Muse

Um, Gil, so I looked over your chart and you have mercury poisoning. Oh, thank you. No, it's actually, it's terrible. You have high levels of mercury in your blood, which is a very toxic poison. Can I ask you about some of your symptoms? Are you feeling fatigue? Muscle weakness? Yeah. Okay, any peeling skin? Yeah, it peels right off. Like wallpaper. Uh, well, these are all the symptoms of mercury poisoning, so... I'm gonna prescribe a supplement for you of selenium, and then I would recommend that you stop eating all fish. I mean, I eat a little bit of tuna fish. Occasionally tuna fish.

Occasionally.

Okay, occasionally. What does that mean?

I don't know. I don't have more than three dollops of tuna, you know, per meal. Two, three ice cream scoopers worth? Yeah, I mean, about a handful is one dollop.

You have three meals of tuna fish per day.

You got to eat breakfast lunch today, don't you? Three squares or rounds if you're talking about tuna dollops.

TBTL.

it's time now for a full look at your forecast with astrid maybe we can canoodle before you get into it about um we're not gonna be canoodling what oh i thought canoodle meant chat he's he's the handsome he's the handsome devil that came down from heaven to make some great songs and and a dancer and give and dance forever i don't know a lot about business but he did an internet

and now the computers like him and wall street is google i get it i know who you are it's been

explained to me i'm into it let's talk all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a monday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live welcome to the internet My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

First things first, I love my job.

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where once again, we're looking at a warm day here on October 17th in the year of our Lord, 2022. I think it was like, it touched 88 in Seattle yesterday.

I just love our cheetahs! I love them so much!

It was like the warmest day, I think, ever in October here in Oregon. It's, well, strange times, everyone. And we are going to try to provide some much-needed normalcy here on episode 3794 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

I started laughing even as I tried to deliver that line with any seriousness. Because if you've heard the show before, which I'm assuming is most of the folks hearing this right now, you know that this show really trades mostly in abnormality. If this is where we now turn as a nation for normalcy, there are some real, real problems in the world. One of those problems, according to a conservative biz dude on Fox Business News last week, was that because of Joe Biden's failed policies, his Taco Bell lunch was $28. Sounds expensive. lunch for one taco bell 28 uh we will look into what all goes into how do you spend 28 on one person for lunch at taco bell i can't believe i ate that whole thing uh and then also in big tbtl news there is a new addition to the walsh has household bring it back home baby bring get back home bingo the kitten who is currently i believe wandering around on top of my friend

andrew's keyboard i'm walking here i'm walking here activating all kinds of sound effects and

initiating phone calls that should not be happening literally moments before we started this that was going on let's check in by the way with the longest running cobro maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships andrew walsh who's joining us right now good morning my friend oh he

is now asleep on my lap purring away and so it begins just had to get a little bit of his yaya's out this morning realized hey there's an audio board in here that lights up when andrew talks that was very exciting to chase the lights on the board that activated every time i talk to you down the line luke but now we have that out of our system and one thing you need to know about bingo the little kitten that we brought home this weekend is he plays hard and he sleeps hard he doesn't even play that hard he plays hard for like 10 minutes and then he gets tired and then he just wants to snuggle on your lap which is what he's doing right now he's like in one of those

Michelob Ultra commercials he's the kind of kitten who like you know gets up early to like hit the gym but then is also just like closing the Jacobson account at his high-powered uh corporate job but then he rollerblades to meet his friends at a rooftop party because he works hard and plays hard and he deserves a

Mick Ultra all of that except he plays sort of hard and sleeps really hard is really maybe more what we're getting in here I just got it I

I did send you a little picture so you can complete the scene. I'm not trying to make you jealous, but I do love the fact that this cat, number one, like, listen, it's a kitten, so there's a lot of playfulness going on. There's a lot of, I have in the other room, you know, our feather on a string set up in a certain way so that the cat can play with it when I'm not in there with him, and so I think he just wore himself out on that. I have it sort of propped up in the sofa cushions, and so then he tired himself out, and he just came in here, and he hopped on my lap, and he is zonkered out, purring away. Luke, I could not be happier with this kitten that we brought home this weekend. I mean, he is perfect in every goddamn way. He's just so perfect. That's so great. I'm so happy for you, man. Now, here's the one thing. Did you by any chance read the newsletter this weekend? It's okay if you – I'm not trying to put you on the spot. I did.

I edited it for you, Andrew.

Oh, that's right. I mean, of course, aside from editing it, did you happen to notice it? I did. I noticed it. So I did put a pledge in here. That I will only mention bingo a maximum of one time per episode with a ceiling of three episodes per week. And I can't accumulate to the unused ones. They don't roll over. Much like my.

You can't like just. If you were to go like five weeks, then you wouldn't. That wouldn't buy you an entire month of bingo.

It's not a flex spend. It's like a flex spending plan. Actually, it does roll over.

It's the reason that I'm trying. I'm wandering on a Walgreens like a maniac sometime in January.

I'm buying them diapers.

Are these Depends considered medical?

For sale, baby diapers never used. But anyway, so I'm going to try to. And I said, like, if we do talk about bingo, I want there to be a narrative arc. I don't want it just me cooing on the air all the time. And so I will try to keep it. I will keep my mentions of bingo as purposeful as possible. But it was a really great weekend bringing this little guy home. He is just, like I say, perfect in every way. The one area that we are actually working on now in all seriousness is keeping our older cat, Professor Bananas, happy. You know, we got a cat that seemed to be very snuggly and affectionate because we thought that would be a really good fit, not just for us, but also for Professor Bananas, who's just the most skittish cat in the world. And it's so funny. It's not funny. it's kind of sad to see our big old cat be so kowtowed by this tiny little kitten that just

wants to give her kisses when you say kowtowed do you mean is like a little bit um nervous is

hiding from bingo the cat yeah kind of hiding and the occasion that bingo will go up to professor bananas you'll get maybe a little bit of a hiss to set up some boundaries and um you can just tell this was interesting so when we first moved in here bananas was having some um anxiety issues for sure and also kind of like if we didn't wake up super early to feed her she would have an accident upstairs in this one place on the carpet that we've been that we mitigated and that that's done now and she's been really chill but you know when a cat does that on a carpet i brought this up on the show i think a couple years ago when theo did it one time like sometimes it feels like they're doing it purposefully like they have one weapon to kind of communicate with you aggressively with and it's their bowels um and uh i i do think that sometimes that's true but then also we as humans i think sometimes look to put meaning on things that don't have meaning like sometimes a cat is just stressed out and goes to the bathroom somewhere well yesterday so we brought home um little bingo here on saturday and i spent and we kept him in a little room like upstairs a little tv room and genevieve went to the eagles that night i was supposed to go to the eagles that night too to literally to play bingo but i decided to stay home and play with a bingo instead and continue watching a baseball game that was going

threatened to go into today's episode of TBTL

they actually pushed bingo at the Eagles back a little bit because of that game but anyway so I did stay home and it was kind of like babysitting because I didn't want to leave him alone in that room you know but I also wanted to kind of go about my own business around the house so anyway we kept them separated for like a day and now he just sort of has the run of the house but here's my point with the weaponized bowel movements which is hey happy Monday everybody Veeves and I did leave the house together leaving Bingo alone for the first time yesterday we went to watch the Seahawks game with some friends just for like you know it was probably gone for maybe three and a half four hours but we decided let's put bananas downstairs where the litter box is and you know there's a couch I mean it's comfortable down here but it's not really bananas is lair bananas likes to be upstairs on the bed or on the couch upstairs whatever but we're like no you're gonna stay downstairs we're gonna lock you downstairs plenty of room down here we're gonna let the kitten have the the run of the upstairs right i had put a little thing of water down on the floor in my office here for bingo the night before i come home we make sure everybody's okay

Thank you.

