Muse

The new Amazon Echo has everyone asking Alexa for help.

Alyssa, what time is it?

What the hell is wrong with this blasted thing?

Amanda!

But the latest technology isn't always easy to use for people of a certain age.

These kids done bought me a busted machine again. Oh, yes, sir!

That's why Amazon partnered with AARP to present the new Amazon Echo Silver, the only smart speaker device designed specifically to be used by the greatest generation. It's super loud and responds to any name even remotely close to Alexa so they can find out the weather.

Allegra, what is the weather outside?

It is 74 degrees and sunny.

Huh?

It is 74 degrees and sunny. Where? Outside. What about it? The temperature outside is 74 degrees and sunny.

I don't know about that. The latest in sports.

Clarissa, how many did old Satchel strike out last night? Satchel Paige died in 1982. How many did he get?

Satchel Paige is dead. He what now? Died. Who did? Satchel Paige.

I don't know about that. Even local news and pop culture. Anita, what them boys up to across the street?

They are just playing. They what now? They are just playing. You say they just playing now? Yes, they are just playing.

I don't know about that. TBTL.

Some people call it catfishing. Some call it to catch a predatory. In Jesus' day, it was called pulling a Judas.

What's the symbology there? Symbology? I'm sure the word you were looking for was symbolism. What is the symbolism there?

This need you have to be the smartest guy in the room is off-putting. You know what, dude? We can make a lot of money on this. If you're making these out of thin air, I mean, there's no overhead. We're going to be rich.

Oh, my God. One hundo a day, both of us. Five hundo a week. That's rich. That's it.

All right. Hello. Good morning and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show it just might be too beautiful to live that's what's in my name is luke burbank i am your host i don't know who that is and i don't care to find out coming to you from the hollywood broadcast center right here in portland oregon sorry the uh cat is going just completely nuts here um it is a uh well let's see it's kind of actually a smoky day again because we still haven't had any rain and there are wildfires burning up and down the pacific northwest sorry billy joe we did start the fire uh so um it's going to be a treadmill day today because it is the particulate levels not healthy here in the pnw take care of yourselves uh don't go out and breathe too much of that air stay indoors and listen to too much tvtl which finds itself at episode 3796 in a collector series let the fun begin i was filling out a application for something yesterday and it was asking me about employment history and it asked me about my job and i said you know i work for american public media and it was like how long have you been at that position and i was realizing it's been since 2008 so i don't know carry the one that's my new go-to joke by the way carry the one uh i mean that's a long time it was it was stunning to me when i realized it's been like 14 years or something of doing this i mean coming up on it anyway uh and here we are my friends speaking of tremendous wastes of time i watched like seven hours of netflix last night there's a waste of time to do that i watched the entirety of that very popular series The Watcher I'm scared half to death which is a psychological thriller based loosely on a true story or true events it's the number one show on Netflix right now I don't usually go in for this kind of stuff but for some reason I just got sucked into it last night and well I've got thoughts and I will share those thoughts with you, because that's sort of how this program works. Also, someone else is sharing their thoughts with the world. One of those two protesters who threw soup on Van Gogh's sunflowers painting is speaking, and I have to say... You're like the coolest person I've ever met. I want to be friends with this Gen Z soup protester named Phoebe Plummer, because I think she makes some really good points. And then James Corden is getting just absolutely dragged on.

on the internet, for being rude at the New York restaurant Balthazar. Now, he's actually been invited back to the restaurant. On Monday, he was banned from the restaurant. He apologized. He was allowed back in. But now what the internet is doing is just trading stories of this guy's alleged rude behavior. And I never knew that I wanted to see people dishing on James Corden the way that I apparently do. So we'll get into that. All with the help of this young man, the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. You will never catch him being rude in a public setting. In fact, he's so kind, he walks around leaving notes on people, on their cars, letting them know that their cars are, in fact, polite.

Oh, my God, I'm freaking out!

That's who this guy is. He's Andrew Walsh. Who do you think you are? He is. He's joining us right now.

Good morning, my friend. God, I've got to get to a bowling alley, man. It has been a while since I've been in a bowling alley. But, yeah, that's who I am. Hey, I read a little piece of news that made me think of, well, think of myself first, but then you very quickly after. Actually, it came to me via the Hot Pod newsletter, Luke, industry news for the podcasting business. I'm really trying to impress my bosses staying on top of the trends, YouTube, Spotify, gaining ever more power in the space. But that's not what I'm here to talk about. There was a little bit at the end of the newsletter that talked about how the latest edition of iPads will no longer have headphone jacks. We've seen headphone jacks leave the iPhone, obviously, and a lot of other phones as well. People are using Bluetooth technology a lot more these days. I know for a while there, the Apple products had, like, headphones that you could plug in via some special port they had, too, right? Wasn't that a thing? It wasn't a regular headphone jack, but it was a special headphone jack. It's still the case. Oh, is that still the case? It doesn't have to just be Bluetooth. It can also be that.

Well, actually, it comes down to the question of what makes a headphone a headphone or a headphone jack a headphone jack. Because I'm looking at my iPhone right now. I can listen to, when you buy a modern-day iPhone, at least whatever this version is I have, it comes with headphones that you can plug into the phone. but they're not using what you and i think of as a headphone jack which is that little it's something more digital you know what i mean it's like a different kind of uh input so for our purposes like sometimes we like to play audio off of our phones or off of our ipads or whatever and that's always using as we talk about on the show so often a mini to mini a certain kind of way to

plug into the phone and that is what's now gone from the iphone i see well i um am fully ensconced in my uh android lifestyle so if i ever were to get another tablet i probably wouldn't be messing around with an ipad anyway um so you'd think why would i be upset about this sorry i didn't know

there was gonna be that much music in the background of that well i just have a drop that's an android discovers feelings which i thought would be apropos there but no it was

way too much noise although it did sound kind of october halloween-ish so it is but anyway this is Jake writing about the lack of jacks in Hot Pod. This is how this affects us, Luke.

It's like 10,000 jakes when all you need is a jack.

So have you ever been on an airplane, Luke, and there is a young person, like a very young person, who is being occupied by playing a video game on their iPad or their parent's iPad and they don't... Oh, yeah, like a very young person. Yes. And they don't play. They don't plug the headphones in. I've been on flights before. In fact, one in particular, I remember where some kid was blasting his video game, his little tablet video game. And I'm like kind of across the aisle from him. And I'm kind of like trying to shoot daggers at the parent. Like it's like airplanes have that hum that sort of like kind of cancels a lot of noise out. But then there are certain things that kind of cut through it. And the sound of this kid, I don't know, jumping over holes and capturing coins or whatever kids do on iPads these days was just cutting through. And it was just like this constant irritation. Three times the flight attendant came by and asked the parent to turn the volume down on the kid's thing. And they would do it momentarily and then they would turn it back up. And I realized that that's what's going to happen. Because, like, you have a kid on an airplane. You haven't got a million. If you have multiple kids on an airplane, you've got a million things going on. It makes a lot of sense here. entertain yourself with this iPad that's what we all do on airplanes but I also think that like if you're then going to be like okay wait and now I need to like hook up the Bluetooth so that my kid can listen to the video game I think that we're just going to see more and more people not just children but more and more people generally speaking not even bothering with headphones in public and I'm thinking specifically about airplanes here and that's why this iPad news affects us all you know that's a really interesting take Thank you. it and i don't i can't disagree with you on that in that you know the the idea is well we all just have bluetooth headphones now and they're all charged all the time and they're all handshaking with the device but see that's a lot of assumption and i mean a lot of the time there's some issue it's it's not as it's it's well very very clearly it's less analog than just plugging something into the device which will always work and which doesn't need battery power etc yeah you know Now, here's what I don't understand. What is the downside of an iPad having a teeny, tiny, microscopic, almost imperceptible little input somewhere on it so that if your Bluetooth headphones are dead or if you're just – have you noticed this trend? my daughter brought this up with me a lot of the people her age the new, I don't know, the look, the move is to actually use corded you know, old school iPod, or yeah iPod headphones, like plug them into your phone and use those even though the same people, a lot of them have Bluetooth you know, have AirPods and whatever it's almost, it's like a look, it's like an it's like us listening to vinyl or something it's like an intentionally anachronistic

