Muse

Hi, Luke and Andrew. My name is Julian, and I'm 10 years old, and I listen to your podcast, and I just wanted to tell you a joke. Why? I mean, what do you call a potato that sits very still? A meditator. Thanks. Power out. TBTL

the faces may not look familiar but the voices this zany radio team have developed a unique

style of frolicking on the airwaves it's kind of meta and that and anything meta sign this guy up

because i am i am totally down for that that's a donny brook that's a total donny brook a donny

brook you know what a donny brook is it's a donny brook and what's the deal with popcorn It doesn't taste like pop, and it sure doesn't look like corn.

Can I just say, and I think this is really important, so I need everyone to shut up.

I love your hair. Oh, thank you. It's genetic and unattainable.

We're the number one show in hospitals and on sinking riverboat casinos. It's party time, chumps.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. I can't believe you're still on the air. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

I feel happy of myself.

Coming to you once again from the future home of TBTL. I keep saying that, although it's sort of the current home of TBTL. I'm here. I'm recording at the Riverhouse Studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia River. And again, we're fortunate right now. I'm looking around. No snow. Not even really any rain.

Oh, la, la.

Kind of decent temperature. And yet, if you were to travel, I don't know, 10, 15 miles in any direction, you might hit an area that's socked in by snow. It's very weird, weird weather times here. as we leave February and enter March. You know, I've known since I was a young child that February has 28 days most of the time when we're not talking leap year. And yet it always catches me by surprise that we are at the end of February. But here we are. We're at the beginning of episode 3890 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

Woody Harrelson was on Saturday Night Live doing the monologue. It was described as rambling, incoherent, kind of confusing, not that funny. And then at the very end, he decided to just slip in some real anti-vax conspiracy stuff.

How dare you people even say that?

Which seems open and shut. And then I happened to read a profile of him or more of a question and answer with him in The New York Times. And it left me feeling very complicated about Woody Harrelson and what it is he stands for. So we will talk about that. I'm also trying to commune with the local bird population out here. Early bird gets the worm, but who wants to live on worms? So we can talk about that. And, excuse me, we can also talk to this guy, the longest running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Y'all know why I'm here. That's right. He's here to chew bubble gum and be hilarious, and he's all out of bubble gum. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

I may be out of hilariousness, too. I'm not entirely sure about that. How much of my brain do you need today? I'm being serious. I am operating on very little sleep. I'm out of my gourd. I'm worried about my performance today.

Hello, darkness, my old friend. Were you playing darts until all hours of the night last night? Is that why you're tired?

No. No, I had a project I was working on that I probably wrapped up around maybe 11 o'clock or something. I told you that I wanted to put some lockers in my newly refurbished bathroom down here. Oh, right. So I bought from overstock.com. I should say Genevieve helped me pick out, and she bought these lockers online. And they came, and I knew I was going to have to assemble them. At first, it wasn't too bad of a job. and then I don't even know where to begin with this there was this one last step, everything was put together on one of these lockers, I had to put two of them together and then I was feeling pretty good some of the parts came a little bit damaged but I was like okay fine, I can work around that, I can kind of bend things back into place I was a little peeved at some of the quality of this stuff as I was taking it out of the box, but I get one of the locker stands kind of built I'm feeling good, now I'm working on the second one And I'm like, I'm going to knock this thing out. I'm going to be done by eight o'clock. And then as I'm.

looking at something on the new one i realized i'd forgotten to put some nuts and bolts in a certain place on the on the one that was already assembled and standing in my bathroom so i'm like okay well that's not a big deal and then i go to just add those i think it was like literally just like six little screws and nuts that i needed to add just for a little bit of security in the in this in the shelves but because everything else was put together and put together properly but tightened up, the holes didn't line up anymore. And it wasn't that I had done anything wrong. It was just that when you're building these things, you need to keep everything kind of loose and finger tight and everything in its place before you tighten everything up.

Until the final round. And by the way, I am the king of getting overexcited with these things where I'm like ratcheting everything down to where it's like the wood or in this case the metal is like starting to flex because I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to need this to be the strongest locker that's ever been assembled. And then I always regret that decision because I messed something up.

Yeah, and I really thought it was done. I hadn't kind of noticed. I went back to the original one for reference. And again, it was like in this moment where I kind of went from some of these pieces look a little damaged to, okay, I can work with this, to, oh, I can actually get both of these done in one day. Oh, I'll zip along on the second unit, no problem, now that I know what I'm doing. and then I just discovered this and this is something else I wanted to talk to you about on the show and I was trying not to hold forth too much today because I am so brain dead but I have a comparison here I've been this is a weird comparison I've been messing around with Sudoku recently which is a game that I've never really played before I remember I tried it one such place

thank you for not calling it Sudoku I never know how to say it no no you said it correctly

but I had to stop and slow down because I say it wrong 99% of the time.

It's shocking the number of people who call it Sudoku, which is not what it's called. I also don't know how to do it. I've literally never participated in it, but I do get annoyed when people call it Sudoku.

Which I promise you I do, and I'm going to try not to do that now. Maybe I'll just refer to it as the S word going forward since I'm so brain dead today. But I'm not going to explain to you how to do it because I think a lot of people know, but all you need to know is it's a mind-strengthening puzzle. It's like a filling in numbers game, right? Exactly, and basically what happened is I have this New York Times app, of course, that I play my Wordle on daily around the same time every day. It's all part of my routine, but they've been adding kind of some new games to that app, and I saw that the S word, Sudoku, was on there for a while.

That's my starter word for Wordle, by the way. Yeah, I think that's too many letters.

I can't do math. Anyway, I saw some 10s online saying, hey, I've been messing around with the Sudoku game. And I was like, yeah, it got me. It got me. Anyway, and I was like, well, I'm out of games. I came here today to play Wordle and the Vortex game. And I'm all out of Wordle and the Vortex game. And so I'm like, I'll give it a shot. And there are three levels, easy, medium, and hard. And for the first time in my life, I played this digital version of the S-word. And it was fun and it was a little puzzling, but I figured it out pretty quickly. I'm like, oh, well, that was the easy level and it was pretty easy. Let me go to medium. This is about a week ago, by the way. So I tried the medium one and I spent about five hours on one puzzle. I never solved it. And it gave me that bad feeling that I get when I try to do crossword puzzles, like my brain just couldn't do it. But there's something you're not like guessing clues like you are with crossword puzzles, right? like it's just arranging numbers it is strictly arranging numbers but it you have to arrange them in this way that that it qualifies for a whole bunch of different sets of numbers and it's one of those things where you think you're locking it down and then you're like oh my god i'm on a roll here oh shoot but this five can't go here because there's a five up there and it unravels everything and then you're like okay well maybe if i come up to this other square that i already had locked down i'll move this over here oh shit there's a seven there for if i move that seven and the next thing you know you're untangling all this shit that you were so proud that you had locked down and i did that for five hours on one game my shoulder was sore the next day because i was stressed out and playing this game the classic sudoku injury exactly yes exactly and i've been a little bit obsessed and so now they don't refresh it as much as wordle it seems they refresh it every couple of days i think i don't know i'm new to this game but the easy one continues to be easy and then i'm i always think well i'll try the medium one and like the medium one is so hard for me and I'm just a dingus but the medium one is so hard for me and I find it so frustrating and it puts me in a bad place I want to be able to do it because I think it's good for my brain but it just drives me bananas and so there I was last night undoing all of these bolts and just being furious about the design of this thing I didn't even get into the fact that these final bolts like it was the final cherry on top of of insult by the people who Thank you. who crafted this thing and gave terrible instructions on how to assemble it. Like they gave you a tool and all the nuts and bolts you need, but these final screws, the tool didn't fit where it needed to get. It was impossible. And Genevieve was out for part of last night. And, and so like, I'm taking this thing I'd already built. I'm flipping it around every which way I keep. I, and I have to, because I can't get my fingers in to the place where these bolts and nuts need to go. I'm, I'm undoing all this work I did to get me some more give so I can sort of twist things a little bit more into place.

And I spent probably an hour and a half undoing and redoing parts of things on this pretty simple little project so that by the time Genevieve got home, I almost threw the whole locker. I almost climbed to the roof, got over my fear of heights, and threw the locker off of the roof.

The only thing that could cure his fear of heights was the... Actually, you know what? We do have some tape. I don't know if you know this, but I have a recording device set up in your basement. This is you last night trying to deal with this locker.

Even you might be eating.

Yes.

