Muse

I love to make people laugh, and I've been doing it since, you know, school. People ask me, were you, you know, you must have been the class clown. And I say, no, I wasn't. But I sat beside the class clown, and I studied him, and saw how he made people laugh. And so I picked some things up and, you know, and at parties and family functions, I have to say, I love, you know, breaking people up. So there's a thing that I think I got an entertaining bug from my grandfather, Chaim Perlgut, who was very, very big in the Yiddish theater back in New York. He was in the very, the sardonically irreverent Dibbick Shmibbick, I Said More Ham. And that review, I believe, was 1914. And that review is what made him famous. Incidentally, the song Boobie Made a Kishka came from that review. TBTL!

Well, all right. Hello, good morning. and welcome everyone to week two of the tbtl winter games boy that weekend just flew by

well i know flew right on by like a different man i mean in some ways it went by quickly but in other ways i just packed a lot in too so it feels like i lived several lives and who would

have imagined that the seahawks would be sitting atop the nfc west completely improbable turn of events the number one pick to win the super bowl this year also i am glad i got my bet in early Back months ago when they were terrible and couldn't stop anyone on defense. Happy New Year, everybody.

It's January 2nd. Look at us. 2023. I'm still wearing the glasses. I have confetti in my hair.

I'm still writing Year of the Dragon on my checks. That's not my joke. That was an almost live joke. Actually, it might have even been a Jack Handy from Saturday night. It was like, it's the Year of the Monkey, but I'm still writing Year of the Dragon on my checks.

That's a pretty good joke.

I thought that was a solid spoof as a kid. We have a solid winter game episode for you today because we are welcoming back the breakout star of the TBTL Summer Games. And I am talking, of course, about Dr. Kirk Honda, a family therapist and also the host of the Psychology in Seattle podcast and the wildly popular YouTube channel. Wildly popular, Andrew. I'm looking at it on these videos. 900,000 views 800,000 views I mean this is almost like he's almost at the level of downloads we get for an episode of TVTL You might say upsettingly popular

Dr. Kirk

Kirk Honda, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me

No pressure, now I really have to prove that somehow I'm worth it, right?

It was, we had a really, really great response to the last time that we had you on, you gave us a kind of ran through some true-false questions around mental health and emotional health and things like that. And I have to say, a lot of it really stuck with me, particularly the detail about when people report feeling their highest level of happiness, which was it like 71 or

something like that? I'd have to look that up again. When was that? It was a lot. Yeah, 70,

age 70 it was older than i expected and i'm not kidding i have thought about that statistic a lot since we had you on the show last time and it's sometimes been what i needed to think about in

that time to kind of do a little self-soothing it might have been confidence not happiness it was something along those lines though uh self-esteem self-esteem oh okay self-esteem so i

i mean i just feel like i think i probably said this when it came up the first time around but i like knowing that i've got about 30 or maybe 24 years to figure this out yeah it's still it's still a work in progress um so uh has your youtube channel always been i think again we may have talked about this a bit last time around but i just i'm i'm stunned anew looking at how many clicks you're getting are you arguably one of the more well-known psychologists on youtube these days uh hard to know but seemingly maybe is the way i'd answer that question that's also a great oasis record seemingly maybe and how i'm going to answer all of the questions on your quiz today no it's i mean it's a very very impressive uh the the following that you've developed over there and we are very honored to have you taking some time out of your busy schedule and also injuring your hand by holding the phone close to your ear for this um so thanks

for doing it should we jump right in sure yeah true or false y'all

swearing increases pain tolerance swearing increases pain tolerance i'm gonna lean towards yes but i think that it's the swearing is almost secondary to the fact that you're saying something in that moment something sort of negative and often that takes the takes the form of swears but something's burning you and you can deal with it by gritting your teeth and saying something awful i'm going to say yes i am also going to say yes but it's

