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www.this and www.that let's www.explainit well what are you i'm a chicken lady can i get you a beer would you like to drink out of the toilet a beer okay

is anyone in this family ever even seen a chicken well there's there's that fine line between you

know have showing emotion and being a hot dog i just wanted people to like me more and this

this is your master plan huh oh no no no this is a whole other awesome thing this is this is just a

goof later tater all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a tuesday edition of tbtl A show that just might be too beautiful to live

Open your eyes

My name is Luke Burbank, I am your host I'd like to grow a pair sometime Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center Located in beautiful Portland, Oregon Just picture perfect blue bird Tuesday morning Oh ma, pa, it's just beautiful Well, I'm wondering if there is actually a predictable weather pattern that I just haven't ever noticed, which is this time of year, maybe it's just cold enough that the sky tends to be clear. I'm talking about the Pacific Northwest. You get into the Midwest, I think it's fairly typical to have very cold, very clear days. and maybe it's been happening all along in January in Portland and Seattle area and I never took note of it but we had a really great weekend yesterday was beautiful today is looking beautiful I will take freezing cold and clear skies any day of the week and twice on Sunday if it can be arranged and I think I'm just putting some extra pep in my step today that and the four cups of coffee that i've already had let the fun begin before we've even started episode 3605 in a collector's series i saw this quite surprising story out of michigan where a woman won three million bucks in the michigan state lottery that cash could really get me out of a couple of jams the way that she figured out that she had won the lottery was almost like the exact thing they tell you not to do this is the beginning of a social engineering attack when it comes to figuring out if you've won a large cash windfall uh so uh we will get into that and also i saw an article in the san francisco Chronicle this morning about a couple of adventurers who had climbed what they're calling the world's tallest mountain.

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means. I was like, well, that's

Mount Everest, right? I'm no, um... Uh... Who's a famous mountaineer? I'm no famous mountaineer. There, I got there. but I know that Mount Everest is the tallest mountain on earth and I want to get into this record that was set because I've got some problems with it as a noted mountaineer myself and knower of various famous mountaineers Edmund Hillary wait did Edmund Hillary was he an Everest dude tenzing norgay and edmund hillary was hillary a south pole guy i don't know this is what i get for not writing out a copious script for myself right before the show uh also uh i have a new youtube viewing obsession that some might find a little bit weird but it's providing me with great mental relief and we'll talk about that too plus emails and emails and this guy the longest running cobro of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships i gotta say 10 years i've been working with this guy and i still never know what's going to come out of his mouth he's a wild card but i'm glad he's in our deck he's andrew walsh and he's joining me right now from the roosevelt neighborhood of seattle washington good morning my friend hillary banks is the name

Ah, for Hilary Banks. Hilary Duff. Hilary Duff and Hilary Banks. Really? Really, Hilary Banks? Hilary Banks is Will Smith's sister in the show Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

I had a big crush on Hilary.

Oh, I understand that. From Fresh Prince. My goodness gracious. What happened to Hilary Banks, the actor who portrayed Hilary Banks, whose name I do not know? You would think we've seen her in more things, but we have not. Or not things that I have seen, I suppose.

You mean, what happened to the actor who played Will Smith's not actual sister, but, you know, like kind of adoptive sister? God, I wish I knew the plot of that TV show. It's not really laid out in the theme song.

Nobody's listening anymore. Yes, of course. They're not sisters. They're cousins. What am I talking about? Oh, my God. I'm sorry. Can we start over?

Born and raised.

Can we start over, please?

On the playground was where he was spending most of his days chilling out, maxing, relaxing, all cool, and all shooting some b-ball outside. of the school then this is where the plot takes a real turn this is the part that your mom didn't like i think yeah a couple of guys who were up to no good started making trouble in his neighborhood he got in one little fight and his mom got scared we can't bubble wrap these kids will smith mom i know and said you're moving with your auntie and uncle to bel-air and that's when this fish

left the water and you're gonna have a part of the song whose name is hilarious

Okay, but really, what did Edmund Hillary...

I think that's an Everest guy. I don't know for sure, but I think that was the... I know, but I just want this.

I need the W today, Andrew. Yes, Sir Edmund Percival Hillary was a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist. On May 29th, 1953, Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest. Okay, I got there. You got there?

Congratulations.

explanations i just you know you know that feeling where you you start a sentence like i said you know i'm no and i wanted yeah i wanted a famous mountaineer i wanted to say i'm no edmund hillary but i my brain was not able to get me there to take me on that journey uh to the to its completion and so then i just said i'm no i'd famous mountaineer and so i was so disappointed that i failed to deliver on that that then when i got back to it and and guessed correctly edmund hillary

that i'm proud of that at least spot expectations luke i gave up on myself years and years ago so i just avoid that phrase i avoid saying any sentence i'm no blank but if i do start it it's inevitably going to end with i'm no guy who knows things but that's and that's almost verbatim what i ended up saying yeah kind yeah kind of i guess yeah oh that was a that was a

rough start to the show but um i actually am very excited to be talking today i'm feeling good i have filled out my finally filled out my huge wall calendar oh nice here in the broadcast center it really is like and i i think i've been i've been in a little bit of a funk the last month or two i mean it's kind of one of those just low grade low grade funk i can't i can't put my finger on and things are basically fine and i'm getting by and i'm i'm living life and i'm having some good days and some less great days but um i i honestly think part of my funk was that i hadn't sat down or really more accurately stood up and even got on a small step stool because the it's hard to fill out january february and march on the top of this thing yeah okay and it's dry erase so i'm filling it in with like an expo marker but but the problem is you have to be very careful to not smudge it once you put all the dates in i guess really the most efficient way to do this and you would have thought of this andrew if you were doing this would be put the dates in for one month and then fill in whatever the events are that month and then do the next month you know what i mean like just kind of go month by month what i did is i filled in the entire year and so it's in the upper left corner of each day i write the date in because of course each year september 1st is on a different day of the week and so you have to go in and kind of like hand fill it all in each year and that process takes me you know the filling in of the whole calendar and then adding the dates and it's like an hour or two project just starting with the

numbers though that sounds fun what did you listen to when you did that because that's the type of thing that like i like to do it's organizing but it's it uses just like it just uses one little part of your brain but leaves a lot of your other brain uh to free wheel but you don't want that other part of your brain to start spiraling so you find a podcast or some music to listen to i was

listening i did this this morning and i was listening to the howard stern show nice from yesterday love it where they have a bet going now between jd and richard because richard is a long running kansas city chiefs fan and jd is a cincinnati bangles fan oh look at this

And if the Bengals win, Richard has to burn his beloved Chiefs hat that he's been wearing for like 20 years. And this is the part. And if the Chiefs win, J.D. And this is where our show and the Stern show tends to diverge. So earmuffs for young people. J.D. has to show Richard his privates over Zoom. And then Richard gets to describe them to everybody on the show.

And so, wait, that's what happens if the Bengals win or the Chiefs win?

It's a terrible deal for J.D. If the Bengals lose, J.D. has to show Richard his privacy.

So, obviously, for the listening audience now, if anybody is listening to that show and they didn't have a Doug on the flight, then they're, of course, going to root for the Chiefs now because that makes better radio, the description.

I guess, but I love both of these characters on the show. They're actually both total mensches, and so I really don't want – I could tell that J.D. didn't even want to get in on this bet, but he also knows that their job is to make good radio. And he doesn't – I think Wisely doesn't think the Bengals are going to go into Kansas City and win. No. I mean, I salute all of our Cincinnati fans, you know, who day, as they say, think they're going to beat the Bengals. Like, I'm so stoked for you all. And actually, you know, Andrew, I'd like to offer you an apology right here, right now. Good. At the risk of this descending into football talk, I just want to say very quickly, when you and I were doing the no point four or five months ago, and you were talking about your beloved Cleveland Browns taking on the Bengals, and I was trying to make the point that the Bengals are not good. And you were like, I think they're pretty good this season. And I was like, I don't know. And then we went through their record, and I was sort of poo-pooing their wins as having been over teams that were not great, et cetera. Well, you, my friend, you were ultimately right. The Bengals are a decent team, and you were right to fear them.

