Muse

The AM radio is a viable and modern source for news and entertainment. Totally. I used to be number one in this town, but people don't listen to AM like they used to. Seems like it's more about FM and color TV. That's stupid. It sure is, Kevin. In fact, I've got a tattoo here that fully illustrates my point. It's of this rebellious young man, and he's urinating on an FM radio.

TBTL!

you take a hot dog stuff it with some jack cheese fold it in a pizza you got cheesy blasters and then all the kids say thanks meat cat and then meat cat flies away on his um skateboard we're

doing it man this is it we're right in the thick of the action it's fear-mongering claptrap isolation is techno paranoia so bogus and dangerous and stupid that it borders on trees

You know, you're overthinking it, buddy. I mean, just kind of see this as a fun thing to do where you make a little bread.

You better finish up that vacuuming. I'm going to have a hot mic in a minute. We're talking Garamod today.

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

This song goes out to all the coffee lovers of the world.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. We may need emergency surgery in the studio. Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where we are looking at another absolutely lovely day.

Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful.

Once again, it will be getting close to 90 degrees.

Mm-mm-mm, I'm flying in hot for that hottie.

On September the 27th. Although tomorrow, in the words of Denzel, we may be getting wet, though. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. Temperature dropping 10 to 15 degrees. So, just, if you're in the Northwest and it's a nice day for you, just go outside, lie on the pavement, greet the heat, and enjoy it. Because it is going to be pretty short-lived. We don't know how short-lived episode 3780 will be in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

Sometimes these things can go for hours and hours and hours, which might be why this podcast is not more popular. Why are you wasting your time with this podcast? Because I have nothing else going on. We're going to finally get to the article about why the era of the hit podcast is apparently over. Also, the DART project happened in space where they crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid.

Voters cannot travel through the vacuum of space.

Very cool stuff happening. Very cinematic stuff happening out there in the distant reaches of space. We will talk about that. Also, we have an update on that KTLA freakout.

Oh my god, I'm freaking out!

That was the guy in Los Angeles who was so upset about his co-worker moving to another TV station that he went off on management, unscripted on the air, and then... Can you verify? Can you give me some 411? And then was fired himself. I guess he was fired, period, because she was not fired. His co-worker was not fired. The only person who got fired was the person who was so upset about the treatment of their co-worker. So we've got an update on that whole story. And we've got this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. I don't usually do this, but I was actually recording our conversation right before the show. And I hope this doesn't embarrass him, but this is a little bit of him talking about me. I love you so much. You literally are my best friend. You did not deserve what happened to you on Wednesday. He's Andrew Walsh, and he is joining me right now. Good morning, my best friend. Good morning, Luke.

My literal best friend. You deserved everything you got on Wednesday. Hey, I want to say something. I got something to say here at the top of the show. It's a rhetorical question. And you know what I do not like, Luke Burbank? I'll answer that for you. I do not like seeing photos of our beloved listeners' houses boarded up as they wait for a storm to come ashore in Florida. Yeah, I got some folks in Florida. Yeah, they're sharing stories. So to all of our listeners in Florida, listeners, Sam reached out to me. He's like, I'm just nervous over here. So, like, just shout out to Alicia's out there, Sam and Kim, you know, all of our Florida listeners. Let's hope this thing wobbles back out to sea. Yeah, definitely. Take care, guys. We are thinking of you. And thanks for reaching out, too, knowing that you kind of think of us in the TBTL community when you're kind of nervous. It means a lot that the community is here for you, and we are here for you. And now I'm going to say a bunch of stupid jokes for the next 90 minutes to try to take your mind off of things. Might make some fart noises.

That is a service that we provide on this program.

When the chips are down, we'll have a long conversation about what kind of chips we actually think are not so great.

Actually, can we take a moment to talk about apples here for a second? Not apple chips.

Yes, we can, Andrew. I've got apples on the brain. Why do you have apples on the brain? Because I have apples on the brain. You want to bring it up, so I'll let you talk first, and then I will tell you why I've got apples on the brain.

I bet you it's a different reason because mine was merely inspired by the Seattle Times who put a little post on their website today looking for lovers of the red delicious apple. This is the classic kind of American apple. It's like the iconic looking apple, but I've never.

The kind that you would supposedly give your teacher in elementary school, although I never actually saw that happen, but we were taught that that was a thing that we were supposed to be doing. Exactly.

Or the type of apple that has that little green worm with the fedora sticking out of it. Right out of a Richard Scarry book. Richard Scarry, right. Anyway, I don't really like those apples, and a lot of people don't. And the Seattle Times, not even piece, but this blurb was like, hey, we're working on a piece about apples, and we know that there must be some people out there who do love the Red Delicious apple. It was king of American apple sales for like 50 years, but then the New York Times wrote a piece like four years ago, which I thought was new when I clicked on it, and I found out later that it was four years old. But also, by the way, has a quote from our editor, Erica Janik, who sometimes edits the TBTL newsletter. She apparently wrote a whole book about the history of the apple in the world, and she's quoted in this New York Times piece.

Anyway, I was the piece about the demise of the red delicious or was it about the rise of the cosmic crisp?

It was about the demise. It was specifically about the demise in sales of the red delicious apple, which is true. Like they describe it as something that is a mealier taste, like a kind of a mealier texture and kind of sweet, but not even a lot of flavor. But it was because the reason it grew to prominence was because of the way it looked. And there was a quote in this piece that said people said we started shop once people started getting apples away from their own farms or just the local community. And they were shopping and, you know, in grocery stores or what have you. They started shopping with their eyes instead of their mouths, one person said. And that red apple really stood out. And that's why it became kind of king of the apples. But like most people, I think, would agree that the red delicious apple is not anywhere near the best apple that's available in the grocery store. I'm a Fuji man.

You know, I mean, I hadn't thought of it that way, but you're absolutely right. It looks nice and it is iconic, but it's never going to be the apple that I'm going for. Now, I asked about this is not why I have apples on the brain, by the way, although I am seeing a doctor this week to see what they should do about it. i've always over the last few years i've been quite fascinated with the rise of the cosmic crisp because i read a piece in the seattle times not the new york times andrew the seattle times that although i've said this much i've said this a lot about the new york times which is that their customer service is not the new york times of customer service i saw a listener tweeting about that when they were frustrated recently and i felt very seen i would also mention the seattle times remembering that i pay money for the seattle times is not the seattle times of remembering things because every time i want to read an article in the seattle times i have to re-log in do you know constantly telling me i'm out of my uh my my number of stories and i'm like uh excuse me i pay you every month to read these stories do you know why that is and

i'm kind of i think i've always kind of knew this in the back of my head but we've never talked about it explicitly but i just had this experience today with the um article from vox that you sent me via email well i was reading that on my phone and the thing is all of our different apps when you click on a link in one of your apps it kind of opens it in that app and then that thing becomes the the reader if you will so let's say you have like chrome or whatever browser you have on your phone and it knows that you're subscribed to the new york times and the seattle times but then you're reading an email from me and you click on a link and it opens up and let's say gmail or whatever your client is then gmail is like hey you need to subscribe to get this or if you click on it in twitter then twitter's like hey you're not a subscriber to the new york times like you have to log all of your apps into all of the different services does that track i i'm about to blow your mind are you sitting down and i'm sitting that was so stand up because it's better to stand up yeah that i'm not being fired because i should that was the most boring place to take

conversation i rarely if ever read an article on my phone oh oh oh i don't like it i feel like i don't see enough of the words i don't like the scrolling i probably only of the like if we talk about a piece or a story on this Thank you.

And I sound, even by my standards, under-informed on it It's because I was reading it on my phone And I only read, like, three sentences I hate reading articles on my phone So, in this particular case When the Seattle Times is negging me I'm on, like, Safari And I'm at seattletimes.com That's the crazy part That is weird Can I sit down now? No Can you tell me when? Maybe when we do the donors? We'll see how the donors feel about that Okay, okay. No, I really like, I think this is how you and I are a little bit different. And in fact, probably how I'm different than the vast majority of people with smartphones who just use their phone like a small computer, which is what it is. I basically use my phone for texting our sports friends, texting my daughter, looking at TikTok, and placing long shot bets on DraftKings. That's what my phone is for. That's what phones are for. And taking a picture of bubbles. If there's an article that I'm interested in, I may text it to myself, but it will be so that I can get my laptop open at some point and read it like God intended. Okay, well, I still want to know why you have apples on the brain. Okay, so you know how at my house that I'm working on, it's on a pretty steep hill. And I was always calling the part of the hill that was overgrown the prairie. and I was quite taken with its kind of natural beauty because it had all this long, tall grass. It was kind of overgrown in this way that made me think I was going to maybe be able to shoot a Terrence Malick film out there where it's just a hand kind of passing across grains of hay or whatever. I don't think hay has grains, but you get the idea. Then my neighbor, Brian, said it's a fire hazard and it's full of tansy. And so then I had to hire a guy, a brush hogger named Jerry, did i ever tell you about jerry did we get into that on the show by the way no are all brush hoggers named jerry too does he own a boat here's the thing all people named jerry are not brush hoggers but all brush hoggers are named jerry same with the boat thing right weren't all your boat owners jerry's down there and four out of five liveaboards at stag set or sorry sagstad marina we're named jerry this guy also a jerry he's now on my phone jerry brush hog guy So when you're trying to I can already feel this is going to be one of those I've had too much coffee this morning This is going to be one of those very very long shows That's good it means you're not hungover We learned yesterday There you go This is a sly illusion to the fact that I did not get drunk last night So When you have Very very tall grass And I bet you anything Maybe your dad had one of these On his tractor or maybe not i don't know the exact layout of the of the property you grew up on but when you have some some kind of grass that's almost gone like wild like pasture land you

can't mow it with a riding mower yeah there is this thing that you can drag behind your tractor which kind of utilizes whatever the um like uh drive shaft is and it you know rotates and then it's a big flat piece of metal with a big blade on the bottom you can drag that behind you and you can cut down like blackberry bushes and stuff that's very wild and overgrown are you familiar

with this whole thing yeah my dad we he had a he had a tractor and then he had kind of a regular um big ass like kind of bladed lawnmower that we would drag behind to mow the lawn but then when it came time to blaze trails in the weeds for us to drive dune buggies and motorcycles through that's when he would borrow the brush hog from a neighbor and then we would he would have these trails in the back and i was on i was a short kid on a short motorcycle and it felt like i was racing through some like on like i was on a speeder bike in star wars i'm so i'm retroactively so jealous i

told you my speeder bike was a four by four sitting on the floor of our garage at our first well our second rental in seattle then my dad nailed two smaller sticks to the side of so i could use them like they were the handles and then i would sit on this four by four and close my eyes and imagine I was on a speeder bike on Endor. You had a 4x4 that was just not functioning for some reason?

