Muse

I frequently am behind cars that have bumper stickers or something on them that I wanted to tell you guys about and I, like, take pictures of. But then I don't send it because it's, like, weird to have a license plate on it. But I just have to tell you, the person in front of me, I don't know what it's called, but the thing around the license plate, so, like, the license plate holder, says, I'd rather be slamming the back of my dragon. I just needed to share that. I'm sorry. What? I've made a terrible mistake. The license plate cover thing or whatever does not say I'd rather be slamming the back of my dragon. It says I'd rather be slamming in the back of my Dragula, which somehow makes less sense to me. I don't understand, but I just wanted to correct myself. I'm sorry. okay well i googled the phrase because it was killing me and apparently there's a rob dombey song that says i slam in the back of my dragula so clearly this person is a rob dombey fan so that was it i'm so sorry for all these words now tbtl

I was just fixing to get me some grub Beans I love beans Big, fat, hot, juicy beans Don't get me going on beans Or I'll be jabbering away till the sun comes up

Alright, you guys like impressions? Here's that guy Bob from Bob's Burgers Hi, I'm Bob from Bob's Burgers How about that show Archer? You watch that show Archer? Here's that guy Archer Hi, I'm Archer from that show, Archer. Now, what if those guys met?

Could you crawl back out of my mind?

If you want to pick a fight with your body's sexual chi, it's just going to drive it inwards.

This party is going to be off of the hook.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL. The show just might be too beautiful to live.

You had no idea what it was.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

explaining how a show works means the show's already in trouble coming to you from the

hollywood broadcast center right here in portland oregon where we got a lot going on it's uh it's snowing outside no snow and more snow uh it's not sticking but it is snowing and then also there's some kind of power outage happening because not thankfully here in the broadcast center but the uh the easy bubbles gets very upset when the stop lights are flashing red, which is what's happening outside of my window right now. So something happened over there. But anyway, we are going to focus on this. Episode 3,896 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. I have got a couple of real audio gems from TikTok. Gonna be a sit-down comedian on Tiki-Taki. That I would like to play for you and my friend Andrew and just try to unpack how I feel about them. They're both There's a lot going on in both pieces of tape. We will play them for you coming up. We're calling it TikTok Tape Roundup. It's the new name of that segment that I just invented right now with my brain. Also, a listener thinks that I might have been conversing with an AI chatbot.

Does this sound like a musical robot?

when I was trying to return that jacket slash shirt the other day with that particular company. And I wonder, let's look back, let's look at the receipts and look back at the record and figure out if that maybe was the case. And then, speaking of receipts, I am, this is a terrible, terrible decision for me to talk about this on the show, to put this, as they say, outward facing. But I am really offended by something that somebody within the CBS travel department implied about me.

How dare you people even say that?

Like, it makes no sense to talk about it because, A, it's jeopardizing a different job that I have working on CBS television. And B, the fact that I'm offended, that very fact will offend some of our listeners Who love the thing that I'm offended about So anyway, stay tuned for that, coming up in a moment Also, we've got this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships Does he think of TBTL as the best part of his day?

Yes, he does

He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now Good morning, my friend Good morning, Luke, this is not a spoof I found your intro especially interesting today and I realized why because, and I'm not trying to put you on front street it's my fault for not noticing this

But I didn't get a rundown of what's coming up in the show today.

Wait, I sent it to you. It didn't come through?

I know that this happened earlier in the week or last week, and it was my fault. I accidentally deleted it while I was blasting out emails in the morning. But this time, I really don't think I received the rundown. But here's why I bring it up. Not to be awkward at the top of the show or to put you on Front Street.

Like I said, 10-07-TBTL-Wednesday-Plan. That's kind of late to send it. It didn't come through?

No, I haven't.

No, I haven't seen it, but my email has been being crazy, and again, I've cursed myself by oftentimes blaming my own, you know, sort of laziness on my email being weird, but sometimes my email actually is weird. I think today might be that day.

I am refreshing my email. Anyway, I do have it here after I refresh, so that might have been me. It might have been me all along, but here's the deal, and now I guess I have my answer is in your intro, you said several things. I was just sitting back being like, oh, that's interesting. And now I have a million questions for you, but I don't know when or where we're allowed to talk about them. For example, I would love, I mean, the idea that you were chatting with an AI chatbot makes so much sense. Can we jump right into that? Really?

See, I think the list, my knee jerk was if the listener is incorrect. But the fact that upon hearing it, you thought, oh, yeah, that actually checks out. That makes me think that listener Chris in Everett, Washington might be correct. Here's what he said. And just a little in case this is somebody's first day with the show. Hi, I'm Luke. That's Andrew. Hey. But I had a little bit of a kind of a situation with an online clothing retailer. I bought this, I guess you would call it a jacket, a chore coat off of Instagram. And when it showed up at my house, it was way bigger than I thought. I tend to wear a large in a lot of things. And I was swimming in it. It looked like two Olsen twins trying to sneak into an R-rated movie. It was way too big. And so I told the folks at the place, hey, I want to send this back. And the person mentioned, this person named Lauren, allegedly, mentioned that, oh, yeah, that was kind of a thing that happened. The production run was such that these came out a little big, and some people have noticed that. So, you know, go ahead and send it back. My issue was I didn't think they were going to pay for the shipping to send it back, which kind of irked me a little bit. And I had this whole sort of back and forth where I was explaining what I didn't like about the coat. and this person Lauren was saying actually it's not a mistake on our part it's within what we call the like a production variance or something meaning it is too big but it's not our fault because these are handmade or something and then later Lauren explained to me the way to wear the coat as in don't tuck it in and also you can pop the collar which is like my friend I've been doing that for a minute much to the chagrin of the CBS sound people who ask me every time when I'm getting mic'd up, are you leaving the caller up? And then I have to say, yeah, it's kind of my weird thing. Anyway, so that's all the backstory. And now listener Chris and Everett said, hey dummies, based on the interactions Luke described with the employee at Imperfect, that's actually the name of the company and also my experience, I'm 90% certain that he was interacting with a bot. The responses are just too scripted and matter of fact and weird, frankly, for that to be an actual human being. this company gives off some serious quote will provide top-notch service without having to pay people a wage or benefits end quote energy signed chris and everett what do you think andrew i have

limited experience talking to ai chatbots but slightly more than you because i signed up for that thing called chat gpt a while back um and now it's really blown up in the past few weeks um in in the media and it seems like every day there's some national headline about ai and um it's interesting because it is just another kind of search engine that grabs information that is somewhere on the internet but it's not like just spitting out wikipedia answers to you this is something i learned when i did a i think i mentioned this to you yesterday i did a tbtl newsletter where basically and this was real it wasn't a spoof i just asked a chatbot a bunch of questions about tbtl and it was really interesting how it uses language so it spits out results that are very conversational and also it's clearly reaching into much deeper depths of the internet like it must have been getting some of this information from like online reviews of our show and i'm assuming like apple podcast reviews and that type of thing like it was really interesting how it really keyed in on the community aspects of tbtl but it still answers in a somewhat wooden way it's a conversational way but a somewhat wooden way and right now you describing your interaction doesn't sound necessarily ai-ish but when you were reading it the other day and when you mentioned just now on the show like a listener thinks it could be a bot i'm like oh yeah like this sort of like language thing of saying and i don't know if you have in front of you now well i have it in front of me but well that's kind of the keen almost seems like i just thought i was talking to somebody british but it said was like yes i acknowledge x but yz and that was kind of what i was getting when i was talking about tbtl it was in this bot to you was saying yes this was within the the you know within the framework of sizes that we established because it is homemade like i feel like you could ask that question a bunch and it would kind of spit that same thing back out at you i'm not saying i'm 100 sold on this but i'm not 100 dismissive of it that's for dang sure and i'm sorry about the language oh the tape i'm gonna play from tiktok has got some real

swears in it so that's just the warm-up act as you were saying that andrew i was reading back to my through my interactions with this person lauren or this entity lauren and again i think i thought they were british but if i look at it through the lens of they're a bot it makes perfect sense and in fact the ways that i felt that they were being friendly but also kind of difficult is very bot-like because yes again high functioning bot yeah so high functioning that i didn't realize it was a bot if it is i want to get into the the sort of text of our interactions again but i have a question for you is it offensive if i ask lauren if they are a bot because i i've

