Muse

The new Amazon Echo has everyone asking Alexa for help.

Alyssa, what time is it?

What the hell is wrong with this blasted thing?

Amanda!

But the latest technology isn't always easy to use for people of a certain age.

These kids done bought me a busted machine again. Odessa!

That's why Amazon partnered with AARP to present the new Amazon Echo Silver. the only smart speaker device designed specifically to be used by the greatest generation. It's super loud and responds to any name even remotely close to Alexa so they can find out the weather.

Allegra, what is the weather outside?

It is 74 degrees and sunny.

Huh?

It is 74 degrees and sunny.

Where?

Outside. What about it? The temperature outside is 74 degrees and sunny.

I don't know about that. The latest in sports.

Clear as it. How many did old satchel strike out last night satchel page died in 1982 how many he get satchel page is dead

He worked there died. Who did satchel page?

I don't know about that local news and pop culture

Anita what them boys up to across the street. They are just playing they what now they are just playing You say they're just playing now? Yes, they are just playing.

I don't know about that.

Some people call it catfishing. Some call it to catch a predatoring. In Jesus' day, it was called pulling a Judas.

What's the symbology there?

Symbology? I'm sure the word you were looking for was symbolism. This need you have to be the smartest guy in the room is off-putting. You know what, dude? We can make a lot of money on this. If you're making these out of thin air, I mean, there's no overhead. We're going to be rich. Oh, my God. One hundo a day, both of us. Five hundo a week. That's rich. That's 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 we talk about you and your life your hopes your ambitions your dreams my name is luke burbank i am your host coming to you from the offices of walsh walsh and doormat Right here in the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington Taking a look at old Theodore Murray Who is just absolutely blissed out Comfortably curled up on a chair Just living his best life right now There is something about the soul of a cat I don't know if I'm living my best life on this Tuesday morning I got up very early to fly up here to Seattle It's part of a multi-leg journey that will put me in New York City later tonight. And so because I got up very early and then was feeling a little bit, just a little bit tired, I walked over to a little local coffee chain, Starbucks, and got a coffee. But I got a decaf because that's what I'm trying to stick with. And this is one of those mornings where I think I could actually use some caffeine.

I'm not handling this well. I don't feel competent. I'm depressed. I'm slouching.

This is probably the first morning where I've thought, boy, I wish there was a little bit more jolt in this moon juice. But I think we can get through this together. Episode 3535. That's right, 3,535 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. Feels like an auspicious number for us. How about this number? 3.25 million. That's how many dollars the highest paid employee in the state of Washington makes. Or I should say was making before he walked away from his job instead of getting the vaccine. What an idiot. We will tell you the curious case of Washington State football quarterback Nick Rolovich and his allergy to money, apparently. That's the real allergy. The allergic response to not having your three plus million dollars a year, I think, is probably much worse than any possible allergic response to the vaccine. But anyway, we'll talk about that. And then on the subject of medical breakthroughs, the prestigious Dyson Award has been given to a German scientist who came up with a male contraceptive approach that involves men who would like to not procreate. They more or less give themselves a testicle bath. I'd like to grow a pair sometime. At a certain temperature and frequency so that it neutralizes their little dudes for a period of a few months. It's quite a fascinating thing and could actually be kind of a big breakthrough in the world of male contraception. So we'll talk about that, too. And time permitting, we'll tell you the interesting story of the Yahoo Yodel.

Yahoo!

We'll do all of that with the help of this guy. By the way, this is the sound that somebody makes when they are giving themselves a testicle bat. I'm getting a laugh. I'm getting a laugh early, my friends. Right over there, the longest running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is Andrew.

Damn. Fire at all. Back at it again with the white van.

Walsh, and he's joining me right now from just across this table. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning. I am going to ask you a question. I want an honest answer, and I want it to be detailed. Okay. Don't scrimp on this.

No, I will spare absolutely no detail.

You roll up here around, what, 9.10, 9.15 in the morning. It's fall outside. Beautiful. Fresh air. You open the front door of my house. Yes. What do you smell? Just generally speaking, when you walk into my house at 9.15, what are the smells that greet you?

To be honest with you, I didn't notice any over... I noticed your bathroom smelled really nice. I didn't notice a specific smell in the sort of living room and entry area of your house. Have you taken to diffusing some kind of oil or, you know, what are you trying to achieve?

What am I getting at here? Well, the thing is I wasn't really trying. I'm not trying to achieve anything. Although, I mean, there have been times where I've talked to Genevieve about changing the, not oral, but what is the word for the scent? Olfactory. Olfactory, yeah. print of the house but no i was just kind of curious because there could have been a lot of things sort of like first of all i spent a good deal of yesterday cleaning i just hadn't cleaned the house in was that

just in preparation for me coming over i feel

bad if the red carpet was no um the uh no you know like it had been i usually will like spend i don't know maybe i'll pick one saturday a month or something and then you know do some real cleaning on that day and I just have not had it in me and it's the but I do not like living in grime and it was one of those things where the house was just you know like little corners with cat hair that you just know is building up and yeah you can zap it with the vacuum but like you just know that overall it's building up right the bathroom was getting to a place where it was just uncomfortable the house was needed a cleaning and I kept putting it off weekend after weekend and then yesterday afternoon around 4 30 I'm finishing my last task and I'm like you know what Genevieve's at work today like just just start cleaning like start and so I just ended up in one room led to another led to another so there was mopping there's pine sole going on there's various kind of cleaners but also when I'm done cleaning the house I like lighting a couple of candles so there's potentially a candle smell Genevieve does have a jasmine diffuser out there okay I want to talk

about that for a minute because Addie has one of those at her place those diffusers there's a certain and I love it by the way but it's funny because there is it's weird how smells become

in style oh really there is that ours is too chemically I didn't know I mean okay I know

this wasn't why you brought it up my the only thing I noticed was I was like wow their house is very clean so that was notable I didn't notice any specific smell but what I noticed when I go hang out with Addie is she has this diffuser going and it's some kind of hip scent it's like a scent that's popular and then in like it's popular on Capitol Hill that neighborhood of Seattle if you can believe it so that then we're walking around and we go in this very hip store called freeman that's kind of like a clothing place um that's very boutiquey and i swear to god they have the same smell being diffused and then we go into some other like a coffee shop not a coffee shop because they wouldn't probably they got the smell of coffee going there but we went in some other very hip place and they were diffusing the same thing and i was like did someone send an email

and it smelled great by the way like i was into it like a woody or more of an earthy or

I guess kind of I'm terrible at trying to describe this stuff, but I would say sort of earthy a little bit more earthy. Yeah, but it made me think I kind of want to get one of those diffusions. What I have is Frazier for oh, yeah, I like that oil that smells like a Christmas tree. I mean amazingly so and you've got those those like the diffusing sticks that you kind of turn over, but it's you know, in the summertime, it's kind of weird. It's not really a summertime smell per se, but I wouldn't struck me.

