Muse

Now, it says here on your resume that from 2010 to 2011, you crushed it. That's actually an old resume. It should also read that I crushed it from 2013 to present.

So are we to understand that you did not crush it in 2012?

There was a medical situation preventing me from crushing it to my usual standards, so I had to take some time off until I was able to crush it at 100%, at which point I resumed crushing it full-time.

TBTL! this need you have to be the smartest guy in the room is off-putting sooner or later gentlemen you will eat your words you can't be that overly confident remember baby never you might eat that mic you don't say much for him but when you do it's to the point and i salute you for it and

for our viewing pleasure i pack terms of e then we're gonna bring it up with a little fried greens to the tea and then hope floats with sandy b yes does somebody die in that one they die in all of them good what do you say we go out and get some carvel i got the time if you got the diapers

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a tuesday edition of tbtl the show

that just might be too beautiful to live holy is this wrong my name is luke burbank i am your host But holy hell, is it erotic?

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon.

My name is Luke and welcome to episode one of Luke's VHS Fun Party.

This may be the last time today where I am in my correct state of mind because after this I am about to go spend eight hours eating cannabis-based cuisine. He's a highly paranoid, very large individual talking a bunch of nonsense. Where I will be doing a TV story for CBS and, well, testing my, I don't know, my sort of, what would you call it, abilities when it comes to eating food that has weed in it. Something that I don't do a ton of the time, but we will have a full report on that tomorrow. As far as today goes, we are at episode 3,805 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

And we have, well, a very interesting story about the origin of one Julia Roberts.

From my point of view, it's a beautiful story. I love your story.

And who paid for her birth and what Julia Roberts is doing with her spare time, which are both very surprising to me anyway. uh, developments in the life of Julia Roberts. So we'll talk about that. Also, um, they did a bit on the view recently where they dressed people up as news stories, the big news stories of the year. And, uh, one of them was sort of bizarre. It was a child dressed as an Oscar with a red handprint on their face. And it was...

Oh my God, that's so crazy. Why?

It was the Oscar slap. It was a child dressed as Will Smith slapping Chris Rock. So we will talk about that. That was the most controversial outfit, but a lot of them were very bizarre, according to news reports. So we'll talk about 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 I always think he is sort of what's in That's what's in He is Andrew Walsh And he's joining me right now Good morning, my friend

Good morning, Luke You know, I've been reading this book the past couple of days A book that I... I don't know where I'm going with this, by the way I tried to explain this to somebody the other day And I don't think it made sense to them And I don't know if it's going to make sense to you But I was, you know, unpacking my books a couple of months ago When we moved into this new house and it makes you kind of look at books you haven't read in a long time. You're like, oh, I should reread that. It's rare that I reread books because I'm such a slow reader. I feel like I should be reading new stuff when I'm doing it. But anyway, I'm unpacking my books and I see that I have a book left over from my time at New Hampshire Public Radio, something that was published back in 2004 by an author called Christopher Brookhouse. It's a book of short stories, just short fiction stories that take place in the fictional town of Jefferson, New Hampshire. But it's like there's another town in New Hampshire that's very close to. Oh, you know what? I think it's Jeffrey, New Hampshire instead of Jaffrey, New Hampshire. I'm getting a little bit in the weeds here. But anyway, my point is I'm really enjoying this book. I'm like, man, I remember we had this guy in New Hampshire Public Radio. I noticed he even signed this book for me. You know, I would get so many books.

in my inbox at New Hampshire Public Radio, and 99% of them ended up being donated somewhere or at best maybe sold back for some money. Who went best? What's that? That's good. That takes the heat off of me, considering that was one of my main revenue streams. Don't leave money on the table, certainly. I think when I became a more senior employee there, I would give the books to the younger, less veteran employees so that they could sell them back. But yeah, we don't like to leave money on the table in public radio. So anyway, I'm going too far in this. Anyway, it's this nice book of short stories that take place in New Hampshire. They are maybe sort of Hemingway-esque in the way they don't necessarily wrap up cleanly or neatly. Anyway, I'm just really enjoying it. And so I've been wanting to do this thing that I guess is kind of a modern phenomenon, which is like I want to connect with this author some way more than just this book that I'm holding from 2004. But, like, he has almost zero presence online. Like, I see that he's written, I don't know, a handful of books, maybe more than five, less than ten. It's not like this is some terribly obscure book that, you know, it's listed on Goodreads and on Amazon or what have you. But, like, I can find zero interviews with the author. I have no idea where he is now. He's not on social media. I can't even find our old interview with him on New Hampshire Public Radio. It's like this stuff when maybe he stopped writing in the Internet age or maybe he just doesn't care about the Internet or maybe the world doesn't care about him. But I just keep on, like, reading this book and just being like, man, this is so goddamn good. And then I'll just go online and be like, well, I should just read an interview about when this book came out. And there's just like nothing there. And it's such a weird, it's a weird analog experience.

Do you know for a fact that you you all interviewed him on NHPR?

Yeah, I'm quite sure it was for that show, The Front Porch, which, of course, that little clip of tape you play of the host saying, best known for his depictions of tall ships. That was that show.

Best known for his depictions of the tall ships, capturing their grace and power.

Although I think that by the time I booked this interview, that host was gone and somebody else did the interview. But I remember just, I remember being in love with this book before the author came in. And as a producer, I didn't read books from cover to cover, right? Like you're booking a million things.

I was going to actually ask about that as well. I was talking to one of the producers of Livewire recently who said – she was like, I don't read any of the books because I want – she also edits most of the interviews. And she was like, I want to come to them with – to these interviews with a sense of wonder and also not knowing anything about it. And I was like, that actually totally makes sense. And also, damn, I'm jealous. Yeah, right. You don't have to read any of these books.

Yeah. And again, as a slow reader, like I would sometimes – it would depend. And every now and then I'd be working with a host who would say, hey, I need you to like kind of write the first script on this. And if that was the case, I remember, you know, spending a few days or a week carrying this book under my arm with like a million little sticky notes sticking out of it with a bunch of notes for myself so that I could turn it into like a script for for the host. But for most of my career, the hosts themselves, they're the ones who they need to feel control. I don't think any hosts I work with really liked the idea of just going off of somebody else's notes exclusively to do an interview, you know. um so but this one it was like it was it was short fiction it's written in this very terse style um that i like and uh and so i remember and again like it's signed i'm not somebody who goes around asking people to sign books like i vaguely remember meeting this person and saying i liked uh the book a lot but like that's basically where my memory ends and it's just like but again it for me it's just interesting that like i don't know there's certain things from this era that like he's not a big enough writer like he's written a handful of books it sounds like he's maybe like you want critics sort of you already mentioned the person's name yeah his name is christopher brookhouse and again he's written like kind of a handful of things this one is a thing of short stories called fog the jeffrey stories and they're just nice short little um little stories from from new hampshire but uh anyway i love that i'm googling this

as you're saying it like i'm gonna find some insight like you're using into this that you haven't even though you've a read the book and b have already googled it but i'm like but maybe i'll actually find something andrew doesn't know about this that does well i first of all i do

think there's a phenomenon i think i might have mentioned this in a newsletter a while back or i edited out for brevity but i think that everybody feels well almost everybody feels like they are a better googler than everybody else like if you told me something i would automatically start googling it too even at the point of your story really that is a fascinating uh sort of take and

And I agree with you. And even though we're all using the same Google, except the people who are using Bing. Thank you. Former TVTL sponsor Bing. But like, yeah, you're right. There's something about thinking. But when I put this into Google, I'm going to get some real intel on this. when someone else has already googled it that is a weird thing to think and yet i totally just did that and sometimes it does i mean sometimes just a second set of eyes or a second approach to things do work like there will be times veves and i will be like looking for a specific commercial from our youth or even the vague idea of a commercial from our youth um that one of us can't find and the other one just kind of comes in with a different idea of a search term in their head i think one of them a good example of this now of course i can't remember the product but It was some sort of oil. I don't think it was Valvoline, but Genevieve was trying a few weeks ago to find that.

