Muse

hi uh welcome to quilting with will uh my name is will grello and i'd like to introduce lynette lynette taught me how to quilt a long time ago and i thank her for it all the time in ways that she doesn't even realize sometimes tmi wip more like it One man's too much information is another man's too little information, T-L-I. And one other man's J-E-I, just enough information. T-B-T-L.

Can we talk one 10 to another?

I'm an 11, but continue.

Oh, oh, look who decided to come in tardy. You know, don't think it's okay to just roll in here at 100 kilometers per hour like you're Joel Otto with the Calgary Flames.

What, you think I'm dressed to talk? I'm dressed to party hardy like an MC Scat Cat.

It's a meme-ish thing. I actually couldn't think of the word meme for a second. I could only think of the word dank, weird.

I feel like we're just in that tired mode where you're delirious and you're laughing at silly things. My door's always open, except when it's closed. But you can open it when it's closed.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

It is our turn.

My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

Carol, hold my calls.

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

Oh, yeah, buddy.

Where I was about to say we are looking at a sort of decent day right now. it's not super cold it's not torrentially raining but i don't actually know what the weather is in portland oregon as this is being released on the internet because we are recording this a day early i as you're hearing this i'm in new york city uh doing a tv uh story and tonight as you're hearing this i will be back in portland oregon oh yeah buddy a long trip for a short piece of footage But that's, I guess, how the television news biz works. But either way, this is going to be a good episode of the show. I can just feel it. This is episode 3,871 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. Dropping on the first day of February. Just the fact that I said February properly instead of February, which is honestly, that's how I want to say it. February is the Volkswagen of months for me. But the fact that I said February, a real official, that tells you this is going to be a good episode, my friends, because we're going to talk about this tech entrepreneur who is spending about $2 million a year. Sounds expensive. To actually reverse the aging process. Kids and fantasy. And it might be working. There are some early indications that he is actually reversing the aging process for his internal organs is this something that we will all be doing in 10 years no the answer is no no fucking way but we're going to talk about it because it's pretty wild the lengths that this guy is going to and then speaking of the aging process i'm a fan of the comedian nate bargazzi who um has been thinking about going to the doctor when you're in your 40s something that

How funny is that? That's pretty funny.

Something that I think about a lot as a middle-aged guy who every once in a while actually goes to the doctor. So we'll get into that. Plus, we've got a bunch of emails and emails. And we've got this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Louie, what is that? I'm like, I don't know. What is it? It's an Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Good morning.

Not only is it February, it is actually Wednesday, February 1. Do you do that, like, we say Wednesday, right, as if it's spelled W-E-N-D, which it's not. But then when I'm spelling it out, whenever I'm typing the word Wednesday, I say Wednesday out loud, because that's how it's spelled.

I have to say that, I have to pronounce it phonetically in my mind, or, you know, the distinct parts of the word to remember how to spell it.

And February, can we get them changed, or am I fighting the wrong fight there? Should we be fighting to have people?

Let's start with restaurant, which I can also never spell on the first try.

Or restaurateur. It's not restaurateur, right? It's restaurateur.

Right, which many people say restaurateur, which I get. I was saying that. I, too, was lost at one time, but now I'm found. And I know it's restaurateur. But that doesn't, that sounds weird.

It sounds weird.

Start a go.

GoFundMe. Let's just make it restaurateur.

Ayn Rand. I mean, the list just goes on. Rand Paul. Paul Giamatti as Einstein. As Einstein. And Paul Giamatti as Einstein.

Now that you and I talked about those commercials, those are the Verizon ads with Cecily Strong and Paul Giamatti. And so far, the ones I've seen are him as Scrooge and him as Einstein. I don't know if they've got something else in their back pocket, but now I'm analyzing them more closely. Like, I get that the joke is that he's Einstein, but he's actually kind of, he's not, he doesn't have a lot of, I guess, what you would call street smarts. Sure.

Yeah.

Because he wants to go walk to get his better coverage, and I think Cecily says the bike would probably be faster. So I guess it's that idea that he's Einstein and he's a true genius, but he also kind of, you know, can't tie his shoes, as it were.

And, you know, my thing with those Verizon commercials, as I already said on the show, so I will try not to belabor this, is they often, Verizon will employ people that we generally like, but then have them play spokespeople in the ads. No. Not like at the store. Well, I don't know. I haven't been to every store. But in the ads, they will, you know, hire actors and comedians that we generally like, but then they make them these very annoying spokespeople that you end up disliking. Thomas Middleditch being a perfect example of that. And Cecily Strong is in these now. And so far, while I find some of the commercials irritating, that irritation does not lay or lie with her. She's been pretty good. But I saw one the other day with a, I don't know, did you see one with Julian Edelman?

Some football player with E's in his name. Well, he started off, I mean, listen, Julian, peace and love to our Patriots fans. But Julian Edelman, you know, he was a New England Patriot. So I was I'm never I'm already starting from a position of not being super pro Julian Edelman. I have a question, though, quickly.

Well, can I just finish my thought, though, and just say that, like, in that commercial, unfortunately, and I don't know if it's Edelman or not, but Cecily Strong is in it and it's starting to slip. Like she plays a kind of obnoxious person in it and she's yelling and she's like, and I think I remember. I don't know if it's him or not, but it's definitely her. And I'm like, don't do this to her. She is beloved. Like I'm a fan Like please Verizon

Okay The one thing I was going to ask you Is does Adam Scott Yeah Because he with the original Cecily Strong Adam Scott ads That's where they're sitting on a Like the word Verizon Yeah And they're They're making some jokes About the fact that you can Stream certain things And that includes Severance Or whatever And do you feel like Adam Scott Escapes from these I think Because we Are pro Adam Scott Do you think he escapes these With his reputation intact

I was very nervous about that. The first ones with the Cecily Strong that I saw was her and Adam Scott. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I love both of these people. Don't do this. And the very first commercial is not over the top. It's relatively benign. Both of them, I feel like they escape that commercial with their dignity. For the most part, it's not a great commercial, but it's not an overly irritating commercial. And then Adam Scott sort of bows out. I haven't seen him in any of the other ones. So I think we sort of dodged a bullet there.