Let's go. I did think at one point I was like, am I glad I don't have kids here? Because I don't know how I would be... Like if I had a kid who was kind of helping me, you know, like I used to help my dad on projects a little bit, you know, mostly just handing him tools or whatever while he worked on something. But like I was sort of thinking like I'm in a state right now that I couldn't be around children. I think I would just be swearing too much. I would be like you would just tell you could just I probably I had like little squiggles probably all around me, just anger squiggles. Although I will say at one point My adorable cat Bingo came up to me And jumped into the locker Cubbyhole that I was working on And I wasn't mad at him for a second It was just the cutest thing in the world It really was, he really did feel like my little buddy

So basically as long as your kids learned how to read your moves And be cute

Then daddy no angry As long as my kids were furry and had tails Which they might But anyway everything is great now So you actually

You eventually prevailed and you got these things put together correctly and the holes to align, et cetera.

Yeah, as mad as I was, like a couple of things did break my way. Like I said, the tool they gave me did not reach these impossible final bolts I needed to put in. So I went out to the garage and like our little crescent wrench set, it has been apparently – I swear we had a really big one at one point like with every single size wrench you could imagine. But that's been deconstructed or something, and there were just, like, wrenches around. And I was like, there's no way I'm going to have the exact wrench I need for this exact size nut. And I did. I found that. And I was like, oh, my God, without that, this project wouldn't be done. So some things did break my way last night. But in the moment, I was in a very dark place. And then I put the other one together, and that one went pretty smoothly. And Veeves came home, and we finished assembling them and put them up. And then I did a lot of – then I was just feeling all jazzed. And then I cleaned – you know, I had shit all over the floor. I had the vacuum before I got tracked all over and then I had my so I cleaned up because when you install a new piece of furniture it feels good you want your surroundings to be nice so by the time I settled down it was midnight and then like well now would be a good time to catch up on The Last of Us so I watched like three hours literally like three hours of that and uh and so I didn't get to bed how about that Nick Offerman episode it's amazing it's um I'm now almost caught up I'm literally I had to finally stop the the latest episode maybe three quarters of the way through because i had to go to bed but um that nick offers an episode which is episode number three out of i think seven right now is one of the best pieces of television one of the best hours of television i've ever seen in my life unfortunately it was such a high bar that i'm starting to sour on a little bit of the rest of the show because it was so unbelievably good

i'm totally caught up and well that's not true i didn't watch it this weekend because i was um uh at that airbnb but um i would say that that is going to be pretty hard for them to top and it's very unexpected and it's i think what you sometimes refer it's not quite a bottle episode but it's sort of it more or less is right i mean do they meet i'm not not going to give anything away i'm not going to give too much away do they meet and then you know the rest of the plot does that all kind of unfold in the same episode or is it do we learn that nick offerman has this is a little bit of a spoiler but nick offerman plays a character in the last of us who is kind of a prepper not kind of he very much is a prepper he's a prepper before before the apocalypse comes yeah real don't tread on me type of dude and uh ends up in a situation where he is the only person living in his small kind of rural town because they've taken everybody else away ostensibly to protect them and he is one of those you know the government ain't coming for me guys and And what ends up happening is, and I'll tell you, I've never wanted to be a prepper more than when Nick Offerman is eating a perfectly cooked piece of steak with a very nice bottle of wine by himself.

And roasted vegetables that he grew.

Right. And again, so Nick Offerman, he is in this very enviable position by the standards of this version of Planet Earth in the show because he has a generator and he's the only person in town. so he can get everything he needs from the Lowe's to build this big perimeter with fences. He puts all these booby traps in. He's got great, delicious food and wine, as much of it as he could use for the rest of his life. He's growing his vegetables. It's very, in a way, it's very nine-year-old Luke fantasy, which is like, I want to have a treehouse, but I want it to be hidden, and I want to have a bunch of booby traps. He's just got this thing so dialed in. But that's established, correct? That's established in the episode before the biggie, the one that we're referring to as maybe some of the best TV. No, it's all one episode. Is that all in the same episode?

Yeah, and that's why I would tell people, like, honestly, like, that one, again, I think it might be an hour long or, you know, that show, it's HBO, so it's not TV.

They vary, by the way.

Yeah, they vary. So, you know, but it's around an hour, maybe a little bit more. I was thinking about this. Like, if you're somebody, you're like, I don't really like zombie movies. And technically, they don't use the word zombie, but, you know, whatever. It's one of these, like, you know, the world isn't – this is not a spoiler. This is just the plot. The world is infected with these zombie-like things. I believe the term The Last of Us maybe gives it away a little bit. Yeah, exactly, right.

It's not called All of Us or Things Are Fine With Us.

I mean, yeah, things are – that's what I would like to watch, honestly, just people enjoying their time together. But, you know, it really does have a lot of the same beats of almost any of these types of adventures, even The Walking Dead. while it's a million times better than The Walking Dead because the writing is so good and the acting, some of the actors on the show are so good. But if you're going to like, I'm just not really into that world that much and I don't like the action scenes or whatever, I would just say like, you honestly do not have to watch episodes one or two and you don't have to watch episodes four through seven. Like you can, you have enough context from what we told you right now just to watch an amazing human story unfold in episode three of the show it is it is absolutely incredible and emotional and beautiful and pitch perfect from acting to directing to writing and it is just it sets such a high bar and now that we're back into the show which by the way still has some really amazing moments to come um nothing can live up to it and the very last episode i watched feels like they're trying to get this emotional core again but like i don't know who's i'm not paying enough attention to who's writing which episodes but like the writing just isn't there you know it's just we're watching another episode i last night watched another episode that is supposed to be a very like kind of a emotional relationship based episode and it just pales in comparison so much yeah i i think

uh it started i'm i didn't watch much of the walking dead because i don't find zombies particularly compelling as characters in movies be they the ones that run fast or walk slow or whatever i am very fascinated though with sort of post-apocalyptic situations or you know things have gone very wrong situations and and what that looks like for people so i i was excited to watch the show i would say yeah it's it's definitely a lot better than the walking dead for me because the writing like you said is i think superior oh but there are entire episodes where it's just it feels very much like a state i mean it was a video game before it was ever a television product so that's also kind of part of it you know like it's this you can kind of see how this was designed as a video game it's like you're out there you're trying to not get bit by the bad guys and you're trying to survive you know so there's sometimes it feels a little thin on on kind of plot and whatever to me um but um also i have i have to be honest with you and this i can't believe i'm even saying this because this is going to sound maybe on the edge of being slightly racist which is you know a place i try not to be in life and on the program so this is how it happens we all wondered i mean what were they what were what was the line in vegas what was the over under on how many shows I would get done before officially getting canceled so I've been fascinated with Pedro Pascal because he is a um uh he's a really good actor and I think he's great in the show and I knew that his parents I knew he was from Chile um and apparently his parents were like enemies of um Pinochet the dictator there or something and so I was like I was watching like I was like Pedro pascal's um i was like how does he have no accent this is wild i was like you know this is guys from chile and he's just like his is um you know american accent is just flawless and then i was talking to a friend of mine who i work with on on another show who's from like laguna she's like oh no no uh pedro i knew him when he was like paul something else and his parents are rich doctors in laguna beach and we used to do like children's theater together and all this stuff and it was like i wasn't ready for pedro pascal to only have become pedro pascal in the last like 15 20 years of his life i like somehow i had this whole mythology around this like chilean guy who had escaped pinochet and was now and it was like he had a very different lived experience than i

sort of assumed okay so all the stuff about the pinochet that was just incorrect then you had

just no it was correct it was i had the timeline off like he was raised he was raised in what i've heard described as great affluence in laguna beach california and was and and at some point embraced the stage name pedro pascal which was not his name growing up it was like paul best something else it was like he just you know he just had one kind of american experience and i had written this whole other version of pedro pascal in my mind which for the record he has he has the absolutely the right to use whatever stage name he wants and absolutely has the right to you know be he's he's not being a hilaria baldwin which that one is really over the line for me like as if hilaria baldwin needs my um my approval but hilaria baldwin is a really weird one because like her name was like hillary um something or other and uh was raised by parents who do not who do not identify as being like from spain and all of the people that knew her growing up very wealthy in in massachusetts we're like oh yeah hillary from school and then at some point she re-emerged as hilaria baldwin who has an accent that no one quite understands where it's

from um so and not just that but also the reason that all came to the forefront was because on some tv show or maybe video she was doing she was talking about something and she was like what is the you couldn't remember what is the english what is the english word for blank it's like wait no you're a native English speaker you just grew up really rich and visited Spain a lot and continue to

she considers herself like culturally Spanish or something but whatever anyway I guess the point of the story is that I've been weirdly obsessing over Pedro Pascal for the last few weeks and like what his story is and everything I think he's a very very fine actor I'm also I have to say like he was the Mandalorian

right he was you know it's been so long since I saw the Mandalorian I can't remember but oh and you know what i don't know if i ever made it to a place where i saw who was underneath that helmet but

i know that he's in in star wars stuff i think he played the mandalorian which is the weirdest thing because um uh because most of the time the mandalorian just has that helmet on and like i had even heard a rumor or maybe it wasn't a rumor it was like an article that was speculating on like if pedro pascal was like a little frustrated that like he's wearing this suit all the time like you could just put any stunt man because obviously the the the any dialogue i don't know how much dialogue i watched this you think i would remember but i don't know how much dialogue the mandalorian has but that's all probably recorded later as well right you have like a a mask that they're wearing and so presumably it's easier to just have someone do all the dialogue you know in a studio later meaning it could have been anybody under there until the point at which he takes the helmet off and i'm not sure if i got that far either i just thought That's interesting casting if you're going to have the person mostly wear the helmet almost the entire series.