after the game banana seems fine bingo's fine banana seems a little pouty i come into my office and there are excuse me if you're eating just pause eating for a moment just two perfectly laid turds right next to bingo's little water like i have never seen bananas go to the bathroom in this area before there's no reason for bananas to go to the bathroom here the litter box is merely 20 feet away where it's always been and she's good about using it but like you're telling me this little saucer of water that we put out for a kitten and then we trap bananas in the basement and bananas just strategically drops to right there they weren't even hard to clean up they were just like they were a message they were shot across the bow next time this will be messier and i was like wow these cats they they know what's going on so we're just trying i don't want bananas to feel like because we're giving so much attention this little kitten i don't want bananas to feel like second fiddle and i want bananas to feel like she has the run of the house because it's

still her house so that's what we're working on well i'm very excited for you um it's uh you know obviously i have i did not take a pledge i took yeah i took no pledge andrew yes i took no oath yes to not talk about my cat which i did incessantly every single day for however many months it's been um and even now have not really slowed down the uh sort of content stream that is my my cat observation so i don't feel i mean i guess you made the pledge but i'm not trying to hold you to that because i find the topic to be quite fascinating now because it's something that

feels relevant to my interest well i will share as i feel that it's interesting but um i saw that there was somebody on slack was starting a counter pledge or like a um a petition to reject the pledge or something like that so i appreciate that well it's really about which slate of electors

i mean just depends on which what you're reading of the law is maybe they're maybe they're sending in a counter slate of electors and and they want to elect the true andrew walsh who talks about his

cat constantly if i understand it correctly they are renting out a gym in iowa and if you're for the original pledge you stand in one part of the gym and if you're for the counter pledge you sit in another part of the gym this cat though by the way still just i believe will just probably stay on my lap here purring for the rest of the show just totally i mean it is a dream

come true this little guy i am so stoked for you i did note by the way that um even though you obviously had your hands full this weekend with this new addition to the family you did have time to send a tweet out on october 15th that was huh almost verbatim a tweet i had sent or i sent a tweet that was i don't know who sent it first but do you realize you and i sent almost the exact tweet same tweet out over the weekend regarding the mariners no i had no idea

this is a weird thing and this is true it's gonna sound like i'm negging you but for some reason i don't ever see your tweets i have my tweets sorted by like whatever the latest comes in first so like they're not weighted by interest and so for some reason like i'm just not looking at twitter when you're tweeting things out what was i tweeted two first of all can you get to your okay i at 6

29 p.m i tweeted hashtag mariners finally getting that prime time slot oh and what time okay yeah

And I wrote, Mariners finally getting to play in a primetime game. Take that, MLB. Okay, what time did you send yours?

I didn't see yours either, by the way. Oh, my God. What time did you say you sent yours? Mine was 629 p.m., October 15th, 2022.

Luke, I'll take a screen cap.

I will take a screen cap.

Mine is 619 p.m. I beat you by 10 minutes. I didn't even know this was going on. Yeah, but here's the screw. Here's the screw. Not that I really don't care about this, but honestly, how many likes do yours have? Like 5,000?

i have 60 uh but it's pretty close i had got 74 but only because i wonder if people thought people

follow us both they must think that we were coordinating that or that we're off our nut or

something well or that that i guess was just a very obvious joke to me well i reject that i don't well i'm the one that copied you listen if anyone's if anyone's you know if anyone's in danger of being seen as a uh ripping someone off it's me yeah yeah i might have been cruising uh if i the fact that i got 14 more interactions with that is probably because bizarrely going into the weekend I sent out like the dumbest tweet that just got caught in some strange updraft and it was just like this picture of Rand Paul that I saw where he reminded me of Danny Masterson the actor and I just wrote something like uh Rand Paul looks like someone drew Danny Masterson from memory and it's really funny because i i just sent that it was like a retweet of someone else's tweet and then i don't know a little while later i was like i don't want people to think because i know danny masters and the actor has now become the point of the focus of a lot of um court stuff around alleged terrible

behavior you know i knew that i had heard bad things about him a long time ago but i now i'm i just i didn't know who you were talking about for a second Thank you. So I just looked him up. Oh, he's facing very serious allegations of assault here. I did not know that.

I kind of was, I was about to go back to the tweet and like, I just wouldn't want anyone to think that, you know, I get worried that people won't understand who the joke is on or what the nature of the joke is or whatever. So I was going to go back and just, because, you know, me tweeting and deleting since 2009. So I was like, I'll just go delete that. And I went back on and it had like 900 retweets or something. and it was very strange because it got into this like like richard marx retweeted it and commented on it jane lynch retweeted it on your tweet yeah yeah like richard marx like tweeted something like this is a quality tweet right here or something and is like retweeting my tweet with comments and i don't i mean it ended up getting enough interaction that i kind of lost track of what was going on with it but it was like of all the dingus things that i put on the internet that

thing is what got all this attention looking at this now you got like over very odd so there must

have been a little more richard mark did richard mark start following you i don't think maybe i mean i don't think so i think i would have noticed that god started following me today which i thought i mean literally like there's an account that's called god and he started following me today

what was that show god on facebook or god's facebook or god oh i have a bunch of drops from it where the guy god's podcaster or whatever yes he's a podcaster who he he hears from god and

podcasts about it or he is god he's god it was called god friended me it was called god friended

me are you kidding me let's take a listen my podcast is on life support hey i need new listeners okay one more here because we got to do this oh my god how's it all going you asking me about my podcast yes i'm still trying to figure it out that's perfect for us

um god i wish i would have thought of that joke because what i did was i retweeted a screen cap of this thing that just says god followed you and i wrote big if true but but no god friended me is a better joke i don't know how many people remember that show but yeah that's kind of the

thing is i mean i know about it because it was one of those shows that probably debuted during football season you know on a fall like right i feel like that was pre-pandemic right like maybe four years ago or something and suddenly like you're just watching a a football game i'm assuming that feels like a fox show right you're watching a football game on fox and then suddenly it's this like they they still have not created i mean we've been talking a bit about the podcast industry lately and how it sort of is just seems really gross to me these days and there have been several attempts to turn podcasts into tv shows i know somebody even approached you about that a long long long time ago um but nobody has done it successfully there was the one that was like the origin story of gimlet with um brav startup yeah brav playing alex bloomberg yeah that was that looked i mean no offense to our pal alex but that looked god awful um and see i don't know if

i had i don't know if i had enough info on that to decide if i thought i actually like zach braff i liked scrubs i'm not um i'm not against uh i'm not against him having a career andrew which i'm sure is a huge relief to him but but yeah i guess i just the like the trailer looked bad did you ever

watch an episode the trailer was terrible um i was sent some um some tape from that show as well

all right kids well as some of you may know i've recently made a very big career change i used to be in radio and now i'm a podcaster does anyone know what a podcast is it's radio on the internet my mom listens to them and they're totally boring ouch i have another one in here

somewhere too i can't find it but you know what that's a trucktober miracle that i can't find it it's so hard to listen to so anyway the point is yeah that's not good that's not a good tone at all they are trying so hard to like because that's what they want right they're making podcasts so that they can turn them into tv shows you know like it's all this bullshit now but like nobody and then god friended me about a guy who's trying to make a podcast right and god is oh i think he's he's making a podcast about losing his religion right not not the rem song but his dad is i'm it's all coming back to me luke almost like divine intervention this it's a story of a young man whose dad i believe is a preacher and this young man is struggling with his faith or maybe trying to leave his faith behind and starting a podcast about it but then god friends him literally god friends him on facebook or an equivalent social media and tries to help him regain his faith while he continues down this road of podcasting his atheism i mean it's i think it's because

unless we're talking about some kind of um ncis salt lake city or whatever or like what are the other there are these franchises where they just can't chicago fire chicago small claims court like they can't make enough of these shows that are just they just run all the time and they're all just very slight tweaks on the same theme

Other than that, it's like they're sort of out of ideas, but podcasting in the like in the word cloud that is pop culture podcast is a very big word in that word cloud right now. And so you're right. I think a lot of people are trying to figure out how. Well, this is something that people are thinking about and talking about. So now we've got to make a show that somehow features that. But it's maybe it doesn't really. Well, that's not even true. I was going to say maybe it doesn't lend itself to making a TV show. But you want to know the show that I think many, many years before podcast was ever invented, like basically showed you how to use a podcast as part of your television show, Northern Exposure.

