Muse

The AM radio is a viable and modern source for news and entertainment. Totally. I used to be number one in this town, but people don't listen to AM like they used to. Seems like it's more about FM and color TV. That's stupid. It sure is, Kevin. In fact, I've got a tattoo here that fully illustrates my point. It's of this rebellious young man, and he's urinating on an FM radio.

TBTL!

you take a hot dog stuff it with some jack cheese fold it in a pizza you got cheesy blasters and then all the kids say thanks meat cat and then meat cat flies away on his um skateboard we're

doing it man this is it we're right in the thick of the action it's fear-mongering claptrap

isolation is techno paranoia so bogus and dangerous and stupid that it borders on trees

You know, you're overthinking it, buddy. I mean, just kind of see this as a fun thing to do where you make a little bread.

You better finish up that vacuuming. I'm going to have a hot mic in a minute. We're talking Garamond today.

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

Somehow, hot break feels good in a place like this.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

I feel cute today. Look at my outfit.

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where it is going to be absolutely roasting today.

I feel warm and I'm levitating.

To make sure and try to get out for my little jog before it reaches almost 90 degrees and before apparently we suffer through some lightning and thunderstorms.

Oh, my God.

um so uh as of right now it's absolutely beautiful but they they say that it's going to get kind of crazy later so anyway we're gonna stay safe right here inside the broadcast center and bring you episode 3944 in a collector's series let the fun begin uh we would like to hear from our younger listeners are the the people in our listening group who are children if you have questions

we would like you to submit them i don't watch the news because i'm a kid because we are going

to be visited by our friends from the radio program and podcast brains on tomorrow and i guess it'll be wednesday's episode but we're going to be talking to them tomorrow our friends Sandin and Molly from Brains On and we have questions from you that we'd like to present to them so we'll talk about that coming up in a minute also a number of major auto manufacturers have announced they are eliminating AM radio from their vehicles that's the saddest thing I've ever heard and there are some actual interesting political implications to this so we'll talk about that and we'll talk to this guy He's the number one AM radio enthusiast under the age of 70. He's also the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Why, Luke, why, or how, or where, when, but mostly why did I wake up today with the song Uptown Girl by Billy Joel going through my head? But only that one line.

Because it's a certified banger?

Okay, fine. I'm not even weighing in on whether or not the song is a certified banger or not. I don't. I'm not allowed to give those certificates out. Not since the incident. Somebody came in. They looked at my CD collection. They said, first of all, you have CDs. Secondly, you are no longer allowed to certify whether or not something is good music. I said, thank you for removing that crown from my head. But I swear I have not heard that song in a long time. But I'm making coffee today, and all of a sudden I realize, Oh, for the past, I don't know, half hour, 40 minutes that I've been awake, I'm just like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Mechanics in Uptown Must you go downtown In order to get your car fixed Seems like there's a business opportunity Seems like there's a business opportunity there

Mechanics are really good at dancing And really bad at fixing cars

Well maybe that's why she went to the one downtown It's worth the drive

Speaking of Questionable Musical choices if you will Or questionable musical experiences because...

This weekend, I was out at the 21st Street Pub. That's the bar that's owned by Becca's brother and his wife. They actually own two bars over there, 21st Avenue, I always call it the wrong name, and then R&R, which is right across the street. They're both wonderful places. We'd highly recommend. But it's a karaoke joint at 21st Ave, and it's hugely popular. It's probably the most popular karaoke bar in Portland. And we had been hanging out. It was a warm Saturday. We had been hanging out at their house and socializing and then ended up going to get some dinner in town and going over to their bar to do karaoke. And at some point in the day, Scott and I have been talking about our love for the song Closer to Fine by the Indigo Girls. Okay. I don't think I know it. And, you know, we were just talking about what a great song it is. And I said, you know, that might actually kill at karaoke. And Scott was like, I don't know. And I was like, you never know with these kids. Because most of the people that go to these karaoke This place has karaoke like seven nights a week or something And it's often People much younger than I Right? So like And you never know what song they're gonna go crazy for Like some Green Day song or something They're loving or you know Obviously newer stuff they're into because they know it Because they're youthful But every once in a while I'll see somebody sing a song That I just think wouldn't work for the crowd And people go nuts So flash forward to Saturday night it's probably like 10 10 or 11 it's the thick of the karaoke scrum there there is a place is just filled with people the list is hours long luckily i happen to know the co-owner of the bar so he says hey should we i just signed us up for closer to fine and i was like okay cool and i was just tipsy enough that that's not like a great idea then about i don't know two minutes before we're gonna go up because i don't know man i'm really rethinking the song switch it to something And I was like no man we committed to this We're doing it it's gonna slap

You know this is an obvious thing That I want clarification on So this is a duet that you guys would do together Is that the deal here

Is the band called the Indigo Girl Andrew It's Two girls it's the Indigo Girls Yes it's a duet and there's some really complicated Harmony that gets involved that we didn't know It turns out yes it's a duet Okay yeah that was just an Indigo Girls joke Our listeners who like the Indigo Girls will laugh at that

No, it's fine. I just thought it was a safe place to ask questions.

It's not. So basically I decide that we should stick with our first choice, and we get up there, and it is immediately clear that it is a terrible decision on my part because, A, the song is so much harder to sing than I thought. There are all these great harmonies, which, like, if I'm by myself in the car screeching away, it sounds like I'm kind of getting there, but I'm not, it turns out. Also, the crowd could not have been more unenthused. We cleared the dance floor. It was filled with people. People are doing fun songs like Uptown Girl by Billy Joel, and everyone's loving it. And then all of a sudden, we get up. We just caterwaul through the song. It's been many years since I've wanted to quit a karaoke song in the middle of it this badly. But that just felt like admitting defeat in this way. that was it was just rough it was so rough and then we finished and then i walked over and i was like boy sorry that was really terrible and he's like yeah that was bad i was like well you i was like you're just gonna have to get another song in and really fix your reputation he goes it's a four-hour wait i used up my one i used up my one my one like you know uh what do you call it you know cut in the line or whatever you know don't pass go whatever basically he used up his one favor at the bar that he owns to get us ahead in the line to sing closer to fine which was a complete disaster would not recommend zero out of five stars do you know this is not a i don't think

this is interesting it's i mean it's just sort of a i mean it is interesting to me but it's really just a plug for my friend i guess um uh but uh do you know that my friend becky warren like tours with the indigo girls and just like sang with amy ray on stage at the grand old opry last weekend what yes her name's back i wish i would have had her at i know i was thinking like she could have really i'm not just in the audience you know i she she'll never hear this i regret saying it's not interesting i mean i i just think i mean it's such such an accomplishment she's like genevieve's closest friend going back the longest like since grade school atlanta right because that's where the girls are from oh is that where they're from i did not make that connection um but yeah from

georgia i don't know if they're from atlanta but they're from georgia yeah and so becky warren Amy and Emily, the Indigo Girls.

But are they both? Amy Ray, but Emily is not Ray, right?

Yeah, Salyers, I think, is her last name.