Well, the thing is, he's had a procedure done where when he's not filming a Verizon commercial, he has no memory of what the filming of the Verizon commercial was. But when he's filming, he has no memory of what being on The Office was. Wow. Not The Office. Parks and Rec. Parks and Rec. So close. So close. Although he must have shown up for a season of The Office. I think I could get away with that. I can't picture him on The Office. Even though that's not what I meant. I can't picture him on The Office.

Adam Scott on The Office? Let me see if I can find a scene.

I promise you he was. Really? I don't think of Bill Hader. No, because, I mean, it's the same. Bill Forte? It's a lot of the same people, right, that did. Is it Greg Daniels? We'll see The Office and Parks and Rec. Is it Mike Schur, I think? It's Mike Schur, but didn't Mike Schur work on The Office? Yeah, Mike Schur worked on The Office. I'm willing to bet that Adam Scott, the actor Adam Scott, appeared as some kind of character on The Office, however briefly, the U.S. version of The Office.

I'm not getting any immediate hits on this, but I can dig a little bit deeper. I'm getting an immediate hit of depression, learning that I was wrong.

That just seems like there's, like I said, because Party Down as a show was so droll, and it was so kind of like it felt kind of, I don't know, from a vibe standpoint, like it was a cousin of The Office. You know what I mean? Party Down wasn't one of those things where everyone's constantly breaking the fourth wall, but it all felt like part of the same sort of comic movement. and then you've got parks and rec which is the same thing it's that kind of like sort of like single camera sort of documentary style of filming i would have bet and i guess i just did so who i owe money to possibly julian edelman but i would have bet so much money that adam scott at

least had like a cameo on the office i mean i wouldn't i mean yeah just one episode just a one walk-in like he's somebody from like the parent company right exactly came down from you know the

home office or whatever now this is what i wanted to say about the julian edelman cecily strong verizon commercials what which it is julian edelman by the way edelman you're right i'm looking at it what i remember about it and why you're right this was cecily strong teetering teetering on the brink of being falling into the sarlacc that is the verizon campaign right because i think what you're also thinking of wasn't it verizon where uh kate mckinnon the beloved kate mckinnon was eventually just screaming about data plans yeah and kind of stomping around yeah

and again i love her and i understand that it started off very much her style but it just got so over the top and it was yeah it seemed like i was like oh why are you doing this to again

somebody who i admire greatly now the thing if i remember right now i haven't watched this commercial since i saw it on television but you talking about it sort of jogged my memory what i think the failure in this commercial is is they want cecily strong to sort of roast julian edelman and so they try to do a football joke not to be confused with a football move right which we know you must do to establish it was a catch but they want cecily strong's character to somehow say something to julian edelman i'm saying this now so when we play it we can see how close i got from memory okay it's something where it's like she says something like well that's the only thing you don't want to catch or whatever like it's something that's like it feels to me like a it's supposed to be a football related burn written by someone who doesn't really football change how you football um like somebody at an ad agency wrote this and it kind of sounds like in the neighborhood of a burn but it's not one that anybody who watches a lot of football would say like it's tortured as far as the reference goes okay are you ready is that enough setup yeah and i will

just want to give you my background with this edelman commercial i can't believe i got the name right because i just knew it had is was edelman a tight end i just remember getting no

he was just like a he was in this long line of like sort of bill belichick edelman i believe was actually a college quarterback this was this is belichick's favorite move you get someone who was just like pretty athletic whether they're a wes welker who was considered undersized or a julian edelman who i believe was a quarterback they converted to like sort of slot receiver uh danny woodhead was another one these guys that kind of go between sort of a running back and sort of a like a slot receiver not a wide receiver and not a tight end but they just do like a million little things where you dink and dunk the ball off to them that was kind of west that was kind

of julian edelman's lane okay gotcha anyway i i think i only saw this once i'm looking it up now it's actually been around since october of last year so it might even predate the adam scott one i'm not sure but i only happened to catch this once and was only sort of paying attention to

it this weekend okay let's see if i was right about this not quite there football burn that the Cecily Strong's character is going to try to put on Julian Edelman. Oh, great. Gosh, that's beautiful. Beautiful audio. What's the word

you go to? Here, I have a better one here, I think. Yeah, please, will you?

Jeez. Ironic. Edelman struggling with reception. Two things I hate

dropping. Okay, there you go. Now, that works okay. Struggling with reception. Yeah, I kind of like that. Let's use a receiver. Ironic, struggling with reception. That might be the joke. I may have really, I may have, as you like to say, Andrew, I may have gotten way over my skis on this one. That's funny.

I always thought I borrowed that from you. Okay, I'm going to go back to the beginning here.

Ironic. Edelman struggling with reception.

Two things I hate dropping. Balls and calls.

Okay, that's another football pun. It works. It works. I'll allow it. It does sound a little testicular to me. Okay, maybe that's on you. Oh, by the way, a little preview of what's going to come after this video is I have an amazing, dazzling detail regarding Adam Scott and The Office that isn't, it doesn't fully redeem you, but it comes pretty close, and I think it's interesting. I know what it is. Yeah.

And I know why I thought this.

Ironic. Edelman struggling with reception.

Two things I hate dropping. Balls and calls.

Well, you need a better network. And Verizon's new Welcome Unlimited plan for just-

I will say you're right. If he had said catch it, or passes, I would have liked that more than balls and calls. I don't know why he says nuts. $30 a line.

Verizon for $30?

Yeah, it's their best unlimited price ever. I'm switching now. And getting the network you want for $30? Touchdown!

Touchdown! Everyone can get Verizon for just $30 a line.

