Muse

I was working on the design of the app Fight Me, which is an app that connects strangers so that they can fight each other on the internet. And it had never occurred to me that that could be used for something bad. I was part of the team that was developing the Yas button, which allows you to murder someone you've never met in another country by just clicking Yas. We had 90 billion data points on every human being in the world and most dogs, and we used this information to sell people mugs online that said things like, don't taco me till I've guacamole-ed. I thought we were doing a good thing. And after we altered the course of U.S. politics and I made enough money to retire at 27, I realized I was wrong.

T-B-T-L What's that noise? Uh, uh, hey, just the radio, dear.

I just want to use my muscles and my mind and be your number one guy using my muscles and my mind.

Come on, is that even a celebrity? He's no Roy Donk, but he was a regular guest on the Colgate Hour.

Okay, this is a rumor that's out there on the Internet, and you think it's nothing. Tell you what, I'm going to look into it. Okay, quick question. The internet. That's the one with email, right? Yes. Got it. I'm on it.

All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

I just want to hug this show and never let it go.

My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

How did I wind up here? How did I wind up here?

Coming to you from the Ness Broadcast Center, high in the sky, above Portland, Oregon, day six, with no coffee.

This song goes out to all the coffee lovers of the world.

So I'm just sipping this peach bubble water and trying to convince myself that it's a warm cup of java here on this wet Tuesday. That's right.

Didn't know you like to get wet, though.

Yesterday was incredibly rainy here in Portland, like standing water in every parking lot and every street I was driving on. I mean, the kind of thing where it was like the storm drains were not functioning. So you just have entire intersections that were like in a foot of water. Today is not nearly as rainy, thankfully. But I do have a new nemesis out there on the jogging path along the Willamette River, which we can get into in a few. By the way, we're at episode 3520 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Oh, and we have some information on who those two guys are that Andrew and I saw in this painting that's one of the submissions for the duck stamp this year. Of course, this is the thing that you need to have if you're going to hunt ducks. Also, people just collect them. it's this huge competition every year where people paint these scenes of ducks and there has to be some hunting involved anyway we one of the pictures that seemed to be maybe trolling the whole contest was a painting of these two kind of quirky looking dudes standing in the water shaking hands with a huge duck behind them and we know now who the players are brother who are you what are you doing in the painting i did a deep dive that involved having to rent a film on amazon this morning to really get to the bottom of it so we'll tell you about that coming up also we'll tell you about the 40 million dollar conference call that went really sideways this media company that may or may not have uh any actual subscribers and visitors and clicks and the like and someone not being able to actually get on zoom so they had to be on a conference call and then a bunch of other shenanigans so we will uh talk about that too plus emails and vmails oh yeah and this guy the longest running cobro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships he prides himself as a family man and a man of faith as

there's a drive in a deep left field by castellanos it will be a home run and so that'll make it a

4-0 ballgame. He is Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend. I'm a man of faith, Luke.

And the words I use don't represent who I am or my family. Hey, I'm thinking of just right now, like literally right now, I am thinking of filing a claim for some Blue Cross Blue Shield class action lawsuit settlement. I saw something

come across my email the other day you get these things from time to time right like it used to be an actual letter in the mail now it's an email and it says hey listen if you uh use this product and service or service as our record show you did you know there's an ongoing class action lawsuit i never mess around with those i don't know what's going on it seems like a lot of work to get a dollar

50 or something right i had one from some cell phone company for like it felt like about a year i was getting and it was like verizon or something although coincidentally i have verizon but it was something like if you had this service between these years you could be entitled to and i was like whatever this amount is it's not worth the headache for me yeah and so for this one though

it's like kind of a done deal they've already reached a settlement like as you were talking i was half listening and half reading i'm like because i just want to you know as my dad says my dad doesn't read emails right he blasts out emails he cleans out his inbox uh and if some Reading happens along the way, so be it. I'm the exact same way. I'm blasting out some emails here while you're talking, and I'm like, ah, this class action thing. What is this thing even about anymore? And it seems like it was an antitrust. I'm sorry, did I say that? Do I say antitrust funny? It was some sort of antitrust settlement claiming that they were eliminating competition. So it's already been settled. So Blue Cross, Blue Shield have admitted nothing. No judge has ruled on this. It's just a settlement, but a settlement for $2.67 billion. Billion dollars? How do I get on that sweet cheddar? And it's like I've already – they gave me a unique ID. By the way, now I sound like I'm about to get phished, right? I can double-check, make sure that this is all real. It seems on the up-and-up, but I'll do my due diligence here. But it seems like it is on the up-and-up. And if it is, I already have a unique ID. And I was, you know. It's your lucky day. You just found a USB flash drive in the parking lot. As I'm saying this, I realize, oh, my God, am I admitting to being scammed on the air? I'll tell you what. I'll do some cross-referencing tomorrow to make sure. This is the first I've actually considered it. But I don't have any reason to think that this isn't an actual settlement here. So assuming it's on the up and up, why wouldn't I just, you know, throw this out there, see what I get? What if I become so rich that I, I don't know, well, leave TBTL and buy a helicopter?

Thank you for your willingness to practice good judgment. We can't do it without you. I'm with you. I mean, you know, if there's some Skrilla in there, I'd say grab it. Remember when we had a whole phase on this show? I was filing for, like, the listeners were, like, putting my name into various search engines for, like, if someone owes you a check still. yes yes and like i think it was like the university of southern california it was actually marketplace which again those are our colleagues now technically speaking but like marketplace had never paid me for some story from 20 years ago so like the university of southern california owed me money um and then there was a few others was it was a great time for me because the listeners would just say hey i just googled your name in south carolina and it turns out somebody owes you eight dollars and I literally got a couple of the checks like it

actually worked out well you know I did that this came up again right before the pandemic hit and I know it happened right before the pandemic because uh we brought it up again and you know somebody gave us a couple of cross-reference websites and I entered my information and it turns out I was owed a hundred dollars for some project I worked on in New Hampshire back in the day and I filed the claim and they said okay here's some paperwork you have to have it printed out and then you have to have it um notarized and i was like notarized is it even worth like if it's a hundred dollars and what does it cost to like get something notarized 20 well you can go to your bank and they'll do it for free oh really just a pro tip yes what does a banana what does a notary cost michael okay so i thought it was more expensive than that because i there's a little ups store around the corner from me and that's where I get things notarized and I you know I know there's a cost associated so I was like okay by the time I get this thing printed out notarized you know is it really worth it um but then the pandemic hit and it kind of really took the um it you know like I'm not gonna go get something notarized in person in the spring of 2020 when everything was shutting down and then I got an email from them again saying well we sent you some stuff and you didn't reply so we're closing up this case so I think I let that hundred bucks slip through my fingers that could have gotten out of a few jams yeah so something about that kind of missed

opportunity that would haunt me like you know a hundred dollars is is certainly not nothing yeah i can think of things that i have spent a hundred dollars on that were you know not essential to my life you know as you and veeves often say what do you say it's it's a round of drinks or it's 2. two rounds of drinks or something. Yeah, it's amazing how that's kind of swelled over the years. Like, what is it? Four nights at the bar. Right, but I mean, I was out with y'all when we had that brief little window of time when it was like things were sort of, when a lot of people had the vaccine and Delta wasn't nearly as widespread. Remember, we went out to a bar and you and V's very generously grabbed the tab for a medium-sized crew of us. So anyway, it can add up. I guess my point is there's a certain kind of lost money that – or I don't mean literally lost, but there's a certain kind – like there are things that I have no problem basically, as we would say in poker, donking off $100 on. But then there are other scenarios where it would haunt me to not have the $100, and that would be one of them. Oh, really? Yeah, for whatever reason, the idea that they sent you the thing and that you could have just filled it out and sent it in and had the $100, but now that ship has sailed, that would be the kind of thing that would for some reason really kind of bother me. Whereas there are other things where I make financial decisions that are really poor and cost me $100 if not more.

By the way, this Blue Cross Blue Shield settlement is real and legit. I see it on several news sites as well as Snopes.com. Can I tell you what you're actually, like, how much money you could be getting? I don't think I've seen anything. Does Snopes get into that? Because usually this thing will vary widely, right, I think, in payouts like this. For me, usually, though, I just remember back in the day, maybe the—I can't remember the last time I did something like this. I feel like I was in high school, and I filled something out, and I got, like, $1.50 in the mail and a check, and the check seemed worth more. That cash could really get me out of a couple of jams.

