Muse

What I like to do is first lay down a kind of syncopated beat that isn't so much about what it is altogether. It's more about the modulation and what it is once it starts. It's a little bit of a groove more than it is a rock beat. I do a flam rest, flam rest, flam rest, followed by sort of kind of an intricate African thing on the low drums. So it goes like so. The pattern is you ride on this tom here. Hopefully you've got the 17 toms. And it goes something like this. TBTL.

In the next hour, we will present information that's both shocking and enlightening. Oh, boy. Who keeps putting Twizzlers in the fridge? I told, is it Sarah? Crystal. Crystal does it? She likes some food. Okay, well, Crystal, you and I are going to have another Twizzler talk. I cannot believe this stuff is on the radio. So, this is what our youth is being subjected to. That was great. That was good. You went for it. I appreciate that. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. This is a whole new level of nerd. That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works.

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

These are the best Cajun chicken niblets I've ever had.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

In case you're wondering what's going on here, I'm having an absolutely fabulous time.

Coming to you from the River House Studios perched high above the mighty Columbia River. Oh, Ma, Pa, it's just beautiful. By beautiful, I mean, like, incredibly windy and kind of frigid today, but actually, you know, beautiful in terms of staring at the river which is what i'm doing right now as i'm talking to you and i'm staring at a hummingbird feeder that seems to be largely neglected by the hummingbirds of southern washington but that's all right because the real focus is on episode 3924 in a collector series let the fun begin where we have arrived today of course big announcement on friday that tbtl is going independent starting july 3rd tbtl 4 a new beginning a new hope i don't know i'm just i'm just workshopping terms for the next phase of the program and um you know it's going to be a lot more work uh for us but that's okay we're up for it in fact i may have found a way to do more tbtl with actually less work from me and that would be using an ai bot that just does my voice your voice is like a combination of fergie and jesus this happened recently a company that i do some work for big software concern on the east side of the greater seattle area needed uh to basically put some voiceover of mine down to some video tracks but i hadn't spoken any of the words that they needed uh and so for timing purposes they just plugged me into something called a voice clone and um well i've got the audio for you we will listen to it uh together and then uh speaking of branding and technology and things like that hbo max is changing its name to something else which we'll talk about i don't even own a television and um i'm out here working on this house project with my dear father, Walt B. And I love the guy, love getting to spend time with him, except for one thing, and that is him bedtime shaming me.

I'm mad at you, Dad!

We'll talk about that as well. And we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Hey, Hermano! He's sort of my podcasting Hermano. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I am not saying this to be dramatic in fact I tend to underplay things I believe in my life maybe you disagree with that but that's how I see it but we have a real Chekhov's cat situation going on here that will probably you know the whole thing you see a cat on a shelf in Act 1 it's likely to jump down on your shoulders after you've forgotten that it's above you in Act 3 because I have this shelf that runs like a bookshelf type of thing that runs along the side like in the wall built-in shelf in my studio it's about shoulder high when I'm standing but right now I'm sitting and what my cat likes to do is quickly jump up on my lap jump up onto my shoulder and then jump up onto the shelf which is like you know right now like I don't know two feet above my head or something like that and Ben goes up there right now he's looking out the window he's totally chill he looks exactly like what you want your cat to look like if you have a happy cat.

on a Monday morning, but at some point, unbeknownst to me, cats love Mondays, and they hate lasagna. That's what I know about cats, and I tell you what's going to happen here, and I'm not going to try to overplay this, but at some point during the show, I'm going to forget that he's up there, and he is going to jump down on my shoulder. He's not a small kitten anymore. He's going to jump down and land on my shoulder when I'm least expecting it, and it's going to scare the hell out of me. So warning on that. That's what I'm going to promise. I'm not trying to be overdramatic about it, but it is going to scare me. It always does.

Right. Because it'll be, again, at the exact moment that you have stopped anticipating bingo jumping on you. So, OK, well, I appreciate the heads up. We're all kind of prepared. And in fact, in some way, looking forward to it.

Yeah, I know. I mean, that's kind of the thing. It does sort of set up a sort of tension in the show. So speaking of tension, I told you before the show that I wanted to get your interpretation of a text thread that the three of us.

Yeah, I need some, in the words of Stone Cold Steve Austin, can you clarify? Can you give me the 411? Why were you texting me and Camaro Kev a photograph of some club called Trinity this weekend?

Okay, so here's the deal. I went to a baseball game down at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington on Saturday night.

So you went Friday and Saturday?

I did, yeah, coincidentally. Look at you. Yeah, no, it wasn't planned. I woke up on Thursday having no baseball plans, and then two different friends, Scotty the Hottie, had an extra ticket on Friday, and my boy Pauly had an extra ticket on Saturday. It was a really great weekend of baseball. It was nice, exactly. And also the M's are now 2-0 for games that I've attended, which means I really need to go to more games, I think. But what I was going to say was I'm leaving the stadium and I'm walking through Pioneer Square is as is my want. I don't like to take the train from the actual stadium stop because it's just super crowd. It's not a very nice walk and you're walking with this huge crowd of, you know, Mariners fans, which can be fun if, you know, if there's some huge win and everybody's chanting or something. But I like to do is put on my headphones, take a nice little stroll through Pioneer Square after the game, get on the train station there. I don't know. What do you think that walk is, Luke? Quarter of a mile or three quarters of a mile or something like that? Maybe it's a nice little walk. And also in this area, Pioneer Square is where there are some clubs, the type of clubs that I would not go to dance clubs. And one of them is called what? Trinity. Right.

Yeah.

And I saw it. Now, I know that you and Camaro Kev back in the day used to go to some sort of clubs in Pioneer Square. I don't know if Trinity is one of your old haunts or not.

No, Trinity. I don't think Trinity was even there. And we were even even in our days of going to the club. We never went to like a cool nightclub where you had to get dressed a certain way and where they were playing cool house music. We would go to a place called Doc Maynard's, which was just a big open room where the bands that would play would just be doing cover songs. So one of the bands we would see would be called Jambalassi. They would just do all manner of... These are the finest Jambalassis I've ever had. The other band we would see there was called Hit Explosion. And they would also... Did they play deep cuts usually? They did. It was a lot of older Tom Waits.

Yeah.

But none of the catchy stuff, none of the radio-friendly Tom Waits stuff.

Small change. You walk into the sound, they keep the sound very low. They don't turn it up too loud. It's just, small change got rained on with his own 38s.

It's actually interesting because both of those bands, Jambalassi and Hit Explosion, were incorporations. there I thought this would have been a kind of an interesting economic story for like marketplace or something back in the day you just had somebody who was smart enough to form a company that was going to be a band called hit explosion not even one of the singers just a person maybe a person with no musical talent and then they would just hire the people to be in the band and so the the lineup would be changing I mean these were hired employees who were there to play music and anyway My point is that was the energy in the room that Camaro, Kevin, and I were in. Not like there's a velvet rope and a bouncer and there's table service. Nothing like whatever probably goes on at Trinity.

Hit Explosion is still a going concern. I think we've talked about this on the show before. I'm on their website now. The Northwest's favorite party band, Hit Explosion. Anyway, I knew that you and Kevin.

You knew that I wasn't in Club Trinity.

I knew that you and Kevin were not actually in Club Trinity. In fact, I knew where Kevin was. He was playing bingo with Genevieve and a bunch of my friends over at the Eagles. But I saw this photo, and so I took a – or I saw this entryway to – the club with a line of people and a bouncer and so i took a photo of it i sent it to you guys on a whim and just said hey you guys inside and you picked up on the sarcasm and wrote uh yeah we're wilding out in here and then i think you attached a video of what was actually happening in your real life at that moment which was it was you at your new house probably i'm guessing after a day of construction or some sort of work there is i'm guessing a bbc drama some sort of tv playing on the projector and your dad sleeping on the couch or at least lounging.

It's the work of one Julian Baptiste, Andrew, of course, previously known as The Missing, but then at some point they changed the series to being called Baptiste.

