Muse

You've been listening to a Glistening Goose podcast, co-produced by Jingle Jangle Media, Inflatable Jukebox Productions, The New York Times, and Splunkz, your one-stop shop for pistachio nuts and swimming trunks. The podcast was produced by me and Ahara Minara. Executive produced by Maria Gronzinski, Jack Goulash, and Peter McTeter-Totter. Additional reporting by Laura Panerni. Our editor is Skye Ben Shugan. Our deputy editor is Kylie Sassafras. Bowles editor is Noah Elefante. Constance editor, Bison Hodgepodge. Executive editor, Bill Fist. Executive associate, associate executive is Mary Lou. Sound production, Sam Bly. Audio production by Hester Lestrange. Production production by Bofi Fennell Harrington. Magic tricks performed by Zamo the Great. Original music for this episode is provided by Young Kong. Next week on The Secret Rabbi, how much lettuce is too much lettuce?

i've seen it coming for years i've worried about it i hoped with all my heart i wouldn't

experience it i wouldn't see it but it's now here chips and dips chips and dips i love chips and

dips that's a that's a no for me dog you know being in prison i have uh finally decided to start my first novel uh started it two weeks ago it is uh christine by stephen king mom

It's not real. It's a jib jab.

You know, I just came here to hit dingers and have a good time. That's about it.

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

Somehow, hot break feels good in a place like this.

My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. Oh, la, la. Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where we are looking at a mixed bag today on the weather front, but there's nothing mixed about how great this episode of TVTL is going to be. It's going to be amazing. I can just feel it. Got a lot of energy today, personal energy. I have kind of a lot going on today. Tonight I'll be at the Schnitz, the Arlene Schnitzer Auditorium here in Portland interviewing Fran Leibovitz. And what I do, so like last night I was feeling growing anxiety about the various plates I'm spinning today and tomorrow. Tomorrow night we'll be doing Live Wire at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland. So I have like a stress response, which is to get sleepy. so what i do is i go to bed like comically early i think i went to bed at like eight then i wake up comically early because even i can't sleep for more than like 14 hours and then i wake up super duper early and then i am ready to go and that is that's where you that's where we've all arrived together this morning is luke has been up for five hours and is just bouncing off the walls and ready to do this thing here at episode 3621 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. I've also been carefully monitoring a pet situation across the pond, as they say, with Luke the rescue mongrel at a shelter outside of London. And we do have a bit of an update.

I'll say, what's up, dog?

As to what's going on with him and whether or not I need to fly to England this weekend to get him. Also, I was enjoying some television last night, and I'd like to tell you about it today on the program.

I love television. I've got to have that thing on 24-7. I love the patter.

So we'll get into that. And then, speaking of television, the voice, the original voice of Bender from Futurama, John DiMaggio, says he's not going to join the reboot on Hulu because they don't pay the voiceover talent enough or enough for his liking. Don't you wish you were flawless like me? A towering inferno of physical perfection? So we'll talk Futurama, voiceover, and all of that coming up. With the help of this young man, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. There's one thing we all know about him.

For one thing, I have no shame before another mortal. All my shame is between myself and Christ

That is just something we all know about him He's Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now From the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington Good morning my friend

Good morning, I got an email about that drop yesterday That really Really sent me on a journey The email came from long time listener Lloyd This is not Pizza Lloyd This is Other Lloyd We have two Lloyds Yeah I don't know if Other Lloyd likes to be called Other Lloyd Hi Lloyd Hey Lloyd Hey Lloyd, um, Todd and the other Lloyd Um

That's right. Todd and the other Lloyd. But Lloyd sent in an email saying, and this is an email I kind of read while I was just kind of on the go yesterday. And it said, hey, I think that might be LBJ from a phone recording in the 60s. And I immediately was like, no, that's that's not LBJ. But then I couldn't shake it. You know, like I was like, wait, maybe I'm being too quick to dismiss. And I didn't have the drop on me. And so for, I don't know, the next hour or so as I'm, you know, running errands, I'm thinking like, am I wrong to dismiss that? Could that be LBJ? We, of course, have played other like kind of body tape of LBJ talking about his trousers and whatnot. But I was like, but that's not his voice. But it was just one of those things I let a little bit of doubt creep in or open mindedness. This is why I'm against open mindedness. First thought. Right. Best thought. You're wrong, Lloyd. How dare you? Shut it down.

Shut it down. I do love that audio tape of LBJ ordering some pants from the Hager Pants Company where he's actually talking to whatever his name is, Hager, the son of the guy, I think, who owns the company. And, again, we've played it many times on the show. We probably don't have to play all of it, but I'm sorry. You've opened this door, Andrew, and now I aim to charge right through it. This is President Lyndon Johnson explaining how he needs his pants. He's, like, calling from the Oval Office. That's why this was recorded. Take a little listen to this. Hello?

Hello. Mr. Hager? Yes, it's Joe Hager. Joe, is your father the one that makes clothes? Yes, sir. We're all together. You all made me some real lightweight slacks that he just made up on his own, sent to me three or four months ago. It's kind of a light brown and a light green, rather soft green and soft brown. Now, I need about six pairs for summer wear.

I need about six pairs to wear around in the evening when I come in from work. Did we talk about this the last time we played this tape? I mean, he's discussing Tonight Pants, Andrew. Yeah, that's a good point.

I don't know if we talked about that angle of it. I feel like we buried it.

How are your new Tonight Pants going, the ones that you attempted to break in recently?

I'm still wearing them. I told you that everything is comfortable about them except for the waist is a little bit tight. I mean, it's not tight if I were wearing these outside as regular pants. But for Tonight Pants, I'd like things to be a little bit looser. So I have been contemplating. Listen to this. I've been contemplating letting them out myself. I noticed that they fasten with a button and the button has a little I could probably move that button by about a half an inch and give myself an extra half an inch of comfort. And then they'd be kind of the perfect tonight pants. As of right now, I sometimes wear them when I'm feeling like fancy at home. And then other times I go back to my other tonight pants, which are just like just so ratty at this point.

have you considered calling the son of the president of the company and ordering six to eight pairs of those pants to your exact specifications it would be amazing if i

went to a tailor and had some pants let out so that i could wear them at night while watching futurama that would be an amazing move all right we're just going to play the part up until he

talks about his nuts because that's to me still some of the funniest audio that's ever existed a U.S. president talking about basically moose knuckles that are happening because of his pants.

And I can send you a pair. I want them a half inch larger in the waist than they were before, except I want two or three inches of stuff left back in there so I can take them up. I vary 10 to 15 pounds a month.

I mean, I don't want to get into body shaming Lyndon Johnson, but that's a pretty big swing. 15 pounds a month. that's like like you know up or down 15 pounds is that's all that's a lot of movement yeah for a person like that's like you're a ufc fighter trying to make weight yeah like you naturally fight at heavyweight but you're trying to get down to middle and so you got to lose 15 pounds like uh that's that's i think that's fairly unusual for someone that's clearly lyndon johnson wasn't like trying to lose weight or gain weight he was just living his life as president of the united

states that would explain the presidential garbage bags that he would sometimes wear

while jogging those yeah he's spitting sometimes you'd find him spitting into a cup while he was

on a speaker phone call with khrushchev yeah so uh leave me at least two and a half three inches in the back where i can let them out or take them up and put it make these a half inch bigger in the waist make the pockets at least an inch longer money my money and my knife everything fall out

also the president at this time was carrying a knife

just think about that why did lyndon johnson the last president to carry a knife i mean that's a real probably lyndon johnson right yeah i mean i mean

George W. Bush really liked to cosplay as a Texan Like I could maybe see him Well if he was out on Crawford Yeah exactly

I don't see George W. Bush actually Needing to get his pockets Customized So his knife didn't fall Also his money It's also funny to me that the president Do you think that the current I guess we're talking about Joe Biden Is the current president But I mean how many presidents back Do we have to go Before you hit the last president To actually carry money

Biden, I have this on good authority Biden has one big Bitcoin That he always carries around with him In his left pocket, I believe Look forward to the next press conference You can sort of see the outline

But I mean, think about it Does the President of the United States Carry money with them? What would they ever use the money for? Everything is paid for They don't purchase anything While they're the President That I can think of Barack Obama's buying gifts for his family He's probably on Amazon I think he has an Amazon account probably prime i mean um oh he's fancy about that but like as far as the day-to-day existence of being the u.s president i can't imagine a scenario where you have to go into your pocket and find

cash i can see photo ops you're in like a little bakery in new hampshire during the primary for photo ops so you pull out a role but the weird thing about that question is not to get too far away from the point here is um nobody really carries cash anymore like i like to carry cash We've talked about that. But for the most part, like there's something to me even more pedestrian about a president carrying a debit card, you know, like cash would actually be kind of like I feel like I want to use the word regal. And that's not the right word there. But cash, there's something maybe even classy about it. Or, yeah, of course, I always have a little cash on me, you know, like a billfold or what have you. But to actually just be like, here's my Bank of America debit card. Well, that's a great question. Thank you, Mr. Biden.

