Muse

Oh, morning, Helen.

Good morning.

I want to thank Mary, Steph, and Michelle for yesterday. So could you send them each a bottle of champagne? Oh, I don't know how to do that. Yeah, me neither. Champagne problems, am I right? Wait, is that what that means? I don't know. Me neither.

TBTL. Guess what day it is. Guess what day it is.

It's Friday. Friday. gotta get down on Friday everybody's looking forward to the weekend so what if I smell like roast beef this whole place smells like roast beef

I'm sorry but when I hear an undeserved compliment it makes my ears want to throw up oh your ears are always throwing up about something

maybe he saw his reflection and thought mm-mm-mm I'm flying in hot for that hottie we'll walk that fine line between cutting edge irreverence and trouble with the Federal Communications Commission

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a friday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live turn it up i want to hear it my name is

luke burbank i am your host is it too early good fish sandwich coming to you from the

hollywood broadcast center right here in portland oregon where it is going to be nice later today It's going to be sunny and like 85 degrees.

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

But it was actually raining on me when I was taking my jog this morning. Didn't know you liked to get wet, though. Giving us the rare combo platter of...

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

Didn't know you liked to get wet, though. It's an audio journey on this show. You're on episode 3783 at a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

If I sound a little extra excited, a little extra buoyant this morning, it's, of course, because my Seattle Mariners are right on the precipice of actually qualifying for the postseason. Something they haven't done in 21 years. And it's exciting times for Mariners fans. And speaking of which, we are going to throw together a special no-point conversion later today. 21 years in the making. So if you'd like to hear two guys who start at the bottom with their sports knowledge, continue at the bottom, and end up at the bottom, we've got that broadcasting for you. We've also got this going on. As I've already mentioned, it's episode 3783 in a collector's series. and our friend Mr. Unlimited Russell Wilson is back at it again creating just some absolute golden audio for us It's called The Danger Witch and it's dangerously good We're going to play it for you Be careful though It's spicy I was loading this audio tape in this morning and at one point I really felt the desire to leave the room like to just go into another room where my laptop wasn't so that I could be further away from how awkward this video makes me feel uh anyway uh we will play you that tape and we'll talk about this anthony bourdain this unauthorized biography of anthony bourdain that really delves into kind of what he was dealing with towards the end of his life wondering if if we need that or not plus music for your weekend because it is a friday and we'll talk to this guy the longest running cobro of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships as you know This is a guy who schedules his haircuts months in advance. He's been hitting the gym. It's really a whole new world for Andrew Walsh.

You are handsome. Don't worry.

And he is joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke.

Alan Sepinwall, who I always thought he wrote for the New York Times. Is he a freelance television journalist? That name is not super familiar to me. Oh, really? I thought you just raised him on the show the other day. Anyway, maybe he just writes for Rolling Stone all the time because he, in Rolling Stone, has released his definitive top 100 greatest television shows of all time. It is quite the list. It's actually a very long article. It's not just a listicle. It breaks down each show. Do you want to take a stab at what you think made? And I think, I mean, for what it's worth, Seven Wall, I believe, is pretty well regarded in his field. Do you want to guess what the number one is?

I mean, his name is Deggans, but come on.

No, he's not Deggans. Right, exactly. He aspires to Deggans' level.

I have a weirdly specific piece of knowledge, I think, about this list.

Oh, yeah?

I think that the show Atlanta is at number eight or nine.

Wow, that's an interesting... I think you're right. I'm going to go back up. I think I saw it at number nine. Let me see if you're right. Why do you know that?

I mean, must be Twitter.

Because I was looking at Twitter the other day and somebody who I didn't know if maybe they were associated with Atlanta, like one of the writers. I didn't recommend it wasn't Donald Glover or something, but somebody was saying on Twitter, this show's not even done yet. And it's already being called the in the top 10 of all time TV shows, basically like, you know, give us our flowers. Yes. So that that part of the list made itself known to me. But other than that, I haven't seen I haven't actually looked at the list.

You're you're absolutely right. It was number nine there. If you want to take a guess, do it at number one. Do you think I have to worry about spoiling this for people who are just, like, looking forward to reading this over their Sunday morning coffee? Let me try to see if I can – one quick question.

Was this across all genre of shows, i.e. comedy, like sitcoms and dramas and all of it was all mixed together?

Yes, and in fact – and I haven't been able to look at the whole thing because, like I say, it's like – it takes the computer a long time to load this thing because it's heavy with graphs. and long paragraphs about each one. So I did see that number 50, for example, was Jeopardy. So that's a game show. So I don't know what else. I don't know if there's some reality stuff in here at some point lower down. I doubt it, but I don't know. But I will say that the top 10, there are very few surprises, I would say.

I have a little Jeopardy tape for you. Can I play it really fast? And then I want to try to guess at the top 10 shows. This was something that I think I saw Stereogum retweeting and the headline was just rough day for Beck. So the category was one name singers and they show just a big, huge photo of Beck. And clearly the people are not aware of who Beck is.

One named rock stars, 400. His surprise was evident when he won Grammy's album of the year in 2015. David. Who's Ed Sheeran? No. remember the category he's ed sheeran life but that's beck now i want i listen i don't want to

take issue with our friend ken jen and you know there are no atheists in foxholes of just i can't imagine the speed at which your brain has to be processing as the host of jeopardy i don't know if i would describe beck or ed sheeran as beck-esque or beck as ed sheeran-esque what do you think he means like visually i don't even think visually they're that similar other than they're both caucasian males i know they both have a red aren't they a reddish area with points with points yeah i mean doesn't i mean back is a little they're not no i think you're but also but also you are you were recently dancing next to a penguin so i don't know if you're the person to weigh in on that okay back to the back to the list i am going to i mean an obvs is the sopranos has got to be in there right the i'm just trying to do the top 10 do you want me to tell you as

you list these you want me to tell you where you where you got it or are you just putting your

no i would like that very much is the so i'm trying to do the top 10 starting with number eight

atlanta sorry number nine atlanta okay number nine is atlanta i'm going to give you number 10 okay because that's uh because it's a little bit surprising because how about this wait don't give

it to me okay I would like you to give me a hint can you give me a hint okay yes I will say number

10 is the only one to crack this list that is something that I would consider a well maybe there's a couple of classic TV shows in here but this one is a a real classic TV show number 10 all in the family no but closer to that era than most of these is it a comedy or a drama number 10 is um it's a classic from the 70s it is a comedy sanford and sons it is not sanford and son he only

had one son i'm taking a point away for an son no yes what is what is what is grady you dummy what is it's the big one elizabeth where is elizabeth and am i coming to her uh is it the uh From the 70s, is it the Dick Van Dyke show? It's a workplace. Dick Van Dyke show.

It's a, oh, you're getting very close. Dick Van Dyke would be the 60s. Mary Tyler Moore show. Exactly. God, you got it right off the bat there. Ooh, I'm throwing rocks tonight. Okay, number, we didn't plan this. This wasn't the show sheet.

Mary Tyler Moore show is number 10. MTM. Atlanta is number nine.

Where does the Sopranos rank? The Sopranos is number one, my friend. Whoa, okay, okay. Yes, so that. More ago but down. And I do feel like The Wire is in there at, I believe, number four. Okay. The Simpsons. The Simpsons is number two. I was shocked. Seinfeld. Seinfeld is number six. Dang. I got like, how many are left in the top ten? I'm trying to scroll through here again. So you still have to guess. Let me just get back up here. You have to start with number 15 now because, no, I believe you got 10, 9. I already can't remember if you said. I don't think you've got number 8 yet. That would be another. I think you would call this TV show number 8 would be another classic, but not from the 70s. Slightly more modern than that. Okay. Is it drama or comedy? It is comedy. It is another workplace comedy from the 1980s primarily.

Oh, workplace. Oh, well, Cheers? cheers indeed the workplace being a bar i guess that is a place where work goes yeah i think some of my best work there yeah i'll bet you did it's funny to think of cheers as a workplace comedy i mean it is you're you're absolutely right but it's just not i'm thinking of like the office right or yeah something that's very like you know but but you're right it is absolutely a place of commerce where people work and they're the centerpiece of the show yeah and a lot of it is

like you know whether carla has to do shifts or if rebecca is in her office or whatever so it's like very business oriented okay number seven is uh not surprising in that it is prestige television of the last couple of decades of the last decade and a half prestige television i know

that i'm i can't believe i'm forgetting because i've already we're already on the wire we're

already on the sopranos um i don't just think you watch this one but it uh took place in the past A modern show that takes place in the past that people obsessed over.

