Muse

A message sent November 28th. Um, Daddy, I want to tell you a few things. Um, I just came back from ballet and we're home right now and Mommy and when we were in the garage, um, I asked Reagan, get your poop? And he nodded his head but he really did not poop. But, um, but that's funny because, um, Mommy checked and there was no poop. So, um, why don't you call me back at 7 o'clock? Bye-bye. TBTL!

I don't know a lot about business, but he did an Internet, and now the computers like him, and Wall Street is Google. Please refrain from scolding us for our approach. Our approach is legitimate. If I was going to go out and have a Mexican dinner tonight, an Italian dinner tonight, it's immaterial and you can twist it and turn it whichever way the press decides to do all right

i'm going to assume that's hypothetical right this is my sandbox i'm not allowed to go in the deep end

that's where i saw the leprechaun he told me to burn things

well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tbtl and you know what this is good news the show that just might be too beautiful to live my name is luke burbank i'm your host doesn't he look like the kind of boy who has to fight him off yes he does coming to you from the hollywood broadcast center right here in portland oregon where as predicted it's now raining didn't know you like to get wet though i guess we're gonna get some nice, what is the word, petrichor today. Because I think this is the first real significant rain we'll have had in a long, long time. It is that time of year, though. Things are a-changing. It's that time of the week where we get to episode 3,781 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. NASA smashed a spacecraft into an asteroid. the size of a football field i hate to say it it was kind of cool some real deep impact business going on out there in space which we will talk about today also it turns out that uh certain podcasts that are supposedly getting a lot of unique listeners every month are doing it because or by way of forcing people playing games on their phone to listen to the show or...

Are you still doing a pod card?

They're forcing them to interact with their podcast. This is a big thing over at iHeartRadio, it turns out. So we will get into the business of podcasting. Also, I don't know if you would call that cheating, what those companies are doing to get more listeners, but there is an allegation in the world of chess that there has been some cheating going on. You play to win the game. Maybe even involving anal beads. How is it that we always end up talking about buttholes at this poker game? So we will get into that, too, coming up. Plus, we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. My good time boy. Andrew Walsh is joining us right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I have a question for you here at the top of the show. I know I could look this up. I probably should have looked it up before the show, but I just want to do a gut check with you on something here. So ride with me, if you will, for a moment on this tale. Do you know this song? Do you believe in magic by the love and spoonful? Yes. Right. Do you believe in magic? Do you remember? I'm trying to figure out if this was a real thing or if my brain invented it, or if me and my friends invented this as a kid, was there a McDonald's commercial where they changed the lyrics of that song to Do You Believe in Magic? And I Hope You Do. You've Always Got a Friend Wearing Big Red Shoes. Whoa. I don't remember that, but that's extremely specific. It is. I heard a snippet of the real song on the radio today, and I didn't think too much of it. And then, I don't know, a half hour later or something, I'm doing dishes upstairs and I find myself singing, you've only got a friend wearing big red shoes. And I'm like, well, well, no, those aren't the those aren't the lyrics. Where did that come from? And then I had to do a little little kind of self-examination. And then I.

But that was about something else. That was medical. And then I was like, well, let's think about this a little bit. Was that a real McDonald's commercial? Was that a spoof that me and Tony came up with when we were, like, 12? I feel like it would have had, if you and Tony came up with it, it would have involved butts. Like, if kids, if teenagers came up with a spoof song, don't you think it would have involved something a little bit more puerile than, do you believe in having a friend with big red shoes? maybe maybe that's a good point so anyway maybe I can look this up during the show I've got it in front of me actually would you like to hear this if you're going to cat roll me I will quit it's Marvel's house when you believe in magic and the hope you do you'll always have a friend wearing big red shoes you did not imagine it I love it oh and you really exercised it like kind of exercise my demons there by actually playing it that's fantastic that's because that's exactly how the journey went i was just like all of a sudden i'm singing this tune and then i realized i'm singing the wrong lyrics to it and then i had this this moment of confusion and that is it it was a song does that look like it's probably from like the 90s or maybe the it says it's from 1992 that'd be about the right here the rest of it we're 11 seconds let's just let's Anything can happen right before your eyes. Whatever you're expecting, expect a surprise. When you believe in magic, only Ronald can do. I believe in magic. I believe in you. When you believe in magic. Okay, listen. I know talking about how Ronald McDonald is unsettling is not a personality. But I am telling you At the end of this commercial The Ronald McDonald character Just looks right into the camera And it's messed up Like I'm going to take a picture and send it to you right now It is Deeply upsetting and again You know whatever clowns they freak me out Like I know that I'm I'm not being original or particularly Unique with that observation but It just it's the makeup up the whole thing i saw a tweet the other day which i'm going to completely botch but it was like somebody was pretending to be the ceo of mcdonald's talking to like their advertising company in the 80s and it was like no no no we don't we can't just have one mascot we have to have like 40 one of them's a clown one of them steals stuff from the place and then just a big purple one that's just a mess yeah right like i've never i've never really thought about how kind of bizarro the i emailed you this photo oh you know what this is nice uh my uh computer doesn't want to send you emails because you know we don't need to email we can go back to the fax plan i was telling genevieve yesterday about oh yeah i completely forgot we both have our brother

printers which apparently are are also fax machines i don't understand why we don't just have a fax-based relationship well i mean uh let's see here god i wish i had this i wish i had this drop ready to go as i often say andrew the facts are your friends the fact i have a clip of mike daisy saying that and i cannot find it how do you feel about my mike daisy impression though do we even need the drop the facts are your friends is it good in my head i've found over the years is that the facts are your friends oh actually okay i was doing too i was making it too gentle I always think of his delivery as being very gentle. Well, because the kind of magic drop is a little bit... It's a kind of magic. It's very whispery. Okay, I'm going to do one. You do the drop. Let's see if... Let's do them out of order. See if anybody knows which is which. Okay. It's a kind of magic. It's a kind of magic. Pretty good. Nobody knows which is which. Pretty good. Yep. Anyway. Well, I've got a... Not an interesting update, but an update, Andrew, about the latest shenanigans the cat has gotten up to. I believe the cat has figured out how to operate Randy, the Roomba. Oh. At least how to activate the Roomba. I'm a human being. I don't know how to activate a Roomba, I'll be honest. I've never had one. Well, so I'm supposed to be able to operate it through my phone, right? There's an app. the problem is remember my whole situation with the gigahertz is it gigahertz is that what the gh yeah is yeah the situation where something i got a new router like you know verizon or who i'm not sorry xfinity sent me a new router and it was a different gigahertz and so then i had to try to set up two different ones so that i could operate like the pet feeder and stuff well the only thing i couldn't bring back online was the roomba so i'm supposed to be able to turn it on and off from my phone, but that doesn't work. That doesn't work ever since I got this new internet router so there is a big button on top of it that you just hit the button and it starts vacuuming but i came home yesterday only to find randy stalled out here in the office and i did not turn randy on when i left and i can't control him from the phone meaning there was only one person who could have done it and it was the cat the cat jumped on it hit the big

yes big button i love big buttons i cannot lie yeah um and then also must have jumped on it later to stop it or it just ran out of cycle like no it goes home right didn't you say it should go