I didn't even realize that. I didn't associate it with Christmas. I was at your place. When was that when we recorded the – oh, it was – pardon me. I was doing a John Mulaney. It was the beginning of – Late spring, early summer. Yeah, right? It was May, last week of May, because we were heading off on our –

our delicate adventure. But anyway, it didn't strike me as like, oh, it smells like Christmas in here. It just smelled generally nice. But, you know, the other thing that was kind of on my mind, though, is you're walking into a house in the morning. And I think houses have different smells in the morning as well. Like Genevieve just got ready for work and went went off to work. I took a shower. So you also like sometimes that can be kind of gross walking into a place where a couple of people have just showered and you're not one of the people. You know what I mean? Like walking And they can be like it can be, you know, just kind of uncomfortable with maybe moisture in the air. But I do have that shower spray. I think that's what you smelled like. That's not a shower spray. I spray it down afterwards. But also there's coffee percolating. It's not really percolating, but I like that word. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so I'm just kind of wondering, like, when you walk in, is it kind of like, ew, it's kind of like showery in here. Or, oh, it smells like coffee and that's nice. Or it smells like Pine Soul because Andrew went.

It seemed really just nice and clean. And you know what smell I did notice walking down here? Because I had the Lyft drop me off. By the way, I don't actually know your address. And so I always just tell them to take me to the Whole Foods.

Oh, yeah.

And then we get to the Whole Foods. And then it's when I realize, oh, that's not where I'm having them take me. But so anyway, I dropped my stuff off here. And then I went to walk to get my cup of decaffeinated coffee.

Broadcast? Oh, wait. No, you didn't. You said you went to a small little boutique.

I don't think I actually. Sorry, Barry. I forgot that you have a broadcast right up there on Roosevelt

Two blocks away

Well believe me I wish I would have

Sorry I did not say that to call you out I just assumed

No I just because I don't live around here I just forget that that's even an option I know this This kind of sort of forgotten Starbucks That's up in like an elevated parking garage Yeah yeah And that's just where I've been going for years And so I'm just a creature of habit But anyways, next time, definitely I'll hit up our dear friends at Broadcast. But I do really like the Broadcast decaf that they sent me. We're not being paid other than I guess they're giving us free coffee. Anyway, I'm walking back down, and I think they were already starting to get their morning prep on at El Camion, that taco truck. Oh, yeah. And, like, the wind shifted. Yeah. I just got hit by the smell of morning, just savory food being prepared.

Peppers, probably. Oh, my gosh. It was so good. But I was like, I'll see you in about two hours, I guess.

I think the thing that happened to me, which was not good for my stated vegetarian ways, was, you know, I was in Texas a few weeks ago and I was doing that story about the gas station that's got all the like elaborate food stuff going on. And so I did. Beef them up. Yep, that's it. They put that in the piece, by the way. I just saw the rate what we call the radio cut of the piece. I was like, oh, gosh, it's actually I believe it's. fresh cooked brisket on the board there it is something like that beef i'm a fresh chopped brisket on the board i the first version of the story didn't have me yelling that and i was kind of relieved and then i saw the second version where the editor was going around and grabbing different bits of footage and put that in and i was like it embarrasses me so deeply but that

probably means it's entertaining yeah and also you had to go through i could see it from both ways in a certain way like you had to go through it so at least it was worth it sure it went towards the piece but on the other hand 20 people saw it before it now what 200 000 i don't know what is their i don't know their viewership in the millions is it in the millions just of everyone's

parents yeah everyone's parents on planet earth are the biggest fans oh man they came so close

to mentioning you on levitar the other day i mean they were circling around burbank adjacent they were circling around cbs sunday morning and like levitar has been on this thing lately about how So, like, CBS is, like, the old people's network, right? But they also have, like, this young man, Chris Whittingham, who I don't think you would – he wasn't there, I think, during your heyday of listening. But he's, like, you know, he's, like, a young Latino man who – like, he's in his 20s, I think, but he's really, like, a 60-year-old British man. Like, he's got the soul of it. And he loves CBS Sunday Morning. And so they come on, and they're talking about Mo Rocca. And they're, like – he's, like, oh, my God, Mo Rocca? You tell me that's not hip and young? And they're like, what is not hip and young about Moe Rock? I'm like, say Burbank, say Burbank. You know what that's like?

That's like me listening for Howard Stern to mention Chris Hayes.

Oh, right.

Because he's a big MSNBC watcher. And he'll mention like Joy Reid. And then he's talking. I mean, unfortunately, because he's Stern and he's still overly like gendered with things. The topic was women, you know, women hosts of television talk shows or news shows. him speculating on hairstyles and outfits, which isn't the greatest look. So maybe that's why I didn't mention Chris, but he's mentioning the show before Chris. He's mentioning

Rachel Maddow. It's like circling around, circling around. I was at the sink, and I was like ready to text you. No, I was like, oh my gosh, is this going to happen? Is it going to happen? Yeah, because I mentioned, I mean, this is very tangential, but they did have a lot of conversation about Danny O'Neill's tweet.

Your friend Daniel O'Neill, my former colleague. Speaking of testicles. That's right. That was the piece. He tweeted out a stat about it was like how many ruptured testicles the Seahawks had. No, no.

The Mariners have had more ruptured testicles than playoff appearances. Exactly right. I believe. So the reason I was saying the El Camion thing was, I think, hitting me especially hard was because when I was down in Texas doing that story, They had put this elaborate spread of food together for me, mostly meat stuff, to try on camera. I guess, would this be ironically, I think this actually rises to the level of ironically, if I'm remembering the current version of the thing, there's no footage of me eating meat.

Oh.

So in other words, that was for naught.

See, that's kind of the opposite of what I was saying before. I'm chopping meat.

I'm interacting with the products, but you don't see me taking a bite. Like, that ended up not being something that had to happen. But here's my point in all this. They had this like smoked brisket breakfast burrito at this place that they had just freshly made and brought over for me. And they're filming me eat it. It might have been the best bite of food that I have had in like 10 years. It was so good that it's making me crave other franchises. Like I think there was a commercial for Arby's brisket right now.

I think you might be thinking of Chipotle.

Maybe Chipotle. Yeah, they got a new thing.

And people are texting me about it for real life.

Somebody has added a brisket product. Yeah. And it was like, I seriously had, I'm not even exaggerating, one bite of this brisket breakfast burrito at a gas station. And I feel like about it the way I remember vividly my first kiss on the lips.

Because there was also beef involved. Yes, there was. There was also brisket.

I just eaten brisket at Snow King Ice Arena. No, it was a kiss with Nikki Balliet, occasional listener to this program over the years. I don't know if currently she's listening. But it felt to me like my head was turned into a helium balloon. It was going to float away from my body. That was the butterflies, you name it. The physical sensation of my lips making contact with someone else's lips while the mummy and my friend Josh Badger Newton were sitting next to me egging me on during christian music ice skate night at snow king ice arena that feeling and which i can still kind of almost viscerally feel 32 years later you're sure that's not the caffeine

it's well this is a decaf my boy um that's when you got the extra heartbeat yes right it has not

stopped and it's just what it is no the extra heartbeat probably started in katie texas when i had one bite of this brisket breakfast burrito it was like my head exploded with the sensation of

how good it was and were you tempted then to eat more or you're in a work situation there there's cameras on you it's not like you're just you're done with your job and you're sitting like at the waffle house they they fed us afterwards but we were kind of done with our presentation they probably brought this to you while you were still in the middle of it was like the first thing so

we're in front of a table that's set up for the shoot that's all lit it's the first and by lit I mean they had lights on it not like it was On fleek but it probably was Also on fleek it was the first thing They had they were having me eat sort of chronologically Like this is breakfast stuff and there Was so much food they had out there That I thought if I if I I mean what I wanted to do was literally inhale This entire thing Because I've never been a person who doesn't think that That meat tastes good right I just Like personally right now in my life not Really generally being Part of that whole deal but I wanted to just eat the entire thing But I also looked I was like I have so much more stuff To eat on camera if I like if I If I eat too much at the beginning I won't even be able To you know get through this And then it ended up being fine We I was sort of just little strategic bites Of this and that I think I said on the show I ended up having like Three total bites of meat products So it was fine but in the time At the moment I was trying to be self-disciplined But I mean if it was Truly if there were no cameras and if I hadn't been so Public about trying to not eat meat And I mean, my impulse was to completely and totally inhale this burrito.