A modern show that took place. What era of the past?

Well, if I tell you that, you'll know it right away. Let's say, let me give you this hint. It's very design forward.

Oh, Mad Men. Mad Men indeed, number seven. You know, I'm considering going back and actually watching. I think I might have watched a season of it, and I certainly enjoyed it. it wasn't like i i made a conscious decision to like not watch mevin and certainly the aesthetic is way up my alley i just got distracted with something but i've been hearing so much john ham of late because of him promoting confess fletch that it really kind of has me wanting

to go back and actually like uh watch that he is a delightful man i gotta say i when i first started watching mad men back in the day i remember genevieve had just moved out to seattle i was alone in new hampshire for this period while we were kind of transitioning me out to the west coast and i remember um sitting down one night and like binging the first five or something and and knowing that it had it wasn't a perfect show but that that i really loved it i hadn't seen anything like it before right and it's so funny because then we got into it but that show and you know not to i'm no alan seppenwall but um i feel like that show as more time goes on i don't know that it will maintain such a high ranking in in our cultural history because i think it had a lot of it checked a lot of boxes for a lot of people but like the experience of watching it and like the the kind of design porniness of it and just like you know see the set design and the costumes and everything is so good that i think it it really covers up some real flaws in the plot i mean they have a big i don't want to spoil anything for you or for folks who haven't seen but there's like kind of this big reveal that happens kind of this big secret reveal that just adds it makes the plot so so property and complex in a way it doesn't need to be and it ends up you can feel them dragging it around like an albatross until they finally just get rid of it halfway through and they realize this is mostly about how people dress and this is like I can't explain like they kind of and sing Zuby Zuby Zoo

like somebody's unbelievably designing Manhattan apartment

I'll bet you if the writers could go back they would do things differently knowing what the show would eventually become i don't think that they knew what the show was going to become when they started it so i think it's worth watching but i also feel like and then by the end it was almost i i got into some arguments at my old workplace at kcrw about whether or not some of the decisions they made at the end was just like it didn't make sense to me within the story it was all just like it became so fan focused they started doing some things in the show that they just knew fans would love but like unless you're fully drinking the kool-aid on it i was like come on like anyway that's how i feel about a show that you haven't seen okay so you've gotten we're narrowing it down you got seinfeld already you said that right game of thrones thrones does not make the top 10 interesting you said the wire right so you said the wire you got number one which is the sopranos you got number two which is the simpsons you got number three which no you didn't i almost fell for your trap luke nice You have not gotten number three or number four or number five. Those are hit three, four and five. One I'm going to have trouble with. Right. You did say Seinfeld.

I believe that's number six. Yeah. I'm guessing. I am guessing that this feller did not put friends. Friends was in there somewhere, but not. But not.

top 10 no i could see friends being the kind of show that like it was a i mean it was inarguably a cultural phenomenon it weirdly remains so it really does it is just comfort viewing for people who are addy's age which is which is funny because i mean addy would have been like two when friends was in its heyday and so it's such an interesting show for people it's not like she was 11 like i understand people her age kind of geeking out on i carly and you know the power puff girls and things that were a big part of their childhood in the way that you know we sort of geek out on teenage mutant ninja turtles like the cartoon or something that was relevant to our youth but friends for somebody who's 23 and wearing a friend's sweatshirt as they walk down Capitol Hill that show was like they weren't even a twinkle in anyone's eye when that show was out it's just a funny thing for everyone to be embracing it's funny like I think the biggest

like comparison there would be like i loved the mary tyler moore show um for whatever reason and that might be the kind of cultural divide you know the the 19 the shows from the 70s that we might have enjoyed laverne and shirley that's not uh in the top 10 i'm sure it maybe shows up somewhere i will say this so you're you're struggling for three four three four and five are all modern prestige television is downton abbey in there what not in the not in these not in these top 10 um i will say one i know for sure you haven't seen a second i'm quite sure you haven't seen and one that you did the third you would stake your life i haven't seen the other one if you ever watch it i will come smack that ipad out of your goddamn hand someone pushes a button and i get a million dollars but somebody dies prestige television from hbo okay um that you i believe watched and liked yeah you definitely watched it and appreciated it and hunted down the

showrunner for tbtl hunted down the hbo oh oh i said the wire did you already say the wire

oh well then you get double points okay the wire is number four fun okay so now here is patriot in the top 10 because it should be patriot is actually lower than about that number one somebody should all right so you got to get number five this is terrible you got to get number five and number three okay number three is an easier one for me to give you some hints on because i know what it's about the other one i don't know anything about it oh that's going to be even more fun okay number three is prestige television along the lines of the type of stuff we've been talking about the what you would group this in with shows like the wire and the sopranos um you've been somewhat curious about this universe um you've mentioned maybe having some desire to dip into it at some point is it actively still going on or is it this show is not and this will be the the killer clue here um okay it's uh uh what would you call it's sequel just wrapped up it's sequel just wrapped up and it's but you've shown more interest in the sequel than in the original i believe you thought

that was going to just slam dunk it for me but uh i did not picking up what you're putting down there is a is it rhoda

actually the fact that i'm ringing this bell would be a big clue oh oh oh oh oh breaking bad yeah so you do know that the bell plays a big role in breaking bad well i watched breaking bad i just

stopped like maybe two seasons early but i do remember very much is that salamanco yeah you salamanca yeah good with the bell that is compelling television that bell boy i mean there's a reason i remember it because yeah i mean the you the tension the stakes have never been other than tbtl the stakes have never been higher for someone making this sound oh yeah okay that's good and yeah okay i i am i am uh i do really need to get into better call saul i've been very much enjoying i think i'm like i don't know six or seven episodes in okay good and if

you've seen that i didn't really i thought you had only watched like two episodes of breaking bad i want to say this um i'm not even kidding this is the weirdest like thing for me to want

to clarify or flex i shit you not i watched breaking bad when there was no hype around it i literally just was like i wonder what this is oh it's the guy from malcolm in the middle and i started watching it and i was like what and i started telling everybody about it i'm not kidding that's the irony is i didn't finish the series but i remember kind of like a little bit like with patriot except patriot never really took off but like i remember just stumbling on to breaking bad on amc and being like okay whatever amc from vince gilligan okay and then just being like this is next level television um again i don't know why i'm trying to point that i guess my point is like if my identity is doesn't watch breaking bad it's funny because it is it was like watching breaking bad before i was hearing any hype around it and then getting off the train to not even find out what the end was like last i saw them they were under a car wash making meth spoiler no um wait they make meth in that show i gotta go back there's so much i forgot um you know i was down to one for whatever it's worth i sort of dismissed it because i enjoyed the sopranos and then there was like all these shows like i remember i think i saw weeds do you remember the show weeds oh yeah of course which was about i didn't watch it but it was a very aware of it in the culture and it was like you know a suburban setting where somebody is doing crime but it's like this juxtaposition i'm just that's kind of what the sopranos was too like suburban life juxtaposed with like a life of crime then you had weeds then you had i think dexter and i don't know the order of all of these things but i remember just sort of grouping breaking bad in with those like okay a school teacher but also making meth and it just seemed like everybody was just cranking out this formula and i was like okay it's another one of those and then it quickly became clear that it was higher quality certainly higher quality than anything like weeds you know um and i got into it but then i got into it i was like i don't know if i can watch it there was so much there was so much graphic like violence and implied violence in it that it was really tough to watch some that that very first episode you're just like can i

get through this anyway okay well and also it's just it's one of those shows i'm trying to think of what the there was another thing that i was watching that was an example of this where it's like every week you're like okay well that's as tense as this shit can get right yeah and then it's like nope then the next week you're like how can it be how can there be more tension in my life watching this show like every single week it feels like well now they're screwed okay now

they're officially screwed yeah exactly and genevieve oh genevieve said ozark is very much like that too that like you can watch it and enjoy it but it just gets more and more and more