The Bengals got off to a good start, that's for sure. I mean, I do think that I won't go into the – I just realized I was going into no-point zone. I do remember that conversation. You were underestimating them, and I just have my eyes on them more because they're in the Browns division. So I kind of knew that they were. But I will also say that the Bengals and Bengals fans know this. By the way, I am now 100% Bengal fan. Like, I am rooting for our division rivals, which is weird. I've never done that for a Seahawks divisional rival, and I never root for the Steelers or the Ravens. But for some reason, yeah, like Cincinnati, like go Cincinnati. But I think even Cincinnati fans would admit that they're – I think I'm using your your oft used phrase correctly when I say out over their skis a little bit like I don't think that's mine no not that you invented it but like it's something that I think of you saying quite a bit but anyway I think that they're I think everybody knows that they're a little bit like the coyote who's still running on air you know what I mean like and I'm rooting for him I don't mean that to be mean I think that they're just like I think that they're a little bit further than their talent says they should be but I hope it I hope they keep it up

it would be really quite something if they go in and beat the chiefs i mean we haven't even because we're you know trying to not turn this into full-on sports talk we haven't even really talked much about the games on sunday in particular that uh chiefs uh bills game and peace and love to our listeners in buffalo i'm thinking of bet at this hard time i'm thinking of lots of other folks out there in western new york uh but um uh that was one heck of a game and andrew i will tell you i the second that buffalo scored the touchdown with 13 seconds to go up i jumped on my betting app and i put 20 on the chiefs because i was like patrick mahomes with three timeouts and 13 seconds that's plenty of time for this dude and i won 240 on my 20 bet it was so gratifying because i was like i mean i was like you realize it's patrick mahomes and like 13 seconds and three timeouts this is to my point about timeouts timeouts are worth their weight in gold in the nfl if you have timeouts you can do anything 13 seconds is plenty of time um and if you don't have timeouts you're you have no chance and they had their full complement of timeouts i was like i he only needed 10 of those 13 seconds andrew he didn't even use the whole 13 seconds, if I remember right. The other thing that's pretty crazy about that final play, or excuse me, the play to Kelsey, the pass. Did you actually get to the end of that game? Were you watching the whole thing?

I was watching that game, but I was also playing Wordle with Genevieve, so I kind of missed that last final drive, which is weird because that was bar Wordle actually, but yeah, homemade Wordle that we were playing at Teddy's. But, yeah, it was weird that I would have, like, because I was paying, well, whatever, I was paying attention to the last half of that game. I walked into the bar as the second half began. I watched most of it, but the beers started to mount up by the end of the second half. So my eyes were wandering. My attention came back to a difficult wordle I was working on, and suddenly I realized I missed most of the overtime drive.

Well, the overtime drive was sort of pro forma. I mean, basically, the Chiefs won the toss and then they just went down the field and won the game. But the 13 seconds, you know, I'm sorry.

Yeah. Yeah. To get to overtime. Right. Yeah.

That was just the corker, really. And, you know, I feel like if I were to delve too deep into the the political leanings of like Travis Kelsey, I would. I my unfortunately, my guess is that it wouldn't be the greatest for to my liking, I guess. But just as a person looking at him from 200 feet away, Travis Kelsey just seems like he just seems like an absolutely hilarious fun bro. He's the tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs and he was being interviewed after the game. So he made this critical catch that, you know, really should not have happened if the Bills would have been in a better defensive set. He made a catch with almost no time left that got the Chiefs into field goal range where they tied it and then ultimately went to overtime. and he said afterwards that he had noticed the kind of coverage the bills were in and he went over to Patrick Mahomes in the huddle now this is again there's five seconds left in the game or whatever eight seconds left in the game and he says to Patrick Mahomes if they go into that coverage again I'm not running the route that we practice I'm just gonna go get open and Patrick Mahomes is like just looks at him and then Kelsey says and then when Patrick Mahomes is midway through his cadence he just starts going do it Kels do it Kels and then they play I saw like the NFL Twitter was tweeting this they go back and they like play the clip you can hear Patrick Mahomes clearly mid cadence going do it Kels do it which is so schoolyard football I kind of can't even handle it like the idea that at this critical moment of this multi-billion dollar operation which is an NFL playoff game, that the two critical dudes are just like, I'm just going down there and get open. And then mid-cadence, he's like, yeah, yeah, you should do that. Go ahead and do that. And then it worked. I mean, I don't know why that charmed me so much. And again, I know if you're a Buffalo fan, this is so hard for you. And it's like somebody delighting in the Malcolm Butler interception of Russell Wilson at the end of the Super Bowl. Like, I don't mean to put salt in anybody's wound, but I do think there was something to me that was just kind of hilarious about how improvised that was. I feel like the NFL at this point, nobody's improvising anything because everyone has studied every single leverage point of every single route and every single kind of coverage. It's so scientific and data driven now to hear that somebody was just running. Just I'm going to run down there and turn around. I'm going to go to the third Honda. I'm going to fake left and go right and then just throw it. like that's the kind of plays we would draw up when I was a kid go down to that van okay you're gonna like do like a hitch and go where you turn around but then you're gonna go deep and I'm just

gonna chuck it like that was what they basically did um it also reminds me of just how little I actually know about football like just the the the glacier of I guess iceberg is really the word you're looking for there Andrew the iceberg of knowledge of football and I only know the tiniest tip of the tip because like you talk about like just being able to see what the defense is setting up like I am trying so hard I've spent the past like year like really trying to look at that and I it just doesn't look like anything to me I've even tried to watch some videos about it but like I think I told you about the time like I can't tell you how many time how many hours I've clocked just sitting on my couch listening to some podcast or another just playing Madden I've been buying those Madden football games for at least the past what six seasons now probably maybe going back further and I will just sit there and you know and again I'm not I'm not playing a super difficult level I'm mostly just there to like you know do something while I'm listening to a podcast or something it's my way of zoning out but I've clocked a lot of time playing that dumb football game and then one time one time I play with another human being and that was my friend Nick jarn and this was a couple of years ago and he came like i think genevieve was out of town and nick's like i'm gonna come over and play video games i'm like awesome i bought a second controller he comes over wearing sweatpants that's how i knew he was ready just to like just like eat pizza and play video games and pretend like you're 12 years old we start playing madden a game that i think he might have said he hadn't played before or he hadn't played it on the xbox and he hadn't played in a long time and immediately he's like oh i see what you're doing there oh i well then why would i Like I hear him talking to himself He's seeing things on the screen that just They just look like football men to me like I still don't know what he was seeing that he's just like he could see my coverage and adjust and I like I how many football games have I watched and I can't read

a defense I think that's generational because I think you and I I mean I know you weren't like crazily into football in your 20s but like I was and no one talked about defenses in those days the way they talk about them now like it's just it's become so complicated and so like I said data-driven and everyone's just so skilled on both sides of the ball that now it comes down to knowing exactly like when they're in that formation it means this is going to happen and i'm able to create a foot of separation which is all i need for some you know the quarterback to back shoulder me open throw me open on the side like it's it's so complicated and i think i mean nick's also super smart but i think younger generations have been raised in that era where that's more talked about i don't know what any of that stuff means i do think it's amazing though the layers of complexity are are just they're so there's they're so layered and there's so many of the layers that now what the defense will do is thank god this didn't turn into no point the defense will like i mean they will line up in it's one of those it's it's like princess bride in when in the ibocaine scene i you know that i know that you know that i know that you know that i know that you so clearly i cannot pick this glass you know because it's like the defense will do a look that the quarterback will interpret as something but they're really about to jump into something else but if the quarterback knows that they're about to jump into something else then they're going to just stay in the original defense because the whole the the move was to make the quarterback think you're going to go into another defense but you're not going to it's just so mind-numbingly complicated it's amazing that you know any of these people are able to pull any of

