Muse

This is without a doubt one of my favorite items by dinner with Andre action figures and what you can do, which is so cute is you can reenact the whole scene, you know, where the two guys talk to each other and say, you know, oh, I'm sure glad you found a good restaurant. It's so hard these days to get in. You know, who do you know? Oh, I just called. Made a call. Spur of the moment. Oh, you, you can always get a reservation. You know, that's not from the movie, but you can make up your own dialogue.

TBTL! That sound means it's time to drop Da Bomb! And yes, folks, I said da, not the. Basically, what I'm trying to say is, it's a positive bomb.

Don't you think it's rather unwise to continue this philanthropic enterprise? This empire that's costing you a million dollars a year? All right, sorry.

Sorry, this actually never happened to me.

Are you freaking with me? Are you freaking with me? Or are you done freaking with me? Ladies and gentlemen, congratulations. This plan is off to a great start.

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

If God wanted us to listen to audiobooks, she wouldn't have given us eyes to watch TV.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Come on, brain. Think of things. Come on, brain. He's smart.

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center, located right here in Portland, Oregon, where it's not the nicest day right now. It's kind of foggy. It's a little damp. It's a little not dry. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. That's typical weather for February in the Northwest, but we have been. We were treated to something they were calling early spring. I don't know. Maybe it's going to come back, too, but it is. What do they say? You give a pig a pancake and he'll ask for syrup Like We got Unseasonably nice weather The last couple of days And now as soon as it reverts As soon as it regresses to the weather mean I'm calling no fairsies This show I'm trying to think Will today's episode of TBTL Which by the way is episode 3615 In a collector's series

Let the fun begin

Will today's episode be a slightly above average or a slightly below average episode of the program? I guess there's no way to know until we get out there. That's why you play the game. That's why you record the imaginary radio show. So let's find out together, why don't we? Speaking of finding things out, I made a bold prediction yesterday about something that I thought would have occurred by showtime today on Tuesday. And, well, we're going to find out if I was right or not. To find out what happens next, log on to GoDaddy.com. Also, speaking of the news, there's news here in Oregon about the end of the mask mandate, which gave me a stronger feeling than I think I was expecting, you know, when I saw it in the Oregonian.

I feel happy of myself.

I know some of our listeners are in places where there's no mask mandate, so this might feel a little hard to relate to because it's been a while for y'all. or maybe you're in a place where they haven't mentioned or put out a date, but as a person who's living in a state where they've now said, this is when this will be over. Again, it was kind of an intense piece of news for me. This is not as intense a piece of news, but it turns out no one is watching the Olympics. You are boring me to death, and I am already dead. You're boring me back to death. We'll look into the reasons why they think no one's watching. TBTL may have more listeners than these Beijing Olympics have viewers, which is really saying something. And then there's some Sky Jinx in the news. Sky Jinx. Two great tastes that taste bad together. The two most universally disappointing airlines have decided to merge into just like a Voltron of bad customer service. Spirit and Frontier. So we'll talk about that too. Plus, we'll welcome this guy to the program, a handsome young stranger, a part-time soulful rocker from New Hampshire, a full-time house party enthusiast. He is the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships.

Hey, Romano!

He is Andrew Walsh, and he is joining us from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington.

Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke. Did you hear about these wacky orca?

No.

You haven't heard about the wacky orca? Okay, so...

I'm always up for a... I mean, a wacky orca makes me think it's a positive story. And if it's a positive story about orca, I'm always here for it. If it's an orca is carrying their, you know, young calf that died for two weeks as a grieving ritual, I'm not here for that story.

Oh, never mind. I just thought it was a wet. Caliqua did that again? No, there's this orca. His name is Adler. I think it's a he. Has a podcast where he's spreading COVID misinformation. No, that's not true. Sorry. Wrong notes.

Wrong notes. I mean, if you did, if we started a podcast about the orca that live in the Northwest, you know, they describe them as being in pods. The one we're all following is called J-Pod. So we'd have to call it the J-Podcast.

Oh, my God, you're right.

Like, it's almost like we should do it just because it's right there for the taking.

I feel like this is one of those questions. I really am going to get at something here in a second, but I got to get this question out of my brain. And this is one of those questions that seems really stupid. but I'm going to regret asking it, but Orca didn't invent podcasting, did they?

They didn't invent it, but they've redefined the genre.

Okay, and that's why we call it podcasting, though. That's exactly what we call podcasting. Because they came in early on and kind of owned that space. No, okay, so here's the deal. So this does involve a dead fish, but it's not a dead Orca. There is an 11-year-old Orca named Adler that is, I guess, and I don't know if these are the pods, they call it a southern resident. Um, so I don't know if that's the Southern pod of the J pod or whatever, but, um, a Southern resident orca named Adler, 11 years old, uh, is, uh, swimming around with a, with a dead fish on its head, just like a small, just balancing like a, uh, they really do go in

for the, um, swimming around with the dead thing on their snout.

Right. But this is, you know, this is just like a, a fish on a large orca whale on its nose. And it turns out this, you know how you and I sometimes get excited when we talk about how like 90s fashion really came back and we see somebody rocking like an oxblood pair of Doc Martens and it just like feels like, oh, yeah, like those were the days. Apparently, that's what Adler is doing here because this was a fad among other orcas back in the 80s. I got this via the Slog, the Stranger's Slog blog. The Stranger's Slog blog says, back in the late 1980s. This is the J-Podcast reporting on the Stranger's Slog blog. A southern resident orca was photographed balancing a dead fish on her head. This is back in the 80s. And it soon became the hot new trend for all the other killer whales in her pod before the fad died out. So there was a time back in the 80s when one of these orcas started swimming around with a dead fish on her head. And then other orcas started imitating that behavior, and it became a bit of a trend. And now we have Adler swimming around, who I think I described as a southern resident before. Actually, Adler's a northern resident, but is now carrying a fish on its nose. And I am interested in seeing if this becomes a fad again, an orca fad, a trend.

I think it's really interesting that Orca, or at least in the, you know, when this was a trend, as if the slog blog is to be believed, behaved very much like middle school students or high schoolers. In that you've got the one or two cool kids that will start doing something and then everyone else will start kind of impersonating that or, you know, doing mimicking it because they recognize on some sort of like hardwired. So, you know, behavioral level, like from like when we were living on the plains of Africa or whatever, like we recognize that if someone has social status and they do something, it benefits us to mimic them. It's interesting that that applies even to Orca. like one day that orca showed up with a dead fish on its nose and then everyone probably one people were like what are they doing but then somebody else is like actually low-key that's pretty dope and then they just then the next day that that other orca showed up and they had like a smaller fish they were trying to be kind of casual about it like they didn't want to just come right out and be like i've also got a fish on my nose they were kind of just oh this fish oh no i haven't had this for like two weeks you didn't realize i've been carrying this fish on my nose forever

and most of them are carrying salmon but then one see that's the thing about coolness right when you're in uh like let's say grade school middle school whatever when you're like going in for fads you had this you had the people who could come in and like do the fad but have it off by a click and that was a good thing it was a cool thing it was adding your own personality but then you had other people like me who would try to do that but then they were just mocked and ridiculed because you weren't part of the gang you know what i mean like there is just like there are certain

Thank you.

Some people just own certain things. By the way, this is from a researcher named Quad Finn. I'm assuming that's their real name on... Their last name is Finn? F-I-N-N. I know. It does seem... And they're reporting on... Yeah. It says that Quad Finn is, according to their Twitter bio, surfer, sailor, researcher, and marine mammal rescuer. I skipped a word in there because I couldn't pronounce whatever word came before researcher. Cetacean? what is that word is it does that recitation researcher oh so like i think i'm i'm guessing

that uh like dolphins and orca and things like that are probably classified as cetacean cetacean

i just couldn't figure out how to say that word out loud that was embarrassing it sounds like that could be a pixie song cetacean um so anyway quad finn if that is your real name you cetacean researcher says the southern resident killer whale dead salmon balancing game went on for weeks that summer before like any fad the orcas all suddenly lost interest and the behavior hasn't been seen since it appears that northern resident orca elder has now reinvented the game oh it's alder alder what was that was i saying adler god damn it what is so right today andrew you showed up

You know what? And it's still a long game. You can't win the game in the first quarter, and you can't lose it in the first quarter. Come on. We have a long, long way to go with this show. It's so funny. Let's do it.

Come on.

You can do the intro better anyway. Come on. I heard some floods in there. I know. I definitely could do the intro better. I didn't hear any floods. Come on. I'm just trying to get the heat off of me.

You're so smart. You know what's kind of interesting, though? I don't want to belabor this or send you to a darker place, but it's weird that the idea of the orca being named adler versus alder radically changes my sense of this orca adler sounds like this is a this is like stella adler comes to mind like this is an orca from probably like the upper east side of new york um you know like very kind of learned sound like a really smart orca who um you know smoke cigarettes and has coffee breath like i don't know why this is what adler is to me then alder is very like everything here in portland is named alder well first of all there's a street alder and there was a restaurant tasty and alder uh that is no more but alder suddenly seems like a regal northwest orca who communes with nature and um you know is can just kind of like is very at peace where's a lot of polar fleece um you know stuff like that so alder now this before it didn't make so much sense to me but this makes perfect sense for alder

that's funny i don't first of all respect your alders something that i was not doing earlier that's a show title i wrote it down i wrote it down before i said it my boy see andrew look at this take the wind so you can get the ashes of the start of the show a phoenix

of a show title has risen we would have never gotten respect your alders if there hadn't been

some confusion around adler's name i don't i don't have it i the name alder sparks nothing for me adler and then adler to me i was getting and maybe it's because it's like an 11 year old and so i was just picturing like an 11 year old kid or something but adler to me sounds like just like a name of well an 11 year old like just kind of adler just sounds like a a young person's name in 2022 but you have it being more of a a new yorker kind of name only because i think there

was an acting teacher named stella adler who was uh you know kind of renowned for her technique she was an actress and um and an acting teacher and i think she trained you know i'm gonna say like brando and like all of this sort of really this class of really great actors who are working uh in film in the 1950s and 60s almost all of them came through the Stella Adler program so that's literally the only reference point I have for Adler and I know that was all happening in New York and so that is why I'm that is why I oriented that orca in New York City that I'm not

saying it's scientific it's just where my brain was categorizing things okay change of topic here And I want to tread lightly because I'm being serious. This is something this is I want to ask you a question that I asked Genevieve yesterday that we were ruminating on that I think is interesting. But it does have somewhat dark origins. We're talking about Alec Baldwin. For some reason, it came up. She did an Alec Baldwin imitation, which didn't you do an Alec Baldwin imitation for me yesterday?

And then ask multiple. Yeah. Tations and weirdly good.

She was she said some I said something and she referred to me as Lemon and gave me a quote. And she actually did the voice, which is not something that Genevieve usually just slips into. And so.

