Muse

i know it seems crazy but tracy and i are totally totally in love in love yeah it's serious she inspires me in ways that linda never has she even wants to read my novel but you haven't written your novel that's the whole point tbtl

guys i'm calling you from a karaoke bar bathroom somebody just put on bohemian rhapsody save me

please i have a beta sequence i've been working on would you like to see it that's our second

arby's in town some say it's better the fries are curlier though i wouldn't know it i'm loyal

to the original we have all the facts on this we need we don't need any more facts in the land of truth my friend the man with one fact is the king hey look here why don't we eat us a few

thousand bears and you tell me what's buzzing in the big bad city all right hello good morning

and welcome everyone to a monday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live

if we're living in a simulation who coded in that my dad has a ponytail my name is luke burbank i am your host that's a weird detail don't do that anymore coming to you from the hollywood

broadcast center right here in portland oregon where it is looking like a beautiful day oh ma pa it's just beautiful let's see it's march 7th so we are i think by next next sunday we uh we We spring ahead, so it's going to be light longer. And then I think the week after that, maybe it's like technically the first day of spring. So we're turning a corner, people. This is very exciting as we arrive at episode 3634 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Speaking of things that are exciting and turning corners, We've got the return of our much, much loved Monday Motivation segment.

I feel happy of myself.

This week, we're going to call up a pep talk hotline put together by some grade school kids in Healdsburg, California. We will be ringing that up coming up. And then, somebody made a game called Wordle. I mean, I know that statement isn't earth-shattering. but I mean like years ago a number of years ago a person made a different game called Wordle that's just been sitting there in the app store for all these years. This is so confusing Ron. And one day the guy wakes up and there's like 500,000 downloads of his game whereas previously there had been like two. And so he's trying to figure out what to do with this. People are downloading the wrong Wordle. There's actually kind of a nice little end to the story though that we'll tell about uh on the program today and then i um i spent the weekend among other things watching

some documentary film programs it's the first line of the film man it's got to be on the money

here including the kanye west genius doc that's on netflix man that's right it was beautiful and i mean really really touching and also frustrating because now it's like Kanye West has re-entered the mental conversation That I'm always having with myself I had relegated him because of his recent antics Which are pretty gross, actually To the far, far back of my brain And now I'm watching this documentary And it's, well, like he says in the song I miss the old Kanye So we'll talk about that Also a documentary that I saw called The Other Side Which has been really Can't stop thinking about it, I'll say that So we will discuss all of those things with this young man, the longest running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Of course, he's a podcaster by trade. But if that doesn't work out, look out, Rick Steves. This guy's got some some travel tips for you. There's no whining in football. But every August, football comes to wine country. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke.

Luke. I had the perfect TBTL story for you. It involved a personal experience that was like no other. It involved my interaction with a newspaper regarding this experience. It involved an adventure of me trying to get a handle on the physical newspaper so I could bring it to you for this episode of TBTL. But do you know what the but here is, Luke? Can you take a guess on this Monday morning what the butt is?

garbage problems it was all a dream

you know that feeling

you used to read Word Up magazine

you know that feeling where like you're having a really good dream about something and you wake up and you're mildly disappointed because it was just a dream that's the feeling I had this morning when I woke up and I realized oh my whole plan for a rockin' TBTL was all just the content tense of a dream. In the dream, I won't go into detail, but some kids squirted me with a hose very rudely. I wrote into the local newspaper about it in probably some sort of rants and raves situation. They published it. Talk about you and your life, your hopes, your ambitions, your dreams. And then Genevieve had the physical newspaper and then it took me a while to find it and then I woke up and I was like, I need that physical paper. I gotta share this with Luke. This is perfect. None of it happened, Luke. All just an invention of my sleeping brain my apologies i do like nothing today i like that you're even when you're sleeping

andrew you're working i'm trying and you can put those hours in on your 8 p.m time card you know

even when i'm even when i'm sleeping i'm failing and that's just really cool

um how about you you have any good tvdl content what i don't have are any dreams that i remember i was talking about this with becca over the weekend because she uh was had a dream with a specific person in it who a person who had been on her mind and and i she was like do you ever have that and i was like no i don't my i definitely if i remember a dream at all it's more like a tone piece it's more just like i remember feeling happy because i had a winning lotto ticket or something it's not and but my dreams are very very non-narrative or there's no plot to them it's not like a thing happens and then i have to fix the thing and then i'm triumphant at the end it's just like hey i can fly this is dope yeah i never related to a thing that's happening in my current

life either that i that i can put my finger on i feel like um as far as the current life stuff is concerned i feel like usually there's a pretty long delay for me on those things in a weird way like uh you and i gearing up for just for example the australia trip we took several years ago now um there's a lot of stress going into that and you'd think i'd be having a lot of very specific australia stress dreams but i did not i probably had i did not i did not have those dreams um i did not that's better thank you thank you for translating that for me um uh but anyway i um hi everyone welcome to my twitter you're my wiseau translator hey everybody he was trying to do a tommy wiseau you couldn't really hear it so luke will explain it um but anyway later on i think weeks after we got back from australia i started to have dreams that were specifically australia related whereas leading up to it i probably just had more random stress dream stuff so usually there's a delay on that for me although i do you know we're in the middle of this move here uh and i have been having some i think dreams kind of just quasi related to that but again we don't have to get too far into dream talk and mostly like you say they're just they're just like tone

pieces or pastiches you know not very narrative if you if you hear uh or a pause andrew or i should say if you don't hear me it's because i'm muting my microphone as i sneeze and deal with what i think is a cold or i'm one of the rare people who's able to get omicron twice one of

the because i know somebody who's got it twice but that person is also not vaccinated um but You're one of the rare people who's been vaccinated and boosted.

Vaxed, boosted, had the Crohn, and I don't know, because I think it's just a cold, actually. We've talked about this plenty over the last two years, but it's very disorienting now if you just get a normal cold in this moment of life. I was at Becca's house, and I was like, should I just take? Because she and I both got a bunch of those government tests. Did you and Genevieve order those, by the way?

Well, one of us did. Which one do you think is more responsible? And on top of things, Genevieve ordered hers. And I was like, I'll order it if I need it, which is like the worst approach to this. But we now have a bunch in our house because when Omicron was surging and we couldn't get any tests, Genevieve got some through normal channels. And then when the government started subsidizing them, I know that she ordered some more. So I think we're in pretty good shape. I have not dipped into my own personal government supply yet, though.

i haven't either because by the time they arrived mostly i was just curious if the if that system was going to work and it worked amazingly i know some people i heard a story on hear it on like npr about how some of the tests were showing up without instructions or maybe the instructions were in a different language than the language that the recipient spoke so There were some glitches, but it was sh**.

shocking how easy it was i mean it took under 20 seconds to sign up for the i mean you didn't have to sign up you just went on a website you just clicked please send me some tests you put your address in and then it was like okay your tests are on the way and then no joke three weeks later the test showed up i mean it was it feels like there's got to be a way to make more government services operate this way like it's you can do it it can happen it can be free it can be uh you

know efficient but anyway well i'm really gonna say i'm glad to hear that because you were like outwardly very skeptical in a way that i kind of found surprising but we never talked about on the show you mentioned it at the beginning of you mentioned at the beginning of the show a couple of times i think where you had on the show sheet for a couple of days but we never got into a conversation about it and i wanted to ask you where all that skepticism came from well other than it just because it was the government some for the same reason sometimes my trash isn't picked up i guess but i remember you said there's no way these are going to show up but i'm so glad to

hear that they did it was just too it was too easy it just seemed like this how can this be the system and also i mean you know with tests retailing for whatever 20 bucks or something you know they send four per household so they're sending me like 80 worth of something and it there was something about the again i'm sorry i'm fighting a sneeze right now so just bear with me But they – I was suspicious because it was so easy to just click a button and say, can you please send me these, that it seemed like there was no way it was going to work out. But, hey, credit to the United States government. It did work out, I think. I mean, I don't know. I haven't taken the tests out of the boxes. Maybe I open the box and there's like one of those peanut brittle snakes in there or something.