Do they still make Valvoline? I think so. I can picture that logo.

Yeah. I already Googled it, Luke. There's no mention of Valvoline online. Valvoline does not exist digitally at all. But do you remember the commercial where there was a bunch of, like, they're all men, a bunch of men in lab coats in some sort of big room, and they all had, like, exposed engines, like car engines out on blocks. I mean, vividly.

Yeah, they were basically – the engine was in some kind of like a – what would you call it? Like a plexiglass, a clear –

I don't even know if that's the case. I think they were just on pedestals, I think. I'm going to find this.

Oh, okay, okay. And they were just like running to see which one – like in one of them, the oil eventually failed and it started smoking or something?

They all do. So basically like which one – like let's all – let's fill these engines up with oil or their oil – their oil compartments as we mechanics call it. and then just run them until they run out of oil and see which one is still going at the end. And one by one throughout the room, the engines lock up, except for I want to say the Valvoline one, but that's probably not right. Let me see if I can find this here. But yeah, that was what we were looking for.

It was a very, very, I would say, kind of ahead-of-its-time ad where they were like, you know what? The Valvoline engine actually locked up first. Yeah, just like real truth in advertising? Yeah, they were like, I mean, try it. It's fine, but, I mean, our research showed that it was actually worse than the other leading competitor.

Speaking, I mean, honestly, we probably should have saved money on this commercial. Here, it's actually for Castrol. Take a listen.

One of these engines was filled with Castrol Syntec, a synthetic oil, the rest with conventional oils. They were then drained and started without oil to prove a point. You see, Syntec has a unique molecular structure that bonds to engine parts. Lab tests show it leaves a layer of protection far stronger than conventional oils. And if Syntec protects this well now, imagine if you leave it in. Castrol Syntec protects in ways other oils can't.

So they fill the...

I'm sorry, it was not Valvoline. It was Castrol Syntec. Yes.

And so what they do is they fill the oil pocket. That's what it's called, by the way. They fill the oil pocket with oil. Then they drain the oil to see how these engines can run after they've been coated with oil but don't have any in the reserves.

I will tell you that that final line, imagine what happens if you leave it in, that really did stick with me as a kid. Of course, I also would have died on the hill of that was definitely a Valvoline ad. So the ad didn't work so well that I'm still putting Castrol Syntec into my cars. But I do remember that final line being extremely compelling. It is.

It's a pretty interesting pitch, certainly. And it got me off the Christopher Brookhouse topic, which I'm especially grateful for.

By the way, Christopher Brookhouse, 84 years old. Ah, that kind of explains. Which would explain the lack of an omnipresence. Yeah, because I was like, hey, listen.

Don't we agree I did Google it better than you? Well, I didn't. You're right. I was not looking for an age. I saw something when I was Googling. And again, like, there's plenty of presence. You know what I mean? There will be like, you know, it's not like the book is not, like, you can't find the book online, but like, if you're looking for any connection.

One of his other books has some nudity on it.

I noticed that, too. A real sexy cover there. Yeah. But I was going to say, I noticed that one publishing house had contact information for the author, and it was not him. It went to the publishing house, but the address was at AOL.com. I was like, yeah, that's a dead letter office right there.

Well, you know who else uses AOL as their email address is David Simon of The Wire fame.

Or at least did, as of course, when you tracked him down, that was 10 years ago now at least, right? I still email him often. Oh, do you guys in touch a lot? I never hear back. But are you pitching possible prequels to The Wire?

Yeah, I also tell him things he did wrong. Oh, that's good. Or things that just didn't kind of work for me about the overall arc. I feel like if he were to institute some of my proposed changes, that show could really actually find an audience. Yeah, no, that would be good. Like a broader audience. Yeah, or just like a group of people who really see the value of the show. I just feel like it's not the kind of thing That people talk about With any kind of reverence And I think he could get there if he were just To make more of the characters white That's the most of my feedback This is not a light enough show and he's not getting back and you want to take it from a show that was not just a um commercial success but one that the critics like as well a critically acclaimed show that's

what i'm trying to i would like him to that's fair bask in the sunshine of some critical acclaim no that would be nice i feel like he's kind of alluded him so far with the television show the wire also by the way christopher brookhouse lives in ashville north carolina i saw that yes

that was the last place i sort of had him so he wrote these and let me see this book about the new hampshire stories it won some sort of new hampshire book award too i saw um so i think at one time he did live in new hampshire um and then and then moved to asheville again like all the a lot of people i feel like moved from new hampshire to asheville he's not the only person i've heard of making that move asheville is a very beautiful place is it not yes um i've only heard

extremely good things about asheville but i didn't know there was a migration from new hampshire down there i'm also now thinking really the way to go is write a a book of short stories about a state that's relatively obscure sure yeah because you will then probably have written one of the best books i'm not taking anything away from christopher brookhouse but like i am currently working on my um short story book about uh north dakota yeah that's smart well i sort of feel

like that was the top 10 list there i do not want to make any enemies here because she is a a beloved writer and i read this book and i really liked it too but um the where'd you go bernadette book and i'm sure you have interviewed i i'm looking it up and maria semple is the author um and but a big thing for me is i read that book right around the time i moved to seattle and it's very much a seattle-based book and like a lot of the complaints of whether it's the weather or the culture here it kind of begins it's been a while since i've read that but it begins from the perspective of a woman who's in seattle but it's kind of over seattle does not is not appreciating seattle and um even though at the time i was reading it i loved seattle i really loved just hearing about the city from the perspective of this fictional character right and i sort of felt like that that that book was really popular but i i i sort of felt like a big part of the popularity was this the seattle specificness of it although i could be wrong about that because i guess it was A national hit

I think it was I think it was I think they even made Maybe a movie Or a TV show

Julia Roberts Based on it

What's that

Julia Roberts Who will be making Appearance later on I think so Golly

You know Andrew We've also had a Julia Roberts story In the top story I know It all comes back To old JR So I do But I also agree with you That I think it felt Particularly insistent In Seattle Because of how much It was about Seattle So it was like Popular nationally but especially popular in seattle yes um i'm wrong though it's not julia roberts i just

had julia roberts on the brain uh it's kate planchette oh right it was i watched it actually

i thought it was pretty oh did you i never saw it i should watch it i will say i mean kate planchette mhm kate planchette is uh you know the tilda swinton of middle brow viewing wow that's a hell what's the new thing that she's in like uh there's a new movie that cape i think cape blanchett is starring in it's called um it starts with a t and it's one of those things that's it's it's getting like just speaking of good reviews it's getting rave reviews and it's not called tar t-a-r yes i don't know anything about this i just keep seeing like if i'm if i go on um i don't know the internet if i'm googling better than you andrew as i often do i keep seeing these like reviews of it and little like a trailer for it and stuff and it's just like the movie of the year and i'm like i bet this is the best movie that's been made that i will never watch why do you think you'll never watch it because i don't watch movies anymore there's so much uh seahawk football to observe oh on the subject of which i was about to text you last night if the seahawks continue to do this we're gonna have to bring the no point back no i mean we thought we were getting a break from it we have like they're extremely relevant well for the record i would

do a no point um win or lose i am not a fair weather no pointer i want to make that very clear that is that is definitely your your call on that but yeah we have a week we can do we have the technology because they set up a special little thing for us behind the scenes so that we can do a no point whenever you want if you want to um if you want to do one later today i'm around Or next week or whatever

