Muse

Let me just ask you a couple other questions. Are you experiencing any dizziness? No. Any shortness of breath? No. Aches and pains anywhere else? No. Are you going to the bathroom a lot? I don't see how that's relevant, really. Am I going to the bathroom a lot? Are you urinating a lot? What does that have to do with my ear? This is a standard medical question. I know, but I really don't think it's relevant how often I go to the bathroom. In all due respect, I think I'm the one to tell you if it's relevant or not, and it is. It's kind of private, and I really don't think... How is it private? I'm asking you about... How often I go to the bathroom is kind of a private thing. Yeah, but I'm not some stranger. We're not on a bus. I'm a doctor. I'm normal. Let's just say that. Three times a day, four times a day.

Do we have to get into a specific number? Do we have to get a number attached to it? Yeah, it's science. However often people are supposed to go, I go, unless I drink a lot of water. And, you know, sometimes I'll drink a lot of water, and I'll go a lot, which I have been doing lately so maybe lately i've been going more often than i normally would great and but it's good for you to drink water that's good that's that's all i wanted to hear okay that's

a good thing drinking water sure sure okay let's move on please how's your stool tbtl your mouth might be saying hey we cool but your eyes are like no we not

nice to meet you no it's not it's all good so expect to feel several bone tremors and be perceived by all around you to be a disgrace this is about respect this is about

personal space this is about the violation to the end got it here's the long and short of it someone has been touching my karaoke machine let me put it in plain english i don't dance to Dido, dude. I know there was a lot of D's in there before you said anything.

All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Beautifully wrapped, glossy, sweet-smelling show. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

I had to rush to the restroom, and I'm just going to call it a violent upheaval.

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon. My goodness gracious, does it feel nice to be here broadcasting to all of you with all of my stuff, all of my knobs and dials and other little pieces of electronics that helped Let me bring you episode 3,914 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. April Fool's Day fell over the weekend, and I saw a prank.

How about, like, pranking an animal?

I saw a prank over the weekend that I actually thought was decent. Like, I thought it was a clever idea.

That's a pretty good spoof.

I'm wondering if it is decent enough that it's melted even the heart of stone that is my friend Andrew Walsh and his take on pranking and April Fool's Day and the like. So we're going to delve into that. And we're also going to talk about my new favorite weird thing on TikTok, which is something called Cart Narcs, where this guy just shames people who have failed to return their shopping cart to the proper place in the parking lot. and the absolute fury that people feel when he's trying to stick a magnet that says Lazy Bones on their car.

I'm mad at you, Dad!

It's wonderful to watch, or at least I'm enjoying it. I'm also enjoying the fact that we're going to get to talk to this guy today, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He sort of approaches his co-bro-ing duties with a certain kind of triangular, with like a pillar approach, basically.

It's one of his three pillars, fighting crime, fighting inequality, and fighting rats.

He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. And I'm all out of rats, Luke. So it's time to fight inequality and crime. I got to be honest with you, I started with the easy ones, the rats. That's all you do, though, you know? You get the easy ones out of the way, and then you take on the biggies. I want to say shout-out to listener Max, who sent that tape to me. He said this would be great intro tape for Andrew. It was regarding the current mayor, Eric Adams of New York. Oh, now this is what Max did that I thought was so genius. He didn't CC you on the email.

Well, that's interesting. I think Max is Max. I'm opening my email now. Is he trying to like like kind of set us against each other? Because I swear that I also got tape from Max this weekend that I haven't listened to yet. I do.

Does Max want us to start disliking each other? Yes, he does.

Let's see here. Should we do it cold?

absolutely so wait so he sent you a piece of tape that said this would be good to play for luke um let's see here i am now looking at the email for the first time so if anybody's curious exactly how long it takes me to read emails this came in on friday i'm lukey on the spot you send me an

email boom i loaded into my various audio systems and i'm ready to go on monday morning what's going

bright-eyed and bushy tail i have been falling behind on some of this stuff um hey andrew heard this on wnyc this morning it's about mayor eric adams and his feud with rats and it screamed intro

tape to me don't know if you'll agree larger is it it's maybe it's the long yeah let's see here

there are several versions here i'm gonna open the one that it has the most kilobytes luke that

is what i'm going to do here but absolutely highest quality audio that's all we settle for also most lowest quality content at the highest kilobyte rate um and the longest i'm guessing

here as well so just opening up a little player here and i should be able to play this in just a

second how are we doing i had a god i hope this is soterios johnson introing this piece i don't think he even works there anymore but he used to be the morning edition guy i was in a lyft the other day when i was in seattle and my driver was named soterios and i said you're the second soterios that i know and he goes really uh and this was a guy who was from romania i said yeah my friend soterios johnson at wnyc in new york he goes that's a weird last name for a soterios and then i said to him and i got no response on this andrew why soterious and i think the joke went over the i think the joke yeah this soterious his head but i do think

why soterious that is a really good joke it's a pretty solid spoof i wish you could have been

so yeah that's perfect all right this is 10 seconds i hate rats rats rats rats let me tell you how scared i am of rats the rats may be listening i'm terrified of rats i had a real

rat infestation okay that's pretty funny so wac put together a montage of that quality audio it

really is i'll save that one that's good you know what's funny is i believe it was do i have the name right was it eric berry who was the uh like cornerback or safety for the kansas city chiefs who was terrified of horses and now we have an eric now we have an eric adams who's terrified of rats is there something about the first name eric i think you're right why can't i find my

horse tape because that's some pretty good tape too yeah we played that a little while ago so i

don't know if we need to bore the listeners with it but i just think it's interesting we were dealing with two erics who are very public about their almost phobic anyway thanks to listener max for kicking off this monday show with some uh some some brand

new piping hot tape yeah i wanted i had a moral i know we want to talk a little bit about you being stuck in chicago as the skies opened up but like kind of conversation well good do you think they're over conversations about moral conundrums when it comes to wordle um yeah absolutely not you said you answered in like kind of affirmative before you heard the wordle part that you really have to wait for me to finish because i think wordle talk is becoming like dream talk but i'll try to keep this relevant to everybody i really do have a bit of a moral conundrum so you know that i play wordle daily with about i don't know six or seven people on a text chain and we all share our scores and wordle i'm saying this to you luke because i think you're the only person who doesn't know this wordle has a way for you to share your results that shows kind of how you did step by step without actually spoiling what the answers are right just by indicating which yellow boxes you placed correctly during any given turn and which green boxes which means that the letters were both correct and in the right place as you try to guess this word so here's the thing i think most people know how wordle goes i won't over explain that part but maybe people don't realize that if you know what somebody else's word is like if you and i were playing every day luke and i know that your starting word is choke which i assume it would be um and you go first and i know your word is choke i can sort of figure out like oh well on this day on your first turn you got uh you know a yellow here and a green there and a yellow there and i know what those words are so that helps me like my first turn is already going to

be aided by me knowing what your first word is wow so if somebody shares if somebody shares their results but in such a way that it doesn't give you the answer you are able to kind of still glean some useful information based on their misses and makes because you know they're starting

exactly and this has been a point of some contention within our wordle group because genevieve thus far is the only person who has taken advantage of this she's a good deductive reasoner early on she kind of figured out just by watching us play uh maybe i even told her at one point what my