Let me ask you this. I feel like I keep on asking the same questions about vegetarianism over and over or your kind of journey with it. But I'm just legitimately interested. You were talking about cutting up the meat, right? You were cutting up brisket at one point. Yeah. And yelling. Yelling your fool head off now. Yeah. But are you finding you haven't really eaten meat with the very, very small exception here and there.

uh in two three years now yeah i think it's i maybe i had some with wolfgang puck i had some

in texas but i mean generally so it's been three or four years yeah yeah yeah yeah so a while are you finding it like almost and for you i don't want to put words in your mouth but it seems like you know one of the driving principles behind you not eating meat is the literal animal connection I'm going to go ahead.

The idea that these are living creatures and you're not comfortable with that. So does that make meat, while sometimes being delicious if you eat a bite of it in a burrito like this, but is the idea of even cutting meat or handling meat getting grosser and grosser to you?

No, I'm not grossed out by it at all. That's the thing. And, you know, we talked about this when I was in Texas. But I there's I think an argument can be made that I'm slightly hypocritical because if I really cared about cows as much as I claim to through generally not eating them, why am I OK with chopping up their flesh on camera and yelling fresh brisket on the board? Like I'm I'm sort of playing in that space You know I mean like a but you know Morrissey right Yeah is is well I think Morrissey's politics have gotten pretty dodgy of late But before all of that or before people knew that about him about the certain nationalistic tendencies I didn't know this Yeah I I don't want to say anything more because I don't know enough about it I'll probably misdescribe it but what I was sort of getting was That he's getting to that age that people get to sometimes times where they just start really kind of regressing to very bad takes and nationalistic takes, you know, and kind of like, I don't know if it was anti-immigrant or what. I mean, he's always been very, very strongly pro-animal, you know, Meat is Murder was named one of their albums. And over the years, people have kind of like started to use it as a way to make fun of Morrissey. Like he won't, allegedly he won't play a venue if they sell meat in the venue, if they sell like, you know, turkey sandwiches. Right. And that's all like seems extra to me and extreme. And I don't ever want to be that guy. But on the other hand, it's kind of like, well, if I do, I believe it or not. If I believe it, if it's an important thing to me, let me use. An absolutely terrible analogy that I'm going to are I can already tell I want to cut this out. It's like Israel. It's worse what I'm about to say. If you are somebody who believes that life begins at conception, you have no choice but to be an extremely active and vocal opposition to people having that choice, if you believe that, right?

I grew up in, you know, I grew up with those values, so I understand the intensity of that. I grew up in the Catholic Church.

Those are not the values that I have anymore. I also did. I mean, we were very, very, very, if you will, anti-choice. And I, you know, I'm as upset as anyone by what's happened in Texas and what is happening in a lot of places that is threatening to deprive a woman of being able to seek medical care that she chooses and needs. So that's where I stand on the issue. That being said, if I was somebody who believed that life began at conception and then I was also just kind of hanging out idly on the sideline, that's, to me, a confusing way to be in the world because it seems like if you believe the way that the folks that believe that do, it almost seems like you're compelled to do something or say something.

Yeah, and obviously you know this, but just to say it, to get it out there so that people don't kind of misconstrue this and send a lot of emails. Obviously, there are also a lot of people who are anti-abortion who are just using it as a tool or a cudgel or as an extension of their politics. You know what I mean? So there is that, but there are also people out there, like people in my family, who truly, truly believe very specifically what you're talking about.

So I guess my point is if you feel something that's so like if, you know, if you feel meat is murder or in the case of I mean, here's the thing for me, though, I I've said this before. And if I lived on a farm or if I lived in a rural area and I, you know, had a neighbor who was a farmer and had had cows or whatever, and and those I could see how those cows were living and they were having a great life and drinking from a stream and eating grass and kind of trotting around or whatever. And and and then just one day their life was over quite suddenly. I don't think I wouldn't find that to be immoral. Personally, my personal values would be that's not immoral.

not immoral but i'll bet you i mean you might you might even be more reluctant to eat that meat though like you probably being baxter that right you develop a relationship well i definitely want

to get a pet cow that's not even a joke there are so i told you that i and the listeners that i got this little kind of uh house that i bought in washington state that i'm gonna be i think i'm gonna be working on although i met with an architect the other day and it was so funny because he kept describing the budget I have for the renovation, which feels to me like a paralyzing amount of money to spend to fix a place up. And he kept saying, well, the budget's a little wonky. I was thinking, wonky? What does that mean? Like, I mean, he was a cool guy. I actually really liked this dude. But he was like, I was like, who are you usually working with? Yeah, who is wonky?

That is a weird.

well i've never heard that he was trying to say when your budget is tight he was trying to say when you don't have enough money to do the things you want to do when it's wonky i thought he was saying that your budget is kind of wonky he is but he was trying to use wonky so as to not hurt my feelings right right what he wanted to say was like well when you don't have enough money to do the stuff you're asking me to do here we got to get creative i think is what he was saying but without he didn't want to use something that was so like pejorative as right tight or so he was saying wonky but anyway driving up to that little place because it's it's near the columbia river the part of the columbia river that comes down and so the columbia river comes you know down along uh the part that separates it separates oregon and washington and then as it's moving south it hangs a hard left and it goes when we think of the part of the columbia that separates oregon and washington most of us think of the northern border of oregon and the southern border of washington because the columbia flows along there and creates a natural boundary but it's also doing it as it's coming from north to south for a little ways and that little area when you're driving on i-5 if you look off to the left there are these kind of islands that are just undeveloped and and maybe not even islands maybe they connect up to land but they're just it's just like trees and grass and somehow all these cows like they must they belong to someone because cows are actually pretty expensive i think items but they love to wander over and just stand ankle deep in the columbia river and graze and stand on these sandy beaches and there is nothing cooler than a cow on a sandy beach i have learned driving back and forth to this place it is it gives me life when i see these cows and i mean i would not feel bad eating one of those cows those cows are living la vida loca like they have unlimited room to roam i mean not really but it feels like it They go chill on the river They're just wandering They're literally doing whatever they want And then at some point, I assume, their life is over Ideally it's not painful And it doesn't involve a super stressful Journey in a cattle car But I don't think I would have a problem with that That being said, I do also want to get a pet cow

Remember that cow we met in the Outback? Yes

We met a lot of cows that were Ex-cows in the Outback That was a big problem out there too

Oh, did we see a bunch of, I remember seeing a lot of carcasses of various animals. I didn't remember seeing the cows were surprisingly, surprisingly regular.

I think it would be because those big, huge semi-trucks that like road trains, I think they called them, that are pulling like three trailers. And I think when you're going in one of those, you don't stop for anyone. So we'd see some, we saw a lot of live cows and also some not live cows.

