Muse

I've got a job in Rippon. I said I'll start tomorrow. A job? You do know I mean to involve you in the running of the estate. Well, don't worry. There are plenty of hours in the day. And, of course, I'll have the weekend.

What is a weekend?

TBTL!

TBTL!

It's Friday! Friday! Gotta get down on Friday! Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. This is a whole new level of nerd. Guys, I could not believe what I was hearing. Like, this is on our radio station. I couldn't even believe the words that I was listening to.

He runs around the house all day naked, chasing himself, playing tag. It's awful. He screams at the cat because she didn't vote. Come on! Watch out for that first step. It's a doozy.

All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of TBTL, a show that just might be too beautiful to live. The vibes will be the illest, and the jams, not ridiculous. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

And apparently, I've never been on live television before.

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center, right here in Portland, Oregon. Last day for a week doing the show here because we will be in Denver on Monday, kicking off TBTL-a-thon 13, Let the Fun Begin, which is going to be really fun, as is today's episode, episode 3000, 688 in A Collector's Series.

Let the Fun Begin.

On yesterday's show, I was talking about how a lot of my smart home devices have stopped working for some reason. And I had a theory that it had to do with the gigahertz that I was working with. And I had gone into a kind of, you know, just the fourth ring of hell trying to get the Internet company Xfinity to help me get this whole thing straightened out. Well, guess what? But since yesterday's episode and this recording right now, I fixed it.

I feel happy of myself.

And also, I wish I hadn't done that. It was a major disaster. It was literally a major disaster. Not only was that apparently not the problem, now nothing works in my house. If you could see this show sheet that I'm referencing, which is normally a pristine printout with all of the information I need. This looks like something Mel Gibson would write out in the movie Conspiracy Theory. It's just yesterday's show sheet, scribbled upon, modified. It's a disaster. It's literally a major disaster. Nothing in this house works anymore because of my supposed fix. So we'll probably end up talking about that a little bit more. But I've got some good news in that we have a big announcement on today's episode.

Attention, everybody, madames and Miss Woz.

We are going to tell you all about the thank you gifts for the TBTL-a-thon, which starts on Monday, as I've already mentioned. And we're going to do that with the help of a very cool and special friend of the show.

You're like the coolest person I've ever met.

And friend of ours. I are the L. So we will introduce that person in just a moment. First, though, I've got to introduce maybe the second coolest person I know. He's my friend, the longest-running co-bro of the show, best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is Andrew Firdle. Walsh, and he's joining me right now from the Sweet Cream District of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend. Good morning. It's weird how nervous I got with that long pause you took. I was like, what are you gearing up for? Well, I was playing through a bunch of different things, which is if I said you were the coolest person I've ever met, then that would mean that our special guest, who, let's not, I mean, we are people of honor. Lies do not become us. It's our friend. What's your name?

Fletch. Full name? Fletch. F. Fletch.

It's our friend, Phyllis Fletcher. P.E., welcome to the program.

Oh, thanks, Luke. I'm so excited to be back. This is awesome.

Yeah, it's been a while.

It has.

Well, we're going to get to that coming up. It's been a while. Sorry, this is early in the show for me to be singing Stained on the program. But anyway, Andrew, that pause was because I don't want to be in the business of trying to rank who is a cooler person. No, absolutely. You or our friend Phyllis Fletcher. So I was trying to be diplomatic, but because Phyllis is a guest, I decided to keep her at number one position of coolness. I was trying to think if there was a Solomonic, if I could cut the coolness in half, if there was a way for you both to be the coolest person I've ever met. Can I be coo and you be ool? We can do better than that. Yes, we can. No, you handled it fine. It's just it was more.

a reflection of how like what did i think you were going to say there i don't know but i legitimately was like oh no like i thought you were about to tell me some bad news or something

i don't know that's more on me than you well i mean listen my focus the bad news in my life is this situation with the internet at my apartment which has gone from bad to i thought better and now to worse um for folks who missed yesterday's show or just at some point warged out uh which would be understandable because it got really technical but from a person me who doesn't understand the technical side of routers p fletch what's your awareness of the 2.4 versus 5

gigahertz situation in most modern american homes um i'm gonna be super sexist on myself and say i

have a husband so i don't have to worry about that i would like to say that phyllis is wearing a shirt though with binary code on it it's a blue shirt that just has binary code in in small white letters little ones and zeros so like you can't be hiding behind this idea that you are not could i borrow

josh for one to two days yeah so okay so the a lot of these like smart home devices like i have a lock kind of on my front door that i can actually lock and unlock from my phone i have i bought this um feeder like you know cat food feeder for the cat that also has a camera on it so like i'm you know we're going to be in denver for a while so um the cat is staying with becca but if it were like a one day trip and the cat were a little older she could probably be okay for a day or so with me monitoring her this way so problem is none of these devices seem to be working and i did some reading and it turns out a lot of them the pet feeder specifically says it does not work with five gigahertz which is the prevailing thing what these routers want to do i've now figured out and Andrew, you already knew this, is they want to have these two versions kind of running at all times and then just switch between them based on what's going on. So they want to be feeding the 5 gigahertz, which is the faster, more kind of cool, jazzy one. But if that's having a problem, they want to shift to the 2.4. So I had to hack through so many different Internet jungles and Xfinity-related impediments to get to where I could actually set up these two networks, but I did it, which was great. But now everything's on the wrong network. I don't know how to. And also, Andrew, I put the pet food feeder on the right on the 2.4 gigahertz. And it's exactly the same problem. And it's still not working. So when you said. Still not working.

When you said you fixed it before, you were able to get it. You were able to hack in finally.

But once you have two networks, if you were to come over to my house. Oh, yeah.

I know you're talking about.

If you decide to let the restraining order lapse and you want to visit my house. Yeah. It's weird how you have a restraining order on my house.

I don't know if that's really how that works Yeah, it called for it After what you did

That's what they said on Ask Judge So yeah, if you were to come over to my house And you were trying to get on the Wi-Fi You'd now see two things Which would be my internet Wi-Fi router One that's just called the 5 gigahertz And one that's called 2.4 And so now, theoretically I can put anything that is supposed to be On the 2.4 on it Which, that was why I was triumphant About 20 minutes ago i was very very chuffed with myself and then right as i was dialing you and phyllis up to have this conversation i realized i couldn't print out my show sheet i realized the pet food machine is completely and totally still not working like somehow this didn't fix the problem you know so i'm now feeling kind of you know i just want to go to denver for a week and not think about it i'm realizing i just want to go to denny's throw in the towel i also do kind of want to go to denny

Right. I'm realizing what you're describing is something that Josh set up for us like a couple of years ago because we have that, the two Wi-Fis where one has the five in it and the other one doesn't. I had no idea what he was doing or why at the time.

I didn't either until like maybe yesterday's show when Andrew was explaining to me or something at some point in this process. So I guess that's what that's all about. So I was happy of myself because I couldn't even get to the point of being able to establish these two different kinds of routers. like it involved Xfinity not thinking I was the primary user of the internet service that I exclusively pay for and set up at my house where I live alone like so after getting through all of this like really frustrating stuff I guess the good news is I now have that that exists yeah so going forward I don't know you know uh like if it'll end up solving the problem but I now have these two routers set up so at least I accomplished that much

that's cool and I actually I'm going to still try to hack into my router later and see if I can maybe set that up too but I just thought of something and this isn't supreme podcasting here I realize but while we're in

troubleshooting why would we on the day before we launch into a week long fundraising effort right

Why would we bring out our Supreme podcasting or our Supreme podcasting, which sounds like a promotion at Long John Silver's? It really does. Step into Long John's right now for Supreme podcasting through the end of June.

I was going to say this, though. I'm glad you figured that out. But whatever is going on with your Internet is not related to just the 2.4 or the 5, because as we discussed yesterday and as listeners may hear now, there's like small little, you know, whatever you're doing with your Internet right now is affecting our recording. that thing isn't even on wi-fi is it isn't the computer you're using plugged into that

something's going on plugged in yeah so that so yeah whatever you're mean there's a ghost in the machine and i i'm i'm not kidding this is i tried to be an andrew on this by that i mean you're very good at methodically diagnosing kind of situations a lot of times you'll be like okay i'm trying to fix something on this computer and i have to go and have to download some new drivers or something And I'm always at the point at which the computer asked me to download a driver. I have just put the computer out on the corner with a free sign. With, by the way, all of my personal data. It says free to all drivers who might drive. And I write the password. I write all the login information right underneath where it says free. No, like every time you're doing that, Andrew, I just think this is never going to work. And it always works because you're good at that stuff. So I was trying to channel my inner Andrew by, like, actually going through the various systems and studying, you know, what the Internet told me and following the rules. And I did all that. And it got me to the point where I had these two things set up. And I was like, I have done it. I have triumphed over technology. But then it didn't work. And now my new solution is to go to Denver and party for a week and just hope it's fixed itself when I get home, which is the Luke solution.

Yeah, I offered that advice to our neighbors who were having trouble with their lawnmower. So we lived next to a house where like two different groups of renters live. It's three women.