But this is Blue Cross Blue Shield. This is medical, right? Yeah. If your level of discomfort at the doctor is any kind of predictor of how much money you're going to make, it's going to be a lot. Yeah, I wonder if there's a place for me to fill that out. Because how do they decide, is it just everybody who had this insurance company or a different one that was being harmed by this antitrust action or whatever, how do they decide who – does everybody just get $100 or is it certain people were considered to be harmed more? And again, if a measurement is how sad were you to be at the doctor's, I think you could be in line for millions.

There's a question here. I'm just starting to fill this out that says, did you take your shirt off at the doctor's? And if so, how painful was it on a scale of one, zero pain to five? You almost jumped out the window. And I'm putting a six down here.

If I find out there's some kind of class action around my recent medical visit, did you step on a meatball on your way to going to the doctor in Portland? Then did the doctor Was the doctor then talking about your radio show While he was handling your meatballs

Oh, dirty

Anyway, I'll let you know how this goes A couple of things, Andrew, that I want to talk about Here at the top of the show with you One, I have been seeing a lot of photos On Instagram of the wedding that you were at this weekend And I have to tell you, Andrew You are handsome, don't worry you look great in the photos your suit is totally stylish i don't know what i was based on your description i thought you were gonna look like david byrne from a talking heads video or something like a comically large suit i think it's very flattering you look great man i was like i mean everybody looks beautiful obviously nick and rosen are attractive humans the whole wedding party looks great but you look you looked really nice in your suit man thanks i appreciate it i i saw

some coming in that one of them i saw last night threw me a little bit into a um not so happy really yeah just like not a great angle making this fucking face sorry kids sorry maddie sorry maddie no i appreciate you saying that yeah uncle luke's friend andrew uses swear words if you ever want a cigarette hit me up no just joking um i uh so you so you were saying i mean i know what that's like yeah i just said one of these photos i'm making a face where it's like why why am i a puffer fish am i trying to make myself as big as possible and i took these

pictures well one of them that i sent i think it might be the show pic where like when i was in texas last week and i was like gonna be you know learning kind of in quotes how to chop up brisket for this gas station chain and they you know the producer thought it would be funny if they gave me Kind of a somewhat silly outfit to wear Which I'm always game for So I had a cowboy hat on And this like apron And they were taking pictures And I don't know what I was trying to do I should send you the outtakes from that Because I look like I am in a hostage situation Like the one I sent you was the sort of least bad And I don't even know what I was exactly trying to accomplish I guess I thought

The one you sent me was just you and Randy, right? An employee there with a cowboy hat Just kind of posing for the camera Yeah.

Exactly. But that was like the producer took like three or four of those pictures. And that one, I'm just kind of look, I look sort of no affect, if you will. I'm just looking kind of straight ahead. But the ones previous to that, I look like there's someone with a loaded weapon standing just out of the frame, pointing it at me. And I'm holding up a newspaper, like a proof of life. Yes.

Why were you holding the Houston Chronicle?

I was wondering about that. Because because I was being detained at a Buc-ee's Andrew against my will. No, because it's the weirdest thing, though, because I don't remember what I was trying to do. I guess I thought if I smile, maybe I'll look goofy-er. So I'm going to try to, like, look kind of, like, sort of almost, like, make this into a candid. I always think candid photos sort of look the best. You know, like, there's something about when we all know that the picture is happening and we're staring at the camera and we're saying cheese or whatever. Those are the pictures that I – I don't know. There's something kind of artificial about them. What I like is a good candid Where the people kind of don't know they're being photographed But then somehow everyone looks kind of nice in it anyway That's like the perfect amount So I guess in my weird brain that morning I was trying to do something where I was almost like looking at the camera But kind of acting like I didn't know they were taking a picture Anyway, what it ended up turning out to be was A series of photos where I look so angry to be there Oh, really? It's really funny So anyway, I guess I'm just saying I can identify with that feeling of seeing a photo and being like, why was I making that face? The other thing is there could be 100 really nice photos of you and one that you don't like, and that's the thing that's going to live, as they say, rent-free in your head. Yeah.

The one photo you didn't love. Yeah, there's a couple out there. There's a couple out there. I appreciate you saying that, but I'm trying to minimize my exposure to some of these photos now because it didn't strike me. It didn't put me in the best place yesterday, certainly.

Well, I'm just telling you that, and I have to do this too. I have to sort of because I have kind of some weird internal stuff around my appearance and probably just getting older and whatever. And so I really, really dislike seeing myself on TV or, you know, photos of myself. And because of my TV job, it sort of comes up a lot. And then sometimes somebody will say, oh, I saw you like my mom will say, your Aunt Kathy saw you on the CBS story. And she just commented, you looked really handsome. and it's like I don't think that right I think all I can think of are the things that make me feel really not great about myself but I also if I'm hearing that feedback I mean it's my aunt so of course she's going to be nice but it's like I will hear nice feedback from people and it will not square with what my brain is telling me right and I have to some at some point go well if four people are telling me something and it I have to believe that maybe they're right and maybe my brain is wrong you know what i mean like i have to actively say i'm going to choose to believe the people that are saying something nice about me over my own internal you know uh voice that's

always telling me not nice stuff about myself yeah and for me like seeing a photo of you know like there's a photo where there's the entire um wedding party so that's gonna be like what 20 people or something and maybe more um no probably probably about 20 people like not everybody is zooming in on my fat face and being like, look at this loser messing up the photo, right? But it sort of feels like that sometimes.

I know that feeling, but I'm just telling you that when I saw those pictures and I was like, oh, I want to see how under your suit it was, I was very impressed. I thought you looked very nice. That was my first, they woke me up at the Buc-ee's. I'd been sleeping in a back room, chained to a wall. They threw a bucket of water over me. And you just just wake up, fresh brisket on the board. Fresh brisket on the board. On the board. and I just like woke up and then they just like handed me that picture of you which was weird and I'm just like he looks nice that was my first and I wasn't like oh I better tell Andrew he looks nice so that he feels better about himself my actual thought sitting in my home looking at the picture was hey Andrew looks really nice the reason they gave you that photo

they were thinking they have ways of making you talk no no I'll stop I'll say beating up on my friend thank you for the kind words

people I don't want to say beat up because I wouldn't advocate for physical violence But there's a new group of people that are grinding my gears. Oh, that's actually a very fitting way to describe it, Andrew, out on the running trails here in Portland. This is two days in a row this has happened now. So I will, depending on which route I'm taking, I will go across this bridge called the Hawthorne Bridge. And it's the one where there's that one guy that occasionally just refuses to sort of, I don't know. Basically what it comes down to is there's this sort of widish sidewalk. You can't actually be on the bridge itself. It's like all this metal grating. think becca said when she was a kid they used to call it the grr bridge because when you drive on

it it makes a sound oh that's such a good description i know exactly what she's talking

about yeah so you can't and certainly a bike can't ride on there it'd be like you would crash immediately like it'd be dangerous for your wheels and nobody wants to run on there and anyway so everyone's kind of up on this sidewalk and where everybody really wants to be is as far away from the grr part of the bridge as possible everybody wants to be on the rail as it were Now that's actually assigned to walkers People who are walking So what that means though Is I'll be jogging on the inside I want to be as close to the guardrail as possible Like basically as far away from the traffic as possible And sometimes I'll run into a guy Who has very much decided He will not ever Yield He will not yield, exactly That's the word I was looking for And so anyway I didn't see that guy the last two mornings But what I did is when you get To the end of the bridge What I do is I kind of do this little loop I go back down onto this path That's kind of along the Willamette River But you have this area Where people on bikes They're coming on a downhill now So they're moving pretty fast Potentially But they're not in the street They're on this sidewalk thing So it's this weird moment where people are riding faster Than you would normally ride on a sidewalk But they're on a sidewalk You see people riding their bikes on the streets pretty fast but that's because they're out with the cars right so this is just this kind of poor design the last two mornings i come around this bend and there is a person these are two different people yesterday it was a man today it was a woman who are on e-bikes going it feels like 30 miles an hour because they're coming downhill they're hauling ass on this sidewalk they're also not where the bike should be they're they're hugging the where the like the actual you know the road markers or the markers on the sidewalk indicate this is the part for people walking out there over there that's the part for people on on cycles in both cases these people on these e-bikes that were just hauling ass were towing kids and i just wanted to be like what are you thinking and in both cases they had to like because they couldn't see that i was about to come around this bend like it also it's like it's sort of a blind spot if you will or whatever it's like somebody who's going 30 miles an hour on an e-bike on a sidewalk in the rain towing their young child as part of the bike setup and i'm just thinking this seems like a bad system and the fact that you um pointed