You

usual starting word was um and so i always had to wait until uh genevieve already posted her answer before i would post mine i didn't want to help her um but then we have another friend in the group our friend toon who like knows that genevieve knows what her word is but she doesn't care she's like i'm not playing against you guys i'm playing for myself and i'm not going to change my starting word uh we've all kind of mocked genevieve we've we've called her we we've labeled her a cheater even though it's not really cheating as Genevieve always says she says I'm just using the information that is in front of me to figure out a puzzle if you don't want me to know your first word don't tell me what it is or don't share until I've gone change it up that's fine or change it up right um well I was one of those people who made fun of Genevieve because also Luke I'm not that smart I'm not that that's not true but I can I just interject very quickly one

thing which i hope this doesn't send us spinning off into some other direction about our relationship but i will tell you this and i find this hilarious i really think the only one of the only times you've been legitimately my like more than mildly annoyed with me was when i was trying to cheat on wordle live on the air a few weeks ago no that's the only time i let you know that i was annoyed okay fine the only time you've been openly a little bit like only five percent and mostly in a joking way but still five percent really like come on man was when i sent that out to the chain like is the wordle chain i'm not on is this good like pretending like i solved like the hardest wordle of all time in like one or two tries and i've never seen you respond to a text faster and you were right in there like luke is cheating he's doing a bit for tbtl like i think that this is i think you live by a very strict moral code when it comes to wordle and i think people even jokingly messing with the messing with the morals of wordle is something that does

caused the inner boy scout in you to come out i have a different read on that situation i was somewhat annoyed with you but i was annoyed and i'm being i didn't know how to share the yeah i'm being somewhat serious here i i don't understand how like you took a screen cap of the game and sent it to a text chain that you weren't even a part like it was just so like you're you're just your claim that you play this game and then you don't even know the basics in a window between yelling at clouds and tying an onion on my belt as was the fashion and again not that like everybody has to know how to play wordle but i know that you've played it before it was just like that

it was just like the whole thing was annoying can i tell you it's not just you and again we'll get back to wordle in a quick second but becca and i saw a movie yesterday i did it andrew i got my physical body to a movie theater and sat in one of the seats it was like a banner day for me well

was it well because i wanted to see a movie this weekend i couldn't find anything worth seeing

well we couldn't either this is a whole other conversation but with the proliferation with everything being based on existing intellectual property there is for i would say discerning film viewers very little going on in the theaters it's all super mario brothers Dungeons and Dragons Fast Furious 9 whatever it is like I will look through the listing of movies and there is not one film I want to see so what do we do we went to the Hollywood theater here in Portland and saw The Postman Always Rings Twice

Oh cool oh that's good I love doing that 35mm yeah yeah I love doing that I love seeing classic films in the theater it's so great but it's I thought

that that was going to be I haven't seen that film before and I thought it was one of those movies like Casablanca or The Third Man where it's like an incredibly well done film that it's like you must see to you know to sort of just really have the full experience of what cinema can be it was not that the audience was openly laughing and mocking the film it's so silly oh really it's not a good but in a fun way I enjoyed it I enjoyed it but basically the two main characters were named car norah and frank and i'll spare everyone the details of the plot but it's just like it's this ridiculous thing where it's like literally like they tried they murder someone they're charged with murder and within three minutes within the film they're they're like let out on the murder charges but then two minutes later they're murdering each other it's just like one of those movies that whip saws nothing gets a chance to breathe ever you know what i mean from a plot standpoint it's like well i can't believe we got off on those murder charges but guess what i'm gonna murder you but you can't but now i'm in jail now i'm getting the gas chamber anyway becca texted me this morning some joke about nora and frank and i go was that something on morning edition she goes no it was the two people in the movie that we spent watching for three hours yesterday my point to you is this is why i don't know how to share wordle scores because my brain is a freaking sieve nothing stays in there for any amount of time so did you enjoy watching that film

So it was almost like watching a campy movie. I did that once or twice in L.A. I remember somebody was doing a screening. But, like, in a very small, like, back of a comic shop kind of thing of, like, of, goddammit, Face Off, that movie Face Off. And it was, like, you know, and everybody, like, kind of reacted and, you know, and that wasn't really, it was a very different situation. It wasn't in a movie theater. But that, like, sitting around, like, making fun of a movie was not for me.

Well, I would not have gone to this if I knew that it was kind of a sort of, like, laughable movie because it just, it feels, and there's just, I mean, there's all of the obvious like casual and not so casual misogyny if there were any people of color in the movie there would be racism you know what i mean like it has every bad thing from that era and then some extra ones to boot if i would have known that it was going to be the kind of thing that we the audience are kind of getting a kick out of i wouldn't have i wouldn't have wanted to

go see it but i found it very enjoyable it was fun that's good yeah that was actually fun but i

wouldn't have signed up for it if i knew that was the deal yeah i realized i kind of asked that

question a very leading way like as if i was judging you i was but i just know that you and i pretty well yeah and you and i kind of share that thing like we don't go into things usually if it's like oh okay let's watch something campy and kind of everybody like has their input but when you accidentally find yourself especially from a movie that's you know what uh 70 years old or something that's uh yeah right am i right about that wow i mean it was black and white so i'm guessing 50s yeah sure but um by the way a couple of my favorite memories in the theater are going to see All About Eve on The Ave here in Seattle. Now that's a good film. I've never even seen it before, but I remember it was like a Wednesday night. It was like a rainy Wednesday night in the winter, and Genevieve was like, hey, this thing is playing. Do you want to meet me at the theater? I'm like, yeah, and it was so great, and I have another similar memory from like 20 years ago in Boston going to see Roman Holiday at the Brattle Theater, and it was just like I had no idea what it was. What a romantic movie. I want to go back and re-watch that, but I think what people really want to talk about today is wordle and the moral implications thereof because here's what happened keep in mind um i did just to go back to where we split off there a second ago with tangents with tangent talk is honestly the reason i wasn't using a lot of deductive reasoning was there's two reasons number one i had a starting word that i liked that i used every single day and i said to myself even though genevieve knows what this word is i don't want to try anything else because one of these days i'm going to try something else and it's going to be my starting word and it's going to kill me you know it's like your roulette numbers it's always or never it's totally that's a perfect

example it's the roulette numbers i play it's also blackjack always or never on 16 you just have to pick a system and commit to it because as soon as you switch it up that's going to be the day that you know the ball lands in number seven and you're furious if you're me and i remember one