Do we think Joe Biden has a debit card at this point?

I feel like yes. But you're right. He's at the 7-Eleven. He's at the 7-Eleven. And he wants to pay for his – he's getting two Gatorades, one for the way to the gym, one after the gym. And he doesn't – because of the new sugar tax, he doesn't have quite enough cash to pay for it. So he has to fish out his debit card.

But it's one of those things where if the charge is under $5, it's a 25-cent charge. Right, and he doesn't like that. He was just trying to get over $5 anyway to not have to pay the service fee.

Because Jill hates that, like service fees. Actually, that is a thing. That's a dynamic in our relationship. Genevieve just hates service fees so much. And we've talked about it. We can go to the Eagles and put $20 down and pull tabs for a half hour and know we're not going to win $20 back, but that's just the cost of doing business. But if there's like a $1 fee to use an ATM, we will drive across town to find a different ATM.

I am exactly the same way. The things that stress me out unduly when it comes to, you know, incurring the costs are ATM fees. I incur them, but it kills me. In fact, I have this one janky online bank account that I signed up for at some point. and it's regularly fails me like i'll try to get some money out of it and it'll just be like turned off for no reason and then you can't get a hold of anyone because it's i mean it's at the it's barely a bank it's called axos i would definitely not recommend it but the one thing is they reimburse you for all atm fees because they're not they don't have any locations you know so like they don't have there's no axos atm atm so i stopped myself and so i i keep being like i gotta get rid of this bs card but i keep hanging on to it because it feels like there's something emotionally calming for me to be like getting money out of a 7-eleven atm which like some of those places are just the worst as far as the service fees and just know that i'm actually not incurring a service fee i like that the other is um uh room service at a hotel or stuff from the hotel minibar yeah i i feel like things in the hotel minibar probably cost it's probably one thousand dollars for a tube of pringles for like a half of a tube of pringles i've never i've never even touched like those hard alcohol like if you're in kind of a fancy hotel and they'll have like a little minibar where it's got like a bottle of gray goose and but it's like you know it's on some pressure sensitive pad or whatever i don't even want to look at that stuff in the in the possibility that in looking at it it will vibrate and move and then they will charge me four thousand dollars for that tiny airplane bottle of gray goose i know i've said this before but there's

a one more category or one more item i would add to that category except it's so antiquated now but remember growing up on the occasion maybe like being uh well maybe growing up and being in a hotel room with our parents or being a young adult.

and just like never, never make a long-distance phone call from the hotel phone. My God. Oh, my God. And so I remember, again, I don't know why I would be in a hotel at an old enough age that I'd be there by myself but a young enough age that I'd still need my parents' help for things. All I remember is my dad had some sort of a credit card number that I had written down on a piece of paper that I kept in my wallet, and you had to punch in a bunch of numbers before you made a phone call. It wasn't one of those William Shatner things. Remember those like dial 6212122, then the number, then nine, then the number again, then type in Shatner and you will save five cents on the long distance call anytime and weekends. So it wasn't one of those. It was like a special credit card number that was reserved for I feel like it was reserved for making long distance phone calls in hotel rooms. But clearly I got something wrong on that.

i had an actual experience with that many years ago so you're saying what like who would make a long distance phone call from a hotel room well i had um i was a producer you know conservative talk radio producer uh it was like my first full-time job out of college and i worked for this guy named peter weisbach and we were broadcasting from the state legislature the washington state legislature in olympia and the thing the dynamic between me and weisbach was him wanting me to get all of these guests to come on the show who were often people he politically disagreed with he wanted to get he had made his mark in portland actually by getting a local like city council person to walk out of an interview with him that was and he was convinced that that was what had that was what had really like kind of created popularity for him in portland so now he was in seattle and he really wanted that to happen again the problem was the people that he was constantly criticizing on the radio didn't want to come be on his show and get criticized more right so so my job was to endlessly disappoint him by telling him no i cannot get christine gregoire or whoever to come talk to you or ron sims just throw a couple of real uh specific seattle references from the late 90s but we were down at the washington state legislature and it was this thing where i was just supposed to be like hitting the phones so hard and trying to get uh you know whoever it was on well i got up really early one day and i was at the hotel and somehow there was something where even though i was calling people within olympia this was the kind of hotel i think it was called the carriage house we were basically living in this hotel for like four months so we would stay there four days a week or something um and somehow in i made like you know how it is producing and booking you'll just call you'll look you'll like make a hundred phone calls in a two-hour period and i was just doing that not realizing that every one of those calls was being charged i don't even know if they were long distance it was just dialing out at this hotel was there was some crazy charge that they had built in so maybe even local calls like were were being charged all i remember is this guy wiseback going like when we checked out of the hotel going like what in the world did you do i had run up i want to say it was like six hundred dollars in calls from this hotel room on this one morning and i was i was like i guess i didn't realize that that there was a fee associated with this to that degree or whatever and i think he paid it because he kind of didn't want to he didn't want to make waves at the radio station because i think our ratings were terrible which would become a theme for me with the various radio shows i worked on but i just remember his look of just absolute and total disappointment in me which again was pretty much the default setting i've never i've never well is it yeah that's probably i've never let someone down

more regularly in an employment environment than with that dude you have at least two stories in

your arsenal of times that a phone bill came and you were oh yes including the time you were calling

certain 900 numbers as a kid what if i had been calling one 900 numbers from my hotel room as a

23 year old it's a big tent we're trying to get as many people on the show as possible um i mean this idea that you said earlier too like maybe not even long distance but local but it's like it's hard for me to even wrap my mind around what was long distance because you didn't have to be calling you know london for it to be long distance it could be a few counties away was long distance right and so that was a thing for us growing up like we needed to know we needed to know in advance if a number was long distance or not. And then I guess if it was, you had to dial one before it. Am I correct on that?

Right. But I don't understand why that was the case at hotels, that they were notoriously, notoriously usurious with their phone calling fees. Because, I mean, I guess it was just a... was it it was a profit thing for them like they were like these people are kind of stuck and of course we're talking pre-cell phone era yeah so it just was this it was a thing you knew growing up growing up when you and i grew up andrew that if you were going to pick up a telephone in a hotel room and try to call anywhere past the front desk it was going to be really expensive

and i wonder why that was the case i had a hard hit of nostalgia yesterday um genevieve had murder She wrote on in the room I was playing my boop boop So I don't remember I'm trying to remember what the plot was I think we just had it rolling for several episodes Had there been a murder? I know somebody was writing about something Yes, somebody was writing about a homicide I think Homicide, she typed That's been a show title, right? Probably I'm writing it down anyway Oh, we have our mystery show to talk about too In Top Stories But there was just a moment she was on a phone. She actually might have even been in a hotel or or some sort of a bed and breakfast or something. And Jessica Fletcher was on a phone and it was a powder blue phone. But it was just like that old school handset, you know, like I could I could feel the handset, like kind of the heavy kind. You know, I could feel the weight in my hand just watching watching her kind of I don't know, cradle that thing between her shoulder and her ear or whatever she whatever her move was. And I suddenly was like overwhelmed with this feeling of wanting that feeling again One thing that my friend Paulie always wanted to do And I don't know if he ever really had an opportunity to do this But a dream of his when we were in high school Was to someday get so angry at a payphone That he could take the handset and do that thing that they do in movies Where you kind of nail the earpiece Like when you go to hang up But you like kind of slam it several times into the phone base Because you're so angry i don't know maybe at your bookie or your ex-wife or something there's a hundred percent chance dustin hoffman has done that in a movie exactly exactly like 19 you know 1983 dustin hoffman

somewhere desperate outside of like you know the port authority and he's trying to get through to someone and then he's just slamming the top of the receiver into the thing in the phone booth

and one of the greatest um tragedies of life i think of all of life is that paul giamatti wasn't quite old enough to have that scene because I could really see that working too, but he's part of the cell phone generation.