home when it's when it's done it's it's loop but i feel like she's just i don't know getting bored and once a friend when i'm not home and so she's now figured out how to get the roomba going so that she's got somebody to hang out with well that's a good development i think means you don't have to get another cat no this one is plenty for me particularly considering how i don't know what is going on with her like she eats the same food she's always eaten and drinks the same water she's always been drinking but the difference in her going to the bathroom smell varies i wonder if it's actually puberty or something in the diet is staying the same you're not feeding yeah no i mean she doesn't she just she's actually pretty uninterested in food i tried to give her um a little bit of turkey the other day because i had bought some turkey fixings for my dad's sandwiches and uh she was totally uninterested in it so she doesn't really care about food um but yeah she's just had this special like you know particular food that i've always been buying her which is supposed to be for her kind of cat but that's all she's ever really eaten but oh my god i like woke up this morning so there's a door that goes between the bathroom and my bedroom and that door is closed and from through the door i could smell that oh god is is there um fish in that food

that you're feeding her is it dry i assume it's wet food right no it's dry oh really okay that's really surprising yeah because i do know i remember so you know ron mcgill right the zoologist who's a regular guest or was a regular guest on the dan levitard show i haven't heard him in a while but um i remember him talking one time i think somebody asked him like what would be the worst kind of dung to clean up at the zoo and what would be the best and it's it's a great question i don't know it is i don't know if it's counterintuitive or not because it makes a lot of sense when you when you think about it but he's like elephants honestly are the easiest because yeah it's big but what is it it's like hey and it's just like manure but you go in and you go into the uh the place where they keep the penguins and they don't need anything but fish all day he's like any animal that just eats fish all day that is what he's like i wouldn't he's like that is on the absolute bottom of my list i would not touch that if i had a choice interesting because that's

a relatively i guess it's not that small group but it's like a thing that eats fish but also poops on the land you know what i mean good good point i guess humans you know there are a lot of

things that eat fish but they're just out there in the water humans cats and penguins that's what we all have in common hey um i have a question for you it has nothing to do with fish it has nothing to do with dung it has nothing to do with your damn cat it has to do with me it has to do with me do you remember the end of yesterday's show oh yeah i do i was at a rock and roll show on monday night right and yesterday was tuesday and you said at the very end of the show that somebody that you know and i don't know if i know this person or not you do saw me at the show and took a secret photo of me and sent it to you who is this person that i know who wouldn't have said

hello my good friend evan oh evan i saw him have gone sailing with in the summertime and do the gunk-holing with. He's a huge PDUSA

fan. I saw him at the last PDUSA show. The one that was at the Crocodile. Oh, interesting. So he took a photo, or you said a moving

image of me. Here's what he said. He sent me a message. I spotted Andrew at the PD show last night, but I didn't get a chance to say hi. He was packed in with tons of people down on the floor, and I was up the stairs on the rail with tons of space and a perfect view. And then he sent me a video. yeah uh and then uh i was trying to find you in the video but i didn't see you in there i thought when i i thought when he sent me the video it was going to be of you rocking out no i'm glad

but it's actually just pd pd doing a thing i was um so yeah i went to that show with uh my friend hauser my friend paul and uh a group of of hauser's friends um who i met and they were all really cool we show up there we kind of end up splitting into two groups i mean it was really packed in um this is at numos this time and i hadn't been to numos in i'll bet you close to a decade i i might have popped in to see a show there

or during a block party forever ago back when I lived on Capitol Hill. But anyway, that's not interesting. Anyway, so I'm in the, we are so jam-packed in there. I mean, so jam-packed, especially in kind of the bar area. There's only a certain area where you can drink and me and Paul were having beers. The rest of the crew kind of went closer to the stage at some point. I kind of lost them, but I was so jammed in there where me and Pauly were. And then at one point I'm like, okay, I got to use the restroom, right? And so I kind of crawl my way through this crowd and the restroom is over to like, where like i guess stage right would be and so i use the restroom and paulie specifically said like if i move up to the front don't leave him behind right um no paulie left behind and uh anyway but i go to use the restroom and then i come out of the restroom and i'm just like i can't crawl my way back to that super packed bar area again like i'd be crawling over people like i was just like and like i mentioned it's right by the stage when i come out of the restroom the stage is right there i could just stand free and clear like right next to the stage and get a great side view that was very very close um all of that is to say i felt kind of bad i don't i never i haven't talked to paul you did leave i did leave a paulie behind and he probably just thinks i don't know if i really explained it to him because he had to leave quickly after the show he probably thinks i just abandoned him to go like hang out with my other friends or something and that that was not the case it was just like there was just i'm old luke there was just no way i was going to crawl through that sea of bodies i wouldn't have liked doing that when i was in my 20s but at age 45 as they

say in the sopranos forget about it uh-huh stop remembering that stop remembering that exactly i um i also think for you it's not strictly age related it's that i you're the person that i know who hates inconveniencing other people or getting in their space or bumping into people more than Like I don't know anyone who likes that experience Less than you do nobody loves it Yeah but it's I think it is especially Unpleasant for you and so the Idea of kind of just like Fighting your way back upstream and having To say excuse me excuse me you know excuse me Yeah sorry sorry sorry to like 60 people as you work your way back Is I think I'm surprised you didn't just leave the show You're surprised I went to the show I don't like I mean I'll tell you What you're becoming a real PD USA uh you know head well what do they call him deadhead you're like a like just i mean you've seen he's come through seattle twice and you've seen him twice yeah well i mean i gotta say both

by prompting of hauser who then by the way i hope it's okay for me to say this and of course hauser listens to the show maybe he'll skip this episode um so jay dog aka hauser so i think that he and i saw pd for the first time like for each of us when we saw him at the croc whatever that was six months ago since then it was probably a little bit more than that because since then uh hauser saw uh pd play at some festival down in like the the spring the baseball spring training in arizona there was a little side music festival it was a whole situation right right and then and then like hauser ends up meeting uh pd and hangs out with him a little bit before his set or something so that would have been the second time that hauser saw he obviously told you the story about the hat right oh yeah and he bought a puff uh what's that guys what's the character's name Huff Puffington or whatever I'm blanking on the character The cool Petey character that smokes

This is Jonathan's story to tell But he relayed it to me when I was hanging out With him and Anna in Portland That he basically like got this hat That was an inside Petey USA joke But then he was hanging out with Petey And he started to feel self-conscious About wearing a hat Like he just felt it was a little try hard So he like threw the hat away But then he needed another hat So he had to go out and buy a hat off of a random dad

Oh, I didn't

So he could have a hat to wear That wasn't the hat that he thought was a little too On the nose for hanging out with Petey Puff Sullivan is the character, by the way

I'm going to play this little skit I don't know this This particular bit And I do know Petey, so I know that this will not work At all in audio form But let's try it anyway This is The Legend of Puff Sullivan Part 3 What did they do to you?