move i didn't i have not noticed that but it doesn't surprise me at all and i can't really dunk on it because so much of like you know me like a while back i was going through an obsession of trying to get like um a walkman i had a walkman i was listening to and it just kind of it was a fun it was just a fun way of listening to music and there are obviously better ways to listen to music i was literally picking out a cassette tape to take with me on a walk as opposed to like the entire catalog of every artist ever on spotify that was also in my pocket like so i i kind of get it like sometimes sometimes these little i don't know having these physical objects do kind of bring you closer to the listening experience i think oh yeah and i'm not even it's not even like

i think it's dunk worthy it just isn't what i saw coming because yeah you know and the other thing that they this is already probably a little bit now kind of over as a trend but certainly on in the tick tock space the the move is so you're like a high schooler and you do it's actually kind of amazing you want to talk about hot pods andrew some of my favorite content these days is just people typically young people and by that i mean people under the age of 25 interviewing each other um in these just a brief like you know one minute two minute long clips so some kid will be at their high school and they're going around asking just some kind of person on the street kind of question of the fellow students but what they do is you know how the old school like um uh headphone cable has the microphone is like a little bump on it yeah yeah and so what they do is that's the mic that they use for the recording of the conversation and so they have there's this very specific way of holding the headphones so that you're you're holding the headphones so that you're you're kind of presenting the little microphone bump and you're sitting there with some kid and you're going like you know who's the best teacher at this school and then you move the like microphone bump over to them and then they answer uh mr waters and then you go okay and then you go like you're doing a poll or something or there's this one uh young woman who just goes around asking people how much they have in their bank account and then what they do and it's a fascinating study of the human condition uh some people don't want to answer some people do answer it's surprising the kinds of jobs and these this will be like at a party somewhere in florida or whatever it's always like this very loud chaotic background and she's just going around going how much do you have in your bank account what do you do and i don't know why i find that endlessly fascinating as a question but they're all doing it using the built-in

microphone on their airpod cable that reminds me i need to check my bank account right now because i try you do my my credit i'm a podcaster um don't ask me what the show's about i my credit card was declined yesterday luke yeah it's always embarrassing kind of forgot to pay my bill um and the thing is i have the money to pay it i'm not a deadbeat it's just that like i have a little reminder here remember i got in trouble with my credit card a while back i had to go a couple of years without a credit card because i just absent-mindedly forgot to pay my credit card bill now i use my credit card almost exclusively um and my i have a little reminder on my calendar Every Wednesday, pay the credit card bill. But then it's never quite as easy as that. I check with Vives. Hey, is it a good time for me to pay this off? She'll say, hey, we got some things pending. Maybe take some time on that. Maybe do it Friday. Check back in. And so my little calendar reminder became very quickly ignorable because it didn't really mean much, right? Then yesterday, I'm at the ARCO or the AMPM if you're Camaro Kev. I don't know. Call it what you want. And I'm buying myself some White Claw, and my credit card was declined. And I'm like, oh, I haven't paid my credit card in a minute. So then I tried to pay it off yesterday, but I did it so quickly and frantically. I don't know if it.

actually went through so i don't know if i'm financially whole right now or not white claw

from the a.m. p.m. is a bold move did you get um did you get some of your um you know uh fago i know that i saw it there or anything else like i i interesting to me i mean you know white claw is

white claw i got a fanta i got a strawberry fanta i was going to drink it before before after these messages as a little as a little energy boost but you know what luke the walk you know a few blocks away and back that energized me enough i didn't need the the soda so it's still waiting for me

in the fridge for when i need a little pick-me-up so much of this is now making more sense okay i got this so in other words you you go to that arco because it's walking distance yeah it's not too far okay that makes perfect sense because i was just thinking i was imagining you driving around and doing errands and then going and i need to stop by the arco for some of my food stuffs

but no it's a proximity thing it's a proximity thing it is still they just recently redid the Arco like it is a really it's a pretty rough corner there's you know people pretty openly just kind of in the parking lot standing around selling drugs a lot of prostitution deals are going on in there it is it is really a rough corner and they just kind of they shut it down for a few weeks and did some renovations but you're starting to kind of see that kind of creep back in so it's not like it's probably not my number one place to do my grocery shopping but I guess it's better than it was in september i used to live across the street from the first place i was living in

portland from this plaid pantry which is uh i don't know how i think it's a a regional thing there there's way more of them in portland than there are in seattle are there a couple of them

in seattle even i feel like i used to pass one somewhere in like kind of near the university

district but i could be wrong about that there's kind of a lot of them here in portland and they are um my experience with them is that they are always a locus of a lot of people who are dealing with a lot of you know stuff like the one that was near my apartment was definitely the parking lot you know had been sort of uh like a lot of folks that were kind of staying there whether it was in a vehicle that was only minimally functional that they might live in or this one there was an area where there was a microwave and you could get you know you could buy like a dinty moor or whatever and warm it up and stuff and i'm not even this sounds like an exaggeration there was a person who just took over that corner of the store and the employees were just kind of like okay and by the way you could you could say this is a larger conversation about our society where people have to live in the corner of a plaid pantry instead of having a a safe reasonable place to live but that place i would always because it was walking distance i would always like if i needed something like last minute i'd be like i'll get it at plaid pantry i can't think of one time something i bought there actually turned out to be like what i was looking for i remember i got some um some hot dog buns there once that were i can still taste how bad they were in my mouth right now thinking about it like they were i i've never like how do you mess up a hot dog bun they were like hostess or something but they were like four months old but they had been treated with some chemicals so their shelf life was indefinite and i just remember like grilling up some veggie dog and putting it onto like the world's worst hot dog bun and just thinking this is my life now but anyway um on the subject of of of mini marts that are maybe not exactly your your number one choice but something

that's just easily gotten to yeah i always do wonder about like when i see um folks out there like clearly kind of just like making deals i wonder what they think of me you know what i mean do they as i because i i'm i'm especially as i'm working from home um i'm not the most i'm not the most put together looking person you know what i mean like i mean do they think for a moment like is this a potential customer or are they like here's this square middle-aged dad type um or like what's what's going on like how do i look or or do they not even see me at all i wonder sometimes as i walk through the market the open-air market that it is right are you a little bit offended

that i mean because honestly i think it's door number two i think that they just see a yeah a real old-fashioned square and kind of feel like this is this is not a person who's probably here for the things that we're here for yeah does that offend you on some level no i just stared daggers

at them the whole time that sounds like and i tried to sort of like brush shoulders like kind of in a kind of aggressive dominance if you can exactly i've always wanted to solo host this show

the king of the more you assert dominance in that parking lot the closer we get to that

well they make a documentary about me called the king of arco about my confrontations

um should i start telling you about this uh show the watcher or should we take a quick break and then i'll start telling you about this show let's see what time wow i mean it's kind of normal