going to cause me then to be turning my back on a i think a buddhist principle that i've long been a fan of the idea of which is if you if you if you whack your thumb with a hammer accidentally the tendency is to want to swear and ball your thumb ball your hand up in a fist and and kind of like squeeze your thumb and and separate yourself from your thumb but a different way to do it is to envelop your thumb with love and to welcome it back into your body and to say you are still part of me even though you hurt and that seems like when i do that it makes my thumb hurt less when i whack it with a hammer which is like a weekly thing yeah we'll stop doing that yeah why are the buddhists telling you to whack your thumb with a hammer all the time is a better question the journey i don't know andrew but anyway um so to me the swearing is my guess is that it is a release and a relief but it also feels like it's part of this very western way of dealing with things that are uncomfortable and i am endeavoring to be more eastern uh unsuccessfully so but i'm endeavoring to that um so what is the real answer the answer is true it's uh andrew w monday and a loop w londay as well really good uh by the way way to do the math in your head as to what day this is airing dr kirk impressive what can't you do yeah so it doesn't

Seeing that just screaming something is the key, I think that research shows that that also helps. But to really reduce your pain or increase your pain tolerance, you've got to let out a swear.

You ever do anything like scream therapy?

No, but I have had clients scream. In fact, at the beginning of my career, when I worked at an agency, my agency put me in a different outbuilding because my clients would frequently have loud moments and the walls were kind of thin and they were – it was upsetting. Not upsetting, like disturbing, but it was like you could hear what was happening. I don't know. I like emotion. I like expression. Get stuff off your chest, that kind of stuff, you know? Can I follow up on that quickly? Yeah, please do, Andrew.

Was it something about the type of care that you were practicing that led specifically your clients to be doing that more than the other doctors in the situation in the building? Or was it about your approach?

Kind of all of the above. I'm trying to think about some examples. Like one, I'm a couple therapist as well. And so when I would treat couples, I would encourage communication. And sometimes we'll be really pent up and reserved and nervous, and so I would try to get them to actually talk. And sometimes that would result in some raised voices for mostly good effect, but sometimes bad effect, I suppose. But I'd also have kids that I treated, and sometimes we would get super rambunctious because I'd try to make them comfortable or just free to be themselves. Other situations would be trauma treatment. Sometimes, you know, there's a lot of emotion that can explode from an individual through recovery. So I don't know. There's just a lot of different examples.

I can't remember exactly what we talked about, you know, the extent of everything we talked about last time we had you on. But did I mention that once I was in couples therapy and I stormed out? And does that mean I permanently lose the argument? Like, is that what's your take on that as a therapist? if one of the people gets angry and leaves the room? Are they officially the bad person in the relationship? Yeah.

I can't remember if we did talk about that on the air or I just heard Yael talk about it. But, yes, that definitely means that you won. That's what we write in the file anyway.

Big stamp with a W on it for wins.

It's like, okay, yeah, I guess we – because I feel like sometimes – and this is, of course, not really the goal, but you know this Dr. Honda like being in the session when you're in a couple's session there is a tendency to hope as one of the people in therapy that you're coming off as the much more rational balanced person that the other person is showing their true colors and therefore the therapist will realize that it's actually their fault I think I really lost that argument when I stood up probably took my therapist dog off of my lap she just had like a very cute like kind of I can't remember what kind of dog his name was Apollo threw apollo across the room and stormed out of the office i think that i lost the uh i lost the

battle there what else you got for us on the quiz true or false searching for information on the internet makes us feel dumber than we actually are huh what do you think true or false huh

can make us searching for stuff on the internet makes us feel dumber um i'll say true because i

think my reasoning is feel dumber i don't think that may necessarily makes us dumber although it could depending on what corner of the internet you're playing around in um but i could see feeling dumb because every time you think you're getting a grasp on knowledge you find another link and another link and another link and it can feel overwhelming i am gonna say false because

everything i say on this show is something that i just quickly googled or i'm sorry something i quickly bing the the confidence that the confidence that i feel off of reading one line from a wikipedia article uh is is is all knows almost no bounds so i feel smarter after googling