this stuff off that's why i just spent my life building up an immunity to a 4-3 defense all right what a 4-3 defense is i don't either i'll never i'll never the number of backs and

the number of people on the line i don't know i'll never i don't even know if anybody plays a 4-3. Everyone's always in cover zero now. I mean, if you're good enough, I guess you're in cover zero. That's like the Seahawks

default setting, right? Here's what I heard the sports nerds talking about on the radio the other day. I was laughing out loud and also trying to pay attention. But they had on I can't remember who, but it was an ex-football player on one of the football shows I was listening to. And anyway, they said, hey, we don't want to get too much in the weeds, but we keep on hearing the Seattle Seahawks have a 4-3 defense, but they play it like a 3-4 defense. Can you break that down for us and like i'm like okay i'm gonna pay attention to this and then it's just they even laughed at the ridiculousness of trying to explain what that meant and then my brain just turned to

jelly and i started playing wordle again man yeah i if i there's no upside to me guessing at that uh what i think that means because i will be wrong and somebody will uh email in and say you're wrong and i don't need that in my life right now andrew because i'm feeling good as i mentioned on this tuesday i've got my calendar filled in so yeah uh we started the show a little bit late today i was supposed to have a cbs thing before the show and it ended up getting moved so i had a little extra time i filled this thing out i've got all of the live wire dates now written in i've got uh some other events by the way i'll be in seattle this saturday at the moore theater interviewing amy sedaris uh if you're in the neighborhood and uh want to swing by and then on tuesday the first of february i'll be at town hall interviewing john darneal from the mountain goats about his new book the devil's house he's a novelist as well as being the guy from the mountain goats so uh those are on the calendar andrew i just there's something calming to me about having this really large visual representation of what my life looks like for the next 12 months at least as far as scheduling goes and these are just the biggies these are just like live wire at revolution hall june 16th like i know that i have to be in portland for that to happen And I was listening to somebody on the radio, on public radio, talking about sort of the anxiety that people have been feeling. Oh, you know, it was the guy who wrote The Body Keeps the Score. Oh, okay. So I thought this was a really interesting piece on All Things Considered last week. They were interviewing people who have had a particularly strong anxiety reaction or anxious reaction to the pandemic. So people who are, well, they talked to a woman who hers is quite reasonable. She had a kidney, I believe it was a kidney transplant, like the day before everything got shut down by COVID. And so she's been immunocompromised throughout this whole thing. And she's her and her husband and their. daughter whose colleges have to wear masks indoors at their house because if she were to get covid it would be and she's you know vaxxed and boosted but it would still if she were to get a breakthrough case it would be really dangerous for her and she was saying how she's it's so stressful for her to go anywhere she rarely does and if she does she's so nervous about it which makes total sense and she wondered am i going to feel this way for the rest of my life then they talked to this uh a guy who also just had he didn't have any kind of underlying conditions but the the the fear of getting covid was so strong in his mind that he had to seek basically mental health you know he called a mental health crisis line over it and so the question was are are we are we in what we would describe as group trauma over covid like are we having are we trauma are we suffering trauma Are you and I suffering trauma?

And they talked to some, you know, professors and psychologists and psychiatrists who look at this stuff, and they mostly said yes. And then they bring the guy on who wrote The Body Keeps the Score, which is, like, the best-selling nonfiction book in America, like, two years running. Interesting how it coincided with a global pandemic. And that guy said, I don't think that this is necessarily trauma for everyone. He said, like, obviously, like, if you lost a loved one, that's very traumatizing. But like, let's just take Luke Burbank as an example. I don't know if I'm in trauma over this because I have been very fortunate. I haven't lost anyone. I've been able to keep my jobs. Very fortunate I have. I do the kind of work that I can do generally safely and remotely. He said it's probably a different category that we don't have a term for right now. And his point was, if we call everything trauma, that's dangerous because it means when there's real trauma happening, it may we may, you know, not it may be diluted or watered down a little bit. He was like, we need to be really precise with the language that we use. That was his argument.

Yeah, that's smart. I was going to say I wasn't sure if you wanted me to jump in there, so I was just jumping in. But there are so many questions about how this is going to impact the long term, I guess, psychological or sociological, or if there's a term in between those two, impact on our culture and our people, you know, whatever our people is or just people around the globe. Because I do think it's different. Like I'm not well, first of all, everybody is different. But like when I think about the youth, Luke, you know, I like to think about the youth and, you know, this can be especially hard on kids of various ages. But also the longer it goes on, it's also it becomes a it becomes normalized to some kids. So in other words, is it almost more traumatic to the people who are old enough to remember the before times better than the kids who are growing up in this? But then you're like, yeah, but this is kind of a shitty thing to grow up. And you're like, yeah, that's also going to cause some issues. And I'm certainly not the one to decide, you know, where the word trauma applies. But it's definitely interesting and concerning to think about where this is going to go.

Right. And I don't think that the body keeps the score guy's point was that this isn't intense and traumatizing for some people. I think he was saying it's almost this new category that we don't even have a term for yet for what it's doing to, like, let's say the general population. the people like me who haven't you know had a you know if you lose if you lose a parent to covid that's obviously trauma like i don't think anyone would argue with that but here's where i'm going with all of this he said something that for some reason i hadn't really thought of but he said what is really so what produces so much anxiety for us as humans is not feeling like we are able to plan for the future or able to know what our future looks like and i was thinking about that because i mean i there there is the occasional person there's the occasional ramdas out there who can just be like totally in the moment and like hey whatever happens happens and i'm always on the journey to try to get there uh with limited success but i was thinking about that i was like i think that's what has made me feel a lot of stress during this thing has been feeling like you just you don't know what the next six months of your life is going to look like and for I guess I take a lot of kind of comfort mentally and emotionally in feeling like I do know what the next six months are going to look like and so just today just filling the stupid calendar out I filled it out and then I'm I have a like a chair in this room um it's like a director's chair because there's not enough room for it in the kitchen area of my apartment and I just I took it over to the other side of the studio and I just sat and I just looked at the calendar and I just felt a sense of well-being wash over me um so i and that's a long climb for a short slide i'm a real edmund hillary here andrew going on long climbs you're real hillary banks i'm a classic hillary famously will smith's sister i can't believe that you would say that andrew that is disgusting but i do wonder what happened to that actor i do i do as well well Okay, you know what? We'll look it up during the break, and then when we come back, we can talk about it. And we can get into these top stories as well here on TBTL. Stay with us.

Thank you, baby.

All right, let's thank the donors of the day. These are some of the wonderful, generous people who are making today's episode possible. They're making a monthly donation or maybe a yearly donation. I don't know their finances. But I know they're on this list, and I know that this list and lists like it are the only way that this thing happens five days a week. And looky here. Look who is first on our list today. None other than Julia Has. Which pronunciation does Julia go with?

I think Julia goes with Has. There is a split in the family. This is my sister-in-law from another mother-in-law, Julia, there in Concord, New Hampshire. Thank you, Julia. As you pointed out, Luke, more and more of this donor list becomes family members as time goes on. Because they're like, we really need to keep Andrew employed because he's going to get really annoying if he's unemployed. So that's where we are. I know.

Over time, as the strangers fall away, it's just family members and people that we went to school with.

It really does become like, well, we just got to keep them busy. We got to give them something to do. Otherwise, they're going to get into trouble.

It's like they're coming to our Tupperware party and buying just enough.

What did my oh, I don't want to put them on front street. But, yeah, I found out my parents bought something. This is going back years now. But from a from a from a family member, from a younger family member who started off on one of those schemes where he sold them like a three hundred dollar something. that should not have been a $300 something. I'm just like, oh, God bless. All right.