They shoved me in a locker and called me inhaler boy. Elementary school is a vacuous hellscape. I can't wait for the sweet release of death. Don't worry, man. High school is right around the corner. Everyone's nice in high school. What's up, fellas? Fuck me sideways. It's Puff Sullivan. Is that the man who smokes cigarettes? Yeah, he's a stallion. Wow. A sweet cigarette-smoking stallion of Central High. King of my heart. Body and soul. God damn it. What? He's just fucking epic. It hurts. I want to be him so bad. What seems to be troubling you, young boy? Bullies, Puff. He's got bad asthma, Puff. He gets bullied at school. Don't sweat it, man. Here, have a cigarette. I'll just leave it there because I don't know where it's going. So that's Puff Sullivan. That paid off. I'm glad. So great. Okay, but I am going somewhere with this. So Hauser and I see Petey at the Croc. I don't think anybody makes any eye contact with Petey. He then meets Petey at this little festival during the spring. Then apparently, again, this is my story to tell, but apparently Hauser was in the crowd, and he believes that Petey made eye contact with him during the show and said hello and gave him like kind of mumbled a hello to Jonathan in the crowd from the stage when we saw him uh in Seattle two nights ago and then Jonathan yesterday drove go to Portland drove down to Portland to see Petey uh in a show again and he was kind of uh somewhat fretting yesterday morning on a text chain saying I don't know Petey recognized me in the show last night and now I'm really worried about like kind of being too much of a peaty head like you know like i told him just try to blend in a little bit i mean i i'd say trust your fears houses yeah i mean you're following the man to multiple states you're wearing a hat you're throwing the hat out because you're worried that it's going to make you look uncool in front of the man i mean it's it's happening it's it's happening your chill has been blown my friend yeah there's no more i mean i have to say if there's somebody uh who uh you know is worth geeking out over i think it's probably this dude is he from chicago or something he's always i feel like he's always wearing bears related stuff yeah i think he is um because and what did kiki i did kiki hernandez play for the white socks before he went to la because in one of his videos i know he's wearing a hernandez jersey as well i think i think he's uh from chicago originally and then as a uh southern la transplant anyway uh that's it yeah i i there okay there's one thing i'm sort of dancing around here that i don't know if we should get into it or not but the two of the last three concerts i went to something happened to me that caused a cringe moment that i know is not that big of a deal but i'm worried that these bands that i like are somewhat ruined for me now and i just need to get over this and i don't know if i can explain it but okay so at the pd show what happened was i'm now separated from basically everybody i'm by the side stage there's a little bit of a breathing

area there that i'm really enjoying and there are some people next to me i don't get a good look at them um they're kind of actually talking behind me really loudly during a a good part of the show and i kind of i kind of gave him a dirty look twice i just like shut up or go to a bar area to have this loud conversation i didn't say anything i just gave him the grumpy old man look twice and then the second time i did it one of the people in that group like kind of broke off from the group and kind of ran up to me and kind of started kind of dancing next to me and then started singing all the lyrics to the song that was going on. I was like, oh, wow, I don't even know who this person was. I didn't get a good look at them. I don't have a sense of gender. I really don't know who this person was, but they just kind of came up to me and quickly kind of got my attention. I'm like saying a lyric in my face, and I couldn't tell if it was almost like kind of a passive aggressive because I was being passive aggressive looking at his friend. But you didn't even register this person's age, gender, appearance. Was it a penguin? I mean, it was eating fish. Did you smell its pee? How was the pee? I do love penguins. They were wearing a tuxedo. No, I know. At first, I thought, I don't know, man. I might have been slightly high. At first, I thought it was a woman. And then the more they kind of stood next to me and danced, I wasn't sure about that. And I just, I didn't want, I don't know. I'm shy. I didn't turn to get a good look at this person but I got the impression that it was a younger person with a lot of energy and in this moment I took this thing to be like I was kind of being grumpy and looking over my shoulder and this person was like I'm totally in my head about this but I almost took it like this person saw me doing that and was like no I'm into this show too dude and like knew every single every single lyric to the song that and this person just suddenly engages and starts like kind of singing this is a really good part of the show at some point you know i'm not a big dancer i'm not a mosher i don't know if you know that but you know i like to rock out in my own private way so i'm kind of bouncing along as the show goes on you know kind of getting into various grooves um and then here's the here's the real cringe part all of that is fine i'm actually kind of like i'm enjoying this person's vibe and then at one point during another song this person is kind of it's like i can't remember what the song is but it's one that's pretty well known um and oh i think it's don't tell the boys which is kind of one of the big songs off of his record and a bunch of people in the crowd are singing all of the lyrics now i don't know all of the lyrics but this person who's standing next to me and who's kind of vibing out turns me at one point and like wants to sing one of the lyrics with me sort of or is just doing that thing where they're just like singing the lyrics to everybody around them and bopping around and like i just totally fell down on the job like i just i wasn't expecting it and i felt

Thank you.

like the biggest dork in the world because everybody was doing a sing-along this person was trying to engage me to do a sing-along did you forget the lyrics or did you just get nervous and kind of shut down i it all happened so fast luke i don't really know i wasn't really singing along anyway i don't know all the lyrics to that song and it wasn't even the chorus but it was just in that one moment i felt like a cool person a young cool person was trying to engage with me and i just stared at them again it was dark and i still don't know what they look like all i know is kind of long dark curlyish hair kind of like brownish area like honestly my eyesight is really bad too um and you know i'm just bad at making eye contact but there was just this moment where this person was like let's sing this song together and i just looked and then the person disengaged i was like okay that's fine i don't have to live with that person i don't even know who they are i literally wouldn't recognize them on the street i just wish i was cooler in that moment and it reminded me of a few nights earlier when i was at the pavement show luke you know one of the most famous one of the most famous like lyrics of pavement that you and i will quote all the time is what about the voice of getty lee how did it get so high i wonder if he does he speak like an ordinary guy i know him and he does he does during that part and that's like with the music that's like a break in the music i think and it's just like it's the most famous thing that everybody would shout out right and i paulie turned to me during that part and i somehow messed up those lyrics it's like that thing where you're driving along in your car and you know the song but then you sing the wrong verse or you sing the wrong lyrics and you're like boy i'm glad i'm alone for that it's not a big deal but you're just glad nobody else is in the car to hear you miff the lyrics and i missed those lyrics and i don't know if i'll ever be able to hear that song again without feeling really cringe oh i'm sorry that that's now part of

your experience with that song because that song is so good right i will tell you this i definitely do not know the lyrics to songs the way i think i know the lyrics to songs and this is laid bare when i'm in the car with becca or even like i told you that you know we do this um uh party at her uh family's kind of house in salem because they have this big field that's called the sports field and you we camp out there and her brothers are both djs and so they'll bring out a legit audio setup uh for karaoke and stuff and i will just be singing along and just horribly wrong with the lyrics and i and i don't even realize it until i'm like actually my my what i'm saying is being put right next to what the actual lyrics are then i realize god i am off about most of this stuff i will do a move in the car i don't know if you've ever done this where i'll be singing the wrong lyric and then realize it's the wrong lyric and then this is with like Becca in the car and then I'll try to change it on the fly to be the right lyric and hope she didn't notice.

Right. And nobody cares, but like it just feels so deeply embarrassing in the moment. Right. What about the voice of Gary, Eddie Lee? How did he get so lie? I'm going to make the name of today's show. What about the voice of Gary Lee?

Can we start a pavement cover band where we do their songs? But everything's just off one clip.

You know what? I got to say, in all seriousness, you and Genevieve both in a private conversation off air one time. I like to spill all your beans. No, I remember when we were all hanging out like years and years ago. I think we were newer friends. And you guys both said that you have something in common. You guys have a lot of things in common. Your love for me being a person. We're both physically attracted to you. Right, exactly. Well, you are. No. But you both said that, like, when you have an embarrassing moment in your life, the best way to sort of cure the cringy aftertaste of that is to turn it into a story that you tell, not necessarily on a podcast, although I think that was the case with you at the time. But just like even Genevieve, just in her, in her, if she does something really embarrassing, like we were talking a while back about the time that she walked in on a famous person's son using the bathroom. Like the way you deal with that embarrassing moment is you just turn it into a story and you tell everybody about it and you laugh about it and it just eases the pain. And I never really felt that way before, although having this conversation with you on TBTL and now having a show title potentially be what about the voice of Gary Lee sort of makes that all sort of makes it all worthwhile. And I don't feel quite as bad as I did. I've been hanging. You're welcome. I've been hanging out to that pavement thing. When was that show like a week and a half ago? I've been kind of hanging on to that.