time this is months ago Genevieve trying to woo me into her dark ways saying to me like look look at what these two people put down ahead of us there is no way it was going to be your starting word and I'm like I don't understand how you know what their starting words are she's like because we do this every day and I'm like I don't know my brain doesn't work that way I just want to play the game but then a few weeks ago Luke and I'm just going to say what the words are here in fact the person that I'm talking about in this world group may even be listening I'm not sure if he listens to the show or not anymore but the word the correct answer this one day ended up being the word stayed s-t-a-i-d right okay and my friend i'll just call him out rodent okay got it got every single letter in the right place except for the last one on his first turn so if the answer was stayed but we know he had s-t-a-i in the right place and his last letter was wrong what do you think that last letter was r r stare i didn't want to know that his starting word is stare but it became so obvious even uh because the only other word that would fit that

with the last one off would have to be stare so the only one i can think of maybe there's another

one but either way it became pretty clear it was like it was like look it was like open it was like accidentally stumbling on somebody's diary and not trying to read it but you couldn't help seeing the big you know sentence that said andrew's a dingleberry which by the way why aren't people writing by the way dingleberry is my starting word yeah you don't understand the game there are five letters um anyway so i basically for the past three weeks or so have had this information that And I also kind of accidentally kind of or maybe it was the same day I looked at other people's. I'm like, oh, well, then I know what Jessica's is, too. Or not not her word, but several letters in it. Because I saw how those matched up to rodents. And like now I got wordle. This is going to sound like a brag, but it's more of a confession. I got wordle on the first try yesterday. Wow. Yes. Because you were.

able to because you saw what rodent's word was yes and if i knew that that was stare and i it didn't feel it didn't feel good i mean if i mean usually if you get it on the first try and you have no idea what it means you have no clues at all then it's just pure dumb luck so i guess it felt a little bit better than dumb luck i'm going to make an argument for why i think you should

feel good about this when not that you're playing against rodent or anyone else but let's just say you're playing chess my you probably my guess would be really really good chess players have an encyclopedic knowledge of their of their opponents typical gambits like if if you were talking to how can i forget the name of the main you know let's just take it back we'll go back to gary kasparov and boris spaski okay i bet you anything kasparov and spaski knew all of the typical gambits that the other person went to in all of the different scenarios now is that cheating that they just know what the patterns are i would say no that's just using the information at the ready and i don't you're not writing this down you don't have some kind of crib note somewhere this is just you using all the information available to you to solve a puzzle and i think

that's just good preparation on your part now here's the question though because this is a question that i've had at the back of my mind for a couple of weeks now and now is very much at the forefront of my mind and maybe it's moot by talking about this on the show and calling him out directly but i feel like i should reach out to road and just be like hey you do you but because of the whole stayed thing a couple of weeks ago i know what your first word is and that's why i was able to get it in too i mean this has knocked my score down by at least a score every day you know what i mean like if i get a three it probably would have been a four otherwise well can you

not look at the could you just make wordle the first thing that you do each day that is true That's what Genevieve says. Before you look at the list, I mean, you could just delay taking in that information until you've solved the puzzle. Because the problem then is now you're in Roden's head, which, again, that's where I like to live, in Roden's head. So I'm not saying don't do this, but it's like if you reach out to him and you're like, bro, I know you're opening word. Therefore, I can get things easier. then he is faced with the choice of changing his opening word which you know is that's putting that's putting him on the sort of you know on a tough decision yeah now Genevieve who has figured

out his word and because I told her I'm like oh I know what his word is she's like yep um she said although he does switch it up sometimes and then today the day after I got it in one I looked at his word and I'm like I don't think he's using his regular word and he wasn't so maybe he's on to me Like, maybe he saw that I got it in one and he's like, you know what, I need to I need to mix up my words more. I hope so. Like, but again, we should be playing individually. Right. Like, I shouldn't be, you know, convincing him to change his ways. Right. But in a certain way, I just feel like he should have the information. Like, hey, you continue to do whatever you want to do. But just so you know, I know that your starting word is stare.

I would also like to just present more evidence to the jury, a.k.a. our listeners, that my brain is broken. Because we have talked extensively on this show about Magnus Carlsen. Remember, he's like the best chess player in the world, probably one of the most famous chess players now of all time. He was playing the other guy who may or may not have had vibrating beads in his keister so as to beat him. Why could my brain not remember Magnus Carlsen, the most famous chess player on planet earth but it could remember that gary kasparov and boris spasky played each other why what my point is my brain is no longer taking in new information like a thing that is so much wider in the pop culture and recent in my telling of things on this show is magnus carlson my brain was like nope sorry we don't know who that is but let's go back to i don't know the late 1980s to a thing you barely knew about as a 15 year old that's where That's the information that we've got for you, Burbs.

Because you probably dined out on that a lot, because you probably brought that up. It, like, wore a groove in your head. Always.

Like, I'd be out with other, you know, like, after the basketball games, we'd be at Denny's, like, sophomore year of high school, and I'd be like, easy, ladies. I mean, he's no Boris Spassky, who, as you know, recently played Gary Kasparov.

You're being sarcastic, but am I right a little bit? Like, it is still, I mean, your favorite.

I don't know how I even, I mean.

Your favorite thing to do is to, maybe not your favorite, but one thing that you do, and I think you would do in friend groups or whatever, is one of your charms, I will say here, Luke, and I say that unironically, is for you to have this information that when deployed, it is hilarious in its specificity. Like, there's no way that you haven't kind of dropped that here and there in a conversation to seem both kind of smart and funny.

Listen.

I mean, 100%, I love hyper-specific references of names and people and, you know, old-time wrestlers or baseball players or whomever. I do really like that. I don't have a conscious memory of those specific two names being something that, like, I've rolled out. Probably someone will email in and go, you did it a week ago on the show, which, by the way, only supports my point. My point is that I think my brain is no longer capable of retaining new information. It's full, and there's no room at the inn, because I couldn't remember that it was Frank and Nora, or was it Frank and Cora? See, that's what I'm talking about. I couldn't remember. I think it's Frank and Cora. I couldn't remember the names of the two people from The Postman Always Rings Twice, but I did remember this chess thing, which, yeah, it's very possible that at some point that stuck in my brain because it seemed like something a little dazzling deet I could roll out. But I would love my brain to remember more current things, and I'm glad to lose the Kasparov-Spasky info and replace it with the thing that I saw yesterday.