Okay, so I was loud wrong. I mean, in that it does sort of, it meets the minimum definition of a football reference when she says ironic, having trouble with receptions. It just felt like a weird, I guess, here was my problem as the viewer, and I'm not just trying to like... redeem my completely incorrect take but when i watched it for the first time i had to spend a bunch of time trying to untangle the irony okay it's ironic that he's having trouble with receptions the point being that because he's a receiver any trouble with receptions would be ironic or because he always caught it it's ironic and i was spending too much time trying to think about if it was football accurate for julian edelman and not enough time thinking about could i save money With Verizon who by the way is the carrier That I use so I misfiled That in my brain as like it's a failed Football attempt maybe what it was was Just for me as the viewer a failed Joke that made me think About the joke more than the Ad I was supposed to be watching

Now this is interesting Parenthetically no it's not You know Is that a show title Have we used that This is interesting and then Parenthetically no it's not Danny Woodhead is now a golfer, and I don't know if he just has, whether himself or somebody really monitoring his Wikipedia page, but I was confused. I kept on looking up Danny Woodhead, and I kept getting results for is an amateur golfer, and then who has qualified for the U.S. Golf Association Championship, also a former American football running back. I'm like, man, like this, you'd think that most people know him as as a patriot, right? As a not just a patriot here of a patriotic citizen of the United States of America, but a New England patriot, you know, like that's so funny. Like he's really like the SEO on Danny Woodhead is really golf centric.

And it's interesting that that's clearly a decision on his part. I feel it is really rebranding himself. And I don't think I mean, he was a very he was very undersized and also very effective for, you know, a few seasons, a very effective football player. And again, he was not to get bogged down with it, but Bill Belichick just seemed to have this ability to take these guys of a certain sort of physical build and stature that were often not particularly like overvalued by anybody else. and just like work them into the New England system so that they suddenly were just like really pretty effective and you'd just be like trying to... It's like, God, really? We're letting Danny Woodhead get like 12 yards on 3rd and 11? What? Like, which I say that as a credit to Belichick and the Patriots. Now, back if we can to the Adam Scott thing because I am realizing exactly why I thought Adam Scott was in the office and I bet you it's what you are about to reference.

And did you look this up or did your brain just light up on this?

My brain, finally, the last quadrant of my brain that works, it's mostly the power is out to most of it. But there's still just a couple. There's just a little sort of fluorescent light that goes and comes back on for like a minute or two. That quadrant of my brain remembered that one of the things that's been popping up on TikTok for me, because I follow a couple of like The Office, like Michael Scott, like just kind of people will just pull like a funny um you know 15 seconds of like prison mic where michael scott is pretending to be one of those like guys from prison who's going to try to scare straight the uh like staff at scranton have you ever seen that one where he has like the so-called like do-rag on oh i think i've seen it uh memefied i don't know if i've seen the episode so it's just i mean it's really funny it's so it's it's a very well executed scene that makes me feel very uncomfortable to watch because not because it's inappropriate but because it's just like you know the cringe factor of michael scott in some of those scenes is a lot but anyway because i follow a couple of office things i'm now starting to see a bunch of other people auditioning for characters on the office and i have kind of mixed feelings about it so what it is i mean it's very fascinating but somebody and this has probably been out for a long time but i'm only seeing it as it's been sort of chopped and screwed and put on tiktok which is just a bunch of people who are famous for other reads like uh seth rogan trying out for the character of dwight i believe it's a patten oswald trying out for i think maybe michael scott adam scott

trying out for michael scott um no adam scott trying out for jim helper for jim sorry for jim um i'm trying i'm looking i'm i'm watching one of this now i'm it's silently in the background and it looks like Odenkirk is a...

Yes, Odenkirk trying out for Michael Scott.

That must be... Yeah, here, actually, I just want to hear the Odenkirk one because I'm... Here, well, let's start with Seth Rogen here.

Now, and this one, listen, I like... Can I just give this a quick teeing up, which is I really like Seth Rogen. Generally speaking, I'm pro-Seth Rogen, and I know that's important to him and his family to hear today. They needed that. They needed that W. you, but I was kind of surprised at

how much now i don't know if this is because i can only think of this michael scott character as being you know basically steve carell but like it was an interesting um and this is this is seth rogan trying to be michael scott or trying to be um dwight i think it's him trying to be i'm not

sure i just see a picture of him i think it's him trying to be dwight and talking about how human

urine is sterile oh yeah i've seen this yeah yeah and i guess to my i guess my larger point is still because i so think of rain wilson now as as um dwight this audition it's like it doesn't surprise me that seth rogan didn't get the job because i think that the the rain wilson impression or i should say audition which i've also seen now is he's just doing the dwight that we know like he came into the process with that character dialed in and it's really good and this seth rogan one seems way worse to me but i don't know just because i'm used to the rain wilson version if that makes sense.

So, in other words, you might not like this as much as you should, but you're blaming it on the rain.

Hey!

Oh, my Christ. Okay, here, take a listen. Urine is sterile. Did you know that? If you're in the field, you can clean the man's wound by taking a whiz on it. That is actually in first aid books written by the Red Cross. We play hard. Okay, so this is a montage, and this might be frustrating for the listeners, but we've now just shifted right... Why stop now? right to Odenkirk here. Bob Odenkirk, take a listen.

Eight books written by the Red Cross. We play hard and we work hard. Sometimes we probably play hard when we should be working hard, and that's probably my fault, but... Fire me.

Now, hey, can you pause? Yeah, I don't know who this next person is either.

Of the people who did not get the job, I think Odenkirk is the best. Like, I thought he kind of got Michael Scott. And also if you just know Odenkirk's career and his vibe To be honest with you If I'm Odenkirk going into that I'm like this is my job to lose Like I feel like Odenkirk was kind of preparing For the Michael Scott role For his whole career And then Steve Carell ends up getting it Which I would have been surprised if I were Bob Odenkirk Now this next person is

Eric Stone Street People might know him from Modern Family Modern Family guy Okay wow he's very young here

So I didn't quite make but he's trying out for the the character that was ultimately played by a guy. I think his name was like Brian Baumgarten or something like basically the the kind of guy who's deeply low energy. Kevin, I think is Kevin. This is this is him trying out chili, I believe for the Kevin role.