Oh, you mean the guy that was weed whacking during our special recording project?

At the most random time? Exactly. The yard next door, by the way, beautiful little house next door, beautiful little yard too, and pretty well kept. But when we moved in, I did notice with all the rain and everything, their lawn, which is a lush green, which is beautiful, was really long. and getting longer and then I eventually met the women who live there, they're renters and the one who lives in an apartment there by herself was trying to mow the back lawn and I realized oh they have some arrangement which I asked about gently but didn't get a clear answer on about why it's up to the renters to mow the lawn but I did ask oh why do you have to mow the lawn and she said I'm just trying to learn, she was a young woman and she's like I'm trying to learn more about just lawn maintenance and stuff and I'm kind of just interested in doing it so i asked the landlord if i could do it i'm like that's cool she's mowing the lawn and her lawnmower breaks it's a gas lawnmower just keeps on stalling out on her and she calls across the fence and asks like hey can i take a look at it now i like troubleshooting things but i don't know shit about motors and engines i mean i know that you need a spark air and gas right that's what they always say but like aside from that i don't really know how to as you and the listeners know i don't know how to create a spark certainly um so um i'm like i'll That's for Genevieve to decide. Yeah, I'll come and take it. I can tell you what she'll say. But anyway, so I was like, I'll come take a look. I'll be friendly about this. But there's not much I can do. I looked at an air filter.

Your plan in your mind was to look at it for an appropriate amount of time to say, boy, yeah, I don't know. That's a stumper. Hands on hips. Arms akimbo. But you had to invest the time in pretending to fix it before you could do the ultimate thing that you were planning on, which was to walk away without the solution having been presented.

At least that would be my move. There were a couple of things I wanted to look at right away. Was the blade clogged, like, because it was big, thick, wet grass? Was there something in the way? And then also, like, I did, like, take out the little air filter area to see, like, hey, if this thing is choking off the air. Like, I looked at a couple of things. None of them really worked. But I said, you know, honestly, if I were you, I'd, like, just put it away for, like, a day and come back. And it might work tomorrow. Like, I'm like, I know that sounds nuts. But, like, I'm not saying that's right. I'm just saying that's what I would do if I were you. And she's like, all right. I think the next day I ran into her again. And she said, I talked to my landlord. He told me the same thing. He's in Hawaii right now. He said, just give it a day and try it again. And then I saw a couple of, oh, then a couple of days later, I think one of her roommates or one of the other people who lived there was trying to mow a different part of the lawn. I don't think they got the memo that the lawnmower didn't work. And I heard somebody start the lawnmower and started mowing and then it stalled out immediately again. They gave it too many days. Yeah, too many. If you give it four days, it's back to being broken again. You got to give it exactly one day. So it turns out lawnmowers don't – and I said this to the woman across the fence. I said, I guess I was wrong. Lawnmowers don't just fix themselves if you just let them take a nap. So, oh, well.

I've had that – I had a weed – what do we decide? A whippersnipper? A whippersnipper? A whippersnipper? A whippersnipper? Look, Phil is just –

gave me i can say that on the radio um whippersnapper yeah okay we yeah there were many there are many names for the what we would call the weed whacker or the weed eater but i had one that was yeah it like it needed uh you had to mix oil and gas so it was like a is that like a two stroke yeah and you know i like lost the direction so i would just do it kind of by like the color of the solution you know like like you're like you're putting cream in your coffee yeah like exactly and so i remember like at the end of one summer it just didn't want to start anymore and i was kind of bummed but i did that i literally like just put it away and then the whole winter went by and then i went back out the next spring i poured some more gas in there and some more oil and i just like pulled the pull cord a bunch of times and then it just started and i was like yeah that fixed itself so that is i think that's a more common approach to these things than than one might expect just make it like put a little blanket over it give it a little pillow give it a few days turn off the light and then see if it's better later um this is a very exciting day for us because we have our friend phyllis here um who uh was you know um at the new york times for a bit and that was why maybe there was a certain absence i guess it turns out that Dean, how do you say Dean's last name? Bacay?

Yep.

Was Dean like, don't go on TBTL, I heard that, and that's a no-go? Is it the publisher or editor-in-chief?

He's the executive editor. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I don't, well, so yeah, I was at the New York Times for a year. I think the last time that I was here was right before I went. And I think that, I mean, so they will say yes to very few things and they consider everything because the new york times is everywhere they have video they have podcasts they have you know obviously a huge news operation they consider everything competition um and so even if it isn't content wise like they want to evaluate well what is it what is it is it potentially something that's going to undermine what we need this person to do and is the product competitive with something we're trying to do oh i see two things one that's

like they're like they did and i and i think a lot of people when they think about like the daily and tbtl they're like those are definitely competitors um in the way that a hammer and a nail have a rivalry yeah um we would be the nail i believe but and then there's also you're saying it's like the question of do we want to go out and have one of our employees making someone else's show more popular that competes with us and then the other one is is this the kind of show that we

want someone who is a new york times employee to be on yep those are those are definitely two very broad considerations that they you know take into deciding whether people can do things and then there's also the kind of like uh the teacher thing of like well if i say you can do this then i have to explain to this other person why i had to say no to their thing and you know it it becomes one of those types of management problems as well so while i was there i asked to do very few things because i could kind of see what were the types of things they would say yes to and what were the types of things that they would say no to um i i think we can assume the tbtl is a pretty

immediate no i mean i'm hoping you didn't use up any of your asks with tbtl no i can say because

right when i got there like the tbtl-a-thon last year would have been right after i had just gotten the job and i figured okay not that luke and andrew have asked but i shouldn't probably ask the times hey i know i just got here but can i raise money for a podcast on the job i just left to come here like i figured that's not the greatest way to enter i think you figured

correctly right yeah maybe he'll never know this is the this is the beauty of how things worked out You have now left the New York Times to kind of strike out on your own. I know you have various projects going on. Yeah. But the timing is impeccable.

It is.

Because it means you're back here talking TV T-L-a-thon with us once again. Yeah. So we appreciate how you timed that. I mean, you're a radio producer, so you back-timed it, and you really nailed it.

You know, I'm really pleased and proud of how it worked out, because, you know, I was there for almost a year, and after that first year, or as it was coming up on my first year, I was like, this isn't, I mean, it's kind of, when I was thinking about it, it reminds me of your experience at NPR and the Bryant Park Project, which, you know, so many listeners have heard about over the years. But it's like, you know, it like that at that point, you know, you were the host of an NPR show in 2007 when it was like.

this is a peak accomplishment for someone especially still were you still in your 20s

at that point I mean I think so it was very weird I went from 31 maybe yeah I guess I went from being but what was what was what I didn't realize was pretty like unusual about it was I went from being the booker on day-to-day yeah to having my own show I think in like 18 months or something like it was very kind of like I wasn't on a track for that and then they like let me on the radio for a minute and then i made like one person in power laugh right and then they were like do you actually want to do this show and then i just lived in new york with like a staff of 20 people yeah it was very kind of which is probably part of why i didn't fully grasp how kind of lucky that was for me and i was like well i'm quitting but maybe my thought was i'll someone will just give

me another expensive radio show to drive and i know i've talked about this before on the show off but what you did was so smart and so brave and I think that it can be hard when you've been like socially conditioned to think okay now I'm doing the thing that I'm supposed to be doing right because everyone else seems to be wanting me to do it um and you know I was a bit more advanced in my career when I went to the New York Times and you know had a lot more agency and had been very deliberate about things that I chose but I think that I still what ended up happening was i still fell into a thing of like okay i'm supposed to be here right but like right kind of like when you're at bryant park like things just weren't clicking like you're like i know that this is supposed to be cool and it's like cool adjacent but it's not quite it's not

you ever find yourself i feel like if i were in that position yeah every day there'd be a point where i would pull my business card out that said new york times and my name i got a box of them that would get me through like another three days of my like existential crisis about it they'd be like i this is i'm not full i'm not fulfilled by this right god damn these business

cards i definitely did i brought them with me to to like um you know like maybe a week like after my friends knew i was leaving but i had maybe a week left i was like these are technically still good it's like your mom with the milk that's almost gonna expire it's like you know you can

the entertainment book that's coming up on expiring alright we're going to Azteca six times

and then we're going to Pizza and Pipes and then we're going to Bartel

if I go to your house right now do you have a coffee table that has a collage of your business cards under like a Lucite top or whatever that is I forgot about that move a glass

that was a move people would do that wasn't that like sometimes in restaurants too kind of like diner

and bars they'll put little coins under there sometimes yeah yeah well it's they're just in

silly boxes you know um and it's funny new york times please um let me mail your computer back

to you that's another thing i have to say this is a big thing with you and apm i don't want to say too much here if you don't want me to but leave it out with a free sign on it i can't see that

going sideways at all yeah um i uh apm took a year to send me a box so that i could send their computer back to them love you APM that took way too long I understand why it happened in in that case but New York Times I mean I I'm surprised every every week or two they're like hey did you ever get that box so that you can send your computer back and I'm like I did not okay so they

are at least this time they are inquiring about it APM was not inquiring and I mean listen I work for this network, and I should be careful what I say, but I remember having kind of like drinks with you outside, but still before we were allowed to go into buildings, I think, or maybe we were allowed to have drinks in tents or something. Was this last summer or something like that? You and I were sitting in Wallingford, literally on the sidewalk, outside some cafe, sipping on mint juleps or something along those lines, and you kept on saying, like, I need to send them their computer back. And I said, or, hear me out, keep it. Like, they don't care about the computer. You're begging them to take it back. Like, can't you just play video games on this thing? And you have such a strong moral compass. You're like, no, this is not my computer. I will not use it. I'm no longer an employee, and I need them to send me a box so I can send it back.

