Muse

Pun Slingers, we come up with pun names for your business. We don't do doggy daycare, haircutting places, or faux. Oh, Italian restaurant. Okay, that sounds good. Where are you going to be located? Okay, get your number. Okay, Jeej, Italian restaurant. Great. All right, so, what do you got, Jeej?

You know, it could be construed as controversial, but it's a great restaurant name. Planned Pizza Hood.

Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. I thought of Pizza Paul and Mary. Love it. That's good. ah thinking let's do you think more in the italian thing venice the menace trust me like trust me out of parm's way oh right that's really terrible yeah i've got one

what about uh spaghetti museum spaghetti museum is that is that a pun lord of the pots pasta rings how about that wait what was it again lord of the movie is the hobbit okay i've got a movie

everyone five easy pizzas tbtl excited to be here uh equally excited for you guys to truly take in how physically imposing i am so whenever you guys are ready to start let's do it i yell at you

because i love you you listen to me because you love me is this a weird dynamic yeah sure from the outside you don't have a choice if you don't like it you can quit that's a call from upstairs

you don't have to make rude noises that's all right i don't mind

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a tuesday edition of tbtl you know this show is

like a dynasty. You hold it and then you hand it off to the next person. The show that just might

be too beautiful to live. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. Coming to you from the offices of Walsh Walsh and Dormat here on the first of February. January felt extra long. I think we were all ready to move into february about a week ago and it just kept being january uh our friend and i think former colleague tracy mumford wrote on uh twitter that on january 31st january was saying this one really is the last day we promise no but this is actually the end of january that's what it felt like to me but i am very excited to be here in the month of february with all of you took a uh a walk this morning actually walked from the hotel up here uh to the roosevelt neighborhood of seattle washington and it was absolutely gorgeous and yet i made a i don't know possibly ugly discovery about myself on that walk which we will probably get into here on episode 3610 in a collector series let the fun begin uh news uh yesterday that the new York Times is buying Wordle you gotta be kidding me it's strange because I like Wordle a lot and I like the New York Times a lot I am a subscriber I am a fan why does it then make me mad that the

New York Times is acquiring Wordle I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore also um

One of those SpaceX Falcon rockets was trying to take off the other day, and they had a problem. It was literally a major disaster. They had to scrub the launch like 30 seconds before liftoff because of something that seemed like a fairly avoidable problem, which we will talk about coming up. And also, I put the question out to the listeners yesterday. if they could help me name a tune a piano a piano version of a a song that i i know i have it somewhere in my music catalog but the piano version of it i couldn't quite place and the

listeners have sent in their responses can you can you verify can you give me some 411 so we'll

go through some of those to see if the listeners have in fact successfully named that tune i will We'll do all of that with the help of this young man, a soulful rocker from New Hampshire who may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's ready to party with the rest of them. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now from just across the table here in the broadcast center at Walsh, Walsh & Dormat. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. You played that drop. I'm mad as hell. I'm not going to take this anymore. It's from broadcast news, right? See, this is the questions that I always have, and it led to a real where's-on...

with me and somebody in a text exchange. You mean, who's on first? Did I say where's on first? Can you write that down? Where's on first is a great show title. That is not the best show title ever, but that's the best accidental show title ever. Oh my gosh, still clearing the fog out of my... Did I just say where? The best joke of my life, and it was a mistake. Damn, I meant to say that. I meant to... It was all part of the script. Yeah, I know, I know. Where do they get their paycheck? No, but so is that OK, so somebody was tweeting about a friend of ours was tweeting about like getting sick of watching broadcast news or something. I can't remember the context. I was like, oh, wait, is that the William Hurt pretending to cry one or is that the I'm as mad as hell? And we went back and forth and back and forth. And it turns out they were just talking about watching the news. They were just calling it network news, even though I think they meant cable news. But anyway, there's Network, right? And then is there Network News or no? There's nothing called Network News, right? Just Broadcast News.

No, we're never going to get to the bottom of where is on first, Andrew, because I was wrong right at the jump. The movie is called Network. It's not called Broadcast News. I think there is.

Which one is Network, though?

John Hurt Crying? I know that Network has Sydney. it was Sidney Lumet this is what the internet is telling me saying I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore

oh okay that's just Network that's from Network

the 1976 film Network he's playing the anchorman Howard Beale and he has basically a he has a meltdown you know while doing the news okay or he comes I don't know the whole context but he just has a meltdown

and that one's just called Network then and then the other movie I'm thinking of is Broadcast News and that's the Holly Hunter

William Hurt Where he does some kind of fake crying

I have been saying William Hurt I haven't been saying where's on Hurt Have I been saying his name right? I'm not even sure anymore

You let a John Hurt slip But I also thought it was called Broadcast Network or something So we're off to a hot, hot start

So good at William Hurt

That's also a pretty good show

William Hurt so good Anyway, here we are Okay, we settled that all up. I think I actually made that more confusing. I think I muddied the waters even more on that whole conversation. What is this terrible revelation that you're having?

Look at how nice it is outside, by the way. I know. Look at that beautiful blue sky. It's not the best view.

You have a better view than I do. As a guest, you have a better view. Yeah.

And it's not great, but it's better. You can see, yeah, it's just a gorgeous Tuesday morning. And so I am, tonight, I am going to be at Town Hall in Seattle, And I'll be interviewing John Darneal The lead singer of the Mountain Goats Who's also a writer And he has his I think third novel out It's called Devil House And it's kind of a murder mystery It's really good But I was trying to get through the last couple hundred pages And so I have the book book But I also have the audible version And so what I'll do is And I do this with a lot of the Stuff that I have sort of assigned reading now I'll just bounce between those two things So if I'm just working in my apartment I'll just have the book going, and then if I have a chance, I'll sit down with the – I'll have the audio book going. If I have a chance, I'll sit down with the book book.

Then you've got to find your place. Do the Germans have a word for that? Finding your place in a physical book after listening to it as an audio book?

That's a – we need that word. We need that term because I'm constantly doing that. I'm toggling between the two. So I got up this morning, and I thought what I could do is I could walk to your house. It's like five miles. I could walk to your house and I could listen to the audio book so that I would, you know, I could knock another hundred pages out or whatever. And so I did that and it was just so nice this morning. A little brisk, but but, you know, I warmed up, you know, once I was walking and moving and just like the sun rising so that all the buildings and houses on the slope of Queen Anne going down to Lake Union were just all kind of pink.

That's one of the most beautiful parts of the city illuminated from the sunrise.

and just walking you know so i walked from the hotel that i'm staying at is kind of it's sort of on the uh border i guess you could say of belltown and south lake union

and um i was i was walking and and did you walk this is such bad podcasting but did you walk east lake i'm trying to think how do you get from there to here on foot now we don't have to do every single step i realize this is terrible this is a terrible path i'm leading us down well uh no

what i did was i instead of walking east lake so i walked from the hotel down to the very edge of south lake union where like daniel's broilers all that stuff oh art marble 21 you stop in the art marble 21 district yes and but then instead of walking on east lake which is kind of a semi-busy street i just actually hugged the Lake Union I actually hugged the water because there are all these little just residential streets that just go along the the lake and um it's still a very efficient way to get where you're going but it's just not so many cars little houseboats I walked by so you're on the east side of the lake I'm on the east side of South Lake Union but I'm just right there along the water it was just beautiful people are out walking their dogs everyone's you know in a good mood because it's a nice morning it's not raining and i did walk by this place it's called like blue ribbon like blue ribbon catering or something it's it's like a place where i think they cater events and you can also take cooking classes and it's right on the water it's in this very cool building that used to be an azteca why do i know that because i was once on a raft under that azteca helping hang the pipes oh my gosh when i worked for that plumbing

company that terrible plumbing company yes i think i know exactly the area you were talking about genevieve took a cooking class there once with their company yeah so that in that exact

thing so that beautiful many years ago that building before it was that cooking place it

was an azteca and that's not far away from what would become the tbtl famous azteca so did that

azteca move it must have yeah interesting but i just remember being a teenager and being on this floating this raft because the restaurant a lot of it is over the water yep so in order to like hang this like i don't know if i hope it wasn't a sewer pipe to hang whatever this pipe was it needed to be hung we had to actually be floating on the water and it was me and this plumber dude who is regaling me with stories of his one night stands from the karaoke bar great and it was so Oh, it was it was like a it was a coming of age tale in the worst sort of way, because it was just like I was like, oh, my God, I hope I never become this guy.