Oh, okay, gotcha. Yeah, but I was like, and I know that Becky is friends with them and tours with them constantly and, you know, sometimes shares a stage with them, but she often opens for them or whatever. But, like, just seeing my friend on the stage with a grand old Opry with Amy Ray was like, geez, Louise, man. I would say squad goals, but it's not really.

a goal of mine it's just i was well it's a goal of mine yeah exactly i mean that would be amazing i mean would that be the the best thing about being like a famous musician or singer is just like casually blowing up a karaoke spot at some time like you probably wouldn't do your own song right that would be gauche right but like if you're just amy ray and you i don't you're just like kind of hanging out in some i don't know somewhat random bar in uh portland oregon and then you just take this stage and somebody's like wait is that oh and then what would she dial up she dial up maybe a cheryl crowe song or something a little bit different than her own work and the

crowd goes crazy yeah i would say to my recommendation recommendation to amy and emily the indigo girls is um don't sing one of your own don't sing one of your songs at this bar on that night it was not it was not a hot zip for that sort of content i was like and i kept this was my calculation these are young people in Portland, Oregon they didn't all some of them moved here but some of them grew up here that meant they had parents in the greater Portland, Oregon area and there is a decent chance that in the 90s their parents who live in famously liberal Portland, Oregon were driving around and thumping Nomads, Indians and Saints or other such powerful albums released by the Indigo Girls I just thought there was going to be this like for instance If Addie had been there, she would have been freaking out because she grew up with just such a parent, me, bumping the indigo girls we'd be driving around. I just I had done this whole, like, intergenerational musical awareness calculation that was wildly off.

No bads, Indian saints, things of that nature. Yes, crab rangoons, get out the map.

I have a serious question.

Power of two. It's not a serious question, but it's a legitimate question that I'd like to hear you explore, Luke. This is almost like a good Hay Dummies question. What is, you know, just to reestablish this, I've never done karaoke in my life. It's not my scene. I've watched many people do it at various bars. You may have watched more karaoke.

Having never done it, you may have watched the most amount of karaoke for someone who's never done karaoke.

There was a period. Yeah, I haven't found myself there in a while. But, yeah, there was a period where you guys were hanging out with all y'all and everybody's always doing karaoke. But really fun nights, right? But anyway, this might depend on kind of the night and all the circumstances, who you're with. But what do you think is one of the best karaoke duet songs to do?

Probably Closer to Fine by the Indigo Girls.

If you know it and if you have the rage. No. Is that putting you on the spot? It's like, what's your favorite TV show? It's like a pretty broad question.

I think, well, you know, there are ones that are popular. Like people like to do the song Photograph That Cheryl Crow And Kid Rock did together I put your picture away It's got like a guy part and a girl part Like that song gets sung a lot People like Paradise by the Dashboard Lights Which I think is Meatloaf and Cher maybe You know there are songs like that Like the song from Grease, Summer Love And they're kind of like Classically these songs that have kind of like a male part And a female part But I'm just a fan of like Well see the problem is The New Little Girls That song All of their songs have really beautiful harmonies Which sound amazing when you're listening to them And are much harder to recreate when you're drunk And it's 11.30 at night So when I think of duets Like a great duet song I think of something where there's like beautiful cool harmonies But that's really hard for most normal people To pull off at karaoke So you tend to just get the duets that are like You know a male part And a female part and the male part will be in blue, and the female part will be in pink. I'm not even kidding. The little colors that light up the words will light up in the traditional blue and pink, so you know if it's the part for the boy to sing or the part for the girl to sing. True story.

It's a gender-reveal karaoke. Show title? Ellen Foley is the other voice. I just looked it up in Paradise by the Dashboard Light, I believe. I think it's Cher.

I have thought that was Cher for some reason. and I got bad intel. That's a really quick Google by me. No, I believe you. I believe you. I think I just made that up in my mind.

You know what somebody did at the Eagles karaoke night, like, I don't know, months, a few months ago, I think during the winter? It's a married couple, maybe about 10 to 15, maybe 15 years older than us. So, you know, maybe, I don't know, 50s or 60s or something. And they did In Spite of Ourselves by John Prine and Iris Demenz. Come on now. And I'm trying to think, did they even swap the roles? Did he sing Iris' part? I don't remember the details, but it was very, very cute. And I'm not saying cute because they're older than me. It was just a very cute thing.

She thinks all my jokes are corny. Convicts movies make her horny. She likes... Catch up on her scrambled eggs. Sails like a, swears like a sailor when she shaves her legs. Man, that song has some of the best lyrics. It really does. Any song I can think of. I'm obsessed.

It's filthy. As soon as I started to hear the music play, I'm like, you dirty dogs.

What's the other? He ain't got laid in a month of Sundays. Caught him once and he was sniffing my undies. Yep, exactly. He ain't too sharp, but he gets things done. Drinks his beer like it's oxygen.

it's such a great line and honestly these the couple that was singing are the exact couple that you would hope to be singing they're not like super they're not like super flashy like hey we own karaoke type of people we've had those type of people in the club

as well and they love John Prine

they are just a couple who like yeah and they also I'm sort of blanking on their names I think her name's Patty and I'm blanking on his name but I was playing darts with him and they're like they have a little rumpus room in their basement I've learned and they play darts all the time, and they play so much darts together that sometimes they play left-handed because they're looking for new challenges.

Now that's squad goals for you.

Yeah, exactly. They're just like, we just had this great night. We've been in the club, the Eagles club together many times, but I hadn't really kind of hung with them before, and this was a very special night.

I was going to say there's a great, John Prine and Irish Dement, I think it's Irish Dement, also do a cover of We're Not the Jet Set, which I think is originally like a George Jones, Tammy Wynette song. It's also just got those amazing lyrics. It's basically like by a fountain back in Rome, I fell in love with you in a small cafe in Athens. You said you love me too. And it was April in Paris when I first held you close to me, Rome, Georgia, Athens, Texas, and Paris, Tennessee. No, we're not the jet set. We're the old Chevrolet set. There's no Riviera in Festus, Missouri, and you won't find Onassis in Mullenville, Kansas. no we're not the jet set we're the old chevrolet set but ain't we got love they just don't they just don't write songs like that anymore i'm sorry you can have your um uh your dead mouse and your um uh who are the ones from from seattle that everybody loves that do the electro music that's so popular i don't know i'm sure you're asking the wrong person so great if i could have dropped uh oh man they're very popular and i can't remember is it little uzi prine

who does We're Not the Jet Set. That's it. I believe it is. I kid you. You know, you've definitely talked about that before because as you were reading those lyrics or reciting those lyrics sorry, didn't mean to imply you're reading them. Oh, I was reading those. Those ones I was reading 100% off the internet. But I don't think I realized that Prine and Dement did another duet together. I just love I listened to a lot more Iris Dement than John Prine in my life. I went through a real Dement phase. It was my Demented phase. But yeah, I just love her voice so much And just like the opening notes of Our Town And I'll just hear that And I just melt into a puddle of tears immediately Oh, I know

We had a whole sesh yesterday We're at my sister's house for Mother's Day So my mom and dad were down And at some point I guess no one in my family Had actually seen this John Prine tattoo I have Because it's been winter or something I've been wearing long-sleeve shirts, and I had a T-shirt on yesterday. And so we got on a conversation about that, and then my brother-in-law, Jason, put on a – he's a big John Prine guy. He's from Mississippi, so, I mean, you have to know he's going to love him some John Prine. Anyway, we put that on, and we were just, like, sitting around this fire. My brother, Jason, built this thing called the Schwanker, which is this – it's like a metal – imagine, like, a sort of a tripod of metal, right, that's about goes up about 10 feet in the air is where the the top part connects and then it's got this uh mesh this metal mesh grill that's a circle and it's on a chain and you can raise it up and down in position so what you do is you get a big fire going you wait till it's down to coals and then you put your meat and your veggies and anything on the swanker and then you just raise it or lower it for temperature and then of course my brother-in-law josh he's like the chef he's the guy that owns pollo bravo the restaurant so they bring out all this like amazing veggies and meat and things of that crab rangoon and things of that nature second stephen a smith reference today and put it on the schwanker and we're sitting outside in this just like little shady area of trees on this like insane property that they have that's on the little white salmon and the stuff is roasting away on the schwanker and john prine is playing and i was just like man this is a pretty good sunday

That sounds awesome, except for the word schwanker. Why is it called that?