Well, yeah. I mean, I think there's also a component of just the sensitivity of the information on there, if it belongs to the New York Times. Because my guess would be the process of getting the computer back, like the shipping cost, the time that somebody has to spend managing that, wiping the computer. I mean, maybe it's a brand new fancy computer, but a lot of times most of the stuff that we have from APM, it's not worth the cost of shipping it back to APM.

No, but Phyllis was an editor. Like she was like, what was your senior editor or something? Like you had a nice computer. You didn't have one of these things.

It's true. I had really nice. macbook pros oh and i wanted to send them back um and so i have to say it's a very so i understand at apm there were a couple folks who left they probably would have been the ones handling the whole thing that's probably what happened because then someone who's very sweet and amazing like hit me up from apm and was like do you still have the computer oh good so they did so you were

absolutely right they eventually reached out to you okay all right good it took almost a year i

should say but yeah so uh you know npr they got their shit back immediately they were like here's

a box yeah pack it up yeah i love your career phyllis has been so interesting and varied that you can rank which major news outlets get their computers back with the most effective strategy

npr number one with the bullet um so we'll see where new york times comes in uh you know they

have a year so i wonder yeah it might be an inverse relationship to pulitzer prizes i'm trying to do the math in my head there but maybe i shouldn't go any further down that way yeah we'll see but

you know like i and like for sure that just like i think again there's so many things in common with your experience with npr and the bryant park project my experience at the times like there are super talented amazing people doing stuff there obviously like they're the number one news brand in the world for that reason um and you know you feature new york times articles on tbtl all the time constantly yeah they're so great it's the first thing that i look at in the morning to

try to find stories for our show and then if that fails then i go to the new york post which is like mostly about speaking of laptops all they cover is hunter biden's laptop like a ridiculous story you know a kicker story that kind of works for us but no the the new york

times is the gold standard of journalism in this country and in their audio department also you know is is part of that um and it's just just like any huge huge huge company there's going to be pockets and things that you can fall into where you're like oh this isn't exactly what i thought i'd be doing um and i just i happened to get um itchy about that and and mentioned it to a friend of mine over text and uh she just immediately called me and was like dude i never thought i'd be able to get you but um and she had some stuff ready for me to work on and so that's now can we talk about that friend yeah yeah so that tanya yep tanya mosley i've heard you broadcast with

her before actually she's incredible great yeah speak it talking uh speaking of of people who just sort of like had i maybe tanya was a a you know somebody say like overnight success and the person has just been like working diligently for many years i've been here for decades yes because tanya was at king five for a long time and then moved into public radio and then you know was hosting at the public rate at the national level yep um on um is it was it here and now yep yeah and like i remember just hearing tanya here now i'd be like oh go tanya this is really good and then next thing hearing oh she's doing this podcasting uh you know kind of production company

that you're now associated with yep i'm really proud to be there so i edit a show called truth be told that is tanya's show that she developed several years ago and took independent kind of like you developed tbtl and and took it independent you guys might have even talked about that at one point um but uh probably yeah i mean so many people come to you to talk about that and get

your advice and my advice is becoming so much less useful over the years because there was this brief window where it was like huh boy this tbtl thing is really kind of you know developed a bit of a following and there's their they've monetized it and they're doing it and then it's like 13 years later it's just like well my advice is talk about your wi-fi a lot and either get divorced or adopt a cat every five years um and you know you'll keep enough people around that it's still a thing i see people going this is not the oracle i thought i'd come to on podcast when your boss at npr says

you can't talk about your armpits anymore make a show where you can damn it yeah this is by the

way what a great name for the production company tmi production i know tanya mostly that's perfect

yeah she's amazing yeah so yeah she's great she you know she has her business set up um more things coming from tanya for sure and so when i decided you know this was such a great opportunity i'm going to leave the new york times and work with tanya um i made my own llc also um to give myself some of the benefits of like being able to be insured and being able to set up my own 401k and all that kind of stuff and i was so inspired by you guys uh with what i'm doing that i gave it a name that is tbtl inspired which is what i am the principal of p1 editorial I don't know. also good

got the P in there nice

perfect that's really good

thank you

does this mean no caliphate 2 colon what could possibly go wrong oh god do I need to cut that no

that I mean it's so caliphate I'm sure most folks know is like a broadly discredited um podcast that actually caused the new york times to have to give back a peabody which i don't know if that had ever happened before and that they had just given it back right before like right before i applied for the job i had there and it had cast a pall on the on the department i think

but um in a way that was because the person one of the main sources was ultimately sort of not

um fully reliable right he had made up um you know the just the key details of of the of the whole story and um and that had been exposed by the canadian government's like filing charges against the guy um for lying to law enforcement um you know like maybe i don't know a year or something after the show was out uh more than a year maybe and um and so that happened a few days later the times gave back the peabody a few months later i'm working there and it's like you can just tell like these people are bummed out or like you know there's all these projects that were supposed to be happening that aren't happening now kind of cold feet kind of a chilling effect i think so yeah and i think that is one of the downsides of working at a large company like you can have really meaningful conversations with the smart people there but the company line is always going to be something slightly different and you know you would you would just know that certain things aren't happening anymore or that certain people's work got reassigned but there's also this huge thing that nobody's really talking about and like you can ask but you're not sure if it's cool to ask and that was kind of awkward it probably didn't affect me as much as it affected lots

of other people but um i feel less bad that tbtl has zero p bodies because we've also had to give back zero.

The picture

of that one guy pointing to his head like smart move guy. Can't lose a Peabody if you never win one.

I don't know if I'm putting you on the spot Phyllis, but this reminds me because people know that you're an editor, right? At the Times at one time I said, hey, you're an editor for the Times. You said to me, I'm a senior editor for the Times. Okay, get it straight. I think about that all the time. give you a business card and that's a true story um but um i got a note from our friend angie um who i don't know if you know angie or not uh phyllis but she's a friend of mine in la and listens to the show and you must have come up on the show somewhat recently um because angie is a video editor and so for her like her job as an editor is being kind of a technical editor right i mean there's creativity in there but she's sitting behind machines and editing and mixing video. And she asked if that's kind of what you do with audio. And then I started to describe what an editor does. And it occurred to me, I'm 45 years old. I've worked for five different public radio stations. And I'm not doing a very good job of explaining what an editor does.

What do you do? It's probably more analogous to the newspaper concept of being an editor than to the TV and film concept. So sometimes you see it called story editor, because we're not necessarily like in the video at the console in the tape you know um in our realm often folks who have those skills are referred to as producers a lot of reporters have those skills so i have done that type of work but i had the title reporter when i was doing that work yeah and sometimes i would still help reporters by doing that with with them or for their stories um when it just made logistical sense to do that um i actually presented about that at the third coast conference once um i i enjoy doing that must be nice thank you hey you can't give back your tickets to the

third coast festival if you don't think we've ever been invited invited i don't know you guys

went to third coast we never left our hotel rooms we were the hermits of third coast yeah

but you like help you work with reporters to help fine-tune their story or yeah before fine-tuning

maybe just tune their story reporters producers hosts yeah every show is a little different as far as like you know the roles and who's doing what um you know sometimes i'm someone that like even when i was at apm every now and then like you would maybe ask me something wouldn't come Thank you. too often but um you know for something that's scripted and very documentary based like i'm helping you know talk about okay who do we need to get make you know what are we going to ask them you know structuring interviews things like that um you know sometimes i'll do research on things i after the fact i might help fact check something or if it needs to be meticulously fact checked we'll hire someone specifically to do that and i'll incorporate the notes with like if something needs to be lawyered i'll oversee that process also um but you know like ideally you know really collaborating with the reporters and the producers and the hosts to make sure that we're telling the story that we want to tell and that can be everything from like you know broad strokes big picture stuff to like you know line edits um and so you know ideally a lot of the work is happening like during the development process and before interviews and things like that i've also taken jobs where that part of it has already happened and now i'm coming in working with the scripting and and what cuts we're going to be choosing and making sure

everything's in context and that kind of stuff well tanya is psyched to have you because i saw that for that image of you you look like a queen or a goddess it's amazing did you see that luke no i'm gonna send this to you maybe we can use it as a show pick today but the production company tmi i guess made i don't know if they do this for all new employees or what but it's an amazing like you know it's like a illustration of phyllis and it's just amazing a philistration it's a