I will be getting high AF

Oh, that's right, you have your shoot today

I do, and I'm, you know, honestly I wouldn't say I'm worried But I am, you know The way that it's going to unfold Is I'm going to interview This person Who is sort of considered to be The Martha Stewart of, uh, of cannabis based cooking. So we're going to have a chat. We're going to eat some food and then we're going to take a break. The crew is going to reset the lighting and, uh, this woman and her, uh, you know, assistants are going to cook like an elaborate multi-course meal with weed in it. So I will have some weed during the sit down interview and then I will eat like a bountiful tables full of weed food and i am a little bit concerned that it's going to get on top

of me i mean i understand any advice as a weed person um i would say um yeah just don't i mean just ignore the dragon in the room i would say as much as possible because those things you will that a show title you will ignore the dragon in the room you'll think in the moment that they don't bite but oh luke oh they bite oh they bite um you know it's it's i don't have any advice because it sounds like such a weird scenario. You know what I mean? Like, I wish you could be, like, my advice would be be there with some friend who you can maybe have a good time with or something.

Are you saying that 12 to 14 television lights and seven cameras does not a non-paranoid person make? Yeah, you know, I got an email from someone the other day

and I don't know why. It wasn't regarding your CBS story. It was something else, But like something we'd said, encourage some listener to call to write in and say, hey, listen, you guys, please get high and do an episode of TBTL, which people you were trying to get that makes me so anxious. Yeah, it doesn't it doesn't sound appealing to me at all. Like I've never done I've never done any kind of like, you know, just doing I don't know any kind of work. It just doesn't sound good. I feel like I would just be it would be hard to concentrate on things. I know that you and I like we do the show and it's fun and we make each other laugh. But, like, the idea of getting high and doing broadcasting just holds no appeal to me. Like, I've no, what's his name, Craig Benson? Nope, that's not his name. Who's Getting Doug with High? Doug Benson would be his name. Which, by the way, one of my, I don't listen to that show, but, you know, Doug Benson, famous comedian stoner, has a show called Getting Doug with High. And I just think. Great title. Just one of the best titles of all time. But, you know, we're no Doug Bensons here. And also, like, what you're doing is different. It's like it's a you're not going to be like doing bong rips with Paul Rudd like you're doing like you're kind of it's just going to write the point is not I don't think the

payoff for the story is me being a little bit yeah a little bit high at all but on the

other hand though what is the point like this is what I'm interested in knowing my advice

for you I should ask more before I do one of these things yeah what is the point yeah

no I mean ask them what is the point is it because they think there's some flavor in here that brings out other flavors I don't think so because I've eaten weed before or extract you know extracted products like maybe but it sounds like the point is to have a nice meal and slowly get high I guess I don't know the whole thing doesn't sound super appealing to me but I think it's an interesting question like what is the what do you guys perceive as the perfect scenario for this thing and then also the fact that like your audience is probably you know it's an older audience that is you know maybe curious about this stuff and maybe like smoked weed at woodstock or whatever but it's like woodstock 99 they were there when limp biscuit

was on exactly so i don't know i'm interested in how it goes that would be more likely the case like because if you were at woodstock woodstock yeah that's getting pretty well but i mean there's a there's a chance that we have some viewers of cbs sunday morning who went to woodstock 99 when

they were like 32 and now they're like 62 yeah that's true that's probably maybe closer to the

what do you think the demo is for that show well it's everyone's parents yeah right the most common piece of feedback is oh my god when literally when we're interviewing someone they will say my parents love this show um that's the so whatever age a parent is which is a range that's

the demo i'm trying to figure yeah i guess oh woodstock itself was a long time ago that's 69 and so if you were uh let's say the average age what do you think the average age of the original woodstock was like the attendee i might guess would be 22 yeah i'm gonna say 20 i'll bet you there are a bunch of like kind of high school age like 18 and 19 year olds there too so yeah that It was six. You said it was 60. What was it? 69. So so if you were 20 and 69, you'd be like 70 plus now. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So I guess what our math departed there because you have the average attendee of Woodstock 99 as being much older than I have the average attendee of Woodstock 69.

but i mean i don't know what yeah i don't know where the average cbs sunday morning view

viewer um kind of lands on the subject of weed but as i mentioned the other day on the show cbs legal has has said i'm not allowed to snack yeah those on weed no snacking i'm like have you met weed do you know what the purpose is i believe by the way that one of the there are certain chemicals in weed that um this woman that i'm interviewing today uh she and her cohort they sort of think that the chemicals cause the experience of eating the food to it elevates the experience so i think it's kind of like a very very controlled and mild version of the munchies

i could see that and if you're really keeping the dosage down in the ingredients and then it's just like it just is adding a little bit of of yeah a little bit of munchies yeah because think about

when you've had the munchies like everything is so good and you're just like i can't get enough of these pringles or whatever i used to date a gal named francesca severini and she and her sister nina were um real uh you know fans of marijuana but also real fans of um not eating uh like you know 10 sleeves of pringles so this was my very brief foray into weedness but they would come over to my apartment on capitol hill and they would bring a giant giant platter of crudite and then we would smoke out and then we would just like eat the living tweedle out of a bunch

of broccoli and carrots and celery i love me some crudite but i'm interesting in this point uh interesting no boring in this point i don't eat what's the opposite i don't need i don't eat dip so i think a lot of people are surprised that that would be a viable snack for me because a lot of people even brought dip oh good they're like me okay yeah i mean i think what they what

they identified was when you get the munchies you just want to be you know noshing on something and why not be noshing on something that's actually you know decent for you instead of and i will tell you it was very satisfying like chomping away on those carrot and not carrots and broccoli was maybe it wasn't quite as good as if i were eating you know potato chips but it was it was okay it kind of it's all it almost feels like the the munchy thing is not really about the specific food that you're trying to eat but just the sensation of chewing on something i'm going

to do something on the fly here that i think you're trying to google better than me i'm googling crudités uh no what i'm going to do is i'm i'm putting five main ingredients in like a store let's say like you go to a store and you buy one of those crudités platters right usually they have broccoli, celery, cauliflower. A lot of them have cherry tomatoes. Asparagus, if you're Dr. Oz. Oh, no, that actually... Did you see that whole thing? Oh, that's right. They were slamming on him. The price of crudité for his party, right? Exactly. No, no, no, not his party.

