Muse

All clear! Go for it! Cool. This is like Mythbusters! Have you seen that show? What? Have you seen the show Mythbusters? No. Is it good? It is. What's the basis of it? Uh, well, it's these two guys. Well, it's a little team. And, uh, they put myths to the test. Like, uh... Let me think of a good one here. Man, I'm drawing a blank I watch this show all the time I can't believe, I can't think of one Oh, it would be like if somebody breaks a window on a plane, would that create a vacuum? And they put it to the test Wow Okay Does it? Nope Okay, you ready for this? T T-B-T-L

guess what day it is guess what day it is it's friday friday gotta get down on friday everybody's looking forward to the weekend well uh i think i'm looking forward to cracking up

uh i hope i can like you know totally crack up so uh i haven't like totally cracked up in a long time as my uh grandpa likes to say hot diggity dog as i like to say hot damn it's a cosmic mix

of the action of the 90s combined with the exploitation films of the 70s definitely a little bit michael man it's kind of a cosmic gumbo it almost moves to the beat of jazz

stop talking get off the phone and let's do this let's do this immediately let's go

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. A beautifully wrapped, glossy, sweet-smelling show. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

I always be sneaky like how I get chocolate.

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where the sun is out, the sky is blue. It's one of those, like, days where the sky looks like the opening credit of The Simpsons. Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. It's going to be a semi-decent weekend here in the 503. I can tell you it's going to be an excellent episode of TBTL as we arrive at episode 3623 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

Apple has arrived at a technological breakthrough where they will now they figure out a way to make it so that you can use the face ID function on your iPhone without taking your mask off.

Look at this face. What do you see?

they uh have announced that it will probably go live at almost exactly the point when every state and municipality in the united states is also slated to get rid of indoor mask and outdoor mask mandates if you're even in a place where they still have that so this is perfect timing by apple uh we'll get into that also mel magazine strikes again brian van hooker over there at mel doing an exhaustive, and I mean, thorough analysis of what Norm from Cheers, what his bar tab would be, because that was a running joke on the program, that he never paid his tab.

Excuse me, I'm not a LaHawket, and I do not like beer.

So we'll go through some of the math on that and see. Oh, also, on the subject of the actor George Wendt, who played Norm, we have an error that we made on the show. I've made a huge mistake. Which I know is a shock to regular listeners that we messed something up, but we need to apologize to the actor George Wendt. So we'll do that, plus music for your weekend on this Friday. And we've got this handsome young stranger. He's doing the work. He's baby-stepping. He's an activist and house party enthusiast He's a coffee lover, and when he comes on the show, we're seeing something we ain't never seen before He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington Good morning, my friend

Good morning, do you think that's where Matt Groening got the idea to have the sky in the Simpsons opening credits? because you said that you looked up at the sky and it looked like The Simpsons, right?

Yeah, I'm going to take a picture of it.

You've told me several times, or we've discussed several times on the show, something that I don't think I realize, that Graining is a Portland guy and a lot of the characters on the show are named after street names and neighborhood names around that area.

So there's a very real possibility that he was looking at the Portland sky and said, I want to use that sky. So that's amazing.

I think it's very likely, actually. You know, as Becca and I were leaving the Fran Leibovitz thing on Wednesday, I happened to bump into Bill Oakley and his wonderful wife, Rachel. Bill, of course, was the executive producer of The Simpsons for many years, including the years where things like steamed hams were a part of the plot. In fact, I think he sort of created that. And I was chatting with him, and it turns out Becca is a deep Simpsons fan. Like, it was one of the things that she and her brothers used to just kind of like watch endlessly when they were kids, like on reruns and whatever. I think I know The Simpsons. I'm like, oh, remember when Flanders said this? But she'll just utter something, and it'll be like the deepest Simpsons cut. That's some sort of inside joke with her and her brothers, and I never know what she's talking about. And it's been humbling because, again, I think of myself as kind of a Simpsons knower. So here we are meeting Bill Oakley, and I sort of didn't want to define him as Simpsons guy because I didn't know if that would be annoying to him. But also it's such a big deal to Becca Because she loves The Simpsons And so I did And I still haven't decided If it was the right call when I said Because you know how when you You sort of meet someone And they're famous for a certain thing Maybe that's not the thing They really want to get into They want to talk about anything else They want to talk about their band That they've started I mean we learned this of course With Billy Bob Thornton

Well he's a bad example He's pretty chill about that stuff But maybe somebody else I would think

You have to just ask yourself The rule of thumb I've learned is would you ask Tom Petty that you can just apply that to any social situation when you're talking to someone and there's, you know, some kind of thing that's closely associated with them. Do you bring it up or not? Or in, you know, on the chance that that's just something they're tired of talking about or they don't like that one sentence into every introduction, that's how they're identified. Like for me, it's like people saying, this is Luke, the classically handsome podcast heartthrob. yeah yeah the first couple times people said that it was like oh thank you you know uh that's flattering but now it's just oh it's like okay we get it um you know you want to be for your feet yes i actually really do andrew and you know that although my feet will never be the same after hawaii remember i told you how i cut the top of my foot on some like i don't think it was coral but some kind of sharp rock that was under the waves in Hawaii is still, I'm just looking at it. That was what that pause was. I was kind of analyzing. Okay, the injury is still not fully healed. That's weird. And the part that is healed is a gruesome scar. So my foot modeling career is basically over before it started. With no help from you, by the way, acting so grossed out every time I would mention that I think I have generally attractive feet.

Yeah, it is gross, but those Tootsies aren't insured?

The policy had lapsed.

When I moved banks, it was a direct deposit.

It was an auto-pay thing that, you know.

Well, I have a little tidbit I want to tell you because I was thinking about unicorn minds being blown as my unicorn mind was blown when we were talking about the opening of The Simpsons and the fact that we know what the inspiration was now. It was the Portland Sky. Right. But but you said you still weren't sure after you introduced Becca and Oakley, like if that was the right call. And I'm just curious. Well, like, how did it play out from there? I mean, was there a beat of awkwardness? Did did Becca feel like she had to say something or was she legit excited in the moment? Like you can usually feel if there's some awkwardness in the air after a moment like that. Right.

I don't think it was overly awkward, but I can say we did not then subsequently have like a four minute conversation about some specific Simpsons thing. Right. Right. So it was sort of like somewhere between, oh, boy, Luke just Luke just really sort of, you know, sort of record scratched this conversation. It wasn't that, but it also wasn't. It didn't open a door. Yeah. A bunch of talking about steamed hams or something.

I guess my question also is, did Becca know like would Becca have made the connection just from watching the credits a bunch and seeing that name? Oh, sure. So she was already kind of like she already knew what the deal was when you ran into him.

Yes. I mean, that's the thing. And this is what's really kind of been it's been eye opening and it's been humbling for me to date someone who really knows things like and by that I just mean minutia like I my whole.

stock and trade like on this show and frankly on a lot of the stuff that i do on the radio is just somehow remembering that the person who wrote this was whomever or you know like i was uh doing this thing with this is going to sound like a humble brag and i guess it is just because i'm so shocked that i remembered this but i was on stage with the guy john darneal from the mountain goats this was in seattle i was interviewing him about his new book and he is An extremely literary person And I am not a very literary person And he was talking about editors And the editing of the book And he said, you know Like the guy who edited Raymond Carver's books And for some reason my brain knew That it was a guy named Gordon Lesch And because he's A, probably the most famous editor in America So I'm not like I'm not winning any awards for that But like in the moment Also I was intimidated slightly By John Darneal's intellect Because he just He just is referencing all of these different things most of which i didn't have any sort of context for but i was like gordon lesh and he said yeah exactly and i that was it for the rest of you i didn't care what happened the rest of the interview i was like it is lish though and maybe you're saying

that is it a pronunciation thing i the only reason i know that this is his son wrote a book that was it lives with me i believe his son's name is atticus lish i wouldn't have been able to pull lish and except that you basically said it um but in atticus i think he's named after um uh what's the famous character from to kill a mockingbird you kill a mockingbird right um and anyway he there's this book by atticus lish um and i was like oh it's the son of the raymond carver editor and i'd try to explain it to people that way and i'd get lost in my words and nobody had any idea what i was talking about and just wait for me to peter out as you do but But anyway, that book that I read is – it stuck with me so much. I don't know if I can recommend it because it is one of the most serious dark books. Yeah, it's a novel about a soldier who comes home after a campaign or several campaigns, I believe, in Iraq, I want to say, and deals with PTSD. And it is like so – it is just so amazingly detailed but so amazingly bleak as well. He just spends a lot of time trying to survive kind of in McDonald's and whatnot. whatnot it's just in new york and it also has um an immigrant story tied into there too uh it is just an amazing story anyway that's the only reason why when you said lesh i was like something's off

about that i think it's lish so i hopefully i said gordon lish at that event i may have said i may have said phil lesh from uh was he a grateful dead guy was that what phil lesh was um anyway here's what my point is in all of this i am like i my identity in the world to some degree has been remembering minutiae or or being the guy i'm sure to a deeply annoying degree who says oh funny story about that that's actually the person who did this thing and then they also happen to do this thing and that's like i'm i'm i make those connections in my brain a lot and that's been my little party trick and now i date someone who knows all of that stuff just because she's just reads a ton remembers information and just so like if i were to say oh do you know do you know who did well but do you know who did the steamed hams episode she'd be like well yeah bill oakley you know and but that happens all the time and what it means is a lot of my i guess you could say ungenerously you could say my mansplaining but more just like what I feel like is the value I'm adding to a conversation which is like oh this is the person who did this did you know that or or had you heard of the and it's the answer is often oh yeah yeah I mean in a nice way not in a I'm put off kind of way but like it's really taken one of the main tools out of my toolbox which is being the person who knows trivial details which is of course the

opposite of me I can't remember anything and then I get even in those moments like uh to kill a mockingbird i know the name of that but when i when i'm put on the spot like my brain just cramps up for what it's worth only because i uh i read this book like a long time ago and it's like one of those things i'm the only person i know who read this book it's an award-winning book it's not like i discovered something it's like i think a highly critically acclaimed book but i just don't know anybody in my circle who's read it it's called preparation for the next life and and that's the eticus lish book and um uh if anybody has read it email me we got to talk about this because it's just like i almost like part of me wants to reread it except it really is i mean it is i love downers but this book is such a downer but it's also like kind of an eye opener so for