Yeah, exactly.

I could really use a win here. My favorite fake quote.

You thought we were done with this tape, Andrew, but we are not, my friend.

The crotch down where your nuts hang is always a little too tight. So when you make them up, give me an inch that I can let out there because they cut me. They're just like riding a wire fence. These are almost the best that I've had anywhere in the United States. But when I gain a little weight, they cut me under there. So, believe me, you never do have much margin there. Let's see if you can't believe me about an inch from where the zipper ends. Oh, God. Around under my, back to my bunghole.

I love it. That tape never, never lets me down. Also, he's pulling a real Nick Kroll there, right? Oh, no, that's a John Mulaney.

Oh, well, he just lets it rip, though. I think the John Mulaney joke is you try to, like, you know, you and I do this on the show a lot. I try to cut it out. I do the same for you, too. I have a rule. You know, we should talk about this. You were doing some shows in my studio, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago. And I think you did something like that. We both do it all the time. We're men of a certain age. We'll be talking. We're drinking coffee. Then we kind of do that as we kind of stifle a burp or something. And when I do that, I will take a little note on my notepad in front of me here and I will I'll try to cut it out later or maybe like kind of clean it up a little bit. And then I figure if I'm doing that for myself, if I notice that you do it, I should do it for you, too, just as a courtesy. That's very thoughtful. That's what I thought. But then the other day you were sitting across from me and I think I think that was the move. I think that you maybe stifled a burp or something like that. And I wrote down a little time code on my notepad. And I thought I saw your eyes note that I was writing a time code down. And I wondered if I got in your head like that was a passive aggressive way of being like, oh, Luke burps again. Luke burp bang? Do you even remember that? Luke burp bang? Do you even remember that? Do you have any idea what I'm talking about? Have you ever been sitting in my studio and thinking like, I don't need Walsh writing down time codes when I make a little noise or something like I'm a therapist. Like, suddenly I'm taking notes.

Fifty-three minutes in, subject, stifled a burp unconvincingly.

Let's return to that later.

Yeah, worth returning to. No, I didn't. I did not – I don't remember that happening, and I don't remember having a thought of – I mean, that seems like a courtesy. Like I would appreciate that. That's very thoughtfully because it's just more work for you to also go in and have to deal with my digestive situation. I do feel lucky that for whatever reason, my body does not – I'm not a real burpy person. Just for whatever reason The way my body processes things Is that's not the issue Which I feel grateful for Because you know That'd be a hassle I mean I certainly have stifled a burp or two on the show And also probably even actually burped But like it's not my Again it's just not like a constant thing that I'm fighting Which is great because our good friend Sean DeTore Of course famously on the show Had what he called the repeats And it was a whole thing And I'm glad that I don't think you or I Andrew

have to deal with that so that's kind of not so much although i will say like we've been doing this for a long time and i don't remember having it so much on my mind in the early days of like if i drink this coffee then i'm going to have one of those situations you know i do think that like from the from every now and then our throat just like needing to be cleared you uh having to invest in a um in a mute button um for the road for the road like we are we are not the spring chickens

we were when we started this in our 30s no we are not andrew and i'll tell you that mute button that i bring on the road now that was your recommendation has changed my life but it has also made it so that i am i'm incapable of of really of broadcasting in a situation where i don't have the ability to mute myself constantly so like when i'm at your house it's a little harder for me at times because there's two microphones that are on so even if i had a mute button on mine it would be kind of

moot even if i had a moot button show title that's funny um because your mic would still

be on so if i like mute my my mic and then i clear my throat like i just so you have to just kind of go with it and just like try to do it either quietly or not do it but i am just in this room i'm constantly constantly muting and unmuting myself now that now when i'm on the road I'm constantly muting and unmuting myself But it's become a tick Like it's become a bit of a crutch for me now Which when I don't have it Makes it even harder for me to do this job Which has a low degree of difficulty honestly Like I don't know why I'm making it harder on myself But I am

I call it the chapstick effect Because I think this is true right There's at least a rumor that If you start using chapstick too much You become dependent on the chapstick Do you know about this?

I think I suffered through that when I was a kid. I was obsessed with chapstick, and I also always had chapped lips. And I feel like I don't have chapped lips anymore as an adult.

Because you don't use it. Yeah, I think your body gets so used to the outside help of moisture. The outside help of moisture. I'm going to write a philosophy book.

The outside help of moisture. All right, let's take a quick break, and then when we come back, an update on Luke the dog, an update on what we're watching on TV, and maybe some emails and V-mails even. Here on TBTL Stay with us I just let out a tremendous rattle With a burp A burp Not the other one With my mic muted Andrew As if I had manifested that By bragging that I don't actually have to burp that often

It was a real Was it Oh not Homer Homer gives some good burps, but it's actually his drunk friend. Barney. Barney. That's Barney's full move.

That's the epitome of a rattle right there, right? Yes, exactly. That was what I just did. My lips turned into like a wavy cartoon. We got to thank some donors of the day. These are the people that are making today's episode possible with their financial support. People like Erica Peterson of Fairfax, California. Aha. Twist ending. I thought we were going with Canada. I don't know if I know where Fairfax is. I always think of Fairfax in Virginia.

Oh, right. Fairfax, Virginia. Why did I think Halifax, maybe? I'm thinking of Halifax. Oh, my goodness. Somebody burp so we forget this conversation.

We'll cut all this out. Thanks, Erica. Also, thanks to Jeremiah Zimmerman in Nashville, Tennessee.

Douglas Smiley is in Seattle, Washington. But where in Seattle, Washington? Which way to turn to wave at you?

Have you ever actually Because I know that's just become this little thing That we're now joking about What direction you have to wave to Are you really doing it Or are you just kind of playing Sort of play acting I have not waved today yet But I did In other days you have actually done it though

When I say I'm facing I was waving over the top of definitive audio Yes I was actually waving Also there's audio of me I think last week Or a couple weeks ago when we first started doing this I mean I actually did not know where to wave And remember I stood up And literally stood up and waved in a circle I did that you could hear the Rattle of my cables Against my microphone I believe

I would just Yeah I would feel kind of misled If you were just pretending to do that When you said you were Because the couple times I've done it I've really turned in a circle And done the whole thing

The only thing I'm lying about Is that I'm in the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle I've never lived there I'm not even in Washington State I don't know how we even started

We're not allowed to disclose Accurately where you actually are We know where Jane Durden is though She's in Alexandria, Virginia Speaking of What is Virginia State What's Virginia's state model? I was going to say, speaking of the something state. I don't know if I know.

The fish and chip state?

Virginia? I don't know. I'm just throwing it out there. The Allen Iverson state? The Michael Vick state? I'm just naming top athletes who have come out of Virginia. I'm guessing it has something to do with the early time of this country. Virginia.

It's different than a motto, though, right? Like, I don't know how to look this up. What do you even call what we're trying to do? Like, New Hampshire is the Granite State, but that's not its motto.

Right, and Washington is the Evergreen State. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah, it's nickname. I guess Virginia State nickname. Okay, yeah, nickname is good. That's what we're looking for. Okay, Virginia State nickname is the... Old Dominion. Old Dominion. Hmm. I don't know about that. I know that's a university. Word dominion gives me a bad feeling considering, you know, just the history of this country. I don't know. It's also very biblical. You know, like it talks in Genesis, I think, about Adam and Eve being given dominion over the animals of the land.