Oh, yeah, sure.

because you had like the guy who hosted the local you know radio show from us from a kind of a a window storefront on main street and it was a very useful expositional device kind of like in do the right thing a little bit you know what i mean like there are examples of somebody who's the radio host kind of narrating things that are going on or being you know useful to moving plots forward and stuff so northern exposure i mean it wasn't a podcast but like there is some there are some examples of it but it seems like no one in the modern world can figure out how to make the

podcast part of the plot i know i've said this before but i think a while back we were talking about how you're very literal with um you know your your expectations of how things are depicted

in movies and tv shows unimaginative is another way to describe that i think literal i think um

i think uh with a much attention to detail is a good way of putting it i remember one time uh i think one time uh boston who has really improved your mood and i like that you seem

you seem much calmer and less critical i do remember my first boss in the newsroom in a

public radio newsroom his name was vince i was in high i was in college at the time and he said something like you have great attention to detail and he did mean it as a compliment but it also was a way of saying that like wow you are really hung up in your own head um but uh what was i going to say oh uh uh what came on the other day or this is a while back now but um uh gross point blank which also uses that like trope of a radio station in a small town or smallish town maybe a city um but it's like they're broadcasting from a store from a window right on the sidewalk somewhere because that's the way it's always done in movies and then i started to see the scenes inside the radio booth and it infuriated me because of how they were not talking they were not talking into the microphones at all like um uh joan cusack's brother what's his name comes in and i think his

name is john cusack i believe so although i think i i love the idea of always describing john cusack is Joan Cusack's brother Genevieve reminded me that's great Genevieve reminded me of something

that I don't know if I realized how funny it was in the moment this this is me really smelling my own podcast here but we were on uh after these messages the other day and Genevieve was I don't know if she was trying to remember somebody or what it was but she's like she's like you know this really um just beautiful woman she's an actor I'm like Joan Cusack and she's like no not you Joan Cusack of all of the people in the world I'm describing and not to say that Joan Cusack is ugly or anything I just have a fascination with Joan Cusack but I might have been the only person in the world who in that situation would have gone right like was that offered to Joan

Cusack was that offered with even the tiniest bit of irony or was that just literally where

your mind landed I think I think if possible both I think I mean I honestly I can't remember the moment that well i remember genevieve because genevieve goes back genevieve is a brave person no genevieve is a person who doesn't hate herself as much as i hate myself she goes back and listens to every episode we do and she doesn't do it out of obligation or work she enjoys it and she's also good at podcasting but like she puts on after these messages on her walk and she listens to it then she'll you know come back she'll oh it's funny when we did this or whatever which is so refreshing i can i mean we don't have to get into that conversation but i cannot do that some nights when i'm feeling a little bit brave i'm like you know what i'll bet you it wasn't so bad today and then i'll turn it on and then my part starts and i'm like okay maybe we're gonna

listen to some levitard and friends for a while uh the thing is if you hadn't gone joan cusack i feel like you would have gone janine garofalo another non-traditional choice

you're saying that and i almost wondered if i follow did you listen to the show did you listen to that episode of after these messages i also don't like listening to you on the podcast you're tweeting the same things i've tweeted you're going for the same reference i actually i i'll have to ask and whatever i won't bring it up again i'll write another pledge that i'll never bring up this anecdote again but uh i'm pretty sure that was maybe my follow-up was oh i believe that i

mean andrew we've spent a lot of time

depths of each other's psyches at this point like i don't think that's i don't think that's crazy that i would have a sense for that being kind of where you might go next um uh speaking of podcasts can i just quickly mention before we get to the break here that um i spent the weekend catching up on the latest offering from serial it's called we were three it's uh it's actually just a three episode series and it's hosted by nancy updike and it is really compelling i would highly recommend folks check it out it is also i want to just let people know really really intense and trigger warning i mean it it gets into domestic uh violence and and things that are really can be very difficult to listen to for some folks so just like know that going in but it's basically the story of this a woman named rachel camacho i guess her name might be rachel mckibben now but she was in this really tight-knit family basically with her dad and her brother her dad who kind of raised her and her brother and but they're kind of sort of semi-estranged she's living out on the out in rochester new york they're still living in southern california where she was raised and basically they both die of covid because they become you know vaccine deniers and and and sort of things like that and the the show is really investigating kind of digging into what was that and they were living they'd always lived together and stuff they had this kind of pretty unhealthy relationship but it's just this person trying to sort of sift through the wreckage of her family and also what how did two people living in a house together who are both not dumb get get drawn into that sort of world um anyway it's really really well done i think nancy uptake is just one of the best writers for podcasts she's almost the level of zach braff in um startup the tv show but no she's i mean just like when i listen to when i listen to a piece that she's written i just feel like i i just need to take everything that i say on these shows and write and then read on liveware and i needed to reduce it all by 80 percent her writing is so effective and so spare and carries so much weight with me it's just like damn that's how you do this

I'm literally sending myself a reminder email right now. It's called We Were Three. Yeah, We Were Three. All right, I'm going to check this out.

I mean, not that it needs our promotion because it's probably the top trending podcast in America right now because of how well regarded the serial New York Times brand is. But this one, I feel, really lives up to all the accolades that they generally get. It's really, really good.

That's good because when I'm around the house just doing my nightly puttering or whatever, I'm usually just interested. And I fell off the lebitard bandwagon a while back, but I'm sort of back on it now. And it's just kind of like, you know, kind of how people treat our show. It's good kind of background listening. If you have it on a speaker, you can walk out of the room and come back in and not feel like you missed anything super important. But when I get into deep cleaning projects like, hey, it's time to real, you know, I mean, it's like a Saturday and I'm really going to dig in. I'm always looking for these kinds of podcasts, something I can get addicted to and binge half of in a few hours.

yeah you will go right through it because it's just like i said it's it's a it's a really fascinating story and in fact i was talking about it with becca because she listened to it too over the weekend and i was saying this is the kind of thing that i want to send to everyone in my family luckily no one in my immediate family is um as sort of anti-vax but there are people one ripple out who are and it's really been a struggle for me actually yeah i believe um and it's the kind of thing as i'm listening to it i want to send it to anyone who is in any part of my life who is skeptical about this stuff because it feels like it's so even-handed it's not presented as and in fact this woman rachel mckibben is you know she loved her she had huge issues with her brother and father but she also loved them so it's not like she's just writing them off like i feel like it's a it's a fairly nuanced uh take on people who just clearly fell down a rabbit hole and kind of lost themselves somewhere but it's like they're not presented as exclusively

as the enemy yeah that's that's good yeah i think that a lot of a lot of folks uh find them so if it's not covid specifically it's other things around misinformation or whatever and it's just like it's really it's just so scary and it's when you care about these people and you love them and you know they're not you know they're not idiots and you know that they're good people but it's just like it's sometimes it's just hard to reach them and there's just all these other messages out there and it's just and everybody thinks they're right and everybody thinks they're losing

the war whatever that means you know right exactly well and that's why it sounded it felt to me like i was like man if i could just get the people that i had in mind and you know becca's got some friends that i was like you she actually had forwarded it to someone that she knows who's who's an amazing person on every single level except for this one thing

which is vaccine skepticism and it's like it's one of those things where you listen to you think well if i could just have this person sit down in a room and listen to these three hours of radio or podcasting they would have there's no way they couldn't hear what i'm hearing when they listen to it now if that's the case that remains to be seen but that's what it feels like well what's that

like i know we should go to a break here and maybe we're getting into a kind of a serious topic but

what is that like oh a virus the sorry a pandemic that killed a million americans yeah um what is

that like a pandemic no um what is it like i i don't i can't think of any time in my life that i have sent somebody something somebody that i love and respect and care about that i've sent them an article or a podcast or any kind of media that might like take another look at things i know that people do that a lot right but often it's like annoying i i usually hear it from the other way right it'll be somebody who maybe has my worldview but then it's like oh my dad keeps sending me these emails about why i don't know why ran paul's the only hope or or why you know oh you mean someone drew danny masterson from memory right um so like uh it sounds like this is now i'm getting to becca's shit too which maybe i shouldn't do but like this sounds like somebody that is in becca's life like was she at all nervous to like send this to be like kind of talking through a proxy of somebody else's um reporting or whatever i don't think so because