Then we started talking about Alec Baldwin and, of course, the tragedy, you know, on set of that movie Rust. He had a prop gun or what he thought was a prop gun with live ammo in it and shot and killed somebody accidentally, a cinematographer. Everybody knows that story. It's just awful. But I was thinking and maybe just sort of thinking out loud, like, eventually there's going to be the Alec Baldwin interview, right? Like, he's remained very private about that. Oh, it's happened. Oh, really? Cause I was going to say like George Stephanopoulos. Oh, Oh really? Oh God, I was far off. When, when did this happen? Like a month ago. Oh, okay. Well then. And it was odd. Did they interview Adler? No, I didn't. I was, I was asking who was going to get it. Cause I'm like, it's not, it's not going to be Oprah. Although I figured it would be that kind of pomp and circumstance, but I figured, I figured that he'd want to go with somebody who's more, this is why I thought of it. You're talking about the name Adler and like kind of thinking New York. And I was like, I don't know. It just feels like a it would be like a New Yorker thing, but it would be on a podcast. I feel like Alec Baldwin would only trust somebody. I didn't have Stephanopoulos. That seems too middlebrow to me. I mean, not no, no offense, George. But I thought for sure just Baldwin's penchant for being an intellectual and a New York intellectual. I figured he'd go with something like very highbrow and sort of whispered.

Well, you got to remember, Stephanopoulos was a White House chief of staff. he was so I think he still carries that cred yeah and also I just get the sense there's a social circle in New York that is it involves Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker it involves Alec and Hilaria Baldwin no one talking about the accent don't bring it up don't make it George Stephanopoulos and Ali Wentworth his wife are probably in it and others who I'm not familiar with or don't know they're part of the crew I think there is probably like a sort of you know a group of couples who are all you know pretty pretty smart and pretty accomplished and pretty wealthy and they bounce back and forth between their Manhattan apartments and their you know weekend homes out on you know Martha's Vineyard or whatever and my guess is that Stephanopoulos and Baldwin are pals and that was how Baldwin probably felt like I can trust that George Stephanopoulos is not going to do me dirty in the words of Daniel Kaluuya and that's how that ended up happening but that's just totally a guess on my part now I totally miss it by the way one

quick thing I want to interject here you mentioned Hilaria and the accent I just would like to remind everybody that we just missed the one-year anniversary of one of the best TBTL show titles of all time do you remember what it was no the Hilaria world of impression i'm pretty sure you came up with that one i don't think so that no that's not no that sounds like you said that i was like wait didn't we do that as a show title and i looked it up january 19th um so i am embarrassed that i totally missed that story but did uh i don't because you i mean usually something like that i'd at least have i'd at least have seen it trending on twitter

anything come out of that was it interesting um you know you're not wrong it didn't make it didn't make the waves that i guess you might have expected it to considering how how big the story was about the the tragic accident that happened and i wonder if it wasn't and i couldn't tell you what was exactly happening on december 3rd 2021 which is when you start to see stories key takeaways from alec baldwin's exclusive interview with george stephanopoulos but i don't know there must have been something else big happening that week i wonder if it got kind of overwhelmed by some other news story at the time but i i have to say i only watched the sort of like clips from it but i don't know how to say this because it's just a really sad topic and i wasn't there so it's like i'm just so far away from having any knowledge of of of the events but i guess just based on what i watched i was a little surprised at how unbowed alec baldwin was i i was it felt to me this is just my read like looking at something on my laptop in portland so i just have to i can't overstate how much i don't know shit about this story or the people involved or what did or did not happen but i remember watching it and my kind of emotional takeaway from it was alec baldwin was more defensive than i expected him to be what i mean maybe that's not shocking to people because alec baldwin is a combative person but i also feel like alec baldwin is a very emotional person and can be a very empathetic person in certain situations and like there was that photo that was sort of publicized uh of him on a phone shortly after this happened and and you and i talked about it at the time it sure seemed to represent a person who is just overwhelmed with grief which is i guess how we would all sort of expect to feel in that situation and it indicates that

But the person who was part of the accident, who pulled the trigger or whatever happened, it was not lost on them how tragic this was. It wasn't like he wasn't sad in the interview with Stephanopoulos, but he really wanted to make it clear that he did not pull the trigger.

Yes, I'm looking at this now.

That was his really, really big assertion. And I just don't know enough about firearms. I hope to never know enough about firearms, Andrew, to to tell you, like, the kind of gun or if you having your finger on the trigger really matters or not, or if you cock the hammers at the same, et cetera, et cetera. Like now we're way out of my element, Donnie. But I just remember watching it and thinking this feels kind of like Alec Baldwin wants to get it on the record that this kind of wasn't his bad.

Yeah, the quotes are very and I'm looking at the recap from ABC, which, of course, is where the interview happened. And I I'm getting that immediately. Like, that's kind of the first takeaway as you read these quotes. Also saying that the director is telling him exactly. He's very careful to say Hutchins was directing every move. Everything is at her director. She's guiding me how she wants me to hold the gun for this angle.

I'm holding like and by the way, I don't think he's lying. No, no, no. That's the thing.

You know, I'm almost I'm going to take this even somewhat broader and maybe regretfully so maybe i'll walk this back but like there's still legal stuff going on right like you being in this position like it was just an absolute tragedy and i'm sure that you know he is a human being who i'm sure feels god-awful about this he will live with this the rest of his life there are other people who are hurt even more in this obviously who will live with this tragedy the rest of their life and life was cut short I think everybody feels bad about it I'm not trying to say that that Baldwin doesn't but it's almost like we have this system now where it's his job to make movies right if he wants I mean Alec Baldwin could also stop making movies but if he wants to get on with his job of making movies a job that he enjoys which I'm now seeing that filming for Rust has just resumed i think actually this week so um oh wow i didn't know that i think i just saw that i just sort of scanning the news quickly but um in order to do that you you probably can't have the headline uh alec baldwin back on set without having the interview capital t capital i first that we all know george stephanopoulos got and we've all been talking about for a month and a half um no but like it's it's like part of the process and it's like he kind of had to do that whether or not he wanted to but then also there is litigation going on and so you also have to be very careful in that so you have to sort of do this public dance in order to go back to work right and some people have to do it because it's a scan it's like a i'm not calling this a scandal this is a tragedy but like if it's a scandal and a scandal of their own making they have to do the mea culpa tour or or you know if you're tubing you have to explain why you were tubing it and why you're now a verb um but uh you know like and that's kind of one thing but this isn't really a mea culpa but it's kind of like we the public demand I don't know I almost want to say the pound of flesh here I don't know if that's really accurate or what I want to say but like the whole thing is set up that like probably in some ways Alec Baldwin can't go back to his work until he does the interview but then if you're going to do the interview of course there's still a lot of legal stuff around this so everything that you say has to you can't be vulnerable you can't be as vulnerable as we want or if you are going to present as vulnerable you're probably really you're acting right in a certain way maybe Alec Baldwin being somewhat I'm not saying he's pugnacious here but being somewhat if he was defensive like that might actually be true to just how his how he navigates the world honestly you know what I mean if he was maybe overly dramatic maybe that would have just been acting and it would feel like he's blowing smoke so I don't really know what i'm saying here other than in a certain way we force a lot of the we we the

public kind of force this stuff by demanding it yes and you're exactly right it's like alec baldwin

is if i can speculate he's probably a feels extremely sad about this and like you said he'll carry this for the rest of his life i don't think i think any normal person if they caused the end of a human life it's going to live with them for the rest of their life b he's also probably feels like of all the luck like you know he didn't get up that morning hoping that this is how anything would go and i again i don't know enough about stunt work etc etc but it's like i i know some other actors were like i never put my finger on the trigger maybe he shouldn't have done that but then he is his response was i didn't put my finger on the trigger. I don't know. Maybe they'll figure this out for Ren.

physically but it i think he probably feels like i was just living my life making movies and now i'm in a position where i might not even get to make movies anymore so now i have to do this thing like you said so that i can continue making movies which just feels like sort of a means to an end which i'm just repeating you now but that's probably why it was not maybe the most open or satisfying kind of conversation for people trying to understand what happened or how he feels about it because it's it's sort of like he has to go out and do this so that they can resume the filming of rust also i mean wither that film project like what is going to happen when that movie gets released i mean my guess is that it will have a lot of people looking at it because the conversation i mean it's been talked about so much now so much more than it would have otherwise it would had just probably been i'm guessing a well done well acted movie that happened to feature alec baldwin that was on netflix and got you know the appropriate amount of viewership i guess now sadly in a sort of macabre twist i guess there will probably be more people watching this movie and will they leave that scene in or will they shoot it will they will they film that scene differently because that's also i mean that's kind of gross like to be watching it and then to have a thing where you're like well this is a thing that got someone killed in real life

exactly you know it is funny this is somewhat timely i backed into this in a weird way but um the headline today as of a couple of hours ago on yahoo news alec baldwin returns to work for first time since rust shooting it looks like maybe he um looks like alec baldwin might have even released some sort of um uh like instagram uh video about this looks like he's laying in bed talking directly to the camera um and uh so anyway so i guess it is somewhat timely and relevant i

just and i'm not are you can i ask a quick question yeah i was under the impression that you were saying he's returning to filming rust yes is he yeah alec baldwin returns to work for

first time oh wait hold on since rust shooting oh shit you're right you're no i'm an idiot Yeah No this is an undisclosed project God damn Adler Come on man let's start over

Let's just do it Come on we'll be legends I want to be Here's the thing I want to be a good co-bro So if you want to start over I will do that for you But I think it's been a good show

So media illiterate here Damn it that pisses me off anyway yes i'm very wrong okay he's returning to another project it's not rust because i was about to say like i just don't see and then there was you know a lot of you know when something like this happens on the set it exposes all kinds of things and then there are a lot of people who say that safety stuff wasn't in place and just seemed so controversial i could not imagine returning to work they're not that it's not you know other people are losing work which is bad but like i just can't imagine going anybody on that set going back to that set

Right. I mean, so does that – by the way, Andrew, I wanted to tell you something. If you're feeling a little frustrated at how the show started, when we come back from the break, though, it's your chance to be right and my chance to be very, very wrong, if that's any consolation.

Goldfish, Luke. I just came up with a quote. Everybody should act like goldfish and eat little flecks of food. I can't remember how it ends. I wrote it down somewhere.