And your dad is on the couch next to you, and I couldn't tell if he was sleeping or just lounging next to you, but I think the point of this joke was that you were not wilding out. You were the opposite. Very sedate scene. You were sedating out. It was a very calm thing. But then I got a text message from Kamara Kev on this chain and his response was in all caps, what exclamation point, question mark, exclamation point. And I could just tell him, by the way, this wasn't super late at night. This wasn't like three o'clock. I don't I don't think I don't know what Kevin's level of drinking, you know, Red Bulls and vodkas was at this point. But I was like, I could tell immediately, like, Kevin doesn't think we're joking. but i also was like but in what scenario would you and i ever be going to trinity and why would i loop it like i mean how could you how could you miss the sarcasm on this so i'm like okay whatever i can't tell if he's being sarcastic or not i'll also let me just say this if if like

you know you're if you're playing bingo and kind of out of the corner of your eye you're glancing at your phone in the in and you see this projection of what turns out to be um a baptiste maybe you take that to be like a video you know inside of i mean i'll tell you what it was dark in this room so in that sense it was kind of like the club i could see just like misunderstanding what even the visual was and thinking like oh luke is inside trinity where they're showing some kind of cool outsider video while they play, you know, Hathaway, What is Love, Baby Don't Hurt Me, which I assume is what they're playing in all of the clubs currently.

That is true. And I don't know if this really clarifies things or should have clarified things or not. But after you sent that video of you guys, you know, just lounging, I texted also to you guys, sweet, save some honeys for me. And then I followed up, by which I mean some of your dad's delicious honey cookies. I don't think honey cookies are a real thing I was just trying to make a joke Because clearly you guys You meant that to be like the ladies The ladies, the honeys I assume that you go to a club and there's honeys I don't know, that's just what I've heard from music

Now can I just mention that you ran the risk Of further confusing our friend Camaro Kev Because

That was before he responded what, by the way, at that point

But even so, because, you know Honeys was I don't think it exists anymore But there was a club, a gentleman's club in like everett washington or everett if you're from around there called honeys that was let me just say the subject of much conversation and speculation for a certain young population in lake stevens washington back in the day so when i saw that i was like wait are they at honey i got

i got a little confused you got confused but what about the follow-up of what i mean your dad's honey cookies like wasn't it pretty clear that i saw you well i've asked you to not speak on my dad's honey cookies oh your dad that was i had a lot of honey cookies don't he know um anyway so i and so after all that kevin just writes what all all caps i'm just like okay i'm gonna just let everybody just kind of figure this out everybody the copy already calm down the copy machines got everybody a little bit too excited so i keep walking to the trade then i get a text from my beloved girlfriend who is at bingo with camaro cap so i wasn't in on that part right no you were not in on this but i just get this text like oh god damn it that was the cat it wasn't bad though he didn't he didn't use his nails it was actually a pretty soft landing but it did surprise me um good job boy um anyway genevieve just texts me just sidebars me like not in on this thread at all wtf you're clubbing without me question mark exclamation point and then i wrote this is what happens when an inside joke gets into the water supply so i wrote i think kevin might have missed the video luke sent but yeah it's wild in here lots of honeys yeah it's wild in here lots of honeys uh and then she says then there's like kind of i don't know a minute or two in between then she says did you know luke was gonna be at the game or something and i'm just like i'm like no no no and i didn't i did not have the energy to string this along anymore please tell me that as of this monday as of the recording both genevieve and camaro kev think you me and my dad were into club no i still want to know what i still

want to know like why kevin was so confused because i would think that bingo itself would be over by this point like they were still in the hall obviously but this is like 10 30 at night 10

you know almost 10 30 at night like prime you know but i speak from experience both for myself and for our friend camaro kev but i mean 10 30 is is is it's it's definitely an hour

of the night where some loopiness can occur you know so anyway so then i just told her via text message i'm like this is what happened i saw this i saw this scene i sent it to luke and kevin jokingly asking if they are currently inside genevieve writes okay that's act one i say luke said yeah come on in we're wilding out she's like act two and then i say critically he attached a video of his dad sleeping on the couch next to him as a bbc drama plays in the background i believe kevin might have missed this video and therefore thinks we're actually in said club to which genevieve said and scene so anyway i guess i need to stop being sarcastic i mean i've heard that before in my life that i can either tease too hard or inexplicably explicately i tease too explicately um uh i don't know what i was trying to say there but anyway i actually meant to ask

you a question at the beginning of the show on the subject of teasing too hard how's the brew

crew looking this year oh man i don't know man i don't have that drop in front of me i like your

droll sense of humor and and again i uh i interpreted it i think in the spirit that it was intended and to be honest with you that's i love the confusion that must have reigned at the mother airy i know eagles airy numero uno like you're more about not made that joke

none of this fun would have happened i know i want to hear more about how that landed how kevin

broke the news that you and i were clubbing the bingo microphone hold on hold on like i just

breaking news i don't understand how you're you immediately see that and you're like oh my god And then you tell Genevieve, they're at the club, they're at Trinity. Like, I just sort of feel like I've known you all for quite some time now. I just can't imagine a world in which, even if I did so, they're like, well, maybe he met up with Luke at the ballgame. I'm like, even still, that's just like, like maybe because you're like Luke, maybe like you had, you know, I really did. Then I'm like, I'm thinking like, is it, do they figure that Luke has some sort of connection at the club? You know CBS has put him up in the hotel outside the club And so therefore somebody you know famous is spinning And you got I mean I'm just trying to think what scenario do they think I would ever set foot in Trinity

But doesn't that honestly I feel like the takeaway from this is really a positive one Which is considering you've put a good 20 years into establishing a personality that would not go into the club Genevieve and Camaro Kev still think you have the plasticity

Yeah, no, that's true

To maybe go into the club Like, I think this is great This means they don't assume that you are as set in your ways As you honestly probably are So that's kind of a good thing In other words, it's them thinking, hey, you know what? Keep them guessing We can believe a universe in which Andrew is in Club Trinity Or whatever it's called

Exactly, so here's my question for you So in that video where you took, you know, I saw you guys projecting a TV show on the screen and I saw the side of the kind of like the kind of backside of your dad's head. I couldn't tell if he was actually sleeping or not. Was he dozing on the couch? Was he awake? And does this play into whatever shame sleep or sleep shaming that you were talking about at the beginning of the slunk jeep, slunk jeep, which clearly I'm keeping.

Well, I have to be I just have to clarify one thing. He's not on a couch because we don't have couches around here. Andrew he is in a weird camp chair that I bought at REI this kind that like is kind of elaborate and if you put your weight it's sort of a rocking chair but it also kind of almost lies flat it's called a stargazer and I guess the idea is you know you're camping you're out in the field you're staring at the stars it allows you to recline pretty far back and we have two of these in this room that i'm in right now and that's what we sit in when we're watching my dad's a bit torrented content now as to the question of if he's sleeping or not that's a little unclear because he he goes in and out so i'm constantly trying to read if his eyes are actually open or not i think he falls asleep for like you know five minutes at a time and then he kind of wakes up he's also coming in by the way from the adu so i can play it a little bit chill but like we can change topics and come

background to this if you'd like. He's seen

there's no no chance that we'll make it back around if we leave now we're just gonna we're just we're gonna just power forward i guess but like you know he's he's seen these shows before um and so there's that probably part of why it's a little bit less riveting but the thing that the thing that happened last night was i it was about 9 30 and i was plum tuckered because i'm not used to doing any real work andrew i mean i have i have the hands and the body and frankly the mentality of a podcaster at this point meaning putting in a bunch putting a bunch of mending plates on a ladder up in the high part of the ceiling yesterday and then doing a bunch of painting that you know that takes it out of old burbs and so uh by 9 30 i was i was tired and my dad is just he's like uh he's raring to go he would have watched four episodes of baptiste last night if i would have gone for it but i was saying to him you know it's not fair for you to bedtime shame me when you're sleeping

through most of this the and and what time do you usually go to bed on just an average night

yourself nine nine thirty well because i've been doing this on weeknights on school nights because i've been doing this thing where i get up at five so it really life comes at you fast uh when you're doing that and so I try to do 9 or 9 30 I mean this has been the case for a long time for me there's almost nothing I enjoy more than getting into bed in the summertime when it's still light out which is more or less I think the exact opposite of how you enjoy an evening Andrew now the thing for me is it's very it's it's sort of I guess you could say it's a bit bipolar and I don't mean that to be glib about people dealing with bipolar I just mean you'll either find me at 5 a.m. playing in an illegal poker game or in bed at 9 p.m. It's the thing is that there's I don't there's not a lot of in between for me. I'm either being fart. I'm either in Club Trinity till way too late or I'm trying to get in bed by nine.