There's something about this is not helpful to you or the donors of the day, but there's something about the line now because SNL broke me. I don't know about that. There's the skit where it's old people trying to use the Amazon Echo device, but they never can remember the proper trigger name for it. So in this skit is a bunch of old people. The idea is Amazon has now created one for old people where you can basically call it anything with an A name, like, hey, Alexander. But they're so old that they're just like they don't believe the information that the device is then giving them. So there's a montage of them just saying, like, I don't know about that. I'm always that line. I don't know about that. Like, just like saying that to a straightforward fact always just makes me laugh.

Old Dominion, that nickname, was earned by the loyalty of Virginia to the royalist cause during the Civil War. So it sounds like Virginia was for at least a time Kind of, you know, basically sticking with the British And so that is why it was And also I'm sure the name Virginia relates back to some British royalty maybe Was there like a, not a Queen Virginia But that just, Virginia sounds like it was probably a name that was in honor of something going on back in Britain Who knows

Another nickname for Virginia, I believe we're on the same page here Is the Mother of Presidents because it's the birthplace of eight U.S. presidents. I'm doing the John Mulaney burp thing right now, by the way. I can't cut that out. Well, let me just get back to— But wouldn't Ohio have more?

I don't know. I don't know. Ask Jane Durden in Alexandria. Thank you, Jane, for the support. Also, thanks to Jeffrey Bettinal in Port Townsend, Washington. The small maritime village of— I'm going to be in Port Townsend this summer, helping out with the— There's a really great organization there called the Jefferson County Land Trust. And for the last couple of years, I've been hosting this kind of fundraiser for them virtually. But this year it's going to be in real life and I'm going to get to go back to Port Townsend and I'm very excited about it. Thanks also to Scott Decay in Clayton, Washington. Scott, thank you very much for keeping the show going. thanks to all of our donors of the day scott jeffrey jane douglas jeremiah and erica we absolutely would not uh be here without you doing the program

hello and welcome to top story do you want an update ohio has seven is home to seven presidents or birthplace of seven presidents, I should say. Virginia has the most with eight. Oh, just barely. Also, I mean, when did it get that name?

That's a good point.

Because when was the last one? Yeah. I wonder if Ohio has been closing the gap. And if Ohio, which is Ohio is a is like this. Isn't Ohio like maybe the fifth most populous state or something in America? Like Ohio is surprisingly like it has a lot of people living in it for a state that's not California or Texas. or often thought about as being as populous or as populated as it is?

Yeah, you know, I'm not sure about that. I don't know about that. You might be right, but I don't know about that. It looks like Woodrow Wilson was the most contemporary president out of Virginia. So I'm looking up the years here. That's 1913 to 1921. And then Warren Harding, it looks like, is the latest president out of Ohio, which that would have been 1923. So, oh, my gosh, this is neck and neck. This is neck and neck. But Ohio actually wins with Hardin having been the most recent president from that state. So now Ohio just needs to make more presidents. But then I think about the politics that might be coming from there, and maybe I think, eh, just chill out.

It really depends on what part of Ohio we're talking about.

Yeah, exactly.

Only accepting presidential candidates from Oregon or California or New York State. Yes. Basically not Staten Island, though. Everywhere else it's not Staten Island. Quick update on Luke the dog. So I keep having this thing happen. If you missed yesterday's show, there's a dog over in England at an animal shelter who they had a Valentine's Day party for the dog trying to get some people to come by and adopt him because he's been there for, like, around 200 days which is way longer the average time for a dog to be at this shelter before they get adopted is around 30 or 35 days so there's something kind of up with luke the dog and what it is is that he's shy and he's a little shy around other dogs i think so it's a lot of people probably come take a look at him but because they have dogs or cats at home or something it's just not a good fit but the pictures of luke the dog wearing a handkerchief that said free kisses and waiting at his party that no one came to almost tore my heart into two pieces in my chest. And I figured that the internet would do its thing and that after the story kind of made the rounds that he'd be adopted by the time I woke up here in Portland. And I was very surprised yesterday to go to the website and see that among all the different dogs they list, and many of them they say reserved, Luke was still not reserved. And then I went this morning to the website, and he is still not reserved. That seems so weird. But see, here's the thing. I went to the Kent Online news site. Kent Online, news you can trust. I think this Better See shelter is in an area called Kent, actually, which is near-ish to London. Our listeners in the UK, it must just be brutal for them to hear us try to describe, like, UK geography. But anyway, from the Kent Online News You Can Trust, Battersea dog Luke the mongrel looking for a new home after spending Valentine's Day alone. Britain's loneliest dog could soon find a forever home after people rushed to adopt him following a Valentine's Day spent alone. Luke has been waiting for more than 200 days, but has had a rush of people looking to adopt him after an appeal. So I don't know Either they need to really update the website At Battersea Or maybe it's There's a waiting period I just want to see him go pending I just want to see that he's Somebody is Somebody is adopting him But it sounds like at least if The Kent Online News is to be believed This was the only place I could find a reference to this If people really are lining up to adopt him Then that's great It means I don't have to go to London For one thing

The one problem is you can't trust that newspaper

Oh, man.

Sorry.

Let's just marinate in that for a second. We're picking up some hop-ons, Andrew. I've had listeners, I think, tweeting at me of dogs they want me to pick up for them if I end up going over there.

You just come back with like – you come back on a plane full of animals. Exactly. A dog plane where it's just me and then hundreds. For some reason, there are giraffes on there. There are snakes. It just got out of control at some point.

But I know, I mean, we were talking about You were eyeing a few dogs there That, again, if I was going to fly over It's like, bring one back And then, like I said, listeners Were also putting in orders So it sounds like, to me He's going to get adopted pretty soon Yeah, definitely I don't know what the lag is with the website But I am checking it about every hour For what that's worth

They went viral internationally like I'm sure they are overwhelmed and now it's probably a mad. This is one of those things where my guess is the Internet did its thing or is doing its thing, as you say. But then also that can be kind of a double edged sword. Right. It went from not enough attention to too much attention. I mean, sometimes you just can't you can't handle it when all of the attention of the world is on you. So then I'm not updating the Web site. That's probably kind of far down there down on their list right now. They might just be trying to, like, just handle all the people who are calling them up trying to get this dog to America.

Also, note to other animal shelters, the whole we threw a party for this animal and no one came is a very, very strong narrative. Yeah. Like, I mean, I'm assuming that this really happened. They really did have this party and really no one came. But, wow, I mean, I could see the argument for just making that the standard story on all of this. Sure, yeah, right.

Just, like, do that for every single—just make up—just moon landing it. Just make up a fake party and some photo ops for every single one of those dogs on your roster at a party where nobody showed up.

You could adopt out, like, a blind cobra with one fang. If you just tied a little—if you just tied a little kerchief around him and you named him Slinky and you said no one came to Slinky's adoption party and then he's just sitting there, like, I'd adopt that cobra.

Yeah. Would you adopt a cobra with two fangs over one fang? See, I'm scared of snakes, so I don't want any snakes. Yeah, I guess actually I'd go no fangs if I had my choice. Exactly. I really have a problem with snakes. Like, I've never, you know, been super close to a snake. I feel like maybe as a kid there's always some opportunity where you're on a field trip or something.

Yeah, like at the science, at the zoo or the science center, you get to, like, hold a boa constrictor or something.

Which, I don't know. I doubt I ever held one. I'm sure I, like, touched one really quickly with my finger and then ran away. But I see snakes on TV. It really wigs me out. I think everything that I was maybe once mildly afraid of, I am now terrified of. Heights comes to mind. Talking on podcasts. Those things. So, like, when I see a snake on TV now, I have almost a visceral reaction to it. Like, I cannot handle it.