Oh, well, I'm happy to be part of the process of exercising that demon. And I saw a photo, I think, on Instagram or something of the set list from Pavement's show in Minnesota, where I think our friend the Stewbot was in attendance. And it was just like my dream Pavement playlist. Like, I just couldn't believe how great the songs were on. on that list and that made me uh kind of sad that i didn't uh go see i assume they came through

portland as well and i didn't go see them there were some songs that i kind of didn't even recognize and i think what they might have been is um because you know pavement isn't touring on a new album or anything but i think the second song they played was that song that was like a bonus track on like the re-release of slanted and enchanted or or crooked rain or something And then, for some reason, it just became really popular on Spotify. Do you remember we talked about this? And, like, the number one song by Pavement on Spotify was something that, like, our generation didn't really know that well. I think it's, like, Harness Your Hopes or something, right? Yes, exactly. And so that was the second song they played. And I knew that one because of that conversation and because it's now on my playlist or whatever. And I think they might have done that to a couple of other songs because there were a couple of other songs in there where I was like, I don't think I know this song. But I also know that you don't have a new album out that I haven't heard

Yeah, I'm looking at this list In Minnesota, they played Major Leagues Cut Your Hair Shady Lane, Spit on a Stranger Gold Sounds, Box Elder Oh, they didn't Range Life Oh, this is a much better playlist than what we got Stop Breathing, and then the encore was Harness Your Hopes, Trigger Cut, Starlings of the Slipstream Jesus Christ

No, I gotta say I know that we had one listener who wrote in And said he was at the show as well And maybe he remembers it differently But that is a I do not They did not play Box Elder They didn't play a lot of those songs Some of them But I think we got a lesser playlist

They really brought their all for Minnesota They knew Stu was going to be there Yeah, wow, I'm kind of jealous I know, right? Well, actually, that makes me Now, thank you, Andrew Now I feel less bad about missing them Because I assumed that this was just the playlist They were doing everywhere But if they were mixing it up Then I feel less bad Because I mean I feel like Stephen Malcolm Seems like the kind of person Who would intentionally play His worst songs Just because he felt like it someday I think I told you Remember those This is Why am I slandering The lead singer Of one of my favorite bands Over a kind of hearsay story But I think I was reading An interview with the guy Who put away those Or put those LaBlogotech shows together The takeaway shows Oh yeah Kind of the first that I remember anyway Was like the very early era of that idea Of getting a band or a singer to play their song In kind of an interesting context Like in the back of a taxi cab Or, you know, on a roof or whatever Just like, we're going to get you playing your music But you're not going to be playing it on a stage You're going to be doing it somewhere unusual And I think he said the only person Who was ever rude to him was Stephen Malcolm

Oh, really? That's interesting

Of the like hundreds and hundreds of people That he had you know videoed for this series And I was like that's for some reason checks out

For me I don't know why you know as weird As my those friends I was visiting in Bend Oregon last week Like they're just pals with him Now because but just because Their kids go to school together or something Yeah went to the same grade school or something Because I said oh I went to see Pavement I kind of forgot that he's like Oh yeah well you know I know Steve I was like oh I guess so

Don't tell them that I slandered him because I still would like to get him On Livewire at some point

I also don't know how deep that relation like when they say that they're friends. I don't know if that means they've been at some functions together. I know that I know that my friend Ben did get to see Milkmas like Milkmas just like I think just pulled out a guitar at a party or maybe it was planned to play like a little set at like a small house party. So that's definitely access. That's definitely cool. But I don't know if Ben could just call him up and be like, hey, get me tickets to your show. I kind of doubt that.

uh i would uh be very excited to be at a at a small function where steve malchemist just starts playing the guitar yeah that would be a big deal to me very few i think i'd feel cringy

um i've been using that word a lot but like i'm not the type of guy who is excited when i'm at in a like at a party and somebody pulls out a guitar i know for some people that's where the party gets good for me that's where the party ends actually that's when i go home usually i'm like oh you have a guitar that you're most hoping they don't play 99 bottles of beer on the wall um but i don't know i'm not like somebody for us you know in a small group like sing-along kind of thing i just feel very deeply uncomfortable um but i i think steve and malcolm this would be one of the few people that i would trust to do it in a way that i would not feel uncomfortable i

would just be super psyched about it he also doesn't really appear to be aging which feels no fair to me because i appear very much to be aging rapidly i don't know all right let's uh take a quick break when we come back i want to talk about this um space project which was very cool and then also how we can get more listeners to tvtl andrew if apm is willing to spend 10 million dollars for the low low price of 10 million dollars even we at tbtl could maybe get more unique listeners well their track record makes me think they will spend that on us all right we'll do that in a moment here on tbtl hey let's thank some daily donors these are the generous folks making today's episode possible with their support folks like marissa collins in columbia maryland thank you marissa also we got to thank wolfgang weber of san francisco california maybe it's wolfgang weber i don't know how traditional wolfie goes with that but um thank you wolfgang we really appreciate it i know for a fact it's not wolfie that's the one thing that i know there's a guy on the howard Stern show. One of the staffers, his name is they call him Wolfie. Yeah. So I think that's where that came from. It's a good nickname honestly. So Wolfgang, if you don't go by Wolfie, I would consider it. I bet it's come up a time or two for Wolfgang. Probably. Thanks also to Madeline Kanai in Chandler, New Jersey. I was thinking it was going to be Chandler, Arizona but no, it's Chandler, New Jersey. Oh, I don't know about either of those Chandlers. Thanks to Linda Critchfield as well in Lancaster, California Dorothy Crutcher Is checking in from Culver City, California I lived there once For about five months Was that where your Temporary housing was, where you had a French Roommate or something? That's exactly right I rented a room In an Airbnb in an apartment in Culver City Culver City will never Be the same to me now that the tattletale Is gone Yeah And just I think I told you Back when this happened But I actually did a quick Walkthrough of the new place And it is So much worse Than I could have even imagined Yeah You mentioned that Like just It's not even like Oh well There's just a new owner It's Or whatever They changed a few things It's like They took all of the charm Out of it And just turned it into The lamest place Ever Mm-hmm I want to see All of my pimples I want the lighting in here To be garish I think the two toilet plungers, I think the two plungers really sums it up.