I don't know. I think it's German. I mean, I think it's a, it may not even be a real word. I think he and my brother-in-law, like, well, Josh basically thinks, if I remember right.

Josh said to Jason, could you build something like this? Could you weld something that does this? And Jason was like, sure. And I don't know which one of them came up with schwanker, if that's even a real word. I think it has to do with German and cooking meat. Okay. It also might just be a totally made-up word that they thought was funny.

I see. It's not Wayne's World related. When you're cooking, you go schwank. No, that's the schwanker. That's the schwanker. Okay, gotcha. Should we do our little call-out for voicemails here? before the break yeah you would you already i think you set it up perfectly at the beginning of the show but just to reiterate what luke said we're excited to be recording with molly and sandon of brains on tomorrow and i think most of our audience is familiar with brains on it's a podcast for for kids and families and uh we thought if if they're gonna come on our show to chat with us and they have an upcoming event here in seattle and portland that they'll talk about uh on the show when we aired on Wednesday we thought hey well let's hear from some of our younger listeners let's pepper these guys with questions and Molly's like hey send us the hardest questions you can possibly come up with kids so if you call our voicemail line children only 206-414-8285 that's 206-414-TBTL call that and leave your voicemail asking Molly and Sandin a question it can be about anything it could be why did andrew wake up i mean i'm not trying to put my finger on the scale here but it could be why did andrew wake up with uptown girl going through his head on monday um but yeah any question we've already gotten some because i did a little call out for this in friday's newsletter and it's just so we're already getting some really great questions the competition is stiff but it's not a competition 206-414-8285 pepper these guys with questions and we'll play on Wednesday.

And this is because we thought it would be fun and also because our friends from Brains On are going to be doing live shows in Seattle and Portland, I believe, coming up. So they'll be talking about that too in case you are here in the Portland area or up in Seattle and you want to come check out what they're up to. We'll give you all that info tomorrow as well. Wednesday. I keep saying tomorrow. We're going to record it tomorrow. It's going to air on Wednesday.

Yeah, actually, that is one thing that I kind of didn't make maybe clear enough Is there is kind of a tight deadline now Because we are recording with them tomorrow That is Tuesday If you're a time bandit You must be listening probably in real time In order for this message to even work for us Because we would need the voicemails by tonight

That's Monday the 15th Alright well please do submit those If you've got some questions that have been bedeviling you Okay let's Did I spell Is that how brain is spelled I'm looking at how I put it on the show sheet. Now, first of all, I don't know why it added in a pot. Did I spell it? Did I call it Brian's on?

No, you got it right here, unless my thing automatically corrected it. Gosh, it looks. No, because you also wrote calling all kids, but you spelled it. I didn't even notice that calling with a K. I like that. And it didn't fix that. 1-877-Calling-all-kids.

But then I was like, we want to hear from, this is what I'm writing on the show sheet to remind us to bring it up, for our Brain's On segment, it really just looks like Brian's on. And also it put an apostrophe in the S like it's the brain's possessive. That's what's messing with you.

That's what's messing with you. I didn't do that.

It auto-corrected to that. But I don't know. It thinks that the brain owns the on. It's the brain's on set.

Yes, exactly. Or brain is on. The brain's on. That could also be an apostrophe there. Brain is on.

Let's take a break. And then when we come back, this is – you sent me this story, Andrew, about the end of AM radio in cars, at least in a lot of the cars that are going to be manufactured and sold going forward. And, you know, as I started reading into it more, I was sort of struck by who was interviewed in the piece and also what the sort of implications of that are, above and beyond just those who will no longer be able to get kicks easily in their car, but, like, just, you know, kind of what this means for the landscape, as it were. So we're going to talk about that after this very quick break here on TBTL.

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

Everybody rattle, dazzle.

Hey, let's thank these dazzling donors. You're talking about great duos, Andrew, or great duets. We've got two dynamic duos today that we're thanking, starting with Mary and Petey Lawrence Worley. They're in Madison, Wisconsin. And, of course, Mary and Petey are dazzling us with their donation of dough each month. That's really, really important to keeping things rolling. We had a meeting on Friday, Andrew, where we were looking at some things. We were doing some forecasting and things for the upcoming fawn. And it was exciting and terrifying. So, you know, looking forward to finding out the week of January 3rd when we officially go independent if this can continue being. uh business i'm i'm cautiously optimistic you know how like sometimes when we would be planning an event or some sort of an adventure and somebody at american public media maybe one of our bosses or maybe like rachel who helps us with accounting stuff would be like hey so guys how much you how much you planning on spending for this we'd be like i don't know like this is a ballpark figure like we'll all figure it out like you're american public media right that sounds pretty big you guys can handle it right and they're they usually just said yes now you and i are like oh yeah oh shit costs money right so now now we start to realize how much these things cost

i think it's good though that you and i are i think that we represent kind of slightly different takes on this stuff in in a good way where i think that we'll have a good i think we'll come out in about the right place i am way too profligate that means spending freewheeling with spending right i sometimes get confused as to profligate spending means just

doing it without thinking enough right profligate means you you lay down on the floor i believe okay

got it um which is what i do after i look at the budget i'm a little too like it'll be fine you know we're running a business we got to just we got to buy what you know we got to we got to spend we got to spend and i think you wisely are very conscious of like hey you know every hundred every extra hundred dollars a month is is actually one thousand two hundred dollars a year i believe that's how that math works i did that right right off the top of my head and uh and so if i if because my tendency is towards just like whatever we just need to we need to sign up for all the systems that we need and do all of the you know like this is you gotta you gotta spend money to lose money That's my basic business approach That's the show title And you're like maybe we should really If we can find some ways to trim the sales I am very proud That this year's TBTL-a-thon And we need to announce pretty soon What the plan for that is I will say this I think it's going to be arguably The most affordable TBTL-a-thon we've done At least since we're the ones paying for it I think it's going to be a really I think it's going to be a really fun week But it's definitely affordable

Yeah I mean it has to be Because, I mean, just – and we'll thank our dazzling donors here, the folks who are making this possible, and we'll make it possible in the future. But, like, we are starting with zero. Like, we're starting with nothing in the bank. We have literally no money in the bank account.

No, that's not true. We have $10. Oh, that's true. Because I was testing the business banking account for the company, and we pushed through $10. There's literally – because I also have a personal account with that particular bank. And so when I go on the app now to look at my personal finance stuff, the TVTL account comes up. Oh, like on the dashboard. It's got like on the dashboard. It's got like $10 and 16 cents in it.

It's like the funniest amount of money for a business to have. Can we do a TVTL-a-thon on $10 and 16 cents? We're going to have to figure out if that's how much we have. Or can you double it at Goldie's, Luke? Anyway, so that is what we're starting with.