No, no, a piece of wood that was 4 inches by 4 inches. I thought you were talking about like a quad runner or something. I can see why that was confusing.

I mean, literally a pressure tree piece of wood that was 4 inches by 4 inches.

Okay, well, we also had a big tank. By like 6 feet. We had some sort of big tank that I believe was filled with maybe heating oil or something in our backyard, too, that was very big to me when I was a boy. And I would climb up on top of that and pretend also that I was, like, riding a missile, if that means anything to you. That didn't move.

Going real Slim Whitman on it. It was real Slim Whitman. Yee-haw! So my neighbor, Brian, really wanted me to get this thing handled. And I didn't want to do it because I loved its kind of natural wildness. And, uh, but I also want to stay on good terms with this guy. And so I, um, started calling around to places to see if I get somebody to come take care of this. And this would have been back in August, I guess. And the people that I called said, we're three months out on doing this and it's really expensive. And I was like, you know, pretty bummed because it was just another thing where the, I don't know if you really call it the supply chain, but the, the demand so outstrips the supply of so many of these things and so i went over i talked to brian i was like hey man i'm calling places and they're like it's months and months out and he goes all right well just whenever you can get to it that's cool and then i remembered a handwritten sign that had been nailed to a telephone pole on some like rural road that i've been driving on to go to the home depot and it just said brush hogging and then a phone number called jerry and i called it didn't even say jerry I didn't even know I was dealing with a Jerry. I just called the number out of sheer desperation. I was like, there's no way this is my best option for brush hogging. The guy who has a quite, I actually think I have the sign. I could even send, because I took a picture of it so I would remember the phone number. I can send you a picture of this sign. Yeah, please. Call the guy, answers on the first ring, totally professional. He's like, oh, well, what are you doing this afternoon? I was like, well, I'll be here. He's like, yeah, I'll come by and take a look. he pulls over he's got the cutest dog it's a yellow lab not unlike rudy but larger named uh i think dakota eight months old so first of all i'm in love with this dog like just you know take the cannoli leave the dog brush hog don't brush hog i don't even care i'm just like so into this dog being at my house but uh he gets out takes a look around and he goes uh okay i can do it i go when And like in eight months, he goes, no, I'll just come back later today.

Nice, Jerry.

And he goes, but, you know, it is a minimum three hours. And I was like, okay, what do you charge per hour? And I'm thinking $1,000 an hour. He's like, $75 an hour. Worth it. I'm like, what am I not getting about this deal? Is this a subscription service? Do I have to like opt out of this eventually? Do you brush hog every month until I decline this? How is this going to be $225 for this giant acre of a steep-ass hill that no one would come out and deal with, and you're going to do it in three hours? And he did. He came back and brush hogged it in like three hours, and it turned out great. He got stung by wasps while doing it. He walked up. Me and my dad were working on the TBTL studio, and he comes up, and he goes, you got any wasp spray? and I was like uh maybe he goes yeah it's got stung and I look and he has just like all this dirt on the side of his neck and he goes yeah my mama taught me you get stung by a wasp you

you rub some brown dirt on it that usually works Jerry is everything that you want to be when you talk on this show about not feeling manly enough or awkward around the people who are coming to work on plumbing or what have you I realize Jerry is you Jerry is what you want to be it gets better

andrew to quote dan savage jerry has a phd in biology from the university of washington oh wow is a wildlife photographer who made his living for many years just taking these he brought me like a flyer from his ranch that he lives on when he came back with the brush hog of his wildlife photography which is like quite incredible uh he also sailed a boat around the world he was like he just like was a guy on a sailboat for i mean yes you are correct he embodies everything

that i'm not and that i aspire to be that i can never be all right yeah send me that sign because i want to call him now just see if he wants to be best friends friends or maybe boy friends i don't

even know like he i somehow it came up the cbs thing and he was like i got some stories for you if you really want if you want a piece which is funny because people always say that to me and it's not usually a good fit for what they do on that tv show but um i i'm gonna send you this

sign uh but anyway you've inspired me i'm gonna go call one of those um numbers on the telephone pole that says we buy houses this afternoon i'll let you know how that goes what

about auction gold ferraris picassos they're okay i've seen those ones i have not but i'm

going to interrupt your story even further you're right this is going to be a disaster of a show but um there is a comedian former snl star it's very key that i get his name right here and i'm blanking on it now who's the copy machine guy from snl rob schneider rob schneider is coming to the eqc casino or something along those lines have you been hearing these promos you have i think about it i think about rob schneider's stand-up act so much right now because of those ads because of how brutally bad the comedy is now are you hearing see i want to try to make an

argument for one genevieve says she's also been hearing oh a version that's on her like music stations and she's like oh the one i heard wasn't as bad then she heard the one that i hear on mariner's broadcast now it starts off with like a voiceover but in the background you can sort of hear him saying the names of men as if they're going to make copies like doing his copy his annoying copy machine guy it's just like it's kind of in the background it's like Daryl and you sort of hear that and you're like oh my god oh my god nobody even knows what that is anymore and then he goes on and then I gotta say the final joke I mean these commercials are terrible any commercial for a stand-up comedian who's appearing at a local casino that is aired on AM radio. I mean, they're always the worst commercials ever, right? You remember the Sinbad

one, right? Yeah, because didn't Camaro Kev, it burrowed into Camaro Kev's brain. The joke, how it is grandma's always got money, they ain't got no job. Right. Well, the Sinbad classic that for like 10 years would just play whenever he was playing EQC.

Well, the Rob Schneider one, I'm sure you've, wait, Rob Schneider? That sounded weird coming out of my mouth. Okay, the Rob Schneider one that I'm sure you've heard the same one as bad as these things are i don't know if this i don't know if this commercial has just like hypnotized me or beaten me down into thinking it's kind of good but it ends with him saying and i think i like the way he delivers it it's not listen it's not my favorite joke but for these commercials i think it's not so bad he just says i see those signs that say get rid of your unwanted gold unwanted gold it's gold and there's that's a good joke oh okay so that's not the one that you're hearing no the one he delivers it really well he says unwanted gold it's gold the the one

that they're playing when i listen to the mariners via serious satellite radio is rob schneider going when you're young you can just go out clubbing all night but then when you're old the next day you're like i can barely walk that's not a joke that was my thought it's it's so i mean the that gold joke i'm i'm with that the other one that they're playing is such a disservice to rob schneider's overall comedy stylings it's so i'm gonna okay i got it's so weird that you're hearing

a local commercial for him appearing at eqc or wherever it is and i'm hearing it but we're hearing different commercials although we're listening to the same sporting event has to do

with apps it's all about apps it really is all about the apps although as we've established i don't really read a lot of news on my apps um i'm sending you this photo by the way all right let's transition to apples from apps to apples thank you for bringing it back all the way back around so yes after jerry brush hogged the living tweedle out of this hillside and i will be honest with you it's sort of like if your dog gets a you know if you take your dog to the groomer and they kind of cut all they shave all their hair off and the first day you're like oh i didn't know you were so tiny yeah uh-huh it was a little like that because it went from wild pasture to like very trimmed down but then after a few days i got used to it and then i realized holy shit this is like an acre of of semi-usable land where i could definitely plant an apple orchard yeah or a tree and so i've been googling how to plant an apple orchard an orchard why don't you start with a

couple of trees you really want to have you met me as it's coming out of my mouth i realized was

it over when the germans bombed pearl harbor like why would i start with one apple tree when i could take on a project that i have no possibility of achieving and plant 40 apple trees so i decided i'm going to become an apple farmer yes this is my last show i've i'm pivoting to full-time Anyway, so that's why I've had apples on the brain, but also I've been obsessed with the Cosmic Crisp for many years because of a story that I read in the Seattle Times about how all of these folks that grow apples in eastern Washington have really sort of staked their hopes to this relatively new apple, the Cosmic Crisp, which was developed, hybrided at Washington State University, which has like the great egg program in the state. and what they had to do was rip up all of their existing orchards because those trees were not going to grow a cosmic crisp and then wait a few years for the cosmic crisp crop to come in i know that's a lot of c's dude uh because the cosmic crisp is supposed to be the perfect sort of every aspect of the apple crispness Thank you. shelf life, non-mealiness, appearance, you name it. It's supposed to bring together all of the things that we like about apples, even if we don't exactly know we like those things about apples.