philistration um well i just want to say p that like i just i am as always so like impressed and uh and like you know proud of you envious whatever the word is that you just kind of do your own thing and like again so many people would just would just not be able to realize that they that That maybe the New York Times, that particular part, the division you were in, et cetera, was like the exact ideal fit for you. People just don't voluntarily walk away from those jobs because for so many of us, and I put myself on this list, our ego is so fed by being able to tell someone at a barbecue, I work for X, Y, Z. You know? Yeah, I do. It's a big part of our identities for a lot of us. And the fact that you were like, that's not going to be what defines me, or you don't need that so badly. You don't need to stop every barbecue conversations with that line because it is a stopper. Well, she's already got the business comments. Somebody is no longer talking about the job they do at Microsoft when you mention you work for them. And that's peace and love to our Microsoft employee friends. But anyway, I'm just saying, Phyllis, it's just yet another thing you've done that I think has been really interesting and really just speaks to how brilliant you are and how much you're just not about being in a situation that's not ideal for you. which is just i think really admirable so oh thank you um you know good job and also everyone

go listen to truth be told dude it's awesome i'm and that's that's part of it's like i knew i was making the right decision like as soon as i knew that this was a possibility for me i was like i have to figure out a way to make this work and um and tanya facilitated that um you know it's like she was able to get stuff together that it works for me like it's awesome and that's great um yeah it's it's rad and and like I've been so excited about the episodes that we've been making it's just it's a different feeling than I had at at the times you know I'm you know sad to say but the stuff I was working on was not moving me in the way that I wanted to be moved and that's not to say that it wouldn't be inspiring and exciting for some other person to work on like someone very different from me. But I'm, I'm so into what Tanya is doing. And the other stuff that she has coming that I just I feel it in my bones, like this is the right thing for me right now. And, you know, it also helps, you know, the folks can go back and listen to the episode I did when I left NPR and came on TVTL, where I talked about having a plan and knowing what I want to do with the rest of my work life and how long i want that to be is part of what made it so clear um this fits that and you know i thought the times would fit that it didn't and that's okay um and it's it made it easy to walk into this because it felt less like i was walking away from something

felt like i was walking to my authenticity oh that's so good that's so inspiring to hear and And also, critically, it means you can be on the show today. Yes, yes, right. I'm going to be honest with you. That's kind of the most important part.

I'm really, I mean, to me, that's, you know, it does bring me joy to come on the show. I am very excited that I can do it. And it is always sad to me when I've had those times when I've taken those jobs where this is part of the tradeoff that I either have to ask and have it be, you know, likely a no.

Or I have to just not ask because I know they would say no. That's something I don't love about taking jobs like that. And it's something I love about leaving jobs like that is like I'm no longer encumbered by their rules and their needs.

Well, any place called TMI Productions is going to probably be relatively OK with TBTL. It's really awesome. Yes. Because we are – that's really more or less what we do most days.

Well, although I do have to say, I did notice that Truth Be Told does go by TBT. And every time I see that, I jump a little bit because I think it's us. And then I realize it's not us. I look at the download numbers. I get excited. I know, Dad.

Well, I also want to say that there's something else I'm excited about. As you guys will say, we can cut this out if I'm not supposed to say it. But there's something else I'm doing that I know the Times would not have let me do, which is I am now a proud board member of LiveWire with Luke Burbrook.

Oh, I didn't know that. I forget. Yeah. I forgot the other way in which Phyllis Fletcher makes my life eminently better and more livable. Yeah. Congratulations. When did that happen? I mean, congratulations really to us and condolences to you, Phyllis, for being the newest member of the LiveWire board. yeah basically like phyllis went on the as soon as like phyllis went onto the free agent market there was a long list of people and entities that were trying to involve her in things and i got an email from our our pal um arvid hokinson saying hey because who's also on the board of livewire saying i think i got the perfect person and he said phyllis flutcher i was like um yes that is

the perfect yes so i'm really excited congratulations well congratulations to both you guys on that but Congratulations on all of this, Phyllis.

Oh, thanks. I'm excited about all of it.

All right. I'm excited to tell the listeners about the TBTL-a-thon thank you gifts as soon as I refresh my memory on what they are. So let's take a quick break. You made half of these things. A third if I finish out one of my projects, which I'm making zero progress on. Anyway, we're going to talk about what the thank you gifts are for the upcoming TBTL-a-thon. when we come back from this quick break.

We was hoping for some razzle-dazzle. Razzle-dazzle. That's right, man, razzle-dazzle.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody razzle-dazzle.

Hey, let's thank some dazzling donors. These are the last two dazzling donor messages of the, I don't know if it's fiscal year, because I'm unfamiliar with what technically the fiscal year of TVTL is, but of the time between the last TBTL-a-thon and this one.

I do want, if anybody heard that and they're like, wait a second, you haven't read my Dazzling Donor message yet. I just want to make clear, we do still have some more to read that we will be sharing next week throughout the THON, but Luke is just saying that this is the last one before the THON. That's what I'm saying. But we do have more folks to think. I also forgot we were going to read some during the thing. Dude, I gave you all the cover there. I was just clarifying, not correcting, and then you had to fall on the grenade.

You were calling me in on something that I missed. This is going to be a long week for you in Denver, Andrew. Just gently nudging you. You're just going to see. I have to wear reading glasses now. The deterioration of my mind is really something to behold these days.

Wait, I actually, well, you might not like this. I know you don't maybe like me wearing things that you're going to put on your skin, but I wouldn't, you got a pair of, oh, wait, yours are prescription though, right? They're not just drugstore readers.

They're prescription, but they're like, they weren't, she didn't tell me they're like, they're $2,200 or I don't know what the terminology is. She just said something like, I forget the term she used, but it was something like relaxation glasses or something. Like, I was like, are these just readers? Did I just pay $300 out of my FHA, FSA? Which one is that? Not FHA. That's where I got my first home loan through. You have the flex spending account or the... Yeah. Like, I was like, are these, because they were, they were like a name that wasn't like for a specific vision. and it was just kind of like, these will help you, glasses. These will help you, glasses. Well, you can try them on.

Anyway, if you don't mind, I wouldn't mind, because I have supposedly progressive lenses now, but they're just not strong enough. I'm still taking my glasses off all the time to read my Instagram memes.

Well, the definition of a progressive is also changing all the time, too.

I mean, they call these Antifa glasses that I have, that I use.

It's like, do the glasses want to defund the police, or do they want to just try to commit to fundamental change within the existing structure?

anyway before i make a joke about a youth jail why don't you think let's thank dazzling donor

dazzling donor jen joyce hey out of washington our longtime friend once known as uber jen

i think she's still cool with us calling her uber jen even though she hasn't worked for uber for quite some time but no we talk about exciting projects that woman's always

got exciting projects yes indeed i see jen on tiktok all the time because it's one of those phone things well i think i'm following her now but before i was following her one day i was just looking doing my endless scroll through tiktok and all of a sudden i see our friend jen joyce

doing an adorable tiktok video like whoa so your algorithm brought it to you it wasn't because you

my algorithm somehow delivered our friend jen joyce to my tiktok for you page before i knew she was on tiktok that is awesome before she was a tiktok in her mother's eye i was my phone was already thinking of her anyway jen says oh friendos thank you for all you do i miss you in real life but i hope we can remedy that soon while this year was wildly busy i am getting back into things that make me happy and that includes listening to you too uh as in me and andrew not the band youtube I've really been getting into the Joshua Tree

And if anybody's worried about that I do want to say next week We will be listening to a lot of U2 So don't worry about that

100% For my message, I'd love to invite the tens That are makers, crafters, and artists To making! Making is an app Built by makers for makers We launched at the end of last year So I guess MakerGen now? Oh, Maker Gen. Proper title. Jen, you let me know if you want to go by Maker Gen now or something else. Knitter Gen, Weight Lifter Gen. These are all things that I know that Gen gets into. Making is an app built by Makers for Makers. We launched at the end of last year, and our amazingly supportive and diverse community has grown quickly. As of right now, you can post to the feed, track projects of all craft types, take classes, and more. But soon we'll be adding our marketplace. I just love my team and what we are building. It's so special. We hope that you will join us. Search Making to download the app for iOS on the Apple App Store and for Android on the Google Play Store. Or visit themakingapp.com for links to download. You can also see my mug on our TikTok account at The Making Co. As head of marketing for a startup, you wear many hats. That's the name of the game. And making crafty TikTok content is one for now. Ha ha. Anyways, thank you all for bringing joy to my and so many people's lives. Love you both lots. Bye. I love it. That's from formerly Ubergen now making Jen.