I think that the scariest expression of snake is swimming snake. Boo! Yeah. That's because they're really good at swimming snake in the bed, snake in the bed. Okay, snake in the bed is not great, but imagine you're swimming and you look over and you realize that a cobra is swimming toward you because they're extremely efficient swimmers, which also just feels like, like, stay on land, guys, we should be safe from you. you know what i've gotten this is this is gonna threaten to derail the show even further and not get us to our actual story plan but i got really into the other day watching aggressive hippo videos because it is wild hippos are terrifying i don't really fully understand how hippos got filed in the category of adorable maybe because like a baby hippo is actually pretty cute they're just kind of so ungainly but yet adorable but like adult hippos are terrifying i think i just happened to see one video of like you know some folks in i think probably like africa on like a safari where they're in a motorboat and they're just kind of zooming along and someone's videotaping with their camera and then out of the water leaps a hippo that's chasing the boat and it's wild Because, I mean, hippos are so fast and they don't swim. They run along the bottom of the riverbed and then just jump out when they want to. But like this, the guide, the person running the motor, it's just like a little tiny outboard motor. And I've been on enough boats where the outboard motor gives out that I'm like, I'm rooting so hard for this outboard motor to keep working because it's what's standing between everyone in the boat dying and, you know, getting to survive. So from there, I was just like kind of watching all these like National Geographic videos on YouTube about hippos and their aggressiveness. And they are terrifying. Why does anybody leave their house?

Like when you think about it, right? You get a house. Just stay there. Stay away from the hippos and the snakes.

And more time to watch television like the show Murderville, Andrew, which did you catch up on that?

I didn't catch up on the whole series. You know, this is a Netflix series So I assume they dropped all six or eight episodes at once But I've only watched the first two so far It's a really interesting premise So set it up Because when I heard there was a show called Murderville I just thought, I don't know I think I knew it was a comedy But I just thought it was, I don't know I thought like Brooklyn Nine-Nine vibes or something But it's a, no, it's a whole different thing Yeah, I don't even love the name Because there's so much, you know, making a murder or our favorite murderers or murderinos or that word is just and I say this as somebody who consumes a lot of true crime content and yet I just think naming something murderville is kind of like okay we get it um but the show I actually think is really interesting it's an adaptation of a BBC

show I think I saw that in the credits I meant to look up the original show most of the good

things we have on American television are just something that we basically ripped off from the brits but um so basically it is a will arnett plays a kind of a silly uh police detective named terry seattle which of course it's already going to draw me in his name is terry seattle and i believe he says in one of the early episodes and no i've never been i was gonna which is which is pretty funny but um he so he's a police detective and he has to solve a crime every episode and he's given a new partner every episode to try to solve this crime now everyone on the show all of the other people that are playing police people and detectives and possible criminals and victims everyone else is working off of a script so it's a scripted kind of comedy crime who done it but the guest star the person who is there to work with terry seattle they do not have a script they are improvising as is will arnett so you have this kind of improvised thing going on within the context of a larger scripted show that's actually trying to go in a certain direction and so the guest stars um are like kumail nanjiani uh conan o'brien sharon stone marshawn lynch um uh oh phooey from uh schitt's creek um amber murphy i think might be her name i thought she is really good by the way um so anyway so that's kind of what this thing is and it's about a half hour long and at the end this is also kind of clever the person who's there improvising who has never seen the script they have to try to guess who the real murderer was and one of the things i noticed is after watching four or five episodes i was starting to play along because it's sort of like an encyclopedia brown thing where they will they will have the characters the suspects of who committed the murder actually say or do something like they write with their left hand or they mentioned their love of boats or whatever and it's actually a clue for you as the viewer that can help you try to figure out the the who really did it which was it's also kind

of a fun aspect of watching it i feel like it's a completely new thing i mean there are aspects of it that have been on television before and clearly in entertainment before because it's improv right it's basically a new stage for improv but it's also like i was thinking um escape rooms were very popular or maybe still are i don't think they're as popular now as they were when they came out like you know in the past 10 years or so but like this idea of for entertainment now we're going to go into a room and then try to collect clues and get out of it as like a something to do on your birthday or whatever like there's elements of that in this and there's improv and like it's funny you and i had different feelings and i think i'm in the minority here of comedy fans who didn't like the Middle Ditch and Schwartz improv short series which got just rave reviews and those guys are so talented and I would listen to Thomas Middle Ditch and Ben Schwartz like all the time on like Comedy Bang Bang and that is improv and like I love that I did there are a few things I love more of entertainment wise than Comedy Bang Bang and that's improv yet and why do I not like these same two entertainers on a stage without props just like pretending they're drinking tea from invisible cups and there's just like something about that format of improv that doesn't work for me but it doesn't mean I don't like improv like here you have I mentioned Brooklyn Nine-Nine before the sets kind of have a Brooklyn Nine-Nine feel to them you know like there's movement to the show it's it's different scenes also they're pulling in good cameos from other comedians as well who are who I believe are slightly more scripted or at least in on what the general plot of the of each episode is but then you just take somebody like Conan O'Brien and you don't even give him a fake name you say this is your new partner Conan O'Brien and Conan O'Brien doesn't really know where this is all going he's probably just told improv and the deal is you got to figure out who done this by the end it is I just can't think of any other show to compare this to we have we have kind of these very specific types of shows dramas comedies even dramedies you know uh um the sitcom format the the non-laugh track sitcom that we've been enjoying like reality tv obviously but what the hell is this like how did they come up with it i love it and like are there other new ideas out

there well it's like how did the people how did the people in england come up with yeah well that's true too yeah the real question but um by the way it's annie murphy not amber murphy from schitt's creek but um uh so i I had been hearing a little bit about this show, but what I kept hearing from folks was, you've got to watch the Marshawn Lynch episode. And by the third time that somebody said that to me, I was like, all right, fine. So I watched this the other night. I ended up watching almost the entire season. But I was really—I was very impressed by how good Marshawn Lynch was at this improv thing. I thought he actually was better than Conan, and you'd think just Conan O'Brien's experience in show business would set him up much better for this. i i really thought marshawn lynch did a pretty good job consider like considering that there was no script and that his job is to just react to things and try to be in the moment and you know improv through this uh i thought i thought he did pretty well how did you feel like he did

i i've only seen two so i can't compare it to the whole thing the conan one was definitely my favorite of the two i watch i watch him him and marshawn i i thought i mean first of all conan was the first one i saw and i don't know like i didn't you know i was everything was so new and novel to me with this show so i was figuring it out and like conan i just find him so delightful and also to go back to formats for a second i love conan o'brien but i don't really like the late night show format so it's like i haven't really enjoyed conan o'brien as much as i should and of course he's got that very popular podcast which i don't have time for because the levitard show just keeps on creating new shows and jamming my ear holes with it and then i feel like i'm

missing out if i'm not listening let's we promise to not jam your ear holes listeners exactly i'm

like a i have a very weird relationship with that show now that is blocking out my listening time for other things but anyway i know people love and celebrate conan and i i think he's hilarious but i don't see him i don't see him in as much stuff as i would like to so anyway i found him just to be absolutely delightful like i had belly laughs and tears at times during his marshawn i thought was fine I thought that um it got better as it went on I told you off air the other day that like my dirty little secret is I think that Marshawn's cameos are kind of overrated like I know that like I'm a Seattle Seahawks fan and I love Marshawn Lynch the person and the idea of him but like when he shows up in things like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and everybody gets giddy over it I'm kind of like okay like he's a good football player I think that maybe his cameos are a little bit overplayed i so going into that episode with that mentality i think that he did maybe slightly better than i thought he would like there were some definitely good physical comedy i think he finally made me laugh about halfway through when they were doing like just the corniest bit in the world which is the classic pretend you're a mirror bit like yes and then i i gotta say then i started to be like okay that's good that's some pretty good physical comedy one person is looking into something that who some oh and who's the comedian uh uh uh who who marchand had to pretend he was the the mirrored image of they look absolutely nothing alike i can't think of his name right now

i forget who it was anyway that was very funny the other thing that's i think pretty smart about the show is it does have a format so like kind of one of the things that always happens is the guest star has to go into a situation where they are sort of undercover in quotes and they're being fed lines through an earpiece by will arnett's character and of course the whole idea is that they have a ridiculous name and they have to basically keep saying they have to deliver all of these lines that are just like designed to make them laugh and what i really like about this show is they leave in the people breaking during the improv and i know there's like two schools of thought on that with saturday night live i know it was kind of like it's really cute when they break character because it doesn't happen all the time but then you get somebody like jimmy fallon who's always breaking character and then some people are like okay it's funny when it happens one out of ten times it's less when it happens ten out of ten times but for me on this murderville show when the guest star or will arnett or anyone is just breaking like and will arnett actually breaks a lot too like the kumail nanjiani episode is great because he is really getting to kumail and like kumail just like not being able to keep it together throughout most of the show is just I don't know why. It's just delightful to watch.

