Muse

About nine years ago, I managed to convince myself that I was nine years old. Every day I walk out into the street, I see things as a nine-year-old would see them. Does that make sense?

Yes and no. I mean, you're...

What are you sat on? A bed? That's not. It's a bouncy bounce. Bouncy bounce. Okay. What are those on your feet?

They're shoes.

They're not. They're your choo-chos.

I mean, how else do you live like a nine-year-old? I mean, you're drinking.

You're drinking alcohol. This isn't alcohol, this is wee-wee. Wee-wee. You can do this, really. Stand up. Okay. Okay, come on, shake it off.

That's it. I feel silly.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, come on,

you're nine years old. It would be nice to not care as much about what other people thought. It's the best. Well, I am Michelle, I miss best Michelle. Missy, wanna go jump on the bed, I'm the bouncy bounce. Get off there. Wait, what?

there not on daddy's bouncy bounce you know this the first part of being smart is knowing what to

do we're gonna we're gonna know we're gonna have systems in place that are easier to learn because when we can put that because we when we can learn our system and we can get good at our system then

our talent can take over can i throw something on you see if it feels good sure okay this is what i do. I would start with a joke. Joke. Vince Vaughn quote. Obviously. Swingers or crashers. Fred

Claus. Can I just stop you real quick and just say what a wonderful atmosphere you have here. A lot of energy, a lot of motion, a lot of fun, a lot of high-fiving, a lot of smiles. You're both

little troublemakers. You're both huge in Japan. You probably have a lot to talk about. Go. Keep

things light. Don't bring up your divorce. All right. Hello. Good morning and welcome everyone On to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Ziggle zag it. Let's get back at it. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. As Jay would say, he's got flow. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, which is just very still today. Like it doesn't even look like there's any movement in the water. It is just glass-like. And again, we are in the last bit of summertime here in the Pacific Northwest. Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. It's beautiful, and it's a Tuesday. And I got up this morning, and I was kind of looking through the foodstuffs that I happen to have here. And I saw that I had the makings for some tacos. And I got really excited because I was like, I got some taco shells left. I've got some of my Gardein fake ground beef. I was like, that's great. I'll reward myself after a long day of working over a hot microphone here with some tacos. And I realized it's actually Tuesday, and I'm doing a Taco Tuesday.

I might have tacos when I go home. I'm not quite sure yet.

I did not even realize it was Tuesday. That's how ingrained in me, I guess, the Taco Tuesday culture is. um here i am coming to you from kalama washington it's me and bubbles and some tacos two guys who

start at the bottom with a lot of hard work continue along the bottom and finally end up

at the bottom i'm glad to report that bubbles seems to be back to her old self if you are concerned listening to yesterday's show about her um sort of mental state uh she is back to just being all up in my business 247 and just sprinting up and down the hallway uh and just doing like, looks like Nadia Comeniche doing the pommel horse in the 19-whatever-that-was-70-something Olympics, jumping onto the bed and waking me up throughout the night. So everything is as it should be here on episode 4035 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

I don't have my real desk bell, but I've got a desk bell sound effect, and I intend to use it today, everyone. McDonald's has announced that they are going to stop. They're going to phase out the refillable drinks, the free refills on your... Boo! We've been trying to talk about the story for roughly 17 episodes, and we're going to get to it today. Dadgummit. Also, a guy out in New Hampshire... New Hampshire? ...has spent $1,700 on light bulbs. Sounds expensive. ...that he says will last him the rest of his life. He's done the math. He is obsessed with incandescent bulbs. And we will talk about that. Oh, and we'll talk to this guy. Longest running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. I don't usually try to coach him up right before the show, but there's something important I think he needs to know. Let me explain something to you, Walsh. This business requires a certain amount of finesse. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke. You ever unsubscribe?