had email half composed on the topic wow um does it matter if it's what was the question is it

insulting or is it yeah like so here's what i have hey lauren not to be weird but to settle a bet by the way i'm doing this podcast to settle a bet somebody bet me i wouldn't do 3896 episodes of a show with my buddy and uh i win uh but to settle a bet are you a person or a very effective bot that's not meant as an insult wow um if you were a human if you were a human and you got that email

how would you feel well i especially somebody in that job if that's a real person that is an insult i mean there's no getting around that it's an insult but this is also a company that i just think is you know i mean i'm not out there to like hurt people's feelings if they're working in the service industry or having to be customer facing or something like that but i also don't

feel like this company really is i feel like this company is right well i'm i'm okay with this company but i think chris in everett has actually really kind of picked up on something which is it's a it's a company that's based in san diego california and it's a kind of skater surfer brand and it seems very like hey whatever but my i have a feeling it's less hey whatever than it's giving in other words i would be unsurprised to find out that this is some kind of this ultimately is owned by clorox like it's some kind of global multinational that it's a subsidiary of that and because when i went to the about us they have they have a one brick and mortar store that's in san diego but what i didn't see on their website was like a guy named skyler who founded it you know what i mean like i expected a kind of like a bleach blonde from surfing guy named skyler who was like yeah man i was just like selling these imperfect shirts out of the back of my car at the beach in uh you know in san diego and uh and and then it just took off there isn't that person on the website so either they just haven't taken the time to invent that person or that person doesn't exist so i'm yeah i'm getting this feeling that it presents as this very kind of like instagramable like artisanal thing but actually maybe it's not which makes me feel less worried about offending

lauren so i did what any self-respecting podcaster would do in this situation in 2023 which is i opened up my chat bot and i asked it and how can you tell if a customer service representative is really an ai chat bot now it didn't answer in like kind of a friendly like human voice it actually just gave me kind of interesting results and here is what it says quoting directly here there are a few ways to tell if a customer representative is an ai chat bot number one and this is some somewhat long um but i'll try to hit the main points here number one instant responses ai chat bots are programmed to respond instantly to customer queries by the way they should actually

now that the word's out on that they should make them wait five minutes or something you know what i mean like if the like these things are eminently programmable and if it if if it responding immediately tells you it's a bot they should stop doing that like scheduling an email to your boss

after hours when really you wrote it in the middle of the day um do

So does that scan with your experience? Are you getting almost too quick of responses? Not instantaneous, but I would say pretty fast, like within maybe five to ten minutes. Number two, lack of human-like emotions. AI chatbots don't have emotions like humans, so their responses may sound robotic and lack empathy. I would say it kind of lacked empathy. It did, and again, it felt oddly dug in. That's the thing. Like it doesn't have any wiggle room. There's no negotiating with the robot.

And I think a human being who's working for kind of a small, you know, sort of mom and pop type operation would be like, this person is a customer. They're interacting with me. I don't need to keep correcting them on the origin of the collar. You know what I mean? Like things that just seem a little bit like a normal, a person would just be like, yeah, I'm going to give this random person Luke who I'm emailing with the W on this and just say the collar didn't work for them. I'm not going to go to great lengths to explain that it's based on this Japanese sort of idea, etc. By the way, speaking of my email being weird, I tried to send this email to Lauren slash possibly the bot, and I can't send any emails right now from this computer. So maybe that's better for all of us, but I am not able to currently right now ask if Lauren is a bot. But the more we talk about it, the more I think it's the case.

I think there's maybe a more creative Way to find out if it's a bot and that's why I think This list is interesting I mean I got Three more notes the list that the bot Gave you yeah because maybe you can actually Try to suss out like instead of saying Hey are you a bot you can maybe like Kind of send some more Emails is this like asking someone

In the Ku Klux Klan what How a racist is

Like in other words touring test For racist one well I don't know that

Was a weird example but I mean we're asking a bot to tell us what a bot is and is that going to like skew the information oh right no yeah like

actually turing test is the wrong word what is the no i think no i mean well turing test

definitely applies to this i mean it's very much the turing test and in fact it passed okay gotcha lauren passed and i didn't even occur to me that they might be a bot um there's a test in at the

beginning of blade runner that i often call the turing test and listeners are always like it's not bad and here is the Voight-Kampff test is a different thing that is in that

movie but also about figuring out something is human or robotic or

in the movie they're replicants I guess they're not technically robots so that's the difference so anyway now I'm getting really off track here so okay so those were two things kind of lack of human like emotions instant responses number three repetitive responses and this is something that I definitely saw I kind of I guess I gotta tell you this Luke I kind of got into it with a chat bot about who's funnier on tbtl you or me and the robot kind of kept giving answers as like you know i can't give you know subjective answers like that blah blah blah but then later on i'm like hey could you tell me some jokes to tell on the show and it said oh yeah jokes are a great way to engage listeners here are some silly jokes or whatever and i was like great i was like i have a joke for you which is uh where does the king keep his armies and it's like where and i said in the sleevies and said that's a great joke you should share that with your listeners and then i was like uh you told me before that you couldn't determine what's funny or not and therefore you couldn't tell me if i'm funnier than luke or not and now you're telling me that that joke about the king and his armies and the sleevies is funny like what's up with that it's like yeah it's true trust you now exactly and it even said it's like i'm sorry you know i'm a i'm a communication bot i said that to be encouraging but really i cannot judge whether or not that is funny take my response and i believe it's i'm moving a little slow this morning i was putting together some lockers last night it said please take that response just as an acknowledgement that you told a joke and i was like whoa that yeah that's my that's the usual response you're pretty good anyway that's kind of what what it i think like repetitive responses

that's when i know one of my marriages is kind of in its initial descent is when the person starts saying just know i'm acknowledging acknowledging making a joke acknowledge joke acknowledge i feel

Genevieve does have to do that sometimes just like I get real like Genevieve Genevieve did you not hear my joke she's like acknowledged move on I do feel like that is something that you saw in these emails repetitive responses or like just sort of restating something in a slightly different way limited responses chatbots are programmed to respond only to specific questions is number four and then inability to understand complex queries is number five and again all of that is kind of like staying within their very specific lane and I think this could be it luke i think you could have been talking to a robot i think than this i think chris and you

are right this is amazing so let me just i won't read all of them all of the interactions because it would be too much but just to kind of to to look at this through the possible lens of am i talking to an ai program i started by saying

Thank you.

Hey, I received a Shepard shirt, an indigo hickory stripe. Unfortunately, it doesn't fit the way I expected. I'd like to return it, please. The response. Hi, Luke. Hope you're keeping well, and thanks for your note. Glad to help you out here. Is the Shepard shirt too large? Are you hoping to size it down or up? Now, that right there feels like a sort of decision tree for Lauren the bot. Right? Yeah, yeah. Like, if then, it's like a real sort of if then proposition. If it is too large, then it will need to be, although I guess a proper if-then would be if it is too large, then it will need to be replaced with a smaller size. Whereas it's saying, is the shirt too large? Are you hoping for a larger shirt or a smaller shirt? Which is a little weird because that's not, you know, if the question is, is the shirt too large? Then the follow-up should be, are you looking for a smaller size? And then I said, thanks for the quick response, Andrew. uh-huh okay so five so my email to the company was friday march 3rd 3 13 p.m their response was 553 p.m so two hours it's a while if they're programming it to be on delay it's working because that's that's the reasonable amount of time right couple hours yeah i think so certainly and then i responded a company like 24 hours really right i mean i was yeah and and again this all played into me assuming that i'm talking to a human being i was just like i could picture lauren i could picture them like going through emails on a friday and then at 7 58 i respond i'm getting more drunk at this point it's a friday hey lauren thanks so much for the quick response it's just gibber it's just gibberish why is it why is it written in wingdings thanks so much for the quick response uh one question this sounds like a bit of a production error with the jackets coming out too large wouldn't the shipping be covered by imperfects the company um and then uh 8 38 p.m so one hour uh about one hour later this person responds this thing responds hi luke no problem keen to get things sorted for you i 100 at this point assumed i was talking to a british person who was living in san diego like i had a whole story for lauren's life she signed it cheerio yep she said pip pip cheerio no problem comma keen to get things sorted for you the sizing is not a defect from our factory there is a production tolerance of a certain amount that we expect when products are being made by hand it is par for the course in the apparel industry now that line kind of put me off a little bit because it felt a little bit like like a little a little um lauren splaney to me but if lauren is a bot it makes a lot more

