Muse

My name is Dr. Gail Timlin, President of Diet Supplement Industries Incorporated. And people say to me all the time, but Gail, you're not a real doctor. And I say to them, oh yeah, well I graduated with a Ph.D. in Religious Studies at Kent State University. Is that real enough for you? No? Well, how's this for real? I lost hundreds of pounds by taking the best dietary product on the market, Dietoloxapam. But can something so good be legal, you ask? Hey, you ask a lot of questions. Of course it's legal. And I should know, I'm not only a doctor and president of Diet Supplemental Industries Incorporated, I'm also the junior state representative of Rhode Island.

TBTL! That's it, the radio. I'll go on the most popular program of the day. I assume that's still Don McNeil and his breakfast club? Like I ask people, what's in your muffin? Huh? How about me? why don't you ask me anybody anybody ask me what's in my muffin i don't know what's in my muffin

if you two dirtbags ever mess with me again i'll take this to the next level you don't do 22 episodes of celebrity outhouse with lorena bobbit without learning a few things dude you are the best you're awesome dude you are god's gift to the airwaves what have you got to say for yourselves

it's hammer time let the freak out begin

well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a monday edition of tbtl show that just might be too beautiful to live that's a tuna bro my name is luke burbank i'm your host coming to you from the hollywood broadcast center right here in portland oregon bring it back home baby bring it back home it is so nice to be back home the comfortable confines of the Broadcast Studio. Of course, last week we were in my parents' basement doing the TBTL-a-thon. More on that coming up, including an update on...

Can you verify? Can you give me some 411?

On whether or not we actually got to our goals. I was flooded with emails and text messages over the weekend of people that are friends, relatives, who also listen to TBTL, or at least were aware of all the social media push we were doing going did you um get to the goal is there going to be a show on monday and i would say just the very fact that you're hearing my voice right now indicates something about how

the tb telethon went last week thank you for your willingness to practice good judgment we can't do

it without you oh by the way here we are at episode 3984 in a collector series let the fun begin i am emceeing, I'm helping emcee this thing starting, I think it may be three this afternoon in Portland called Dragathon. They are trying to set the Guinness world record for the longest continuous drag show in

history. You want showmanship? You got it! And over the weekend

I received the rules and instructions for emceeing the world's longest drag show and it is shockingly complex. This may be one of the more challenging hosting gigs I've ever taken on because of some of these time constraints. Anyway, we'll talk about that. Maybe we'll see somebody out there tonight at Darcell 15, which is the club where this is all happening. Oh, and Threads has added 100 million users in just five days.

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

Making it the most successful, at least in terms of signing people up quickly, the most popular social media app since they invented social media apps so we'll get into that plus we've got a voicemail that andrew is just absolutely dying to play for me that's all i know about it i know andrew is dying to play it for me i also know that andrew is the longest running cobro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships their grace their splendor and all that intricate rigging he did such an incredible job last week um just making the show happen from a technical standpoint and from his always delightful presence on the program this week i think he's phoning it in because he's got bigger plans he is going to the all-star baseball game and the home run derby the next couple of days 360 spins and slam dunk pointers so let's be honest this is today and tomorrow a bit of a rounding error from for him on the work side but he's joining us nonetheless good morning my friend good morning luke this is a quick little

easter egg for listeners and we're going to get to the results of the tb telethon here in just a moment but i said something delightful happened during the intro that you can scroll back or rewind back and listen to but you have to listen very very closely so when i'm playing those little intro packages with the montage of sound i keep your microphone muted it.

on my end and then at some point when we're getting near the end of that montage i will unmute your channel i wondered today if that if i and usually i got caught in a hot mic usually i wait until the very very end but today i think i maybe opened it up just a few seconds earlier than usual and i opened up your mic again kind of on my end right right at the end of that 30 rock joke about a celebrity outhouse with Lorena Bobbitt. And right as I unmuted it, I heard way, way in the background. I hope I mean, go back and listen, listeners. I heard something there. And can you confirm that that one

got you? Literally. Well, I just had forgotten. I just had forgotten about that audio. It's so good. Something about celebrity outhouse with Lorena Bobbitt. It's so good. it's just such a perfect joke it really is it works on so many levels so anyway but then i looked down i realized oh yeah my mic is unmuted and i was like andrew i'm not kidding you the thought that i then had was yeah but andrew keeps me muted right up until the moment when i'm gonna go over the air so i bet you anything he is about three seconds away from unmuting me meaning no one will ever know that happened and yet everyone now knows that happened we're back baby i gotta

to say i had so much fun last week doing the tb telethon whether we're like on the road hitchhiking or in a foreign country or just um sequestered in your parents basement uh broadcasting live on the stream there's always fun aspects to that but i gotta say there's something really nice about being back uh doing what we do uh a podcast only medium and uh and and chatting down the line

with you i'm feeling good this morning this is a medium through which people get podcasts or that our podcast is only medium i would say medium at best as the kids say mid yeah med we're med at best no i know what you mean and also i think there's a i i was i was really excited to do today's show usually when we've done some big event whether it's a live show or a trip or a the thon i'm kind of like i'm pretty you know i'm fairly wrung out by the end of it and then it's like boy monday is right around the corner and i'm i'm i wouldn't say i'm dreading it but it's like sometimes sometimes it feels like oh didn't we just do this on friday i've been really looking forward to doing today's show with you because it was unclear to us going into last week if we were going to do a show on monday i mean it would have been an extreme circumstance where we literally just yeah i mean we would have done the store yeah on friday but i didn't know i guess my point is i didn't know what today would exactly look like i didn't know if we would be um you know we would be kind of disappointed and i mean we even had a plan in our minds like if we need to maybe we you know we could extend the thon just be really clear and say like this is we didn't go the way we hoped maybe you know i just didn't know what the deal was going to be for this monday july 10th episode and it's been you know last week was circled on my calendar ever since we told apm that we wanted to go independent but today was just like a big question mark what's the vibe going to be what's it going to look like well i'm very happy to report everyone here on this monday that i'm happy to report we still have the longest drum roll in the game should be longer now we can afford it we can exactly you think these are cheap these long ass drum rolls i am very happy to mention that um we did it we did it joe that's right

You got me with the Kamala.

That was also on the tape. You laughing at my Kamala Harris joke. We did it, folks. In fact, you did it. I almost down to the we got an update from TBTL employee numero uno, John Sklaroff, this morning, kind of giving us, you know, some sort of final totals with the weekend, you know, having sort of wrapped up and everything. and down to, like, pretty close to the dollar amount that we had said, this is what we really need to get to. This means that we can, you know, have some amount of health care benefits. We can pay ourselves. We can have a bit of a budget for doing things. We can pay for TBTL commemorative coins and the shipping related. Like, we had some numbers, and we hit those numbers, and what that means is we're going to be doing this for the foreseeable future, everyone. This is officially an independent podcast that is financially viable, it turns out. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being a friend. Thanks to everybody who donated. I know a lot of people dug really deep this year because of a certain amount of concern as to if the program would continue. We had a lot of first time donors. We had a lot of people who've been donating a long time. But again, you know, maybe went up a level or something. And then we also had people probably who weren't able to donate, but were on the Facebook page. kind of sort of encouraging everyone and just keeping the excitement levels high. If you interacted with the show in any way last week at all, if you listened to it, if you donated, if you.