Rose and Thistle. Yeah. anyway point is folks like mary and pd uh have gotten us this far and we sure do appreciate it they say hi luke and andrew first off we would like to thank you we truly appreciate tbtl and the hours of banter you both provide each week keep up the cat talk sports ball chatter and two numerous tangents love them all speaking of tangents so when we were recording when we were recording friday's show we had a moment there andrew where we became worried that we had not recorded like the previous half hour of the show that like never happens you are so good with this you have so many redundancies like i don't know if ever under your watchful eye we've ever had an issue where the show didn't record i can't think of a time maybe when i was in charge of it that probably happened on the regular but we had a moment where we thought we were gonna have to go back and re-record like 30 minutes of the show not even like the whole show but you said very sagely i don't know man i don't think we can recreate a lot of those tangents we did right

and you wouldn't want what it was like it's a hard it's a hard emotion to describe it's like well we wouldn't try to recreate them and i'm not even saying they were necessarily good tangents right but it was just kind of like we already did it and then here here was the deal like we'd have to go back i'll just say we had the part that i was worried about was i had thought i had lost everything starting with the dazzling donors well into top stories so like all of the dazzling donor which had gone on for a long time with many a tangent and then i think a solid top story or two and then i looked down and my thing wasn't recording i thought i'd lost it all and i was about to lose it all because i was just like i can't go back and like thank these same folks And then part of my brain would be like, well, last time we sort of said this. I don't want to say this again. I don't know. It's like a cosmic gumbo. It really is. You know, what we're doing here, it's it's. so tangential but somehow the idea of going back and trying to recreate it or even just do the tangents the different tangents over again yeah felt very maybe i was just tired because it was the end of the week it turns out andrew we had the whole recording because your eagle eye your eagle eye like looked at the recorder the second it stopped and said wait a minute our recorder's not recording so we were we were a okay but yeah all of that is to say um you know these tangents The conversation just flows through us We're just a vessel We're just channeling these tangents in this conversation Mary and Petey continue Secondly, thank you to the Stens community It's refreshing to know that there are online Social media groups that provide mostly Positive and supportive interactions And lastly Just a little plug for Petey's radio show Rock and roll over Rock and roll over Rock and roll over Over on WSUM.org You can listen Tuesday mornings From 6 to 8 central time It's an eclectic show featuring everything From new ambient and indie artists To soul and hip hop favorites Thanks again and power out What do you think it would take for Petey To play Uptown Girl

This message Maybe we have to become a dazzling donor

That would be fair Turnabout is fair play I feel like the people tuning into WSUM on that morning, the people that are used to Petey's cool, hip, eclectic taste that covers her. They would all be a little confused about Uptown Girl, but then what if he plays Uptown Girl right into Closer to Fine by the Indigo Girls? It'd be a real inside joke for the TBTL listeners. Anyway, everyone go check out Rock and Roll Over Tuesday mornings over there on WSUM. Mary and Petey say thanks again and power out. Well, thank you, Mary and Petey. Appreciate you. Maestro?

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

Everybody rattle, dattle.

It's Karen and Brian McManus, our second dynamic duo of the day. They're in Seattle, Washington, and say, you've gotten us through a pandemic, and you've gotten me through a dance with cancer. Oh, wow. Hope you're doing okay with that, are you know things are things are pointing in the right direction it's just so nice to have a daily giggle with some imaginary friends your podcast always lifts me up thanks and remember what you do is so important oh maria bamford mom uh well karen and brian hope again hope things are going going okay in the health department and um i'm flattered to hear that we got you through the pandemic um i feel like that might be giving us a little too much credit i i want to give i honestly think we need to share some of it with anthony fauci i'm not willing to do that okay well then um andrew is on the record as saying tbtl was more important than anthony fauci getting us through the pandemic it is boy it's really um it's interesting to every once in a while just scan a room i forget where i was beck and i were having dinner somewhere a while ago and i would just scan the room and zero masks zero masks now you know there are folks with underlying health uh conditions and so obviously they're still masking and hell people can mask for whatever reason they care to but you know in portland there was a long time where like the mask mandate was over it was no longer like required we saw a lot of people masking just watching that kind of fade away and you forget about it then one day you're just looking around you're like

hey there's not one mask inside yeah i still see it you know and i know that you're just talking about in that thing like i see it on the bus a lot um in various instances um around town but i am um sorry for this tangent or i guess you're welcome for this tangent depending on where you are on this tangent i'm gonna be so pissed i just instinctively looked down to make sure that we're recording as i apologize for what i'm about to say but um i feel like i've been saying this a lot lately in various places but like i'm at a stage now of coming out of the pandemic of really kind of just like holy shit what we went through i think you and i talked about this a little bit but just like i texted my buddy who recently moved to the east side and i i moved up here so i don't see him hardly at all but i used to see him all the time at teddy's when uh we both lived around the corner from our favorite bar teddy's and so we were kind of teddy's friends and um like i suddenly was like just flashing to this period i i'm not even gonna try to remember what year and month this was but it was during the pandemic when things reopened but with all these rules and contingencies of course the masking all that but the big thing for us was no sitting at the bar right you couldn't sit in communal spaces like dine like diner counters or you sit at the rail at the at a bar actually sit at the bar which is always what i like to do in like both of those scenarios um and he's very much like that as well and so when we were going to teddy's for a big chunk of time i don't know if it was six months more than that um they had the tables arranged like kind of in like i don't know several feet back from the bar but we would all sit us regulars would sit kind of facing the bar one table to each of us in our usual sort of places only instead of sitting at stools at the bar we were sitting at tables away from the bar but still basically trying to recreate the same sort of banter all you know six to twelve feet apart or whatever and it was just like it was just this small detail of life that became so normalized in in just a regular part of our life for a brief moment that i'm not trying to like be i think nostalgia is the wrong word for living through something so globally terrible but like to suddenly be like god yeah that was weird and And then not even to speak of like the obviously the loss of life and the really painful stuff a lot of us went through. But even just the mundanity of, hey, we're at a barbecue and we found out that somebody's friend who wasn't at the barbecue, but they'd seen them recently, had COVID. So therefore, we all should get into our cars and line up at an e-check, a former e-check station and have a stranger stick something up our nose while dressed up like we're in the movie Contagion. And it was just like, yeah, that's what you do. It was just like what you did. And it's like, that is so weird.

That is so weird. And it was yesterday. I was, right? And I was texting with my former neighbor, Rich. He and Linda, they're in Europe right now. They're like riding bikes through Europe or something. It's always great when people that are pushing mid-70s are far outliving me in terms of their joie de vivre, Andrew. I know. But anyway. I literally can't bend over.

Like I have a sore back and this weekend I'm like I'm shuffling around I can't bend over and I just see people like literally twice my age who are like kayaking on a bike somehow.

I know he's sending me these pictures of them like in the Alps or something and they're like sitting around with their friends with steins of beer having just cycled 50 miles or something. I'm like wow. But anyway he was like yeah we've been knocked down with COVID because we got COVID the other day and I was like oh shit and I'm like well then I guess you just live in some hotel. he goes no it's europe they're very chill about it they just treat it like a bad cold we've just been cycling like what oh i thought i figured the opposite i figured they would that's what i would have thought i was like oh that must suck you must have to cancel all plans and just like cloister yourselves he's like no they don't they don't really care over here it's just like you know try not to you know to try not to give it to anyone or whatever it's like wow okay i mean this guy's a doctor too so and very i mean extremely conscientious i mean these are like the first people to get vaccinated and total you know adheres to the masking stuff so i don't think this is them being kind of uh you know deciding that they're just not going to respect the local rules because they would if the local rules said you have to stay in your hotel or whatever but i was like wow that's that's a that's a new vibration to hear regarding this whole thing

yeah they're probably masking up and mostly being outside on their bikes and just saying hey this is this is what i guess this is what they told us life would eventually be like yeah and then the

fact that it's been formally you know they've sort of formally ended the the not state of emergency But whatever the exact terminology was for where we were sort of at federally and even on the state level, like what they're doing in Oregon, I believe, is that there's no longer you're no longer required to be vaccinated to work for the state of Oregon. They're trying to go with this other approach where they're incentivizing people to stay current on their vaccines. They'll give you a thousand dollars if you're a state employee and you stay current on your vaccine. Jeez Louise, are you serious? I know. Seriously, like podcasting is for the birds. So I'm going to get a job with a serial vaccine. With the water department. Yeah, right, right, exactly. Just constantly get vaccinated. But anyway, yeah, it's just, what was it? Hemingway, I think, was it Hemingway? Somebody talked about bankruptcy. They said it happens very slowly and then all at once. And it feels like the change, the return to normal life feels like it's happened very slowly and then all at once. Like, all of a sudden you just look up and it's like, well, shit, we're just, I don't even know where my vax card is right now. You know, like that was our constant companion. Everyone had their system to for what kind of, you know, clips they would use to hold their mask around their neck when they weren't wearing all these bizarre little systems and workarounds that we'd all sort of invented for ourselves because it was just part of everyday life. And that's all gone away now. And it's just but you sort of forget about how different things were.