Staying home watching TV every night. Yeah, for me, I like it.

frankly i spent the first month trying to uh remind my boss that there is no why in paper

i'm not afraid of so i think that was that was katherine han right there i'm gonna stop probably trying out for um uh pam maybe uh yes i was getting pam vibes off of that also we have judah freelander here from um 30 rock but i'm gonna stop doing this i don't think it's paying off like it's it's chopped up too much and to not be able to see the visuals i don't think is doing our our audience a service here if you don't mind i guess what i was what i yeah what i was

intrigued by was or an intrigued is that something probably not the right word but what i what i found interesting was just the audition process for a tv show or like a i guess a movie as well is interesting to me because you sort of like if you watch the office you just see all of these characters kind of pretty fully formed and being portrayed by the people who had been through a long audition process and whatever and it just becomes kind of the that's the version that you think of but to know like katherine hahn is a national treasure by the way yeah and like the idea that katherine hahn went in and tried out for something they said no sorry that's you're not who we want for this we're going with somebody else like it's amazing to see all of the truly talented people that were trying to be a part of this and were passed over um i guess it just proves that there is a certain amount of luck to it and also that like i don't know it's a weird process i guess is all i'm trying to say and having seen a bunch of people who i really admire professionally trying their best at it and not getting it was kind of it made me feel bad about all the things i've failed at i guess is where i'm going it made you feel bad i mean better

Better. What's the opposite of bad? Good. Less bad. Yeah. Yeah, it's really hard. I mean, this is just stating the obvious of any kind of exercise like this. But it is really hard, even as much as I absolutely love Bob Odenkirk. I just cannot picture anybody being Michael Scott except for Steve Carell, which is interesting because he wasn't the original person to play that type of character, obviously. Ricky Gervais in the British one, although he had a different name, right? I don't think the name— David Brent. David Brent, yes, you just said that.

But, you know, so—

So I have, again, because I'm being, I am, by the way, I'm not like, as is evidenced by me not knowing the Kevin character's name, I am not like some sort of expert on the American version of The Office. I know a lot of people like love, it's sort of comfort viewing for them. Like they'll just watch it over and over again when they don't have anything else to watch, which totally makes sense because I think it has some just unbelievably good moments. But because I've been sort of letting the things play longer in my TikTok feed, I'm getting a lot of content related to it, including a podcast where some of the producers or writers for the show were talking about season one of the American version of The Office. and uh it was really really interesting to me because what they were saying was because the british office was so kind of unrelenting in how bleak it was and how sort of bad david brent was they you know imagine this writer's room they're just like a bunch of very cool funny ironic they get it kind of people and they're like okay we're writing the american version of the office and we are not going to write the michael scott character like we're not going to americanize it in the sense that it's not going to be like he wins at the end or he's got a heart of gold right like we want to make this we want to make him as unrelentingly cringy as the david brent character was on the british version and then something kind of unexpected happened first of all no one was watching the show it was apparently having a lot of uh you know ratings problems and then all of a sudden the 40 year old virgin comes out and steve carell becomes a major movie star in america after they've already filmed like most of the first season of the office and this was not something that anybody was expecting and so all of a sudden you have this resource which is a genuinely famous person who's now on your tv show and so the word came down from the network we want more of the steve carell from the 40 year old version in our michael scott because people like that guy who gets his chest wax and yells kelly kelly clarkson Or Kaleli Clarkson I don't know how she pronounces it these days So the writer This is what I found really interesting The writer was like we were like hell no We're not going to sell this character out Like how dare you the man And then Greg Daniels Who was in charge of the whole thing Sat down with the writers and said Yeah we are going to make Michael Scott A little more likable We're just going to do a little thing At the end of the episode Where we just let up a tiny bit and they cited a specific episode where i think they're at a pub probably like where the crew goes after work or something and michael scott is doing some i'm sure terribly cringy i don't know if it's karaoke or he's trying some of his freestyle stand-up or what but he starts getting razzed by some people at the bar and there's a moment where like jim and pam and the other people kind of look at each other and they sort of stick up for him like this is our guy

Yeah. And the audience must feel a little bit of that, too. Like, hey, that's our guy.

Yeah. And that was apparently a huge pivot for the show was just giving Michael Scott a shred of humanity, going from zero humanity to a shred of humanity. And that was enough to really change people's perception of the show and to really get buy in from the viewers. And obviously it was a big old hit.

Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That is interesting. It's also there is a lesson to be learned. There is as people who you and I tangentially work in the creative space as well. You know what I mean? You can be you can be very protective of something. And I understand I can understand that the writers, you know, desire to remain true to this character and to not schmaltz it up too much. And the good thing is, it's like it turns out the answer was in that tension a little bit. Right. You can't make them because it is true that Brent is too unlikable. like that show is so rough to go back and watch it now I was looking at the years I can't believe the years I guess this is long long long before I knew you but I I don't know why I knew about the British office or like what friend group I was in but we were fans of the British office before the American office came out which I don't think is a super underground thing but also you know I know some people kind of didn't realize until later that there was a British version but like we were fans of the British version it just seemed great and I remember just thinking the american version of this is going to be terrible just like it's going to be awful you know and then it wasn't and it is true that he's slightly softer he's slightly more sympathetic but still in a very losery somewhat like um pathetic way but i i love that example of being like a little bit like wait wait wait wait wait you this is that you suddenly see him through the eyes of characters on the show who don't know him and then you feel protective of him that's a great way to go about kind of redeeming him a tiny bit without actually without without um turning your

back on the true character right and and you're absolutely right that as people who are i guess you could say like like you said we're sort of creative adjacent like i don't know i wouldn't i wouldn't say that what we do is so creative but there are times and there have been times where we would get notes or feedback certainly it happens with live wire where i'm so resistant to that stuff because i just feel like if if if i if somebody's trying to mess with me or say could you maybe not make that kind of joke could you make this kind of joke it's just like get off me old man with my my creative process and it's like no you can actually I mean there might be some there might be some actual wisdom in the feedback you get occasionally which is my way of telling you Andrew that John Sklaroff and I have been doing some audience polling and they would like you to be one just like a small shred of humanity at the end of each episode coming from you the listeners need that from you right now they're finding it just to be a little too bleak screw you

wait that

reminds me of something that oh oh Oh, I know. I had a little correction that I wanted to mention at the top of the show. This isn't a very big deal, but this goes back to something we were talking about two days ago on the show. In fact, I realize you aren't going to like me bringing this up again because it always feels like it's a bit of a vortex and it sucks us down. No, we were trying to name all of the movies in alphabetical order that, not all of the movies, but movies in alphabetical order that just have one word titles. And for Z, we went with Zorro, but listener David pointed out, and I just saw this before we started recording today, that that movie is actually called The Mask of Zorro, which means, first of all, it doesn't start with a Z and it doesn't have one word. So I would respectfully offer Zoolander as a replacement.