whatever that's worth i feel i mean we can't start with something like this because it's too over my head and also i don't like sad things but we should talk about maybe reviving the tbtl book club You know, maybe if I want, if I want. cheat, maybe we can pick a book I already have to read for something so I can maximize my time spent reading, my TSR. But I've been sort of pitching this idea to you for a while. That was really fun back when we used to do that with the listeners. And I know that our listeners would get

a kick out of it. Yeah, that would be a lot of fun. And back in the day, I remember, I mean, that was the very first, I believe, TBTL event, like quote unquote event that I had anything to do with i think it was one of one of your meetings with a book club for the for the hunger games and like i was working with you at cairo and i think you just needed somebody maybe to i think we brought a little mixing board right because there were just like a couple of microphones like you and jen had microphones i think in the hotel lobby what was the name of that hotel it's uh the sorrento sorrento i think that's still around right kind of yes it is and um yeah i went uh went and had

um a drink there during the pandemic but during that moment that two weeks in the summer where you could go to places you know maskless and and i think we actually sat outside it was becca and i but yeah that place is is very cool and and like it's not it's like it's weird because it's it it feels like it's something it feels like it's it's something out of like manhattan or new york society it's very posh i don't think it's prohibitively expensive and the rooms themselves My memory is There can be a little on the threadbare side But the entrance to the Sorrento The sort of roundabout And the lobby and everything It just feels like you're Eloise or something Like you're in, I don't know The Waldorf or something I don't think that's where Eloise lived in those books But you know what I mean It feels almost like something not in Seattle Seattle doesn't have a lot of that kind of old glam Yeah, it's got new glam And some fancy places But nothing that feels like it's been there for 200 years

Yeah, you mentioned the lobby. And I guess that's kind of the I think if you're talking about the same thing, I guess that's kind of the area where you had the book club. And I think that The Stranger had some book book reading clubs there as well. And I think at KUW, we use that space for something because it's almost like I don't know exactly what a drawing room is, but I'd always read about drawing rooms. It's like that, right? It's like it's got a fireplace. It's very cozy, old school leather armchairs and a sofa, except I'm sure there's a different word for sofa that you would use in this context. A divan A divan And it's funny that I would even say sofa there I never say sofa I say couch I grew up saying couch Do you say sofa or couch?

I think I say couch But unless I'm trying to be fancy See, that's the thing If I'm trying to be fancy No, that's not true I wouldn't even say sofa I saw a picture on Twitter This is probably retweeted by your friend The Stewbot But it said like Tell me you're in Minnesota without telling me Tell me you're in a Minnesota gym without telling me you're in a Minnesota gym And it was just a huge sign on the wall that said, no pop in the gym.

Love it. Yes.

You could just like, I could just hear a reproachful high school administrator say, getting on the mic, having to get on the mic during halftime and going, okay, we talked about no pop in the gym. Okay.

I definitely grew up saying pop. You told me that you grew up saying soda, right?

west coast well my mom being from philly i think she brought soda over from the old country and so i that was kind of what i heard oh man this guy is now really simpson simpsonsing out andrew

ignore that picture i sent yeah you take another photo because this is amazing look i've been i didn't tell you about this but last week i came up with just the germ of an idea of something i wanted to do on tbtl i don't know if now is the time to go through all of these but i have an email thread to myself going on called synonym or pronunciation game we're still workshopping that title that wasn't supposed to be right on the air now that i think about it but i heard somebody refer to the contiguous united states i believe and uh it occurred to me that i like maybe it came up a lot when i was in hawaii referring to them as the lower 48 and i thought this would be a fun game let's go through and say just like in if just in the heat of conversation or whatever are you the type of person who says lower 48 or contiguous united states or the next one i have here is are you the type of person who says controversial or controversial and we just go through a whole list of these things couch or menstruation or menstruation that's another one

too uh that was a big tbtl topic back in the day was it really yes it really was like in year one we were still a radio show and i can't remember why but it was jen was was was facilitating a conversation around yeah if it was if people said menstruation or menstruation and which was the

correct thing to say um the fact that you just sent me an email that says simps too makes me

wonder if i know i thought about that there's like a funny way that the simpsons now could also be cross-referenced with simping i simp for the simpsons um okay really quickly here

um i just had one thing that kind of well ironically blew my mind yesterday

Thank you.

Okay, can I just ask one thing about the lower 48? Oh, yeah. Do you think that the lower 48 probably was coined as a phrase before Hawaii was in the U.S.? Because Hawaii is not lower than the United States. It must have been Alaska was a state, so the lower 48 was everything not Alaska. But once Hawaii got on the list, I don't think you can really say lower 48 because Hawaii is lower. I think it's on the equator. It's lower than many of the states in the United States, at least in terms of, you know, is that latitudes? It's attitudes. I think it's latitudes.

Would that be longitude? Lat is fat. It is latitudes.

So the latitudes go around and the longitudes go over.

Really? Really? That's how I was taught to remember it. I always think of longitude as going like kind of – maybe I'm saying it in the wrong way, but I think of it as going like horizontal or east-west. Is that what you're saying?

I think of latitudes as being east-west, which is why latitudes and attitudes. It's like why Jimmy Buffett is pitching an idea of being at a certain latitude, i.e. like the latitude that Bermuda is on is different than the latitude that Nova Scotia is on, whereas the longitude wouldn't tell you anything because the longitude of Greenland could be the same as the longitude of Sierra Leone.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. Um, yes. You know, it's funny when you, uh, started talking about that, that idea of the lower 48, not really, not really applying to Hawaii. Whenever I, I, I heard somebody on the radio and I'm pretty sure they said the lower 48 and that's what got me, or maybe they said contiguous. I'm not sure. But then I did write that note down and I had just the beginning of that thought that you, that you expressed. Like I was like, but wait, Hawaii isn't like higher. And then but that's when I stopped thinking something shiny got in front of my face. And I started paying attention to that instead. And then I grabbed onto it and I would not let go. And that's how I ended up. You still haven't. That's how I ended up in The Red Fern Groves, which is one of the only things I remember about that book. But yeah, no, that's a good point. So maybe one of them is, you know, not used anymore. I was going to say Deroguer, but I don't know if I'm saying that right.

No, de rigueur is in style. Oh, that's in style. Something that's de rigueur is the thing we're sort of doing. Ew, okay. But let's see. What would be the – what is the French sort of out of fashion? Because now I can't think of that. I would like to mention one quick thing, and then we can get back to what you were about to say, because I know I've greatly sidetracked us here. It's not a big deal.

It's just a quickie.

Passé, maybe? I mean, Passé is kind of a version of that.

Sure, yeah, yeah.

but um when we were doing uh this so live wire we have this new weekly podcast best news and we were talking about that story that we did on tbtl as well which was the um the the vandalization of the of the marker in key west florida that indicates that you're the southernmost part of the contiguous united states um and somebody emailed in and said well how can you say key west How do they say QS is in the contiguous United States when it's a chain of islands and it's just connected by bridges? But the thing that I said is, you know what else is only connected to America by bridges? Manhattan. Yeah. You know, we think of that as, of course, nobody's wondering if that's part of the contiguous United States. Right. Right. But but but so there are I mean, there are many, many better examples or or additional examples. But it's like, OK, if Manhattan gets to be part of the US, then so does Key West and the contiguous US, as it were.

Yeah, this is boring to say, but I would say that's a good question and a good answer, because it's true. Like any island off the East Coast, you know what I mean? Or any island at all that is just off the coast of the United States. Like, I guess you consider the state that it is associated with or the state that it belongs to is part of the contiguous United States. So therefore, New York State is. And that's why, you know, New York City, Manhattan is as well as would Key West. That makes sense.

Before we go to break, I just want to say thank you to everybody who came out to Livewire last night. It was such a fun show. And I'll be totally honest. It was our first show back after a long break. There's still, you know, a mask mandate in place. There's still a lot of just kind of, you know, weirdness around around public life together. And so we weren't sure how it was going to go But the crowd was really great The guests were super duper fun I got to see, of course, our friend Lynn Who's ride or die with LiveWire But also I got to meet a new listener, Pam Who came down from Tacoma with her husband Because she won some tickets to LiveWire And she was telling me, Andrew She started listening to our show during the pandemic And now she never misses an episode And she's a retired nurse But this is what really struck me She said, well, she said, I'm a retired nurse. Well, I retired and then I immediately started. And doing vaccines for people. And then I remembered, oh, yeah, that's who's doing so much of that. I think every shot that I got was from somebody who was a retired health care professional who had then come out of retirement to basically try to save this country. So I just wanted to say hi to Pam and also thanks for helping out with that. That's a huge deal. Pam said during her time giving the shot, she got to see so many more tattoos than she would have expected. Oh, yeah. It's like a real view into the tattoo culture of America. By way of lots of people's arms.

I wonder if it's fun to like, you know, if you have a little bit of leeway as far as where exactly in the forearm, you're going to jab it. Like maybe if there's like a, you know, I don't know, a dragon, maybe you do it right in the dragon's nostril or something. Oh, sure. Have fun with that.

Try to find a vein on the dragon. Right. Yeah, exactly. Did you try to plan the shirt that you were going to wear to get your your first or your second vac shot? because when I got those, it was in a very public setting, right? It was in a convention center, a huge room. And the first time I was wearing a button-up collared shirt, which meant I had to unbutton my shirt and be effectively shirtless in the middle of this auditorium with all these people. It doesn't seem like a thing you would really be into.

No, I didn't wear a shirt at all because I wasn't exactly sure what the thing was. I mean, I wore kind of a light jacket, but it was made of mesh. It was kind of like that material that they wore in Girls and that famous scene where they're dancing around. It's kind of a mesh yellow shirt that she borrows from somebody on her birthday.

And then you just streaked through Lumen Field while people threw the vaccine needles like darts at you. Yeah, exactly. Somebody threw them all at me. Finally, they got enough in you that you went down. Yeah, they were shooting them at me. He was like, there's a long, long elephant rifle. But you kept fighting. They were like, God, that takes. You just keep hitting them with Moderna. Yeah, finally the one right in the buttocks as I'm running away.