she and this person have have discussed this on on good fairly regular sure um occasions and they're good friends and so it's like they talk about it and and so i don't think it i don't think that she didn't express that to me i mean you could ask her that sounds very healthy and maybe

that's my problem is like i'm so scared to have the hard conversations because i'm always like

well i'm not going to change anybody's mind anyway well i mean you're there there's also some truth to what you're saying i mean it's very how about this i will let you know when i hear back on if this had any kind of a positive impact because that's that's the whole problem with this stuff is that and that's why this thing jumped out at me like it felt so even-handed of course it's produced by the new york times yeah and serial production so we already kind of know the politics of the people that are making this right generally speaking so maybe that's why it sounds even handed to me because it's my politics but but it just felt like one of those things that if you listen to it it's just a compelling human story which happens to also illuminate and there's also the fact this is okay i mean i know that for our listeners this is i'm not breaking any news here but it seems like the con you have one person who got vaccinated and she's telling the story of her dad and brother who were both young and healthy who are both now not alive anymore because they didn't believe in the vaccine it seems that feels like a fairly open and shut conversation right and that's what's so maddening about is like think about any other any other event where it's like okay these two people had a disagreement about if it was a or b right and the people who said it was a are dead and the people who said it was b are alive that would seem like it sort of settles the matter yeah exactly and then you don't but you don't want

to be winning arguments with the loss of people you know well of course not and also like one of

the things that her brother and father fell into because her father got it first and they were convinced that i didn't even i don't think i even knew this was one of the rumors but they were convinced that if you got the vaccine then your body started shedding the covid virus so you were than a super spreader from having gotten the vaccine so they were convinced that because they had gone to a family wedding that was that everyone except them was vaccinated they had gotten it because of people getting the vaccine so once you've crossed into that like kind of once you've crossed that rubicon like two people being dead and one person being alive probably doesn't actually have the same sort of doesn't make the same compelling case that it would to

me or you well i i mean i take most of my cues from robbie ray and aaron rogers um and so that's two of the most successful athletes of the past weekend indeedly do indeedly do um all right let's

take a quick break and then when we come back we'll talk taco bell we'll talk about what we talk when we talk about taco bell here on here on tbt on let's let it tease dude i'll take a

Raymond Carver joke any day.

Let's thank some of our Daily Donors, these wonderful folks. This is why, Andrew, we don't have to. We're under no financial pressure to sell the IP of TBTL to Zach Braff at Al. No matter how much they beg us.

Mm-hmm.

And they do. They want to make a TBTL starring Ice-T. Yeah.

To play me, I hope. Christopher Maloney. Am I iced tea and you're Maloney or vice versa? You get to be Maloney, which is a bummer for me because Maloney is just considered to be the zaddy of all zaddies now.

That's a whole internet.

That's a whole corner of the internet is just people fetishizing Chris Maloney's ample hindquarters.

Oh, is it specifically his hindquarters? I didn't know that.

Well, I think that's kind of started where it started. And now it's just like he's like literally like he has done interviews. I think he did an interview recently where he said it's very flattering to be considered a zaddy. Like he used the word because it's so often thrown around related to him on the Internet. Of course, I'll always think of Christopher Maloney as being in the movie. Oh, God. Now I'm going to forget which movie it was. It was either some kind of wonderful or back to school. It was one of those movies that I saw when I was a kid Where he plays like a kind of punk rocker dude

I can't picture this

And then, of course, he was in Wet Hot American Summer He's the fondle my sweaters guy

Right, right, right

But I always think of him as being I think he said fondue with cheddar, I think I did, I said fondue with cheddar But I always think of him as being Of course I think of it Incompletely because I can't remember which movie it was But I just remembered him being A kind of a punk kind of an intimidating Punk guy in one of those Sort of coming of age romance Movies and then when I saw him Later in his career I was always like that's the guy From you know that movie I saw at Oak Tree

Well this is not interesting we should move on But I just went on a little journey here that blew My damn mind because I was like how old is this fella And then I type in Christopher Maloney and it says 44 years old I'm like no way that guy's younger than me And then I start to feel sad And then I see a bunch of faces of somebody who doesn't look like him Turns out Maloney is spelled with an E You spell it with an A and you get an English singer Who's a 44 year old Christopher Maloney I feel like that's too confusing I feel like that's a little bit like the singer is being you Copying my tweet there I feel like he's trying to draft off of somebody else's popularity But anyway no Christopher Do you want to take a Before we thank the donors Which we haven't done yet Even though the music's over Do you want to guess the age On Christopher Meloni The actor

I actually think I know what it is Because I'm looking him up too Oh okay And I think He's born in 1961 Which would make him Like 60 something 61 Interesting A real zaddy

Born in 61 And he's 61 years old

Also I'm now looking through I'm looking through His sort of acting credits And I'm not seeing Any movie That Sort of What's the word I'm looking for Am I thinking of someone who looked a lot like him Because I'm seeing him in 12 Monkeys That would have been much later I'm not seeing him There must have been I'll spend the rest of the afternoon researching this Don't worry There must have been somebody who reminded me of him Who was in some kind of One of those movies when I was young And I've Mandela I've Maloney affected it I've just thought it was him the whole time and it actually wasn't yeah because I'm not seeing anything either it looks like really his career begins with a bunch of TV stuff in the 90s and you're talking about a movie in the 80s yeah well it could have even been early 90s but it would have been it'd be on this list and I'm not seeing it so and then once he's in you know like doing homicide life on the streets and stuff where that's we've gone way past the kind of era that I'm thinking about so he was on wonder shows in remember oh wow yes that

weirdo um there's like a weird puppet thing that was kind of grotesque though right yeah it was

like it was like sort of in the style of a kid's show but it was like really really edgy and had all kinds of just weirdness going on anyway we'd like to thank donor of the day christopher maloney

the singer the british yes okay yeah yeah certainly yeah actually you know what we are going um far

afield today we're thanking some of these donors we're thanking chris herbert in freeman's bay Auckland and then Auckland. So N-I though. I mean, that'd be New Zealand, right?

I think that's New Zealand. Why does it say N-I and not N-Z? No, Auckland's

Australia. What am I saying? Oh, that must be

the province in Australia then. Let me look this up. Because I know we have a Victoria province coming up as well, right? Yeah, but No, it's New Zealand. I think

that's a typo. Okay. Gotcha. N-Z. Okay.

um let me have a word with um with our executive producer john sklaroff about this will you please i feel like this can't go unmentioned i feel like because unfortunately it reflects badly on us

andrew we're the ones have to get out here every day and put our reputations on the line yeah and when the little people like john set us up for failure

like the devil's in the details and it's just like one of those things where when you're working primarily behind the scenes it's hard to understand the pressure that you and i deal with day in and day out and so it seems like oh whatever a typo here a typo yeah no this is this could be a real um you know kind of a game changer for us and i'd like to say like

I'm trying here, you know, I'm trying to keep my cool. There's a lot of pressure and I feel like people don't know what it's like on this side of the microphone. And, you know, and it's just like, walk a day in my shoes, walk a day in my shoes.

Yeah, you, Zach Braff, playing Alex Bloomberg.

Hey, listen, actually, the reason I got distracted there is because now I am wanting to maybe very softly correct a mistake. possibly did i zone out or do we think the first person on this list already i was trying to i said

we're i was trying to make a connection between the british singer and the facts what i was going to do was start with someone who's not in the u.s yes and then go back to the first person so okay we'll beep this all out okay sounds good i love the idea of fixing that by just having a buster Bluth style two-minute bleep session. By the way, that's also how I describe my love making, a two-minute bleep session.

Possible show title.