out that they're e-bikes i think is telling as well right because even if you were even if you were reaching those speeds completely you know of your own volition on a non-naturally yeah like with you know just with without that e-assist because you can and many people do reach those same exact speeds do i pick up there's something slightly more galling to you knowing that it's like a somewhat electronic vehicle like what if there was no human assist at all like where's the line on this like before we're all just yeah you're right there's something about there's

something about the enus of it that kind of i think what it is is these places where i jog that you know it's it's people on bikes and people who are on foot but there are so many e-bikes now and now there are these e-bikes that have these really fat tires that are basically feel like a moped and yesterday literally so i go i'm i'm i'm i'm exiting the bridge and this guy comes hauling down the hill on his e-bike towing his kid and almost hits me and then has to swerve and again i wasn't like so offended for myself i was more just like dang man like if you were to crash with like pulling your kid that seems dangerous then i do i go around this little circle this little loop and as i'm going down there's another person on one of these e-bikes that's again a motorcycle and they're just like motoring up the hill they also have a kid on the back so really it's three actually i saw two of them yesterday in like rapid succession and you're right there's something about the fact that so much of the traffic now on these areas that i jog are are people that are on what i consider to be basically motorcycles that i'm kind of like a little bit it just at some point they're probably gonna have to figure out a system for make keeping everyone separate and safe because it's like one thing if someone's just riding a bike but it's another thing if someone's an empowered vehicle that can go like 25 30 miles an hour that feels like it's a little bit of a different category of transportation yeah i don't know i don't know if i want to

weigh in on that one because i don't know e-bikes that well i know my dad um has been biking a lot Now my dad is, you know, in his now late 70s. He just had a birthday. And this is in Ohio, so don't worry. He's not on the Burr Bridge. Or the Gurr Bridge. Gurr? The Gurr Bridge. The Gurr Bridge. The Gurr Bridge makes Burr go Gurr. Okay.

I'm sorry. I'm trying to do...

more things in the style of dr seuss okay i was just trying to figure out if i was missing

references the gerbridge makes burbs go ger oh burbs go ger okay gotcha sorry i get mad when i'm on the bridge people aren't doing it right yes yes yes anyway um i promise you my dad is not

getting in your way but anyway you know i see bob walsh out there i swear to god he's he's outside

exercising on his bike and i know it's got a little bit of an e assist as he describes it that will kick in a little bit when he's going up hills or what have you but i don't think that he would ever describe it as like a motorcycle certainly or even necessarily a scooter just something that gives them you know again helps them yes while going uphill so i and that's how i've heard these things described but again this isn't my um this isn't my i don't have a dug on this flight so like it's there you go battle yeah i have nothing against e-bikes and i have nothing

against people um i mean i think they're generally a force for good if it's more if it means more people are out uh you know getting some exercise and cutting their carbon footprint yeah yeah i mean i i think that they're a good thing i'm not anti-e-bike but there is this again there's this version of it now that seems to be popping up in portland a lot that's heavy on the e and really light on the bike like it's just i just see people going uphill like 20 miles an hour going uphill like barely pedaling and again it feels in those moments it feels to me like we're just talking about a scooter that now someone is just riding on this path where you wouldn't actually be allowed

to drive like a scooter you know yeah i mean we definitely have like no motorized vehicle areas certainly that's nothing new to our society so i will tell you this though i i'm i'm not a huge

um uh cyclist or biker i have a bike that's up in bellingham um that i guess i'll bring down to portland i mean i enjoy it uh but i it's not something that i i tend to use for exercise or what have you but i will tell you andrew i saw on instagram an ad for this i think it's a mercedes benz e-bike the other day it might have been the most beautiful object i have ever seen in my life human or otherwise i wanted to marry this e-bike and i immediately started trying to construct a universe in which i should have this like three thousand dollar get on the waiting list for this three thousand dollar e-bike that universe could not be constructed andrew and i did not get on the waiting list and i will not be buying it but it was so gorgeous from a design standpoint that i just was like well i guess i'm just an e-bike man now because of the beauty of this thing i mean

it was just amazing i don't know why i'm going here but you want to want me to throw myself on the the petty tracks here for a moment i was running around yesterday i had a pretty um busy day not a hard day necessarily just kind of busy a lot of things stacked up uh and so i ran out for lunch quickly and just kind of ran into several things that were like that sort of held me up like i went to subway i wasn't like going to some sit down i wasn't taking what do you get when you go to subway well i almost always get i did not do this yesterday uh but i almost always get like an italian bmt or a spicy italian which are very similar sandwiches uh foot long white bread not toasted lettuce i mean you asked lettuce yeah no i'm i'm listen this is the most interesting thing

we've talked about in weeks i am fascinated with what people order when they go to subway i'm not

even kidding so it's yeah uh italian then you know like the cold cuts and then um uh lettuce peppercini onion a little bit of onion can't do too much if you're going back to the office place um that might be it for veggies and then um this is what turns out is controversial i didn't realize this but honey mustard genevieve thinks honey mustard on that sandwich is gross but that's

what i like i yeah that does strike me as a little bit odd because you got this certain kind of flavor profile going of the spicy yeah and then but i guess it's a good contrast yeah i love it especially

with those onions which are also like a little bit sweet you know it's like red onion is a little bit sweet but anyway that's what i usually get yesterday i was just in the mood for a meatball sandwich no uh we've talked about it before i think you get you like they got the bread for you it's probably a is it a wheat bread that they peel out all the bread is kind of the same like

there's no healthy bread there so it's like just pick the one you like the taste of and what is the one you like the taste of um i think i get the i think i get the wheat bread yeah um and and then have yeah you're right they have them tear out the thing which which is which is great because it's like half of the amount of bread and you don't even notice it um and then yeah just pretty much every veggie they have but i'm big on getting it toasted and then i get extra cheese and um i had one of those in california the other day and it was i was super hungry i'd been driving a long way it's one of the best sandwiches i've had in a long time but anyway so you're in the subway and you're hankering for a meatball sandwich yeah so i get my meat Ball sandwich and the thing is Now I'm just telling this there's way too many details I'm now entering in that do not matter The point is I just wanted to make this a very quick Targeted trip to Subway Boom boom in and out on the way out Genevieve says you're going to Subway I'll take one I'm like Okay no problem just text me your order I get there there's hardly a line I've just beat the lunch rush But her order has not been texted To me yet I'm like what's going on So I'm like I'm in line what do you want what do you want I'm at the front of the line you know me I don't like to hold up lines I don't you know so I'm waiting for Genevieve to text me her order it's been like 10 minutes since I left the house long story short it turns out it was a technology thing it didn't come through in time so I get my sandwich I eat it there I'm waiting for her to text me I keep texting her she finally realizes that it hasn't come through so she sends it again so then I have to get back in the line when I'm done eating my sandwich to get her sandwich but now of course it's a long ass line and people are ordering weird things it was like everything had come to a standstill then they start using the toaster to heat up bacon or something and it's getting like smoky in there and i'm like you've got to

be you're like feeling like me when i was at that starbucks in the hotel in california and the line was super long because everybody was ordering all kinds of complicated things that needed to be heated up and i was like can we just all please get a medium cup of black coffee and call it good

and i was so close to the perfect crime because i had gotten there before the lines were long and i had gone through the line but the but i was waiting on vives and again it was a technological thing because it turns out like something got stuck in her phone and then later maybe it was reception on her end maybe on my end because then later on it came through like twice anyway so that kind of put me in a mood and then i i'm gonna rush home then i realize ah i turn on the car and it bings at me i'm almost out of gas i'm like all right there's a gas station literally a block and a half from here there aren't tons of gas stations around my house i'm like i'll just take care of this now fine so i go to the gas station and the only place i can you know like find a spot at the pump is a space that is almost totally taken up by somebody who is gassing up their escalade at another pump but the thing i've already sworn once i'm going to say it the thing is so goddamn huge and gaudy that they're pulled up to their pump so far that i can barely pull my mini little snub nosed car to the other pump in front of them to get my gas i have canyon narrow