You even identified it there. It wasn't like because sometimes we're kids. We just think older people who are more worldly or. But, you know, I found it troubling.

It also didn't help. He didn't have the greatest. Imagine this. Didn't have the greatest teeth. Well, no, we did call him WT because one of his teeth looked like it was wood. It wasn't. It was just it had it. But the rest of his teeth were, I guess, normal ish. This one tooth went so brown that me and Joe would call him W.T. for wood tooth. But I just remember. Yeah, he didn't have the greatest way of describing women. And so his his sort of what he he was trying to impress this like 17 year old kid on this raft hanging pipe with him, which also probably was his nickname for having sex with his tales of these like women that he would like, you know, his his tales of conquest. But I was just thinking, God, this sounds like a bleak life.

I don't think you were able to identify it that early on.

And I want to mention that at that point in my life, I had gotten someone pregnant and nobody knew. I wasn't exactly killing the game myself. But anyway, so here's the realization that I had on this really beautiful walk, though, that I don't feel great about. It is kind of if you are if you're old enough and you're from Seattle and you lived here, you know, for enough time or you lived here back in the 80s or even the 90s. 90s the the the thing to do the cool thing to do is talk about how much everything has changed

and in particular is that the cool thing to do or that's just the thing everybody does that's like the uncool thing to do right you're getting old everybody always talks about well maybe maybe

it's uncool but it's it's just here's what i'm saying it's not an in-style opinion to like the amazonification of south lake sure you agree with that yeah yeah sure yeah the idea that like everything the rent is prohibitive there and it's all fancy and that every one story building has been raised to create a big high rise that has you know some kind of yoga studio on the ground floor and a um you know peruvian specialty coffee house or something like the amazonification of seattle i feel like it is popular to look askance at that can we agree on that as a thing i just wasn't sure where you're going yet as i was walking well started last night i had to run a couple errands and i so i left the hotel this was at about 4 30 in the afternoon it was a kind of a nice night and i was able to do i all of these errands that i needed to do i was able to do in a two block radius from the hotel walking and then on my way home i stopped off at this very nice um cool place called the um it's an ethan stowell place the chef i guess is in charge of it it's called the like um the something tavern and i stopped in and i had a caesar salad and a glass of wine and it was just like such good food and i was on the happy hour menu so it was actually affordable relatively affordable and i looked around and there was like in an immediate i could see from the point that i was at that there was at least 10 other restaurants that i would be interested in trying you know and they were they all just looked welcoming and like the food was good and they were interesting and varied and this those amazon spheres are

quite fascinating from an architectural standpoint and the idea there's all that greenery i don't know if people outside of seattle are as familiar but amazon has these two weird but kind of intriguing glass bubbles one of them seems like it's mostly just plants and things growing that has a restaurant

below the plants did you know that i didn't know that i went i went into the plant area once and wandered around but i was very confused by what's going on with that space somehow i did not follow that it's like suddenly i just felt like it was there oh you know what i think a lot of the construction for that and probably a lot of the conversation happened probably around when i was in la i mean a project like that takes i don't know how long so i i just am ignorant to it but i just sort of feel like i came back to seattle and these spheres were here and so i wandered around i mean it was incredible i mean it's just incredible to be in there but they're also they really restrict where you can go because it's the rest of it actual amazon workspace or is it

rented to other businesses do we know that's the part that i don't understand yeah i just didn't even realize they had a restaurant in there and last night as i was uh on my walk it was all illuminated it was just so cool looking and again you know amazon as a company we can all agree is doing a lot of bad stuff in the in the world there's a lot of ways in which the convenience that we all enjoy from amazon is making people's lives measurably worse so like that's kind of my default setting if you were like Amazon Southlake like when I when I was a kid we would go roller skating in Southlake Union in a I mean maybe that was what you could call a little more Seattle Center but there was a lot of like low single story weird warehouse spaces I mean that was just like nobody cared about Southlake Union and my if you were to ask me if you woke me up out of a dead sleep and said what do you think of Southlake Union I'd be like bullshit how it's all been it's all fancy now and it's all you know whatever this morning as I was walking through it and as i was observing all of these interesting restaurants and coffee shops and places you can do things and buy stuff and people walking their dogs and these beautiful even these like google buildings like google has built it's like really architecturally interesting giant glass structures that are right at the edge of south lake union that i've never even noticed before yeah i realized i love it down there i think i want to live in south lake union which is like i feel like i'm really selling out my seattle cred my old school like i grew up on aurora avenue when you know everybody in seattle it didn't hurt that last night when i was at that little tavern having some dinner the guy next to me who was in his 70s probably we started chatting and it turned out he was a sign painter who had now his operation was much much much bigger than my dad's operation like you know your dad have they ever met at a conference they had i don't

think my dad's ever been to a signed conference but they um that actually of all the industry conferences that wouldn't be the worst oh i'll tell you to this day sign maker magazine not a read i i love industry specific conferences just the idea of them is great but so i ended up talking

to this guy don for like an hour and he was you know grew up in seattle he had these crazy stories about growing up in seattle um unlike lower queen anne i'm sorry this is so seattle specific today everyone but just it is it is what it is he grew up on the part of lower queen anne queen anne is a neighborhood in seattle and that's a very nice neighborhood now and very fancy if you can afford to live there things are going pretty well but when he lived there in the you know 1960s it was considered kind of rough if you were down by the ship canal and he was telling me these stories When he was five, six years old, he and his buddies would go down and they would jump on the caboose of a train that was just a working train. And they would jump on at kind of where the Nickerson pub is, where the Fremont Bridge is. Yeah, that's going down. They would go down and they would jump on the back of a train on the caboose and they would ride it all the way down to like South Lake Union. Now where there's like Google stuff is. And they would just and he said the only thing is that we were all told we weren't allowed to go in the canal, in the ship canal because it was dangerous. so he said not like hopping on the back of a train right no that was fine he said so you never wanted to come home wet so he's like we would go we'd be out all day and he was like and then as long as we didn't come home wet we were all right he just had all these stories and we were just like trading old seattle stories so anyway that was that has me nostalgic for old seattle and that's kind of usually my default setting when i'm talking about seattle with people what i tend to say now is well when i grew up it was very blue collar it was very different but i found myself in the middle of the boot like now the newly bougie part of seattle just going like i get it this is great this is oh and by the way this guy don i was talking to he lives there now he lives in this fancy if he sold his whole business off in georgetown sold all this stuff he's retired and he he's a widower and he lives in this like bomb modern apartment where he can just walk to everything like

The urban design of it is actually not the worst.

Yeah, no, I mean, I agree with you. You know me, the reason I wanted to move to Seattle or really any city is because I wanted an urban lifestyle, you know, exactly what you're describing. Now, that happens to be a very moneyed area, which is one thing. But in that particular case, and I could be wrong and people maybe get on us about this, but like and, you know, the idea of how we're planning this and who's being taxed and the displacement of people in other parts of the city is terrible. But specifically South Lake Union, I don't think I could be wrong. I don't think there was tons of displacement going on there. Like you said, it was even when I moved here back in 2009, like I liked the only thing that I feel like they could have done that would have been really cool as they rebuild everything up is instead of just taking down that really old school little amusement park, those few amusement park rides that were left over from the World's Fair that used to be right below the Space Needle. You mean the Fun Forest? The Fun Forest. I feel like they could have really put money, if somebody was interested in doing it, they could have really put money into renovating that and making it really retro modern, sort of. They could have like, that would have been an amazing little nod to the past, but also kept it, because it was so grungy. It was just like, it was a bunch of rides that no longer worked. Every now and then. You would walk through there, and it's like, that could have been really cool. But instead, they turned it into the Chihuly Museum, And I'm not a big fan of I'm not somebody who's super into glass art. And it sounded kind of sounded kind of, I don't know, uninteresting to me. But I got to give him credit. They built a glass museum there. And it's great. Like the glass museum is a great place to take people when they're visiting. I just sort of feel like South Lake Union, you didn't you didn't lose a lot. I mean, you tell me you've been longer. But I guess this is your whole point. Like there it's not like it's not like going into maybe some corner of Ballard where you had a bunch of single family houses. and a real working-class community where the working-class people can't afford to live there anymore because the taxes have gone up while Amazon is not paying taxes. Right, South Lake Union was primarily industrial and warehouses. Yeah, and not even cool industrial, not like cranes on the water. You know what I mean? Right, right. Like you say, it was kind of a dead space that had been mismanaged. Wasn't there, though, wasn't there something? I shouldn't even bring this up. Didn't, like, Paul Allen or somebody have a proposal to create more of a public space there, and people are still mad they didn't do it? But that was long before.