But didn't we actually like get out of the car and like kind of, you approached a cow I think there's a photo of that, maybe.

Yes, and it comes up on my memories in my phone on occasion. And then I'm like, I will be like, I totally forgot we went to Australia. It was such a blur. So anyway, my house smells like meat. Yeah, what have you been frying in here? Okay, let's take a quick break, and then when we're back, we'll do the top stories and the like here on old TBTL.

Thank you, baby.

All right, let's thank some donors of the day who are making today's episode possible. Folks like Olivia Kent in Rockville, Maryland. I wonder if the dazzle of zebras has made its way down to Rockville. Probably not. I think it's in a different part of the state.

Don't Go Back to Rockville is a beautiful song. Who's that by? I think R.E.M., unless that's a cover.

Hmm. You think they mean Rockville, Maryland? I think so. Now, I wonder if Rockville is the same as Rockville Town Center. I don't know that. I think you got Rockville, Maryland, and Silver Springs, Maryland are all kind of right. You can take, if I remember right, you can take the Metro in D.C. out to those places. They're not very far away.

But it does look like it was originally an REM song, so it wasn't a cover. Let's go out with it. I'm going to write that down. Okay. It's beautiful.

Olivia, you do need to go back to Rockville because that's where you live.

That's where your mail is.

And we need you to keep donating each month to the show. So if you could just stay put, that would help a lot. We also have too many listeners moving around. Yes, the skinks are fusing. Our brittle brains can't follow that kind of stuff. Danielle Robbins is in SeaTac, Washington. Danielle, I'll be in your town no less than two times today. That's right.

You were already there once.

I was already there once. Oh, my gosh. Andrew, can I just tell you, this morning, taking off from Portland, And as the sun was rising and everything was just pink flying over the aforementioned Columbia River and then just coming up going past Mount St. Helens and all of the other just natural, incredible natural beauty between Portland and Seattle. And then we came into Seattle and we did that thing where, like, even though.

SeaTac is south of Seattle SeaTac where Danielle is Of course the airplane has to go all the way up to like Everett

Yeah and then it circles around And I can watch it from my house circle around

I'll send you a text next time so you can wave But it was like just one of those Flights where it was so Quiet and smooth And I was listening to my Cocteau Twins music And we were just gliding Absolutely In stillness and silence Other than my Cocteau Twins music over Elliott Bay and just looking at the sun dapple on the water and the buildings, and then we went and we turned around and the angle of the sun had changed, and I was just watching it glint off of things, and I was just like, how amazing that I live in an era where this is something that we can see. Yeah, yep. I mean, like, this is relatively new to humankind.

And then you got close enough, you could see the Denny's, and you're like, I'm gonna get a grand slam

later. I mean, if you think about, humans have been here for, what, 100,000 plus years, only about 10,000 of those years are you able to get a Moon's Over Miami maybe 20

I'm just proud I didn't make a lover's joke I went with a different establishment that I know of actually I do every time I go to SeaTac like that's the only Denny's that I've been to in like the past 20 years and I've been there a couple of times so when I think of SeaTac I always think yeah someday I'll go back have myself a breakfast

at Denny's. I keep talking about this now but this little house that I bought it is it's relatively close to the only functioning talk the closest functioning taco time oh is

that how you found it which is in kelso washington is there a filter for that on zillow like there's

a filter for that in my brain yeah but so i like i um anytime i go up there to do something or when i was meeting with that architect i was like i gotta hit that uh i gotta hit that that sweet sweet taco time so i drive up to where the taco time is but what i noted is that across the parking lot there is a working denny's an operating denny's and a sherry's oh okay i haven't done sherry's that's a real that's a real sweet spot you've got yeah you've got basically your choice of the kind of places that my dad used to have men's prayer breakfasts in the 80s throw in a

perkins and it's a clean sweep well listen i don't want to insult danielle uh or her beautiful town of sea tech but i will say this the sausage at denny's is not the sausage of my youth it's different now i think that my guess is i mean it might just be that these restaurants just are serving less quality food than they used to i don't know but it almost seems like they're trying it like when they went to that phase of putting like caloric information on um on the menus and what have you i'm wondering if they tried to find a slightly more healthy version of a pork sausage link which you're not going to get a healthier version but instead of being smooth with a casing

around it that kind of pops when it's kind of bite into it it's kind of rough now it's like

rough now there's no snap they got rid of the snap it's more like kind of ground meat that's formed into a link i don't again danielle like i don't blame you but if you want to send some

email if i knew a ground meat link that was able to live its life happily yes drinking from a stream yeah living on an island off of i-5 little links i'd have no problem i'd have no problem eating it Kevin Budrovich Ryan is in Olympia, Washington Just a little bit south of SeaTac Thanks, Kevin Thanks, baby Dan Schlieff is in West Lynn, Oregon Guess what? I know where that is now That place was just a name I had seen on a map somewhere But now I've actually been to West Lynn being an Oregonian Sarah Adelman is in Seattle, Washington Another place I've been Ah, yeah And then Raul I'll be there quite a bit today You'll be at the El Camion That's right, yeah Raul Alvarez is also in Seattle Raul and Sarah, thank you so much for supporting the show Thanks to all of our donors for making TV Chill possible We appreciate you Babies Thank you, baby This is my thing

Thank you, baby Oh, my love

Hello and welcome to Top Story.

Our top story today, the former head coach of the Washington State University Cougars football team, a guy named Nick Rolovich, has officially been fired for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine. He was the highest paid state employee Which is one of the many weird things About how our state-run universities pay their coaches Particularly their men's football Well, it's only men's football But their football and men's basketball coaches Are typically the top paid state employees in any state And Rolovich was making over $3 million This was sort of a slow-speed crash because he said over the summer, that he wasn't going to get vaccinated he didn't go to the there's a media day uh where they get all the coaches together and the media gets to kind of ask them questions about the upcoming season he declined to go to that or he chose not to because you had to be vaccinated to go there

so he was already making national headlines at that point because he's the only one

right and then he uh you know was kind of tight-lipped about it like he wouldn't really say what he was going to do then he applied for a religious exemption there's also i think is today Today is literally the day that the mandate goes into place, I believe.

Well, I mean, yesterday was, yeah, because a bunch of police officers have resigned today as well in Seattle and King County. So I think the deadline was yesterday and today is the first day of the new world order.

Yeah, right. So he tried to get a medical exemption, which they didn't give him, or excuse me, a religious exemption, which this is probably weird to say.

thank god thank god they turned down his religious exemption well listen like in all in all earnestness like i don't like to get into people's belief systems but like and people's beliefs can change over time but it's pretty well established that he grew up in a catholic household he um he went to a catholic school he went to a catholic high school i don't know about college but either way

it seems like you know this is i think he played for the university of hawaii oh oh is that how he ended up coaching up there too yeah i think he was a quarterback there under june jones but anyway

like clearly there's he comes from a catholic background and i grew up catholic didn't the pope say you can get the yes the pope said you can get it and also like we have gotten all kinds of vaccines like you know as catholics as kids like i don't so you know unless he because there are other religions you know like established religions right because the whole point of this like it's a real sorry to get into the hr aspects of this but i was really interested in like how do you vet a religious exemption and the i was reading a few pieces there shouldn't be any that's how you vet it right social engineering and there are you know they don't want people to just say hey i belong to a new religion that's it's called no no vaximus um which is weirdly catholic sounds like a thing they would sing during a mass no maximus um and also with you um but uh but anyway so they're they're trying to avoid people just saying well i'm part of a you know it has to be an established religion and there are some established religions you know what i mean like whether or not you personally don't care what thing that matters but the point is like you i just find it interesting that like people are kind of confusing what religious exemption and personal belief is yeah you know what i mean and and but it's also weird because he doesn't seem like a grandstander like this thing about this is he's clearly kind of he's making he's making a stand here obviously but he's not kairi irving you know did you notice i almost said kairi irving but then at the end i remember there's a g at the end of it that worked i would i was i was going with you until you flagged that it's like kairi irving who's the brother of Kyrie Irving, you know, who's on like, you know, he's doing Instagram lives and trying to make his point and getting attention and all of this stuff, whereas Rolovich has not been like grandstanding on it. He doesn't want to talk about it.