A snake pops out at you with a bunch of confetti. but i don't want to i love that the government is so efficient when it comes to pranking millions

of americans like i ordered this gum from the government they're sending everyone four packs of gum but then when i pull it out of the thing it just snaps my finger if that was the the one thing our government could really nail is just pranks i was waiting to see if i just felt a little better today um and i again i i really think i am just dealing with a common cold but it's you know it's been a long time since that's happened and everyone's you know the the the sort of statement on this from people is always just like i'm never you know i'm gonna keep with the mask and hand washing because i love not having colds because there's a lot of people that you know deal with like a few times a year they get some sort of like flu or cold thing and now they haven't been getting them and they're loving that I am not a person who actually gets colds very often so that also means that I'm a complete baby about it because I've been very fortunate that I'm not sick very often when I am not feeling well I need the entire world to stop and take notice of it really that doesn't that doesn't scan with

what I thought of you because I mean obviously we've been doing this show for a long time and I've maybe you don't have colds all that often but obviously I've heard you fight through them You haven't, for what it's worth, you haven't acted like a big baby to me, but maybe it's those who are around you when you're off air. But I feel like you fought through a lot of colds before Ira Glass style.

I guess, you know, I mean, yeah, I guess just what I mean by that is I feel very, very, very fortunate that my physical body, despite the many abuses that I have subjected it to over the years, Uh, my body works pretty well for me and I don't get like sick, sick a lot. And I think about people who are dealing with chronic pain or chronic illness. And I am, I'm, you know, I'm in awe of how people are able to sort of push through. I might be able to push through, I've got a bit of a froggy throat, or, you know, a cold or whatever, but that's, you know, two or three days of my life. I feel like if anything really serious were to happen to me, I don't, I just don't, again, I'm very amazed that people are able to push through what they're able to push through, because I don't think I have that in me.

I think you do. you know one of the most fascinating things that i've ever heard i did not realize this was a phenomenon um but our friend celine who's a also a performer but she's a musician and like i remember seeing her one time again this is well pre-covid but she had a really bad cold but she was on tour she was on some sort of a mini tour i think they might have even had to i think this might have been the trip where she was performing overseas in europe possibly if she lists if she's listening to this i don't know how much of this i'm getting right or wrong or how much i'm conflating but i know that she had had to perform somewhere and it was a pretty big deal i want to say it might have been overseas it might have had to do with a twin peaks festival overseas anyway um she says that you know she's just you know in the depths of this cold feeling really rough like scratchy voice all these things

But then goes out on stage and she says the adrenaline just makes it feel like you don't have a cold during that time. And then you kind of it sounds like you probably crash kind of hard after the performance. But somehow in those situations, she says that the adrenaline just totally takes over. Because, again, I don't have a musical bone in my body, so I have no idea what it's like. I don't even do karaoke, so I don't know what it's like to sing in front of people. But that is astounding to me that you have a physical ailment that is literally affecting your instrument, your voice. right but then your body also just says i need i know you need to get through this saline i got you for a little bit but then you're gonna crash after i've had versions of that happen when i'm

doing say live wire like live in front of a crowd where i'm feeling crummy let's be honest maybe just hung over who knows where i'm like okay how am i well you know what i was in uh chicago and we had a big show and i took a fall in chicago the day of this big live wire show we had like Reggie Watts and all these people and I had like I had like split my lip open and I was like probably had a head injury like you know I'd conked my head but I didn't go to the ER or anything and I I remember just thinking how am I gonna go on stage first of all I was just embarrassed because I like a bandage like I had like a wound on my face and I was just feeling terrible but it was same that same thing kind of happened like I got on stage and everything just my body just like said okay we're prioritizing all of the energy resources for this happening and i just felt great it was a really great show reggie watts was great rick bayless was there um and then i went out with some but okay that's his brother um which is crazy to me i don't know why that oh that's true literally they're brothers oh i thought you're just oh no i didn't know that

i don't even really know who rick is i'll be honest not to be rude but rick bayless is a

I like to say restaurateur because I just recently learned that's the word. Yeah. I think I've been saying restaurateur.

I think we learned that on the show a while back.

So now I don't want to miss any chance to put that to use. But anyway, Rick Bayless is the guy behind Frontera Grill and another one that I forget. Then Topa La Bamba, maybe. He's kind of the Tom Douglas of Chicago. He has a string of very, very popular, beloved restaurants, often kind of focusing on, like, Mexican cuisine. But his brother is Skip Bayless, who is, I think, just known the world over as a deeply unpleasant fellow. Like, IRL, deeply unpleasant, which is part of why his brother, the restaurateur, doesn't speak to him. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I was just making a Bayless joke.

I didn't know that they were actually related. They really are.

I was saying I want to use the word restaurateur. There is a moment in the Kanye documentary, the Genius, which is a three-part thing on Netflix. I'm guessing you haven't had a chance to watch any of this yet.

No, although I probably should, although it might be one of those things where it just makes, kind of as you somewhat alluded to in the intro, it might just make me sad because I was such a big fan of his early work. He is so charming.

and so likable the you know 23 year old version of kanye he's being interviewed uh he's like driving around in his like ultima and he's just getting just enough heat that some somebody's interviewing maybe for like a hip-hop magazine or something and the the writer is kind of riding around in the car with him and i want to i forget what the word is but there's a word that like the whole interview is done and then kanye says oh can you also put this word in and um he goes because

i just learned that word and i'm trying to use it more can you just put this word in yes and the

writer's like yeah i can i can do that this would be a way more interesting story if i could remember the specific word but it was it was you know it's something having to do with you know success or or whatever and it was so i mean that's the thing about this guy he's just so likable such a interesting curious mind i mean on his grind that almost yeah those words rhymed and i didn't even what's the guy saying i was a poet yeah i mean to be a poet um he's like it's just it's amazing it's also just like a trip down memory lane of 90s and i should say 2000s hip-hop fashion and also you know who was out in the hip-hop world and who kanye was crossing paths with and And like, it's just so basically this guy named Cootie started was a stand up comedian in Chicago who was hosting this kind of like hip public access hip hop show called Channel Zero, which was kind of becoming a big deal in Chicago. And because it was like the only TV show, even though it was public access, that was sort of dedicated to hip hop, he got everybody who would come through Chicago, whether it was Snoop or you name it, they would he would always get them on this Channel Zero thing, this guy Cootie. And so through that, he met Kanye. And then at some point he realized, oh, Kanye is going to really be something I should just start filming him all the time. And so he basically dedicated his life to documenting Kanye West And had been doing so for many years And now this is all the footage from that And it is, I mean, it's just a really, really compelling The thing that

Is it a docu-series or a docu- or just a documentary? It's three parts It is a three part, okay Yeah, I guess we'll call that a series And so do you, have you seen the whole thing And do we know where it ends? Like, what part is it like? I haven't seen the whole thing I've watched, like, the first

they're like like each thing is like an hour and a half or something so i've watched the first two um and i haven't gotten to the third but i yeah that's i'm kind of bracing for that because obviously he's going to have to sort of reckon with where kanye has ended up and a lot of the sort of political things he said and also i don't think it gets i don't think it gets into what's going on currently in kanye's life but it's pretty unfortunate what seems to be going on with him kind of like more or less uh acting or talking violently towards like the guy that his ex-wife is dating you know which is a big a big problem now but i don't think we get fully there we probably get to the like trump stuff and then i think they're gonna i mean i will say this i it's not like it's not necessarily the most nuanced documentary i've ever seen it's not like the writing and the vo is is is sparkling per se but just the footage is so compelling and one of the things that i i'd never really understood i mean if you know anything about kanye you know that his mother's passing was a really big thing for him i mean as it would be for most people but like he was particularly close to his mother and his mother was really a like a um i don't know what call sort of a an anchor in his life and you know i heard that i never thought about it very much and then you see donda west and kanye interacting and it totally makes sense she is one of the most lovely people you will ever see in your life and the way she talks to him and the things she says to him are like she's just his biggest cheerleader but she's also very smart obviously and giving him good advice about just kind of like there's this scene where he shows up at this apartment that she has in in chicago and he's getting excited because he's just gotten the i think it's his beat that was the h to the izzo song the jay-z song and he's talking uh you know to his mom about it and she's just again she's so supportive like you know sometimes you'll get the maternal figures can kind of be slightly undermining to their children without meaning to be but she's really not that but she says something she goes just remember that when a giant looks in the mirror he sees uh well she says something like she gives this quote it's like when a giant looks in the mirror he thinks he's small or something which was like her i think kind of saying to him like that's no matter how big you get you're always going to be battling insecurity basically because this is at the same time when he's writing like the you know the um i'm so self-conscious that's why you always see me with at least one of my watches rollies and whatever he says i can't even pronounce nothing past that Versace like which is such a genius line anyway he's it's at the same time where he's really struggling with getting popular and being very outwardly confident but of course feeling not confident inside which is typically the case for people that are very boastful but just the way that his mom interacts with him is so touching and it just like really kind of made me feel emotional watching it and it also really kind of explained why he totally lost