I see. I just got a text message from a number I don't that I don't recognize that has I have zero text history with this number, at least on this phone. It just says, how are you doing these days? Are you still in Seattle? Now, I don't have a Seattle number. my area code is still an east coast area code it seems like this person actually knows me how do i

you know what i've started doing with that because speaking of being at club trinity till all hours i definitely as i've wandered the highways and byways of life portland other places and let's just say i may be staying up late i may be having a few adult beverages i will not never in a creepy like i'm trying to you know get a date with someone way but i will like become fast friends with someone at the poker table right and it because i'm a little loopy it'll you know i'll probably be overstating how just how much we should all hang out and be buds and then i'll get a text a day or two later it'll be like great meeting you at the poker game or whatever sure yeah and then i'm and i don't even i don't know anything about this person like i'm very limited uh you know recall on it or even just having met a lot of people in my life I will get the occasional text from a number I don't recognize and what I have finally started doing is just saying this is embarrassing but who is this again like I tried so many games around you know I got a new phone but that doesn't even matter like a new phone doesn't erase your context let's just call it what it is people a lie so I've started taking the direct approach when I get a text like the one you got where the person would appear to have some info about your life and it sucks but it's better than some weird dance where you've got to try to like trick the person like a rumpelstiltskin or something you got to trick them into saying their name to you so then you can try to piece

it together yeah that happened i was on the opposite end of that recently with our friend liz who listens to this show and will probably hear this conversation not unlike your dad listening to um your conversation about your sleeping habits but um uh liz is one of the people who was behind or i think maybe the person who was behind that billboard campaign that i was fascinated with yeah the disappearing billboard disappearing billboard that um said homelessness

and then it changed to say home that definitely sounds like an encyclopedia brown book as well

the case of the disappearing billboard yes yes and we kind of we kind of figured it out sort of Well, Liz told us. Anyway, I had Liz's number from some wild night. Remember when, like, one of our friends accidentally left or grabbed the wrong phone? Yes, our friend Katie. Yes. I'm fine with it. I was doing a little protection there. I'll name names. That was one of the nights where we were up very, very late, and one of our friends grabbed the wrong person's phone, so we're driving Liz around to get to Katie's house so that we can... And Purse, which had the phone, though. There were communication breakdowns because I think Katie had Liz's phone. There was keys.

It was a situation.

Right. So I think we were all in a text chain that night as we tried to. um untangle that and so i had liz's number and then as i would go around town i would see her billboards i would text her be like hey your billboard is still up in ballard or blah blah and honestly i think i text people i don't expect texts back you know like i just don't that's not in fact i think some of my friends need to have learned that they shouldn't expect texts back from me either it's like totally on a whim i might hit you up with a million questions if you text me in the middle of the day i may never respond i think that should be the general vibe with text

messaging with that kind of communication now you and i a lot of the stuff that we text about might be work related so that's kind of a different bar but in terms of just like throwing out a joke or a thing or a thought on the mariners i'm good with the understanding that it may be responded

to it may not and that's all okay and it shouldn't be embarrassing to receive a text message back that says i'm sorry i don't know who this is but one of the one of the i don't know last times i texted her um this is a few months ago she just wrote back like listen i'm really embarrassed about this i'm sorry but do i know you or something along those lines and then i scroll up i'm like oh yeah this person has not been responding to my text messages i'm like this is walsh and she's like oh yeah like the person i'm literally listening to in my earbuds right now got it

and so i understand there is always this is what me helping retrieve your possessions at three in the morning this is this is this is my thank you but it's hard not to sort of feel

even even though like liz and i are irl friends like we've seen each other since probably some of these missed missed text messages or whatever but like there was part of his like well yeah i guess i did save your number and you didn't save mine i guess there is a little bit of a power imbalance there that i think i'm just very nerdy and like when i get somebody's number i do this with listeners as well like when listeners text in to me i if they tell me who they are i try to save them so that the next time i get a text message from them you know about the show or anything we're talking about i at least know who we're talking to you know what i mean maybe it's

christine and span away or something i think this is an indicator of the of a difference in our personalities and also in just our the way that we because we were talking the other day about procrastination and productivity and things and i was saying i think of you as being a very um orderly person and a person who really kind of knuckles down when you need to i have so many texts on my phone where there's no contact i just have learned what the area code indicates like the hawk squad a couple of my nieces have um have have cell phones now maddie and mary i have no idea who is what i haven't put either of them in his contacts there's just these random they're not random but there's these numbers that chime in and i've sort of figured out which one i think is maddie which one is mary it would take me two seconds to just make a contact and then i would never have to wonder but i am that kind of frantic possibly undiagnosed adhd person oh more on that by the way at some point yeah like um well maybe more on that at this point very quickly i i i haven't thought of myself as somebody who might have adhd because i think of the hallmark of that is being like you can never find your car keys and that's not a big struggle for me i'm i'm not i i'm fairly organized in certain ways you know as far as again knowing where my wallet is and things like that i tend to do okay with that stuff and i i think i attributed or i said well that's you know if you don't if you're not doing that then it means you're not having add or adhd or whatever but i saw something interesting the other day about low dopamine being associated with adhd and that would totally check out because if you have low dopamine what might one do to try to give that dopamine a boost one might do a lot of dumb things that in the short term feel like you've really opened the uh the spigot on the dopamine um and so that i'm like i might want to look into that a little bit like i'm wondering if i actually uh have a

touch of the adhd i'm um googling this this number may be coming from the manager of the iron horse casino in auburn could that possibly be it i this could you know that's a possibility that i haven't thought of is this could be a wrong number although you're texting a 603 to somebody i don't mind saying that i have a new hampshire area code you know you're texting you don't mind bragging about your new hampshire cred who did i text the other day somebody had a 206 and i was so jealous like they don't hand out 206s anymore right that's that would be the classic seattle area code

yeah i don't i actually don't know um the answer to that because i haven't lived there uh in a long time so yeah did they run out of 206s i mean what do you get in seattle if it's not a 206 and so

i'm thinking this can't be a wrong number because who's texting a 603 and saying are you still in And it is a 253 number 253 is that sort of South Puget Sound By the way 253 is that right

Yeah that's

That would be Tacoma, areas around there. I mean, honestly, if anyone's going to get a text from the Iron Horse Casino, I would think it would be me.

Yeah, okay. I'll tell you what. During the break, I'll respond to this. The one thing was I'm just like, maybe this is somebody who I don't want to connect with, so that was my hesitation. Maybe it is somebody I met randomly a long time ago, but I'll text back.

That seems much more like me than you.

Yeah, I'll text back and be like, hey, sorry, I don't have this phone number in my system, and we'll see what we learn from there. Maybe it's Liz.

that would be amazing oh my gosh that when and the fact that she works at the iron horse casino

yeah also life update yeah oh anyway check out the adhd thing i'm sorry i didn't mean to ignore that i wanted to say that we have a friend a mutual friend who recently as an adult was diagnosed with it and she was saying that like just having that knowledge has really had a huge impact on how she sort of sees herself and how she navigates and also answers a lot of questions for herself so if you're serious about that it'd be something worth pursuing i didn't mean to blow that off as I try to text on the show.

I mean, there's an irony to the fact that I was bearing my soul to you and you were focusing on something else like a crow seeing something shiny.

Yeah, an irony, like the Iron Horse Casino. That was the iron.

Maybe we should both go see somebody about that. Yeah, exactly. All right. Quick break, and then we will be back with more TBTL. Stay with us.

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

Hey, let's thank some dazzling donors. These are the amazing, generous folk who are keeping TBTL going and who will continue, Andrew, to be so instrumental and so necessary when TBTL goes independent July 3rd. Did you reconsider this whole announcement and our whole idea of trying to basically run our own small business going forward over the weekend?