Break time, but we haven't taken a normal break in a long, long time. I feel like once I start, I mean, I'm not exaggerating, seven hours of my life. I'm a person who won't go to a movie because I can't commit to 90 minutes of sitting in a comfortable chair eating delicious popcorn. I don't have 90 minutes of my life for that, Andrew. But what I did have last night was seven hours of my life to give over to this semi-hokey TV program. So anyway, well, let's do this quick break, and then we'll come back and talk about all of the top stories here on TBTL. Let's thank some daily donors for making TBTL possible. We want to thank Linda Mills of Anacortes, Washington. Beautiful Anacortes. God, Anacortes. That's just heaven on earth. We're having a wedding celebration for my brother Sam up in Mount Vernon, which is not too far from there. Maybe I have to swing through Anacortes because that is a really cool town. Thank you, Linda. Also, thanks to Allie Piazza of Portland, Oregon. Hey, Allie. Of the Wild Mike's Pizza concern. Absolutely. Long, long, long time listener, Allie. Way long time. Thank you, Allie. Way long time. Yeah. For many years. Thanks, Allie. We appreciate you. Nice to see your name on this list. Rob Runblad is in Charlevoix, Michigan. How would you say that?

I think that's how I would hope to say it. I don't know if I would nail it the first time, but that looks like a Charlevoix to me.

Yeah. I don't think I've ever seen the word Charlevoix before. Me neither.

I hope we're saying it could be a local thing where it's actually, you know, like Des Moines, Washington. Well, exactly.

Or Mackinac.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

We went down that hole. Oh, no. We went onto that island and then died. I can't get the Michiganders angry again. Rob, thank you for supporting us through our various pronunciation challenges regarding everything. What is Michigan? It's the what state. If you had to guess, let's play a quick game of. I'm going to say the mitten state, although that's a good guess. Because, well, a, you know, they always talk about what the you youpers and the flatlanders. It's like a mitten. People will say it's like, but also it's cold there. So you need to wear mittens. I am thinking... Can I look it up now that I've given my guess? Yes, the Mitten State. You're on the record as the Mitten State. I'm wondering if it's... Like, the thing is, the automotive stuff came too late. Otherwise, I'd say it's like the, you know, they'd call it the ever-forward state or something as a reference to, like, Ford. But I think they would have established their kind of nickname before that. And I'm wondering if it's something, like, I don't know, related to a plant That's you know well Ohio is like the Buckeye state right that is true yes So I'm wondering it's also

Luke the heart of it all According to an 80s and 90s Advertising campaign for Tourism because Ohio is sort of shaped like a Heart I think it's a pretty good slogan

You know what that's not a terrible

Yeah kind of in the middle kind of in the middle of the country The heart of it all

Michigan Michigan Michigan

um the there's a couple here okay is it plant related one of them is geography related one of

them is animal related i wonder if they're trying to play off the fact that it this that the that the state kind of goes up into almost into canada and has these huge you know this giant lake and

is kind of boundless is it the boundless state no but you said an important word in that sentence

and it wasn't canada lake yeah land but not land of a thousand lakes because that's no that's already taken it's not a lake it's not a good lakes state it's a bad lake state it's a great lake state on the course how boss would it be if they were like the bad lake state

Unfortunately, that might be Ohio The Great Lake State It's more recently been called that And that's what it says on the back of the U.S. quarter That represents the state But the traditional nickname is an animal I don't know that you'll ever get there, though You would definitely describe this animal as charismatic megafauna Nope Because Michigan is the badger

um the wolverine state maybe i should have gone with a oh yes of course marvel reference i apologize i said that michigan is the badgers that's wisconsin of course michigan wolverines yeah so there you go my bad i was thinking i was imagining the michigan mascot but i was imagining the wrong kind of fierce kind of roly-poly animals so ah yes the wolverine state yes well thanks uh rob for checking in from the wolverine state also thanks to alicia and dan schaefer in seattle washington washington the evergreen state except for right now i could have gotten that one actually i bet you if you'd

asked me that my brain would have frozen and i wouldn't have gotten there even though obviously i know it's the evergreen state like it's one of those questions kind of like we were talking about Yesterday like what's the second last book You read you maybe not wouldn't be able To conjure it like I don't know if I would Have just been able to come up with that

They're calling it it's now known as the evergreen State except for Andrew's lawn yeah Don't even get me started I know It's it is I mean I know I Always start the show with some kind of weather update Which probably is boring but man it is Desiccated out here in Portland as well

I don't know what's going to happen in Portland but A big rain is supposed to come I think maybe starting um i don't know if it's tomorrow or the next day but kind of through the weekend and like i don't i know that there are a lot of people who like kind of well i guess i'll just be a little bit rude about it there i feel like there are some people online who like kind of really make it one of their big personality traits that they like rain um the rain here doesn't bother me so much and as much as like constant heat would but you know whatever um but anyway i'm kind of really looking forward to that rain just sort of like as a as a spiritual cleansing it's like they're calling it the first big soaker of the season i'm kind of looking forward to it i i look

around my lawn and everything just seems thirsty i um see this is the thing i'm with you like i never thought i would say this because every year that i've lived in the northwest in adulthood the the rain and the particularly the lack of daylight has it sort of bugs me a little bit more i'm it's not it's not like i have a higher tolerance i somehow have a lower tolerance and so like normally i would be dreading when it starts the the rain comes but but it's been so dry that i actually sounds really fun but what i would like would be to have like three or four days of a lot of rain get everything uh you know good and hydrated again and then let's go back to this

weather yeah yeah right well the problem for me is the rain means that that's now going to be the

default setting for kind of a long time i wish we could just yeah can't we just keep it fun and and and unpredictable and do like you know do a couple weeks of 90 in december and then a couple weeks of rain and then you know something like that 90 in december doesn't sound great to me either i did not mind that when i lived in la you know and you know you live down there people would say well aren't you going to kind of miss the seasons or isn't it going to be weird to do christmas and it's 80 degrees and i kind of thought it would be in my first christmas down there 80 degrees i'm out and playing with the dog in my front lawn where there's an orange tree and then i came inside and had a mimosa and opened presents and i was good i did not need the snow