his marbles when his mom died yeah you know that was an insight into his life that i didn't have

before i watched this doc i think you know there's a lot of kanye haters out there in our audience even before he went completely over the edge i think people were a little confused why we like him so much and that's fine like we can all like different things um but i've heard a song about that but i do think it's you know but but maybe maybe those criticisms do live in my head a little but only because I think that people are legit confused what we see in early Kanye, right? Yeah, I mean, if not the music being for him, just even early on, you know, from him jumping on stage and interrupting Taylor Swift and whatnot, like, he's always been somebody who just, if you're not kind of following the nuances, and especially if you're not following his lyrics, seems completely unselfaware, which is where I'm going with this. And I don't know if you'll go with me here, Luke, or not, but I almost feel like he is early Kanye when there was still some what I like to think of just as some Kanye still being in there. I feel like he was somehow so self-aware about being not. self-aware which obviously sounds kind of like a tautology or something or not a tautology but like it doesn't make sense but um because he would he would have these moments he would have the taylor swift moments which were obnoxious like absolutely obnoxious but then he would he would kind of work it out in his art and he would rap about it and they did rap about it and then he'd hand the mic to ders i don't want it this is the show where we just do our poor poor impression

of drops that we play on the show sometimes. I just can't say rap about it

without just slipping into that drop. But you know what I mean? Like knowing that he was somebody who struggled with this, somebody who would come off as being way too boastful and way too confident, but then kind of knowing that it comes from this place of insecurity. And then it makes you think about everybody's insecurity and how it comes off and how it manifests differently in all of us. And there was a lot of self-awareness around his apparent non-self-awareness That was kind of a really interesting thing. And then you mix it with a brain that I think was also just a genius as far as like what he could do artistically and to address these things artistically. And so to sort of see that shut off is the tragedy before when you were talking, by the way, or when I asked you about how far you think this documentary goes into his life. It was even less about how the documentary is going. My question came from not so much how this filmmaker is going to deal with it, but just when this filmmaker's access was cut off, if it ever was, because you mentioned that he was doing it. It was called Station Zero. Do I have that right? Channel Zero. Channel Zero. So I assume that if he was, you know, hanging out with Kanye back when he was 23 years old, that was a long time ago. Now, eventually, I'm assuming that he hasn't been with him up until this day of him renting out what was the Atlanta Stadium so that he could, you know, practice Donda some more or fine tune Donda.

Right. I again, I haven't gotten to the end yet. I get the feeling that this guy was this guy Cootie had a special place in Kanye's life. and i don't think it was like he was following him 24 hours a day but i think it was the kind of thing where when stuff would happen he could call kanye and say hey i want to come film you and kanye would say yes it actually starts the very beginning of the film is kanye in the dominican republic in 2020 like wearing military like this military vest and on the phone with someone about his presidential run so we know he gets that far with kanye um but but but hasn't kind of circle back to that beginning the other thing too is like the the the taylor swift thing that that to me is like that's new kanye like that's like by that i guess what i will and this is because art is so personal to the people experiencing the art to me i think of like the prime kanye time is like the college dropout and like i'm think i'm living in la still and i'm listening to like uh we don't dare the name of that song or we don't care i'm such a fan that i don't remember the name of the song that i love so much i know the song you're talking about with

the course of the kids i don't know the name of it off the top of my head but like that that album

driving around la with addy in the car and addy of course loved that song because i had kids on it and just like that to me is is is what i think of as being con like peak kanye music i guess and so when you're talking about the by the time he was barging on stage and doing stuff to taylor swift i feel like he had already kind of like it's been become someone who i was kind of like not that entertained by anymore i just felt i felt sad because i i saw somebody who's i think dealing with mental health issues in the public space um so this is all way way way before that this is when he's just like this very young person and i mean the way they've i don't know how actually How real this was Or how much they're trying to gin this up To kind of give the movie a bit of a plot But it's a lot of it in the first two episodes Or first two installments Revolves around Kanye at Rockefeller Not being thought of as a performer But being thought of as a super producer So his whole thing is He's making beats for everyone And he's everybody's favorite producer But what he really wants to be Is like the person who's doing the rapping But everyone keeps introducing him as a producer He finally gets signed to Rockefeller And they're still not really like Putting him on things Or not releasing his album They're just kind of like Not really taking him seriously As a performer Which of course is wild now Because of how famous And he became more famous Than anyone there With the exception probably of Jay-Z It's also funny These scenes where it's like He's trying to get like Scarface And you know Peace and love to Scarface But it's like He's like if I can just get Scarface To guest on this one track Then maybe they'll take my album seriously But it's like this is just it's Kanye West interacting with about 100 rappers who he is now this day and age. I mean, now, unfortunately, maybe. Maybe he's infamous, but like, it's just a guy who is becoming so much more famous than any of these people whose approval he's seeking and who he's hoping will do him a solid. Like these people are in the dust of Kanye West's career. And at the time he's like, God, I just, I got like Scarface comes and listens to, um, I forget the track, but he's like, uh, he's like, doesn't end up even wanting to be on the track. And I'm just thinking, man, you know, like the people in this documentary who are now less famous or less well-known than Kanye, it's just kind of an interesting thing to watch this and know how a lot of the story sort of turns out. The other documentary that I watched, which I, can I, like, should I do a trigger warning about recommending something, Andrew? Like, like this, there is a documentary that I watched on Amazon Prime yesterday called The Other Side. It's filmed in mostly in the area of West Monroe, Louisiana. And it's following this guy named Mark, who's a drug addict, and sort of petty criminal.

and it's him and it's his fiance and it's their you know family their distant family and close family and it's just following life for these people on the margins and it is one of the most arresting films i've ever seen i mean it shows it shows a variety of things that would be very triggering to people that's why i said i want to give a trigger like do not go blindly watch this film without realizing that it it shows people abusing drugs abusing each other engaging in sexual activity like there are so many scenes in this movie that I thought how did they let them film that but it's also speaking of tone pieces it almost reminds me of like a a Terrence Malick film like where it's just so visually stunning like the the film well the film opens with this weird militia group in louisiana like trainings i think the united nations i think nato is going to come and try to take over the u.s so it's documentary footage of these like kooky militia people then it cuts to just this dude mark he's just naked he's just lying on the side of the road now he wakes up from a bender and he starts walking home naked and they're just following him and then from like for the rest of the film it's just like it's like someone was just sitting there with a camera while he was living his life and doing everything and anything that he does and the nobody in the film seems to notice there's a camera on them and it sent me down this rabbit hole trying to figure out is this fictional or real and if you google it like the first thing that comes up is is the other side real because it's like you can't believe that the that the folks in this film let the people film them doing all the stuff they're doing but again it's also just a it's a gorgeous film from a cinematography standpoint from how quiet it is i mean there's just a scene where he's just the camera person is behind him and he's just in a canoe kind of rowing around in the bay or you know paddling around the bayou he doesn't say anything there are lots and lots of scenes where no one's talking just sitting there just kind of like he's just in the canoe and he's just paddling around and it's in you know in the swamps of louisiana it's just so many scenes that were like haunting me and i guess it's real i i ended up watching an entire like half hour interview the director did at like the new york film forum explaining that yeah this is all real this is not fictionalized um so if you're a documentary fan and if you have a tolerance for very very real and sometimes upsetting behaviors this film the other i don't understand how it's not didn't get more attention it played at con but that's it like didn't get nominated for an oscar there's a very little chatter about it anywhere like i feel like it's one of them can i

ask you because i'm googling around while you're talking because i thought it was on netflix but it's not on netflix i see you can rent it on amazon i rented it yesterday okay i was gonna ask where you got it okay yeah because i can see that you can you can pay a little extra to get it on amazon prime and we even pay for prime and it's not even free with that membership i know and this thing's been around for like it's like how is there no press about this and now i'm saying oh this came out in 2015 so it's not like yeah yeah but i just yeah it's from 2015 i had to

what happened was i was watching some other documentary and then it said maybe you'll like this and then i was like okay and then i was like 499 no way i'm already paying for this i'm already paying for amazon then i watched the trailer and then i thought how many other things do i waste $4.99 yeah and then I And then I rented it and then I was just like The whole time I was like how is this the first I'm hearing about this film and and how Is how did this not get Like it feels to me like it should have Won an Oscar for for documentary Film it's just So like again it's just it's