Oh, that's good. We've got to start at A again. We've got to start at A. Alive. Don't. Honestly, like once you start going with it.

I know.

It's kind of hard to stop.

But we should.

We should. We should take a quick break here because when we come back, Andrew, I'm going to tell you how you, for the low, low price of $2 million a year, can actually lower the age of your internal organs by up to five years. Oh, stop drinking? No, no, definitely not that. Anything but that, please. We'll talk about that coming up in a moment here on TBTL. hello and welcome to top story um i saw this story going around like last week and i sort of didn't think well it's not true i read the entire story because i was intrigued by it but i didn't know if it was quite tbtl material but now like becca sent it to me it's being picked up by this service that i read called pocket which kind of you know grabs a bunch of stories that are sort of buzzy and it just seems like it's really making the rounds and so i figured we could at least discuss it a little bit it's um from bloomberg it's a piece written by uh ashley vance uh the headline is how to be 18 years old again for only two million dollars a year and it is a story of this tech what does centimillionaire mean you've got a hundred million that's interesting it says middle-aged tech centimillionaire brian johnson yeah huh i've never heard that we have i guess we have to do that now because you know millionaire which still seems like a lot of money to me is now like if you had one million dollars you'd be a millionaire but if you had 150 million dollars that's a real difference in how much money you have yeah and it

make sense i mean when average homes in seattle are going right exactly like a million yeah right

it's like a million dollars used to feel like an amount of money that i would never i would never ever have in my life and now that i started this remodel project i realized i'll never have it in 10 lifetimes so it's good we're going in the right direction financially but anyway this guy brian johnson had some kind of an online um like uh payment system called brain tree payment solutions that's where we missed out andrew why didn't we because like elon musk came up where he was part i think of the early days of paypal and this guy made all his money on something called brain tree like that's what we should instead of going out and recording performances and bringing them back and putting them on public radio or getting vox pop we should have been developing some kind of

digital payment system i was i called it the envelope but what you don't see there is that it's spelled e envelope but you can't it's hard to pronounce because it's like two e's in a row it's called the envelope so it was like a lower it was like a lowercase e but like uppercase n it's an envelope and what you do is you put the money in your envelope and then you put it under your email.

mattress um it's a system that allows you to buy envelopes online which you can then put your money in and drive it to the bank right exactly so anyway that didn't take off this guy uh his name is um brian johnson he's 45 now he is as we now have learned a centimillionaire and he has decided that he really wants to see if through just like an incredible amount of self-denial he can actually reverse the aging process like not just live longer but actually start moving it in the reverse direction and this project is called project blueprint he has got a team of something like i think it's 30 doctors and health experts that are monitoring his every bodily function it's led by a regenerative medicine physician who has committed to help reverse the aging process in every one of johnson's organs these two johnson and his main doctor they obsessively read the scientific literature on aging and longevity and they're using johnson as a guinea pig for the most promising treatments getting the program up and running required an investment of several million dollars including the cost of a medical suite at johnson's home in venice california this year he's on track to pay two million dollars he wants to have brain heart lungs liver kidney tendons teeth skin hair bladder penis and rectum of an 18 year old well i mean that's easy just go on online you could oh on his person i just thought he wanted an 18 year old i feel like that's doable didn't mary shelley write about this i will say that the pictures of this guy are a bit uncanny because he so the story on brian johnson as he tells it is that when he was in his 30s, he was one of these people who just worked 20 hours a day and he says that he didn't physically feel great because he just was overworked and he was emotionally dealing with a lot of sort of depression and things like that. And so when he sold his company and suddenly he didn't have to do that anymore, he decided that his new focus was going to be on really taking care of his health and on seeing if he could be the blueprint for an idea of reversing aging. This is what this guy does. They've been doing this for about a year. Okay, first of all, what he eats. He eats a 1,900-calorie-a-day vegan diet. He exercises for an hour a day, high-intensity three times a week. So the sense I get is he works out seven days a week, but three times of that is HIIT training. Have you ever done any HIIT training, Andrew, When you've been in your gym phase

No

The crunches that I know you do sit-ups That's a HIIT training thing

Is it? Yeah, I mean actually It is crunches I do On the little crunch bench thing Where it's like

Yeah, that's definitely HIIT training

Okay, I didn't know that

Like I think I think a lot of times The high intensity stuff Is kind of like You would do some crunches And then you would Get those two ropes Or something And you start doing the thing Like you're in a Gatorade commercial That looks fun, yeah And then you do Like a little circuit of things That are i am i hate that stuff so much like i will jog i'll i'll i'll jog till the cows come home but give me anywhere near any like like i will run for an hour semi happily but if you want me to do some kind of like hit training for 12 minutes miss me with that like i don't know why something

about my body does not enjoy that kind of stuff my thing is more about like whether or not i'm drawing attention to myself at the gym like that's for sure that really dictates what i'm doing if i I go on one of those little benches and like, you know, when I was kind of in peak going to the gym, which I would like to get back to because I've been paying for it in more ways than one. I, you know, like I would do, I think, I don't know, up to like maybe 40 crunches and then take a little break. And then if I could do 30 and 30 or something, I know I was getting like in just in over 100, probably sitting on that bench for between five and 10 minutes or something. So I don't know if that is the type of exercise you described, but like it worked for me because it was goal oriented. Like if I'm counting and then like, you know, I start off and just get if I'm just going to the gym for the first time in a long time and I can only pull off 20 of those. But by week number two, I'm already up to 35 or something. It just feels really good and it's very trackable.