encourage other people to donate unless you complained about it even that andrew it's hashtag engagement okay i'm feeling i'm feeling i'm feeling very uh very happy and very appreciative i don't have any room in my heart this morning for for for any sort of um anything other than just complete gratitude um so thank you again uh for getting us to where we needed to get so that we can keep doing this for our jobs this is incredible and we also have an employee which i was getting a ride back to the airport from john on friday when we wrapped everything up and i was saying to him and i guess because we have no there is no behind the scenes on tbtl there's only in front of the scenes everything is happening on the show but i was saying to john that it's it's an interesting thing because for you know the last eight years or so we were at apm which meant theoretically we had access to up to like hundreds of colleagues we could reach out to and i know you availed yourself of a lot of that because of the technical stuff and and we got great help from people and it was amazing but there's also something about having a person who literally works with us and for us whose full-time 40-hour a week job is to just support tbtl mostly on the financial side but just in various ways like i feel like we've gone from having a hundred kind of like colleagues to having one co-worker and you know sort of tbtl co-bro which somehow seems to force multiply like i feel like we can do bigger and better things than we've ever been

able to do with the three of us i agree and john is spinning a whole bunch of different plates he's he's producing some things he's um obviously our our business person and you know he's our firearms expert firearms expert i'm gonna say something here that i hope is not even too transparent even for us because i'm going to say something here that is incredibly earnest and something that i would say to you and john but when you and i made this decision in earnest we realized for the future of the show for the betterment of the show for the long-term health of the show

we probably for our longtime goal to bring down the carvana company we need to make a leap here

it was really scary it was something that we had talked about theoretically over the years like would the time ever come i mean the first several years at american public media i just was assuming that one of these days I get a pink slip or something, right? The idea of leaving of our own volition, it didn't even occur to me until we were there quite some time. But then when we started saying, hey, listen, I think this actually has to happen for the long-term health of the show, we started talking about our options, right? And we knew we needed to bring somebody on who understands business and finance, right? and as we've been going as we're going through the process john was the obvious person to do that with he he loves the show he's a part of the tbtl community we'd already been working with him on a you know through apm i can't imagine anybody else doing the job but there was a part of me as we talked about this fundraising like thinking okay so we're carrying three salaries like we need to do that but that's three salaries and then i look at other people who are Wunderkins for lack of a Do you say Wunderkind or Wunderkind?

It depends on the mood I'm in. Sometimes I really Lean into the Wunderking Right. Usually if I'm opening One of those chocolate eggs That also has some kind of like writing On it that I don't fully understand

But and so I'm going to put Another person on Front Street here. I'm going to talk about Broadcast Barry who of course runs Broadcast Coffee and this is a man Who knows a lot about coffee How to make coffee, how to run coffee shops all these song goes out to all the coffee lovers of the world but he's also a businessman he also understands business and i started to wonder like were you and i taking on too much by bringing on a full-time employee should we just yeah be better at being businessmen

can we learn and then if we can get if we can build the business then at some point when it's very clear that we have the finances for it then look out look into getting a part or

full-time person to do that right and that is not a statement about John obviously like we wanted to bring on John but I just started to worry like did we bite off more than we can chew and if we were if we were if we were just kind of not even better at our jobs I don't know I just started to feel insecure about like you know it was was this something that we can sustain with all three of After the week that we just had working with John, I can state that it would be impossible, literally impossible to be where we are today without John. It was absolutely necessary to have someone, especially him, in that role. It may be the best decision we've ever made in our lives. I'm not in our business. He's never even going to hear this. No, he's done listening.

Does not like the show. Does not like the show.

He's not a regular listener. No, I know it sounds like I'm pandering to him, but this is something I was thinking about a lot this weekend. The fact that I ever. thought for a moment well maybe i can just learn to be a businessman was really the stupidest thing we needed to get in the people that we needed to get in or the person and then support that and his job was to make sure that we could raise the money we need to support that and i feel i mean i feel so thankful but also really good about where we are right now i i think this is as auspicious as

i've felt about tbtl probably ever honestly which is which is wild that it's episode 3984 well think about it when we started as a radio show jen and i i think both were like if we make the show that we want to make it's pretty likely it'll get canceled hence the name too beautiful to live then when we did get fired then it was like well i have 90 days on my contract they're still paying me i guess i'll just keep doing it at my house but that was big question mark then it was like the first tbtl athon was like a paypal page just like could you go throw some money in there then we signed with apm which felt like it was solidifying things certainly getting uh you on full-time was huge i mean that's probably in the top three biggest maybe in the top two biggest like events for tbtl was having you actually go like this is my full-time job but even then we with apm we always knew we are here because we the tens of listeners donate enough money that this thing is uh at the very least breaking even and maybe a little in the black for apm we couldn't ever get a real clear snapshot but we we knew that if we were to start you know sort of uh if we were to start slipping and if suddenly it was costing apm a significant amount of money to keep tbtl around they were not going to keep tbtl around so it didn't feel like a lot of job security it felt like yeah we're you know we have these amazing supporters who we want to give them the best show possible then we decided we're going to go independent then we decided we definitely need somebody uh with the brains of of john to help us kind of handle the business side etc and again up until like probably friday morning maybe thursday night we could kind of see how things were trending and i was like we our goals are within like you know we're sort of in the neighborhood like it's realistic that we could try to get to those goals but maybe it was friday afternoon where it was like yeah we're this is going to work out we can look at the budget we can look at what our costs are what our you know income is and we can really do this and then to realize holy shit dude we're in charge of this like we're the bosses of this we have a full-time person that we work with who's amazing and we have these incredible supporters who've been doing this many of them for like over a decade supporting the show and being part of tbtl and somehow it's still happening like i just felt like how did we you know how did we do this nobody made this what did those red socks guys say when they found that when they found that banner on the ground by julie's house i think out there in oh yeah massachusetts somewhere like it's i feel so good this morning because i feel like we in the sorry in the words of kamala again we did it we did it joe like we we somehow figured out how to untangle uh the show from our previous employers who were great about everything by the way built this whole system that was really you and john

building that the financial side primarily john put it out ask the listeners to support it they said okay and here we are on monday morning we like there's so much maritime sort of like um iconography or branding on our show for some reason considering that you probably wouldn't want to drive a boat and i can't drive a boat despite wanting to like successfully oh i drove

my uncle steve's boat okay well i don't want to paint you with that brush i just want to say for

we had a lot of maritime stuff going on and and i feel like i feel like we're the captains of this of this you know the of the uss friendship now it's like you me and john are like in the boat and we have enough gas in the motor or enough whatever i'm just the analogies are really is it a rowboat is it a motorboat what is it i don't well uncle steve's was a motorboat okay so we're

gonna go with the motorboat speeding across lake erie winded my hair we i just feel so i just feel

so incredibly grateful and optimistic here because it's just like it worked like we have a business we have an income stream from the donations of the listeners we have the right person handling that side of it and john we have you and me making these shows like like here we are like we are in We are, I think, very well positioned to keep doing this for a long, long time and to get to take the show in all kinds of directions we want to and to get creative about how we promote it. And just there's just so much reason for me for optimism here on this Monday morning in a way that feels fundamentally different than any other time in the show for me.

Yeah. And I'll say one more thing in the in the spirit of transparency is I feel like the next year, like the next big step.

for us is now to and I hope this doesn't actually I hope this doesn't hit the listeners ears in a weird way because I think people are very protective of this show but we need to grow our audience and that's the next big thing and this is why it's not just because hey we now we're independent we want to be famous I don't care about being famous all I want to do is drive Uncle Steve's boat across the area it's because Because I saw something phenomenal and humbling during this last TBTL-a-thon that we've seen in TBTL-a-thons past as well, which is wonderful, which is the longtime TBTL listeners, the longtime TBTL supporters who have been ride or die for so long and who have been carrying this show on their financial back for so long doubled down, tripled down, in some cases quadrupled down and said, this is important. This is where the rubber hits the road. This is for the future of TBTL. all of that stuff is true and those folks those folks picked up so much and now that we also heard from new listeners we did hear from people who could only donate at at you know for the first time at lower levels and everything is appreciated but i also just saw some herculean how do you say absolutely no i think that was perfect by people who are putting more and investing more and more and more money into the show which is again i cannot thank you all enough but also i don't want you to have i don't want a few people to have to carry this weight this long i want by this time next year to bring more people into the fold without changing the show but like you know i mean maybe making it slightly better um but no people like what they like that sounds like a lot um but no but like i want to bring more i think that this show has the potential to bring more people in i know that we're a niche product but i think that we could bring more people in to help so then the next time we're asking for money which will be almost exactly a year from now i think uh people can say hey i'm new to this thing and i like it and i don't have to contribute boatloads of money there's a boat again but like you know we can spread that out a little that's what i want and i want that out of respect for the people who've done so much for us and that