the most but it's it's also not like sometimes you'll get these documentaries where the point is look at these look at these poor people in very sort of abject circumstances and we're all going to pity them and it's just kind of almost like we're just going to show you how grimy their life is and think that's the point of the documentary that's somehow not how this one works like yes the people in it are in intense poverty and have all kinds of addiction issues and and yet they're so human and they're just living their life and by the way there's also some really upsetting racial language in this film i just i can't give enough caveats to anyone if you watch this there's a scene involving a barack obama mask that i will never get out of my head like it's there is this is an intense intense film but um but somehow the characters in it are just it's not just like get a load of these people and how pathetic their life is it's not it's like we're all human beings on this planet we're all in different circumstances we're all kind of doing our best to get through it this is what that version this is what this person's life and these people's life looks like you know in you know 20 whatever it was i think they filmed it in like 2013 or something but no that's not true because when when was schubert dip out

but what you're saying is is if and when you watch this with the whole family make sure the kids have an extra stuffy that they can hold on to during it basically yeah i'd say this is a two

two stuffies up i give it five stuffies i don't i know language changes and i know that we have i know that you know that's just what we're doing now but i'm never going to get used to stuffy

you know what it's funny i said that for the joke but in in in real life andrew not podcast andrew never says stuffy maybe it's just because i when i was in cleveland i was visiting families with kids and so i heard the word stuffy more but no i i'm with you like i always just call them stuffed animals people say well they're not all animals i guess that's the thing a lot of stuffies now are like based on video games and what have you so i guess like an emoji could be a stuffy yeah because i did i guess i said teddy bears growing up but at a certain point i just said stuffed animals and we called them stuffed animals you know i could list them all fleagle the beagle cuckoo koala etc um but um and they were my they were my good good friends and we played board games together and sometimes pluto would cheat but you know what pluto's got to live with himself not me so anyway um i definitely i miss the old pluto too man but right i'm not

listen the here's the thing stuffy makes a lot of sense first of all it's cute like you said not all stuffed toys or companions are animals so stuffed animal doesn't really it's not a it's not a um broad enough term so everything about stuffy makes sense it's just not what i grew up with yep me too and so it just always hits my ear funny that that's we just somehow decided as a nation we're just called that's what we're calling anything that's soft we're calling it stuffy yeah

this is ridiculous this is stoner talk but like yeah i would love to somehow track who was the first person to start doing that you know what i mean like where did it begin was it a company that started saying because it seems like it wasn't just like one person in one family who said stuffy and then their neighbors heard it and then it grew out from there like somebody must have made this decision at some point right yeah okay let us take a quick break and then speaking

of the children who i've been on the record for years as saying i believe are the future uh we'll uh we'll check in with the students of i think it's called west side elementary in healdsburg california for some monday motivation pep talking so stay with us here on tbtl hello and welcome to top story uh this is a quite adorable story that um listener theresa sent in thank you theresa for the heads up uh by way of i think npr might have been the place that was highlighting this um press three for a pep talk from kindergartners uh the kids at west side elementary in hieldsburg california which by the way where my sister sarah used to live coincidentally uh they these uh kids uh in the school created something called pep talk the pep talk hotline uh this was a project that was suggested by some teachers jessica martin and Ashura Weiss, who are teachers at the school, said they were inspired by their students' positive attitudes, despite everything that they've been through, the pandemic, wildfires in the region, and just all the stuff that goes into being a kid. And so they thought, well, why don't we turn this into something? And so the kids recorded all of these different kind of inspirational things, and then they made posters, and they went around and put the posters up all over Healdsburg.

and they're getting like 700 calls an hour. I bet more now, now that the word is out, but it's kind of blowing up. Do you want to call the line, Andrew, and just get kind of pumped on this Monday? Yeah, let me see. And I have not heard this yet. I assume, have you called this yourself? I called it earlier to make sure I could get through, but I didn't listen to it in its entirety. Let's see what happens here. I'm a little nervous with the technology and everything, but let's see if we can get a dial tone.

Hi, welcome to Pep Talk, a public art project by West Side School. Bienvenidos a Pep Talk, un proyecto creado por los estudiantes de West Side School.

Para un mensaje feliz, presiona 5. Please listen to the following options for encouraging messages. If you're feeling mad, frustrated, or nervous, press 1. If you needed words of encouragement and life advice, press 2. If you needed Pep Talk from kindergartners, press 3. If you need to hear a kid's laughing with the light, press 4. If you would like to make a donation to support this project, please press 6.

Let's try 3. Let's start with 3. Okay. This is Monday Motivation.

You can do it! Keep trying! Don't give up!

If you're more, we'll transfer you back to the main menu. If you're feeling mad, frustrated, or nervous, press 1. If you need to... Okay, so do you want to do 3 again?

Do we want to do three again to hear the same thing? Yeah, I want to hear. You think it's going to rotate through? Yes. All right, here we go with number three.

I need to hear it. You can do it!

Keep trying!

Don't give up! Okay. If you're feeling mad, frustrated, et cetera.

Okay, now let's do number one. This is going to be if you're feeling mad, frustrated, et cetera. Okay, I'm going to hit one here. You said you were having the Mondays today, so this will be good for you.

When you're feeling mad, you should take three deep breaths and think of things that make you happy. The thing that makes me happy is when I think of happy things that will happen in the future, like going to a friend's house or a cousin's house. Bye.

Oh, I love that. I was going to pot it down for a second. Do you want to do this with me? Take three deep breaths and think of something happening? Yeah. Okay, Lynn. Thinking about going to my cousin's house, how fun that's going to be. Mm-hmm. Thinking about the dune buggy. That was always my happy thing that I thought of when I was a kid. We had a dune buggy that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. It was a big project between my dad and I think his brother. Here, we're still on the line here. Hold on.

If you feel mad, please do something that you like. Do something that inspires you. Do something to make you feel better.

if you're sad or angry go get a cookie a smoothie or an ice cream

if you're feeling mad frustrated or nervous press one if you need words of encouragement

and life advice press two we're gonna do two this time luke okay we haven't done this yet i like

some life advice be grateful for yourself dude live it up be you i trust that you to make things right. Be happy. Try it again. Believe in yourself. If you're feeling up high and unbalanced, think of groundhogs. It's okay to be different. Always stay together. Don't give up. Power through. We all really like you. Never back down. Never give up. The world is a better place with you in it. Everyone is capable of doing anything. You just have to let yourself shine bro you're looking great okay a little aggro be nice she's weird

you are okay we love you oh my god i'm gonna cry cute that's got strong um it's like the it's like the less upsetting version of hooray for you yeah that thing we used to play on the show

Hooray for you!

Somehow it's much more charming when it's coming from small children. Don't we also, now I've hung up on that because I was sort of pranking the line there. I'm happy to call back if you'd like. I think we got the gist. Yeah, I think we got the gist. That was really great. I'd actually like to spend some time maybe calling it off air and actually maybe grabbing some of that tape. Wait a second. As I'm saying that, did I just admit in a public forum that I want to bootleg the work of these kindergartners? My dad's got it on a thumb drive I'll hit six later and I'll make a donation Will that make it better? No, that'd be good I feel like that's just good audio to have on You know, on standby For when we're feeling mad, sad, or frustrated I love that project so much Like, I really do I mean, just even just

as a project just imagining i just like hearing all those kids voices like un unironically or totally i guess nobody's accusing this of being ironic i guess but um but i also love thinking about them working on this together i mean it's a really cool project i just love dial-ins i mean i'm sure you did this too when when i was in college there was the um they might be giants dial dial a song thing right and i would call that i'm not even a huge fan of theirs no offense it's just you know it wasn't something that I was really into but I just loved the idea that they would update it with a new song every week or a couple of weeks or something and you could just

call them up and dial a song it was great I have had this number in my phone called fun times that I think was one of those things I don't I it was something we called years ago when we were I don't know if we were a radio show still but we were doing the show at Cairo a lot It wasn't a movie theater, was it? I remember you guys called it a movie theater. Yeah, I know there was a movie theater in, like, North Carolina or something. But I'm just going to hit. Let's see if this. I just got it on speakerphone here on my phone.

Thank you for calling the Baton Road Drive-In. Yes. It is drive-in season again. We will be opening for the season on Friday. It used to be, like, a really outgoing fella, right? With, like, a Southern accent.