Yeah, that's one of the moments where laughter was infectious for me on the show was when Conan O'Brien is dealing with a suspect who's also – it's David Wayne, actually, who's a close magician. And he's doing close magic. And Job – you just said his name a million times. Will Arnett. Will Arnett. He's overreacting in amazement to these close magic tricks. and I mean just over the top and Conan just can't keep his shit together and I'm with you like I don't think it's inherently funny when comedians break like I think it was way overdone on SNL for like a couple of seasons when they realized that was kind of funny and I especially hate it if there's any whiff of it being inauthentic you know what I mean but just like seeing Conan I don't know.

Brian just like not be able to keep his shit together because Will Arnett is just so funny in this one moment like it just feels real to me and even like not even necessarily hilarious things but Marshawn Lynch at one point they they give him a shot of alcohol or you know stage alcohol I imagine but there's a moment where they have to do shots and he's holding it but then the real Marshawn does not know if he's supposed to drink that or not he's on a set he doesn't know what's in this glass and he just sort of looks over his shoulder at somebody and just says, wait, can I really drink this? It wasn't even necessarily funny, but it was just a nice little reminder that we're still keeping this loose. This is still just like, think of it as people on stage doing improv, only there are better sets and more kind of detailed plots, I guess.

Yeah, so I would recommend this. I think it's a really interesting structure for a show.

I have one more question about this before you move on. There is, I think, an ongoing bit. I don't know. There's a bit in the first episode where we find out that Will Arnett's partner, his his original partner on the force has has died. And so nobody it's like the trope of nobody can touch her desk and there's cobwebs and stuff all over it. But there's a quick shot of his partner's face in a frame. Is that Jennifer Aniston? Yes, it is. Jennifer Aniston. I don't know if it's a spoiler. Is there ever any connection to that or is it they just have a picture of Jennifer Aniston playing?

i think that's just the joke i mean i love that i think i've watched i haven't watched maybe the final episode but i haven't seen like i haven't seen her make a cameo maybe she shows up in the last one or something but like uh i mean like a dream sequence or something but like no it's just one of many jokes that are just i mean that's one of the that was one of the funny parts i think it's conan's episode where they're looking at um i think it was conan they're looking at the jennifer aniston character's desk which again has been untouched over the course of 13 years so it's got cobwebs it's got her half-eaten breakfast burrito it's got a rabbit in a cage but it's a skeleton and it's like you know because because will arnett's character wanted to leave it leave everything exactly so and i think conan says you could still give the rabbit food and honor the memory of your partner said you can feed those things you know yeah uh that made me laugh the other thing that conan said that really made me laugh was that he he's telling the story about being bullied and it was diane feinstein yeah i had a feeling it was gonna go with that direction the main bully yes yeah the idea of a diminutive elderly diane feinstein bullying conan o'brien really had me laughing so that's like i think kind of one end of the of the crime show spectrum which is something that's very inventive and outside the box and then maybe towards the other end you have the television show fbi on cbs andrew which we have a couple of tbtl listeners Who have been on that show Or are on that show I will admit I haven't watched a ton of FBI But something wild happened to me the other night I was I must have been watching something else And when Like I was probably watching something On an on-demand service Oh you know what So my tradition is My ritual is I will make dinner And I'll watch All In with Chris Hayes But I'll usually watch it Like on a DVR recording So it comes on the air five o'clock here in portland so at about 5 30 i start making dinner and i go to the tape and that means i can skip some commercials and whatever but then when that ends it just defaults back to whatever tv station like over the air tv station my tv's on and it just so happened that it right when whatever i was watching on demand ended it defaults back to whatever the cbs station is here in portland and it's the opening thing of fbi and you know how do i say this because again i know we have a listener connection to that show let's just say all of those procedurals that i see endless ads for during like the super bowl whether it's csi ncis fbi i it's i don't usually find myself going and seeking that kind of programming out right like it's just it's just not something that i think about much in my life and i find some of the promos for a lot of those shows to be sort of hilarious it's like ice tea solving crimes you know for the navy or something

it just feels hilarious but not something i would ever watch because i started at like minute one with this episode i got completely sucked in and yes it's a little hokey it's a little like jeremy cisco is kind of the lead fbi guy so i mean it's a procedural right a crime happens and then you spend the whole episode trying to figure out what exactly went on and like Jeremy Cisco is who was kind of like an edgy I forget what show he was in was it Six Feet Under was he the sort of no good boyfriend of someone on Six Feet Under there was a good boyfriend I think or Sisto not Cisco but I remember when I was living in LA seeing Jeremy Sisto in a like Go.

Going into the bathroom at like Ackbar in L.A. and thinking, OK, now it's happening. I'm seeing famous people now these days. He's, you know, 45 and it's kind of filled out. And he's like the guy who kind of walks around going like, get eyes on. I need eyes on that security footage. Or it's actually kind of a genius premise for a show because you've got this command center. So a crime happens. Then you have this command center where all these people are sitting at different desks and screens. And from a narrative like standpoint, it just allows them to do all this stuff that's completely impossible in real life. Like they're tracking the person who may have gone into the sex club. I need to get that security camera from third and Lexington. And then this person's like on it. And then all of a sudden you're just watching like security footage. Like you'd have to go to the store and ask the people, do you have a security camera that works? And then if you did, you have to get the footage and then put it on a thumb drive and take, you know, like there's a million things that they can do in this control room. That each one would take one to five days Normally but just so it's like It's just very addictive because you're Just like oh I want to see what happens next and you're Always grabbing this information that's like Interesting and vital or whatever so I guess my point is I watched This whole episode and I just found it thoroughly Entertaining and I was like my I was reminded of Why procedurals are so popular

Now here's the thing that gets me About FBI Because I'm with you this isn't something that I Watch a lot of although you actually make a pretty good you make a compelling case there for why they're addictive but going back to the Lebitard show again they were talking the Stu Gotts was saying one of the characters on the show was saying that he loves a show called FBI International and everybody laughed at him and I thought that was kind of part of the joke because obviously there's not the FBI isn't international that's called the CIA right over the NSA or like yes something that is not the FBI which is very specifically you know Domestic law enforcement But I'm looking here No that is the third in the trilogy There is FBI Then there's FBI Most Wanted And then somehow There is FBI International For like the last two weeks I thought that was a joke on Levitard how is there An FBI International

I Get the sense That people are not overly tied to the fact-based universe when they're watching these shows nor was i i'm not kidding you my my sort of what i realized as i because i started being like okay i gotta figure out what i'm gonna really watch and then it's like we're now five minutes into this episode and then it's like huh i do kind of wonder why she went into that sex club or i wonder what she was doing at the at the atm getting money out etc like and so then i'm kind of like getting drawn in and then there's a commercial and then i'm like all right let's go see what happens when we get back from this commercial also it's kind of interesting because i was watching it in real time and that meant watching it with the commercials and there was also something kind of enjoyable about that believe it or not just it felt very nostalgic to me to be sitting there watching something that i did not have the ability to just like zoom through all the ads on um that was not the you know it wasn't like the coolest thing i'd ever watched but it was working like procedurals work there's a reason they're so popular because i do think the kind of you know the whodunit factor was pretty effective now here's the thing though and i i work for cbs so i hope this doesn't end up getting me you know on someone's uh list but i'm sitting there just like watching and then it's like going to commercial but it's or maybe we're coming back from commercial it's basically like some kind of an ad for fbi which i'm watching right some kind of a little package and the announcer comes on and just goes just straight up goes and i'm now i'm not trying to reproduce this because i guess if i say it out loud i will then also do what they did but they just straight up have a voiceover guy going hey siri remind me when fbi is on and now i've heard like on npr you know they'll say tell your smart speaker to say listen to morning edition they'll like tell people they'll instruct people to instruct their smart device to whatever this was straight up that's no cbs television just talking right out of the tv right into people's phones there was no the guy didn't say tell your siri device to do this that and the other no it just was legit the guy hoping that you had left i mean i don't think the guy doing the voice cared really but this was somebody at cbs hoping that you're as my phone was sitting there on the coffee table getting a message from the network that's dirty shut it down shut it down

that is really dirty in fact i feel like that should be regulated like that is wrong i know

i i mean like i don't know i don't know how uh common that is and i mean because think about it Like there's so much.

bad stuff you could do with that also if you've left the room you know what i mean like if you if you're just like left your phone on the table and you've gone off to do something else i almost i think that's what they're hoping like you know they're just hoping that your phone is left it's like a it's like a toy company trying to directly through the tv tell a kid to go get on amazon and buy the toy on their parents account like this is this is them trying to talk to your phone maybe when you're not around to get your phone to do something which might cause you to watch the show I was like, wow.