Yeah, this is going to sound like this is the part of the show where I just list my jackets, but I'm actually going somewhere with this. But I have, like, during the winter, a peacoat that I just wear constantly. And then I have one kind of nicer.

overcoat that I can also wear in the winter and then when the weather starts to get a little bit nicer I have a light jacket a Tommy Hilfiger light jacket that really screams I'm becoming my parents because I'm a homeowner now in a progressive commercial and uh but it suits my needs my point of all this is to say each one of those has the following in its pockets at all times a a school like a pack of gum a pack a travel pack of tissues and a cloth mask I'm very particular about the type of masks that I like to wear during the pandemic there were these cloth ones that came from Target they covered my face I had to you know it was a little negotiating as far as my glasses and my beard and these just worked for me so I bought a bunch of them and to this day when I'm putting on my coat I make sure a mask is in there because I still think Like, I don't want to go out and find out that I'm going to a place that still requires masks. Yet, when's the last time any of us have been in a place that requires masks? I went to the dentist the other day, and I'm like, aha, good thing my system works because I'm going into a medical place, and they're going to make me wear a mask, and I don't want to wear one of theirs. I show up. I put on my mask outside the door. I go in. Nobody's wearing a mask. You know, I thought, you know, like, and it's a dental office.

I mean I'm literally somebody's going to be poking into my mouth so but still like waiting room areas whatever like I feel like any kind of medical place was still you know masks were mandatory yeah the pharmacy that I go to is still like mask required but then they have a bunch of masks so you grab it it's also like the most left-wing pharmacy that's ever existed it's like happens to be in a in a sort of small building that provides health care for I think primarily people who are are trans And it's like it's like everywhere you look, there's just like free lube and condoms and like the farm. It's just like it's like every conservative's nightmare of what a Portland pharmacy is. This is a future pharmacy that liberals want. Yes, exactly. It's like everyone's masked. Everyone's like, you know, kind of just on their own journey with whatever they're whatever's going on for them. And it's just like full of it's basically the most inclusive pharmacy of all time, which, again, you know, would just kill people to know that there's a pharmacy that wants to help everyone yeah people are just accepting of each other and just so gross people to to be who they say they are how awful i mean it is it's a it's a living nightmare i mean what i love you want to talk about tangents i i'm sure there's some stand i'm sure bill i don't know if bill maher is doing this joke there's someone somewhere doing a joke that's like did who could have known how concerned conservatives were about swimming yeah like right yeah yeah yeah i can't even i can't i mean you used to just you'd go to a swim meet and it would just be all people wearing like maga hats and you know just like screaming and being like you know oh my god that's an amazing time for the 500 meter butterfly yeah they were like you know that there was just dyed in the wool swimming heads yeah and then when you take that away from them by one trans person swimming in one yeah yeah like they're It's like, well, I guess I'll check out this football thing now. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, okay. Those are just the kinds of tannies that our listeners love, and we're very happy to provide them to Karen and Brian McManus and also Mary and Petey Lawrence Worley. Thanks to all of our dazzling donors today. Wouldn't be here without you.

Hello, and welcome to Top Story.

All right, our top story is regarding the news that a number of automakers, BMW, Volkswagen, Tesla, and Ford are going to be eliminating AM radio from some of their new vehicles. Ford is going to apparently be taking it out of all of their new vehicles they're building. The story with the Teslas and some of the other EVs is that they say that the basically electrical current or whatever is created, the electricity that the engine is using, interferes somehow with the signal of the AM radio. And so they're taking it out for that reason. They're also saying that there are just like a lot more options now, which is true. I mean, if you have an EV, what are the chances that you're probably going to also use your phone as a way to listen to stuff, you know, whether it's your like Spotify stuff or something. Or in fact, your phone, I mean, there's all these apps, right? I'm sure your phone can talk to your screen and you can play the things on your phone through the screen on your high-tech car.

I mean, I don't even have a high-tech car, and that's how it works. I plug my phone in, and then it's like all my podcasts, all my Spotify, everything's there. I happen to be a big AM radio listener anyway. But, yeah, I mean, that's not even the high-tech stuff. That's our five-year-old Volkswagen.

And I use, when I'm in my car, which does have AM, I use my phone because I can't get the Mariners here. And so I listen.

to the mariners believe it or not i listen to the am radio station that the mariners are on by way of the sirius xm app that's plugged into my car it's the longest journey for that thing to go on um i would just listen to it on the radio if we're available here but i it's just my habit i get in my car and i plug my phone in and that's really unless i'm listening to opb um that's really kind of now how i listen to most stuff so on the on the one hand it's like well people there are other ways generally for people to get this content if they want it but this was the thing that i hadn't thought of which is these conservatives well first of all they talked to michael harrison publisher of talkers magazine now this magazine talkers only exists so that there is someone that the regular news media can talk to when there is news related to am radio or talk radio you will not find a story about talk radio wherein michael harrison publisher of talkers magazine is not

quoted now talkers is also are they the ones who also send out the pamphlets that say these are

the available guests no radio show radio and TV it's like yeah it's like R&R something yeah and I think it's just a newsprint thing of just bad interview ideas yeah I remember talkers though

I remember getting excited if Cairo you know our old radio station was mentioned and talkers

it's the industry magazine for talk radio and it's funny because there are not that many talk radio shows in america i mean on the one hand there are a lot but on the other hand like every host i ever worked for everyone i knew was always really stoked when they'd make the talkers top 100 but it's like think about are there really more than like a hundred live talk radio shows in america i mean maybe yeah i think so i think quite a bit more but i still think like there was i think they i think they rolled out the talkers 200 like it is a magazine that exists so that people that host radio shows can feel like they it's working for them and uh it's only subscribed to by radio stations it's not like you people don't go buy it at the newsstand or anything i just think it's a funny very specific kind of industry magazine that again i think mostly exists so that people can say I was in the Talkers 200. Anyway, the other thing, though, that I hadn't thought about is the potential implications for conservative radio. Because if you think about it, and as they point out in this piece, this is a Washington Post piece written by Mark Fisher. So much of what is on the AM dial is conservative talk radio. And when you're talking about the Sean Hannity's of the world and the Mark Levine's, this is where they're really their bread is really buttered on the AM dial. And if you stop producing cars with AM radio, some would say it's an assault on conservative talk radio, which I'm all for, honestly, but I hadn't thought of it that way.