Margaret Finnegan is in Redford, Michigan, and is also helping keep TBTL going today. Thanks to all of our donors today for making TBTL happen. Couldn't be here without you. Thank you, baby. Hello and welcome to Top Story. The DART project is being hailed as a big success. This was NASA's project to crash a spacecraft. DART stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test. They launched this spacecraft in November and then raced it around the sun for 10 months as it was chasing its target, which was a small space rock known as Demorphis, which is 7 million miles from Earth. By the way, I'm reading in The New York Times A piece by Kenneth Chang And they did it They crashed this Spacecraft into Dimorphis, which was going 14,000 Miles per hour That's the thing, I can't My brain is not able to really Wrap itself around the idea that Things in space are going 14,000 Miles an hour Yeah, me too Because there's no reference point for it There's no sound, right, in space It's like you could tell me that the thing is going a million miles an hour, or you could tell me it's going one mile an hour, and I'd be like, I guess that probably is what's happening. Yeah, but yeah, like 14,000 versus a million. Like, there's a huge gap there, but honestly, I wouldn't be able to tell, right? Like, they'd both be very – doesn't Sammy Hagar have a song, I Can't Drive, 14,000? Mm-hmm. Sorry, that's a terrible show. That was the original title, and the A&R folks said it's just not relatable. Yes, no. He's like, what about 55? They're like, okay. Also, I don't even think... Is the speed limit 55 anywhere anymore? Yeah, no. Well, I think there is a speed... Yeah, and it's like kind of smaller highways. Have I told you about Strodes yet? We'll talk about Strodes another day. We're in the middle of space talk. No, let's take a moment to talk about Strodes. What is that? It's pretty wonky. But I was reading an article. I heard the writer of this article interviewed on, I think, Slate's political gab fest a few months ago. And I'm sorry that I don't remember her name or her publication. I want to say Vox, though. She may have been a penguin. It might have been a penguin. I think she was dancing next to me at the Petey concert. No, but it was. interesting article i think the name of the article was something like the most dangerous road in america or the most dangerous street in america and it's about the um it's about roads that are basically like aurora up where i live right only like almost extreme examples of it like roads that are not highways but have many lanes and there's this one in florida that's like the uber example of this where it's like three lanes of traffic going one way three lanes going

the other way two turn lanes at one point and maybe a middle lane so it's just like this huge like highway but it's not a highway it's still a place where there are businesses and there are

neighborhoods around it and a lot of turns you know and a lot of like cross sections yes intersections yeah yeah right because of course you know freeways work because no one's trying

to take a right every two seconds kind of thing exactly and so one of the people in this article That was like this article did a really good examination of these really dangerous places where there are so many deaths, often pedestrian deaths, but sometimes just, you know, to to, you know, people who are in cars, but often pedestrian deaths. And it gets into all of the reasons why we're building these things. And the one person coined the term strode, which is you have streets, which are a little bit like a destination, right? You live on a street. Your neighbor lives down the street. You might have a shop on a street. It's a place where, yes, you can drive and walk, but it's a place to be. Then you have roads, which are just to get you from point A to point B, right? And maybe a highway would be a road or a country road, but you don't have a bunch of businesses dotted along the side of it. And a strode is something like Aurora or these other roads that we're talking about where you have a lot of pedestrian traffic because you have stores all over the place. Sometimes it's a Walmart or whatnot. But you also have these things going through communities where typically you have a lower income level. So people might be less likely to have cars or a two car family or something. So you're going to have more and more pedestrians around these areas. But also you just have this traffic where people are just trying to fly by at like 45 miles an hour as fast as they can, which I think we've all been guilty of at some point or another. And it's just like as the as the can't remember what the advocacy group that came up with this study is called, but it's like dangerous by design. Like they were saying when somebody dies on these roads, we have to stop calling them accidents because they're not accidents. It's like designed to be dangerous and we need to cut down on these types of urban design. So that's what a strode is. Ever since I read this article, I can't – and I told Genevieve about it. Like we're just obsessed with strodes.

I'm talking about strodes all the time now. I'd never thought of that, but that makes a lot of sense. Having grown up, you know, literally one house off of Aurora Avenue. Yeah. And spending – actually, you know what? i was thinking about this the other day on my jog because i have a very very intense and i think actually overly developed fear of being hit by a car oh like when i'm jogging or not so much when i'm walking but i hate jogging along like a country road where you know i could somebody could just be looking down at their phone and then their truck could kind of go into the off to the shoulder and and you know hit me or whatever and i think it's because when i was a kid i was crossing aurora avenue and uh i think i've told the story a few times but like basically there was two lanes of traffic that had come to a complete stop and so i was kind of weaving my way through that traffic but what i didn't realize was the third lane was wide open and a car came was a car was going like 60 or 70 in that third lane as i stepped into it oh my god And I do not know this story Yeah I was probably I don't know I was probably like 15 or 16 It was right by that Texaco Where Green Lake Way kind of It's basically if you were coming from Downtown Seattle and you're driving north On Aurora You could take a right and get onto Green Lake Way Or you could keep going straight and you'd keep shooting up Aurora It was right at that kind of area And I was jaywalking by the way So it was kind of on me But I step into the Third empty i think is an empty lane of traffic and i look to my right and a car is like five feet from me and it's going like 60 miles an hour and i jumped in the air i just remember having the thought i need to be in the air so that when it hits me i'll roll over the car as opposed to getting caught under it so i jump and as i'm jumping i sort of take one big step and do a leap and then And the car also manages to kind of swerve. So you sort of leap backwards, Luke?

What's that?

When you say you leap, do you sort of leap backwards? No, forward. Like, I'm basically, I can't go backwards because the car is too close to me. And so what I'm trying to do is get airborne so that when it hits me, I'll like do a roll on the hood as opposed to.

you know, get hit, you know, in my hip or something or whatever. This is what's going through my mind. Somehow the combination of my leaping and the car kind of doing enough of a swerve, I end up clearing the entire hood of the car. And I hit my hand on the antenna and I land safely on the other side of the car, untouched, like unhurt. And everyone like stops and people are getting out there like, are you, because I mean, I did end up on the ground. But I basically sort of jumped over the hood of the car. more or less and i i'm just i sort of get up and everyone's like are you okay and i'm like yeah i'm fine i'm totally fine and then i just walk i'm going to my friend peter williams's house he lived by there and i'm just walking i'm like wow that was crazy and then about five minutes later when i get to his house i just start uncontrollably shaking like some weird all the adrenaline response like in the moment i didn't i didn't freak out i i just was like i was almost like hey that was kind of boss like i sort of jumped over a car's hood that was cool but then when that adrenaline left i was wrecked i mean it was so i was like just fun like physically upset by what had just happened yeah and i think i think that went into my brain somewhere and has for the rest of my life made me especially afraid of getting hit by a car did the car that almost hit you did the driver of that car stop yes they did i mean i felt kind of bad for them because like They weren't really Doing anything Unsafe or illegal I was the one who emerged I'm jaywalking between cars So they stopped And they were like are you okay They were probably pretty freaked out Because they slammed on their brakes And the car swerved The combination of the movement of their car And me jumping Somehow I basically jumped diagonally Across the hood of the car Now was that car a Dodge Dart? i would have remembered that because of course we had a dodge dart oh you did the only reason i've asked is i was trying to segue you back into space talk i wasn't sure if we needed that yeah we we had a dodge dart that was mostly bondo uh growing up i believe that was the same car that landed that car landed my parents in hot water with child protective services oh really i tell you this story i don't think so that we had a two-door and my i think it was my mom was trying To get my sister Liz out of the back Of the car she was a baby And she kind of grabbed her by the arm I mean I don't think this was a violent action I think she was just Trying to literally be like help her out of the car In the process of trying to Pull her out of the back of this two door Dodge dart she dislocated My sister's like elbow So they went to the emergency Room but you know dislocated elbow on a Child is commonly associated with You know abuse And so I remember them being There for like 10 hours being interviewed by cps oh my god because of suspicion around i mean the irony is they were beating us i mean we were