I know. That's like the social contract, whether it's Mary Kay or Avon or Amway or what have you, or TBTL. You just have to, you know, you go to the thing. You're supportive. You buy the amount of something that you kind of decided, okay, I'll throw them 20 bucks. That's basically what we do here on the show, except for the podcast version.

Yes. It was a $300 fireplace blower, one of those things the thing that you squeeze like an accordion bellows is a bellows they don't

have a fireplace but that's what it was actually that sounds kind of dope i would go i would love to have and at some point i probably will buy andrew a like embossed like a leather bellows that says like lb on it or something what'll happen is i'll see it on an instagram ad and i'll just be in one of those emotional moments where i'm like that's gonna make me feel okay and then you'll say, Luke, do you have a fireplace? And I'll say, no, I don't. But when I get one, I'll already have, and I studied it, I'll already have this leather bellows, beautiful $300. Can you get me the number or the email of that person who sold your parents that bellows?

I don't remember what it was they bought. I was just trying to think of the most ridiculous thing

you could buy for $300. You name a thing, I'll make the argument for spending 300 bucks on it,

Andrew. I feel like my family had a bellows at one point. We had a fireplace growing up. That was one of my favorite feelings in the world was sitting with our backs to the fireplace on the little, on the hearth, I guess it is, and just sitting there until you couldn't take it anymore and then running to another part of the room. Did you guys have that too?

We had, well, so when I was really little, we lived near, we lived in the Northgate area, sort of, I don't know, Lake City, Northgate. But anyway, there was a little rental we had and it had a fireplace and it had a set of, is that called andirons? The, like, poker and the little shovel with the broom and the stuff that goes kind of with the fire.

I know you're talking about—in fact, we have a set of that here in our apartment here because there's a fireplace in our apartment that we do not use and are not allowed to use. I don't think it's functioning. But anyway, when we moved in, it had one of those sets just sitting next to the fireplace, so it's sitting there.

I think an andiron is actually—I don't think it's the—I don't think that's the name for the tool set. I think that the andirons are things that in the olden days the wood would sit on. I'm looking this up online. That's why I'm correcting myself. Anyway, point is, one of those little fireplace tool sets, and there was a poker, Andrew, and I just decided to just jackhammer the living tweedle out of the, I guess, hearth, I don't know, the stone thing that was in front of the fireplace in this rental. I just like went, I guess I just wanted to see how pockmarked I could make it, And the answer was very popular. Like, this is the kind of stuff. I mean, that's just pure destruction. My poor parents are, like, broke. They, I mean, not to get too heavy duty, but, I mean, I had a little brother who died. Like, there's a lot.

renting this house from this guy who was if i remember right kind of a pain and then they just one day like you know they come into the living room and there's little luke just absolutely decimating this thing that they're gonna have to then like deal with with the landlord it's amazing that they didn't just put me in a basket of reeds and push me down the nile that's what i would have

done to me most families would go military school was that ever a threat like i feel like growing up

like every now and then you'll bring there was a free one they would have sent me to yeah i feel

like that's one of those tropes that like i never saw in real life but according to tv growing up there was always the threat of military school like everybody was always being threatened to

go to military school if they were a bad kid you know um like i said i think it would have occurred to my parents if but i think that they're just how poor they were and the thought of like sending me anywhere that would be like a like reformatory would would be like prohibitively expensive that I don't think it ever even became a threat I did have a friend I will omit their name I guess out of privacy who was had to go to something called pioneer trails which was one of those kind of like wilderness schools they tricked him by telling him they were going to Oregon to buy a car to buy him a car and they were going to do it in Oregon because there was no sales tax which is an extremely specific lie to tell your kid who you're actually transporting to Oregon so that he can be, so he can be, what is the term? Renditioned.

I didn't know that. I don't think. Okay.

What's that drop we play? Am I being, am I being renditioned?

Am I being rendered? No, you're being friendered.

Like they basically, second they got them across the state line to where, to the state where this place was pioneer trails, some, you know, seal team four comes out from wherever it grabs him and takes him to this thing that sounds traumatic that's you know i don't think that's as uncommon as you would think uh because obviously if you have a kid and they're really having behavioral issues they're not going to probably voluntarily go be part of this thing um but anyway yeah this that was that was the only person i i knew who had to go to one of those kinds of things and again it was very much not uh it was sort of against his will and the thing was this particular person if i remember right they weren't even like that bad like what they were doing was i think just being kind of defiant to their parents like disrespectful this was like christian school kid level bad so it was just kind of like talking back or something it wasn't like because i hung out with this person all the time and um it like Like, we were not smoking dope. We were not, you know, we weren't, like, there was nothing going on that would quite warrant this that I could imagine. But, you know, we grew up in a very, very strict fundamentalist scene where just being disrespectful to your parents could be enough to get you friend-ditioned to Pioneer Trails.

Now, we need to go on and thank some more donors, probably. Otherwise, this donor segment is going to take us to the end of the show. But you don't have to, like, honestly, just say in this voice will not answer if you don't answer this question, if it gives up if it gives up this person's identity too much. But is this a person that you've kept up with in your adult life? Is this even somebody who I may have rubbed shoulders with at some?

No, you would not have rubbed shoulders with them. I have texted to this person in adult life. They're not a character on the show who I mention frequently. Like, it's not Peter Williams or the mummy or something like that. This is a person who I was really good pals with probably in like 9th and 10th grade or maybe 10th and some of – yeah, no, definitely 10th and 11th grade. But it's not somebody that you've met.

Yeah, I still wanted to hear you say will not answer in a robot voice, but maybe another –

I was just thinking when you said that, that that would be a good drop for you. That would be a good intro drop of your robot voice saying will not answer. Megan Perry is in Omaha, Nebraska, and is supporting the program today. Thank you, Megan.

Megan, I don't think Megan is in my family, but now Megan is just, you know what? All the donors today are considered family members.

Yeah. Megan is your sister the way that Hillary was Will Smith's sister.

Exactly.

And the Fresh Prince. Thanks, Megan. Also, Kate Sandvik is in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Beautiful. You're going to make it after all, Kate.

Buried under snow right now, I think. Take care.

I mean, isn't that the, not to sound cold-hearted or uninterested, isn't that the default setting?

I think so. That's why I just assume they're buried under snow. Oh, I see. I thought you'd seen a news story. Well, I don't know. You know, I follow people from Minnesota or from the Twin Cities on Twitter. Now, I feel like there's been an uptick in weather complaints, but I could be wrong about that.

We've been there. Have we been there in the winter? Yes, we've been there during the TV chill business.

We've been there during some pretty heavy winter stuff because, sorry, heavy-duty winter stuff sounded like something, and I don't know what. But we were there in January, whatever the January was before the pandemic, remember? That was a great work trip. I actually got stuck in a snowstorm, but I didn't mind. I just spend an extra night in that nice hotel

Oh yes Why was I leaving before you I must have been going somewhere else Probably go do live wire

Yeah I think you had maybe a wait wait or a live wire So you ducked out a day early anyway And then a bunch of other people were in town For this same sort of event We were in town for this work event And a lot of people were getting out early And I was like it'll be fine It'll be fine I need to write the newsletter I remember like just watching the snow pile up As I'm writing the newsletter and then watching flights just get canceled, canceled, canceled down the line. But that's okay because that night I went to this little restaurant and I had a bowl of my favorite French onion soup with some – this doesn't sound like this is something that goes together well, but when I'm in this one specific hotel restaurant – Orange Julius? Well, actually, when I describe the three things, so a martini, super dry martini, and a thing of French onion soup, that's okay. This is a very cozy kind of place. I think there might even be a fireplace in there. They might even have a Bellows. But then I also really love their shrimp cocktail, their jumbo shrimp cocktail. So I think I begin with the shrimp cocktail and then, which is like just like maybe three or four very big shrimps. How does Camaro Kev say it? Scrimps. And then the soup. And that's just, that's my happy place. That's one of my happy places.