Yeah, that is a really kind of satisfying feeling to to see some improvement in that area. I kind of feel like I've really plateaued with the jogging stuff. That's why my weird one-man basketball practice By the way, they're doing some kind of work on my building If you hear a rumbling in the background I don't know, I think they're doing a project Where they just randomly run a hammer drill Into the side of the building for no discernible reason This is the other Now, okay, all that stuff, you're eating a vegan diet You're being very careful about your calories All that is like, you know Sort of well and good, I guess But this is where I thought I don't think this, I couldn't Well, I couldn't keep up with any of this But I particularly couldn't keep up with this Thank you.

part um he goes to sleep at the same time every night after two hours of wearing glasses that block blue light um in the interest of fine-tuning the program he constantly monitors his vital signs each month oh you know what you know it's really funny i um i think i've read two versions of this story i think that there's been a lot of writing about him he must be doing a kind of a media tour because this is the part that the other article i read about him mentioned he sleeps with his head in this kind of like device like imagine my weird laser balding helmet but like way more robust and it's supposed to be reading his brain waves but he also has a monitor and uh you know i'm gonna say something fairly adult for the young ears he sleeps with a monitor on his penis to measure how many erections he has during his sleep wow this was all in the article i mean that part felt like okay i'm in you know gamify that where do i get two million dollars yeah no that something about the sleeping part of it like as in i need i just need my like my sleeping is so is so um sort of it needs to be just so for me for me i need to have a pillow between my knees i need to have a fan going like i can't have any weirdness going on with my i can't be sleeping in a like a in a weird salad colander that's zapping my brain i can't have a monitor hooked up to my privates i can't like like the sleeping aspect of it is the part that i would i saw a photo of of him sleeping in this other article in this weird device and i was like that's i'm out just from that yeah he

must really have to go through all the movies that only have one word title to fall asleep and he

knows because of all of the ginkgo biloba he's taking that it's called the mask of zorro that's not Zorro. So, is it working? Well, there are some obvious... I'm reading still from this article. There are some obvious signs that Johnson is at least healthier than most 45-year-olds. His body fat hovers between 5% and 6%. He says the tests show he's reduced his overall biological age by at least five years. The results of these tests suggest he has the heart of a 37-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old... I'm just going to go into Tobias here.

I know, that's what I was thinking. And the feet of an elephant.

that's what i was thinking as well he's at the he's 45 remember he's got a 37 year old heart apparently a 28 year old skin that's the part that's uncanny so i've seen photos of him when he was like burning the candle at both ends and by the way he looked like a perfectly conventionally attractive whatever 30 something year old dude like he wasn't like the before picture from some kind of weird medical scam he looked like a guy but now his skin is like very almost translucent and it looks so moisturized he kind of looks like if Axl Rose really got his shit together and then mated with like some kind of an elf from Lord of the Rings like it's slightly other worldly I'm getting strong Gadriel vibes off of him yeah I can see that and so he has the capacity and fitness the lung capacity and fitness of an 18 year old so apparently Apparently, it's sort of working. Now, this was the other thing, Andrew. When you hear strict vegan diet, I know that you love your sausages and everything, but I will tell you this. There is some really yummy vegan food out there, and I'm sure you've had it. There are some restaurants that just do it right. You do not miss the fact that this is not full of animal products. I am looking at what this guy eats, and I honestly would not make it through day one. And his regular meals, and this is pre-blender, is just a bunch of, it looks like it's just raw broccoli, raw cauliflower, raw mushroom tops, and raw lentils that he's about to put into a blender. That's one of this dude's meals. And that is also, along with the penis monitor and sleeping in some kind of brainwave measurement device, that's where I'm like, no. Like this, there is healthy food that is yummy, and then there is healthy food that looks like a punishment in a North Korean re-education camp. And that is what this guy has been subsisting on.

I have never had raw lentils, but everything else that you describe is like, you know, I enjoy the occasional crudité, like not to be all Dr. Oz here. Like Dr. Oz? Right, exactly.

How much asparagus do you throw in that crudité?

Hey, like I love the I love biting into some raw cauliflower and getting that squeaky sensation on your teeth. Maybe you know what I'm talking about. Maybe we just let that pass. I love having Brock. Anyway, so the point is, like, we're not saying these foods are at least I'm not saying that these foods are not tasty in their own way. But like man can not live on squeak alone is what I'm saying.

I am just like this article is so long. I'm looking at all of the things. So every day he measures his weight, his body mass index, his body fat, blood glucose. glucose heart what uh he's also undergoing a fairly constant stream of of blood stool and urine tests to repair sun damage to his skin he's applying seven daily creams and he gets weekly acid peels and he now stays out of the sun to improve the hearing in his left ear which he suffered um hearing loss from a childhood hunting trip in utah he does sound therapy which tests the limits of the frequencies he can hear and then produces blah blah blah like i mean really and truly the whole thing is kind of interesting to me but also feels like a cry for help is that just the easy take because really like most people look at this and go this guy is clearly dealing with some other sort of emotional situation that he's trying to deal with by controlling this other thing where he gets an acid peel every week and sleeps with some kind of sleeve on his dong

um yeah i mean obviously i think the most obvious take is kind of like yeah but at what cost okay this is this is what you've turned your life into and ideally you're extending your life but this is your life like why extend you know right this is your one wild life and there's

probably something in between like eating a bunch of super unhealthy things and kind of like not

taking care of your body and then whatever this is but it's like it's you know first of all i'm literally the last person to weigh in on this um because i live a very unhealthy lifestyle and we joke about it but it's true and like you know there are other people in my life who I know who are varying degrees of health and like I think to especially if you're trying to turn around your life or turn around some habits that you have that might be unhealthy like I think you have to be a little bit obsessive over it like if you're just starting off a new diet regime or if you don't want to think of it as a diet or is it just like you want to change your your lifestyle and you want to get more exercise i think you have to not not everybody but i think a lot of us have to sort of get a little obsessive about it like um and then we have people in our lives who are super super healthy or or super long distance runners i know we have people in our audience we have friends who like put their body through things that i literally can't imagine and that you probably can't even imagine luke as somebody who does run on the reg and who has been in marathons and and and you know does these things but still we know other people who there's always somebody a little bit more extreme right and then you can always especially as somebody like me who like basically gets exercise for my thumbs playing madden and darts um like you know for me it all can sort of seem extreme so where are those lines i don't group everybody together it's like hey listen this is my healthy lifestyle yes i'm obsessive over it but also i enjoy it this obsession is is my obsession and it is a lifestyle that i enjoy in the same way that i wouldn't enjoy sitting on my ass every night trying to you know playing a two-year-old version of madden you know so i understand that like i don't want to judge but i mean yeah this is the extreme of the extreme of the extreme and it's like it you know he's getting something from it like if he wasn't if he wasn't doing all of this my guess is his energy would be into something you know all this energy would go into something else that would be kind of equally extreme and equally all-encompassing

