Muse

Gee, Mr. Artoonian. Oh, my God! The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here! Well, I wish I could get that excited about that. Nothing! Are you kidding? Page 73, Johnson, Naven, R. I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this book every day! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity, your name in print, that makes people!

T-B-T-L Ahoy hoy Is that still a thing? Guess what day it is Guess what day it is Cause it's Friday, you ain't got no job And you ain't got s*** to do

You know, actually, I'm just gonna go home I'm not feeling too hot How many hot dogs do you have for lunch? Three Well there's your problem, you're starving Your body's literally eating itself Let me see if I have an emergency dogs on my desk. I bet I do.

Are we, are we, um, we are. Are we telling this to the audience? We should.

My headphone's on, and here we go. I'm so excited. All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Friday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Gentlemen, it's a bet, but we leave at 9.30. Ish. Ish.

My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. Hi, everybody. Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where it is shaping up to be a toasty day, although not nearly as hot as a lot of other parts of the country. Hope you're doing okay. It's going to be very hot. It's going to be very uncomfortable for everybody. You're going to want to hunker down, stay hydrated, stay in the shade, and blast this episode of TBTL, which is episode 3,978 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

And it's a very special episode of the program, for reals.

This is special. This is special.

Got a couple of announcements that are, at least one of them, I would say fairly historic in terms of this program that's been around for all these years.

This is a serious message to everybody watching my update right now.

In fact, it's such a sort of important show that I actually took the rare step of sequestering bubbles in my bedroom. God knows what that place is going to look like after a couple of hours of podcasting when I go retrieve her.

Kittens! Inspired by kittens!

But I just couldn't have her jumping on the equipment and unplugging things and generally distracting me on today's show the way that she typically does. Of course, we are going to tell you all about the upcoming TBTL-a-thon and what you can do to help support TBTL and what we can do to help entice you to support TBTL.

One hundo a day, five hundo a week. That's rich. That's it.

And then in the maybe less important news, I did go to a Portland Pickles game last night and there was a promotion going on that really felt like it might be something out of Portlandia. tastes like soot and hot water i'm hooked plus we'll do some music for your weekend because it is a friday and you ain't got no job when i heard that drop it felt like it could be foreshadowing and i sure hope it wasn't this guy also hopes that wasn't foreshadowing he's the longest running cobro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships he's not just a colleague he's also a friendo call it friendo he's andrew welsh and he's joining me right now good morning my

my friend it's working luke our best laid traps for new listeners okay are working i just got a

notification did you do that thing where you dig a hole and then place a flash drive with the show on it in the hole and then cover it with leaves and someone fell in and found the show close it

was a rope situation so that it would grab them by the ankle then hold them upside down in the forest, no, instead of laying out a tasty treat or a tasty USB drive to lure new listeners, we opened up comments on our website. So if you go to our website, tvchel.net, and click on one of the shows, you can listen to it there, and you can comment on the show, and people are having conversations. It's been great.

I've got something to say.

A lot of activity in the new comment section. I love it. Everything that's old is new again with TBTL. It's popping off, Luke, if I can use that phrase. But I just got a comment on the show we did a couple of days ago where I talked about getting a random text message from a number I did not recognize, including nothing but a photo of a very expensive bottle of wine in a woman's hand holding it. And I did respond, and they never responded.

back but we now realize that this is a common scam i'm hearing from people around the country saying oh a listener oh i'm blanking on who sent me a picture it might have been jamie in mississippi got a photo yesterday of a very expensive golf club some sort of gilded golf club in somebody's hand we should introduce those people that one person with the expensive wine that's a party that's what i'm saying anyway check this out new comment from jp on episode number 3975 i don't know anything about this podcast you and me both buddy i don't know anything about this podcast but i just got the same photo sent to me by a random number i found your page by reverse image searching it this is so weird what do you think what do you think maybe uh jp will stick around listen to today's show maybe become a listener maybe be one of the first donors once we open up that donation

page well we already have our first donor that is true that is a can i just say this as a little preview yeah yeah that is um uh that is an honor that a distinction i should say i don't know if it's an honor there's a distinction that goes to our dear friend broadcast barry of the broadcast coffee empire and also the black moon this song goes out to all the coffee lovers of the world the black moon pizza empire of boise idaho uh barry because i mean we've been uh leaning on barry heavily for business advice throughout this process and uh he's i understand why he's the owner of many successful businesses he's a smart cookie he just figured out that there's a chance this donation page is a page is already live and they're just not publicizing yet i bet bet you I can find where it is and he sleuthed it right out and started donating yes at the highest

level that we offer at an incredibly generous level as if he has not been already incredibly kind and generous to us we get a note um from somebody who's keeping eye an eye on these things um who says hey it looks like we might already have a donor is this for real and I had to figure it out yesterday this was yesterday exactly and I was like oh I guess so because I mean that is the dirty dirty filthy truth of all of this is i've had a donation page up for quite some time and it is alive it is live or alive on the internet it's just that you would need the link you'd need to figure out how to find it well barry used some tool some internet tool called goggle or google or something and it was like it was he just typed in donate to tbtl and it was like the third thing to pop up what's a toyger i don't know i have to learn more about the internet

if we're going to make a successful business is there anything else that we have going live that we desperately don't want the listeners to find out about because if it's all gorgolable i think we might need to add a few other uh i don't know layers of protection that being said of course

i do have some extra pentagon papers that nobody has seen yet and some dead sea scrolls but uh Again, but I don't think anybody will Google those things.

So by the time you're hearing this, by the time this show is published, you can go to tbtl.net and you can click on the link, which is now you don't have to do all kinds of sort of dark web research like Barry did. You can just go there, click and you can support the show. Much more about that coming up in just a few moments. And again, this big TBTL announcement, which is related very much to the financial health of the show. And I'm pretty psyched about it. I did want to tell you, Andrew, about speaking of financial wins, you know, I went to a Portland Pickles game last year and I bought this baseball bat that also holds, I don't know how many ounces of beer, but it's like hollowed out. It's plastic and you pay like 24 bucks for the bat the first time with the beer in it. But then after that, it's a mere $12 a beer to fill your bat. and I'm like I'm very much the kind of person who when I um when I see something like that I'm probably going to just get it when it's like the large soda is four cents more I'm just gonna even if I don't think I need to consume that much soda on that day I'm always gonna kind of I'm very

easily upsold on things can I jump in here though and say why I think it from my perspective and obviously you speak for yourself but um it does it does seem somewhat out of character for you though because you're not you're not like a demonstrably goofy person and also you're not a huge beer drinker true and also i feel like maybe by the time you get to the bottom of this thing and you're kind of like does anybody drink the bottom of the bat of beer like i love that you're into it i definitely would have bought one of these things although i i don't really lean into the goof factor all that much either, but I think it's fun and I'm glad you got into it, but can't you see a world where I would be surprised that you were so into buying the bat full of beer? It's a little look at me, Louie, to borrow a phrase from the...