Do you know, by the way? Goldfish. Oh, God. You forgot. Do you know that I read this article that dentists say goldfish crackers are absolutely, and this isn't like one of those ZergNet things. This was an actual real kind of piece of medical dental writing, but that according to dentists, goldfish crackers are the worst thing for kids' teeth, worse than like candy because something having to do with the way that the powder gets wedged into the crevices of the teeth and also because of the, you know, i guess fairly high sugar content and it's just funny that like goldfish crackers are a pretty common part of childhood in this country you know it's not uncommon at all to see a kid walking around with a ziploc bag full of goldfish and i'm not telling anyone how to you know feed their children i just it would have never occurred to me that they were supposedly an especially bad

menace for uh for children's teeth i didn't realize that goldfish are still like kind of such a going concern i thought it was a big thing when i was a kid i didn't realize that i ate them a lot as a kid because it's something that kids eat they are fun I like goldfish I probably though you know how they say you only use like a very small percentage of your brain I use my whole brain because it just makes more sense it's more efficient that way but I think there's a whole array of goldfish flavors out there but I don't eat like I don't eat cheese flavored things so for me there's only two flavors of goldfish which is original which is remarkably hard to find. you would think that original right well everything's been yeah now it's like ranch yeah i'm not interested in ranch or any but i will play around with although i don't see them here anymore when i was a kid they had just little pretzels that were in the shape of goldfish just

goldfish pretzels do you remember that i don't think no they were wait so they were it was made

of pretzel yeah just a goldfish made of pretzel yeah it looks like a little fish though i'm looking at it here yeah um so those were all i ever had was original and pretzel and pretzel like that's just a shape you know what i mean you can it's just a pretzel i do like the flavor of a pretzel shape made of goldfish a fish that is in the shape of a pretzel you go to a fancy restaurant yeah and they put they they chop up a fish and then they reconstruct it in the shape of like a

anti m you know that guy that that guy that ruined your thanksgiving he'll do that oh yeah right That's one of the most popular dishes. I thought it was a Salt Bae thing.

Did I get his name right?

That guy. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. That's a whole thing. Can I just quickly, Andrew, can I, before we go to break, throw out a little PSA for folks? No one? Can I play it as loud as humanly possible? Nobody got up this morning and said, I hope I hear on TBTL the eight foods and drinks that dentists reveal are worse for your teeth than candy. But can I just run through this? Yeah, I'm interested. It's kind of interesting. Okay. So they said that basically it's acid, not sugar, is the root cause of cavities. So candy and chocolates are not the worst offenders for teeth problems. Crackers, especially saltines and goldfish, should be avoided. So saltines, Andrew. Saltine crackers are worse for your teeth because they're fermentable and highly processed starch, according to this dentist. Many people don't realize that most crackers are highly processed and contain genetically engineered ingredients, essentially increasing the glycemic index, making the food more karyogenic, which is cavity-causing is what karyogenic means. Goldfish crackers, as mentioned. Ever notice how saltine crackers or goldfish become sticky in your mouth as you're chewing them, the dentist says? Even better for the bacteria. That sticky goo gets between your teeth, and the bacteria can feast for even longer. Also, dried fruit. That one surprises me. I feel like our ancestors were eating dried fruit. Our ancestors probably also had no teeth after 23, you know, if you think about it. Dried fruit just seems like, I mean, it's got some natural sugar in it, but it just seems like our evolution has worked out our ability to deal with dried fruit, but I guess not.

But it's so adhesive, though. Like, weren't you just saying on the show that you like the dried apricots? Those are especially sticky.

Mango.

Or mango. Okay, mango, I think, is a little bit more dried out. Not quite as sticky as the apricot, I think.

I want to say, too, that I have been trying to battle my mango addiction as far as it relates to my teeth. Because for Christmas, Becca got me a Sonicare. And the first, like, two times I used it, I remember I was brushing my teeth. And she happened to be over and she said, you know, there's a timer on that thing. And I was like, you know, what do you mean a timer? I don't know how to set the timer. I don't care. She goes, no, there's a timer on it. It'll just turn off when it's done. and i was like because i had just been brushing my teeth for what seemed like the normal amount of time and then turning it off and then i was like oh i see she was telling me you just leave it on and then it tells you when it's done it turns out you're supposed to apparently according to sonicare brush your teeth for 11 minutes andrew because i was like okay this is probably done it was going on and goes on forever i don't know if i was not brushing my teeth long enough before But according to this particular brand of toothbrush, we should all be brushing our teeth for one to four hours.

I'm pretty sure it's two minutes. Somebody has not been listening to the Quip ads, has not been listening to. I haven't done a Quip ad in probably two years. But I'm pretty sure they all, because I have a.

I was using Quip, and Quip is a great product. I'm not even lying. I don't think they advertise on the show, so we have no Doug on that flight. Yeah, anymore, yeah. But I do think Quip is a great product. I was really struck, though, by how long Sonicare is telling. Maybe that's just two minutes. It feels like about six minutes, though.

I think because mine, and yours probably does this, too. Genevieve didn't notice that this was happening. She thought it was just a weird vibration that was randomly happening when she was brushing her teeth. And I'm pretty sure the quip did this exact thing, too, which is it'll also, while it's vibrating and you're brushing your teeth, every 30 seconds it'll give you a little buzz to tell you to do a different quadrant. So it'll break. I could be wrong. Maybe you have a different Sonicare. But usually, and I've used two different electric brushes of different brands, and they both do the same thing, which is 30 seconds and then a little extra buzz in there. And then you do a different part of your mouth than an extra. And so it's 30, 30, 30, 30. So it's probably two minutes, although I will say. that, like, two minutes when you're not looking at your phone or trying to read something, and you're just staring in the mirror brushing your teeth, two minutes really feels like a long time. One thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty.

Other things that are not great for your teeth that you might not think, cough drops. I don't think that's a surprise to anyone. I always, like, if it's a night where I have a bit of a cough and I am using a cough drop, I'm always like This is not great for the old The old teeth the old chompers Because I know I'm going to fall asleep I'm also worried about falling asleep And inhaling it

I haven't inhaled it but I know what you mean I've woken up with the cough drop Lodged way back Between my molar and my cheek

You know what would be great Let's create a product that's roughly the width of your Esophagus That's also rounded at the corners For maximum blockability Yeah, right. And then you should go to sleep with it. And then drink something like quill. That sounds like a plant. Right. And then drink a sedative. Then take a little propofol and let's see how – how is it that cough drops don't have to – maybe that's in the really fine print. But how is it that they don't have to have a disclaimer that says don't go to sleep with this in your mouth? Because especially if you live alone like I do, I've been having these thoughts a lot, Andrew. I'm I'm I'm very much like Liz Lemon who you know a big plot in one of those seasons that she's just very worried about dying alone in her apartment. I was telling I was at that Airbnb and I was worried about falling from the ladder. Now I'm like worried about going to sleep with a cough drop in my mouth because if I start there's no one to do the Heimlich if I if I wake up choking grapefruit is also not feeling when you said acid.

I was just telling Genevieve yesterday As I came home from the grocery store How much I love grapefruit

People think grapefruit is a great breakfast But in fact it's very acidic Acidic things damage enamel Because it literally dissolves it When you pour acid on something It leaches out the calcium Next up, coffee, more bad news Tannic acids Naturally found in coffee can do more damage to teeth Than just unsightly stains I feel like that's This is just i'm i'm showing my personal bias it's a non-starter with me like i'm not i don't care what i mean i will floss till the cows come home i will brush my teeth for three hours a night if i need to i will do all of those things but i am i can't give up coffee i'm sorry like i think i could give up booze before i could give up coffee at this point in my life and i think that's being a 45 year old dad type um also diet soda strike two for burbs uh diet soda has even more acid than regular soda do you still drink a lot of diet soda i don't drink i will probably have a can of diet coke or actually what i tend to consume more if it's available is coke zero i probably have one can of coke zero or diet coke every other day on average so i bet you i average

two to three a week does that sound like a lot or not a lot no i don't think that's a lot i don't drink tons of soda maybe i i have it maybe once a week or once every couple of weeks that it's almost exclusively when i like go to one of my kind of dinery kind of places you know what i mean not like a cool diner just like literally an old man diner like yesterday i went back up to um lena's which i believe is in shoreline or whatever yeah i had my um i had a physical magazine i just I mean, I was the youngest one in there by decades. It was awesome. Let's feel good. It was awesome. I love that place. And so, like, I had a French dip, and so I had a thing of Coke. I don't even – I drink it so rarely that, like, I'm not even going to mess around with the diet. I mean, actually, I'm coming off of a weekend of seeing, like, five movies in a row, so I guess I was treating myself badly there, too. I always drink soda in the theater. But, like, for me, soda is not something that I'm drinking on a daily basis. So I'm like, on the occasion that I have, I'm not messing around with the diet. I don't like the taste of diet soda.

The thing that really changed my relationship with it is, A, I just don't have much of it around, which helps. And B, I got one of those, my refrigerator in this apartment doesn't have like a built in water source, but I got one of those Brita giant tanks of water that you fill up and then put in your refrigerator. And what I realized at some point was when I was drinking soda, when I was drinking a lot of soda, it was because I was thirsty. but if I you know fill up a glass with some like nice filtered Brita water it's so thirst quenching and something about that little just mental awareness of like I think I want a diet coke right now or a coke really I just want some hydration that has helped me a lot so it's cut my consumption way back although if I'm having french fries if I'm having pizza if I'm having something extremely salty then I love having a soda product with that so but then and it's it's Hilarious because I'm always, like, very adamant that it's a Diet Coke.

or a Coke Zero, as I'm about to eat a 3,000 calories of pizza. Yeah. Let's really make sure I don't get an extra 100 calories in there from the soda product.

I don't know where you are on this list, but I'll just say this is a very embarrassing thing to admit, but it's kind of what you're saying there, too, which is, like, I realize that anything that I'm drinking that isn't water is just sort of for entertainment now. That's not what I want to say. What I want to say here is growing up, if you're thirsty and it's morning, go get some orange juice or if you're thirsty and it's the afternoon, go get some Kool-Aid or whatever. Like in this, I guess, just kind of speaks to the maybe my generation and my particular parents or whatever, not to throw them under the bus. But we just get some milk, get some milk. Exactly. Like I wasn't drinking tons of water. Now, of course, like everybody's got water bottles all the time. I've even got my like crappy water bottle that I've been carrying around since we went hitchhiking. And, you know, anywhere I am in the house, I have this thing with me. And like if I wake up in the morning now and I'm thirsty and even on the occasion that we do have orange juice in the fridge or whatever, I'm not reaching for that first. I'm not saying that I don't occasionally have a glass of orange juice, but I don't drink anything other than water to quench my thirst anymore. It's like a mental shift. I'm like, oh, no, if I want my if I'm drinking something because I'm thirsty, it's got to be water. If I'm just sort of feeling empty and thinking consumption will fill the void, maybe then I will have an orange juice or whatever the situation might be. But it's just weird that it took me 30, 40 years to figure that out.