I meant to talk to you about this before the show. Maybe we can talk more after the show, but there has been a small change. I am actually going to stay with American Public Media. I will be part of the Brains On team going forward. It just seemed like there was more security there, but I wish you and the Dazzling Donors the best of luck. No, I'm just joking.

I heard people were concerned about the fact that you recently bought a home.

Oh, is that true? Were people like saying, oh, what's this idiot doing?

Yeah, I was hearing, I don't go on those sites, but I was, I was, sites, I make it sound like, I don't go on those websites, Andrew. But no, I was, I was chatting with somebody who does kind of, is aware of what goes on on the Stens page and places like that. And they were saying, like, everyone's really excited, excited that, you know, we're going to have a drastic reduction in ads, as in probably no ads unless some local business wants to advertise on the show. And then but also nervous about you all, y'all's health care and also that Andrew recently bought a house. And I thought, is anyone worried for Luke? Look, I am driving down to the Columbia River and just shoveling a wheelbarrow full of money into the river and watching it float down towards Astoria. No one's worried about my financial health. I mean, I'm the one who they should be concerned about.

But you also have a million jobs, and they know that I'm a loser.

Yeah, but each job pays me 25 cents, so if you do the math, it's not as much. Now, that is not where I'm going with it. The good news is I think it's going to work. I think this new phase of the show Is actually going to be great for the listeners I think everyone's going to step up I just wanted to I don't know check in on how you're feeling After we made the big announcement

I'm excited about it I've seen a lot of support from This is a wrong number That I believe I've received here Okay I wrote how are you doing these days Or no they wrote how are you doing these days Are you still in Seattle I wrote back hey there I don't have this number on my phone Who's checking in the person responded with their name and a winky smiley face emoji which is a name that i think i might have seen associated with the iron horse but that was on some chamber of commerce page and i might have had my wires crossed there it might have been some other like business but i'm not going to share the name on the air but then they responded with is this still joanna and so are you kidding me that joanna was another 603 number who was living in seattle wow that's fascinating

will you screen cap it and send it to me do you think it's possible that i know this person i

just gave them your number to throw them off the case maybe especially um and then i'm also seeing somebody uh with this same name as a somebody in the department of uh well somebody at the university of washington somebody who's an academic at the university of washington so i'm gonna maybe let this go for now because clearly i am all over the place with that but um yeah i want to say that i want to part of your brain say that yeah no we've gotten a really good of support from listeners and it really is important all kidding aside and we're going to thank our dazzling donor here in just a second but it is really really important that people know what the situation is and that we are going to be doing our first tbtl-a-thon uh without the support of american public media starting on uh july 3rd and and that's going to be a busy week for a lot of people because of the holiday so please please if you want to keep up with what we are doing and how you can support the show please sign up for the new tbtl newsletter you You can find that if you go to tbtl.net and scroll down about half a page. You should see a button that says extra, extra. I made it. No big deal. Click there and sign up. We're about a fifth of the way towards recreating the email list that we'll be leaving behind when we leave American public media. And that is critical in us in our future and me not losing this home. Yes, I don't want to say that, but it is important stressful for the listeners.

But Andrew will be experiencing houselessness if we can't get 5,000 people to subscribe to the new TBTL newsletter.

No, we do need that as a line of communication with you guys. And I'm not going to be sending out tons of stuff on that new channel for a while because I don't want to flood you on both email addresses. But please do sign up and we'll keep you abreast about what our fundraising is going to look like going forward.

And also, we have some really fun plans in the works for content that we're going to be making for y'all. People seem to really enjoy the fact, Andrew That we had We videotaped Some parts of Friday's show Where we were kind of making the announcement And put that out All I could keep thinking was I've got to stop itching my nose so much If we're going to actually put out video content But people really like that And so, just so you know This new kind of email that we're sending out It's not just going to be reminding people That we need them to support the show There's going to be a lot of content in there That folks are going to like too

Yeah, and that's going to be where the new TBTL newsletter, you know, just the weekly TBTL newsletter, that's where you'll find that every week. So, yeah, that's how you can find us. Go to tbtl.net and scroll down and sign up for the new newsletter.

That's right. We've got to thank dazzling donor Ruby Thaler in Seattle, Washington. Good friend of the show. Absolutely. Ruby's a karaoke master, recognized master in the form of karaoke. Ruby said I had a hard time thinking of what to say this year And then my cousin posted pictures of his latest crop of foster puppies And I realized I had to promote his non-profit My cousin Cole is one of the co-founders of Paws Between Homes That's P-A-W-S A non-profit that helps find foster homes for pets Belonging to folks in the Atlanta area experiencing homelessness So that the pets have a safe place to live until their owners find stable housing Wow. What an incredible service. I went through something much more voluntary and not nearly as traumatizing as experiencing homelessness. But when I moved to L.A. with my first ex-wife, we were in a rental and we had this dog, Flea, this crazy boxer. and it was just it was not possible to find a place where the dog could live and we could live and amazingly I found this really kind person who lived out in like Eagle Rock who said yeah you know what I love dogs and your dog can come live with me and my dogs until you're ready to get her back and that was so incredibly helpful and we were people with resources we were like this was something that made our life more more livable I can't imagine going through the experience of losing your place to live and then having to try to figure out what to do with your

pet yeah so that's the problem and that's the i mean not to get on a high horse here but that's the thing too the the the city and the county will be disingenuous when they tell people who are living on the streets well we gave them a place we offered them a place to stay but usually those places are a one-night shelter where you can't bring your dog and like we talk about our pets on this show all the time like what what you know what what it means to have pets in your family and your pets being a huge part of your family and um and the fact that i think society just things oh if you're living on the streets that's not your dog isn't your family like it's more important than ever for these folks and they don't have a place that they can stay overnight and bring their dog yet you know again i feel like it's disingenuous to say that well we've offered them a place to stay like no like you would never say to somebody you have to break up your family in

order to stay somewhere for a night i um only because this is so relevant to what we're talking about this morning i was leaving uh the home depot very early and i was there was somebody who was sleeping you know um unhoused and they were under a kind of a sort of a bunch of sleeping bags and stuff it's really cold out here still and they were kind of up against the side of this little building and their dog was sleeping with them and kind of on top of them and it was looked like the kind of looked like maybe an like an australian shepherd or some kind of

of a you know mutt that had a lot of that going on and i just had this this like this wave of emotion washed over me thinking about so many things about this person's life and what they're going through and also the loyalty of this dog and just how much and i i didn't even know that this was going to come up in the dazzling donor thing today but just like i i'm gonna assume a lot here i don't know that person but i'm going to guess that that dog that dog loving them and that dog sleeping with them in that scenario is a critical piece of them even be able to make it through from day to day you know what i mean absolutely like i love my pets but they're all kind of um you know they're it's again it's fun to have them around what i was observing what i thought seemed to me to be a more important and strong connection than anything i'll probably experience with a pet and i certainly love my pets so yeah that's just another way of saying this is very cool what ruby's cousin is doing if you're interested in learning more this is their website pause between homes.org again p-a-w-s between homes.org luke and andrew thanks for everything you do and for bringing us tens together and for giving my mom and me inside jokes to share since 2008 oh my gosh um love you guys signed ruby well thanks ruby we love you and

really appreciate you as well maestro look who it is it's our friend mr solo flyer chris o'leary

in brooklyn new york chris may be well over that and on to all of his other things he does but i'll never get over that the fact that he was once the only person on a plane i think from cleveland to

new york or vice versa or something yeah i can't remember the details i think i mean here's the thing i don't want to spoil this but i think one other person ended up getting on that flight right it wasn't totally by himself i think you're right but i do think it made its way into like

the new york post yeah which which to me is like if the new york post is ever writing about me it's not good you know it's just like hunter biden's wild night out at trinity with local podcaster Like it's not going to be good if I get in there, but I saw I have below the fold on that story.

There's a subheadline. Where was Walsh?