Well, and also, it sort of bears some similarity to when you're in Vegas and somebody buys one of those, we used to call them whale bones, which is that incredibly oversized, long plastic chute of some kind of frozen alcohol drink, and you literally have a harness, you're carrying it around like you're playing some sort of oversized saxophone, but in middle school band when you're too small to play an oversight the saxophone rivals the size of your own human body um so i i'm with you that like it would i think the reason that i got into it last year well first of all uh if there is a place i'm going to drink a beer it is going to be a baseball game that is kind of like that that's the setting for me that's the ideal setting for me they're trying to say i was drunk i drank eight beers yesterday that was all i drank and last year when i went to to the pickles game we went uh it was becca and i and her brother scott and his wife tiffany and we were kind of just having a fun time and i may have even i may have started off sneaking out to dylan's secret landing or whatever there's like a bar bar there that'll sell you like the hard stuff yep and i may have you know i i think actually what happened was all things come back to my um totally healthy gambling policies um i think i had some kind of kooky mariners bet going that came in that day so i was monitoring the mariners on my phone and i think i was like celebrating that by doing a shot or something so i was my my my judgment was already slightly impaired when i was presented with this can't miss offer of a a bat that you could fill with beer for a mere 24 dollars uh the thing that was that i did though that was surprising to even me was i didn't manage to lose the bat in the last 12 months yeah that is interesting and i again i'm the it's amazing the bat made it home with me like not because i was like so loopy but just because i just am i'm constantly acquiring things uh both things that are inexpensive and things that might be kind of expensive and then often not using them for their desired sort of designed purpose yeah and again

you don't seem like the type of person who's going to you know after the fun has been had you're going to carefully protect the plastic goo ga that you picked up at a at a sporting event like this especially if it's sticky with beer who knows like what you're if you're going somewhere after the game etc i am also surprised that not only did this come home with you but then stayed stayed somewhere where you could then find it again next season that is that's all very surprising you're a new person it stayed in the closet where the washer and dryer are in my

apartment it stayed next to the aluminum christmas tree that i overpaid for so that i could reenact christmas memories by myself with the cat um and uh yeah sure enough in fact i will tell you that i did leave the apartment last night all day yesterday i was thinking get your beer bat make sure you have your beer bat don't forget the beer bat got all the way down to the lobby of the apartment without the beer bat had to go back up and get the beer bat but then i was like is this does this crossover seasons like is this a lifetime offer is this yeah i would assume not I would assume not as well. So imagine my delight as I was strolling up to Lentz Field, Lentz Park. I think it's called Walker Stadium in Lentz, Oregon. I noticed a few other bargain hunters like myself and one crocodile hunter. So that's where he's been with the exact same bat I had. oh and the other thing about this andrew is that it's just a freaking fun object to have in your hand it's just like a wiffle ball bat so when you're not drinking beer out of it by the way it's terrible as a way to drink beer it's you bonk the person sitting in front of you in the bleachers like uh the like the last third of it just races right there's no consuming the last third of the bat without spilling all over yourself it all comes splashing down on your

think about the distance it's traveling yes it's picking up momentum it's like it is just it's

from a functional standpoint just terrible but when you're not when there's no beer in it you're just carrying a wiffle ball bat around which is just took me right back to child i took a picture of myself waiting for becca to come pick me up because i had my bat and as i wrote on instagram strong child of divorce energy coming off me i look like that kid with his mitt who's waiting

for his dad to pick him up i was wondering about that did you say that unclear if that's going to happen did you say you had becca take that photo no i propped my phone up against i was going to

ask you that today some kind of transformer some sort of power you know whatever that like big metal box is that you'll just see on a corner that has something to do with electricity uh nate bargetsy the comedian has a great joke where he says like if he went back a hundred

years nothing would change he'd just be telling people about things like they'd have a phone and he'd be like yeah well they've got those phones are portable now and they go that's amazing how do they do that and he'd be like I don't really know that would be me like there's a lot of stuff I see in the world that I I like I think that has there's some electrical there's something in there but I couldn't tell you how any of it works at all but I leaned my phone up against that and took a picture because I thought this was funny and then as I was doing it Becca pulled up and i was it was slightly embarrassing not so embarrassing that i didn't post it to instagram um but uh anyway that's how that came about so here's what i want to tell you about though do you know what last night's the theme of last night's pickles game was no is it one of those

things where they sort of even changed their name thematically or just no they just they just

somebody had i'm guessing some entity had paid for the rights to call last night's pickles game the salute to portland tap water night that's great i love it clean water celebrate it absolutely and it was seriously like i said it was very just like hot water i'm hooked i'm guessing that like the city of portland like the water department you know somebody who's somebody who would like to uh encourage folks to enjoy the tap water of portland and they'd like to point out the safety of the tap which is that's privilege that's not the case everywhere in america as we know um decided to sponsor but i just thought that is the that's the weirdest that's the weirdest like you know uh you know night you could possibly have for a baseball team but then what they did so usually at least the last game i was at and i think most uh most home games because everything is pickle themed you know The mascot is a big pickle. His name is Dylan, like dill. Ah, I like that. I can board that train. They have a contest where you have to chug pickle juice. They get a bunch of, you know, young, rowdy people together. And then I think it's like, who can chug a pint glass of just pure pickle juice the fastest? But last night it was just, who can chug a giant water bottle of water first? And what was interesting was it was no less exciting than if they would have been chugging alcohol, than if they would have been chugging pickle juice. I just think the chugging is where the fun is, and maybe next time any of us are at a party, I know this is, I'm sure, happening all the time to my 45-year-olds, where there's some sort of alcohol drinking contest, I would say try some Portland tap water. It was the guy who won almost ripped his shirt off like Hulk Hogan. It was like people were amped about it, and I realized, boy, what an innocent, what a nice little innocent fun exercise where nobody's harming their body but it was i was very invested on who was gonna be able to chug

this portland tap water the the quickest you know it's funny how and i'm just as i'm starting to say this remembering that even though springfield is not supposed to be any specific place that the origins of the simpsons came from portland right i mean that's where matt graining lived and he took a lot of inspiration from around there and a lot of names and words um i kind of forgot that but like this whole description it feels like a like first of all you're homer i don't know how you feel about that but like i'm getting excited about this this baseball bat you can drink beer out of and even like saving it and like pulling it out i know that your place is very clean but like i picture homer pulling it out from like behind the washing machine and it's kind of covered in cobwebs but he's been saving it and he might even throw out a patented woohoo um and then he takes it to the game he's dragging it around and then he gives another woohoo when he finds out he can still use it meanwhile you're at a portland baseball game and the theme of the night is tap water drink it up like it all feels very simpsons to me and i love it it does because

the simpsons did really like to lean into i guess you might call it like somewhat banal civic society or just like the what goes on when you live in a city and the different entities there and stuff like that now i will also just mention that the pickles are owned or co-owned by a hero of seattle seahawks football punter john ryan really is yeah he and his wife i think her name is sarah colonna she is a performer she used to be on the show chelsea lately yeah they are part of the ownership group of the portland pickles and john ryan of course uh it was our punter for many years and threw a touchdown on a trick play against the green bay packers in the nfc championship game that that turned the tides and got the seahawks on the way to coming back from what was at the time considered a less than 1% chance of winning that game and he the I was showing everyone who would look at it the photo last night of John Ryan throwing that touchdown pass because I showed it to Becca and she goes that's what I would look like throwing a touchdown I said exactly that's

why it's beautiful I know that this is not the case but in my memory his tongue is lagging

out or wagging out sort of is the case well you can see his tongue quite clearly okay then i guess

that i didn't totally make that up but that's the that's the energy of the photo and his wrist is

like kind of like as the ball leaves and i say this as a person who hopes to one day meet john ryan and kiss his feet kiss his literal feet but it is the derpiest photo i've ever seen of someone doing something that's incredibly badass so great he i believe is the first canadian to ever throw a touchdown in the postseason of the nfl oh that's a stat it's just like because it was so unlikely what happened and he threw it to this guy named um terry something started with a g who was like uh i think that might have been like his first catch of the season and then later he did dine at the um chuck-a-nut drive manor when my brother sam was like um a bus boy there anyway it was just It was a special, magical moment, and I was able to retell it to many people at the Pickles game last night who were only moderately interested.