in a certain way he probably has that personality i mean how do you build the way you build some super or a way i don't want to say the way but a way that you build some giant valuable digital payment company is probably having a fairly obsessive hyper focused kind of personality and then you sell that and it's like what are you going to obsess and hyper focus on after that

yeah and so like i don't know i'm just trying to avoid having the obvious take here also like i don't know like i think about my own life i tend to be a very happy person like i i enjoy like we joke around about my you know my past times being somewhat lame but also like but it really does bring me joy it's my way of unwinding i enjoy my life a great deal um and it's hard to like kind of compare joy with other people and so i don't know i don't want to be judgmental i also know that i'm in a very bad place to be judgmental when somebody's trying to improve their quality of life but also i think almost any reasonable person would say this is very very extreme and And it's not how I mean, maybe he's trying to blaze a path for the future by being extreme now in 2023 with his body. Maybe he sees long term goals of actually changing the world and changing the way human beings can can preserve their body in the long run. And maybe that will be his legacy. But for me, this sounds awful, obviously.

I think that's a really I think it's a very measured and good take by you. And I think you're right, because as I read through the whole article, it was like, yeah, this is not something that I would choose. But it does seem to be something that gives him a lot of happiness Or a focus for his life And he really does think that, you know He wants to basically be the guinea pig Do we say that anymore? When's PETA getting on that one? No, good point Well, that is a good point

Because I guess guinea pig means that we're testing on them Experimenting on an animal

But I think he wants to be the test case thinking

And then some of the stuff he's doing, if it actually shows interesting results, could become the norm and it could be there could be like a way less intense version of it. Like, hey, eating this kind of thing helps with whatever, you know, or doing this kind of movement or, you know, he I do think he thinks of this as his way of sort of bettering the human race going forward, that he can be the person or a person who has all of this research done. He's like dedicate he's like donating his body to science before he's died and he's willing to do all of the hard work. So, in a way, I do think that that's sort of an admirable thing. Again, it's not something that I would do, but I'm with you. I think to just be like, F this guy, or whatever, dude, that's also kind of like not a particularly interesting take. Now, are you familiar with the comedian Nate Bargetsy? No, you keep on mentioning this in the show, but I don't know. I've definitely oversold it, but I love him. He's a very funny, he's just kind of this like, you know, he's a stand-up, he's a funny guy. uh he was i think he's one of those um comedians who really has benefited from i don't i wouldn't say he benefited from the pandemic but he's benefited from like tiktok and a lot of social media in that a lot of his sets have been sort of clipped up into like two minute bits and uploaded and they'll have like hundreds of thousands of views and now i know he tours and plays really big stadiums everywhere um this was him on fallon he's just the only reason i pulled this and now i've ruined it by like promoting it four times and making it into more than it is i was watching this and i was thinking this reminds me andrew of the kind of conversations you and i have about going to the doctor at our age this is napar getsy talking

to jimmy 43 43 you still think you're young you know like i'll hang out like a 23 year old and i'm like you get a dude we're just a couple young dudes kicking it and some guy will be like i'm 45 i'm like beat it old man i can't believe that guy had the nerve to hang out i did i went and got a physical recently and after your 40s i'll tell you uh before 40 you go through like a drive-thru window it's like they're just like you move your neck and they're like come on man you're wasting everybody's time all right go live a life and then you pass 40 and the doctor's like you mind shutting that door behind you you know he's like i'd lock it we're about to get after it and it was the first it was the first time I've ever been talked to old and so it was just me and him and he goes do you pee a lot at night and I was like did my dad just walk in the room like how old you know I've never peed at night in my life I was like how about that I don't pee till the sun goes down but I did I was like but you know just so I know what is a lot what is a big him out and and i'll tell you what he's ruined me i only pee at night now it's i would love to pee during the day i my body's like enjoy the day we'll get it out tonight don't worry about it

i will tell you that um the the house that i'm that i'm working on it doesn't have there's an upstairs uh which is these two tiny little like weird rooms where you can barely stand up like one of the construction guys says oh yeah this is they called these a floor and a half or story and a half houses like they built them this way it's like yeah in the 1930s like was everyone under five five like how was this how did they do this but one of the other being john malkovich room it really feels like i might find myself in john malkovich accidentally and one of the other things about it is it doesn't have there's no bathroom up there there's one bathroom in this house and um and so but the the two little like weird rooms upstairs they do have carpeting and they have like a little heater so that's where my dad and i have been sleep like we there we each have a room and an airbed so it's you know pretty nice and um but between the two of us trying to sleep there and then you have to get up in the middle of the night to pee and you have to go down these stairs into the freezing cold living room which is just like wood like it's like bare subfloor no walls no insulation the wind is just whistling through it and then get to the bathroom which also has a little like portable heater in it so the bathroom is also a sanctuary of warmth i was talking to my dad the other day and i was like i i mean i'm still like i'm a good year or two out from being able to do any kind of remodeling on the upstairs of this house like that's so far down the road because of how much other stuff there is to do but i said can we put a urinal or something in the upstairs like in the hallway and just run a pvc pipe out to the yard This was not a joke I was like Because I'm pretty close to just getting like A piss jug up there Which isn't something I saw for my life But I'm like I cannot This is on the subject of going to the bathroom in the middle of the night It's so disruptive to my sleep Because if I'm at this apartment And I wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom I keep my eyes closed I stumble towards the bathroom I don't turn the light on I use the bathroom