being spanked just not no one was getting their arm dislocated over the corporal punishment in my household right right right wow i don't think i knew either one of those stories well back to darts uh as in this project um this is is pretty amazing what they were able to do of course the idea is they wanted to figure out if an asteroid is coming towards earth and it could do damage to earth do we have the capability to bonk into it with something and we do apparently now this is interesting up until five minutes before impact um uh what is i'm sorry let me read the previous paragraph what's even more impressive is that darts camera spotted dimorphous that's the asteroid for the first time a little more than an hour before impact dimorphous orbits a larger asteroid didymus and until then the smaller asteroid was lost in the glare of the larger object darts navigation system then shifted its gaze towards the smaller asteroid just think about what we are capable of as human beings we shoot this rocket up it circles the sun 10 times and then because we have just figured out where exactly this tiny asteroid is going to be in space and time it then can just go there and intersect with it even though it doesn't even see it until an hour before it gets like when it's basically within within crashing distance of this thing i cannot believe we're able to pull this kind of shit off well it's like running a route luke you know you just trust that your receiver's gonna be there at the right moment it was a back it was a back shoulder throw yeah the thing is you honestly can't even fault dimorphous that coverage i mean that coverage was exactly where you went dimorphous to be right exactly they just nasa just threw it open you know what i mean they just created that play absolutely yeah um during the last five minutes people in the control room were spectators like everyone watching the stream of photographs of dimorphous and then it was over initial analysis indicated that the spacecraft hit within about 50 feet of the target which is incredible so it would what do you mean it hit within 50 feet it hit the target did it not well it hit the asteroid but on the the asteroid the size of a football field and they wanted to

hit a specific part of the football field and they were within 50 feet of the specific target wow yeah that is incredible and it's also it i i'm not even joking when i say this although it's going to be the most ridiculous thing i say all day but it's especially fun knowing that it was practice right like they need i'm not saying that i'm not like trying to do some radio hot take of just like oh these guys just want to play with their toys or whatever uh i don't know if anybody's offering that hot take today um but like it is it served a purpose but also knowing that we were doing this not because we had the existential threat of an actual meteor bearing down on us

yeah no it actually like no represents some sort of forethought on our part as a country and i think there's also an international space agency that's involved in this project to basically go okay we they think that a large asteroid the kind that killed the dinosaurs i saw a lot of people on twitter saying this one's for the dinosaurs by the way um it's payback from this planet like i think those those sorts of we've looked out in space and we don't see anything that's as large as say the asteroid that that hit the earth and change the climate so that the dinosaurs were going to die um but there are a lot of smaller ones that are out there that that could pop up and so yeah as opposed to the you know the the movie version of this where like bruce willis and billy bob thornton have to fight over um you know live tyler's affection i think i'm blending

by the way deep impact in armageddon yeah but uh it's ben affleck i think i only know that because i've never i've never even seen that movie but i caught the beginning of it one time and i was again being the annoying feminist that i am i was so irritated by the opening of like bruce willis is like chasing some guy around an oil rig ben affleck with a shotgun because how dare you sleep with my daughter like that overprotective dad shit well uh the good news is like you said

we're doing this kind of um you know in advance of actually having to you know like have it be life and death for us and i noticed one thing that nasa kept saying was because people are because we're basically morons i mean some of us are able to fly a rocket ship into within 50 feet of a target on an asteroid but the rest of us are morons and they had to keep saying this thing poses no threat to human life because if most people what they know about this whole thing is what they've seen in those movies and if they heard about us crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid they would assume that it was because it was about to you know crash into planet earth yeah now another another thought that they've i don't know if they're ever going to do this but i thought this was kind of interesting one theory for redirecting an asteroid that uh was you know on target for the earth would be painting one side of it have you heard about this no what do you mean you paint it i think white and then it i don't know if it heats it up differently or if it somehow interacts differently with the with the sun in some way but one of the theories is that you might be able to move an asteroid off of its problematic trajectory by painting part of it

is it just the weight because i mean that's a fascinating thing that you learn in the boeing tour um you know when they're when they're making these massive planes like one coat of paint on the airplane adds weight to it and so they need to use very special paint and that's why i think we have people who are going to know more about this than me certainly in our audience but i think that that's one of the reasons why a lot of airplanes or the predominant airplane color is white is because it has less pigmentation or less pigment which means um it's not as heavy

of a paint this is from wired magazine in 2013 how to deflect killer asteroids with spray paint a fresh paint job might be all that's needed to prevent a giant asteroid from raining destruction upon our planet though strange sounding the strategy uh would make use of a real world phenomenon known as the yarkovsky effect named for the russian engineer who discovered it in 1902 the effect results from the fact that asteroids heat up as they bask in the sun's light a coat the coat of paint would be very thin almost like saran wrap um if we push it in the right direction we can get the asteroid to cease crossing earth's orbit and completely eliminate the threat

hmm so there you go it didn't really explain the what the process is so it has to do with the heat and then the the changing of the heat changes the direction of the effect yeah the effect results

from the fact that asteroids heat up as they bask in the sun's light so yeah you're right though it doesn't fully answer the question i won't bore people with me trying to read this article on the fly but i'm just saying we the good news is we have options i mean the pressure rocket into it

and we also paint it right and the real good news is that i was right about that mcdonald's commercial that That's, I think, the big takeaway from today's show. Yeah, who's writing about that? Who's talking about iHeartRadio buying millions of downloads effectively? Well, our friend Camaro Kev, who sent us this article today, what did he say? Should we scrape some money together, or are you guys already doing this? It's like, you greatly overestimate the listenership of this show, Camaro Kev. There was an interesting piece in Bloomberg, actually, let's see here, written by Ashley Carmen uh podcasters are buying millions of listeners through mobile game ads players in mobile games trigger downloads of shows no one may be hearing for more than seconds and uh there is this company called June that uh they're what they do is they basically get you unique listeners if you're iHeartRadio or whomever and then you can turn around and charge advertisers more because you can say we have six million unique listeners and the way this company June apparently is achieving this is by putting at like ads in games where if you click on this thing you get some free uh one of the game is called subway surfers and uh if you if you click on this thing you get some i don't know what some free thing in the game i don't know if you get more like credits or money or whatever it is but by clicking on it so as to get your reward in the game you're also authorizing them to auto start auto downloading their podcast to your phone and it's just kind of in the

background you're not actually signed up via one of your podcast apps like the next time you open up your app you won't be subscribed to bob's podcast or whatever it's just something that downloads an episode downloads in the background right if i'm understanding this correctly and then it counts as a download it auto plays auto plays an episode for seconds so that they get the credit yeah so in other words it's not signing you up for things it's just in the background it's I mean, it's just like the I mean, in the earliest not earliest, but the earlier days of mainstream Internet, like didn't we have the same thing where people were were claiming all kinds of clicks that were just like simply not actually happening on like banner ads and stuff? Isn't that one of the reasons why online advertising was so devalued was because they just had like these these weird bots that were just like you could buy something that would click on a bunch of banner ads. and then people would say hey look we can sell you this ad millions of people are clicking on it but it was just like nobody was actually clicking on it well the problem we were having on tbtl

which i guess was a good problem to have in the day because it boosted our confidence was our system that was telling us how many downloads we were getting was it didn't understand basically that like when someone's listening to the show on their phone imagine that the actual audio file is somewhere in like a bank and when you know you listen to this show all it is is you're using a one like whether it's stitcher itunes apple music what have you it's just pointing your phone towards where this audio lives and then that and if you go listen it's a download or a listen but the problem was our system when people's phones were buffering so if your your phone might check in with the file many times throughout the listening experience because it's trying to get a few seconds ahead so i'm describing this very inartfully but Like the idea is that, you know, if you're if you lose your connection a little bit, the audio experience will be uninterrupted because it's constantly buffering and it's checking in with the file. And every time the phone would do that, we were getting a download. And we were being told we were getting like two million downloads on some episodes. And I was really ready to declare us the most popular show on planet Earth.