Yeah. And I that's another one where I wanted to like it and I just kind of felt like it was just too, too corny. And so I don't think I got to the part. There were some good moments, but it was pretty corny at times. One episode. I'm like that. Like sometimes one episode will just break me if I'm like sort of enjoying a show. But it's like, you know, I'm not super invested in it. And then like it just gets a little bit corny. Like I can't handle it. I'm just like, well, I'm out. I'm done with it. And so I don't think I ever got to that part Although I do know I think I'm not confusing him with somebody else He played the sexy He was in Game of Thrones He played like the sexy prince guy In the Garden City Oberon That's what I said The sexy prince guy in the Garden City That's how George R.R. Martin describes him I was just trying to be true to the texts Anyway, he's amazing You really get to see his acting chops I think in The Last of Us I'm really impressed with him And oh, and the other Game of Thrones connection is the young woman, the 14 year old girl in this is Lady Mormont, who was a kind of a breakaway fan favorite character in Game of Thrones. As as people were starting to sour on that show a little bit, that was a big side plot of how much they love this very tertiary character of this of this very young queen. And boy, is she amazing. I mean, that is.

There is just like now I'm just bringing us back to the show, but like there is a moment where in The Last of Us, I'm talking about now the and I'm sorry, I don't have the actor's name in front of me. She's I don't think she needs Bella Ramsey. I think is that it. OK, I was going to say she's probably doesn't need the TBTL bump anyway. But I mean, just acting, I mean, just incredible being natural in scenes. sometimes when she's paired up with somebody who maybe isn't as good of an actor you really see how much work she's doing to like kind of just sort of like there's one moment and by the way

this is a so now here's what we think there's where we find out who you think is a bad actor

no I realize I'm about to give an example in this this kid there's a moment where she there's an episode where she spends a lot of time with another kid I actually think that other kid is a really good actor too but there's a moment where they're kind of communicating and she's waiting for his response on something and she just sort of starts cracking her knuckles but not in this like way that is like exaggerated like usually if if there's knuckle cracking in a movie it's just kind of like i'm gonna stretch out and crack my knuckles and get down to brass tacks where you know what i mean it always serves a purpose but in this case it seemed like an honest to god natural tick that a kid around her age would do she was like cracking like her middle knuckles or something just in this way that seemed like i don't even know if the actor knew she was doing it you know what i mean and it might have been written in i don't know but there's like this there's this just natural quality to her that i just literally cannot get over when you see acting that good

especially from somebody that young yeah i think i think obviously they had to be really uh dialed in on their casting because there's lots and lots of scenes where it's just basically pedro pascal and bella ramsey just walking around the woods somewhere having conversations and it's like if those characters aren't working, you're in a lot of trouble.

The lockers are assembled, but I'm still

tired. That's the point. So the lockers were not what kept you up. It was trying to come down off the high of the lockers and you tried to do that by watching The Last of Us. The highs and lows.

Yeah, that is true. Maybe I could have picked a different... I really wanted to try to catch up, though, because everybody's talking about it. I would say that those two events

have pretty similar stakes, like you putting a locker together and two people trying to survive a fungal

zombie apocalypse. Yeah, Yeah, well, I haven't opened the bottom locker yet because I think there might be a clicker in there. We'll see.

Now, I know that it's a video game that was turned into an HBO program. So the science is, I'm hoping, not predictive. I have spent a fair amount of time hoping that a fungus doesn't figure out how it can survive in the body temperature of a human. That actually got to put a little bit of a scare into me. I was like, oh, boy, because I'd heard about that, you know, fungus that can control an ant's brain. I mean, that's a real thing. And and I, you know, I was aware of that as a thing. And then there's, you know, the very first moments of this HBO show, it's sort of like a talk show in the 1960s that's describing how it's not possible for this sort of thing to happen to humans because the fungus can't exist at these warmer temperatures that our body have. And then somebody says, well, one of these experts is like, well, but if it were to evolve or mutate, we'd be in real trouble. Cut to it has evolved and mutated. I was like, how realistic, how scientifically plausible is that? And do I need to be extra careful?

Well, here's the good news for you. If there ever was some sort of a global event that involved, you know, health and disease, I'm sure that every American would line up together and do the right thing and make small sacrifices for the benefit of mankind and then potentially even go on TV at some point and celebrate all of the frontline workers and medicines that helped get us through it.

What an amazing bit of foreshadowing, my friend, and forward promotion to what we're going to talk about right after this short break. And that would be Woody Harrelson on SNL and dropping some COVID conspiracy stuff. So we will talk about that in a moment here on TVTL. Let's thank some dazzling donors. These are the wonderful, generous people Who are supporting the program With a dazzling donation of dough There are the days when I'm appreciative Of having this as my job, Andrew And then there's the days that I'm really appreciative This would be one of the really appreciative days Because I'm here at this house That my dad and I have been working on It was funny when you mentioned Working with your dad when you were a kid And basically you're just handing him tools That's my life at 46 going on 47 very little has changed but there's some other guys out here today working breaking up some concrete that's going to be replaced and digging a ditch for some drainage that needs to happen and I was out there talking to him right before the show, and then I came inside, and I can just see a reflection in the glass of these guys out there just working really hard. And then I was like, well, I've got to go in that room in that house now and talk to my friend Andrew for my job so that I can then earn the money to pay you for doing that job. And I've just never felt like less of a real worker than in here talking to you about The Last of Us while there are people out in my yard doing real actual work. So a big thanks to Brenda Bradley of Washington, D.C., who's our first dazzling donor. Thank you, Brenda, for allowing me to be in here talking to Andrew instead of out there swinging a pickaxe. Brenda says you might or might not remember me as the person who left eclipse glasses for Luke at the DC Convention Center Hotel I do remember that thank you my razzle dazzle message is inspired by your Delica adventure I love camper vans and I want to shout out my friend's camper van business it's called Vander Outdoors any tents contemplating a camper van road trip or just dipping a toe in the van life world should check out the website vanderoutdoors.com they uh they said they'll give a discount to anyone mentioning tbtl does that

what include us andrew yeah i assume i can mention it i've mentioned it like a couple of times

already yeah that's uh that's great what yeah i wonder um we'll have to go to their website i wonder if they rent vans or if they outfit them or they do all of it i as i'm sitting here in a active construction zone actively running out of money andrew i still have fantasies of just getting like a camper like a some kind of kitted out camper van and just getting off the grid that's not going to happen because uh i well you like the grid for starters a a i like the grid you're a pretty big fan of the grid it turns out i'm very reliant on the grid and b uh i would immediately stop having any sort of income uh which would be bad uh for me but anyway i do i am such a i'm a fan of the idea sometimes i'll be driving down the road and i'll see somebody's got some you know cool v-dub van or one of these sprinter vans kind of pulled over and i'm just like that must be the life well if you like me are intrigued by that you should go to the vanderoutdoors.com on behalf of a dazzling donor brenda uh brenda says unlike your tbtl-a-thon delica i can't imagine their vans dying at a truck stop outside of phoenix or anywhere else thanks luke and andrew for this razzle dazzle opportunity to help support a small business and thanks for everything nice well thank you a couple of clarifications i do wasn't quite a truck truck stop outside of phoenix it was a a service station in i know it was outside of phoenix but what it was really was in the sonoran desert it was a hundred it was almost

exactly a hundred miles right that's what our toe was right like outside of phoenix sounds like we

were in scottsdale and i just i i'm i'm sorry i just need to clarify we were well for one at one point um the border patrol were there chasing after uh what we were told had been some folks that were trying to get into the u.s that was how close we were to the border i'm very proud to say That if they would have asked us We would have lied through our teeth That away We would have done like the cartoon move Where you and I look at each other They went that away And then we all point in different directions Thus befuddling the border patrol But I mean it was And it was hot as you might imagine It was a real scene out there Where the Delica did break down I'm sure that would never happen With anything from VanderOutdoors.com You're going to be very safe with them so thanks Brenda appreciate you and everybody go check out Brenda's Friends Maestro

on your mark on your mark get set get set now ready ready go everybody rattle

dattle

we've also got to thank Abby Hersey of Worthington Ohio where's Worthington Ohio in relation to where you grew up

I have no idea Luke Burbank zero idea where Worthington is I'm not Worthington. I'm not Worthington. You are not.

We're not Worthington.

