Muse

Hi, this is Langley, and I have another joke. Here it is. How do you get a Pikachu to get on the bus?

You Pokemon. Bye. TBTL!

In 1971, Bill Greats invented Microsoft. Wouldn't it be cool if I could remember my dingus password from my email?

What, you think I'm dressed to talk? I'm dressed to party hardy like an MC Scat Cat.

That was great. That was good. You went for it. I appreciate that.

You sound like you might be a little bit jealous, babe. No, and I know a little something about being jealous because people have been jealous of me my entire life.

This party is going to be off the hook.

Well, all right. Hello. Good morning and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. jalapeno my name is luke burbank i am your host do i love hosting this podcast yes he does do i not love the fact that right when i started talking the cat decided to leave the room she was just standing there stock still when i started like when the intro tape was playing and i looked back at her and she was just staring at me like what's dad doing and then i started saying my typical preamble and then she without comment she just turned and slowly walked out of the room we hope you're all gonna stay around and hang out in the room for episode 3946 in a collector series let the fun begin because our friends molly bloom and sand and totten are gonna stop by from the brains on podcast that would explain why we have so many drunk kids here And they will be answering previously unanswerable questions from actual children who listen to TBTL or overhear it in the car when their parents are out voting them. We're the number one show on sinking riverboats and places where parents are forcing their kids to hear this. Anyway, we'll talk about that. Also, my upstairs neighbor, something just happened. This is a Wednesday edition of the show. We were recording it on a Tuesday. and in between the Tuesday recording and this recording you're hearing I went out in the other room I was catching up on my brains on and my neighbor upstairs was doing something that I don't know how I feel about it may have been slightly rude I'll find out in a minute when I ask this guy the longest running co-bro of the show maybe best known for his depiction of tall ships their grace, their splendor and that intricate rigging He has asked today that I introduce him by a new name Which oddly enough is He's that And he joins me right now Good morning, my friend

Good morning, Luke I'm going to introduce a topic that I already regret At the beginning of this show Because I feel like we have guests on Every time to slug down this ginger lime mule, please When we have guests on Sometimes that attracts the attention of people Who might not otherwise listen to TBTL Certainly, we probably have a lot of children listening today who are tuning in to hear Molly and Sandin and their own voicemails. We've got a lot of voicemails from kids. Kids and fantasy. So many voicemails from kids excited to get through today. Won't be able to get to them all. Apologies in advance. But let's quickly talk about my armpits because, Luke, I need to get back on the certain dry cycle. cycle because i think what happens is i will i will douse myself with that for a few nights and then i just simply stop sweating from my armpits for about five months which sounds good

just seals that stuff up you actually had taken the leap to use i know we've i'm guessing we've talked about this on the program i was a power user of that many years ago it done did my armpits in to the degree that i haven't sweated since the nixon administration that's a reference for

all the kids out there fun flirty and young kids and fantasies try to keep it up to date the carter administration um i uh yeah for me what happens is i use it so this is like this very powerful antiperspirant that you roll on your armpits and they say to only use it at night and i never knew why and kind of like the misguided family in the movie the gremlins i think i even tried using it

I believe it's just gremlins, please.

Is it not the gremlins? I don't know. I think it might be gremlins. No, you're probably right. Keep talking. I'm going to look it up. This leads me to another thing.

It's the counting gremlins.

If it is not the gremlins, then I've been cheating at the little game I play. Oh, your game, your fall asleep game. Yes, because I'm still doing the one word starts. Definitely gremlins. Oh, no, I need a new because I'm doing something where it has to start with the word the and then only has one word following it, and I've been doing the gremlins.

but now i need another one the goodwill hunting the goonies the goonies anyway nobody knows what i'm talking about but yeah so what happens with me is you put on this certain dry you're only supposed to wear it at night it kind of burns if you wear it during the day oh i learned that not and it's not a deodorant no you can still i can still stink up a room sure yeah no that's why i always invite you to parties um but it just seals up your pores or something i don't know maybe i just need to start using like actual deck sealant or something under my arms it works for about

use kills too it's a lacquer based primer and it'll definitely do the job it cannot be the

healthiest thing to do to your skin i realize that but i got on this train years and years ago now but what'll happen is it'll just keep everything super unnaturally dry there for a long time until it stops working and then a few months later maybe a half a year later suddenly and i hope it's okay to say this we are pre-recording today's episode because we have special guests on so you and i just finished a recording of tbtl and my sweating luke doesn't have to do with the heat i know that we are in the summertime it's nervous sweat it kind of it's like i'm not nervous doing tbtl i promise you after all these years but it's performative sweat it happens after i do after these messages with genevieve um when i am done recording a podcast if i'm doing a a podcast like somebody else's podcast and my nerve levels are up even higher then it's a real problem and right now i'm sitting here luke and i realize i should have changed my shirt i mean we're talking about a shirt changing situation uh when this stuff wears off suddenly i just become the leakiest

man on earth so is it hold on and there's one answer that will make me feel happy of myself and there's one that will make me feel sad of myself so choose the right one all right is it residual kind of being worked up from the Tuesday show we recorded, or is it preemptive nerves about the fact that we're having real broadcasters, Molly Blumensand and Totten, on the show?

No, good follow-up, because I wasn't clear there. No, this is from the show we just recorded, which is why I...

Yes, that's the answer I was hoping for.

Yeah, no, it's because... I can still make you nervous. It doesn't happen before the show. It's because I just got done recording, you know, whatever it was, an hour-long podcast with you, Tuesday's episode, and then I'm done with the show, and I just realized, like, oh, I am so gross right now, but just in that part, just in my armpits, I need to change my shirt. I should have done it before this, and I'm sure after this conversation that we're going to have today, I'll probably need to even change it again. That doesn't make sense. It's the same shirt, but whatever.