Yeah, there was – well, Paul Allen – Vulcan ended up buying. Right. Paul Allen's other company, Vulcan, ended up buying almost all of that. And I don't know if Amazon just bought it from them or leased it or what the dealers are. Google. I don't know who actually owns all the real estate. There was a thing that was proposed like 20 years ago. When I first started out in public radio as just like an intern, like the public affairs show called Weekday that I kind of worked on. How did they come up with that name? I swear every – it's weird because it was a weekend show. That. I would be on board with. Why aren't any of our projects more successful, Andrew, when what we think is the best name for a show would be something that was deeply confusing? Welcome to the pre-taped Colin show. But I felt like every single segment that they were doing was about this proposal. I think it was called The Commons. That sounds right. And it was, yeah, this idea of a big, I think, you know, public park in South Lake Union that would have been really cool, actually, had it gone through. So, I mean, maybe this Amazon thing, I'm calling it that because it's mostly Amazon, but there's just a lot of tech stuff down there. You know, maybe a public space down there, a larger public space would have been a better use of it. But you're right. I mean, it wasn't like, I don't think it was densely populated with residential sort of stuff that they kind of moved people out the way that they did when they put in I-90. Interstate 90, they went through a part of the Rainier Valley that was called, I don't know if you, can you say this anymore? They called it garlic Gulch because it was where all the Italian people live.

I've heard you say that before.

But, you know, I mean, a lot of this eminent domain stuff can be pretty bad. This is a sort of different story in South Lake Union. But again, I was just I was I was shocked at how pleasant. And again, I guess if you're making enough money that you can live in one of these really expensive apartments, of course, it's nice down there. Like, that's the whole point. But I was struck by how successfully they engineered it to have everything you would possibly need.

Yeah, I think urban. Now, I'm really into I'm not really into it because I don't know shit about it, but I love the idea of good urban planning and urban design. And again, like you're talking about those Amazon spheres like that's amazing. I mean, again, any issues I have with Seattle writ large about housing and everything has to do with the ripple effects and the fact that they're not cutting out other they're not protecting other things. And I'm not even saying like protect all, you know, like single family houses. We need clearly like we have a housing issue here. And I have been looking at our first houses and it's just like it is it is it is ridiculous. It is beyond ridiculous. This is not a place where poor people can live anymore. This isn't barely a place where middle class people can live anymore. So, I mean, those are the issues. But specifically talking about. having good urban planning in a place that you're building up and also a lot of that well that mercer area was also part of that was part of the stimulus too now we're getting really boring but anyway um yeah no i i'm with you on that i don't think you should feel bad about that like when you see a city i mean just you want to look at the you want to look at it holistically but that doesn't mean that you have to throw the baby out with the bath water like good like um dense urban planning is good right right yeah it's i mean it's just it's just unaffordable it's not affordable

for most people and again it feels like new seattle to me i mean that's really what it is is like i i think that i have i pride myself in in knowing some of seattle's history from my growing up here and think about old seattle as just being like far superior to new seattle for all the reasons that you just stated the largest being affordability but to just be in the midst just to be bathing in the in the perfectly warm water of engineered bougie Seattle like it felt kind of good and I felt kind of bad about how good it felt I think

it I don't know man I think it's interesting I think that I think maybe my position on this has maybe changed I like to think maybe matured a little bit too like as you look at the city as a whole because like I read a really interesting piece this is going back is his name Paul Feig is that a local writer writes with Erica Barnett now I believe you mean Josh Fite I'm thinking of Josh Fite Paul Feig is the director yes right okay so I just want to say you like Paul Feig right yes okay anyway put that aside we've had Paul Feig on TVTL oh I think I might have no I don't think I was on that one was that right before Bridesmaids came out probably yeah something like that anyway Josh Fite Josh Fite who writes about density and stuff like that and it's also kind of one of those writers who's always willing to take or always eager to take this sort of counterpoint on anything. But was writing like, I think the headline was something like, sorry, Gen Xers, Capitol Hill is better now than it's ever been. And like, there is something about like Capitol Hill, for those who don't know, is that's the first place where Avivs and I lived when we moved here and it was known as being the very gay, arty, young kind of part of town, right? And also gritty a little bit, right? And this is where the gay bars were before gay bars were more mainstreamed and everything so you kind of have that going hand in hand with it by the time we moved here in 2009 like well first of all i think when you're when you're younger and you move to an exciting place like that's always going to be the heyday of it right now the big complaint on capitol hill now is so much money has been poured into there and and it's become and and josh did address it like that is you can't ignore that that's the downfall that's the part of the argument that is really huge is that if it's less affordable that's going to cut out the the more let's say the artistic class or the younger class or the people who are up and coming, which is a problem, but he did make a big argument for Capitol Hill being way more diverse than it used to be, way more, I mean, whether or not they're affordable is one thing, but actually having more places to live than ever before, and actually kind of being vibrant in a way, and, like, I'm just trying to, like, remember that, like, change, just because change isn't necessarily bad, you know what I mean, and, like, this city is making some huge mistake, you know, I feel strongly about some of those things, but. And honestly, though, living in a city like growing up in the country and wanting to live in a city that is a good urban city and seeing this city grow more urban around me is good as long as we are, you know, kind of making some decisions and not not keeping people out. And again, I'm not trying to dismiss that part of the conversation. I just don't want to get into that now. And also, I'm not smart enough to get into that now. But I think there I think I've changed a little bit from my knee jerk reaction. maybe if you were to talk to me five years ago like i miss the roller rinks luke you know me i'm old school i miss the bowling alleys that rainier bowling alley we used to hang out at oh yeah i miss those places but i also understand why those places have to make way for you know places for people to live if we're going to grow as a city you say all this and yet we all know seattle is dying andrew yet you're alighting that very obvious fact you know that's part of it too i

think it's because and you know i'm obsessed with the train right and it sort of feels like we have And, you know, this light rail, which is relatively new in the city and brand new in our neighborhood. And like more and more since this light rail opened two months ago or three months ago, Vives and I will hop on the train. We hopped on the train to go meet you at the Moore Theater when you're interviewing Amy Sedaris the other night. And we had a great time downtown. And then I hopped in the I think the train was stopped running by the time I was leaving. So I got into a car to head home and was home like in like, you know, 10 minutes car hop on the highway. And like you go downtown and like it's it's terrible when you when you see just like the poverty on the streets and the fact that these people don't have a place to live. That's that is terrible. But to fit into the narrative of downtown or Seattle is dying or a dangerous place. Downtown is better than ever. Like, again, I want to look out for for the homeless neighbors who live there and find solutions for that. I don't want to dismiss that. But like you go downtown and people are zipping around on scooters.

and there's bike lanes and people are going places like it's great yeah we all met up at this theater where the event was and then we all walked to the the bar where we had some drinks by way thank you to you and v's for the drinks i don't even want to know how expensive that was oh no you're gonna need to take out a second mortgage first mortgage like two rounds of drinks it's fine man place wasn't it wasn't speaking of affordability issues but no like we had a lovely night as a group of friends in downtown seattle at no time did any of us And it involved walking, you know, a relatively short distance. Yeah, no time did it feel like Seattle was dying.