So they're part of an ownership group there, huh? I didn't know that. That's cool.

Or they just own it outright. I don't know. Oh, the other thing, this was all because my buddy Anthony from CBS and his lovely wife Lisa were going, and they said, hey, do you want to come to the game? And I think Anthony said, you know, what they've really figured out here is what makes a baseball game fun. and it turns out for a lot of people anyway it's like the baseball game itself it gets up to about number four on the list like now if you're going to a mariners game and they're not abjectly terrible like they have been lately then yeah i'm pretty zeroed in on the game and how it's going but if you go to a pickles game it's so much fun because you really don't have to get that into the game like they're doing little competitions you're drinking beer out of a bat they're playing funny audio drops anytime someone fouls a ball off and it goes out of the stands they just play a sound of shattering glass oh nice i like that or they play like a car horn going off like the entire operation is run by 25 year olds because they're the only people that will work for no money so like it just has this very like great youthful energy where and like the just the walk up the the the people the the players are all college players who are off for the summer so they're doing this in between their season as college baseball players and so there's the whole energy of the place is amazing because it's just like a bunch of people who have so much life in front of them

and then people like me that come there to vampire it and and just get loaded on baseball bats full of uh gin and soda or no what do you drink vodka sodas no no no baseball bats full of coors light

which is the other if they would add bud light i i would have because uh you know as i was saying before the show i'm an ally i support dylan mulvaney and i will drink bud light as long as they make it now but they didn't have it they had coors light a baseball bat full of coors light is the exact right alcohol by volume for me at one of those things like two of those bats and i had like the i don't i don't know if you'd call it a buzz but just the lightest sense of of joy but not like i'm getting kind of crazy not like oh man that friday morning's gonna be rough on me like And it takes a long time to drink a baseball bat full of Coors Light. So that's my go-to. In fact, I might just, you know, when we're up working on the Thawne and we're staying at our... Bring the bat. I was going to say undisclosed location, but we've disclosed it because people are in the comments saying, you're going to be in Paul's Bow. I may bring the bat to Paul's Bow. I may sit out there, look at the water, and drink a bat of Bud Light to unwind each evening.

Now, but at what point do you start filling that with other things other than beer, though? Like, at what point are you stirring up a cocktail in there? And then eventually is it just filled with whiskey?

These are larger questions for my therapist slash parole officer slash court-appointed monitor. I think – I don't think it would have the same – I don't think it would provide me the same fun. The other thing, Anthony got one of these bats, and he said he got a whole, like – he got a whole spiel from the person who sold him the bat. one was you cannot balance the bat on its end it will tip over because i think people want to do that the way you might place like a mug of beer down and and then you know a pint of beer they really wanted to be clear like you can't balance this on the knob of the bat it's going to tip over don't do that it must have a lot of people coming back like i spilled my beer so that's interesting

though so you do have to hold it at all times that is a commitment yes it is it was a little

I did a life hack, which was I was on the corner, so there was like a handrail with a kind of involved thing that I could lean mine against, which was nice. But then the other thing they said was it will crack if you whack anyone with it, which I think is just to try to stop people from whacking other people. I don't think it would crack.

It's pretty sturdy. And it definitely depends on where you whack them. If you whack them in the buttocks, you're probably fine. I think that this is... is just to try to deter people from hitting other people with their beer bats at the Pickles game.

I think you're absolutely right. This sounds like urban legend, but I think it's true, and I think I verified this, maybe even on this show before with a quick Google search, but wasn't there a famous incident in the 1970s where a baseball team, I want to say a Midwestern baseball team, I don't know if it was Cleveland or Detroit, but somebody had combined like 25-cent beer night with free mini-bat giveaway night, and all you ended up with was a bunch of people clubbing each other.

That sounds like it totally could have happened. I went to a Mariner's, I don't even think it was mini bat. It was like real bat, and I believe it was like signed by Alvin Davis. And I don't think they'd do that anymore. Like, I don't think they'd give the first 15,000 fans. I mean, the lucky thing was in those days, and again, once again for the Mariner's faithful, it was such a sort of sad time that no one had the energy to wail on anybody with the bat it was not a hyped environment in those days but i don't i don't see them giving out 14 000 bats uh to you know people anymore i don't think i don't think that would be a very safe thing to do but they did that back in the day and i was stoked i don't think the bat was really any good but i was really

excited to have it it was cleveland by the way and then it was 1974 i was wrong about the amount it It was 10-cent beer night, and I'm trying to read this on the fly, but yeah, there's plenty written about it, and I believe that they also gave away Little Bats, and Little Bats are kind of like little clubs, little billy clubs.

Oh, sure. Not to be confused with what Disco Demolition Night, which also turned into a fiasco. That, I believe, was in Detroit, right? Yes, yes. When they had people bring out their disco records so as to drive over them with a steamroller.

Yeah, that was Steve Dahl, the famous radio host, hosted that event.

that was his thing yes and then it that went completely awry if i remember right yeah i mean

i think it was you're you're mixing a lot of like weird like i don't know if anger is the right word but like a lot of a lot of brain chemicals and alcohol chemicals combined with fire and a weirdly

strong dislike of a music it was just chicago of course which the steve doll thing should have tipped me off on that because steve doll was a famous longtime chicago chicago not detroit right

Like that was making sense.

I'm trying to just look through and see if anybody, if they were also offering cheap beer in addition to it. I don't think so. I think it was just the fury around the pushback on disco was so powerful that night. They didn't even need cheap beer to get completely wild in Chicago.

I might be lying about the baseball bat giveaway. Maybe it was just the 10 cents night, 10 cent beer combined with like a lot of, I'm trying to read this on the fly, which is a bad idea. But for those of you who are rushing to tbtel.net comment sections, Our new listener, JP, who wants to really sharpshoot me on this. Maybe I'm wrong about the little mini baseball bats. I'll have to get it. I'll get back to you on that.

No, I won't.

I am loving. I mean, we've talked about Disco Demolition Night a few times on the show, so I don't need to sort of belabor this, but I'm just kind of going through the series of events, and there's just some really great stuff. And by great stuff, I mean probably troubling stuff if you were there, but looking back on it, it's kind of funny. Let's see here. carry this is when things are starting to really go off the rails people are rushing the field it's getting out of control there's a bonfire someone has started in center field uh carry this would be i assume harry carry um they probably put on the mic unsuccessfully attempted to restore order via the public address system the scoreboard was flashing please return to your seats and that was ignored as was the playing of take me out to the ball game some attendees danced in circles around the burning vinyl shards um i love the idea of trying to play take me out to the ball game so as to quell the maniacal fans who are dancing amidst the burning disco records like as if that's gonna work as if they're gonna hear take me out to the ball game and it's gonna be like the manchurian candidate it's gonna read it's gonna tip something off in their brain so they all just quietly return

to their seats and sit calmly do you know i didn't realize that that happened during a game i thought have just happened at a uh like in a baseball park i didn't realize that it actually was part

of a it was at comiskey and so they they did now known as what bank rate field or something i don't know on the south side of chicago andrew all right uh enough uh jibber jabber from me uh let's take a quick break which i guess for the purposes of today is just a about a half a second for all of us to reflect and then we'll be right back here with some big tbtl news stay with us hello and welcome to top story i do have to tell you something andrew um you know off air i said i'm gonna go refill my coffee and i did that but then while i was refilling my coffee i just heard the saddest meows from the cat and i broke down and I let her back in. So the rest of this episode.