Wait, did you say that it actually did work? Is your device now reminding you of it? Because maybe that's the one thing we're missing here, that it doesn't actually stick. It actually is telling you to tell your device that.

I don't know if it – I did not see my robot on my phone actually light up. So I don't know if it worked, but I can tell what they were trying to do.

I'd like to hear from anybody that this happened to them. Like the other end of it, not just you hear it on TV, but are your devices reminding you of things that you didn't ask for because the TV told it to?

I'm really tempted right now to do a joke where I instruct. I do exactly what we're talking about, CBS doing, where I tell everyone's phones to do something related to TBTL. I won't do that just because that feels – then we're as bad as FBI. But again, I was like, I wonder if that's going to be part of a growing trend or if it's already happening and I don't realize it. To where it's just like, we're no longer asking people to talk to their devices. We're just talking straight to the devices.

Yeah, well, if that really does become a trend and people are flooded with that, well, then I think people will find those devices less desirable.

Yeah. All right, speaking of devices, quickly before we go to the emails, I guess Futurama is being rebooted. And the guy who voices Bender says he's not going to come back because they're not paying him enough money. Now, really, the mistake from Hulu was that they announced triumphantly that they were rebooting the show before they had actually re-signed the whole cast. And whereas maybe pre-internet or earlier internet or whatever, I mean, I think it's happened plenty of times where on certain shows, some people have been recast maybe, and it hasn't been a kerfuffle. But this time it's turned into a huge kerfuffle, and you have lots of other people kind of standing up for this guy, John DiMaggio. it doesn't seem like anyone's seeing him as greedy they're seeing him as like deserving pay from hulu or whoever it is who's making this thing and um and not getting it so now you wonder what they're going to end up doing and if like oh the other thing that i saw was um james adomian who's a performer and does a lot of impressions and things james adomian was on twitter saying that he had he had seen the audition for bender going around like they had wanted him to audition for bender And he could, I'm sure he could do like a spot on Bender impression, but he was like, I didn't even, I didn't even respond to this email. And he said that a whole bunch of other voiceover actors in L.A. and in the industry had all seen the Bender audition and were all intentionally not trying out for Bender out of support for John DiMaggio and for the idea of paying voiceover actors, you know, what you might pay a live action actor or at least valuing their contribution the same way you would value a live actor's contribution.

Yeah, no, that's great. I like that solidarity.

Although, I mean I get, yeah, I mean the thing about a live actor Is they're much harder to replace In terms of like you can get away with If you found someone That can do an impression of a character That's a cartoon, then you can get away with Replacing them and no one is necessarily The wiser But with the live action person They're standing there, they're on camera They sort of have more leverage in that situation But I wonder if we're going to enter an era Where you can't get away with doing that with uh with you know cartoon voices i mean the simpsons cast notoriously has like battled the you know whoever it is fox i guess whoever owns the simpsons like about every three or four years they're like they basically almost stage a walkout to get paid more um and i guess if your whole cast defects that would also be sort of a problem but anyway i guess we'll see what happens because if they end up putting a a bender impersonator on there i wonder what the Like, I wonder what the reaction is going to be from the fans of the show, if they'll also sort of boycott it.

I mean, this isn't really moving the conversation forward, but it's it's reminding me a little bit of like something that happened on the TV show Big Mouth. Jenny Slate, I can't remember her character's name, but she plays a little girl or played a little girl. She voiced the character for a little girl on that show. And that character is mixed race. But Jenny Slate is not. So there was people who were saying, that doesn't feel right to us. So she ended up stepping down. Now, I think they've released they've kept the character and found somebody that they feel is.

appropriate to voice that character but i haven't heard it yet i think they've released a season already with the new actor but i'm not entirely sure i was uh i was interested in hearing that because that again is one of those things where maybe as the viewer for me i would never even know i'm interested in knowing how much character how much that character's voice is different or not at all maybe i would never even know if it weren't for the headlines i think is it does dr

hibbert on the simpsons have a new voice i think because i didn't know that i i think there is a character on the simpsons that that their voice has changed because i think you had harry shearer playing dr hibbert and dr hibbert is black so i think that they i think that that was one of the characters you know that the simpsons producers decided obviously that was not a good look to have a white guy playing a black character um and i it's just been so long since i watched the simpsons i can't really tell you what the effect is certainly when they switch someone out so that it's more kind of culturally or racially appropriate i mean that one i'm all for you know so like if you i don't know i don't know what bender's ethnicity is do they address that

in the show i think he's roboholic i'm not sure 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 roboholic that's pretty good yeah

Nah, it was on the fly. So we were talking on the show earlier this week about how you and I didn't drink that much water as kids. We were always drinking where I was like drinking Kool-Aid or milk or orange juice. And it wasn't like water wasn't the go to rehydration for us. And I wasn't sure if that was just like you and me and our personal experiences. But no, there's a whole bunch of people out there who either reject water or have somebody in their life who rejects water. This person didn't want me to use their name, but it says I was catching up on a few old episodes and had to drop mouth laugh at the listener whose mom said water would rust her insides. My dad said my dad used to say that, too. He grew up partly in rural China in an area where water wasn't particularly of good repute. So he just avoided water. He drank beer, Chinese tea and coffee. He was water avoided for years, saying it'll rust my insides and that the water wasn't safe to drink in China. Then my mom would point out that he's lived in the United States since he was 10 years old. This went on repeatedly. Eventually, he had a health issue in the 80s related to this lack of water, which, shall we say, learned him real good. He now drinks water regularly. The current issue is getting him to stop using single-use plastic water bottles, which is probably a lost cause at this point when they pile up in his car. I got him a nice reusable one for Christmas, and it's not working. Anyway, thanks for the nostalgia. So, yeah, water rusting one's insides. That is apparently a thing. That is a thing. We also had one more voicemail on this topic from Liz.

Hey, this is listener Jen in Fullerton, California.

It's funny that I said Liz. this is a listener jen jen jen she's a roboholic hey this is listener jen in fullerton california

my mom was telling this story about when she and my dad first got married they got married when they were like 18 didn't have a lot of money my mom was making dinner and she said that she made them um to drink she made kool-aid but instead of putting in any sugar she just put the kool-aid packet into water so she's telling us the story we're like why did you not put any sugar in it she said well we couldn't afford sugar like mom why didn't you just drink water and she goes People didn't drink water back then Okay, bye

You know, didn't you have Didn't you have a story about going to a friend's house as a kid And the parents there didn't put sugar in the Kool-Aid? I don't think that was me Somebody did because I didn't realize or remember that that was a thing Me neither I would have thought the Kool-Aid powder was the flavoring Yeah, and it is the flavoring But apparently it's not the sweetening And I don't know if this is still true to this day, but somebody was telling me how they used to go to somebody's house as a kid and their mom or dad or whoever would not put sugar into the Kool-Aid. I'm like, well, yeah, you don't need it. And this person was telling me, apparently not you, was telling me, no, no, that's just the flavoring, but you still needed Kool-Aid. Otherwise, it was way too just like tart or whatever. There was no sweetness to it. I had no idea.