No, it feels it feels vibrant. Like you just see like kind of young people out there going to the thing again, like so many different modes of transportation now. Like, I don't know. Like, I think that and again, not to ignore the poverty thing and the huge the gap between the haves and the have nots is just disgusting and terrible and needs to be remedied. But the idea of Seattle dying, like I actually think like I made a joke on the show yesterday, the day before I said something like maybe we should move to Tacoma because it's getting hard to afford living here. But like the truth is, I do love Seattle and I love it as much today as I did in 2009 when I moved here.

Well, I've always loved Seattle, but I realized this morning that I will be moving back here, probably to South Lake Union, probably to a condo somewhere in the midst of all the tech bros. Maybe I'll move into the Amazon. Yeah. I mean, as long as you're part of the problem, that's the good thing. That's always been kind of, you know, it's hard to always know what the right call is in terms of sort of ethics and personal morality. But as long as you use trying to be part of the problem as your North Star, you're never going to go that wrong. Exactly. That's what I say. All right. Let's take a quick break, and then we come back. We'll talk Wordle. And speaking of tech bros, we'll talk about SpaceX as well. Coming up here on TVTL. All right, let's thank some donors of the day. These are the wonderful, generous folks who are making the show possible with their support. and we really do appreciate it. I'm never going to be able to afford that condo in South Lake Union. I'm never going to be able to afford that coffee in South Lake Union without the help of these donors. Folks like Rachel Andrusiak of Ypsilanti, Michigan. Thank you, Rachel. Also, thanks to Allie Leanna, right here in Seattle, Washington. Now, do you have an address? Do you have a specific address? They don't give me that information anymore, The APM folks have I guess at the request of the donors I'm no longer allowed to know specific addresses Too many standing outside the house With boombox incidents I just like to show up and sometimes thank people personally

Like I'll bring a basket of cookies It's funny how you always show up at dinner time though It's a real Jughead Jones move

I like to show up with some Baked goods Just a little something And apparently I'm just awful at baking So the listeners were like We will send in the money if you just keep Luke away from our homes that was what Allie said and I respect that thank you Allie so much for the support of the program also thanks to Julie Taznady in Salem Oregon I that's where Becca's from and so it means that I am now spent more time in Salem Oregon in the last however many months than I had all of my life combined before that it's a cool town Particularly the kind of area outside of Salem, the kind of wine country, if you will, the beautiful, beautiful country down there in Salem.

Can I ask you a question? Yes. I can't tell if this is the stupidest question I've ever asked or where's on first is the stupidest question I've ever asked. But I know this is a different Salem. But speaking of Salem. Were there witch trials at this one? I was, well, sort of, I was thinking about the Salem Witch Trials and like this idea of witchery as it was presented in, you know, in America in those times. Did other cultures like have the same idea of witches that Americans, I mean, it was obviously rooted in sexism and I'm sure that there was some version of mysticism and sexism mixed up in other cultures as well. But, like, this idea of witches as Americans, as what we now call Americans, would consider witches.

Were there witch burnings in other countries?

I'm glad I could just keep us on topic for the donors. Absolutely. So that's the important thing.

Well, interesting. Now, this is just what Gorgel has delivered to me. Okay, Gorgel. Where's on first? Hey, Gorgel. Where's on first? These six trials were part of the worldwide witch hunt frenzy Ah, okay

Valais, which is in France slash Switzerland in 1428 through 1477, in Trier, Germany in the late 1500s, North Berwick, Scotland in the late 1500s. These are all kind of lists. Fulda, Germany in the early 1600s, in England, in Sweden. The Swedes even got into it. History.com, which, I mean, how could they? I guess this is the History Channel's web page. I wonder how much they had to pay. Like, I wonder if someone at the History Channel realized in the early days of the Internet, we want to get that URL. Or if somebody just had it, somebody had the wherewithal or the presence of mind to buy it. And then the History Channel had to just drop some big bucks. Yeah, there were. That makes sense. It looks like there were witch trials kind of around the what we'll call Western world, which would, you know, I mean, I don't know why I'm deciding to take this to this place during the donors.

It's weird that I brought it up. Honestly, that's on me.

But like you see this kind of happen generally like, you know, the the idea that Brexit happened and that Donald Trump got elected around the same time, you know, feels kind of like probably related in a way to like there are these things that happen sort of culturally and certain groups of people feel, you know, like disaffected or like the world is not the world that they grew up in or whatever. And then they react predictably. And I'm sure that the witch trial is something I've spent no time studying.

Well, no, you just studied it for like 30 seconds. Had a version.

I was here for it. Every time I tried to buy a witch trial. But you know what I mean? Like I'm sure that whatever was animating that behavior was it was fear based. It was people who were afraid that something was going on and they had decided that these people who they thought had practiced witchcraft or had witchy ways that they somehow that finding those people identifying and destroying them. Gave them something to focus their fear on That was happening for people On different land masses because of the same Whatever it is but it is interesting That they didn't have the internet then wait did they have The internet in the 1600s or not can I look that

Up quickly I'm going to I'm going to rustle through some old newspapers to Find the answer to that one get some microfiche

But like it's interesting that that would Happen minus the internet Because you would think that Like these days the internet makes Us feel more connected to people around the globe And, you know, if something happens in in Europe, we know about it in the U.S. so quickly, like if it's a big enough event and rumors on the Internet and Facebook and exaggerations, all this misinformation can move so quickly. But like, how is it how is it that the people in Switzerland were as afraid of witches as the people in Salem, Massachusetts were based on my watching of Game of Thrones is Raven related.

Like, you could get a raven from Salem, Massachusetts over to Europe in probably about two hours, I think. Yeah, that's actually— I mean, if the wind's against the bird, yeah.

And then warging.

Yeah, then you have to war. Gotta factor warging in. Yeah, you gotta get big tree roots or something. I don't know.

Deborah Watkins warged out of this conversation hours ago. Yes, did I. She's in Bellingham, Washington. Beautiful Bellingham, Washington. The Bay City of—thanks, Deborah, for supporting the program from my old stomps. Kathleen Munns is in Bloomington, Minnesota.

Oh, I didn't see it coming.

I button hooked you. Actually, Kathleen button hooked you by not being in Bloomington, Indiana. But thank you, Kathleen, nonetheless. And then Timothy Little is in Normandy Park, Washington. East of Seattle? South of Seattle.

South of Seattle, okay.

Yeah. Normandy Park is actually a very cool enclave as well. Some really great old homes there, some cool architecture. Thank you, Timothy. Thank you to all of our donors of the day for making TBTL possible. We wouldn't be here doing this without you.

Hello and welcome to Top Story.

We have been playing Thank You Baby for, like, years now, and I swear every once in a while I hear a section of the song I've never heard before because it's just in the clear. There's something in there about hope of promotion she sings.

Yes, I had a similar thought back in my head as I heard that particular thing. The same is with the song that Genevieve and I use at the end of After These Messages by Das Racist. It's called You Can Sell Anything. and every not every time but so many times like if we're blabbing longer at the end of the show and then I swell it for a second I'm like what what is that like we've been using that song for six years I mean no we haven't we've been paying rights to use that yeah what's a top story today

who's where's on first the top story my friend is about the New York Times buying Wordle. I don't know why this surprised me so much because, I mean, nothing gold can stay. And Josh Wordle, the person who designed Wordle, was always, in the early interviews about the explosion of Wordle, was saying kind of how intense it was to try to maintain this game that he had created that was now the obsession of, you know, I guess millions of people, Or maybe it's just the 1,000 people I interact with on Twitter. I mean, that's actually a real question. Is Wordle that popular or is it just popular with people like us?