isn't what it could have been or should have been even it's because um i do not have a heart of stone um and i do not actually make good decisions related to this cat ever no that no you're wrong

you've made the good decision don't worry about it we can all handle it if you have to pause every now and then and say bubbles get down from there i have a question for you though so you said you just refilled your coffee so when you put hot coffee into the bat is it hard to hold the the bat i assume you're still using the baseball bat no the bailey's actually just makes it the exact right temperature that's starting to sound nice you don't irish up your bat coffee every morning

wow okay you've really gone soft um all right uh we are going to talk about the tbtl-a-thon here and all of the cool thank yous that we have put together in the hopes of enticing people to support the program but before all that we need to announce something and someone who's going to be helping us with all of that and so much more here on tbtl so if i can i would like to tell you

as soon as this drum roll has is it a drummer did you hire a drummer i did by the way we've

spent a lot of money on drummers so far even though we haven't i would like to introduce a tbtl employee numero uno and the third amigo of two beautiful two biz our new vp of revenue and operations mr john sklaroff ahoy hello welcome to the program and the team john hey love it love

it glad to be here thrilled to be this is your onboarding call right now so we're going to go over some hr some hr things we have a video we'd like you to watch do i just give you my social

security number over the line is that how we do this is that that is we have just so much training

Put it on a thumb drive and leave it somewhere. We'll find it. It's our lucky day. John, welcome to TBTL. This is like, seriously, one of the things I've been the most excited about, about the whole project, is that it's not just me and Andrew trying to make the shows and put them out there. But we have gotten the greatest mind of public radio membership and fundraising. You are doing such an incredible job at APM working with us that we thought we would reward APM for all their help over the years by stealing their star from membership and seducing you away to the side of the TVTL side of town. So thanks for being part of this whole thing.

No, absolutely. Like when you guys first approached me about it, it was no break. You guys know I love the show, love working with you guys. love the community obviously the 10s are just literally the best um i did have to tell my wife yes i'm going to quit my job with a very significant public media institution to go

work with these two guys you don't know and a 401k and do they have a business plan well they need me

to make a business plan it's kind of what it was but what was her response like how did she feel

about this whole thing she knew how much i i appreciate you guys in the show and everything And so she was like, this is clearly something that would be important to you and make you happy, so go for it. She was very supportive, actually. I mean, not actually. Not shockingly, she's great.

I have to say, if we can just turn the spotlight back to me for a moment. I've been talking about you long enough, John. I am amazed, I am personally amazed that at no time did Andrew and I mention you accidentally during all of the conversation around this. because the truth is behind the scenes, you have been working your tookus off to help set up all of the systems and the fundraising and getting the cool thank you gift that we're going to send out designed. And you've just been putting in so much time and energy on this. And you're going to be in my parents' basement with us. And so every time I would talk about what's going to be happening, it was so hard for me to not say, and, you know, Andrew and John or the three of us or whatever, because that's how I've been thinking about it in my mind this whole time. So I guess go us, Andrew, that we didn't let that cat out of that bag.

Well, there were two. Just hold on, John. You've talked enough. There were two times when I've come really close. In fact, one of them just happened earlier in the show. I heard that one.

You're like a person who monitors these things.

Yes, John, you were on the line muted for that first segment. I don't know if you noticed that, too, but we were talking about our first donor. And I almost said, then John emailed me to say that Barry had already donated. But, ooh, I craftily steered my ship away from that iceberg. I know. Take note.

You stutter stepped your way right out of that. That was good. So now it's like so exciting and not just exciting, but like I think critical to TBTL's, you know, possible future that we have somebody with John's brains and hard work and creativity helping with the money side of this. But it also just means now we have three salaries. it's it's good and bad it's good because we actually i think we have the we have the the the people between yumi uh andrew and john uh we have the people to make this happen but now we have to pay the people to make this happen so right yeah donate early donate often everybody

for the upcoming thought but it is true like we would literally not be able to make this leap without john and all the work that john has been doing because we have obviously you guys i'm speaking to the audience here you guys look at me and luke and we seem like the full package like what can't we do we are experts at everything um from cyber security on to s corp establishment dns pointing it's one of my specialties pointing um and so no we obviously have some huge blind spots around the business of this thing and obviously as we do sort of kind of sever our ties with a large podcasting network and as of right now we've decided to try a non-advertising approach at least for the time being well then we really mostly because no one wants to advertise but that's okay it has been nice though honestly like listening to the past few days shows like the intro i actually kind of got a little rush last night going back listening to some shows and hearing the intro tape start clean without having to like kind of fast forward through a commercial then you're halfway through the intro tape i think the show is going to be better but we're taking a huge risk is my point and so having somebody like john there who's going to make sure that we are in the black as much as possible as we as we launch the ship is really important. So thank you, John, for for taking this big jump with us.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's it's it's something that I'm grateful to be a part of it. Like I said, like I'll say it till I'm blue in the face. I love the show. I love the community of people. There's it's it's I've been in public media fundraising for about a decade and there's nothing like literally I'm not just saying that's not hyperbole. there's nothing like this community and there's that that coalesce around the show because of what it means to them and and to each other um so like it's a big it's a big risk in a lot of ways but i also feel incredibly confident because everyone's just so awesome john am i i can't

get you in trouble with apm if i talk about like the i mean like those people they have no legal uh like leverage over you at this point right i actually say today's your guys last day last Friday was my last day. Did they pay out your vacation time? You have everything you need from

them? Not yet, but I'm not too concerned about it. I did get my notice in the email today that my health insurance will no longer be active after today, but I feel okay about things, yeah.

We do have health coverage on this show. It's one of those Costco-sized things of ibuprofen, and then just a big thing of tussin. Yeah, no, that sounds great. Like Chris Rock used to say, rub some tussin on it um i was going to say i'm kind of proud of this whole i don't think i've ever been involved in a thing exactly like this believe it or not even though i've worked on the show for like a decade now or more probably more but um becca was saying to me she goes isn't it kind of crazy to think that however many months ago the three of us met up using borrowing the space from the portland business alliance in portland and like sat down and you know filled up all these whiteboards and kind of just like talked out all this stuff and like said okay let's try to do this and then over time and again I've done the least in the three of us I've done the absolute least of this but like built this thing and like now there's a web page with uh all the different donation levels and if people donate then the money goes into a business account we have and then like there's just all this stuff that's been created from this like meeting that we had where we kind of dreamed it up and now it's like really happening like it's actually a

very cool gratifying thing to get to this point yeah it's uh i gotta say that that weekend i remember like going back to work or on zoom or whatever like on a meeting on like monday morning i was like oh how's your weekend oh look he didn't do anything didn't fly to the to the pacific northwest to have a clandestine meeting with uh luke and andrew not at all not at all and remember

we were having drinks at uh is it your father's place is that the name my father my father's Not your father's place. Don't get it twisted. And a 10 is the bartender there. And I remember, what's that, Luke? Chad. Chad, right. Yes, thank you. And Chad, and so we're sitting there, and I did feel like I was caught cheating or something because it's like, who's sitting at the bar? Genevieve was in town for that first night, too. So who's sitting at the bar? But Luke, Andrew, Genevieve, and John Sklaroff from Minnesota Public Radio. I don't think Chad demanded an explanation.

But I think I gave him one without the demand because of the demands of the alcohol that I was consuming compelled me to over explain it. Probably. Yeah, I did have one kind of aspect here.