You want something that will make you feel better about your brain? Yes. Got an email a couple of weeks ago, or maybe less, from listener James who says, In the opening of Sixth Sense, is it The Sixth Sense? I'm not sure. I'm just trying to say that word so carefully so as to not lisp. As you can tell, Bruce Willis is attacked by a former patient. He's played by Donnie Wahlberg and is naked and wet. It is unclear how the attack revolves, setting up the surprise ending. There's also a bunch of scenes in 12 Monkeys where Bruce Willis is naked and afraid, hence Luke's confusion. So when you make a reference to being naked, now I don't think it doesn't, I can't, it sounds like it's not Bruce Willis. It sounds like it's Donnie Wahlberg who's naked Oh, but there is a naked, wet, scared person

Well, thank you to that listener Because I regularly reference that as a thing on the show And then I regularly realize a little later that I thought I was wrong about that I'm glad there's at least, it's in the neighborhood of being correct There's some reason why my brain would be saying that But anyway, you know what we should do here Is we should probably take a quick break And then we come back I'm going to try to give you – because I'm traveling a lot lately, and that just means by definition there will be some snafus, so some faux pas. Or as my dad, for some reason, calls them foopas. And I say, Dad, it's not. It's a faux pas. And then he says, shut up and make me a latte. And I'm like, okay, your world, Walt. But – Does it stand for us?

Is it foopas?

He also wears pooboos while he's helping me build the future TVTL studio. But, no, I mean, there are obviously going to be hang-ups, so that's not interesting content. But I am going to tell you a quick story about a chinchilla named Mr. Bean that I did think was pretty charming, and for me, a first when in my travels around this beautiful country of ours. So we'll talk about that in a moment here on TVTL.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go.

Hey, let's thank some dazzling donors. These are the awesome, generous folk who are dazzling us with their donation of dough. It keeps this show rolling on day after day after day after day after day after day. Folks like Lorraine Gayette, who's in South Dennis, Massachusetts. You know, I'm going to be in Massachusetts later this week. I'm going to be in, I actually don't know the name of the city or the town, but I wonder if I'm going to pass through South Dennis. I'm flying into Logan, and then I'm driving an hour and a half, and I wonder if I'll see Lorraine out there somewhere in the wilds of Massachusetts. Lorraine says, much has been said about what TBTL means to the tens. I agree with all of it, except any of the criticism. Oh, marry me. Oh, Lorraine. thank you lorraine we appreciate you to me the importance of tbtl is it's embracing of wide-ranging conversation you know i almost read embracing as embarrassing andrew like that just tells you how much i've internalized how i feel about our performance or i'll say my performance excuse me um no uh lorraine was saying it's embracing of wide-ranging conversation as imaginary friendos your stand-ins when real ones are unavailable or life is so demanding that a person doesn't have the wherewithal to actually communicate in real time with another actual person god this is a very insightful message from listener and donor lorraine we're always trying to understand what the appeal of the show is and you know we like to say that we're hope we're hoping to to you know um sort of uh cure global loneliness but this is a very i think a very insightful description of what that feeling must be like for certain folks sometimes you know like it's almost just like it's like socializing by proxy like it's like we're in some kind of sim and this person's a little maybe a little too tired or just busy to actually socialize so they can listen to us socialize and it kind of scratches

that itch like when i lived in capitol hill i'd see all the young people going out to their parties and concerts i didn't want to go to the parties and concerts but i really enjoyed watching them

go to it that's right uh in a world that seems to prize either busyness or screen-centric silliness tv chill provides stillness screen-centric stillness i consider it silliness so i've got some notes for lorraine about this email i'll get i'm gonna punch this up for you tbtl provides a healthy dose of friendly generously meandering discussion after a decade of two four three six five caregiving wow that segued into the pandemic spouse and i are going to recreate uh or is that recreate or recreate andrew in this case looking ahead i guess it's recreate our

traveling ways and hit the road wow i do feel like lorraine is challenging us now because like I corrected you on stillness. Screen-centric stillness is a little bit tough, and then we are recreating our traveling ways and hit the road for a circumnavigation of the lower 48.

Nice. From May into June, we'll revisit people and places we've loved. If any tens spot a TBTL sticker on a red Forester from Massachusetts, please wave. We'll wave back. That's awesome. Lorraine, I'm so happy for you that you've got this great adventure in front of you with your spouse and hope you have lots of fun and that you see lots of TBTL10s and wave at them. I don't want to open this door because we have so many other doors that I need to open today, but when Lorraine mentions a red Forester from Massachusetts, I'm reminded of a lift that i took yesterday from pdx airport back home and it was the driver the lift driver her name was cherry and the car that she was driving it was a small suv was cherry red and you when i threw my luggage in the back she had down cherry red colored blankets for the suitcases to go in and all the seat covers were cherry red and i thought this is a person who's embraced this

name as a lifestyle well if i can open a quick door here to a quick follow-up on something do you remember somebody said they saw a license plate that was something like tplsgr yeah and it was like i guess that's topless grandma um somebody wrote in to say hey the listener said that was on like a malibu you know the who makes the malibu chevy uh i think uh chevy yeah malibu and the listener said and i don't remember who this is or if they signed it but they said Is there a chance this was a convertible And that it's a little bit of a double entendre

Topless Malibu

Yes, like it's a top You know, like maybe it's a woman of a certain age Who's got grandkids and she's a firecracker

Oh, I see, so it is topless grandma It's topless grandma, but it's like The references to the The references of the vehicle having the top down

Yes, and you know, also Like, the funny thing is

That sounds like a fun, but not super maternal grandma That sounds like a fun grandma

but sometimes she's at the bar maybe but maybe that's just going with topless grandma for her yeah i mean i don't know the funny thing is when i first heard that i thought like i and this is how immature i am it didn't occur to me that it might be like kind of a free spirit woman who's a grandma who's just kind of leaning into it like for some reason i'm like that's what it was well of course it but i'm just an idiot and so i for some reason i was like oh this is like some some dumb dude who thinks he's being funny or something like the kids i went to high school with got it

I assumed it was just a sexy topless grandma

Right, well, it shows my immaturity Some people on the social media were like Why did Andrew, like, is he ageist? Is he sexist? Why was he so against a grandma being proud of being topless? And it's like, it didn't even occur to me it was really a grandma I just thought it was like my friend Dave Kvallik making a joke But I wasn't the wrong That's topless Kvallik And he drives a Jeep Wrangler That's my first word on a wordle

Hey, thanks, Lorraine Good luck with your journey And thanks for being part of TBTL Maestro

On your mark On your mark Get set Get set Now ready Ready Go Everybody rattle

Dattle

We've also got to thank the legend Michelle McNelly Pronounced Michelle I wonder at what point Our friend Michelle McNelly Will legally change her name To Michelle McNelly Because on TBTL That's you know That's how you're known there's a certain like you know how there's like all kinds of

common laws like where if you use a name you know by the way my name has never officially been changed to luke burbank my my real name on my birth certificate is luke kelly but i've never gone by luke kelly and so there's a point at which it just becomes your legal name because of common use or using it you know on various things at what point will michelle mcnelly be named michelle mcnelly legally because of how many times we've said it this is a typo that has lived

Longer than most TV shows Right like Was it 10 years ago That we were reading a donor list And there was a typo in there Or maybe was it even a typo Maybe it was just us talking I may have no