We're not Worthington. I'm looking it up now, though. What a terrible bid. I wonder if it's close to. I hope that the guys digging a ditch didn't hear me doing that bid. Oh, my God. They're like, oh, my God. This guy. This jabroni. They're like, I don't think our checks are going to clear. I hear what he's doing. Oh, it looks like it's very near Columbus, Ohio. That would be why I was less familiar, because I was up in the Cleveland area.

I was just recently in Columbus, Ohio. You'd think I would have noted on the map that we were near Worthington, where Abby is. Well, listen, Abby, thank you so much. Abby says, I don't have anything particularly dazzling to say. I just wanted to thank Luke and Andrew for another year of TBTL.

I look forward to every episode. God, that makes one of us, Abby. No, I can't. Listen, Abby, thank you. God, that's like such a nice thing to say. I have a very hard time embracing or accepting love. Right. And also, I just have such a hard time imagining that experience. But, you know, Abby's not the only one who describes it that way. I just there are so many episodes of the show where I kind of think, well, you know, we're either kind of covering the same territory or maybe I didn't have anything. I mean, it's just me complaining about the to-do list at an Airbnb. It's just like, I, I just have a really hard time putting myself in the mindset of someone who's looking forward to each of the 3,890 episodes, but there are those people and those people are Abby and we are very lucky to have Abby in our life.

Yes. And appreciative. Certainly.

Yes. Thank you, Abby. I also want to say hi to my fellow Worthington will. Oh, yeah. His 11, Laura, and his five, Nora.

I believe I could have the wrong Nora, but I'm pretty sure Nora is the person who sung the Hawaii song for us. Maybe I can play that at the end of the show. Yeah, and if I have this right, Will...

That puts her in the top two Noras that I know, the other being McInerney.

Will also, I believe, another erstwhile Browns fan. He and I used to bond over... Ooh, good use of erstwhile, Andrew. Oh, thanks. I was sitting on that. I came up with that around 3 in the morning last night. I was like, ooh, I've got to go to bed. I want to use erstwhile tomorrow. The erstwhile of us. I was watching that on HBO. But anyway, yeah. So anyway, shout out to all these folks. Thanks for making it special.

Yeah, thanks, Abby, and thanks, everyone out there in Worthington, keeping a TBTL hot zip going. We've got Will and Abby out there. That's a lot for Worthington, Ohio. So thanks. Thanks, Abby. Appreciate you. Wouldn't be here without you. hello and welcome to top story so woody harrelson hosted um saturday night live it was his fifth time doing it i actually was reading a review i was reading some reviews of his monologue that didn't even mention the end of the monologue or didn't mention it in a way that said and then he like you know courted controversy or something i read one review that just said like yeah woody harrelson was just like really all over the place in this monologue and it was rambling and he just kind of was like it wasn't particularly funny it just seemed like he was just up there just riffing but about like the weirdest topics and then uh somebody else just was talking about again i read someone else mentioning that he had ended with this line about reading a movie script that was unbelievable and then i'll play the audio in a minute but they also didn't comment on the fact that it was clearly anti-vax and I was like what's going on here like how is this not a bigger story and then over the next couple of days as people started to unpack kind of the premise of what he was saying then the conversation moved to like did Woody Harrelson just like fully go anti-vax on national television let me play this for you it's at the end of this long rambling monologue and he sets it up by saying like somebody wanted me to read a movie script and I thought it was just too improbable and anyway here's what he said so the movie goes like this the biggest drug

cartels in the world get together and buy up all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes and people can only come out if they take the cartels drugs and keep taking them over and over i threw the script away now andrew i'm

wondering if you're in the audience at snl what are you like what what are you feeling in this moment because it's it's like you can tell the audience is starting to catch on to where he's going with this and you know it doesn't sound like they're really going there with him what

am you want to know how i would react well first of all i'd probably be confused i go through most of my life just confused luke i don't know if you know that i'd be like oh my god i'm in new york city i'd be just still be freaking out that i'm in new york um but uh so there's a lot of sensory overload but probably by the time i realized would you start booing him i don't No, I think I would just sit there in stunned silence and think like, oh, this doesn't feel so fun anymore. Right?

That's what I feel like this audience is at.

I threw the script away. I mean, who is going to believe that crazy idea? Being forced to do drugs? I do that voluntarily all day long.

So that's kind of a save. That laugh at the end is them just so glad that the punchline was something that they could

just laugh at that doesn't have to but then they're also doing the math on like yeah but he also probably believes the other stuff he was saying yeah like he's kind of getting the nose up because it's just a joke about him being a stoner but it's also like you know and then i left this last part in this was right before he's gonna say we've got a great show for you tonight jack white is here but there's this very like there's this pregnant pause of the audience just trying to understand what they just heard uh after he says this next part anyway it's about that time

yikes did he say come on he's like come on is that what i heard yeah he's like whispering that

under his breath like uh so i have a lot of questions about this one is and i don't i don't you know the answer Andrew so we're really the two people that should be analyzing this but like I guess I was under the impression that these Saturday Night Live monologues when when it's the kind of night where the host just does a monologue versus like a bit where they're like backstage or they're singing or whatever if it's just going to be like you go up there and do a monologue isn't that usually vetted at some point like I assume it's like they're it's sort of written by some of the writers and then they practice it and there are beats and because you know this is national television it's a big deal i don't think they're in the habit of just sending someone out and going i don't know have fun riffing but that's really what this monologue felt like from him or is it possible that the snl writers were like yeah dude if you want to get out there and go anti-vax on it like be our guest well yeah i don't have an answer to that i've been kind of

puzzling over this as well my guess though is snl i mean despite a you know despite i think a reputation especially that was established maybe in the early days of being this kind of late liberal outlet i think they obviously they have so much power and they're so established

well they've been red-pilled andrew so now they can't look back they try to like you know have i

mean i mean they had rudy julian rudy giuliani on all the time back in the day before he was

as as i mean they had trump on that was back when we just yeah trump was a reality tv buffoon

and not someone who might become president i mean i could see if harrelson was like hey i have this I have you know 20 minute or however long a monologue is it's not 20 minutes it feels like it sometimes but you know I have five minutes of material and it's all bashing COVID protocols or whatever somebody'll be like hey listen that's not the tone of the show but I could totally see them saying there's this one joke and they're like maybe somebody says you sure you want to do that but at the end of the day saying well we're not gonna like we're not gonna like sort of censor you on this one thing it's a live show it's a live audience like see what happens I again I could be totally wrong i don't get the impression here though that this is something that he slipped in last minute because he wanted he wanted to get it in or that he he fooled anybody maybe they knew also i was just looking at this right now so again good research on my part i just wanted to kind of

have an article in front of me you were coming down off the high of assembling the lockers right

well no no i had read busy i had read the story yesterday um that you had that you had sent me about like the SNL thing and I had not heard the tape but I'd read the you know I'd read it the write-ups or whatever but what I'm seeing right now is so he's on a press tour for some new project and apparently in this long profile of him in the New York Times I've not read the whole thing I'm reading excerpts of it in Variety and apparently he went on some the headline here is Woody Harrelson slams COVID set protocols as nonsense urges Hollywood to stop forcing vaccination quote That's not a free country. And I'm sort of like reading some pull quotes from this now and him complaining about masking on sets and making and having mandates that people on like movie sets or film sets or TV, HBO. I don't know. It's all the same to me now having to have vaccination mandates and stuff. So this and this was published before SNL. This was published on the 24th, which was last Thursday, I think, or Friday, maybe. So apparently like he's not shy about this stuff and this isn't like something that was just isolated to SNL.