And this is something that we have the three of us, weirdly enough, as much as we've been talking about this transition for months now, we have not talked about this. And I need to bring it up, I think, just to just I think on behalf of the listeners, there's one sort of controversial part of bringing John on board, which, of course, is the fact that. He's a Yankees fan, and I feel like there's going to be a lot of people who are like, that doesn't seem like the values of TBTL to bring a Yankees fan on board.

Listen, I won't present my thesis on why the Yankees are good for baseball right now. We can really get into it.

I think you might have a point, by the way. I would buy that thesis, even just based on that statement.

Look at the Oakland A's and teams actively not spending time to leave.

Right, the Yankees need to have someone to throw perfect games against.

well yeah also Domingo Herman we don't need I know that was that was that's not he's a bad human um but if we want for like an extra donation level can we have John explains why the Yankees

are good or something like that is that or if you don't donate we force you but you know see John

this is what I would say about your Yankees fandom is like I think you come by it honestly like uh you grew up in is upstate New York no I grew up in Westchester County oh Westchester

county right okay so people don't know the geography like i grew up like 25 minutes north of the bronx so the yankees really are my hometown team it's not like i'm a bandwagon guy that was

from you grew up in plano texas and you're a yankees as we've been talking about in the past weeks who was it andrew you were saying was somebody online who's like a their their favorite teams are like the lakers the cowboys like that's that's unforgivable you grow up in i mean listen And if I grew up in New York, I'd be a Yankees fan or a Mets fan. Like I would not be sad that my team has had a lot of success historically and has deep pockets. Like none of that would bother me if I was from there. I'm not from there, so it bothers me a lot. But at least I appreciate that you came by it honestly.

Yeah, and I'll add this. Like for people that feel very bad for me already for being a Yankees fan because we haven't won since 2010, um i i also grew up a jets fan and a knicks fan so like i do understand pain in sports i really get it um the jets fan is a real that's a that's a real carbon offset right all of the

success of the yankees over there has been more than offset by just the just the awfulness of

of the jets so like i had to deal with rich kotite as my head coach you guys don't i mean what about when you guys had the man genius there eric you know for the jet this is the thing about the jets it's like a bad relationship where every time something good happens you're like it's okay we're gonna be better and then they're just like hurt you again and mangini was one of those moments

one of the great scenes from the sopranos was when they're in some kind of restaurant and i think tony sees uh what was not mangini that's uh but what was his what was his real last name um eric eric mangini mangini mangini and he was like adam manginius is over there and i was like this is these are the two things i love in the world the sopranos and roasting the jets and it's all coming together i didn't realize the listeners are gonna be like oh no more sports talk um but

wait i only i didn't realize that eric mangini was he because i know that name from a from the cleveland browns he was a browns coach but was that after his tenure with the jets i don't know

I think he was the – was he a defensive coordinator of the Browns or was he the head coach?

I thought he eventually became the head coach. It doesn't matter.

I do want to mention at the $1,000 a month level, we promise to never, ever discuss sports. If we have one person to donate $1,000 once, that will buy no sports talk for the entire year. Actually, you know what we really need to do, and this isn't actually on the current lineup of things we're offering, But what we just need to do is reboot the no point with the three of us and then get all of our sports yaya's out in a place where people want to hear our sports yaya's getting out. Should we should we talk about the the the THON and kind of what we're what we're hoping happens and how we're hoping to thank people for their support?

I think we should. It's pretty exciting. You know, an email is going to be coming into your inbox, everybody, if you signed up for the new TBTL newsletter. And if you haven't, you can do that at tbtl.net. But for those of you who signed up, we have an email coming out later today that is sort of an introduction to the THON and the plans that we're making to thank people who donate at various levels. By the time you hear our voices, you will be able to go to tbtl.net and click on the big donate button at the top of the page. And that will also take you to a place where it lists everything that we're going to be giving away as thank you gifts. Luke, maybe and I'd like maybe you to start the ball rolling here. Do you want to talk about the actual object? We have one object that we are giving away that we've been working on. We've been designing. We hired a TBTL artist who has been part of the TBTL family for a while.

Eric, who did the Oops, the Dirty Monster animation. We have at the, if you're able to help us with $10 a month, just the cost of, you know, I was going to say two cups of coffee. I feel that that's a cup of coffee now. That is a cup of coffee. Depending on where you go for just the cost of a cup of coffee

a month. You can support TBTL at the $10 a month level. And the thing that we'll be able to give you for that amount of support is this I Saved TBTL Commemorative Coin, which is almost straight out of the Sterlington Collection. In celebration of this historic event, the Sterlington Collection is making available a limited edition replica of this timeless heirloom. The timeless heirloom being this awesome coin that Eric helped design. On one side of it is uh the kind of picture of us in the rowboat and on the other side of the coin it says i saved tbtl it also says ad proximum come we we on it right it does kind of a call back to the early days of the show and uh what is i think so cool about this this thing is well first of all it's just actually a very beautiful little i mean it's it's real metal it's not like for out of the like um fake pirate booty like box you might have at halloween or something like it's not plastic Like, it's legit. Do you know what kind of metal it's made out of, John?

Oh, I have that somewhere in an email. I think it's made out of real metal.

Like, this is like, this has some heft to it.

It's a brass coating, I believe, is the brass coating that's the color. So, people want, like, a vision. When you get it in the mail, bite it.

Like, people always do with gold. Probably don't do that. Okay, don't bite it.

You will get lead poisoning.

Sorry, our VP of revenue and operations says don't bite the coin.

It's hefty, though. I have not had a chance to touch one yet. But you had some samples sent to you and you sent us a video of it and you were clanking a few of them around in your hand. Like this is I know. I mean, it's a coin. It's a commemorative coin. You can put it in your pocket and carry it around. You can put it on a bookshelf, whatever you want to do. But the thing that I find appealing about it and I can't wait to get my grubby hands on it is because it seems like a good fidgety thing. It seems like it's a substance to it. Yes. Yeah, it's definitely sturdy.

right and and the thing also that i think is cool about this is that this is we're only doing this this year this is not like something that will be a part of every thon it will be we'll never do it again because the idea was if you're somebody who's able to help us out uh this year and keep the show going we wanted you to have something that like if we're you know 20 years from now i mean again 67 67 do you think we'll still be i'm willing to give it a shot 66 years old

for me what are you what would you be john you'd be 56 you'd be a young yeah we need i need at

least 30 years from you guys you'd probably just at this point you just take the show over you and aaron judge would just be co-hosting the show by that time you and josh donaldson judge but um but like i like the idea that many years from now when this uh you know when too beautiful to biz is this big thriving media concern and maybe we've been able to bring some other programs and other folks into the fold and we've really built something somebody who helped us this first year at just $10 a month we'll have this thing that's like hey I was there at the kind of you know maybe not the Genesis point but the Genesis point of this version of TBTL think about anything that you love that you think is like cool whether it's a TV show or a band or anything to be like this thing only exists because of me like because I bought this and donated this money I'm hoping anyway that that kind of carries a certain excitement for folks because it would for me if we were talking about something that is my TBTL you know something that I'm really into so that's at the $10 a month level plus we'll put your name on the the TBTL ticker we're gonna and by we I mean probably YouTube but maybe me to some degree we're gonna build this ticker on tbtl.net that's gonna scroll through constantly 24 hours a day the names of everyone who's donated during this thon so if you want to impress somebody at the bar you can go to tbtl.net on your phone and wait and just wait for hours Just wait. Just wait. See when your name cycles through. At the $15 a month daily donor level, we'll thank you on the podcast, which we've been doing for a number of years. And you'll get the coin. You'll be on the ticker. Stop me if I'm glossing over anything interesting. No, this is good.