yeah i don't remember yeah i think i needed i think i needed a little bit more seasonal change but also you know i was in a pretty high stress situation most of the time i was down there and so i always found like i i find it easier to be somewhat anxious or um you know just in maybe a slightly less than ideal mental place if the weather isn't super nice it sort of mocked me a little bit it felt like it just felt unrelenting and mock and like it was mocking me all the time like stopping sitting here on this bench the sun is like just beating down on me and i'm just racing with anxiety right now like could could we get a cloud come on i feel like everything

in la for you is sort of colored by the fact that you were in a job that was really stressful for you and you were working at kcrw yeah right exactly so like it'd be interesting if you ever give that place another i mean unlikely now that you you have become homeowners in seattle but like it'd be interesting to see what it would have been like for you there minus uh basically a ulcer yeah stress around your job because you might have had a you might have had a bit of a different

experience i did i mean if you'll recall i um i think i lived there maybe a full year post that job after that job right doing just tbtl longer than i remember i think it was a full year and yeah absolutely the city felt like it opened up to me because even my time like i was just like spending so much time on the west side and then so much time commuting back and forth and just like everything felt like every minute to myself felt a little bit like i had to snatch it from somewhere and also yeah i was just kind of in a bad mental place um but then when you know like i wasn't commuting i was working from home doing tbtl and loving it and like suddenly i was like oh the grocery store is walkable it's just like i never had time to walk there before you know and And, like, the city really opened up for me, and it is true that I like L.A. I still think the weather doesn't really fit me that well. I do think I'm more Seattle weather. But, listen, we should probably just move on. I feel like I'm boring everybody.

We should probably just thank Allison Walker in Essex Junction, Vermont. Yeah, that sounds beautiful, too. Now, this time of year especially, what is Vermont's state theme? Oh.

Oh, wow. The upside down New Hampshire state. No, that's not it. We used to call New Hampshire fat at the bottom. You should call it dumps like trucks. I was thinking about the shoddy fire burning on the dance floor this morning and just thinking, like, again, how awful that sounds. It really sounds like we're burning bodies. I don't know why I was thinking about that. Maybe from a drop you played in the intro. But I don't know. What is the fire burning on the dance floor? Is that an Usher line? I don't I literally don't know it's a song I think maybe I heard it you know what I think they might have played it at that uh Mariner's watch party at T-Mobile Park because I heard it somewhere recently um and I was like I forgot banging around in your brain and it seems somewhat grisly um Vermont is it the maple syrup state I feel like I'm being very reductive here like that's that sounds like that's got some the maple state I'm gonna look it up now I've given mine I

don't know if you want again i feel like what we have here and we've we somehow happened upon this topic this is why we rarely get written about in hot pod because a couple times a year we get into this mode where we're just trying to name state models but there's there's usually like two there's whatever it was named like okay obviously famously new hampshire is the granite state right yes that's but then i'm sure that it also has like a marketing slogan that's kind of gets basically updated about every 20 years when the legislature like dedicates the funds to like a uh tourism you know push or whatever and then it'll become like state vermont a state of mind or sorry new hampshire a state of

mind or what i do i think there's a distinction there i think there are official state nicknames and i'm looking at vermont's now and i did know it and like i think that that's the difference between ohio the upside down new hampshire it is you know that's the difference between ohio the heart of it all which was a you know advertising slogan versus the buckeye state which it's always been sure i state so vermont you want me to give it to you or do you want to take a swing

no just give it to the green mountain state i knew that because that yeah coffee company yeah

exactly and it really sets itself apart from new hampshire named for the the k cup coffee company

i believe so yeah they that's um that's exactly we'll ask allison walker who's out there in essex junction and then uh we will wrap things up with kelvin walk in fort collins colorado i weirdly know what colorado's is andrew the blucifer state uh it should be that's their that's the newly it's the russell wilson only has six more years on his contract state no um they're the centennial state oh and i think that has to do with that maybe they were made a state like at the centennial that would make sense that would make sense so like maybe 1876 or something they became a state yeah that makes sense i'm not going to google it on the fly here because we should probably we've done enough good work here today during this donor thanks segment hey thank you to all of our donors for making the episode possible we just would not

be here without you right hello and welcome to top story you are right um all right six luke 1876 you're absolutely right that's what i said right yep you were absolutely wow

all i can say is wow okay um so i uh i watched this thing the watcher last night uh which is this seven episode uh whatever tv thing that's on netflix and it is it's what got me was it starts with well for the first thing that got me was the you know how on netflix and i'm sure all the streaming services now do this because it's very effective when you turn it on when you turn on netflix wherever your remote like happens to fall it'll start auto playing you a little bit of a little tape right all the proof of concept yes interesting and that i have to say is a very effective because if i'm just looking at a static you know just a tile that's just a picture and it says the watcher and it's got like um bobby cannavale and um naomi watts on it i'll be like no thanks but you know what this one had is and i should have looked her name up because she is a national treasure she was in um gosh she's been in so many things she was in uh justified that uh that that really great show with timothy oliphant where she played like the main bad person she kind

of ran this like crime syndicate in the holler i heard it's very addictive i have not watched it i heard that it's strange credulity but it's very addictive right the watcher or justified justified

yeah well it also also timothy oliphant is not bad to look at like i feel like if that were if that were what i were interested in fellers boy i just watched the show just for timothy oliphant's wait hold on i was describing the wrong show there's another one that takes unjustified

It's unjustified, yeah. I can't picture the fellow that you're talking about now, justified. I think Genevieve gave it a try. I'm thinking of, oh boy, who played Michael on Arrested Development. Oh, Ozark is what you're thinking of. Ozark is what I was thinking of. Sorry to break your flow.

That's okay, because it gave me time to look up Margot Martindale. Okay. Margot Martindale is amazing as an actor. And, I mean, everybody knows this. I mean, it's been a couple of years ago was kind of the like it was the sort of summer of Margot Martindale where she was just chewing the scenery in the best sort of way on Justified and was in. I'm forgetting the other things that she was in, but she just has been in a bunch of really choice roles. And she is just a really, really good actor. And so the little clip that starts playing on Netflix when you happen to accidentally scroll over the watcher is Margot Martindale. And guess who plays her husband in it? richard kine lois oh okay yeah and they're arguing with bobby cannavale about harvesting some arugula from bobby cannavale's yard which is technically on his side of the fence but she wants to harvest the arugula because that's where it's growing and i swear this was like a 10 i should have grabbed the clip actually that would have made this a much more compelling way to talk about the show but that clip that 15 seconds andrew changed the course of the next seven hours of my life and now the lives of all the listeners who are hearing this because she's so good in it and cliff clavin not cliff clavin his name was cliff i believe also on mad about you so i always want to call him cliff clavin her and richard kind and bobby cannavale are so good in this scene that i was like all right i'll give it a day in court as camaro kev would say and so i started watching it now it's produced by ryan murphy or directed by ryan oh okay american crime story he does all those like yeah he does all that stuff and usually that this kind of stuff is a little bit it's a little glossy for me it's a little overproduced it's a little hokey a little

soap opera i i i don't mind them all like i like the oj simpson one and i think i watched one other like i like it but you know what you're getting into and yeah so it's like kind of the most soap opera soap opera e thing that i will kind of get into and and again that's not usually i didn't want