He was standing in a grocery store trying to do a video that was relatable to the average harried Pennsylvanian and taxpayer. And he was trying to make the point that food prices are high because of joe brandon and he was like walking through the store grabbing vegetables like you know you want to just have like a crudite and uh you know and and he was like getting the ingredients for it and it was like the most bizarre melange of things including raw asparagus

and it was like this what it was for i thought it was something like his for his wife or something like it was a a weekly thing that he picks up for his wife am i making that part up um you know i

might have missed he may have said that in the video and i only watched the more like truncated clip but it was it was one of those things that he was trying to say like the price of groceries is too damn high and to illustrate that he was pointing out how expensive it was to get the ingredients for a crudite plate which you know peace and love to our listeners in pennsylvania but i don't think the crudite costs are what are really hitting the the wallets of the average american interesting i wanted on how we eat as a nation and then he also grabbed like the weirdest group of ingredients or or you know components including asparagus which has never ever once

been part of a cruditate plate that i well i'll say like you know i because what i want to do here is i i have six ingredients of an average cruditate at least from my neck of the woods but i wanted to make sure that i had it right and i see that there is a if you go to cruditate the Wikipedia page it has all the things I would put and it has white asparagus on there as well so I mean it might be a somewhat of a regional thing although I mean I'm happy for people to dunk on Oz like you know I was gonna say are you siding with Mehmet Oz on this but I mean finally the show where you it does come out in support of him maybe some people do that I've never seen in a cruditate platter but here's what I'm putting on there I'm putting broccoli celery cauliflower are cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and radish. And if I'm going to rank them for myself, like, what am I going to kind of cycle through? I think I'm putting broccoli at the top of the list followed very closely by a radish. I love radishes. I'm starting to think I'm one of the bigger radish fans in, um, in my social circle. Like I could just chomp on radishes forever. Then I'll put cauliflower because I don't eat a lot of raw cauliflower in my life. And when you're at a party where there's cauliflower, you're like, Ooh, what a fun squeaky time. You know, that squeaky sound you get when you eat the raw cauliflower. Yes. Yeah. then i'll put celery next only because it's a little bit uh no no cucumber next i love me some cucumbers then celery then carrots then i'll put cherry tomatoes at last because i don't think cherry tomatoes really belong in a crudité platter i like them but i don't think they belong as finger food uh cherry tomato tomatoes in general or specifically cherry tomatoes tomatoes i mean the only tomatoes i've ever seen on a crudité platter have been cherry tomatoes i can't imagine sliced potatoes i'm sorry tomatoes um but uh i don't i i think you can skip the cherry tomatoes

on a platter yeah i think i tend to i just love tomatoes so much that i think if they're on a crudité platter i will grab the cherry tomatoes but you might be right let me play if you don't mind let me play this dr oz uh you know video from inside a uh grocery store the headline or this the whatever the writing on this tweet from Dr. Oz was inflation is hurting American families under Joe Biden gas prices are skyrocketing and food prices are rising we must stop the reckless spending this is outrageous thanks a lot Joe and here's Mehmet there's a grocery shopping I'm at

Wagner's and my wife wants some vegetables for crudite right so here's a broccoli that's two Not a ton of broccoli there. There's some asparagus. That's $4.

Again, see previous comments.

Carrots. That's $4 more. That's $10 of vegetables there. And then we need some guacamole.

Huh? Guacamole? Crudite?

That seems odd.

You're dipping the broccoli in guacamole?

That seems strange.

i've i mean have i've never seen guacamole outside of a chip based experience have you

no i'm not a bahita i'm not a huge guac person i'll eat it every now and then but usually it's like you know it's it's tortilla chips and salsa and or um and or guac it's definitely not a thing you're dipping like celery in no i that seems too green yeah four dollars more and she loves

salsa yeah he then grabs a thing of salsa this is worse than i remember it being by the way his crudité involves if you're scoring at home uh asparagus guacamole and salsa yeah that's not Right. I also think it's really funny that this is maybe his his kind of being a physician showing through like not to dunk on Americans and not to dunk on Pennsylvanians. But like if he really wants to talk about the cost of food, he needs to be standing in the snack aisle like the again. I don't think the thing that's killing the American budget is that broccoli and guacamole is too expensive. like i think he's he he appears to be a very fit individual he probably presumably you know eats in a pretty clean healthy fashion so he's like his you know his staffers are like we need to make a video that is pointing out that joe biden's failed policies have led to increased food costs and instead of standing you know near the like captain crunch or something he's like okay great well let's go to the part of the grocery store that i go to or at least i used to go to before i had nine personal assistance and it is the vegetable section where i put together a crudite plate

that no one's ever asked for but also didn't he say that he wants to dip it in a gallon of gasoline and the price of gasoline is just way too high as well like that i thought actually i thought that

actually did illustrate a pretty poignant point i mean i'm not the first person to make this point But it is really troubling how much of our future as a democracy rests on the price of gasoline versus the stock market versus the actual economy. I mean, there are these insane statistics or sort of polls where Americans are doing pretty well economically, financially, like their personal finances are fine. But if the price of gas goes up, they panic and want to like, you know, oust the ruling party, as it were, even though it's like everything else is where the 401k is back up. I mean, the stock, the Dow is at like 32,000 right now or something. It's pretty close to whatever its all time high is All of these other things Everyone's still cruising off of their PPP loans And stuff But if the price of gas goes up People panic And it's not even like that important It looms so much larger in our minds Than it actually does economically In our pocketbook That every time I drive by a gas station I see the gas is up I'm like well I guess Donald Trump is going to be president again For life

yeah i mean i've been hearing a lot of people say that too and i know that there is that is

economically a lot of people are just me your friend and confidant and knower of things that

are not generally observed i've been googling it a lot better than you um i uh but i guess that's true i mean i shouldn't even say this we i don't know that we can have these conversations anymore because i'm not going to be super helpful on them and i don't like saying this stuff publicly what i sometimes feel in my darkest places but like i just sort of feel like yeah we can say that it's the there's somebody in my life who's been saying well this is it our entire democracy is going to crumble because of the price of gas and i end of an era and i'm just like no our entire democracy is going to crumble because people are inherently bad and because we have these politics of fear

how did we get away with it being how did we counter that for so many years i agree people are inherently bad but how did the how did the center hold on this project of democracy for so

many years before this i think that has to do with perspective and of you know who who democracy has been working for for all these years i think it has been terrible for for a lot of people for a

long long time uh sure so you think january 6th is because basically white men have never had to

actually have their bullshit sort of threatened i mean i i'm not gonna say one thing led to january 6 i just think that when we talk about like i sort of feel like we we hearken back to this era of of a golden age i mean in fact that's what trump book you know kind of based his whole thing on all right let's make america great again or whatever and i just think that depending on who you were america wasn't always great like they're just from well sure you know what i mean so this idea that like maybe it's manifesting itself in different ways now and it's a little bit more more um public but like i i just it's you know the more you think back on it and you think about this country from its very origins and the way we treated human beings in this country like was this

ever a great a great accomplishment but i didn't say the country was great i said the center of democracy held we didn't have a january other than the civil war there was a long long long time where nobody stormed the capital trying to overturn the results of an election so i'm trying to understand why they didn't happen in you know when the people were marching in selma um and i by the way i don't think you're wrong that it's just what we're seeing are basically the death throes of the patriarchy and white supremacy and these things that now are causing people to freak out who had been in control for a long time and now fear they're losing control their grip on everything but it is it is just an interesting question to me of kind of like how it was that this didn't happen before and now it's happening where people are just have chosen to completely depart from reality i mean a significant portion of republicans think that the person who attacked nancy pelosi's husband was a prostitute that he had retained do them you think the majority of

people believe that i know that people are the majority of republicans i think i well what i

said was a significant portion of republicans first of all one one republican believing that is overly significant to me. But I'm saying there is a pretty – I mean, who was it? Carrie Lake, who is likely to be the governor of Arizona, made a joke the other day about the attack on Paul Pelosi that was premised on this idea. This is a person who will be the governor of a major American state. And they all giggled. They all giggled their ass off about it. So, I mean, again, I actually – I think I agree with you That really what we're seeing is what happens when a bunch of people who are used to just everything going their way and it being unquestioned and the default setting being whiteness and straightness and maleness, they feel like that is being threatened. And so they're going to do everything in their power to try to preserve that status. but it is I do think it is I would say it's it's unprecedented what is happening or at least it hasn't happened in you know a hundred or whatever years how long ago was the Civil War no that like