That reminds me of a line from The Simpsons, which I'm going to butcher, but it used to go through my head all the time. I believe Milhouse is impressed with some cool kid at school because the cool kid signed his yearbook, but he kind of he signed it in slang sort of. and he's just like oh he writes like he talks and i sort of feel like near the end of that dazzling donor message we just sort of got like we really kind of captured jen's voice

i was leaving out a variety of like the um i don't know if it's the greater or less than sign and then a three to make a heart like there was a lot there was a lot of kind of jen's i think like you said sort of special linguistic approach yeah i wasn't even reading all of it but but it's

all in there i love the use of emoticons over emoji remember i was trying to just find the distinction between those a while back and some listeners wrote in but yeah i i love an old school

emoticon a heart with the three etc well jen thank you so much for all i remember meeting jen for a drink to talk about tvtl and uber collabing when there were like 12 people working for uber and was one of them we met at this bar called montana on capitol hill and i think she said something like we don't really have any money but we can give y'all unlimited rides i was like that's better than money yeah i know can we get that again we got unlimited making whatever jen's latest carrot she can pass off to her friends and podcasters. Anyway, Jen, thanks again. We really appreciate you and love you. Thanks for your support all these years. Maestro?

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattle

dattle. All right. Now this has to be, this can't be a coincidence. Our second dazzling donor today is none other than Phyllis Fletcher of Seattle, Washington. I just go in order, man. I don't know what to tell you. Wow. And you don't believe in a Todd. and yet phyllis's dazzling donor message is the thing that we're reading today i find that to be

a little sus i don't know i'm just i just do what they tell me luke i just do it i love this because now i can enforce it and make sure that you read the whole thing well also i have a question for you since you're here in person you get to decide do you want this music underneath it or not

yeah okay we're gonna keep it going and do you want me to read this p or do you want to read it You read it. You read it.

wrote it yes and it does have the b word in it you're gonna make luke say the b word did you do that on purpose yes can you put on your editor your senior editor hat phyllis and how do you

feel about me saying the b word yes do it i wrote it as a guy okay okay about me in this instance yes i do okay but it's probably the only time ever okay okay okay phyllis fletcher

seattle washington hello from gus's school parking lot where i'm listening to you right now Do you know a bitch is about to be 50? I thought baloney was the B word.

Yay.

By the time you read this, maybe I am. You are. Yep. Happy birthday. Thank you. How's it feel, Pete? Great.

I'm happy to be here, man. It looks good on you. Thank you. Did you get your booster? I am eligible for that this summer.

Oh, okay. Yes. I thought it was as soon as you turned 50.

I have a weird vaccination schedule that starts with me getting the J&J. So you can just fill in the blanks after that. Right. Okay. Gotcha. But because of that, my booster schedule is slightly off, but I am going to get that this summer. Nice. Nice. Yep.

I went into a restaurant last night here in Portland with Becca where they actually required proof of vaccination, which I had to scroll so far back in my phone to find. I was like, we're going back to that.

You need the iOS wallet card.

I know. I think I saved it to my wallet, but I panic because it's like it's only once every it's very infrequent. Like I've got to take one in L.A. when I interview this this guy, Austin Butler, who plays Elvis. I have to take a test right there because they're like, well, you're not getting young Elvis sick. Yeah, no, absolutely. With your public radio podcasting questionable background.

Right.

But it's so it's so rare that I have to produce the evidence of my vaccination anymore that I like I panic. You're right. I think it is in my wallet, but I just, like, freaked out. So I'm just scrolling back to, what, like, two years ago or something? Feeling guilty. The Salem Convention Center in the geotag of my photos, because that's where it happened.

Right. Yes.

Okay. By the time you read this, maybe I am 50, which you are. Happy Blur's Day. I've eased into middle-aged mom life as a 10. a special time every day is when i drive gus home and we laugh at the latest tbtl gus has listened since he was four now he's 12 and plays trombone and bass in an award-winning jazz band i've seen i've seen video i didn't even know that was gus when you sent that it was just what was the song

they were doing i think i sent you their marching band doing push it by yes and i was just like i

just thought i didn't put it together that was gus and his his uh crew so i was like phyllis i just had this weird thought i was like phyllis is walking down the street and just saw a marching band playing playing push it and was just like this is cool i got to send this to the guys and then that was gus i can't believe it um as a middle-aged mom i have earned the right to say this andrew luke i tell all my 45 year old guys to get their colonoscopies i know luke that you You had that deal where you got to swab your poo and send it to a lab. By the way, I want to just mention, I low-keyed that for Andrews. That could have been a three-week plot arc on the show. Wait, this is something that you guys talked about off air.

No, it was on the show.

It was? No, I mentioned it. Yeah. My doctor, who tells all those 45-year-olds a variety of things, they sent me home with some kind of a little self-test that involves taking one's own fecal matter. And sending it in, which is a deeply troubling process that we're not talking about enough in this society. Like we see the commercials for Cola guard or whatever. It's like a happy top and happy talking box that will supposedly detect illness. But what you really have to do is poop onto a piece of paper, which feels weird.

I must have worked out. I feel like I would have had a million follow-up questions, although carefully placed questions. Maybe it was an early on a Monday and I hadn't woken up yet. This feels like news to me. Wow.

But it sounds, Phyllis, like your point is I did the sort of that's the very, very, very kind of like easiest, lowest impact version of this. But it's not as complete as, say, an actual colonoscopy. So you're recommending that Andrew and I, at our age, as 45, 46-year-olds, that we get our colonoscopies. And then, Phyllis, you say, I had one, too. Guess what? It didn't find. And when you say one, too, you mean one of those, like, home tests. Poo swab. Yeah, the poo swab. It didn't find three polyps. Those polyps are no more, and I live to dazzle you once again. Jeez. P? I had no idea.

Sorry.

oh look who wants to play in that space I thought that was an awesome

started with you i don't think i knew this phyllis yeah i'm really glad that that that they that has

all been handled yeah me too yeah yeah i so yeah a few years ago i i remember the um you know the medical the like national medical board that decides you know the recommended recommendations for like what age you get what thing they were talking about maybe lowering the colonoscopy age which they now have but right before that was about to happen i was having a doctor's appointment and i mentioned it and at the time she recommended the poo swab thing so i did that and it didn't find anything and then um then that age was lowered and i also was getting ads in my facebook feed for to do a um they're like are you due for a colonoscopy if you are will you please you know

be in our study right yeah you did this right i okay so i did that too which i didn't mention

in my dazzling donor message but it's like part of my my colonoscopy journey so i'm mentioning it um so that was a thing that is like it's a it's it's a competitor to coligard if it makes the market it's it's the same process for the patient but they use different lab things that they analyze like they're looking for different things once they have what they want from you which is a complete bowel movement so i they send this bucket apparatus you put in the box depending on the day they better send me two buckets i don't know i mean depends on what i ate i i gave them what they needed i will say that oh my god it's this bucket apparatus you put in your toilet and for me having the parts that i have the challenge yes i did the challenge for me was to not get pee in it and I really had to think about this quite a bit of where am I going to place the bucket am I going to try to pee before or after because once certain things start they're not going to stop and if my aim is bad I'm going to fill this bucket with pee and I'm going to ruin the sample and I'm not going to get my $200 because they pay me for this you know but I can say I nailed it it involved a lot of thought and a lot of concentration um and i did everything that they need me to do with that packaged it up someone came to my porch

and took it away poor son of a gun and i got my 200 bucks is this one of the podcasts that you pitched to the new york times that they said no to yes and so even tmi said too much

we're not trying to hear that yeah so so yeah so then so they because that's part of a study i never get the results so i don't know how accurate that was but part of what they're comparing it to to see if it's working is my actual colonoscopy which i then got and that's where the i see so

that was kind of like they had to do that to cross reference yes because if they if you didn't get the actual one then they wouldn't indicate to them how effective the um bucket was right exactly yeah so you weren't planning that one and then that one found some polyps that they that they

took care of yeah yeah and i was planning to get the colonoscopy because by then the age had been lowered i wasn't 50 yet but the age had been lowered to 45 so i knew i could get it and so i just asked again i did have to ask multiple times um i think that was partly because of because of covid and partly because they weren't sure why i was asking because their records showed i had had the swab thing already and the age just got lowered why do you care about this

but i really did what a health care system we have it is wild talking you out of getting

preventative it was like yeah tacitly talking me out of it but once they once i harangued them enough times and like i really want to do this she dropped a new york times business card once i let them know and they're like oh okay so yes so i did get it um and yeah they found three things that they took out and i am going back again soon because of that but if that comes back clear then i think that i get to you know wait another several more years maybe five more years before i do it again so yes i do tell all my 45 and 46 old guys get your colonoscopies please at least talk to your doctor about it see if they recommend it um every i mean you're totally

right phyllis and in fact i'm not trying to give out any medical information here or advice but i do know that I have read articles that say that there is an increase in colon cancer among people who previously would have been thought too young to have it. Unfortunately, what happens a lot, like Jesse Case, the very funny podcaster who has the show Jesse vs. Cancer, we've had him on the show before. He was an example of somebody who was feeling badly for years and going to the doctor and constantly being told it.

it would could never be something like colon cancer because of his age and then it turned out to be colon cancer and miraculously he has survived and is thriving but that's you know that's sometimes an exception and so anytime you hear about somebody every time you talk to somebody who's dealing with a really adverse medical diagnosis particularly in the department of like cancer the i feel like the feedback or the thing they always say is trust your body don't take no for an answer and stay on top of your stuff yeah um so i think that's really good advice i will do this if andrew you and i can be like steve martin martin short colonoscopy friends well listen we're gonna be in denver together for a week i'm not even kidding you know about this right this came up on the show um no i think this came up on stern phyllis might know about this i heard about this

it could be yeah because yeah they these guys i think they talked about it on stern they may have Yeah, and they get together and they do their colonoscopies together.