I don't want it to sound like I'm in any way kind of armpit shaming you, but I'm a bit surprised that your pores were able to push through because, again, I had a real situation going, and I used that CertainDry, which we are not recommending at all on this program because it is— Is it actually—do we know for sure that it's bad for you, or do we just assume based on what it does? Well, so a normal like sort of antiperspirant deodorant I think antiperspirant Let's leave deodorant out of this Antiperspirant, which stops you from perspirating Is like 1% aluminum chloride Which is the thing in it that is bad for you But also what is effective And I believe Certain Dry is 99% aluminum chloride It's like only the bad stuff And what it does, like you said Is you put it on the night before It also leaves a nasty red Kind of skin irritation In my experience That little roller ball also

That'll catch you on the armpit hairs That can happen I will say that it has not irritated me in any way Well that's good

It was quite irritating for me back in the day But it's pretty much 100% The thing That is a minimal amount In normal antiperspirant That is also supposedly bad for you And for me, again, I used it for a while and then either I don't know if my hormones changed or if I went through menopause or something changed so that I don't have overly sweaty armpits anymore. And I think it's because I use so much certain dry that it it actually permanently blocked up my my armpit holes. I'm surprised that yours are robust enough to push through.

Well, yeah, I got robust pores. I don't know. Well, maybe it's like when I first started using it, I don't know how many days I use or how many nights I used it in a row. I should say it didn't irritate me, but I guess it did irritate me the one time I tried it during the day. I'm like, what are these? What do these scienticians know? If I can wear it at night, I can wear it during the day. Exactly. But it did. You licked it just to kind of. Yeah, I put it on my eyes. My eyes don't sweat anymore, Luke. Also, I can't cry. You always say I'm not feeling.

it's just that i put a certain dry on my eyes um some people get well whatever uh i won't go down that road um but anyway uh i wonder if maybe because now my process is i use it for a few nights and then it just seals everything else up and i'm good for months on end and then at some point the the clock just runs out on me and then i don't know if my body's over correcting if it's just been storing all of that right for three months it basically is like the grand coulee damn has been breached oh terrible so anyway welcome to the show if you're a new listener

heck yeah brains on crew get at us um this is the kind of content that we like to bring you on a wednesday luke wondering if it is rude of his neighbor also i talk about myself in the third person um if you're new to the show that's a thing i do a lot uh i'm wondering if it was so i have noticed this thing on my little balcony here at my apartment uh which is that it's covered in like a green a green scum yeah and what i need to do is get out there with some kind of bleach agent and a scrub brush and scrub it off but you know uh life comes at you fast and i'm often busy and i haven't gotten around to it but i also thought it was odd it's an odd amount of green scum because there is a balcony above my balcony and the rain very rarely hits my balcony directly I was always wondering, huh, this is like this is really scummy and really mossy for a thing that doesn't actually get exposed to the elements very much. And then today in between our recordings, I was working in the living room and I heard what I thought was someone urinating onto my balcony. And I looked up to realize, no, it was my neighbors one floor above watering their plants. And it covers my balcony in water. and that is the that is the source of the scum that's been bugging me for the better part of

two years now that rude well i'll tell you what i really we didn't need my armpit talk at the top of the show i shouldn't have even brought that up this is so much more interesting and part of a hydrology theme that we're going for that is true oh no i thought it was rain if i wiped the plants down with certain dry it turns out it was andrew leaning out over the balcony in his arm just drenching my porch no um that's really interesting because i feel like is it rude of the neighbors i feel like no i feel like you got to be able to water your plants yeah water their plants that

doesn't seem like an unreasonable thing yeah water yeah and you're right but it also is now making work like when i thought it was possibly the rain i was just shaking my fist at the heavens but i was okay i do that a lot yeah weirdly now that i know there's a person involved now it feels personal now i'm like really why would you do that to me but when you find a good solution i'll bet

you you're right you can just find a spray on solution you know like i don't think you have to i mean if you i'm sure if you go online there's a million like earth-friendly things you can make yourself at home or whatever but let's face it you're not going to do that uh and neither would i by the way i just like you know you buy yourself maybe even like i'm only hesitant because I don't want to get hollered at. I know it's not great for the environment, but, like, I use tub and tile cleaner, like the old school kind of bleach-based stuff.

Oh, you know what? I have that tile cleaner that stinks to high heaven. Maybe that would be a good place to use it. Oh, that's right. And that one actually is natural, isn't it?

Mrs. Myers? Yeah, that one is, like, kind of more on the natural side. I don't know if all of Mrs. – I don't know exactly the rep of Mrs. Myers, but I know that they try to be more environmentally friendly. Try that because I was talking about the nasty stuff. I was talking about the Clorox stuff. But, no, no, that's a great idea. And also, if you're using that stuff outside, you don't have to worry about the smell of it. The day you told me about that, I saw it. This is Mrs. Meyer's Tub and Tile Cleaner. Verbena, I believe. Lemon verbena. I saw it in the grocery store, and I unscrewed the cap, and I took a whiff of it. It doesn't smell great. I think it's that vinegar, huh?

Maybe that's what it is. But you know what? That would be... See, I've gone from being frustrated at my neighbors to appreciating the opportunity they've created for me. Yeah. which is, I'm not going to use that stuff on my tub because I don't like the smell of it, but I can definitely use it on the balcony. Yes, you can. Outside, and so I will get use out of it. So that's what I'm going to do. I will not be letting bubbles out there because we've gone back and forth on this, she and I. First, I didn't let her go on the balcony because I was afraid that she would, you know, I'm on like the fifth floor. I thought she might, you know, I don't know, jump or chase a bird or something. This happened to Becca's cat, Holly, who, by the way, has been here for the last, like, three shows. She just stays in the closet. She's a silent partner on this whole project. But Holly jumped off of, like, Becca's apartment is on the, like, umpteenth floor. Umpteenth? You go umpteenth or upteenth? Umpteenth. umpteenth that's what it says on the elevator button she's on a very yes she's on a very high

floor of her very tall apartment building and holly jumped off of the balcony chasing we think a bird i didn't know her at the time and thank god she jumped off of the like right side of the balcony and fell one floor to the next balcony had she jumped off the left side it would have been a really bad scene so that's kind of running through my mind but i also think well bubbles is a cat she really wants to go out on the balcony she has some sense of kind of I don't know what like self-preservation or something so for a couple weeks I was letting her go out there and it was amazing because she was just like so entertained she was kind of out of my hair for a minute and it was nice a nice little um you know cross breeze and all that and then I'm in the kitchen and I'm like setting up dinner and I look over and she is standing on top of the railing the very like narrow railing no no no no now she's a cat she's a cat right she has great you know what balance prio perception but it was like a hot it was like a it was like someone i don't i'm not trying to be grim it i felt like a hostage negotiator andrew i didn't i couldn't like run out there and be like get down i had to be very calm i had to be like hey bubs hey buddy you want to come in here hey you want to play with this bird feather on a string like i no

sudden movements right thinking about her even jump even thinking about her jumping and landing on that thing is freaking me i also i also am the owner of a very clumsy cat so like you know i know that Bubbles is a very athletic cat. Bubbles is not clumsy, weirdly.