If there was a fumble there it was me I fumbled the bag probably I probably just said it wrong In a moment of being hung over And now it's canon as they say By the way uh michelle aka michelle is in edina minnesota and keeping it short and sweet today and also encouraging i would say because michelle is saying more cat talk please which i i like seeing that because i definitely worry that i've i've overplayed the bubbles hand i think you've been fairly restrained with bingo and i'm impressed by that you know right now bubbles is at becca's house because i'm home for like about 24 hours and so it was kind of didn't make sense to grab her again and then take her back but like when bubbles is here i'm always narrating what she's doing on air i think you have a good you're more disciplined about talking about bingo

but i will do this and i'm honestly doing this in honor of michelle and her uh short dazzling donor message saying more cat talk please i will just quickly tell you that uh it was a very cat centric weekend here in the walsh household it always is veves and i i was telling her this weekend or we were discussing this weekend like if you were to make a pie chart of our conversations like how much of that pie is us just talking about the cats hey genevieve bananas is sitting on the other chair now hey genevieve where's bingo is he looking at bananas like we're just constantly monitoring their relationship because a quick reminder bananas is an older cat now she's very skittish and it's taken her a long time to get used to having another cat in the house and we feel really bad because she went from being much more relaxed when she was an only kitten, well, old cat to being just constantly hunched up on this one part of the couch

I think the term is topless grandma

Yes, she was just always balled up and looking kind of tense in the one place where she felt like bingo, the young cat, wouldn't annoy her and he was constantly kind of bird dogging her, which is weird for a cat to do And just like he's always got her in her sights. And this weekend, we've had so many breakthroughs. I'm not exactly sure why, but you can hear me getting emotional. Yes, that was the beauty of the cough button there. But she has been more bold. She has been finding other places around the house to relax. She is sort of following him a little bit. Like we spend a lot of time down here in the rumpus room this weekend. And usually she'd just be upstairs minding her own business. but she like kind of follows us around now even when he's there and they're kind of like they're they're shared these two cats are like sharing a space together now without being at each other at all times and at one point bingo the younger cat was sitting next to me on the couch and bananas came up and tried to groom him now he reacted like a kitten and punched her away and they fought but it was the first time that she like went up to him to i mean this is the future liberals want like all these and i want is for these two cats to get to grooming acquaintances

uh on the subject of grooming acquaintances between cats so you know becca has a cat named holly go lightly this is very adorable um and and let's just say pleasantly plump tuxedo cat who's more on the sedentary side of life than bubbles who's a wild eyed animal that's probably shouldn't be kept indoors and so of course the dynamic is it's not probably dissimilar to what you're describing between bingo and professor and but because bubbles has been at becca's house with holly so much i was over there yesterday and it's really cute because holly will just be kind of curled up in her like bed or whatever and then bubbles just come over and for like an hour just be licking her head and holly now tolerates it now even holly's can tolerate bubbles um and uh And like they the same kind of thing has happened, whereas it used to be every time Bubbles would get up in Holly's business, Holly would just like hiss and be like, get out of here. Now they're like kind of a little a little tandem. Now, the one thing I would like is if Bubbles spent less time cleaning Holly's undercarriage, because that's really gross. And she seems to love it. Holly doesn't seem to hate it. And it means. When those two cats are together, I cannot give Bubbles any kisses because I know I need like a two or three day period of Bubbles being solo at my house and having consumed plenty of water before I can give her like a little kiss on her nose. Because I need that thing to have fully aired out from where I know it's been.

But, I mean, I don't want to ruin it for you, but, you know, she's doing it to her own undercarriage.

She doesn't, okay, she doesn't do it to her own self that I've ever noticed. Maybe her front side, which I'm not, you know, stoked on. But, like, she's not up in her own business very much. She grooms herself a little bit, but she's not, like, going to town. But she is going to town on Holly's Salad, and I don't like it at all. So, anyway, Michelle, thanks for taking us there as a group. Couldn't do this without you. hello and welcome to top story all right very briefly um i was trying to get home from chicago on friday after doing uh wait wait out there and my flight was friday night i'd done tbtl from the hotel there and i was you know gonna hit the road and started getting a series of updates about the flight being delayed first it was delayed into the early evening then the late evening then it was like two it was delayed until 209 a.m and i was like even if this flight takes off i feel like i'm going to be pretty ruined for saturday if i catch a 2 a.m saturday morning flight like i'm just going to get home and then go directly to bed so i thought it wise to just get a hotel room change my flight to the morning get a hotel room and just leave real early saturday

morning did you so you switched hotels you didn't just you because you had already checked out of

where you were i checked out and it was literally um a two-hour drive to o'hare which is about 19 miles from downtown chicago if that it was things were just like i heard more than one person in the airport out of the term or the name planes trains and automobiles like it was it got real planes trainsy real fast there like getting to the airport was like lunacy uh the airport there was a giant thunder and lightning storm so one thing that happened was i had checked my large bag because i thought i'm going to be in this airport for the next like eight hours i don't want to be just like schlepping that bag everywhere i'll just i'll put it in their hands and then i'll get it you know in portland well then when the flight was moved until like even later like two in the morning i said you know what i actually would just like to go to a hotel so i went to get my bag back and they were like because of the lightning storm no one is allowed to go outside to the ramp so your bag is trapped we cannot go get your bag it's unsafe and i was like okay so there's a hilton hotel that's built into o'hare essentially like it's just you walk you can walk there in maybe 10 minutes so i walk over to that hilton and i'm standing in line and it's one of those things where there's kind of two different lines and you know this gives me a lot of agita like who got here first is someone kind of cutting someone else but it's like whatever i'm not going to stress it and i get to the front of the one line i'm in and someone's in the other one and They kind of move ahead of me, or they kind of go take the person, you know, the next available front desk person at this Hilton. And I'm standing there, and literally in that moment, the manager walks out from the back office and goes, no more walk-ups. We're sold out. Again, C, planes, trains, comma, and automobiles. I use the Oxford comma, even though they probably don't in the movie. And so I was like, wow, that's a crushing moment. So I stayed at a hotel that was like three miles away That part was just fine But I had moved to an early morning flight Which I got up And then noted that they had now moved that flight From 7.50 a.m. until Eventually I think it took off from Chicago At about 2 in the afternoon And it wasn't going to Portland It was going to Seattle Where my next flight was at 5 a.m. on Sunday

Oh jeez

That's what they'd been able to set up for me change cities and also the city that you're going to, you've got to wait another 15 hours or something. So suffice to say, I didn't do that. I flew to Seattle and then I rented a car and drove home. This was the kind of, I would say almost, it wasn't worth it, but the kind of fun bonding thing was all of us in O'Hare Airport on Saturday, we had all been through the ringer. Most of us had either been on the, supposed to be on the flight from the night before, or people had showed up shown up hours early on saturday so five in the morning only to have the 750 pushed back and back and back so we were all kind of in that bonding mode of like you know what the heck and i started chatting with um a young uh a woman named ali i say young because everyone seems younger than me including andrew i just realized ron desantis you know ron desantis This is...