Oh, this does ring a bell. They meet the night before and they hang out and they drink whatever that situation is. I mean, because it's like Steve Martin's house, there's a lot of bathrooms. I think everyone just kind of like calls dibs on one. And then they just like hang out and have a fun night where they're kind of all going through this slightly odd experience. And then they go get their colonoscopies the next day together. That kind of makes it sound fun.

i will say this and this is gonna sound weird because i know that colonoscopy like the prep for it is really something i know that the and the procedure itself isn't great right it's not

i mean i was knocked out david sedaris loved it i heard him on conan and he was so into it the drugs he wants to get one every year and i don't think he was trying to be funny i mean they put

me on that i was knocked the fuck out and then i woke up like blam and this is how i'm like i am so me like through and through the first thing i said is what's the weirdest thing anyone's ever

said waking up from this i thought you were saying what's the weirdest thing you found up there

no well and then the lady said the weirdest thing anyone's ever said waking up from this was um we were it was i think it was propofol um and uh it was a different procedure they were doing on a child but the child woke up and said i put a popcorn kernel in my brother's ear and and the nurse then when the parents came in were like does your child have a sibling okay this is what they said um do you mind if we check their ear they found two popcorn oh my god that is

an incredible story i was so glad i asked that is an incredible story i'm gonna i'm sorry phyllis i will credit you but i'm gonna be repeating that story for the rest of my life beautiful thing

about being an editor you want people to just copy you don't want credit yeah i don't want

credit just take it take that one that's really that is an amazing story i'm a little worried i'm going to be honest with you i don't know what i'm going to admit to when i'm under that who knows when i come out of that thing it's yeah i got a lot of as mo would say a lot of disturbing secrets well then a minute or two later you'll be like did i really say that yeah yes they yeah

they um because then i'm pretty sure i started talking about high school after that and then a minute later i was like was i just talking about high school and she was like oh i don't know like

they weren't even listening to you battle god i'm gonna ask that to please leave me in a room by myself until i'm fully awake because i don't know what i'm gonna say yeah but andrew when you come out i will be videotaping the dentist's real life i will say i was gonna say really quickly

that um honestly all that you know it's something we got to go through but if the alternative is like pooping in a box and sending it in i'd rather just go to the doctor and have it do this this makes the colonoscopy sound so much better because i don't want to do that but i was going to say when i um you know had my fingers uh they put me out to uh have surgery on my fingers in what what was i calling it the surgery room i was corrected the operating room um i remember kind of asking too, like, was I acting weird? Was I okay? And she said, you just kind of kept apologizing and said that you were just being grabbed. And that's you. Your hands were through and through.

Thank God, yes. It's good to know. I think this came up at the time, but I mean, it's good to know that like inside this the outer shell that is an extremely conscientious, thoughtful person is a warm, gooey center that's also a thoughtful conscientious person. I was going to say the goo on the inside matches the goo on the outside. I always ask people i always ask my 45 year olds hey is the goo match the outside is that a show title does the goo match the outside i don't know anyway phyllis it's rare that i can say this at the end of one of these donor messages but thank you so much for supporting the show that was uh it's incredibly generous of you and josh and to some degree gus's college fund um and uh and we just really appreciate you and love you so thank you oh i love being here i love

being able to support the show that way. Thank you. Hello and welcome to Top Story. let the fun begin and uh we've got some some thank you gifts what do you think what's the best way to um announce these roll through these describe them how should we do this well i think

well i did i did want to ask phyllis like you i have not told you about any of these gifts no has anybody do you know what we're about to be talking about because i'm excited about these things um and i will let's just go through them one by one we have a list here in front of us you want to start with the thing that everybody can get luke no matter what level you donate at you can get a thank you gift that comes immediately to you by the way. That's right. It's what I like to call a digi-gift. Oh! I just came up with it.

You donate one dollar if you donate I mean maybe one cent. I don't know if it has to be a dollar. You will get our latest movie track that is where we watch a film and talk about it and then you watch that same film and play the recording so it's like you're hanging out watching a movie with me and Andrew and Genevieve. We watched The Princess Bride.

Oh! Yay!

Indeed. Inconceited.

I love this. I don't know if you guys would remember this at all, but before you guys started doing these, when we would have meetings, when I was still at 8 p.m. and we would talk about the thank you gifts, this was my idea.

To do Princess Bride?

Not to do Princess Bride.

Oh, just to do the movie tracks. Yeah. Oh, I didn't remember that. I had already, in my Thrive review, I said that it was my idea. Oh, you should, you should. Editors want you to do that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You should.

Well, thank you. It's a good idea. We've now done three of these things, right? We did Home Alone for Christmastime last year. And what was the first? Oh, Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings. Right, yeah. So this one is, and I like the idea of doing Princess Bride because, like, well, first of all, it's just, I love this movie. And it kind of inspired the question that I put on the 10 of the Week forms in the newsletter, which is if you could make the world watch one movie, what would it be and why? Not, like, what's your favorite movie, but what is the movie you would recommend to everybody else? and the answer that comes up the most is The Princess Bride and it's my answer to that question as well so I think that there's a lot of love for this movie amongst tens like us

yeah absolutely oh that's great that's fun

and it's also family friendly as it were yeah not that the other movies we've done I mean Lord of the Rings I guess is a bit violent but like it's also something that you could watch with your kids although as I think we said in the recording hopefully it's not the first time your kids if your kids haven't seen The Princess Bride let them watch it once without us yapping and then watch this like the second time because then they'll be in on all the jokes. Yeah, absolutely. That's any donation amount, whatever you can spare and feel okay about, we will send you the link to that and you could be, you know, Monday afternoon you could be watching The Princess Bride and listening to us talk about The Princess Bride. That's great.

Gus is going to love that. He's listening to both of them.

Can I ask you one question before we move on? I was going to say, you mentioned having a really good time watching um the home alone one with gus and i know that gus listens to the show and he's heard people swear before oh yeah uh maybe even sometimes his parents but um yeah i remember

cringing for a second describe shitting in a bucket man you know stuff oh yeah i feel like

actually i feel like i might have let an f-bomb fly what's next ronnie rating his mom that's just for you she's a 10 100 to make for this but i was gonna say i think i let an f-bomb fly in that in that home alone thing which is both not very holiday ish and also people were enjoying this children's movie with their kids so if if i did do that i apologize if i scandalize anybody out there and i can promise you that this one is f-bomb free yeah we were all i think pretty

had our wits i had my wits not about me towards the end of home alone and loader because i was i was uh you know having a few drinks but um i was much more mentally aware and competent for I don't know if that makes for a better or worse riff track, but that was what was going on there. All right, Andrew, do you want to do the next one? I'll give you a little drumroll.

Sure, give me the drumroll, but then I'm going to have you describe it, because in many ways this was your vision, Luke. But this is a gift that many, many people have asked for. TBTL bumper sticker.

It's an all-new TBTL bumper sticker. Now, here's the thing. not just any bumper sticker but this looks like it's a public radio station from the like late 80s or early 90s you know that classic like you just see i know i use this reference too much but just like growing up

in the northwest there was a certain kind of it was a volvo for a long time uh-huh it's like a volvo station wagon that would have a green piece sticker and like uh you know hug your love your mother you know yep and like just all these icon all of it yeah and then like a a bumper sticker for you know um maybe ku probably kuow but there was a very specific aesthetic style to like public radio station bumper stickers from that era when i was a kid and i've always kind of loved that and so we we've had one designed that is very much in that world which you can stick on your car or your laptop or your window or do whatever you want to do with it but it's i think it's great because it once it gets a patina on it it will look like tbtl has been around for 36 years

phyllis i just texted you a photo of it if you want to look at it and it's also so the font is sort of that public radio thing you send me a photo andrew oh it should be in that email you're reading off of right now down at the bottom um i didn't even realize it also says tbtl hit radio 10 which was your idea as well which isn't so public radio-y but more just like kind of retro

radio yeah you know i guess maybe it's i i'm framing it very public radio but i guess the fact that we put hit radio on there is more of a wmms vibe right let's just say it looks like a radio station bumper sticker from a certain era that a lot of us grew up seeing those stickers having them on our car uh and uh it will also help identify you in the wild as a 10 i know some people have kind of made their own um bumper stickers long ago i think jen had some she was um selling or giving to people um but this is now going to be the official one that you can put again on your vehicle or you know if you're like fancy you could just tape it into the back of the windows on the paint job right right i feel that this is very evocative of am radio days too

because it's almost like it has like call letters and then you know the slogan and then the two digit dial position yes that's exactly yeah that is that's very precisely what we're going for

yeah and it's just been a long time i don't think we've ever had it's very possible we did and i forgot about i don't think we've ever had an official like created by apm or certainly cairo bumper sticker for the show yeah not since i've been with it yeah we created little ones for the

listener drive that were like our high school photos that were like more like laptop stickers but like yes yeah yeah you wouldn't really put that on your car and people have been i mean i don't think there's been a like a car sticker since i've been on the show which has been 10

10 years now i think and people the question is do i put one of these on my mazda or is that just the height of being high on my own supply.