is so yes uh so huge that it's basically taking up all of the space and it's just and it's and

it's literally escalate is the cadillac one right it's just like this big it's the cadillac yeah of those things douchebaggery um and so uh anyway i just there's something and again it's one of those things where i see those kinds of things too in the city i'm just like it's just so i just it just triggers me like you know just in a way that like I sum you up so quickly if I see in a way that I try not to do other people and that doesn't exactly align with the way I'm trying to see other people in the world and judge them but when I see an escalate and you're taking up two pumps at the gas station I was so put off by it I think I were you tempted to just throw Genevieve's sandwich at their windshield I was not but I had to try to not look miffed because I felt like I don't know the person who was filling up the gas tank I just didn't want them to know that I don't know sometimes I just have this whole narrative in my head that like they know they're irritating me I don't know it wasn't a good moment for me I just have to wait for them to be done

because also it probably takes about an hour to gas one of those things up no I was able to like

pull that's why they must have known that they were like in my ways because I had to pull the hose to its absolute stretched limit to get it to my gas tank if that makes sense because they're

taking so much space but you were able to do it i was able to make any kind of eye contact with them or did you so you're saying i know you kind of want to move on from this which is fair because

this is like i want everybody to know like don't don't tell me that i'm in the wrong here whatever like yeah i know i was just being petty and in a mood and i saw this thing and it just irritated

me they could be a humble podcaster like me that just needed to rent a car to go one way from bellingham to seattle and the the avis gave him a canyon arrow you know that's i mean maybe

And it's one of those things where I have no proof to the to the negative of that. And it's like so this is like so the opposite. Usually like you're playing the Andrew role here. You are absolutely right. That could be it based on me sizing this person up. I don't think that's it. But also I was sizing them up with the Escalade in mind.

So I don't know. All right. Well, I'm glad everything turned out OK.

But it didn't take what happened to the end of the story on the way home. I was so mad. I threw Genevieve's sandwich out the window. And now we're breaking it up Oh wow

You really cut me off there 34 minutes into the show Andrew I needed to tell you About my sandwich order okay Sorry we had things That we needed to discuss If you want to come crash Down here in Portland with me That's fine Oh that would be sad Just the best

Bachelor bros. Yeah. That would be, like, that would not be, again, you know, we'll do what we have to do for you, Andrew. No, thanks. That would not be a good version of this show. Only one of us could be experiencing divorce at the same time, please. Oh, yeah. And I called dibs. Although, honestly, I may have used up all of my, I think I used up all of my get divorced while, or go through a major breakup while co-hosting this show cards. So I guess it's your turn next. All right, let's take a quick break and then we come back. I am actually very excited. I hope, Andrew, that you have done me the service of not overly researching this duck story. No, I'm dying to hear. It's actually very interesting. Yes. It's actually quite interesting. So we will get into that coming up in a moment here on TBTL. hey let's thank some donors of the day these are the folks that are making today's episode possible with their generous support financial support and also emotional support but a lot of But critically, the financial support. Folks like Mariah Spicer out there in Chicago, Illinois. We know Mariah. Mariah's a long-standing member of the TBTL10s community, a wine enthusiast, and just an all-around great, creative, interesting person. I believe I started following Mariah on Twitter because she said something like, I was talking about weird Twitter. I wanted to be a part of weird Twitter, but I don't really get it. Like, I want to be an old friend, Josh Letterman type. But I don't have the tone or the voice, you know. I admire it when I see it. Anyway, Mariah said, follow me, because I am really good at weird Twitter. So I did. Oh, really? And is Mariah playing in that weird Twitter space? You know, I haven't seen. This hasn't been a ton of activity. Mo, you need to, I don't know if people call her that, but I am now. You need to really up the hashtag content, hashtag creation, because I started following you for weird Twitter takes, and I'm not seeing anything. Well, maybe it's super weird. Maybe it's weird that she doesn't tweet. Maybe that's what it is. That's genius work. Just not do any tweets. Follow me for my weird tweets, and then don't do any tweets. Not tweeting is the new weird Twitter. That's right. Oh, I think I found Mariah. Okay, let's move on. Chris Walton is in Arlington, Massachusetts. Thank you, Chris, for supporting the program. Marion Benner is out there in Maple Valley, Washington. I feel like we've had a lot of people checking in from Maple Valley of late. Kayla Forzali is in Miami, Florida.

Now, Kayla, did we meet?

I don't remember meeting Kayla at the Florida show, although if we did, now I'm really...

Well, Miami is pretty far. Oh, right, Miami, Miami, Miami, far away, far away.

Welcome to Miami. I mean, I'm not saying anything particularly insightful, but like Miami is I mean, it is it's it's almost literally, but also figuratively, like I've always said it's kind of the least you can still be in the United States, but be technically in the United States. Like I, you know, I spent a summer in Miami and I remember getting there and just getting off the plane and just I'd never been to that part of South Florida and getting off the plane and just thinking I am no longer in the United States. Just the temperature, the culture, the sort of, you know, international influence on everything. I mean, in kind of a cool, fun way. It's also like it's like an eight hour flight from Seattle. It is so far away. So anyway, Kayla, if you didn't make it up to our Waffle House show, we understand. But thank you for the donations. Or if you did and we talked to you, it was so nice meeting you. Yes, I'll never forget it. Asha Erbilgen in San Francisco, California. Another year, another time that I try to say this listener's name and say it probably incorrectly. And I believe that this listener has even actually emailed in some kind of helpful pronouncer at some point. And I still clearly didn't retain any of that. So thank you, though, for the donation. We really appreciate it. Thanks for being cool with my butchering of your name.

Erbilgen.

That's what you'd say?

Erbilgen? I just wanted to, I just, I had nothing to say there, so I wanted to try to help out in some way, so I just gave it a shot too, an earnest shot, yeah.

Yeah, would you go with Acha for the first name?

Yeah, I would, or me, I wonder if it could be softer, I wonder if it could be Acha, I'm not sure.

Acha or Acha, Erbilgen, thank you. Also, Jill Casasola is in Miami Beach, Florida, wow, Miami, Florida and Miami Beach, Florida.

what's going on on the same day what's going on and you don't believe in a god

hey thank you so much to all of our donors of the day thanks for making in TBTL possible. We really do appreciate you. Hello and welcome to Top Story. Alright, I kind of laid this out at the top of the show, but we saw that painting yesterday that was I think you and I both were like, I would actually like if I had that painting of the two guys standing in the water shaking hands with a duck behind them, if I had that painting, I would display it in my home proudly. It's actually a very interesting piece of art, but we were trying to figure out who these guys were and in fact the audubon uh magazine which had gone through the flicker site of all the submissions for the um duck stamp the i guess it's the 2021 duck stamp or i guess it'd be 2022 probably when it goes into effect uh they even the audubon society had said who are these guys question mark yeah and i was on the flicker page like it's weird

they like the the audubon society uploaded all these but they didn't even mention the artist They didn't caption it with the artist's name or anything because I just during the show yesterday, I wanted to do a little poking around, but I wasn't I wasn't able to come up with anything.

So listener AJ reached out and AJ sent me a link to a clip of John Oliver talking about the duck stamp. Oh, OK. And so I'm watching this John Oliver piece But it was one of those It was like I could probably get to the real footage If I wanted to like Log into my HBO account or whatever But then I'd have to figure out What episode it was on What this piece of tape was It was from YouTube And it was someone pointing their phone At their television It was like that kind of thing But that was the only place Again short of Going into my actual account On my computer And finding this particular episode Where he talked about duck stamps And then getting to this point, I just anyway, it was going to be too much work. So I was like, well, I'll just use this audio. And then I noticed that John Oliver was playing clips that involved the two guys in the painting. And that's from a documentary called The Million Dollar Duck, which is this documentary from a few years ago that's just about the duck stamp competition.

Oh, really?