I wonder if the children of today, the young people of today, grow up drinking a lot more just straight water than we did. Because there was no water drinking culture when I was a kid. There were no Brita filters. There were no, I don't even think, I mean, I guess some people who were rich, they had a water and ice machine built into the door of the refrigerator, but there was, it was exotic to drink like a premium water product. Like Evian was like a joke. Perrier was a joke. It was kind of like, pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon? Like, you know what I mean? Like nobody, there was just no, people didn't have water bottles unless you were jazzercising. Like it was just a really different thing. And if I was thirsty, it would have never occurred to me to get a glass of water. It would always be open the fridge. What's in here? And, you know, I mean, if we had had soda, which we never did, that would have been the absolute number one. Then some kind of Kool-Aid product. If we had a powder around, you know, orange juice would do in a pinch. Apple juice, you know, then milk in a, you know, last resort. Anyway. And grape coupon, frankly. And grape coupon. You just throw a little like a dollop. Just a lanyop But nowadays Imagine being like a 7 year old kid Growing up in a typical American household Your parents Probably are carrying around Those water bottles That are like a gallon a day And it's got all these inspirational messages About how close you're getting to being done I feel like As an American culture We're so much more fixated on hydration Through water than we ever were when I was a kid And I wonder if that if that actually gets down and filters down, so to speak, to the level of young people like our six year olds drinking more water. Yeah, I think so. They find it quenching.

I think so. I mean, listen, kids also have different needs, different nutrients needs. And I'm not a parent, so I don't want to I don't want to sound like I know what the hell I'm talking about. But everything that you said just about water culture, see, I thought that was just me growing up in rural Ohio in the 80s. But even out here in the metropolis of Seattle, Washington, like kind of similar, similar for you. I wonder if other at least how I grew up.

Yeah. But I mean, admittedly, I didn't grow up in a like. Yeah. You know, in a liberal NPR listening. People go exercise for the sake of exercise home like that wasn't the environment. So I might have grown up in a bit of a bubble that was more like Valley City, Ohio. Yeah. And then than other people who are in Seattle. But I just don't I just remember water being the absolute last resort. Yeah, exactly.

And let's face it. Like, we just didn't see like we didn't live in a culture where everybody had plastic bottles of water in their fridge. And I know that, oh, yeah, like reusable bottles are the way to go. But I just mean that, like, you didn't have an entire aisle of a grocery store dedicated just to different brands of water bottles of water. Right. That you can grab. But just what we didn't see everybody on TV carrying, you know, wearing yoga pants and carrying their water bottles everywhere like we do if you just walk out on the street like right now. So, yeah, I think that that is definitely a change, which maybe that'll maybe that'll solve all the world's problems. Maybe the thing is, yes, earlier generations weren't drinking enough water. We're drinking if we consume all of the world's water.

I think we'll get closer to solving climate change. We just have to get. All the time.

All of that water out of the oceans and the rivers and melt the glaciers and snowpack so that I can have more LaCroix. If we can just get there, I think we'll finally start to turn this thing around. Just to quickly wrap this up, this is actually surprising to me. Diet soda has more acid than regular soda. When they take out the sugar, there is some tartness that is lost, so they add phosphoric acid. Phosphoric acid may add tang to your favorite soft drink, but it can also dissolve the calcium found on the enamel. bottled lemon iced tea that one is not surprising to me at all like that just seems like a sugar bomb uh and that's the last one i guess so uh bottled lemon iced tea is um also something

that is not great for your teeth because the lemon is very acidic and then you have probably sugar so was that in order or was that just um five that was just the those were yeah that was

that was all the ones that they listed on there i don't think it was going from i didn't didn't seem like it was going from worst to least worst but those are just things if you're if you're

curious by the way did they say goldfish i have a goldfish brain i remember you said saltines but

then goldfish was in there too okay goldfish was the second one on the list um and i will be giving up none of those things andrew i'd just like to point out that uh i i i can't give up coffee i don't even i'm not even one of those people who needs my cup of java to get like you know don't talk to me until I've had my coffee like that's not even my relationship with it I don't even have coffee every morning but on the mornings when I have it it's just so pleasurable and it's just such a part of like every time I come over to your house to do the show I get my cup of coffee either at your house or maybe I stop at a coffee shop it's just it's the ritual of it and I love it so much that if it hastens if it hastens the end of my teeth I guess I'll just have to just have to get uh you know dentures or something because I just I can't see a world in which I

don't drink coffee the older i get i think i said this to you the other day off air the older i get the more i appreciate the smell of coffee like coffee i think almost everybody thinks is a is a nice smell and even if you're a kid it means and you don't drink it it still means like oh you know maybe it's morning it's time to maybe it's even a weekend morning and that's what woke you up out of bed like it's just a nice familiar cozy smell but the older i get the more i'm obsessed with the smell of coffee and i do something now so i grind the beans for our coffee the night before and then i get the coffee pot all set up uh so that in the morning we just have to press a button and and get it going and um and i love it it like divides up like my splitting up my coffee making process over over the course of 12 hours means that like at night sometimes especially if we're just like done with dinner or whatever and now it's time to grind the coffee beans Like Genevieve and I will just be like, I don't know, cartoon toucans with our noses like floating us through the house to the coffee grinder. It just smells so good. And that's a very different smell than when it's brewing, too. And it just, yeah, it's just like it's becoming like a drug for me. Huh. Coffee. Really? Drug. Huh. Yeah.

Gosh, we are. Andrew, we're dangerously close. We're within spitting distance of the river here. No, we're not.

Are we serious?

Yeah, 46 minutes into this, 48 minutes into this. I actually started my clock late. I started my clock when I was talking. So I think we're almost at 50 minutes here. So let's take a break. I'm going to go get some more coffee. I'm going to get like three to four goldfish crackers and a cough drop or two. And then we're going to come back and we'll do the rest of the show. Stay with us here on TBTL. Let's thank some donors of the day. These are the generous, supportive, kind-hearted people who are making today's episode possible. People like Lucy Wu out there in Renton, Washington. Renton.

Now, Renton, I'm just going to keep doing this. I mentioned, we talked about a city that was near Seattle recently. I can't remember which one, and I said south when it was north. I was going to say Renton is definitely south, right? And it sounds like you just confirmed that.

It is. Renton is south. It's down at the south end of Lake Washington. There's a huge Boeing facility there.

Yeah, right.

Right on the water. I don't know if the Seahawks training facility is technically considered Renton or not. It might be. The VMAC. And then you've got all kinds of other stuff happening down there in Renton. Renton's actually a very cool town. When I lived in Mount Baker, kind of a little bit further north on Lake Washington, I actually started going down to Renton, I'll be honest with you, at a card room called Diamond Lills. But there was lots of other stuff happening in Renton. I was like, this is a cool city. They also are famous, if you grew up in Seattle.

and you'd never even been to Renton, you knew about what was called the Renton S-curves.

Oh, yeah, that's where the S-curves are, right.

And you had to use those S-curves, I believe, to go to that Fry's once many years ago, Andrew, because there was a Fry's in Renton. I think it was the only one in the area. Genevieve Tollickson is in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

Arlington Heights.

I feel like there is a famous writer from Arlington Heights, Illinois. It might be Genevieve, actually. No. Arlington Heights, Illinois feels to me like it's... Maybe I'm just thinking of Oak Park. Wasn't like Hemingway from Oak Park or something? I don't know.

I always think of Hemingway as being a Florida writer, but did he end up moving there later in life?

Maybe this is where I'm already moving way out of my areas of expertise. Famous people from Arlington Heights.

I do see it is... Arlington Heights is a suburb of Chicago, according to Wikipedia. Notable people. Here we go.

You know who's first on the list? Genevieve Tullickson.

Whoa, famous TV-tailed donor?

Yep.

Jimmy Garoppolo was born there. Oh, really? According to FamousBirthdays.com, also Sebastian Maniscalco.

You've been to this Ross for less.

That's my Sebastian Maniscalco impression. Wait, what is that? Remember that bit we used to play? Oh, yeah. Sebastian Manischalko is now a very, very, very popular comedian who makes tons of money. But a long, long time ago, there was a comedy documentary that was kind of like one of those – it was like Vince Vaughn's Wild West comedy show or something. And it was a kind of a doc where it was a bunch of comedians going around and performing kind of a group show. And it would follow them behind the scenes. It was kind of like the comedians of comedy or whatever. and Sebastian Maniscalco was one of them and I remember he had a bit about Ross dressed for less yes that was a huge and what a disaster Ross was yeah and we were at the time obsessed with it because our friend Katie Springer had these like really amazing kind of um strategies for for going into Ross and and how you kind of maximize your experience there and so um that's kind of what I know Sebastian Maniscalco for and that what he just heard me do was my impression of him doing his Ross but I feel like he might even call it Ross for less because that's

kind of his he had been to this Ross for less like

that was that's my impression of him talking

about Ross I have it here but I'll save it for the end of the show I think you know I I know that tape so well we use it as intro tape but I never remember that that's his name and I think every time you bring up his name I'm like who and then you tell me that story again so it's the Ross dress for less guy I'll just never remember the name it's It's Alden? What?

Yep. Famous people from Arlington Heights, Illinois. Sebastian Maniscalco, Jimmy G, and Genevieve T. And Ray Kroc. Those are the three most famous people. Oh, really? And Ted Nugent. Yes. Oh. Come on. Let's end strong. Wait. Ted Nugent's not from Detroit? The Motor City Madman?

Wait. You're right. This must be wrong. It says he was born. Oh, maybe it's because he went to school there. Let me see here. Gosh, darn it. He's listed on famous people from Arlington Heights, Illinois. I guess we could get into a conversation about what it means to be from somewhere.

I love it. What do you talk about in your podcast? We talk about what it really means to be from.

Nugent was born. Sorry. Now I'm just like I'm on four different pages of just Wikipedia all the way down. Nugent was born in Redford, Michigan, raised in Detroit. So I don't know why Arlington is claiming him. I would just let it go, Arlington. That's not one to fight over.

I don't know why Michigan is claiming him. Yeah.

Right. Okay.

We've also got to thank Sarah Longino DeKalb from Moxie, Washington.

Moxie? I've never heard of Moxie. I'm going to say it's directly west of Seattle.

I feel like we've had a donor from Moxie before, and it may have been Sarah, and we probably talked about it for a while because that's such a cool name for a town.

It really is. You got Moxie.