That idea that Twitter doesn't represent real life really kind of comes up here, right? Because it did. Oh, well, I won't go into the details because I've already told this story. But yes, like to me, I got on Wordle because, well, I saw some green and black boxes. I didn't know what it meant. It washed over me. But then I think it was literally our friend Jake, the perfect daddy in Chicago, who was tweeting about how he's done with it and he's blocking anybody who has Wordle in there in their tweets or he's muting the term Wordle. And there was like him complaining about it. It's always like kind of the backlash that gets me interested. I'm like, what is this thing? And so I play it for a couple of days and it just seems like Wordle is inescapable. Then Genevieve and I go over to our local watering hole teddies and we're talking about Wordle and then we're playing our homemade Wordle game on scraps of paper and nobody in that GD bar had any idea what we were talking about and we explained Wordle at least five times that night as we sat there and played and everybody seemed interested in it though. It did still have that like real life Twitter thing where everybody was like, I got to ask, what is this game that you're playing? So there was interest in it. But no, I couldn't believe it. I'm like, have you guys ever heard of Twitter? Good for them for not.

Yeah. This this article in The Washington Post says that Wordle when when Wordle went public in October, it had 90 people playing as of November 1st, 2021. It was 90 people. And by January 3rd, that was 300,000. The thing is, 300,000 still feels low.

Yeah, it seems very low now. When was that written? Oh, this is the new article.

As of January 3rd.

Okay.

Now, the New York Times is saying that it has millions of daily players. Yes. Okay, yeah, yeah. So maybe there was like an almost, maybe not exactly exponential, but there was probably a big jump from 300,000 January 3rd.

Yeah, because that's basically a month ago now, and I do feel like it's been the past three, four weeks that it's been just exploding.

But even if it's, let's just say it's three million people play it. That's a lot. that's a third of how many people listen to joe rogan that's not even a third of one episode of joe rogan like it's if it's three million people it's the three million people that you and i and genevieve right interact with the most whether in real life or by way of our kind of digital lives

although a lot of the people who i see posting and are like people i follow over at the am sports station like those are some of the guys who are constantly posting which kind of breaks a little bit of that too there is something we should just get on with this because i've i've analyzed wordle too much on the show already but there's something accessible about it like genevieve has already been playing tons of word games on her phone she's always playing the new york times queen bee game and she's just constantly doing word puzzles so adding wordle to her repertoire makes sense but also those word puzzles make my brain hurt like it actually makes my brain sometimes feel like it's cramping which i don't know how that's possible um whereas wordle is a challenge but it's a very accessible challenge to me i think that's part of its success oh absolutely

and the fact that you can very easily share it yeah and you can share it in a way that doesn't give away the game it's an ingenious very very clever yeah um apparently the new york times paid in the low seven figures for it which i had to google what does the low seven figures mean A mil Yeah I thought that but I just wanted to double check So maybe a couple mil Is that what you take away from low 7 figures

For some reason I'm thinking 3 mil and I have no idea They said I read low 7 figures I'm like yeah probably 3 mil Maybe 3.5 I have no idea where I'm getting that number from

The New York Times I don't think they've said If it's going to They said no change will be made To the gameplay but the migration Will happen very shortly This is according to a Times spokesperson person i don't know if they've said anything about if it's going to cost money or not like if you're

going to need to be a times subscriber it will be it will be quote unquote initially free so that

you know that was what everybody was hanging on to yesterday part of the whole fun of the story around wordle when it first came out of course was its humble origins and the fact that this guy designed it for his partner and that it was a play on his name and that it was free and there were no ads um and yet i i sort of of course i don't begrudge him because like he made something that's taken off if he has a chance to kind of set him himself and his partner up you know financially

a while and also not feel the pressure of trying to maintain this thing that the whole world is paying attention to right now I don't begrudge him and I guess I sort of don't begrudge the times but it still just feels like well of course now it's going to be behind a paywall eventually you know I

maybe just to lean into our bougie pro I mean obviously we're both pro Amazon and would hate it

as a future resident of the South Lake Union area sure and it's

Just, you know, obviously pro them never paying taxes to offset what they're doing in the city. No, but, you know, to go with that, like I didn't I saw people kind of bemoaning this in one way or another. And as you set it up at the beginning of the show, that it sits it doesn't sit well with you. I don't have that at all. It seemed perfect to me. And maybe that's why maybe that has to do with the fact that Genevieve and some of my other friends are obsessed with like these other New York Times word games like this Queen Bee game. Like before Wordle I mean it's not as much as Wordle But like on Instagram and a little bit Twitter But it seems like more of an Instagram thing So many people I know were tweeting out Hey I made Queen Bee today Do you know this game? I don't even know how to explain it It looks like a honeycomb

Yes I see people posting it on Twitter as well

It's like I've never tried to play it though It's made up of a certain number of letters I want to say eight letters with one in the middle If you can sort of picture them arranged in a hex shape So it looks kind of like a honeycomb and you have to and every day it's a random assortment of letters and you have to figure out every single word that can be created with those letters but you always have to use the center one and there's always one word that uses all of the letters I think that might be called a bingo and then if you get like most of that anyway then there's different ranks you can get depending on how many of the words you get and Genevieve is always playing that and also of course the new york times has a long tradition of the um of the crossword puzzle which has now been digitized in a way that people are apparently has a really good ui so i sort of like the fact that the new york times has really created this little segment within the new york times of that is rooted in the tradition of them being the masters of the crossword puzzle updated that for the digital age in a way that isn't clunky and smooth and now for some people that's what they associate it with and then wordle seems like such a perfect fit with that and also knowing that wardle the i can't remember his first name josh josh wardle um you know he first of all he gets a payday yeah which he should get absolutely and doesn't have to worry about like am i going to go out and figure out how to underwrite this thing or get my own ads or whatever like he gets a payday he gets to hand off the the the app to somebody who will probably i think i have confidence in the times because they've done a good job of right not making these things worse instead making them even more user-friendly i kind of trust them to do it now if it goes behind a paywall i get it that's the one thing that it's like suddenly you take something that's free and now people have to pay for it that sucks if it goes in that direction but maybe the new york times if they're smart they'll keep that as a free entryway you know what i mean keep it free but also use it as a way of pushing people towards their other games you know uh i saw somebody write on twitter that really what

they should do is wordle should be free forever but it costs you 99 cents to post your score to twitter that's that's kind of genius yeah like because really you know people love if they do well with it people love kind of putting that out there and that that's really where you could charge folks uh yeah you're right i mean josh wardle says that he that the times gameplay so So I think he means that section of the New York Times you're talking about had a big part in the original creation of of Wordle. Oh, so he said it feels very natural to him for it to go back into the times. I think that that Spelling Bee game you were talking about. He liked all that stuff. He sort of made his own version of it, which was which was Wordle. So it's it's almost like that was kind of an incubator for him in a way. And so the fact that it's going back there. Yeah. Kind of makes sense. Seems like a good fit. I also just wonder, like, how long will this game? Yeah. stay popular like he was very very smart to sell it right now because i i mean i kind of think that there are the hardcore kind of word puzzle people but i just think that something like this is it's very it's very um trendy right now it's got people like me who aren't really word nerds into it but how long is that really gonna last so it was very smart to sell it while it has its most kind of

like attention being put absolutely like everybody who like some people and i thought it was kind of funny i don't i don't um i don't begrudge people who saw this news um as bad news and kind of feel like the somehow it takes the fun out of it i get that but also and now of course i can't remember the the details of it but and i'm sure there's a million tweets like this but like somebody said the different phases of the pandemic and it started with like no toilet paper

followed by Tiger King, followed by, like, all the things that we got obsessed with for a hot, hot minute, right? And then it ended with Wordle, you know? Like, Wordle is going to be hot. Wordle is going to be very specifically January of 2022. It just is, you know? Yeah.

The other story that I saw yesterday that I thought was kind of funny was the story of this SpaceX rocket that was supposed to take off to take like some part communication section of like an Italian satellite or something.

Oh, I didn't know it was Italian. That sounds sexy. I know. It does seem like an Italian satellite. I know. Bunga, bunga. Yeah.

That satellite is going to want to smoke inside your house and possibly seduce your girlfriend.

It's the only satellite you can smoke inside.

That's great. And so this was a Falcon 9 rocket. It was 34 seconds. This was off of Florida. 34 seconds from taking off from Cape Canaveral when they had to scrub the mission. This is what it sounded like when they had to call it off. Hold, hold, hold. Boarding launch auto. Launch director calling a hold. We have a red range for a fouled range with a ship in the hazard area. There are episodes of TBTO when I want to call it a red range, fouled range. Like, we just don't. We can't do this. said, we had to have failure to launch today. Then you have a little more tape from the flummoxed local reporter who thought they were there to cover the launch of this rocket and is now having to cover the scrubbing of the launch 30 seconds before it actually took off. This is her and the producer going, do we go back on? I mean, like off camera and off mic, and then her going, okay, here we go.