And I just slow down and big tree fall hard. Slowly, slowly slump to the ground. To answer your question, I did think about it. But I actually, you know, my quote unquote uniform, as Genevieve would say, is every day I wear just some sort of a T-shirt. It's either a plain white T-shirt or sometimes it's like a, you know, T-shirt with some sort of message on it. But it doesn't matter because then I put a button down or a snap down shirt on over top of it. But in this case, though, I just made sure to wear short sleeve. So I still wore my uniform. I still had a T-shirt on and some sort of a button down over top. But it was a short sleeve shirt. So I just had to raise the short sleeve. And by the way, that's my fault. For the third one, I didn't, you know, the first two, I really prepared the person. I said, you know, I'm not good with eating needles, just so you know. And I don't know what I want them to do there. But I just want to prepare them if I'm acting like weird or awkward. I just feel like they should know that I can quickly get in my head in these situations and maybe get a little lightheaded or something. I didn't get lightheaded in any of these, but I was very proud for the third one. And it really made me think, like, first of all, I should be getting a flu shot every year anyway. I just don't because I'm lazy and I'm a bad citizen. But I feel like for most people that is kind of a yearly thing. You get your flu shot. And if if getting booster shots is a yearly thing or some sort of a regular thing, it's just amazing how it's just amazing how we acclimate. I mean, I know getting a little shot in the arm is not that big of a deal for most people anyway, but for some of us it is. But by the third one, I didn't even I didn't even have to say like, hey, I'm a little nervous about this. Also, the third one, I was in a different setting. It's no longer that big that big auditorium, like you said, or convention center. And it's just it felt more normal. We were in a hospital. There were long lines, but like, you know, then a nurse gave me a shot. But even the mask thing, which I am looking forward to talking to more when we get on this topic for top stories, because, you know, that top story about the Apple, the Apple face ID being able to work without a mask. And I like your take like, oh, just in just in time, as even Washington state announces that it's going to be dropping the mask mandate pretty soon. But I just think about how we are all adaptable, especially if you want to be, you know, like at the beginning of this pandemic, I feel like as a very different person, every time I put on a mask, I felt so self conscious, I felt embarrassed, I didn't like looking at people with masks on and I didn't like them looking at me with masks on it just, I don't know why it's a psychological thing. I've heard from other listeners who had similar feelings, and I was, you know, kind of nervous about getting shots, and now I'm just kind of like, I don't know, yeah, just try to, you know, punch it in my arm, and we're all wearing masks, and nobody even notices anymore, and it's just like, we are, those are really small things, I realize, but we are very adaptable.

we sure are speaking of medical situations andrew i don't know if i'm if i'm violating my own hippa rights here but i um got a voicemail on my phone this morning from my doctor my all i tell all my 45 year old guys doctor and i swear to god what happened i'm tempted to play the voicemail. i swear to god what happened was he maybe because he came to livewire that one time he must have gotten an email that reminded him livewire is happening he starts the message by saying sorry i missed your show last night but i was just looking over your file and i realized we never sent you the results of any of your labs from september remember i said nobody had told me anything yeah and and like i i guess luckily i'm i'm mostly okay i think i he said i'm low in vitamin b12 so he wants me to start taking some kind of vitamin b12 thing but everything else is fine thankfully including a stool sample i sent in but i don't know if it's a good system that i only get my lab updates when the doctor remembers me because he gets an email about my radio show i don't know if that's an ideal system and he literally apologizes now it may not be his fault it might be you know somewhere in the in the hierarchy of the sort of office of this particular you know doctor's office that I'm going to I wouldn't imagine that it's his job to send this stuff out but it's very funny to me that that appears to be what jogged his memory to tell me that I'm low in vitamin B12 that is interesting by the way I just wanted

to do a really quick google here to see you know obviously we take supplements or I don't take any but I know one can take supplements to you know get whatever get whatever vitamin that we're deficient on but I was just curious like huh I wonder what foods have b12 in them and you know what i'm seeing here did you already know this yeah it's in it's internal organs it's meat and eggs basically so it says right here like the first result you're more likely to be low in this vitamin if you're older or if you eat a vegetarian diet um so that is it's interesting when yep yep that scans i'm not making an old joke here i'm just saying like oh yeah well you've been you've been you've cut meat out for quite some time now yeah so i guess i'm

Back to eating innards, Andrew. Sweet meats. That was my nickname in high school. I tested high for vitamin D12, Eminem's rap posse he hangs out with.

Yeah, right.

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. I feel like I have fallen greatly out of step with a lot of America on the topic of Eminem. Maybe because, speaking of the early days of TBTL, like, Jen really loved Eminem And really kind of like in the way that she's very good at, she made much larger meaning out of his music and his message and all kinds of things. I mean, Jen's the kind of person that you can listen to, you know, sort of not unlike Fran Leibowitz, I guess, hold forth on it just about any topic. And you start to kind of believe her by the end of it. And so, you know, and I really like the I like whatever his first big song, literally like when he was relatively unknown, at least to the wider world, the My Name Is. I always thought that that was kind of a, that was kind of a jam, but really since then, not a lot of it has been for me, and there was something about him on the Super Bowl, like, I liked that he took a knee, by the way, which was completely lost on the cameras, because I don't think that they were really, they, maybe hadn't cleared it with the director, hadn't cleared it with Jay-Z or whoever was directing it, that, like, I'm gonna, he was taking a knee in support of Colin Kaepernick during the performance, which I thought was a nice touch, and, and, you know, of course, it's a little hard to not get hyped when that lose-yourself, like, guitar riff starts playing but i don't know why eminem is dying his beard so brown right now like he's he i believe he's sober he clearly is in great shape he sounds good i mean everything seems to be working for marshall mathers i don't understand why it's important to him that his beard is a very very dark unnatural shade of brown i don't even remember that that well i'm trying to

take a look at the because i remember like part i'd love that super bowl show but there was depending did he go on right after kendrick because i remember like kind of running from from one room to another after kendrick's verse because i wanted to go talk about it to somebody so i might have missed you know everything moves pretty quickly in those performances so i might have just kind of missed his performance because no i definitely didn't see right after kendrick i heard about the knee but i didn't see it and and you said the camera didn't really capture it that well and also i might have been so hyped about kendrick that i was turned my back to the

tv for a second i guess the way i feel about eminem is like i think he's i i'm glad that eminem exists because i think he's generally i mean his lyrics are complicated right because he does a lot of things that sound violent or misogynistic or homophobic but then it's he presents it as this is a character i'm playing and this is actually shining a light on people who who truly hold those beliefs it gets complicated and frankly i don't like the music enough to really care about unpacking it all but i also feel like eminem is i mean i don't think he's no kid rock you know what i mean like i think eminem is probably in his heart of hearts a person who probably holds beliefs that are pretty similar to the ones that i hold which we all know are the

correct beliefs but so i'm not i'm like happy m&m exists but it's just none of it is music or an aesthetic or a vibe or anything that really i care about i guess when i think of m&m i have this one

memory that it's not worth me saying this is such a shitty thing to say but i was having brunch with a friend of mine this this goes back years and i don't think this person will hear it um but if they do you know i love you but we were like having brunch and i remember being so hung over too i remember just kind of being oh that's right i was so hung over at this brunch and i also like spilled my coke all over the table i was like so out of it uh just it was just one of those brunches and uh i was there with genevieve and our friend um and our friend just to make conversations said who is on your mount rushmore of rap which was like it's not my favorite kind a game to play anyway and certainly with rap like that's you know i'd like some rap i don't know it just felt like i'm like okay whatever i don't know what i said um but then this person who asked the question their answer i realized i'm racking my brain but three out of the four people were white and one of them was eminem my friend here is a white person um and i i don't remember if i called him out in the moment or if it was on the drive home but it was like eminem and then i don't know if it was all the beastie boys or one of the beastie boys gets one slot i'm not sure it was snow no i can't remember i think the jay-z might have been the lone black rapper on this and i just i just think about it it just like i was so blurry eyed um during this brunch and that was on me i kind of felt crappy about that i didn't come i guess i didn't come to play but i just remember thinking like come on man can we diversify your mount rushmore of rap just a tiny

bit maybe leave eminem off it i have i have i have many more thoughts on on on eminem and hip-hop music and things like that but before andrew you and i have to follow a tsunami evacuation route out of the show so as to avoid the tidal wave of emails from people who are mad that i'm criticizing their favorite music let's just go to break also it's almost 40 minutes into the show so we might as well uh let's take a quick break and then we will be back with more tbtl in just a moment all right let's thank some donors of the day these are the people who are making this episode possible because they are generously and regularly supporting the program with a donation each month We had a meeting, Andrew About the upcoming TBTL-a-thon And if it comes together It's going to be a real humdinger And we've got some I think we've already got some very, very cool Thank you gift ideas that the listeners are going to Be excited about Yes, I agree So, watch this space For more info on that In the meantime, let's thank the people Who are responding to last year's thon People like Michael Guerrero in Jersey City New Jersey. Nice. Yeah. It's kind of taking a page from New York City there, huh? Yeah.

Let's not overthink this.

Keep it simple, stupid. That's right. Morgan Madison is in Seattle, Washington. We're going to go on a little Seattle triptych here. Andrew, a Seattle triple threat. Morgan Madison in Seattle. Nigel Miller in Seattle. And then Matt Stachowiak. In Seattle. Wow. Now, I wonder if that's a coincidence. I wonder if they're roommates. Ah, wow. That would be amazing. Like, they all donate, but then they listen together. They gather around. They gather around their RCA record player, and they sit like that dog, staring at the record player. Do you know the story on that, by the way, supposedly? It was actually recently on a This American Life.

No, was it not posed?

it was that what they there are some theories that so that dog that is kind of the famous rca dog was looking at a record or at a you know record player at something that was playing a voice but it was playing the voice of its owner who had passed away interesting this was apparently a thing that they would do for a while which is if there was a recording of the person they would maybe play their voice at their funeral or at their memorial as a way of kind of remembering them and

So they that was that dog was the dog was responding to the recorded voice of its deceased owner.

Oh, wow. Is one sweet or maybe bittersweet.

And that's how Nigel, Matt and Nigel, Matt and Morgan. That's how they listen to TBTL. That's really interesting.