You know that, I think it's Penn Jillette, his daughter, they named her Moxie Crimefighter Jillette. I didn't know that. I'd forgotten if I did. Might be, I think Moxie is a cute name, though. Crimefighter maybe is, I mean, you're really putting a lot of pressure on the kid. What if she just wants to pay her taxes and let the government fight crime? What if she wants to do crime? Exactly. Like, crime fight. I mean, that's the origin story of a bad person in a Marvel story, is that their parents named him Crime Fighter. You're right. I don't know what Sarah named.

her kids if she has any but I'm sure it's appropriate and not driving them towards some kind of being the villain in one of those stories Catherine McFadden is right here in Portland Oregon what up Catherine I'm waving to you I'm now I'm Andrew I'm turning in a circle you're turning in a circle because you don't know where I'm waving I don't know south because I know that Portland is south of here I'm turning in another circle because my headphones got wrapped around my legs that was dangerous Stephen Lawson is in San francisco california thank you steven and then it's brandy unruh in woodenville washington thank you brandy thank you to all of our donors of the day thanks for making today's uh episode possible wouldn't be here without you

but you were blind with other things on your mind

hello and welcome to top story uh top story i was uh wrong with my prediction yesterday that by today's showtime joe rogan would be fired from spotify or they would have sort of parted ways spotify at least as of now as of press time are um they're standing behind their guy which is what you predicted andrew so you were right and i was wrong and i'll go a step

further here now that now that he yeah go a step further put all of your money on the bangles this weekend i already did i was gonna say um it's funny how these things work i feel like yesterday was the biggest firestorm for the second offense like these these you know dredged up podcasts where rogan says the n-word and other slurs in various contexts um and i feel like if the boot or if the axe didn't fall yesterday then he's fine until a third thing happens or a third thing is revealed yes it's funny how that happens like one day and it's like i feel and maybe that's what Cuomo was doing like it just like let's just see like let's just let's just see what happens like sit tight hold tight hold on tight and just see what happens because it's kind of like once you break through the firestorm there is there can be short attention on these things right and and

I think you're exactly right now the question is once what ends up happening though is when you get I mean Joe Rogan has been talked about a lot during the pandemic just because of his bad takes on on science and the vaccine and things like that but it seems like it's especially he's really you know he's trending everywhere right now and when you start when that starts happening then what happens is the people who don't like you or what your message is they start to really really dig up everything on you like the the the doxing and i'm not saying that joe rogan is being treated unfairly maybe there's another term for doxing when it's warranted or not you know printing someone's home address or whatever but like the when the internet decides they want to figure out what you've done that's not good they can figure it out and so that seems like that ends up sort of unearthing a lot of times like you said that third thing when that third shoe drops it's like why did you have three shoes i don't know just go with me when that third shoe drops sometimes because the the folk the internet focusing on you then they start really turning over some rocks and they might find stuff that if you weren't the focus of the internet's attention nobody would ever quite put together now this is where this story becomes personal for me andrew i really love the howard stern show and what all these deplorables and i say this because they literally most of them on their twitter uh you know bio list themselves as deplorable they're very excited about it all these maga chuds today and rogan defenders are spending their time tweeting countless photos of howard stern in blackface from the early days of his like he had a tv show not the one that everyone saw on e but he had like local tv shows and stuff in the more like tri-state area um apparently i haven't heard the tape but he may have said the n-word like you know in the service of a joke or whatever on the air like and of course my knee jerk because i really get a lot of enjoyment of listening to the howard stern show was to think well this is different but then this whole morning i've been sitting with the question of is it different why is it different like i want it to be different because i don't want to stop listening to the howard stern show because i find it to be very entertaining but if my argument for why people shouldn't listen to joe rogan is among other things because you shouldn't use the n-word um as a white person certainly not a white person who's been granted a microphone i don't know how that's fundamentally different than what howard stern did and i don't even know if howard stern has actually apologized I mean maybe he has I mean what I would say is he would never say that now he would never be in blackface now and he's

is a staunch defender of Tony Fauci and science, which is probably part of why I'm inclined to give him a pass. But I don't know if that's just hypocrisy on my part because I get enjoyment from The Howard Stern Show.

Yeah, it's hard for, you know, I'm, it's really hard for me to apply the context filter for Stern because my relationship with that show is as very much an outsider. But as somebody who, you know, I grew up, I listened to The Stern Show a little bit I thought it was middle school, but Phyllis Fletcher was doing the timeline with me, and whatever I heard, it must have been later than that, so my memories are a little bit fuzzy there. But I remember there being a time when I would listen to that and like it, and again, it's the type of radio I enjoy because I like the type of radio where you listen on day one and two and think, what am I listening to, but then you need to have it on day three and four. Like that's yeah, that's my ideal type of radio. And I'd like to think that sometimes we do that here. But as an adult, I never listened to it. But then like, no joke. And I'm not I'm not just, you know, me, I don't like to flatter. But it's like when three of the smartest people in my friend group, you Phyllis and my friend Aaron, who also all three of you love radio in a way that I love radio. So the three of you are obsessed independently and sometimes together with the Howard Stern show. And I love that so much and I respect you all so much. But then when I would get my free subscription to Sirius and I'd listen to it for a little bit, like the first time I did that as an adult, it was really hard to get through. I'm like, oh, wow, we're still doing this, like the shock jock stuff, the P word constantly. And, you know, who's the limo driver? Ronnie. ronnie the limo driver oh yeah getting through and just like and and all of the the resets and the promotional and the and the bumping in with classic oh you mean um just like it's just

you mean coctober are you not a not a coctober fan and then but then on the other hand you know

i told you that i saw the beginning of jackass yesterday and sometimes i wonder how much am i just approved because that was kind of shocking to me um but i don't think you're approved with

i think the stern stuff is it's that kind of thing where it's i wouldn't consume that kind of content anywhere else because it would seem so puerile to me but because i've been in the water and the the temperature just been turned up and what i'm really interested in is the sort of dynamics between the staff members and things like that less so than the we're going to do something uh that we see as uh being edgy like i don't care about any of that stuff but i put up with it and i and it doesn't even phase me anymore and that's a that's a question about like you know Have I been staring into the Ronnie so long That it's staring back

You know This goes back to Phyllis I don't think with Phyllis' current job I don't think she can just hop on TBTL anymore

You don't need the New York Times Once they're coming on this podcast To discuss Cocktober

Because she said something one time Luke, when you weren't here But she did say this on the show I'm going to call her after the show To make sure that she said this publicly

I'm literally in a text conversation with her right now about what's going on on Stern. I'm not kidding you. Okay, fact check this. Her and Carrie and I have a Stern breakout group where we discuss things that are going on on the show.

Okay, actually, if you're texting with her right now, fact check this for me, that it's okay that I say this publicly because I'm pretty sure she said this on TBTL on a day that you were out and she was hosting with me, and we're talking about Stern stuff, and she said that she knows that Howard Stern wouldn't hire her based on the way she looks. and I was like wow but you're you're still a huge fan and she said yeah and I can't remember exactly where that conversation went from there but it's something that I think about a lot because I think about Phyllis again like in just is Phyllis the smartest person I know like

probably top two right like like Genevieve and Phyllis whoever leans at the tape maybe gets it

Exactly. It's so like and so I have so much respect for her. But there's also not. But so I find it really interesting that Phyllis can also compartmentalize like that. You know what I mean? Like, I love her love of the Howard Stern show, something that I find is too caustic for me at times, if that's the right word or just too blue or gross. gross um but then to have this almost personal thing and be like well i work in radio i could apply for jobs there but this man who i admire and listen to and i've been listening to for 20 or whatever years it's been um from phyllis's perspective probably wouldn't hire me because of prejudice and you're just like but i can still but i can compartmentalize that and still enjoy the product i don't have an analog to that in my life but it's something that i i think about a lot And maybe that's something to apply. why when you're talking about things of Rogan, or there are more like, I just think Rogan's an idiot, though, too. I think the problem with Rogan is he's a dumb guy who people think he's smart. Like, I was watching some of these clips of him, like, having this conversation with another white guy about how you can't say the N-word anymore and how stupid it is, and why can we say, quote, the N-word when we can't say the actual N-word, and pretty soon we won't even be able to say, quote, the N-word, and, hey, you can use Italian slurs, and I'm not offended by that. And I'm just like this is like the two stupidest guys that I would have met on my dormitory floor in 1991 in Ohio and they've never met a black person. You know what I mean? Just like it is the most – that's the thing. It's the most moronic conversation and sophomoric conversation even though I said freshman floor. Go with sophomoric here. It's not even smart but it's like it's dumb guys and it is guys. It's dumb guys who think they're intellectual, and they think they're rattling the cage, and they think they're thinking outside the box, but they're just having the same myopic, dumbass thoughts that a million other white guys have had before them, and it's not intellectual. You're just an idiot, and you're missing all of the context. That's the thing that bugs me the most about this is he's just not smart, but he's convinced a bunch of dumb people to think that he's smart.

TBTL Breaking News. We do have a response from our friend, P. Fletch. I said, TBTL question, because we're talking Stern. P., did you say something like, you don't think Stern would hire you? And I asked if Phyllis was okay with me sharing her responses. She said yes. She said yes and yes. Where he stands on women and weight is very clear, and I look a certain way. So yep and yep. So there you go. You did not misinterpret Phyllis' message. She feels like that's not a hospitable place for her as a staffer, but you're right. As we know, she's a fan of the show. I mean, to me, that sort of raises the stakes for maybe this whole conversation, but I think what I was going to say is, and again, I want to just mention that this is completely out of selfishness on my part because I don't want to give up listening to The Howard Stern show because i enjoy it particularly on weeks when opb is in a pledge drive you want to talk about a real whip saw andrew what usually happens is i'll listen to opb in the mornings and then at some point in the daytime or afternoon when it's a week when they have new shows i'll catch up on like what stern was up to but this week opb is in the pledge drive i've already made my donation all right everybody calm down and so now this is a week where i'm going to listen to stern in the morning and so i selfishly don't want to have to give it up but i think to me a critical difference is a lot of the stuff that stern does is that's that's on the line is really just in the it's in the category of crude and and is it you know talking about bodily functions and sex and things like that and it's not even stern as much as it's like you know ronnie the limo driver or these other they have a person who does a spot-on impression of george takai like eerily perfect impression and the whole because takai is also um or george takei i guess he's already he's been on stern a lot he was kind of their unofficial announcer for a long time and i think he's kind of like you know getting older and busy with other things so now they have a person who can do like a perfect impression of him um and that person is just so so sexed up so just talking about genitalia all the time that's just kind of the the bit a lot of that stuff might be in poor taste but what joe rogan is doing in having vaccine skeptics on is actually killing people so to me that's those are not in the same category um poor taste and getting people killed so i guess that's Ultimately, that's what I'm going to hang my hat on so that I don't have to make the hard decision of not listening to Stern anymore.

Yeah. And, you know, this isn't exactly this isn't at all what you're saying, but my mind is just sort of reeling and, you know, thinking about all the opinions on this Joe Rogan matter that I've been absorbing for the past four days just by living, living in this country and looking at social media and what have you. And like, it's also just like raised this conversation of just like the role of comedians, right? Some people are like, well, comedy is supposed to be challenging. And that's a whole different conversation. But also it's like, is Joe Rogan a comedian when he's having when he's trying to like expand our minds and our worldview by having on people who question the status quo? Like you're not being a comedian at that point anymore. And I've just sort of and maybe I'm raising a maybe this is a little bit of a of a straw man argument here. But I just sort of feel like some he's. I think it's interesting that Joe Rogan is operating in a in a in an undefined space sort of right. Like he's a comedian and kind of a stand up comedian. And actually his first big role was on a sitcom in the 90s. But then he becomes but then he's also sports guy and he becomes MMA guy. Is it MMA specifically? Yeah.