sense one thing that i didn't realize and i mean you probably said this and even if you didn't it's obvious in the name imperfects i asked this chatbot i was trying to see if i get this chatbot to rat out it's chatbot friend that works over at imperfects um so i just said are you familiar with a clothing brand called Imperfects and it says, as an AI language model, I don't have personal experience with it or the ability to browse the internet like humans, but here's some general information. And it looks like it just went to grab the very basics of the company Imperfects, a clothing brand that sells items that have minor flaws such as stitching errors or fabric irregularities or being too large at discounted prices. And I do wonder if like Nope, not that one. Yeah, I was on that website. What are the discount? What would that be without the discount? But so I do wonder if it's not just because I kept on hearing, as you just read in that email, like, well, these things are handmade, so there's going to be some derivation. Is that the right word? There's going to be some some margins of error, not derivation. That's the wrong word. I'm embarrassed. I embarrass the show. But I didn't realize that they're also kind of saying, hey, these clothes have minor flaws, which is why we sell them under the brand Imperfects.

Well, it sounds like they're – my sense is it's – I guess you're right. I guess maybe – I guess I hadn't thought of that either, is that the name is saying – not that they're going and buying clothes that someone else made that had a mistake in them, and they're reselling them. That would be one kind of business model. They're saying, hey, these are not going to be the same because we're going to hand make them or have someone hand make them, and there's going to be some, as they say, production tolerance around it. So I guess I should have known from the name that that's how they're positioning things. As if your mother were to make you a shirt or a jacket, you wouldn't expect it to be absolutely perfect because a human being made it.

So I guess I guess that's I should have realized that just from interacting with the company.

My guess is we will use this tool on the show more and more in the coming years, assuming that we have years. No. Before I close the tab, though, is there anything you wanted me to ask the chat bot? Is Lauren at Imperfects a bot? This is going to be the most frustrating answer. As a language bot, I will not be able to assess whether or not blah, blah, blah. Go ahead.

I do like I'll tell you this, though. I do appreciate that they've programmed ChatGPT to know It's limitations and to be very upfront about that Like I wish more people had that You know what I mean You're talking to someone and they don't know what they're talking about But they're trying to kind of fake it till they make it I would rather and I would like to Also apply this in my own life I would rather just be like you know what As a human being of 46 years old who's had the experience I've had I don't know the answer to that And I'm not even going to try

Unfortunately this spit out the same I didn't even run into this exact issue when I was doing this for the newsletter. It spit out the very, very same sentence saying to start things off, saying as an AI language model, I don't have access to real time information or the ability to browse the Internet. So I don't know. However, if you are in a conversation with Lauren through a chat interface, there are a few things you can do to determine whether you're talking to a chat bot. for example you can ask open-ended questions that require more than a simple yes or no answer to see if responses are human-like you can also try to ask personal questions or engage in small talk to see if the responses indicate emotional intelligence or empathy which may suggest a human ultimately it's important to remember that chatbots are becoming more sophisticated and human-like in their interactions so it may not always be easy to tell the difference and that's coming from a

probe it what if i ask lauren how do you like san diego is and lauren is a human and thinks i'm

hitting on them that is the thing right like because it says hey ask a personal question then you're like well also what if i don't what if maybe i don't ask a personal hey lauren what

turns you on in a man hey lauren do you like pina coladas long walks on the beach what's your thoughts on getting caught in the rain i am going to i i am actually when this galdang software so my my email on this computer andrew that i'm sitting in front of here in the room my email doesn't work but if i were to open up my my laptop my macbook air that i just sort of carry around the apartment with me the email works on that computer which is ridiculous because this is all cloud-based you know it doesn't make there should be no reason that the physical machinery has any impact on it but that's the world we live in anyway when i go out to my other computer i will email lauren something something not too creepy to try to assess if this is a person or a bot and i will report on it tomorrow can you stop that email you already asked or that you already yes it's in my outbot well yeah i can you can't you don't

like that one well if you're going to follow up with a more subtle approach let's let's put the jackhammer away for a moment and go back to the chisel so it's a jackhammer of me saying are you

a person or a very effective bot yeah that's the jack how do i okay so then well then okay so then my question is how do i ask how do i get the information i need in a less jackhammery approach is it literally asking lauren a personal question or how would you go about this okay let me think

So I just asked the chat bot what it would write. And it says, start with, hey, hermano. No, I didn't do that. I don't have an answer to that question because I am now getting really worried about coming off as creepy to anybody. Like on the other end of this thing, like any employee, if it is a real person, like no joke, like kind of don't like the idea of getting into any kind of like even even quasi harassment. You know what I mean? They got a job to do. which is my lane by the way quasi harassment i've been described as a quasi yeah that's why we had to take that extra quasi hr training at work it's very vague it really was not that you're doing

this or even that it's a hundred percent not cool but if you were to do it it would be not a hundred

percent cool the answer to everything was you're not going to get fired for that but knock it off that's how that training went um but anyway yeah i don't know i need to think about that a little bit more i mean it would be nice to maybe ask another professional question that is specific and uh but again like anything personal like like this chatbot suggested i think gets into some pretty weird territory that if this is a real person they shouldn't have to deal with so i don't know but i do think that if you say so what you can agree on is that my first email is a

jackhammer but you have no useful advice about how well i thought you were suggesting and i

thought you were saying later on you're going to go to your computer that You works i know but i didn't know their email yes that's my intention but i don't know what to do yeah okay but you don't want them to get two that's what i'm saying you don't want to get the yeah they open up their email are you a robot and then another one that says hey how's san diego

that would be so embarrassing for lauren to see the iterative process like just like word substitutions me trying to downgrade the creepiness or the jackhammery factor yeah that that would be have you ever done that i feel like i've probably done that in my life where i've sent an email not realizing i sent it and then i've sent the like less aggressive version which very clearly indicates to the person that the first one i sent was in haste i don't think i've had

that exact experience but like i'm getting real tense just even thinking about andrew when we come

back from the break i literally did that this morning regarding the cbs situation and i will read you the email and then i will email it to lauren and ask her as a chat bot would this offend you um because i'm getting i'm getting a bad feeling right now thinking about the email that i sent like two hours ago i hate this do you not want me to read it no i do i mean i love it content but it's good content but it makes you feel physically unwell i mean i love that it's not me

uh in this situation i'll put it that way but like no i'm having a visceral a visceral reaction to i am too and i'm the one who sent the email but like i just mean i hate this feeling that that i'm i'm sorry that you're in this situation and also like oh like just an email sent that wasn't

supposed to go is oh no such a bad feeling i mean it shouldn't have gone but i hit send i actively sent the email but i probably shouldn't have but i don't know i i want to explain the story to you when we come back and then i want to get your uh opinion on it because i i don't know if i'm I don't think it was wildly out of line of me, but it was definitely not super professional. So anyway, point is, we're fired from APM. OK, well, it was inevitable. All right. Back with more in a moment.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattle, dazzle.

Let's thank some dazzling donors. These wonderful, generous folks are making TBTL possible on this. So Wednesday, March the 8th, 2023, with their donations. Folks like Dave and Shelly Samut of Woodland, California. Beautiful Woodland, California. My dad lived in Woodland Hills, California when he was young. And I'm wondering if those are the hills that are surrounding Woodland or if they're totally unrelated. if the Woodland Hills area is not related to Woodland.

Yeah. Do you think there are any trees in Woodland? No. Do you think there are any hills in Woodland Hills?

I don't think so. That's how they do it in California. They're so sarcastic there. They just love to zig when other people would zag. Dave and Shelly say, Ahoy, hoy, Luke and Andrew. It's been a fun year for us continuing to listen to. TBTLs we're either driving to and from are working on our home in the mountains. Oh, yes. Okay, I know this, Dave and Shelly. They sent some photos in of this place that they're building up in Calaveras County. Speaking of hills and mountains. And I have to say, it looks amazing. Wow. That sounds like a life for you. It sure does. As soon as I get done paying people to build this other place, I'm going to Calaveras County, California, and building a house right next to Dave and Shelly. Hopefully we will have it done by the time TBTL heads out for another road trip As we could offer a huge deck With a view And your own private suite, Andrew Wow

How many people can they put up Do you think? You, me, and Lauren

I met someone by the way

The good thing about Lauren is

I said are you a human and she was like I am, what's your number?