Yeah, it was it was one of those Q&A's with David Marchese in The New York Times. I think this guy, David, maybe it's Marquis. I don't know how you say his last name, but he is really good. He and Taffy Brodesser-Ackner, I feel like, are two big stars at The New York Times and are really good at like talking to celebrities and getting interesting stuff. And it's a very interesting conversation because the New York Times guy, David Marquise, he's asking probing questions and Woody Harrelson is answering them kind of honestly. and it's it it i went from seeing the snl stuff and being like oh come on woody harrelson really you're one of those people to reading this interview and by the way still being like come on woody harrelson but being like five percent more i guess like i i my my annoyance at woody harrelson and my i guess what you would say would be burgeoning dislike for him like i had i had no strong opinion on woody harrelson one way or the other and then i see that he's on snl saying that the vaccine is the drug cart you know he's calling him a cartel by the way the drug company's just trying to make more money

And I'm like, come on, dude, you suck. And now I read this profile or this Q&A and I'm like, he actually seems kind of like a conflicted, interesting guy to me again. He's talking a lot about his own ego. He's talking very honestly about his struggles with like not drinking and not smoking pot. He's famously a pothead, but he doesn't want to be, but he doesn't know how to stop because he's addicted. He talks about his family life His children He has this very disarming way That's very different than like your anti-vax Friend who's just Straight up sucks you know And by friend I mean like a person you know in your life Who's just like It's all Biden's plan to mind control you Like there's a way of talking about this stuff that's just If you're coming at it from my perspective It's so off putting You know and if you read this New York Times thing with Woody Harrelson It's not that it's this other thing where he's just it's I can't explain it other than you should just probably read it if you're you know if you have the time because it just comes off as a little more nuance and a little bit less like preachy than I expected or something or less assured from him if that makes sense like it's just somehow this other weird version of being anti-vax where it I still disagree with him and I still think he's dumb for thinking this but I didn't think I'll never see a Woody harrelson movie going forward which is kind of how i felt after the snl thing it's probably i

don't know for sure but it sounds like you know what you're reacting to is he's not just repeating fox news or worse like uh party line on this like just quotes of like it doesn't sound it doesn't sound like this is like you know and i know people like this too who are just on a steady diet of that kind of stuff and that and that is all their languages now um where it sort of sounds like he this is how he feels we don't agree with it but it sort of feels like he came to it on his own and it fits in with his broader worldview which is still maybe not great you know and i i have sort of mixed emotions like when i first saw the snl thing i'm like well you know in a certain way like good like i guess show your ass on this you know what i mean like sometimes i feel like hey listen if you're a famous person well i always feel like this if you're a famous person with a a loud megaphone and you can influence people i want you to use that for for good and not ill obviously in a case like this though if he's harboring these thoughts i was sort of like well i mean at least you're kind of letting us know this is where you are like i don't know if anybody's going to hear his hear his monologue and say you know what i am against covid protocols now you know what i mean i think we're all pretty well established in how we feel about these things um but he does seem like a i mean he kind of think if i'm influenced by some of the roles he's played i mean doesn't he sort of play like a guy who is into conspiracy theories quite a bit Or am I just thinking of like some like one role that I walked in on one time while Genevieve was watching it on TV? Like he seems like a kook in a certain way. So I wasn't kind of shocked about this.

He does seem like a kook. I think he's always kind of been sort of this. I think even maybe this New York Times piece calls him like America's beloved, like stoner uncle or something. He just kind of seems like he sort of like seems like he's five percent less annoying than McConaughey, which is ironic because they were in True Detective together. but like kind of just like one of those guys let me read you this little quick excerpt from this New York Times interview uh this is the interviewer David Marquise it's interesting to me that a guy like you grew up culturally conservative I mean you went to the same college as Mike Pence you canvassed for Ronald Reagan what flipped the switch and made you interested in other ways of thinking and uh what Woody Harrelson says I've always been a student I study life and as an actor you're studying you're playing a doctor you study a doctor even outside of that I love reading and learning but a big thing happened for me when i was 23 i think i was on a bus going from st louis to oklahoma city i don't recommend that on a greyhound by the way and this gal next to me sees me blowing my nose and i had all this acne and she goes you're lactose intolerant uh if you stop dairy all these things are going to go away and and then he says you're telling me it's dairy which does a body good so i did it and days later those symptoms were gone it was like wow so what else is not true reagan the great communicator this guy was awful i started seeing for what it was i started understanding the ecological impact of things the heavy footprint of the beast as i call it all these various industries that are raping mother earth getting giant tax breaks i started getting that this is how the world actually works and that being a republican ain't going to help things being a democrat ain't going to help either i did vote for biden though just because like you know what i mean like you're like this is a person who clearly now has suspicion about big pharma and about like just everything medical everything the medical community tells him because a woman on a bus told him to stop drinking milk and his skin cleared up and yet i can kind of relate to that because i had bad skin and if somebody if i would have stopped doing something that wasn't what the medical you know literature was telling me and it fixed it i'd be like okay I'm

completely now open to all a lot of different kind of like forms of of like i don't know you know medical modalities or something like this there's something about the way he talks about this stuff that makes me way less mad than like robbie ray not taking the vax and i'm not even saying it's logical i'm just saying it's how it feels to me right you know i had no idea this is

where the conversation would go when i first saw this story yesterday about tbtl andrew neither

Neither did I.

Well, the thing is, and I, you know, I did not see the story until you put it in yesterday's show sheet. And I only say that as a reminder that we didn't get to the top stories yesterday and that we should feel like a little bit of failures. No, but so actually, it's kind of funny because when I saw it, then I was tumbling it around in my head, as I will. And then and then we didn't get to it. So I tumbled around for another 24 hours. And here we are talking about it. one of the things i was going to say was well it's and this was just a comment on the snl thing not even knowing about the profile of the new yorker in the in this q a but like you know woody harrelson don't put me in a position where i need to defend big pharma either you know like

that was the other thing because he's not wrong about the fact that those companies suck i mean

in everything again it was the unofficial tbtl logo for quite some time or slogan should be complicated you know like yeah that's the thing like i am very pro vaccine obviously i mean we've talked about that we don't have to share our bona fides on that i don't think but that doesn't mean that i i i mean there's a very real chance that and also him just to reiterate it even him saying like oh forcing people to have a vaccine like we've always done that we've i mean we've always

had vaccines to go to school how do you like not having polio exactly like it's just but

But so, in other words, like, OK, so I dismiss that. But on the other hand, like, don't put me in the position to be like, hey, Big Pharma is always looking out for us. Like, it's not because I get probably something will come up on this show if we do this show long enough where you and I are railing against maybe maybe the same exact companies that that didn't make the vaccine because nothing is a straight line on these things. And we needed that vaccine. But it doesn't mean that we should just trust everything Big Pharma or anything that any of these just overpowered institutions have over our lawmakers, which is a thing, too, with I mean, it's got to be one of the biggest lobbying groups in the in the country.

that's saying something right i mean and but the thing is and maybe it's it's because i you know i've seen i've liked him in various movies or something or because this interview again he's very self-deprecating but in a way that feels genuine he's talking about like that i'll just read one other very short uh you know a part he goes um every aspect uh that my ego has grown outsized i admonish myself i have such anger with myself for allowing it i want to see the kid i was that 12 year old who's full of love for everybody even into my 20s i was the most loving person i had such kindness and then once fame came along that started to bleep with those good attributes um i do feel like i'm in a much better place now than i was even five years ago um and he just goes into basically how he was a jerk to people and stuff and so there's something about him being vulnerable in that way or being i guess honest with himself that takes the edge off of the stuff That's just scientifically ridiculous Like that this was Just a plot to sell more Vaccines to people But this is the part that's truly weird I was talking about this on the show a couple weeks ago How I've got people in my life Who I love dearly And have loved dearly for 30 years And those people Some of them I found out not that long ago Were very vaccine resistant I don't know if they got it Or if they did get it It was only so they could go to work you know and they're probably and they're coming at it from the same like Woody Harrelson like left wing thing you know what I mean like it isn't because Judge Jeannie Pirro on Fox told him not to do it it's because Dale Bigtree on YouTube told them not to and yet I somehow am having an easier time forgiving Woody Harrelson who I'll never meet than these other people in my life who I see on the regular you said that

they're coming at it the same way but I mean are they talk they talk about it the same way because we don't even talk about it because I

feel like it would it's so combustible for me i mean it just even even where we are with this thing now feeling like we've you know moved into a very different place in terms of like hospitals not being overrun and the you know death toll declining greatly on a sort of per day average etc like it's just i can't even bring it up with these people in my life because if i did i feel like it would threaten to destroy our our relationship which i don't want to have happen And so we just don't talk about it, which, if you've heard this show, is not really my lane not talking about things or not confronting things either.

Or not confronting things. It's so. It is probably one of the few things in my life that is so fraught that I don't I've not even ever to talked about it face to face with these people because I'm afraid of where that conversation will end up.

Mm hmm. Well, I mean, this doesn't go to your family because I can't speak to that. But there is something about self-deprecation, self-doubt, even self-loathing that goes a long way with you and I.

They call that they call that the triangle of. they call that the tbcl the three principles upon which this entire program is based

you take one away and the whole thing crumbles tips right over easy with that less shame luke

easy we're gonna need that for support wobbling but anyway i do think that goes a long way and it just and and so there's a difference between and also him having the space to do that but also So like you say, bringing some vulnerability to the conversation is a lot different than just like running, you know, me making a comment about Robbie Ray on Twitter and then having some rando come in and just like fully confidently mansplained to me. And like and right with a profile that checks all the boxes of somebody who is just like spending their entire life feeling a aggrieved be right about everything see ready to to fight and tell you how it is, you know, I mean, there's something about that. And that is usually the kind of vibe that I get from people who, again, are spending a lot of time, you know, watching the Fox News content and everything related to that and then entering the world feeling like I know what's going on. And if you disagree with me, it's only because you're in a bubble.