Yeah. And it involves these two guys, the two guys that are in the painting. and so then i went to amazon well first i went to find million dollar duck to see if i could just get to the source material and i found it but you know i needed to rent it on amazon for 3.99 so i did andrew and uh so i i was able to i didn't watch all the documentary although by the way it seems to be a really good documentary i'm actually stoked to watch it later i only watched the relevant part for these guys so do you have the um painting or do you remember the painting i

I remember the painting very well. I don't have it in front of me right now. I could if you want me to stare at it while you play this. No, no.

As long as you kind of remember who the folks are. So there was a bald guy who seemed who was in camo, who seemed like he was kind of, I don't know, more like a duck hunter guy or some sort of corporate dude maybe. And then you had this other guy in a suit with this kind of almost like Kramer esque hair, a little bit kind of a quirky looking dude. And they're shaking hands. So the bald guy is named Tim Taylor, and he enters this duck stamp competition every year. He's a painter and takes it very seriously. The guy in the suit is named Rob McBroom. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, and he is also an artist. But he is constantly trying to subvert the competition by sending in his kind of weird conceptual, like mixed media art stuff that is, in a way, trolling all of the people that take it really seriously. And so Tim Taylor, the more serious bald guy, really does not like Rob McBroom. This is Tim Taylor talking about him from the documentary.

Rob McBroom is a guy who enters the duck stamp every year, and every year he violates the rules. He breaks every rule of the contest, and he's really just an intention seeker.

I don't know if we need to talk about Tim Taylor.

So this is Rob McBroom now, okay?

He and I have never directly confronted each other. He is taken to bad-mouthing me on the internet a bit.

he's found this contest that people take very seriously and the contestants work really hard on their entries and he mocks it he does paintings that mock it here's the first one that i found

about me the sequin guy violates all the rules of the competition so this is rob mcbroom finding a

a kind of less than flattering review written by tim taylor so what happened was rob mcbroom put up like a duck painting in one time again and his paintings are very like abstract and kind of weird whereas people that win this are usually just doing extremely realistic very faithful paintings of waterfowl. Yeah. But this guy comes in from Minnesota he also like owns this record record label and he works at an art museum and he's just kind of like one of those typical kind of quirky dudes so he sends in one one year and then this tim taylor guy basically writes a bad review of it and then all of a sudden rob mcbroom makes it his life's goal to try to troll tim taylor because of this one negative review and yet they allow it because they enjoy it and

think it's funny this guy has wasted thousands on entry fees and who knows how many hours

to what end he will never win i never said a bad word about his artwork just doesn't belong in this contest but he obviously read that and took great offense to it what i decided to do it was him and

one other guy i started recreating their work their kind of greatest hits as it were using my own style this is about as close as you can get to tim's original without actually knowing the size

So we're now standing in a gallery where Rob McBroom has recreated a very, very, it's like a super similar painting of a duck to the one that the Tim Taylor guy did, except he's gone in and he has put Barack Obama's birth certificate in it because this Tim Taylor guy doesn't like Obama. and he's taken pictures of Tim Taylor and like if you get up close to the duck it's just this giant trolling project of the bald dude

and it's completely built from scratch

this is the piece of work that Rob McBroom took off of the internet to abstract

the little bits I've learned about him I'm like okay he obviously hates Barack Obama and he hates communism so I decided to load it up with imagery with that

here's barack obama's birth certificate that he released here's the eye of the duck which is the communist symbol there's other things in here like he was

holding a baby at a christening and then i put lenin's head on top of it so rob mcbroom

is finding pictures of tim taylor at like a christening on the internet he finds a picture of it so he takes that photo and then he instead of a baby the dude's holding lenin and he's integrating it into this duck entering in the duck hero competition and then there's some of

his other pieces that didn't do so well in the competitions that he doesn't like

so there's okay that is high high level that's chief petty officer behavior oh it certainly is He went and found the stamps that Tim Taylor did that didn't do well, that did not win or did not place very high. And he's working those in just to twist the knife a little bit.

An old surf scoter that he was unhappy with. So that went in there.

I was ultimately thought it was funny. Then I was a little angry about it. Then I didn't care. I'm his big villain and I didn't even know I was his villain and nobody cares I wonder if the guy's ever actually seen a duck

I've got a boat 15-20 hours in this already so now we're in the basement we're in Rob McBroom's basement And he's working on his latest submission, which is, again, just completely designed to try to troll Tim Taylor, where he's working in something involving the Oakland Raiders because he's figured out that Tim Taylor is a Raiders fan.

I've got about another 20 to 30 to go. The legs are changed now. They're kicking out because I have to work with the Sabres on the Oakland Raiders thing. Tim Taylor likes the Raiders. I've been tweaking certain things there just to go, this is something you used to enjoy. And I'm using it now. Even the detractors, they haven't faulted my technical skill. So that's nice. It's not like they're going, oh, this thing's a giant piece of crap. It just doesn't belong anywhere near what they have going on.

So there you go. Those are the two guys in the painting. Now, what we don't know is who painted. Yes, that's what I wanted to ask. The painting. because it's not part of the trolling project it's not the troll who it's not a self or no i don't i don't get the sense that um rob mcbroom could actually paint the painting that first sparked your interest in my interest because it's a very i mean that's painted by a very very skilled painter and rob mcbroom's uh work is again much more sort of i guess you could call it abstract i mean our listeners who know art would have better terminology for it but i really want to figure out who painted the painting of them shaking hands because that's incredible to me this is is so this this is a good ducktail luke you just told me a ducktail i don't know if you realize that um that is a uh that is a fascinating world i mean that's isn't it i mean it reminds me a little bit like i am you played me that tape and i am sucked in um but like that was kind of the uh the template right for documentaries in the early 2000s which i don't think this is i'm just saying that it kind of reminds me you're thinking of like king of kong exactly or the um spelling bee one or there was a whole bunch where it's just kind of like you find a community of people and wasn't there a doll collecting one, I think? Probably. Some of them were, you know, the ones that started the trend were really, really good. And then after a while, some of them seemed a little just kind of exploitative and, you know, also a little paint by numbers. Like you find a quirky group of people who are passionate about something and then you dig into their passion and find the little tension points and what have you. But, man, this is, that adds so much more context to this. that makes me want to join the duck painting community like it really does like i want to be

closer to this story like one so one of the other people who uh rob uh mcbroom is mad at he's mad at tim taylor and then somebody else who's not named but i guess the other guy his other nemesis does like um window paintings like you know at christmas time when like a uh like a department store or something some store will basically hire someone to come and paint like Santa and elves and like Christmas scenes in that kind of you know paint that you can eventually wash off so this guy does that and so this Taylor does Tim the tool Tim the not tool man Taylor no I think it's this other person oh okay so there's like two people that Rob McBroom is mad at Tim Taylor is one of them then there's another one who doesn't get mentioned by name but who Rob McBroom goes and finds one of this guy's projects he's done where he's painted a window, and then he takes a picture of the Santa that this other dude painted, and then he integrates it into one of his duck things as a way of trolling that guy, for some reason. Look at you, you paint Santas on windows, you're lame, I guess. It's like hardcore. It really is. And all that tape is from that documentary, The Million Dollar Duck, which you can buy or rent on Amazon or Apple, and I actually am very excited to watch the whole thing because it definitely looks like it's a well-done film. So props to whoever put that together. This story was bouncing around the Internet yesterday. It was actually, I guess you called a column by Ben Smith. He writes the media column for The New York Times. Ben Smith was one of the co-founders of BuzzFeed. And I have to say, he is a very good writer. Like, I always really enjoy his stuff. and he was detailing the kind of weird world of this thing called OZ Media. When I was in L.A. a few weeks ago, I kept noticing that there were these like signs, what do you call them, on a telephone pole or something. Actually, it was more like when there's a building that's boarded up and then somebody comes along and they just put up all of those like posters effectively, right?