ridiculous as far as like the stakes and the well i told you why i watched the first like four episodes of ozark and why i got off the train it's too blue oh the literally the color of the screen i don't know why they decided to shoot that entire show with some kind of blue gel over

the camera but it's like literally distracting for me oh this is nice you got news radio at 94 and the rockford files at 93 i think i just found my section of this list sweet spot it sounds like

i have the listeners are um i'm sure quite bored with this gone is the word you're looking for there so what i think i need to get one more right you have one more and i don't know how to

i don't know how to give you a clue on this other than reading literally what it's about from wikipedia because this was a cultural phenomenon a few years ago in our in i think over here in the states i believe it started as a bbc show i just know that because i'm looking at this now and it came over and it was one of those things that everybody was talking about you know what like it's one of those shows that i know nothing about it and like i forgot that bridgerton and the show both existed and it's only because it's my ignorance it's not bridgerton but like oh yeah this is another one of those that i just sort of vaguely oh fleabag yes exactly oh i loved fleabag you watch that huh oh yeah i did that's a good show i know like i know that it was a cultural phenomenon and it was based who's the actor in it that everybody phoebe waller bridges right

name is she also a musician or am i confusing her no there's um no that's um that's uh phoebe bridgers right yes okay gotcha uh tokyo what if you just if i were going to give you

a clue about that show what what should it have been like what is fleabag about

if you said if you said hot priest or butt stuff i'd be yeah fleabag

that's not you know i'm on wikipedia and it doesn't even mention that in the first graph so

no no what is fleabag about it's kind of just a a show that revolves around this central character played by phoebe waller bridges who um i believe it started as a one woman show at the edinburgh fringe fest like it was i believe a stage production and uh i have the order events right you are right about that i know that but it became this tv show and just kind of follows her adventures she's kind of i mean it's very refreshing because she's a bit

of an anti-hero right like she's kind of is it modern day is it historical it's modern day it's

in england uh she's got you know kind of she's uh got this sister who she interacts with a lot i watched it a while ago so some of it is a little blurry but it's just basically her and she's fleabag it's her just kind of going around getting into trouble um she ends up with this big crush on um the catholic priest at her like that parish or whatever i can't remember if she's actively attending church or she just meets him somewhere i think she drinks too much uh she uh there is i think some reference to butt stuff i clearly that made an impression on me yeah um it's just a very what it what it is is a very funny extremely honest a kind of um no gloss on it view of someone's life

who happens to be a woman, which is really refreshing because you get that with guys sometimes. You know what I mean? It's like you get that a lot with this kind of male antihero character and she's sort of the female antihero in a way, but very charming and winning. So I thought it was a great show.

Well, that did make me, one, you mentioned that you don't get that from a woman's perspective or focusing on a female character like that. And I was looking at this too and I'm wondering, is Sepinwall like of this generation? I believe Alan Sepinwall is a white man who I would guess is probably like somewhere between my age and 20 years older than me and i wonder if like as you go through the top five of these things or even the top somewhere between you and george burns

the range of age you've narrated oh alan you devil um that's a good joke if you know you know heaven can wait actually no sorry that's uh heaven can wait is uh is uh warren beaty actually i

believe right uh i'm not sure what that is but yeah there was oh god and then there was i think

Warren Beatty goes to heaven and then gets sent back down for some reason.

I see. Oh, God. And oh, God, you'd ever, I believe, has George Burns playing a cantankerous god, literally the Christian god or whatever. And isn't it John Denver, who's the guy on Earth that he's harassing?

I would. Everything I know about those George Burns films are just from staring at the VHS tape in the video rental section of Craig and his pharmacy.

Yeah, I'm looking up. Oh, God cast. Oh, God is not on this list, weirdly, and I believe the sequel is Oh, God, You Devil.

So Fleabag, so that's the top ten. So just will you quickly, let me see if I can do this from memory.

Okay, yeah.

Sopranos numero uno.

Okay, you're going with number one. Okay, hold on. This thing is hard. Okay, number one is Sopranos.

Sopranos. Number two, Simpsons.

Yeah.

Number three, Seinfeld. Number three is Breaking Bad. Number three, Breaking Bad. Number five, Fleabag.

Let's do number four.

Number four Seinfeld Number four is The Wire Number four The Wire Number five Fleabag Number six Seinfeld Number six is Seinfeld Number seven is That one show

What's number seven What do you want me to say It's Mad Men Mad Men number seven

Number eight Workplace comedy

If you expand the idea of workplace

Cheers, number nine, Atlanta, number 10, Mary Tyler Moore show. We're going to make it after all.

And then Succession coming in at number 11 for whatever that's worth.

That's one I cannot get into.

Oh, really? I somehow didn't get into it for most of it, and then I just binged it all. I think I was on vacation, and that's how it sometimes happens with me. My rhythm will break up. I don't just get done with whatever I'm puttering around with and then sit down and play a video game or whatever. It's like I'm on a plane so I'll start this thing And then while I'm on vacation I'll keep Like binging it and I feel like succession Might have coincided with My last trip to Hawaii and Once I started I understood the Addictive quality of it like it was

I think I yeah I need to Get in for I need an international Flight I'll watch Anything like I think when you and I were flying to Australia I watched like 12 hours Of the TV version of get shorty Yeah you said you kept saying to watch It and I still haven't I need it's really good yeah it is really starring ray romano and chris o'dowd i mean again oh you know we're at whatever 30 000 feet and uh you know there's something about being on a plane like i watched white lotus flying to and from hawaii with becca like that was perfect that was great like watching white lotus as you're flying to hawaii is really the sweet spot for that show let me say this because

i know i know i hijacked the show we should probably move on go to a break or whatever but But I just want to say that I haven't gotten into cat kissing yet. Oh, did you mention cat kissing at the top of the show? I must have worked out. OK, I will say this. There was some show that you said, oh, yeah, I haven't gotten into that yet. Oh, like Mad Men. I'm seeing that number 14 on this list is the Americans. And I will tell you this, Luke. Yeah. If you and I share any of the same taste or at least appreciate the same types of quality television content, the Americans is so, especially from a narrative standpoint and a compelling standpoint, the Americans and I mean it doesn't not going to razzle dazzle you with all the 60s design stuff which I know that you love as well but the Americans actually has a pretty good sense of design but from an 80s standpoint but forget about the design I mean from just a human storytelling standpoint with a lot of intrigue and you have to ignore some pretty big coincidences but that was what got me

I watched like the first four episodes oh you did the wigs got to me Oh, OK. Yeah. You have to suspend some disbelief. I'm sure. Yeah, I would I would go back to that. I mean, again, I'm not kidding. If I'm on an airplane, I could probably fall in love with the Americans and be totally riveted. I think I was it was at a time where I was not fully engaged. And there was a couple flashback scenes that were a little bit like kind of they're trying to make these actors like look like they look back in Mother Russia where they're like studying, you know, gymnastics or whatever. I forget the exact scene, but it was kind of like it just struck me as the teensiest bit, like not completely believable for me. Yeah, just the flashback nature of it. But I think if I let that go, all the stuff that's happening in modern life, it sounds like it's quite compelling.

Yeah, some of the spy craft stuff is, like, really fun to watch, but also you do have to, like I say, suspend disbelief, as I'm saying, and I'm realizing, oh, yeah, and you're a very literal watcher, and maybe you'll enjoy Mad Men more because you can just, like, you can just dip into that world. I mean, that was the thing that appealed to me about Mad Men is you just get to live in these very stylized and stylistic 1960s for a while and see incredibly beautiful people do beautiful things. And so you can sort of just dip in and enjoy that universe. Like I say, I still think there are some plot holes, but maybe that would appeal to you more because you don't have to sit there and be like, wait, there's no way somebody wouldn't have seen that guy hiding around that tree or whatever.

I wish I could turn that part of my brain off because it makes stuff less fun for me. And I'm a very bad suspender of disbelief, which is, again, not like my finest quality. But okay, let's take a quick break. That was fun. Yeah, very good stuff. That was fun. Yeah. Let's take a quick break, and then when we come back, I do want to play you this Dangerous tape. Talk about cat kissing and Anthony Bourdain. Coming up on TBTL.

Thank you, baby.

All right, let's thank some daily donors who are making TBTL possible. Generous people like Liz Gerrard. of Seattle, Washington. Hey, Liz. What up, Liz? We know Liz. We do know Liz. We had a fun adventure once with Liz, trying to get back Liz's stuff. And she gave you... Oh, that's right.