is two years younger than us yeah i'm not surprised i hadn't given it a lot of thought but yeah that i i'm at an age where i think of successful adults they're all about two years

younger than me well like for real somehow ron i don't know why but somehow ron de santis yeah being and when i uh turned 47 three years younger than me is troubling is very troubling but anyway I'm chatting with this person, Allie And we're kind of commiserating And she was trying to get to Portland as well She was going to hang out with some friends in Portland And she goes, I've also got an illegal pet with me I go, what do you mean? She goes, I got a chinchilla named Mr. Bean In this bag And he's just, I got him in there, he's got his food He's got his little grass or whatever And he's just living his best life She goes, I go, why are you Flying with a chinchilla? She goes, he's my son, he's my life, he's my everything And I was like, okay she goes she's it turns out she's a physics teacher high school or yeah high school physics teacher in chicago and mr bean was the class chinchilla and at some point it was time for mr bean to not be at the school anymore and like no one would take him and so she adopted mr bean and has bonded with mr bean so hardcore that now he is as she said her son her everything And she started showing me pictures of Mr. Bean Like on her phone And it was Chinchillas are so cute They have the most giant ears I think I thought of them as being kind of like a hamster But they've got way more Visually going on than a hamster And there was something about No offense hamsters There's something about this And that's of course how does a chinchilla get a name like Mr. Bean It's called the class names it Oh okay yeah like because and and also just the fact that this this was you know her as a teacher just kind of doing what teachers i think do so much of the time in so many different ways which is like going okay well i'll handle this whether it's buy more school supplies for my students because the district isn't covering that or go the extra mile i just feel like teachers are always going the extra mile and like adopting the class chinchilla feels like really going the extra mile but then falling in love with the class chinchilla is also kind of a great plot twist for the whole thing yeah i think

my friends who have kids i think they there was some like kind of campaign amongst the kids to get like a classroom pet like something probably about the size and manageability of a chinchilla i don't remember the details but i remember the sticking point being like yeah but then summer comes around like somebody's got to take this and teachers being like we can't just keep bringing pets home like this is a thing

well in this case this one relationship even though it may have been you know a sort of arranged marriage as it were it has blossomed into love between and then this person Ali was actually flying I don't want to get too much into their life other than to say the chinchilla is going to live in Portland for a while because she's going to be traveling internationally so it wasn't just like I fly this chinchilla everywhere it's like the chinchilla is relocating and so that so that you know it can have a loving home out here anyway i just i just love the idea of of mr b in the chinchilla taking a wild uh wild ride um okay speaking i know i do need to

ask one question here because i think you can i think you can deal with this question pretty quickly but okay i guess i sort of know the answer to this based on the conversation we had before the show but listeners might be thinking right now hey luke did end up flying back through the seattle airport didn't luke lose an expensive piece of equipment audio equipment that he does the podcast with at the seattle airport because that's something that i've had on my on my mind is like if you end up this thing is called a mix pre this this piece of audio equipment and i've been thinking and i've been meaning to tell you that like if you if somebody locates it at the TSA at Seattle airport and you need me to go pick it up you would let me know and I'll take care of that for you but it sounds like you drove right or you landed in Seattle and then drove home to Portland did you have a chance to get the machine I take I take it not Andrew do you know that until

this moment it hadn't occurred to me that I was in the airport oh where the piece of equipment may have been at the lost and found do you realize that at no time when I was landing at SeaTac and wrestling with the Avis car rental app and thinking good thoughts for Mr. Bean, the chinchilla. At no time did it enter my brain on Saturday that I might just toddle over to the lost and found counter and see what I could find out. Do you realize that is how bad my brain is? Forget the Magnus Carlsen comments. This is the new evidence that my brain is that bad. It did not occur to me that that's the same place.

I was so caught up in the just like What not of my travel woes And just trying to get to the rental car To get home because I was exhausted Did not even think to do that

Yeah well that's really disappointing It really is Well just I did get an email from them Let me tell you this

Again we need I want to talk about this prank I want to get your take on this prank Do you know the prank I'm talking about? No I have no idea and I purposely didn't

Me averting my eyes to Rodin's first word I did not look into this Because I want you to tell me what's going on

Good They sent me an email telling me they haven't found it yet Which I both appreciate Getting more information And also they really played with my emotions Because suddenly I had an email in my inbox From the lost and found department And I was like, it's happening And then I clicked on it and it said Just an update, we haven't found your thing yet

I appreciate it though i totally understand your experience there but it's nice to know that like because you just fill out these goddamn forms everybody's filling what uh what yeah what is it like a fill out a ticket we filled out a ticket everybody's filling out tickets or whatever the expression is these days and it's like filling out a ticket means i fill out a form that goes directly into nothing into the digital garbage can so the fact that they're kind of like monitoring it that i kind of appreciate

that i do too but now i'm just i'm so disappointed in myself that i didn't just walk over to the it's it's like it's like here's what happened in my brain on friday i remember thinking god when's the next time i'm flying through seattle right i remember thinking that like when am i going to be in seattle again when could i go check on this and i thought well not today because i'm flying to portland and then somehow that just that continued as my overriding sort of mental state even as i was flying through seattle but i mean seriously in your defense that's sort of how

rigid my brain got in your defense i mean it was a top i'm not even joking like it was a topsy-turvy i mean you're just your your schedule had changed so many times because of acts of god aka the weather you're just trying to deal with getting home like you're probably not operating on a lot of good sleep you're going through different time zones like i think it's forgivable i guess but i

mean it's pretty silly not even not even that they would have had it but like to miss the opportunity to just walk over to wherever it is and just kind of knock on the door and be like

could we could i help you poke around um never knock on the door of the tsa and say can i help

you can i help you poke around yeah anyway okay let's talk let's talk spoofing an elephant because i remember on friday andrew you were very thankful that april fools april 1st fell on a weekend because you thought that might cut down on the shenanigans. That would certainly limit maybe the corporations talking about, you know, or the brands talking about, we're rolling out, you know, we're reintroducing Crystal Pepsi or whatever the pranks are. And I know you're not really into that stuff, but I saw one that happened over the weekend that I thought was actually a pretty good spoof because I think it really plays into your and mine kind of deep anxiety, but not in like a hurtful way so here's what happened you know weekend update with uh michael che and colin jost so apparently what happened was michael che told the audience secretly like before they were both out on stage to not laugh at colin jost's jokes that's pretty funny right

like i'm gonna play this for you i'm gonna play this for you there's it's a little now first of

there's a little there is some laughter for Colin Jost's jokes but when you really notice the difference is when Michael Che delivers his first joke and then towards the end I'm only narrating this because it's a little hard to pick up but as as Colin Jost delivers his sort of final joke in this like free fall somebody from the audience yells you stink so listen for that okay so take a listen this is SNL good evening everyone

welcome to Wigan London I'm Michael Che I'm Colin Jost. Well, great news for conservatives. New York is finally cracking down on crime. Former President Donald Trump was indicted for his role in paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels, and the trial will be like a Stormy Daniels movie because I'm deeply ashamed at how excited I am to watch it. Trump will reportedly surrender next week, but his lawyer Joe Tacopina, who Trump definitely calls Joe Tapioca, said that the president will not be put in handcuffs though he would consider wearing fake breakaway handcuffs and a superman t-shirt when trump surrenders new york city police will take his official mugshot which you know is the only thing trump cares about getting right i'm sure he's hoping it'll look cool like frank sinatra's but i bet it'll end up closer to

Nick Nolte. Trump is reportedly being charged with 34 counts of business fraud. Business fraud is also what they call the Trump costume at Spirit Halloween.