I don't watch any of those, like you said. I didn't watch the OJ one. I didn't watch the whatever. Is he also the American Horror Story guy? I think so. I think so. So none of that is stuff that I particularly – and he was Glee, right, I think? Oh, that I did not know. Okay. I could be wrong. But so I have to say the opening, like the sort of opening episode is really, really compelling because now I'm also going to I'm not I'm not trying to spoil anything but just know that I might accidentally say something that gives you some indication as to where the show goes but basically the plot is Bobby Cannavale and Naomi Watts and their two kids they they move out to the suburbs outside of New York and they buy this beautiful home and right when they move in they get a really creepy letter in their mailbox that basically says like I've been watching the house um and the house needs blood and it's like they do a really good job with whatever however they process the voice of the letter writer so you've got them looking at this typed letter but then it's being read aloud by this voice that's been processed in a certain way that's just like

really terrifying did you mention that this is based on the true story we talked about this like a lot on tbtl when this was going on did we did you mention that already i didn't mention it yet

But so that's actually that's part of the whole thing for me was I didn't when I saw the Watcher, I didn't remember that this had been something that we had talked about. And then it said based on a true story. And then I was like, is this a This American Life piece? I'm still trying to remember where was the original source material on this Watcher thing? Like, I thought it was a T.A.L. piece or something. I was Googling around last night as I was watching it. Where were we getting the news reports on this from? I wonder.

You're asking me. I don't know. i thought you like kind of who broke the story because i mean it became a big story but i don't know like what publication kind of broke it open but it was a very creepy story i don't remember if this goes so far back that we were talking about it on the radio when you had the the midday show or not but um i definitely remember like talking about this and like actually getting

like kind of chills thinking about it yeah i'm looking at some pictures of the of the actual family in in question um there is a family the broadest family um who moved to westfield new jersey um and uh in real life and and started getting these creepy letters and so this is the kind of now let me just tell you this a lot of stuff happens in this in the ryan murphy version that i'm i'm guessing didn't happen in real life like the similarities are someone a family moves out to a beautiful home in the new jersey suburbs and they start getting creepy letters letters you know that's the sim and that's where the similarities i think sort of stop because of course this is television and so they all kinds of shenanigans are going on uh left and right but i was you know i was kind of i was drawn in and i was i was there for it and then but i had this growing suspicion andrew this growing dread that what they had done was set up and this is what always happens it's really easy to set up a mystery and to create a lot of tension and a lot of intrigue landing that plane is the hard part right or to use a analogy that george saunders uses when you're writing a story you can start throwing balls in the air but keeping those balls going and then catching all of them when you're done that's the trick anyone can start throwing like 15 balls in the air but you've got to actually figure out how to juggle them and then how to end it and um i'll just say that people on the internet are saying that this is one of the worst endings of any show they've ever seen um because it i will i will say that it was not for me particularly satisfactory now what i'm reading is that the ending in a way mirrored the ending in real life so i guess i'll give them credit on that like but it was not i i was about five hours in i was like i don't know if i have two more hours of this in me plus they had a lot of episodes that started to feel like filler like why couldn't this have been three episodes this could have been an email ryan murphy um like but i was like i gotta know how this ends i considered just skipping to the last episode i just wanted to see how they were going to wrap it up and without giving it away i'll just say that i didn't like i didn't turn the tv off at 11 45 p.m and just go like well that was satisfying you know they kind of did that thing where they got they hooked me in they made it very tense and very kind of mysterious and then did also did some really hokey shit at the end too like on the way to what i guess the real quote-unquote ending was there was about four false endings and they were like so they were the kind of things that if i were in the writer's room like let me put it this way a central figure to the whole thing basically admits to the crime and they admit to it in this way that's like as they're describing it it's like there's this makes

no flipping sense and then it turns out that they actually didn't do it it was like this was all in the last 20 minutes of the entire show so you have like a person saying i did it and then that's the end and i'm like that was really unsatisfying and then it's like then their daughter goes actually they didn't do it and then it's like we're back to not knowing who i mean just now that the last

according to the article you sent me today that that was true to life but just not satisfying as

an ending right no no no no that well yes the fact that let me put it this way if you don't

want to hear me well i don't want to ruin this i think you've already i mean honestly you telling people that the that they think it's wrapped up but it's actually not as that's about as big of spoiler as it is so i mean spoiler alerts retroactively like i think it's spoiled so well

no no i don't i don't think okay it's a it's a plot point well first of all the person the person who in the show admits to doing it is not a real person like that person didn't exist in okay real life that person was a like a completely invented character just to kind of like i don't know you know what i mean like it's the story of the real family this character did not exist oh i see i

might have misread it or we're talking about a different thing but it doesn't matter because i didn't watch it so i'm not trying to i'm not trying to ruin this segment i i i was just under the impression that one of the i was under the impression that one of these kind of like fake outs um if there were more than one was actually based on true life but i might have just been

totally wrong yeah i don't think so i don't think that there were in real life i don't think there was any fake admissions from people who were you know doing whatever i'm being very like extremely i'm both somehow ruining this and also not doing a good job of talking about it so i'd say two for two but um anyway i it's just funny because as i said when we were going into the break i'm a person who won't go to a movie because i just can't i feel like what if i get bored in the middle what if i get a work email like i who has 90 minutes and it's like i just frittered away so much of my life last night watching this thing but i will tell you this um uh margo i'm already

forgetting uh what her martindale which i didn't know that name until you said it but margo martindale

is absolutely dynamic in this show she is i mean she is she has a couple of scenes you know what she has a couple scenes that are so great that this completely and totally justifies oh and

jennifer coolidge is in it oh we were just talking about jennifer coolidge yesterday jennifer coolidge is a very big part of this show as well um who's in old navy commercials as you said, not Target commercials as I accidentally said, and you didn't correct me. um i uh i can't always be strong for both of us andrew i'm sorry but i got a live text from

genevieve about that during the show she could hear the show and i didn't realize she was texting me because you know i try to stay present i don't live on my phone during the show but then i open up my phone after the show and genevieve has sent me several text messages responding to things that we've said on the show including correcting me on the old navy thing it's funny because we were

just talking about the other day like i love jennifer coolidge and i think jennifer coolidge like in white lotus and and a lot of these things is so great and she's very good in this but she's sort of playing her white lotus she's playing a less depressed version of her white lotus character yeah i could see her slipping i feel like they that everyone casts jennifer coolidge as the kind of a sort of a lonely heart who's kind of looking for love but not quite able to figure out how to how to settle down with a person or be what the world wants her to like she's there's this kind of verse like maybe it's maybe i'm just thinking of white lotus and then this this her character in this is so similar to her character in white lotus that it was kind of like i wonder if she's we need to cast her as like i don't know like an um an er doc who's the only person who knows that like what the surgical procedure should be in a moment like i would love to see her play something that's not kind of a slightly airhead-ish person who's just, you know. And again, none of that is a criticism of Jennifer Coolidge, and I think she does really well with those characters, and she brings a lot of, like, humanity to them. But I'm ready to see a total pivot for Jennifer Coolidge as an actor.

I agree. I think she has more depth, and I don't think it does her much good if we kind of typecast her, you know.

Right. Like in those Target commercials. I feel like she's a little bit, they're pigeonholed. Those are Kmart commercials. I'm not trying.