And she gave you some words to live by that you... She really did.

I was like, you know, I've been carrying around that info that was imparted to me at the Eagles, at the Mother Airy.

That's where so much wisdom comes out, by the way. Usually it's about third round at the Eagles. That's when things start getting real. That's when the real Algonquin round table breaks out.

Indeedly do. Thanks, Liz. Trisha Lenhart Pendergrass is in Aurora, Colorado. Thanks, Trisha. Oh, and look at this. Back-to-back Alex's. Oh, wow. Wow. This is a Keaton of Alex's. I believe. Alex Strawn is in Seattle, Washington. And Alex Straughn has been listening to this show, or at the very least, financially supporting this show for Evs. Thank you, Alex. Thank you. O-G-10. And then, speaking of O-G-10s, Alex Washington is in Brooklyn, New York.

We've met Alex Washington. Yes, we have. Now, here's the one thing. And now it's hard for me to say this because I've met Alex. She's a wonderful person. I've met both Alexes, by the way. I don't know if I've met Alex Straughn. And if I have Alex and I forgot, my apologies. But here's the deal. We have one Alex who lives in Washington and then one Alex whose name is Washington but doesn't live in Washington. And I'd like to see some consistency here. I feel like we could do a swap-a-roo, make things a little bit easier on me.

Yes.

Alexes, please get together. I'll send you contact info.

Work this out so it's less confusing for Andrew. Thank you. Kevin Wilson is down here in Portland, Oregon. Oh, wow. Remember the rule, Kevin. You see, if you're a cop, you have to tell me. If you see me, if you see me wandering the world of Portland, you must identify yourself before I do something deeply embarrassing. Before I headbutt you. Exactly. God, wouldn't that be a real but doctor, I am Pagliacci moment? Like if I fight, if I were to fight a 10. I'm trying to think of the Pagliacci reference I don't get. Well, I don't know if that really holds up. You know, the story is that like, you know, a guy goes to clown, right? right this guy goes this guy's depressed and he goes to the doctor or the therapist and the doctor says there's a clown that's performing here paliaci and you should go see him because it will cheer you up and he says i am paliaci oh oh yeah intense chills that's the 12th most popular show according to john seppenwald doctor i am paliaci no that's i mean that but the problem is that analogy doesn't totally hold i just mean maybe it's more of a two spider-men pointing at each other whatever it is it would be weird and cinematic if i got into a fight with someone well just full stop right it would be weird if i got into a fight with someone at age 46 oh by the way i thought i was 47 for about the last three months and i just remembered yesterday i'm 46 and honestly andrew i got a whole

new lease on life it's that time of the year i think because i had to ask genevieve recently i was talking to somebody and i couldn't remember if i was 45 or 46 i'm 45 about to be 46 you're 46 and you won't be 47 until the spring right and yes and i had to check with becca yesterday i said

am i 46 or 47 she goes we just talked about this like two months ago you're 46 i was like yes yes

and you can tell i have the sharp brain of a 46 year old exactly are you my mother oh

let's not get into that but uh but anyway um wait what was i saying you were gonna think pardon me i was going to say it would be i was gonna thank cheryl axel of bellevue washington thanks cheryl and i was gonna say it would just be a weird thing if i got into a tussle with someone and like mid tussle they said something like um power out power out right as they hit Right as they punch you in the face But they don't realize That I'm the host of TBTL And I don't realize they're a fan of TBTL And we're just like you know We're throwing hands And then one of us lets slip Some TBTL inside joke Why we're saying this kind of stuff In the middle of a Donnybrook I don't know but let's just go with it And somebody like you said They say power out Or they say poop Scoop poop or something And then we just stop And then we start doing a mirror exercise well here's the deal i'm more similar than we are different i'm i understand why you wouldn't

recognize this person as a listener but to this imaginary listener that we're talking to right now how do you not realize it's luke you're fighting with first of all you've heard his voice i have

updated any of my headshots in a long time the pictures on the internet of me are not representative of what 46 possibly 47 year old luke looks like you're wearing a bath towel and carrying a scale around for some reason that is well okay and you know in that way i do look like that um no i mean i'm not i don't think this is a uh likely scenario i'm just saying it would be funny it would be interesting if and then we were just best friends after that because it was like oh we like the same thing we both like me i got i don't know why but i gotta go

you just do this from here on thanks to all of our thanks to all of our donors for making the show possible hello and welcome to top story all right uh cat kissing i can't believe that i'm

actually bringing that you're right it was not on the show sheet but i have trained bubbles to give me a kiss if i make a certain sound and i can't tell if this is adorable or something i should never bring up around polite company oh what do you mean are we doing i mean is that i didn't even know this is a thing cats could do i think that with bananas i i just i

lean in and when i lean in and she sees me and then her she lifts her little nose up and she

touches her nose to my lips okay good i see you have to realize i know that i've this is actually technically the third cat that i've lived with but it still feels in a lot of ways like the first cat that I've ever like there's just a lot of stuff about the world of cats that I just don't know about and I didn't know if that was a thing but we've got this whole system going like we'll be watching the Seattle Mariners or something and she'll just be going wild on the couch and like jumping on me and stuff and so I'll kind of put her in a little bear hug and then I'll make a sound I'll go and then she'll stop being wild and she'll put her little nose on my lips yep yeah okay that's a thing okay I'm glad I just thought maybe I had like I'd entered a bizarre world of of I don't know cat kissing that was like you know you can't come back from i shouldn't mention this and

i wasn't going to mention this i don't want to derail the show again i've already done that but

i will tell you this are we doing your shows number 10 through 20 i have a list alan septim

wall's top 100 cats of all time who do you think is number one on the list it might surprise you garfield wins again um fargill doesn't even make an appearance luke uh yeah i probably shouldn't bring this up because it'll just side uh kind of uh distract us but um yeah so tomorrow vives and i i'll just whisper tomorrow vives and i are heading down um to uh tacoma to meet some kittens what so yes in other words you're bringing back a kitten tomorrow uh i don't i don't i understand it to be sort of like your situation where if everything works out the the kittens would still stay with their mom for a little bit longer, but there is adoption most likely on the agenda, most likely if everything goes well.

That is really exciting. I'm so stoked for y'all. The listeners are like, just when Burbank started to mellow out in his obsession with his new cat acquisition, now we're going to...

going to have another one but i personally am very excited to hear about this and i'm stoked

for y'all that's going to be really fun it's funny how this show intersects with our real lives because like i was thinking about this before this is going to sound i don't think it's going to sound cruel but it's going to be um transparent it's like i almost didn't want to mention it on the show until after maybe until like we had the cat in our house just because like i was doing this thinking about it like the the cats in my life theo and bananas they were in my life before i was doing tbtl right they've always been a constant and i didn't want like i didn't want to open the door to people suggesting names for my cat or i don't know there are certain things that i just like to sometimes i kind of keep private until they're done sort of and i was thinking about that and that's why i was like maybe i'll just wait but of course i can't keep my fat mouth shut but um i uh yeah i brought up cat kissing you brought up cat kissing i'm like you know what's gonna happen next you're gonna another spill your guts yeah but chances are yeah because i and i also think people will probably be a little bit bummed that we didn't go down the dog route but i think veves and i just like with the experience of of cat sitting the the cat that visited us for a few weeks and how much we just really enjoyed that and looking at our own laziness and being like do we do we bring another animal into this house like a dog that would be you know significantly more work i mean we can do it but is that is that the move for us and also i think just picturing professor bananas snuggling with a cat in a way that we know her well enough to know that i think a dog would have probably she would have dealt with it, but it probably would have been more jarring, and I don't know if they would have ever gotten to a place where they would be friends, whereas I'm pretty confident that Bananas will end up probably taking a little kitten under her wing. By the way, Bananas has wings, which is a... You should definitely talk to the vet about this. Yeah, no, she's a beautiful cat. She lays eggs. She's a beautiful cat with wings that goes cluck, cluck, cluck, and lays eggs. Anyway, I'll let you...

Has anyone in this family ever even seen a cat?

I'll let you know on Monday how that trip was.