Yeah, it's weird. It is a very interesting approach by this guy. And I have to say, this is going to sound like what I was saying before the break about other equally weighty topics. I will at the end of the day give this dude a scintilla of credit for choosing his wackadoo belief over three plus million dollars a year like I don't agree with it he's wrong it's unsafe but I'll tell you I have no absolutely no respect for it's the people threatening to not work the people you know who are like like these police benevolence associations in some places where they're constantly trying to tell you that all the police are going to quit if you do the mat the mandate and then i think this was i want to say in in new york i think it was the maybe new york state patrol like it wasn't nypd but it was state patrol and the union said that it was like dozens of of state patrol officers were gonna like quit because of the mandate and it was one like there there's there's this kind of way of of being very public often on social media and other places about no i'm not going to get the vaccine we're quitting we're all quitting and what they found is vaccine mandates work because most people if it's if you're trading everything about your life your job getting paid paying your mortgage all this stuff for this idea that you don't want to get you feel like it's not cool that they're going to tell you to get vaccinated. Most people at the end of it all choose their life, i.e. they just choose to get the vaccine, which they're pissed about, but they just do it. That's why vaccine mandates are kind of great because they do dramatically increase the number of people who are vaccinated in situations. then you get the occasional Nick Rolovich who is literally like no I actually am going to forego three million dollars a year and even though I disagree with him I at least give him some credit for actually following through with this if it's really what he believes again he's wrong and it's it's stupid the reason I was saying the stuff about the religious exemption is not to be critical of anyone's religious beliefs but there is no religious exemption for drunk driving there's no religious exemption for things that we agree are dangerous to society religious exemptions uh you know should apply to matters of morality i guess personal morality or you know like i remember you know famously the story chariots of fire like uh eric little it's the inspire i need to tell people the plot of chariots of fire but it's like the inspiring story of eric little this missionary uh who's also a fast runner but he doesn't want to run i think on like sundays because

that's the lord's day and you know i literally didn't know that was the plot i just knew as i

knew about the song and that people are running um i mean that's most of the movie but i think part of it is he qualifies i haven't seen this movie since i was a kid but he he sort of uh qualifies for like an olympics trial or some hugely important race but it's on sunday and he i think he doesn't run it because it's it's lord's day but maybe he gets a talk later and he decides to run it anyway point is the religious exemption to me is such it's it's wild that they're that that even possibly exists because somebody's personal religious beliefs which if it gives them comfort in their lives and if it is a way that they can connect with other people on this planet i support it wholeheartedly that's great my version of that is buffalo wild wings uh when the seahawks are playing no i'm totally i'm not trying to sound anti-religious i'm i am anti of people being allowed to do something that's dangerous to everybody under the under the banner of some sort of religious freedom that's really i just don't understand how that one got kind of like how that camel's nose got under the tent at some point right well i mean

for me and i think i think we've literally had this exact conversation where you said that and then i say what i'm about to say but like for me the religious the religious exemption for homophobia is especially mind-blowing yeah we mentioned that the mission down in seattle that I think the union gospel mission and I'm pretty sure that I'm pretty sure that they won the lawsuit if it's not still pending but they they fired somebody or I'm sorry I think they decided not to hire somebody or they let somebody go I believe it was an attorney uh you know like a staff attorney because um because he was gay or queer in some way I can't remember the details of this and it's like yay we're a religious organization so we don't have to hire that person as if that's what jesus would do that's what always that's what blows my mind like how how is that a religious like what if what if your religion says that mixed race people can't get married right at what point do we just let hate you know that we just let hate go under the the

guise of religion yeah so i guess washington state's looking for a new uh a new coach which again oh also you know his like four assistant coaches had to go with him yeah which kind of

sucks so they or maybe they're down with it i assume that that was a move of solidarity with him and maybe they didn't get vexed as well i actually didn't know the details about the four

assistant coaches i haven't either i just saw the headline that it's him and four assistants i saw

that too um so i actually read a whole piece about it they didn't go into detail about the four assistant coaches who went with them but it is funny you know did you did you read the seattle times write-up of this today by any chance i know it's been all over you know this story is national news it's kind of the highest profile case of this which again is so interesting that he's not in a certain way he's not grandstanding or he's not using it as a way to get a message out there

no i mean he is literally someone who i think just wanted to keep coaching this college football team get paid not have anyone ask him about the vaccine status like if he could have done that that would have been his druthers he's not using this it would appear as a as a chance to get on a soapbox

yeah but the athletic director went and you know like talked to the team and it sounds like the team you know the the students the the young men who are on this football team he was tactful in his description of it but it sounds like you know they're all probably incredibly upset this is a team that you know they're they're cougars they just there's literally a term called couging it where like you always find some sort of new way to lose and their season started poorly but it's finally on the upswing and um not that football is the most important thing here but this idea of this being a community you know that that you know when you're on a football team or anything at that level it's almost kind of culty right like the way you guys all interact and and i and

the sense is that they you know rolovich is a guy whose players really like playing for him and so they're they're bummed because it's it's changing the the course of their season um but

um yeah i guess that for i guess the one player who didn't like playing for him was the player who is suing him because he says that um rolovich told him to clean out his lock

or if he decides to get involved in any social justice campaigns.

Yeah, that was, I think, a guy that played there last season or maybe the season before. He's now suing Rolovich for creating a kind of a hostile environment. It's also clear that Nick Rolovich assumes he will be hired somewhere else.

That is what I think. I think that he will be, like, I'm sure he liked this job, but I'll bet you, like, the SEC, I don't know what openings are out there. What's the Clemson? Didn't the Clemson thing? Maybe we'll swap with Clemson.

I don't think he's at the level of, like, I don't think he's being considered for any, like, really top-tier jobs. Yeah, and that would be, like, the top-tier.

Am I right about that? Is Clemson the one that has an opening? Okay. I don't know.

But I think, you know, he'll probably, I mean, there's probably Liberty University or somebody who's going to be looking for a coach at some point. Some school somewhere that doesn't, you know, take this stuff that seriously. But I have to salute Washington State University for doing what they did, because it was definitely sort of the right the right call.

Although it isn't. What would they have done? Like, what could they do? I mean, their hands were tied. It's a state mandate, right?

Like it would have been. Well, they could have accepted the religious.

Oh, that's true. Yeah, that's true. That's what they could have done.