Sorry to sharpshoot. Those are Kmart commercials. Okay. Is Kmart? Do Kmarts exist, Andrew? I don't think so. I think there's one in Los Angeles with the scary basement I was telling you about where we would buy puzzles. You know that one.

I feel like I went to a Kmart a couple of years ago because I was on the road for work and it was the thing that was nearby in whatever kind of slightly out of the way place I was. And I yes, I do remember this because I had a mask on because this was still in the midst of the pandemic. And I feel like people looked at me like I was losing my mind because I was masked up in this Kmart, wherever that was.

All right. Let's talk about. Can I mention one thing about masks that I think is interesting? And I'll make this really short. We predicted that when, you know, when the pandemic came and we were all forced to wear masks for a while, That we would see we would also just see people more comfortable wearing them as they are in other non-American cultures. Right. And with the smoke that's been infiltrating, you know, certainly Seattle and Portland. It's interesting to see so many people wearing masks that I don't know that these folks would have wore masks like before the pandemic, if the smoke level was so was so high or equally as high. I think people have just gotten comfortable with it. And now they're just like, oh, because a couple of times I've said to somebody, oh, I'm sorry, I'm not wearing a mask. Do you want me to wear one? They're like, no, no, I'm just wearing this for the smoke. So it is we did see that kind of the normalization. Yeah, which is good.

Certainly in a place like Portland, it's very, very normal for people to be wearing masks. I mean, smoke aside, like there is a significant I think there's a significant portion of the Portland population that's never going back to not masking in public, which, like you said, is is is something that was that is. i think much more common in like asia and places like that where folks have been masking up kind of for a long time um and like in the portland airport i mean a lot a lot a lot of people are masked up um so i think that yeah i think a lot of people have just that's just a lifestyle for them um i'm kind of i'm i'm sort of intermittent with it like i'll usually do it on an airplane um but uh but maybe not in the airport which it doesn't make any sense i'm not masking in like restaurants by the way i'm getting my booster on friday have you gotten your booster yet no and

it's just pure laziness on my part you know um jen what happened was and this is again where i'm acting like an infant i need to just get my shit together because like um when we were getting our you know first couple of rounds of vaccines and booster um veeves was just so motivated to do it that she was just making appointments and making them for both of us but then she got her she just was at the doctor or something and they just gave her a booster so she's all set which means now yeah that's great but i'm like andrew like i just need to make an appointment somewhere and get the jab it's not that big of a deal it's just like i'm just like so i'm just i'm thinking about it right now because we're talking about it and i guarantee you by the time we're done with this show i will totally forget about it again which is really irresponsible i need to i think you can

just like walk into a right aid yeah i should do that and just ask them you know basically uh if you can get one and if there's not a line i think i mean that's kind of our plan Thank you. for friday beck and i are gonna go get them but um uh but anyway yeah so this james corden thing um you have now listen we i'm sure have listeners who love james corden because i know he has a background in musical theater and he does that carpool karaoke thing you've that's never really been the style of entertainment that you find compelling i think yeah i don't want to dunk but

like i've always like just for me because this this really gets me into the yucking other people's Yum thing and there's no point in it like he's Never caused any harm to me or anything but yeah That the whenever I'd see the car people Carpool karaoke thing I'd always Like it would kind of grown it's not it's just not For me but I know a lot of people love it

Well I had sort Of I was I guess you would say agnostic On the subject of James Corden I didn't I didn't um sort of Dislike that segment as much as as you Do but also I'm not you know it's not Like the first thing I'm trying to watch When I go onto the internet or whatever I was just It was all I mean I liked it uh Reggie Watts as his music director, because I think Reggie is a rare talent. So I was just kind of medium on the whole topic, I guess, of this guy, James Corden, which is why I was surprised at how much delight I've been taking in seeing him kind of like, I would say, these are all allegations, but him being sort of, I don't know, publicly called in for what a lot of people are saying is kind of a pattern of being rude to people. So the way this whole thing started was a guy named Keith McNally who owns Balthazar in New York, which is a kind of legendary restaurant and a place to be seen. He wrote the other day on Instagram that he was banning James Corden from his restaurant, that he was 86ing him james um uh because of rude behavior because there were two different incidents apparently according to keith mcnally uh where james corden had been very rude to the balthazar staff one time it was because he said he found a hair in his food and so he demanded a round of free drinks and was apparently very rude to the server and then another time he ordered a very specific kind of um egg yolk omelet and it there was a shell in it he said so he sent it back and when it came

back you sure i read this a couple of times i thought it was that he claimed that it was um there was some whites in with the egg it was supposed to be just yolk but there's a tiny bit

of egg white in there not shell yeah exactly so he was yeah exactly it wasn't made to a standard he sent it back and then and then it came back and he also didn't like and then he was like berating the server so this guy keith mcnally says james corden is 86 from balthazar and um So then all of a sudden, the Internet, everybody just starts submitting their stories of times that they saw James Corden somewhere being rude. Now, again, these are all just random people on the Internet, so there aren't any receipts for a lot of this stuff. But one of the stories that is, again, seems like it's kind of like the main piece of evidence that James Corden is apparently not a nice person is the thing with the flight.

did you read that one no unfortunately i didn't get the good juicy stuff i i because i i thought there must be more and you're about to tell me more because it sounded like there's these two incidents from this one restaurant which it also seemed a little bit odd to me that these things happened apparently back in june but the restaurateur is uh posting about them now like he also seems like a guy who's who's trying to get attention as well it seemed like that that whole thing seemed weird but i was also kind of like okay so now gordon has apparently apologized and Now he's no longer banned. Corden. Sorry. I don't want you to get another text. What did I say? You said Gordon. Did I? Are you sure? Maybe I just talk funny. But Genevieve also isn't here today to mock me. But you are. But anyway, we'll go back to the tape. What I was going to say was, so yeah.

Hold on, I'm going to throw my challenge flag.

My favorite part is when you say, of course I didn't say Gordon. Anyway, yeah. So I'm interested in hearing what else is here, because it seemed like it was like two incidents that were bad, but he apologized and everybody's moved on. But I see the Internet is is digging up other things.

Yeah. Like, well, the the big story that's going around is basically goes like this. Somebody is on a flight. I don't know what the you know, like if it was from New York to London or where it was, but it sounds like a kind of a long flight. And the basically their description is there's a woman with a crying baby and the baby is she's walking the baby in the aisle. The baby is really uncomfortable. Then the flight attendants sort of escort her to first class. And they put her in a seat next to James Corden and everyone on the flight, I guess, who's aware of who James Corden is, is worried that he is going to have his his flight disturbed by a crying baby. And but then they were like pleasantly surprised that he handled it fine. He just like put his eye mask on and put his like headphones, you know, on or whatever, and then just like went to sleep. And then at the end of the flight, the woman with the crying baby is trying to get her luggage out of first class. And at some point turns to James Corden and goes like, are you going to help me with this or not? Because it's his wife. So the reveal, the M. Night Shyamalan reveal of it is that this was his actual family, like his wife and his child. And he just was completely ignoring them on the flight and just sleeping and totally checked out.