was a thing too i mean we i think on the show sheet the plan was to talk was to just announce that we made the thong bowl and then move on and we'll probably be on this for like an hour um you'll completely miss the home run derby tonight because i'll still be talking about inside baseball not the baseball you want to be seeing but i want to be talking about yeah right outside baseball but like you know that was a trend that that was a trend that we saw even at apm that we were always trying to solve for which was we would we would like the business model of this show to not be a smaller and smaller group of people are donating more and more money because just you don't have to be a harvard business school graduate to realize that that's not a sustainable thing that's not a good trend it's incredibly appreciated and i mean again the generosity that we saw last week was really jaw-dropping but like i would love it if we can maybe the project we're calling it is grow the niche like if we can grow the niche this year and it just if we were even able to add a third more listeners or you know it's like we don't have that many listeners so we're not talking you don't have to worry this is not gonna if we were to double the listenership of this show you would never notice as a listener other than there'd be more people to help support me to bear the financial load of the show it's not like it's not like we're gonna suddenly be um selling out the chicago theater like uh call her daddy was or something when i walked by it recently it was some podcast i hadn't heard of that was selling out the chicago theater in chicago and i thought well it's still a ways off for tbtl we're getting

close to selling out the the neptune theater here yes that is cool that is cool i'm stoked i am very

excited go to tbtl.net to get your tickets if you haven't yet oh and by the way andrew uh that's like uh three weeks away so um yeah we'd like to just i thought you're handling if you'd like to replace the stress you were feeling about the tbtl-a-thon and you gotta be kidding me and now uh just us the nice thing is this whole thing is very um it's like a template you just pull out whatever the old stress was and you pop the new stress right in and that's called the tbtl 4000th but all that is to say uh i'm with you andrew i really think our big goal this year is to expand the audience not so that tbtl will change or not so that we'll start taking diamond encrusted limousines places i'm already doing that um it's just so that yeah in and the years to come we can spread the financial responsibility amongst the largest group of people possible Therefore, making it affordable for everyone and making it so we don't have a relatively short list of people that are taking on a lot of sort of generosity, responsibility for what we're doing. So that's and that's but I also feel like we can do.

that too like this is i mean this is john can do it that's i mean when i say we i mean john mostly but like i mean we know people on podcasts we know people that are podcasters like i'm i'm excited for the tbtl charm offensive uh john and i were talking uh in the in the car the other day about maybe trying to you know do some see if we can get some uh some promotion around the 4000th episode it's not every day a podcast turns 4000 like just the idea that i do think that between the three of us and the people we know and the experiences we've had and this that and the other i do think we can really grow the audience this year i think it's a fun goal and it's just cool to be like we don't every month we're not going to be going like how are we going to like pay for the internet connection or how are we going to like just to know that you know basically we'll just continue on and again because in the interest of over transparency and i hope john's okay with me mentioning this he makes eight hundred thousand dollars a year but that's you know we needed him and so no um you know what we all said was we're just going to make exactly what we made at apm like we're not taking a pay raise this is not because we're trying to improve our financial picture we just want to keep doing what we've been doing but we want to do it with fewer weird ads that the listeners don't want and so like that's what we're doing we're all just making what we used to make at the other place and to know that like our paychecks theoretically should clear and like that we should just be able to continue on with our life it makes i guess my points i feel a weirdly i feel a stability with the show right now that i haven't felt in a long time because even though we were stable at apm i think you and i both had in the back of our mind like that question of like when will it become the case that it makes the most sense for us to go independent and are we going to get an email this week that says oh we're adding you know this new ad package to your thing and cadence 13 the company that was like responsible for a lot of the ads they're going to start putting we're going to have four pre-rolls like there was just a lot of unknown and now i just feel like hey this is on us we you know we we we have the we have the um the platform now and we have the stability to just make this anything we want it to be so that's a really exciting feeling to have and again it's been a long time since i felt this exact way about the show yeah no i agree with all of that now do

you remember i i know you do luke but the listeners do they remember when you told this story a few weeks ago um maybe about a month ago you were asked by a friend to officially nominate someone for an award that would sort of recognize their contribution to like the the portland community i think yes and you thought that your role was sort of like pro forma this person was just going to be honored one way or the other they just needed somebody like you to like submit the paperwork so you did the paperwork but you did it in a very like kind of quick like least possible detail kind of way to submit it burbankian burbankian would be the way right common ways to describe and then you were later sort of mortified because you learned that not only did the person not win the community achievement award or whatever it was uh but it was your nomination form was discussed in the room of judges at length for it's like lack for its lack of care i believe one judge said i I know even less about this nominee now than I did before I read this. Yes. And you were especially, again, mortified about this because your name was on the forum and you're somebody who's known around Portland as well. This wasn't anonymous and, you know, it kind of reflected poorly on you. You were feeling terrible about that. You're feeling terrible about the whole thing. What if I were to tell you that we have a voicemail from someone whose wife was one of the judges in the room and can offer a perspective on what was said in that room? A waterfall of sweat just went down my back, Andrew. I don't want to tell you what's in this voice. I don't want to tell you how to prepare for this voicemail. But I think that it adds interesting context. And I think that, you know, I was.

Is it sufficiently anonymized, too?

The person, we did not put an anonymous filter on their voice, but they did ask to remain. But, you know, I don't know who this person is. In other words, the details are not going to kind of – No one's going to be able to figure out what specifically we're talking about. No name of the group, no name of anything. I'm quite sure of that, but also we are not live streaming today, so if I'm wrong.

I am not kidding you. My back just started sweating when you said that. And it's a very – I don't know. My upper back doesn't sweat in these moments. It starts about midway down my back. And then I have a bit of a sway back. Have you ever – you know what that is where it's kind of like the lower part of my back.

It sounds like a chair that you'd be interested in.

Exactly. Oh, the Eames sway back? Sure. The Jen's Razum sway back. It's like my lower back kind of – it con –

caves a little bit if that makes sense like it kind of it sort of pushes towards like my stomach a little bit more than i think the normal person which is why i have such a juicy ham it really kind of really kind of can't the whole my whole backyard kind of like really just really gets a but anyway no like i'm not andrew i'm not kidding you that area i'm putting my left hand i'm placing it i'm placing it right on that sway back the lower part of my back and it is already i can feel the effects of the sweat that started to happen when you said that this is total news to me you did not tell me you just said you had a voicemail you wanted to play didn't tell me any other details i am very intrigued and also very nervous about do you want to save it for the end

of the show or do you want to play it in top stories i don't think there's anything else well

this drag-a-thon thing is kind of interesting oh i do want to hear about that but but um but maybe let's just you know what let's do this let's get the let's get the um let's get the voicemail out of the way because i don't know what my reaction is going to be um so let's just do that first and then the you know if we have time for everything else we have time for it okay let's make it a top story hello and welcome to top story all right lay it on me okay now you i'm covering my eyes for some reason which makes no sense in this context of what we're doing well you did mention

that you know we are protecting the names what are we saying we're changing the names to protect the innocent or withholding details on the story i'm pretty sure that this voicemail does not have anything in it that you do not feel would be ready for broadcast if i'm wrong about that though be honest with me again we're not live streaming today so i can edit things out i can bleep things out but here is the voicemail as it came into our voicemail box and i should mention this is a A couple of weeks ago, this came in a few days before we started the THON. During the TBTELA THON, I was behind on voicemail. So here it is. This came in in the last week of June.

Hey, friendos. I'm calling from Portland. And I guess I should remain anonymous just to be on the safe side. But I wanted to call in. I was listening to Friday's show in which Luke was talking about this application for an award that he had submitted on someone's behalf. And the reason that I'm choosing to remain anonymous is because my wife, my voice, is actually on the committee of people who selected the winners of this award. It kind of goes to show you how small the town Portland can be sometimes. um but i was amused by the show on last friday and i played some of it for my wife and she confirmed for me a couple of things one of which is that yes luke's name is on the application uh in bold print and so that's not good and yes there was some discussion in the room about well how poor this application was and you know that's not good either but she did tell me Are we getting to the good part? That's it.