around although i probably shouldn't so i'm going false so luke you're more reflective of the average respondent to research studies it makes us feel smarter actually on average searching for information on the internet makes us feel smarter than we actually are makes us feel smarter than

we actually see so Andrew is actually smart because he knows that he's not getting smarter or he's not as smart as he feels like he is so he he feels dumber after searching I am like the Homer Simpson of the show and I feel extremely informed by doing it even though it's not really

having the effect thank you for saying that says about the storm out of here then you lose the

podcast should we and dorm into a break by the way oh yeah good call I completely lost track of the the time. So yeah, let's do that. Let's do a quick break and then we're going to come back and we're going to keep talking to Dr. Kirk Honda from the Psychology in Seattle podcast. Stick around. All right, we are talking to a friend of the show, Dr. Kirk Honda from the Psychology in Seattle podcast and also Cameo. Dr. Kirk is listed as highly responsive. If you would like to use him for your cameo, um, desires. What sorts of cameos do you get? Do, do people ask you to, um, try to diagnose somebody or to try to tell someone that they need to stop acting a fool? What are the

cameos that people request from a psychologist? Mostly they just want me to wish someone happy birthday or Merry Christmas or something. Um, incidentally, I've been trying to get, I texted Andrew a couple of times trying to get the two of you to go on cameo because you were talking about it on the air and I know your listeners would love it it seems self-indulgent and narcissistic right to be like okay I'm gonna people are gonna want to spend money for me but I find it to be a wonderful little way to connect with people it to give someone a little if you've ever gotten a cameo it just feels delightful to get a little happy birthday from some parasocial relationship

yeah carrie got me one from jeff the drunk from the howard stern whack pack once and i was

legitimately pumped i would do it my only reluctance and maybe this gets a little bit too much into the weeds but i also hope our listeners um respect this like honestly because we're a show that is funded by our listeners and our listeners have been so generous to us over the years that having another thing that they have to pay for to connect with us never seemed quite right unless i was able to unless we were able to actually fold it into our proper fundraising efforts if that makes sense i don't know if you feel the same way about that luke but i think that because i've thought about it especially when cameo was really hot um not that it's not anymore but like when we were talking about it a lot i was like oh that would be a really fun thing to use to somehow engage with but then saying but then slapping up another price tag on it sort

of seemed wrong to me yeah i think my concern was for us personally it could kind of cannibalize the hey dummies videos but i guess the i guess that you know you know somebody there are there are definitely and other things that we do where we try to add a little bit of experience for the listeners hopefully that doesn't cost any extra money where we're just kind of like popping up on a video saying like hey thanks for whatever it is but um i'll tell you what if uh if the if the seahawks don't pull through and win the super bowl i'm gonna need to make some extra money And I'm going to be right on. So be ready for it. All right. What is the next question, Dr. Kirk?

True or false. Sixty five percent of meat eaters and forty five. So sixty five percent of those who eat meat and forty five percent of vegetarians find the idea of lab grown meat appetizing. Sixty five percent of meat eaters, forty five percent.

of vegetarians found the idea of lab-grown meat to be appetizing.

I think that's false because I think 0% of people who either eat meat or don't eat meat think of lab-grown meat as appetizing. Now, will I eat it when it comes out? A hundred percent. Is it appetizing? No.

Yeah, I'm with you. I feel like the 65% of meat eaters, which you are not a member of the meat-eating community now, Luke, generally speaking. um so that's interesting i could see 45 percent of vegetarians maybe saying hey that's something that i would like to try because i do miss certain aspects of eating meat but i can't morally get myself to do it but 65 percent of people who are currently eating meat saying i want to try some of that lab grown stuff doesn't seem right to me although i will say that if they developed it and it was good me a meat eater i i don't know if i would say it sounds appetizing but it does sound like something that is better that i should try and maybe try to lean more heavily on if it

were available yeah you're saying false it is not an andrew w monday it is true 65 about two thirds of meat eaters find the idea of lab-grown meat to be appetizing and almost half of vegetarians i find that's really surprising yeah according to research that that's what they found