So it is funny. Wow, that is a good twist on that, because in a certain way, you're like, oh, he's being the perfect patient traveler there, but instead, no, he's totally checked out on his family.

Now, the problem, I feel like there are some logical, I have some sort of practical questions about that story. First of all, the premise of the story is that this woman was not thought to be in first class, but then was escorted to first class. Well, I've never seen a flight attendant. If you're, let's say, you're in first class and you're walking around with your baby in coach because you just want to, like, kind of help them, you know, not cry during the flight, I can't see the flight attendant coming up and escorting you to first class. Like, you would just go back and sit in first class. So that part of the story is a little sus to me.

Yeah, this whole thing is a little sus, I think.

Like, also, everybody – look, if you're clocking that James Corden is on your flight, so you're looking – you know that he's James Corden somehow, which, first of all, he's not, like, the most recognizable person in America. I would say he's more recognizable than you and me, less recognizable than Flo from the progressive ads. So, like, you're watching – you know it's James Corden, but you never noted that this woman who was sitting next to him with a baby was his wife until later she comes and sits down next to him. It just – there's – it just doesn't really make logical sense. you're looking at the back of this dude's head and you're like that's the back of the head of james corden one of the top six late night hosts in the game and then but obviously he'd be sitting next to his wife and baby when they get on the plane when that plane is taking off yeah so now you've forgotten that that woman was saying like it's just it just feels there's something fishy about that story so and then there's other ones about him being out with harry styles in and again these are just the least these are sort of the least verifiable things you could ever have someone just like tweeting out or whatever i was in london and and james corden was with harry styles and they were having dinner and i just noticed that james corden was being very rude to the staff meanwhile harry styles was being great like okay that's what someone says it's pretty hard to verify if that happened or not so anyway james corden apparently apologized immediately to the guy who owns balthazar who then wrote this kind of rambling like james corden is great by me he's allowed to come back to balthazar anytime and honestly the whole thing felt vaguely like a promotion pr yeah grab for this keith mcnally guy um but i think there's something about james corden being so like on tv kind of pleasantly pleasant that the idea it's sort of like the Ellen stuff like there's I think we take delight for or at least I do in the idea that somebody who we think of as being just sweet and polite and whatever just having a total other side to them and just being a bad person I don't know why that's like somehow like exciting or soothing or it's intriguing but the internet has just been everyone's just been trading stories about James Corden just being like a bad person now for like two solid days. And I didn't expect to read it with such interest as I did, but now I'm wondering if it's even true.

Yeah, I'll bet you. I mean, especially when things like this, I mean, people will hop on these things, right? And then suddenly they'll be like, yeah, that time that I passed him on the street, he wasn't smiling. Like, I don't know. Like, I'm kind of hearing all of these pylons just from you for the first time right now, so I can't really weigh in, but I'm somewhat skeptical about a lot of them. I definitely got a weird feeling from this restaurant owner, the Balthazar owner. He sounds like a piece of work himself, and again, it sort of seems weird that he was outing this months later and then making this big flap about it. I just get an icky vibe from that whole situation too. The funny thing is you bring up Ellen, And, like, I'm not somebody who ever watched Ellen, like, whether you're talking about the sitcom, although that really ages me. Do people even know that she had a sitcom with your favorite?

your favorite actor jeremy i have mercury poisoning piven um how you live in jay piven i forgot oh it's so good can you do a check and see what the latest post is on uh how you live in with jay piven um see if that podcast is still it was just how you live in jay piven is that what it is um but anyway um uh anyway the ellen thing kind of bummed me out honestly and i'm not somebody who watches her talk show either but like i always thought she was sort of a force for good and even though i'm not somebody who watches talk shows for some reason i always sort of got the impression that maybe i would watch well it's funny because there's a lot of like her like making her guests do goofy dancing i don't really like goofy dancing i don't know it seemed like a sunshiny show that sort of made me smile in the idea of it and so the idea that ellen i didn't take pleasure in the fact that ellen might be just a big phony and a jerk behind the scenes i think that's because you had

no investment in or you had a limited investment in the idea of ellen from the get-go or that it was leaning towards positive or that if i had a feeling towards her it was more positive yeah right but if you but but like there are a lot of people i mean there was a there was a moment and we talked about it a lot on the show because the ellen show was really good at jumping on stuff that is like was kind of in the tbtl wheelhouse as far as topics like some you know the back at it again with the white vans kid and stuff like that like there was this moment where something would burble up on the internet and then they'd almost always end up on ellen the you know charlie that hurt kind of stuff all of that the the the like life cycle of a viral moment was it happens in the wild it gets picked up suddenly that kid is on ellen then they're having the kid do something funny you know the apparently kid like all of these people would make their pilgrimage to ellen so she was in the conversation a lot for us uh and also i mean i i did think she was pretty funny on that show and likable so it was a little bit it was a little bit jarring to me to hear that she's behind the scenes not nearly as as likable as people think by the way uh it would appear that the last episode of how you live in jay piven dropped july 13th of this

year okay so still still could be kicking and by the way i just want to throw in there too I love Jesus but I drink a little Which was you know Jen I associate that so much with Jen Flash Andrews But that was tape from Ellen right I believe It was it was a regular caller that she had Oh okay Gladys or something Yeah yeah Gladys yeah I think so

I'm just wondering I mean do you think How You Live in Jay Piven the last episode Being July 13th or do you think just taking The summer off slash fall Could be I mean these things like people create

These false seasons for no reason You know what I mean? I understand if you have like a narrative arc to a story like serial or what have you, or in the dark, why you have seasons. But I don't know why you would have seasons of a podcast when you're just interviewing other famous people. But I'm sure it's because Piven, you know how you know how he's living. He's probably also got some acting jobs or whatever. Like it could. I don't think it's a ghost ship only after five months. I think that you have to wait for at least a year to start questioning whether or not that thing's coming.

that's interesting so that's the standard that we're going to because listen you and i toiling in near anonymity here i always am like when somebody as famous as jay piven launches a podcast and then promptly forgets about it i don't know why that like really rankles me i think it's because you know this is what we do for our job this is a sacred space we take it very seriously of course As I mentioned, 3,796 of these now we've done, but it's a year. So once someone has – if someone announces a podcast and they start doing it and they do – so far I believe there's 38 episodes of How You Live in J. Piven. If they go one year without dropping another episode, we can then declare it to be a ghost ship.