And that I mean, I will also say that I am happy that they are the religious exemptions are getting scrutiny. And I think this is probably pretty typical around the country as more, you know, state mandates get put in. I know Washington State with Jay Inslee has one of the most stringent because Washington State will not let you just do like weekly testing. A lot of the mandates are or if you want to get tested every week, you can. But Washington doesn't even allow for that. But as that sort of going into place and then more people because there are these like wingnut pastors in parts of the country that are like, send me the paperwork and I'll like declare I'll give you a religious exemption. That's their way of trying to get around it. And I'm glad that those things are not just like they're not just going, OK, well, you got your religious exemption rubber stamp. I'm glad there's actually some question of like what's actually behind this. Yeah. This interesting story out of Germany and an enterprising German scientist captured top prize at Germany's coveted Dyson Awards for an unconventional form of contraception that uses a testicle bath to prevent pregnancies. It's entitled COSO, and the device is described as an ultrasound-based, reversible, and hormone-free male contraceptive device for home use. It looks like a bidet for, you know, I've got nieces listening to the show, so I'm trying to be a little careful here. But it's basically like a bidet, but it's smaller than a bidet you sit in. And you just, if you're a guy, you just put a certain part of your body in there. You add water up to the indicated mark. You sit there with a doctor, by the way. You raise the, like, the first time you do this, you have to have a doctor there. How long does it last?

It lasts for, like, six months. Oh, I had it wrong. I thought it was, like, before each sex. Yeah, or, yeah, or way more frequent.

Talk about a kind of, well, for me, anyway, something that wouldn't seem super erotic. Or, on the other hand, it could go the other way. I mean, to each their own on that. No, so you have to do it. I think it's in the story here how. So you have to do it every couple of months. Okay. So basically the first time that you do it, you're under a doctor's supervision. And the doctor sits there with you while you basically brew a pot of tea. And the doctor says, I love your radio show. you know none of the um uh physician's assistants even know whose balls are

marinating in this room oh come on what happened to you i'm gonna try to be careful here it lasted for 10 seconds

so the doctor waits with you while you while you make the soup and then you um you know i'm like for our my uh fellow tiktok enthusiasts out there the word soup has been forever ruined for me now because there's a scene in Girls I didn't make it all the way through the final season of Girls. Me neither. I got pretty

far into it. I enjoyed that show but for whatever

reason just. Exact same thing for me like I really liked it. I didn't ever consciously think I'm going to watch this less but I think it's when Lena Dunham's character and Adam Driver's character I don't know if they break up for good there's like a really sad moment where they go through a breakup but then they're still sitting in a diner okay which i which it looks like a i've seen this scene a million times now because what happens is as they're sitting there kind of both very emotional they've agreed they've decided and agreed that they're not going to be together anymore he's also got this bowl of soup okay he takes a bite of it and he goes in a very adam drivery way good soup yeah that's the worst adam driver i've ever heard and so now all over tiktok People are constantly doing things Where they just go Good soup Like over Like they're just lip syncing Over

With Adam Driver saying good soup And so like if I say the word soup All I think of is Adam Driver saying good soup You tweeted about soup yesterday You have soup on the mind I do well yesterday I was It was kind of in the morning It was a little colder in Portland And I was just After we got done with the show I think that and the no point I was just feeling kind of like I went and I sat on my bed Which is often what I do after the show with my laptop I'm doing a CBS Sunday morning commentary While I'm in New York Trying to normalize bed desks I feel like we I wrote this on Twitter as well I feel like we all got A lot of people got sit-stand desks When the pandemic started But really what we're not talking about Is the amount of work that's getting done With people sitting on their bed

At least that's what I do a lot I see a lot of people doing that And I just We've talked about this It's not your style I just I couldn't Like I'm just not comfortable In that position You know if I'm in a bed I'm comfortable Totally laying down and sleeping But not like That like Like, if I'm going to get some work done, I'm going to – even something simple. Like, let's say I'm sending out, like, my coordinating email for my volunteer group. Like, I have to be sitting here behind my keyboard tap, tap, tapping it out. I can't be, like, just up in my bed half lounging.

I love it. To me, it's just the height of relaxation. And I actually – you know, famously, like, Dalton Trumbo, the writer, had to sit in the bathtub when he wrote it. I think he also had back problems. But I just love – like, the bed is made. I'm not in the bed. I'm not under the covers. the bed is made but I'm sitting on the bed and I have my shoes on and I have my laptop and I've got a couple pillows and I'm propped up and it just it feels like relaxing but still productive to me. I do

wonder what it what happened in our lives like is it something about the families we grew up in is it something about maybe you having to capture certain moments within being in a bigger family you know what I mean and maybe like I'm just trying to figure out is it just genetic and certain people like

certain things like i think it's nurture i don't think listen i don't know your dad but i think if it were a saturday yeah and you were sitting on your bed you know yeah reading a comic book and bob walsh walked in my guess would be he would think based on what you've described about the

chore situation well the funny thing is here though i'm talking specifically like i could maybe lay in bed and read a book or a comic book or something but it's like the idea of for me it's like a wall between no if i'm gonna get something done i need to be in a position of getting something done yeah like work it's the combination of work like that doesn't sound appealing to me right you know it's like interesting and i and i in the same way but you're right like i i wonder

if my dad is the same way my my guess is yes because my mom is a huge napper and always was i mean one she birthed eight children so it was like there's just always babies and like no one was getting any sleep and so it was ever like it was very common for it to be like okay mom's taking a nap for an hour everyone leave her alone so that was modeled for me early on so i've always been a big fan of napping um and so maybe that just carries over to me not feeling uh any shame about like hey if i'm gonna be working from home and if i'm getting work done that's the other thing you know sometimes it almost feels more creative to me like it's it's almost puts me in this kind of like restful mindset that's then more liberating like if i'm sitting at a desk and i'm like okay um i gotta write this live wire script i gotta write this whatever thing it feels i don't know at the at a maximum no i'm sorry at a minimum if i'm not in my bed if we're not actively recording so i've got this room where this like the nest broadcast studio that's if there's anything audio wise that has to happen but if we're not recording or if i'm not doing one of my other things that records i will go sit on my couch and i will like sit sideways on my couch and type that's my that's if it's not the bed it's that it's like something about me i have to be very comfortable to be even remotely creatively productive it's i'm like the complete

opposite like you know we talk about even just like physically like i like having a mouse right like i always have a mouse like and that's another thing that's why i could never i mean audio editing you kind of need a mouse for anyway i mean you can do some very basic audio editing with just a trackpad and I'm sure you have but um for years and years but um like for me I could never like sit in bed and like try to like be you know splitting some tape or splicing some tape or whatever virtually without a mouse like yet creatively you're right I remember it was a few months ago I woke up early on I woke up earlier than I usually would I said I'm gonna get the newsletter done and I'm gonna go and I'm gonna sit behind my computer and I'm gonna get it done in the morning instead of the afternoon hello Theo um and uh I I'm like okay good I'll be really productive and I go and I'm gonna bang this out before I even take a shower so I come in to my office and I'm sitting behind my computer and I'm doing all of the parts of the newsletter that don't need creativity right I'm doing all the rote parts

of it and the cutting and the pasting and the choosing of gifts or whatever but like what am

Thank you.

i going to write at the top what am i going to write at the top the clock is ticking it's getting closer and closer to do tbtl with you i'm just like i guess i just don't have anything to write about this week and i so i'm like i guess i'll just throw in the towel go take a shower i take a shower and within five minutes i have i don't remember what it was but i had an idea yeah it's like clearly my brain needs at least the idea to formulate somewhere else but then once i have it I need to sit here in my rigid back chair to type it out.