Anyway, love the show. Anyway, love the show. Good luck with the TB Telethon.

Here, I'll pick up here. A couple of other candidates that people submitted applications for who had years and decades of demonstrated good deeds in the community that were aligned with what this committee was looking for. and had proven track records, I guess, in ways that, again, that this committee was looking for and mentioned that even if Luke's application had been perfect and stellar and exactly what they were looking for, probably the person that he had nominated would not have won the award anyway. And that's not to say that this person is not out there doing good things and is not deserving of awards and certainly may win this award someday in the future. Who knows? But if it helps Luke feel a little bit better, it's at least a case that no matter what his application said, it was just not meant to be this go-round. So I just wanted to call in with that because it's sort of a funny intersection of sort of my real life tangentially and TBTL, and that inspired me to call.

All right, that's it. Power out. So just to reiterate, in case anybody kind of knows the characters involved here, it's just that there were so many applications for people who had done so many good things in the community for so many years and so many decades that in this particular case, they were kind of your nominee was somewhat just. sort of outgunned and out experienced it's not again a statement i didn't like ruin it for that

person no that's what they're saying yes but this is where the caller i think misunderstands my motivations i don't care if they get the award i was embarrassed i felt embarrassed by this event and that nothing this isn't about the person no this isn't about the nominee of the award working hard in the community to better other people's lives this is not what that's about this is about Oh, thank you for supporting TBTL. This is about me looking foolish in a room full of people I don't know because I got incomplete information about what I was being asked to do. I'm also wondering, I don't want to keep pulling on this thread, but I'm wondering if the person who asked me to do it, because they know me a little bit, I wonder if they intentionally left out the part. maybe they thought when i started filling out the the the nomination that i would just get kind of swept up in the moment and write something very like eloquent and heartfelt and lengthy maybe because i wonder if they didn't not tell me that if they didn't omit the idea that this nomination form is important because they were like he's never going to agree to do it if he if he learns that he has to really put his full attention to this thing as opposed to dashing it off while on an airplane so again i uh that's an that's a fascinating update i really at listener will you please i believe that that they said that their wife was part of this particular committee um if that listener uh could please i'm sure they already have but if you could re relay to your wife the real story of what happened which was i did not realize how much weight the nomination letter i was writing was going to actually carry now i understand also what the caller is saying which is this was probably not what was make or break for the person that i was that i was nominating but even so i need as many people who were in that meeting as possible to understand that i didn't in the words again of the kids i misunderstood the assignment so that's i just i need to have my good name cleared because again of all the places for me for my name to be on it and for it to be in a community of people for whom there is a reasonable chance they're kind of aware of me like that's not the case in most places you plot me down in jonesboro arkansas there's not gonna be a lot of people going up hey are you the luke burbank you you put me in portland on a committee of people that are nominating someone for an award related to public service now my my q rating is going up a lot like it's up to like 30 chance that someone there has heard of me so it was like the worst possible place for me to be turning in

my worst possible work this is a question that i hesitate to ask and it's going to sound somewhat marmish i think but i ask it sincerely finger waggy as you say finger waggy will this experience change your behavior in any way in the future maybe in this way if i were asked to do something

like this again i'll say no i think no no no no listen only but andrew only because of the embarrassment factor yeah in other words if if it had just been the case that i heard like oh they loved the application but the person that or they love the nomination but the person you nominated just you know needs a little bit more experience in the community um a longer track record and so you know maybe next year they'll get it like if that was the feedback nothing about my approach to life would change but the feedback being somebody in the meeting literally said i feel like i know less about this person now which is such a good that stings me that stings me so badly that what i might do the way my behavior might change would be if someone asked me to do something like this in the future i would say um well uh possibly but let me just get let me just make sure i understand what the expectation is and also how i can be helpful here not just kind of like yeah sure I'll do it and then thinking like yeah I'll just throw that you know I'll just I'll just again I'll literally fill out I'll plug a sentence into each question so that it officially goes through the system so that then the people you know the other thing too not to defend myself but the person that I nominated has been doing some work here in Portland that's been very very publicly noted so I kind of thought I would be really surprised if anybody in that room was unaware of the person, the work of the person I was nominating, which is another reason why I thought it was my job to just kind of get the ball rolling and then leave it to this room of people to decide, you know, but I didn't think I needed to give a huge amount of explanation on the person because the person has not been working in anonymity, if that makes any sense. But the other thing, and what I do think is positive about this, not for me, my reputation remains greatly tarnished but what i think is good about this is i'm really impressed to hear how seriously the folks in that room took this process you know when you're in a society i do feel like at least my assumption having never received any actual awards is that a lot of times things like this are kind of an honor that they give to people who have been working hard, but that the kind of behind the scenes, robust sort of debate and conversation about who might deserve it best this time around, things like that. Like, I, I guess I thought that maybe there was a certain amount of, you know, kind of like mutual back scratching that goes along. And it's kind of like, Hey, uh, we like what this person has been doing. we'd like to have a fun event where we can honor and support them and other people doing similar work so we kind of know who we're going to give this to let's just kind of get them you know let's get them across the line as far as the nomination and then and then we'll all just kind of like i said we'll all kind of scratch each other's backs that is not what happened here no like people took this rightfully so i think very seriously and sounds like really weighed the kind of merits of each person and also you know the the nomination form and how how well it made

the case for the person so while this is a very bad day for my reputation i think it's a very good day for this particular honor because it seems like a really good system they're doing and even

if it is out of self-interest uh it looks like maybe it will set you up to make better decisions in the future again sounds god i just sound terrible in saying that i don't support this for

i don't necessarily really support this for for animals like the invisible fence thing now i don't i don't i don't want to get i don't even want to weigh into that because i'm sure we have listeners that have used that. In fact, I have friends, people I really love who have used it because it's the only thing that based on their property lines, et cetera. I wish we could use more carrot and less stick in all training situations with animals. But if they did make a shot collar for me, I think it would be... Oh, sure. No, I'd execute the hell out of you. I would never let you near the button. What are you talking about? I would never let you near the clicker.

He's reaching for the cheese!

But this is basically like, this is the only thing that will get me to change my behavior i walked across a line unknowingly and then suddenly i started vibrating you know and that's what so so yeah it may change my behavior but only because

i got shocked well in a certain way it does play into a theory that you you've been espousing on the show i mean i okay i'll let you tell me how you feel about this well the shocky cheese thing but also and i know that you've said some things like you've been doing this show for 15 years and going back to the radio days, I know that you had some theories and whatever philosophies that you've left by the wayside that don't hold up. But one that you did sort of lean into for a while was the idea of shame, at least in your own life, personal shame as being a great motivator. And that is something that really has not changed. Maybe you would back off on saying everybody should turn to shame as a way of navigating their life. But clearly with you, that is the motivator.