bathroom and then i go right back to bed i try to keep it all in the kind of you know um night

time whatever and this is like actually let me follow up i'm not to be your doctor here but this is usually once a night and this is usually in the middle of the night

it's once a night in the middle of the night okay which i think you know i'm 46 i think that's you know in the normal ish range uh sometimes i'll sleep through the night well sometimes here i'll sleep through the night and i'll just wake up like pretty early maybe five or six and i've got a you

you know pee that's more my thing that's why i asked usually i'll wake up about maybe two hours before i plan on getting out of bed yeah exactly i mean really this is you know this is life giving me an opportunity that i don't take that's really when my body is like okay now just stay up like it's a normal time to be awake but of course i'm a lazy bones who likes to sleep as much as absolutely possible so um yeah but you know that's usually my thing wake up five six or something

like that and go to the bathroom this might be more like four so it's not like i'm not if i go to bed at like 10 which is pretty typical for me it's like i'm not waking up four hours later maybe i'm waking up at like four in the morning but the problem is like you said it is sometimes i try to just roll over and just like tough it out which is also just like the least restful sleep is like you're kind of staving off this feeling and more often than not i just like suck it up i get up i go downstairs i do it i come back upstairs and try to fall back asleep but i'm just saying this is what happens when you get to my age is you consider temporarily installing some sort of sluice on the second floor that you can just use to not have to go downstairs because of how much of it it's a

thing yeah no i can imagine that i mean this i was in my 30s then but still using the restroom early morning or in the middle of the night is i think somewhat universal and um we only had one bathroom in our house when we lived in new hampshire and it was like down you know we lived in a house that was built in the late 1800s the bathroom was downstairs right off the kitchen so you know like i think the reason for that being that there was not a lot in fact it might have even been in addition back in the early 1900s or something but like oh sure i'm dealing with that right now yeah all the plumbing was relatively close together right bathroom and kitchen right there anyway the point is like keep in mind this is a new hampshire winter the the house might have been being heated with the wood-burning stove which is now kind of gone a little bit cold during the night and you have to wake up and walk all the way downstairs in the cold to use the bathroom and then trudge all the way back upstairs like it's very it's a it's a big disruption you

know that never happened to tech sent to millionaire brian john oh is that what we were talking about yeah probably had can have a bathroom upstairs i feel like he could probably just do that yeah that's true too yeah or he just has something attached also had a pvc pipe running

up outside of his house in venice yeah but that pvc is connected actually to him

oh you know at some point this guy's drinking his own pee yeah no no you know right i think you're

right here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female Oh, man, it's not from a female.

All right, my friend, email or V-mail before I rush to the airport and get on an airplane and go to New York City for a short amount of time.

See, we have a little bit of a limited time here. So why don't... Here, you know what, I'm going to play this one since this is probably our last email segment of the week before we do Blur's Days tomorrow. Let me play this voicemail from Ryan. Just a little bit of insight on the Goonies house that we were talking about on Monday. Or is it just Goonies house we were talking about on Monday? Of course, the bottom line of the story was somebody is now living there who is happy to welcome and wave to the Goonies tourists who want to come see the house that Goonies was shot in. And but some of the neighbors are not loving that. And apparently the previous owner of the house was not loving these these trips. What is the word? Visits. Eventually.

It sounds like that neighbor, the person who lived in the house started off trying to be helpful, but it became, you know, thousands of people a week, which was just not sustainable for them.

Yeah. And what is the word I'm looking for? There's sort of a there's a term for almost a pilgrimage is exactly the word I was looking for. Thank you. Anyway, Ryan did this.

Hey, dummies. My wife and I went to the Goonie house in 2008-ish. And what they're not telling you is the Goonie house is on the end of a private road that goes up to that. It's not on the end. I think it's one or two houses from the very end. So we parked on the public part of the street. At the bottom, it says it's a private road. Don't park on it. And we walked up there and took a picture in front of the house.

I will say that if I lived on that private street, it would drive me nuts, too, that there were a thousand people a day coming down my street. Power out.

You know, Linda also, I got an email from listener Linda who says she's booking some sort of a trip that I believe is a cruise or cruise related somehow. And one of the things this cruise does, I'm going to read this directly from the booking of this company. I don't have the name of it and I should probably not share it anyway, but it says you'll continue through the town for views of the Goonies house. This charming Victoria style home had a starring role as the home of the main characters in the Goonies, the 1985 comedy, et cetera, et cetera. So like there are actually like my point here is and Linda says that she doesn't plan on taking part in that part of this this tour. But like there are actually like, you know, quasi official tour groups that are going here. And then you combine that with what Ryan just said in his voicemail. Like, I could see that being, you know, not just for the people who live there, who apparently they like it now, but I understand that affecting the neighbors.

I really like that voicemail from Ryan because it very typifies my approach to the world, which is like, yeah, we did go up the private road and take a picture because we went to Astoria. We're going to get that picture. But I would also hate it if I lived there. Like, I love it. Ryan was like, yeah, it's pretty annoying. I mean, we had to do it. We're not going to not. We're not going to drive to Astoria and not go take that picture. But we also agree that it's slightly ruining the lives of the people who live near the house.

Yeah. Are you saying that you would? I don't see you.

I'm saying I would do exactly what Ryan.

Really? I don't see you being super interested in taking a picture of the Goonies house.

Well, I'm saying if there was something I wanted to do. I see. Right. That I wanted to do for my own kind of satisfaction or experience. Sure. I would be able to understand that I was slightly making someone's life worse, but it would not override my desire to do the thing I wanted to do.

Yeah. If you felt the need to do that. Yeah. I understand. All right. You've got to go catch a flight or something, right?

I do. So I guess, but the thing that's truly wild, Andrew, is the next time you and I talk, I'll be right back here in Portland, Oregon. So it'll be like I live an entire lifetime. I hit a wormhole, and then it spits me right back out here for a Thursday edition of the program, which will be tomorrow. We'll see all of you then. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. See you later, suckers. I'm taking myself on a hot air balloon ride. Power out.