I think this next one is another one that's very exciting that we can kind of sink our teeth into. Actually, do you mind if I jump in here and just say, this is for the donors who can contribute at the $25 a month level. um you'll get access to a new little production that we're doing we're calling it tbtl week in review w-e-a-k week in review and it's going to be a little video series i don't know maybe 10-15 minutes uh of course we say 10-15 minutes i'm assuming it'll be probably 45 minutes

at the shortest once we get rolling but it's going to be an exclusive little video for folks

at that level that will email out to you every friday and it'll be um it's not just going to be like Luke and me doing a Hey Dummies video, it's going to be more of an expanded TBTL universe, that's why I'm very excited about this, who knows maybe one day it'll be me and a listener just cutting it up about something that they heard and really stood out to them on the show that day, friends of

The show will be swinging by talking about what they liked or didn't like on the show that week. Of course, I can't imagine people not liking what they heard on the show, but John will be producing some of these. So it'll be sort of this like kind of rotating cast of characters. And also, I think you'll be able to start putting some some voices and faces to some of the people that you hear us chat about on the show. We are talking before the break. I'm for real going to bring something up to you guys that I wanted to talk about off air. But I'll just say it on air and just really commit ourselves to this. But I would like to see if we could get broadcast Barry to maybe be on the inaugural edition of this since he was the first person to officially donor numero uno. Exactly. But anyway, we'll look at his schedule. But, yeah, we'll try to bring more people in the TBTL fold into this video. And, again, if you donate at the $25 a month level, you'll get a link to that video in your inbox every Friday.

yeah like if you like uh the podcast version of the show and you also sort of like hey dummies and you're like hey it'd be i would be interested in seeing more video content but video content that's really related to what has occurred on the program during the given week like let's dig deeper on something i'm sure we'll be able to come up with a mechanism for people to email in like maybe if you want a question answered about something that happened or if you'd like to say yeah if you'd like to throw your phone at us or whatever like it's just going to be more fun content which I think it's part of a larger thing, too, that this isn't part of the THON, but that since we're just having off-air conversations on air, we need a sound effect for that, right? Because I feel like that happens constantly. Like, we need some kind of imaging, audio imaging, for when we're basically just having a show meeting and it's happening while we're recording the show.

Maybe the segment could be called, we should have cleared this with legal. Right? Also, when are we getting legal? Also, when are we getting legal?

But I was going to say, I think I battle this because on the one hand, nobody needs to see video evidence of my face at this point in my life. I don't think it's adding much to the discourse. On the other hand, I feel like this industry, there are more and more shows that I experience through video and through podcasts, or as Andrew likes to call them, vodcasts. Oh, yeah. The way that this stuff is getting transmitted is changing all the time. And I do think that there's an opportunity for us. Like whenever we lean into the video side of things a little bit, the feedback we always get is, oh, this is so cool. I'm so excited this is happening. So I look forward to us kind of expanding that part and having John here will help a lot with that, expanding that part of what TBTL is. So it's, you know, still mostly going to be our voices talking, but we can add in more video like this week in review thing.

Exactly. I'm really excited about that. It's going to be a bit of a challenge. I think we're going to have to start it probably a little bit later in the summer. Maybe I think we're shooting to maybe launch that in the first week of August, maybe earlier, depending as we sort of get our get our feet underneath us. But I'm very excited about that. And then, of course, we have our dazzling donor level at the fifty dollars a month, which is, you know, everything that we just talked about. Plus, you can submit your own dazzling donor message that Luke and I will read on the show. But then we have one I don't do. We were talking about naming this. It's what's what's more dazzling than a dazzling donor. Are we calling this like the super duper dazzler like dynasty donor? A dynasty donor? I don't know.

What, John? Do you have any thoughts as the VP of Revenue and Operations?

Since you already made fun of me for liking the team, the Steinbrenner Club? Like maybe that.

We might have to call it the Steinbrenner Club. And for our Steinbrenner Club members.

I told you we should not have hired a Yankees fan. Jesus.

At the $100 a month level, We've never asked this. I have to say, like, I can't remember how exactly this came up, who pushed for it. My memory is I was instrumental in saying, why don't we see if there are some number of folks who are so invested in the future of TBTL and are able to do it that they might want to donate $100 a month? Because that's more than we've ever put out there as an option. But I was listening to OPB the other day, and they were in their pledge drive, and they just mentioned casually, like, at the $300 a month level or something, you'll be in our circle of honor. I think they called it the Steinbrenner Club.

Yeah, interestingly enough.

But, like, and I thought, okay, well, you know, I mean, first of all, I think OPB is great. I support them. I think that's awesome, the local public radio station here. But I also thought we should try to create something where people, that that works for their finances, something like $100 a month, which is not nothing. It's, you know, like a cell phone bill. It's like, here's what I'm trying to say. Take one of your kids off of the cell phone plan and add TBTL at the Steinbrenner Club level because what you'll get for that is everything before that, meaning all the stuff you'd get as a dazzling donor, the special message, you get the coin, week in review, everything that's on offer you'll get.

and you'll also get a ticket to the 4,000th episode and you get to hang out at a special pre-show get-together with us. Now, if you're hearing this and you're thinking, I already bought a ticket to the 4,000th episode, we will refund you for that ticket and we will get you in free or we will get you in complimentary as a thank you for being in the $100 a month level. And I will mention, and again, I don't want to put this person on front street, but the only donor we have so far is at the 100 a month level broadcast barry meaning right now one thousand percent of our donors are donating at the 100 a month level i think this is going to go great i want to oh go

ahead go ahead john i was just going to say i'm putting my vp of revenue which thank you guys i think andrew was like what title do you want for linkedin there's three of us in the company it's kind of irrelevant but it sounds nice so thank you very much um i think you know don't be shy like if the opb 300 a month is doable for you great of course the benefits end at the 100 a month club but in all seriousness like if six dollars a month which gets your name on the tbtl ticker is like the limit whatever's right for your budget but don't be shy about 300 a month that's my like

sales pitch for the day i like it john is not afraid to ask why not throw it out there what's the downside hey you know this is not this is not one of my um patented spoofs where i sound like i'm saying something serious and then i bring up the yankees i'm being quite serious here i want to just go back and say something very just to crystallize something that luke just said and make it very clear if you've already purchased a ticket to the 4000th episode and you are interested in donating at this level do not get rid of your ticket we're not going to give you a different ticket we will just pay you back for the ticket i don't we can't handle like people switching around or saying hey i don't need my tickets anymore because i'm going uh you know backstage or whatever. You still will probably need that ticket. Nobody start shuffling your tickets around. I just wanted to throw that out there. That's a really good point. And then I want to

just say something that also if you get the newsletter, I think I said something similar to this in the Hey Dummies video that's coming out today. But really what we are trying to do this time around as a show is stay afloat. And the best way for us to do that is to focus mostly on things that are more content that we can create like the we can review video thanks to the listeners that are more on the digital side like the ticker things that are kind of you know one size fits all like the coin we are really hoping that you'll go with us on this thon out of an interest in keeping the show going and then over the years as we continue to do this and as we get our sort of books and balance sheet in order you know we'll we'll try to expand back into all kinds of gigas and different kinds of devices that are built in various countries and shipped over here like this year we're really hoping that you all the listeners will be excited about the thank you gifts but we'll also realize that this is really in the larger service of keeping tbtl in existence and uh as we get more capacity we'll get more you know we'll be sending you more physical things