Well, I have heard from people that said if we ever did, you know, like press an episode of TBTL on the vinyl, they would be very interested in that. That is something that we should think about, almost like the poor man's Wu-Tang Clan. We just do one special show of TBTL. We sell it to Martin Shkreli. We sell it to Martin Shkreli, and we never do another episode again.

We get the hell out of this banana republic. Move to a different banana republic where you can live for $4,000 a year. Thanks also to Avalon Hernandez, who's in Glasgow, Scotland.

That is impressive. I mean, I don't know. Is it impressive to live somewhere? It's impressive to me. It seems just very fancy.

I wonder if Avalon's shites are a wee bit honking ever. How do I not have that? How do I not have that loaded in? That Scottish kid talking about how things were a wee bit honking. And that is now, because I watched that video so many times on TikTok, Andrew, most of what's showing up on my For You page is now just people in Scotland just driving their cars and talking into their phone and just being delightful. I wonder, I don't know if Avalon is, you know, was born in Scotland and has a Scottish accent or is an expat from the U.S. I don't know exactly the story there, but I wonder if like if I were to move to Scotland, I wonder if the accent would remain as charming to me as it is not living there. Like if if I, you know, 10 years in, if it still just sounds like music, because that's what it sounds like to me. I just love it so much.

And then if you were to do like a like a little promo video for AMC theaters, would you sound like you're from America? And would you recognize it? And would I recognize it personally? Would I recognize the accent? Exactly. He was loud.

What accent is that? I was trying to say you were loud, wrong, and Scottish, and I don't even know where that went. I couldn't even finish the word loud. I know that feeling, though. God, that was embarrassing. That was so—that was deeply embarrassing. And I blame Avalon Hernandez in Glasgow, Scotland. No, I don't. I thank you, Avalon, for supporting the program. Appreciate you. Sally Rasmussen is in North Bend, Washington, where they have no discernible accent. They say milk and bagel and everything else perfectly correctly in North Bend.

I'm going to say something weird here, but I feel like Sally, if Sally is not already into politics, I feel like Sally should get into politics. It sounds like a good name for— Well, you're saying that because Stuart Rasmussen is a pollster, right? Is that maybe where you're getting that? Maybe, and Sally Bagshaw. I have no idea. I don't know why these two names together just sound like you're a good— You start off on the city council and you go from there. I don't know. It just sounds a Sally. If you're not in politics, I would ask you to consider it.

Scott Rasmus, if not. Okay. Whatever I said before that. Maybe they know each other. I know this. The donors of the day are vital to our show happening. We absolutely couldn't do this without you all. So thank you so much for your support. We really do appreciate it.

hello and welcome to top story uh apple has announced that there's an update to the iphone

that will allow you to leave your mask on while doing the face id thing um it's in beta testing right now but they think it should be around by mid-march when you say the face id thing i assume

you mean unlocking a computer or a smartphone or whatever okay yeah do you have that on your

on your um will you have a what do you have again a samsung i do have a samsung i think it's

available on my phone i'm not sure i don't use it if it is but i do have a samsung tablet and yeah that recognizes my face and it is pretty it's one of those things that i think the first couple of times i was like oh whoa i wasn't wasn't ready for that uh and now i'm so used to it that on the occasion that i restart it or if it doesn't recognize me for low light i'm just I'm like, oh, are you kidding me? What, I'm typing in a pin like it's 1842?

I mean, the last two years of my life have been spent, like, walking up to my apartment or something, and I've got, like, nine things in my hands, groceries, whatever, and I'm trying to, like, check something on my phone. Why I need to do that in that moment, who knows? But, like, my hands are full. I've got the phone. I'm holding it up to my face, but I have the mask on, And then I'm having to enter my like passcode based on the numbers and just thinking this is a terrible.

system or you're just on the subway or you're just somewhere in public so you're masked up and it can't recognize you and then you're just like oh god it always feels like the last thing i want to be doing in that moment is actually manually punching in my code and i was always curious why they hadn't figured out a way to fix that you know what it just occurred to me you know

how i unlock my phone unless it just unless it just has been restarted and you need to actually use the pin my phone i just i tap my thumb it's so it is biometrics it just occurred to me i do it How many times a day do I do this? 1,000 times a day. I just tap my thumb, and it reads my thumbprint, and it unlocks for me.

Well, see, this is the problem with the way that the sort of—I don't know if this really is an example of planned obsolescence from Apple, but there are many. They got rid of that feature on the iPhone. That used to be how you did it. There was a little circle at the bottom of the phone, and you would put your thumb over it and would read it. That doesn't exist on the newer iPhones. they love to like create something get you used to it and then literally eliminate it yeah so there's nowhere on this there's and i probably their argument would be the face id this is you know i guess before the pandemic their argument would be the face id is equally if not more convenient than the thumbprint and that means more surface area for watching quibi on your phone like the fact that there's not because the circle is a different it's a i mean it's a noticeable little circle on the phone it's a break in the continuity of the film screen if you will or the screen on which you're watching the nfl on the app you know so that's probably the logic like they i know that apple had a big sort of initiative to try to get rid of anything and everything that wasn't just pure screen on this thing but then the pandemic came and then all of you who could just use other phones and just put your thumb down and get into your into your phone you're laughing all the way to the time savings because for people like me it's like i'm trying to punch this number in and just being very frustrated for the last two years yeah the time savings bank has been

really full during the pandemic with me and my cohorts all just you know where it is uh the uh the design is is different on and i'm not even getting you know i'm not debating the merits of one over the other i don't i kind of don't care about that stuff but um like i think tell me if i'm wrong about this but i don't think the iphone has any side buttons at all it does oh it does Okay, because my phone thing is on the side. Like, it's like, it's kind of, I guess that's the power button, but it also just has that biometrics into it. So it doesn't take up the screen. Although that whole, like, we have to, we must preserve all screen space. Like, that was a huge thing for these phones. And, like, the commercials were based around that. And was it the Bevel? I thought they had a different name for it. Was it just the Bevel? I don't know what it was. But everybody was talking about the screen space. I'm just like, I feel like the people making the phones, like, they did a little research, they heard that that's kind of important to people, and then they just obsess over it. The way that the phones on the back, or I'm sorry, the cameras on the back of these phones now, now, that's the huge thing. Like, instead of, like, instead of being smaller and more discreet, it's like, you don't have a real phone unless your camera has three lenses that can turn around, like, you're getting your eyes tested at the doctor. I'm like, I don't I honestly don't fully believe that you need that much like visible hardware for the phones to have really good cameras. I could be wrong about that. I almost think that once it became a selling point, they're making these cameras more clunky looking and ostentatious because it is now the selling point. Right. We use our right. We use these things as cameras way more than we use them as actual phones that we talk like it's not even close. My guess is that pendulum is going to swing back the other way, and pretty soon the camera lenses are going to be indecipherable. They're going to be tiny little pinholes, but it will take a beautiful photo. And, again, I really appreciate the cameras on these things. Like my dad the other day was talking about one of the hay dummies I did recently from my car, and he couldn't believe that it was just my phone that had taken that video. I was like, yeah, no, they're pretty good. But there's no denying that. But I think that, like, it's so funny that these companies just get obsessed with one specific form function on these phones, And then, like, they build everything around that. And for a while, it was screen space as if an extra pixel was going to, like, make or break my experience.

This happens in all different kinds of industries, I think, where there's something gets buzzy and then it becomes just gospel. And I feel like what's happening right now with the podcasting industry, the listeners will be unsurprised to hear that I am not as interested in shorter podcasts. but you know like i know the tbtl is bloated and largely unlistenable like i get that i understand that on some level but i also i think i fundamentally reject the idea that what people really want are six minute podcasts but that is the orthodoxy now in the industry if you talk to any consultant any person who is supposedly a knower of podcasts and i will also say this and You can just hear you.

can hear my resentment just bubbling up to the surface now almost always the people who are supposedly the advice or the knowers of how to do things have never done the thing very well it's you know it pro sports maybe the people you know does anybody think that um uh who are the guys on like first take what's his name uh woody are these the two oh wait no i'm thinking well shannon so So Shannon Sharp really played. Shannon Sharp was a player for the Denver Broncos. But then it's Woody Bayless, I think. Not Woody Bayless.

No, it's Bayless. It's Skip Bayless.

I was confusing with the guy Woody, who's just another random dude that's on Around the Horn. Now, I have a very strange relationship with the talking heads on Around the Horn. I've never listened to the audio of that show once in my life. But I feel like I think the guy's name may be Woody Hayes, like Kevin Blackashaw, all of these different like Jackie McMullin. Like I have been in countless bars and other like, you know, I don't know, lunchtime or late afternoon settings where around the horn is playing muted. And I watch these people and all their bits and I see them drone on. I think Mina used to be on that show a lot. And I've never heard any of them talk But anyway, I think Skip Bayless They have a show called Undisputed, right? Oh, okay Yeah, I think there used to be That's the second version of it There was a different version with Skip Bayless years ago I think that they moved to Fox Sports

Yeah, and there's still a first take I hear them reference that a lot on, you know, Levitard But I don't watch that stuff So I have the same kind of passing Well, you have more of a knowledge of it than I do Except that I didn't know the name of the show

Or the person who co-hosts it But I would say other than that it's a deep knowledge But like I guess my point is just this Skip Bayless Is paid to talk about How someone needs to be better at catching a football Even though I bet you Skip Bayless couldn't catch a football to save his life Nor could I But like also all of these consultants That I now deal with on other podcasting projects Who love to say that The big thing about podcasts is they all need to be six minutes None of them have ever made a podcast that anyone has ever listened to i don't understand the orthodoxy of something like that but i swear to god i'm going to this thing the prpd that we've talked about a lot we've done the show from there we should sneak you into this one andrew it's new orleans in august don't miss me with that you will be you will die i will probably also die but like i'm sure that if you wander actually that's not even a good example because prpd tends to be more radio focused but there's something called podcast movement that's like the cool podcast movement is the cool podcasting uh conference i promise you if you were to walk around podcast movement 80 of the people there who'd set up booths to try to tell people how to do podcasts would say it's got to be shorter everyone knows it's got to be shorter and again it should be shorter than tbtl i will admit that but i just don't i don't know who the person is who's like i want to listen to a six minute podcast I don't understand how that fits into someone's life and I do think Quibi is an example of how that kind of short programming doesn't really have an audience but all that is say I agree with you on the camera thing like it's become for whatever reason or either the camera thing like people want to see the lenses and so then you have Johnny Ive and whoever else all these design people they're just going into these meetings at Apple and Samsung and wherever and they're like no you don't understand customers want to know that there's 11 lenses customers want this to look sort of like a telescope that you would see in New Mexico. They want something to jut out of the phone and reach towards the sky so that they know just how boss these cameras are. Or the phone purchasers want every single micron of space on this thing to be screened. And then everyone just kind of runs with it and it's unclear if that's even what people really give a shit about. I do think

that the quality of a camera is probably top of mind for a lot of people when buying a phone i know for certain that that is the big thing for genevieve like genevieve's got a pretty old phone we've been android people for a long time now we always have the um the samsung android phones um but uh she needs a she needs a new one she needed a new one yesterday frankly but um uh you know i know that she's very excited about the phone about the camera function and that they get better and better so i'm definitely not arguing that on the off chance that anybody is hearing this and thinking that's what i'm saying i'm just saying that when you think about the design of Apple phones it's always led with minimalism right and I just sort of feel like I feel like they could have made I could be totally wrong but I feel like they could have made this phone with equal quality camera function but a smaller lens but that they needed something outwardly to put in those to put in those commercials where the phone spins around in space and as its back face