Well, I'm sort of pulling that out of my derriere. Sorry for the language. It's not like It's not like something that I've thought about Ahead of time but I was just sort of like thinking

About it. I don't think that's a bad rule of thumb It's a round number It's like yeah sometimes people Take the summer off or like you said There are you know They release in fact I do think the Jay Piven thing there's a season one and a season

Two. That's right in fact maybe that's Why that's top of mind for me because I think I was ready To dance on its grave a while back but Somebody pointed out that there was a break for for the season so i'm just so after one year then we hire all of the lawyers named danny that we can find and we push hard to buy the ip for how you live in jay piven i want to own that ip luke i want to turn it into i want to turn it into six seasons in a movie or just redirect the link to

bruce willis singing seagram's golden wine cooler i just want to play this tape for you as a little update on

Thank you.

the story of the tomato soup thrown on the Van Gogh painting. Now, this was a couple of protesters with an organization that's trying to draw attention to climate change and also to ending the use of fossil fuels. This is Phoebe Plummer, who was one of the two people who threw the soup on the painting and then glued themselves to the wall. And what I said about this was I thought it was a really good protest idea because it did not damage the painting but it did draw attention to the topic and has people and has us talking about it which is theoretically a first step towards maybe some actual important uh decisions being made on it now phoebe this is hard to hear in the tape but the first thing that i really adore about this person is that they have the can of soup with them they're standing i don't know where somewhere else in public and they're totally making a joke about the soup being their brand now and so uh she just goes on to i don't know the pronouns that phoebe uses so forgive me i'm going to i'm going to use she her uh unless i get other indications but um she uh just seems so smart and makes such a compelling case for what's going on uh and with climate change right now and with fossil fuels and i also think it's funny that she has a can of soup with her now and she's self-aware saying this is my brand now take

a listen to this this is phoebe i would like to make one thing perfectly clear we did no damage to the painting whatsoever i was in court yesterday heard that there's been minimal damage done to the frame which is repairable and replaceable and absolutely no damage done to the painting it was behind glass and we never ever would have considered doing it if we didn't know that it was behind glass and that we wouldn't do any damage i mean literally we were sat there still glued to the wall they wiped it off with a bit of kitchen roll i recognize that it looks like

a slightly ridiculous by the way i think kitchen roll is the best way to describe paper towels that's my new that's my new favorite that sounds so much more cool yeah they wiped it off with a bit of kitchen roll what's that yeah i never heard that before me neither looks like a slightly

ridiculous action i agree it is ridiculous but we're not asking the question should everybody be throwing soup on paintings we're what we're doing is getting the conversation going so we can ask the questions that matter questions like is it okay that liz trust is licensing over a hundred new fossil fuel licenses is it okay that fossil fuels are subsidized 30 times more than renewables when offshore wind is currently nine times cheaper than fossil fuels is it okay that it is there in action that has led us to the cost of living crisis where this winter people are going to be forced to choose between heating and eating this is the conversation we need to be having now because we don't have time to waste last year sir david king said what we do in the next three to four years will determine the future of humanity so we're doing these we're using these actions to get media attention because we need to get people talking about this now and we know that civil resistance works history has shown us that it works i'm stood here today as a queer woman and the reason that i'm able to vote the reason i'm able to go to university hopefully someday marry the person I love is because of people who have taken part in civil resistance before me

so there you go that's Phoebe Plummer I know is it too late could we make her the leader of England she already sounds better than

and it's exactly the point right and again I don't know where the lines are and I'm not making judgment calls it's not my place to make judgment calls about what works what doesn't where the line is when it comes to civil disobedience but yeah when and again this is this is a this is a young person who's as i said the other day literally fighting for the life of the planet and the people on the planet and you can't do that by just being quiet and and she would not be having this interview if if she and her compatriots hadn't hadn't planned this thing and she even said like and i like i like hearing that it was knowing too that like we knew we weren't going to be causing actual damage to the painting but that we would be causing people to seek interviews with us like that's how it works

you know yeah you hear oh somebody threw soup on a van gogh as a protest and you kind of at least in my mind you think of some sort of like wild haired kind of out of it person who's just out doing random destruction thinking it's somehow provoking some kind of a reaction from people and then you hear this young person talking and you're like no she knows exactly what she's doing she's making some really good points this was you know like i just she was so much more with it i guess than i would have initially realized just looking at seeing the photos of her glued to the wall standing next to a painting with soup on it it's like this is she seems like a very impressive person to me um so um

Thank you.

So, yeah, I just thought that tape was kind of interesting.

Yeah, I would have yelled, real polite painting.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. Oh, man, it's not from a female.

All right, an email or V-mail.

Yeah, I know we don't have tons of time here, but I did get a voicemail from our friend Marissa in Maryland, I believe, Who was the person who tipped us off About the fact that disc golf players Refer to regular golf as ball golf And so she's sort of our disc golf expert She's our chain smoker correspondent Yes, exactly, because her husband is deep, deep, deep In the world of disc golf, apparently And you mentioned this chain smoking It was a t-shirt that you saw Can you describe it again? It was a bumper sticker Can you explain it again? What did it say?

It just said chain smoker But that word chain smoker was was next to kind of, you know, an illustration of the I guess you would call it the hole. The basket.

Yeah, the chain basket thing that you're trying to get the disc into. Well, Marissa, I don't know if that doesn't make sense as a bumper sticker in this context. But Marissa, talk to her husband about this and has this update.

Hi, guys. So I had to ask my husband about the whole chain smokers thing, because I was the one who called in about ball golf versus disc golf, and my husband is a huge disc golfer. But I did want his take on the chain smokers thing. So I said, like, oh, is that, like, a cool term you guys use? Like, oh, we're smoking the chain. And he said, no, it's the term that they use for people who don't play disc golf, who go to a park and see a disc golf basket and mistake it for a barbecue, which is apparently a very common problem because a lot of disc golf courses are just in like normal public multi-use parks and people want to like grill up some whatever and they see like the basket with all the chains and they just assume that it's like a special kind of grill and the little tea pad is like a nice place to sit and have a picnic and I was like is this an urban legend he's like no I there are receipts there are there are photos of people doing this So that's what Chainsmokers means in the disc golf community. All right. Where's Ben, Maryland? Power out.

So that's fascinating on its own. Right. But I do feel like there must be more because I'm also Googling while I'm listening to that. And like I'm looking at a professional disc golf association, the PEI Chainsmokers Disc Golf League. Like I don't think that they would name their league after people who are accidentally burning down their infrastructure. right it must be it must have a couple of meanings yeah because also i can't imagine

that person would put that if they were actually in the way that marissa's partner described it if they were a chain smoker i.e a person who showed up and tried to barbecue in the basket then that person wouldn't go out and actually get that basket like they wouldn't have that bumper sticker yeah you know what i mean if they were if they were a person who had the that limited of information about about how disc golf works so they must be from the the version of disc golf

where people think that's like a cool way to describe it yeah and again i i'm obviously not in that world so i'm not trying to to argue with marissa's husband who is deeply in that world but like i'm online right now on amazon and like you can get like that that pop socket thing for the back of your phone that says like chain smoker in like kind of an aggressive font and it's got like one of the the disc golf um chain things behind it so it must you know it must have separate meanings it's very clear to me looking at these products and these leagues and stuff that people are also just kind of excited about like you know kind of about their sport and like they're being

chain smokers in the way that you were describing it i do like the idea though of some dingus just going up and putting a bunch of coals in that thing and just barbecuing and then just like they keep getting hit in the head with a frisbee like they're like what is going on with this

barbecue what is happening like that's how the disc golfers uh resolve the issue too they just keep on just play through as they say in ball golf i know you're in a bit of a hurry so maybe i should just leave it there with that voicemail for today all right well thanks marissa for

checking yeah that's interesting um all right that's gonna do it for today's episode uh we're We'll be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. Please do join us for that. Until then, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Thank you.

You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies? Power out.