I think my takeaway maybe should be if I can somehow find grace for Woody Harrelson, who I will never meet, I should probably also try to find that same grace for people in my life who I who I love and who I, you know, think of as good people in the world outside of this one extremely bad take. you know um i think that's probably where i'm gonna have to try to go with this because now if you would have asked me in the in the absolute teeth of the pandemic about this i would have said never forget and never forgive because it was so existential the threat it felt like anyway and i think it was in a way and like people that were just being like you said it a while ago like why would why would you be so selfish as to just not like like just wear a mask who cares it's not hurting you and get the vax it's if you can have eyes in your head and can understand the most basic amount of research by having eyes in your head not even a prerequisite for this if you're someone who can understand the most basic tenets of science you would know that the vaccine is not dangerous for you like it's such a small thing to do to maybe save the life of yourself or other people why would you not do it what what a terrible person you have to be to not want to make that small sacrifice that's sort of how i felt maybe it's receding a little bit because you know we're getting to another phase with this and it's not as daily it's not as dangerous on a day-to-day basis and stuff at least to me you know without like pre-existing stuff and comorbidities but anyway i guess i'm just i'm grappling with this in real time because i just don't know how to stop having that be the first thing i think about when i think about these people in my extended

family this we could have wrapped it up there why am I doing this is because I'm tired I should let my tiredness just make me not talk instead of extend conversation I've had a thought a couple of times just kind of pop into my head and it's a very strong almost overwhelming feeling and I don't know what it is I mean it's partially gratitude I think a big chunk of it is gratitude A big chunk of it is just sort of, I guess, context, for lack of a better word, but where I look around at the world because I'm in some sort of situation where maybe the last time I was in that situation, we were still feeling the more, I would say, poignant effects of the pandemic and suddenly looking around and being like, oh, we really made it. And I know we have to be really careful with this, because like you say, there's still a lot of vulnerable people out there who are put in vulnerable positions because of their jobs, who who are still feeling the effects, who've lost people. I'm not you know like I don't want to dismiss that stuff but as as we navigate our world here in in you know almost March of 2023 and I think back to just a year ago or two years ago you and I you know more at the beginning of the pandemic would talk about how like we would fantasize about the the what we would describe as the kind of end of World War Two moment you know like the the thing was like we all fling our doors open and we go into the streets and it's over and of course it's It didn't happen like that.

And you dipped me in Times Square and kissed me.

And just plant one right on you.

That was the part I was most looking forward to. the year is still young um but anyway like so i was at the gym the other day i gotta bring that up but i was at the gym the other day and i was on the treadmill and i wasn't wearing a mask and nobody was wearing a mask i mean maybe some people were i don't know point is it was just normal it was exactly like going to the gym four years ago or whatever um and i was like all of a sudden like in the middle of a workout on the elliptical i just looked around me i'm just like holy shit holy shit like there were just there were times when things were slowly reopening and that i was on that treadmill or what have you and wearing a mask and trying to like huff and puff through a mask and everything was spaced out and being like well even then being glad i could be out in public again being glad to be at the gym but just thinking like will will i ever be able to be on a on a treadmill without a mask again you know another one was i went into a bookstore the other day i looking for a book that was I guess kind of obvious but I went into this bookstore the other day that I'd only gone to once before in my life third place books over there in Ravenna Luke you probably know it and I'd been in the pub below a few times before but I'd only gone to the bookstore itself one time before and it was in kind of the heart of the pandemic like things were reopening but everything was very still very cautious and very locked down and I remember I had to wait outside of the bookstore this is you know in the pandemic and they I don't know if they didn't check an ID I think they were checking they were checking vaccine cards or something and making us sanitize our hands before we go in and of course everybody was masked and they might have been even counting maybe that's why there was a line you could only have so many people in the bookstore and I was in this bookstore the other day looking for a book and then I was again I guess obvious and and I was just like wow I was only in here once before and it really it felt like like my memory of being in there was almost a little bit like a memory of something you would see on television you know or maybe the last of us is getting to me you know but like it was just like it was like wow like here we are we're all just in a bookstore together and there's a cafe right there and it's crowded in here and and again i don't want to dismiss people who are still feel who are still struggling in some way because of it and we can't just say the pandemic is over but i was just overwhelmed with this feeling of like my god normalcy it was a bit of a slow move but Like, my life is almost exactly like it was before. I'm so lucky and privileged to say that and just very grateful.

And I know this is, like, kind of a slightly weird place to take it and I guess maybe end this part of the conversation with. But, like, I've been seeing various sort of post-morts and not even in, like, crazy, you know, Joe Rogan, like, you know, fan threads or whatever. But, like, basically some publications that are saying, like, what were the things that the officials got right and the scientists got right and what are the things they got wrong about it, you know? Like, did we need to, like, wipe down our groceries? Well, no, we didn't. I saw someone pointing out that the whole, like, dirty pen, clean pen thing.

Yeah, that leaves us big.

Yeah, it's like a very, very unnecessary thing. It does not the virus does not travel on a pen. So we don't need to always take a pen and put it in a dirty pile or whatever. So there's a lot of stuff like that, that probably if we look back on it, it may or may not have even worked. But my takeaway from that is we were all doing our best, including the scientists, including the public officials of the public officials that aren't named like Rick Abbott or whatever. or ron de santis like the yes were there some things were there some hoops that we jumped through that turns out didn't really make any difference totally but does that mean that it's a conspiracy by big pharma to sell more um you know vaccine no does it mean that uh the vaccine is killing people um because you know some of the science you know was adjusted over time of course not i just don't understand the person who doesn't look at all this for what it was which was a bunch of people like a society that was totally freaked out and that was trying to do their best and was not getting all of it right and was doing some things that turned out to be unnecessary but all in a good faith effort to just keep us alive on this planet like i find it deeply bizarre and and sort of narcissistic for someone to try to cherry pick examples of where something was unnecessary and therefore we shouldn't have had to do any of it yeah and again like the mask wearing i mean even

if you have complicated feelings about big pharma or or what have you in the vaccine like again like i those are easily i believe dismissed as far as those concerns um are concerned um but when it came to the mask thing and then people like really trying to dig in and like find arguments against it like well our kids will never be able to socialize because we're now in a world where everybody wears masks and this is it like you're you're you're ruining my kid's life forever and And it's like, well, what happened was, and there's, first of all, there are cultures who were wearing masks. masks before the pandemic and we will there are people have asked me to wear a mask just to cover up yeah right well i've told you to stop drinking milk just do something but um i uh but anyway it's just like those were just such red herrings and so disingenuous you know i mean listen maybe those folks were freaking out too and i should extend some grace to that but it was like what it was was we all were in this together and i mean this is maybe more of a personal thing but i sort of feel like i know people who who both like almost fetishize the world war ii era and america coming together almost this idea of you want to make america great again i'm sure that that is kind of like the platonic ideal that these usually white people look at right and all that stuff

beating the right you're beating the germans and all that and not wearing nylons but drawing a line

up your leg or whatever i go with that one because it's the sexier one but um you know like that was a whole generation who who whose generation was defined in a way by the sacrifices that they made at home and abroad but at home and and small things yet the the people who maybe like look at that as the golden age of america were like you're gonna make me wear a mask in a grocery store how dare you you nazi you're just like what how did that how about we're gonna send you to

omaha beach you know you know the government is going to actually compel your physical body to go to europe and then jump out of one of those like amphibious transports and run up a beach where you may or may not survive that seems like a bigger imposition than could you wear a mask

on the bus right exactly but anyway we were at a nice place of gratitude and now you and i are just spinning into into shadow boxing with let's let's serve it let's turn the corner and and let's

also andrew fulfill the promise of last week when i said we were going to talk about starbucks Putting olive oil in some of their coffee products And I bring this up again because A, I'm interested in the topic And B, I know that you actually had to do a little research on this Because you were on the KUOW podcast Talking about this So this is where I'll just hand the reins over to you You obviously have a take, and I'm going to enjoy it

No, this story bedevils me I don't like this story very much Because a lot of the information came from this big CNN piece Which was based on an interview with Howard Schultz about this this new line of coffee that they're going to be kind of rolling out very slowly mostly I think in coffee shops in select coffee shops in Europe and in Italy and then I think maybe there's there's one line of these drinks that may be in Southern California at again very select shops where they're adding olive oil to the drinks and I read the piece it sort of sounded like howard schultz in this and this uh olive oil magnate in italy said that they tell me if i got this wrong you and i kind of talked about this very briefly on the show the other day because i was confused by this article it sort of sounded like they the way it was presented by schultz in the cnn piece is that they wanted to partner up in some way but they didn't know how and then a little bit later schultz had some coffee with olive oil in it and it's got health benefits so he went back to his olive oil magnate friend and said, what if we teamed up and put your olive oil in my coffee? Is that how you understood it? Because it sort of sounded like you had a different read on things.