We're getting unconfirmed reports. Walsh was also in the club like the New York Post is so terrible. So, so terrible. But I would say it's in the top four most read newspapers for me, which is messed up because I don't watch Fox News for fun. Like watching Fox News angers me. Reading the New York Post kind of makes me laugh. And it's bizarre. It's the only thing like that where it's, you know, it's a conservative media propaganda outlet. And yet, for some reason, I kind of like if I were in the New York Post, some part of me would be like, holy shit, I made it.

Well, let me ask you this. And I'm sorry to get us so off track from the message, but it's also partially because the Post will have the types of headlines that we can use for this show. Right. Like, do you think that if you were not in the radio podcast biz that you would still read it just as much?

Well only because Now it's a habit And it's also It's a throwback to a style Of New York tabloid journalism That just doesn't really exist I think they still have like Cindy Adams writing Like a gossip column or some shit You know what I mean? There used to be five papers in New York that did this And now it's down to I think pretty much the post And so now that It's sort of a habit for me And also, here's what I will say. It's somehow it has just and I mean, barely enough journalism that they they find stories that are ridiculous that like the New York Times and other real journalism outfits would kind of skip. But it's also not as crazy as like Zerg net, you know, one of those like out brain, like some clickbait thing that's like, look, which Hollywood stars aren't aging well. Like it's one level above that But only one So that it is in a way Kind of journalistic enough That it's stories we could talk about But it's so in the gutter That they're kind of entertaining

I do want to talk about the muscle boy And where he is now though But we can do that another time

Don't we all Speaking of muscle boys Chris O'Leary is in Brooklyn, New York And Chris says Hey dummies As I spent days wondering What I'd put in my dazzling donor message I heard feels like the first time by foreigner at a bar in winston-salem north carolina where uh many tbtlathons on but if you could dig up the theme to tbtlathon three feels like the very third time i'd be eternally grateful thanks to luke and and Andrew, and to all the tens who I've met over time, but especially all the tenverites I met last May. You all bring me so much joy, though.

That was so much fun.

That really was a blast. Now, do you remember this audio moment in TBTL history? I don't...

I do. This is a Sean production, right?

Well, I think it was a co-production. I believe I produced it, i.e. I think I laid the tape up, as it were. But I think I asked Sean to do He provided vocals

Is maybe the way we would put that

He provided saying the word third But in such a droll way That I was seeing if I had this tape with me here Which I did And then I was listening to it the other day And I was like Is that Sean? Is that Japan's number one mixer Sean Datori? I'm going to play it for you And I guess we can try to figure out together I mean I know My memory of it is that it's Sean But again, it's it's so downbeat that I almost kind of wondered if I had misremembered or something. Take listen. Third. Third. Third time. OK, that's Sean. Yeah. Third. Third. Third. i feel like we were and this isn't a good thing a much more experimental program from an audio standpoint i like it like in what universe was is that a compelling thing to get people to donate

money that's exactly how i remember it except i thought the music stopped when he said third i didn't know that was just laid right on top of that we had this long tail i remember it yeah i'm trying to think what year that would have been because i feel like i remember that really well but i don't think i would have been on the show for your third i think that would have been

my guess is around 2012 maybe because maybe we started 2008 but we weren't having thons because we worked at cairo and then we did about a year and a half of that or a year plus and then we would have had tb chill thon one would have been maybe in 2009 so if we're getting to the third third third dollar foot long um i kind of changed up what we were going for there anyway i think maybe that would have been three years into doing thons which in my mind puts it around 2011 or

something which sort of raises the question not that it's a question i should be raising on the show i guess but um you know sometimes we try to number our we continue to number our tbtl a thons and i think those numbers have changed a bit i think we've now just gone with the numbers that represent how long we've been around as opposed to how long we've been doing thons right because they didn't line up perfectly because the first year or maybe two you were on the radio and so

therefore you were not doing thons yes the thon is not a reflect the thon number is not aligned with or connected to when the radio show started it should it's supposed to be connected to how many tb telethons there have been which again is not an unknowable number like it's amazing how All I have to do is, like, text myself a message that says, this is the thon we're on, and then I should be able to just add one to it for the next year. Speaking of which, which one are we coming up on? Does anyone know?

Well, that's why, I mean, I thought you and I in internal emails were referring, in internal emails, which I'm sure will be public at some point once we are indicted. But I think that we have been calling it TBTL-a-thon 15 because we are celebrating our 15th year. Like the 15th anniversary was in January. Right. And so I guess that means we're celebrating our 16th year. But let's not get into that. So, I mean, it seems easier and cleaner, especially with the new news. Does that mean last year was 14? I don't know if we gave it a number last year. You know what I mean? I don't know if we've been super consistent with this.

so we've done somebody somebody somewhere knows the answer to this and i bet you we asked last year and got the answer and i've misplaced the answer but either way whatever is literal i think

this would be a really good time to abandon that literalness and just say this is the 15th you know

this is the 15th year right so in other words we're just gonna we're gonna bust the odometer on this thing we're just gonna make it say what we wanted to say which is that this is tbtl-a-thon 15 yes and then because it's a nice it's not a round number but it's a memorable number exactly it feels important which aligns with uh tbtl independence week right i can get down with that i mean then there's a different argument which is just we stop numbering them all that

might that might be confusing that might be i'd go for either one of those maybe losing the number

might be the right thing to do i don't know maybe we lose the number until tb telethon 20 but then what is 20 whenever we feel like no i mean we're numbering them internally yeah i'm just saying we're not as far as the um as far as the this sort of outward-facing branding of the... By the way, welcome to a TBTL meeting between Luke and Andrew. As far as in the kind of way we describe the Thon, maybe we don't have to sort of highlight the particular Thon that we're on. I don't know if that's interesting information to people or not.

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe we just lose the numbers.

Well, because it used to be part of the joke, hence feels like the very third time. You know what I mean? The number of the Thon used to be kind of integrated into some part of the joke of the whole thing. But I don't know. I mean, 15, is there a joke there? Again, is it even the 15th? Are we even accurate with that?

Yeah. I think the fifth Thon, I could be wrong about this, but I think Carrie came up with the name of that. I could have my time, but it was like Cinco De Niro. Wasn't that the name of the TV Channel Thon 5? I remember laughing at that. That's a good name. It is a good name, yeah.

Cinco De Niro? Yeah. Anyway, let's just start with this If anyone knows what THON we're supposed to be on Like officially, let us know And then we can decide if we want to You know, if we want to involve that In the talking about But here's really what I want to say, Andrew Thank you to our dazzling donors Ruby and Chris today Thank you for making TBTL possible

Hello and welcome to Top Story

all right um sorry that was serious xm calling me andrew because oh you should pick um i think they declined i think i think i have an old credit card that's um associated with that account and uh and so i guess i'm overdue on it it's very funny though this actually is i won't make a whole thing out of this but this is kind of relevant to our work in radio and podcasting and things which is i can tell that sirius slash xm satellite radio really doesn't want to turn my service off because they really want me to keep listening like they they know that like once i don't have access to the content i probably i mean in my case because i i'm a daily howard stern show listener i would actually go through jump through the hoops to get back on it but it's like one of those things where there's a momentum to it kind of like somebody being a tbtl donor where you really or even just a tbtl listener like we would love it if people donate but we really want people to listen and if the question if the choice is between donating and listening we'll take listening right and that's kind of i think where serious is with me they keep trying to figure out ways to get me to pay without stopping me having access to the thing that i'm that they want me to pay for because they know once i don't have access to it there's a good chance i just go away and you've

paid for long enough that they know that like you you're still yeah likely to sign up or renew or something whereas with me like the experiences i've had with that service have all been free trials and so i don't think i've ever given them any credit card information and so when the free trial ends i know that they will be emailing me and calling me for you know probably a few weeks after the expiration date passes, but they're never going to just leave it on for me in hopes that I'll start paying because they never really got any of my info, whereas you, you're a viable satellite radio listener.