I'll tell you this, there would have been a time where I would have been rooting so heavily for y'all to get a dog because I love dogs and I love Rudy and I've always, that's been a thing I identified as a dog owner, dog lover, whatever. But this whole thing of just being here with bubbles and getting that stupid leash and just taking her everywhere. Somebody tweeted a picture at me of somebody rock climbing with a cat in a backpack and the cat's saying, you could have just left me at home for this one. that's low-key becoming that guy but like i i think i might have been i might be transformed into a cat person it doesn't mean i'll like never have a dog again in my life but this cat is the exact right amount of pet for me to have and she's so fun the this week's hey dummies video is me just playing fetch with her like she's she's just really really fun to be around but also can be home for a few hours by herself and it's not a thing and is just like she's the right amount of obsessed with me yeah which is a little bit but not like the way a dog would be constantly like so anyway you know i obviously am a fan of dogs but i i am i right now i'm like i think you're gonna have a lot of fun having two cats i'm not even i'm not even disappointed you're not getting

a dog yeah you know i have mixed emotions i sort of feel like if we're not doing it now we probably never will i mean that that's not written in stone but uh but i do get your dirt bike right yeah once you get your cabin and dirt bike i think you're gonna dog is gonna come next but i am i am looking forward to it and it is you know i think we are thinking about the the professor bananas uh kind of role in all of this as well and we're a little family so um no i'm looking for i'm looking forward to that i'll let you know how it goes um this uh russell wilson audio is uh it's

funny that i didn't see this when it was first making the rounds i guess this is actually uh kind of um this is from a few months ago um but it's russell wilson doing um some kind of

an ad for subway he's got his own sandwich at subway here's one thing i will give you some background on this oh please do do you remember when i did my investigative journalism about the new menu at subway a while back it was like george plimpton trying to make the detroit line incredibly immersive will he eat a sandwich or not um that had us talking a lot about the subway menus and some listeners pointed out even back then before this commercial came to light that russell wilson had his own sandwich at subway it just had not been promoted yet and it was kind of like an online order only like part of the website and some people had been sending me links to it so cut to a month or two later when this video comes out that you're going to share with us i realized oh yeah subway already had this this russell wilson dangerous sandwich or whatever it is kind of in the works for a while and sitting quietly on their website and now it seems like

now they're ready to promote it i guess it's such an odd bit of promotion though because like Thank you.

It's not like one of those, at least so far, I haven't seen like, you know, Subway spends a lot of money advertising during sporting events. And they've got like Charles Barkley and Steph Curry and all these, you know, major stars talking about their sandwiches in produced commercials. This one appears to be like they just brought Russell Wilson into some Subway test kitchen somewhere and just asked him to basically improvise something.

Well, isn't this a leak, though? Isn't this they probably asked him to improvise and we're just seeing like the uncut tape, right?

I'm reading from SB Nation now Somebody named James Dator Writing Russell Wilson's dangerous sandwich at Subway Is sadder than you can imagine He says I really wanted to write a pithy lead in To set up this TikTok Russell Wilson posted As an ad to Subway But there's absolutely nothing I can say That would do this justice Russ was quick to delete this masterpiece of awkwardness And I'm still left gobsmacked That it was ever posted in the first place I can't tell you how many short videos I've recorded watched back and then deleted and redone because i flubbed a word or made a mess out of a turn of phrase instead this was put online with a rambling diatribe about danger in which russ either admits to a crime or is about to tell a story about a weird trip to tijuana um i had that so wrong i

didn't realize that he had posted it i thought this was another thing like him posing in front of the green screen with a football for the broncos just saying things like let's ride that people were going to chop up and use in a commercial and then it leaked this is more along the lines of Mr. Unlimited, where he just doesn't realize how cringy he is when he's on social media.

Yeah. And I just want to say, we have a lot of listeners in Denver, and I know y'all are very excited to have a good football team helmed by Russell Wilson. So I don't want this show to turn into us just basically making it unfun to listen if you're a Denver football fan. I wish y'all really I'd do the best. I'm not really angry at Russell Wilson on a day-to-day basis. I continue to be amazed at where his personality pops up in ways that I don't think is really playing to his strengths. So we'll just play you this. So he's got this sandwich, and clearly, you know, because his handle on Twitter is dangerous. I will also just say this. There's no one less dangerous than Russell Wilson. And I know, like, it's a play on words, but I feel like from its genesis, it's just not a good fit. He is not a dangerous person. He is, he's making wishes come true in the, you know, the cancer ward of a children's hospital, which is a very laudable thing. Not everyone is dangerous, certainly not Russell Wilson. So this, so because he's calling himself dangerous or whatever, they decide that the premise of this thing is that this sandwich is so spicy that it's dangerous. Here is Russell Wilson.

Hey, you want to split this Subway sandwich? It is my signature sandwich. It's called the Danger Witch. And it's dangerously good.

Be careful, though. It's spicy. I can 100% imagine the conversation that happened right before they started rolling. Because I've been, I mean, I am no Russell Wilson, but I've been in a situation that is probably more cringy than this, what the final product was. which is i got sort of brought on to do this microsoft thing which was supposed to be like we're just going to ad lib a bunch of fun stuff but then they ended up just cutting it together in the absolute worst way and i'm horrible at improvising because i'm too self-conscious so like i know that there's some big ad agency it's on sitting on the other side of this camera and they've been like okay russ just have fun with it just like you know it's the dangerous okay and uh you know it's like and let's just kind of riff let's just have some fun about how dangerous this sandwich is and then like russell wilson who's really good at throwing footballs and you know uh playing football less great at improvising about this sandwich being so dangerous for people

you ever done anything dangerous

he's literally eating too oh geez that is dangerous i've done something like that too

i won't tell anybody listen i won't tell anybody it's i guess what he's saying he wants the he wants the viewer to share a dark secret with him and he is promising he won't tell anyone your

dark secret i think that he have you ever done anything dangerous and then i don't know if he's hearing the response or what and then he's like oh i've done something like that too i won't tell anybody so yeah i guess you're kind of sharing like the secret of what the dangerous thing that you've done which honestly one of the more dangerous things i've done in my life is overeat subway sandwiches like it's going i mean if you could get a live look inside my arteries right now you would realize that I have also played with fire myself.

I am not going to lie to you I know there's a Our listeners They fall on a long kind of spectrum Of like the people who absolutely Hate us eating on air And the people who actually kind of weirdly like it This is making me hungry Hearing Russell Wilson eat I'm not kidding that's where I am on that spectrum I really want to get one of these Or a sandwich from Subway I'm not kidding

One time Never mind that's too dangerous Anyways

my danger witch it's only in the vault that's our little secret it's only in the vault that's

our little secret like i think that's that part of that website that's what i think i was referring to before i see so they're yeah because i don't see and i didn't realize that he had posted this to instagram again so i thought that they were getting ready to like you know turn this tape into a commercial that would air on tv with production and what have you and these were the outtakes and then they'd be advertising this special sandwich that you can only get at the

special section online okay okay that's a little more context all right the reason that this kills me is because i would be exactly this unfunny if you gave me a sandwich and said riff so i think it bothers me so much because it's a mirror that i'm holding up to myself because i am equally bad at improvving now this is where this guy james uh dator or however you say his last name at sb nation i think really zeroes in on something important he gets the ingredients to the danger which the danger which comes with pepperoni salami black forest ham provolone cheese and bacon on italian herb and cheese bread topped with lettuce green peppers tomatoes banana peppers finished with yellow mustard and mayo now this is all caps pepperoni and banana peppers are the spiciest things on this sandwich i am irrationally angry at this what is the what is the where's the danger

Where's the danger, Russ? Where's the dash of Tabasco? They don't have Tabasco there, I don't think.

Where are the jalapenos? Where's the one-chip challenge? Have you seen that, by the way?

No, what is that? Eat one?

You don't know about the one-chip challenge? Oh, my God.

I don't. Every now and then we're talking, and I can really see us as 12-year-olds, and that was a moment. When you just yelled at me, you don't know about the one-chip challenge, I could see us being on a playground as you're yelling that at me.