50 years ago yeah well I mean that's one thing too I mean now that we're kind of well come out now that we're well into the into the 2000s you know it is it gets obviously time passes and the Civil War gets more and more in the background but I mean when people say that like except for the Civil War, I always think that's a pretty huge caveat, you know, like, and

And the fact that we were living in kind of like the, you know, this is something that I've said a million times. This is just my I'm not like debating anything here. I'm just talking about my own kind of perspective on things as the world. You know, I grew up in a, you know, in a very traditional education in small town America and a conservative family. Like I just remember like learning all of these things just about like the the sanctity of America and all these things. And the older you get and you start to get more context, you look around, you get more information and you're like, oh, wow. Like, first of all, you know, like just the context that I mentioned before, but also just the context of time and how things that seemed like so far in the rearview mirror were not quite as far as as it seemed, you know, like growing up and feeling like World War Two was just like some ancient thing. And then you get a little bit older and you're like, oh, wow. No, I mean, that was just like this attempted extermination of people was just like not that long ago at all. And just sort of like time sort of compresses a little bit. And while the Civil War obviously was like the 1860s and that's quite some time ago, like the ramifications of 1960s, the 19th. Wait. Oh, are you talking about are you talking about the 1860? I was going to try to make a goddamn hippie joke. what's the festival we're talking we were just talking about woodstock yeah i was trying to make a woodstock joke and i couldn't think of the word woodstock which is critical for a woodstock joke but anyway yeah i mean i just think that that's that's kind of part of it too and again like i i don't know like if you honestly asked me what led to like if i had to give one specific answer i would say it has a lot to do with the the the the i guess media landscape is one way of putting it but really just sort of like just the the mass production of lies and this sort of this this cultiness that we see that has been able to if you're asking me I just sort of feel like it really does come down to Fox News and then what Fox News sort of birthed in the fact that like people who can just feel sort of like safe like oh they can lean into this lie that America used to be really great and then they can just spread all this like really toxic misinformation that is like there's various levels of that right it goes from the the the lies of like trying to strip critical race theory out of schools that never had critical race theory just a total made-up lie that like and that just sways elections to then obviously the the intense lies that lead people to to to break into senators houses and try to kill or kidnap them like it prostitutes to break into right yeah uh congress people's homes andrew yes oh sorry congress

people yes not senate but um yeah yeah i think you're totally right i think that the i think what's what is different now is the way that information like misinformation can be pumped directly into people's brains like i just think in the even in the you know 1960s a lot of people had terrible takes but they couldn't all gather together or there wasn't somebody what's actually interesting i've been listening to this um rachel maddow presents ultra which is um really good by the way it's a podcast about um the basically the pro-nazi movement in america before world war ii

i read something about that a long time ago fascinating book yes it's shockingly significant

right like we kind of certainly not being from that era i think well we got out there and we beat the jerrys and we took hitler down and like we were all on board and it's like well there were get-togethers in Los Angeles there they celebrated Hitler's birthday in a public square in Los Angeles at some point before we entered World War II and that was a thing that was not you know no one was arrested over that like there was a pretty significant I'm going to go back to that word kind of you know Germany sympathizer slash Nazi sympathizer contingent in America including this this particular um senator from uh minnesota who died in a plane crash um it kind of which was a pretty sus deal uh his name was earnest i'm forgetting his last name but anyway i'd never heard of him before this podcast but um anyway the difference between oh the thing i was thinking of was there was a radio host named Father Coughlin who had, I think, at the time, he was just a kind of a Catholic priest who did this radio show, and I think he had, like, 8 million listeners when the U.S. population was, like, 60 million people or something. Like, he had a massive portion of the American population listening to his radio presentation each week, and it was all basically pro-Nazi. He was the most popular media...

figure in america in terms of how many people were consuming what he was saying and he was pro-nazi

and didn't he have like charles lindberg on and henry ford like these were hugely famous people like that i'm trying to remember i i've read i know i read that um counter history um oh right sure the man in the high castle no no no um philip roth has a counter history that really kind of got into like what if lindberg had actually won the nomination or something and it brought in and that's where i kind of learned a lot of this and there's also like a book called um oh it's such a it's such a dark read but it's called human smoke and it basically it's not even a it's not even a book luke what it is it's it's all direct quotes it's a big non-fiction book and it's all direct quotes from newspaper articles and and stuff from the time against america oh plot against america is the roth one human smoke uses just like all direct quotes and clippings and everything to retell the story of the lead up to the war but it arranges it in a way that it shows you like all the anti-semitism and how close america was like on this on the seesaw of being isolationist and even nazi sympathizer to actually actually you know like getting involved in the war i mean it's it's incredible it's seemed i should listen to rachel's podcast i've been hearing really good

things about that no it's it is it's incredible lundin by the way ernest lundin was the senator from Minnesota who died in the plane crash. But the thing is, on the subject of Father Coughlin, the reason that Father Coughlin eventually stepped away from the microphone was because people, conservatives said, you've gone too far. Basically, the Catholic Church said, this is too much, my guy. And so he basically lost his microphone phone because of going too far there is no too far too far anymore and that's what really i always refer refer to like you know richard nixon stepping down richard nixon stepped down not because the democrats wanted him to but because the republicans were literally walking over to the white house from from congress to say you have like we're we're going to vote you out we're going to impeach you and we're going to support the impeachment effort that doesn't exist anymore on the Republican side, and that is what is so troubling to me, is that there's just no, you need, it's like, you need bookends, right? You need both groups to be eventually like some kind of barrier to the whole thing on either end, and they're just like the bookend that is the Republican side has completely evaporated, which puts us, I think, in kind of uncharted territory.

I feel like, and now I'm getting them really confused, because I listened to a couple of Watergate-era podcasts around the same time. One was Rachel's podcast. Oh, yeah, about Bagman? Yes, Bagman. About Spiro Agnew? Right, but there was another one that I think was a Slate podcast. Yeah, Slow Burn. Slow Burn, yeah. It's kind of getting those a little bit intertwined, but I'm pretty sure it was Slow Burn that really illustrated, too, even how, like, eventually, eventually the Republicans finally said, okay, this has gone on too far. But it almost it's sort of the the way I remember Slowburn telling the story, it you almost didn't have that moment like that moment could have slipped away, too. It was because of some real doggedness, I think, on some people's part that it didn't just get swept under the rug in the party.

No, no, I think you're right. But again, to me, it's like the fact that it happened is significant and that it wouldn't like, you know, the Liz Cheney's of that era were able to prevail. And now Liz Cheney is no longer a U.S. senator or will not be a U.S. senator. Is she still technically a senator until January or something like it's I mean, yeah, it's just I feel like I hear what you're saying, which is that it it wasn't I'm not here trying to make the point that things used to be great. But there was some sense of gravity that I think is just gone now.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. I mean, I'm actually I'm looking at the web, the Wikipedia page for human smoke, by the way. It's Nicholson Baker kind of wrote it, but it's described here as it questions the commonly held belief that the Allies wanted to avoid war at all costs and is told strictly through official government transcripts, newspaper articles and other documents of the time. And I don't know, like I sort of feel like the more we talk about this, I mean, it's sort of I feel like does point to this fact that like it has never been it hasn't always been as solid as solidly in the side of good as maybe it just sort of seemed.