Some sort of MMA is his whole thing because he was like into it. He doesn't do boxing. Yeah. It's all mixed martial arts. He is like he likes doing it. And when it wasn't nearly as popular, he was probably one of the more famous people who had an interest in the sport. So he sort of got, you know, they would they let him be like, you know, the color commentary for it, because just basically nobody else gave a shit.

And then it grew. And he's good at it. I want to point out again, like I think I said this last time this came up. I think that like I remember driving in L.A. and like listening to one of the sports stations. Maybe I landed on it. I can't remember. But I remember listening to somebody talk about something that I didn't find very interesting, but I found him to be very gripping, like pulling me into some sports story that I wouldn't otherwise care about. And then realizing at some point, oh, this is Joe Rogan. I mean, this is I was in L.A. This is like 2014. He already had a podcast at this point. But like I just he's just it's broadcasting is a craft and he's really good at it. I can name some other people who are really good at the craft of broadcasting who I find their ideas and what they do with broadcasting repugnant. Right. And so like I get why he's appealing in that way. But like what is he doing like when he's when he's talking about the vaccines, he's not being a comedian anymore. And I just sort of feel like some people are kind of like, oh, come on, it's Joe Rogan. Don't take it that seriously. It's like, well, he's he's positioning himself now as a thought leader, like like it or not.

Yeah, it's it's not comedy at that point when you have on somebody who says that the vaccine is actually harming people versus keeping them safe. Like that's not you. I mean, I guess you could argue that that's discourse, but it's definitely doesn't to me fall under the under the bounds of. And again, this is sort of all goes back to the thing that you were saying when when maybe not even on the topic of Rogan, but just on the idea of, quote unquote, cancel culture, just like Joe Rogan has a platform. He can say what he wants. No one is saying it's illegal for Joe Rogan to ask questions about the vaccine. But everyone else also has the freedom of speech to say what they want and that they don't think it's good for the country. And if Joe Rogan was just talking about genitalia on his podcast all day long, I don't I wouldn't think he was a danger to America. It might not be for me. But considering the reach he has, I do think it's it's not great. And I do think it's interesting to watch the movement against this and to see if Spotify will end up caving or not. And I mean, for now, like we've already talked about, they aren't. And I think you're right. I think it will take a third thing that will put this over the top. For the time being, though, Andrew, you are very right, and I'm very wrong. He's still over there doing his thing on Spotify. He probably definitely has more listeners than the Olympics has viewers because nobody is watching the Winter Olympics. I keep forgetting they're even happening. Apparently, this U.S. Olympian, Nathan Chen, who's a figure skater, had the highest score in the history of olympics figure skating for men last night which seems like in other years would have been kind of a thing and i was like oh yeah i saw it like on my like alerts on my phone i was like oh yeah they um they're still having the olympics i guess i i know you're not like you don't care that much about the olympics one way or the other but usually i'm excited for it to happen i'll have it on tv uh you know kind of for the couple of weeks it's going on i'll kind of get sucked into some of the storylines there's just also this way that the the media talking about things so much and kind of turning a lot of these athletes into sort of stories you start to see it a bunch and then you start to get invested in the story and then you're like what am i going to watch tonight you sort of put it on i do think there's a certain kind of grandeur to the whole thing that i really like um but i just me and most people in america andrew are just uh swerving on this whole olympics thing the uh viewership is down 43 percent from uh 2018 and uh it just they think it's a combination of the fact that there are no fans in the stands and that they also can't actually film a lot of they there's some problem with you know actually getting access to the athletes because they're kept in these very

tight bubbles to try to keep them from getting covid so there's like they can't film them out and about in china also i guess the film crews can't really travel around like beijing and the other places to get beauty shots of china so it's sort of like the countryside and the things that all of this like We'll be right back. interstitial stuff that nobody realizes when you're watching the olympics it's kind of going on in the like visual storytelling of the whole thing they can't do most of that and also interestingly enough it seems like americans have gotten the memo that china is terrible on human

rights yeah just got just got awful and quick um anecdote from my life here like obviously i knew that the olympics were coming because like i say just because of the news cycle and the conversations about the the um tennis player shui peng peng shui i don't yes did i dial that i think you got pretty close nice add adlai aldi um adlai stevenson named the orca for the failed presidential candidate i've already forgotten the real name of the orca anyway um yes i think that's part of it but here's the anecdote from my life i knew that the olympics were coming it's been in the news blah blah yet somehow i woke up on whatever was the morning after the olympics started and saw a headline about somebody winning a medal and my mind was blown my mind was absolutely blown that the olympics had already begun that the games had started that medals were being awarded Like I had no idea. Like usually there's some like I never watch it, but I'm at least aware of when the opening ceremony is going to be like that. It's just like I can't escape it. I saw somebody tweet and I can't tell exactly what their point was, like whether they're kind of more anti Olympic or pro Olympic or what. But I did see somebody tweet at some point like, wow, the Olympics just began with like a nine minute feature about essentially why China is so terrible. We shouldn't be watching the Olympics. That's an interesting move. I mean, they were exaggerating and I think I'm exaggerating the tweet, but it is such a I mean, also just like, yeah, China's corrupt. And you know what else is corrupt? The IOC, like the whole organization just stinks top to bottom. I mean the only good thing is the athleticism and the athletes and the hard work that they actually have to do and it is the biggest platform for that so then we are stuck in between rooting against a terrible organization but not wanting to take away the platform and the opportunities for these people who've dedicated their lives to something that is special. So I understand that tension, but also like this time it seems to be coming to the forefront where you have a country that is doing terrible things, hosting this thing again for the first time in like – or I'm sorry, for like the second time in eight years or ten years or something. And kind of trying to kind of whitewash their reputation through this idea that, oh, well, the Olympic Games is where we put our differences aside and we all come together. Well, how about we don't put human rights aside? Like maybe that's something that we don't put aside. Maybe sometimes it's not okay just to come together so that somebody can jump over a hurdle or do whatever they do in the Winter Olympics. I'm not an expert. I believe skis are involved. Clearly, you're not a bowler. What did you say? Clearly, you're not a golfer? Clearly, you're not a golfer. That's the Lebowski line? Anyway, so yeah.

I mean, and then you have broadcast, and I assume it's still all NBC and NBC products doing this. But then they realize, I mean, they abdicate their journalistic responsibilities so bad, Olympic after Olympic after Olympic. But apparently this year they had to address it in some way. And so even they, the broadcasters and sponsors of this thing, realize they're in a tight spot. Like, the whole thing is just ugly.

It is. And, I mean, to me it goes back to the IOC awarding it to China. Like you have to just, you have to let China know that until some fundamental changes happen around human rights, they're not going to get things like the Olympics. You could have the Olympics, lots of snowy places that aren't, you know, creating essentially concentration camps for the Uyghurs, et cetera. I mean, the list is long of the violations from the Chinese government. Like it's because the IOC, like you said, the IOC is just an incredibly corrupt organization anyway. But then you feel bad for the actual athletes Because the actual people Doing the act I saw somebody wrote on Twitter last night Every Olympic event should start with a normal person Trying to do whatever the thing is

Yes, yeah I would watch that

Like, okay, before Nathan Chen takes to the ice For his short form Or whatever they call it You know, skating demonstration We have Eric Eric is from Tacoma, Washington and um he has was on ice skates uh 20 years ago when he was 15 take it away eric and then you just watch a normal person try to do the thing and then you get to watch the people who've trained intensely and are incredible at it like i feel bad for the athletes because all they're doing is working their tails off for four years and hoping that they can go and Yes.

know represent their country and do well etc so i do feel bad for them that no one's watching them

do their thing um i also they also say like i love that certain people love the olympics like almost like how i appreciate your guys's appreciation of stern even though i kind of can't i just kind of can't get too far into that world like i've never cared about cared about the olympics but i know that like if genevieve did care about the olympics i'm sure i'd be into it Because it's so much fun to watch this stuff with people who are really into it. My friend Jessica was visiting Seattle from out of town during the summer games. And so we would like go to bars and just like watch some events. And she would tell me about it. And like, I love that shit. And, you know, that's kind of how I got into football, watching it with you guys. Like I do like that's the other thing. I kind of don't want to take away people's enjoyment of it, too, because people really get into it. And you take away all the bullshit, and fundamentally it should be a good, innocent thing, right? Like just really appreciating prowess.

Well, one of the things I think that's also contributing to the kind of apathy towards this is that because of COVID, they kind of had to double up. Normally, when I was a kid growing up, it was four years between the Olympics. So when they happened, it was huge because it had just been a long time.

Wait, it was four years between even like first a winter and then four years before the summer? Or no, it was like it was two years, right?

No, it was four years. They used to do the summer and winter in the same year. Oh, interesting. So the summertime would be the summer and the wintertime would be the winter and you would wait four years. It was only about 10 or 15 years ago they switched to every two years. And so that – I was into that move because, again, four years was like a really long time to wait for me as somebody who was actually interested in the olympics you know as a teenager or whatever and um but the problem in this particular case is they had to delay i guess was tokyo the last one so they like did tokyo or whatever the one before this was and then they did this one and like a year apart or eight some short amount of time like nobody was like god i really missed the olympics that i didn't watch when it happened nine months ago yeah it was because jessica

that was just this summer like it was just this last baseball season i know like it was it was

months ago not even a year i will say this though in i don't know however many years from now in four years from now i don't know what the timing is but if we get to the point where like and i don't i could just look this up on the internet but let's just imagine it's four years from now the summer olympics which i really love anyway like just the sports are more interesting to me the summer Olympics is being held in a place that's not a terrible place for people to live, or at least not exceptionally terrible like China and they can have people in the stands and we're not living in a pandemic, you know, and like I will be here for that Olympics. I will be interested. It'll be probably in kind of an August. It'll be warm out. I'll have the window open for a little cross breeze. I'll be just kind of like, also the timing will be better. The problem when they have it across the, when they have it like in Asia, is that the timing is really, really tough in the States as far as when events are happening. But I am not anti the Olympics per se, or I'm never going to enjoy the Olympics. This one is a complete miss for me. But I look forward to the idea of watching some American athlete really excel in the Summer Olympics under normal circumstances. That's appealing to me as an idea.

I guess most people do like the Summer Games more than the Winter Games, huh? Because, I mean, you know...

I think it's more relatable to more people. We've all, at some point, ran around a track and handed a baton to someone when they said hit. Andrew, we've all done that. Everyone. No, I'm kidding. But I do think that's the story.

I mean, honestly, I didn't know that you were kidding. I mean, I did have relay races as a kid.