Wow. I'll tell you what, between nuclear fusion and being able to grow meat in a lab, if we make it, if this planet can survive for another 20 years, things are going to be really different potentially. You know, like, I mean, that would be a huge step forward. And I, again, I enjoy the experience of eating meat generally, like depending on what kind of meat it is. So I'm just mostly not doing it out of kind of my little animal stuff. But boy, if I could eat a chicken tendy that never had to be on a chicken, no chicken had to be sad about its life, sign me up. But they need to get it right, though, because a lot of this fake meat stuff that they're doing right now, which I know is different than lab-grown meat, but a lot of the fake meat is just not quite – it's not convincing.

I've been wondering about this, and I've been wanting to email you, but then I thought, well, I don't know if he gets back to people over email, so I just thought I'd ask you. So you were talking about how when you were a kid, you would go to the Godfathers in Ballard and terrorize the, or you would, I forget what you were saying, but you would do something that wasn't on the up and up. And I used to work at that Godfathers and I was wondering, and I remember some kids, some teenagers, I'm older than you. And I remember some teenagers coming in and doing things that were not on the up and up. And I was wondering if it was possible that this, you know, I would have been like 22 at the time or something, and you would have been in high school, and that we met in person because of that. So I worked there in late of 1993, so would you have been there in late 1993?

I would have. It's very possible that I went into that Godfather's Pizza. I loved, and to this day, I love Godfather's Pizza. Does it still exist, by the way? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, if they had that, I would still, I would go there tomorrow if they had Godfathers. But I probably went to that store, but that wasn't the store or the location where we would pull our scam on the buffet. That was the one on, oh, Phooey, what's the, is it, what does Roosevelt turn into? When did Schubert dip come out? What is, you know, Roosevelt kind of goes up and it goes past the Pinehurst pub and it goes past that Safeway. and it goes by Jackson Golf Course. I don't know what that street is called.

I think it's 15th. I think it might be. Is it 15th?

Oh, okay. So 15th, there was a Godfather's on 15th at basically 145th and 15th, and that was near where I went to high school. And so that's where we would go, and one kid would pay the $3 or $4 for the buffet, and then all the rest of us would just sit in this booth and eat the pizza off of that person's plate. That person would just make, like, 80 trips. And then I learned from other people that what they did is they just stole the plates. And then you just come in, and then you break out your own plate. I guess my question to you, having worked there, was how much did you, the staff, care about the abuse of the buffet situation?

Oh, I could not care less. I was 22 years old. What did I care?

See, that's what you don't understand. that's what I didn't understand as a 14 year old kid was how little most people in positions of authority when it comes to pizza really care about what's going on like I was like oh my god we're gonna get in so much trouble I can't believe we're violating the sanctity of the all-you-can-eat pizza buffet but now as an adult I'm like of course the 22 year olds didn't care like why what are they gonna do like it's not their pizza well if there are any teenagers listening right

Now they're getting some good information. Did you like that job, by the way?

My nieces just go on a crime spree now that they know that none of us adults really care what they're doing. Yeah, did you?

you like the job yeah i well eventually i graduated to be pizza delivery driver and that was awesome because you got tips and i could listen to music and drive all over to this day i know every back

street of ballard like the back of my hand did you have a did you start out with a thomas guide and then just like eventually you didn't even need it because you were just like one with the streets

yeah you know i think i did have some sort of yeah i must well there was a big map on the wall of course at the godfathers so maybe that's what i referenced yeah but ballard's pretty easy to navigate because it's mostly one big grid as opposed to other parts of seattle of course

did you ever um have like um somebody who um couldn't pay for the pizza and then they tried to come up with a different creative solution for how the pizza could be compensated maybe somebody in a robe somebody that's like a negligee of some kind i mean if it helps your fantasy life how upset would you be as both i would say now my friend and future therapist to know that my fantasies involved you delivering pizza delivering pizza this is usually where andrew steps in it says okay yeah exactly nope i'm letting y'all dangle save me from this um okay let's uh what's

the next question true or false u.s adults who don't have kids are more satisfied with life

than those with kids true or false i think i know this one i mean people who have kids always talk about you know how the kids you know change their lives and the kids mean the world to them having said that i am a childless adult who loves my freedom so i'm gonna say i guess the answer would be true what what is the actual thing that we get more satisfaction out of life or happier what is

U.S. adults who don't have kids are more satisfied with life.