Yeah. Big disappointment for me, though, of course, the Cosmic Crisp. Yeah, it's been out for several years now. It's been out since, I think, 2018, maybe. And it did not do it for you? Well, listen, you couldn't have had a bigger buildup for an apple. Like, I've never had a buildup to a fruit before, you know, like in my life. I'm trying to think, did anybody ever say, hey, you've never tried a kumquat? Am I allowed to say that? I'll beep it. You know, and then like, I'm sure some case of fruit blindness. I'm sure somebody has been like maybe hyped a fruit to me before, but I can't remember that happening.

I'm just trying to imagine a scenario where someone's like, dude, pluot. Well, I'm thinking, Poma's a guy with, like, the guy with the trench coat, and he just opens it up, and he's like, yep, plums.

Oh, God, I love a good plumb. Pomegranate, is that the one with all the little beads inside? Yeah, yeah, I think that, you know, that might have been a hyped fruit for me at one point. I feel like I was a kid, I heard about this pomegranate thing, and then my parents eventually got me one. Putting that aside, for years- You know what you used to do with those pomegranates, by the way?

Throw them at passing cars? Nope. First of all, this, I, my guess would be that this does not hold up. It's probably kind of casual racism Which I apologize for But we called those Chinese apples And we would get them about once a year And you would get your A pomegranate and then Also you'd be handed a bunch of newspaper And we would spread out newspaper On the table And eat our pomegranates on the newspaper Because they were so messy So it was almost like your

Like when you go into a crab shack And they put all the Totally Yeah, any food that was like a real event like that.

You'd smash it with a mallet, would throw some Old Bay seasoning in. Yeah, Old Bay on a pomegranate. What is it, a sachet of some kind of spice.

You know, a pomegranate, I haven't had one of these. I'm looking at pictures of these. You just scoop out the beads, right, and you don't eat the white part. Is that right? Should I get one of these later? Yeah, maybe.

I kind of want to have one now. I don't think I've had a pomegranate since I was a kid.

Yeah, me neither. Anyway, all of that is to say, this apple is just like, everybody's like, oh, the new apple's coming, the new apple's coming. For years we've heard about it. It couldn't live up to the hype. It just couldn't. And I think it's fine. But like I said before, I'm pretty sure, and I could be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure Fuji is the apple that I gravitate towards. They all look kind of similar. When you get away from the pure green, like, what are those, Granny? Granny Smith. Yeah, Granny Smith. And then the pure red that we were talking about before, the red delicious. A lot of those in-between ones, they're rounder, and they're both a combination of red and green. But here's the deal with me. I like a tart apple. I like crab apples off the tree. I had one yesterday, and I walked to the train station.

I ate one in the executive producer of Live Wire, Laura Haddon. We had a get-together at her house recently, and they have an apple tree in their backyard. And the apples were not ripe. They were green apples. And I just ate one. And the first bite was like, ooh, I shouldn't do this. and then I just completely finished the apple because it was actually so pleasant once I got used to it.

I love them. Our boy Hauser's got a plum tree in his backyard. My friend Hannah, who's spotless with me, she's got an apple tree in her backyard. Luke, she's making...

Down here in Portland, and she's not sharing the wealth with me.

She's making apple cider vinegar out of all of the extra apple droppings.

Which is why I need to have 40 apple trees, Andrew.

Trust me, one will get you enough vinegar for a lifetime. But anyway, I just love fruit trees. I think it's one of the greatest pleasures in life. We grew up with a crab apple tree in the backyard and grapes. We had a couple of grape vines. Really? They were weird grapes. So they had a very, very thick, almost leathery outer skin. And then inside, they were very slippery and like this texture of an eyeball. Am I making you want one of these? they were very um i bet you they were bred i feel like they might have been bred for i did because i loved just random fruit from the backyard but i don't think it appealed to a lot of people i'll bet you they might have been the kind of grapes that are supposed to be used for maybe canning or wine or something but i'll look up to see if i can figure out what these things

there were some some grapes growing at my my place the other house um which i ate one of and whoo i don't think those are whatever they're for it ain't for eaten or they were not ready but that was my first thought with that kind of once i got used to that that kind of area being trimmed down was well this could also be a vineyard and again not like a vineyard like i could you know i'm going to become a um you know wine baron but just kind of like you could grow some grapes which i just think kind of look cool yeah they do those

leaves are beautiful yeah and then you know i don't i wouldn't know what to do after that but then i i came around to apples although i'm wondering if you can do if if it will work to do a couple of and i'm not going to do 40 trees but if it'll work to do a couple of apple trees

and a couple of cherry trees that's what i was going to say cohabitate yeah don't why lock into just one kind of fruit all of a sudden you're like an apple farmer like you don't want that Like, just plant a couple of trees around your property that provide you all kinds of delicious treats.

Andrew, I need to sit on this deck, which will never be built because I can't get a structural engineer to design it for me. I need to sit on this deck. I need to look out at the orchard. It has to be an orchard. It can't be two trees. Yeah. It has to be an orchard. This is the closest I'll ever get to Lake Como. I call it Lake Comeover, which also describes how I wear my hair. um but uh no i i i'm not going to do 40 trees but i'm going to do more than two trees because i really do want to have like something happened to me that was very formative uh many years ago which was when i was in that beer commercial uh for molson we drove through flathead lake and this probably came up when i was doing the show from there um back in the winter time but i'd never been to that part of the country and as you're driving by flathead lake through paulson montana there are all these beautiful old like kind of craftsman homes they're not you know mansions per se but they were just built you know probably in the 1920s and many of them would have these lawns that would go right down to the lake and they would have cherry orchards in them and i saw that and i just thought this is the most wonderful place on earth and so i've always had it in my mind that if i could ever gaze out upon an orchard and not that my house doesn't like go down to the water it goes down to interstate five which is a little bit less awesome than uh you know flathead lake but i've always had in my mind that if i could gaze out upon an orchard that would

feel really good so i'm going to try to do some version of that luke i think they were muscadine muscadine uh grapes does that ring a bell to you i found a new york times article about it they um grow in pretty warm climates but they grow all the way south in florida all the way north to jersey And as far west as Texas So I think that Ohio would be in that range And it says that they're typically used In making artisan wines, juice, and jelly And they're also a rich source of polyphenols I wonder if they're the grapes That you use to make muscat Ooh, that would make sense Based on the name there, yeah Yeah, muscat I think is like a

I remember it being kind of like A little after dinner wine In the little tiny glass Yeah So, well, that's my plan No, Muscat is another kind of grape Oh, okay That's what I get for speculating

Oh, oh, oh, we gotta clean something up Oh my god, we have to do some cleanup on something that was just said a little while ago I took a note Aisle 4? Aisle 4, not Slim Whitman Slim Pickens As you said it and I laughed

Oh, it's not Slim Whitman

No, no, it's Slim Pickens Slim Whitman musician, Slim Pickens actor Oh, thank you You know that I've never actually seen that movie?

Oh, oh, wow. I know that George C. Scott is demented in it because sometimes Kevin Calabro, the one-time voice of the Seattle Supersonics, now the voice of the Trailblazers, will send out a gif. When the Mariners are having a particularly crazy game, he'll send out this gif of George C. Scott losing himself from that movie. So I know that, and I know a guy rides a nuclear bomb down to the ground. Those are the things I know about that film.

I you know it's one of those movies that it seemed very important to me when I was younger and getting into films you know and now like it is so I mean I think I would still recommend it it's Kubrick but it is so specifically of a time it is so of a time I think that you would like it I think you would at least appreciate it but it is one of those movies where like as that particular Cold War era and its nuances become you know further and further in the past. I don't know if new audiences will appreciate it as much, but it's a fantastic film.

Speaking of film, Andrew, I'm going to play this, hopefully without too much commentary from me or making this longer than it already is, but I want to play a little audio for you before we go to the break of my dad breaking down what those Matt Barry pretending to be Gandalf clips are, which are actually from a guy i think his name is maybe um ben kearns is the person on tiktok who so matt berry uh for maybe the newest of new listeners or people who are uninitiated with his work is this guy that's on what we do in the shadows and is on a lot of like bbc type stuff uh who has a kind of penchant for saying certain names and things weird and uh and so somebody did an impression of him on tiktok if he were to be gandalf like if he was cast as gandalf and these are the uh the things uh a little late to be trimming the verge

don't you think samwise gamgey peregrine took you total ass next time save us all the trouble and throw yourself down there, you little turd. Tell me, when did Saruman the Wise become Sauron's bitch and abandon reason for total madness?