Well, I think there's a difference between shame and embarrassment, Andrew. So I think embarrassment is what drives me, not shame. Shame would be if I said, hey, you know what, Luke? Somebody asked you to do something, and you did the bare minimum. You could have blocked out one hour of an afternoon somewhere, sat down with your cup of coffee, opened your laptop, and really taken this seriously and over-delivered. But instead, you waited until you were on an airplane with spotty Wi-Fi, probably two glasses of wine in and then did the bare minimum now that's something maybe you could be ashamed of that would be shame i have no shame i have embarrassment i am embarrassed that the people in that room think that that is what passes for good writing for me yeah and those are different that's the problem i embarrassment and and trying to avoid embarrassment is a very big motivator for me basic human shame something i should feel more of is not something that that

factors a lot of the time shame is almost being like you like personal embarrassment about yourself like i might feel shame i might do something in the secrecy of my shame of my own basement that nobody knows i've done and i might feel shame about that for a while i don't know why that got so gross um but like i can feel shame even secrets i prefer to keep clandestine terrible disturbing secrets one can feel shame if they've done something that nobody in the world even knows about but they just feel like that was shameful behavior i need to be better whereas

embarrassment is like public shame well yes but also again i think that i'm kind of just repeating myself but the the thing is i could feel shame about i should probably feel some amount of shame about not putting my all into something and and somebody asked me to do somebody who in my own life has done me plenty of favors and is a very nice person that I know asked me to do one thing and I did the minimum and like shame around that would be me saying hey Luke that's shameful what you did do better next time my whole motivation on is like god that was embarrassing when those people said they knew less about the candidate maybe I'll do differently

later or do differently at a different time but or act differently but not because of what should just be a basic amount of shame of like hey let's be better luke but instead of being like hey i don't want to be embarrassed again they made a devastating rhyme about it they did grandma can you come pick me up from the nomination committee uh okay uh let's talk about this dragathon thing i wonder if there's going to be any tens at this now speaking of things i should probably feel shame about when i was first asked to do this i said yes and then i immediately started complaining about how small my name was on the list like you know this dragathon thing i mean there's a lot of legitimately famous people helping out emceeing i think it's like you know uh fred armison's going to be there carrie brownstein a bunch of busy phillips uh john cameron mitchell like a bunch of folks like that and of course those people are all higher up on the on the poster than me but i was like almost invisible to the naked eye and i was like for some reason just on that morning i was feeling kind of petty oh i was um we were getting uh we're having a little afternoon lunch and uh some wine tasting yesterday with becca's family uh down in salem and um her her brother jeff and his wife darcy were as they often do very kindly watching bubbles which is really a full-time job and so we went down to get the cats and then also to um go hang out with them a little bit and somehow this this drag-a-thon thing came up and i forget i think maybe it was jeff said oh is that the thing where you thought your name was too small well hey we have a listener the brand is strong but um anyway i i should probably realize that that person listens to tbtl no i think that they kind of i mean becca's whole family is much more aware i mean i don't think that there's i don't think anyone's like a daily listener to the show but as far as just my general comings and goings whether it's a cbs story whether it's you know live wire stuff etc even tbtl like they were like hey how'd the thon go you know it's like they're it's very nice it's very front of mind for them just it's a it's a it's a large and very loving and caring family actually i come from a very large family but um though the her family is is very like uh interested and tuned in to the various things that i'm doing so but uh anyway i should probably have felt a little i you know i maybe i did feel a little shame about that because i came on the show then a day or two later or at some point anyway saying i was being petty about worrying about how big my name was on the poster that was very petty of me and also i was speculating i was going to get a really bad time slot by bad i just mean they were going to put me on at three in the morning which was going to i mean that's my poker time i don't i can't be i can't be hosting a charity event for the trevor project when i should be out playing all hours poker but anyway uh that did not it also did not happen i got the exact time slot i asked for which was tonight at 8 p.m and uh i received over the weekend the kind of guide to emceeing this so it's going to be i mean the big

draw is a bunch of super talented drag performers but then they need people like me to kind of run up in between the performances and make some announcements or just hype the crowd up or whatever and i had heard that this was an attempt to set the guinness record and we talk a lot about the guinness book of world records on the show because i was so and i think you were to some degree pretty obsessed with it as kids and we had that great article that you sent me recently that long read yeah yeah that was just like all of the like kind of ins and outs of it i had assumed that the the guinness uh record the guinness book of world records whatever it's technically called now had just become such a sham because i thought a lot of the records seemed kind of silly to me that there was almost no oversight there's a lot of oversight yeah we learned that from the article and now you're learning it in real life. How long can I be on stage, right? I'm reading from the guide here. How long can I be on stage? Your timing is incredibly important for the show. Guinness World Records rules state that performers can be on stage for no more than four and a half minutes at a time. This is a hard and fast rule that, if ignored, could cost us the record. Don't be that person.

Wait, however, can I just stop for a second because I'm a little bit confused. So the Guinness record that y'all are going for, maybe that this group is going for, is the longest continuous drag show in history. Yes. And the rule is that you, Luke Burbank, as the emcee, can't eat up too much time between performances because you're not doing drag. It has to be predominantly drag performances. Precisely. Precisely. Okay, got it. I just need to slow down for a second.

No, but you described it exactly accurately. Okay. Like, I just figured, again, this seems to be a theme for me. I figured I'd just throw in the bare minimum of the nomination and then that person would get passed right through to the award. I figured we just, somebody tells the folks in England, hey, we did a drag show for three days. And they're like, cool. It's wild how specific it is. So you're exactly right. The MCs who are.

not in drag although i did yesterday think am i supposed to be in drag but then that felt like cultural appropriation and also i didn't want to be outshined so hard i was like this is not my lane at all i'll just wear a suit but there are all these rules about how much of the hour must be drag performance versus me on stage sure announcing because they don't want a thing that's uh sort of ostensibly a drag show but where there's very little drag happening right yeah that's the guinness folks so that's smart by the way i wouldn't have thought of that but that is a good point yeah yeah there is there's there is so much stuff in here that's like specific to making sure that this is a legitimate record and not just some kind of a you know a thing that is phoned in having to do with costumes having to do with the um the drag performers needing to be uh effectively like competent drag performers like again in other words not somebody making

a mockery of it just somebody throwing on like a man throwing on a woman's dress even though

they've never done that before yeah me putting on a wig and standing on stage and calling it drag or

something i mean these are no that's highly well thought out yeah people would do that some you

know some jabroni would maybe do that yeah yeah so okay uh back to this is the part that has me nervous the timing so the rules state that performers i.e mcs people like me can only be on stage for more than uh four and a half minutes at a time this is a hard and fast rule however we do need the mcs to aim for being on stage for four minutes each time you come out so we can hit our overall schedule and this is i'm still reading from the guide but how will i know how long that is fear not we will have a giant clock facing you from the back you got a pitch clock and our av team will start the countdown when you come on stage you will be very aware of your time if you hit four minutes and 15 seconds we might have to cut off your mic to make sure we remain eligible for

the world record that'll be funny that'll be funny if people keep if you know if you and the other emcees kind of keep getting cut off too they can make that work that's great right i mean again i

don't want to get too cute no because if if i'm you know if i'm trying to make a bit out of going long and then i accidentally do go long or and by the way this is like have you ever tiled a bathroom andrew have you ever done any tiling projects no but i have a feeling there's one

on the horizon we don't have to talk about that now well the thing is when you start tiling if

you get off at the beginning you just it just radiates out and then you're like so screwed i don't want to be i mean i'm getting on stage like five hours into this thing i do not want to be the section of tile that starts everything out on a bad path that like like a day from now fred armison is crying on stage because uh you know he only has eight seconds every time he goes up or

something i'm not suggesting this because you're right you you should just do the best most competent job you can do here without getting too cute and also you're the mc you're not trying to

take it i am not yeah i am not the draw right i mean on any level for this so i'm going to really try to keep out of everyone's way and just help them have this event it would be pretty funny

though if maybe given a different circumstance if the bit kept being like you go out there and you like kind of say what you need to say but then you but then you say but um you know before we do introduce this next performer i just want to get something off my chest and then boom they cut your microphone and then you like keep going on and be saying there's just one thing that i need to confess to that i'm feeling pretty bad about and then they cut your microphone that would be a pretty funny bit i don't think this is the time for that but uh i don't know maybe i'll give you a

pitch clock at the uh 4000th episode what if i just kept calling time and stepping to the side of the stage just to try to mess with the audience and try to caballero your way through my way then one of the audience members throws a drink way over my head like garrett cole did that was another thing that my that uh that becca's brother jeff said to me yesterday something about the show he's like yeah it's a great show like when you guys get done talking about baseball i really kind of you know i tend to i tend to listen with great interest and i was like oh okay okay because i was like there's no way like we just had this amazing generous week of the tb telethon and now we're coming back and it's monday and again we should try to be in we should be on our best behavior you and i and yet you're going to the home run derby today you're going to the all-star game tomorrow like how are we how is this not going to just turn into

a bunch of baseball talk well yeah i mean honestly i i um we don't have to get into it now i will tell you about my experiences of going to these various all-star activities but i don't think you have to worry about it being too baseball-y um i don't want to talk about this now because i'll just maybe give you a little roundup of what my experience will be like this afternoon at the home run derby but i'll i'll include in that my experiences yesterday of going down to the area in seattle where the all-star festivities started over the weekend and sunday I got my first taste of it and um i actually do you know that i was actually at the baseball draft yesterday that i sat there for the first half of the first round of the of the mlb baseball draft again i won't go into details and honestly though i don't think that people who don't like baseball have to worry about us getting we're not going to be breaking down or bemoaning the results of mariners games it's just going to be it's going to you know this is just a kind of a big spectacle yeah and it's