I'm human and I'm ready to Mewman is not what that chatbot said I'm not a bot

and let's get hot yours was better than mine yours was better than mine honestly I stand by yours I think yours was better it was imperfect like the clothing you know what it was within the production tolerance of jokes you know what Luke this batch of jokes leans a little bit bad

but it is within the production

but we are not going to pay for shipping You're not allowed to ship these jokes back on us. We're enjoying listening to the progress on the new studio and the free labor at the Eagles Club. Oh, you know what, Andrew? Let me do this. Let me finish up the message from Dave and Shelly, and then I have an Eagles-related question for you. Takes me back to my old Eagles days. With my best buddies, keep up the good work and hoping for a fan meetup soon. Signed, Dave and Shelly Samut. Thank you, Dave and Shelly. That's awesome. Appreciate you. We would not be able to do this without you. And I don't know if Andrew's coming, but I will 100% stop by the cabin. Deck, private suite, I'm in.

Yeah, and congratulations on all that, by the way, too.

Yeah, and if you know someone, if you've got a good contractor in Calaveras County, do they travel up to southern Washington? now my question to you is how did the stain the oil stain on the steps at the eagles that you went and personally cleaned how did it all come out now that you've been back there it looks good

genevieve i think it was genevieve it was so i was there this weekend and just a quick little a quick little background on this for the for the longest time at the club that we belong to this eagles area in lake city um there's a set of stairs that you see right as you kind of walk in you have to walk up this small set of stairs and um it's been really gross because somebody spilled something that was kind of a big mess and this has been there for years very oily i think and very oily i think we later learned that it was like they called it the pot roast stain in that we didn't know but all i knew was i was walking up these stairs and just thinking this is such a gross stain and this is the first thing visitors see when they come to visit the eagles and we were having like a big kind of 125th birthday bash or something. This is a few weeks ago. And I was like, we should just try to scrub that stain out. So I volunteered to at least give it a shot. And I went over there with various cleaning supplies, including brushes and extraction vacuum cleaners and hoo-ha's and doodah's. And I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. And I actually started to see some real progress. But then the problem is once the stairs dried, and again, And this is like a very thin, like kind of industrial carpeting, if you can picture that, like high traffic carpeting. But I did like scrub it with a scrub brush and a little bit of water. By the time it all dried the next day, it looked like I almost highlighted the stain because the area around it was so clean. Some of the stain did come up, but the area area and the area area. And it really especially didn't photograph well. When I was trying to take before and after pictures, the phone just auto corrected in this way that it really, again, highlighted that that area around the stain and how it was like this, this flaw in the middle of like a now a clean patch. But I also had a feeling like all we need is a couple of weekends of some people walking up and down these stairs. And I mean, I hate to hate to clean dirt with dirt, but it's at least going to like level everything off a little bit on spotless. It is now don't clean. What is it? Iron sharpens iron. Dirt cleans dirt. Like iron sharpens iron. Love it. Dirt cleans dirt. But anyway, Vives and I were visiting there this weekend, and I had actually a really great night with a bunch of friends and friends of TBTL on Friday, in fact. But I was going up the stairs and wasn't even really paying attention, and Genevieve said, look, and again, this has been like, I don't know, two months later. She's like, look, there is no arguing that that is so much better than it was when we were, you know, before you took a brush to it. And it's true. Like, I'm not trying to pat myself on the back, but it's better.

Nice. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah. The main question I was wondering about was if the dirt had cleaned the dirt, if the kind of like, you know, racing stripe down the stairs of cleanliness had then been sort of had been patinaed over so that it kind of looks normal again. Nice. Well, if I ever actually come back there And sign up for my You know, my membership

Well, you've signed up, you've paid the money You just gotta do the silly little ceremony I'm sorry to call it silly I'm not supposed to do that as a proud member Of the Eagles But I find most ceremonies to be silly

I'm, yeah, and again, I'm happy to do it It just, it has to be on a kind of A random Thursday When I'm in Seattle, which funnily enough I will be in Seattle a Wednesday I guess I could go up there tonight And then just be there tomorrow I don't know It's not an ideal night of the week For me to be in Seattle But I will make it happen Because again all of my friends Pretty much all of my dearest friends in the world Is Tune a member yet? No Other than Tune all of my dearest friends in the world Are members of this area So I need to get this thing fully Fully figured out

Can I tell you I know that we have another Dazzling donor to thank This last Friday at the Eagles was really kind of, it was almost idyllic in the way that it had a touch of rolling thunder to it, even though we didn't go to other locations, which I know is the kind of definition of rolling thunder. But Vives and I met up with some friends at the Eagles, some folks who hadn't even been there before Uber Jen wanted to check it out. So we were hanging out with Uber Jen and her partner and just.

heaven like you know just we're just like oh yeah and then uh and then some other friends showed up and it was like gonna be just like a chill like hey let's catch up haven't seen you since before the pandemic and that's definitely how things started but then we you know like as one hopes you get more and more hop-ons the next thing you know we got the big table full of friends some who know each other some are meeting for the first time next thing you know Genevieve's pretty tuned up and of course you know she is now the designated KJ yeah I was gonna ask the Eagles but it was not a it was not a karaoke night it was a pretty slow night at the eagles in fact the um in fact the um well gator boy had just finished his set uh gator boy is a what do you call like uh he's a dj that spins like um zydeco music oh sure sure so uh zydeco so gator boy was spinning zydeco music and there was a little dance party up there until like 9 30 we didn't really get involved with that But then I don't see you as a real Zydeco dancing person. But now it's probably like 11 o'clock or something. The upstairs, like kind of the dance floor area and everything is kind of cleared out. Somebody's like, do you want to go play some darts? And then somebody, I mean, it was like one of those things where you work for a company and you have the keys to that company. And then one night you get a little bit tuned up and you're like, hey, I have the keys to the company.

it's like when i was a kid and we had one friend who had keys to the gym the basketball oh wow okay yeah and we were all like into basketball and it'd be like oh man does so and so have the keys like do they have the keys right now because we would go like at like one in the morning and play pickup

basketball that's so that is so wholesome though that's so awesome i love it as i literally when i was in high school i was sneaking around gyms that were like to not open at the time to smoke cigarettes during seventh period i'm not joking like i got caught the one time and i kind of wiggled my way off of that hook too in a lot of ways but my parents never found out about that one but oh shit in fact if i'm being totally honest with you you changed the cigarette into an a plus on the note that they sent you home with yeah that was a different thing i shouldn't i'm admitting too much bad behavior on this show lately but you know what i'm just remembering the time we me and a buddy and i can't remember who it was we got busted we had just smoked a joint in this old gym that nobody was using during that like it was a gym had one of those rubber floors to it I went to a school that had like several gyms it was kind of on this campus and there's this one that was very rarely used and so me and my buddy had a period off that was the I'm not even kidding

that was the kind of floor we had at the same gym it was not hardwood they must have sold a lot of that somebody had some rubber flooring system that they were selling to schools in probably

the mid 80s or something and i remember again this is just bad boy talk my apologies to anybody in my family who hears this i am a good boy but i if you'd like a bleeped version of the show go to this american life dot net um but we we rolled a joint and smoked a joint in like the locker room of this very little used gym and we thought we're off the hook and then i think afterwards we're just smoking a couple of cigarettes and then the like the classic gym teacher and i don't think i ever had this teacher for gym but i think he knew the other guy i was with and this is like a tall white gym teacher with a crew cut and the mustache luke the shorts and the mustache this would have been like 1993 or 4 but he looked like straight out of a textbook and i feel like he knew he might have been even the coach or teacher of the kid i was with but the thing is when i said i promise

So he called that kid by his last name.

And never have I been so quick to admit to smoking a cigarette on school property. I remember that's how I got out of it. It's like we felt like we dodged a bullet because all he knew is. Because you didn't admit to the joint. Exactly. We were just smoking cigarettes. I was like, yes, please lock me up. If you knew about the ketamine, you would have been in huge trouble. I know. All of that is to say, what was I talking about? Oh, it was like that vibe when Genevieve had this drunken idea. She's like, wait a second. We can just roll out the karaoke situation now. So she goes upstairs. They start blasting it way too loud. All of us in the lounge area.