It is pretty much all my TikTok feed is now, is people eating. So you buy it. I think it's like $8. I think the company is called Paki that makes it. And it is literally a giant black tortilla chip that is coated in some kind of insanely hot chemical. And you take it out of the package and you eat it and you crap your pants pretty much is what a lot of people seem to do. and because i let it run you know one of them those videos now it's just all the tiktok is delivering to me is people doing the one chip challenge and i'm not gonna lie i find it endlessly fun to watch and they literally ship one chip in a package it's not a bag of chips it's not a bag of chips it's one chip it's and it's in so it's like a cardboard box that's shaped like a coffin uh-huh i believe i've never actually held one of these in my hands i've only seen it on tiktok but i believe it comes in sort of a coffin shaped um cardboard box and then in that is a you know sealed like in a a kind of snack food wrapper or whatever one chip and you open it up and you eat the chip and it's it's just it's endlessly fun because it almost always follows the same arc the person is usually feeling very confident they usually wharf down the chip they often say oh it tastes really bad like no one has ever said this is a good taste like i think it's a pretty unpleasant tortilla chip and then they're like i'm not feeling anything and then they're just kind of like about 30 seconds in they start to cough here i'm on one of these can i play

it this is just some guy he's got a terrible he's got a terrible handle here crazy russian hacker on youtube but he looks like he might have a youtube channel he's going to try this thing he's Just about to take a bite of this chip for the first time. We're about a minute into this four-minute video here.

Let's see what happens. Okay. So, about nothing, we're into it, like, for five seconds. Ooh. I can't even talk. The heat, mouth take over. It's spicy. Number one, they say, don't take over, for sure. Next one, they say, shag the senses.

I don't know.

I can't tell what he's saying.

The person for whom English is not a first language is probably going to be a little tougher to follow. And also, the reason that I like to watch the One Ship Challenge is because I'm always looking to find another person. I've only seen it two or three times. a person who

unfazed by it mm-hmm was it travis one was a kid there is like a like a high school kid and they're taking attendance he's in class his friend is like videotaping him and he just like he's putting tabasco on the one chip challenge and then he eats it in a full minute and a half go by and he has absolutely no reaction well keep your eyes on that kid exactly like clone him or lock him up something clone him or put him in a vault he's definitely this is an x-men type situation and we need to figure out what side of this he's coming down on and there was another i've seen like just a couple of people who are just like they eat it and it just has no impact on them but that's like again maybe two people out of the hundred that i've watched um one of them that was so great was a young woman who's just video with her phone videotaping and you can't even you can just kind of vaguely make out a shape in the bathroom lying in the bathtub and then it's her mom is just yelling at her mom's boyfriend because he is in the bathtub running water on himself because he ate the one chip and then crapped himself oh no and it's so funny the dynamic in their relationship because the mom is not impressed she doesn't feel bad for him she doesn't think it's funny she's like you idiot what did like and then the teenage girl just like laughing uproariously on her phone as her mom is yelling at her mom's boyfriend about crapping his pants that's the content i'm here for i didn't know when you said people crapping their pants

i thought you meant just like figuratively because i was thinking like oh later on when it is time to go to the bathroom that also could be a challenge but i didn't know that a food could be so hot that the immediate reaction would be that it doesn't even seem to make biological sense okay um i i

think uh i think it's like and it's not everybody who does it let me see here okay here we go i think i got the audio of this i don't know if this is going to pay off but this is the mom yelling at her boyfriend and this is the what's written on it bro uh my duke's boyfriend ate that hot chip at the store and shit it on himself in the tub man is running cold water i'm like bro in my bathroom, Manticlisten. Get your ass up.

There's nobody telling you to get that chill. Stop calling at me. You sound all dumb.

You're not trying to help you do shit.

Why would you want to do that? Help yourself. Get a water on me, please. That's the deal. Do you need your rag towel? Yeah. What the fuck do you think I need? I need a water on me.

I don't know why that audio delighted me for like two solid days, but I am, uh, I am. I'm not tired of one chip challenge, tick tock yet.

I'm looking at their website now. So I was right in watching when I was watching that Russian YouTuber. It looked like his tongue was changing color. And I guess that is part of this as well. Is that that's totally die, though, right? That's not like some physical reaction, I'm sure.

No, it's not. And the way it goes is you're and it's evolving, too, over time, by the way. So it just started with like, oh, eat this chip and see if you can handle it. Now it's become this thing where people will bet each other. okay I'll give you 20 bucks if you can eat this chip and not drink any water for the first five minutes yeah and I think on the on the packaging it says your tongue is going to turn blue and that's the proof that you fully swallowed it so you chew it up you swallow and then you stick your tongue out and then we can see that a you've swallowed the chip and that you've fully it's

fully coated your tongue um well this company did a really good job on this right like I don't know how this started or with it but I'm saying like that whole thing it's like they have on their website if you can do it for one minute before you short circuit without eating or drinking anything for relief one minute you're powerless 10 minutes powerful 30 minutes supercharged etc so like they're definitely leaning it i mean what a this is this moment is going to last but a moment and so this company needs to squeeze all of the money out of it and yeah promotion as

possible right i mean uh and they seem to be really i mean thanks to tiktok they seem to really be maximizing it and i you know me andrew i'm my brain is bad and so i've been watching these i'm constantly asking myself could i or should i do this and the answer is no no not it looks it looks deeply unpleasant um but there's also some part of my brain that's like i wonder how i would hold up to this thing now i will tell you that what we all know from eating stuff that's two spots.

is drinking water only makes it worse in the in the long run because it moves the oil around that's already burning your your tongue up you know they say milk you're supposed to have or whatever but like this whole thing where you're not supposed to drink water for the first minute i think that the water would probably almost make it worse because if you know we've all had something really spicy and you drink water and it like for one second quenches you but then right after that it's like more painful in my experience yeah it's been i mean i know that you did that

Pepper tasting live on Live on stage I just don't I don't go in for that stuff as much Like sort of like food related Dares or any kind of dares Performative spiciness yeah so I mean Obviously I've eaten food before that's been too Spicy for me and Then I mean yeah even if it doesn't make sense though You just chug water like you just I Know that supposedly cream like something Like a milk will do you better but

I don't like yeah I the problem For me is that this at my advanced age Advanced age of 46 possibly 47 uh it's really i don't know what the bathroom situation that i'm not talking like i'm talking like a day later not like in the moment not like i'm lying in a bathtub and someone's yelling at me i mean like i mean if i have a normally spicy stuff like if i just have thai food and i go four stars instead of three it's definitely something that is noticed the following day so something

like this i mean you might never be right yeah exactly that you're you need to block off some time on your calendar for this and recovery time which is just not the best way to spend time

no it isn't which is why if i ever andrew if you ever get a text from me going i got a chip should i do it for hay dummies stop me okay protect me from myself well the good news is

i'll have forgotten about this conversation i'll be like what are you talking about a chip i don't

know um this is kind of a weird and slightly large topic to bring up at the end of the show but i feel like i've been promoting it for two days so we got to kind of pay it off but there was a really interesting and very intense i will just say this you know trigger warning and a heads up um this uh piece by kim severson about the last days of anthony bourdain and centering around this book that's being written or at least is being released i think the uh the journalist is named charles leeson and what he's done is basically he got access somehow to anthony bourdain's uh computer files i think from his um from his widow because he was i believe still married he was separated but still married uh to somebody uh he was also dating or in a pretty tumultuous relationship with the actor asia argento but anyway somehow this writer got a hold of a lot of the like last text messages and things that anthony bourdain sent and of course it was a huge shock to all of us who didn't who are on the outside of his life because he seemed to really have it all he was this fabulous writer and bon vivant and just like interesting person who everybody seemed to really love and respect his work and and yet he took his own life and these text messages reveal somebody who was you know dealing with a lot of presumably depression and a very chaotic relationship with asia argento and and just somebody who was not you know the on the outside he looked like he was doing okay but internally he really wasn't and i had this thought reading the article like do we really need to know this about anthony bourdain like is there any real value to the wider public and i i mean no one's going to write any kind of biography of me authorized or unauthorized but i sort of thought oh i've written several

unauthorized biographies of you don't um andrew you told me anything you write about me is going to be a hagiography that was our deal what does that even mean that's like an incredibly glowing