It's kind of designed – it's designed to be entertaining in the way a Harlem Globetrotters game is designed to be entertaining. You don't be a basketball fan to watch the Globetrotters. You just have to have an appetite for me running out onto the court, jumping up, grabbing the net, doing a chin-up, and pulling the rim down, which has happened at a local Globetrotters event once when you and Dave Ross and I went over there and, again, talk about lack of shame.

But I do. And again, I'll talk about this tomorrow. But for example, I want to tell you about the process of getting into the events yesterday, because some of the events going on in the south of downtown Seattle, Soto, for people who live here in the in the like kind of the arena district. I want to tell you about the process for getting in to this big area that is supposed to be free events because it is not a story about baseball, Luke, but I believe it's a it's a story about late stage capitalism that I'm excited to tell you about. Or as I as I mistakenly called it to Genevieve yesterday, late stage democracy. And she said, I think you mean capitalism, but I also think we're there.

I think those are intertwined in a pretty fundamental way. It's funny that you said that. I literally used that comment. I said that to Becca last night driving home from Salem. We stopped to get some gas, and I was hungry, and I was trying to figure out what I was going to do for dinner. It was one of those subways that's in a pilot, kind of like a truck stop-y kind of deal. In Oregon, they come out and pump the gas for you. Sometimes there's a wait. I thought, well, maybe I'll just take advantage of this. I'll go in there. I'll get my veggie sub sandwich, and uh and then i'll just you know bring that home and i'll have it tonight uh for dinner and so i ran in there and then it was just like one thing after another it was like you know they didn't have any tomatoes because the supply chain the person working behind the counter was was very nice but my guess would be that they're probably not um they're probably maybe not making a living wage from doing this i'm not sure but it's like and then there was no ice in any of the like the fountain drink machines and it just i i just felt like the center is not holding on this whole system i'm paying 16 for a sandwich which by the way was the least annoying part of the thing it wasn't even that but i'm like i'm paying 16 for a sandwich that they can't give you the tomatoes because there are no tomatoes in the supply chain being made by a person who's probably not making a living wage to do this in a building that has no ice like this this is what it feels like as the wheels start to come off of this whole operation this that's not the take that you

You know, that's not kind of related to what I want to tell you about. But let me tell you this. I had almost the opposite experience with food yesterday. I was down at the ballpark area, but not in a like not in a specially sanctioned part, not as part of the all star activities. Just this one street that lines itself with hot dog vendors and sausage vendors on any day that there's an event outside the arenas. So I call it Hot Dog Alley. I've referred to. We recorded there once. Yeah, exactly. It's just the street leading up to the stadiums where all the hot dog vendors are, and these are independent little businesses, right? Well, I don't know if it's because of the competition of the food inside the gates of the all-star activities, but I ended up being astounded by the affordability of a sausage that I bought. But I told you before the show, I was dealing with some really interesting. I think I had some sort of foodborne illness that happened over the over the weekend. Actually, it kind of hit me on Friday during the show. And anyway, it was a weird thing. So my stomach has been very sensitive. And I went to this All Star thing. I had not eaten all day. I hadn't eaten in a while. I think when I showed up at the All Star festivities yesterday and I'd been drinking a lot of water. but then it was one of those things where I'm not hungry I'm not hungry I'm not hungry and then suddenly around I don't know four or five I'm like oh my gosh I'm really hungry right now so we leave the sanctioned area we go to this little hot dog stand out outside of it and I stop at the very first one it's like you can get a Polish sausage for seven dollars and it's Polish sausage for seven dollars it's about ballpark prices whatever um and then they make it for me and again I'm supposed to be you know i'm better at this point i don't think that i'm carrying around any uh and any more of whatever illness i was dealing with but i haven't been eating a lot my stomach has contracted i don't want to be like you know just like slamming down sausages the way i usually would And they hand me this thing, Luke. You know when you see a kielbasa in the store, it's in like a big long horseshoe shape? I'd love to eat too many hot dogs. This thing was basically half of one of those. If you were to cut it right at the top of the horseshoe, it was $7 on a hoagie roll with onions. It was probably the best ballpark related food I'd ever had. It was huge. It was so goddamn big. And I was like, $7, how can you afford to give this to me? And like a dollar for a bottle of water or something. I almost was like here. Well, obviously I tipped, but like I just could not believe. Have you ever ordered something at an airport or a ballpark where it was more food than you expected for the dollar amount? It was astounding. Never in my life.

I'm just going to go there for lunch from now on any given day. Do you know that that's how the famous sort of Chicago, at least the lore is, that's how the Chicago style of hot dog preparation got started? That was like during the depression, you know, a lot of people were out of work and a lot of people even who were working. Sorry, the cat is trying to fax bingo right now. So you may hear some beeping in the background. You know, even folks that were working were really short on cash. And so I guess the deal was, you know, there was these folks selling hot dogs or whatever, some kind of sausagey thing on the street corners of Chicago during the depression. but the deal was the hot dog was whatever it was but it was like unlimited other stuff sides you know and so people would make it their whole maybe their meal for the day but they'd be getting that's why that that's got like tomatoes on it and peppers and pickles green that atomic that like radioactive green relish yeah like it got started because people were just like you're going to start doing it was a cheap lunch that could fill them up for the whole day because

they'd get all the sides on it yeah no that they i do remember that coming up on the show i did not know that before that but um and i do like a chicago dog by the way i did not have a chicago style dog again that has sport peppers relish i think pickles sport peppers tomatoes and i can't remember if i'm missing another key ingredient maybe celery salt i could be wrong about that but anyway uh that is that has been a development in my life i don't eat those enough probably

actually you know what never mind i'm sure i eat plenty of hot dogs your stomach is literally eating itself you're dangerously under hot dog andrew um the good news for you is that you're gonna have many times in the next two days to go get more more affordable polish sausage because you're going down today yep you're going down tomorrow um what time is the what time is the the derby

tonight today you know i i was telling you and john that i'm just like hey listen i know we're going to be coming out of this tbtl-a-thon we're probably gonna have a lot of business to do on monday and tuesday but just so you know i'm essentially just like taking off this the back half of monday and tuesday like i will not be accessible during that time and i'll catch up with you on wednesday but the thing is you know i i was looking at my notes for my friend paulie who i'm going with um and you know he's been sending me schedules and the whole thing seemed pretty overwhelming but now that i've sort of been down there on sunday and sort of got a feel for the outlines of things i think that um well to answer your question today i'm going to get out of here right away because the doors open at two for the for the home run derby and we thought it'd be fun to get there maybe for doors and then the game is at five but tomorrow i don't think the game is until oh nope it's gonna be the same deal tomorrow game's at five tomorrow too but i think there will be with each passing day i think paulie and i and he's been there even a few more days than me now are less interested in getting there super super early you know what i mean like we've started to we've experienced all of the shenanigans going on outside of the arena and everything so i think the pressure will be slightly off tomorrow but you know you also don't want to be late for the all-star game this is like i said like i i would be pretty surprised if i ever find myself going to another all-star weekend in my life you know what i mean it's sort of like when you go

to a music festival or something like that and you get the schedule and you're just like, I want to go to all of this and everything. And then by the third day, you're just like climbing out of your tent, going to the one headliner that you were going to see. Yeah, exactly.