Yeah. If it were Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, these would be one of the good leads. Exactly. Right? The Patel leads. These are the prime leads that they want, the Burbank leads, because he's a person who's been paying them a lot of money every year to get to listen to his stuff. Anyway, I've been talking about this a bunch now between Friday and today, but I had an interesting experience last week on Thursday, which was I was recording some voiceover for this cyber training that I am kind of the host of, I guess, for this big software company. And the guy who was helping produce it, hey, do you want to hear something interesting? This is you. This is AI-generated you. And I was like, huh, okay. And so he played it for me. And I thought it was interesting. I don't know if it sounds exactly like me, but I feel like there are moments that it kind of sounds like me. This was, it's called voice cloning. And apparently what they did was they fed my actual voice from some other recording of me somewhere they found into this AI system. And then it like learned my voice and then they just typed up all the stuff that they wanted. So what I'm about to play for you, these are not words that I've ever said on a recording for the purposes of this like software thing or cyber thing, right? Like this is not a recording of me or words I've ever said. this is an ai program that's trying to sound like me saying things okay you ready oh yeah okay here we go it's it's also a little bit short because in order to get this tape i had to agree to not have any of the important things in there And also not have the name of the company mentioned. So anyway, here we go.

This is AI me. Hi, I'm Luke, your security sidekick for the course. When you're ready to get started with the course, just select next at the lower right side of the screen.

What do you think so far?

I think it's really interesting. It does sound like you, but it does have an energy about it that is like it's amped up a little bit. Yes, it's a little bit. It's a little bit amped up. Now, I will say that when you are doing, I haven't heard your cybersecurity demonstration before. But like when I hear you every now and then, you'll need to like cut a track for CBS and I'll record it and send it to you if you're in my studio. Or you'll say, hey, hold on, before we start the show, I need to cut this thing. And so you leave your mic open and you record something yourself. Your energy when recording stuff for CBS is very different and closer to this than maybe your TBTL presentation. So I understand, like, comparing how you sound right now in this very moment to this, there's a big difference, maybe slightly lesser for your CBS work. But it is – I'm really intrigued by that. I'm really intrigued by that. That's way closer than I thought it was going to be.

Yeah, I agree with you. The kind of tone and vibe is a little bit more sales pitchy than I usually get, even for things like CBS or this company that I'm working for. But as far as the actual audio, the sound of the voice, it sounds more like me than I would have expected. Here's a little bit more.

Let's cover a couple of housekeeping items. In the upper right of the screen, you'll find the resources button for the course with links to all kinds of information for your reference, including the latest on password managers and resources to share with friends and family. And you can select accessibility features on this page to understand the support in place to assist you with navigating the course.

That's all of the tape that I have for you right now. I think the beginning of it when I'm saying my name was a little bit more convincing. It sounded a little bit more like me than when it just got into the kind of more, I don't know, boilerplate stuff. But I was, I have to say, I was surprised at how close they got it, considering that's not a recording of me at all.

So do you have any idea, like, what they're using? Like, are they using something that is just accessible to any of us? Or do they have some sort of special? I think it might be an internal thing. Yeah, because this is what they do, right?

I think it's called Lab 8, technically, which I don't know if I'm allowed to say that or not, but whatever. Let me see. I'm going to go try to find the exact sort of back and forth. Sorry. It's called Eleven Labs, and they fed in a voiceover of me. I'm just kind of paraphrasing. I was talking to one of the engineers who had done this. And, yeah, so it's something called Eleven Labs. I don't know if that's a product made by this company in question or some other person. and uh and yeah basically they just put my voice in and then just said learn this and then they just put in like gobs of text that they wanted it to read and and off it went wow

okay so i'm on the 11 labs page now and you can get started for free i would love to play around with this so obviously we do ai andrew it says so i don't know if the free part of this would let us actually choose our own voices i'm you know looking at this now for the very first time And I mean, at first blush, it just looks like a text to speech program, which I've used for various things before. But I'd really maybe after the show today, I can kind of dig into this a little bit more and see if we can upload more voices.

Maybe I can ask my my guy over there who is helping me out. Like, hey, if I send you a minute of my buddy, this poor guy, he's had to send so many emails to me because there was a whole thing with the link not downloading. And I realized, I don't know if you've ever done this, but like, I had sent him four different emails asking, okay, but did you feed my voice into this? And each time he had said yes in a different way, but I had somehow missed all of it. So I just kept asking him, like, he probably thinks I'm an AI program. I kept asking him the same question over again.

Did he say, there's a tortoise in the desert. It's on its back.

He won't help it. I wanted to be able to tell you and the listeners what the sort of methodology was, right?

Uh-huh, yeah.

And, and, and somehow in the back and forth thing, he kept saying, we did this thing, but I kept just kind of like, I think I was just looking for the audio link. And because the audio link was, was proving challenging, I kept just missing that relevant piece of information and then re asking him the same question. And like, it's amazing. He didn't just like crawl through the computer and strangle me and go, dude, I told you we fed your voice into the system. That's how this works.

Well, I mean, how do you feel about this? Because I first of all, that really paid off for me. Like, I think that that's what's important. I think that that is way closer than I thought it was going to be. And so looks at watch. It's 2023 right now, like in 20.

33 like imagine how good that will sound and does and the problems that could possibly come along

with that and also the question of is there a way for us to harness this so we don't have to do so

much work well there's definitely that i mean do you think that there's enough samples of our voice anywhere um so that so that we can feed it into an ai machine that's the thing i guess the thing

though this would be the big trick well first of all they got to get the voices dot really dialed which i'm with you i i bet you that in i don't think it's gonna be 20 years i bet you in five years with you know how rapid the sort of learning and exponential the learning is on this stuff my guess is in five or ten years there'll be like a almost like imperceptible like it'll be so close you can't even tell the difference then but the real deal is can an ai program learn how to be this boring but then occasionally interesting and i'm not actually kidding you like if you were trying to teach an ai program how to talk the way you and i talk to each other i'm talking about subject matter now and where our brains go and when we digress which is like all the time we this may be the one show that ai could never learn how to do because it follows

no predictable pattern and the question is does that make the show better i mean there's an argument for the the good part of the show being the meandering nature of it but i'd be lying if i told you that there aren't times where i get off you know get off the air with you it's not air but you know get done with the show with you i'm just like oh god damn it man what was i doing on the show today i mean there is a chance that the robots would know what's more in would know what's

more interesting and emphasize it well i guess the really the the sort of ultimate expression of that would be if the if the ai program was able to go on to like the stens page and other places and sort of figure out because i mean really once you get once this stuff starts learning and starts just like again it's like moore's law or whatever once it just starts doubling and tripling in its abilities it could it could eventually figure out ways to figure out how long are people listening when are people tuning out you know what are the things that the topics and the things that are making people stick around and listen more what's happening on the stens page what kind of feedback is there what do people like what people not like like it could become really the perfect expression of tbtl in terms of listenability by just taking in all this information that frankly we're too lazy to take in and then reflect back to the listener i'm guessing that if you were

to actually parse the numbers look at the raw data the things that are most popular would be talking about our dreams um talking about uh blurs days blurs days baseballs but not doing the blurs days talking about if we should talk about exactly we're getting dangerously close to our unwieldy title from friday's show what we talk about i love that title i asked you to make it longer i'm like i did can you make it rain harder um by the way i i have now and since we've been talking and i'm sorry if i've been overly distracted this show i have signed up for 11 labs there was no waiting list like there was for chat GPT so that's pretty good and I'm seeing here that I can start doing text to voice but then I can use pre-made voices but now Luke I am on a page that says add voice so I'm going to I don't think I can like figure this out on the show right now but there's a chance that I can upload a sample and by tomorrow I can play for you what AI Andy sounds like then

the next step I mean I'm excited just to hear that but then the next step is can we get ai andy and ai luke to generate a conversation i think my guess is right now it needs this voice cloning needs some content to go off of right they're not actually like they're not a chat bot in that they're going to come up with their own content they're just going to sound like us what would be crazy is if we can develop if we could get ai andy and ai luke really dialed in and then we could somehow put them on some kind of put some kind of a chat bot program together so that the chat bot is writing material for tbtl but using the voices from 11

labs that would really be something to hear now what do you think the ai voice of me would say when he finds out that it's 22 a month to unlock that feature hell no that's my look do we have a

tbtl credit card yet we don't and we never will what's the number what's the number what's the number as your co-bro and co-owner of this new small business i think that well i don't know we should have a conversation offer i don't know if that's the best use of 22 a month for us i also don't know if we want to be debating 22 a month spends on this business you know what i mean like right right so i mean i had a 2200 spend at the iron horse casino recently which is i think why

they're trying to get in touch with you you and joanna um i maybe can get it down to five dollars them.