I think you should get your car wrapped with this.

I like that. Well, it's already wrapped for Monster Energy drinks. We'd have to get that unwrapped and then have this added. Don't lose the Monster deal. Actually, you know what I'm going to do? If I ever get up the emotional courage to go figure out what's going on with that truck I bought, this would be the perfect bumper sticker on a 1974 ford f a 1974 f ford f250 i think a portland 10 should just run up to it and slap it on there when no one's looking well it's at burnside it's at the burnside auto repair if anybody wants to go visit it's the big orange truck that's sitting there on the lot all right somebody's got a brand new orange truck there that's about to get tagged like sweet maybe we'll convert it to another

listener yeah all right andrew do you want to do the next one yeah i'm really excited about this one and this one is um still a work in progress because we are doing andrew's doing the work well and we're both working on this collabing i mean i don't mind doing doing it all but i do think it's fun that you and i are writing these ourselves and i'm sending phyllis a photo of the cover of it which is even better than what's going to be on the inside but we are calling these too beautiful to lib these are like the mad libs that used to play as a kid or in the newsletter i'm calling them angry libs just to avoid any kind of uh copyright lawsuit um but we all know about mad libs right you fill in certain words and the upset lib anyway the uh apm art department i gotta give them major kudos they nailed the uh cover of this thing it's like they've taken the logo of you and me in the in the boat and the uss friendship and they've adapted it so it's in that classic mad lib style have you seen this are you looking at this it's so cute

Is that not so cute?

It's so great. I love it. I mean, yeah, this is, that's all, I mean, I think the Mad Libs are going to be great because they're TBTL related Mad Libs. Yes. But just the cover alone is almost my favorite part of the whole thing.

Yeah, so these are like TBTL related stories, some of them fantastical, some of them kind of rewrites of things that we've told on the show before, adventures that we've been in. And they're in Mad Lib style so that you can either play by yourself or with a friend or a family member. and you can

can kind of fill in the the adverbs and adjectives it's also a good reminder of the difference between an adverb and an adjective for people this has been part of why i haven't been contributing

as many there's 20 of these in the book and we're in the we're still in the process of developing all of them yeah i've written my lack of clear understanding of things like adverbs is i will not lie standing somewhat in the way of me carrying shouldering my weight i'm happy to

keep on trucking along but um yeah and so we'll be working on these in denver too and hopefully get them to the publishers pretty soon oh and also i should mention a couple of things here um you will get the physical book with this really cute cover on it you'll also get a digital version of this so you can play it over and over again if you want to with with other people um and also you know we have a voicemail line so you know our friend john who helped um coordinate all this stuff and come up with some of these ideas in the membership department who's actually going to be in denver with us i don't know if you mentioned that yesterday i feel like you did um so john will be there and he's been such a creative force on this whole thing he's like you know people could be calling in with their Too Beautiful to Libs, leaving them on the voicemail line, so feel free to do that as well. Oh, that would be great.

I hadn't thought of that part. We talked about, because we're taking calls, maybe we're going to try to do some on-air living, some on-air to-libbing? We always do some on-air living, I think. Yeah, we do. But anyway, yeah, it would be fun also to have it left on the voicemail. That would just, to hear where people have arrived with some of these things. Now, I'm not

going to send Phyllis a photo of this next thing because I actually have it here and I'm going to show her the, I don't know if you'd call it, the spec version of this. So Luke, while I get the, while I unbag this, will you describe it? It's one of those

famous unbagging videos tearing up the internet. Yeah. At the $50 a month, oh excuse me, at the $20 a month level, that's an old sales trick, Andrew.

I can't afford not to donate.

Exactly. We've marked this down to the $20 a month level. You will get a pair of tonight pants. That's right. Actual pants that have smaller versions of pants on them that are comfy. Elastic waistband.

Oh, my God.

Drawstring. Whoa. Ultimate evening comfort to slip into.

They're actually comfortable pants. It's like the whole idea of tonight pants are, my tonight pants are ridiculous. They're like corduroys or chinos that are just like one size too big. Those sound so uncomfortable for me to be relaxing in, to be honest. That's not what these are. Don't worry. These are not just some old dirty pair of pants that have been in the bottom of my closet for a decade or two. These are actually nice, comfortable pants that normal people, like our normal listeners, will enjoy lounging around in. And they're cute as hell.

They're so cute. Yeah, they are. Oh, my God. I'm putting them on.

Yeah.

I am.

I will get you a pair of those, Phyllis, but I do need to take that exact pair to Denver with me, just so you know.

We'll see. You've got to get me out of them.

I did not think we were going to get to the part of the show where I have to get Phyllis out of pants, but here we are. Once again. Phyllis is putting them on right now over her pants. This is why things didn't work out at the Times. You're the first person in the world to wear the Tonight Pants. Oh, my God. I like the fact that you didn't even ask. You're just like, those are halfway up your ass before you. It's the Burbank way.

So instead of asking permission, you apologize later, right? Except I'm not sorry. We're also going to auction those off.

The first Tonight Pants that have been worn by the actual Phyllis Fletcher. These are great. They're actually really – I'm happy with how they turned out aesthetically, Andrew, because, you know, you and I are both like – we wanted it to be fun and frivolous, but also not something that if, let's say, there were an emergency and you had to go outside in them. Yes, exactly. I mean, because that's your whole theory on the original Tonight Pants is you wanted to be relaxed. You want to be, because this is active. You want to be relaxed, but also slightly dignified. And I think we went more in the relaxed direction with these, but they're actually cute. The design, and again, this was with our help from our friend John, our colleague John and Emily. Like, the actual design, I think, is pretty adorable. And they look comfy as hell.

Phyllis, are you ready for me to take your photo? Yeah. Okay, I'm going to do this. Now, Phyllis has also attached a gold fanny pack for the whole fit. We can't give away the fanny pack. There you go. Also, Phyllis is pointing out something here that we should mention, too. Pockets. These things have comfortable pockets.

Deep pockets. Yeah. Chicks don't usually get pockets like this. We really don't.

That was a big thing. I remember in one of the meetings about this, it was, and I don't think anybody was pushing back on it, but it was very important that these things have pockets because, you know, not having pockets. And also that they not look too much like scrubs. yes that was a big thing yeah we had to thread a needle because we were going through different colors and patterns and concepts and it was like one thing looked a little too like maybe scrubs one thing got a little too i don't know militarist like there was all these things that we wanted to make sure we were kind of steering a little clear of and we ended up i think at a really great

Oh, yeah.

Well, I was pushing for the camo pretty hard, so that's on me.

Well, you wanted to be able to wear them hunting. Exactly.

I totally see kids at Gus's school wearing stuff like this. They kind of look like PJ pants, but just very, very casual. You could totally wear these to school type of pants. Yep. And they can be your business pants when you need to be business, but from the chest up. From the waist up. Yeah, yeah, waist up. and then yeah then then it's already tonight on your pants this is great your your torso says

your torso says business meeting your pants say i'm already relaxing i'm already sliding down

your pants have their feet up already yeah this is great and then you know um yeah for reference so i have i i got a booty i can say that and these are the large and so like if there's like if there's an extra large like oh we've got i feel like it would be quite generous which is

great these these come we've definitely we've factored in all shapes and sizes with these so this is a really wide range of uh of of the yeah i mean this this is a pant that we would love it for everybody to feel comfortable in and to wear and have fun i mean they're just the ideal pants

for listening to a podcast exactly they're tonight once you put them on you get like the stress of

day will melt away what stress i'm wearing my tonight pants i wish we would have had time to shoot like a fake commercial oh p you might you would do you remember those ads from when we were kids in seattle it was for maybe klsy your after work station and it was like somebody comes home to like a what at the time would have been like a really lovely condo probably down in like pike place area and i just remember it's just sort of snapshots but it was like someone was coming home after a stressful day and they wanted to relax and they put on KLSY and then or maybe it was a different one but I feel like Songbird the Kenny G song was in there but it just was like as a kid I had no stress in my life but I just knew that when I was an adult full of stress this was what I was going to listen to when I came home to my condo because it just was like your stress will melt away with KLSY

I bet it was KLSY because they are the station that would have done that that's great I love that

kind of a Kelgon take me away vibe

yes exactly and you can wear these in the bath if that's your thing too they're bath safe as well so and then this is just kind of the summation of all of it if you are in a position to donate a dazzling donation each month which is 50 bucks a month which we are very aware is not nothing there are a lot of things you could be spending that money on and for all the folks that have been able to do that for tbchell we just can't overstate how appreciative we are uh if you have if you're donating that level and you let it keep rolling or maybe you're somebody who is in a position where that's an amount of money that would be okay for your personal finance you'll get all of that stuff that we already mentioned so you of course you get the uh the riff track of the princess bride the bumper sticker the too beautiful to libs and the tonight pants and the dazzling donor message where we will basically read just about anything you want within reason or play music or whatever you want to do today it could be a psa it could be a psa about psa numbers is that the term is that the that's the what when it comes to uh the colon right there's a psa as

an indicator of things right uh you know so that was those two things are next to each other but

um i think that's i think in in in guys i think the psa number is something that they'll be

monitoring i see so that was a psa about psa for you guys yeah that was pretty good i was unfamiliar with the psa before you explained the joke but this is one of those instances where explaining the joke actually did make me appreciate it yeah it's good oh because it's a fun time

hey let's do a little music for your weekend before we get i noticed i saw what you did walsh You rapscallion.