You're like, Bon Iver,

better on record anyway. How dare you say that about Justin Vernon? I can't remember who was a Wisconsin high school basketball star.

I think, I actually, I think Bon Iver just took a stray from me because I think I was thinking of Iron and Wine. I was at the Pitchfork Music Festival one time and being like, oh iron and wine is playing but then realizing when you showed up and again no insult to them but at that time was not the right kind of energy level for a daytime concert at a loud out you know a huge sprawling outdoor thing you couldn't hear anything you could barely hear their beards rustling into the microphone i feel i think i had an awkward interaction with the iron and wine the guy from iron and wine once at sasquatch i think i was trying to get him because you know for a few years we would like set up that little table to interview folks but then but then the real work began because it'd be like trying to convince people who wanted to just like you know maybe have a drink side stage and stare off at the gorge or see their friends in some other bands trying to convince them to actually come over and do extra work sit at a dusty table with a person they'd never heard of and i feel like i had like the iron and wine guy uh was was like not not not rude but maybe not overly solicitous not overly like trying to make me think that he was really up for this thing or something like i don't think

we got him on the show but so i remember that's where we interviewed the uh alabama shakes we did britney um howard but i had to look it up okay from the alabama shakes remember that guy rain wolf yeah and rain wolf who like would just appear at the festival like standing on the hood of a car

with an electric guitar and a little amp that i mean i wonder whatever happened to that guy but he was as far as the live experience it's not even particularly my style of music it's really guitar heavy it's really kind of intentionally i think blown out a little bit kind of a real i don't know low kind of i don't know a combination of hi-fi and lo-fi um but he was awesome like he was shredding and to watch the way the crowd and you're right i think he was on top of a van at

some point oh yeah like van he pulled his van up to some grassy area just just like had an amp and

it was like immediately a crowd formed that kid was that kid was really fun to talk to but anyway um all right well i look forward to hearing about uh how it's going down there i i was i was not very jealous about it um and now i'm feeling a little fomo oh really so if that's anything that powers you knowing that i have fomo what you're doing well you already missed the best part

the draft i've told v's i'm like oh my god if you think baseball is slow sweetie imagine going to

the mlb draft well that's the thing because the mlb operates so differently than really the nfl or NBA in that, you know, the person who's going to go first in the NBA draft, which it was, you know, I'm just going to call him Wemby until I, because I think that's A, his nickname, and B, until I learn how to fully say his last name, I'm going to call him Wemby. Also, I think he looks a little bit like Gumby, kind of tall and lanky, so Wemby seems like an apt handle. But anyway, like the NFL draft and the NBA draft, there's so much talk about who's going to be the first pick and if it's the NBA then the person was a star in college so you've already like is it going to be uh you know Johnny Manziel or is it going to be whomever you know which Manning brother or now which Manning which Manning grandchild is it going to be uh there's just so much speculation around the players you know who they are baseball is just so different it's just probably some kid from LSU you've never heard of the kid the first two were LSU kids ah right okay so there you go like uh so but then again i thought well that's good for you because you're so you're kind of so deep in that fantasy that baseball fantasy world in fact the only times last week that i ever heard you or john talking about anything non-work related i mean you guys were both burning multiple candles at multiple ends and i was so appreciative of what you were doing because when the show was over for both of you the work was just starting you were just doing doing all kinds of web posting and editing audio and video and financial stuff, it was a blur. But every once in a while, I'd hear you saying something to each other, and I'd be like, I don't think that's TBTL. And it would be about baseball. It would be about fantasy baseball.

I got slammed in fantasy baseball last week. We don't have to talk about that. Let me pull this back around, actually. Speaking of TBTL-a-thon-related web work, as of today, we have uploaded everybody's name, everybody who's eligible everybody's name to the tbtl ticker on tbtl.net and i know people were like excited like hey we're gonna we're gonna have we're gonna see our name in lights on the tbtl website we have had so many donors that we're thankful for that the ticker has slowed down to a crawl i know technically it is a crawl that's what you call something a list of names that crawl across the screen but we have it on the fastest speed possible but we have so much data in there that it's just super super slow and unfortunately it's not randomized so it starts with the same name every time i i think we're working on a script to maybe possibly randomize it although i don't think that's possible but we're working with some people at squarespace and some uh 10 named sarah who recently worked at squarespace for for for years and years and years who's going well above and beyond to try to, like, hack this for us. But for people, I got a drunken phone call from a listener who was mad at us on Monday night for not having the ticket.

ticker up there yet um and now here it is a Monday later and the ticker is up there all the eligible names should be in there it is slow it is imperfect but we are working on it can I ask a quick question is it possible that it's slowing down the entire website why maybe is the whole website janky right

I just have I thought it was my connectivity but I was trying to check a couple things over the weekend and when I put like right now I put tbtl.net into my computer and it is taking forever to load now it could just be my browsers it could just be my my phone i don't want to like send you listen it's it's baseball o'clock somewhere for andy's yeah i mean people let us know it's loading

fine for me right now but it's very possible it could be but i mean we i mean this ticker for squarespace when they designed something like this they were like hey maybe you have an upcoming event and you just wanted to scroll across the bottom of the screen come join us 4000th episode this is the date and that's that like that's all this thing was built for we are stress testing this we should get a check from squarespace for stress testing this in a new way we are we are luke utilizing this feature not using it the way it was intended and so we might have to figure out some things here but yeah do let me know if you're having connectivity or not connectivity but loading issues it's see everything but the ticker seems fine to me right now but yeah keep an eye on these things i saw them at sasquatch a few years ago everything but the ticker everything but the ticker yeah kind of twee but i like him you know

uh what we may end up getting down to is just you can call a voicemail line and hear me reading every listener's name it's a it's a 12-hour recording of me just reciting names as my

friend luke would say don't threaten me with a good time here i go once again with the email

every week i hope that it's from a female oh man it's not from a female all right i feel like we've

already had a very very compelling female today so i don't know if you have anything else you want to throw on great if not we can just we can wrap it up i know you've got baseball to see yep and hot dog and sausages to eat and i want to be a little careful today i don't know if i'm going

to go back to the sausage well but all right here here's a here's 20 second here's a 20 second

question for you luke with your connections at cbs do you think you could get on a future season of survivor i think you would be really good at it honestly very good at talking to people very good at figuring out schemes uh i think you're made for the show luke hour out what do

you think i don't think my very very very minor role at cbs would would um would help me in the case i think maybe years ago when i was younger i either need to be older or younger here's what i think would hurt me i'm just a kind of non-interesting middle-aged white dude if i was if i was young and and and and strapping maybe if i was very old and and crafty maybe i'm somewhere i'm in just like this liminal sort of state of of being interesting to a show like survivor the closest that i ever and also i'm not a power watcher of the program so i don't really know all the strategies and lores and johnny fairplay and various characters people are just so hardcore into that show for years and years the closest and this is a classically this is classically the way that i view the world not unlike the bowling alley that i almost purchased once andrew by driving by it and thinking maybe i should buy that bowling alley by calling them and asking if it was for sale by talking to a very perplexed person who was probably at the same time spraying deodorant

into shoes and true is your bowling alley for sale no it's league night right uh uh that's uh

that's the whole budget including swimming well there's no swimming in my show um so this is like along those lines the closest i ever got to being on a reality show was when i thought about applying for the real world when it was in seattle because i figured what they hadn't had and this would have been like in like 96 97 something like that what they had not featured as of that point on the real world was a teen parent somebody who was on the real world but was also trying to sort of co-parent a kid that's actually an interesting angle and because it was in seattle that year i thought uh i thought well this could work because if it's in chicago then i'm just an absent parent then i've just moved somewhere and then no one's helping out with the kid but if it's in Seattle of course that would have also meant subjecting my infant daughter to some amount of MTV notoriety which like do you really want to put that on a kid when they have no vote in the matter etc her mom obviously would have reasonably had an opinion on this so I remember thinking at the time I bet I could get on the real world because I'm a Seattle guy I have some maybe minimal amount of I don't want to say hipness but I felt like I sort of had my finger