biography like to the point of being like just not even believable how would i describe him as a role model or as my own personal webster's defined heroism as that's how i like i would like your biography of me to start i was just thinking like if i were to pass away well for one thing i'll be gone i won't know what's happening anthony bourdain doesn't know what's happening so i don't that's not a worry for me as far as like is this sad for him but it's like do we as the public have the right to or do we need to know the exact amount of money that anthony bourdain used out of his account to pay off somebody who was suing his girlfriend asia argento for an incident that had happened or that he may have been um using the services of sex workers or that he was drinking to excess etc like do we really need those details about the

end of his life and that's what this article that you sent to me um kind of addresses too there's a lot of people who are like friends of his and family of his who are saying you know who are first of all tried to get the book not published or to stop publication of the book and who would not talk to the author and who say that there are fallacies in here and you know that. when somebody when somebody passes away either and this is i don't want to even talk about this on a friday but you know by their own hand it and i read about it and i'm a fan of them it hits me differently like it'll really send me i mean coolio died yesterday i'm not a you know i wasn't a huge coolio fan but that that was really sad he was too young too many black men are dying way too young from heart disease as i mentioned yesterday on the show by the way i don't think that's still confirmed just oh is it not okay um but but but the point stands yeah but anyway um and that's sad when somebody and i'm thinking specifically about two people when um david burman died of the silver jews and we talked about in the show how hard that hit me and and and brody stevens um who was a man who i had met a couple of times and was a new lived a very both of these guys right lived a very difficult life and then and then it eventually ends too early and like I it it really really affects me more than more than a death by other means when I'm when I'm reading about it and contemplating it and especially if I'm a fan of theirs and so the reason I'm saying all of that is I know that as the media covers these things they have to be very careful about it because it can as you gave a trigger warning before it can be very triggering for people and you don't want um to do anything that you know even report on something that might uh harm somebody else who's reading your coverage or watching it but the sometimes for me the lack of details around the stuff might make it a little bit worse as i contemplate it and this might just be me personally um i was trying to think i was trying to think today as i was reading this piece Like, is there any argument for somebody who might be suffering from mental illness of some sort to be able to hear some of these details and by maybe taking the mystery away from it and showing that that sometimes these feelings are normal, even at the highest echelons of success, sort of. but this story ended this way and just reach out because there have been a million people there who could have could have helped and would have helped and you're not maybe so alone i don't i don't think i end up there with this it was just something that i was really thinking hard about there's also other parts of the story though that complicate that like even if all the shit i just said makes any sense and i'm not certain it does um there's also people who say listen there are untruths in here or this is not right you know and this goes there's also just like when covering

something that is scandalous like some of these details like is it really is it it all in the public good to hear about the details around this stuff I just sort of feel like I don't know some of the stuff if you can express a way that somebody in their lowest moments feels so that other people don't feel so alone and might get help I could see an argument for that the way this article portrays this book though there's also just a lot of like just kind of shit in there that are salacious salacious is the word i'm probably not really it's creating as we used

to say in talk radio it's creating heat but not light oh interesting yeah you know because i mean that didn't you didn't we used to throw that around as far as like you know you want to create light if you're something that actually is like informing people or create kind of you know giving useful information is creating light and just getting people worked up is creating heat

that's interesting if we've talked about that might have been something that more you and jen talked about if we talked about that i'd slip my mind but um but i'd say it's a really

interesting thing that you brought up this idea that maybe in sharing that he was a person who was struggling that other people who are struggling might feel a little bit less isolated a little bit less alone and again i think who have i already i've already compared myself i think to russell wilson today so i'll just continue with my and palia grandiose comparisons there was something that anthony bourdain had said in one of these text messages um to i believe it was his his wife so it sounds like what happened was he was he was in a relationship with his wife that was non-traditional by the end because he was also dating Asia Argento and uh they both very much knew about each other um but anyway that's why I'm describing this person as his wife is slightly complicated because I don't think they were fully divorced but but they talked a lot and he texted her something and I'm paraphrasing here that was like I hate being famous I hate my job and I hate my fans too I think it was in that same yeah and I don't first of all I don't have any well I guess we have fans on this show or something i don't i don't think i've ever thought i dislike the people who like the work that i do so i don't i can't quite go there but i have very much thought oh i hate my job and i have the most fun jobs you could ever have i am so lucky to get to do this there is a line from mac miller that all

always killed me um and it was made more intense by his own passing but it was um something about like nobody feels bad for you in your five-star hotel and i have been really lucky in my life that i've gotten to do some really fun interesting job stuff and it's the kind of stuff and it often comes with a certain level of comfort in like the kind of places i get to stay or the people i get to talk to it's so much more fun and and and then my wildest imagination pretty much of what my job stuff was going to be when i was working at a plumbing company or something you know that it just feels like to not like it for a minute feels like you're such a bad person that it actually compounds how shitty you feel about yourself because if i was working in a coal mine and i texted someone i hate my job he'd be like yeah that checks out yeah that's tough work yeah but But when you have—when you've gotten—and, you know, Bourdain was infinitely more famous and well-known and beloved than I will ever be. But this feeling of being—of having what seems like it all and it not feeling the way you thought it would feel is a unique kind of bad feeling, you know?

A loneliness, I'm sure.

Yeah. And he said that, too, in another text that's mentioned in the piece about his loneliness. And it's like, same thing. And I'm not complaining, I'm really not trying to complain, but there's a weird loneliness to business travel, like the kind that he did a ton of and that I do a fair amount of, where you're just in a different shuttle van, you're checking into a different hotel lobby, you're standing in line at a different Avis, and then you go and you see people and you interview them and they point cameras at you and there's this kind of moment of whatever shared experience, but there's just so much time when you're just on your own. And you're just, it can be a very, and we have a lot of listeners who travel for work. It can be a very lonely thing. And yet you're also, in the case of Anthony Bourdain, this very famous person. And that's another thing that people talk about, you know, how lonely fame can be. So I guess, ultimately, here's what I take away from this whole thing. For people who are fans of Anthony Bourdain's, as I very much am, nothing that they mention in that article makes me think any less of him. like so that's what i'm kind of hoping is the takeaway for i think the people that really love this guy and really admired him and his way of being in the world i don't think any of those people are going to be like well maybe i had this guy read wrong you know like it kind of seems to me like this you know he he took his own life he clearly he was struggling i guess now we have some of the details of his struggle um but it certainly doesn't diminish him in my mind at all and i'm also not going to buy the book even though i'm low-key curious because again i'm such a fan of his i was such a fan of his work that i want to know more about him in the way that somebody who's a big fan of elvis or something wants to kind of know the details of their life but i'm also not going to buy the book because i kind of feel like i let me i'd let just let the guy rest in peace yeah all right these better be some goddamn upbeat songs andrew every time we do a death dedication it's coming out actually maybe mine maybe mine would be um

good to play here because it maybe it can ramp up into something a little bit more upbeat but it's not it's not dirgy but this song i'm going to play for you luke comes from one of my favorite bands from the 90s belly and oh yeah they had two records out in the 90s and that's basically all i know of them they i i found this out yesterday as i was exploring this song they did get back together in like the 2015s or 16s or something and released another um independent record and i'm unfamiliar with that but thanks to listener amanda in atlanta who is this week's 10 of the week in the newsletter one of the questions when we're highlighting a 10 of the week is what song would you choose to end an episode of tbtl with and amanda wrote the french version of the belly song judas my heart which is i'm not even going to try to say the french version of that because i don't speak french um and uh amanda says belly was one of my favorite bands in the 90s and i stumbled on this gem a few years ago and so i did not realize this that belly had released for record store day a couple of years ago and like a four disc album of b-sides and unreleased material including this French version of the song.

Je d'aime moi au cœur.

There you go. Mon cœur. Judas Moncure.

Je d'aime moi au cœur.

Oh, you slowed it down for me. Thank you.

It just did that naturally, but that's very cool.

It did to the second slowdown? Yeah.

I mean, how would I even control that?

Well, some of them, there's a little switch.

Oh, I didn't do that. I wish I could take credit for it. That was very useful, though.

Anyway, this is a very beautiful version of the song. Again, the original song in English is Judas, My Heart, And here it is in French, a B-side from Belly that is just so beautiful.

We'll be right back.

Aujourd'hui, mes sanglots se lèvent et vous voilez les étoiles. Et mon cœur a besoin de vivre comme hier.

Oh, je ne veux que toi.