Yeah, I mean, I have so much to say on this as somebody who listens to so much AM radio regarding the thing that you just brought up, like kind of all the conservative talk. And this isn't just this is not I cannot stress this enough. This is not usually reasonable conservative talk because I have my stations on AM that I like to listen to. Right. And most of them are like kind of pre dialed into my car's presets, two sports stations, my Kixi radio for my oldies, the new station, you know, AM 1000, which is now I don't know. I always call it Como. It's not Como anymore, technically. And there's like one or two other AM stations in there that I listen to. And so mostly I jump around using my presets. But for some reason, I'm just like scanning through the stations. And so I need to – I'm listening to let's say 710 and then I just hit the up button once or twice or three times to get to my next station. And I land for more than two seconds on something in between. it is like it is like playing hot lava with radio and hatred i mean i i i can get so appalled and my head will almost explode while i'm driving listening to the stuff that is spewed out i think a lot of the worst stuff i think is coming from probably these nationally syndicated am radio shows but like i remember well sadly now i can't even remember which gd shooting it was but there was you know this was i think last summer i was driving somewhere and it was after one of the more atrocious atrocious shootings in in this country and it just happened the day before and i landed on some blowhard talking not not the way he was presenting it was not this is my theory it was fact that the democrats were absolutely gleeful over this shooting because now they can push their laws on us and he he was explaining in this long drawn out way as if he was in the room he's like right now they are in meetings and they are talking it's just like and i can picture and you know no offense to all the groups that i'm about to paint with a broad brush here but i can picture the older person listening to their am radio who have just like their whole life is just like listening to these types of liars spread this hatred and misinformation and the more they hear it the more it just kind of backs up all of the notions they already have because they're just constantly being fed this vitriolic lie about how the other side is celebrating mass shootings obviously this one thing i landed on really land really struck me emotionally but you hear that shit all the time and it just makes me realize how many people are being affected by the poison putting out being put out into the airwaves um and people taking it very seriously and very literally um and so when i'm reading this article as somebody who

loves am radio i also did think well maybe it's time to shut down that hose because it ain't good it's real real bad some of the shit that's on there but you know it's not gonna fix anything it's shutting you know they're not doing it so that they can control speech like well that's

the funny part is like but it is people in congress trying to get riled up about this as if it's an attempt to silence conservatives here's the other thing i wanted to mention this

is a totally totally different point but it's um a little bit nerdy is i ran into my um friend jessamine mcintyre you know jessamine we used to work with her she was a producer and host on the sports side when we worked at cairo radio and she's at another am sports radio station now and i ran into her at the baseball game a couple of weeks ago and i hadn't seen her in years luke and so we were we were catching up and um she's younger than us now i'm not i'm no spring chicken So I'm not trying to make it sound like she's a child, but she's significantly younger than me, I think at least 10 years. And I was so delighted to hear that she does the same thing I do. A lot of these AM stations in town also broadcast on the FM dial now, which is one thing that these car manufacturers are saying. Like a lot of these AM stations also have sister stations that you can listen to in FM. And Jessamyn and I were just like, get that away from me. We like the AM dial. We like that high-pitched interference that comes in super compressed. If I'm listening to AM radio, I want it to sound like AM radio. I don't want it all clean and clear like the FM dial.

Yeah. There is a mention in this article of what seems like sort of the platonic ideal of AM radio, and it's a station that's in Bryan, Texas. Yeah. Bryan and College Station. It's WTAW. And they're talking about a show hosted by a guy named Scott DeLuccia. he hosts the morning show there called the infomaniacs he says he does his best to steer clear of divisive political chatter chatter preferring to talk about the traffic sports and what's good to watch on tv um uh and but basically what it sounds like is the infomaniacs which by the way is often the top rated show in the city or in the cities um is just kind of like a, you know, what would you call it, a water cooler for these towns. Like, these days in the town of 84,000 people, Delusha seeks to maintain connections. His show is often number one in the ratings, offering a traditional mix of features such as Today in Texas History, updates on Texas A&M Athletics, and a plethora of homespun ads for locally owned businesses, many with their own jingles produced by the station's ad staff. It sounds like a throwback, but lots of people in Bryan can sing the jingles for Schulte Roofing, Home of the Bulletproof Roof, or George's Paint and Body, We Meet by Accident at George's Paint and Body.

Oh my god, I was just telling Vives that there's another, there's a jingle for an auto repair shop around here, that we meet by accident, we fix it. Oh really? Yeah, and I always tell Vives, I love that, we meet by accident is such a great tagline for a collision repair place.

One regular guest on the Info Maniacs is Brian's Mayor Bobby Gutierrez A lifelong resident of the city who also owns the House of Tires auto service shop Passed down from his parents They've been an advertiser on the station for 50 years That sounds like my kind of radio, the Info Maniacs

Definitely, that show sounds great The other thing, the bummer about that though Is that that I believe is just the morning programming And then it just goes into like all your Hannity And all that other poisonous, hateful stuff I was talking about before So that kind of bums me out that stations like that that seem like very reasonable and probably probably I mean, I'm guessing a relatively conservative community, but it's a community radio station. They're not looking to whip up vitriol or anything. But even that has to be funded. You know, that that's not enough because they said they even have a couple of reporters, I think, unless I'm confusing my stations and they have a meteorologist that they hire. And, you know, that's that's a tough thing to fund in order to do it. I'm sure the vast majority of their advertising comes in through. advertising on those those better name national shows the other part of this though are the

stations that are foreign language stations yeah that are dedicated you know to a particular language that that somebody might speak in this article they talk about polish and russian outlets in chicago there are farsi stations in los angeles there are five vietnamese stations in northern and southern california tons of spanish language stations that's the other thing you catch on the am dial when you start scanning is a station that's being conducted completely in a different language which i can only imagine what a lifeline that would be yeah if i was living in russia and everything on the radio was in russian there was one english-speaking station i would whatever the hell they were talking about i'd be listening to it because it'd just be like oh thank

god yeah and if you're somebody who's spending a lot of time in a car let's say that you drive a you know you're you're new to this country and you drive a lift you often will hear like you know back in the day cabbies or now like lyft drivers or uber drivers they'll say that they often like listen to talk radio in english because it helps them learn english um but also it would be a great thing to be able to stay in touch with your community and also be able to relax a little bit and listen to something in your own language while you're driving around eight hours a day or something but i think that the real thing here is and kind of trying to keep this relatable to the audience as much as i can um i think a lot of people are probably thinking yeah but andrew how does this affect the am signal in the university district of washington of seattle washington because i told you before the show luke that this article accidentally i think explained a phenomenon to me when i am driving around the u district again a neighborhood here whatever am station i'm listening to gets terrible like it is almost like passing through a wall Once you, like, pass over 45th, like, it just becomes all static. I still listen to it. You just turn it down. You can just hear the voices just coming through because, my God, I will not turn on the FM radio, apparently. But the static just takes over. And I always had a feeling it had to do with the buses around there because those buses are electric buses and they're on those wires that hang overhead. That's what powers the buses. And I always thought, I'll bet you that electricity is creating all kinds of interference in the AM signal. And this sort of seems to back that up, right? Like these electric cars, the batteries create some sort of interference with AM signals.