So that's the original audio that we've been playing on the show. Now, while my dad and I were out at the house working on it and then sitting by the fire at night, as was kind of our tradition, I realized I could ask my dad to break down what that stuff means. and i i whipped out my phone so sorry the the recording is kind of bad because it's just like the memo function on my phone but this is me and my dad looking at the stars and talking about loader where he basically explains what those things are actually a reference to um okay dad what does it's a little late to be trimming the verge samwise gamji mean a little late to be

trimming the verge don't you think samwise gamge trimming the verge under the window is uh

gandalf is talking to frodo in bag end in the kitchen and the windows are open and gandalf hears the noise outside the window by the way i just want to mention it took my dad zero seconds

to immediately identify what these drops were referencing like you know and uh my dad may not always be the quickest on his feet but when it comes to loader it's like just total instantaneous

recall and uh so gandalf moves over to the window sticks a staff out the window and hits sam gamji on the head and drags sam in through the window and lays him on the table uh or the cutting board or whatever it is i think it's just the table in uh the kitchen of frodo's uh hobbit hole there and uh Gandalf asks Sam what what are you doing at this time of night and Sam says well I'm just trimming some of the the flowers under the window and Gandalf applies a little late to be trimming

the verge isn't it oh okay did you know that no although that part of it no no I did when you played that tape for me I had no idea what it was about but as your dad describes that scene I think I remember it from the books like I don't remember the movies that well I read the books as a kid And, yeah, he was eavesdropping, right? He was not trimming anything.

Yeah, okay. And I guess that Gandalf decides to call it The Verge. Maybe that's a Tolkien thing or something.

And so that's where it comes from. It's an iconic and classic line from The Lord of the Rings. Okay, so hold on. The Fellowship of the Ring.

Okay.

Okay, how about... Peregrim took you total ass. Next time, save us all the trouble and throw yourself down there, you little turd. Well, he doesn't call him a turd for anything.

Okay, maybe this guy is... By the way, my dad, a lot of the humor of this is really missed on my dad. This was a recurring theme of him being like, well, technically, that is not a word that is said in the book or the film. It would be amazing if we thought that, though.

Nass. Okay. So they're in the mines of Moria, and they're in Dwalin's tomb, and there's...

Oh, sure, Dwalin's tomb. Duh, I can't believe it was right there Why can't I ever remember things that I already know Like DeWallin's tomb

It's a well With a bucket sitting over the edge And a dead I think a dead dwarf with an arrow Stuck in its head, you know, just the skeletal Remains And they're in the minds Of Moria and they're Scared out of their You know, out of their pants

By the way, that's about as racy as it gets with my dad A little fresh

scared out of their pants yeah and uh who's peregrine peregrine took is the cousin of frodo oh and he's one of the members of the not one of the nine members of the fellowship there's peregrine took and there's also mary doc brandy book uh mary who's known as mary and peregrine is um um pippin oh oh that's mary and pippin yeah their government names are are peregrine and maria took or whatever mary doc yeah so pippin takes and fidgets with the uh arrow that's sticking in the skull of this dead dwarf and it causes this bucket in this uh you You know.

in this cave to tip over the edge and fall down this well shaft and and it goes down with a bunch of chain that's holding the bucket and it creates all this noise and they're afraid of orcs in the mind because and so and that's where you get the iconic scene where their battle against the the uh cave troll and uh the uh goblins inside moria and uh so it's it's a pretty cool scene okay one more here when did sarum and the wise become sauron's bitch and abandon reason for total madness

those are the cigars waltz i love how much my dad loved hearing the word bitch like i don't know i don't know if he's ever said that word like probably when he was a teen but in the last 45 years of his life i don't think that man has uttered the word bitch other than right here recorded onto my phone well actually that's not the word right that's there you go that's not yeah that's not that's we need to do a little more just being funny but that made you laugh because like is that what you're thinking as a viewer or as a reader of the book that like um that he's basically becoming subservient to sauron yeah exactly

because Saruman is interested in in ring lore and wants to find the one ring and uh so uh when he becomes aware that Gandalf knew that the ring was in the shire all this time Saruman is is livid with Gandalf and uh accuses Gandalf of smoking too much pipe weed um and uh that's when Gandalf basically makes that statement there so uh when Sauron works for Sauron well he works for himself basically he's kind of like Trump you know he has he has thoughts of grandeur but uh he's got a lot

of classified documents up on top of that weird uh tower that he lives on the tower of Orthanc

You were thinking of the Tower of Orthanc, Andrew. Orthanc's for asking. Oh, Orthanc? Terrible Orthanc for asking. Just awful jokes.

Yeah, he has too many file boxes full of leftover file.

By the way, the other thing that we talked about incessantly during the project was my dad's visceral hate for Donald Trump. Yeah. Which I very much appreciate because so many of my parents' friends who come from the same evangelical world that they come from are just deeply in the bag for Trump, including pretty close family members of mine now, as in like aunts and uncles and stuff. So it's very reassuring that my parents are not going down that road.

You know, classified documents, but he's got all these, you know, Saruman has all this old Middle Earth lore. And he's been wondering what happened to the one ring, because if he can get his hands on it, he could become the next Sauron or whatever.

And is that the one that's played by Christopher Lee in the films?

Right. That's Christopher Lee. What a great choice of actor to play that part.

But that was well, dad, thank you for this explanation, because we've been playing this tape like crazy on TV. tell but andrew and i don't know anything about loader and so we've just been laughing at it as

a funny thing you need to come over you need to come over and have a marathon weekend with me one of these days and watch uh all three trilogies the extended versions my gosh and also the appendices uh so you're you know fully versed in all of this stuff all right i'll do it that was interesting

thanks dad suddenly you could hear luke looking at this calendar well i'm kind of booked up um for suddenly oh god 2023 is pretty packed for me maybe we circle back in 2024 well does your dad know about the special recording we did with your brother David I don't think he does actually just because my dad is not aware of anything that happens on TBTL in fact I told him that he's really kind of like emerging as a breakout star of the show and I don't think he really A. cares about that or B. can conceive of what that even would mean. I wonder if he would enjoy. So I'm talking about for folks who don't know, I think it was like a couple of years ago now as a thank you gift for the TV telethon. Anybody who donated got an. It was an audio track of you and me, Luke, and your brother David, who is super schooled like your dad in Lord of the Rings lore, and Genevieve, and we all watched the first, what is it, The Fellowship of the Ring, right? We watched that together and recorded an audio track that could sync up with the movie. And I'm wondering, is that something that your dad would enjoy, or is that something that would make you uncomfortable? Were we talking? Did we kind of, like, make jokes?

I was pretty faded by the end of that, if I remember right. but i don't think that i was also pretty faded when i was interviewing my dad you just had a couple of drinks yeah but um uh it's very funny because you know my dad uh doesn't drink my mom is sober and my dad is just like sober adjacent uh in that he's just a extremely supportive spouse who also just kind of could take or leave alcohol in his life so even when we're out there working on the house and then it's like we're done and we're sitting by the fire he's just like having one of his ginger beers you've never seen a person savor whatever cock and bull ginger beer like this dude does meanwhile i'm like halfway through a bottle of like suntory toki whiskey just to feel something and he's just like so happy with his little ginger beer but um uh he's all hopped up on goofballs though he is classically actually hopped up on those damn cigars i had to i had to get him i did drive down to the local town and go to a vape shop andrew and get him two more cigars at one point because i was running errands anyway i was getting us some like uh some plywood that we needed and stuff like that and i was like hey i'm gonna be down there do you want me to get you some cigars and i kind of meant it as like uh he probably won't take me up on he's like well i guess i wouldn't mind that i'm getting kind of running low tell you what kind to buy because now i'm getting nervous about you in a cigar store no he said uh any five dollar cigar is fine so Like, of course, I went a little bit north of that, but I'll tell you what, is there anything more depressing than one of these stores? And I'm not trying to act—I'm not trying to moralize because I spend a lot of time in dingy casinos and video poker rooms and dingy bars. It's just the world of vaping and, like, cones. Like, this store that I went to—and by cones, I mean, like, a paper cone that I think you maybe roll a blunt in or something. Oh, okay.

it had it was the store was enormous and actually very cigar paper i think technically what's that a blunt just for the record i think that would be like a cigar it's usually that's like a leafy

paper like a cigar something well they i just the place actually smelled very nice it was very clean it was totally fine when i was in there but maybe it's just that i don't you know i don't engage with much of this stuff and so they had a you know cabinet i got a couple cigars whatever but But then I was just like looking around as I was paying, and it's just like all of this stuff that I just have no kind of context for, like boxes of some kind of cones that they were supposedly offering the best prices on. It looked like a small version of what you make your dog wear so they won't chew out their stitches. I don't know what that is. Yeah, no, those places are just everything under the sun, every kind of glass, dabbing, bong thing, whatever you could do to smoke a thing, they had it.

do you know i i need to play this whole thing and i don't care that it's a minute long we'll play it we'll go to break i'm not even asking i'm gonna do it um but the thing is you've probably heard this tape a bunch from portlandia do you know that what they're describing is a vape store in this tape does this ring a bell to you when i say the portlandia vape store tape oh i thought you're gonna start playing no do you know what i'm talking about though i don't know if i do i'll have to i think you've probably heard this before but you might not have realized that this is a this is a spoof on somebody who wants to open a vape store we tear all the wood out we want to get

rid of anything that seems natural authentic get rid of the espresso machine get rid of that that all go anything rustic is gone anything authentic anything organic anything permanent also this is a vape store yeah so we want a carpeting that's going to absorb and i don't mean mask but literally just absorb the odor so that when people come in here they're just overwhelmed okay you want it to

be pungent jaundice sickly vomited he's just vile you want it to smell like old bubble gum yeah have you ever huffed an airwick the lighting is too warm in here this is too i'm feeling too good about this you know i want to see my own zits like a old thrift store or something maybe no that's even too descriptive that's too kitschy it should just be like part of an airport that you ignore think of hanging out inside a vending machine a cell phone store or batteries plus make sure your bathroom really has got a toilet that's way too high and kind of big also two plungers two plungers

says it all i say that all the time i never knew that was about a vape store yes and the garish

lighting no i want to see all of my pimples oh my god that perfectly and again this place that i was actually when i was inside it was one of the nicer versions of these kind of stores i've ever been in like very well kept We'll be right back.