Yeah, there was some big, like, yeah, I forget what the. . . Yeah, he would give some really funny description of the movies. There was some reason why I had that on my phone as a thing to call if I was ever feeling bummed. Feeling blue, yeah. I'm going to have to put these kids... I mean, obviously, they've also... They've gotten distracted with other things, and now it's just a... Could there be more of a come down from Fun Times than the automated voice? Like, this is a drive-in. It will be open March 5th. But, yeah, I'll need to replace the new Fun Times numbers, There's 707-998-8410, the students of the West Side School there in Healdsburg. This is kind of a weird story. A guy named Steven Cravada created a game called Wordle six years ago. He was a kind of a computer guy, and he was 18 at the time, and he made this game, and nobody liked it. The average daily download rate was in the single digits Then last December when he checked the app's status He noticed it had 500,000 downloads in five days After digging, he realized a slew of people were looking for Wordle So I guess the difference is His Wordle has an exclamation point at the end But it's spelled exactly the same way

I wonder, does this article get into how he ended up with that name? Because the name of the other Wordle, the popular Wordle i like the origin story it was invented by a guy named wardle i believe with an a i'm probably saying that with a big ohio accent but wardle came became wardle but why would cravada name

his game wardle uh it does not seem to say in the story why he picked that name let's see uh i'm kind of scanning through here um i had no reason to build this app other than i enjoyed doing it he said it was my passion i didn't think anything was going to come of it i just thought it would be cool to have my friends play a game that i put in the app store um uh let's see yeah i don't think uh i don't think it explains why he went with wordle other than probably just it sounded clever to him but this is kind of the cool part of it so now the wrong wordle game uh which i haven't played yet and i wonder like if it's i wonder uh if it like if it's actually a fun game to play or not but what's cool is this guy because the wrong wordle is getting downloaded so many times now that he's making a shitload of money on it and he's donating fifty thousand dollars to a charity of the choosing of the wordle people the real word

like like josh wordle he's still making he so are these all the profits or this is just a part of the profits of this off-brand wordle you know what that's a good question i don't

know if i mean fifty thousand dollars is kind of a round number yeah um with wardle's support cravada decided to donate fifty thousand dollars of the app's revenue to boost west oakland which provides free tutoring and mentorship for children in oakland california so uh of the app's revenue makes it sound like um he's actually making more than that but he has donated at least some of it

Now, this is interesting. Now, obviously, giving it to a charity is great, like, but it's interesting where this person's let's let's call this the original Wordle. I said off brand before. That's not fair because it was out there first. I wonder where the sense of responsibility comes from that people are downloading the wrong app. So I understand him maybe feeling a little, you know, guilty about that potentially. But on the other hand... His game was out there first. He's not like one of those people who is trying to do, you know, who created something to try to draft off of the popularity of something else. Really, Josh Wardle should be apologizing to him for stepping on his toes.

Well, it's I know it's it's funny because in both cases, it sounds like the people designing these games that had the same name had zero expectations. The first dude was like, oh, I just my my friends are going to kick out of me having something in the app store. and then he just sort of you know basically sounds like he forgot about it more or less and Josh Wardle was just making something I think for his like partner yeah because she liked word games and in both cases it was just like oh yeah this would be like a fun thing to do yeah yeah and so with kind of it would under it would it would make sense that Josh Wardle didn't do an exhaustive search of other things called Wardle yeah because he wasn't like launching this big you know company or something he was just like making a little thing you know for his partner

so um do you know that there's still a a podcast called after these messages that is not our podcast me and Genevieve that is still in the app store and we when we chose the name after these messages for our show we made sure there was not another podcast with that same name and then we spent maybe two more weeks kind of hammering down our ideas and then we launched the show and within that two-week period that we had chosen a name and made an intro and all these things somebody launched a different podcast called after these messages and it was some guy his name honestly is jason newman but he spells newman differently than our late friend um and uh it was just like these it was like parody commercials or something it was like a parody radio broadcast with little made-up commercials and stuff in it and they were like short form like five ten minute uh episodes and i told v it's like well we'll just out we'll just outlive this this podcast right like we'll just keep doing this every week which we've done but the seo on that is still pretty strong even though this jason person hasn't i don't think updated that podcast in years now it still creates confusion in the marketplace when we're trying to get people to sign up for our podcast which is very frustrating have you considered sending him a cease and desist i have several lawyers named danny working on it as we speak yes um i think the key for us andrew

is we need to create some kind of app that someday someone else will make a better version of with the same name. Yes. That's our in. We need somebody to make

a really amazing podcast called TDTL or it's CBTL or something and then we can get caught up in their upstream draft.

Right, because we're not yet. I mean, this show is honestly pretty boutique. But if there's something else that's very popular that people will be confusing this show for. That's our new growth strategy. Get Lily on the line.

Yeah, I know. Can we pitch that? I mean, it's not that much worse than the suggestion from somebody we used to report to, whose idea for a growth strategy for TBTL was to create a new, better podcast that would then maybe grow an audience. And then in that podcast, we could tell them about TBTL.

That seems to be... That's why, Andrew, do I why must I always pull the curtain so far back? I led you here. I shouldn't have done this. But that seems to be a theme in the life of the podcast that I do, because we're doing a version of that with Livewire. Now we have this new podcast called The Best News Podcast, which is actually really fun. But, you know, Livewire as a podcast product. so the radio show live wire which is also available as a podcast is it it's it you know it has it gets some downloads but they always you know everyone thinks and i don't think they're wrong the future of all of broadcasting is podcasting is digital is on demand and so we're like having all these meetings with the distributor and everyone's like we really want to try to grow the live wire podcast but it just kind of is what it is right it's like it's you know me and elena of talking and then we're on stage a lot and we interview guests and it's just kind of like there's just there's only so much we can do to the because it's also here's part of the challenge and this is so boring to the listeners but whatever you'll find it interesting we're making a radio show right so it's playing on i don't know some 300 radio stations or something so that's really what the thing is then we turn around we release it as a podcast if we wanted to make it the most compelling podcast it could be we would design it differently than it is currently existing but that's because it's not a podcast it's a radio show so where we've landed with this is to make the live wire podcast more popular we just have to do a new podcast called the best news podcast that hopefully will become very popular and then drive people back to the live wire podcast so everywhere i go So I'm making a podcast that's only moderately successful. And the feedback is, why don't we do a different, better podcast that will then eventually lead people back to the moderately successful one?

I am feeling a little cringy about something that I did that I'm guessing because you spend a lot of time on Twitter, you might have seen this or not. But I did something very uncharacteristic of myself. I saw that. Yeah. What do you? Well, I guess I'll set it. I want to know before I even set it up and put my own spin on it. Actually, why don't you? Tell me from your perspective. You tell the audience what I tweeted, and I would like to hear you describe it. I really want to know, you're honest, as if we were off the air, what you think of this move that I did. It was very uncharacteristic.

Well, I noticed that you were somebody put out a Seattle radio personality or former radio.

Someone who's been described as I'm looking at a headline now, a Seattle broadcasting legend. I don't know if that's putting too much, too much stank on it. But this is somebody who's well known and has been in the Seattle radio world long before I was ever in Seattle or in radio.

you know and this person said something to the effect of radio stations releasing their radio shows as podcasts has been is the most damaging thing that they can do and i think you responded uh well you should ask ira glass about that or something to that effect you kind of pointed to the success of this american life as both a radio and on-demand product as uh you know being a

counter argument to what this person was putting yeah and i don't mind saying who it is so the person is dave grosby goes by the gros long time sports broadcaster around here right and also and this is kind of one of the reasons i'm feeling somewhat cringe about this especially not that this really plays into it either but he retired recently he's been around forever he used to work at the station that you and i worked at although he was on the on the sports side of things and i never really interacted with him i got to know some of those other sports hosts just by like you know bumping into him in the kitchen uh i will say the garage was never super warm towards me i would say hi to him every now and then and he would always look like who look at me like who let this intern talk to me um so but but again i mean people are celebrating him because he did have to retire recently because he was diagnosed with parkinson's which is something that he has been like kind of really public about and talking about and trying to uh raise money for other people who struggle with it and so you know kind of using his megaphone like I think that uh he's a very celebrated man in Seattle broadcasting these days and um it's very rare for me to sort of like pick a fight on Twitter not that I was picking a fight I didn't think he'd respond like um but that I would just like because I I didn't respond to his tweet I quoted it like I tweet I retweeted it and quoted it and he was he was actually responding to some other you know somebody's presentation there's some podcasting or broadcasting conference that was happening over the weekend or something and and he had tweeted out posting radio shows as podcasts is the single most damaging thing a radio station can do to its product and he sent that out several days ago he sent that out on the fourth and it just lived in my head and it was driving me nuts maybe because there's a couple of things going on here with this as a podcast consumer there's nothing i like more than being able to get the entire product as it was broadcast like there is a new show on kow which is hosted by our friend libby dankman who um i love and i wanted to catch up on it the other day and i don't want to talk smack here but i was really disappointed to see that they are not podcasting that as a full hour long show or if so i was on the wrong page but they are breaking it up into individual segments and podcasting those segments so if you're interested in an 11-minute conversation about homelessness in seattle you can listen to that or you can move on and listen to an interview with an artist or something which i don't prefer that when i listen to podcasts i want to hear the whole thing it's like kind of why i got into lebitard they were still doing a radio show at the time and taking that entire radio show and moving it over to the podcast that's why i fell in love with tbtl like you know back in the day when you guys were on the radio and i was in new hampshire listening i wouldn't have just tuned in for like the 10 or let's say the 15 minute segment of top stories or awesome not awesome or awesome not awesome that's what I meant to say that was the the kind of flagship segment back in the day I would want to listen to the whole thing I'd want to hear you guys goofing around ahead of time I'd want to hear you guys maybe messing up