Me neither. I didn't ever really make Kool-Aid as a kid. I certainly would consume it. If I went to someone's house who had it, it was like not on the list at my parents' house of things that we had. So that's why I, to this day, don't even understand how it's –

it's put together um but i wonder so it would just be the tartness but none of the sweetness

i wonder what that yes or just like the flavor of of cherry or the flavor of grape but not not sweet that's i'm having a very as i want to do having a very visceral nostalgic um flashback right now thinking about those what we called little huggies growing up i think you have a different name for them out here it's very regional but they're they're little barrel shaped containers with orange drink or red drink or purple drink in there and you would peel off the foil on top and you would slam it down. It was kind of like Kool-Aid only a little bit it had more bite. You know what I'm talking about? The only Huggies I knew as a kid were diapers. You really have no idea what I'm talking about. The little barrel shaped little beverage containers

that kids would drink? No, you know what? I'm looking at them now. Yeah, they were a little hug fruit barrel. I did not grow up with those.

Oh, a little hug. You're right. Not a little huggy. Oh, yeah, that's funny. Boy, I haven't looked at these in a very, very long time. Oh, got to get me some of these.

I would have been obsessed with this as a kid because it would tell my brain that this is a barrel of thirst quenching. This is like it's, you know, that just looks refreshing to my kid brain.

Yes, it does. And again, it wasn't quite like Kool-Aid because I feel like it had a little bit more. I mean, it was like Kool-Aid, but I feel like it had a little bit more. I can't explain it. Like it just kind of just a little bit of a tiny burn of an aftertaste, if that makes sense, which I don't think it does.

Now that I hear I had a water situation this morning, Andrew, I was like I was really, as I mentioned at the top of the show, I got up pretty early today and I just was getting a lot done. I was feeling good. I was, you know, cleaning the place and getting laundry going. And and I decided to do something else that's a slightly annoying task, which is, you know, I have that ice maker that makes the pebble ice. And the way it works is there's this big kind of water reservoir that you refill that you then have to kind of click back into this special sort of harness thing so that it can then feed the liquid water into the ice machine, which then, of course, turns it eventually into ice cubes or little pebble ice. And so this reservoir, it goes, it's basically the deal is it needs to be upside down. It needs to use gravity to push the water into the machine, but that means that it has this kind of complicated valve on the bottom of it so that when you turn it over, all the water doesn't just come out. So you kind of fill this thing up, and then you flip it over, and then you have to click it into this device so that now the water is flowing freely and will go in and make the ice cubes. so I do that I fill it up and I put it in and I like go off to do whatever else I'm doing and then I come back around the corner 10-15 minutes later and I step in something and I'm like oh you gotta be kidding me and what had happened was there is a hose that goes from the back of this where the reservoir clicks in there's a hose that goes from there to the back of the ice machine And when I was moving the whole thing, the hose detached. So this entire reservoir of water was just emptying out onto the counter, into the stove, onto the floor of the kitchen, around, now into the bathroom. I dumped, I don't know, three gallons of water slowly throughout my living area, my kitchen and living room and bedroom.

Was anything damaged? Did it hit anything like a couch or a carpeted area?

No, it's just annoying. It was like, I don't also, because I just live here by myself, I don't really have like proper, a lot of things. Like, I think I have like four towels that I bought at like Bed Bath & Beyond, like when I moved here. And I thought at some point I'll get more towels. But like three of them are like in the wash right now. So they're like, they're damp. So I was like, I have one towel left to try to like get this all sort of like sopped up. And it was a major hassle, but I got it. I got it taken care of.

How many times do you use a bath towel before throwing it in the washing machine, especially, you know, since you have a washing machine in the house?

Honestly, maybe three times.

Yeah, sounds about right. You know, when I was, you know, going to laundromats to do my laundry, I might have been more conservative about it. But now that, like, you know, I have a washing machine right off the kitchen, and it's just a putterer's paradise, I love keeping towels clean. Like, the second a towel starts to have that, what I learned recently, it's called the sour smell. Towels kind of go sour. But, you know, when it just slightly starts to get a little bit of, like, oh, I hung this up, but the bathroom is still a little bit damp, and it's still, like, maintaining a little bit too much moisture. You know that smell. The second it even gets a tinge of that. Oh, yeah. Especially during this time of year where our windows.

aren't open all the time you i mean you gotta avoid that you gotta avoid that yeah yeah definitely

well luckily i think my bathroom here is pretty well ventilated because that doesn't really happen i just kind of do it because i'm like well i should i've been drying off of this but there is i think we've talked about this before if you think about it let's just say for the sake of argument that everything's ventilating properly so you're not going to get that kind of whatever that is it's more just you're if you're getting out of the shower clean and so the only water on your body is clean water and then you dry it off and then you hang the towel and the towel dries

theoretically you should never have to wash that towel yes except even the most even the best ventilated um bathroom just like it's always it's it's you still have something that's wet that is air drying for a certain period of time and that's just not going to stay clean forever i mean you need to wash these things i mean unless you're like showering outside like in the direct sunlight of los angeles i mean that's the thing i think about la so much like if you had anything that was even you know slightly damp you come home from the gym and you have a towel in your tennis shoes you put them out on the on the porch table in the direct sunlight and you come out five minutes

later and they are like just crispy dry somebody put some kind of or did i write this tweet maybe i did something i remember at one time at one time trying to come up with a way of describing how awesome it feels when you get a load out of the dryer and it's just all towels yeah compared to like 55 socks particularly our listeners that have like kids and little kids i mean you can really identify like it's a it's a thrill when you open the dryer and you're like yes eight towels bury your face in them take a big breath well really also just it'll take two minutes to fold them yeah it's just the easiest it's the easiest thing to deal with even though it's voluminous you're just like yeah yep i always pull the time when i'm doing when i'm

folding the laundry first thing i do is i pull out all of the towels and then i fold them but in kind and we're not in kind but like um i'll fold all of let's say the kitchen towels first So we have a lot of those in the rotation, you know, just like hand towels in the kitchen. I go through like three of those at least a day. And so maybe I'll fold all of those and then the bath towels. And then you stare down at the pile and there's nothing left but socks and underwear and T-shirts. You're like, all right, now the real work begins.

I have these Nike running socks that are actually designated right foot or left foot. And I never even noticed that for the first like three months I was wearing them. But then once I figured that out, I thought, well, let me just see if it makes any difference. And I'm sure it's 100% psychosomatic. But now I do feel like, oh, I run a little bit better when I've got the right side. But what that means now is that's an added thing that I have to factor in when I'm putting my socks together out of the dryer is now pairing right and left. Normally, you don't have to do that. Socks are socks.

Are they indicated with an L or an R? Yes.

There's an R and an L on them. And so I have to go, like, actually, when I was doing this this morning, I was putting some socks together, and I was like, I had two rights. And I was like, wait, what? Then I realized I had put three LL pairs together, and I had to, like, go and undo it all so that everything is a right and a left.

I have these slip-on shoes that, they're like dock siders, only these are, like, the cheapest shoes I ever bought. I was actually in, they're my tonight shoes, actually. I usually keep actual dock siders as tonight shoes, just the slip-on kind without laces. These I have now are like super, super off brand that I bought for literally $20 at Target. I was like, oh, all right. And boy, you can really tell the difference between a $20 pair of shoes and even $60 pair of shoes. Anyway, one day I looked down. This is not all that long ago. I'd been wearing them on the wrong feet. It made me laugh so hard because they're maybe they're my size, but they're just like, again, these aren't shoes. They look fine, but they're not usually shoes I would wear outside unless I'm going to the beach or the pool on vacation or something. But I just wear them around the house, and they're just big enough that they're slip-ons and they're comfortable, and it made me laugh so hard. I mean, I felt like a child again. I was just like, yeah, remember being a kid, and sometimes you would just have your shoes on the wrong feet and not realize, oh, this will be a lot more comfortable when I swap these around.

I love the idea of you at 45 years old just sitting there with your shoes on the wrong feet, drinking your little hug juice barrel.

I got a beanie with a propeller on it, and I'm holding a balloon for some reason. Yeah, nice.

All right. I think that's going to do it for today's show. Now, of course, you have me thinking, do I need to get some new Sperry top siders? I think I have a pair still in storage in Bellingham. But I'm like, if I buy these shoes, then it will mean summer is coming faster. And that's the important thing. Anyway, thanks for.

listening, everyone. Maybe I'll see some of you tonight at Fran Leibowitz or tomorrow night at LiveWire, the Alberta Rose. For the rest of you, we will see you tomorrow morning here on the Imaginary Radio, so please join us for that. Until then, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves and each other, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

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