You see that it's loaded with the telescope, as you described it before. Brian Van Hooker, one of my very favorite writers in America now, has decided over at Mel Magazine to look into the question of what was Norm's tab on the TV show Cheers. I will be totally honest with you. I watched Cheers intermittently as a kid. I always enjoyed it when it was on. I didn't grow up in a household where I would imagine in your home as well Andrew Cheers was probably considered but I think the word we were looking for earlier was de classe which is not how Cheers would be, maybe verboten would be better, I could see a world in which your dad who didn't drink, if it's okay for me to say that, wouldn't see a show set in a bar as 100% great, what was your family's relationship with the show Cheers?

In a certain way couldn't be more wrong, my family was very strict about the things that um that we watched as kids so that was a show with adult themes and we were not allowed anywhere near it however it was my dad's favorite show he wow loved it so much and one of my earliest memories and this is kind of a happy memory but like we would i don't know if it was happy at the time because i was in bed early and supposed to be sleeping i couldn't sleep but like we would you know it'd be bedtime i'm talking about being little kids here probably like still like you know one-piece pajamas with footies kind of like that age and we would they would tuck us in we go to bed but then on whatever night it was I feel like it was Wednesday nights or I could be wrong about that my dad would go downstairs to the family room and watch Cheers and the house would just shake with his laughter and my dad loved that show so much and just oh it's great belly laughs at something and then sometimes the next day at dinner he would tell us what was making him laugh

so much on Cheers that's awesome I love that story um I was again I was always I I knew that everybody thought Cheers was funny and and it was I mean it's such a warm show it was so well executed that I don't think it's very hard to watch an episode in the in the 90s and not you know find yourself enjoying it but I didn't know the plot lines of the show like I didn't realize that there was a whole running gag that norm was a loser i guess because um the john ratzenberger's character who's the cliff cliff clavin because cliff the mailman i mean that's really what i am by the way i'm a cliff clavin and the problem is becca is also a cliff clavin so because wasn't that his big thing was that he was like mr trivia he was always kind of yeah well the thing about this is or whatever that was the cliff clavin deal well i didn't realize that the joke was that norm was kind of a loser i guess i just based on his look i assumed he was a genial accountant or something who just liked to hang out at the bar but i guess that wasn't the case as i'm learning

in this piece i didn't read this piece so what do you mean because my memory of it is and i did end up clocking quite a bit of cheers at some point in my life and like i thought that i mean i know that the joke was his home life wasn't great like he had like a a naggy battle axe of a wife who and that's why he was at the bar all the time and so there was a lot of kind of that negging going on and that like but he did have a job right he was coming in at the end of his job feeling like like kind of uh bedraggled at the end of a long day and not going home right yeah i guess like i

mean this is uh this is in the mel magazine piece this clip where he comes into the bar i guess this was kind of a famous line where uh they asked norm how he's doing and this is what he said

good afternoon everybody hey what's happening norm it's a dog eat dog world sammy and i'm wearing milk bone underwear

now i don't know if that speaks to his employment status but just the idea i didn't even realize that the the joke was that he just kind of like you know couldn't couldn't kick the football charlie brown style like i just didn't know that that was part of the plot would you say that that's that's at least accurate based on your watching of the show well i don't

I don't want to claim that I'm right here if you just read this piece and this person went on this deep dive on Norm Peterson. But my my vibe of it was like he wasn't like he wasn't really down and out, but he was just like really dry and sort of always acted like the weight of the world was on his shoulders in a way. But not that he was like necessarily I wouldn't describe him as a loser, just like, you know, kind of a bar fly who's just like tired at the end of the day. I'm trying to figure out what his job was because you're right. I got I got like kind of accountant coming back from the office, like some sort of mid-level job at the office or maybe even low level job at the office. He wore a sport coat all the time, I think. Yes.

But I mean, there was this run undeniably there was this running joke that is he never paid his bar tab, which doesn't like which doesn't really indicate that he's I mean, you could you could I guess you could kind of like make a lot of different determinations about what that meant, whether it was that he didn't have a lot of money or that he was just cheap or a scoundrel. or what but again i didn't even know i didn't even know that was like a thing and what brian does

Listen to this. I would recommend everyone, particularly if you're like a Cheers head, go read this piece. Andrew, this thing is like 20 pages long of just deep analysis of what his tab would have been. And all of the times in different seasons where there are jokes that are made. This guy, Brian Van Hooker, went and watched 275 episodes of Cheers, or he went through 275 scripts anyway. And it's an analysis of every time there's a reference to his bar tab being unpaid. it's an analysis of apparently there was a visual joke where he had you know his tab was like a big binder that said like norm's bar tab on it and that thing would like it would change colors it was red and then some at some point it was black and it would have like hundreds of pages but then sometimes thinner pages like he's just reading all of this all of this data also he's analyzing the price of beer based on when the origin story of norm is because in some episodes there's a reference and again i apologize that i'm like the last person that should be trying to relay this info because none of this is really natural to me i didn't watch that much cheers but like there's some reference at some point there's a line on the show that indicates that george had been coming to cheers before sam malone bought it for x number of years so brian van hooker is doing all this really complicated math based on like what that what that date would have been and what the price of beer was then there's all these graphs it is incredibly involved trying to figure out what his bar tab would be at the end of cheers do you mind if i just throw this in here because

i love the wikipedia entry on norm peterson this is just just on his character um and there's the show ran for so long that there's so much backstory on this so here's what we know about norm norm previously this would be before the show started norm previously served in the united states coast guard uh in an earlier episode he stated that he'd been in the army so it sounds like maybe that's uh that one of those is wrong uh he loses his job in an accounting firm by defending diane from his boss so for a big chunk of the show i'm guessing he was an accountant i mean he just has that like accounted look to him right but it looks like a plot point at some point was um his boss probably comes into the bar and gives diane a hard time or something and he defends diane and loses his job After that he struggled for a few years As an independent accountant Eventually becomes a house painter Which I sort of remember that And then Norm was also revealed to be an accomplished Interior decorator and beer taster I think that's as the show got into the 90s And they started like really spinning out of control A little bit

House painter seems like I don't know if George went on a ladder For 10 hours a day That seems like that would be a tough transition From accounting, from an office job to house painting But this was what was really great about this Brian Van Hooker piece. And this brings us to the TBTL apology, Andrew. He wanted to find out what George Wendt thought the answer was to how many beers or I should say what the bar tab was for George Wendt after or Norm after all those years. So he went on Cameo and he paid George Wendt. Remember we were talking about George Wendt on Cameo? Yeah, that's how this came up. So he posed the question to him. And this is George Wendt's answer on Cameo as to.

hello brian george wendt here uh gonna give you some uh some ideas about norm's uh tab on cheers um hmm okay the show ran 11 seasons that's 11 times 365 is how many days and I'm guessing probably about 10 beers, 10 beers a day. So I'll let you do the math. Let's see. Now, I was 34, I want to say, when Cheers premiered. So, you know, now I was 33. Anyway. so let's say I could have been going there for 10 years before then so double that roughly I hope that helps I don't know what in God's name beers cost in 1982 etc good luck I think you know you could probably find some online research where somebody actually tabulated it as per the show but yeah i don't know i think you might have a a better idea all right bye for now uh sorry it's such a long one

okay so that's george went doing kind of like the setup but not actually getting to the um what he call call it the the sum what is what is the answer in arithmetic yeah yeah yeah yeah um so uh well okay a couple things first of all george went's hair is just very thick we were speculating when we saw his cameo thumbnail i was that maybe he had a a hairpiece on no george went was just blessed with incredibly thick hair i did a deep dive today looking at tons and tons of photos of george went like up the current photos and he is his hair is just he just has a lion's mane of hair so i am sorry that we were speculating that george went uh was was you know there's and also there's absolutely nothing wrong with wearing a toupee if somebody chooses to do that or a wig or anything like that but in this case uh i i'm very very uh sure that hit this is just his real hair now the backdrop of the cameo video does have me wondering some other things though there is no way i was just looking at so i spent a lot of time researching george went today andrew on wikipedia and other places and one of the things i was struck by was how actually how active he's been post cheers he's just done a lot of interesting stuff he's done a lot of theater he was in a production of hairspray where i believe he played the the the mom character Which has also been played by Harvey Fierstein And a lot of other noted actors And that's a very That's a cool role to play He's been in television He's been in movies He's done a lot of things outside of Cheers There's no way George Wendt is hard up for money, right? I mean, can we assume that he's not hard up for money Based on his long Hollywood career?