Right, but we've never had a president refuse to accept the results of an election post the Civil War. Like that to me, I mean, I understand what you're saying. I think you want to make the point.

that it would be glib to say that things used to be better than they are now because a lot of people had a terrible time of it and continue to have a terrible time of it. And democracy is always kind of hung in the balance or hung by a thread. But, I mean, we literally have never had a president who lost the election and said, I didn't lose the election.

I know. I feel like you want to win. I'm not looking to win here.

I'm just a violation of norms that I feel like it's it's a new it's a new level of bad okay yeah I

don't I like I said I'm not really debating and I'm just sort of telling you kind of how I how I feel about it and I clearly like I'm not an expert on these things I probably shouldn't be talking about them but I feel like you really want me to to come around on something here I don't know that

I can provide that I want you to come around on getting in touch with your author from Asheville North Carolina and just to see what his take on it is yes I feel like if we if you google him a little better you will get we'll get some intel on him i actually believe by the way that the listeners will deliver some useful contact info or other things that he's done is it joseph joseph

brookhouse christopher brookhouse but no don't don't don't listeners i mean all i would say is like if you i mean i don't and that's the other thing too i don't know if this is like this book is for for everybody i don't even know if i i you know can recommend it everybody likes different things but no you know i'm not and i you know it's not one of those things where i'm looking to reach out to him i actually don't i have no desire to especially you know he's some maybe he's done writing but i just for me it was just it's like one of those things that's like 2004 2005 it's just on that edge of kind of just like there isn't a lot of the internet just isn't important to this particular writer's thing it's just like i'm just like any book or movie that you read that has come out in the past 10 or 15 years you can then go read some vulture article about it or I also think it has to do with the fact That Christopher Brookhouse is not a household name You know what I mean but it's just like I just kind of Have this instinct that I didn't realize before That when I'm enjoying some sort of media like That I then go for my Two screen experience for some more Background on it it's just funny that it's just It's just not there this thing just exists As a book on my bookshelf and I mean you know at other people's bookshelves

Well there's some maybe there's something Kind of nice about that too I guess yeah All right let's do this 53 minutes in let's take a break and then when we come back I don't know we will either do the top stories or the emails Andrew and I will discuss this during the break and report back in a moment here on TBTL we talked about it during the break we meditated on it I prayed on it and we decided to thank the donors of the day. We decided that we needed to thank the people who are paying for this episode of TBTL. Quick knock-knock joke for us. Knock-knock.

Who's there? Lettuce. Lettuce who? Lettuce pray.

Let us

pray. Yeah, I should have delivered it that way.

Is there more to that joke? No, I think that's it. It does sort of, a lot of knock-knock jokes sort of leave you wanting more. See, I'm more of a fan of the, you know, orange you glad I didn't say banana. Yeah, the more Or interrupting cow I like to play with the form, Andrew Yeah, right Let us pray is a little Mmm Mmm You know who loves that joke? Heather Heather Rood of Bothell, Washington Actually, you know what? I don't want to weigh in on Heather's Sort of comedic sensibility But I do know that Heather is a very generous And long-standing supporter of this show And gave us some lettuce

To support it Is lettuce a slang word for money or not Totally

It's funny any kind of Also cabbage Cheese, cheddar Lettuce, cabbage Nobody says spinach

That is true we can make it a thing I'm happy to do that

Alright let's try that Heather thanks for the spinach Also thanks to Roxanne Westfall Howard Of Chicago, Illinois for the kale. Sprinkle a little kale on that. Nice. Throwing a little kale down for us. Thank you, Roxanne. Also, thanks to Brenda Willis of Coburg, Oregon. Right near Cobro, Oregon. Right. The longest-running Coburg of Oregon, I believe. If I remember, I will introduce you as the longest-running Coburg of the show tomorrow. Thank you, Brenda. Also, Carla Beck is in Seattle Washington am I leaving out Any I guess What arugula no that's not Really a I wouldn't Call arugula a leafy green So we got Well we talked lettuce We talked cabbage we talked

Am I forgetting any other I think you can go arugula You put it in a salad right

Yeah but it's so small It is small Like I feel like the reason that we talk about Lettuce being like money Is because you have a green rectangle of paper That is the money And you have a green You know flattish thing That is a leaf of lettuce Or a side of cabbage or whatever I don't know if arugula rises to that same occasion

I'm just looking at a list. We've done cabbage, beet greens. Are those going to be red? Is that going to be red or is it going to be green?

You're not looking at a list of things that people say instead of money. Are you looking at a thing? I'm just looking at leafy vegetables. Watercress.

How about watercress? I don't know watercress.

Unfortunately, my bank account currently, Andrew, is microgreens. How about romaine? How about chard? I can get down with romaine.

Okay, there. I've given you several options. Which is a lettuce, though, right? Yeah, it is a kind of lettuce, yeah.

thank you for the romaine malia meyer excuse me malia mayor of wenatchee washington thanks for the apples malia because that's when actually is apple country oh nice and green apples thanks for the green apples oh that sounds like very delicious i think it's a chard instead of shard and it's living in my head a little bit but you know you're right though shard is very much in that family nobody says hey man uh can you can you get back to me on that shard you owe me

right and also um why is it a soft ch but anyway um i think shard could round us out

uh also thanks to greg devore from vashon washington thank you for the give me another one endive i don't know what endive thank you for the undive undive i don't even know what that is oh you do it is i'm looking at it here it's kind of it's it is a it's i guess you would say it's a lettuce but it's it's whitish it's a good um kind of boat for delivering other more caloric things like you can put some kind of and this might be why you're not that familiar with it a lot of times an endive salad will have like blue cheese in it or something stuff that's kind of in the

in the on dive leaf and dive i'm getting endive just so you know and i saw a pronouncer that said end dive yeah i wonder how i got on dive in my mind i'm not sure it sounds nicer although that reminds me of the other thing that you and genevieve both like a lot now i don't know if it would be a stand-in for money but it could be um oh gosh they have a heart in them and you always hear about it it starts i believe the thing starts with an a it's like a artichoke artichoke could that be a

for money yeah you know i i would allow it i would allow it you could peel the artichoke leaves off and throw them down like poker chips like so many poker chips i just you reach across the table and

just bring them all to you after the big win i watch a lot of poker movies yeah sure thank you

greg devore for the artichoke yes and thanks to all of our donors today for making tbtl possible

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 i'm gonna blast through two top stories

and i'm gonna wonder why i say on dive weird um julia roberts's birth was paid for by dr martin luther king and his wife coretta scott king which is wild i saw something like this

bouncing around the other day on like social media somewhere and i didn't investigate it i think i might have thought it was some bullshit story to be honest with you well that's not

it sounded like a bullshit story so somebody on twitter was like the fact that julia roberts birth was paid for by martin luther king and coretta scott king is sending me and then the internet was like that's definitely apocryphal and then someone else found an interview where julia roberts was confirming it to gail king and in fact um descendants of dr martin luther king and credit scott king uh were like oh yeah yeah we were all friends so julia roberts parents ran a child theater program in atlanta and uh the credit scott king called them and said like i'm trying to bring my kids to one of these programs and no one will let us in because we're black and the roberts were like yeah come on over and they all became friends but they were the roberts were very poor turns out child theater atlanta georgia late 60s it's not the road to artichokes andrew and so they were pregnant with julia and were having her and couldn't pay the hospital bill and the kings swooped in and covered it wow which is a pretty cool story now the thing that i was particularly shocked by was i think it was maybe a washington post article i was reading on this mentions at the end of the piece.