Kamara Kev probably wasn't into that idea, was he?

Yeah, right. Next thing you know, I don't know. It was a long drunken night for me, but Genevieve said, I eventually said to her, I thought you had a bad drunken idea, but you had a great drunken idea. And that's basically the night ended up being wild. We had a dog running around We had people flopped on the floor

Singing, it was great That's amazing, god I'm jealous That sounds like kind of a perfect Friday or Saturday night Brought to you by Dave and Shelley Samut, thank you, and also Maestro

On your mark Get set Now ready Go

Also brought to you by our good friend Roald Palamaria of North Bend, Washington. Thanks, Roald. Appreciate you. I'm pen pals with Roald.

i'm so interested in the grocery store industry so it comes up on the show a lot rold will write in sometimes i just reach out with my questions rold what is the i don't this is i don't think

this is rold's department but i'm wondering what the uh what they would call maybe shrinkage or the loss is on all of the like um automated or self-checkout things ah interesting because like i'm gonna be honest with you if i'm putting an onion in and it's organic i might put it in as a non-organic onion that might happen interesting wow i'm not intentionally but if the non-organic is the first thing that comes up i'm going with it the self-checkout pardon me failed me the other

day because i bought one of those kind of pre-assembled little packages of berries that you can get in the produce section if you're feeling lazy and you don't want to get a bunch of strawberries a bunch of blackberries and blueberries and mix it all up oh i see so it's kind of pre-made yeah it's like mixed berries little package of them but because they're like assembled by people at the grocery store and then slapped with a sticker whoever slapped the sticker on the round bottom of this thing did not do a very good job so like the the code that i needed to scan was wrinkled this is such a bad story in the middle of a dazzling donor and anyway so it's relevant to rold's interests so i'm scanning i'm like and i'm also trying to be really fast because there was a long line and there's one thing and you know this about me luke is even if i'm taking a little bit longer than you want me to at a self-checkout you know that i'm showing hustle man there's nothing i hate more than waiting in that line and seeing people up there just lollygagging like there's no line in the world like i am going to show you hustle if i'm bagging my own bags up there and so i was doing that and this one thing wouldn't scan and i'm conscious of the line behind me and i was like i could just throw this in my bag but i won't and so i paid for everything and i carried the the fruit back to the produce section dropped it off left it at the grocery store you went fruitless i went fruitless then i got it the next week i would have stolen

that i would have robbed them stupid no because i'd be like i'm trying to be a good customer here and not hold up the self-checkout line and i've tried my darndest to scan this and it's not working and therefore it's free mixed berries for me that would have been my calculation not for me not for this boy scout you know rold appreciates that as a person who works in the industry rold says hi friendos i'd like to take this opportunity as a grocery worker to remind everyone to be kind and patient with the retail and service industry workers you come in contact with but if we can't scan the berries it's cool to steal them how did rold know that wow how how did he put this in his message so many months ago uh rold says we are still overworked and understaffed this has been a rough couple of years for everyone involved i will we talked about this a lot during the kind of height of the pandemic but there were so many jobs during the pandemic that were elevated in their importance to us not i mean obviously somebody working in a grocery store that's always important we need food but like it was like you had first responders you know medical Personnel and the people Keeping the food and other things in the Store that we need to survive like Folks working in that industry moved Right to the top of the list of people Who are critical to our way of life

During the pandemic yes and while we as A society tried to make at least an outward Effort towards celebrating the Frontline workers as They deserved and I'm sure that they also Received a great deal of backlash

Most of them except for the nurses protesting Getting the vaccine outside of OHSU

but the rest of it putting that aside but um the uh what i was going to say was like the grocery workers we heard horror stories from our listeners who work in the industry just saying that like people are screaming at me like we got a voicemail from somebody who works at costco i think and saying like um people were screaming at me they were saying we know that you're hiding more fill in the blank in the back it's like we're not hiding why would we be hiding products from you

guys like we're not in the business of selling things here right this is hiding yeah yeah gosh Anyway, Roald says, after 22 years in management, I decided to step down for my own mental and emotional health. It was the best decision for me and my family. Yeah. Congrats, Roald, on the change of pace. Every year you play a drop. Oh, okay. Oh, I should have flagged this. Could you be so kind to do it again? Now, Andrew, do you have this message in front of you?

Yeah, we need drops.

What I'm going to do, here's what I'm going to do. I have this program that I use called Farago or Farajo that has a bunch of drops. It's kind of like, what would you call it? It's like tiles that I click on, and it plays the audio. It's like a soundboard, like a digital soundboard. Kind of a soundboard, yeah, exactly. It's a little easier than scrolling through Apple Music or whatever it is these days. But there are more drops than I use for a typical.

show so i have the top line of drops these are the drops i started today's program with it was

no idea what it was and then this one explaining how a show works means the show's already in trouble and then also this no snow and more snow which it's by the way stop snowing of course we

also have let the fun begin little tommy shane and then um the tick tock uh for forward promotion gonna be a sit down comedian on ticky tocky by the way these are not the drops for rolled's children i'm just i'm setting it up so there's this top line of drops but then there's like One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. There's seven more rows of drops. So I'm going to choose four drops from what I have already on this screen. So can you read a name of one of Rold's children, and then I'm just going to play a drop that I have here?

Yeah, and consider the ages here, too. Val is two years old and needs a drop.

You're a gross person.

Probably true. I mean, let's be honest. We all are.

Have you seen what was in Val's diaper not long ago?

Audrey is nine years old. Okay, let's see. Because I sit with it. That's loud.

I've also not pre-balanced. You know what's funny? You really notice the difference between the drops that you and I go through and make sure the level is okay. Yeah. And then the rest of them.

I think it'll get smashed down in post. Okay, we have another drop need here. Asher is 13. Oh, sure. Okay. See, your money goes a long way with that drop, Asher. Yeah. Good job. And then finally, Hayden. My volume, you got the most valuable drop. Hayden is 15 years old, and this will round it out. 15 years old. You've got to be kidding me. Do you have You've Got to Be Kidding Me? 15, yeah. Oh, here we go. This is better. Jalapeno. Jalapeno. Jalapeno.

Nice. That drop made me happy. By the way, the intro tape today, Andrew, made me so happy. That voicemail from the listener and then just the various drops I was laughing all the way home with that

Yeah, I want to say that those voicemails As you heard them at the top of the show from that listener I don't know that listener's name I received all three of those voicemails in a row last night While recording after these messages, my phone kept buzzing And then I took my phone out of my pocket I'm like, wow, somebody called the voicemail line three times I hope everything is okay They didn't need me in an emergency And then I listened to the voicemails exactly as you heard them unedited with Genevieve and we were laughing our ass off so great you know what a Dragula is it's the no I did not know the car from the Munsters it's the it's like the one of the characters on the Munsters yes the hearse and so so Rob Zombie made a song about his Dragula based on the car

from the Munsters well do you know Rob Zombie also directed the reboot of the Munsters I believe

or the yeah the Munster I think he did a Munsters reboot I didn't know that House of a Thousand Munsters, it was called, I believe.

Yep, that is. That's exactly what it was called. Now, let me finish Rold's... I have so much... What are you doing for the next three hours, Andrew? I have so much to talk to you about still. To finish Rold's message, Rold says, a quick shout-out to all the tens out there. You're all great, and I appreciate you all. Now, back to the show, because what you do is so important. Oh, nice. At least to me and the rest of the tens. Rold, thanks so much, and shout-out to Val, Audrey, Asher, and Hayden. Appreciate all of y'all. hello and welcome to top story sure 52 minutes into the show or so that's fine now the thing i was going to say related to the uh the the voicemails at the beginning of the program about license plate surrounders and taking pictures of bumper stickers and the like i was behind a truck on the freeway like two days ago andrew i was uh actually driving from the other place down here and it had this massive, I don't know what you'd call it. Sign is the wrong word. Basically, there was like a sort of a tarp that went over the entire truck that was sort of strapped down. It was black. And it's probably for that kind of truck. But on that tarp, there was a huge American flag and then there was like the outline of a soldier holding like an AK-47, like kneeling in front of the flag. And here's what the sign said. Our flag doesn't fly from the wind moving it. It flies from the last breath of every soldier that died defending it. And what these people lack in meteorological knowledge, they make up for in terrible graphic design. it was so hard to read the critical part of the sign because the uh last breath from every soldier is in red and you could i took i took a picture of it because i wanted to put it on instagram and try to like roast these people it's unreadable like someone paid

All this money for this, by the way, incredibly non-logical, tortured thing about the flag. So what? The flag only flutters because soldiers die? Like, that's, I don't even really.