The look on Colin Joe's face, by the way, is kind of amazing as he realizes it's not that the audience is just dead.

I think in general the people might be overreacting to this indictment. Like, an actual headline on CNN yesterday was, nothing in American history approaches the tumult of the charging and possible trial and conviction of a former president. A more accurate headline would be, man we all knew was criminal, maybe criminal. At this point, it feels like even pro-Trump people have moved on. I mean, I went down to the courthouse today, and I was the only protester there.

You stink!

here's where che is about to let him in on the on the on the prank

and i have to say that like this is where it really gets good for me because

the palpable relief slash whatever other emotion you can imagine on colin joe's face is really pretty great like you don't get so many really real moments in television anymore but you can just tell and this is where i say it relates to our anxiety andrew you can tell that he was so confused why his jokes were bombing he's gonna say in a minute he thought his mic was off

am i now mike and then i was just like oh i just suck

all right moving right along representative marjorie taylor green you're evil plans to come to new york on tuesday to protest trump's indictment because apparently it takes her three days to put on her joker makeup no they'll probably laugh at this

that's the meanest thing you've ever done i was i'm covered in sweat

anyway so uh would you say uh that that is a decent april fool's prank to do yeah i i do i

think that's funny even when you were just describing it to me i thought it was funny I am and I don't have the visuals here and obviously obviously it's a live show so I'm not I'm not claiming anything here conspiratorially I'm just confused it's the laughter when you told me that there's still some laughter for Collins jokes but it's it's kind of muted in comparison I expected it to be more of a expected to be quieter and more like sort of mumbly it's it's weird that it's like it's still there it's just really fast it almost sounds like somebody's pulling down the microphone you know what i mean like if or if you had to edit like sometimes i edit applause or laughter for intro tape if it's a stand-up comedian and sometimes you're like huh that's funny how like how it's like these short bursts of laughter do you think that there are all other people in the audience who are plants who always laugh no matter what is that just it doesn't sound like natural laughter in a certain way do you know what i mean and again i'm not i'm not claiming anything here i'm just kind of confused

I you know because I what my question was I wonder how it would be that Michael Che would be able to talk to the audience and Colin Jost wouldn't know about it but I will so that was my question is how did he transmit that information and either maybe the information didn't get to the entire audience or there may just be a segment of the human population that even if somebody tells them don't laugh. yeah they just are so conditioned that when something goes like you know set up punchline they just like involuntarily respond and maybe this is that percentage of the audience i'm not totally sure about that because like when i read the write-up i and hadn't watched it yet i assumed it would be like colin jose does a joke and there's just crickets yeah but and it wasn't crickets uh but i i think i attribute that just to the like the the i don't know variety of responses that some people have uh to even being told to do something not being able to keep it together or i don't know but what i but what i do know is i feel that it really in the room was really weird because the reaction from colin jost who's not a good enough actor for this was so clearly of somebody who was could not understand why they were failing so hard you know like and again it was it felt like exactly like not that i think i'm calling jose but how i would feel i would also be covered in sweat i would also be furious but kind of relieved like the interaction with him really to me that the joy of it if you ever watch it is like him and chai after chai has explained to him what's going on like that dynamic is like really kind of charming and funny and makes me believe that this really was whatever the acoustics are in the room it was like one of these people is failing hard and the other person is is crushing it yeah and and the

fact that it sounds sort of that the audience laughter sort of confuses me only makes it all feel more real to me again not that i'm looking for a conspiracy here but like you said there are things it's like well it is television like if it was a skit yes they would have made it like

they would have had a tumbleweed blow through the audience as i like to say right or like what was

the um i don't know why i need to bring this up what was the the um kate mckinnon sketch on snl where this is years ago now but the headlines the next day were like kate mckinnon breaks character And it's hilarious when it's like, no, that was kind of clear that that was that was part of the plan going into the sketches that she was doing this what she was doing a Fauci, I think, or something. Or she was doing some sort of a doctor, I believe she was portraying. And then she said, yes, we know this. Yes, we know this. I guess that's not Fauci. And then she kind of breaks character. But it was clearly part of their entertainers. They're making stuff for us. It's supposed to feel spontaneous sometimes when it's not. Whereas this seems very believable.

yeah that one because i got i was i was so annoyed because there was these headlines bouncing around that was like epic break in character for kate mckinnon and then that the character that had the quote-unquote epic break after having their kind of whatever like you know going off script they then did about three more minutes that was very clearly on script with colin jost yeah so it was like misunderstanding what and it was you know one of the all-time epic breaks on snl and i was like we got to watch more snl to to realize that that was if you have a break like that you don't just then do three more minutes in that version of the character right very tightly and and coordinatedly with uh with the host but yeah this was this unless you know unless i have just fully lost my powers of uh you know observation this one really struck me as real and i thought yeah this is a good prank because it's both harmful and harmless it's harmful to Colin Jost's ego for a two-minute period, but harmless in the greater scheme of things.

And you're relieved at the end. I mean, I guess you could say that about any prank, right? You put fake dog poo on the ground, and somebody's upset for a second. Then you say, it's not real. It's fake. And then you remember my grandparent's dog's name.

I told you there's no accounting for the information that sticks in this brain.

Did you know that my grandparent's dog, Terry, also played chess? But, wow, what an amazing pull. I can't even remember what school you went to When you say it in every intro of the show Practically I feel like if they were going to fake this If SNL was going to fake this They would have killed the mic on the crowd There would have been a way to make this smoother So anyway, very interesting

And also it wasn't I think part of what annoys you and I And you definitely have brought me over to this side of things But I'm with you now I keep saying corporation But just like when a product, let's say Is doing it to just get earned media let's be honest probably on this show there's something also that just feels a little bit like cynical about it whereas this wasn't other than i guess the larger argument of trying to make snl more funny and then more popular this wasn't a product just saying like we're introducing all brown skittles this was like two people who clearly like really like each other one of them just kind of messing with the other one but in a way where like nobody gets really hurt and also No one's trying to make you buy something or process something or joke something, bought or processed. Anyway, I thought it was pretty – I thought it was, as we say, a pretty good spoof. Now, did you notice, Andrew, that I did something very subtle today that I wondered if you would pick up? I wonder if any of the listeners picked up on it. But, you know, I played my little audio tape for the promotion of the stories we're going to talk about. I played back-to-back Galifianakis from two different situations.