And I honestly, I'm torn. I mean, I was terrified, and I've never let her on the balcony since. No. But also, she does have a very good kind of dexterity and balance, and probably had done it 50 times when I wasn't looking. This just was the time I was looking. Now, again, I can't... She can't go back out there without me being there. Like, that was too scary. But I don't know. I mean, are cats... Can cats do that? are cats able to just like i mean well you told me things like i mean you told me about becca's

cat and i won't go into detail but you told me about another cat who had an accident and i think about that all the time because people are like well they're cats they know their limits and i kind of always thought that but then when we lived in our last apartment which was just a couple of floors up um you know our cats would sometimes jump up in the windowsill of an open window where they could squeeze through the screen and i hated that and i i thought like you just don't know like Like you said, a bird might fly by and just grab their attention before they can realize what they're doing or they get spooked or freeze. And it's just like it's not worth it to me. Right.

It is. It's almost worth it to me. That's the thing. Well, you sell tickets. Not her dying. Although I did look down yesterday. I looked over and there is a huge tree. And I was like, I watch parkour videos on TikTok. There are humans who jump from this height to a tree. Could she live? And I was like, not worth it. Almost worth it, but not worth it. No.

No. wow that would oh i really wish i hadn't talked about my armpits there's so much good stuff at

the top of the show today we got it all in and we're only 18 minutes in and now it's time for brian's on yeah brian's on anyway yeah that is that makes me sweat a little more dude it was seriously yeah get that certain dry out get the certain dry at the ready it was it really was a moment i was like because it was just totally out of the blue and i had really like decided oh this is a great thing she goes out there she comes in she doesn't do anything crazy we have this this is going to be a fun summer in this apartment and then right as I was getting totally comfortable with her being out there I look over and she's literally like on one foot she's got she's like the guy from who is a man on wire oh yeah that walked between the twin towers yeah she's going full man on wire out there just like oh God did they save money by not putting thes in that title like man on wire the man of the wire i think i think it's um it's a reference the director is named marsden i interviewed that director when we worked at cairo together i believe i might have

some burbank yeah i might have even booked that person i don't i want to say james marsden but

that's the actor by the way on the subject of james marsden very quickly because we got to get to our brian's on friends there is a show called jury duty which becca talked me into watching featuring James Marsden that is pretty genius. Are you familiar with this program at all? I don't think so. James Marsh, by the way, is the director of Man of Wire. James Marsh, thank you.

Jury Duty is the name of the project.

Which is not a promising name. Here is the premise, though. There is a guy who answers an ad to be part of a jury and doesn't realize...

That everyone else on the jury, including the judge, the bailiff, all of the potential jurors, are all actors who are involved in this show. There's one person who doesn't know it's a show, and he is this extremely affable guy. and James Marsden the actor pretends to be James Marsden who's been called to jury duty and is constantly grandstanding and constantly just doing douchey Hollywood things which to watch the reaction of the guy who's not in on the bit to he thinks it's pretty cool he's meeting James Marsden but everything this James Marsden guy is doing is like the worst representation of being

an entitled hollywood type and this is real like this is like a real prank show like they're pranking this person it's not a drama with where this is the plot or a comedy where they're pranking

him um they're they are pranking him and i know you're not a big prank guy but but the improv of the basically everyone else are they're clearly like actors from la who or people who are interested in acting from la i don't think they're even all professional actors but they're like the judge is a guy i guess who's actually an attorney and he's amazing in this like and they of course have kind of care like uh personalities for the different people one guy is trying to be a transhumanist which is he keeps bringing these weird extra like devices and hands and things because he wants to be sort of part man part machine there's like a conspiracy theory lady who's real into like true crime again there's james marzen the james marzen thing is so amazing because the stuff he does andrew i would rather die than have this person believe for even one day that i'm this much of a douche exactly that's what i'm like i'm already cringing it's but so maybe it's not for you but i will i want to just give i want to just honor james marsden's commitment to the bit because it's like yeah he is so willing to humiliate himself in front of this guy um i haven't gotten to the final episode i i trust anyway that they do tell the guy at some point it's a bit but the stuff that james margin is willing to do and the way that he's willing to just act completely oblivious is quite something and it makes sense because remember he was in 30 rock he dated lemon

yes that's what i was going to say like the thing that gets me thinking that i would at least want to check out maybe one episode of this like you said i'm not into anything that's going to make me kind of squirm uncomfortably which it sounds like this might but james marsden is i i really like him he is and because he plays such a yeah and because he plays such a a a character that you just tend to like usually to see him play somebody who's like so not able to read a room it sounds like and he's like he's like a buffoon an exaggerated version of a hollywood spoiled

brat yes but in a subtle way i think i sort of misdescribed it because i was talking about it's not even the thing that's really genius about is it's not even like big movements like one of the things is he decides he's trying to get off the jury so he decides that he's going to try To let the judge The judge doesn't recognize him as a Hollywood type So they all go to lunch at the court And there's like a taco truck And he basically decides he's going to Try to buy lunch for everyone as the Judge walks by so that the judge will understand He's a rich Hollywood type So he says like lunch is on me and the judge Totally doesn't even read it And then he doesn't want to buy lunch For everyone because it didn't work Like it's like really It's just like it's almost like Curb your enthusiasm level so just like

shit like that yeah exactly yeah and curb is a show that i like but can only watch like one or two episodes of before i'm like i need to now watch something more relaxed right a palate

kind of stresses me out but yeah i i just i just want to salute james marsden oh there's another thing the transhumanist guy who's i don't know what that actor's name is but he's very funny and very it's got strong guffman vibes because you know the people who aren't everyone who's in on the joke they're improv-ing this right um the transhumanist guy and the guy who's not in on it they have like they end up getting sequestered the jury does because of james marsden because james marsden calls the paparazzi on himself to try to get out of jury duty and all it ends up meaning is they all have to go live in this holiday inn and the transhumanist and the guy who's not in on it have that kind of like hotel room with the adjoining doors and the transhumanist guy is like so into the fact that they can come into each other's room and the guy who isn't in on the joke is so likable that he's just like oh awesome man like he's totally like rolling with it and i'm just thinking like i wouldn't even want you coming in my hotel room and i like you you're not a transhumanist yeah the shades of patriot there too i believe right maybe that's what i'm liking about it's got a little a little bit of patriot in there anyway jury duty not just a poly shore movie anymore um but now uh some kind of i think it's on like a thing called freebie which strike two

sorry like it's on some streaming platform like if you have amazon but it's not amazon it's called freebie or something i'm not familiar how does anyone think there's any money to be made in a

new streaming platform at this point it's called well it's called freebie i mean that where's the

business model there what's the starla that's your business model solid as a rock okay uh let's take a break, and when we come back, we will feature your questions for our friends from Brains On. Stay with us.