I think I know exactly what you saw And I think I had it like two blocks from me In my own neighborhood

Yeah it's a big thing in LA too Because I've said this a million times On the show I have a feeling that The film industry and The media industry in LA They spend a disproportionate amount Of their advertising money in LA So that the people who are in the things Will see it Like my theory is they're overspending On like Mission Impossible 7 billboards along sunset so tom cruise will see them and feel like okay well they're doing their best because i don't think people in la need to know that there's a mission impossible seven half of them probably worked on it right exactly and the other big one is the four-year consideration campaigns yeah you ever notice that oh yeah of course to la oh yeah i mean outdoors it's just so strange it's like there's all these industry awards i mean some of them are well known the oscars or the emmys or whatever but then there's even just like the dgas and whatever and you'll just see these billboards for your consideration the handmaid's tale like literally trying to get someone who's driving down sunset who also is part of the hollywood foreign press or whatever to like consider it literally it's for your consideration would you consider giving us this award for this project please yes it was one of the i mean i love that that was one of the cultural

things where i was visiting la for my job interview down there kind of leaning towards not taking the job but just wanting to explore it but there was something about it was was that my first time in la i think it was and just sort of seeing i think it might have even been award season so seeing all these four-year considerations I

I found it to be a very intriguing thing that seeing L.A. almost as a business town and the business is movies, you know, it's really totally like it won me over.

Right. Right. And so they also, you know, they don't miss a chance if you've got a any kind of a flat surface that they can like someone can come out and like put a bunch of. Again, I should really learn what the term calling it posters, but those posters up that are advertising a new show or trying to win an award or whatever. I saw a bunch of them when I was down there for something called The Carlos Watson Show. And I kept seeing this guy, and I was like, this guy looks familiar, but what is The Carlos Watson Show? I was like, well, whatever it is, they're pumping some money into trying to promote it. Well, it's a project from this thing, OZ Media. Ben Smith details a Zoom video conference on February 2nd that OZ arranged between the Goldman Sachs Asset Management Division and YouTube. So this was supposed to be a conversation like Goldman Sachs, I think, was considering investing 40 million dollars into this Ozy Media thing. And so Ozy Media had set up basically a conversation between somebody at YouTube, a guy named Alex Piper and the folks from Goldman Sachs. The idea was the guy from YouTube is going to come on and he's going to explain to Goldman Sachs that OZ Media's shows, they make like talk shows and whatever, and have a newsletter. Have we considered having a newsletter, Andrew? You know, we should probably look into doing that to grow audience. But so the idea was that this like YouTube, the person who worked at YouTube was going to kind of like say, yeah, this OZ Media thing is really doing well. And the Goldman Sachs people were going to say, oh, OK, well, then we should invest this $40 million in this thing. So the problem was Alex Piper, the guy from YouTube, was running late and apologized to the Goldman Sachs team saying he'd have trouble logging on to Zoom. I mean, certainly we all have had technical challenges in our life. But in 2021, if you literally can't get on Zoom and you also allegedly work for YouTube, there's maybe a problem.

I was going to say, yeah, I mean, this is you're supposed to be a big, you know, well, you're supposed to be representing YouTube, a huge media company. I think you can get your camera to work.

Like, I can't get on Zooming. What is this, Catfish? Is Neve hanging out somewhere? That's the number one dead giveaway on Catfish on MTV is, well, they said their camera was broken. Yeah, for two years?

Yeah.

No one's camera's broken. So this Alex Piper guy is like, can we just move this to an actual conference call, like old school? And he didn't say that part. I added that in. According to four people who were briefed on the meeting, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity. so everyone switches over to an old-fashioned conference call. The guest told the bankers what they had been waiting to hear, that Ozzy was a great success on YouTube, racking up significant views and ad dollars, and that Mr. Watson was as good a leader as he seemed to be. As he spoke, however, the man's voice began to sound strange to the Goldman Sachs team, as though it might have been digitally altered, the four people said. After the meeting, someone in the Goldman Sachs side reached out to mr piper that's the guy from youtube not through the gmail address that was provided to participants before the meeting but through mr piper's assistant at youtube that's when things got weird a confused mr piper told the goldman sachs investor that he had never spoken with her before someone else it seemed had been playing the part of mr piper on the call with oz i can't believe that the oz folks thought that that was gonna work like i mean okay what we're going to do is uh what do we do what do we do we do we we don't have this info from youtube because we're not actually as popular as we say we are okay what if we faked a person from youtube i know but then on zoom they're going to see it's not the guy well do they know what the guy looks like i don't know we can't risk it okay we get them on a conference call okay but then you don't sound like alex piper well maybe we could digitally alter like someone had to download a program to do and also how is it being digitally altered to sound more like alex piper does anyone know

what an Alex Piper sounds like well that's I'm so I'm I'm still confused in the dark and kind of on the edge of my seat here because you sent me this article today I didn't see it over the weekend and so I've read most of it but I got like four more paragraphs for the big reveal or maybe eight I don't know because it starts with this anecdote and then it backs up and it looks at this organization as a whole and some how it looks like they're kind of fudging numbers and doing all kinds of things to make it seem like they're a bigger company than they are. Maybe you're about to get to that, so I won't spoil the details on that. But I still don't know what actually is happening with this call. The article has not come back around. It said that it sounded digital at times. I wasn't sure exactly why it was digital. Again, are they using some device to mask the voice on the phone call. And also, well, you have

gotten to the point of uh what they say happened yet what the owner of this company says happened

but it's not a good enough explanation for me right so youtube's security team gets involved once they hear that someone's been pretending to be alex piper in meetings and so they start investigating and uh and basically what they're able to figure out pretty quickly is that the voice on the call that was supposed to be this alex piper guy was actually the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of OZI A guy named Samir Rao And you got Carlos Watson Who's the sort of The titular head of the whole operation He's the guy that's hosting Did I use titular correctly there? I always I kind of I think I always I confuse Sometimes I confuse Titular with eponymous

Here let me give a Let me give a stab at this Titular would be If you have an album But then there's a song on that album That is also the name of the album

album that would be the titular track i believe and then eponymous would be it's named for the band eponymous yes i believe so like aerosmith is eponymous record it's just called aerosmith got it okay so it's not quite titular but basically this carlos watson guy is the straw that's stirring this drink he used to be on msnbc he's like the host of like nine of their shows um and so anyway what what youtube ended up finding out was that it was this dude samir Rao and pretending to be somebody from YouTube you got Carlos Watson apologizing profusely here's the interesting part Carlos Watson reached out to the OZ board of directors and basically says our CEO Samir Rao is undergoing a mental health crisis and he stepped away from the company and he went to get help and now he's gotten help and now he's back and the interesting thing is the board was like works for us like including the guy that owns the Milwaukee Bucks is on the board of this oz thing and is like yeah i i think this was all handled pretty well this company which like what the story goes on to basically point out is that there just are all these metrics that this company has been using that are just not verifiable of how many millions of views they have on youtube for instance they have a number of videos on youtube that have a million viewers a million views but they have like 10 comments which is shady if you if something has been viewed a million times more than 10 people are going to have something to say about it those might be bad takes but they're going to exist and so it just feels like a company that is like one of the things they said was the carlos watson show or whatever one of these shows is it's the fastest growing show on amazon prime but then when the talk show talk show the fast growing talk show on amazon prime except when they go actually look at the when ben smith goes and looks at the thing It's just like a function on Amazon Where you can upload your own show In other words, it's not like Patriot That Amazon Prime went out and paid a bunch of money For someone to make It's like you and I could take a Hey Dummies video and we could upload it on whatever This particular part of Amazon Prime is And then maybe we could be the fastest growing show On Amazon Prime, Andrew That's a perfect thing

Was it the claim of fastest growing or the claim of first? I'm seeing here Amazon Prime's first talk show

But it was very misleading Right. If you just read it, you would think, oh, I guess Amazon Prime has like entered a deal with these folks. And it's like, no, they just went out and like made their show and then just like it's like uploaded it onto Amazon Prime. So there's just like a bunch of stuff like that that makes it seem like this company is definitely not as kind of legit as it's presenting.

But I'm just amazed. Can I just say, though, that be on this very specific, sorry to interrupt, but on this very specific point of Amazon Prime's first talk show. I mean, I can't believe I'm even saying this. How many ads do I see in some form or another every GD day? Right. But I can tell you, I have looked at and considered, like you say, those wall posters, those outdoor wall posters advertising the Carlos Watson show, because that that claim, Amazon Prime's first talk show stood out to me. luke i can tell you where they were on the corner of roosevelt and i want to say 66th so you saw these in seattle yes in my neighborhood that's what i was saying before they're like blocks from me i mean i don't think they're there anymore but i remember seeing them about a year ago and um it's kind of between me and like where theo's vet is and just a whole bunch of things and it's just right there in my neighborhood so i would pass them all the time and i would think oh amazon's i mean i literally thought oh amazon's got a talk show now oh that's kind of interesting but i also remember thinking like because it's just got this photo I think it's the photo that we see in this New York Times article too of Carlos Watson kind of standing there and there was another blurb on there too something making a claim of just like Carlos Watson being one of the most enter entertaining men in America or something like that I don't remember what it was but I remember thinking about them like why have I not heard of this guy I mean I maybe maybe I'll check that out I mean I don't even watch talk shows, but I. I'd seen I'd walked past this thing enough times that the exact messaging they were going for entered my brain. And I made a little yelp when I was reading this article and I saw that. Like suddenly I'm like, oh, that poster, that poster.