More satisfied? I'm going to say true.

You know, I kind of – I think I have an interesting perspective on this because I am a parent, but I'm the parent of someone who is soon going to be 29 years old, which is a really different lifestyle than being the parent of a five-year-old. And so I both feel like I'm, in a way, kind of like, you know, I'm childless in a way, or at least I don't have to do a lot of day-to-day parenting. So I love that. But also, I do feel like my kid is – it's extremely gratifying to have a kid and to have this relationship with my daughter. I would often say it's like the only meaningful accomplishment of my life, really, and I kind of really mean that. But I do think people without kids are happier because, god damn, they're a hassle when they're little.

Well, the answer is false. It's sort of a trick question. What? They have the same level. They have the same level of life. Oh, okay. Okay. Do you have kids? You know, I don't talk about that because of various different boring ethical reasons that would take me a long time to answer.

Well, tell me this. Are you happy?

Yeah, I'm extremely happy, mostly because my parents raised me really well, and I've been very privileged to be able to not have any massive, horrible problems in my life.

Wait a sec. No, but this is a serious question. It sounds like a joke. Does that actually work raising your kid right? Because I feel like it is so hard to raise a child and not leave, you know, and not have them carrying around a certain amount of disappointment, trauma, things they wish you would have done differently as a parent. And some of the parents who I know who have tried the absolute hardest to create a kid who doesn't have a lot of pain have kids that are in the most pain. I'm actually very – it's very interesting to hear you say that your parents were able to raise you in a way that has really put you on a good course.

Yeah, long answer potentiality for that. But in brief, what I'll say is, yeah, I've been there as well, where parents seemingly, it's hard to know, but seemingly are doing all the right things, are very attuned, have a lot of love and attention to the child. And the child, for whatever reason, and there are very similar theories to why this happens, can be extremely unhappy and very upset about the way that they're being parented. And that's not huge. That's not the usual case. But in general, research shows that when we have, you know, not the least amount of traumas, you know, difficult experiences growing up and the most amount of attunement from a parent, from our caregivers, where they are paying attention to us and responsive to our situations and our emotions. And research shows that well-being, happiness and all the various different things that you look for, like graduating from high school, lower levels of mental illness, this sort of, you know, happy relationships, this kind of thing.

uh, those, those things are associated. Um, but yeah, I mean, well-being is a pretty complicated thing. There's a lot of things that, the thing that I say to people is as a parent, the thing you're shooting for the, you know, the, the bullseye, if you will, is so that your kid only needs five years of therapy to do as opposed to 25. What would you say? What percentage of your,

um, would you, do you call them clients, patients? What do you call the folks you work with?

Yeah, generate clients, yeah.

What percentage of your clients report that most of their trauma is because their mom didn't want to come watch them throw out the first pitch at a Mariners game because she was at Costco?

Yeah, I have to tell you, when you, both of you talk about things like that, I mean, the therapist in me has so many things that I want to talk about in questions and, like, what things I want to say to you. There's just like, but, you know, I guess that would be for another day maybe off the air.

Have you watched Stutz yet on Netflix?

I have, yeah. I actually did a series of reaction videos on YouTube about it. Oh, nice.

I'm going to watch those, okay? Because, yeah, I was kind of thinking about you when I was watching that because it's a very – have you watched that one yet, Andrew? No, I've never heard of it, I don't think. It's Jonah Hill and his kind of longtime therapist talking about therapy and their lives and things like that. But what I was struck by was I've always had therapists who took a very kind of the approach is not them telling me what I should be doing. You should do this and don't do that. It's more we talk and then I arrive hopefully at some insights. And because for people that don't go to therapy, they often think it's just the person's telling you how to live your life. And my experience is that that's not how it's been. But in this case, this guy was much more. Is there a term for that kind of therapy where the therapist is like you need to do X, Y and Z to be happy?