I feel like for me, it's only one of two things. Either I'm lying on my bed, and then some thoughts will come to me, or I'm jogging, and thoughts will come to me. There's no in-between. The part that doesn't work for me is sitting at a desk. Anyway, I was lying on my bed post-show, but I was also kind of cold, and I wanted some soup, good soup. And so I don't know why I did that. I was in a funny, goofy mood yesterday, but I put a poll up on Twitter, should I go make some soup? or keep lying here on the bed, which if that's not a desperate cry for attention, I really don't know what it is. Did people vote for soup? 100%. Yeah, they always voted for soup. Everybody voted for soup, and then I went and I made some soup. It wasn't as good as I was hoping it was going to be. What was it?

You actually made soup? No, I just opened a can. Okay, yeah.

Was it Annie's? It was Annie's or Amy's. It was one of those. I can't remember. Abby's. Yeah. Allegra. One of them, but it was tomato basil, which I was shocked. Oh, yeah. So I have this mixed vegetable, which seems like it'd be very healthy, and then i have this tomato basil which seems like because there's probably a little cream in there and stuff like that the tomato basil was like 280 calories for the entire can and the mixed vegetable was like 320 or 340 for the whole can so it was actually the the tomato basil was actually like a little bit less caloric it is surprising right yeah but then i put a bunch of parmesan cheese in it which really really changed the dynamic but anyway yeah um soup soup good soup so the the point of this is that this actually provides a way this coso system where you can uh make yourself render yourself as a as a man uh effectively um under birth control and if you do it if you once you've done it once with the help of a doctor then i guess you're you're free to do this on your own and you do it um uh every uh two it takes two weeks to kick in the first time but then every couple of months after that you just keep cooking yourself and then uh i think it's like six months or something if you if you stop doing it after six months everything will return to normal and you will presumably become somebody who could

procreate again i think the weirdest thing about this story and i only scanned it but i thought the weirdest thing is that uh chairman insley is forcing everybody to do it or you're gonna lose your state jobs. That's the real reason why your roll of it is stepping down.

Yahoo! Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. Oh, man! It's not from a female.

Alright, emails or v-mails today? I got a

fascinating voicemail. You were sitting here when I was listening to it for the first time, and like, I don't know, like five seconds into this voicemail You heard me gasp. I'm like, I think we got a good voicemail here. It is a good voicemail. I'm going to start this, but then I'm going to pause it, and I'm going to clarify something early on.

Hey, y'all. This is listener Harper from Chicago. Pronouns are she, her. And I literally couldn't believe that y'all were talking about stealing from Whole Foods on the show because literally last week I got caught, shoplifting from Whole Foods. Harper!

Now, see, I think you're onto this faster than I was. I thought that this story... I listened to this entire voicemail thinking that Harper innocently got accused of shoplifting, or did something that I did, where they left their, like, cat litter in the grocery cart, or whatever, right? But, no, no, no. Harper's just admitting that she's a shoplifter. Like, that's it. I am

so here for this voicemail.

We got you, right? You want to listen to the rest of this or just move on?

You know what? I've got to catch a flight. Just tell me how it goes. No, man, I am riveted.

And I wanted to tell you guys about it because I might have some more information. So it did seem like they have a whole sort of operation, but it's not clear when you're actually walking through the store. um but I had like sort of gotten my things and I walked out of the store and then like I had exited the store and I had walked a couple steps and then I felt this giant tub on my backpack and it was the sort of security person in normal person's clothes so it was it felt like it was someone who was going undercover walking around the store or looking at the security cameras who's trying to look normal but then it's actually security working for a whole team and he like I got my backpack and and he was like you can't do this you can't all this stuff and he took me upstairs and you're right it is in like the top sort of floor of the operation and they have me sit down and they take got all my stuff and then they made a receipt for all the stuff that I had taken of like how much it would have cost and they didn't make me pay for anything but they took my name down and they told me that I was a trespasser and that if I had if I set foot in that Whole Foods again I would go to jail um so I'm not allowed in that Whole Foods anymore and um yeah so that's my story I hope that that's enlightening for you and I was really surprised to hear you talk about it because it literally happened to me last week um so I love you guys power up what do you know wow

Harper I want to know what she took yeah I've you know like I wonder it wasn't until the end

of that voicemail my first time listening through when they're taking everything out of her bag where I'm like oh this isn't a mistake you were just you were just shopping you were just like

fill in your bag full of stuff it's funny because i talk a big game about about stealing from whole foods or yesterday i was saying we should all be allowed to take yeah we have to do a self-checkout we should be and again you know whole foods that's you know bezos right so it's like hard to feel like it feels like bezos can handle uh you know somebody getting some free you know brie cheese or whatever i say that because somebody that i used to hang out with a lot their whole move They would explain to us was to they would shoplift cheese all the time because cheese is very expensive. If you go to the like, you know, fancy cheese counter and it's very small. So you could steal a hundred dollars of expensive cheese and it's not bulky. You know, this is this person explaining it to me. And then I rethought every time they'd showed up at my house with cheese.

Yeah. And then also like in how was this person? I can't imagine who you're talking about. I'm just using all of my brain power here. But you also think, well, when you're shoplifting, you're also putting this thing that you're stealing in uncomfortable places.

But this person was notoriously clean. So, yeah, this person notoriously showered once every day.

Yeah. Yeah. For a second, I was kind of like, wait a second. Wait a minute. Is cheddar supposed to smell this funky? And I don't like cheese anyway. So, I mean, and also it's like it's small, but it's expensive. So it's more bang for your buck. To me, that's like that only works if you're selling it on the secondary market. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, I guess like, I mean, if you enjoy the finer things in life, but you don't want to pay for them, I guess that's one thing to me. I guess the cheese thing is just a mental block. But like that just I don't know.

I'm also wondering for Harper. And again, Harper, you're in a no obligation to explain this to us. But I'm wondering what her deal is with like. If it was out of financial necessity, if it was out of which if that's the Bezos. Screw Bezos, if it was out of, I want this, but I just don't want to pay what they're charging for this. I'm wondering what the kind of, yeah, what the reasoning was and how it exactly happened.

Yeah, and what the moves were. Clearly not effective. If we are being, if we're just going to be confessional here, I have straight up shoplifted two things in my life. One was a little figurine of Obi-Wan Kenobi that I glued to the dashboard of my minivan. So it was kind of like a Jesus-esque figure. Yes. And he was Obi-Wan and his brown robe.

Why did you not want to pay for that?