Yeah, it seems to be like, it seems to be a circular logic. What are you actually fighting for? You're fighting for a flag? You're fighting for other soldiers?

Are you fighting for soldiers to die? Are you fighting, like, because if the flags are all just slack, it means no soldiers died that day? Like, it's so, it is, it is just, like, obviously you're trying to say support the troops, And that's fine we have listeners that are in the military But it is the most complex And illogical way to do that And then it's also Unreadable Like it's so I don't know why they wanted to All they needed to do was not have those words in red And it would be fine I wouldn't agree with the totality of the sentiment Necessarily Like this idea of the sort of jingoism and whatever But I would at least be able to read it Andrew

Well I do feel like people with fonts and colors They sort of feel like they've got to get their money's worth with these things a lot.

That's exactly what happened. Somebody was ordering this, and someone on the line at the wherever was like, well, would you like any of these sentences to be in a different color? They're like, is it extra? They're like, nope. Same price.

Yeah, yeah. On the other hand, though, their sign is still affixed to their truck, whereas our signs were missing within moments of starting off on our road trip.

I'm sending you a picture of this, by the way. I don't know if we want to make it the show pic. I don't know if we really want to traffic in, so to speak, that kind of whatever. But I just want you to get a chance to observe what a bad decision it was to make this one part of the message in red. Okay, so from one regrettable statement to another, Andrew. So here's what I was dealing with before the radio program today, or the podcast, whatever it is we're doing here. I woke up this morning to a flurry of emails. So next week, I'm going to be working on a TV story for CVS, and I'm going to be down in Southern California. It's a story about a company that is being described as the Warby Parker of caskets. I mentioned this to Becca last night. She said, do they let you try on five caskets? That's where the analogy really breaks down. Becca, solid, solid joke. It's not. So it's not really the Warby Parker of caskets. But what it is, is a place that is offering caskets that you can buy online that are much more affordable, I believe, than what you might pay in a in a funeral home. So I am going to be down in a couple of different parts of California. It was pitched to me as, oh, you're going to go to L.A., but it's actually like kind of a bit outside of L.A. One of the filming locations is in Brea, California, and one of the filming locations is in Corona, California. It's probably 30 miles outside of L.A., but as the traffic crow flies, it's probably a couple of hours to get out there. So it turns out that the vector for Brea, California and Corona, California is, wait for it, Anaheim, California. That's a place that's roughly a half hour from each location. And so I thought, well, I'll just stay in Anaheim, California to do this story because I can get to each thing pretty conveniently. And there's, you know, a decent number of hotels in Anaheim. I was actually trying to find a hotel that wasn't part of the Disney empire down there because I just I'm just not into that for this trip. Like, I'm not trying to be part of a bunch of families going to Disneyland. I'm trying to be part of a person sleeping in a bed and getting up and going down and using the hotel gym or whatever. So it turns out, and you know, I'm in that Bonvoy club. There is like a Marriott that's available and I'm going to get my points and it's in Anaheim and whatever. So I book that through the travel software. I wake up this morning to an email. Well, first I wake up to a text from my friend who's producing this piece. It's not Anthony who I've mentioned on the show. It's a different producer that I work with a lot. and this producer said hey you're going to probably get some pushback on the hotel because it's out of like the per diem which i'd never heard per diem used this way until i started working for cbs i always thought per diem was just the money they give you to buy food on a given day

at work there is the term also within cbs that there's the per diem i.e what cbs thinks a hotel room should cost in a particular city so obviously in new york it's more than it would be in a small town somewhere in the middle of america but uh my the producer that i work with said hey you're gonna get some pushback on the hotel by the way this never happens i've never gotten this before because i booked it through the software now granted the software said this is out of the per diem but it says what's the explanation i wrote it's equidistant to the two places we're going right like it's not the Yeah. You know, Beverly Wilshire, which side note is also one of the hotels that they suggested I stay in. They were fine with me staying in the Beverly Wilshire, which is like 400 something a night and then driving out to Brea, California, driving back to the Beverly Wilshire, then driving to Corona, California. But because it's Anaheim and it's a different per diem, this was over the limit, which, again, I was it was this was not a scam by me. I figured whatever so I then I get an email from somebody that I work with who's kind of the boss of all the travel saying and I've also never gotten one of these emails and he's saying hey uh the um the hotel that you booked is is overpriced you know it's not within our parameters for price you're gonna need to book a different hotel this hotel by the way is more expensive than the Wilshire it is less expensive okay but what they what they set aside for staying in Anaheim is a different amount of money than what they set aside for staying in Los Angeles, if that makes any sense. So again, ironically, I could just tell them I'm going to stay in LA, I'm going to drive out to these exurban locations, and I could be staying in a more expensive hotel in Los Angeles if I wanted to do the extra driving. That's why this whole system is sort of lunacy, right? In a way. That they were dinging me on this, but whatever, it's fine. The person that I work with a lot, who I actually very much like the person on the travel side, just forwards me an email chain so and and there's a bunch of people on the email chain and i scroll down to the bottom of it and i see the the initial email is from someone else who i haven't dealt with a lot who works in the like travel department for cbs and that person is saying to the person that i work with more um regularly good morning to this person's name we have a hotel request for luke b in anaheim california march 15th through 17th the rate is 365 a night the notes state that he needed to be in that location comma appears to be close to disneyland when i tell you andrew how furious i was at the implication so they're implying i was trying to

scam a free hotel near a disneyland and am i and i'm i apologize i feel like i'm being very thick here i i will maybe use this head cold as an excuse for one more day but um didn't you say that some of the things that were suggested were disney properties oh many of them because you're not choosing a disney property no you're choosing a different one but they're flagging near disney and therefore suspicious behavior.

I would just as soon be in whatever part of Anaheim is not overrun with Disney folk. And I said at the beginning of the show, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings who loves Disney. That's awesome. I'm happy that people get happiness from it. It's not really my thing. I've been there, I think, one time with Addy when I lived in L.A. It was a fun day. We stood in line forever going on a ride with a person behind us, calling all their friends to tell them They had just seen the movie I, Robot, starring Will Smith, except they kept calling it I, Robit. So, you know, it's a memory that will last forever. But it's not really my deal.

And also you're at work. I mean, it doesn't even matter if it's your deal or not. That's not what you're there for.

It is so not what I'm there for. And again, peace and love. We have listeners that live in Anaheim. God bless Anaheim. there is nowhere that i would less care about being equidistant to than corona california and brea california in the shadow of mickey and minnie it is literally my idea of hell and the idea that this person at cbs travel was flagging it because they thought i was trying to steal a night at motherfucking disney made me so irate this morning that i sent a slightly regrettable

email so now everyone on the chain okay and now is this one of those where you said you sent it and then you did you end up sending two emails accidentally or is that just sort of a different thing so you just fired off an angry email and now you're having some feelings about it

I am uh I said uh let's see here I'm gonna get I have to scroll back in the in the uh text chain here i said oh by the way can i add one other interesting detail to the story in the text chain was an email from the producer i'm working with on the story so what happened was somebody flagged it said this guy's trying to stay near disneyland out of the per diem and then somebody else said well who's the producer on the story let's find out if they're staying there because luke is claiming this is near where they're doing the thing then they reached out to the producer my friend who is the producer sent an email with a typo in it Andrew that completely pwned me The producer said I haven't booked yet But he does not need to be close to our location In Corona, California For timing reasons I'll probably be staying elsewhere closer to downtown LA I reached out to the producer And I was like really dude Does not need to be And I was like oh my god It auto corrected to does not need to be When I was trying to say He does need to be near Corona, California

Again I was confused I was like what No you do need to be That's the whole point of this