Yeah, we sometimes call that directive therapy, or sometimes it's confrontational, or sometimes you might call it a particular version of gestalt therapy. When I watch that, it provokes me to say a lot of different things. In a nutshell, Stutz is the name of the documentary. He is doing things that some therapists will do, but not all, obviously, and it can be a little shocking. so there's that too it looked like he was a little uh he's making some claims about his treatment that i was not enthusiastic about things like he's unique he's not actually particularly unique things like he's he's always right he basically said that and i don't know if he was just kind of exaggerating as a joke or something but he basically said something like if clients listen to him and did what he said, they will always get better 100 percent of the time. And that's a well-known unethical thing to say as a clinician. Interesting. OK, well,

I'm going to go watch your reaction videos and get the full download on this. I thought it was I thought it was fascinating. But I but also it seemed like it was part one part therapist, one part like Ram Dass, one part like it had a lot of different things going on.

The other thing I want to say is that I have no doubt that he's helped a lot of people. So I'm not saying that his treatment is somehow bad. I'm just saying what I said.

Yeah. Okay, can we do one more question before we get out of here?

True or false? Telling a happy story makes people feel closer to you than telling a sad story. A happy story makes people feel closer to you than telling a sad story.

I'm going to say false because I feel like when people share their trauma or if they're going through something, certainly in the moment, if you are the recipient of that information, you feel like they are confiding in you. And I feel like they and also then you as the recipient of that information might feel more protective of that person and you understand their journey more and therefore you feel closer to them.

I agree with Andrew on this. I think, you know, is trauma bonding even, is that a real thing, or is that just something Marc Maron does in his stand-up act? I heard him say that once, and I was like, I didn't know that was a real kind of like psychological event or whatever. But I do think sharing things that are hard bonds people more than sharing things that are funny, which is why very few people are bonded to me, because I mostly just try to make things funny. That's my default setting.

I totally agree with what you're saying. And I don't think the study looks at the full breadth of the types of stories and situations. But all three of us are wrong in that this is a true statement, according to some research, that telling happy stories make people feel closer to you than telling a sad story. But I think absolutely, you know, when we hear people tell sad stories and it's in a particular kind.

of a context, like we're willing to hear it and we like the person to some extent, then absolutely we will bond more. About trauma bonding, that term has been changed by the internet to mean something different than clinically. Trauma bonding means to essentially have trauma or have Stockholm syndrome, where you will bond with the person who's traumatizing you. But the internet uses it as two people sharing their quote-unquote traumas and bonding, which, yeah, that's a thing

that will happen to people. I know about that because do you have any knowledge of this Instagram account called The Cranky Therapist, a woman named Jess Sprangle? She is an actual therapist, but she's constantly tweeting out all kinds of memes and what have you, but a lot of them are related to therapy and and and that kind of world are you familiar with that uh it doesn't ring a bell okay anyway it's just it's one of those i don't know how i landed on it it's pretty entertaining but um her her you know stories will sometimes address real life things and i saw her writing about how like trauma bonding has been totally kind of perverted from its original

from its original source i blame mark yeah absolutely personally and i blame tiktok i feel like i i think i may actually be kind of do you look at tiktok at all dr honda yeah occasionally i've you know i've been like looking at it for hours and hours a day pretty much since the pandemic started and i think i may have just finally started to hit my wall because what i feel like i see and maybe it's just my for you page i see a lot of people who are dealing with a lot of kind of hurt and mental health stuff and emotional health stuff and they just don't have an outlet for it and so they just post these tiktoks where people are always taking on haters and i'm like, I don't think you have that many haters. And like, it's just, it's turned into kind of a weird world, particularly from kind of a emotional health standpoint. Have you noticed anything like