Does he gamble? That's a question I have no idea We were talking about Louis Anderson Not all that long ago in the gambling it's like I don't know people's lives I mean my guess is if he's if he was somewhat responsible he's probably fine I don't think he's the richest man in Hollywood obviously which is not what you're asking but I would I would hope that that he's comfortable yeah

he's the backdrop of this cameo is interesting to me because he is in a dimly lit but I can still tell it's very much the kind of apartment that you might have when you are either in college and you've got some roommates or you're just out of college and it's there's a very specific kind of look and design to these you know uh sort of starter apartments and there it looks i'm hoping that this is his office uh or like maybe it's one of his kids apartments and he they just had a better web setup so he's like i'm gonna do these cameos while i'm visiting you I I will be very it will be intense for me if this is the place where George went is living after all and I don't think it is I don't think that's the answer but I'm curious as to why this is the place where he's decided to answer his cameo videos because it's just not where I sort of imagined George went living at this point in his career yeah I guess I'm looking at it now just kind of looks like a just kind of a blah apartment or something you're right but I mean I would assume that maybe he has various properties I have

I stumbled on something here, Luke, that I think is that I think is interesting, although it involves numbers so it might not be but I thought it was interesting when George went and mentioned he didn't know what a price of beer was in the 70s, right? Well, I see that Cheers started in 1982 and so I was like, how much was a beer like a pint of beer at a bar in 1982 and I found myself on this website Brookston Beer Bulletin and they have it broken down. They actually have it broken down, a pint of beer going back to the 50s all the way through when this article was written in 2017. Actually, the last year they have data for is 2016. But there are two columns. It's the actual price of a pint of beer in that year. But then what that price would be adjusted for inflation. Now, inflation, again, in the year 2017 when this was written. So let's start with the regular numbers. A pint of beer in 1982 was $1.59, right, in real money at the time. For inflation, $20, $17, that's like $4.14. But then I started thinking, okay, well, let's just look at this. And that seems about – is that what you would pay for a pint of beer poured from the tap in a bar now, about $4? Sounds about right, maybe $4 or $5. Well, we're in Seattle.

I'll take your word for it. I never order beer in bars. I rarely do. And I also don't know what things cost.

Yeah, and I'm also – yeah, and usually I'm just more of a bottle of Miller Lite as a chaser kind of thing. So I don't really know, like, the type of, you know, the pint of beer that Norm gets. But what I thought was interesting is when do you think, adjusted for inflation, so not real dollars, when do you think beer was most expensive in the span of going back from 1952 to 2016? Interesting.

I'm going to say the late 1970s, early 80s. It looks like it was actually the late 1950s for some reason. The adjusted for inflation numbers say that in 1956, it was only 68 cents for a pint of beer, which is unbelievable to think about. But that equates to six dollars and one cent in in twenty seventeen dollars and same with nineteen fifty seven. So it's like fifty six and fifty seven. The beer is just over six dollars. The when the most modern price on this, it was three ninety nine in twenty sixteen.

Wouldn't that follow sort of simple economics? I can't believe I'm going to try to do this. Oh, dear God. Please give me the grace to accept the things that I will be wrong about in next two minutes.

And so you go with the serenity prayer while we're talking about booze.

I love it. Irony is not dead, Andrew Walsh. And I also don't even really know the serenity prayer. But wouldn't it seem that like it's post-World War II, that you know the like there's just a baby boom and a building boom and everything's booming in america and we beat we beat hitler and we're building levittown and everything is just captain america everything is punched in america superman is punching mouse a tongue and it's just like everything is booming in america which of course creates inflation and so that it's almost like the most expensive pint of beer is also probably connected to an extremely growth oriented moment in this country's economy which my guess would be that that's what that was in the 50s maybe yeah

i was also wondering if it was about um supply and demand what people were drinking i don't know there's probably a lot of there's probably a lot of factors there do you think though that in 1956 They still called it Joeflation

I will Just tell you this the internet says George Wendt is worth 45 million dollars So if that's the case Now I will also say that the same Internet says I am worth I think 11 million I was going to say yeah these sites are Notoriously bad and I would like you to know That I am not worth 11 million Dollars I am barely worth 11 Dollars with these divorces I tell you But I had somebody i gotta be careful about this i was at a get together with family and friends and i had somebody at the family and friends get together just drop casually that they had seen this number online that my net worth was like 11 million dollars which again is i mean that is that is a i mean that i don't even understand what the like first of all i don't know how i even qualify to be on some sort of list like i don't know why a computer program grabbed my name from somewhere on the internet and then grabbed a random dollar amount and connected them there i must just have just enough mentions on the internet for it for the internet to have decided that's a thing that maybe we'll get a click but it's just strange to me and that is a number that is i mean it's it's i can't overstate how many millions of dollars that's 11 million dollars high yeah yeah i mean And those are eleven and a half million dollars higher or whatever.

And I'm going to say this because for the first time in my life, I actually remember this guy's name, comedian James Austin Johnson. And I didn't look it up for some reason. It's in my head now. But of course, we know him because he was doing the Trump imitations and now he's on SNL. And I follow him on Instagram and he's been posting like images of this same site doing this to him as well. It's not just wealth. It's about like it's like this. It's clearly robots scraping data from various places and then trying to make it sound like a human wrote it. But it's so clearly not a human who wrote it, like talking about siblings. And but then it'll take a quote from some interview from forever ago and say the best moment in James Austin Johnson's life was when he married his wife. And it is so funny. Like, I don't think he's doctoring it. I think it's just hilarious on on its own. And of course, part of that also is like the wealth. And it's like, I don't know. I don't know where the stuff is scraped from, but it's pretty funny.

Luke Burbank net worth, $11 million. It's still there. Luke Burbank net worth and salary. Luke Burbank is a radio host who has a net worth of $11 million. Luke Burbank was born on May 8th, 1976, known for hosting several Oregon and Washington based radio programs and podcasts. This is actually not, other than the $11 million, this is actually not that far off. I'm surprised. Family life, a native of Eureka, California He later lived in Portland, Oregon Los Angeles, California and Seattle, Washington He and his wife Carrie raised a daughter Named Adelaide, well He served as the temporary replacement For wait, wait, don't tell me who's Peter Segal Why it is that those tidbits Of information are the ones the internet Scraped, by the way there's also One that lists my net worth at 1.5 million and for some reason that hurts Even though That's also about 1.5 million dollars high that kind of that one that's stings yeah that one stings but my point is i just with again without being overly specific i remember somebody mentioning that 11 million dollars number and i remember trying to as clearly as i could just make it clear that that's just that's just a comical made-up fantasy fictional thing that'd be like you know anyway but the more that i tried to say that the more it sounded like i was actually worth 11 million dollars and i was trying to play it off yeah like i was i doth protested too much i protested so much because it's just wildly untrue but it sounded like i was trying to just be humble and then i just thought how long is it before this person reaches out to me for some sort of financial help right the fact that you try i'm worth 11 million dollars

the fact that you tried to shut this person up but it was by grabbing a wad of money and shoving it in their mouth directly. It was both inhumane and sent the wrong message. It definitely didn't make me seem like I'm not worth $11 million. While we're talking about owning Internet spaces, let me come back to this. This is a dumb thing. This is what I was going to tell you at the beginning of the show, but it did sort of make my head explode, which is ironic. Do me a favor, Luke. You use Google, right? Like, even though you're an Apple person, like the default search engine is Google. Am I right about this? Okay, if you can, go onto Google and type in one of our favorite things, which is unicorn head explode. While you do that, I'm going to catch people up here. This is an emoji or more like one of those Apple sticker things that your dad was using quite a bit in text messages. And it's a it's a brightly colored unicorn, like rainbow colored unicorn with its mind being blown. Right. With a rainbow explosion. With a rainbow explosion. And we often in shorthand on the show now we will say, well, unicorn head explode. Right. Or something along those lines. Well, yesterday I was replying to an email from a colleague who made my unicorn head explode. And so I wanted to grab that image quickly and pasted it into an email and send it back to him. And I went, as I usually do, is I just typed in unicorn head explode. And then as I usually do, I should say I then clicked on image search. Right. And I just clicked on the first one that appeared and I downloaded it. And as it was downloading, I noticed that it was downloading from tbtl.net. The first, like, four image results for Unicorn Head Explode, at least on my computer. This is where I don't know about the vagaries of Google searches and how much it remembers, like, the sites that I go to. Are we owning the space of Unicorn Head Exploding when you do the image search specifically? Oh, okay. Sorry. I'll switch over to image search. Yeah. Yeah, so Unicorn Head Explode, what is the first, like, real non-sponsored image?

Yes, the Swordsman of Slander.

Yes! We own this space! Wow. Like, doesn't that, I mean, I legitimately got excited about this yesterday, then I had to really think about why I was excited and what I was excited about.

So we have basically created the web address, if you will, that the most thing, the web address where there is a unicorn head exploding that the most other things are pointing towards yes are connecting to so that when you do a google image search for it tbtl the swordsman of slander episode 3424 in a collector series is what comes up yes which i don't know why i should be proud

of that but for some reason i'm proud of that i made it it's so hard to do something on the

internet that becomes the main the most of that thing on the internet and doesn't it sort of Aptly make your unicorn head Explode it does although the Irony is that we're Using that ironically yeah I don't think you or I think That unicorns rainbows Any of that stuff it's not it's not it's not Our go-to style of humor these Days and the fact it was my dad It was kind of funny because it just also seems out of character From my almost 70 year old pops But now we are the place to go For that joke even though most of the People that would see that would have no idea that we're trying to make a slightly elevated

joke on the whole topic. Well, I feel like this is one of your most used quotes is most appropriate here, right? You wear the mask long enough. Yes. I feel like I don't know. At one point it was ironic. Now it just is me. I don't know.

What would you guess Norm's bar tab was after all of the seasons of Cheers accounting for price fluctuation in the cost of beer and things

like that and this writer is including the pre cheers assumption that he was going there for 10

years including the preachers assumption he's doing something else interesting too because there were there were a number of seasons where norm supposedly paid his tab off so uh it let's see in um i think it was season six rebecca says i've been going over the books norm and i think it's time to pay your tab norm says oh gee thanks rebecca insert laugh um rebecca says i mean it's time for you to pay your tab oh i see norm thought that she was going to pay his tab norm says me i paid it last month this implies that at this point in the series norm has been paying his tab on a monthly basis again this brian van hooker piece he goes through each season what he thinks the tab would be at the end of that season based on plot points but he ends up doing his total number based on the idea that norm never paid his tab because of this thing he says um let's see uh let me get jump to that part he has this really great line about a moment in which the he feels like the uh show kind of starts to he says something from the marvel universe like i even printed this thing out and i can't find this stuff oh here he goes he goes sometime in season 10 i don't know quite when something rather extraordinary happens using the marvel movie parlance of our times this is when the main cheers continuity branches off into another timeline in the vast cheers multiverse in this new reality everything is exactly the same as it was before except for norm's bar tab which has gone from voluminous to outright cartoonish instead of a thin black binder with about 50 pages it's a thick black binder with hundreds of pages and no it's not possible that norm racked up this much beer in season 10 alone because this new tab brings with it a number of cheers continuity errors for one sam says the tab goes all the way back to when we didn't even know your name skinny guy at the end of the bar but other episodes make it clear that norm has been coming to cheers since well before sam bought it in 1977 also sam had wiped clean norm's tab at the beginning of season nine would sammy renege on his word no that's not who sammy is so this is clearly another reality where he never wiped norm's tab clean norm never worked it off or paid it off his tab under rebecca and perhaps norm has never paid for a single beer since he first arrived at Cheers in the 1960s. Okay, so those are the parameters that Brian Rensperer is working with.