Yeah, I think I've kind of, I never thought of it that way, but living in Seattle for a long time, I've always noticed that when you drive. And again, I guess this just speaks to my AM radio ways. Like driving around Whenever you go under one of those Electric cables or whatever You always get an interference So that would seem to check out I mean the other thing I would say is What are the chances of And I don't really know the answer to this But what are the chances of like a hardcore Sean Hannity listener Also being somebody who decides I really want to buy an EV from Volkswagen Like Is that the same i mean is that a demo that exists i mean i'm not saying i'm not trying to sit i'm not trying to say i know how every conservative thinks and buys their cars but i just like i don't it doesn't seem like the people that are going for these teslas and then doesn't seem like the same demo of people who are having worked at a talk radio at a conservative talk radio station for some number of years and going out a meeting with a lot of the listeners now granted evs did not exist then but the funny thing about the conservative movement is there's one side of it which is these people that are ultra wealthy the coke brothers and stuff like that i think there's only one coke brother left different than the indigo girls and that there's one coke brother surviving but there's this idea that like it's the conservative movement is really made up of these fat cats that want to just like pay lower taxes and there is some of that but when we used to do events for kvi i was always like where are those people can we see them because the people that we would see were not like the the upper crust of society they were people that were hanging on by a thread a lot of them and I was like how did this when I started to really sour on that movement I was like how did these folks that could really benefit from social programs get convinced that they need to really advocate against any and all social programs that would help them you know we'd have these we do these live broadcasts at like the Cocos in Lake Forest park and the rogues gallery that would come out to watch us these were not people that you you fast forward 20 years and they're driving rivian electric trucks that start out at about seventy thousand dollars or something so i also just wonder if like if if this being mostly ev really i mean the ford is its own whole conversation but um i wonder if the ev cars are less likely

to draw people that would be mark levin listeners anyway well as um as ernest hemingway famously said, the switch to electric vehicles happens slowly.

than all at once because i do think that this is a very reasonable slippery slope that people are concerned about here i think that like in in our lifetimes well i i won't throw any kind of stats or numbers because i guess i guess i don't know enough about it but like thieves and i were even just having this conversation this weekend with her brother who's visiting like we were driving down to tacoma in our you know gas-powered vehicle and saying like we hope on we this is the first new vehicle we've ever bought and viz and i are the type of people who would take pride in just like driving it like into the ground for like you know not buying you bought it you're not 30 years yeah no we bought it and again we we you know it was cheap because of the big scandal with v-dub um and uh and so anyway point is like but we said if if and when we do have to sell this car something you know if we're you know trash it or something like that um we would probably just get electric at this point right like because we don't drive around that much we live in a house so that we could charge it in our driveway if need be like it's just like everything is sort of moving in that direction now i know that we aren't the the type of um you know am radio listener that you were just describing but like i do think more and more it's just going to be a way of life that people are having electric vehicles and so the people who are concerned that this is a huge and like you mentioned earlier ford is going to stop carrying am radios in all of their vehicles electric or otherwise so like the concern that they have of being like oh my god this is really the beginning of the end i think is kind of i think is kind of viable yeah i'm with you um it's definitely

i guess the question two will be is there any universe in which the content that's on am radio will be able to migrate to streaming and things like that like or is it content that is somehow Now, is it sort of sui generis to the AM radio frequency? In other words, if once you can get your Mark Levin's and your Sean Hannity's on your phone, I mean, you already probably can. But I guess my question is, will their audience go to the phone with them? Like, can that be migrated off that platform or is it like when AM radio dies, is that form of speech going to die with it?

No, I'm guessing that it'll just move over to other forms. And maybe Twitter may honestly become the AM radio, you know, like Carlson's going. Right. That's what I mean. Like if if Twitter just leans into this direction of just being like, hey, we're going to be the place where conservatives like him can come and say anything and we're going to be almost a broadcast outlet. Like, I think that this that's why me kind of having this knee jerk reaction of saying, hey, maybe if AM radio dies, it's better for the country. Like that is a very knee jerky thing because like that kind of speech will always be out there. I mean, I just think there's people like me. And again, I don't go in for that kind of programming, but you're just going to have old people like me who just really cling to that format and don't feel like dialing something up. I will listen to the worst sports radio programming because I had the Mariners game on the night before and I'm making a bologna sandwich in the kitchen and I turn on the radio and it's just on and I'll listen to that goddamn cars for kids commercial again because I don't feel like dialing something on. I don't feel like opening up my phone, looking for a podcast. When I open up my phone, I'm going to see 17 notifications of something else. I'm going to stand there looking at my phone for five minutes, forget what I was doing because I start chasing down all the notifications and emails and texts. And then then, oh, well, what am I in the mood for? Am I in the mood to start a new This American Life from the beginning? Like you just want something you can just dip into and you turn on the goddamn radio.

that's the one thing and i know there's something you can probably create with your you know whatever podcasting app you use where you program some kind of lineup for you i'm sure that is a technology that exists but i'm totally with you like there is something that the thing that the nut they have not cracked yet for me with on-demand listening is making it so i don't have to make the choice which is by the way the opposite of on-demand this like i would i want more programming i didn't demand on my demand yeah right you know what i mean just give me just you tell me play it exactly you guide me just i want to turn it on i mean again that's that's there's something very uh there's something that is a great relief about just turning on your radio and hearing whatever it is that people that put the radio station together have decided is going to be happening now like that's that's that's comforting to my brain and it relaxes me whereas i can definitely to get sort of paralyzed by scrolling through all of my different options and and trying to figure

out what it is i want to do on that moment so 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 rightly emails v-mails yeah i

got an i got an email for you here actually i have a voicemail for you here this is uh this is an interesting question that comes in from Jeffrey in Eugene.

Gene, it's not related to anything that's come up on the show before so far as I can tell, but it's an interesting question.

Hey, dummies. This is Jeffrey and Eugene, and I was wondering if you would rule on something for me. a neighbor sent a text to me and the other neighbors on our block asking if we would like to have a lawn sign supporting her labor union that's in a contract dispute with her employer. And while I support that labor union in their efforts, I'm not a lawn sign guy, nor is my wife. and we're not like bumper sticker people or anything like that. But I kind of feel like because she sent this text to me and eight other people and we all know who everybody is, that that's kind of a jerk move because it basically is just pointing out, it feels like blackness to me that she is sending this and if I don't say yes, and everybody's gonna look down on me like i don't support it or something and so far i'm one of two people in this whole list everybody else has said yes only two of us have said

nothing what say you i think it was pretty clear from the context there that when the phone went out he said this sort of feels like blackmail like kind of like by putting everybody on this list and asking quasi publicly for this lawn sign favor right the fact that it's not bcc'd right exactly or just that's reached out individually right so there's kind of a public

record of like the listener saying of who has said yes and not i honestly i think you just have to take the l on this one and just say sure like i'm also not a lawn sign kind of person um by the way my daughter uh saw somebody with the the latest tbtl bumper sticker from last year's thon in their car in seattle washington nice yeah tbtl hit radio we saw that out in the wild well i didn't but my daughter didn't text it to me i want to say thank you to whoever had that in their car i'm looking up the picture from addy see if i can figure out what kind of car yeah could you just give out the license plate number no but i would like to thank them for making it seem to my daughter like what her dad does for a living actually has some impact in the world or at least there's something it's a honda fit if you drive a blue honda fit in seattle and you've got the tbtl 10 bumper sticker just know we got eyes on it and thank you yeah that's awesome i i kind

of disagree with your take maybe not surprisingly because i'm like mr boundaries these days but um but i also i so here's the deal i sort of understand what jeffrey is saying he feels a little pressure because he feels like well i i don't want to be i i believe in this group and And I believe that's the thing. That's the thing. But like, I don't want to do that. I would certainly never put a bumper sticker on my car. That's a little bit more permanent. But also, I don't know that I would necessarily want a sign in my yard either, unless it was something I was very, very, very passionate about. But the thing is, like, I don't feel like the person who asked this and even included everybody on the text chain. I don't think that they did anything wrong. Like what they're fighting for is incredibly important to them. If it was if it was a cause that you didn't agree with, you could say, hey, listen, I'm on the fence on this or that this actually isn't something that I necessarily support. And you could you could just tell them that. And I actually think I would, depending on what the issue was. But this is one that Jeffrey says, I do agree with what they're fighting for. I just kind of don't want to get into the fight in this way myself. I think that's reasonable. You know, everybody can make up their own decision about how far they want to go for the causes that they believe in, whether it's something they're kind of watching from the sidelines. versus people who are out there marching or putting signs in the yard or whatever it is. I think that everybody can choose their own involvement. But the person who sent this request, even if they did it knowingly, like, hey, by adding everybody's name to this, it adds a little bit of social pressure. That's a pretty innocent tactic to use when you're fighting for something that is very, very important to you in your livelihood.