on the pulse of something at that time, which I no longer have. And there's this plot line with me. So I didn't do it, and I didn't get on the show. But the reason that I feel like I could have also is because it was only a year or two later that we auditioned for that Molson beer commercial. And the idea of that commercial was they wanted to get real groups of friends. They wanted to get real people to just go on this epic road trip. They were going to film all of it and basically turn it into a beer commercial. And we went into that audition exactly like we were auditioning for the real world. Like, I knew exactly what buttons to push and levers to pull to get these casting people and the directors of the commercial, who, by the way, Andrew, we're probably the age I am now. Like, I was like 20. Maybe younger. I was like 24. Well, weirdly, the guy that directed it, his name was Eric Saarinen. His dad was Aero Saarinen, who designed the TWA terminal at JFK and also the St. Louis Arch. And that's just a side note about that commercial. But we went in there, and I was like, we auditioned in Seattle we didn't have headshots we hand drew our headshots because I thought they'll think that's cute guess what Andrew they did then we went to Portland for the callback and on the way down to Portland we stopped off at a Dairy Queen to get food I of course pilfered like some kind of a like one of those cardboard signs showing all the Dairy Queen food you could get like I kind of stole it out of like a frame like in the bathroom of the Dairy Queen or something and then we all signed it and then we gave it to them when we walked in i mean just the absolute worst shenanigans of like look at me behavior which reads to those people as in like these are free spirits and it totally worked and it confirmed to me andrew that i could have been

on the real world if i would have wanted to do you remember this is way less interesting than that but i am just remembering now i talked about this on the show at the time although it feels like forever ago several residences ago for me i was living in um wallingford the wallingford neighborhood of seattle and somebody knocked on my door i'm trying to remember the order of events maybe i i don't know if i knew at this point that something was going on in seattle but like somebody knocked on my door it was like some young person or i think it was just one young person but i saw some other young people with them down at the end of the walkway on the sidewalk and they're It was like, hey, can we run through your backyard? We're part of this adventure. We're part of this race, and we need to get through people's backyards. And I was just like, I remember looking kind of perplexed and looking at them, and I think I just said, like, do it to it, my dude, or some version of that, and closed the door. And then I later, I think, found out that it wasn't the Amazing Race, right? But it was some sort of MTV production. I think it was the real world again. Oh, it was like this rebooted real world. I think they shot that in Seattle again. Yeah. I did audition for that one. And they had games involved. involved and so i had that brief brief brush with celebrity it might have been a real world road rules rural rural rural challenge in fact i there's no way i'd ever be able to find that episode again i'm trying to figure out if i even looked down when they said that if i looked down at the street and saw that they had some cameras or whatever nobody ever approached me with a form about using my face or whatever so i don't think that i was like i yeah i think they rented out

this loft on Capitol Hill that like used to be this advertising agency called Creature on 12th and we're doing the real world again in Seattle or something at that point. But the original

real world did not have games like this. No it didn't but

that's why maybe it was because then what they in addition to the real world then they started creating these like competition shows where people are like a bunch of hot young conventionally attractive people are like driving around in rvs and then doing these like you know weird competitions with each other and then of course also hooking up with each other and shit talking each other and doing all the behind the scenes drama that we love so much called like the gauntlet and real world road rules challenge are you finding it harder and harder to

say real world each time it comes up i find it increasingly difficult to say in this conversation

yes it's a lot of ours and like real world road rules yeah like it does not trip off the tongue what i find interesting i don't i don't know if those shows are still in production um but my guess would be that now they decided to zhuzh up the whatever the real world is by adding some of that stuff but what i thought was kind of interesting was that like those challengey kind of shows where it's competitive there are a few people on those shows that have been just doing those shows for the last 20 years like because i would occasionally be like walking through an airport or something and i'd see a promo and be like and that guy with the headband hadn't he been on there for like 20 years like not that long after the time when i was like maybe i can get on the real world there was a couple of these shows that were again like rome was called road rules that was like a road trip show that was the real world and then

Thank you.

And then they started getting more and more competitive. And there was a couple of people who I guess were just such hits, like maybe their characters were considered so intriguing or whatever, that like they just kept bringing them back into these increasingly complicated, weird shows. And then I remember seeing some of these and like Googling some of them, like how old is this person? And they would have like a couple of people on there, I swear were like pushing 40. And I was just like, that's weird. like I can't imagine trying to be on one of those shows even if I was 30 and you know and not that

they wouldn't try to have you know not to be ageist about it but once the same person over and over and over again that's just like their life goal to get on one of these shows or to cling to one of these shows I guess is that's the thing right I mean what is I mean this is the first I'm sort of hearing of this phenomenon but like uh not the phenomenon of reality tv I am aware of that as a concept but this idea that there are people who've like basically spent their entire life just like competing in some way to be on mtv shows well i also i had a whole theory i might have come up on

the show or i maybe was just talking about it with people off air but i had a whole theory that because mtv famously doesn't pay any money like even to its you know the the djs or the vjs that they hire or the whatever mtv was famously kind of parsimonious and my guess would be that the people that are being on these shows like the real world and road rules and stuff like that we're also probably making you know something that seems like a lot of money compared to a normal job you know maybe you're getting paid thirty thousand dollars to do this show but it also takes three months of your life and you have to be in an rv you can't go any you can't go to your regular job my theory was that some of these people kind of got trapped in this life of being on mtv shows because if they were entertaining enough then they get invited back so then they're gonna you know every six months they're on some other show and they're not really making enough to like retire or to like build a whole investment portfolio but they also are addicted to the attention they're kind of like trapped in this weird world of going on these slightly underpaying mtv shows but it's also stopping them from ever developing a normal like adult life and career and that would have been me andrew if i was cast on the real world seattle so i think i'm happy with how things turned out here on the first day of the rest of TBTL's life as an independent program. Yeah, what would I be doing? Do you think about that? I think you would probably be running a division at NPR.

I don't think I'd probably make it to the network level. Oh, you absolutely would. I think I like public radio. I think I like the local stuff. There was a time when it was kind of like... You'd be a program director then, and a really good one. Maybe, maybe. Anyway, well, enough about me. Let's leave it there. What do you say? Okay.

All right. Thanks for listening, everyone. We are going to be right back here tomorrow. I mean, we are financially, we have a fiduciary responsibility, Andrew, to be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for all of you. Again, from the very bottom of our hearts, for real, thank you so much to everyone who stepped up last week and who committed to keeping this thing going. It just feels really amazing to know that there's still that support out there, and we will not let you down. I mean, any more than we always let the listeners down every day. But we won't let you down in a worse way than normal We're going to talk about Jose Caballero so much next week Oh, I forgot to even We'll see, I don't want to jinx it I don't want anyone to get hurt tonight But the Home Run Derby creates the opportunity for me to make What I think is a truly original comedy observation for me Which is the idea that we now have these protective nets up all around the stadium So that people don't get hit by foul balls But for the Home Run Derby I mean, we regularly put small children at the cut of the grass and then have Juan Soto absolutely hammer the ball as hard as he can. I find it fascinating that the outfield tonight will be full of children, Andrew, as the greatest baseball hitters of our generation are wailing on the ball. And I'll be there heckling the children. As well you should. All right, thanks, everybody. We'll see you tomorrow. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

We're driving on McGrath Highway in Somerville, and I noticed a couple cars swinging, like moving to the right, and we seen something in the street. And he's like, Louie, what is that? I'm like, I don't know. What is it? So I ran across the highway to grab it. We brought it in the car. We had no idea what it was. It was wrapped up in a brown paper bag. First thing I said, this belongs to the Red Sox. This is for Fenway Park. Like, how do we have this? Like, nobody made this. This belongs to the park. I'm thinking that they hang it off the green monster. Power out.