We was hoping for some razzle-dazzle. Razzle-dazzle. That's right, man. Razzle-dazzle. On your mark.

On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody razzle-dazzle.

Hey, let's thank some dazzling donors. These are the wonderful, generous folks keeping TVTL rolling with their dazzling donation of dough. Starting with our friend Aisha Erbilgen in San Francisco, the city by the bay, California. I'm only, I'm conceding that San Francisco is the city by the bay as opposed to Bellingham, Washington, the bay city, or many other places that I've titled the bay city because Aisha is supporting the show with a dazzling amount of dough and says, after 10-ish years of being a TBTL donor, since the Feels Like the Third Time TBTL-a-thon. And if you guys could play that clip, that would totally make my day. Well, guess what? I've actually got that clip right here. Let's take a listen. Third. Third. Third time. Turns out this is a minute and 18 seconds, Andrew. This is about a minute longer than anybody needs.

Third.

Third Did you know there was a whole breakdown in the moment?

No, I didn't This is a karaoke nightmare here

We're getting pulled from Spotify as we speak No, but this is a cover It's third time, not first time Right? Totally different intellectual property Calm down, foreigner Oh, see, I didn't even have

Sean, I didn't even have the dedication He just hung down

He went to get a beer at some point during that guitar solo. There you go, Aisha. That's all of the feels like the third time that we can subject the listeners to. Aisha continues, I am finally dazzling. There's so much crappy stuff going on all around us. It's wonderful to have you two dummies to rely on for the perfect balance of interesting conversation. That's not too much of a bummer. your quote jokes about being canceled last year really hit home my day always gets a little bit better when i've listened to a tbtl episode i hope the tens can uh take an extra moment today to be grateful for their loved ones and things in their lives that bring them joy signed aish thank you so much uh aisha we really do appreciate you i believe i feel like i walked by aisha once No you know what that was listener treasure I was just going you know I'm categorizing These folks as having very interesting Names very memorable Names I should I don't think We walked by each other one time in Greenwood If we did let me know But thank you but salute to treasure

Also I want to say I don't remember Making jokes about being canceled but I Assume that means not like canceled Like we've said something wrong and Society has no taste For us anymore we know you can't say anything we must have been making jokes about apm firing us or something i don't remember that but um i just want to reiterate that although we are leaving apm we did not get fired it's the most important more than a paycheck it's more important to me that people know our dignity

we have so little of it and we have two of our for now colleagues waiting in the wings yes to join us and if we were ever going to make the point that we were not fired from apm this feels Molly and Sandin did not fire us I promise Despite the many letters they wrote to HR Thank you Aisha we really do appreciate you Maestro

On your mark Get set Now ready Everybody rattle

We've also got to thank Dan Kusha Down there in Gerhart, Oregon Now again We're trying to be expeditious today With these dazzling donors But I do have to tell you My daughter recently stayed in Gerhart, Oregon And told me it is possibly the most adorable place on earth That's how you know it's pronounced Gerhart Because I would have said Gearhart She could have been mispronouncing it She's terrible with names Well, that's what I was subtly trying to say But, you know, I've got a running list of places That I'm going to move soon And those include Plymouth, Massachusetts And now Gerhart, Oregon

Dan says, I appreciate Luke and Andrew for the daily affirmations and laughs in the last year. I had the privilege of being the first What's in the Box segment, I think, when I sent Andrew the Far Side box set. Okay. Did we just bell at the same exact time? Did we just become best friends? Yes. Wow. I got to say, I was pretty jealous. I mean, in a good way. I was pretty jealous of that. That's a very handsome tome. We can share it if you want. You can have it on. Visitation. Visitation on weekends and holidays. Am I allowed to visit the Farside box set without supervision right now? What does the court say?

It is honestly a prized possession of mine. It's pretty cool. The complete Farside, two huge volumes packaged together. These two books, I don't even want to think about how much Dan paid for shipping of this. It weighs as much as a bowling ball, and it's got a couple of hardcover, huge books. I picture somebody pulling these books down from the great library in Game of Thrones.

Mm hmm. I've stolen a considerable number of books from the Citadel. I believe that's what. Yeah, the Citadel. Yes. What's he say? Is that Sam says that? Yeah, I think so. I believe I may have that ready for you. Let's see here. I stole a considerable number of books from the Citadel library. I never thought I was going to have a reason to play that drop.

Why is that a drop? Why do you have that? I don't know. I thought it was funny when you said it.

Let me finish Dan's message. It made my year to hear Andrew struggle to open it. and then talk about it. I hope it's brought you the same joy as TBTL brings me and all the other 10s. Thank you for what you both do. It's so important. Day four of what you do is so important. Wow, you're right. In a desling donor. You're right. Yeah, right. Hey, thank you, Dan, and thank you, Aisha. We really appreciate both of you, and we could not be here without you. All right, without further ado, we have a couple of our colleagues who are also definitely not fired by APM. In fact, they have the number four program. I checked it today. The number four program on iTunes in the kids department. It is brains on and they are coming to Seattle and Portland. They're going to be in Portland Saturday, June 17th. They'll be at Rev Hall, my favorite place to play in Portland. And then at Town Hall in Seattle on Sunday, June the 18th. They'll be in the Great Hall there. Our friends Molly Bloom and Sandin Totten. Welcome to the program. This is where I unmute Sandin, by the way. I forgot I had one job here and I failed. Hi, everybody.