Didn't it also have something to do with like being mobile and then pinging off of various cell phone servers as well? Was that part of it? That's serious. You're thinking of Adnan Syed. i certainly did that i thought that that was another issue with podcasts back in the day

but maybe that wasn't part of the tbtl it was one of those things where i knew i just i was like there's no way that we have two million people listening like i i can i know most of the listeners personally at this point like it was like something is off but i didn't really want to question it because it felt kind of cool to be you know feeling like we were reaching such a wide group of people basically as the measurement devices have become better um for podcasts our listeners have gone down like yeah every time we measure it more carefully we realize we have fewer listeners than we thought iheart radio which calls itself the number one podcast publisher globally uh spent 10 million dollars over the past four years doing this system which procured them about six million unique listens per month but they're not actual listens either right it's just right you're a scam yeah okay yeah it's a i mean it's very unlikely that somebody who's trying to play subway surfer is going to hear one second of whatever random iheart podcast and then become a fan of it for that so yeah it's not really i don't think it's a good faith attempt to get listeners it's just a way of being able to charge out

advertisers more and it's an interesting business model because i wonder what the roi on that has been like i wonder for the 10 million they spent how much they've been able to charge i mean

presumably they've made they've made money on this yeah i um when i first saw your headline in the show she because i hadn't read this article when camaro sent it to us um so i didn't know what the i didn't realize these were the same article i thought that this was going to be something like i think a couple of weeks ago i was telling you that like games like grand theft auto where you're driving around in a car like they had and again i played a version that was like probably 10 or 15 years old now um but like you're driving around in your car and there's like i don't know 10 or 15 radio stations that you can scroll through just like a real car and they play real music but then have like fake ads and fake announcers in them and i thought that like oh what gamers are doing is like putting in in open world games like that just make podcasts available so that like while you're you could listen to tbtl while you're while you're stealing cars or whatever which is probably not on brand for us but like that i think would be a brilliant idea yeah that's

actually a really that's a really good idea i wonder if anyone's done that is there is there a game out there there's gotta be or is there a game where you podcast oh my god you're right you know what i mean because like you're doing a pressure washer game i'm trying to learn how to play trombone yeah basically any kind of mundane activity has now been turned into a video game is there a video game where you basically like launch and do a podcast and that's the that's the game oh god probably um i i feel like i have to close the loop on this uh chess story because i i i talked about anal beads at the beginning of the show and it's checkoffs anal beads andrew if you mention them at the beginning of the show and you don't get to the story it's also a bit of a um red herring actually so uh have you been following any of this with magnus carlson and um this uh a guy named uh let's see uh why can't i find his name right here his last name is neiman uh hans neiman uh magnus carlson has accused this guy hans neiman of cheating at chess and that which is a it's a pretty uh a big allegation to make him public i don't know anything about chess I literally don't know how to play chess I don't understand the rules of

chess do you know how to play chess I know how to play chess I'm not good at it but I was in chess club for a minute in eighth grade I still have my chess board but I know I know how the pieces move you know but like that's about my skill level but um yeah now I read and this is why I'm a little bit bummed I saw a chess scandal uh this weekend or something on my phone I'm like oh this will be a good tbtl story and whatever version was fed to me was the driest most boring version I think think it was from the BBC left out the anal beads yeah there was none of that and it was like it was all like kind of like it wasn't even speculation because nobody they it seemed like everybody was implying there could be some cheating but nobody said how the cheating was being done or what the allegations were and the the guy who's supposedly accusing this other guy is just sort of being like kind of he said well we might speak out on that later but for now I can't say anything and the only thing I know is this guy who is I guess being accused of cheating does admit to cheating as a chess playing child is this the did you pick up on this too at age 12 and 16 he said that he cheated

that's all i remember um he yeah he he admitted to having cheated in the past now by the way this guy's only 19 years old this hans neiman oh okay cheating as a child it wasn't that long ago like

that he was that age which is a little sus i thought he was like my age i just assumed okay

magnus carlson has called him out for cheating because basically um this guy is not as good at chess i mean he's a grand master this hans neiman but he's not as good at chess as like magnus carlson's the number one in the world and yet he has been like he was sort of outmaneuvering him in this way and then magnus carlson was upset because he basically said this guy didn't even look like he was paying attention to the chessboard during critical moments he didn't seem tense to me and he was making moves that like somebody at his level wouldn't know how to make therefore i'm assuming he's cheating he's accused by some of this is hans nieman of using a vibrating remotely controlled sex toy to gain an advantage over carlson by getting an accomplice to buzz the device to guide him into making better moves here's what doesn't make sense to me about that

Why wouldn't the person with the device Just be playing chess Because they would be using AI Oh they're using So in other words it's not like just a better chess Player that is Like whispering in the ear like Oh I can never remember what's the story That Roxanne is based on Cyrano de Bergerac Yeah they're not de Bergerac-ing this It's like they're using a computer and then buzzing the answers

Yeah somebody is Yes.

That's my understanding, would be that they would be using some kind of program, some kind of AI program or whatever, to analyze what the absolute best play would be. And then they're buzzing Hans Niemann's butthole. Would you say they're analyzing it or analyzing it?

Oh, come on. We're better than that. Analyze that.

It's not that kind of show. It really isn't. He has denied that, by the way. And Hans Niemann has said he will play naked if he needs to, to prove that he is not getting advice by way of his bunghole. Ooh, and just like that, chess got more popular. Right? I ended up kind of doing a bit of a deep dive on this this morning, and I ended up on various chess websites, which, you know, if you're ever having trouble falling asleep, I'd recommend various chess websites. but um i was reading this one person who was like themselves a unbelievably talented chess player who then went on to get a uh graduate degree in mathematics from oxford so a very like data savvy person who analyzed every single game that this hans nieman has played and like the kind of strategies that he uses etc like that he's played for the past whatever two years and he actually said he didn't see any evidence of cheating like there's no like they didn't catch this guy Hans Niemann with anything it's just basically saying he couldn't he shouldn't be this good and he has admitted cheating in the past ergo he must be yeah cheating yeah and the person who

lost this or I shouldn't even say lost this match isn't the guy who's making the accusations didn't he like just stand up and like leave early in a match like he yeah he played I think like two

Moves or something against Hans Neiman and then he just got up and Walked away which was like a huge scandal In chess that like never happens yeah but the Interesting part is Magnus Carlsen Ended up winning that tournament anyway So he basically I would imagine Forfeited his first match to this guy But then this guy ended up Hans Ended up losing to someone else later And Magnus Carlsen came in through the whatever Losers bracket and he won the whole tournament

That's interesting so yeah so he's He's good he probably is yeah he'll be

Yeah, I was really interested to find how physically taxing playing chess is like these guys are burning sometimes like there was one chess player who would sometimes lose 10 pounds over the course of a weekend playing chess because the amount of concentration, the calories that you burn concentrating heavily are pretty significant. And this guy Magnus Carlsen has like Trained with like soccer teams In Denmark where he's from and he's like Like he treats this like it's a Physical sport this chess playing And that was part of why he thinks that this other Guy Hans Niemann was cheating because Hans Niemann was Barely breaking a sweat

And he was just eating Fritos at the chess board Which nobody really And he kept saying ooh explicit

And then And then he would just make like A really amazing He'd go, ooh, and then he would just, like, pull an insane move. Oh, explicit. Right. Ooh.