Thanks, Darren Booknight in Case, South Carolina, for helping fund this one-hour bleep session that is this episode. Also, thanks, Chris. We do appreciate you out there in New Zealand. And Darren, Case, South Carolina. I don't know if I've heard of that place before, although I recognize Darren's name. so we it must have been we must have said case south carolina in years past too so thanks darren

jeremy jewell is in leewood kansas that sounds like a kansas town man hey where's you wake somebody up in the middle of the night hey where's leewood it's got to be kansas or a town that's

named for that one friend who would do anything like we got to get somebody to put this cherry bomb down the toilet in the girls bathroom i don't know you could get suspended for that you

know what lee would yeah i got lee to do it he'll do it oh my god that was such a setup for that

that was amazing i feel like yeah semi paid off i've had things that paid off less

that's the bar i remember being my friend tony used to make that that was the same joke i mean i mean literally we were in fifth grade staying up all night making each other laugh with that same exact joke only we're talking about ron wood the guitarist i believe for the rolling stones right we had a whole we had like we had a loose faces we had a loose 17 on ron wood jokes

uh meanwhile i was listening to richard mark with ben folk who was calling into the the lunchtime dedication show dedicating right here waiting for you to his girlfriend and i was just dying of jealousy that he had a girlfriend and you're making ron wood joke from small faces Hey, Ron Wood. That's a much higher level of comedy than what I was doing at that age. And just musical IQ. Yeah, well, I'll give Tony credit for that, I guess. Kelly Shannon is in Edmonds, Washington. Thank you, Kelly. And then Tim Crane checking in in Monroe, Washington. Nice. Home of the, it's not a state fair, it must be a county fair.

Oh, I guess so, yeah. So what county is Monroe in? Because I went up there when I was...

Snohomish, maybe?

Yeah, I'll bet you. Is it Snohomish County Fair? Yeah, so it might be the Snohomish County Fair. I did not go to the Snohomish County Fair, but I did go to the Snohomish County Fairgrounds in Monroe, if that's what they're called.

Oh, to see monster trucks, right?

Demolition Derby on July 4th, and it might have been our first July 4th in this region, and I have photos of Genevieve and our friends just bundled under blankets in the bleachers on July 4th because summer has not started.

You'll never be cold again because we have entered some, you know, like it's right before a planet dies. There's a moment of sweet, sweet release, and I think we're in it right now.

So nasty. I say there was a the heat was an intense heat that like I can't explain. Not only did it not belong in this season, but it was like a weird, low, intense heat coming in through the smoke yesterday. I'd never felt anything like it. It was it was the most unnatural heat I'd ever felt from the sun.

Well, of course, because it shouldn't be it should have already started to rain. You know, I'm not a fan of like the gray.

kind of drizzly months and months that occur in the northwest but when you don't get that all of these other kind of natural processes are now like out of whack like you know things kind of happen the way they happen typically for a reason so if you get zero rain in the months of september and october and it continues to be hot which means wildfires continue to burn like it's a bunch of stuff that is not supposed to be happening in this way and so of course you're going to have you're going to see all of these unintended consequences of that which i think is kind of what we're what we're living in like geno smith being one of the most productive quarterbacks in the nfl that is not supposed to be happening and i think i i blame that also on climate change

i call it a silver lining of climate sure yeah well that's what i mean i i believe that climate change exists i just don't think that geno smith is causing it is what's going on there sure um and uh i think we have one more person to think yeah the jury is still out i got this i got this i'm sorry i don't know sorry i'm not trying to micromanage i'm just getting nervous for some

reason nervous today now here's a question is this power out linda oh you better believe you unless we picked up another linda in australia linda doyle of melbourne in out there in australia so two folks checking in from that part of the world one from new zealand and one from australia

that's very exciting linda oh how are you and as a listener pointed out to me via um twitter this weekend um well this person didn't put it rudely like this but i need to remember that um australia and new zealand are different places and that the band the beths hail from new zealand not

australia i think i might have messed that up no i think i'd because i have this playlist with like

i thought three australian bands but it turns out it's two australian and one new zealand band so my

apologies to to everybody involved well i also for some reason i just momentarily thought auckland was in Australia, which it's obviously not. So I think we both have a lot of, you know what, Andrew, right now, this is a time for us to really listen.

I agree.

Okay, and to just sort of take a step back to listen and reflect on the mistakes that we've made regarding Australia versus New Zealand. Hey, Luke. I think we're done with all the thank yous now. Oh, are you sure? Sorry. Hey, thank you to our donors of the day. We would not be here without you.

Indeed.

hello and welcome to top story uh i'm you know this this story is already made its way around the internet we promoted it on friday i mostly just wanted to talk about it because the write-up that patrick redford did in defector was really good like the headline is i just ate 28 worth of taco bell because some dingus on tv claimed he did it i love dingus um um he so he's he's talking about this there was actually you know what i've got the uh oh did i did i delete the audio somehow uh over the weekend that would be silly oh no i've got it right here okay so this is the original tape it's neil cavuto that's a fox business news by the way neil cavuto not the worst i mean he's not on fox fox i think he used to be for a while but his maybe or maybe he's always been on fox business but the thing with this neil cavuto guy is at least i will give him this he is pro-vax i don't know why so much vax talk is happening today he's pro-vax and i think put himself kind of in the crosshairs at foxville he he felt ill and with i think he had an underlying condition and he came back on the air and basically said the reason i survived it was

because of the vaccine so get it i remember that story but i didn't connect the name gotcha so i'll

give i'll give neil cavuto that much we appreciate that level of medical honesty he's not even in this clip it just happened to be on his show or maybe he says a couple things but both mostly it's this uh this dude named scott martin who goes by the name scotty markets uh this is what uh patrick redford ended up trying to eat 28 worth of taco bell for lunch and he goes i have undertaken this dreadful quest because scott scotty markets martin went on some fox business show to complain about president joe brandon's reckless pro-inflation governance i don't know why calling him president joe brandon makes me laugh so much but he used a baffling and bafflingly specific example to illustrate the damage done to working families by inflation his ass went to taco bell for a quote nice lunch and it cost him quote about 28 let's take a listen to the original tape and admittedly

you want to know how bad inflation is yesterday yes i had a nice lunch at taco bell cost me about $28 at Taco Bell for lunch. People need to pay for those things, and they do that by getting jobs and getting in the economy and getting active and getting involved. Wait a minute. You spent $28 at Taco Bell for just yourself?

That is Neil Cavuto, by the way. Again, being the voice of reason to some degree on Fox.

For lunch.

Yeah, it's true. Okay. That's a lot of chalupas. That's an inflation story. That is. You're both thin, thick guys. I can't see me. That's just like the opening appetizer, but whatever.

All right, a little levity from Kavuto. We don't hate that. So Patrick Redford continues. Martin's colleagues were astounded, as was a former colleague of mine, Libby Watson, when Libby invoked the blogger's code and raised the possibility of a stunt blog attempting to recreate a $28 Taco Bell order, I knew I had to be the one to answer the call. I love the blogger's code, because that's a really good point. That's what tends to happen on these things, is like, I tried to make Russell Wilson's Danger Witch, and here's what it tasted like.

Right, right, right. This is good echoes of dead spin on Defector. Love it, love it.

I think that's kind of why I latched on to it, because it really reminded me of those halcyon days, right, of the blogger's code being in full enforcement. So he says, I hopped on my bike and headed to the accursed Taco Bell in uptown Oakland. The problem started right away. The inside of the restaurant was closed for an unspecified reason. The doors locked, and the grim interior sealed off from the public in a way that felt semi-permanent. You were only allowed to access this Taco Bell's proprietary slops and sludges via drive-thru window, which felt annoying to me, but also spiritually coherent. Thankfully, they let me enter the drive-thru on my bike as two and then three cars idled in front of me. I tried to do the math in real time to end up with $28 worth of food. It was a tricky endeavor, especially because the speaker appeared to have sustained some blunt force trauma. Okay, I told you, I went to Taco Bell just like a couple weeks ago after we did this LiveWire event and nothing else was open, And it reminded me when I read this, I've never seen a Taco Bell drive-thru that has not been punched in, like speaker that is. I mean, at this point, maybe they make them that way just to save everyone the effort.

That way people won't do it if they're already damaged.