over time i think is the plan yeah and also john kind of with john here and maybe i should just let john say this but i'll maybe tee you up here but like having john on board and us totally steering our own ship means that we're gonna have a lot more flexibility about what our calendar year looks like and and when we make things available every now and then i'll throw out an idea on the show like hey we should give this away as a gift at some point like what if we created this and made it a gift and we don't have to wait a year for the next tbtl-a-thon maybe we can do things like merch drops or if we get a fun idea of like hey we should make that thing there's a chance that like in the middle of the year, we could just say, Hey, we're doing the special offer on things. So I'm hoping that as the years go on, we don't have to have a rigid schedule where we're only like kind of giving things away as a thank you gift once a year. Right. And Andrew, to that

point, I think like the specifically merch drop, like as you put it, I know you have fielded many email and pass them all along to me, or I've gotten emails from people over the couple of last few years i've been working with you guys where it's like i'm an 11 i want to get my you know fan of your show i don't understand like a t-shirt how do i do that that's like it doesn't really work that way um but to your point i you know i don't i won't say guarantees or timelines but i know that's obviously something at the forefront of our brains too uh as being real and possibilities uh so yeah that's super exciting to be able to do that yeah to maybe have a store

or if we want to just create a limited edition t-shirt and throw it out there at a certain time And yeah, it'll be it'll be maybe a different kind of model. I'm very excited. Like the sky is the limit. I'm not being I mean, both with content on the show and how we kind of handle our business. Like, I think, you know, I think it's going to be successful. But I also think it's going to be a lot of fun for everybody involved.

And I'm probably going to say this too many times next week. And so.

know just buckle up i guess but i really want to say too that the reason that we're doing this the reason that john left his secure job with a major public radio public media corporation where he was valued um and respected and and why andrew and i left that same place where we were working um the reason we've done this is because we want to make this the best show it can be for you the people who are hearing it right now whether or not you can donate if you can that That would be amazing, so we can keep doing it. Even if you can't, though, we didn't want you to continue to have to hear tons and tons of ads and also have some concern for us around certain fundraising kind of things that were maybe serving the larger interests of APM, but were not so TBTL specific, and things like that. This just gives us all kinds of flexibility to just decide what's best for the 10s right now. A lot of what we were doing while we worked at APM, which, was a great place full of great people andrew and i were running a fair amount of interference when we could trying to really protect this group of fans that we have listeners and donors uh to just basically say like there's only so many times a year that we want to come in and ask for money there's only we want to make sure that if we are asking for something we're trying to give something back that that really makes it worth it etc like what we're doing now is leaving the comfortable confines of this one thing so that we can try to make this like the best show for you all in terms of your experience so we're hoping that that was the right call we're gonna

find out yeah this wasn't a thing where you and i were like hey we could make a lot more money if and and our lives could be a lot more easier if we went independent that is not the case we're just trying we're we're hoping to break even here we're hoping to to do our our darndest to to you know and i and i i i'm confident that we will be able to do that but we are the only reason we are doing this is in the interest of the product of tbtl and in the interest of the tbtl audience i

swear to gosh and i because john was on thin ice at 8 p.m yeah yeah well you know disciplinary track

yeah i said the wrong things the wrong people or i guess to the right people no i'll i'll just add that like that's that's so true the amount of times like i think i had in my role there i had almost uh like a fiduciary responsibility to the organization to raise money and the amount of conversations we would have with you guys like we being like our friend may who i worked with and emily before was working with you guys it's like we need to raise more money from tbtl and you guys i think one of the reasons i jumped at this opportunity rightfully so we're like listen the tens are so generous so supportive we don't need to ask them for money right now or we don't need to do this or do that and so it really is between that and double carvana ads at the beginning of a show um the amount of times people reach out to me you're like this is ruining my tbtl experience i'm like i know i'm very sorry um it really does set the show up for such a better listening and experience overall i think for the listeners um and then certainly for us as well so we don't have to worry about people getting mad about things beyond our control yep and now

if down the line somebody ruins the show it's gonna be us yeah that is where we have really

lost our ability to blame others that's kind of a problem yeah but i mean like if we do at some

point of you know i don't think that what we're what we're saying is that there will never be advertising ever again on tbtl but if there is it will be really carefully considered it'll be us talking it'll be something that we actually have used and tried and feel good about recommending it will not be happening before our precious precious intro tape like it'll just be a totally different thing which i i'm guessing that the listeners won't mind because what's been grading on a lot of them is this it kind of just feeling like this little show that they love suddenly is getting kind of fire hosed with a bunch of content that we have no say about so i think it's going to be even if we and and by the way unless we have some radical radical growth in our downloads i don't think there's a huge danger of too many ads over the course of the next year or two so i I wouldn't be too worried. But just everything that happens going forward is going to be from the standpoint of like what serves the tens of listeners the best and what makes it the most likely that we can keep doing this until John is finally able to get Aaron Judge to agree to co-host. I mean, that's the long term goal of the show. So that's why we need you to join the Steinbrenner Club.

We need you to donate $30 million today.

I am interested in like if you get him for like the week in the review, I'm interested in his thoughts on the Bed Bath and Beyond conversation we had yesterday.

So get on. Doesn't Luke have that pivotal story of the Bed Bath and Beyond in like Midtown Manhattan?

So that would be right. That was that's a tie in. There you go. Have you heard of Chelsea, Aaron Judge? Well, this guy on the show once had a breakdown in Chelsea coming out of the Bed Bath and Beyond. anyway all right well that's uh that's the update on the thon and the update on our new

new VP of revenue and operations. Very exciting stuff.

Yeah, thrilled to be here, guys. Thank you.

Hey, let's do a little music for your weekend. Before that, let's do a little audio that my mom texted me that I'm guessing is accidental that just showed up. It's three seconds. Do we just play this on the disc? Can this be my music for your weekend suggestion? I've been talking to my folks a bunch the last few days about what the plan is for their basement.

Oh, yeah, because we're doing the show from your parents' basement starting Monday.

It turns out they had like moved a whole bed down there. Like they used to have a, I haven't been in that basement in like years, even though I go to my folks' house all the time, I just don't go to the basement for some reason because bad things happen down there, no. So I guess there's like some bed set up that they have to move and stuff like that. So anyway, I think this is just a butt dial. I can't believe I'm playing, Andrew, cut this out later if it's something we shouldn't be playing, but I'm too intrigued. Three seconds of like a voice memo from my mom.

Pass Paradise in Paulsbo, Washington.

Okay, cool. I think that was just my mom telling my dad directions of where they're going. I told you it was three seconds. Let me hear it again.

Pass Paradise in Paulsbo, Washington. Pass Paradise?

I think that might be where our Airbnb is. Oh, great. Okay. I don't know. I think she just bleeped these out, okay?

Pass Paradise in Paulsbo, Washington.