All right. So just seconds ago, as we prepare to bring you a live launch from our space coast the uh folks there in the control center said they're simply um a ship too close there so they're not able to take off as planned with just about 33 seconds before they were able to take off they aborted the mission and our they aborteth yeah that sounds like me

nasa giveth and nasa aborteth some missions although it's not nasa this is of course space X. The reason that they had to scrub the launch was because this cruise ship had strayed by the way the in the ironic naming departments the cruise ship is called the Harmony of the Seas

which is stay out of its fucking way. The

Harmony of a Norwegian cruise line ship the Harmony of the Seas had cruised right into this special area this kind of like area where no ships are allowed to be. The Coast Guard was apparently trying to stop the shift but was not able to do it. The Coast Guard informed Mission Control that the Harmony of the Seas had entered into this safety zone. My guess would be...

I was wondering why, because I only heard this as a newscast. I'm like, well, why was there a boat there?

They never explained it on the Morning Edition newscast. Now, this is where I'm sort of guessing, but my thought is they create some sort of area you know in the water where they don't want anyone any ships because if there's a problem with the rocket you know if it blows up or if something falls off of it you can't be in that kind of area where something might happen yeah and but what i what we still don't really have an explanation on yet that i've seen is how it was that i mean these cruise ships are floating cities they're massive and like nothing happens by accident for these ships like everything

is well this i guess something we and well we have also seen some major cruise ship accidents

right how long ago well sure oh yeah you know my parents were on that exact ship i think the year

before that happened no i can't remember even where that it really ran aground right yeah because

i think the uh and of course i can't remember the name off the top of my head but i think it turned out it was because the captain of the ship wanted to wave to his girlfriend i forgot about that you're right so i guess you're absolutely right andrew these things are not nearly as um sort of locked down or proscribed is that the word i'm looking for the routes yeah like the fact that the that the captain of that ship in italy was able to change the course so that he could wave to his girlfriend and then run the ship aground and drinking might have been

involved too although i don't know if i'm slandering now i can't i feel like that story also had to do with the fact that maybe he'd been drinking i don't know um possibly i the details

are sketchy I mean you could see a world in which he had a few and then got the bright idea to wave to his girlfriend

and then remember there was the other and I remember this because it was right at the beginning of me hosting the night show and not knowing what the hell to do with it but we were on cruise ship watch because there was that one cruise ship that couldn't dock anywhere obviously this is years and years and years pre-COVID

it but wasn't there a cruise ship where everybody was like kind of puking and shitting their brains out and they couldn't but they're out at sea why do you always take it to number two talk on this show andrew but you remember this but they was out at sea and they couldn't they couldn't find a place to come to shore for some reason i don't remember why i think it had to do with

yeah i i forget the details but i know that it was a problem where everybody got sick and maybe it was like a health concern like they were worried about the the people bringing something ashore or it would just had to do with the again the weird economics of these cruise ships like i i once filmed the evacuation video for a cruise line yeah and we had to go to florida to do this we went to um fort lauderdale and it was wild because we were given the crew and the producers and everything and me were given like i don't know what it was three hours on a saturday and three hours on a sunday when one of these massive cruise ships had pulled into port had sort of sent everyone ashore who wanted to go ashore and yet and had not yet gone back out to sea and they told us let's just say that we were allowed to be on the ship from 12 noon until 3 p.m they said if you are on this ship at 3 p.m and two seconds you are staying on this ship you

work for the ship you work for the ship now and those are i mean well i guess it depends on the

trip some of those are quite lengthy trips could have been they were like we are not delaying by one second this boat leaving this thing because it's the economics of it are so crazy i mean it's tens of thousands of dollars a minute sometimes i also heard a story from one of the captains i think it was on this ship that they had been out on the water and that there had been i believe it was a football game involving the university of nebraska and there was a bunch of corn husker fans that were on the ship and they had gone to whomever and asked can we please watch this college game because a lot of these ships have you know satellite receivers in order for this ship to get the corn husker game they had to angle the boat a little bit so that the satellite thing would hit it and that involved the boat i think maybe going slightly more against a current or against the wind the story i heard that it was something like 15 000 an hour of extra cost for the boat to slightly vary its whatever course to put a ball joint on that uh satellite dish i know i mean that's the part that's so you'd think we'll go i don't know hang it up on the other side of the boat or something it's got to be a cheaper thing it's just literally a direct

TV with one cable dangling that nobody knows where that one goes.

I don't want to say anything that sounds overly fancy, although we do know that I'm a future resident of South Lake Union. But like I would go if my choice was have a direct TV dish on the front of my house or not have cable TV, I would not have cable TV. Yeah, I find that so aesthetically displeasing for me. Like if I were to move somewhere and I wanted and that was the only way to get cable and they said, yeah, but the only way that this can work is we're going to put it like a like a unicorn's horn right on the front of your house.

I feel like that's not how they do it anymore. Is it via is it via Internet now? If you sign up for DirecTV, do you know or did they still do in those things?

Well, well, in some places they don't. There's no hard line. It's true. Cable out to you. So you're getting it out of the sky, probably your Internet and your TV.

Yeah. By the way, I just only because this the first couple of graphs of this well-written CNBC article from 2013 will scratch a few itches of us trying to remember these stories. The headline is, and again, this is from February 14th of 2013. So happy Valentine's Day. Stricken Carnival cruise ship docks in Mobile, Mobile, Mobile, Mobile, Alabama, Mobile, Alabama, reeking of raw sewage, a crippled cruise ship carrying more than 42. Two hundred people docked to the port in Mobile, Alabama on Thursday as passengers wave towels and flashlights to greet the end of a voyage. Some described as hellish tugboats pulled the Carnival Triumph into port in a drama that played out on live U.S. cable news stations, creating another public relations nightmare for the cruise giant Carnival. Last year, it's Costa Concordia. That was a luxury ship grounded off the coast of Italy. 32 people died. In this case, over the last four days, passengers described an overpowering stench on parts of the ship after an engine room fire knocked out power and plumbing across the 893-foot vessel. The ship, anyway, that goes in the background of the ship, the mishap toilets and drain pipes overflowed, soaking many cabins and interior passages in sewage and turning the vessel into what some have described as a... giant petri dish oh that's actually petri dish is less gross yeah i know right yes so i so i again but back to this harmony of the seas story i don't really understand how that it was like how this was not somehow communicated to the the the people running this cruise ship because you think that they're getting constant updates about everything related to the whereabouts of the ship or or like if they're about to take the ship somewhere where the it's too shallow and they could run aground or if the current is too strong or if it's going to be I don't know just in some sort of prohibited area you just think that I could see if they had to scrap the launch because some Yahoo on like his you know pontoon boat was tooling around and like ended up in the like you know the the

shooting fish in the water

the forbidden zone oh oh is that rocket ship today I'm just out here, you know, I'm out here having a Wednesday morning. It was actually, I believe, a Sunday night. But it's just amazing to me that somehow it did not, that information did not make its way to the people driving this insane floating city.

Yeah, me too. You always assume that, but again, as you point out, Casa Concordia somehow involving somebody wanting to wave to their partner. Like you and I just assume and we go through life just assuming that the people who are in charge of these things are so dialed into all of these communication sources. But, yeah, cruise ships don't have the best the best reputation.

My relationship with cruise ships. I want to also mention that it was a Royal Caribbean's Harmony of the Sea. It's not Norwegian. OK. I didn't mean to besmirch the good name of of Norwegian cruise lines. The Norse, the Norwegians would never do that.