Very casually, on the subject of Julia Roberts' kind of social justice activism, they're sort of assuming because of her family's history with the civil rights movement, etc., they just mentioned that she has personally created like, I don't know, 1,700 Wikipedia entries for underappreciated scientists that tend to be women and people of color. julia roberts is apparently just creating wikipedia pages for people who are not who have not been um sort of um accounted for historically weirdly and not to dismiss the

the you know the social the good work of that right but i'm almost more impressed that she

just knows how to do that like and i mean you get on that list of underappreciated podcasters

I mean, on the occasion that I've tried to, like, go back and see who made it, like, I'm trying to sleuth something out. We've done it on the show before. Like, you get into the guts of Wikipedia, and I cannot tell. I mean, it is, like, a totally different language.

Oh, yeah, 100%. Like, I have – not that long ago, I was looking at the Wikipedia page about me, and i was i had mentioned this on the show that someone had gone to the trouble of adding my first ex-wife by name oh yeah you mentioned that and i was like huh that's a that's a dazzling deet and who was that person and what motivated them to do that and was it my first ex-wife i mean it does not seem like her move i mean she and i are very amicable actually it's like it for many years uh i don't believe she was mentioned by name and then all of a sudden she was on there and i was like i can't imagine she took time out of her busy life to go clarify that point so then it was like somebody else must have and that's again an interesting thing for someone to do and so then i was trying to scroll through the like edits on my wikipedia page and then i was totally lost because it is it's sort of its own syntax yeah exactly and and there you have i

mean i am a little bit did the article mention why uh julia was snubbed for where'd you go

Bernadette that's what I want to know it did they they listed the fact that she's not in it yeah it just seems like being one of the big reasons that she was snubbed by the Oscar right

that's true I've been snubbed by the by the the casting director but yeah sure yeah uh the other

thing I want to say very quickly is uh the view the tv show that apparently still exists which is kind of rich coming from us here on episode 3805 like we're also the podcast that still exists much to the surprise of many but the view uh decided to do some like halloween episode where they made children dress up as the big news stories of the year okay so they're all children okay i believe so it was the hot topics segment um they had a kid dressed in a car dealership inflatable thingy with money glued to the sides. That was for inflation. So imagine that kind of weird whatever you call that guy. They had a kid with a Donald Trump wig dressed as a toilet, flushing down classified documents. And they had a kid dressed as an Oscar with a red handprint on their face and that kid was the oscars slap and people do not like this people i mean according to one article i saw people were like huh and i i now it's it's a kid looks very much like i don't know like an oompa loompa or something like the kid looks like a character from a dystopian 1970s movie where for some reason people have to cover their heads uh in gold and you know what i mean Like it's, there's something kind of uncanny about this kid.

I'm looking at this now and it's got some like, is it Manos in the Hands of Fate energy to it? You know what I'm talking about? I don't even know what that is. It's a classic sci-fi like B movie that I think is one of the more famous mystery science theater 3000 episodes. I believe it's Manos in the Hands of Fate. It's big in nerd culture. You would know it.

I bet you I've seen this meme-ified. I didn't even know.

Maybe, yeah. Like the big cape with the handprints on it. But it definitely, yeah. this makes me uncomfortable it also just does seem like and why are we bringing children into i mean these are kind of like some of these are like first of all well obviously that oscar moment was very complicated for a lot of reasons and just like do i also see um somebody dressed up here like the oh god what is wrong with my brain today the joyce carol oats uh book and uh tv show about a world where women have even less rights um do i see oh uh yeah uh hands made do i

do i but uh yeah uh handmaid's tale do i see a kid doing the handmaid's tale as well

i don't know but i think that the the title monos and the hands of fate is weird because monos or manos if one cares to mispronounce it is spanish for hands so it's hands in the hands

of fate i didn't know it's margaret atwood sorry about that i don't know why i said joyce carol um but um yeah so i guess so yeah but that's like that's kind of classic camp now right uh-huh yeah

man is in the hands but again like why do they name him hands i don't know this is more than i even know about the the movie i've learned everything that i'm saying is based on um me googling it better than you and doing an image search maybe that's that's where you you get losses you fail to do the image search my friend as far as on dive or end dive i know that people call it endive i must have heard like julia child or some person being fancy once say it like with a french pronunciation and i don't know why that stuck in my mind but i've always i there's another i feel like there's another name for endive as well like it's called something else uh it's sort of like in the way that like they call uh arugula rocket if you're oh i didn't know that or like uh you know um eggplant is uh aubergine or abergine in other places i didn't know that i feel like there's another name for oh is it escarole now i've heard of that endive the same thing i always thought that was a fish so i'm no uh yeah if you google escarole okay okay oh that

yeah you're right i'm with the same exact picture of those little yellow and white babies But I'm wondering why I've been calling it On-dive my whole life I don't think it's that big of a deal I didn't mean to get in your head on that You were just saying on-dive as I happened to be looking at a pronunciation That said N-dive So that's why I wanted to kind of figure it out for myself

Right, but I'm interrogating my own My own mistakes here And trying to figure out why it is that I've been Because I've literally been saying that for like 25 years of my life Would you say you're taking a deep dive on N-dives?

a deep dive on end dive is that a show maybe yes you know we're getting near the end of the show and that's all i got so i'm writing that down as a possibility we're getting to the escarole of the show that's how i escarole all right listen let's know don't hey can i quickly before we do have to get out of here i wanted to give a big shout out to an event that the tens might be interested in that involves another long time 10 and friend of the show megan kelso now uh-huh we've you know had we've read from megan's emails and heard her voicemails on the show for a long long time now megan i don't know if a lot of tens know this is also an author she's just now releasing a um collection of short stories a graphic kind of a graphic novel style um graphic short stories um uh and that book is just coming out oh it's coming out today it's coming out today i'm looking at the notes here today is the publication day so congratulations to megan that is awesome megan sent us a copy of the book i can't wait to dig into it uh and then google her and see if she's online but um the what i wanted to let people know about is this coming sunday Megan is being interviewed by none other than Phyllis P. Fletch Fletcher at the downtown Seattle Public Library all about this new book and her work and everything so this is this is everything we love all coming together at the downtown library this is this coming Sunday starting at 1pm if you guys want to kind of meet some other 10s and see Phyllis interview I don't know it says in conversation with so maybe an interview is is too harsh of a word it's a it's a it's a conversation Luke but that's what's going on you're going to just be chatting it'll actually be in the hallway over towards the quiet reading area you can eavesdrop about it yeah so me and Megan I'm going to see if we're going to see if we can get Megan on for the winter games

too maybe she can tell Megan famously happened to illustrate the I anonymous that I wrote to the stranger many years ago you and I were talking about this off air this is an email or a letter or I can't even remember the format that I used. I may have literally typed a letter, put it in an envelope, put it in an on-dive-lope, and sent it to the stranger. But I would never send it now. It was me kind of like – it was actually very Tiffany Smiley of me being like, I didn't like what some people were doing in the grocery store regarding what I thought they were buying with welfare, et cetera. But anyway, it just so happened that that that I anonymous at the stranger came through on Megan Kelso's watch and she illustrated it. And I can still picture it to this day.