I did, but, you know, I could have been, you know, just scanning the article or not, you know, reading closely enough because the sense that I had was, let me just read from this CNN article, which was written by Danielle Weiner-Brunner of CNN Business. Last year, Schultz met olive oil producer Tommaso Asaro, who introduced him to the practice of consuming a tablespoon of olive oil each day. Schultz learned more about the practice this summer while visiting Sicily and then picked up the habit himself. He wondered if he could combine it with his daily coffee routine. When we got together and started doing this ritual, I said to Tommaso, I know you think I'm going to be crazy, but have you ever thought of infusing a tablespoon of olive oil with Starbucks coffee? schultz uh currently starbucks interim ceo told cnn's poppy harlow so yeah that's kind of what i had yeah he thought it was a little strange asaro is the chairman of united olive oil through which starbucks was sourcing its olive oil but i didn't get the sense that they agreed that there had to be some way to sell more olive oil through starbucks i took it to be this guy tomaso was like and this is where i will do the accent hey you will have us a teaspoon of olive oil each a that's my howard schultz impression and then tomaso was like yes you can do that no um the sense i got from this was that the olive oil hey it's a me howard

can that be the show title it's a me howard yes it can be absolutely um i just got the idea that

he with this rich guy was hanging out with this different rich guy and then howard schultz got into this practice of having a tablespoon or

a teaspoon or whatever of olive oil every day for its supposed health benefits and then he got into it and then he started thinking like is there an angle where i can put this in the coffee and it's like it sounds like he told the tomaso guy yeah like it was howard schultz's idea that's the way

they're presenting it here i find that storyline to be bullshit i mean i mean yeah but i mean so it was because i think that some people were saying oh yeah this olive oil guy talked howard schultz and adding oil to his coffee and it's like no well according to the the story that they're laying out they had bonded over the idea of have a tablespoon of olive oil for health purposes and then a year later schultz is like wait what if we combine it and put yours and put your oil in my coffee and it's just like well no i'm sure that there were they were spreadsheets and they realize there is a money-making opportunity here maybe i'm just too cynical about these things um like who could ever not be cynical about howard schultz but um not me unless

i'm meeting him in madison park and making the decision that i want to fit in with him and his rich wife more than i want to speak truth to power about my beloved seattle supersonics but all of

that is to say so they're going to try this it's not totally unprecedented the way that they are the way that they're going to roll this out is it's not just in like a black drip coffee or an Americano. There's various like kind of specialty drinks that are kind of built around this and then in like kind of foamy drinks or in drinks with a lot of dairy and the olive oil adds a little texture to it. I will give so I you mentioned that I was on the KUW podcast Seattle now on friday and um first of all the host the fill-in host that day page browning i totally give her credit for pulling a luke burbank we got to this topic near the end of the segment and then she said i want to talk about my armpits is that we got in trouble for talking about yeah but no she didn't say that she said oh by the way i um i have my cup of coffee here and i have put a teaspoon or a tablespoon or whatever it is of olive oil in here yeah i've got olive oil in the other room and she's like so and also i was thinking like well that we've been talking for 30 minutes and that coffee has been sitting there so i don't know if it's the bed but she but she went for it but the thing is like that's not going to be like kind of what they're presenting not just dumping some olive oil and black coffee but like presenting these special drinks i the other guest on that podcast and this is the this was the good thing that i was on with a restaurant writer so he's um you know he's interested in food food yeah it's ton vin great guy um and he didn't realize that he had interviewed me before for for a story about um that never happened he

absolutely remembered no he just had to he had to alpha you i don't know if we ever talked about

that on the show but i did end up talking to the seattle times because they were considering maybe writing a story about that that uh chef i almost said celebrity chef i don't know if that's fair But that chef who was here in Seattle, who took a bunch of orders for Thanksgiving meals and never delivered them, I heard that he's been up to all kinds of shenanigans since then. But anyway, all of that is to say, Tan, during the conversation we had last Friday, mentioned that he's like, one thing to keep in mind here is Americans think of olive oil as one thing where it's kind of different in Italy. Like there are going to be more like I don't know if he said the kind of floral or like almost fruity accents to oil over there. like we're pretty much used to our standard olive oil over here unless we really really pay out the nose for it and so not only will the coffee drinks be a little bit different but the olive oil being used will probably have certain notes that we aren't familiar with yeah and the person writing

the article I guess taste tested these three different drinks that involved it and I have to give them credit they sort of said the first first one was pretty good the second one they kind of couldn't even taste it and then the third one it was not good yeah so it wasn't like it was sort of part puff piece but then also you know it wasn't like and all three were the most delicious coffee i'd ever had and the thing about this that intrigued me and i guess this it comes down to how much do we believe the mythology that starbucks is creating around the creation of these drinks but if it is true that this literally was just a thing that howard schultz got on because he's like you know i've heard like bulletproof coffee or these other things where it's like you put a scoop of butter in your coffee it's kind of a whole thing right now are you following any of this no there's just like you know all kinds of trends around how you take your coffee and also like what you know the best way for it to fuel you throughout the day and and like there's just there's this there's this thing called bulletproof coffee which is like i think you put butter in it and stuff so this just feels like it's sort of adjacent to that but if it's true that this really came about because howard schultz himself was just like got into this habit this trend of like having a spoonful of olive oil every day and then he like calls up hq and is like okay we're doing it we need to start like We're going to have to like, you know, think about just the implication of that to create three new drinks on their menu, just what the lift is. And also just from like a, you know, do they have to get different kinds of cups? They have to buy a bunch of olive oil. They have to train people how to do it. Like, it seems if it's true that he just wanted to do this, I think it's an interesting it'll be interesting to see if it works. Like usually if you add a menu item to some massive company like Starbucks, the amount of market research that you've done, I presume, is just intense. Like you're really trying to figure out like what do people want to eat and then we will start making that thing or making that drink. It's very rare in this day and age that something gets created like this just because the owner was like or the CEO was like, we should do that. It's a good idea. Do you think it's in any way possible that this literally was just because Howard Schultz is into this shit or do you think that's all a convenient narrative and that they had actually done a bunch of research and found out that people wanted to start putting olive oil in their coffee?

I was going to say, the story as it's laid out here, like I said before, just seems too convenient, too cute, too bullshitty for me. But the only thing that sort of supports the narrative is it doesn't seem at all like a slam dunk moneymaker. It seems risky and daring and not for the American palate.

It smells like one guy's bad idea.

Yeah. And that is the one thing that kind of maybe I need to back off my cynicism a little bit. Again, I don't think there's any harm in being cynical about, you know, about the Starbucks and what its motivations are or whatever. Its motivations is to make money and to, you know, not let its workers unionize. um never forget so you know like i i don't want to bend over backwards to to to believe his narrative but the thing is it's not like hey well we're trying this new thing where we're adding this other kind of sugary flavor to something that is big in other countries but it would appeal to the mass american palate because it doesn't sound like this is this is another thing that would almost be like sort of training the american palate like hey go with me on this you know this feels more like something that like hey you heard about your your friend who lives in Greenwich Village and they go to a coffee shop where they put oil in the coffee and hey you got to try this thing and then maybe you go back home to Seattle and you're telling people about it or something you know what I mean it doesn't seem like the type of thing that is just kind of like you know what's going to make this multi-billion dollar company richer putting olive oil in coffee because

americans are going to lap that up right and that is why i i think that the story that this is just howard schultz's dumb idea might be true and it would be spectacular and great and karmic reward for my beloved sonics if this just like cost starbucks a cool two hundred million dollars of like fail like if if it's like the if it's the like you know crystal pepsi of of coffee tries Like if years from now we're like, oh, and remember when Starbucks was putting frigging olive oil in the coffee because Howard Schultz thought that was a good idea and there was like a huge failure? I would love him to fail spectacularly and publicly with this.

By the way, it seems inevitable that Seattle is going to get a basketball team again, right? What do you put it at? How many years do you think before your ass is in a seat at Climate Pledge Arena watching the new Supersonics play?

three years uh oh god no five much well here's what i'm going off of i had a conversation once i was at um mo pop i think it was an event at the museum of pop culture formerly uh the uh experience music project and i was chatting with a very nice fellow and sonics came up for some reason maybe because where we were and i said we're gonna get a team i assume right and he goes yeah i don't think that's going to happen and he goes i'm not trying to say that to be you know negative it just doesn't seem like it's just probably not going to happen and i said something to the effect of where do you get that from and he goes i'm the general manager of the portland trailblazers and so and he seemed like a nice guy and he also seemed like he was not like you know trying to big dog me he was like friend to friend being like yeah i got bad news on that one and so i've taken that to mean it's probably not going to happen now maybe how long ago is that

because you mentioned that the other day on the show and i forgot to ask like when when was that

was that like in the past year it would have probably no no no no few years ago because i

there seems to be a lot of heat now i just keep on heat haha um i keep on hearing that it's like almost inevitable that they want to expand into vegas and if they're going to expand into vegas then they're going to want to expand into Seattle, too.