Because, I mean, I've never seen a Taco Bell drive-thru speaker that's in any kind of okay shape. I hadn't thought of it that way until I read it in this article. So Patrick Redford ends up ordering, he gets it pretty close, $28.60 is what he ends up putting in for lunch. I mentioned this on Friday when this came up, and we didn't get to the story, but I could definitely see myself spending $28 at Taco Bell for food that is just for me. But then also I thought, you know what? That might be because I order a lot of food through delivery services now. And as you've pointed out on the show, Andrew, the delivery costs definitely do add up. And I think at some point it skews my sense of what things even cost. Because when I looked at the list of what he bought, I was like, that seems like a lot even for me. So to get to $28, he got one Crunchwrap Supreme, two – there's abbreviations, so I don't know what the CHPT, CHD means, but two Chalupa – he got one Crunchwrap Supreme, two Chalupas of some kind that I can't fully identify, one Beef Supreme Burrito, one Steak Quesadilla, one Bean Burrito, and then one Sauce Packet. which is actually free. So we're talking two chalupas, a supreme burrito, a steak quesadillo, an additional bean burrito, and then a Crunchwrap Supreme. And I am here to tell you that is a lot of food. Beans are filling. Yes. And again, you know, anytime we now get into this, we have to add the caveat. I'm not telling anyone how to live their life. I'm not trying to make a statement about bodies or anything or what people do.

We're just talking about a Fox News person bullshitting and lying to make a

There's no way this guy walked into a Taco Bell for lunch and ordered this much food. It's just not how it would typically go. I mean, like, what a weird thing to lie about.

Yeah, right. I mean, I'm sure like, yeah, I'm sure it was like an exaggeration, you know, just like speaking on the fly. Also, maybe it was it was probably a Chipotle that he had delivered. You know what I mean? A hundred percent.

probably right because like and you could easily easily run up 28 bucks on a chipotle

delivery service thing i know that this is exactly the same story i told the other day but i told you that i am trying to get food delivered less because i'm again as somebody who's not super price conscious usually like i am just astounded by i mean there's there is a service fee that went into effect here in seattle um that's good i think a two dollar on all deliveries um that was supposed to help workers during the pandemic. I think that's going to that's going to send.

set pretty soon um but uh you know like vives and i and again do we have to order chicken wings as a side when ordering a pizza from uh pudge brothers no we don't but you know what it shouldn't be 55 so we got a large pizza and an order of like i don't know eight wings or whatever and by the time it got delivered and the tip and everything it was it was 50 did i say 58 i think it's 53 dollars but either way like that's still like and that's this is not me fox newsing it i'm not i'm not blaming joe brandon but i like it is uh it just does not seem worth it to have shit delivered

anymore it is astounding i have i have to say and who knows if this particular episode of our show is preceded by an ad for a food delivery service but i mean i and i certainly avail myself of these services a lot but i'll tell you what less than i used to like i think there's a time and place for it and there is a convenience factor but in the early days certainly of the pandemic in the early days of these services i was i could find myself in a mode where it was kind of my default setting and i have really started to you know either walk to pick something up in my neighborhood or fix my own stuff with groceries or like um even if i'm out and about like let's say it's 4 p.m and i'm i've been running some errands and i know i'm going to eventually head home i start thinking about ordering something for pickup from a place that i'm i mean i i as a you know as a person who lives alone and is bad at cooking i definitely don't prepare as many of my meals for myself as i probably should maybe just from a health standpoint for me so it's most of the time i'm probably getting food that somebody else made but i find myself more and more strategically figuring out my afternoon based around oh i'm going to be out i'm going to be near the laughing planet so I'm going to call in my order, then I'm going to come home, then I'm going to sit on the couch, I'm going to watch Chris Hayes' show, and I'm going to try to keep the cat from putting her gross-ass paws in my Thai broccoli bowl.

How about this for a little kind of post-pandemic economic weirdness? Because these prices are starting to get with me with delivery, I did something the other day that I had only done once – well, twice before in my life. once when we did our pizza challenge and once when I think we had a football party or something and Genevieve ordered prepared but uncooked pizzas from Papa Murphy's, which is something that people do. I had never done that because I like things delivered to me. That's the whole point. But I was out and about one day and there's a Papa Murphy's, Luke, back in the shopping center where the QFC is. I need to write a pledge to not mention my QFC. That's next week's letter. Yeah. Is it Carkeek? What is that area you said?

I like that I've gotten you to come over to that because I do think I would say that seems relatively accurate to me.

And it stuck with me because as I was driving up to it the other day, I saw there is a little street sign for Car King Park there. So anyway, there's a Papa Murphy's back there. So I'm like, you know what? I'm going to be a responsible boy. I'm going to go order a pizza at Papa Murphy's, go do some grocery shopping, and then come out, and I'll pick up my pizza. I walk over to the Papa Murphy's, and there's just a handwritten sign in the window that says, sorry, we had to close. We don't have enough people to staff this place today. And you're just like, wow, things are still very weird around here. Yeah, they are.

I'm trying to think of – I went somewhere the other day, and of course I don't remember specifically it was, but I think it was – I just looked at the menu, and so many things on the menu were crossed off. And the funny part was it didn't even feel strange to me because it's not anymore. and i was thinking god four years ago can you imagine you go sit down in a restaurant they're like we don't most of the things on this list we just don't have yeah right and or you oh you know what it was it was it was the airport and it was the um is it like uh romano's macaroni grill and oh hair okay so arts i was either a magianos or a romano's i don't know one of those two kind of pretty middle of the road Italian food places and I was for some reason really craving some soup that just sounded, I don't know, kind of comforting to me or whatever and there's of course a line because that's also part of life now because everybody is understaffed and it's a Sunday in O'Hare so it's just kind of a mob scene anyway so I wait in this long line this one woman is having a full on meltdown real Karen style She's, like, mad because they tried to move her table, and now she's yelling at this waiter who wasn't even the person who moved her, and it's just, like, a really nice guy. Actually, this guy, do you ever see somebody doing a job and you think you could definitely be – and this isn't making a statement about being a waiter, a server as a job, but this guy de-escalated the situation like he was freaking Anthony Blinken. like you bro you could be secretary of state with these skills like you're at a you're at

of Maggiano's in O'Hare and you're de-escalating this like can we send you please uh to you know Ukraine or something to help out like it was quite something to witness it reminded me of the kid at the gas station I was gonna say this reminds me of another story you told I couldn't quite

but the other one was a gas station and you only heard one side of the conversation he was talking someone down who was claiming that like they didn't get full service or they were claiming

i think someone they knew maybe a relative or something had pulled up in their car to get gas and then had been ignored and i believe the person was not able to get out of their car for some reason and so was feeling like they were passed over and uh the the young person there was explaining that that um there hadn't been any indication of that and maybe they were thinking of a different gas station which is kind of my guess probably but you could just tell like this this teenage kid was just like he was he was you know he was he was you would say standing his ground a little bit but in a polite way but he wasn't taking the bait but he also wasn't he wasn't gonna like say that something that something had happened that didn't happen but he also wasn't being mean to the other person and he was like if you'd like to have them come down we'd be very happy to help them like and then i told you this but then when he hung up we literally

spontaneously started clapping in the chevron well what happened if it's tony romas or whatever

wherever you were at the airport oh my god if tony romo starts a competing restaurant no tony

roma i know but i just wanted to be tony roma did you guys have those around here we had them in

ohio but i haven't seen one yes when i was a kid ever we had the tony roma's yeah i don't think i've ever been to one but i remember there was one actually not far not super far from where you live but well on the other side of i5 um over by um where that ross dress for less is and stuff like that maybe i don't know if it's a tj maxx now but there was a little kind of shopping center there and i used to take add i used to pick addy up from school and take her out for like lunch and we would go to this place called pancake hoss h-a-u-s that was like our go-to like little lunch date spot and then it was across the parking lot from a tony roma's and i remember thinking someday i'll have tony roma's money and i'll take my daughter there but you know what i was looking

to see if there's any in seattle at all there's one and it was right by my house it's by the super cuts on um on kind of like north gateway maybe that's one two miles from my place but it says