Royal Caribbean, maybe. The Casa Concordia, I don't know if the guy was drunk or not, but people were saying that he was seen drinking at the bar with a quote-unquote beautiful woman shortly before the ship hit a rocky crag. That reminds me of – I didn't do a lot of photography for weddings. That's a really hard job, and I am not that good. But one time – and this was really fun. My friend was the main photographer for a wedding, and he asked me to come along as a secondary photographer. Now, that's so much fun because you can just kind of be arty and take photos of fancy napkins and whatever. And I remember him telling me we were good friends. He wasn't like tisking me or anything. But he was just saying, by the way, I don't drink at these things because it doesn't matter whether or not you're drunk. But if something happens to your photo card and you wipe out 100 photos from the wedding and people are like, yeah, I saw that guy with a beer in his hand.

like the look is yes it's just terrible absolutely no i mean that's that's uh when i am uh well i'm trying to think now well first of all what the stuff that i'm doing with events i don't like the stuff that i do isn't really a wedding but even at like corporate events or like charity auctions things like that that i'm like running same deal like i don't for somebody who really enjoys drinking as i do i never that i can remember i will never indulge during the work portion of it yeah because if anything goes sideways i don't want anyone to have the thought that it was because i got mildly lubricated exactly um things go sideways all the time but that they can't blame it on that that's the important thing you have to blame it on your skill set which is possibly worse my relationship with cruise ships and going on cruises is every time that i've done it i felt like why am i doing this i don't this is not the way that i want a vacation this is like I don't I'm not somebody who wants to go to Disneyland like as an adult even if I had kids I think like little kids I think I would hope that I could steer them away I'd much rather go to the Grand Canyon with my young kids than go to Disneyland like I'm just not into Disney I'm not into those kinds of things and crew every cruise ship is a version of that essentially it's like all set up for you it's it feels to me sort of lowest common denominator and I heard someone else point out once that the fact that this thing is in the water is kind of immaterial because everything you're doing is on the boat. You just look outside and there's the water but it's like they could just put this thing up on jacks in like Nebraska to bring it back to the Cornhusker country and you could just go on it and take the water slide and do all the stuff and yet every time I think back on the fun that I've had on cruises so I went on one for Camaro Kev's wedding we went around the Mediterranean and went to um croatia that was super fun and also there must be moments where you walk i mean

especially you who a man who loves a view that would be the that would be the book about that would be the 007 book about you the man who loves a view um you must go to the railing and spend time looking out at the sea like it's better than just being up in a parking lot every time that i've

been on

on one of those uh cruise ships i have sprung for the cabin that has at least a window yeah to the uh to the to the ocean if not a little tiny balcony because yeah that and and that is really enjoyable i did have a moment once on that cruise that was for kevin and anita's uh wedding where i was sitting on the balcony and we were going by some little just like small island off the coast of italy and we i mean almost i don't want to say it was uninhabited but just very sparse rural undeveloped and they went by this like farm which this guy had built a like hand piled a stone wall around his area where his like sheep were living and stuff so just imagine sun bleached but with grass side of a kind of volcanic island off the coast of italy hand built wall of rocks i don't know 10 sheep living and the guy's just sitting out there on like a little you know hill smoking a pipe watching his sheep and i just thought that guy's got it figured out like ah how do i become that guy and i mean like who knows uh you know what was going on for that guy but god it was appealing to me yeah yeah so i was glad i had the view for

that reason yeah no i mean that's yeah i've never been on a cruise ship before i know what you mean it reminds me a little bit a couple of times these and i have found ourselves in like resort areas on vacation like when we went to costa rica is that where we went to yes well you can't really talk about it but yes i've heard that's where you went the first rule of secrets is you know the rest um i uh i had a i had a really nice time there but i know that genevieve even felt a little bit like is when we got off of the resort from time to time uh which was kind of they make it very difficult for you to get off the resort right yeah of course it's kind of a lack of transportation and what have you um but we did take like one full day adventure where we went you know we went down a river with guides and saw monkeys and stuff tons of monkeys and that's alligators right i want to make sure down there yeah that'd be alligators i mean i saw an alligator very close to my boat like i was like i guess we're just doing this and were you scared yeah It was an alligator. Did you do that thing, though?

My math in those situations is the people running this are still alive. And so they must know how close you can be to those animals before it gets dangerous. When I'm in a moment.

Well, our boat captain's name was Dangerous Stumpy, and he only had one arm and one leg.

Yeah, but you know what? He still had the one arm and the one leg, so he had learned from the incident. but you know in those moments when it's anything where i'm like in like a small airplane in the you know like maybe like a cessna it's for a story and the person flying there's something going on that feels scary but i think well this person's done it a bunch and they're still alive of course everyone has that thought right before things go truly sideways like but that's what i that's how i quell my anxiety in those moments like there's an alligator near the boat we're low in the water on this river and in costa rica but the person driving the boat they seem unfazed so i'm gonna choose to believe they know what they're doing is that kind of where you went yeah i think

i do remember stumpy as we got on the boat stumpy looked me in the eye and said this is the last face you're gonna see before you die i said oh that's that's a weird way to start it's amazing how good your spanish is to be able to understand that i um i i think i had a similar thought yeah just kind of like well i'm here with i'm here with you know genevieve i mean it wasn't like Like, it was incredible. We should get Genevieve to talk about it sometime on the show. But it was just incredible because it was, I couldn't believe it. And, again, this goes to the economy down there where there's a lot of poverty. But, like, it was, I want to say $100 a day for both of us. And that included them picking us up in a shuttle. Like, one guy picked just me and Genevieve up in a shuttle. There was nobody else in the group. And drove us for about, I think, an hour and a half somewhere. Then we did this river ride with these boats. They threw in a lunch of like beans and rice and chicken or something like that. Like and then we went down the river for like a couple of hours and we saw like, you know, all kinds of wildlife and alligators and all this stuff. And like and then they drove us back. And then at one point I realized I had I think I had made some mistake in packing and I didn't have socks. So the guy like the guy stopped at like some sort of like whatever their version of like a like Walgreens or something would be. Los Walgreens. Yeah, he stopped at Los Walgreens so I could buy socks and Band-Aids or something like that. I don't know what. He's like, no, no. He overheard us talking in the back. He's like, of course, I've got nothing to do. And we're like, we got, you know, he was telling us stories about his wife and kids who he was going back to. But they were having dinner late that night, so he didn't mind stopping. Like, it was just, it was an incredible experience. All that is to say, that was the highlight of a trip where we were staying on a resort. You know what I mean? It was the day we got off the resort that that was fascinating. But on the other hand, I had a great time at the resort.

And it was also nice to swim up to a pool and have them hand you a cocktail that was part of the price.

You know, that's the thing. The convenience factor of one of those cruise ships. We also, of course, we did one in Mexico for I think for Newman's birthday. No, wait. Newman. We went to Vegas for Newman's birthday. Was it also Camaro's birthday that we were in the we were on the cruise in Mexico where I had to send you. and Genevieve to break into our friend Jessica's house to mail me my passport because I had not realized that Mexico, Andrew, is a different country. Was that, maybe that was an anniversary

trip. I could be wrong. An anniversary trip? Was that not Kamara Kev and Anita's anniversary? No.

Isn't it weird to celebrate? Don't you feel like, I don't think it was. Okay. But I want to ask you a question is it weird to expect other people to wish you a happy anniversary um you know me i don't

yeah you know i i lie so low on any kind of birthday or right anniversary so um yeah like if i knew it was your anniversary i don't think that always strikes me as weird when people are

like like sometimes people will get someone a happy anniversary card i think parents are different i think you should wish your parents we should wish our own parents yes a happy anniversary yes Yeah, I guess I should.

I mean, I wouldn't be. Well, I only acknowledge my parents' anniversary, though, not my dad and stepmom.

So it's weird when I try to get a three-way call. You try to orchestrate a parent trap style meet cute between your mom and dad to see if there's any chance to re-spark those flames of love.

Right. No. Yeah, no, but I do think parents, because parents do so much for you in raising you and part of the reason you exist is because of their relationship.

So I guess I guess that makes sense. I always feel like my parents are a little thirsty around their anniversary. Well, it'll just be like I think my mom low key. Well, she certainly wouldn't mind if I sent her a happy anniversary card. And I always feel like it's a little like, yeah, good for you. Like that's your life. That's not my life. That's your life. And enjoy it. And the anniversaries that involve me in relationships I'm in, I will celebrate those with the people I'm in that relationship with.