You guys found out years later that. that she was the one who illustrated it right yes yeah exactly like that was a total coincidence or a kind of a little weird quirk of history but anyway so everybody go see megan and p fletch at the library yeah conversation in conversation i didn't say the name of the book it's called who

will make the pancakes so look for it and buy it and support a fellow 10 i think somebody was

making pancakes in my apartment building at like nine last night i was taking the garbage down to the garbage chute and i smelled pancakes and i thought that's a great idea why am i not making

more pancakes for dinner i'm trying to think i'm not challenging you here but do pancakes have a smell or is it the things that go along with pancakes can i do anything right no for real like what is it because i can smell syrup or bacon i can imagine i guess oh they very much

up to me they very much have a smell yeah i guess i'm just not picturing it well but yeah Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to be able to describe it other than it smells like pancakes. Yeah. It's a smell of batter and probably some amount of butter, but to me it's very distinct. It was also the only thing pretty much that I could make when Addie was a kid. So it was like It was a big Saturday morning ritual for us Because it was the It was the only thing that I could actually like do From a food standpoint that was kind of impressive to her Mostly was that I would cut the pancake Into the shape of the letter A So you would cut it

That's right you didn't

I didn't have a A mold for it or anything But no I mean I cooked a lot of pancakes back in the day And to me they definitely have a pretty distinct smell

Oh my god you know what I need to do Luke I need to do research

It's almost waffle cone, but not as sweet Does that help?

Yeah, no, it does The more I think about it, the more we talk about it I think I can imagine that smell And I think what I need to do And I need to do this for the show And honestly, I should probably expense it to 8 p.m. As I should, as soon as I get the show posted Walk on over to the IHOP And do some research on this topic

I saw an ad for IHOP last night While I was watching Monday Night Football And they were sort of advertising their two new menu options and i thought peace and love by the way to anybody who might love ihop or work at ihop or own ihop they were promoting their salisbury steak and their salmon not like as part of the same meal but you can get the salmon or you can get the salisbury steak and i just thought those are two things that if you put a gun to my head i wouldn't order at ihop

salisbury steak gun to my head i would do that i mean well you know what like that honestly

loaded gun to my head i would order anything right right i would i don't know salmon i might

take the the risk i'd like oh my i like to you know what i like to order at the ihop is the um the shrimp cocktail that's my like yeah no i'm i have i'm not warm i have some reactions to any kind of any kind of seafood like i have to have it in like any kind of anything that is fishy or comes from the water like i have a lot of reservations about generally speaking

yeah i you know honestly the salisbury steak it's a thing that's in was in every sort of tv dinner yeah that's why i kind of i think it's probably a pretty durable product it's covered in some kind of gravy i think that's yep it's sort of designed to be tolerable now even luke's can tolerate salisbury steak but salmon but solomon feels like you're asking for trouble yeah

With a salmon berry steak. No, that sounds, yeah, I would not be getting the salmon dinner at IHOP.

I just feel like if you're IHOP, if you're the international house of pancakes, just own the pancake space. Yeah. Make every ad about pancakes. That's why we're going there. No one's going there for the salmon.

Okay, I'll make this really quick, but let's end on a quick anecdote about a commercial I saw that irritates me. it was from 1995 and i found it on one of those vhs tapes and it's for ihop it's literally for ihop and even though ihop is called always the international house of pancakes this particular commercial was advertising a um kind of a what do you call it like a special that they had going on a special menu where they had all different kinds of pancakes from around the world but oh yeah it didn't bring up lingonberry right maybe that and it didn't really make a lot of sense to me maybe crepes were an option in there or something but the commercial stars like some guy some middle-aged man who walks into an ihop and then stops a young busy server kind of mid-stride and asked this young man um hey what kind of pancakes do you have here and um so yeah he's not walking into an ihop he's walking into the competition right so he's just in some random diner and he stops the server and says what kind of pancakes do you have here and the kid looks at him he's Like, I don't know, the round kind? And... then it's like why would you go to these places come to ihop where we have an extended oh i see he's not in the ihop no i misspoke he's he's he's in the competition but the point is at ihop we have all different kinds of pancakes but my point is who's stopping some kid some server while he's trying to bust a bunch of tables and say what kind of pancakes do you have here how are you portraying the kid who tried to answer that question in good faith as the antagonist here how's he the enemy how is he the enemy what kind of asshole walks into a restaurant and says what kind of pancakes do you have there and expects anything but another answer like would you even say that a crepe is a good answer to that question like i don't know right and the fact that he's not listen if

there's one place that you can walk in and ask what kind of pancakes do you have it's the international house of them yeah right but this is not even that place like this person walked

into a denny's right and said that and then they're saying that's why you need to come to the International House of Pancakes. He walked into an Arby's and was like, what kind of pancakes do you have?

And the guy was understandably confused. He walked into a bank and said, what kind of pancakes do you have here? The kind that are made out of lettuce.

How to end lives.

All right. I think that we should probably call that good. Again, I got to go. Yeah, good luck. I got to get Doug with Luke. This getting Doug with Luke.

wait should that be that should probably be the show title i think um yeah i'm actually i'm legit

interested in kind of how this goes again not like full report tomorrow i haven't lost my damn

mind thanks to the reefer madness right and like i'm almost like kind of less yeah because i don't think it's gonna be like oh man luke got high what was it like it's just like the whole situation sounds like just an interesting you know somewhat inorganic way to go about also happening on a

houseboat oh i didn't know that what so throw that on the list why um that's where the person lives oh okay you're just going to their house yeah we're going to her house we're going to hang out in her kitchen on her houseboat and oh wow talk and eat and get friggin high as balls

all right we'll have fun i look forward to hearing about it oh by the way i've started i watched the

entire first season of detroiters for some reason when i said high as balls i felt like it was

re-channeling tim robinson it's great don't don't even finish this if you don't love it because i i love it okay good i mean i watched the whole season yeah that's a good point yeah but it's

really funny to watch i mean i just i really i really genuinely love it i think it's a it makes me want to live in detroit by the way i i didn't realize detroit was on a lake

oh yeah we were talking about michigan didn't weren't we just talking about that yeah no i

mean i'm i can't believe that and i've been to detroit a few times i didn't realize like all the shots of like the lake and how much of the city is perched on the lake and the various like that dive bar they they the whatever it's called the something room that they go to the temple bar or something the temple room where they're always hanging out and mort crim is doing the news it's a really really good show and it's also fun to watch occasionally a glimmer of a character or a version of tim robinson or sam richardson that will then be showing up and i think you should

And I can't really speak to this Because they're too inside baseball for me But I think there's a lot of local Detroit Commercial references in there I think a lot of the things they're doing Are inspired by real life campaigns That took place in the 80s and 90s So there's a generation of people familiar With Detroit who would also watch that show And just get so much out of it Cameos I think

Somebody making a show about Seattle And it's a reference to Jack Roberts Linwood Home Appliance

Or Pad O'Day

A tiny overhead Sumner? I didn't actually realize that, but that's even cooler. Yeah, yeah, good. I'm glad you checked that out. All right, good luck today. I'm very much enjoying it. Thank you. I just want you to be normal, and clearly you're not. Whoa, whoa, whoa, easy, Kid Cudi.

I thought that was me, because I started hitting the music over here, right?

You know what's funny is, like, I was just searching in my system for Pat O'Day, but Day and Night by Kid Cudi also involves someone named Plain Pat.

Oh, that song is so good. Oh, that's why I brought that up. Day and night, flawless, as our boy Stu would say. No notes. Objectively perfect.

No notes. Maybe that'll be my music for your weekend this week. Nice. All right, thanks for listening, everybody. We will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you, so please do join us for that. Until then, have a great Tuesday. Stay safe. Go Phils. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

We'll be right back.

Tonight pants were dress pants that I used to wear. I mean, I love this so much. Some dress pants that I used to wear are now my tonight pants. And that is a thing. I have never had a pair of dress pants that became tonight pants that I wore as pajamas. Andrew, my God, he's just so adorable. Oh, my God. I love you guys.

Power out.