the intro and having to restart it like to me it's all of those moments in between the segments that make this type of radio fun and interesting and live feeling and so when I see somebody like Crosby, who is just like throwing the sentence out here as a, you know, yes, an elder statesman of broadcasting, but also as somebody who I don't think should maybe be just like throwing out just broad statements.

about podcasts and radio given that the landscape is continuing to change and he is retired now and maybe doesn't doesn't have his finger completely on the pulse of it so i was like yeah who would yeah nothing ruined this american life more than podcasting i mean this american life created the the template for podcasting so anyway it was weird of me though so then i retweet it and with my little snarky comment and i got 50 50 likes which is not thousands or even hundreds obviously people are familiar with the number 50 I believe I'm not trying to make it sound like this is I'm not trying to blow it out of proportion but yeah I did this mostly for myself out of just like pettiness and now it's kind of like oh like every time he's opening his phone he's seeing another person is liking my little flippant remark towards him and I don't feel great about that well

here's the thing I think that I agree with I agree with you that that that statement is is not totally accurate from the gras because i think theoretically that you should as a radio station if you're creating content any way for people to get that content is good and if you have shows that you're broadcasting so like i jump in the car and i turn on my radio and i'm hearing the station but then i missed something and i want to hear it later being able to go catch that um as a podcast i think i think it's a positive i think it's complicated but i think it's overall a positive i don't think that it's death for a radio station to release its content also on demand the only slight issue i would take was i don't think this american life is maybe the most apt because what he's saying is a better retort to him would have been a radio station that is releasing its content as a podcast that is also successful because this american life is

not a radio station no but that is why and i thought about this as i was tweeting it or maybe haven't thought about taking it down but i went back and looked at his uh carefully he says the most damaging thing a radio station can do to its product and that is what kind of stood out to me because there is an argument to say that maybe posting your radio shows a podcast is the single most damaging thing a station can do to its bottom line because i do think and i don't know where we are on this now but i do know that traditionally there's been a huge difference in the revenues that you can raise with a classic style talk radio show, the money you can raise on the radio side of things, the way the salespeople have been trained and been doing it their whole time to sell radio segments is a lot more profitable than people selling a spot or two on the digital version of that product, like a podcast, like what we do. So you could really make an argument that even though the listeners might crave a full radio show in their podcast feed, It's actually not good for a station's bottom line. I actually think there's probably an argument for that and something that we should try to tackle. Right. But he's saying that it ruins the product. And in this case, I was thinking of This American Life as the product or even the Dan Levitard show as the product. You know, I don't think that I don't think going digital hurt the Dan Levitard show as a product. You know what I mean? I don't know.

Sure. I think when I read that, I read, I just sort of took product to mean, like, the widget that you make at the radio station, which is shows, and also, more broadly, the ability to make money, like, just the whole kind of ball of wax. Like, basically, he thinks, I think what he thinks is that you got to force people to listen to the radio station, like, over the air, on the frequency. and if you do anything that allows them to get the content without having to tune in that that's bad for the station or the product but can I just tell you that there is I don't know if I believe in an afterlife I sort of don't but if there is a hell Andrew it's called Living Inside the iHeartRadio podcast advertisements I am listening to a really good podcast right now called the AckCast it's Jamie Loftus Who is a writer and comedian She did My Year in Mensa She also did the Lolita podcast We're having her on Livewire this week And she Did this really interesting podcast About the cartoon Kathy And really dives Into sort of what You know Like where it fits into you know feminism And You know just like a whole bunch of really larger Interesting cultural conversations This is kind of what her specialty is, because she's just, like, really brilliant. And so I've been very much enjoying it, and I would recommend the AckCast for people. But it's technically an iHeartRadio product, and I don't know how in the world this really good podcast ended up on iHeartRadio. By the way, we may be on iHeartRadio someday, and if we are, pretend I never said any of this, please. Sure, of course. But because I'm listening to this podcast And because all All of the ads are through whatever I heart radios cadence 13 is it is just millions of ads for like podcasts for people that I don't think listen to podcasts like it's it'll just be like hey this is beauty influencer Bobby Brown you may know me from my makeup I don't mean Bobby Brown from new edition there's a woman who is famous for makeup named Bobby Brown join me and my friend and it's like I don't know my badass boss bitch friend so and so as we as we talk to thought leaders like entrepreneur christy turlington like and join us every other week for get let's get down to it and then it's like another like another ad for something similar and then another one another one basically like my problems with these podcasts are one every other week join us every other week that's you couldn't get bobby brown to make four podcast a month i hate the term thought leader i just hate it with a deep how do you refer to me thought follower oh wow that's insulting i just call you a thought an afterthought

um but like i don't like the term thought leader i basically what i keep seeing whether digital like whether like on on twitter or hearing on the iheart radio app these ads for these podcasts that are just kind of like sort of businessy, potentially tech bro-y. There's a lot of thought leaders on there. It's people who, one was like, I'm Dua Lipa, and I love Dua Lipa, okay? We've established she's an Albanian, she's a fellow Albanian, and so for that, and I also like her music. Potentially. That is for the courts to decide, my friend. But like, Dua Lipa has a podcast, which, no offense, she couldn't sound less interested in doing this podcast. Hi, this is Dua Lipa. Join me as I talk to some of the hottest whatever's in pop music. And then it's like there are she talks to Elton John or something, but it's like I was shocked at actually the like Elton John is very famous. But I was shocked that that was the only famous person she actually got. I mean, she's Dua Lipa. Also, who thought that Dua Lipa needs to host a podcast like all of these? I heart podcasts are like they just sound like someone was like, well, the future of media is podcasting. so let's get let's make some podcasts but there's no like just i don't know i'm doing a terrible job explaining my feelings on this which is deeply ironic that i am hosting a podcast where i'm criticizing other podcasts and i'm doing it poorly but it's just like it's just this litany of ads for podcasts that are being hosted by people who i think probably don't really give a shit about it and they all kind of sound the same like the promo you know like the tone of voice again terms like thought leaders also i don't know why this bothered me but like calling christy turlington an entrepreneur mildly annoyed me because i i'm sure christy turlington is an entrepreneur but she was also a supermodel for many years and what basically was going on in my mind was i bet you christy turlington does not like being referred to as a supermodel like i feel like which is her right she can she deserves to be described however it is that she prefers but like the idea of this makeup person and then her boss bitch friend talking to christy turlington not about the thing she's famous for every other week just did not seem like a very compelling product to me