Okay, so we're saying there was never, because on the Wikipedia page there was a paragraph dedicated to this as well that said, like, at one point it was stated that he owed $850, but he worked it off by painting. This must have been during the painting era. I would assume. He painted Rebecca's office and was able to work part of it down. But we're saying get rid of all of that. We just want to figure out how much did he rack up. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do some math on the fly here, and I have a calculator open. I'm going to say Norm spends most weekdays and weeknights, I should say, at Cheers, but probably isn't going in there on Saturday and Sunday. I don't know why I'm thinking of that, but it just seems like, okay, this is kind of a—

We're just hoping that for Norm.

We're just hoping that for Norm, that he's spending his weekend somewhere else. So I'm saying 261 working days in a year, okay? Okay. I'm going to say—so we are going back to pre-Cheers days. We're thinking about him—

1966. I'll give you this much. But Brian Van Hooker's number is 1966 is when he thinks Norm was going to Cheers. And then 10 years later or so, that's when Sam Malone buys the bar. And then that's when we join the party as the viewers.

Wait a second. Then we have to figure out how many years this is total because 66 and the show ran through 93, right? So is that 28 years?

You're the one with the calculator.

I'm just going to say I'm going to round that to be about 28 years, okay? So if we're saying, I think I'm wrong on that, but whatever, because I'm also trying not to, believe it or not, I'm trying not to belabor this. I'm saying 261 working days in a year times 28 years. That's about 7,300. And then we were saying, Wendt said 10 beers an episode or 10 beers a day. I think that's high. I'm going to put it at a sixer. I'm going to say that he had a six-pack, so 7,300 times six beers a night, and then we say that the average cost of a beer is about $4, let's say, and 10 cents equals – that's much probably too low. But I'm ending up with $179,776. So let's go $180,000 is what I came up with.

Wow, you're not, I mean, you're not right, but you're not wildly off. I'm serious. Here's where Van Hooker ended up. He said, assuming Norm never paid for a beer in his entire tenure at Cheers, at the end of 1966, when beer was just 75 cents a glass, he would have owed Cheers a mere $562.50. Now, when the show premiered and Sam was charging just a dollar for beer, Norm's tab had already reached $55,121.48. Finally, when Cheers ended on May 20, 1993, Norm's tab would have been $124,406.90.

Yeah, so I got it within 50K.

Yeah, no, that's actually a lot closer than I was expecting when I heard your when I heard your ciphering over there. I was like, oh, boy.

Yeah, you're pretty close, actually. I also didn't know about the dollar beers or I didn't hear you say the dollar beer. So that could affect it as well. Because I was I was going up to four dollars a beer across the 28 years.

One of the things that they mentioned, too, in this article or that this guy Brian wrote about in this article is that apparently they no one ever paid. You never saw anybody pay a specific Amount of money for a drink on Cheers Because they didn't Want it to Be a clear indication They wanted basically the show to live in syndication forever And if someone was paying a nickel For a beer it would Immediately signal to the viewer that this is a very old Show so they were they did all They did tons of things like that to sort of Evergreen the show to kind of make it So that you could watch it Ten years later and not feel like you're watching a really, really old show based on what the cost of something is. I thought that was kind of interesting.

It's interesting, although there's such an interesting, maybe what I want to say there is misguided. Like, there are so many tells. Like, you just can't make a timeless show. There are so many tells. I mean, that show is, a lot of stuff in that show, by the way, does not hold up for what it's worth. I mean, just Sam Malone's whole thing of just like, hey, I got dates with twins tonight. Like, ew. Like, that show, like, there are moments that-

Now, why is that an ew?

going on a date with two siblings at the same time yeah i mean what if they what if everyone's

in on it what if the siblings like i mean i didn't watch that episode but what if the i guess my question there is in that particular example are we now in a world where consenting adults of any sort of configuration can can do are you talking about what you felt was a general um what's the word i'm looking for just kind of toxic masculinity from that character but i mean don't you think

it's weird to go have any kind of sexual relations between siblings like well it would be for me

that like it's not my it's certainly it's not it's certainly not my um it's it's it's not something that i would be pursuing or find exciting but i just i guess i wonder i feel like i brought up a version of this the other day and also it was kind of like kind of i didn't express it very clearly but there are some things like i i agree with you that's not something i would want to do and probably i'm sure you're right that the sam malone character is kind of like being a Casanova a lot of that stuff doesn't hold up but I was wondering if like because we were coming in a lot of ways more sexually liberated are there certain things like that that like saying like criticizing that is now is we're not we shouldn't criticize it because it would be criticizing adults making choices around their sexual lives or something no because I mean

it's about agency it's about the way he treated women it's about the treating women as objects the way they're portrayed like I know that the Diane character was there to like kind of be You know to be a relief Against that but no I mean there I don't think That I mean he was a he was a scumbag Now I mean I know the joke was he was a scumbag But he was also like the scumbag you root for like it Was just again like I mean if people enjoy The show enjoy the show but like I just Don't think it holds up

Who was was it Kirstie Alley or Shelly Long I want to say Shelly Long who was the First who was first on that show it was diane it was shelly long oh i see so it was first her and then they switched over to and then when did like was frazier was kelsey grammar always part of it or was he kind of an ad towards the middle he was lilith's boyfriend or something right yeah that's a good point but

i thought he was and this is where i i don't know but uh i don't know if either one of them were around for the uh duration of the series i get the impression that frazier might have come on later But I feel like it led with Frasier, then we eventually met his wife, Lilith. I don't think it was Lilith, and then we meet her husband, Frasier. I'm quite – yeah, saying that out loud, I'm quite sure of that, that, you know, Frasier is a character. Whether Frasier was there on day one, I think you're right. He probably wasn't there on day one, but he wasn't, I don't think, a late addition. He's there because he and Diane have a relationship. So, yeah, he's there pretty early on.

It's interesting that they decided, and obviously successfully so, that then Frasier was going to be the springboard into the next thing. Like, of all the characters on Cheers, that that was the one that they were like, this is where we're going with this next. And, I mean, they were hugely successful, so obviously they made a good call. And now Frasier's partying at Mar-a-Lago, right?

Did you see that? Oh, no. Really? Yeah. Kelsey Grammer is not Frasier. That's one thing that everybody should try to remember.

Oh, gosh, really? This is why we can't have nice things. Dang it. He's MAGA?

I don't know if he's MAGA. There was some big party at MAGA. I'm looking this up now because this is the type of thing that I saw, like, on the side of my Twitter recommendations or something. You know what I mean? Like, I'm looking this up now. I also don't even know how to spell his name. Oh, I got it right. Okay. But I think that also. And I think that Bill Belichick was there. And so I don't even know if it was a Trump party. It was something at Mar-a-Lago, which is, I think, what the kind of conversation is. It's like, where do we? Yeah, I'm sorry, though.

You show up at Mar-a-Lago at this point. Of course. And you are 100% making a decision. All right. Well, listen, this has been good. I think we've really done some important mathematical work. What do they always say, Andrew? Try to do as much math on the radio as possible. Exactly. On the fly, numbers. Yes. I'm proud of how close you actually got And how much math we crammed into Just all of the top stories That's the most math we've done Maybe in the history of the program

I love that this also includes a conversation About how those consultants Don't know anything about What podcast listeners want They want two hour shows Where Andrew tries to do math On the fly

Alright let's do some music For your weekend before we get out of here of a big birthday party to pull together in this tiny apartment, Andrew. Oh, yeah. So we'll see how that all goes. In the meantime, though, what song would you like to recommend for the listeners this week?

So I think this is very interesting, and I'm going to play, well, I'm going to play little bits of different songs, if you don't mind, but I'll try to make it quick. But there is a band called Bodega, New York City, I want to say, punky, kind of poppy Punky Band. And I feel like I don't know anything about them. I feel like I might have played a song by them on the show at some point. I maybe not. It's just something that I kind of I see the name Bodega from time to time. I couldn't have told you much about him. But they just released a new single called Statuette on the Console. And that's the name of the album as well. It's got nine songs on it. There's something very interesting about this album. Before I get into all of that, I'm just going to play for you the lead track, though, Statuette on the console by Bodega. So take a listen to this.

So I like that a lot.

It was very catchy. very simple very catchy but here's the thing that i want to say is interesting about this album like i said it's nine songs long it's that same exact song nine times only in a different language each time i'm actually reading this because i couldn't tell what these languages were just by looking at them but i'm on uh brooklyn vegan a one time i believe favorite website of the show maybe i'm

wrong well just it's crazy how i think we were promoted once in brooklyn vegan we were doing maybe that's what i'm thinking in new york it's just funny how many things that are not related to veganism run through the brooklyn vegan website yes and so anyway they they list it out here it's

an english dutch french german greek italian portuguese spanish and ukrainian um and i think i hope i'm right about this i don't play i think this one statuette sur la console i think this is the french one which i mean they they're all pretty good i mean again you have a very simple song structure there, so why wouldn't they be? But this one is pretty good. I started just playing, I just hit play on the first one the other day and just listened to this all in a row until I thought I was going mad. Hmm.

Not bad, right?

Oh, my gosh, it's so good. I am a sucker for music with French lyrics. Of course, I know nothing about what's being said, but it is just such a it's a mellifluous language to me.

Yeah, and that's why I chose the French one, because I thought that might be up your alley, too. Yeah, anyway, I'm really impressed with that. I want to go back and check out more of their back catalog. Again, it's Bodega.