that? Absolutely. You know, it's been happening with social media for a while now, but TikTok, for whatever reason in particular, has some kind of culture or some kind of expectation around And that being a bigger possibility, people will post all sorts of things. And in general, I think it's a good thing overall that people feel able to express themselves, get support, that kind of thing. But, you know, there's a major asterisk to that. There's some cons, right, where people, I don't know, they might even drum up their negative feelings because it gets more clicks. There's also a lot of people spreading a lot of misinformation on TikTok about various different issues, trauma, one of them. I mean, that's kind of innocuous, but there are more problematic misinformation bits that people are spreading through TikTok. And I actually have made videos reacting to various TikToks. Like, one of the things that I did was I just searched for psychology on TikTok and then reacted to the first, you know, 20 TikToks that came up. And 19 out of 20 of them were not only just false in terms of what they were claiming, but extremely problematic in what they were, like, proposing that people do and think, you know. So, yeah, it's a big problem.

well get all of your psychology information from the psychology in seattle podcast and also the psychology in seattle youtube page those are the only two tbtl authorized place to get your psychological advice etc reacts all of that and cameos only get cameos from dr kirk honda if you're getting them from someone who's not in the howard stern whack pack yeah you two need to

be on cameo i i'm telling you your audience is just really wants you to be there i just well

maybe we can do it and then we can like figure out somewhere interesting and useful for the money to go because i would be down to do it but maybe it's like maybe we just don't i love i'm saying this now check back in six months when the money's going directly into my pocket and then directly to the illanay casino in southern washington yeah somehow my cameo money is going right to your

casino? What the hell? But Andrew, I can

double it with my system.

I have a system.

All right, listen, Dr. Kirk Honda, thank you so much for once again interrupting your busy media schedule and actual therapy practice schedule to talk to us on the Winter Games.

Thanks. It's always great to come on the show, for sure.

Thank you, baby.

Let's thank our daily donors who are keeping TBTL going. Folks like Jason Hart. Hey, my buddy Jason in Bellingham, Washington. What up, Jason? Thank you for still being. I'm touched when somebody who is in Bellingham continues to support the program. though I don't live there anymore. Because they're not listening just for references to themselves. Exactly.

When I'm living there, they'll probably want to hear me mention the filling station on Alabama or other such local points of interest. But this tells me Jason is listening for the right reasons, which is psychology advice from Dr. Kirk Honda. So thanks, Jason. Also, thanks to Rachelle Rader in Everett, Washington. Is that how you would say uh rachel's first name i'd probably just say rachel but i'm not sure okay well agree to be

wrong can i can i direct if you haven't already can i direct your eyeballs to the name two down

because we have a rachel raider oh wow and then we've got a kelly raber yes you know bellevue washington it's a real raber raider off today i find that fascinating because just recently we're

talking about having you know similar names near each other that's about as close as it gets how do you feel about a zachary has in san francisco are you directing my eyes down another line i didn't i was so obsessed with the raider rabur situation that i didn't notice that my brother-in-law zachary donating thank you zachary that is now in i believe of atlanta georgia is

where he's staying now thank you very much zachary always appreciate it's always nice to see somebody From my old hometown And someone who's Essentially related to Andrew

Yes exactly That's amazing And now I know he's listening For the right reasons too Which is the mentions Of the filling station On Main Street

Exactly He just wants to know You know Do they Is paws for a beer Still operating there In Bellingham That's a place Like a dog park Where you can also get beer Which is a very smart idea By the way That's exactly where

Zachary would go as well

By the way With his pooch Thanks to Eleanor Johnson Of Belmont Massachusetts as well thanks eleanor and then where would we be without rebecca ormsby of plano texas i'm trying why plano texas comes up in my mind more than you might expect and i'm trying to remember what it is that happens in plano texas um yeah i i mean plano you're right i hear that

name a lot it must be one of the the the more well-known texas cities aside from like the big three that we all think of right away dallas houston and austin and san jose obviously oh

in san jose right that's right from one of the largest cities in texas i met the visit plano website and uh let's see uh things to do in plano activities and attraction okay we're gonna get to the bottom of this uh there looks like there's a lot of hot air balloon riding that sounds scary and beautiful at the same time uh sounds like there is an escape room Sounds like there's a Something called Billy Bob's, Texas I bet you that's vegetarian Is that probably vegan?