i feel like shrimp cocktail is the number one thing that film and television uses to express that something decadent is going on really like whenever i like whenever there's a scene where like you know a kid is teleported into an adult's body and they have to spend a million dollars a day or you know what i mean like anytime there's like the scene where somebody is all of a sudden they have like unlimited resources and they're just kind of like buying like I'll take one of everything. I feel like a shrimp cocktail is often in the scene and it's sort of seen as like very decadent like someone will just be taking, having some shrimp cocktail because somebody else is picking up the bill or they've gotten a hold of, you know, the credit card of some aging billionaire or whatever. I feel like, I haven't seen the original Mr. Dietz. I did see the Adam Sandler version, but I feel like in that movie someone must eat a shrimp cocktail to express some research I'm sure Brewster's millions they eat a shrimp cocktail like I just think it's Hollywood's way of telling you these people are just you know money is no object for these people they're having that was like you in St. Paul money was no object and I wanted to let the donors know that I did not I

did not comp that meal that way I pay for my own food on those you and I never do that yeah yeah By the way, I was wrong about snow. It's actually totally clear, sunny sky in Minneapolis right now. But honestly, guess what the temperature is? I just looked it up. Guess what the temperature is right now in Minneapolis?

It's 10 degrees. Zero. It's just zero.

When you go to the weather page, it's like a perfect yellow circle representing clear sky, sunny. Wow. And then a perfect round zero right next to it. Yeah, clear skies. It's like that in Seattle, too. When the skies are too clear, it gets real cold.

Well, I started the show by saying I'm down with this kind of weather, but also it's not zero here in Portland.

It's not zero.

So I don't know if, I mean, I guess I'd have to be there in the Twin Cities to decide if I would trade, if I'll take this weather when it's actually zero degree. My hunch is yes, because mostly what I need from the weather is a good visual that lifts my spirits. But anyway Kate thank you so much for supporting the program And yes None of these donor dollars have gone to Andrew's Shrimp Cocktail I'm not even kidding like this is a weird A weird thing you and I both have Which is when we're traveling It hasn't happened in a long time now But when we used to travel on APM's Dime More you and I both never ever Put in for our meal Expenses which is so strange I feel like that's some kind of a comment On you and I feeling like we don't deserve to have

this as a job this is gonna sound like i'm trying to be self-aggrandizing here and i'm honestly not but here's the deal i'm not surprised that i do it because i just my dad like just growing up i just would hear stories of my dad just thinking that like you'd tell these stories of salesmen coming in and just wanting to you know like it was not salesmen i'm sorry but like uh vendors no i'm trying to think what the relationship would be but like people just taking advantage of just like all going out and taking advantage of this.

salesperson and ordering all of this off the menu like I've always just been really sheepish about that stuff because I grew up thinking that you're a real you're a real piece of work if you're the type of person who's always kind of feeding off of others in that way having said that you love a good do I say scam here or deal uh why don't we go with not scam no but like I am kind of surprised that you don't take advantage of that more and I'm wondering is it because is it because I am weird about it that therefore i've made you feel weird about it no i guess the thing i've never

been quite able to get over is i was going to eat anyway and i eat out all the time because i'm not that much of a cook and when i travel for you know personal i would say personal pleasure that sounds like i'm going i'm going somewhere for some weird assignation when i'm just like you know traveling for fun i'm gonna eat out a bunch and like it just feels weird to me to say because i'm traveling you have to give me the money for this meal and also to be honest with you most of the bills of anywhere i go is alcohol which isn't covered anyway yes right then you have to like separate it out dude i just had an uber charge that involved about 20 people at apm had to get

involved with getting it off of concur oh that's right this is going a ways back though this was

like 14 so because our apm somehow uber refers back to the apm credit card that i have which i i mean it's like in a drawer somewhere like i've never used that card obviously but i took an uber once like four months ago and it kicked over to that card and getting that thing handled has just been quite the hassle that involved our boss beth and a bunch of other actually really nice people helping me out i got it handled but all that to say i don't want to be i don't want to be trying to explain why i decided to have another appetizer at ike's in the minnesota airport right exactly right it's just like forget it anyway all i'm trying to say to people like amy zentz in seattle washington and kathleen aiken in port orchard washington is that we are very careful with the tbtl money we're so careful with it that we're not even allowed to have it they take care of it at 8 p.m. and then we get our little paychecks all because of people also like jan kaufman in sierra vista arizona oh that sounds nice i bet you that's quite a vista you got a sierra vista down there in az thanks jan thanks to jan kathleen amy kate megan and julia all of our donors of the day some of them family members some of them family we just haven't met yet you're all like my hillary's That's right. Thanks to all of our Hillarys for supporting the show. Hello and welcome to Top Story. All right, our top story coming to you from Michigan today. A woman named Laura Spears found out that she had won $3 million from the Michigan lottery after checking her spam folder, Andrew, for an unrelated email. This is an amazing story, but it actually stresses me out. so this woman Laura Spears had purchased a Mega Millions lottery ticket online from the state and she because she saw that the jackpot was getting huge this is also my strategy which is of course the least playing the lottery is illogical but the least logical way to play it is well I'm going to wait till it's 500 million I'm going to wait till it's the most possible although I guess the number of people playing doesn't matter it's just a question of the combination of numbers right that doesn't change i guess what changes is the more people playing at the slightly increased chances that if you did win you'd have to share it with someone because the numbers are the numbers like so you know that that impossible to get string of numbers is going to be what it is if one person plays it or if one million people play it but the more people playing it the greater the chances are that the prize will be split between people who have independently gotten to that weird string of numbers like if one if you're if you're one

person playing the lottery you still have to get all those numbers in order sure yeah yeah which

is the hard part yeah it's different than just like saying well there's more people in therefore therefore my chances are going down that's not it's not a raffle right it's not like you bought

a raffle ticket and now there's only one ticket in the fishbowl it's it's not like that it's like everyone is trying to get hope that their numbers line up with this like impossible to get string of numbers but anyway she like me saw that the big old prize was going up and so she decided to buy a ticket online which we do everything online now i don't know why the lot and i mean my sports gambling stuff is all online and i think still ultimately through the oregon state lottery so i don't know why this seems weird to me but i guess it just to me buying one of these like powerball tickets or lotto tickets that the tradition is and i've never won i mean i've never even won 50 bucks on one of these things that i can think of but the tradition is you go to some mini mart and you buy the physical a paper ticket and then you have that and then you walk around with that and you put it somewhere safe and and you look forward to like saturday or whatever when they announce the numbers the idea of just going online and being like yes Michigan State I'll take one State of Michigan I'll take one lottery ticket digitally please I don't know

why that just seems less fun to me um can you also ask them just to randomize it if you don't um have a good set of numbers that you want like in other words like especially when you're doing it in person if there's a long line behind you where you're like, okay, four, four, four. You can definitely. I'm done. No, I'm done. I was willing to. No, but for real, can you just say, just give me whatever numbers. I assume that.

You say, let the machine, I'll just let the machine pick it.

Can you say that in a robot voice?

I can't do that, Andrew.

Why did I laugh over that?