Mr. No Boundaries checking in. The thing I would say is because the Listener supports the cause Now if you didn't support the cause I'm obviously That's a non-starter but the fact that they actually support The cause the fact that it Has to be on some limited timeline Right how long before Whatever vote comes up Unless this is permanent unless the idea is this is A permanent statement you put This in your yard and you just leave it there for the rest Of time if it's like This is going to be up for three months And you like this neighbor as a person and you know that it will like it will keep you in good stead with them and maybe you need a favor from them someday it feels to me like and again i'm a person who's very particular about the aesthetics of my life yeah i can't see you putting like i know you're in a park now but I can't see you putting like a sign in your window or something if somebody asked you

to do it I feel like you if it was a cause that I supported and I thought it was like if it was a cause that I supported and I liked the person who was making the ask I really think I would say yeah you know what as essentially as a favor to my friend and in support of this thing I would do I think I would do it again I wouldn't want to I wouldn't want to put it out there for the next two years but as a limited event as a favor to someone i think i i think i would tend to go for it personally but that's not saying that's what the listener has to do but i'm just saying if you haven't considered just biting the bullet and being like you know sure okay we'll do this thing that is not super comfortable for us in terms of and when he says we're not lawn sign people i'm guessing that just has to do with like they have their yard set up the way they like it yeah and

they don't want a bunch of signs yeah no i i definitely i don't know to me one sign in your

otherwise beautiful uh yard is doesn't seem like you're going crazy but um so i don't know i would just i would i would offer the idea of maybe just maybe just doing it to preserve peace and also because you might need a favor from this person someday oh that's true um yeah and i just think

that everybody it really depends on how you feel about the cause but if i and again i don't think You would agree with this, Luke. But I would say, like, if you really just feel like I don't want to step up my involvement in this campaign to the degree that I get involved with a sign in my yard, just ignore the text is what I would do. Just like my friend Josh used to say all the time, just pretend like you didn't see it. The only sign that I would ever put in my yard would say, in this house, we believe the bones are their money. Bozo did the dub. And Bozo did the dub. Hey, isn't season three supposed to drop this month? oh is it this month it should be soon i know that it's coming up yeah i'm excited about may circled on my calendar that shows that's oh by the way for those who don't know those were references to the tv show i think you should leave everything you should if you can't tell

what we're talking about release the third season yeah it's just i think you should release the snyder cut the hell release the robinson cut yeah what did it just pop up on my tiktok the other day I follow something called, like, I Think You Should Stream or something. It's basically just – it's not even the people from the show. It's just someone who just decided to grab random clips from it. And you just – it's just a constant reminder of how much funny stuff they've done in two seasons of that show. I wish I could even remember. It was a more obscure – it was a sketch that I had sort of forgotten about. And I forget, you know, what it was that Tim Robinson was on about. but it was like I'd you know I'd say it was like a it was not one of the main ones that you and I quote to each other or that I even think about very much but by itself it if it would have been the best sketch from I think you should leave it would have been very good like it was from a different show it would have been like there's this show and they did this amazing sketch I didn't even remember this sketch because there's so many amazing skills I is it I think you should

reel is that the one you and there's a million of these but that's the one that's I think you should reel yeah I follow that one too yeah there was one the other day they posted where Tim robinson he's like is he in a job interview but or maybe he's being dressed down by his boss or something in a meeting but then he just he just interrupts the meeting so that he can negotiate with somebody on craigslist about where he's going to meet them and whether or not that he's going to drive two hours north and he's just like he's trying to sell a bike i'm not gonna drive down there and like just like i it's i cannot describe in a way that makes it sound funny other than it's just like the most inappropriate behavior in that thing but it was like again probably a two-minute sketch that i totally forgot about until somebody posted it to social media again becca works with

a guy who loves that show as much as we do and becca has no knowledge of it or is not interesting i tried to make her watch it a couple times and so what happens is she gets caught in these bizarre exchanges where she said ben was talking about calico pants and then i tell him and then i respond with like um well you got to pay for the website and then he tells her some joke from the show and then we just go back and forth with her being the intermediary of inside jokes that she

is totally not interested in or aware of the one well the one i've been obsessing over lately which is coming up in conversation is i i've said this several times it's so hard to pick favorites And why would you even want to paint yourself into that corner? But I think if I had to choose a favorite, it would be what I believe might be the final sketch of season two, which is the courtroom scene where they're reading the deposition or they're reading that the text messages that two colleagues sent to each other over insider trading. But the Tim Robinson character is in the courtroom and a whole bunch of these texts are really them just.

making fun of his hat behind his back and his behavior behind his back and they're just like it's a fedora with these two flaps on the back of it

and he's carrying dice in his pocket yes

don't bring up the dice

you forget about the part where when they're talking you know there's obviously like he's wearing this kind of silly looking hat but then there's the parts that are towards the end of the sketch where he's defending the hat to his bosses and other people you're not allowed to then he said you're not allowed to tell me to take the hat

Yeah, but it's all told in a flashback of somebody just reading transcripts in court. Oh, my God. It's so amazing.

He said no one else. He's never seen anyone else pull this hat off.

The guy at the store told me he's never seen anybody else pull this hat off before. Nobody raised their hand, dude. Nobody raised their hand. Okay. That's probably a good enough place to end this.

All right. Well, thank you, everyone, for listening. That is going to bring us to the end of today's show. I'm going to say something I didn't see in my life four months ago. Go Kraken.

Oh, yes. Tonight, the night. Tonight's it.

Tonight is game seven. All or nothing. They're playing in Dallas. That's right. And I will be watching. I went from having no opinion on hockey to now being so mad when certain players for the Kraken do something that I think that they've been doing too much of. It is amazing how quick. I still don't know how anything in the sport works, but I'm just like, really? Okay. Okay. Seriously? Really? You're going to do that? You cannot clear the puck against the grain Okay, that's a classic way to get a goal scored on you

I'm sure your interpretation is more Actually has somewhat more knowledge Than when I look back at some of my first years Of watching baseball here in Seattle As a person who did not watch baseball at all And me just like screaming at the TV Like, pull this pitcher, what are you doing? When I realized now, like I had no idea how bullpens work And lefty on righty matchups And looking at the entire series And keeping arms I was just like, pull this guy now. I had such strong opinions as I'm screaming at the TV, not even realizing that K's mean strikes and thinking that there might be Ku Klux Klan members in the stadium.

Well, with Robbie Ray sidelined, I think we're going to see less of that. So true.

We don't have to worry about the K's problematic or otherwise.

Exactly. All right. Well, listen, everybody have a great Monday. Thank you for being part of TVTL. We'll be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio. for remember if you have questions if your kids have questions that are almost unanswerable the brains on team or excuse me the brian's on team wants to take them on uh how do people send send

in their question again call us 206-414-8285 that's 206-414-tbtl all right see you tomorrow

everybody until then have a great monday stay cool and please remember no mountain too high wait too high no mountain too tall how many times did you have trouble on Friday too I forgot half of the line on Friday

are we a Benjamin Button podcast where we're getting rustier

or am I in some kind of cognitive decline that I need to get I need to get looked at please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to I

and then to come out here with the smile on your face like that the world is just beautiful i don't understand it it bothers me enough you got to get it done period power out