month anyway i don't know if we'll be bringing a free trial can we do a free i'm on the free trial now that does not have the voice cloning capabilities um but it looks like maybe at five bucks a month which i could certainly maybe you know just maybe i don't know if i have to lock in for a year but i'm willing to pay like ten dollars for to have two two months of hearing my

own voice back at me love it okay um well watch this space for that i'm actually i'm i'm genuinely now very curious to hear what ai andy sounds like and if you if it turns out to be prohibitively expensive i can bother this other dude ken who's been helping me talk about an annoying ask hey by the way do you feed my voice into the program to get me and also here's my buddy's voice could you feed it into it please send me the file back and then they hear that voice and they say that

is the future of cyber security training videos right there and then you talk yourself right out

of a gig that okay well see now you're cutting in on one of my one million jobs yeah that's not right now now i don't i don't like where this is going you sent me this article the other day andrew about the new branding for hbo max which hbo max is hbo's streaming service which to be honest with you i don't really understand the difference because hbo itself is streaming like at this point you know what i mean like aren't all of these premium channels effectively streaming in the sense that they're they're not sending it necessarily through the cable wires they're sending it over the internet my tv is a big computer right and every everything is streaming what's the difference between getting something on hbo and getting something on what was previously

known as hbo max well i don't know if i can clarify all of that but here's my understanding of it because you know up until a year ago we were cable subscribers and as cable subscribers we paid for hbo so that we could get it on our television not necessarily through a smart tv service, not through a streaming service, but just like through our cable box in the same way that we could watch, you know, the BBC or anything else that wasn't like an app, you know, it was actually a channel. But because we paid for that channel, we also had access to what was then HBO Go. And HBO Go was just like the when you're on the go, you can stream this channel because I think people saw the streaming services a little bit back then, especially when you're talking about a mirrored service from a cable channel is well you're on the go you can dial it up when you're on the go but really when you're at home you're watching hbo on the old cable box at some point during the era of cable cutting hbo go turned into hbo max and i believe that was an attempt to sort of appeal to the people the younger generations who aren't getting cable at all it's not just an extension of your cable it's just like i don't have cable i'm using this just like a streaming service it's more along the lines of your spotify or your netflix or whatever and now i also have hbo max but what happened was what was it a year or two ago luke uh hbo basically was acquired by uh discover productions or discovery right what is the channel discovery discovery and so they produce all kinds of non what's what i'm looking for like you you would consider hbo content to be um non-prestige programming exactly and so you have discovery who produces all kinds

of non-prestige world's deadliest catch or something yeah and all kinds of reality stuff

yeah and and hbo is is a brand i mean i and we can talk more about this i mean i'd argue that hbo and with their sonic branding and their logo and everything is one of the top 20 brands in the united states that is like really over the years really earned its brand you know you know what it means it's not tv it's hbo right but discovery has been basically under this new it's kind of like the the cable town taking taking over uh what is it tgs on 30 rock like it it seems like these people came in they took over hbo and the programming was getting diluted they were pulling some programming off of hbo for reasons that don't make a lot of sense they were pulling movies they were canceling projects and this was going on a year or two ago and people were starting to kind of flip out about it a little bit like what are these yokels doing to this hbo brand and then as you just said the latest news came out last week that under discovery which is you know when you sign up for the app hbo max they're going to just start calling it max and it's your portal to all of the programming under the the broader umbrella yes your your hbo shows like succession and barry but also your deadliest catches and your god knows what else is on that um but instead of

keeping probably bering sea gold is that a thing oh yeah dude i'll watch the shit out of some of that stuff there's all these shows about gold mining that are so obviously contrived and it's Just guys vacuuming the bottom of like. a river in the Yukon and it's this it's hours of your life to get this one second of payoff when they pile up all this gold dust at the end and put it on a scale and go that's thirty thousand

dollars and it's not yours that's that's that's always the bummer about those shows so anyway yeah you can watch Barry or Baring Straight Gold and it's all gonna be on max and you know I I'm a little bit beside myself on this not because like I work for HBO or have any like you know like connection to it like succession will still be on there and Barry will still be on there whatever you know whatever the prestige television is that you want from HBO but it just seems like such a dissolution of the not dissolution but it just seems like it's it's just deterioration deterioration of one of the strongest brands in America now I'll stop talking after I throw this one thing since I got so upset about this last week and talked your and Genevieve's ear off about it off air i've heard one theory that might make the most sense which is discovery is now this umbrella thing and they have all this different programming prestige and very very non-prestige and everything in between and so this is a way of saving the hbo brand because within the app there will still be a place you go for your hbo programming so it's a way of almost like saying listen you download this app on your tv on your phone and whatever it's called max now but it has all kinds of stuff under there but hbo still means something because within the app you go to the hbo section and that's where you get your movies and your prestige stuff i guess that's the only argument i can sort of see for this but it just seems like such a mishigas it just seems like such

a bad idea all around yeah that's what i was reading in the cnbc article i mean i never believe any of these things these corporations say but they were the the people at discovery plus and hbo were saying this is to protect the hbo brand to your exact point like instead of instead of having all this stuff under this umbrella which doesn't reflect how we think of hbo we're going to call it something else and then there's still going to be the other hbo thing i don't want to take it back to this because i'm sure the listeners are so many steps ahead of me but i just don't think i'm my brain is built for the streaming world versus the you know cable world because what what it seems to me is if i'm paying for hbo like i have cable not here but i have cable down in portland and i'm paying some unreasonable amount of money for that but it's basic so i can watch the mariners and watch our friend chris hayes um but if i'm paying for that let's just say take the hbo example so then it seems to me like i should just be able to watch hbo on my computer if that's what i want to do wherever i am because i'm paying for it at my house and i don't know why that needs to be a different streaming service as opposed to just you pay for hbo and let's say you don't have cable at your house let's say you've cut the cord as it were you could be able to buy hbo just as content just hbo and it just you watch it on your laptop instead or you watch it on your computer or your tv which is a giant computer the segmenting it or the there being a thing that is hbo the channel that's on my tv and then HBO Max or Max, this other thing that's more it's it confuses me because I'm just I don't understand why it all isn't just the same thing that you're either getting on your TV or on your computer. You can do it whatever way works for you. Well, I think it I think it is. I don't quite

follow you. I think as a cable subscriber, you have access to free HBO Max or what is now called HBO Max. Like so I think this is the perfect example. You pay for cable at home. That gives you access to hbo max let's just leave the discovery stuff out of this for now which means when you go on the road and you're in a hotel room or you're in your house in washington that you're working on with your dad you can you don't have access to your cable box obviously but when you go on your laptop computer and you go to hbo max it'll say hey you want to sign in what is your what is your cable uh you know what is your cable provider and you'll do that and then you'll log in with your cable and it's a way of taking your cable with you for the cable people i think really though what this is pointing towards is a world where people like me no longer have cable but you can still buy the service but for you i think it's a way of just taking your cable with

you right i guess part of it too and this is again a side conversation is i have found it tremendously annoying trying to watch hbo sometimes like even at my apartment where i have it on the tv i was trying to watch something on demand and it's wanting me to go to a url on my laptop or phone to confirm that i have i'm paying for it and i'm like i am paying but because it's not on hbo because it's hbo max but i'm trying to watch it on my tv it's this other thing and i find all that stuff to be annoying because what it is is hbo trying to make sure that i'm not sharing my account with someone with all kinds of dual factor authentication making me constantly re-login and prove to them that I have the account. And you know me.

no way i have any of the passwords for any of this stuff so if my computer is not doesn't hasn't remembered it on my behalf that's an hour of my life now that i'm gonna have to spend trying to like reset everything so i guess but again this is on me to a degree because i just think i just think this stuff baffles me more than it baffles most people even at the age of 46 i would agree

that you do seem to have more issues with passwords than anybody that i've ever met before

And at a certain point, I've stopped saying, like, stop yelling at the machine because there's too much smoke around the one user.