Hi. Hi, Andrew.

Hey, guys. Thank you for having us. Oh, yeah. You excited to come out to the Pacific Northwest? So excited.

Yeah, I've been out. And the thing I remember most specifically was that when I went to Portland, and this was in the early 2010s, maybe, people said, Portland has the best brunch in the universe. And so we just spent like four days eating brunches and especially I think it was like eggs Florentine or something. I don't know what exactly, but something with like a biscuit, a ham and an egg. We tried it a bunch of different places and it was indeed very good.

I have a little unsolicited advice regarding the venues you guys are going to be playing at. Town Hall is amazing in Seattle. It's a wonder. They just they just seismically retrofitted it. So it's not going to fall down on you, which is huge. It's one of the things I look for in a theater, but it has the green room has zero counter space. We were doing live wire there recently and everyone signing the release had to do it on top of a mini fridge. So just go in knowing that. And then Rev Hall, Revolution Hall is this really cool place in Portland. It was a high school and the theater is what used to be the theater in the high school. And they went in and made it all nice and the seats are comfy, but you're playing a high school in Portland at Revolution Hall.

That's super cool.

I was going to ask you guys, how do you translate your show into a live stage show?

Well, so normally we do a podcast where we break down the world using science and fun metaphors, various characters. You both played bacterias on our show. That's one way we have people personify science. We kind of do the same thing on our live show. So it's me, Molly, and Mark up on stage. And in this one, we're going to explain how your brain works. And we go through different lobes, what their roles are. We show some magic tricks and illusions. We have a dance that you'll learn by the end of the show, guaranteed, or your money back. And that dance will teach you a bunch of lobes of the brain and what they do. So it's kind of like our show. It's just with more like limbs and body parts rather than disembodied voices.

I was watching the trailer for it. Is that Mark dressed up like a brain?

Oh, yeah.

Who made that costume? It's very convincing.

Great question. I don't remember but Mark is always the one we make dressed in silly costumes for a previous show he wore a dinosaur costume he was a dog once he's a dog poor Mark he's the one we make do the silly things

He spends most of his time putting clothes on during the show. He's only in it for like this brief 15 minutes or something. The rest of it's costume changes.

Sure, sure. Like T. Swizzy right now. I mean, I think I hear she has like four costume changes. This is Mark's era tour for sure. That's the only thing that's appearing on my TikTok is people crying, not even at a Taylor Swift concert, but outside of a Taylor Swift concert where they can hear the music. It's a whole mood.

Wow. Imagine commanding that kind of emotional power over people.

Well, that's what's going to happen when Brains On comes to Seattle and Portland in June.

When our audience is crying outside the show, it's usually a meltdown or a temper tantrum. But I see where you're going with that. That's a good point.

I forgot about your demo. Speaking of your demo, I should say, let's get into some of these voicemails. So we asked our audience to call in, to have the younger members of our audience call in with any question that they could come up with for you guys. And Molly, I think, or maybe Sandin, this was your idea. You said, you know, make them tough, like challenge us, ask us the impossible questions. So I will try to play some of the more difficult questions for you folks here. Let's start with this one from listener Magnolia.

Hi, my name is Magnolia, and I have a question for Brains On. why do humans get bigger and why do they stop growing?

Now I don't know who wants to field that one. Mark.

Mark, it's your turn. Put on your costume. That's a really great question. A really, really good question. We are actually doing an episode about this topic coming up. We are? Yeah, we are. The next set of episodes. We haven't really started researching it yet. though. I do know, here's a fact, I do know that your brain only makes the hormone that triggers your growing when you're sleeping. So it really is true that if you don't sleep, you're not going to grow. So you need to get that sleep in order for your body to do its thing.

Parents of America, thank you for putting that out there.

I'll add that one of the reasons we get bigger is because we have to start out small because if our mothers had to carry a full adult in their belly and then just give birth to a full adult, that would not work. So evolutionarily, there's a reason we start out small.

We would have stopped at one baby as a species.

It would basically be a horror movie where each person replaces the one – like alien basically. You just rip out and then that's it.

Tear your way out. Yeah. Or a hilarious Adam Sandler movie. One of the two, I feel like. Right? It's called Big Baby starring Adam Sandler.

He's a tall-sized Adam Sandler.

Hey, the writers are on a strike right now. You can't be throwing out gold like that.

Let me throw another one at you guys. This is from listener Ryan.

Why, when you eat sour things, does it make your face pucker?

god these are all questions that i'm actually been wondering that's a good one does this go

back to the disgust episode yeah yeah go for it totally does yeah so that is a disgust reflex and so when you think about it like everybody should make the pucker face right now when think about what you're doing you are basically closing your mouth super tight pushing out so whatever was in your mouth is sort of like being pushed forward and that's Because your body's basically saying, don't eat that. What's wrong with you? Stop it. Because in the olden days, you know, evolutionarily, the sour things were usually poison. And so your body's like, dude, don't do it. You know, now it's not poison.

And so we know that there were no warheads growing on a tree in the rift valley of Kenya or something.

Exactly. So we still have that in us, though. Huh.

is the salad do you think the salivation that you get also when you have something sour is also you're basically your mouth and your throat trying to kind of like lubricate things up to get whatever you shouldn't be eating out of your mouth and to kind of create a little a little barrier

yeah to flush it out for sure it's kind of like um those eyewash stations in labs but for your

mouth yeah that's interesting because i i can think of three different ways my mouth might tell me danger danger right you just described the puckering of the sour but that's very different than when you eat something that's too hot right that your mouth reacts very differently to that trigeminal nerve i believe is what's activated is that oh that's right because you've you've

experimented with some hot peppers yourself luke and then there's well i once did a story about hot cheetos and that was how all of my all of my um you know all of my trigeminal nerve awareness came from that story.

so many ways that nature says do not touch what was the third one andrew oh i was gonna say gagging is the third one that i can think of just that's also getting it out yeah and even the sound like

bleh that's like you being like get it out yeah yeah and i guess sneezing is kind of a version

of that too i i would assume it's your body trying to reject something that maybe got up your old

nose your body's full of these eject buttons just like all over these orifices what's surprising is that the ear doesn't have one you know like if you hear a sound you hate there's no like kind of like i don't know little balloons that come out in a thousand years

there are there are spouses of listeners of this show right now we're like god if only my ears

could reject the sound that I'm subjected to. We talk, Sandin and Molly, we talk about our listeners. We call them the tens of listeners and they self-identify and their partners or the people who are trapped with them are called elevens and then we'll hear from them that they're down to a ten and a half, which means they're getting closer to tolerating the show. Yes.