all of this led me and probably many listeners to ask themselves right now how is how you live in jay piven the podcast doing whoa good memory well no i had to look it up how is he living Because we talked about Jeremy Piven when he launched his podcast, and this was a while back now. And I was like, and there's something also about, like, if you'll recall, like, the kind of teaser video for that show was like, hey, we're going to talk to Jamie Foxx. And I remember just thinking, like, I know that Jamie Foxx and Jeremy Piven are very famous people, maybe even more famous than me, if you combine their fame, maybe. But, like, is that what people want? Do people need to, like, this is very much me. Like any podcast that is based on we have this famous person this week, we have this famous person this week. And I know that that is a majority of podcasts, like comedy podcasts. Hey, we got our buddy, this comedian who you may or may not have heard of. Like, but for me, that is not interesting to me. And what we're doing and what I say on this show is not interesting to a lot of people as well. I understand that. But for me, it's like it's about the narrative arc. And for us, you know, it's our life here. Or you get into one of those podcasts that, like, you know, takes a specific issue or a mystery and solves it. And so you have a 20 episode arc or whatever. I understand that. But just like, hey, today I'm this person and I'm going to interview Jamie Foxx. And then tomorrow I'm going to interview somebody maybe slightly less or the next week or in two weeks from now, I'm going to interview somebody maybe slightly less famous. But you might have heard of them. And but they're from a totally different field. Like it's just like who. Who wants that? People do. People do. But not me. Not this guy. Anyway, I figured that Jeremy Piven's podcast would survive maybe about three episodes and then go away. According to Apple Podcasts, which I'm on right now, I'm counting, starting with the first episode with Jamie Foxx in July of 2021, I'm counting about 25, 30 episodes released, which is not bad. I'm confused why in the middle none of these are numbered but in the middle some of them are just listed as episode number 118 episode 119 I don't know where those are because I'm going through all of these right now maybe there is a secret feed but I don't understand how you'd be on 119 yeah audible tells me there's 27 total episodes and that's what I'm about counting here so I don't know why suddenly it's episode 119 if that was just trickeration or what But I would say 27 episodes is more than I thought. The last one aired in December of 2021, which was, you know, three months ago. But as of last week, there is an announcement. Season two premiere, March 2nd, 2022, 50-minute podcast. JP, that's Jeremy Piven, and Bill Dawes crack open a bottle of tequila and talk about where the hell Jeremy has been the past few months. but honestly though they've kept the needles moving here more than i thought they would have

well i'm with you well first of all let me repeat your caveat that i get the irony of us on this podcast that has very very few listeners criticizing other podcasts that i'm sure have probably more listeners i don't know i wonder do you think we have more listeners than how you live

in jay piven i mean that's a real question i do not think we have more listeners than are you sure i am not sure but i do not think we do um i saw a comparison our number we are a very boutique podcast i've been seeing some numbers going around very boutique just more boutique by the day

almost well this so anyway obviously all of the all of those asterisks are are noted by me of like the irony of this conversation but i'm with you andrew that this whole movement of like hey you're a famous person people will probably want to hear you interview other people now some people are really good at it like Dax Shepard is really good at it and that's why Armchair Expert is a very very popular show sometimes it really hits where there's somebody who happens to be famous but they also are good at podcasting and interviewing people and whatever but so much of the time it's just kind of like it's like getting a podcast now if you're famous is like something that you do like getting a personal trainer like it's just one of the boxes you have to tick because everyone has heard that podcasts are hot and so you know if you're jeremy piven of course you have to have a podcast now do you have any special abilities i mean i don't know because i haven't listened to the show maybe the show's great that's the other thing he isn't i mean he

is a good entertainer you know what i mean i don't love him as a as a guy i don't love his personality but it is one of those things like it's no mystery why joe rogan has an audience he's

really good at podcasting right yes i what was oh we were talking about this on the show the other day about the carlos mencia and the joke theft oh yeah and i was just like remembering such a it was such an innocent time when that was the big thing that we knew joe rogan for was that he was calling out carlos mencia but um yeah no he's a i mean he's a he's a talented um a podcaster But yeah just this whole This idea that they just like Everyone is starting a podcast Whether it's something that they seem particularly interested Like I don't I really wonder If Dua Lipa was like in the midst of being An international pop star was like I really also need to start A podcast where I interview Elton John I mean it's possible that there was a burning Desire on Dua Lipa's part My guess would be it has something to do with Some sort of complicated Massive record deal and or Something with iHeartRadio Because iHeartRadio is a very, very big They own a lot of radio stations And maybe there's something where Dua Lipa's management Was like, hey, if you throw them a bone And you host this Every four month podcast They'll play more Dua Lipa songs On their iHeart stations, maybe

Or it might be just less complicated It might just be a money deal Like iHeart is willing to throw down this much money And you should take it And also just like, I feel like it's probably Just like investing in things, right Like in the same way you want to keep your portfolio portfolio you know if you have money in like your retirement account or what have you you're like well I want this style of portfolio you want your money in various interests like I feel like if you're just any kind of a megastar you just have people who are saying well you need to be playing in the podcast space too like that you know whether or not it totally makes sense you just need you just need to be there and let me again I don't have any animus towards Dua Lipa as you

you know, as a podcast, I do leap.

like a lovely human being um so you know this isn't to be critical of her and again maybe she's a really really good podcast host too i don't know but it just didn't sound in the promo like this was her passion i think being an international pop star is probably her passion and she's really

good at it here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female no man it's not from a female

all right

emails for females

yes I have some voicemails I really want to play but I have something here I need to share with you so I don't know if we have time for all of this but I feel like I need to address this message that was posted on the TBTL Slack page I'm sure we're too late now to actually offer any helpful advice but I find this pretty fascinating and left this comment looking for some advice from fellow 10s. I'm having an ethical dilemma. I need help figuring out what's right and what's wrong here. There's a house behind us that's for sale, and they had free stuff on the porch and in the back shed, which included furniture. Yesterday, we walked by, and there's this hutch that's exactly like the hutch I've been wanting. It's so cute, but it had a sign on it saying that someone was coming for it, and please save it for them. And a phone number was on the note. I texted the number, and I guess she's going to try to pick it up today? But if it's there tonight, I want to take it. Is that bad? I was telling my mom about it last night, and she almost picked it up for me without me even asking. She says you really can't reserve free stuff, and it's not like this other person paid for it and is coming to pick it up. My husband found out and got really upset by that and said it was very wrong, So I told my mom not to pick it up But I'm having this ethical dilemma How do you let someone figure out How to pick up a free piece of furniture Before grabbing it yourself That's interesting What is your move here, Luke? Do we know anything about

Where this person is checking in from? No, I don't Because I feel like weather Has a lot to do with it Because if there's a piece of furniture That's out for free And it's in like Portland or Seattle And it's this time of year it's going to get ruined by the rain.

Well, let's leave that out because I don't think that's going to be the case here because Anne writes in here that there's a back shed that has a bunch of free furniture in it. So let's assume that this is protected from the elements. It's not that. It's an ethical issue. And somebody, you see the perfect free piece of furniture. I mean, you've been looking for this thing. And you see that it's free. You could take it right now. But somebody left a note on it and said, please leave this here for me. I'm going to be picking it up later today. Now you've already reached out to that person, too. You've texted them and said, hey, I really want this thing, too. When are you picking it up? And they say today. They don't pick it up during the day, and it's nighttime. Do you go and pick it up yourself? You give them like a grace period. I probably do. Do you even wait until night, or do you just ignore the note?

I don't ignore it. Well, how about this power move? You take the hutch. You put it in your house. You leave the note on it, and you text them, hey, I'm protecting this piece of furniture for you. until 5 p.m. if you want to come get it. Otherwise, I'm taking it. Because the other problem is someone else who is more unscrupulous may come along and take the hutch from the, you know what I mean? Like someone else may not respect the note at all. That would be where my, I have a very messed up mind, Andrew. And I have this like artificial scarcity mentality at all times, like I need to super possess things, etc and so my thought would be fine i'm respecting the note but what about someone who comes along who isn't going to respect the note and i don't want to lose it to that person right to that someone is going to get this so i better be the jerk if someone's going to yoink this hutch yeah um then then it might as well be me because i don't want to be some other jabroni who shows up even later in the game so maybe i would like take it bring it over to my garage and hold on to it so that if the person wants to get it they can come get it but they're going to come get it

from me now how would you do that would you text the number and say that and then give them eventually your address because that would be a problem for me what if they come what if they they don't abide by the window that you've given them but they have your address and now it's two days later and they come knocking at your door and they say okay i want my hutch now you're like no i gave you a time limit get off my property like i don't know that could be that could be odd would you leave would you leave a note in the original location with your number on it leave it up to them to return the or a burner phone so you start up you get a burner phone you get it you sign up

for a google voice account yes so you set up a number and then you take the hutch bring it to your house you leave behind a note you write on the note that the original person

left hey i'm holding on to this furniture until 6 p.m tonight after which it'll be mine and then you put the burner phone number on and so then when they reach out to you uh you know three days later you just let the call go to voicemail hmm yeah i don't know what would you do um i would