Now, not to take the fun out of this, but if you were using a device like that, even if the device was made for pleasure, you wouldn't necessarily need that in the pleasure center. You know what I mean? Like, he wouldn't have to wear it up there. He could just have it taped to his leg or something. I guess that's a good point, but why not have fun?

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 after he won the match everybody wanted to rip

hans nieman's shirt off but he was like no no no no my wife doesn't want me to be shirtless on tv

yeah and i got a new tattoo i got a new tattoo i'm embarrassed of no no no leave this on yeah all right let's not talk about baseball i can't talk about baseball luke i will here's what i'm to talk here's what i'm gonna say about baseball actually no people don't like me talking about baseball people don't like like me talking about my dreams i just assume i just assume last night the dreams that i had were they weren't really dreams you're all just kind of vague notions of those kind of dreams but all of them took place with me talking about the mariners with other people on twitter because i was doing that last night like last night was just one of those days where everybody who's a mariners fan who's on twitter just had to bleed openly and be there for each other and so i was reading a lot of that and last night whatever dreams i had like literal people that i know only online from their handles were like kind of appearing in my dreams and we were talking about the mariners in some fashion in my dreams that's how that's how bad it is right

now i'm just emotionally distancing myself until the postseason which i don't think is necessarily a great strategy, but I'm just relying on Baltimore to lose enough games that we can limp into the playoffs.

And again, people who know what we're talking about.

about know what we're talking about we can move on here I'm not going to try to explain everything but I will say the most because all you can do at this point is laugh and cry at the same time oh and eat your feelings actually there's a lot of things you can do yeah no we yeah no um but the best thing I saw online uh this guy Joe Vieira who I follow he's one of my favorite follows and he's a big Mariners fan um he just he just tweeted out something like the Mariners heading into the postseason and it was a gif of do you remember either the simpsons movie or a simpsons episode homer somebody put like a boot on homer's car on the wheel of his car but he just drives it away

anyway it's destroying like the whatever part of his car yeah the entire fender and undercarriage

he's just like stepping on the gas as the car just like lurches forward with the boot on it and it's just like yep the mariners heading into the postseason i couldn't think of a better

uh visual representation of of what is happening right now but um i know it's it's brutal i think

we have to keep reminding ourselves though that only because of their amazing success a while ago are we in a position where we can stink this badly and still probably go to the

postseason yeah and it just it's just it's kind of demoralizing too we we we could still be in the mix for a better place in the wild card race but anyway um here let me play hey look i have a Voicemail here from Erica that is Labeled bad driving I don't read oh I know oh Okay so this is Erica who Called into the show a couple of weeks ago And told a story about finding money In a closet she worked for a Company that would like kind of repaint Apartments and apartment Complexes like as as people moved In and out and so Erica found a bunch of money in a closet That she was cleaning out and painting and Turned it in and some Something sketchy ended up happening with that money but anyway erica has called back with another story here related to that same job but nothing to do with money here it's about bad driving now i don't know what you said to spark this memory i think it might have had to do with you renting a giant like you you rented a car but they gave you a giant suv instead and just like we're talking about people who shouldn't you know who can't drive vehicles that big but insist on it anyway well here's erica what is happening

y'all this is erica from arlington washington again i just wanted to tell about a time that maybe somebody who is driving a large vehicle should not be driving a large vehicle um i worked for a painting company we painted apartments and homes when they were being turned over people moving in and out my boss was uh he could not see very well and well enough to drive questionably but we were at an apartment complex and it had like tiered landscaping so the apartments were like at different levels so there were lower ones and higher ones so we were at a building and needed to move to another building so he's driving along and you would think you know the smallest person always gets stuck in the middle right but I always insisted to sit by the door I just had a feeling that I could make an easy escape if I needed to and on this day he was driving along and he thought he saw like a slope to drive down but he was not sure so he slowly approached the slopes while all of us were in the back seat of the truck couldn't really see anything and he just slowly slowly approaches and then thump it was a cliff he had driven his front tires like we kind of petered down and I was like nope I'm out I just opened up the back door and hopped out um and the truck was it was stuck um it only teetered for a minute and then so the rest of the guys like hopped out and started jumping on the bed of the truck while he had it in reverse and miraculously they were I I don't even know how we're able to get it back up on the road and driving again. But I always sat by the door from then on out.

So I could sort of picture like he's the rear wheels maybe aren't quite touching the ground, but he's got it in reverse. So the guys get out and they start jumping using their weight in the back of the bed to get those wheels to touch the ground so he can get it off the edge of this cliff area, as Erica describes it. Here's the thing that here's the thing I'm thinking, though, and I'm probably picturing this way too cartoonish and like how you'd see it in a movie. But like, Erica, was there a moment where you thought if I get out of here, I will upset the balance of this truck and all of my coworkers will just go careening down with the truck? You know what I mean? Like maybe we needed that weight back there. Like in the movie, a butterfly lands.

the hood and then the whole thing goes over the edge exactly or the the driver just looks down and suddenly realizes there's no ground below him and then he falls but um yeah doesn't sound

like erica was um really concerned with the overall well-being of her colleagues no she's

wanted to get the hell out of there yeah erica by the way is um the daughter of listener maggie maggie from the middle shelf and uh i got a text message after erica told her last story about finding this money and then turning it into a property manager who then disappeared with the money and then was fired and there's some sketchiness around it maggie texted the tbtl phone line that night and said i'm erica's mother and i'd never heard that story before and i was like yeah pretty nuts but you got a good kid there did the right thing turning in the money and maggie's like no way i would have kept the money she was disappointed i uh i mean this is a service we

provide as a show because we do have people that like you know people uh who are friends with other listeners or who are married to other listeners or people who are in you know close relationships but who are all listeners this is a way for you all to communicate with each other just call the tbtl voice line leave a message and it's a way to open up to your to your loved ones 206-414-8285 There it is Anything else you want to play or read Before we get out of here

Um let's leave it Let's leave it there Okay that's going to do it Sorry that was not a good power out was it Should have said something like I have some great stuff for tomorrow We do we have Blurs days tomorrow

Somebody sent me a different picture of you at a different concert

Somebody sent me a video of you not knowing The lyrics in the pivotal moment Of Cut Your Hair

A penguin sent me a video of you seeing the wrong lyrics at a PDUSA show.

Oh, man. So embarrassing. All right. Thanks, everyone, for listening. I don't think that person's thinking of me. I think that person's thinking of me the way I'm thinking of them. Do you think they're talking about it

on their podcast?

Probably.

All right. Thanks, everyone, for listening. We are going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. So please do join us for that. Until then, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. Go Mariners. I'm reading your tweet, Andrew. Death by Mariners is a real thing. And not enough doctors talk about it. 40 likes. I was in a bad place last night. I'll smash the like button on that. Thank you. 41, baby. All right, everybody. See you tomorrow. Until then, remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

What about the voice of Geddy Lee? How did it get so high? I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy. I know him, and he does. And you're my fact-checking cup. Power out.