But, yeah, you can just say – I mean, I think the default setting is if you go up to them and you just say, I want $20 of, like, mega millions, they just – the assumption is the computer is just going to do it. Then you get the other people because they have those little, like, cards that you can get out of some little, you know, like, Lucite kiosk thing where you could fill in your own numbers if you've been playing the same numbers, you know, for your whole life. I mean, you can, but most, I think at this point, most people just walk in and say, give me 10 bucks or five bucks of that thing. And then the computer just spits out the numbers. That's what I've always done, which is weird. Cause when I play like roulette, I'm very obsessed with my specific four numbers that I play, but it doesn't extend to me and the lottery. So, uh, Laura Spears, uh, was looking for, uh, she says a few days later, I was looking for a missing email from someone. So I checked the spam folder in my email account. that's when i saw an email from the lottery saying i had won a prize i couldn't believe what i was reading so i logged into my lottery account to confirm the message in the email uh according to the bbc she called the win quote shocking now i am speaking of shocked i am shocked that this is the system like they send an email saying hey you won three million

dollars and if it goes to spam yeah that's just it yeah that i wonder do they have a how long was

it in there like would they call after a while i guess we don't know i mean this was it sounds like this was just you know a week or two after the after the prize and i guess i mean my hope would be that see the difference between this and if you just walk in and buy a ticket maybe this is a strong argument for doing all of this stuff online if you walked into just a kind of anonymous gas station and you bought this ticket and it won you just walked out and then you like lost the ticket or forgot about it they don't know who you are you don't have to provide id but because she was doing this virtual or doing this online they at least had her email to send her but to send her an email saying hey you know you won but i don't know what the state of what the state of michigan's policy is like if they send you an email that says you want and you don't respond they could assume that you you're not interested in the money that you have passed away that you've moved to Fiji like I don't know if that if how hard they're going to work to track you down especially if they get to keep it well that's the thing if they if after a certain amount of time it just goes back into the prize which then presumably drives more ticket sales which creates more revenue They're incentivized in a certain way to not work too hard to find the people who rightfully won the money.

That's why when they send out the announcements, they always include metadata. They include words like porn pills and anything else that would get flagged.

By the way, Andrew, I've been taking porn pills for years and absolutely zero.

It's not working? Zero benefit. What about those ones that we got at the travel station when we were hitchhiking? Oh, horny goat weed? Horny goat weed. is it travel station is that what they call them in minnesota because i'm travel center we always oh is it travel center we always call them truck stops and they have a different name yeah i'm out

there anyway um i i am just like i said this is a cool story for this woman who says she plans to retire early but it just it stresses me out to think that there's a possibility that if she would not have checked her spam folder which the other thing is i at this point now maybe it'd be different if I had a habit of playing the Oregon State Lottery online. by way of my email or something but like if i went into my spam folder and it said you've won a lottery jackpot you couldn't create an email that i'd be less likely to click on yeah yeah

that's what you're saying at the top of the show right that's the place social your spam folder

your spam folder is full at any time of people claiming you've won the lottery yeah let me see

what is my i'm gonna actually see can i get to my spam folder here let's see here i'm gonna do This is my personal account. I actually try to keep mine relatively clean, of course. Oh, I have been getting stuff from Rudy's Barbershop that I've been missing. Let's see here. I got something from LinkedIn that says you appeared in eight searches this week. I don't think that's really LinkedIn because I'm not on LinkedIn. Let's see here. A lot of fake suspicious account activity. Oh, here's one. Get matched with singles looking for Porn pills I don't know what that means If you could forward me that one I'd appreciate it Oh you know what shoot I'm looking at the TVTL email again this was Meant for you do you have anything good in yours

No it's so boring This is my like personal email Account and There's 71 items in my junk folder It must auto delete them Because you know me it's no way I'm going in and Cleaning this out myself it's a lot Of stuff that's Framed as being from Costco, but I would be really surprised if it's actually. No, it's from some email. Hello at brief dot me.

Yeah, every single one of these, like these subject lines all have like emoji in them and just like scrolling over them. I feel like I'm giving my computer a virus.

Definitely all these ones from Costco and one from Unilever. Let's find out who actually this is. unilever at email dot unilever dot us oh yeah absolutely not yeah no that sounds good sure

yeah so these are all just what about food stamp dot support what are they trying to send me oh

actually if you could forward that one to me too uh let's see yeah paypal but again all these avis mexico i think this is real because i rented a car when i was in mexico and they have not left me alone on my here's the other thing that's weird so my phone obviously my personal email account is what it is but on my phone every morning when i wake up and i um and i sort of look at what emails i got over the in the middle of the night there's always emails from avis mexico now when i go on my laptop computer and look at the same email account all of those emails are being diverted to the junk folder which is strange that is that is odd and you think the same rules would apply whether i'm looking at the emails on my iphone or on the laptop you'd think that both systems would just like you know shunt the same stuff over to the junk folder it like doesn't happen on the phone but does happen on the computer you know what i wish i could do i

because maybe that's just a technological thing because you know i don't use apple products so i don't really know how the behavior is but i also think you have a lot of like you just you know how i like things to be clean just like the idea not i don't mean like spick and span i just mean even if you're like talking about like you and i were talking about some of our radio equipment before the show just like I like clean answers I like things to make sense I like the cables to be in the right place I just like things to work correctly and if I could if I had some sort of magical power where I could just read like turn off your entire digital life count to 10 and then turn it back on and just like start fresh with you I'd really like to untangle some of these oddities that you have with like the fact that you couldn't log in to your fantasy baseball for not baseball maybe fantasy football a few years back but like every single time you were trying to hack into the mainframe some reason you were vpn-ing into cody to try to get into your fantasy football like yeah uh something is just not right in your accounts i feel like that we just need some um we just need we just need a pinch isn't that what they called it in oceans 11 where it's just like the idea that something would just like blink out all technology we need that

is that what um don cheetle was in charge of me i feel like it it's been a while yeah i think don cheedle's the like kind of munitions expert who has to he's like down in the like kind of underground like sewer system of vegas like about to run this like massive electrostatic event like shut everything down for a hot second and he speaks in cockney slang i think or i could be wrong about that i kind of do need that the problem is it's like everything in my digital life is just it's it's just sort of like what's what is in my direct field of vision and is the most on fire that's what gets dealt with so on the days when i can't log into our apm stuff so therefore i can't submit my time card and get paid that's the most that's the most pressing issue and then i'll get that fixed and then there'll be something else but as long if it's not like right in front of me and if it's not just fully engaged and engulfed in flames i'm just

kind of like i don't know i'll deal with that on a different day just push it down which whereas i'm the opposite but also in a problematic way because i won't be able to do anything until i get it sorted out and i have all of the answers right it's like well we need to be on the air in two minutes it's like i don't care it's like the isdn is working now i don't care i need to know why it didn't work before or one channel is slightly buzzy it doesn't have to be perfect yes it does cut to four hours later we didn't have a show i'm living on the streets it's now now

listen don't be don't be mean to my friend andrew because you did send me a text the other day that said i am having computer problems on the other computer not the one that is critical to us doing the show and you said i'm trying to fix it but if we're pressed for time i can deal with it later and we weren't pressed for time and so you fixed it and everything turned out okay but see you you do at least have the perspective you were self-aware enough to say if we're pressed for time i will just deal with this later but i also knew that it would be better for us and the show if you did get it worked out because it would it would live right in the front of your brain

the whole show if it if it wasn't working and also it you know what it would have done not that this is really what we're here to talk about but what what it would have done is it would have meant that i couldn't have played audio from my computer which is fine we would have just recorded the show dry you play most of the audio on your end i just play that intro montage and then the music underneath you but wouldn't you agree though that there's it's a weird headspace especially you as the first voice yeah isn't it a weird headspace when you have to say hey everybody welcome to a tuesday edition of tbtl but you don't have that music playing underneath you i could add it later But it's just like it must affect your energy.

Can you please, Andrew, say what you just said? Can you go back later, listen to the show, transcribe that, put it in an email and send it to my dear friends at LiveWire? Because this is a constant battle.

They don't like talk. I mean, I understand it from a producer point of view. It gives you more editing options. Yeah. Exactly. But there's also ways to multitrack that stuff now.

Well, that's on me. What I need to do is figure out Actually Andrew you know what This is how we can all win I can win because I'll have better systems And you can win because you'll get to coach me Through having better systems And you can sleep at night knowing that Everything is working and not haphazard What I need to do is figure out How to play audio so that I can Hear it but it's not going on the recording That would be the simple Is that possible on my board? I don't mean we have to fix it right now

But is that possible on the board? Yeah, it depends on, I mean, yes, it's possible and it depends how you would do it would be how you have things set up right now. But yeah, with these boards, you can just send audio to different places. So what you can do is you can send audio to your headphones that sounds like both your microphone and the music underneath, but to your recording device, you can just send your voice.