I guess you're right. I picked a terrible example. But, I mean, the conventional wisdom is we have more kind of, like, shared experience with the events of the Summer Olympics, whether it's – because, I mean, think about the things that are in the Summer Olympics. basketball volleyball track like things that just feel kind of you know the biathlon most of us are not experienced with skiing with a rifle on our back yeah you know that's why i'm going to

make an analogy here that i don't think holds up but why should i start being good at podcasting now uh two hours into the show um but like i feel like growing up or my instinct if you were to ask me even just a couple of years ago my instinct would be to say that most people like the winter Olympics more because they seem more like I don't know I don't know why it just seemed like yeah of course the Winter Olympics is where everybody that's what everybody watches and that's what everybody wants but I think that that is like me here's the bad analogy thinking for a long time that Back to the Future 2 was better than the original just because I liked as a kid I liked the cartoonishness of the

Amen.

future but then you grow up and you're just like oh no the first one is a much better movie and the second one relies a lot on the work that the first movie did and it's corny but it's like kind of you know i i don't want to use the word exotic but there's something about like oh my god people going really really fast downhill on skis and in little that part is unquestionably like to me that just seems so much that has always traditionally seemed so much more exciting than somebody running on dirt you know what i mean like it just seemed so i thought everybody felt that way i don't really have a strong opinion it's just that i guess i was just reading it wrong for a long time

i will agree with you that i think that the ski jump well first of all the like the downhill skiing is amazing to watch and the ski jump you know where they just go they don't even have poles they just go down that long ramp yeah i was watching that the other day i can't believe humans can do that yeah i mean there's a lot of unnatural intervention there between the ramp and the snow machines and these highly designed skis etc it's not like our cave forefathers were doing that for fun but it is incredible that a human being can survive that because you are getting about as close to flying as as we get you know it's i mean that i'm never bored with that but i I think generally the thought is that the Summer Olympics are a little bit more relatable to more people. You're also a self-described kind of an indoor kid, or at least you've said that you didn't like sitting out in the broiling sun of Los Angeles. You were more kind of wanting to be inside. You liked that it's a bit more cloudy in Seattle at times. That's your setting. So it would make sense to me that you'd be more into the idea of being cozy and inside in the wintertime than being, like, out on a blazing track in the middle of summer.

And maybe it was just the idea of, you know, growing up in a snowy place. We, you know, we were on sleds a lot. We'd go out back to this little area of our yard that we called the Hills of Ohio, and we would slide down them, right? And, like, you know, the idea of, you know, and it was exciting. It was like a go-kart without wheels in the winter or whatever. Like, it was just, like, there was speed involved, and so I don't know if it was relatability in that way, too. But, yeah, just the idea of, again, I still think, like, if I had to choose one, yeah, I don't know. But certainly the sport that probably fascinates me the most is, like, the luge, which is just, like, I'm fascinated because I don't know. I know that there is skill involved, but I don't know exactly what it is. Put rocks in your pockets? I don't know. But, like, also, like, we're just going to put you in this bullet and just shoot you down this thing. I just seem so it seems so well that's probably the bobsled right oh I'm sorry bobsled what did I say well luge is the one where you lie down yeah that one is they're both fascinating and I

feel like I could be wrong about this but I think with like the luge there's one where you go down head first and where you go down feet first and like I can't picture the head first one utterly terrifying to me utterly terrifying to me that sounds like a bad idea there's some yeah there's some kind of microscopic steering and leaning i think that kind of you know everybody in that sport the difference of the gold medal and the person who embarrassed themselves is like three-tenths of a second you know so it's so kind of i mean that's also why those there it's interesting to see people going fast but you need a lot of context because most of us have never done that and it just seems like they're all going wicked fast hey can we um go out today with the Sufjan Stevens song, The Hills of Ohio? Yeah, we can. The song is Spotify is cool with that.

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.

Andrew, I've got an email journey that I'd like you to go on with me. And it's related to yesterday's big announcement that the song that I had been thinking of that I couldn't name because I had heard a piano version on TikTok, the song that I was reminded of that I spent a week and that the listeners spent a lot of time themselves thinking about, trying to figure out what the heck was Luke remembering, that song was called Wet and Rusting by the band Monomena. And I went through a ton of responses yesterday. And finally, the reveal was that listener Summer had submitted that kind of nominee, if you will, that she had said wet and rusting by Monomena, and that was exactly right. And I gave Summer her propers, and I was extremely relieved to have that figured out. I remain extremely relieved.

Is Summer, by the way, our stargazing Summer? Our astronomy correspondent? That's a good question.

I'm not 100% sure, actually. I think we may have a couple of Summer listeners. Let me... It's okay, sorry.

I didn't mean to...

I'm plugging this into, I don't think, I think this is a different summer. Okay. I know this summer's last name, and I just Googled it, and it didn't say astronomer. So I'm thinking we're talking different summers. But I was, the whole thing I thought ended really well. Good payoff for the listeners. Good props to summer. Good relief for burbs that I don't have to think about that anymore. And then I got this email from listener Matthew. Hi, Luke. I'm sorry to be so petty about this I was so excited to listen to the show today And find out if I got it right When I had suggested wet and rusting And I got more and more excited As each incorrect answer was listed And then the moment of triumph was Somebody else Again, I don't even know why I'm emailing about this Because I don't want to make anyone feel bad or anything I guess I just couldn't leave it alone I was hoping to share a similar moment of relief as you had when someone finally guessed it right. I've been listening daily to the show since the first day it switched to a podcast. And I knew that you'd played, if not that exact song, then a very similar kinds of songs back then. And I've loved that song forever, so I had a strong feeling. Apologies for the whining, Matt. So I saw this, and I felt terrible immediately because I completely get Matt's point of view. If you submit the correct answer and it goes unremarked upon, that'd be a bummer feeling. And so I apologized to Matt and I said, look, I will give you your propers tomorrow. But then I was trying to understand, Andrew, why did I not see Matt's email? Because I really did go. I know I'm terrible with the emails, but for this particular story, this particular plot line on the show, I really went back to the very The only emails that I found Related to the song that I didn't include Were like the first two That we had received Because we'd already talked about those But I went through and Certainly by my standards I was very meticulous I know And I was like I was like how could I have missed this Because if I would have seen that I would have listened to it And I would have been Celebrating both Matt and Summer So By the way, people think the Matt Olympics Are more popular than the Summer Olympics But it's actually quite the opposite Yeah, you put mats into a little bullet So I then did the unusual thing After I sent Matt my mea culpa I then took the unusual step Of searching for every email I'd gotten from Matt And that was the only one Using Matt's email account Matt said I sent this on Saturday So then I went to Saturday and there was no email from Matt on Saturday and then I thought well maybe I trashed it so I went

to the trash and I looked for everything I threw out on Saturday or everything that was thrown out from Saturday nothing from Matt I searched his email address in about every way I could imagine and I didn't see anything and what I realized in that moment was Matt must have not sent like maybe hit send and it just like either got the email address wrong or this happens to me actually a lot i'll hit send on an email because my this is more my like personal email is it's kind of fluky it's sometimes if like it's being weird with the internet connection it'll just it'll be in the outbox forever and it'll and then it'll think we can't send this email and then i'll be wondering why someone hasn't emailed me back and i'll go check my outbox and i still have an email from two days ago that never went out so then i was like how do i tell matt that i withdraw my apology because if Matt didn't send this in, you know, like I get it that he got the answer right. But, you know, if you if you thought you hit send and you didn't, then that doesn't really like that's not on me. And then I realized, oh, here's what happened. He sent it to you, Andrew, and you didn't forward it to me. So then I was really mad at you for a good portion of yesterday. And then this morning, right before Showtime, because my plan was to ask you if you had seen this email and if you had failed to forward it to me. But right before Showtime today, I went into my junk folder, which I had searched generally. But instead, I went and I actually went through and looked at everything in my junk folder, like got eyes on it. And wouldn't you know, there was an email from listener Matt on Saturday saying, is it wet and rusting by Monomena? So, Matt, I want to salute you and give you full credit. And I want to withdraw the anger that I felt at you yesterday when I thought you had not emailed it in. And, Andrew, I want to apologize for the anger I felt at you for thinking you hadn't forwarded me the email from Matt. I didn't even open any of those. I had so many.

had hundreds here's where i thought that was going i was wrong i thought for sure you're going to say he tweeted it in because that's the other thing too and this is not a complaint i love having all of these different channels to communicate with people and sometimes people will just text the tbtl line at like any random hour and if i'm available it'll come up on my phone and i might even like text back with you like i love doing that it's very casual and fun um sometimes that stuff will hit the show but usually not because i'm not like when i'm doing when i'm in show prep mode i'm not like checking the text line for things to add that's more of a casual thing the voicemail line sometimes i let that build up a little bit then go through it and i collect the gems and play them on the show but like if you need to get information to me don't leave it on the voicemail line right we have all these different ways of interacting and you can easily lose where you saw something did i see it on slack did i see it on twitter did i see it via text message voicemail email and there are others too again i want to make it very clear i'm not complaining about it i love it but i would say that if somebody is sending something in that really is important that we need to see it like email with the subject line clear because that is kind of like a i am sitting down now to check the messages you know what i mean that is like the best way for us to like kind of track things like there have been times i felt bad i'll go check the voicemail line and i'll realize somebody left a blurs day on the voicemail line you know like weeks ago or something and we don't do blurs days on the voicemail line right now why should somebody necessarily know that or put that together um you might not but for whatever it's worth yeah if you need to get something to us and it's timely email is the way to do it and in this case matt did that um oh yeah but it was just your your junk folder i wonder why your junk folder grabbed that of all

things uh i don't know actually i it you know it was a um i think i don't think there's any way anyone's going to guess so i think i feel comfortable saying it was a gmail account um so like i'm oh i don't gmail i don't know if that matters because i feel like we get i mean i have a gmail account you have you know you have various gmail accounts like we use these all the time and they work i don't know why this one got trapped in the filter i should probably go actually look through the junk and figure out if there are other emails in there from listeners that have been snared. But it was legitimately a weird journey for me because when I got that email, I felt terrible and I immediately assumed I was in the wrong because I am not great about keeping track of all the emails that come in. So I apologized reflexively. And then when I actually went and started searching in the search function to see other emails and I didn't see it, then I was i literally felt kind of annoyed that i had been apologetic because i was like what am i apologizing right i didn't even do anything here i like i was like i was like i can't believe i'm in a position where i have to apologize when i wasn't in the wrong then i i wasn't mad at you but i was curious if it had come in just to your email andrew and you had not forwarded it to me which is what i was planning on talking about in the segment with you just to say can you go into your account and see if you can find this. And then I realized, no, sort of everybody did everything as well as you can in this scenario. Listener Matt sent in the right answer. I really did check all of the submissions that I saw. I mean, I guess I could just make the daily practice of going into my junk folder. Maybe that's where I failed. But it turns out nobody needed to be mad at anybody, except whoever designed the GoDaddy email.