nice staff everything was fine but again it's just it's just so much stuff that i and you know like i said we have listeners who love these places and enjoy all of the products they sell and that's great as well you know i'm again you'll find me in the back of a very dingy video poker room somewhere um you know eating tater tots and then touching the slot machine with the same hand like yeah i have no absolutely no room to judge by the way raw cones appear to be uh here's what amazon says tired of rolling can't hand roll no problem these are pre-rolled cones with tips included seriously just fill pack and enjoy oh it's like a little icy it's just like an empty

joint that you can fill up with weed oh that's interesting okay but they had a big sign about

their cones very excited about their best prices on cones or something and i was like well those are waffle cones sign me up okay all right let's go uh let's take a quick break and then andrew we still have oh my god this is going to be a lot i really want to play you the update on the ktla stuff yeah i really want to hear i don't know what the hell that is i really want to hear that i mean manage your expectations it's not okay it's not that great okay is that what they thought

it's a broadcast it's like my ability to roll my own joints okay it's not great that's what i want to hear on kuow when they're for forward promoting a segment like after the news break it's not listen manage your expectations it's not that great we're gonna be talking about the honesty

i would listen i would honestly listen to that just out of respect yeah we're gonna be talking

about the intersection of history and ethics coming up on here and now um i would listen to

that we're gonna listen to the intersection of a four-hour show and your personal time listeners when we come back from this short break here on TBTL. Thank you, baby. Hey, let's thank some daily donors. These are the wonderful, generous folks who are supporting TBTL with their donations or making today's episode possible. If this episode goes as long as it's threatening to, this will be, these donors will have the experience of like when you're getting an ice cream cone and they just get to the end of the carton of ice cream and so they just give all of it to you and you just get some extra ice cream or you're at the bar and they're running out of the gym beam. They just got a little left and they're like, okay, just have the rest of it. Just top it off a little bit. Yeah, we're topping off this episode of TBTL for folks like David Zuckerman of Mamoronek, New York. Sounds old school I feel like I used to know how to say that town And maybe it sounded weird when I said it But I think that's how you say it

I picture a boat in a boathouse At dusk at Mamoronic

God that sounds amazing Looking out on an orchard Looking out on a lake Roughly 40 apple and cherry trees Thanks David Brittany Pendergraft is in Mukulteo, Washington Rick Stevestown You know who doesn't need to buy a cone to roll his joint? Rick Steves.

Oh, my God. You're right. He must roll amazing joints.

Appreciate you. Christine Zazula is in Johnston, Rhode Island. I said that like there's another Johnston. I was thinking of – I think there's a – maybe I'm thinking of like a Johnson, Iowa or something. But, no, Johnston, Rhode Island is where Christine is. Thank you.

I have something I want to say that's really inappropriate, especially given the fact that we're going too long, and I shouldn't be jamming this in here. But it's just something I want to tell you as a friend. Yes. Let's just honestly, let's go with it today. Let's just go with it today.

Let's just do the show up until the Mariner game starts.

I actually have a meeting at 2 with a top-level APM executive named John Sklaroff. So we can't go too long. But this is going to be bad. I can test him. We can push that. Because I can't even remember which comedian it was, but on Comedy Bang Bang, where they will have, you know, some guests come on and just be themselves. But then it's also an improv show where people come on as various characters. Some comedian came on playing a character that I had never heard before. And he was some character and he was from Bellingham, Washington. And he was a, you know, just a made up guy. But like he was from Bellingham, Washington was his backstory. And he was a travel writer who wanted to make murder legal. and it takes a long time for them to build up to what the kind of joke is or where they're going with this character and I'm listening to it for a while and I realize, oh, this is a Rick Steves joke. I mean, I don't know if he's got Bellingham connections. Was it Adam Ray? I don't think so. I can look it up here.

Only because there's a really funny comedian from the Northwest named Adam Ray who does a lot of impressions and sort of characters. And I once saw him perform at the Wild Buffalo in Bellingham. That's the only person I can think of who would be aware of Bellingham but also possibly have access to Comedy Bang Bang. That name doesn't ring a bell, but I'm going to get the answer to this because it was just recently. Well, then I'm going to keep thanking donors while you do a little research. Thank you, Christine. Also, thanks to Byron Ajima in Granada Hills, California. Lovely Granada Hills, C.A. Thanks, Byron. Bettina Mackey is in Bothell, Washington, for however much time feels appropriate to you.

That was a good joke.

And then Brooks Wilson is in Boise, Idaho.

One of our Boise boys.

Yeah, that's right. It's a good time, boys. That's right. No, I'm sorry.

Yeah, no, I'm with it.

Thanks, Brooks. Thanks to all of our donors for making today's episode possible. Please enjoy your extra scoop of ice cream. You earned it.

Hello, and welcome to Top Story. By which I mean you paid for it. The comedian is Devin Field, I believe. I don't know Devin Field's background, but he plays travel guide Steve Spinks, who shares some travel tips with the comedy Bang Bang Gang.

That's interesting. I'm not familiar with that person's name, but it's like Bellingham is such a sort of specific place. I wonder, oh, yeah, originally from Seattle, Washington. Okay, there you go. He graduated from USC School of Cinematic Arts. There you go. There you go. As Don O'Neill taught us, Andrew, you get to the universal through the specific. That's right. And I love the specificity of Bellingham, Washington. All right. Remember when we played this audio of the guy on KTLA just getting really upset about the fact that his colleague, this was on the Saturday morning news broadcast on KTLA in Los Angeles. This guy named Mark Messner was very upset that his colleague, a person named Lynette Romero, had basically moved stations because she was not getting the air shift that she wanted on KTLA. She wanted to have a weekday slot, and she wasn't getting it, and so he kind of went rogue on a Saturday broadcast.

What the viewers experienced was rude, it was cruel, it was inappropriate, and we were so sorry. I also want to say sorry to Lynette Romero, because Lynette, I love you so much. You literally are my best friend. You did not deserve what happened to you on Wednesday.

And what we realized happened on Wednesday was somebody at the station read a statement saying, we wish Lynette Romero the absolute best in her future endeavors.

Yes, and we've enjoyed our time with her

I feel very validated in our take on this, Andrew Because we've gotten, you and I have gotten a lot of texts From personal friends who also listen to the show By that I mean Phyllis Fletcher and Chris Hayes Who are both like, what the actual act? Yeah, right? Everybody who hears this, particularly people that work in the media Are like, something is off about this whole situation So because I had clicked on Lynette Romero's Twitter feed in order to, I guess, just figure out what her deal was. Now I'm getting Lynette Romero tweets, Andrew. Okay. Because that's how Twitter works. And today, this morning, actually right before Showtime, I saw that she is now weighing, well, she's not weighing in on it directly, but she has posted a video to Twitter. This is the Lynette Romero.

Hi, guys. It's Lynette. I know I haven't had a chance to talk to you guys directly. I've missed you. and I want to thank you for reaching out to me. I know you've been worried about me and I want you to know I'm okay. And you know what? This is good news. I always get to share your good news and I finally get to share my good news with you. I have a new family. I have a new home. I'm going to Today in LA, NBC4. I am so excited. I have been working my entire career. Yes, it's been three decades. I can't believe that. And this is my new home. So come with me. Let me open the door and welcome you in. I can't wait to get started. I can't wait for you to meet my new family. It's going to happen very, very soon, so stay tuned. I told you I'd be right back, right? I told you I'd be right back. Here I am.

And she has a new family, too. She's kind of bearing the lead on that. Who are these interlopers?

She sounds insane. Like, she and Mark Messner deserve each other, as far as I'm concerned. Like, this is also a person who sounds to be deeply misreading how much people are concerned. I mean, what she's clearly trying to reference without saying it is the.

kind of kerfuffle around this other person getting fired right like people you were worried about me

really were people worried well i do i listen i do believe that there was probably an outcry online in certain communities in certain circles right in these articles we read and so like you and i are outside that market but like not not to totally defend her like that's that just sounded like almost anybody talking directly into a camera in 2022 which everybody does now which i guess i shouldn't throw any any uh shade there because we do that too and we do this show but like that just sounded like yeah when ron and don left cairo like anybody in any other radio market wouldn't care but you and i of course knew all you know especially because we worked at that radio station like we waited for their podcast to come out so we could listen to it in australia in australia as we drove across the outback i had to download their first podcast so we could get the juicy nugs of what happened when this media organization didn't renew a contract i mean that's all that was a media organization well let's be honest didn't renew a contract it was mostly

interview with john urquhart yes well the arms yeah what do they say arms around paper boys

what his new specialty is but uh oh god oh god that piece of yeah that guy yeah geez anyway um And so all of that is to say, yes, I do believe that in the country's second biggest market, somebody who's had a time slot that's in a four years or a long time has developed a cult following or just a following maybe. And then there were people who were like, why is she leaving the announcement that she was going to and be to the NBC affiliate in L.A.? I don't think it was public news until this guy freaked out on the air and then the L.A. Times and other, you know, other organizations started reporting on it. So, yeah, I'm sure there was probably a lot of drama around it, and also she was somebody who wanted to stay, it sort of sounds like, but they didn't give her the opportunity, so she's going across the street in a bit of a huff. Like, I don't know. I can sort of understand, after all of this national attention, her going online and just saying, like, hey, listen, this is good news. I'm excited to announce I'm going to the time slot that I wanted on KNBC, one of the biggest affiliates in the country.