Well, that's what I need to do because we record all this different Livewire stuff now. We do the interstitials, which is the kind of beginning, middle, and end of the show, which kind of goes around the interviews. We've got this new podcast, the Best News podcast, which I have to say has been really fun and is turning out pretty well. But yeah, the producers and editors would like it to all be dry because it just gives them more options later. But I really want to get in the mood. So yesterday when we were recording Best News, I said, OK, fine, here's the I'm going to just play the theme song and then I'm going to stop it and then I'm going to do my top of the show rap dry. But having just heard the theme song, so I'm in the mood. And I feel like if you don't host one of these things, it's just like, just just pretend, Luke, like just make it easy on everyone, which I understand that perspective. But it's also there's just I don't know There's a vibe of when you're listening to the Actual music and talking it Just energetically informs things

Yeah it's so funny that we both stumbled on Like this we're having This conversation organically because it really was That computer that I was having issues with And that was just yesterday and it turns out yesterday You were also wrangling with this on A different show I know and I

I can't believe what am I I'm 45 this is 20 almost I mean this is 25 years I've worked in radio and it didn't occur to me that I could just a B this so that, you know, I could use the, um, I could just use audition. Who's on the boards, like on a real board, there's like a program and audition, all right. The two buses. Oh,

on the natural radio and an old radio board. Yeah. Yep.

I mean, I, there's a, of course there's a way for me to do this. So I'm playing all my music that I want to play and just getting in the vibe and also not sticking it to the track that the editors and producers need to use later.

Do you know there's a lot of cops named Andrew Walsh?

Are you getting spam mail for an Andrew Walsh police officer?

As you know, Luke, when you're as famous as I am, you have a Google News alert.

out for your own name and what you get is um you get a lot of news alerts for a uh i believe he is the deputy sheriff of las vegas county is las vegas county is las vegas in las vegas county i don't think so i think that's clark county okay that would be clark county so i don't understand how he could be the deputy sheriff for las vegas because i thought sheriff's departments were associated with counties either way there is um a deputy sheriff in that area whose name is andrew walsh so every now and then he's in the news and um now i see i just got another google news alert um for a new canaan uh c-a-n-a-a-n connecticut i'm assuming this is connecticut and they have

a captain named andrew walsh what's the i mean i what's the um like ethnic background of walsh is Is it from the U.K.?

You know, I've always thought it as kind of an Irish name. It's not, by the way, we have no Irish. It's because of a family history that we ended up with that name, but that's not our, you know, it's not our actual background.

It would be more fun if you were.

Well, maybe.

If you were Irish, Bob wouldn't be so down on those traveling salesmen trying to take him out for a big night at CI Shenanigans on the, you know, grommet company that they work for, Midwest Grommet. Right. Showing up and being like, hey, Bob, let's go out and let's have a night. Right.

I don't think, for what it's worth, I don't think those stories were from the perspective of my dad and his company particularly, but just salespeople that he knew and was friends with and just like this idea of, you know, somebody rolls into town, yeah, they expect to go to the steakhouse or whatever, and they never intend to buy. They never intend to buy. They just want the steak and the onion soup and the shrimp cocktail. The shrimp cocktail. Exactly.

Can we find – I don't want to make more work for you, but I want to find a photo of someone decadently eating a shrimp cocktail for the show pic.

For the show pic? Yeah. As a matter of fact, let me go right – that's a good Getty Images one. I don't think I've told you this many times before, but when we were first starting at American Public Media, they said, you know, the images that you use on the website now should be cleared. Like we should use our stock photo site because you and I mostly, I guess you were posting the show before APM. You would just grab whatever goofy, funny image off the Internet that you could find. I sure would. And, you know, but APM was like, you know, we don't want to be we don't want to be using other people's work and potentially get sued. I can't believe it's been six years and we haven't been the ones to bring down APM yet. I really thought we would have engendered a lawsuit at some point. But I guess it's going to take us seven. But anyway, so I remember saying, well, we like to use funny photos. I was in an email with the Stewbot and the Stewbot's colleague at the time, Andy, who is still a colleague of ours. And I said, but are they funny? I think it was Andy who wrote back, they're funny in a different way. And boy, was he right. Getty images can really be funny in a different way.

Yes. That is a whole comic kind of visual language. It really is. photo and like kind of the more because you have you have this sense of like what they were going for it usually doesn't quite achieve it I mean we all know the like kind of famous meme-ified versions of this of the guy and his girlfriend you know walking and the guys looking back and it's like all of those things that become kind of really popular and widely distributed it's always because they were trying to represent something and they kind of missed the mark a little bit but in a way that's hilarious

exactly yeah

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.

All right, we ran out of time before the mountaineering story, but I do want to talk about it tomorrow, mostly so I can casually drop Edmund Hillary at the top of the show like it's nothing. I love that show, The Fresh Prince. We'll carry that over until tomorrow because I do think it's kind of an interesting story. In the meantime, though, are you seeing any emails or V-mails that are of note?

Yeah, let's see. Oh, I did get a text and an email from listener David who says that a childless snowflake should be my pro wrestling name. That was something that I referred to myself as a childless snowflake on the show yesterday.

That would be a great heel character. Because think about it. I don't want to generalize. But I'm thinking that the likelihood is That the people who are really into pro wrestling Are also likely to have children And to be less snowflake-y Yeah, slightly less You know what I mean? I don't see it as being an arena of full of Ira glasses And so if you came out as the childless snowflake Just like criticizing people for their decision to have children And for their non-thoughtful use of language and stuff You'd really get the Pontiac Silverdome going

I believe that's where I think that's where Wrestlemania 3 was When I was a kid So in my mind All pro wrestling events Happened at the Pontiac Silverdome

Do you remember The name of The TV station That we were talking about Quite a bit Either earlier this week Or late last week Yeah WSAZ WSAZ And it was in the Pittsburgh area Correct

No it was It was in Virginia Right The reporter in question Who got hit by the car

She is going to Pittsburgh. Right, right, right. West Virginia was. Yes. And we were talking, of course, not to recap the entire thing, but while a reporter was on site doing a live stand up, she got hit by a car. The newscaster who was back in the studio, his name was Tim. He reacted somewhat stiffly and the Internet sort of jumped on him, as did we, I will admit, for kind of seeming to lack empathy in the moment. And then later on, the newscaster and reporter came back on the news to say that he's a very empathetic man and he just couldn't see what was going on on the monitor, but still came off as, again, somewhat wooden and a little bit less empathetic than you'd think. Well, we got a note here from a longtime listener, Grace in Brooklyn, who says, I grew up in eastern Kentucky, a tri-state area, if you will, West Virginia and Ohio. It's super red and very cringe. But growing up, Tim, this is the newscaster, Tim was one of the few people that was on our local news that wouldn't just go along with the they was trying to say I was drunk type of people. He would often make the most subtle and hilarious remarks that led to my sister and me referring to him as our local Conan.

Wow. All I can say is, wow, really? So Grace has a lived experience with the Tim of this story.

He brought us so much laughter in a very dull area to grow up. Word on the street is he will be retiring soon. And though I go home every couple of years, I always look forward to seeing our local news comedian gracing our TV screens. Also, each and every time we ran into him in the street, we would always shout his name. And now my dad has taken to getting selfies with him to send to me to bring me a little sliver of joy. I felt the need to stand up for my boy, Timmy, a national tri-state hero. Talk to you later, dummies. Grace, the dog walker in Brooklyn.

Oh, my gosh. I thought, because I think Grace was the person who hipped me to getting key fobs made for my old apartment building. Oh, maybe. I think Grace had learned that through her dog walking experience.