I so obviously there's not like this is not a complete and total sham in that like they have created a lot of content and they also have this festival Ozy Fest or whatever that they were like doing, you know, pre pandemic. and I guess are going to supposedly bring back, and they had the money for those posters that you saw and that I saw in different cities in America. So somebody printed those out, found someone who would go and glue them up on walls in different cities. It's not like this is just a complete and total farce, but it sounds like it's definitely not what they're trying to present it as. But again, if we can just for a moment go back to this idea that you can describe faking being somebody from YouTube and using a voice modulator, you can describe that as a mental health crisis? It's interesting to me. Yeah, and do they ever come back around to this?

So again, the founder of the company says-

No, it never comes back up in the story. It's just everyone associated with Ozzy, well, they do come back to it in that there might be charges over this. So there may be criminal charges. So the government is not done with this because they're like, look, if you impersonate someone else essentially to raise money, I mean that's just obviously that's fraud and a bunch of other felonies probably because you're talking about real money $40 million somebody walks into a convenience store and sticks them up for $20 the police are going to look for that person too talk about $40 million by way of pretending to be someone who you're not vouching for the company's success so the government is not done with this but what I just find fascinating is that everybody associated with OZ including the board is like yeah we feel fine about this it was a mental health crisis and now we're moving on like that's like i just i don't think that's i mean i don't think that's a mental health crisis and i think it couldn't be a lone

actor you're on the call like you know whether or not you've booked somebody some executive from youtube to be on the call what you're just saying that like you were all ready just to go forward with this call without him on the agenda nobody wrote an agenda for this meeting and then suddenly you get a surprise visit from somebody from youtube who has your back i mean clearly this was set up by all of them you can't just say right one lone actor had a mental health crisis that's why i was waiting to get to the end of the article to see how people are reacting to that claim

i guess maybe their claim is i'm just totally speculating here i i could see a world in which their claim is we have this ceo right and he was telling us that he had brokered this deal with youtube or that he was going to have this person from youtube on okay yeah and then he couldn't deliver and so then he tried to pull a fast one but again and maybe now i'm really just going i'm going right down the rabbit hole with this maybe samir rao the ceo maybe his deal was if i get on the call and i sound like samir rao carlos watson and everyone else are gonna know it's me oh then using the digital so that's why he would use the digital voice thing because it was actually more about fooling his colleagues and it was again i'm giving them a huge benefit of the doubt here as far as the story goes my guess is it's probably more just a few people were in on trying to like trick Goldman Sachs into uh you know into basically investing all this money in a company

that's definitely not a sure thing and also by using this excuse they can even go from saying it's not our fault to well we're kind of heroes here because they use this language of like really standing by our partner through this tough time of his right of his legit mental illness you know and we're not going to abandon him because he's sick.

Right, which is, let's just say it was just the CEO and he was just in over his head. That's still, I'm sorry, that's not, to me, a mental illness. That is somebody who was basically bad at their job. And, I mean, by that same token, you could say Elizabeth Holmes was suffering from a mental health crisis at Theranos. Because it was like you kept saying that a thing was going to happen and then you could say the guys who threw the fire festival we're dealing with a mental health crisis because you're promising something to people and you're not going to be able to deliver on it and at some point it just all kind of collapses on itself

yeah boy all those stories just stress me out you rattling those off i just think oh god like i hate well you know me i just i i do not like to play in any kind of um uh untruthful space you know like i just the idea of spinning a bunch of lies that continue to like get bigger and bigger and start chasing you around gives me so much anxiety because I have not, you know, had to do that since I was getting in trouble as a grade schooler, you know, with whether when I say getting in trouble, I mean, you know, just maybe getting in trouble in school and hoping that that news doesn't come home.

or eventually having to get report cards signed or whatever. But just that feeling in your gut that you know eventually this is all going to come collapsing down on you.

Right, like me when I was a kid, stealing money out of this kind of tin can that we had that was like a thing where you put pennies and stuff in. And every night when my dad would come home from work, we would sit at the dinner table and he would take out his pocket change and he would put it in this thing. And this was going to be money that we were going to send to like the missionaries or something. And I, one day I wanted a candy bar and I pried the thing open and it was really hard to pry open. And I was like, I'm just going to take, you know, 20 cents. And then I tied an onion to my belt, as was the fashion in the times and went and got a Charleston shoe. So, but then it was like, I'm only going to take pennies. And then I was like, I'm only going to take dimes. And then it was like, eventually I'm taking the quarters and then the paper money. And it's like I know somewhere in my mind that this is eventually going to come crashing down. And it did. My dad one day was – I told the story many times on the show. But somehow the topic of the collection or whatever you call it, the little offering box came up. And I said, trying to be clever but being too clever by half, I said, yeah, dad, you should put some money on that thing or it's going to be empty. He said, what? And I said, you know, I'm just I'm just joking about how long it's been since you put money in there. And then it would be like it was a joke that didn't quite work. Right. Right.

Like, you know, because how money how we always call money compost. And, you know, kind of you get the worms from the bottom.

Good meatloaf, mom. Their bones are their money. And so my dad was like, what do you mean? I was like, nothing. So then he goes, well, let's just see how much is in there. He opens it up and pours it out on his plate.

And it probably opens up pretty easily.

way too easily because someone's been prying it up with a fork me and it's like 10 pennies and this has been like a year that my dad has been putting silver money into this thing and i think even paper money so what's funny is like whenever we talk about these stories like fire fest and things like that that where it's just like something gets out of control and the person's in over their head i often say i could see myself in that um and for many years i thought yeah i'll probably have at some point you know a some kind of theranos level scam that i get caught up in but i'm just too lazy for it now like i've luckily i think that that door has closed for me because i don't have the energy to con a bunch of people into something other than this show yeah right once a year we only do that once a year it's like it's like to do something like fire festival or theranos or even oz media it's a that's just a lot of work yeah i just don't have it in me yeah like that's the thing a lot of the times these scams is what i used to always think with the mummy these scams are oftentimes more work than just doing an actual job yeah right being above board like so i'm too lazy for these scams thankfully so uh i i think it's unlikely i'll end up you'll see me in the new york times you'll see ben smith writing about my uh you know online media scam that i was running because i just don't have the energy for it anymore yeah That's what I call Jughead Jones-ing it.

Guy worked so hard not to work.

Right.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week I hope that it's from a female. No, man. It's not from a female.

Was Jughead your favorite? I think I liked Archie, which is super basic. I don't even know why. Because, you know, I was talking about this with Becca the other day. i don't really vibe with the movie ferris bueller's day off the way a lot of other people do like i don't have a problem with it but i never understood why i was rooting for ferris bueller yeah like it was just like yeah this everything seems to go really well for this kid like and and and so i don't know why with archie it was kind of the same thing you know what i mean it was like the girls were fighting over archie or something like i don't know why i identified with him but i think

he was probably my favorite i was a jughead yeah jughead hands down um and what was a uh bueller's friend's name i was definitely uh i was i definitely associated with him a lot more in fact i remember even thinking it seemed like somewhat rude like how we know he's somewhat heart like he's sort of a uh what what's ferris bueller's friend's name um i don't know because

i have seen that movie like twice in my life uh is it cameron i think it's cameron yes um i was

looking it up um but anyway you know cameron like i don't know like he's he's clearly in a bad place and feeling kind of low and i've i and i have not seen this movie in a long time but i feel like i remember maybe even being young and seeing it for the first time i'm thinking like really you guys are gonna make out in front of him right now like come on he's having a hard time anyway yeah i'm a thank you man and my um i'm a cameron man

Is that your favorite Jadena song?

Do I say Cameron funny?