it's permanently closed yeah that was that's the one i'm talking about that used to that used to have pancake house in it now it's what i call the mattress district i swear like every store there is a sleep country yeah slunk jeep anyway so here's what happened at tony at tony romo's um this person was freaking out they de-escalated anyway it was a it took me a while to get seated and then i sat down and then they handed me what was clearly a a menu that had been typed up that day and had like literally four items on it probably all items that could be made in just like mass quantity and then just kind of like kept warm and then just like scooped into something like this was triage food preparation like this was because they didn't have enough people and again i don't blame anybody there at all it's just it was interesting to observe that they had like three or four menu items and i because like normally they have one of those menus you know the normal kind it's got like 10 pages in it there's 8 000 things they were just like if you want some of this that's what we got and if you're not into it there's eight people waiting to get into this joint you know i mean again nobody there was rude i'm not trying to say yeah i just mean the the sort of supply demand aspect of it was really interesting because it was like oh this would never fly during the normal yeah you know our previous version of life this would never fly everyone would just leave but also everyone was just hungry and also this was one of the only things open so we're all just going to put up with four options yeah and flying is

stressful too so like everybody's probably like not you know some of these people are probably not on their best behavior i would have guessed that if you're a server in an airport you must have kind of a maybe a pretty quick shut it down filter i'm not sure like what what were well i

mean i i was impressed this this guy who was de-escalating i feel like i would have been like I need you to leave that would have been but he wasn't doing that he was like he was like well we got you we'll take care of you what do you need okay well let's let's take care of it I mean he just had a really good tone I mean whatever those folks are making it's it they should be doubled and I'll pay the surcharge on that you know like by the way I didn't end up eating there because I was like as much as now I'm seated I'm on my table for one I was like well first of all it was mostly meat stuff and i was just like i don't really wanna i was like i was so torn because i was like i'm already sitting down should i just get like the world's worst caesar salad and like call it good

but um i didn't i went over to frontera grill where i did have a delicious uh tortilla soup so it all worked out but um but it's a different world this person was just like basically just

furious that the the full menu wasn't there this person no no no her i couldn't figure out what

her deal was um it was something about how some other server had made her move had come over and basically closed a section of the restaurant and so she thought and had said like you can't sit there or something and then the guy who was helping was like well did you get reseated and she's like no they just closed it but here's my suspicion i think this woman who was not she was on the older side i think that she might have been a bit confused about what was open and not open okay like literally in the restaurant and she had sat in a section that was not open that's probably why there was empty tables when there's like a line all the way back to nuts on clark like so yeah lady why do you think there's no one sitting at those tables probably because it's not open so she i think she had sat herself at a table that wasn't open and a server who was very harried had said like that's not open you can't sit there i see and she took it as a personal affront and was like dressing down this completely unrelated person who was handling it better than i would have nice nice yeah i don't think i'd be good at that job i mean this andrew i gotta be honest with I don't think I'm great at podcasting But this is basically, this is all I've got left I'm constantly observing Jobs in the world that I know I would be bad at, and it's pretty much every Job that's not this

I was telling you last week, I'm constantly Fantasizing about that, I was on top of the ladder last week Your ladder jobs? And I'm just kind of like Well, what jobs can I do that won't get me too Far up off the ground, because I am scared of heights Also, who would hire a 45 Year old at this point, and I'm just like Andrew, you have a job, you have the best job in the world

why does your brain always do this because it feels we were talking last week appreciatively about the listeners and the and particularly the listeners who are in a position to fund this thing it still feels 3794 episodes into it it still feels a little bit like it could you know at some point this could stop working as a business model and so i think i i think that too like and And even like I have nine jobs, but all of those jobs feel like someone's letting me do it for the time being. But at some point, they're going to get wise or the media landscape is going to shift yet again. And I'm always trying to think of my backup plan. And the answer is, Andrew, I don't have that.

But I mean my backup plans are always so far afield of what I do. I mean whatever ends up happening. I mean, if we're talking about some worst case scenario with, you know, my current job, like, why do I automatically go from, well, I can't work on TBTL anymore. I guess I have to become an Apple picker and I need to conquer my fear of heights. Like, why doesn't it begin with, well, maybe I'll apply for some low level public radio jobs. Like, can I still call screen for God's sakes? For field and stream? Oh, no, I meant call screen on a public radio calling show. But, yeah, also, can I telemarket?

I think part of that is because everything that you and I hear, and probably our listeners are the same, everything you hear about the media, the state of the media, as it were, in America is that it's falling apart because nobody pays for content anymore. Unless you're talking about the New York Times, the Washington Post, or a few other select entities, it's like everybody is being asked to do more for less money. you hear so it doesn't feel like i i assume the same thing like i assume that if we can't do this anymore and for me if like you know they decide to pull the plug on like live wire i don't i'm not assuming that someone else will just be like hey could we uh would you like to host a different radio show like i feel like this is this you know these things that we're doing i'm really grateful to get to do them but it feels to me like the the last of these kind of jobs i'll probably have just because there's more competition and younger people who have more interesting things to say and are maybe from you know non non-white male straight boring ass communities like i am like i just feel like i'm on the i'm i'm on the uh you know i'm beginning my initial descent as far as being a media voice anybody wants to hear from and i'm okay with that but what i should really do is think about what i'm going to actually do for the next you know what actually i just realized what i'm going to do andrew i'm going to build a time machine which i i've heard is hard but i think i could do it i'm gonna go back in time and i'm gonna stop getting divorced every six years okay that's an interesting because that is financially you could just quit working and just also just stop that's what i do i go back in time i stop getting divorced uh-huh and then i'm rich right now and then i don't have to then i don't have to worry if i get fired from being a podcaster

i i do wonder if for me it has to do with you know in a certain way i'm telling these stories as if it's like as if I'm like tortured with this idea of like well what what job

outside my industry what just like job that i can do with my hands right or whatever um i wonder for me if it's almost more of a comforting thing and that it actually goes back further to even me working in media but like almost a horatio elger maybe even a maybe even a somewhat conservative notion that i grew up with that like no matter what i can like that i feel like i've lucked into so many things but at the end of the day if the luck runs out i will work hard that that yeah and i don't know if that's true anymore because of the just the thing you know the the the the the aging of one's body but like i do feel like i went through life apple picking is going to be hard i'm not i'm scared of heights man i don't know what to do we're gonna have to start luke and andrew's apple picking business you're gonna go well you know i'm working on an orchard so

that's right i'm already setting us up for our future i'm just gonna hold my um apron out in

front of me and you're going to drop the apples into the apron and I'm going to put them in a basket what's so hard I am I do think that I went through life always thinking like especially in public radio sorry this is getting sort of deep again but I'm just sort of exploring this now I think maybe it's like I was never I was never the smartest person in the room but I always felt like I could work hard you know like I will what is it I'll learn it what is it I'll learn it I'll do it I'll be here you know and like that's always been my default am I am you know I'm no I'm no Nihar I don't know why he jumps to mind but you know our friend and my my former colleague Nihar who's just a great producer I'd listen to him cut it up with the other producers and he just is sitting on this you know um just this uh broad base of knowledge and he cut it up with anybody I'm like I I can't do that I know it's weird that I have this job and I say I can't do that but um but I'm like yeah but I will study it out I'll I'll like put in the hours and that that was what always got me through thinking that maybe i don't belong here or this is how i can i'll just muscle it out in a certain way at age 45 or 46 i don't think that's true anymore i mean i think that when i was younger in in in the media like social media did not exist when i started my radio job but when social media did start raising its its its cute little head um i was one of the younger people in the newsroom so sure i can tackle that social media now social media is stuff that i don't know how to I don't know how to tick and I don't know how to talk Luke I'm not gonna lie to you like I like that train has left the station for me and I think I sometimes get a little anxious thinking about all the things that I felt like well I'll just muscle through it and so now my brain still does that but it's looking for for jobs that are maybe just maybe more accessible to me for some reason like can I I honestly went to bed the other night having a well fantasy is the wrong word like some sort of a daydream some sort of a I hadn't fallen asleep yet but I was thinking hard about like my first day at the airport as a custodian I'm not even joking this was like a long kind of fantasy that I had about like when they say you know you have to you have to tackle a real nasty situation in the men's room or something like can I handle that it's

very strange how obsessed I am with this well I can I can relate to a degree because I used to do this way of soothing myself sometimes when i'd be feeling stressed or when i'd be feeling like um uncertain about my kind of job future i would remind myself and i really believed this deeply up until a few years ago i would always say if you dropped me off on a street corner in any city in america and i had like you know a driver if i had like a you know government id that i could that was valid i could be back on my feet within a year you know and maybe not have rebuilt all of my life but i could be like i could i could have an apartment i could have a job in an apartment like i i felt very confident that if you just left me on a street corner and i could figure it out you know and there'd be some there'd obviously be some lean initial weeks and things like that but I just felt like I was somehow myself a naturally renewing resource that was always going to be okay. And now I do not feel like I could, I do not know if you drop me off on a street corner with just my ID somewhere, if I could, you know, I don't know. I don't know what it would look like. I don't feel, I just used to think I'll always figure it out. And now I'm like, the world has changed so much and I'm not as young as I used to be and the world might kind of value some different things. And I've also been in this kind of job so long that I don't know if I have it in me. This is where you and I are different. I don't think I have it in me to go work at a grocery store where I clock in at 8 a.m. and I clock out at 4 p.m. My ability to do that was never great, but any ability I had to maybe exist more in the typical 9-to-5 world I think has really atrophied. So it's weird because I used to just think I will always be okay. And now I feel like, we'll see.