The email, the typo in the email projected the exact opposite message that needed to be transmitted to the folks. Basically, like I was one guy is like, he's trying to stay at Disneyland. And then a producer was like, yeah, he doesn't need to be over near Disneyland. Like things were going off the rails in New York. Well, about the time I was waking up, probably because I've been getting up early. But like there was a lot going on that was a series of misunderstandings, miscommunications, typos and the like. but again there was something about like now listen if i'm in vegas if they're like huh does he need to be at the uh at the win on the strip in a suite i'd be like you know what as uh as steve coogan says in um what was that what's the show that we love that he's where he's like the really angry guy oh um uh saxondale saxondale i'll raise my hand okay like if they were like why are you staying in vegas in a beautiful hotel room on the strip when you're just doing a story out in like henderson i'll raise my hand okay that would probably be a thing i would do i can promise you i'm not trying to scam a disney adjacent hotel in anaheim right i promise you so here is the uh response that i send to two people in the travel department

who you don't know personally the person who flagged it you don't know you've never worked with that person so far as you know and the person

the person who flagged it I don't know but I've seen their name on email lists before and the person who told me hey sorry you know you can't stay at that hotel that person I've never met in person but I deal with him all the time because they're like the main point of contact for all this kind of stuff and then there's also the producer that I was working with and then my probably most direct boss at CBS like one of the we call them the seniors so she is like a very high up person on the show that i work on so that's everybody who's on this email for me and it states i'll move hotels but for the record this marriott is just the most logical place equidistant to our shoots in brea california and corona california its proximity to disney hal is completely unrelated by the way the person is named hal i got that context yeah uh its proximity to disneyland hal is completely unrelated but thanks for flagging that signed l

that's not so bad oh good i mean listen i mean you're clearly not pleased but i mean i'm not really you know i wouldn't be super pleased with again it's it's a marriott you're not you're not right there are there are other jw marriott but still yes which by the way i left out because

i'm always working an angle andrew i didn't say the jw marriott which is like sort of the one of the sort of higher end of the marriott food chain but i'm sure that i consciously but unconsciously left out the jw marriott part of it but yes it's a marriott it's not a four seasons it's not i'm this is not a scam i am not trying to invent a reason to go to anaheim so how do you think this

is going to work out though i mean it's a real bummer about that about that typo from the

producer was that corrected like yes it was and i feel a little bad because i love this producer and i work with him on a lot of stories and he's awesome he's totally great so like i was a little bit sort of creased with him just i was like dude you're killing me with this typo and he was like oh my god well first i said i was like really that you said i don't have to be near corona california he's like oh my god i'm so sorry that was a typo and i was like yeah uh it's a whole thing now and then he he was in new york in a meeting with some of the relevant parties and apparently went after the meeting like an all staff and went and said like hey i sent the wrong thing uh luke does need to be there and then the person who i work with the most on the travel side was like okay i'll fix it or whatever by the way i'm staying in a different hotel because i just i unbooked the one that was too expensive and i booked a different one that was still too expensive yeah right because the other thing and this is super boring but the other problem is that cbs has not updated their their per diem stuff does not reflect inflation so there are like every hotel is out of per diem and you just book it and they just say okay like this is this is i've never encountered this before it's a typical thing where you get a kind of a little like triangular error message and concur and it says like this is out of per diem you're going to need approval from the boss and i just send it through and they're just like yeah of course the guy's got to be in anaheim that's usually the thing this just got down a weird road because it's near disneyland hal flagged it my friend the producer sent the world's least the world's least opportune typo message the other person elevated it and then i woke up to find out that i was not allowed to stay at the jw marriott in anaheim and was not having it and And again, if there was a casino nearby. Exactly.

I raised my hand.

Like, 100%. I'm not above this kind of behavior. But then there's something that is especially galling about. That I was intentionally trying. That's not in your interest. I was literally mapping these hotels, Andrew, various hotels that I was considering, and trying to find one that was not, like, on or near Disneyland property. Because it just seemed like a whole headache that I was not trying to have.

Right.

So that being the implication, it's near Disneyland. i was like you gotta be fucking kidding me how really you're doing this right now you think you think that i'm trying to i have stolen many nights of hotel stays from cbs but not for

disneyland my good sir i mean it would be the ultimate irony if this colleague named hail who you've never met before actually is an ai and it was and he's married to lauren and it just flagged Because it's like, you know, the chatbots know that if it's near Disney, like, let's run this up the pole. Let's scrutinize this a little bit.

I'm keen to find you a hotel that's not near Disney.

Do you remember, by the way, this is a totally different, totally different topic here. A huge change in conversation, or at least a pause in this conversation.

I'm sure the listeners are tired of my antics.

I was telling Genevieve yesterday about two of my favorite expressions that our friend Chris Hayes has used in talking about TBTL in private. I think it's okay to say this, but one time referring to going back and listening to Blur's Day segments that he skipped, like somebody rooting around for old cigarette butts because they just need a fix. And then also on the show He one time said he took This one moment of TBTL That we love I think it was a moment of TBTL Not some other part of pop culture And he held it up to the light Like a jewel To let the light come through it And those are two incredibly evocative Ways of talking about something You've heard on this show One kind of good one kind of bad But do you remember what the TBTL jewel was We used to refer to it all the time And I can't remember anymore What he held up to the light

The specific kind of an actual Like the jewel itself Like if it were a ruby No I feel like it was

He said there was some moment I believe Of TBTL that he just He really liked to go back to or ponder This is going back years now But he said he just likes to take it and hold it up to the light Like a jewel and let the light come through it And I can't remember what The bit was that he was comparing To that jewel You don't remember either

I shouldn't have brought it up No, I don't I do not But I do love the Would you call that an analogy Or the How would you describe that That way of talking about something

I think that's an I think that's an analogy Not a simile I think a simile is when you No, it might be I don't know, dude

Simile is saying something is like Well, no, it would maybe be a simile Saying something is like something Isn't that what simile is?

I think simile says like or as Oh, a metaphor Oh, metaphor Yeah, a metaphor and simile. Those are the things that you get confused. Like, you know, here I'm using an example from the Internet here. Like, oh, Luke is a walking dictionary. He's not like a walking dictionary. Luke is a walking dictionary. That would be a metaphor. Luke is like a walking dictionary would be like a simile. The simile.

I do not remember. I love that metaphor. I do not remember what the actual thing was, what the content was we created. It wasn't this segment. i'm hoping that the other listeners who have sent regrettable emails to people they work with feel very seen by this segment 74 plus it's not even 74 minutes into the show because i stopped my my little stopwatch after the dazzling donors and then i started it like four or five minutes late so i don't even know where we are in space and time no i thought your story was good i just think

that the segment got really good when i started talking about similes and metaphors and reading off the internet and stumbling around and not having you were not stumbling around and i i

you were reading off the internet because i asked you the difference between a simile and a metaphor so you were only you were only delivering on the boring content that i was promising time is money

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 v-mails Thank you.

before we wrap her up today?

Yeah, I have a couple of quick voicemails here that I want to share with you, Luke. Great day for voicemails. I'm going back. I got to say that I was behind on checking the voicemail line. So some of these go back a couple of weeks here. But yeah, a lot of good stuff, starting with what we heard at the very beginning of the show from that listener with the license plate story to this voicemail from our friend Kim down in Florida. Now, I don't know if you're going to like this as much as I do, Luke. I mean, the voicemail is very charming, but I've said on the show many times that I always wanted to have a segment, preferably like a call in segment on a radio show called What's Your Damage? And people just call in and complain. And it's like there's no reason to do it. There's no solution to be found. It's just a place to vent. I always thought that'd be a great call in radio segment. And that's sort of what we got from Kim here, and I love it because we have been talking off and on about frustrations with on-street parking, people who live in neighborhoods where they can't find a place to park on the street when they get home at the end of the day because people have parked rudely or what have you, stories of people parking too close to driveways, not close enough to driveways, et cetera. Well, Kim has a story like this, and it's just to vent. And Kim, we are here for this. hey dingleberries um this is also huh kind of a strong start i would say i mean if you

if you separate yourself i can handle dingle we are we are we are balls of crap

of life you we all know what dingleberries are i thought it was a strong start hey dingleberries

um this is kim in st petersburg florida i was just listening to parking complaint talk We live on a street where most people do not have driveways, but our neighbor across the street has a driveway, and yet they continue to park in front of our house on the street. And, by the way, we do not have a driveway, and it pisses me off to no end when I pull up and they're parked on the street instead of in their perfectly usable driveway. But, yeah, I just thought I'd add that. I don't know if anybody cares about that. Also, speaking of teeny tiny compact cars I drive a Nissan Versa Note So I'm picking up very little space And they have two cars And they like to park their big ass Jeep In front of my house That's it, thanks y'all, bye

Can't you just carry the Versa into the house with you? Why don't you just throw it in your bag?