No, you're absolutely right. I think this is a blind spot for me because I've never really worked in local television, and the kind of TV that I sort of work in at this point is very removed from all of that. Like if I never did another piece for CBS Sunday Morning, no one would notice. And so I think I have this bizarre relationship with the idea of what television newscasters or people that make news, how they're regarded by the public. But I think you're absolutely right. If you've been on TV in L.A. for 20 or 30 years, you're definitely, and if you, you know, as we learned from Mark Messner's long, that's just the cat, by the way, jumping on the litter robot box in case you're worried about the sound in the background. As we learned from Mark Messner's rant You know she like Didn't she like get a Colonoscopy on air or like Her daughter had a colonoscopy on air I don't she had like some kind of like She's been one of those anchors who's like Quote unquote shared their life with the viewers And so I believe You're totally right I believe that the viewers In LA at least some segment of them It was a big deal to them so I shouldn't dismiss that I just always think of it because I think of everything through my experience i just think of me recording this video like to the cbs sunday morning viewers like guys it's good news i know you were worried about me but i'm actually going to the today show you know not that they would ever have me but that's that's me knowing that the way that i show up on tv on the rare occasion when i do has a certain kind of uh i guess reaction from the viewers which is like oh okay i guess that guy's on again versus a local host who people do really get connected to

i mean i had a show on cairo radio for one year and made a big deal about my last episode by having a whole bunch of friends and guests come by like nobody at the station even knew i had that time slot like there were people who were like oh you're leaving when did they give you a radio show but it still was a big deal to me so i'll give this i'll give you know you're right this person by the way so well this person is this almost seems like an internet troll but there are four comments on the deadline piece that was released a couple of hours ago announcing this this move to KNBC yeah and so here are four comments from listeners or viewers or readers I'll never watch KTLA again but there are periods all over so it actually reads like this I'll never watch KTLA again they screwed up bad two of my favorite anchors are home Lynette and Mark they suck big time I don't even understand I think these he means um KTLA sucks big

time i was so unhappy says dorothy kinney to see lynette go and then mark to be disciplined for making a heartfelt statement and then eventually fired i hope that mark also goes to channel four with lynette because they are magic together i will be moving over to watch lynette on october 10th on nbc now these are i'm reading inner like who knows who these people are if they're real or not but you know there are people who are just like i can't wait oh here's one i'll be watching Lynette in her new slot when Michaela Pereira left key TLA for CNN she got quite the send off granted Corsini was at the helm a class act and knew the LA market Corsini was at the helm that was from Anonymous by the way that person knows all the inside scoop of that TV station and they're not putting their name to it so you know there are people who care about this shit

absolutely you know you're absolutely right I didn't mean to I wish I could take it back when I said Lynette Romero sounded insane that was an overstatement I think we've cleaned it up. Okay. Oh, you edited it out? Thank you. Yeah, beep! All right. From one dying media to the next, Andrew, just because we have to pay off on this thing we've been promoting for about eight episodes now, this piece in Vulture by Nick Kwa. Podcasting is just radio now. Now, remember, and we talked about this last week, there was a fairly stunning development in the case of Adnan Syed out there in Baltimore, and he was released. He was, of course, the person who was at this—one of the people that was at the center of the whole serial podcast phenomenon. And so this seemed to be a jumping off point for Nick Kwa to kind of say, basically, when Sarah Koenig did her, I don't know, it was like a 16-minute update the next day. Did you end up actually listening to that? No, I didn't. It was good, by the way. I mean, just a written piece. Because remember we talked so much about that photo of her with the shotgun?

Yeah, yeah.

It's funny because there's zero tape in the piece other than what I assume could have been gotten by a producer. I don't know why this is where I'm starting with our analysis of this Nick Qua piece. But it's like you're, you know, it's kind of I guess what I really want to say is it's interesting. And I know, Sarah, I would consider us to be sort of friends. It's funny to me that it fell on Sarah to also have to have her shotgun microphone and recorder there. She probably wanted to, though. I mean, this is her story. But what I mean is Serial is one of the most successful podcasts in the history of podcasting. you could also get producers out there with their shotgun you could have 20 producers making sure you catch it from every angle like if i were if i were the host of something as kind of um well uh regarded and well presumably funded as that i'm not saying i wouldn't have a microphone but i guess i would sort of also be like let's bring a bunch of people out to make sure that

we get all of it you know yeah maybe i don't know man i um you've worked for npr i haven't you gone out on those types of things i just i feel like you would you would want to be there and you're not saying that you wouldn't be but i also feel like you're just like you you aren't somebody who wants tons of people with tons of equipment around you maybe cbs has changed you and i don't even know who you are anymore but i just sort of feel like i have a new family i feel like i feel like you'd be more comfortable just like holding a shotgun mic probably a little bit too low and i would

I would want to have it as a backup in case I saw something happening and I couldn't flag a producer to run over and record it. But I will. You said it sort of jokingly, but I actually don't think it's a joke. I think I've gotten extremely spoiled from getting to do a certain amount of work with network television because there's a crew and they just put a mic on you. And then there's just a minimum of two to three people whose job it is to just do all of the hard work of schlepping the gear and pointing it at you and like you just go, hey, can we talk to this person? And then all of a sudden a light materializes like a key stand and all this stuff. I really do think I've become insufferable. But anyway, Sarah's piece the next day I thought was really good. It was just kind of a 16-minute written piece that I thought was really nice. But Nick Kwa is basically saying, since we're all thinking about Serial, it's worth noting that there hasn't been anything really like that in a long time. In other words, there isn't a podcast that we're all saying, hey, are you listening to this? Like, there are podcasts that people like, and maybe their friends like that, they have a friend who likes it or whatever. But there isn't something that is really, like, a cultural, in the way that even, like, Serial ended up as a sketch on SNL, I believe. Like that's when you know that it had like moved into the stratosphere and a Nick was basically making the argument that podcasts are no longer we're just not churning out podcasts that are the kind of phenomenon that serial was.

Yeah, and you know what? I mean, I read this article, and I've been thinking about it, and I'll probably say stuff in here that later on I'll think, oh, I wish I hadn't said that, or my opinion might change. Like, Lynette Romero is insane? Right, that's going to live in your head. Could you just make that sound? I'm going to talk now, but you make that sound for as long as you can, because that way I don't want anybody to hear what I'm going to say. But no, you know what? Okay, I'll just tell you, my initial reaction is, who gives a shit? like and my my reaction to this is never gonna get on hot pods that way exactly it's all colored

by the fact that i believe that ship has sailed for us anyways which is weird because i ran sorry i'm interrupting but i literally like ran into this guy who writes this column at um whatever like prpd or something yeah in the elevator right i was there i didn't meet him but i was at that conference with you and i and i i think i kind of like unsubtly was like hey you could do a thing About us it's funny because earlier in this show I said people are often telling me Hey you could do a TV story about this and I'm like It's never a thing I'm going to do a TV story And I'm being to him hey You should write a column about us I do think that we present an interesting business model

For the record I might have that wrong I might have seen him in an elevator later and just Recognized him and didn't say anything but did you run Into him in an elevator am I confusing No we ran into Ira in an elevator I do remember

That I was there for that Yeah I think I Was just standing in a you know hotel whatever ballroom or lobby or something but sorry anyway you were saying

I do think I can I conflated that because I think I later saw him in an elevator and I was like oh that's that's our keys to the kingdom right there be nice to that guy and then I just hit the stop elevator button and I grabbed him by the lapel and I said why won't you write about us I smacked him that way where the back of my hand is that why we're never in the column back of my hand front of the hand how are you just now telling

me this that was really a a blow I don't know possible growth as a show it seemed like it made to I screamed at him

never mind I was gonna make a Chinatown joke that would be untasteful um all right so all of all of that I I do want to say that I I have the best job in the world and I am deeply insecure about the podcasting industry in some ways like I I wake up on some days and I think how in the world how in the world are we so lucky as podcasters you and i luke and then other days i wake up i'm just like why does nobody pay attention to us like you know like why aren't we a hit podcast why does nobody promote it like sometimes i have the biggest chip on my shoulder and sometimes i'm just like what would you possibly complain about like what you get to do every single day for your job so um i have a lot of insecurity about kind of what we do and where we are or aren't in the podcasting conversation right but i'm reading this and it's like all this hand-wringing uh i mean it's kind of like hand-wringing i'm not trying to go i'm not trying to um insult nick here or his writing it is an interesting question he says there were times when like when serial was new but then also the the richard simmons podcast or or or s town there were moments whether or not you liked these podcasts or even thought they were ethical there was a time where everybody was talking about a podcast and it has been a while since we've all kind of kind of convened our our social conversation has not kind of convened around a single podcast recently but like i'm also hearing people like julie snyder uh who i admire greatly um who also worked you know she's one of the um serial productions eps and and nick kind of from the perspective of the story and some other people in here who are kind of like yeah we don't have it like i don't know what we're i don't know where we are in the conversation anymore and maybe like it's just going to be like radio where you just have like the joe rogan's are the rush limbaugh's or whatever um and i'm just like you know what every single one of these people that you're quoting is like so-and-so who used to work for cereal which was bought by the new york times so-and-so who used to work for gimlet who was bought by spotify it's like you're you all just sold out y'all i mean i love the new york times i don't think that's a bad fit but yeah i mean we have this situation in the podcast economy right now where you have huge players in in amazon and spotify and apple and they're just trying to grab everything and they're trying to like split up the market like as an i'm not talking about tbtl here because we have a lot of support from apm as far as getting us on platforms but as somebody who does like two you know very small niche um just independent podcasts and after these messages and spotless like i'm getting worried about maintaining our little show on all the platforms because more and more it's kind of like well we sold to amazon so amazon's only going to put it on their platform which is behind a paywall and spotify is making some moves that look more and more like that and it's like all these people who are just kind of like well i just want to make good