Oh, I didn't notice that. How about, like, pranking an animal?

That, of course, is Galifianakis from that really great Dog Bites Man, where he plays, like, I think, the cameraman on this kind of fictional Spokane, Washington TV show, or TV news crew, rather. And then this is him, I think, playing his brother, Seth Galifianakis. Well, that's a pretty good spoof. Turns out all of the pranking and spoofing drops we have all emanate from Zach Galifianakis.

I got a I think it was a voicemail from a listener who was just like so happy to I mean this is just like last week a few days ago a listener was so happy to have stumbled on that that's a pretty good spoof drop in the wild like when you hear something over and over and over again on a dumb podcast and then.

And you're just like, oh, my God, you hear it in the wild in all the context. The person just had to call the line and be like, oh, my God, do you know that do you know that that's Zach Elfnack is playing his own brother?

Like, yes, I do. That's a that is a real joy. I've had versions of that where and it's just from drops that you've put into intro packages and that I'm watching, you know, Archer or some other show. Typically one maybe that you and Veeves were kind of like geeking out on for a while or Bob's Burgers or something. I'll just be like, oh, that's where that's from. I'm like, I get that excitement, and I work on the show. Yeah, barely.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. Oh, man, it's not from a female.

All right, emails or v-mails?

Yeah, let me play one quick voicemail for you here. We were talking a couple of weeks ago, I believe inspired by a CBS story that you were working on About the coffin or casket industry

Casket Andrew They don't say coffin Unless it's coffin flops We call them caskets

One of my favorite bands from the 90s was Soul Casket What a terrible joke

I don't need to walk around in circles Walk around in circles I think you were probably going Soul Asylum And I was going Soul Coughing

No I was, that's Soul Coughing Soul Casket, Soul Coughing Okay, so I'm going to play this for you So that story inspired a lot of people to write and call in about stories of them, in some cases, preparing for their own end of days or what have you. And we got this voicemail from Monty.

Hi, this is Monty. I'm a U10. So my dad was a construction worker and a construction management professor, and he built all our cabinets and stuff. And about 15 years ago, when my grandpa died, he asked my dad to build his coffin, build a beautiful wooden coffin. And when his mom died, he did the same thing. Well, a few years later, I'm visiting their house, and he takes me downstairs to show me something. And underneath the stairs, there's some storage space. And he opens the little door and pulls out two coffins. They're on wheels. He just pulls them out. Beautiful black oak or something like that. Really beautiful handmade coffins. So he's already built the coffins that him and my mother are going to be buried in. They're just in the basement. And in fact, they're full of food storage right now. So power out. Wow.

Yeah, that's amazing. I did not see that last part coming.

No, that's my favorite part. And like, honestly, like I think a lot of us and myself included have trouble talking about death, have trouble probably, you know, even visualizing it for the people we love in our family. But these are important conversations to have. So I don't think it's just like, you know, I think it's nice that that Monty's dad has built these and is planning and preparing. But you also can't deny what feeling that must give you when your dad says, hey, come downstairs. I want to show you something and pulls out two boxes where he's going to be laid to rest.

Well, because I've been spending a considerable amount of time in the world of casket and casket history, it's interesting because – and we probably have some listeners that maybe work in the funeral industry, and I know that there are a lot of really great people that help folks out, folks who are grieving a loved one. And I don't want to sound like I'm trying to be critical of everybody who works in that, you know, in that world. But there was a time and it was like not super long ago. It was like pre the 1900s where if people passed away, they would you just get buried in the ground. Like so you dig a hole. Someone would dig a hole in your yard and put you in there and maybe put you in a shroud. And then at some point people started building caskets. It was like the carpenter down the street would like make a casket. You go buy it from them. It was just kind of like a thing that you could make. And then I think it was probably around the 1920s. You start to have this funeral industry with funeral directors. And all of a sudden it went from being a thing where like you could go to Monty's dad and be like, hey, could you knock me out a casket for my aunt or something? I heard you built some pretty cool ones to like now this is a thing where embalming becomes a thing, which would never happen before. And caskets became very like over the top and expensive. That was the creation of the funeral industry. It's not like a tradition in America. And so this idea of people, if they want to have a casket, building their own casket or going and just like buying one from somebody who made it, that's really a throwback to a time in our history when that was going on a lot. It's only been in the last hundred years that this industry, the sort of, as Caitlin Doty calls it, the funeral industrial complex, has tried to make people think that there's only one way to sort of say goodbye to a loved one. it involves. thousands of dollars of spending and a real sort of high gloss finish on like a box that they're going to like live in for eternity yeah and as you mentioned and you're just in a state you're

in a state like if you're somebody who's close to the person who died like you're also trying to make these hugely expensive decisions when you're in a state of mourning and potentially shock and you're unmoored um it's yeah it's it's you gotta that's another argument for really planning ahead

yeah it's I will tell you this because I somehow found myself on the funeral beat at CBS Sunday morning I've actually thought about this more you know I'm not gonna I'm not interested personally in having an over-the-top funeral or like a casket you know or anything like that but I definitely have figured out or at least I've come to the awareness that the more that you can just try to even if it's scary just kind of make friends with the idea that we're all gonna leave this planet at some point and our loved ones are going to leave this planet and having those conversations even if they're not super fun if you have those conversations before it's the moment of of grief and loss it's just going to go so much better because it's the absolute worst time to be trying to make really hard decisions when you're also just you know grieving a loved one who's gone so i even though i was very very afraid of thinking about my death or my death or whatever years ago. Now I look forward to it. I consider it a sweet release, Andrew. I'd give this five more years on this coil for me.

Went from being nice to not so nice.

I do think that if we're able to, if folks are able to kind of like really square up and make some amount of peace with the fact that this is a really uncomfortable topic, it's going to go a lot better for everybody involved. Involved. Agreed. All right. Well, on that note, I think it's probably time for us to wrap things up here on this Monday. I've got great news, though, for everyone. I'll be back in Chicago tomorrow. I'm hosting this thing tonight called the Oregon Book Awards. And then I'm getting on an actual red eye, like a red eye that's planned to be a red eye and going back to Chicago, my new hometown. And and that's where I'll be for the next few shows.

so do me a favor stop at that that lovers shop by the airport get yourself some handcuffs and handcuff that mix pre to your wrist as you go I love that you think lovers you're probably right

though I guess that is the only place that probably sells handcuffs they're gonna have pink fur on them I know you think that's an issue no I think that's a way of keeping track of things it's very smart of you okay I'll do that and see everybody tomorrow in the meantime have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall, and good luck to all.

One more vampire joke, and I'm gonna walk right back there, go into my coffin, and I'm not coming out, okay? Power out.