from an email like you get some sort of a email from a merchant or a marketer of some sort and you're like yes yeah i did business monger what's that a monger a mom potentially a monger

i'm like a some kind of clothing monger fish monger you bought yourself some fish and they're

like oh you want to be on our um loyalty program great but we're going to need your email address Next thing you know, you're getting all kinds of emails from Monty the Monger or Freddie the Fishmonger. I don't know. What would be a good name for a monger, Luke? I want some alliteration here. Morty the Monger. Oh, I like Morty the Monger. So you're on Morty the Monger's list. And you're like, you know, I don't really need these. Usually you get like five of them. And you're like, wait a second. Why am I on Morty the Monger's list? I don't need emails from a fishmonger. So you go to unsubscribe. And then it says, okay, why do you want to unsubscribe for this? just like let us know and there's like hey i never signed up for this or the emails are inappropriate or whatever but the first option usually is i no longer want to receive these emails i'm looking at this right next i'm unsubscribing from something i'm unsubscribing from an email that i just received moments ago from my old tax preparer in los angeles california so i don't think i need these anymore but wouldn't the first you weren't going to the guy in la that i used right no i went to some guy who also as i sat there and tried to read the file tabs next to his desk also uh prepared the the the taxes for freddy krueger what's the name of the actor who played freddy krueger i'm blanking if freddy england no robert something england yes robert england because i'm in la and i'm like oh and i was just my taxes were such a mess i just sit at his desk forever or somebody's desk forever and i started trying to read the files on their desk and i saw that robert england was when i'm like that's gotta be the same robert england right like it's la he's probably not in some fancy tax preparer's office i think the reason that i was wondering

is because i think i'd misfiled that information because my guy jamie i forget his last name who i was going to in like glendale also had a bunch of headshots oh yeah yeah of of of sort of b b and c level celebrities and in fact mostly people i'd never seen before and he heard that i was well he knew because he was doing my taxes that i was a public radio producer and he was like i got to get your headshot and i was like i don't think you understand how public radio production works

we don't have headshot or wait maybe he did understand though because now here you are big time you know cbs producer or host all kinds of headshots um correspondent yeah so now he's like hey i got this head or he could have been hey i got this headshot when this kid was just a Instead, he had to settle for Robert Englund's brother, Freddie England. Exactly. Who was, I'm guessing, in some sort of a band. Anyway, I wasn't going anywhere with that. I'm just looking at it. And the first option is, I no longer want to receive these emails. Is that the reason you're unsubscribing? And I just sort of feel like, yeah, that's obvious. That's a given. If somebody clicks a button that says unsubscribe, why? Is it because you no longer want to receive them? I think that, like, you don't need to put that as an option. Obviously, the person does not want to receive these anymore, right?

Yeah. I find unsubscribing to emails that have been haunting me, it's one of the great joys in life. It's extremely kind of pleasurable and therapeutic. Because what I will let happen is I will, and it's always some, I'm getting a bunch from something called Blend Jet right now. Oh. I can promise, I assume that's some sort of appliance. I've never even looked at the email. And I have certainly not purchased a Blend Jet. somebody sold my email address to them and what i usually do is i'll let it go for about three weeks of every morning deleting i'm getting something there's something called philosophy right now which i for some reason assume is a skincare deal blend jet and philosophy have just been just been haunting my inbox every morning and i just delete delete delete and then one day i'm just like enough and then i go figure out how to unsubscribe and when it says you've been been unsubscribed she's like you've not got mail it is such a relief you know this blend jet thing

is kind of interesting and it's funny that you would land there i'm not getting emails from blended jet but i have been seeing them a lot in my um instagram feed and their advertisements you know that are being pushed to me and the reason i'm seeing a lot of them is and this is how they get you this is really smart marketing on instagram so it is some sort of a blender right like some sort of a food blender i'm sure you make probably um juices with it or or whatever smoothies uh i'm not really living that lifestyle um unless they have one for sausages uh and beef jerky oh i believe it but um but what i was going to say was the reason i'm getting a lot of them is because i did pay attention to one of the ads because it they didn't do this for any other reason other than to snare people like me i have no interest in juicing things but i do have an interest in tiny little replicas of