Mm hmm. Yeah. I mean, it's funny you mentioned grocery store, because obviously that's something I think about a lot. I was just in the grocery store the other day thinking about that, too, because whenever I pass one of those, you know, I know exactly why I thought about it, because I passed one of those people that I don't know if he works for the grocery store or a delivery service. I'm guessing the grocery store and he's got one of those huge carts that he's filling up for somebody's like delivery or something. And we started to see that a lot during the pandemic. Right. That's one thing that's going to change that'll stick around the idea of like kind of normalizing grocery store delivery. But whenever I see those folks, you always run into one or two of them in the grocery store. And it reminds me of that moment where people I knew who worked in the bar and restaurant industry had to get jobs at grocery stores because they didn't have anywhere else to go. right and um and and that's where that's where the jobs were because you needed extra people for delivering at the grocery store and so i ran into one of those guys kind of had one of those awkward coming around the corner almost um almost bumping carts with the guy now we're in love actually we're getting married uh next week that wasn't me cute it wasn't me cute but i was just like now that's a job i could do like i wonder do you just stay in the grocery store all day again like i just i maybe i'm somewhat curious about people's jobs too but i'm just like huh i wondered like do you just fill that cart all day and then get a new cart or are you from are you getting the list filling it up delivering it yourself can i do that are there heights involved will i be

picking apples you better hope that you don't have to do what they were doing when i was in hill ham tennessee recently which was i went to the food lion or whatever the local store was that which is where i got turned on to using those breakfast sausages in lieu of hot dogs oh yeah but But basically 80% of the staff of the grocery store was furiously emptying out this two aisles of the refrigerators because they had broken and all of the frozen food was about to go bad. It was like all hands on deck. It was like the frigging Titanic. People are just running around with these bins and just putting everything in the bin they can and then taking it. I don't know where they were taking it. somewhere colder i guess and i just thought oh golly that's like that seems like a really stressful situation like how much inventory is that and also how do you figure out what you can put out and sell because there's probably a certain amount of liability of something thaws yeah you thought it was frozen but it's thawed and i was like that's probably like that's probably 50 grand of food that just is now in a really kind of big question mark zone like damn like i'm happy that all i had to do today was interview some people playing marbles and talk to andrew

here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female no man

it's not from a female all right any emails or v-mails that uh you find interesting on this

monday you know what why this seems perfect if we're talking about the job market um let us give the line to jeffrey here listener jeffrey uh left us a voicemail and we were talking about the the author carl hyacinth recently he's like kind of a kind of a pulpy writer of like kind of uh crime and mystery novels that take place in florida and um it came up because one of his books is about cheating during a bass fishing competition and it was very similar to the walleye competition story we were talking about but anyway that reminded jeffrey of this story

Hey, dummies. Jeffrey in Eugene, Oregon here, and your talk about Carl Hyass reminded me of an embarrassing moment during an interview that was going really well, actually, until the very end when they just started asking some softball questions to get to know me, what I like to do, all that sort of stuff. And then they asked the question, what was the last book you read? And the last book that I read was Strip Tease by Carl Hyasson, and I couldn't think of another thing to say. Truthfully, that was the last thing I read. I did not have a power out to that. And I don't think they probably just knew it from the movie and not at all from the humor of Carl Hyasson. Good news is I got the job, and I'm still there 20 years later. So, all's well that ends well. Power out.

You know, it's so hard. If you've read like a thousand books in your life, just quickly name a book you've read other than the one you're not supposed to say right now. Yeah, exactly. It's just like it's so hard to name. Like when it's like don't say the elephant, don't say the elephant. It's just like that's it. There's only one book in the world and it's Striptease by Carl Hiaasen. Do I get the job? Like, you just cannot sometimes, especially in a high-pressure situation like that, think of any other book in the world. Green Eggs and Ham! But, and also, if...

I mean, the thing about Carl Hiaasen is, yeah, the book is called Strip Tease, and yes, it does involve somebody who's a dancer, but it's not overly sexual in nature. It's not graphic. It's not soft core. Yeah. So if you hadn't read it, though, like there's a million other Carl Hiaasen books that the listener could have mentioned that aren't called Strip Tease. Yeah. So if you're conducting the interview and you're not familiar with the work and they say, what's the last book you've read? And it's like Striptease, you're probably thinking, oh, it's just a book about strippers. But that's really that's just kind of the jumping off point for that book.

Yeah. I even more confusing. I made a bit of a mistake here. The cat was totally asleep on my lap the entire show. But then I got uncomfortable. You know how you're subconsciously holding your legs in a certain way. So yes, cat will fall through them or whatever. And like he was totally zonked out for like an hour now. But I got uncomfortable and I knocked him off my lap. And now he may create some havoc here

That is like exactly my life with Bubbles I feel like they should have a better Internal gyroscope Or whatever it is that keeps them Because think about their ancestors Particularly Bubbles' ancestors She's like a couple generations From being a jungle leopard If they fall asleep in a tree And they fall out of it They could easily die How is it that she can't just sleep on my legs without falling off of my legs while I'm watching a football game like has she lost

all self-preservation well I want I mean my cat here bingo like he fell asleep in a way that like he just turns into molasses and like uh I I feel like he'd I don't know like he he wasn't fall I don't know it was almost more on me it's like he wasn't falling off my lap but he was just sort of like dripping off of my legs and I just kind of realized oh I'm holding myself in a certain way here right to accommodate that but if i didn't he'd probably be fine i think it's just me

but anyway i think we're i think we're all clear that's a that's a good indication that we should yeah we should probably wrap this up wrap this up so uh that's sorry for the last uh sorry for

the last cat story i'm just getting a little bit distracted because he was nosing around the place where i have a little box that's plugged into a computer and if the usb jiggles even a little bit i lose my connection to you and i saw no starting to know nose around that area which is why i couldn't think of anything else to say other than my cat is a way i don't know if you

want to use the second of your three weekly mentions tomorrow but i do have a question for you that maybe i can ask you tomorrow about why it is that the cat is with you the person doing a live recording broadcast and not the other person who lives in the house who is presumably not

recording a live broadcast right now you think that Genevieve should have taken the I'm not

saying should have I'm only asking questions Andrew because Genevieve's at work meeting with the president of the university I'm only okay but I'm only asking questions okay well that's well now you've kind of given me the answer I didn't know I thought you were both working from home today and I was like I was interested I still want to ask you about this tomorrow because I feel like um I'm I'm curious about how this is this whole thing as far as like as far as the cat ownership is going to play out between the two of you so maybe and then if you don't want to use up one of your mentions tomorrow i'll loan you a bubbles mention i will withhold i will not talk

about bubble it's like a carbon offset i was that's literally what i was gonna say it's we're trading credits here i like where this is i'll give you a kitty cat off i love tomorrow so i can

ask my question okay great all right that's gonna do it for today's show thank you everyone for hanging out with us we'll be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you so please do join us for that until then have a great monday take care of yourselves stay safe and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

they is trying to say i was greasy i only washed one time last week that's all i needed this is a quote from my beautiful wife thanks power out