This brings up something, a little mystery that I stumbled on today, and I think I can make this understandable, but as I mentioned, people will text message us at the TBTL voicemail line, 206-414-8285, and you can leave voicemails there as well, but when I log into Google voice before i can get to the tbtl voicemails and text messages it shows me my own private google voice first now here's the deal this private google voice i have just has a phone number attached to it i only have this by virtue of having a google account at some point i must have set this up maybe i had a purpose for it but i don't think it was ever public in any way I don't even know. I couldn't tell you. I'm looking at it now, but I couldn't tell you at all from memory what my Google voicemail line is because I don't use it. It's an area code I don't even recognize. I have no idea when this was sent in. but let's see seven days ago i got a text message from somebody who's talking about the recorder that i just actually not my new recorder that i bought but my old recorder that i uh that i had to say goodbye to because it was broken i just got a text Thank you. message Tascam DR40X you up that was sent at 2 30 in the morning on February 1st and then I'm like who is this and I'm going back it says Mike in Hollywood now I don't think this is Hollywood Mike maybe it is I don't know if this is a different Mike in Hollywood or our friend Hollywood Mike who is currently in Hollywood by way of the Twin Cities but whoever this is i have no idea how they have this voicemail number for me because i don't even know this voicemail number for me and let's see the first text came in in october of 2014 um wanting to know about my fantasy football situation i didn't respond and then um a few months later or a few weeks later laughing at us for describing minnesota as the land of 100 lakes which is

Well, this is definitely a listener. Oh, wait, then.

Yes, but wait a second. Maybe this is Holly Woo Mike, because Mike is in Hollywood, and he's laughing at a Minnesota joke, and we know that Holly Woo Mike used to live in Minnesota, so maybe that's him. And he's a sound engineer, so he's talking about the Tascam DR-40X. I guess that's him. Mike, how did you get this number? How did you even know this number? Can you teach me this number? I'm not mad, bro. It's not like it's an invasion of privacy. I just don't have any idea what this number even is that you're texting.

I got a text the other day. This actually very rarely happens now. I feel like we get, we all get the amount of spam we get, some more than others, like you, Andrew. But I got a text from somebody in L.A., and I'm looking through my old text. I must have deleted it. But it was someone saying, hey, I forget what they called me, but it was like, hey, so-and-so, i'm trying to get in touch with monet do you still know do you still have their info and i it's just rare that you get a text like that that's just to the wrong number but the number they texted is an actual phone number it's either spam that's you know designed to try to trick you or it's somebody you already know like that's just like wrong number like that i feel like just doesn't happen anymore for whatever reason and so i was like hey i think you have the wrong part of me wanted to just be deleted and just kind of like not get into it but i could just tell that this was a real this was a real person trying to get in touch with someone it just didn't have the whatever the kind of indications of being a spam thing and so i said i think you got the wrong number uh good luck though and i hit send and i was like am i going to become best friends with this person is this going to be a new are they going to respond and say oh this used to be so and so's number and i'm like no it's my number now and then we'll like start chatting and then next time i'm in la we're going to hang out like did i just did we just become best friends and then like a week went by or four days went by and they just said okay thanks and that was it that was the end of the friendship right back like yeah but i'm still willing to be vulnerable if you want to talk about anything i what's going on with monet that i mean is everything all right

you know that is the scam though like um because i was driving yesterday i think and my phone or you know my phone is plugged into the car and the car says you have a new text message or something and it was hey Jason it's been a long time how have you been and I made a mental note I'm like oh somebody's got the wrong number that sounds like I should probably actually respond to them so then when I got out of the car and I was looking at my messages later I saw oh no that came in via whatsapp and that is a common kind of catfishing thing on whatsapp because I get a lot of messages from people that are like not a lot but I only use that to communicate I think with two different people one friend in australia and one friend in england um so it's it's not um it's not well used but every now and then i'll just get a random note from clearly and it's always you know an avatar of often a scantily clad or certainly um you know beautiful woman who is saying who's like acting like they're they have the wrong number but they want me to respond so that i will then get into conversations and then they will scan me in some way you know what i mean

Like you've you've seen that before. But here's the thing. I don't want to give them any good ideas, but it's much better to say, oh, hey, do you still have Monet's number? Because it's not because what what what immediately has the sort of ring of falsehood. A lesser Johnny Cash number, by the way, I fell into a burning ring of falsehood is if they go like, hey, baby, I love my heart. love miss you you know like some just mangled thing that's where they're aiming it right at you like hey how are you doing like we are all at this point like kind of trained to recognize that for what it is but if you're just like if it's if it's something where there's it's not overdoing it at first like i texted this person back if it was a scam i got and it doesn't appear to be because there was no follow-up but if part of the scam is to just start an actual engagement with this person i think it works so much better if you were to get a text andrew that just said like oh hey hey hey james uh this is so and so

So I'm trying to get in touch with Larry. Do you still have his info? If that was the wouldn't you be tempted to respond? Oh, I think you have the wrong number.

I would if it wasn't on WhatsApp. I would do like if it was actually to my my, you know, private text number. I would assume that it is somebody who is confused. And even this like I'm looking. Yeah, I had two calls coming yesterday. They're both coming in from a different country, too. And I'm sorry, not calls, but messages on WhatsApp. And, you know, both of the icons are they're not scantily clad. I shouldn't have said that, but they're they're probably stolen profile pics of attractive women. The one is wearing kind of a big floppy like L.A. hipster hat. And it says, hi, Jason. Long time. No, see. How have you been? And then about, I don't know, an hour later, got another one from a different person. John, how have you been? And it's like, I'm not messing with that stuff on WhatsApp. I don't know if people just have random number generators or whatever, but a text message. I don't get. Oh, by the way, those spam calls I was getting like the one day I got like twenty five. within the course of like one hour that's not an exaggeration um but uh because it was actually more than that because i did the math and it was once every two minutes my phone was ringing it was just it was like i thought i had to throw my phone away those have eased up a little bit but um yeah anyway i'm with you if it comes in as a text message i would say oh i think you got

the wrong number because it's probably a mistake but i also get scam texts as well not like all the time but i will get them sometimes where it's i mean i have to say my phone like i guess it would be uh verizon like which is a mildly annoying service but i will give them credit whatever their gatekeeping is on like spam text getting in my phone it's pretty effective but i've certainly gotten a few but i'm just thinking generally speaking if we're trying to also scam emails i mean i guess the i don't know why i'm like rooting for the scammers now like how can we do this better but it's like i guess the problem is in order to do a phishing or scam operation you have to send it out to probably millions of possible addresses just to get down to 10 people who might respond um and so it has to be so broad in general that there's no way to really tailor it like if you were just trying to scam one person you could probably make it more convincing than what you have to do for the for the sort of like math to work out and again i don't know i'm not rooting for these people but i'm just trying to understand it i guess yeah although there is

something and we should wrap up the show here but i think there's also something magical about a wrong number i mean it's something that is just like a legit wrong number interaction it's something that we grew up with with landlines all the time and you always do get that sort of maybe you don't always but it's easy to kind of get that oh wonder like just that sliding doors feeling of missed connections like who is that in the world what are they looking for what's the story there and so getting a legit wrong number that's why when i get a on the occasion that i get a wrong number on my phone which again with so many scam calls lately i don't even really pick up numbers i don't recognize but there was a time when i would and then i would say oh no i'm sorry you have the wrong number and the son of a gun on the other end would hang up on you without even saying oh sorry or thanks the gall i would steam about it all day are you kidding me you can't say oh sorry you're you called my phone mother tutor yeah mother tutor how about you know who that is i was gonna swear you probably couldn't tell i was going to swear there but then i pulled it back

i the equivalent of that to me also is you let someone in traffic and they don't wait don't even and get me started like i mean is it that hard to show a little i showed some human decency to you you're not going to show the decency back come on i did that i did somebody i did somebody a huge

solid yes so they had to cross a couple of lanes of traffic i could just sort of tell their left blinker on but they needed to cross a couple of lanes they could have taken a left into the empty lane to my left but i just had a feeling they needed to be in my lane so i stopped short and made sure i let them in in their jeep i didn't even i i didn't get shit for that man i didn't get shit really frustrating ended up swearing anyway uh-huh i didn't get toots for that man

i didn't get toots you really got toots on the brain before we started the show i said something and you misheard it and you thought i was referencing farts and then a little bit into the show you're referencing first i was just making a dumb joke you made a joke about farts then into the show you mentioned it earlier in the show you kind of made a passing reference now you just said toots are you i mean are you doing okay did you eat something did you have a

bunch of pho what's going on yeah for sure i got an email from somebody who um said uh actually i i'm not gonna read the whole thing because this goes back to a conversation we had um a while back now but i gotta i i think i might i might be responsible for bringing one more listener on board with my poop talk.

Because I get a note from Eugene who says, first time listener and not the last. My girlfriend sent me episode 3608 and said, I'd relate to your post-pho toilet call. I have the same issue with him. I basically have a 30-minute window to get to a bathroom. That's what it is for me, too. So, yeah. So, Eugene heard my disgusting story of bodily function and said, that was the first show I heard. But it won't be the last because we are brothers on the throne. There are dozens of us. Exactly. Dozens!

All right. That's going to do it for today's show. We've been going long the last couple days, my friend. I know. That's good. Like 25 quibbies. I know. You know what that sounds like?

You know I'm cutting out like the first 45 minutes, right? Because that's where all of the mistakes were.

The show's still going to come in a good hour plus.

It's going to be weird when it starts with the top story sounder.

That exhalation is because we started doing this new podcast associated with LiveWire called The Best News Podcast, which I actually think is a pretty fun listen. It's kind of my attempt. Well, it's the distributor's attempt for us to create a new podcast, and it's my response by TPTLing it up a little bit. It's kind of me and Elena chatting. But it's funny because all the powers that be and the people at various levels on the LiveWire side and the distributor side, everyone's like, can we try to make this 13 minutes? And I'm like, why? And they're like, well, those are the listening trends. And I'm like, they probably are. I'm not like, look, TV tell is not exactly burning up the charts. But as we as this as this episode enters, you know, our like one hour and 40 minute territory or wherever we're at. I can't count very well. I guess we're actually. What is this? Yeah. Hour 41 or so. Like, I just laugh thinking about the powers that be wanting the TV or the live wire podcast to be more like 12 minutes.

Are you kidding me? I make more mistakes in 13 minutes than you will in an entire season, LiveWire. We're just getting started here.

I know. Well, that's the thing. And I try to express to them is like, look, you never know. Now, maybe an hour and 40 minutes is excessive. I don't know how many people make it to the end of this. But it's surprising to me how often something that we mentioned at minute 57 is what resonated with someone. And so to me, it's like the more minutes you do, the more possible points of resonation of resounding. No. Resignation is is really kind of, you know, how we feel by Friday. Like we're just resigned to this being thing. But resonance, maybe that's what I'm looking for. I feel like the more possible moments of resonance there are, the more minutes you do. And so that's just kind of I don't know. That feels like our approach to it. And, well, here we are, however many years later, still doing it. So I guess there's some merit to that theory. Okay. That is going to do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening, everyone. We'll be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. So please do join us for that. Until then, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

I went to Ross for less. Anybody been to this nightmare? i walked into ross i thought i walked into downtown beirut i thought a bomb went off at this store everything's on the floor power out