Do you know that when I log in to the system that you and I use to talk to each other, IPDTL it's called, do you know that whenever I'm somewhere else, whether it's here or in a hotel somewhere, I have to go find an email that you sent me five to six years ago that has the logins? This is my ritual.

Well, that doesn't sound like me. I would never put login information in an email, Luke. That's the first thing that a hacker will look for.

Well, this all happened before we knew what we now know about cybersecurity, Andrew. So this is not really on you. This was at the time you were working with the most updated information. Let's see here. I'm trying to find.

I know exactly what you're talking about because I have it. I mean, I don't. I wouldn't. But someone like me who looks like me might have a doc with all that information in it as well, which, again, you're not supposed to do. But, you know, this goes speaking of cybersecurity training, I have I have a really fun voicemail I want to play for you. So if we're running out of time, give me a heads up and I'll stop babbling. But I'll just say that, like, I know that I just took that cybersecurity training again. And they always say don't reuse passwords, which I know I get it, like whatever. But like if you have just a password that you use for all of your streaming services, I know that it's still not great computer hygiene to do that. because if one of them does get compromised and they have access to your other stuff and everything can start spooling on you but for the most part like yeah use really strong passwords for your bank accounts and anything like that but like if you just said like all of my tv stuff my hulu my netflix my hbo max it's all it's all like you know one password good boy tv or whatever it is that's what mine is obviously just to remind myself i'm a good boy while i'm watching tv like i that should be and i know what you mean they do then make you like kind of sign on via your phone which is more of a convenience thing so you don't have to use that terrible tv interface like click click click where's the g for good boy you know like it's kind of easier to log in using your device but like can you just simplify your passwords a little bit well uh no because what

happens is i mean i have a few that are my kind of go-tos that are simplified but as the uh rubric For what is considered to be A usable password becomes More and I may be misusing rubric there by The way but as the rules for What is an acceptable password become more And more complicated it's more And more you know symbols and Things and like can't be one you've Used before I have defaulted to Just letting the computer pick some Totally insane String of numbers because Because the problem is I'll spend a bunch of time Trying to like type in the password That I might remember and they're all variations on a theme right let's just say that i was able to streamline and just use like let's say one password for everything that one password is going to be it's in some places it's going to have an exclamation point in some places it's not in some places it's going to have a one you know a one two three like it's i can't get consistent to the point where it's literally the same thing so what it means is i'm in an airport somewhere trying to log into something and i'm trying to guess is it my usual password one two three is it my usual password exclamation point like for all intents and purposes even if i use the same password because i have to do slightly different things for different logins they're different and it i'm equally confused you know i can't have one password to rule them all because not everyone needs not everyone has the same rules

one two three exclamation point okay just writing that down just in case i need to hack in later

yeah exactly 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 i do think i know a fair number of your passwords just because

we've needed you know for various things i don't know your passwords but i think i have some insight into your conventions and i think you have some insight into my conventions i'd be interested in

knowing sometimes what i would have shared with you that would have been telling but i like wi-fi

login back in the day before every you know device recognized everything stuff like that

Yeah, I could see that. Yeah, you definitely know my home Wi-Fi, which is a word with some numbers in there. But it's funny because I do have a convention that is – well it's based on something in the real world but i change one factor i don't want to i don't mind telling you as a friend off air what that means but i i will i've said too much on the on the show but um i'd be interested to know if you picked up on that because i kind of doubt it i don't think i've shared that kind of stuff with you but we'll see here here's a voicemail though

i'm just saying it's mutual mutual assured destruction if you try to mess with me i'm

gonna mess with you yeah but i know how to change my password this i don't okay well that's actually

That's very asymmetric then This small business is starting off great

Asymmetric That's when the Fonz is excited About something being the same On the left and the right That's a joke I just made up Here's a voicemail that we got today It's regarding my new washer and dryer I told you that when a cycle ended I can't remember if it was the washer or dryer Maybe it's the same song My machines sing this song Letting you know that the cycle is done And it goes on and on and on and on. And I got this voicemail from a listener who thinks they know exactly the song I'm talking about.

Hey, Luke and Andrew, I was just listening to, I think, episode 3921, bit of a time bandit. And I'm calling in the middle of the episode, just in case one of you sings the song from Andrew's new washing machine, because I think I know what it is. I had every single washer and dryer or washer, we didn't have dryers in Korea everyone I had in Korea did the same song and I'm guessing it's this one so I'm going to sing it and tell me if I'm right

Okay, go ahead and kill the Doogie Howser music take a listen to this

All right, so I heard that this morning.

I was like, you know, I don't even know. I only heard it once or twice, and then I turned that function off on my machine. But I was like, well, let's figure this out. I put my dryer on the shortest cycle possible, which apparently is four minutes, and I waited for it with my recorder. I was all excited, and then it got to the end of the cycle, and nothing happened because I forgot to turn the sound back on. So that pissed me off. So then I did it again, waited another four minutes, and recorded this. You'll also hear a little bit of the sound of my cat in the background, both meowing and then clawing at my leg when I don't pet him. Wow, that was really spot on.

Was it? Let's go to the tape. It sounded like it.

Oh, my God. Pretty good.

Wait for the flourish.

Wow.

Yeah.

All I can say is wow.

Pretty good, right? I mean, the timing gets off a little bit there because the listener was leaving it on the voicemail. but um but very very did i mention the brand or do they all have the same sound the brand by the

way is samsung which um i am guessing well no i was gonna say is that a korean company or is that a japanese company i'm not sure the listener mentioned something about being in korea yeah

exactly so i don't and they said that they know every every song of every washer and dryer in

korea did i get that right that is like but i'm just telling you that is when you said the song is really long i thought you were just kind of you know maybe exaggerating slightly or being funny that is that's a full-on like that's a full-on tune and also yeah that listener crushed it

that's amazing looks like samsung is in korea yeah so if my googling on the fly is right here So yeah, I'm very impressed with that I love it

As am I And thank you for the audio production And also thank you to Bingo for helping out I do think the listener needs to remember to factor in the cat Kind of meowing in the background Next time they call in with an appliance song

Try to get that Get a friend to play the part of Bingo Who by the way, after jumping down And startling me earlier Bingo has curled up I just noticed this He's been...

kind of sleeping kind of next to my desk this whole show. That's very rare. Usually once the show starts, he goes and does his own thing. But I guess we're bonding today. And I am here for it.

Yeah, you are. I'm on another extended separation from my cat because it's a whole lot for her to be up here because it's all construction stuff. And so she's staying with Becca's family. And that is just an incredibly kind thing Because, you know, she does now wake whatever human is in her area up at 4.30 in the morning. That's her deal. So watching her means committing to being woken up at 4.30 in the morning every single day of your life. Which is a lot to ask. So thanks, Darcy. Appreciate it. And thanks, Jeff, as well. Thanks to both of you.

Bingo's learned how to be really... And this is the thing. And I kind of like it that they're getting along. The two cats, their relationship continues to evolve. mostly in positive ways and I'm glad of that but they've totally teamed up in the morning to be as annoying as possible and like Bingo does all these things now where he almost knocks over my lamp and crawls up and uses his nails in ways he shouldn't be using his nails not on me but like clawing at the bed and doing things that he knows I can't ignore and so like it's amazing how cats are like this like they are so insistent they know like we need to wake these sleeping Flesh bags up so that they'll feed us

Well and the thing that's happening With Bubbles and Holly And Holly is Becca's cat who was Just a really Just a very chill cat Didn't ever do anything bad And now she's a full on Delinquent like She'll sneak out of the apartment if you open The door she's like picked up all of Bubbles's bad habits this is In the course of them knowing each other for like six months Or whatever like she went from being A total non troublemaker to just

being kind of a rebel yeah i don't like that that's a bad influence situation and of course like with the going around to different it's like me influencing you to go into trinity right exactly man so many honeys yeah all the honeys that were in there it was really great

all right that is going to bring us to the end of today's program but guess what we'll be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you so please do join us for that in the meantime Have yourself a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. Go Mariners. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all.

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