podcasting it's like yeah but you also got your bank like you also sold your company to spot

which is totally you're right i would have done the same thing and i would be i would be doing that scene in the movie where i'm rolling around in money on a bed right now as i assume oh no robert redford i'm really going i'm really going hard here i don't think julie snyder is necessarily like has a money tree in her backyard but i just think that like i just i just think make podcasts make good podcasts and and the rest will sort itself out I don't think we need a single podcast that everybody is talking about anymore. The industry is changing. I think the industry is changing for the worst. I think a lot of people are getting rich on this. I think there's a huge bubble right now. People are talking about making these podcasts that are like, I don't know, 12 episodes long for a series, but it costs so much to promote them that they've still lost money on their hit podcast. There was a quote like that. I can't remember the podcast in particular that is mentioned in the article. I'm just like, well, then how about us? We don't spend any money on promotions. You know what I mean? Like I just – I'm so insecure about this topic that I just can't like shed any tears. I don't know if that's what this article was calling for. But I don't have this like tons of sympathy about the state of the podcasting artist. Right.

I just wonder if – and this is probably the most closed-minded thing that I could say or the least imaginative take on it. But I just – I'm already regretting what I'm about to say, which is, is it possible that we've reached maximum podcast such that there's not – there is no longer a way to do something in the podcast space that will be so innovative that it will make 10 million people pay attention to it at the same time? Like that's a very like short-sighted of me because –

No, no, I'm missing the point. isn't that what the article is arguing that we we we just aren't there and we might not make it back

there again right but i mean that's like saying there will never be a tv show that everybody talks about again because every kind of tv show has been made um which i guess maybe is an argument um and maybe that's the case with podcasts i'm it feels to me like there's just i don't know if you can make a podcast anymore that's going to be so groundbreaking that it's going to become the phenomenon that cereal was but again that makes me feel like i'm just i'm just not having very ambitious thoughts about what this medium can be well i know i mean i think that's what this

article is raising by the way as i'm doing this i'm opening a package i saw i got a package from apm here and i'm opening up my package of um mad libs books that we wrote this is fun that's why didn't he write about that in the article yeah exactly that's that's the future of podcasting more mad libs oh and some bumper stickers down here nice um anyway so this is fun like we have fun with our show and like there are days when i wake up i'm not even answering your question but um there are days when i wake up and i'm just kind of like man why aren't we promoted more but then i look at this this kind of stuff that we're doing and it's like man we have a lot of fun we have lawyer list loyal listeners um and who we feel like are our irl friends and we found a way to make it work now i inherited this gig i can't take credit for that stuff but like i'm just not i just don't think the world is a is a worse place if we never have a single podcast that the culture i keep on saying convenes around that's not the word i'm looking for but that the culture is all talking about at once you know i think it will happen again like where's maron been like i haven't heard maron in the news a long time but he'll do some interview with somebody where something is revealed and you know maron is kind of like the you know with maron and conan they're like the versions of the tv shows of like conan's old show or a late night show where sometimes news will break because you're interviewing famous people or the smart less podcast that everybody's talking about which i haven't heard yet have you dipped in on that you know i had there was this

day i'm not even kidding it was literally a day probably a year or two ago i want to say it was when colbert was on smartless and i had i've never had this happen before at least five people in my life said oh do you listen to smart list like texted me my sister liz texted me uh i forget who like and i remember just being like shocked because i've never had that many people on the same day be like you should listen to this one thing and of course that cursed it because it was way too much um hype for me and then i listened to it and i thought it was fine but uh i didn't quite meet whatever my elevated expectations were i mean i love colbert and i love all the people on that show but there was no way it was gonna you know pay off based on all of the uh you know sort of plaudits it was getting you know let me let me let me calm down a little bit here boy i got yeah

andrew we've all been thinking it um i think i'm just i'm i do think that podcasting is in the bubble and i'm fine with it bursting a little bit like i don't i mean and selfishly of course i want What?

what we do to remain strong if what we do is strong i i want you know what i mean i i want to i want to grow our audience a little bit more i want to maintain the relationship we have with our current audience those are important things to me but like tbtl and again i'm not trying to take credit for this i inherited this but like tbtl the bubble has not affected tbtl for better or for worse and so if i'm just thinking about this totally selfishly yeah i think that but i think that people immediately trying to scoop up the entire podcasting industry and put it into like maybe four four or five buckets that are owned by these huge ass companies that are also making tv shows and all these other things and and signing um you know royalty to million dollar millions of dollars in contracts for one episode or whatever like yeah it's not the market has not been improving the market i think the podcast market is terrible right now and honestly a little bit of shrinkage and a little bit of like hey what are we doing here and a little bit of like forcing people maybe to get back to their roots would maybe be a good thing you know i have

to say that i remember how sort of worked up i was about the fact that harry and megan were paid some insane amount of money for their podcast and then they didn't do any podcasts yeah that's trying to allude there too yeah i i just saw a headline the other day and i don't know if this was sustainable or whatnot or what but like i guess a recent episode of some podcast that megan markle made was the most popular podcast that existed like it yeah unseated rogan so i

guess that's a different that's her archetype podcast i want to say but it was because it was because of the death of the queen right and so therefore you have but it wasn't the i don't i could be wrong but i don't think that's the same podcast that they launched together that was signed to some just enormous contract i guess i just i i think of i interpret everything related to

podcasting through our experience like your experience and my experience of the kind of people that like our show and i just think that's everyone who listens to podcasting and so i was like who in the hell would ever care i mean peace and love to megan markle by the way i don't have any issue with her but it's just it's not a thing that is of interest to me like whatever it is going on in that part of the podcast space and so because it's not interesting to me and because i don't think of it as something that our listeners really care about i i tend to just think well there's no audience for that but in fact there is and apparently it's the biggest audience on planet earth in terms of an an episode of a podcast which just shows how little i know about who's listening to podcasts or why they're listening yeah yeah i don't think that i mean

honestly and i shouldn't say this publicly because it's we're getting near review season but like you and i have a bit of a i don't know if myopic is too strong of a word but we do have a bit of a a narrow view of the industry based on what we do and like maybe that can be one of our goals You have to do those. Those are due today.

Be less myopic about what the show can do.

Exactly.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. No, man, it's not from a female.

All right.

Emails or V-mails? Yeah, you know, I have a voicemail that I want to play for you. I have kind of a whole bunch that I pulled off the line yesterday, and I'll play one for you. But something just came in, I think, this morning that I wanted to share with you. Um, this is from listener Harrison, uh, who attached a, a, an adorable photo of his dog wearing a rain slicker. Um, but Harrison says, my dear wife, Becca, not your Becca, Harrison clarifies. Better not be. Yeah, that would be interesting. What if Becca was married to Jackson?

I mean, honestly, that could grow the audience. Yes. Just like some real romantic drama.

One of the listeners is married to my girlfriend. We don't put enough of our, like, I don't have a lot of romantic drama in my life, but maybe I should cook some up. I do wonder if, like, maybe if Vives and I. Maybe I should just start sharing mine. I've got a lot. Yes, exactly. A lot of it involving Harrison. So Harrison, and so his wife, Becca, has a new Etsy store. Erica, I'm sorry. Rebecca is a graphic designer and opened up an Etsy store where she's been kind of publishing and selling some of her projects. And she's been listening to TBTL for a while. And Luke, you've mentioned that someday you want to write a book called My Child, My Enemy.

Oh, yeah. I might have to go back to that since Failure is an Option was already taken by H. John Benjamin.