I don't think we can get to the chorus

It's going on longer than I thought But it's a very beautiful song and um one i think maybe coincidence slash transition into your song here is when i was looking for this song on spotify i get to belly's like page on spotify where it lists all their albums or whatever um and their banner image across the top says delete spotify belly is one of the bands that does not like the spotify business model does did not like the joe rogan situation has a lot of strong opinions about why people should not be listening to their music on spotify but are in a position where they can't easily pull their music down from it so out of protest their banner just on spotify says delete spotify wow that's uh sticking it to them yeah so i'm literally i went on a website called discogs yesterday looking for some of these records but i might just buy them new because i kind of respect that and maybe the the band gets my you know a portion of the 14.99 or whatever i would pay for this record well it's yeah that's

a good entree into the song that i wanted to play this week which is certainly um not a new but a good one it's neil young it's off of harvest moon it's one of these days um my dad loves neil young and as we've been like the two things that my dad is just playing on his little iphone and then his like you had a little bluetooth speaker or something the kind you get at like the dollar general was marianne mcpartland piano jazz my story with marianne mcpartland is when she had a show that was on npr and npr used to circulate this list of people that we should have obituaries ready to go on they sent it to the all staff and then she was on there and i remember her just responding yeah i'm still here oh my god oh my god that's a great story i did not know that yeah it was crazy because you know it was like charlton heston i actually did the charlton heston um obit you know they try to have them ready to go for pretty famous people who are who are not young but every once in a while one of those famous people might be on the email list that's rough did they send out an apology or anything that you recall i don't remember the apology but i just remember it being kind of funny when she was wow not dead yet i don't think that's literally what she said but she she jumped on the thread anyway um so my dad was playing a lot of Marian McPartland piano jazz, and then playing Neil Young and particularly Harvest Moon, which is just such a fucking good record. I mean, every song is so good. So today I was like, you know what? Let's just lay a little Neil Young on the folks. And so I do my thing, which is I'm going to go to Spotify and just figure out what track I want off of Harvest Moon. And I'm just like looking around Spotify and I'm like, what is all this? Everyone's covering Harvest Moon and there's like, you know, like what the hell? And it was only after about five minutes that I remembered. Oh, right. he's not on spotify he was one of the was he not the first person maybe yeah i believe so yeah maybe um joanie mitchell as well i think was also part of that but like and he's legit not on there now there are some things where he doesn't have the like movie soundtracks and i guess that i ended up looking this up on reuters afterwards because of course andrew because people are trash reuters was debunking this big internet rumor that was going around that was like neil young Is just right back on Spotify And of course you know those are Rogan Heads and like Jordan Peterson Alkalites who are like Basically want to try to make the point That Neil Young is a hypocrite And wasn't really Pulling his stuff from Spotify in protest over Joe Rogan but no he's very Much not on Spotify other than random Things that he doesn't actually have the rights to Because they're part of some other production

Right. I mean, come on. We know that Spotify does not pay enough to musicians that Neil Young at his level of success would be like, boy, that was a mistake. I got to get back on Spotify so I can get point zero zero three cents per play.

I mean wasn't Neil Young living in a teepee with Daryl Hannah like 10 years ago I don't think this guy needs any of our bullshit yeah I think he's like I think he's got probably more money than he can spend even though I'm sure he's left millions of dollars on the table through having being a principled artist and even so has plenty of money to do whatever he needs to do which strikes me as not anything that involved he just seems I don't know the guy but he just seems like He's got his head screwed on pretty straight. So anyway, I just love this song, One of These Days. It is, I will mention, on Amazon Music. So that's what I was using to play it this morning on my Sonos. But I wasn't sure if you had that one. No, here it is. That's the YouTube link. Yeah, here's the YouTube version.

One of these days I'm gonna sit down And write a long letter To all the good friends I've known And I'm gonna try To thank them all For the good times together Though so appalling we've grown One of these days I'm gonna sit down and write a long letter To all the good friends I've known One of these days I just realized something, Andrew.

We can probably play this entire song, because can Spotify pull down what somebody won't let them put up on their site?

I'll bet you it doesn't get through the cracks that way, Because I don't think they're worried about their own catalog or things that they have the rights to stream. I think they're worried about hosting podcasts that are playing things that they don't have the right to host. Oh, I see.

I was going to say, could Spotify microwave a burrito so hot and you couldn't eat it?

Right, exactly. The thing would be if enough people hate Spotify that they all pull their music off of it, and then we could put our podcast on Spotify where nobody is anymore.

I'll talk to Neil about that. What happened? I just have to say, once again, there are no misses on Harvest Moon. Like, we were like halfway through it, and I was like, is this the greatest hits? I thought this was Harvest Moon. My dad was like, no, it's Harvest Moon. I was like, how are there? I mean, and I know Neil Young has a million albums, and I'm sure the more legit Neil Young stuff predates Harvest Moon. I mean, that was like I was in high school or something, but I just love that album so much.

Well, I know I say this every time, but so I'm not that familiar with Harvest Moon. I remember when the song, I remember when the album and the single came out and it was a big deal. But the thing about that album is it was sort of a return to his roots. And he had an album called Harvest that came out, I believe, in like the early 70s, very early 70s, maybe 69. But I want to say 70s, which and that was the one that I really that imprinted on me. And so I've never gone back and really listened to Harvest Moon much, even though you always recommend it. And I always sort of forget it. But we should both take each other's advice. Yeah, you should listen to like. All right. And you want to talk about, like, you know, that song, The Needle and the Damage Done. And I'm thinking about our conversation earlier about, you know, people who are in dark places. And, you know, and then that's another song that's a tribute to, you know, people in his own life who've suffered the consequences of addiction and what have you. It's like a very somber record, but it's like very beautiful.

OK, well, I will start listening to Harvest, but you got to listen to Harvest Moon.

Yeah, it seems it's a good season for it, too.

This is good Neil Young. it's also funny how much my dad like is out of the streaming economy because of course he had like the whole album downloaded to his this iphone that he uses like his ipod now like he has two iphones and one is like not attached to anything so it's just like downloaded music somehow i like

that yeah because i have a few de la soul records that are not available on any streaming service and i have those downloaded onto my phone and so if i ever find myself in a place like for some reason where I have no connectivity and I wasn't expecting that I can just go back to my day law yeah my dad is totally he

He's, you know, he's future-proofed as far as his music. He can listen to his Marian McPartland and his Neil Young all he wants, independently. A quick question for you. Is Marilyn still with us to this day? I do not believe so anymore. But it was pretty good stuff, too. And it was really cute because, like, I don't really think of my dad as being this way. It feels like kind of a move I would pull. But it was clear that there were just, like, a few of these piano songs that he particularly loved. And he'd just be like chomping on his cigar And be like this song is just so great Just so great and then we'd have to kind of like try to work Quietly so we could like enjoy The song because it was like big to him That like I enjoyed it with him Which was actually really cute Anyway the listener suggestion Is from listener Ryan by the way Thank you to everyone who's been sending in music free weekend Selections this is great we are getting We are refilling Much like the litter robot we are At 70% capacity Now I'll keep sending them but if you don't hear your song for the next couple of weeks it's only because we've actually gotten a bunch of great suggestions i wanted to include this song uh from listener ryan because one it's just kind of a nice little it feels like a nice end of summer fall is beginning song uh ryan says this song is perfect in my opinion especially for a beautiful fall day it's instrumental and can serve as the perfect soundtrack to a walk in the park or a drive through a charming part of town It's by somebody named Andrew Wasilik And the song is called Last Sunbeams of Childhood And it's submitted by Ryan In Gallatin, Tennessee Which he points out Is really a back-to-back 10 references Gallatin, Tennessee Wow So Ryan, thanks for sending this in This song is very enjoyable And I'm going to see if I can create Some kind of a playlist off of it Because this is definitely very this is a vibe for me that I could see being some nice music to clean the house to or do various tasks. So anyway, that's how we're going to wrap up the show today and this broadcast week. Thank you, everyone, for listening. Again, we're going to do a no point after this. So, you know, maybe we'll see you over there. Maybe we won't. In the meantime, have a great weekend, everybody. Stay safe. Thinking of all y'all down in Florida, hopefully you're getting things kind of back on the right track and are doing okay uh we'll see you on monday have a great weekend and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

Thank you.

Mr. Unlimited. Power out.