Yeah.

You know, like I always kind of feel like, but then all my other siblings who are not so withholding, they're like on Hawk Squad, like, happy anniversary. Like, I'll throw my parents a happy anniversary on the Hawk Squad. Yeah. But I'm not going to get them a gift or anything.

I don't get gifts or cards. I actually don't get gifts or cards for anybody except for Genevieve.

Yeah, I've noticed. I think that the Mexico trip, I think that was for Camaro's 40th. Ah, yeah. Because we had this like we all kind of turned 40, you know, in the same year, year and a half. And so it was sort of like we had that 40th thing for me where we rented that house on that island and everybody came out. Oh, yeah. And then it was like I think we went to maybe Vegas for Jessica's 40th and we went to on that cruise for Camaro's 40th. But anyway, yeah, every time I'm on a cruise ship, I'm actually really enjoying it. And the memories I have later on, I'm always like, there were a lot of fun moments. And yet there's something about the idea of it that doesn't really seem like it's really for me. I have no idea what I did for my 40th. Did you even realize it was your 40th?

I think so. The big ones you remember. I think it was one of those things where I was probably saying I was 40 long before I was 40. You know what I mean? You get to 38, you start telling people you're 40. So you can smoke. I don't know. I don't know if that's a thing just for you. No, I think people do. I've heard that when you get to a certain age and then the in-between ages, it's easy to forget.

36 or 37 i don't really i tell people i'm i'm having my sixth annual 39th birthday andrew but

yeah no i mean that well i just i think i just turned 45 and you did just look yeah we low-keyed that one and that's fine i low-key everything yeah but i feel like something happened for 40

i don't know i mean obviously we knew each other did we have a celebration for your 40th birthday that i was a part of i don't think so five years ago is a long time it is i can't remember five

minutes ago 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

all right we have um some people who are weighing in on this question of what song i uh i i heard or saw on tiktok that i couldn't place um maybe i'll play the original yeah kind of i'll bring down the email music which you know regular listeners of the show have heard that i recognize that from somewhere 3 000 times so i probably don't they can just imagine in their head this is the piece of music that i heard somebody playing on piano on tiktok that i i know it to be from a song, like a pop song of some kind.

um i think anyway but this is the piano version and i can't remember the song that i'm thinking of it from so take a listen so that's it that's the loop and i thought i almost had it like at about four this morning

andrew i woke up to pee yeah like when your brain is not obsessed with it and i was like

oh i could i felt like i could almost hear it but then i couldn't get all the way there so

we've had a lot of people because you're hearing something that is different instrumentation right exactly you think this is a piano version of a poppy song that probably has guitars or drums or

something yes yes that's exactly right so i'm i can't i i'm gonna think maybe guitar you know would be the instrument from the song that i'm thinking of but a lot of folks sent in kind of the same answer to the question i believe uh i have this here if you want me to play it yeah from my end if that's i wanted to give credit to like listener tom sent this in alicia sent this Yeah, I think our listener, John, as well, our friend John Takamoto, I think, maybe sent in an answer to this as well. So and they all everybody sent in the same thing. It's or at least all those those three people I just mentioned all sent in this song. It's like a French name. J'étais l'assuré des mots, which, yeah, does it give you any did they give you any more information?

I did a little bit of poking around. I went to Genius.com, and somebody said that this is from a soundtrack from a French movie called Hidden Diary in English. I'm not going to attempt the French there. It stars Catherine Deneuve, and it came out in theaters spelled T-R-E-S in Canada, mostly in Quebec in 2010. This is just – now, this is Genius.com, so this is crowdsourced. That's not an official thing. That's what somebody wrote on that website.

Now, I don't know how everyone arrived at the same song. Like, I feel like, because Alicia said, sorry for getting bombarded with answers, but in case no one has found out yet, this is your song. A French song called J'étais L'Essere des mots by Patrick Wilson. It seems to be the original. I'm wondering if everyone, if I could have Shazammed this if I tried.

Yeah, like you're wondering if people Shazam this and so it came up with another piano song that sounds similar where you're trying to think, is this thing that I heard a piano version of a song that wasn't a piano song originally? Right. Which is why I kind of – so can we take a listen to this?

Yes, because I can promise you this. I have never that I'm aware of seen the name of this artist, Patrick Wilson, or the name of this song or that French movie that you mentioned.

Right. Or it could be that this is reminding you of something that is simply not. Your brain could be playing tricks on you My brain would never do that to me Let's at least just take a listen to this This is beautiful by the way It's nice I don't hear it though There it is. Yeah. Wow. It even does go up there. Actually, I guess that sounds good.

very familiar so here's the thing that's definitely the same yeah song and the the kind of um i don't know what you'd call that a run you know the way when you sort of change the i don't know if it's a full-on key change but um that's definitely the same song but there is another song out there that at least it's reminding you of there is a pop song there is a more poppy song that uses that same sort of I guess we'll call it chord progression that's the one that I'm thinking of because I've never heard that song before that we just played but it was beautiful it's my new favorite song I'm going to play it all the time when I'm living in my new South Lake Union condominium but it's not checking on your sheep on the island I'm going to go between I'm going to be bi-coastal I'm going to go between the shores of

south lake union and the shores of that italian island yeah but you know what i mean so that's the thank you so much to everyone who sent that in you are not wrong clearly what i think what the person on tiktok was playing was probably this song um but there is another song that uses

that chord progression somebody said maybe maps by the yeah yeah yes no that was bobby yeah and Oh, that was Bobby.

And Bobby, consider this my email response. Close, but no cigar. But I can hear how you would think you were hearing that.

And there are probably some similarities. And again, that's kind of instrumentation again, I think. Well, no, does Maps have a piano in it? I feel like it does, but I could be wrong. Anyway, yeah, that's not it. But my guess is this is the song that that person was playing, but it merely reminds you of something else, right?

Well, there is another song out there, which we may never know, which that uses that same and it may they may be playing piano in the song too maybe they're playing synthesizer or something but there's another song out there that uses that exact same i'll gonna again i'll call it a chord progression because i don't really know what it's called there's another thing that uses that it's not motor breath off of kill them all by metallica i've had that sometimes like if you know if i don't get that quip toothbrush out

brush my teeth enough but um no i don't think it's not metal militia it's not the four horsemen And I'm just going through every track on Kill Em All. Is none of those?

I don't think so. Okay. But we can listen to them right now if we want to. You want to? If we would like to make this another show where we push back against Spotify. Yeah, right, right, right. If we want to make this another protest show where we pull it from Spotify, sure.

Do you think your song by any chance is Words by Doves?

No, but I would love to hear that song right now. All right, let's do that. All right. Hey, that's going to bring us to the end of the show today. Thanks for listening, everyone. we're going to be back here tomorrow with another episode of TBTL for you until then please enjoy the rest of your Tuesday stay safe take care of yourselves take care of each other and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

So it was a good movie It wasn't a great movie But how often do you see a great movie? Oh, I saw a great movie last night Yeah, it was on The Late Show. It was, um, uh, oh, what was it called? It's a classic. It's a real, it's a classic. It's, um, uh, oh, I hate this. I hate it when this happens. What was it about? Uh, it's about this, uh, newspaper tycoon, and he's dead, and everybody's telling stories about him, and it was... It's Citizen Kane. No, that's not it. No, no, no, no, but it's something like that. It's, uh, it's, um, uh... Okay, who was in it? Um, Orson Welles is in it, and it's, uh... And this is Citizen Kane. It's Citizen Kane. No, that isn't it. That isn't it. But you're not far from it. It's, uh... Well, who else was in it? Oh, um, uh, I don't know. Was Joseph Codden in it? What else has he been in? The Third Man, The Magnificent Ambersons. Oh, The Magnificent Ambersons. Yes, yes, yes, he was in it. Yes, oh, that's one of my favorite Orson Welles movies. Well, this is definitely Citizen Kane, then. You're talking about Citizen Kane. No, no, no, but it's something like that. It's cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis, cis