I think she's trying to, oh, maybe she's trying to talk into her phone to get directions, but instead she sent me a voice memo. Yeah, well, anyway, I don't even know what that means. By the way, I do think that, I mean, the Airbnb that we've rented does have, it's got a fairly close proximity to some salt water, and it's going to be a hot week next week. There's a decent chance my mom will come back to the Airbnb and my mom will just be out swimming in the bay. Nice. my mom is like she is she's she's hardcore for that saltwater swimming anyway love it uh andrew do you have any music for our collective weekend here yeah i'm gonna uh play you a song here also

john stuck around john has a song he'll play us out with later but i'll go first here and um i don't have a real reason for this in fact it's a sunny summer day i'm feeling really amped up for all of our activities that will begin next week and I'm in a great mood but you you might not pick up on that from the song I'm about to play because it's a little bit more it's a little bit of a of a serious sounding song but my god it is so good and I've been listening to it a lot lately as I've been doing a lot of like just like tedious data entry on the RSS feed and what have you I for some reason the other day really got in the mood to listen to some Gillian Welsh now did I say that wrong i always say it wrong is it gillian welch no it's jillian welch right soft g gillian is it gillian gillian welch and i'm not saying that ch hard enough i'm picking up i don't know

all right gillian i didn't even there's there's you're more of a fan though of hers than i i

didn't even know that miss ohio song and oh god it's so good yes um that is off of a of a different album i'm going to play the lead track off of the album time the revelator and the first song is called Revelator. And I don't know why I wanted to listen to this. And again, it's it's kind of got a somber tone to it, but it's really, really good. It's a very long song. In fact, I'll get it playing underneath me here. And maybe part of it is as I've been listening back to old TBTLs and kind of going through this archiving process, it has made me sort of think about the passage of time a little bit. And of course, as we make this this new leap where we are in time right now. So take a listen to this. This is Gillian or possibly Jillian Welch singing Revelator.

And not what I'm supposed to be But who could know If I'm a traitor Times are ever later

Speaking of time being the revelator, I'm looking here. This album came out in 2001, and I think I started listening to this record probably just a year or two after this. I don't think I realized at the time how new the music was. I think I thought this was probably from like the 90s or something. I'm only now realizing that I was listening to this when it was still sort of contemporary. back in the early 2000s but uh it's really great this song also like i'm not a big guitar solo guy but her her musical partner i think it's david something i want to say david rollins but i'm probably wrong about that too um he's an amazing guitarist and there's a long acoustic guitar solo in this song i really suggest people check out time the revelator is it gavid i'm sorry it's javid it's javid laurer okay yeah so anyway yeah check it out beautiful by the way have you heard

that before i haven't i'm telling you um the singer that you're talking about whose name i'll i will butcher no longer yes the way that does sound like a natalie merchant record i will butcher no longer um uh i don't know a ton i mean i know just a little bit of her work but that song miss ohio that you turned me on this very show maybe even as a music for your weekend or maybe it was just in real life we were just somewhere and you played it i i break that one

out all the time because i'm such a fan um one monkey on that same record not the one i played but One Monkey is on the same record that Ohio is on. Miss Ohio, I think you'd like that song a lot as well.

So I have kind of like two things on my music for your weekend because, again, what I will often do is just go back through things I've Shazammed to try to remember, oh, what was I interested in that I heard somewhere that I was like, what's that? And I had a song on there by Leon Bridges called Coming Home. It's off of an album called Coming Home, which has actually been out for a while. I looked it up. I think the album might be from like 2017 or something. have we played that are you able to does the new tbtl.net andrew give you the opportunity to find

out if we've played that leon bridges song or not i'm just going through old emails now because i list these uh you know i list the songs we play in the newsletters and no it looks like we played steam a long time ago and we played another song a few weeks ago better man you played a while back but no and now we're going back to 2018 so i i doubt it yeah i feel like this first of all the

song just as I like to say borrowing I think from maybe our friend Stu this song slaps and also coming home I mean we're going to my parents basement yeah I'm coming home and so it's just a nice song it has a nice summery vibe so can we hear a little Leon Bridges coming home

Baby, baby, baby I'm coming home to your tender sweet Loving you're my one and only one The world leaves a bit of taste in my mouth All right, that's a little Leon Bridges.

I'm stepping on the song because I don't want to get pulled from Spotify here on the Friday before we need to really need to be working on Spotify. Luke, when, when, when will I learn?

Every time I see Leon Bridges on the show sheet, I always think it's like alt country or modern folk music or acoustic. I always forget that it's soul influenced. It's so good sounding. And now I just want to listen to this whole record. It's so good sounding. This is why you donate to TVTL because of my musical analysis.

Yes. Jazz critic Ken Tucker joins us now. this new record is very good sounding and it sounds good on the ears by the way i think it's jazz critic kevin whitehead i'm sorry i apologize to all the fresh air heads out there um but uh yeah i would but i don't think you're it's i don't think you're totally nuts though because leon bridges also does a lot of stuff that feels like it gets right up kind of close to uh alt country sorry that was just a um a ring light falling off of its stand here in the studio Because of a cat? Great. No, because of bad suction cup technology. Oh, okay. Donate now. Better suction cups for all. Buy us, please. Help us buy better suction cups for our little square yellow lights that we're putting up on our computers. All right, John, welcome to the team. What would you like to play on this Friday for a little music for everyone's weekend?

I'll set this up by first saying music discovery. I'm not good at discovering my own. Actually, it's one of the things I like about TVTL and music for the weekend and hearing from the tens of what they have to recommend. So on that note, I have a song from 1977 here off of the album My Aim is True by Elvis Costello. It's Welcome to the Working Week now. Oh, dude, I love this song. I've been listening to this album on repeat lately for reasons I don't know why other than it's great.

I know it's a Friday, so this song might be triggering for people, but going on this adventure with you guys, and all I can think about is Monday, Monday, Monday, and the thon starting, and that being my first working week with you guys, officially as Too Beautiful to Biz, so that's the song. It's also super fun and great, and that's it.

Actually, I think that's a genius choice, and it's a nice little upbeat number. Anything off that record, I'm down for.

It's great.

So good. All right. Well, that's going to bring us to the end of this broadcast week and to the end of our time working for American Public Media. So I really do want to say thanks to everybody there who we've worked with over the years. Big thanks, actually, specifically to Steve Nelson, who brought us on board there and kind of got them to buy off on what was probably on paper a pretty bad idea. Let's create two full time staff positions for two dudes who just want to talk to each other about garbage anxiety. five days a week and thanks to everybody else who's just been you know supported us over the years and made this job doable thanks to our friend the Stubot who was an early kind of ally over there and anyway just again we are so appreciative it's been an amazing what eight years or so

yep just over eight years it was eight years in March and like there are so many people that I want to kind of call out right now but then I'm nervous to do it because I'll leave somebody out and then I'll feel bad about it but I think you know who you are

picked two white men can that be the first week of review or we just name colleagues of your

but not just colleagues of your and that's what i wanted to say too there's a bunch of really good folks who i've been working with a lot lately not even just with this transition but you know i'll name another one like even annie who we got to work with in advertising has been just amazing and and james who's been making our our videos i said i wasn't going to start and sending us postcards and literally sending us postcards to our tbtl uh po box and uh with with hey dummies questions on them and just like we've made we've met some amazing people and made some amazing friends eric the viking stromsted again like there's a million people i know i'm leaving people out so i don't want to be rude about it emily who who uh john worked with closely and she was your direct supervisor a million amazing people before that yeah so thanks to everybody if i didn't say your name you still i think you know who you are it's been really really special

working with all y'all yeah all right monday begins a whole new era for the program uh to you andrew and john i will see you in my parents basement on sunday for setup and to everyone else we'll see you on monday until then have a great weekend take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

Welcome to the workin' week. You gotta do it till you do it, so you better get into it. All of your family had to kill to survive. And just waiting for their big day to arrive. But if they knew how I felt, they'd bury me alive. Welcome to the workin' week. Oh, I know it don't kill you. I hope it don't kill you. Welcome to the workin' week. You gotta do it till you do it, so you better get into it. I hear you saying, baby, this is all right when you're only ready to pay them bills.

Spend all your money getting short cut.

Awesome.

Oh, I can't believe this is actually happening.

Power out.