Ah, interesting, yeah.

And that has changed my life, by the way, Grace. It's this thing. We don't receive any money from them, but it's just called Kimi. And they're in the entry of Fred Meyer out here, and I'm sure whatever your local version of that is. It's, I think, the best company in America. I cannot believe that more people. And not only can you get a fob made, like an extra fob, you can get a flat little disc that you glue. I have it just like glued to the back of my cell phone case, which is also an RFID thing.

Oh, yeah.

And so I just, I don't even have to carry a fob anymore. My phone is the fob now, effectively. Every time I get in the elevator and I scan it, anyone that's in the elevator with me goes, what did you just do? How are you doing that with your phone? And I say, Grace in Brooklyn. So I thought that was Grace's greatest contribution to my life But I don't know, this Tim news might be even greater Because that's amazing It's a good perspective, right? It's a great perspective, you're right You know, it's not fair for us It's not fair for me, I don't want to drag you into this, Andrew To judge Tim by this one moment of his life

Oh, yeah, no, I'm on tape going hard against Tim So I think even more so than you

If Grace likes TBTL Grace's taste in entertainment and content is obviously impeccable and so if grace also loves tim's work then that means tim is good with us

we're good with tim yeah let me read to you another oh actually i don't know if we have time uh to get into this but this sort of would lead you to tell us about your new youtube obsession but if you don't mind let's start by let me read let me read you this um this note we got from ann and i didn't write it down but i'm pretty sure this is our bud ann in new hampshire um who wrote in regarding the kind of ephemeral VHS footage that I've been like kind of looking for on YouTube lately just like weird old stuff from the 80s and 90s that was like somebody just testing out a VHS recorder for the first time or whatever it is capturing the moment it's very raw footage we can find long form stuff on YouTube and it just sort of feels like a time machine to me and Anne says your chat about old audio and videotapes reminded me of something when my parents moved out of their house of 30 plus years, I ended up with a bunch of their old videotapes. Of course, not all of them were marked correctly, so I went through each one.

so I could label them. I love that instinct, by the way. Good for you. The best one I came across was made purely by accident. Someone had left the video camera going on a side table, pointed out a window onto the front porch. Just picture a basic New England porch, wicker, rockers, hanging plants, the lot. And the audio captured the sound of the entire family having dinner together. That tape was priceless, and I'm getting a little teared up just thinking of it right now. that is the kind of ephemera that i am talking about just like and again this all kind of ties into our conversation with chris hayes a couple of weeks ago about like the the real fly on the wall nature of that eight hour beatles documentary that just came out just like this idea of i mean you want to talk about a fly on the wall how about a camcorder on a table pointed out the window yeah

and i think probably the fact that nobody realized they were being recorded added to it or helped because obviously like when you know you're someone's pointing a camera at you or just recording the audio that's probably in your head a little bit but just to have like i would absolutely love to just hear a recording of like a dinner in my house growing up you know like circa 1987 or something so i'm you know i'm i'm 11 years old and just like what were the conversations like what did our voices sound like what did my parents sound like like what just what was the vibe because I feel like I have my memories of it but you know memory is a fugitive like we like I don't know how accurate any of those memories are they're just what my brain is telling me happened but I could very well be wrong or off or like I don't know that would be that would be really cool to get to hear something like that yeah especially like you said if you don't

know you're being recorded it's different um because like I think I mentioned this to you on the show it's funny I was watching one of those like I don't know hour and a half long not really watching just kind of having on in the background one of those really long um uh vhs tape things that's on youtube now of these teenagers in the 80s kind of smoking outside their school and hanging out outside school um and i realized that people are i mean i think people still do this but like back then people were just not as comfortable being on camera because they weren't on camera all the time like they are now right like now you put a camera on somebody they all just automatically start doing a tiktok dance um back in the 80s kids didn't know what to do so they inevitably end up flicking off the camera like it's just it's just like they were when they're out of things to do they just give the finger to the camera that makes me think of something that i probably don't want to talk about on the show right now okay do you want to talk about what you're watching on youtube or do you want to save that for tomorrow let's talk about

that tomorrow okay i will i'm going to um i'm going to spend the next 24 hours considering if i want to bring up the thing that's related to the flipping off can we talk about it after the show or do you i want yes maybe and you can tell me if you think it's something i should get into

okay sounds good uh what music should we go out with and how did we not write down a show title i did we yesterday we had the best show title of all time i believe and now i feel like rebranded yeah so now i'm wondering like did that take all of this is we just like hit the top of everest

and now we well that would uh which turns out isn't the tallest mountain on earth apparently Andrew The thing is yesterday there was like Four really good show titles That came up and that's what happens it's like You get four of them It's like when your pitcher goes out and throws A shutout and you also score 14 runs It's like hey can we Can we get three runs a game For the next six games please I'm like going back

I'm going back Now days and weeks And see if there were any show show titles that we slept on that you can just say here the nugs we never used that no never used that we went well you just said it the m is for micro on that day anyway um i'm trying to find

hold on i'm trying to find some music here though oh how about this yeah about this how about coffin nails by mf doom okay mf doom who uh passed away during the pandemic r.i.p mf doom um but i was um we were out on saturday night it was becca's birthday and we popped into this very cool bar in portland called fortune in the sentinel hotel and um uh they were this song was playing and i was like i was like i don't know what this song is but i like its vibe and so i was trying to like shazam it but i was holding my phone in a way that i thought looked casual but what i was really doing was imagine this picture this if you can i wanted the it was loud it was a bar and i wanted the phone to be sort of closer to the speaker but without just standing where I'm like holding my arm straight up as high as it will go so I kind of have both of my hands on the back of my head so just kind of do that at home if you're trying to picture it and I'm holding the phone so it's kind of sticking up so this is the look and I go

And Becca goes, what are you doing? And I'm like, I'm trying to Shazam this song, but I'm trying to be kind of subtle about it. And Tiffany, Becca's sister-in-law, goes, that's not subtle.

No, that's holding your hand up almost. It's like saying, everybody, look at me.

It was so much weirder. The physical kind of position I was in was drawing so much more attention to me that it would have been if I just, there was a better way to do it than what I was doing. But the good news is it worked, and I was able to figure out what the song was called.

Have you experimented with just not holding it so close? Like, it really depends on how much noise is in it. So I understand that those things can be sensitive, but I feel like it's getting better and better. Like, I will sometimes just hold it on the table, and I'll kind of, like, I think it's listening through, I'm assuming, like, the mouthpiece of the phone, like the bottom of the phone, I'm assuming. so what I'll do is I'll sort of set it on the table but kind of like you know how if you take your phone and you don't have a speaker for it but you put it in a glass of water and it'll sort of amplify a little bit it'll like kind of reflect off I try to put the I guess the microphone of the phone kind of on the table hoping that the sound is bouncing off the table into the phone I've had decent luck but we also have different phones so I

don't know I also see here's like it's it stresses me out because if I'm hearing a song in the wild that I want to know what it is i feel like it could end at any moment true that and so my like i it's i'm i'm sort of feverishly getting to shazam and then i'm like trying to get it as close physically to the source of the noise because i feel like if i try to play it too cool it's not going to work yeah and i don't know if that fear is found or not you're right the technology improves every single day on this stuff but um but i yeah i should um i'll try that again it was also a fairly loud environment yeah so that was also adding to my stress level of if i was going to capture this or not a lot of clinking plates yeah oh man i really want to eat at this place so it's vegetarian it's a bar but they have a vegetarian menu and people were just eating these like vegetarian these veggie burgers left and right that just looked absolutely like they were you wouldn't have been able to tell the difference at all between them and regular meat burgers and The menu was amazing. Oh, I'm so hungry.

Okay, we got to go.

All right. So that's what we're going to go out with. Let's go out with some MF Doom and say thank you for listening to yet another episode of TBTL. We'll be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. Until then, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Thank you.

will not answer i can't do that andrew power out