The album was produced by Parquet Courts member Austin Brown. Ah, that would make sense. That would check out. All right. My suggestion for this week is from the new Big Thief. album dragon new warm mountain i believe in you which is a completely mysterious name for an album to me this is a completely mysterious band to me in that i've heard big thief music over the years and um i certainly really there's a song called shark smile which i think i've played on the show a bunch of times it's off of maybe one of their first albums that i just love there's a very produced very kind of like I don't know almost like slick sound to it and then they've just put out a number of different records and they're just they their sound changes to my ears anyway a lot from different records and Adrian Lenker I think is the name of the lead singer and main I guess main songwriter and she is just an incredible artist and musician and person it would seem but this album the reason i'm i'm kind of meandering here andrew is because there are songs on this album one's called spud infinity that i wanted to recommend because i just i cry every time i hear the song but it sounds like a band it sounds like you're at a farmer's market and you come around a corner and there's like five old hippies who rode there on their bikes with like a trailer behind them for towing rutabagas and now they just all are standing in a circle playing like it sounds like that's the band that's playing but the song the lyrics of the song are so profound to me and beautiful i was i went on a run on saturday in pasadena around the rose bowl and then i was just sitting in the grass outside the rose bowl in the sun in southern california and i started playing this album i was listening to it on my headphones and i just started crying because it's so good even though the songs are weird to me i don't even like i don't like all of the songs but i love this album as an album has 20 tracks and it's one of the first albums in a long time that i'll just listen through the whole thing even though there are songs on it that by themselves i'm like i don't even know why i'm listening to this but it somehow holds together as some weird cohesive piece of sound to me but i didn't want to play spud infinity because i feel like it would for some of the listeners just be a bridge too far like you can't start with spud infinity um if you're not into this kind of music i guess so i want to try to pick something that was a little bit more welcoming and so uh certainty is the

song that i want to play today can i ask you so i got a little bit kind of lost in the timeline here so is certainty a new song or is this an older song that you're going to because the newer

stuff seems less accessible to you this is a song off of this album that is a new album dragon new warm mountain i believe in you i think it's maybe the it's not the first track but it's it's um i think it's a pretty popular track off the album this is off of the new album but this is i think the most accessible the most initially accessible or least polarizing song off of the album my real favorite song is spud infinity but again that's just it just sounds like a hootenanny or something it just it just it sounds so silly it just sounds like but the other thing i'll mention is i think i know that adrian uh lenker and uh one of the other founders of the band in fact i think maybe everyone in this band went to berkeley college of music which is also fascinating to me because that's one of the most prestigious uh you know music academies in the country so it's clear that everybody in big thief is extremely well schooled in music and music theory i mean they went to the the harvard of what they do and yet there are songs on this album that just sounds so kind of lo-fi and and just countrified and just kind of like again you're hearing just like a jam that you you could be forgiven for not realizing what the musical pedigree of all this stuff is I guess so yes funny because I'm

interested in hearing this because I didn't realize that their sound vacillated so much in fact I think I must have just been listening to because I don't I like I don't know an album by them I just know them a little bit here and there and all this stuff actually my problem was it all kind of sounded alike And I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean it in a beautiful way. But when I think of Big Thief, I thought it was all that, like, really gentle, almost whispering singing over, like, very delicate music. But I didn't realize that they swung so widely.

Well, part of it is that I first heard—the first I heard of Big Thief was this song, Shark Smile, which I'm going to play a little bit. They really like this, like, weird, some weird-ass stuff before they get into the song-song part of it. Just give us a second. Let them just foam this off. All right, we get it. This is the Berklee School of Music part of the whole operation.

so this sound is what i associate with and this was the first song i knew by them and this is what where they always kind of lived in my head musically and i don't know if that's represented in all of their albums because i'm really not an expert on this band

So are you familiar with that song from me playing it on the show?

I don't remember this particularly, and I think the stuff that I got into, and again, I wouldn't even say I got into it, just like here and there a song would come across a transom, I'd add it to a mixtape Mostly during this pandemic And even that song You just played right there Even has a little bit More of a backbone Than some of the stuff That I think of Some of the stuff I heard Was like very ethereal And she's kind of got a You can hear it there A little bit She's got a little bit Of a haunting voice With an accent I really like that I'm just saying that I kind of didn't realize Their breadth Right So

Anyway so that's kind of like If you said What's Big Thief sound like My brain Again having fairly Limited knowledge of the band Would be that's what they said well that's what they sound like then this new album comes out and i start listening to it and it sounds wildly different to me but so good um again that's just my take on it we may have some real fans out there who are going to go no this is part of a very obvious progression or they started doing this four albums ago and you just didn't realize it luke

all very possible this is such a long album now i see um this is a 20 track record this new one

dragon new warm mountain i know i believe in you and again i i i can't overstate this enough it's not even like i like every track individually but i like the experience of listening to this whole album and i can't explain it because i'm very like easily dissuaded from from music like if something's not sounding great to me i don't have a great i don't have a good tolerance for like learn you know like experiencing a song that maybe i don't like at first but then kind of Understanding it over time and coming to appreciate It like if it doesn't taste great right Away I'm like this is not for me But somehow this album has Has caused me to change That at least as it relates to it so anyway okay Enough build up can we hear a little bit of Certainty by Big Thief off of this Album Dragon New Warm Mountain I believe

In you I'm gonna make you feel good first though Because I'm gonna say the variety write Up of this The sub headline is if the ethereal Folk of UFOF F.O.F., and the earthy indie rock of Two Hands, these are two records, indicated the end of the band's sonic spectrum, Dragon Posits, an entirely new access. All of that is to say, yes, this sounds like this is a shift, Luke. I don't think that you're the first person to say that. I'm not losing my mind. Yeah, exactly. So here's Certainty.

Thank you. Cook it as it goes No, no, no Shadow from the grass And the dirt on the lawn Why do I string you along? My certainty is wild Weaving

So there you go.

It's such a beautiful voice. I just love her voice so much. Oh my gosh, right?

I want to say this Spud Infinity song, the song that I'm too afraid to play, I don't know why I'm underestimating I'm the one that has limited musical range I don't know why I'm assuming the listeners Are like me, close-minded But Spud Infinity has this line Where she's talking about Like, sort of Being in your body And like, she says something along the lines of Like, kiss your body all over Except your elbows, they're just out in space On their own, because you know there's like Famously the thing of you can't kiss your own elbow Like, you can't get to it

I don't think I knew that expression

Do you know that's a thing? No, I don't think I know. Yeah, there's like, you cannot kiss your elbow. It's not possible. So I love that she just has this line about kissing yourself all over your body as a way of checking in with your physical self. But not your elbows. They're out in space. They're on their own. They're doing their thing. I don't know why that line just cracks me up. But if you're adventurous, check out this whole album and then check out that track, Spud Infinity.

Hey, before you move on to this listener music for your weekend, which is one of my favorite music for your weekend songs in a long time i love love the song you're about to play i want to read a quick email if you don't mind luke regarding a pre a previous music for your weekend song that you played and i am talking about the um the telephone song what was it again labby sifri labby sifri and is it just called telephone is that the name of it i'm god bless the telephone god bless the telephone which i've listened to several times and i i tear up um like you said It's really hard for me to listen to that song without crying. Listen to this email I got from Sam. Long-time listener, first-time emailer. I'm getting married this Saturday. So I think this is this Saturday, by the way. I'm getting married this Saturday. Mazel. Exactly. Amazing person ever. We've been together for five years. Wait, you're marrying Genevieve? You son of a... We've been together for five years, but we've never had an hour song. With the wedding coming up, we had settled on Crazy Love by Van Morrison, but we had no emotional connection to it other than it being a lovely tune. I was listening to an episode of TBTL a few weeks back, and Luke played Bless the Telephone by Labby Seyfray, and it reminded me of the time Mary and I were apart for months early in our relationship, when her job at the time transferred her to D.C. We would call each other multiple times per day just to check in and mostly talk about nothing in particular. I think we just wanted to reassure each other that we wanted to be together, despite the distance. I played this song for her, and it immediately brought her to tears. We have since made it our song, and we'll be dancing to it at our wedding. How sweet is that? I wanted to reach out and thank you for sharing that with the world. How sweet is that? I'm getting choked up reading that because that song makes me choked up hearing you read that.

Oh, my gosh. And just imagining these two folks committing their lives to each other and enjoying that song together and having it feel special to them. That makes me feel really happy about what we get to do for this, how we get to have this as our job, Andrew. because we're just here flapping our gums for well over six minutes each day. A little over. Despite the consultant feedback. We're just north of six minutes and, you know, some parts of it are listenable, some parts of it are deeply boring, some parts of it are math related. Some of them are deep in the math. But somehow in all of that every once in a while something kind of cuts through and makes an impression on someone and then makes their life better and that is like, that's really an honor And I have to stop talking about that or I'll start crying

Yes, and of course I wrote that song So I even get more credit for it

God, this is such a long way For you to get more on the publishing rights For that song Our listener suggestion this week Is from our dear friend listener Jamie, who says I love this song by Flower Love A flower of love is going to be big Flower of love is somebody named Joyce Siss or sissy um who jamie describes as a kid with a great sound and an amazing look too so the song is called i love this song and it's by someone who plays under the name flower of love and it is very very good it also doesn't have that many streams on spotify comparatively to how good it is and also how many streams songs will tend to get jamie of course is a real kind of music connoisseur she's got that great operation sunstroke house that she runs that we actually did tbtl there once and so i'm not surprised to hear that jamie has kind of put her finger on the pulse of something that isn't widely super widely known but i think she's right this flower of love person is very talented so that's what we're going to go out with i love this song by flower of love and remind you that we'll be back here on monday with more imaginary radio for you So see you then Until then Have a great Have a great Great whack end Take care of yourselves Sorry I'm so emotional From hearing about The wedding Really got to me God I'm falling apart here Anyway Thanks for listening We'll see you on Monday And please remember No mountain too tall And good luck to all

Feeling sunshine. Know everything's right. Outside. Bowels of motion through the sea streaming on. Dance around the moon because I love this song.

i do think about the planet's been spirals round the ball of fire we're sitting natural if you feel it it's not missing casual that's nothing it's a given don't know about time Would you say that to Tom Petty? You wouldn't say that to Tom Petty, would you?

Power out.