You know, if...

So I'm sure things could change. And also, I mean, L.A., when we're talking about now football is a different sport. But the thing with it was the weirdest thing that for the longest time, L.A. didn't have any NFL team because it's a big market. And after like, you know, five, 10 years go by with no teams, then the rumor starts to be, oh, the NFL doesn't want a team in L.A. because it gives them leverage in every other city because every owner can be like, well, if you don't build me the new stadium, I'll just go to L.A. Like, it's useful for a pro sports league to have one major city that doesn't have its team because it can always use that. And I guess I've started to think maybe that's what Seattle's purpose is for the NBA. But then again, L.A. has two football teams now. So do they have two still? They have the Rams. Yeah, the Chargers. And they have the Chargers and the Rams. So I guess my point is I don't know. I don't feel very confident about it. But I'm also not living in Seattle. I'm not, like, listening to local sports radio all the time. So you're probably more up on it than I am. It seems like it would make a lot of sense to put a team in Seattle, a place that historically supported an NBA team quite well up until like they basically had an ownership group that was intentionally tanking. But before that, for many years, you couldn't get a ticket at old. Then it was called Key Arena. So it seems logical for them to put a team there. Then my question for myself is, will I re-embrace that team? Like, will I will I will it be like it was when I was a 15 year old kid and like I lived for the Seattle Supersonics, like was obsessed with Sean Kemp and like would you don't I mean, like it was it was maybe the biggest sport for me, even bigger than Seahawks and Mariners. If they get a team Which I assume they'll have to call them the Sonics Like we would not accept anything else If there's a new Seattle Supersonics team or Seattle Sonics team There will it feel like it did for me 30 years ago or will There be some you know will something have changed Where I just I'm aware they're doing Their thing I'm thinking generally good thoughts for them But I'm not like watching every game or listening To it or checking it on my phone I don't know I don't know how it'll feel I mean I'd Like to have the I'd like to find Out you know I'd like them to get us a team so that i can find out if i still love seattle sonics basketball um so that's not really an answer to your question other than i would be surprised if it's in the next three years that

would be great i'd be pleasantly surprised yeah i don't know i don't know where i'm getting that like you even say like i don't even know if i did hear that locally i don't know what i'm basing this on i just sort of feel like it's just sort of in the air but um uh what was i gonna oh yeah i think that your connection to if if there were a new team i think your connection to it would be somewhat predicated on the the involvement of the people around you right like if your social circle if there's somebody that you're like the only reason I still think one of the only reasons that I watch any football now is because when I moved to Seattle I got in with you and Durs and a bunch of people who loved football like I watched football I was you know I watched some important Patriots games when I was living in New England but like I never I never set a timer to to like oh I got to wake up because football's on today you know like I like I do during football season now and the only reason I got into it or a big reason was because the people around me were really into the Seahawks and the Seahawks got me back into the Browns etc and so you know if you have if our fun-loving criminals chain is really hugely into it or if you know people in your life and Portland are hugely into it, you probably will as well. Very quickly, speaking of our sports chain, can you do me a favor? Don't do this on the text chain, but can you just text DERS, our pal DERS, directly? Don't copy anybody else on it. Don't copy me and don't mention that I told you to do this, but just tell him to start dominating the zone. I've been doing that lately. That's a term that, like, I mean, it's thrown around in baseball a lot, but it's something the Mariners really latched onto a couple of years ago. Well, we just got to dominate the zone. That's our key. We always dominate the zone, both in pitching and hitting. And so my new thing is I just hit Andy up every now and then, Durs. I just sent him a text. I'm just like, Andy, I feel like you're not dominating the zone today. Could you really dominate the zone? So if you don't mind, just get on that bandwagon. Just hit him up randomly throughout the day, maybe middle of the night. I just texted him.

Hey, man, just a daily reminder to dominate the zone today. Thank you. Let's just keep doing it. So we'll see what his response is.

Yes, great.

here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female no man it's not from

a female all right emails or vmails i'm really worried that you're not dominating the zone

um let me let me play a voicemail uh this is a a little bit of a stem winder from uh listener lauren in florida this is in regards and i think lauren does a good job of setting this up

But we were talking last week about this phenomenon of people driving their cars into 7-Elevens, like into 7-Elevens, and sometimes on accident. Yeah, it happens kind of a lot. Yes, and sometimes on purpose because sometimes people are doing that as a way of getting into the store and then holding it up and stealing from the store. So take a listen to this story from Lauren.

Hey, guys. this listener, Lauren in Jacksonville, and y'all are talking about people who drive their cars in the front of a 7-Eleven, and then the issue of ram raiding came up, and when I was living in Dallas, my ex-boyfriend, who has been my boyfriend, had a work truck. It was like an F-250. It was this huge truck to haul, like, landscaping equipment. and he did not own this truck and he parked it outside of the condo that he owned that I was living in as well just kind of, you know, in a parking lot that was not gated but, you know, relatively private and woke up one night to a phone call from the police saying that the truck had been stolen and rammed into a 7-Eleven so that they could knock over the ATM. And I had to drive him over and pick up the truck. And then a week later, it happened again. Same truck, same 7-Eleven. And so after that, we had to actually keep his truck at a storage unit, like in their parking lot behind the gate. And I'd have to drive him there in the mornings on my way to work to pick up his work truck because they didn't trust him to keep it at our house and with good reason. Incidentally, my car was also stolen from the same parking lot. The Honda Civic that I got from my grandfather had been hit and I never got it back again. Interestingly, my ex-boyfriend, same one, studied under George Thoma. He was a turf grass scientist. So it's been a whole week

of him strange uh power out george thoma the uh what was his nickname again the sod father

the sod father yes it's so great the duchess of dirt no the doyanne of dirt what did they call they had another nickname as well wasn't there an npr commentator who was the doyanne of dirt a uh a um a gardening person back in the you and i heyday of listening to all things considered and hearing from cowboy poets and large animal veterinarians and the doyan of dirt and what have you does that ring a bell well baxter black i think was the he was the poet he was a cowboy

poet right and veterinarian yep he was also the large animal veterinarian yep yep yep and the i bet you there was i don't remember who that was i always say this this is not what lauren the point of lauren's story was me lamenting a certain kind of npr commentary but i really miss those like i really miss those just like completely out of nowhere andre kudrescu talking about some shit

or quetzal levine does that name quetzal levine that's the doyenne of dirt that's the reason i know that levine quetzal quetzal levine the doyenne of dirt and she would go on with it looks like maybe um scott simon here in 2000 no that would have been before scott's time uh right and weekend edition saturday anyway yeah that that was that era of of uh npr i love that yeah i want to go back to that era by the way one thing i should note um about lauren's voicemail is it was not approved by the dallas chamber of commerce like it just sounds like and then this car got stolen and driven through a store. And then this car got stolen and driven. And then my car got stolen. I love that car. Dallas. My grandpa's car. Make sure you lock the...

Dallas, bring the club.

Right, exactly. Dallas, we bring the club to you. That didn't make a lot of sense, but we'll go with it.

But I laughed.

Yeah, thank you. And that's what I needed today. Look, we made it through. My brain was dead. We had some good moments. We had some rough moments, but we got through it. And that's the important thing.

Yes, that's really, you know, Sometimes, sometimes we do the show because, well, it's 10 a.m. and we've got to do the show. Sometimes we're bursting with content and sometimes we're, you know, we're kind of we're sort of limping along. But but we get through it day in and day out somehow. And now I have to spend the rest of my day hiding in this house from the people who are doing real work outside. So if I go out there, I will be then it'll be like, hey, well, why don't you want to grab a shovel? You want to make yourself useful? I have to act like I'm in here doing important cogitating and preparing for live wire and such things.

I was going to say, I was going to ask you if when we say goodbye, if you're just going to like very casually reach over and hang.

up on me but actually keep the exact same position for the next couple of hours so and just talk to yourself just so it looks like you're doing work and you don't have to engage with real labor

yes i'm that's exactly and i mean who even knows right if this is even being recorded so as long as i keep leaning into this microphone yes and kind of pantomiming that this is still happening

i don't think anyone's going to mess with me so you could go with a garfield you could you know what that might that i almost might mitigate some of the expectations of you amongst the people who were at your house. Put up a poster of Garfield saying, I love work. I could watch people do it all day. I'm pretty sure I had a Garfield poster or a Garfield calendar or maybe even a puzzle that said that.

It's nature's way of saying, I don't want to do the work today. All right. That's going to do it for today's episode of the program. Thank you, everyone, for listening. We are going to be back here tomorrow though with more imaginary radio for you, so please do join us for that. In the meantime, have Have yourself a merry little Tuesday. Let your heart be bright. And we'll see you tomorrow. Please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all. That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works. Power out.