And a lot of the people we're hearing from today are known as fives. These are the children of tens. In fact, Irene is a five.

Hi, my name is Irene, and I have a question for Brains On. That question is, why is there no gravity in space?

Oh, yeah.

Great questions. Well, space is cheap, and gravity is expensive. Space did not want to splurge.

All right, slow down, Einstein.

So there is a little bit of gravity in space, but it's not enough for us to really feel. there are probably pockets of space without much, but gravity comes from mass. So every single thing has gravity from the little tiny Lego in your carpet that's waiting for you to step on it to the giant planet we live on. The bigger it is, the more gravity it has. And that basically that gravity pulls you towards it. So if you're floating outside of earth, there's probably a tiny bit of microgravity. So the people on the International Space Station, for instance, will feel like kind of microgravity but um they won't necessarily feel it the way we feel it here on earth and the reason that our planet is spinning around the sun is because the the sun is pulling the earth with some gravity in some you know capacity that in the in between we might not feel it like it doesn't sort of pull us towards the sun or the earth if we were out there but it's enough to keep those planets spinning around each other so there's gravity with around anything that has mass and in between these planets it's the effect gets weaker the further you go away so you won't really

notice it but like jupiter would have more gravity than earth right because it's larger oh yeah yeah

definitely well no because it has less mass though it's gaseous so that could also affect it i don't

know what the gravity is like on jupiter huh excuse me while i google it i can excuse me while i google it for those who didn't hear molly mumbling in the lesser jimmy hendrick song now are you guys like the type this this thirst for knowledge that you guys have obviously every i mean you guys have been producing the show for quite some time now and you guys have themes and you explore these things but if you weren't doing this show do you think that you two would still be like kind of attracted to like this kind of knowledge sand and i'll start with you while molly is cheating on the

oh it's not cheating we're not we're not geniuses this is we learn everything along with our audience so you know these questions that your listeners the fives are asking us this is how we figure out what we need to know we we don't you know and even my answer there i was sort of struggling because i don't know everything but what we really want to teach our listeners and your listeners and anyone else is that it's okay to wonder and then go find out knowing everything is boring i mean i'm not a i don't i can't speak for chat gpt but i'll just say that you know i wouldn't want to know everything because that would deprive me of the going out and learning and trying to understand because what's really exciting to me is that moment when you're thinking about an idea and suddenly you're like oh i get it and it starts making sense and you're starting to put the pieces together and that's what we try to create so i think i don't know if i would be the kind of person who would just have all this random trivia if we didn't do this show but i and always be the kind of person who would want to go learn and discover stuff and sort of figure out how things work. That's just core to what we do.

And I will confirm that as somebody who knows almost everything and is right about almost everything, it is kind of a burden, and it does get boring at times. So I can confirm on that. Did you get any info on Jupiter, Molly?

Oh, yeah. The pull of Jupiter is described as being feeble. so whoa so feasible gravity on jupiter i feel like earth wrote that right but you know it is

The gravity on Jupiter is greater than the gravity on Earth.

Maybe Mars is a better example, right? Because is Mars less gaseous?

Mars is dense like Earth, but it's smaller. It's like a quarter Earth size, I think.

Is there a planet that is – you know what, kids? As my mom once said when I bought my niece a karaoke microphone and then she took it away to sing Stand By Your Man by Tammy Wynette. The kids have had enough fun. My question is – kids, you've had enough fun. My question is, like, is there a planet in our solar system that is sort of solid the way the Earth is, or relatively solid, but larger than the Earth? Is there a planet that has more higher gravity than the Earth, or are we on the highest gravity planet?

Well, no, we're not the highest gravity planet because, like, Jupiter does have more gravity than us, even though it's feeble compared to its size.

I see.

It's still the mass. The mass is more. So it's like two and a half times Earth's gravity. Got it.

Got it.

OK. And there's definitely a reason why all the rocky sort of solid planets are closer to the Earth and it gets more gaseous the further you get out. But I can't remember that reason.

No, it's because of the Big Bang. It's because of the Big Bang. When when all of the the materials got kind of like blown out from the Big Bang, the gaseous materials traveled farther from the star.

oh you're not talking about the big bang you're talking about when the sun turned on oh yeah when the sun turned on sorry so yeah not the big bang but when every galaxy forms um you know you or a solar system forms around the sun at first it's like a bunch of dust just swirling around you know like imagine the corner of luke's room i'm assuming there's a big pile of dust there and when a fan when the fan blows that dust it kind of swirls around but eventually some of it sort of sticks together and forms a dust bunny um and then with gravity like we talked about before that dust bunny kind of builds on it and then starts kind of compacting in on itself it gets denser and denser and it pulls more things so eventually that happens uh with a bunch of the gas and that forms the hydrogen reaction that turns the sun and the sun kind of turns on like a switch so all that stuff is just condensing condensing until it gets to the point where it creates this like hydrogen fusion chamber and then poof it turns on and when it does it creates this like gust of solar wind kind of like a giant celestial fart and it just that fart spreads out the solar wind and everything that was around it around that dust bunny gets shot out but the heavier stuff can't fly as far you know it just kind of goes like out around the sun but the gaseous stuff can fly further out and so that's what that's what you're talking about that's why the planets closer to the sun still have all that rocky material but the gases got blown out even farther by the solar wind and the planets in the distant area of our solar system there

made more of gases and things so if somebody breaks wind you might want to just to say that they broke celestial wind if it's like a really bad one because i'm yeah if it's really bad you

be like wow you just made a neptune let's bring things back that wasn't feeble

let's get into let's see i think this is a question about the natural world from nola there might even be two questions in here i don't know if we allow that or not

hello my name is nola um nola van miller and my question is um what is pine tree sap made out of because me and my parents don't know what it's made of so i was just wondering

so i believe it's sap i don't know if nola said country sap i think she said oh pine tree sap

OK, gotcha. Sap. Yes. Yeah. So sap, I believe. Well, Sandin is our plant expert. He loves all things plant. But I believe, please correct me if I'm wrong, sap is basically like the sugary glucose that the tree has made in its photosynthesis process? Question mark. Is that right?