You know, this was just high school and it was just shenanigans. Yes. You know, and I can't remember where that was, but it was kind of like, you know, me and my friends goading each other. The other thing was also in the toy aisle. One of these was in Kmart, I remember, but I think a cap gun or maybe a set of cap guns. So toys. And then I was like around like I remember in college, I was friends with a bunch of like kind of punk rockers who like would go in and like kind of shoplift a bunch of booze. But I'll be honest, like I was with them, but I was too scared to do it. But I just remember like somehow them grabbing a bunch of, I don't know, beer. it was easier to grab like big bottles so it was probably like um 40 ounces or 22s or something like that and then you just like run i don't know i think that my recollection and this is why i was kind of surprised that maybe this wasn't part of harper's thing was um my recollection was they would shoplift stuff but then buy one thing or something and so it looked like you're going through the line because i remember going through the line with them being incredibly nervous i'm not shoplifting myself here by the way but just being nervous and and whatever but also being excited that we're going to have alcohol because we're under 21 and uh and then like i kind of had eyes on what my friends were grabbing i can't remember how they did it if they put it in bags or what but then i remember going outside of my friend greg and we're all like like oh that was good and then my friend greg being like that's not all he lifts up his shirt and he's got a bottle of champagne like wedged down the front of his pants in his cheese spot his cheese spot yes in his cheese wrangler yeah so anyway those are my

those are my shoplifting experience i was i had a major shoplifting phase but only from one place

which was craigen's pharmacy where it was an inside job though right well i only worked there

for a few months but i was we would go there constantly because it was literally like 200 feet from our house and it was an old style pharmacy that just sold a little bit of everything and so it started with because there was usually just like the person working the front counter would be a woman in her 70s and if they were doing something in the back of the store there was literally no supervision and so i think probably at some point i figured out i could sneak a pack of baseball cards in my pocket or uh you know some whatever uh candy bars and then it got a little out of control i think where peter my buddy peter and i sorry peter drag you into this but facts are facts where we would we would really rob that place stupid as they say on it's always sunny and um but one time when i was in there i got yelled at by gladys she told me i

had sticky fingers and i was gonna say she's probably saw you coming a mile away well she

also loved me like we would go i think she figured out at some point that something was up but there was many months that went by where she would okay tell your mom hi for me it was like a real which kind of makes me feel bad because it was a real one of those like informal it wasn't a mom and pop operation but it was like we were friends with all the employees they saw us come in by candy like we'd buy our christmas presents there so very norman rockwell it was it really was but um i was too afraid to try to shoplift from anywhere besides that any like department store or like

didn't you gank a game system did you gank like an nes or something we did and then snuck it back in right because you felt i did peter did oh i would feel bad or he feel like he was gonna get

caught no i mean he had pulled off the crime i think he felt bad he felt like it was just too

much but also like if you're in a household in the 80s and you're a kid and your parents just walk in and you have a new nintendo entertainment system or whatever it was like how do you explain

that maybe that was part of his logic as well but yeah that was the that was the the height of it And that was almost more just like we were just challenging ourselves, like what could we get away with with this place, including something that's literally behind glass. You have to go around behind it, open the back of the cabinet up, get it out, and then physically get this huge box out of the store.

You have this aerosol spray so you can see where the lasers are. Yeah, exactly. Where the lasers are. I'm doing parkour. Yeah, exactly. Your butt is going right underneath one of those red beams.

But yeah, that was pretty much it. In my adulthood, I haven't much of shop, again, only because I'm afraid of going through what Harper went through.

Right. Yes. No. And also, you know, and I would not I would not do it now under any circumstances. I don't have the constitution for it. And it's wrong. But sorry, Harper. But I I would never do. I understand you were a kid as a different circumstance. But like if I ever had to do anything like this, I would never do it anywhere near where I usually live and shop. You know, like I would go so far, I would go to a completely different community so that if I did get caught or something, it wouldn't be like, oh, I can't come to my Safeway anymore or what have you.

I wonder, Harper, are you going to abide by the lifetime ban for that Whole Foods?

Yeah, I also don't think that there's legal stand. I don't think that they can just say, oh, Harper's here again. We have her picture on file. Now we're calling the cops and she's going to go to jail. That sounds like an empty threat to me. i mean that's i mean i'm not encouraging it harper just take care of yourself well that's

the other thing that yeah harper i hope you're doing all right and then that's the other thing you start to realize as an adult is the state the punishment like when you're a kid and everyone knew someone who got busted shoplifting from nordstrom or somewhere and then their parents got called and there was a whole thing but when you get older you realize it's pretty toothless the legal system around it's my understanding anyway well remember dftb his whole job at tj max was just to follow people around that they knew were stealing and ask them if they needed help with things. Like, they were under, I think, strict instructions to not actually intervene. That's more the case now, I think, than, you know, I'm sort of surprised Harper got caught. That's what I want to know. Harper, were you trying to steal a pineapple? Did you have it under your hat? Was it like a comically bad attempt at shoplifting?

It's like a big top hat. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure there's so much surveillance, too, especially in Whole Foods. I mean, you know, like you just think about how Amazon and how they use technology to, I guess the word is destroy our society. Like, just imagine the high tech surveillance they probably have going on before they probably radio to the plainclothes person down there and say, hey, there's somebody sniffing around the cheese aisle or what have you or the banana stand. So, yeah, I'm sure that I'm sure they had eyes on Harper for a long time.

No, nobody, you know, I do not want to officially advocate for people shoplifting. But if I were going to do it, I would try to what I would try to do is make it so that the stuff I had was out in the open and visible. So I had plausible deniability. I feel like where you really get in trouble when you start concealing, like if the motion of grabbing something and putting in your backpack just seems. Well, and also if you walk out of the store and you have – I think I remember hearing as a kid, I don't know if this is true or not, but if you're holding it out in plain sight, they can't actually accuse you of shoplifting because you're not concealing it. So the thing now that you're taking, if you were like – it's almost like to put it in your shopping cart but then to put it down on the bottom and then cover it. I don't know. I feel like the key is don't ever put anything like inside your clothing or your backpack and then conceal it because that's 100% obvious that you're shoplifting.

I also think it's who you are. Yes, there's a huge amount of privilege. But like me walking out, you know, accidentally with some cat litter the other day and then saying it's probably not worth me going back and paying for this. And they probably don't care anyway. That's a lot different. But if I if I had been living on the street for two years and I was going in there with like dirty pants that were ripped open, they'd have eyes on me the second I walk through. There's no. And if I just walked out with something, they would have they would have seen it. Very true.

Very true. All right, Harper, give us an update on that. If you know when they let you out of Whole Foods jail. Use your one phone call to call TVTL back, please Let us know how it's going

I think we have some lawyers on standby, too Danny?

Other Danny? The Dannys?

We're going to need the whole legal team on this

Alright, what do you think? Should we call it good for the day? Alright, that's going to do it for this Tuesday edition of the program We will be back here tomorrow This is that R.E.M. song?

Yeah, you'll recognize it I love this song so much I think this is the first song I ever played on my first radio show. I had a radio show in college that was from 4 a.m. to 7 a.m. on Wednesday mornings.

This is tomorrow's show. How do I not know this about you?

Yeah, I don't think I have any air checks from it. It was rough. I'll tell you about it tomorrow. Kent State? Kent State, yeah.

What the heck?

Okay. This wasn't the first song, though. I remember how this played into that. I'll tell you about it tomorrow. Yeah, I'm excited.

He's writing it down. I really am. All right. We'll see you all tomorrow. Thanks for listening. Until then, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, the mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

You'll wind up in some factory That's full time filled With nowhere left to go Welcome to an empty house Sit around All by yourself I know it might sound strange But I believe you'll be coming back Before too long

Don't go back to Rockville Don't go back to Rockville

Don't go back to Robin

You're stealing, right to jail You're playing music too loud, right to jail, right away You're driving too fast, jail Slow, jail You're charging too high prices for sweaters, glasses You're right to jail You undercooked fish, believe it or not, jail You overcook chicken also jail, undercooked, overcooked. Power out.