Oh, by offloading my work for the week?

Well, because here's the thing. I had been texting with Phyllis literally the same day, and I said, hey, since you're going to be on the show, it would be fun if you wanted to pick a song. And then I was thinking we'll do that in lieu of the listener suggestion, which is me getting out of my work because I'm the one that digs through the listener suggestions. And then like an hour later, because clearly you and I, Andrew, are not in close communication, you were texting. The good news was that the same outcome happened, right? Which is, Phyllis, you've actually got a song.

Okay, just to be clear, though, you guys weren't including me on those texts, right? No. Oh, okay, good, good, good. I was like, I promise you, I did not see that. No, no, no, you weren't.

I should have looped you in. I was just trying to have a private PSA-related conversation with my friend Phyllis Fletcher. No, I just, it was literally like a wild hair. I was probably waiting for the elevator in my building. I just thought, oh, it'd be fun if Phyllis picked a song. I dashed off the note And then hours and

phyllis like totally and then hours later it the idea was tweaked and i would say maybe even sharpened so okay cool so we're starting with a song recommended by you phyllis what have you

brought us this week well um i brought you guys a recording of my son's marching band you are oh my god culture i am i so yes i am as i've been telling you guys uh i have gone full band mom that's why i have the fanny pack um i'm very supportive of my son's marching band so he goes to a school that just opened five years ago called robert eaglestaff middle school and um they the principal has said like the smartest thing that she has done as principal is hire the band director because she wanted to have a kick-ass music program and um and so he developed that kick-ass music program and then covid happened and all like live performance was shut down for two years and then everything reopened gus came in with the class of kids where even if they had already been students at the school none of them had marched before and so they were all coming in totally green and he's got these kids jamming he's got these kids fucking jamming that's why i sent you that that video of them doing push it because i could not believe how good they sounded and he's very smart he picks songs from you know he's he's like a uh you know he's like jamming 95 or something like that like he's picking you know your hits from

the 80s 90s songs that you the parents are gonna be like oh hell yes and then he picks ones that

the kids are like oh hell yes and so kids should not be saying hell they say crazy stuff man I have heard those kids say wild things. I'm like, you're in uniform. What are you doing? So I'm around the kids a lot because I am the mom who transports the sousaphone. It's not a tuba. That's why I have my fanny pack so I can be prepared and hands, you know, like hands free carrying my stuff so that I can help them with their stuff. And this spring they performed in the Daffodil Festival in Pierce County. A couple of tens came out to see them. So shout out to DJ in Tacoma and Brandon in Puyallup. And the song that they that I've given as my music for your weekend is Industry Baby by Lil Nas X by the Robert Eaglestaff Marching Ravens.

And I noticed that you sent this to me with a timestamp in it. Was that on purpose? Am I cutting in about 30 seconds here? Yeah. Yeah.

Because this is them actually marching in in Puyallup in the Daffodil Festival. And like there's a bunch of crowd sound and all that kind of whatnot. and then they actually get to it.

Okay, cool. So this is Industry Baby. Yes. Lil Nas X by the Marching Ravens.

so then they do a dance routine oh they certainly do look at these kids kids today

are so cool and what you can't hear is do the darndest dances they are singing the chorus of Industry Baby.

I know that song from TikTok, by the way. Yeah.

Yeah.

And they sound good.

They sound amazing. And now they have a whole new routine that they do to Waiting for Tonight by J-Lo. And he taught them dances that became popular on TikTok. The band director taught them these dances. It's very choreographed. I'm very lucky that Gus plays trombone and he's in the front rank and so and and um it's it's fun when Gus watches the videos of of these performances he sees himself and he's like I'm so tiny because middle school is that age where like some of the kids look like full-on adults and some of them very much still look like kids you know but they're all you know in the same age range and they just do amazing stuff and whenever I've gone to their performances you hear people in the in the crowd going like is that really a middle school and and when we were at the daffodil festival other kids were asking their band directors can we play industry baby and that made me think about like who is out there making a marching band arrangement of industry baby like what what a trip and

I was like, let me look at this sheet music. It was John Aguilar, Gus's band director.

I was going to say, I assumed that he had written it or arranged it himself. He did. Wow. He did.

And I'm just like, this guy is a mega talent. He's going to go down in history. They're going to be like making Mr. Holland's opus about this guy.

I also love that in the description of the video, it says, make sure to watch this in 4K. Use headphones for best audio quality. True. That's like me. When I make a mixtape, I'm like, you have to listen in order.

he has a whole media team i mean that's why this video looks so great um you see them you know surrounded by by cameras and mics and everything and i'm like he's very smart to do that too because that's how he's going to be able to develop the program even further these kids did the promo video for lizzo's concert date in seattle oh they've done amazing incredible stuff And I'm just like, God protect John Aguilar. Let him be the band director there for years and years to come. It's everyone. Every kid should have a teacher like that, whatever the subject is. So I'm really, really happy that he gets to experience that. And thank you to the 10s who've come out to see him. And if you want to see them at the Seattle Storm game on June 5th, you can do that.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, I'll put the tickets in the in the Sten page. I'll put the ticket link in the Sten page. and um you can follow them on youtube and instagram robert eaglestaff marching ravens

that is awesome that is so much cooler than i even fully comprehended until getting that explanation well thank you for indulging me they sound good they do they move they move great they do um that's impressive yeah all right here's the good news andrew i know sometimes these music for your week i mean i think we're cool with the eagle staff audio but i know sometimes like you and i have fret over like how much of a song can we play uh-huh um without getting in trouble with spotify or whomever well the good news is i have to be out of here in four minutes so we know in fact more like three minutes so we know that we're gonna only hear a very short clip at least of my song okay um and then uh and then i guess you can let the listener suggestion roll as long as um as long as feels appropriate to you but i will probably have have bounced at that point i heard this song the other day i was having like a dinner and i was like i love this song who is it and i shazammed and it was my old guys peter bjorn and john and by old guys i mean i think i interviewed them once a long time ago but i thought i knew all of their stuff but i did not know about this song called nothing to worry about by peter bjorn and john so can we take a listen to that how did these bjorn guys escape my radar that's what i was trying to construct in my mind i had i wasn't

talking so i was able to construct it for you okay here we go nothing to worry about Do this in this type of thing, put the little money in this type of thing

I've got nothing to worry about, I've got nothing to worry about

Do this in this type of thing, put the little money in this type of thing I've got nothing to worry about, I've got nothing to worry about

Negative Why are we so negative If you have problems Why don't you go solvent Feed me up At least you won't be out of touch If you're such a poet All right, so there you go.

Echoes of marching band early on in that.

I was going to say, I've got to send this to Mr. Aguilar, man. Yeah, no kidding.

This is awesome.

I've never heard that kind of sound. I know. That's why I initially didn't recognize it as them. And yeah, you throw some kids singing in any song, and I am extremely... That'd be a fun song to play as a marching band.

Totally.

All right. Our listener suggestion comes from listener Aaron, who says, Hey there, for the first time in my life, I've managed to stumble on music that's not already on people's radar and yet really needs to be. I'm a huge sucker for good piano, and this song has it in spades. Please check it out. My Days by Caleb Mendoza featuring Whitney Caridad. Warmly, listener Aaron. Also, P.S., never apologize for Bubbles-related videos. I'm all for a temporary change in segment name to Hey Bubbles for the light. All right, slow down. I still need a job. So that's what we're going to play here from listener Aaron. That's going to bring us to the end of our broadcast week. Next time we check in, it will be from...

So Denver, Monday morning, 9 a.m. West Coast, noon East Coast. You can call in. It's all going to be live streamed. So we will see you then. Until then, Phyllis, thank you so much for jumping back on the show today. It was really, really fun to catch up with you.

Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for having me. I hope to come back soon.

I need those pants back.

I will see about that. All right.

Have a great weekend, everybody. We'll see you on Monday from Denver. Until then, please take care of yourselves. And remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

I never leave, but now I'm just not what you want Well, boom, babe, I fell to the deepest You had me all alone And now, babe, I hope that you're happy I'll find a new way home And oh, babe, I won't think about it All we have now is gone And my days were going well without you I guess I'm moving on It's alright

power out