I mean, the tree made it. I wish there'd be more. Okay. I'll preface by saying, going out on a limb here, the tree did make it. I don't know if it's the same as, like, the glucose the tree makes to feed itself. I think sap is a defense mechanism. Like, it might be the sour face of a tree. Because from what I understand, like, when you damage or cut a tree, the sap will come out. Or sometimes it'll, like, they will create more sap when they have an insect infestation. to kind of like gooify, kind of like a glue trap. But I can't remember if it serves some other purpose besides that or if it's just for defense.

Okay, I looked back at an old episode of ours and I found, so pine sap is kind of the blood of the tree. It's what carries around the nutrients. So like that sugar and water and things like that are being carried around through.

the xylem cells i mean the inside of trees are super super cool um and we should all hug them all the time so it's not except for when they're sappy in the words of john denver r.i.p plant a

tree for your tomorrow plant a tree it clears the air plant a tree tree for america plant a tree for all the world to share do you guys see that psa as as young people no no it was sung by john denver I spared you all my singing of it.

I'm going to. Okay, so here's where I'm going to struggle. I want to leave you guys with one question here. But here's the deal. I got two very similar questions. And they're both from listeners named Alice. But they are different Alices with similar questions. So I got to play both for you because. Play them both at the same time. So we're going to start with. Wait, we were fired from APM, if we're being honest. It's for audio choices like that. It's becoming clear. So here is the first one from Alice.

Hi, my name is Alice on the 7th, and my question is, why is there a universe?

So that question is, why is there a universe? I have a simple one. Yeah, kind of a simple one to leave you with.

It's like when Larry King was interviewing Jim Caviezel, who had played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ, And he said, is there a heaven? We have 10 seconds.

Okay. So before you tackle that, I'll give you a second. Like, why is there a universe? But then knowing that there is a universe, this Alice has a follow-up question.

Hi, my name is Alice from Sydney, Australia. And my question for Brains on this, what is the universe expanding into? Thank you.

All right. So why is there a universe? And what is it expanding into? You guys said you wanted the tough questions

This is tough Alice through the looking glass The Alice-verse, here we go

Also, why am I impressed That a kid from Australia has an Australian accent I mean, that checks out But I was mildly starstruck I know

I just feel like they have so much Better things to do in Australia That anytime they're spending time listening to art We get Australian listeners too And I'm always so excited Because if I was in Australia, I would be out high five playing a didgeridoo yeah just exploring the outback and the fact that they take time to

listen i'm just like wow that's so cool all right well you guys have stalled to the explanation sandin let me ask you very clearly why is australia exactly

okay so the question was their universe why is their universe and what is it expanding into

Well, what is it expanding into is easier of the two.

The universe is shaped like a donut. That's the fact I have about the universe.

I was thinking it was the bubbles. I was thinking of – so one theory of the universe is that our universe is one of many and in between, like, you know, it's just this sort of bubble expanding out into nothing. But that there may be other universes expanding into that nothing from other directions, kind of like a bunch of bubbles floating. And that eventually two of them could kind of bump up and they could be parallel dimensions and they could join. And that would be one way that two very similar Alices could then meet each other from parallel dimensions. That was one theory we talked about in one episode about that whole like – Multiverse. Theory that – multiverse. Yeah, that's the word I was thinking for. But I think most scientists think that it's expanding into nothing right now. That there isn't really like – as far as we understand anything there, there.

so that's the part that makes my brain hurt is the idea of that nothingness i feel like there needs to be a brick wall at the far reach of the universe that tells us okay we're done like the idea that it's a nothing out there i can't i lie in bed at night contemplating that and i've yet

to make peace with it well if it's shaped like coffee okay i'll take that i will absolutely

accept that i picture like i mean there'd be no way for us to process the nothing because it would be expanding at a rate faster than any of our senses so it would be like you'd be barreling at it at the speed of light trying to get it you'd always just be like kind of like trying to outrun a fog you know you just you're always in it um so the only way to really experience a nothingness would be to get outside the universe somehow which you can't do because like i said there'd be no way to process or move fast enough to go faster than the expanding universe so the why of

the universe that's the big thing that i mentioned i can't imagine a more tough question than that

you asked for the toughest questions well let me ask you alice why not the universe oh no fair uh-uh uh-uh that is that your is that what you do when you're

stumped in one of these lab shows sandin yeah just turning back on the kids yeah yeah well

because you know what i bet you alice has some great answers both alices but the alices would have great answers you know because like honestly this is one thing we say a lot is scientists don't know all these things and sometimes a creative kid could come up with an answer just as good as a phd or some other d phs or whatever md oh no they don't do astrophysics you know people with

degrees unlike me well yeah like we just talked about einstein on an episode and he changed the way we think about the universe and gravity and all those things we've been talking about really through thought experiments just by like sitting and imagining racing alongside a beam of light he did that all just in his head by being super like creative and curious and very childlike in the way that kids are super smart and super creative and super curious. So Alice's are basically Einstein.

I feel like about every five years, there's some thing where they sort of use some sort of computer AI or something very high tech to try to sort of test out one of Einstein's theories. And it always checks out. And we're always like, holy moly, how did this affable guy who I had a poster of in my room growing up and i got it in prints at the northgate mall how did he do that so well with such a sort of less amount of you know just like computers and math and things like that he just was he was just so spot on it's pretty incredible yeah i've heard people argue that's one of stephen

hawking's superpowers too was that he did a lot of his work in his mind um especially later when he couldn't use his body as well he was trying to visualize and think things out and you know the Brain is – imagination is a powerful tool for figuring out the universe.

Don't you find Alice's? We appreciate it. Yeah, send us your answers.

Alice, I don't know if Australia Alice is going to make it to Portland or Seattle. We hope so. But American Alice, I mean you have no excuse. You're literally 5,000 miles closer than the other Alice. So you have to get to Portland on June 17th at Rev Hall to see Brains on or the town hall, Great Hall in Seattle on Sunday, June 18th. You're just like a traveling band. you're like playing portland on a saturday and then breaking it all down and then playing seattle

on a sunday man life on the road yeah don't let it change mostly it's mostly hard to pack all those costumes yeah poor mark he's the drummer of the group yeah there's a fine line he is actually a drummer between being a producer and hazing i guess it sort of sounds like i'm not exactly i

I dream of a moment where you all sing Tiny Dancer on the bus like they do in Almost Famous. It's just been like you're so road weary and you've just given it all you had and you're just emptied out, but you have just enough left to sing Tiny Dancer. I imagine that for the brains on bus. I assume also you're driving a bus from Minnesota.