Okay, we've got several voicemails here. We don't have to play them all today. But this one is a bit of a stem winder, I will say. And it was prompted by me mentioning this, what I thought was bizarre, but it turns out kind of a common experience in Macy's, where you go in and, you know, I bought my suit, which was, you know, on discount, but, you know, not deep discount. I don't just do somehow, you know, there was a sale going on. So I bought my suit for this wedding. And then we took a long time to find the right white shirt for me, just like cotton button down white shirt that I could wear with a tie. And then he eventually found one that was priced, you know, appropriately at like thirty five, forty bucks or whatever. And then when we went to check out the woman who's like, you know, behind the counter and making sure we're getting the best price and all this stuff rings up the shirt. And she's like, oh, that's funny. it rang up as 499 we're like 499 she's like well i'm not going to argue with it like what does she care right so she rings up our shirt at 499 which didn't really make a lot of sense to me um that is the story that prompted this voicemail hey guys this is sarah and austin um andrew's 499

shirt made me think of something uh one of my favorite stories so about 15 years ago my mother passed away. That's not the fun part. But she left me a pile of money, which was great. I paid off a bunch of debt. I bought a minivan, which I really needed for my small children to drive them around town. And I had a little bit left over. I've always, always wanted a standing mixer. So that was sort of one of the larger items that I was considering purchasing. And I was kind of paying attention. I knew they mostly retailed at $2.99. So I I was just sort of thinking about it, keeping an eye out for them. And one day I was in my local H-E-B, which is the supermarket chain down here. And on the shelf, there was a standing mixer, a red standing mixer, that was selling for $2.50. And I thought, well, $50 off, this is what I've been looking for, I'll just go ahead and grab it. So I grabbed the thing, put it in the bottom of my cart, got up to the cashier, and they were ringing everything up and we got to the standing mixer and there was no barcode on it and she said to me how much was this do you remember and I said oh yeah it was $250 and she looked at me kind of quizzically like she didn't believe me and then she said well let me just make sure and so she flagged some kid down and said would you go to the aisle the kitchen where's aisle and check the price on these um and he he ran off and and ran back uh very efficiently and he said to her uh yeah they're 250 and she looked at him and she looked at me and she kind of shrugged and she rang up the kitchen aid standing mixer for two dollars and 50 cents and sent me on my way and i said nothing uh and i don't still to this day know if that was feeling or not it probably was but it felt like it just felt like sort of a little gift from my mom to me and I use that standing mixer all the time every time I make a cake and I love it so

much okay thanks guys power out so you know I was gonna ask you yeah I guess we know your feelings

on this well I don't I mean yes my feelings are did she mention the name of the like the kind of

store we're talking about she said it was a grocery store but the name went by quickly it was a regional grocery store chain that um i didn't as a matter of fact i have another voicemail i want to play regarding grocery store names but um i didn't quite catch it it sounds like it's a chain

grocery store in the area though i know we're gonna get emails and people will point out probably correctly that like you know even a chain of grocery stores that's could still be a small family business and i don't know if it were if it was like a mom and pop you know i actually just went in this store that i love here in portland called kitchen caboodle oh yeah i needed to buy a silpat this weekend and a rolling pin it's just kind of one of those stores they have one very similar in bellingham called green home which is like they just like the main floor is all just like kitchen stuff like every kind of late crusade you could think of every kind of spatula spatula city and then upstairs is like is like um you know furniture and stuff but it's kind of a not a huge store anyway i really like that place i was telling back it's like the rei of cooking for me it makes me want to be a better cook yeah yeah so i'm like if i just had this kind of egg timer i would be a whiz at timing my eggs um but anyway so it was like that i would think that's kind of

a bummer that's probably stealing but then the bigger the store gets like if you're talking about a jc pennies or a walmart yeah then my ethics are you know what they can absorb that hit right giant company um and so i am gonna go with and again i know our listeners probably won't like this our rule followers but i'm gonna say sarah was completely fine to do this considering she did not set out to steal this mixer she was answering honestly uh and then like the idea that it was sort of her mom's spirit looking out for her that the kid came back and said 250 the kid could have said 250 yeah and then also i do empathize ever so slightly with the person doing the ringing up because they must have thought i can just see they're thinking how are we making money on this thing two dollars and fifty cents right because it's not a goodwill if it was a goodwill you'd be like well i don't know maybe the motor's broken or i don't know what things people put all kinds of crazy prices on things but this is a new stand-up mixer yeah like how is that two dollars i don't even i mean just the cord is two dollars and fifty cents what is what is going on

here right right right yeah i don't know how i feel about it honestly i mean there's the grief element and i certainly don't want to make sarah feel bad about it either way even if i did come down on that side i think i'm with you it really depends on a lot of a lot of circumstances most importantly the store the organization you know what i mean again if it was literally a walmart and they said um to you know ring it up as two dollars and fifty cents i don't think i would i think i would just have the same exact feelings that sarah does but uh yeah so it really does depend on the circumstances speaking of grocery store names let me just play this one too uh

this is listener rachel from pittsburgh um i called last week or i was played last week talking about giant eagle the local grocery store here and you guys commented on grocery store names and i wanted to say um i'm originally from seattle and i was talking to my friends about how i lived really near this grocery store um you guys know the one probably in linwood on highway 99 um safeway and my friend from here from pennsylvania looked at me shocked and she said the grocery stores named Safeway? And I said, yeah, because that's like a very normal name for a grocery store. And she said that it sounded like they were protesting too much, that a place called Safeway seems like it's probably full of expired foods and in a dangerous area of town. So I hear it now, but that was like never even a thought. I don't even think I considered the means of the word other than Safeway the Grocery Store. Anyways, power out. Thanks, guys.

Yeah, and the reason it came up was because she mentioned Giant Eagle, which is a grocery store chain I grew up with that never seemed weird until I hadn't heard it in 20 years. And then she just mentioned Giant Eagle. I'm like, why am I buying food from a Giant Eagle? And why am I suddenly scared?

Well, it's like we don't have rats anymore. That was the grocery store we used to go to. And it just seemed completely normal because it's just like you grow up with something.

Yeah, our apples aren't poisoned in the famous Mr. Show. I think there's a Mr. Show skit. It's literally that. It's competing commercials for two competing grocery store chains, and the new slick organization just keeps saying, shop here. We don't have poisoned apples. All right, so what do we want to go out with here today, Luke, musically speaking?

Let's see here. The Rolling Stones are touring. I did this dumb Tweet on Twitter They were just retweeting Mick Jagger They were playing in St. Louis This last weekend And it's like Mick Jagger is just standing in front of the Arch It's just the corniest picture And what I wrote on Twitter was It's funny that one of the coolest People in the history of rock and roll And my dad Walter Burbank would take the same photo If they were in St. Louis Yeah, I want to see him in front of the Bean. Right? It's like Mick Jagger's 80 or whatever he is. And yeah, he's had a lot of cool experiences, and they've written a lot of music that's really iconic. But at his core, I think he's just entering that phase where he's just kind of a doof. Yeah. It's just funny to me to see that trend. If you think about Mick Jagger in 1972 versus Mick Jagger in 2021 and how he's just become everybody's granddad, I guess is my point. So I don't know, something from The Stones?

Sure, yeah, let me play something off of that compilation that I mentioned from time to time. More Hot Rocks, Big Hits and Phased Cookies. Let's go with... Oh yeah, you love this one. Yeah, yeah. So let's go with kind of an earlier... How about Sitting on a Fence? Do you like that one? Do you know that song? Sure.

I do, I think I've heard that before

Let's do that Okay, that's what we'll go out with The Rolling Stones coming at ya On a Tuesday Alright, thanks everyone Have a great rest of your Tuesday We'll be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you Until then, stay safe, take care of yourselves Go Mariners That's the part where you say This is a call back to our texts of last night Alright, see you tomorrow Please remember, in a mountain too tall And good luck to all

understand Some of the sick things that a girl does to a man So I'm just sitting on a fence You can say I got no sense Trying to make up my mind Really is so hard to find So I'm sitting on a fence All of my friends at school grew up and settled down and they mortgaged off their life One thing's not said too much but I think it's true They just get married cause there's nothing else to do So I'm just sitting on a fence You can say I got no sense Trying to make up my mind Really is so hard to find So I'm sitting on a fence

You