And so the title to Luke's forthcoming parenting manual slash memoir, My Child, My Enemy, basically, Becca, not unlike those books we were talking about yesterday that are just like kind of fake book.

jackets with a blanket side book she designed a cover for that book already my child my enemy and is selling it based on my thing yes in fact i should forward this to you right now i should have done this before i was like started talking um because i'd like to i was wondering how you would feel about it so this book that you haven't written yet i'm sending this can you get to your tbtl.net account probably not uh yeah probably yeah let me hear uh this is awesome man i just railed about other people's podcasts. I can't understand why this show is less popular than Megan Markle's show. I'm going to clean all this up. I'm in. I'm in the system. I'm going to do the rest of this in a British accent. I think I sent it to your main address here. Anyway, so take a look at that book. How do you feel, Luke, knowing that there is already a cover out there that listeners can buy on Etsy, by the way, and I would encourage Becca and Harrison to check out the TENS Helping TENS website, which is um run by listener kelly and some other people and so way to uh support the projects of other listeners of tbtl you could post your shop there um but anyway what do you think of this book cover and how do you feel about already having a cover to a book you haven't written yet it's a great

cover it's good right i mean holy moly now did harrison hear yesterday's show and yes is that

what this is in response to specifically yes and so yesterday we were talking about like fake book jackets for for fake books or whatever and and harrison's mind was blown on the synchronicity

here absolutely adore this book cover right it makes me want to write the book now here's the thing i think not unlike my penchant for tussling with people in my 30s i don't know if i fully stand behind the title my child my enemy the premise of that was if i were ever to be married again and if i were to have children i would want the dynamic to be me and my spouse were a team and the children were our enemies as in i don't want it to be a thing where my spouse and the children are teaming up against me or i'm teaming up with the children against my my wife you know like i feel like and i got i got a lot of big ideas for somebody who's been divorced twice and broke off an engagement the day we were supposed to send out the save the date cards. But I feel like a thing that can happen in relationships sometimes when there are children involved is that the parents, their relationship can suffer. I mean, this can go in any direction. Sometimes their relationship can be much better for this. But I have observed this in people I know where the relationship between the parents kind of suffers because of just how intense it is to have small humans that you're responsible for. And I think, here's what I can say. My mom and dad are insanely happily married. And the only thing you can do to make my dad mad is say something that's even within one area code of being critical of my mom. They are so bonded with each other, and they, of course, love their kids a lot, but they are a team. And if we were to come, Now, honestly, the only thing that makes my mom happy is when we roast my dad. So it's not – they're not really both playing the same game. My mom's only happiness is feeling like she is our favorite parent. Oh, my God. That's hilarious. But my dad has made this relationship work all these years by being my mom's most staunch defender. And I do think that there is something that can be useful about two people that are in a relationship and have children that they are really, really bonded and looking out for each other. And then from that, I think good parenting will happen. Hence, My Child, My Enemy. I've said this to people I've been married to. If we ever have kids, we're a team. The kids are the enemy. That's what that line is about. Now, is My Child, My Enemy a little bit harsh for a book title? Yes. is this maybe the best book cover I've ever seen in my life also yes

I'm going to use this book cover if that's okay as a show

you don't use the brush logging phone number I actually really like that too

actually I did really like that picture

but everyone's going to start calling poor Jerry actually if you call Jerry just order one of his wildlife photos

they're amazing yeah everybody support Jerry but anyway I think I got to use this because we're talking about a very visual thing here and this is something that Meghan Markle would never do And so I want to try to rectify that. Oh, actually, though, can I just play one quick voicemail here? Let me just go down. Oh, oh, okay. Okay. We're going to go back into found money for a second here. I have a 90-second voicemail I want to play for you. I have more voicemails about finding money.

money and gift cards and whatnot. I'll sprinkle those throughout the week. But I want to play this first one. It's from Jamie in Maryland. But I want a trigger warning. This is a – I want a trigger warning without spoiling it, but this made me gag a little listening to this voice. Is it about Danimals? It is not. It is yogurt-free.

Hey, friendos. This is our listener Jamie from Columbia, Maryland, And I've been enjoying these stories, these happy stories about found money and wanting to find money and sharing found money. But I'll tell you, there's a dark side to finding money. It's not always a good thing. Let me tell you what happened to me. So I was walking down a city street in Chicago, minding my own business, and I glanced down and I see there's a dollar bill laying right there on the sidewalk.

I want to just make very clear here, I wasn't joking about the trigger warning. This is, I think I know where this is going.

okay so hey i'm not going to turn down a three dollar bill i'm excited back then i was you know younger just out of college and thinking that's going to get me a drink later right so it reached down to pick it up and luckily because i am a germaphobe i picked it up just by the corner because you know money's gross well this money was especially gross and i realized right away there's something off about this dollar the weight's wrong doesn't feel right when I realized it's full of shit. It's a shit dollar. Someone has taken this dollar and folded it around a turd and squished it. And why? Why did someone do that? I still to this day don't know. But, of course, I threw the shit dollar on the ground, and I, you know, decontaminated my hands and tried to, you know, recover from the trauma of that. To this day, it's still kind of horrifying. But I guess there are some mysteries that will never be solved. I'll never know why someone made a dollar full of human feces, or, well, I guess it could be dog. But either way, totally disgusting. And every time I see a dollar now, or any money on the ground, I sort of give it a kick to make sure it's safe to pick up. So heed my warning, people. You might just want to give it a good look before you pick it up.

That's it.

Power up.

I got a lot of follow-ups.

Yes, you said that you thought you knew where that was going.

Is that where you thought it was going? No. I thought somebody had like a fishing line on it. Although this wouldn't necessitate a trigger warning. But I thought, you know, because sometimes people will do that. They'll leave a dollar out in public, but it's like a prank thing. Or then they kind of like either glue it to the sidewalk or yank it out or whatever. That's what I thought. I had not heard of the old dollar Rooney full of dog shit. But this one of the questions I have is how large would the denomination have to be for you to continue possessing that money?

for me i think it's got to be a 50 at a minimum um it would have to be at least a hundo for me whoa you wouldn't wash a 50 off i've been i've been pretty successful at this podcasting game i mean honestly i'd make it work with a 50 no because you're you're out in public with somebody like how are you getting that to a place where you're even ready to wash it like what are you doing with it in the interim i have my i always carry a ziploc bag you know this you're gonna start yeah you're gonna always carry a ziploc bag and one of those those tong things that people

pick up litter with yep yep and i throw it in there zip it ziploc it up and then just deal with it later no i mean if i found a 50 bill that was wrapped around dog poop and smashed i would that would change the entire course of my afternoon because now I'm no longer on a walk in Chicago I'm now figuring out how to clean this $50 yeah I mean that's what I just I just don't

that this you have an interesting relationship with money because like in a certain way like you'll you'll throw 50 bucks toward you know if you're having like a if you're you're having

Ezekiel Elliott and Saquon Barkley both having over 100 yards while Daniel Jones scores a touchdown on the run for a plus 1,600. Did you get it? Did you nail it? No. God, no. I wasn't watching that game last night. That was a football game wrapped in a turd. Nobody did anything. What did Barkley do? I donk off money. It's weird. You're exactly right. I both waste money, or at least don't always think through certain financial transactions, and yet would 100% deal with a $50 smeared in shit. 100%. It's not even close.

That's so interesting. Yeah, I feel – I mean, you're talking to a man. The reason this conversation even comes up is because my one dream.

dream in life i only have one dream in life i'm gonna put this in my goals i'm gonna codify this in my goals did you say codify or codify i say codify okay i'm gonna codify it in my goals later today uh that my goals in life is to find a uh to find a bag of money like i want to find money so bad but finding money like is it worth fifty dollar listen yes what if somebody said what if somebody said here um there is you instead of finding 50 on the ground with with poop in it you instead find a t-shirt with poop in it on the ground and somebody says i'll pay you 50 to wash that shirt 100 you would take that you would carry a shit filled shirt around with you until you can get to a place where you can wash it by hand or i don't know if you're throwing this 50 bill in a washing machine or what it seems like that soil the washing machine um but you would do the labor to earn that fifty dollars like you have no idea what i've done for fifty dollars and we should probably wrap the show up there all right i don't want to hear about it let's get out of here my enemy that's my new book let's get out of here while we still have a show Oh, that was disgusting. Thank you, Jamie, for that story.

I have a... I've just received a text message from somebody who was observing you last night at the PDUSA show. And I've even got video evidence, Andrew, so we'll have to talk about that tomorrow. Does the name begin with a T?

No. Because there is somebody there who, like, in the group of friends I was meeting, There was somebody there named Tyler Who also is aware of the show And listens to the show sometimes, I think So I thought maybe he just sent you one So there was somebody there who was observing me And I didn't Ooh, that makes me really uncomfortable, actually Because I gotta Yeah, that makes me uncomfortable Because I had some awkward moments Is it pretty bad?

No, no, no, no, no, no It's a I don't Listen I don't want you to be stressed about this I was just trying to create some drama Okay, okay Somebody was just like Hey, I saw Andrew at the show That was it That's like the total but there's video am I rocking out I don't even know if you're in the I tried to play the video on mute but it started playing it over doogie and then I couldn't I don't even know if you're in the video I think my friend was just making a video from a perspective at the show that was like a really cool perspective you could see the stage really well and then they mentioned as part of it that they saw you at the show oh interesting so this is an actual friend of yours too not a TV show listener per se yes and so I don't want it to be that thing where like your boss says hey can i talk to you after um you know hey when you get done uh with the show can uh

can we talk for a minute right right right that's usually when i know i'm fired i just i just don't there was a moment there was a brief moment where i was doing rails off of pd's behind and i just want to make sure that that is that is in the video okay i gotta add a new goal i guess to my goals list today, which is to never... Stop doing rails off of PD's behind. Exactly.

That's how they say it. Well, the part that's complicated is you're doing a rail off his behind and then like four more versions of him emerge from just different places and they're just having a really elaborate conversation. One's wearing a Chicago

Bears sweater for some reason. I can actually hear that. What are you doing? I'm doing rails off of his behind. What's he doing? He's doing rails off of his behind. Why is he doing... Epic. Classic. And one guy just comes in and says

epic. He's doing epic rails off

of his behind i can't tell if today's show is greater only you me my friend evan and hauser

enjoyed that joke and and you and i are the only ones still listening to this nonsense all right all right man uh thanks everybody for listening we are going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you until then please have a great tuesday take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

We'll be right back. Heck, I reckon you wouldn't even be human beings if you didn't have some pretty strong personal feelings about nuclear combat. I want you to remember one thing, that folks back home is counting on you, and by golly, we ain't about to let them down. I'll tell you something else. This thing turns out to be half as important as I figure it just might be. I'd say that you're all in line for some important promotions and personal citations when this thing's over with.

Power out.