Yeah, I'm a little confused about that Bring a tote bag I've been thinking about this voicemail Because Kim isn't saying Actually, I have some other voicemails from listeners that we'll get into maybe next week who want some advice on how to deal with some annoyances from neighbors, which is always something that we are happy to weigh in on. But there's nothing to do here. Kim just needed to vent, and I appreciate it. Like, obviously, anybody has the right to park on the street as long as you're allowed to park on that street. And there's no rules that say if you have a driveway, you're not allowed to use street parking. Like, there's nothing to be done here other than to say, like, to your friends, ugh, this drives me crazy. I got to be honest with you, Luke, we have a driveway here. We don't use it. We use on street parking, but I don't think parking is a problem in our neighborhood. I would reassess that if, you know, if they built a, you know, like a maybe a six unit or an eight unit building around here and we started to have a lot more renters. I would be cognizant, I think, of the parking situation. but as of right now and i mean i'm just hoping that i don't have a neighbor like kim that is judging me for parking my giant um volkswagen golf in the uh volkswagen golf but anyway that's

really that's really interesting actually i'm i'm very glad we got that that voicemail because i i saw something on tiktok recently that was like someone being described as a sort of a karen who was upset that people were parking in front of their house with street parking. And I was kind of thinking, what you're saying, which is the truth, which is anyone is allowed to park on the street if it's legal. And how could you be mad at someone? But actually, the listener, it's Kim, is the name of the listener? Yeah, Kim in Florida. It raises a good point, which is like, if there's limited street parking and you have a driveway and you're not making use of it, If I only had street parking, I would be annoyed at a person who wasn't making use of their driveway. So I kind of can see it now from both sides. I had not thought about that angle on it.

Yeah, it's a little annoying, but again, not something that is worth addressing because nobody's doing anything wrong. It's just that you hope people would be good neighbors. And that's always my thing, too. I think being a good neighbor in the broad sense of that word, being a good citizen, is like kind of taking a moment to look at your surroundings, the people around you, and how you might be affecting them. And that includes if you're in the grocery store and you put your grocery cart on one side of the aisle.

and then you block the other part of the aisle by standing in front of the shelves and you're just like, do you not know that people are trying to pass through here? Oh, now is not the time to get into it. But would you mind if we started tomorrow's show with a grocery store rant that has been just slowly percolating in my brain for years now but finally acutely, acutely came to the surface on Monday when I went back to my old Safeway grocery store that I want to talk to you about, about the way we shelve things. Oh, I'd love to talk about that. But let's not do that now. Instead, I'm going to play this voicemail from somebody who wanted to weigh in on the Airbnb situations we've been talking about, where it seems like the people who are renting out homes and cabins and whatever are getting more and more strict with the rules and what they expect of us, the people who are paying to stay there.

Hey, guys, I was just listening to you talk about Airbnbs and i just wanted to share my wacky story we were in um spokane for that three-on-three tournament

they have and the owner what is that is that's a basketball that's a really big thing yes spokane has this three-on-three basketball tournament that's like nat like national people come in from i think it's called hoop it up i never played in it as a teenager but it was like legendary and people would put teams together and go over there my friend ben like won it one year

yeah it's a big deal me and my friend were making a bunch of shrimp related jokes on our text chain today it doesn't matter why it just doesn't matter why but we're making a bunch of shrimp puns and during the show today earlier on i photoshopped an image of debt left shrimp with a big shrimp on his head and just sent it to him without any comment so if you need a pretty kind of janky yet i'm still proud of it which is kind of my brand with photoshop uh image of detlef in a sonics jersey but instead of having a head has a big cocktail shrimp coming out of his jersey let me

know because i i have one of those images i'll forward it to carrie who works with detlef

don't do that i don't want to get i don't want to end up on a most excited thing i was like all i

ask her when we chat is a can i leave my boat there for a little bit longer and b how's detlef

Okay, so this is a quick voicemail, and I've already extended it too much. But anyway, so this listener is in, was it Spokane? Yes. For the three-on-three?

Spokane for that three-on-three tournament they have. And the owner was there when we arrived. He was lovely. And then he said, like, welcome. Everything's great. Will you please water my garden and feed my kids gecko? what yeah people are wacky about airbnbs all right bye i believe that's called house sitting

will you feed my kids gecko that's amazing the audacity of people like i mean if you're paying to stay somewhere you should have zero tasks by the way it's called hoop fest not hoop it up okay it's billed as the largest three-on-three in the world did you hoop that's a good show title too i feel like we already had one what was the other one metal dirt cleans dirt i like that one but i just want to honor i want to recognize that joke of did you hoop it's also very solid wow i want to know from the listener did they water the garden and feed the guy again it's one of those weird things where watering the garden is a pleasant experience like you're in spokane it's june you're there for hoop fest like you stand outside and you kind of run the hose it's not even like like that sounds fun to me if i'm at my house right so it's like these things are not necessarily frustrating tasks but there's something frustrating about paying someone money and then being given a list of chores yeah and also like

it goes back to the roots of these of these units for rent of Airbnb right and again it was all part of what they were what they used to call the sharing economy but they stopped calling it that because it's not the sharing economy it's just like letting people operate little businesses like little personal hotels and little taxi cabs and because of that like these things have health care

sorry not that last part it used to be like

hey you know and like my friend Avishai Who we mentioned on the show from time to time A long time friend of mine and a producer in public radio I remember He was the first person back in the very early 2000s when we were working together In New Hampshire He would go to Couchsurfing.com Or whatever that website was And it was much more like that Like hey I'm passing through A young broke recent college graduate

Thank you.

it but i want to be in town to see um some band or whatever you know what i mean like what whatever it is like and then like okay well toss me some bucks or maybe it's free and i'll also host somebody at my place and so there's like little bits of that left over with airbnb but that ain't it anymore or if it is you just say you post it that way you say hey listen this is super affordable because we just ask that you water the the garden and feed the lizards and it'll be which ironically

I would be into on my own dime like yeah like if I'm paying for the Airbnb which I typically am I would love that deal like I would happily stay somewhere for like 50 bucks a night that was a cool house or apartment or whatever and I had a few tasks I'm down for that what I'm not down for is paying the cleaning cost and paying the 300 a night and then you know being

asked to feed Miley the gecko yes how did you know how did you know the gecko's name well most geckos I should ask the chat bot, what are most geckos named in the United States?

Yep. All right. I guess those are the V-mails for the day. Good V-mails.

Thanks, everyone.

Very solid, really great V-mail game, listeners. Thank you. Thank you. For all your contributions. Oh, my God. Andrew, the cat is back under the frickin' calendar.

Uh-oh. Dude, stop. You know what? I just sent you Detlef shrimp, but I will also send you a photo of what my cat was doing during most of the show, which was napping next to me with his paw on the VCR on my desk during the show. Can I borrow?

Can I borrow a feeling? Can I borrow your cat? Yeah. I want to trade you my cat.

Yeah. You have a beautiful cat.

All right. Thanks, everybody. That's going to do it for today's episode. But I have some amazing news. We'll be right back here tomorrow. I really need this job now that I'm being fired by CBS. Yes. So we will definitely be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. In the meantime, thanks for listening, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Anger is like flatulence, isn't it? insofar as it's far better to let it out in increments than to let go with one humongous rattle. Oh, well, yes, yeah, inasmuch as losing your temper is about transferring that anger to those closest to you. Well, you're farting in the face of the person you love, aren't you? If you ask the police, they will tell you that most murders are committed by a friend or relative of the victim. They take place at home, in the office, on public transport, in a jacuzzi. Are we still talking about murder? I hold my hands up. The last three examples were specifically farting.

Power out.