We're a bus.

Absolutely.

Come join us. Come sing with us.

Yeah, Luke.

I mean honestly let's see June 17th I may be around I'm down here in Portland I may have to stop by and ask you guys why the universe exists

yeah you know you're leaving 8pm so it doesn't mean you have to leave us

yeah what's the word around there I mean there's just people openly sobbing in the building I mean I assume it's been it's been just like people are still trying to process the news that TBTL is not going to be there anymore

we're very sad about it we'll miss being on slack with you

struggling with the news it's a real hit to morale

we have a slack

I believe that is everything you need to know about why TV shows not at 8pm anymore that's the first time hearing that we have a slack

thank you guys for doing this with us and I want to say we got so so so so many voicemails from listeners and I'm sorry we couldn't get to them all but um thank you for everybody boy that is if you ever want to know luke do we have actual people listening out there boy did our voicemail line light up with dozens and dozens of calls so

great ideas can i just put a little plug in andrew that people can also send their questions to us at brains on brains on dot org slash contact because that every single episode we make is inspired by questions from fives so and other children so please send them we recently signed

a quit claim with APM. That is our intellectual property. How dare you? Literally, they sent us a quit claim. It's like, I didn't even know that applied to podcasting.

Yeah. Have you signed it yet?

No, part of it reeks of an NDA. We'll talk about it out there. Okay. All right. Molly and Sandin, thank you so much. We really appreciate you.

Thank you. We love you guys. See you guys later.

Love you. Bye.

here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female

no man it's not from a female uh one more thanks to all of the um kids and parents who sent in those i mean parents who told their kids about it and kids who came up with great questions um and if we weren't able to get to your question definitely send it to the brains on folks um and tune in to what they're doing because they may be able to answer it for you but those are really I think we need the problem Andrew is we don't know anything but I feel like we shouldn't let that stop us from doing that segment more on the show where we just answer kids questions you know they say the darndest things I have

you know I have a bunch that we weren't able to get to today and again thank you to everybody who called in and I do feel bad if anybody is sad that they didn't get to hear their voice on the show we couldn't play them all so I was so excited to see how many people called in for this but yeah maybe we can pepper some of these extra questions into the show as we go forward for now though um i want to remind people of something i said in yesterday's show which is a tbtl book club has emerged listener christine wrote in to us to let us know that the very first virtual meeting of the book club is going to be on june 4th at 2 p.m mountain time it's 1 p.m pacific 4 p.m eastern and if you want any information about how you can join that email tbtl10sbookclub at gmail.com tbtl10sbookclub at gmail.com and the books that they're starting with for the first meeting is The Storied Life of A.J. Fickery by Gabriel Zevin or Zevin and Diary of a Void by Emi Yogi. I just wanted to shout that out one more time because I just think that's a really really cool thing that I just love the fact that the listeners are kind of putting that together themselves and kind of talk to the great community we have. Luke, we also got an email here. I saw you replied to this one today, and I'm trying to figure out... I'm trying to find it, but I think I deleted it because I was so hurt. I have it here. No, it's from Jennifer. I found it. It was in my trash.

Okay, you want to read it? I'm the trash man. I come in and... No, it was... This is how you... Listener Jennifer clearly... Jennifer's in Arlington, Texas. Clearly listens to the show and knows our vibe because Jennifer was... This is how Jennifer starts an email correcting me on some sort of word usage issues hey dummies i love you guys so much three heart emojis so jennifer's being like i come in peace but she says i have to tell you every time use luke uses apoplectic when he means perplexed i don't hear what's said for the next few minutes because i'm trying to figure out why john mulaney is enraged with a kid in the audience Or Steve Harvey is having a stroke because he's so angry at a game show contestant. I had to speak up for my own peace of mind and to protect my phone. It's new. Peace and love, Jennifer in Arlington. And then Jennifer includes the actual definition of apoplectic, which I've got to be honest with you. I did not know this is what that word meant. I thought apoplectic just meant sort of confused, not sure how to proceed. but technically according to this someone who is apoplectic is not just mad they're so filled with rage they can barely communicate so if your mother is apoplectic you better hope it isn't something that you did this dictionary says so that is what apoplectic means and I have definitely been misusing it I saw

this you emphasize that the email says every time that Luke uses it I didn't even read it that way when I read this i thought it just said every time you use apoplectic because i've been trying to figure out if i knew this or not i feel i feel like i knew apoplectic meant angry but i don't know for sure if that like reading this email has sort of erased my memory of me ever using or understanding the word so i wasn't sure i may have been using it incorrectly all this time as well i have no well

I have seen the error of my ways, and honestly, I'm so apoplectic at listener Jen for correcting me in this very public way that I'm so filled with rage I have nothing further to add to this conversation.

I know. I'm struggling here. If it sounded like I was going to say something else, I was, and then I realized I can't remember either word. There were two words, and I've mentioned this on the show before, that for the longest time, well, well into adulthood, I thought they meant the same thing. But they mean almost opposites, and I was using them. And I don't remember when I realized I was using it interchangeably, but it was a sad day for me. One of them – oh, I know. Okay, they don't mean opposites, but it was catatonic and cathartic. They don't mean opposites, but they definitely mean different things. And I don't know how long I was telling people that their music sounded –

really catatonic was that was that catatonic for you when you confronted your father about um his whatever like oh man those are those are definitely ones you don't want to mix up because they have very different meaning hey thanks for listening everyone uh we will be back here tomorrow uh with more imaginary radio i believe by that time i will be in chicago illinois for wait wait don't tell me. I don't know if we have any Chicagoans coming out to that. It's going to be a fun night. Maybe we'll see you there at the Studebaker Theater. In the meantime, have a great rest of your Wednesday. Go Mariners, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

How would you get up through your phone if you like, don't if it's too fine and And you would, if you, like, you didn't stop, how would you, like, figure that out? Power out.