probably i would probably just be like well not my day but i mean that's not a very interesting answer and i probably take l's a little bit too easily but i would you know you know who we should have on this conversation i don't even know if he's here right now the veves would have a very oh yeah she loves oh god veves loves a good free piece of furniture she loves craigslist and with us moving i mean she is she is living in that space i mean she's buying she's selling she's on the phone yelling bye bye dealing sell sell sell i saw her do that thing where she takes the phone and slams it down a few times in a row it's a cell phone it doesn't even make sense but um she closes her flip phone angrily for some reason um but yeah no she'd be an interesting one because she loves a find i mean her prized possession is a velvet like as a velvet painting of uh lionel richie that she found on the side of the road in new hampshire um and also these two chairs that we have that we actually ended up having kind of like repaired and refurbished and um what do you call it when you when you put when you uh reupholstered reupholstered thank you it's exactly the word i was looking for um but those were like free chairs again that we found on the side of the road in new hampshire although i think there's a little question mark i mean they're so nice that genevieve is not entirely sure if maybe somebody was just moving them i don't know like she just cannot understand how these chairs were just on the side of the road but anyway some of her i mean genevieve you know loves a good you know possession that that she that she cares about But if she has a good origin story for it, like I found this or I got a great deal on it, like this table that she just found on, like a dining room table that she found on Craigslist. It's a mid-century modern thing that I got to admit, like once I saw it in person, I really got it. Like the craftsmanship on this is amazing. And Genevieve was doing comparable pricing on it, like what it should have gone for versus what we paid for. We paid for like less than a third of probably its value. And she is so excited about this. And when she went to pick it up from the people, they were almost like, I don't know if we're going to regret this or not. But, you know, we're older and we're downsizing and we just love this table so much. So, like, Genevieve is now, like, sending them pictures of the table in its new home. It's an open adoption. Because she loves how much they love it, too. And hopefully it will make them feel better to know that it's not just going to somebody who doesn't care about it. But anyway, yeah, this is the world Genevieve lives in and loves. And so, actually, she might have a good answer to this. I'll ask her tonight and see if I can either record something with her or tell you what she says tomorrow. I will say this, too.

There are different rules when it's free, I think. Maybe this makes me a bad person, but it's kind of the Wild West out there. Like, when you're talking about, hey, this stuff is all just here for the taking. Whoever wants it, grab it. Like, it's not the same as you're going into a store, you're paying money, you're getting a receipt. And so, I mean, it is kind of like, I do feel like it's a little bit of sort of survival of the fittest. Like, you know, if you left a note on there, but you're not going to make it back or you can't, you know, like figure it out. Like, I don't think the power of the note is powerful enough for me in that situation. Like, because I've done the move where I see something and like maybe I'm out for a walk. And it's like if I saw something that I wanted and I was out for a walk, it was a chair, let's say. i would sit on it and then i would call someone and be like hey this is annoying but can you like drive over here and help me get like i wouldn't leave i would not leave the thing the item i agree you know i would not have it out of my field of vision until i had secured the bag as they say

because it's the wild west yeah i you know what and you say that and i can really relate to that too you know this is i would if you i'm not saying this is what one should do but if you honestly want to know what i would do i would just do one extreme or the other i would totally take the l and be like well i wish i'd been here uh sooner or i would say what note and i'd put it in my truck you know what i mean i'd be like hey like i just like i don't think that i would mess around with the middle space there because you're right it is kind of like the wild west and it's like i'm sorry like the question becomes the question becomes what right does the person who left that note have right huh yeah exactly like so now they're just like yeah i dibs mom no more i think about it the more i think about it you just take it and then you tell the story about the poor fool who thought that leaving a note was good enough i hate to say it like i i think i might be making some people angry with it i like to Thank you.

think that i have good morals on these things but actually the more i think about it it's like sorry you you you snossed and look what you lost that's a good uh it's good to end the show on yet

another funny tbtl drop since that's been a theme that's woven through this episode yeah so uh i guess we'll wrap things up there uh and will you get back to us and let us know what

happened yeah i really want to know yeah because ann already reached out and so this person already has ann's contact information so that automatically changes kind of changes the scope of or kind of narrows the scope of what your options are yeah all right well well well that's my ronald are we ending with ronald rick yes well nancy that's just how am i getting worse at that no

it's not i mean i recognize well was okay but when i said nancy it really fell off but i got it because nancy was his wife so it's like context is a big tear down that wall it sounds

like crispin glover in back to the future by the way i hand her are you i haven't read the reviews yet um i want to but did you oh you mentioned that there was one bad review for the uh for the new Batman movie the Batman movie but it sounds like they're breaking box office records or something it's certainly there there seems to be a there seems to be a hunger for the new Batman and I wonder if that's a generational thing I wonder if it's because Robert Pattinson is such a name amongst a younger generation that once and maybe they think of him as a bit of a snacky Batman I don't know this is

he's a whole snack this is not going to translate at all to audio but you know the one of the things that everyone's noting about that film is that colin farrell the actor is kind of unrecognizable um can have him in all this heavy prosthetic he's basically playing the penguin but the guy's not called the penguin but he's much fleshier than than than colin farrell and he has the scar and kind of the nose that tells us he's kind of got a penguin he knows you know the onion tweet out a picture of colin farrell and a picture of his like penguin you know kind of ghastly thing they said something like in order for colin farrell to play the penguin they simply removed his prosthetic the joke being the colin farrell we know and love is the prosthetic right and what he really looks like is the penguin guy i'll again i'll be honest i do want to see it now

i kind of want to know why they didn't call him the penguin and i kind of like playing around with that a little bit and so even though i keep on saying that the movie just the trailers look so boring i'll bet you i'll i probably won't see it this week but i'll bet you next monday i'll tell you that i ended up watching it paul dano as the riddler is also interesting to me um oh i don't

think i knew that i think that they kind of make him like the zodiac killer though like he's not like jim carrey he's not wearing a bunch of question marks and and kind of you know riddling me this it's more like he's a complete psychopath serial killer yeah who is that's you know i mean it's like everything is just grittier than you know um yeah i don't will i watch it it's the kind of thing where like if it was on tv and i was in a certain mood like if it was on you know netflix or hbo max i might hit play on it um i was trying to watch this thing that people are recommending to us called the tourist which is jamie dornan who is the guy from 50 shades of gray and lots of other things he was the dad in that um like irish movie that you said you watched some of that was like perfectly pleasant and will probably win a million oscars oh oh oh belfast oh

yeah yeah but the more i hear the more i know that that one is you know up for an oscar makes me mad that movie wasn't that good but anyway i know who you're talking about that guy jamie dornan he is

this dude who is in the outback of australia he is driving a car and a like a big semi truck like crashes into him and it becomes clear he wakes up in the hospital with amnesia and he finds like a note in his pocket and it's basically like he doesn't understand why someone's trying to kill him he doesn't know who he is and i wanted to watch it yesterday but it was like this hbo max kept stopping i kept pausing like there was which is weird because everything else was working and you know all the television that's happening in my house is coming by way of the internet so i know what was up with hbo max but it was it was sort of like it's kludgy enough that i ended up stopping watching the show because i was like it just keeps pausing every four minutes at like a critical moment and they'll do like these three dots and i was like that may i may never revisit this program because of this one technical glitch which if i were the people that made the show i'd be really yeah like they put a lot of work into this thing and now some connectivity is why they're not getting the luke burbank eyeballs i do wonder um yeah what end that was on you're not saying because i didn't know well now this is really boring i did notice that your internet line not in a bad way but dropped out a couple of times uh today and recently um and i'm just wondering if maybe you're having internet issues maybe it's not maybe

problem maybe so but it seemed like everything else was working you know that was the only

channel that was doing that yeah that's really frustrating i am going to be just filling your ear balls full of all kinds of interesting interesting interesting internet talk as i I try to make this move to fiber and I'm trying to figure out if I'm on fiber, if I actually have to be physically plugged in to, you know, the modem, the way I do this show with you now or or whatever. But it is going to be you thought dream talk at the top of the show was boring. Wait till I cut the cord and go fiber only, folks.

Meanwhile, I'm going to be just trying to get more fiber into my diet. I'll be giving a report each day of how the results on that are. That is where we're headed as this middle-aged podcast. Oh, are you kidding me? Good grief. Definitely. Well, that's like half of what Stern talks about now is these Metamucil cookies that he loves.

Uh-huh.

And it's not an ad? Oh, no, no, no. No, he just likes these cookies, and they help him with his going number two. So, like, that's definitely... I mean, he's paving, you know, Howard Stern walked so we could run with that content. Right, exactly. All right. Thanks for listening, everyone. We are going to be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. Until then, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. Stay safe. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

they say you snooze you lose well we snossed and look what we lost power out