I'm guessing, yeah Fans of lab-grown meat there Is probably what they sell Well, 60% of them are Yeah, 65% Yes, yes That's why 45% of vegetarians go there When visiting Plano

Other things we can do in Plano Something called Cheeky Monkeys Which brings it back to Looks like it's some kind of Like a Chuck E. Cheese type of deal Seriously? Yeah, there's a place called Cheeky Monkeys which is why I'll never name your child Simon. I can't believe that.

Of all the things to come back around, how is it cheeky monkey? What, did I just go back in time?

I know. There's a number of escape rooms. It seems like mostly in plan what they want to do is put you in a room and see if you can get out.

Or a hot air balloon, which that's a dangerous mixture. I don't want to go in an escape hot air balloon. I'll tell you that much right now.

They've also got indoor skydiving, which I was supposed to do a while ago. I don't know what happened with that, but would you – I'm sorry. First, I just need to ask you, would you do indoor skydiving? And then I need to tell you about this restaurant that I'm also seeing on the list.

Yes, I would because I think we talked about this a while back. As long as there's no heights involved, I would be happy to try this.

You're still probably 15 feet over the fan or something.

Would that be kind of – Maybe I'd want to scope it out, but I'll tell you, and you know me, I have no bravado. I will admit to being scared of everything. But at first blush, from what I know of it, it doesn't sound like something that would kind of trigger my phobias. But maybe if I got there and I saw the fan and I thought it was going to be like a reverse Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where I was going to get sucked down into it. And my uncle's yelling, boop, Charlie, boop. Anyway, I don't know if you remember that scene. But, you know, from from where I'm sitting right now, I'd be somewhat curious to try that.

Yeah, I think I want to check it out, too. It was going to be a Christmas present for someone. And then there was like you had to buy like a four pack. And so Becca asked me, like, would you do this? And I said, yes. And then I think she went with a different. present option but now i'm kind of intrigued by the whole thing i'm also intrigued by this restaurant called legacy hall because they have a giant kind of graphic on the wall in one of

these dining rooms that just says eat slay love that was a um we really i know that you you have to go so i'm not trying to extend this but relatively new on netflix in the past couple of months is this show um fleischman is in trouble which is based on the book by taffy brodesser akner who were big fans of and i don't know if you read the book i read the book when it was new um and i really enjoyed it and a big recurring theme in the book and i think they've carried it through to the tv show as well although i haven't seen as much of it is um a real like she has so much fun describing what is on the front of the yoga shirts that these women wear at the 92nd street why it is what have you read that is my favorite part of the book uh there's also a place

in plano that you can go have i think like um it's sort of like laser tag but with nerf guns called nerfies oh really i thought you were saying that for a joke oh god that sounds great fun yes nerfies it's also you know has happened i'm not gonna lie it's happened to me after you know maybe one too many bee feeders but uh that's a where i'd like to end the show today i'd like to end this monday edition of the winter games it was on a vaguely uh mildly offensive joke about sexual performance. All right. Oh, God. I couldn't. I was so confused. Well, this has never happened to you.

That's why it's like I'm speaking another language. Is that a slang word for that? We don't have to dwell on this. Yeah, that would be like what some of my friends would be like. They might describe that they were nerfing out. I did not know that. Today I became a man. Okay. Let's get out of here. Happy New Year, everybody.

Yeah. Thanks for listening. We'll be back here tomorrow with another edition. a sexual reference free edition of the TBTL Winter Games coming your way tomorrow. If I can just escape from this room that I'm in. We'll see you then. Until then, have a great Monday. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Power out.