things and that's sort of a trend on instagram right like let me make a tiny tiny little scale size kitchen and cook a little fake egg in it or something along those lines have do you get these

in your feed no but i have a guy on tiktok that you really need to start following he has a tiny skillet yeah and he just makes and then he drinks like an airline bottle of crown royal and cooks a full breakfast in his tiny skillet sitting out like that on his back deck i love it

so much there's a bunch and i mean some of these are literally the size you know like um a skillet the size of half a penny or something like some of these scales get really really tiny and i watch those things and so i was scrolling and i saw somebody making a tiny little smoothie out of a tiny tiny little little kitchen appliance i'm like oh watch this this is cute and then i see oh this is an ad oh this is an ad for actually a juicer and now instagram's like hey i saw you're interested in this juicer i'm like no i'm interested in tiny things what i get really

mad about when i'm getting spammed with email that i may have agreed to sign up for because of it being 10 off but a lot of times i think it's just my info got sold or whatever is when they make you put your email back in and then go into like like they don't just have an unsubscribe button it's like i've got to like log into their system and then start changing my preferences of their email here's my preference leave me alone yeah exactly yes no i know exactly what you're talking and the worst part is it's often successful in that i then don't unsubscribe because i don't have a i don't know my account for philosophy or whatever it is like i don't have an account and so if you know they may like it's weird because the companies that actually have some sort of moral decency just make it so you can just hit a button that says unsubscribe and you're unsubscribed and then the shadier they are the more hoops you have to jump through and i guess you could say coincidentally or maybe ironically we'll ask alanis morissette for a ruling on this those the shadier the company the greater the chances that i will continue to receive emails from them over time because i because it's too hard to unsubscribe and it's just weird it's

like i you shouldn't be requesting my personal information in order to get you to stop using my personal information like there's a cognitive dissonance there and certainly i would say a trust

gap exactly um and also i'm getting i what here's the other thing i don't i'm sorry i don't really have time for or care about how did we do i don't care how yesterday i was at the bank and i had this um uh the the per it's it's well and andrew this could be become an evolving story on the show because um i go i have a one bank account at the same bank that tbtl has its bank account too beautiful to biz and one time i was there and because you know we are a small business and we have of course a budget that is thanks to the donors of the show and we're you know we use it to pay ourselves and to do various businessy things that when my account comes up my little humble like checking account i have at this particular bank they also see the too beautiful to biz because i'm like i guess i'm officially on the you know you and john and i are officially on the paperwork for that and this one person who i seem to get constantly this teller is always trying to um explain to me ways that we could be investing our too beautiful to biz uh account you know what i mean like money market things and various ways that we could be maybe achieving greater returns on our business and at some point i said well that's not really my account that's just for this company that i co-own with some people and she says okay what kind of company and i was like it's a podcast which i did not want to get into but i didn't have a good lie ready to go company you can say for now media company or something i know i shouldn't so then yesterday i go in to talk to uh just to ask some questions about a totally not too beautiful to biz related thing it was about me maybe doing a certain kind of home equity line of credit actually would you be interested to know that i may have i may have fallen into like a predatory lending situation andrew is that interesting content or is that boring or is it too much well the first really depends on how

how intermingled with tbtl.biz it is

i'm already sweating content for me to tell you we're broke i'm already sweating just hearing

hearing that the bankers are confused about which lines of credit they're working with over there

what are we in for here luke what am i in for um well i just you better hope genevieve gets that promotion no um so basically what happened was uh i got i don't know how long ago it was maybe a year ago or longer i got what's called a heloc and not compete with all the she locks i i bit all the helocs um i got a home equity line of credit because you know doing this project, this construction project is very expensive and I wanted, I needed more money to do it, but I wanted to try to, um, have that money, have access to some money, but at a somewhat reasonable, uh, interest rate. So a HELOC is, it's basically like a credit card, but your home is the, uh, is the, is the, um, collateral. And so they'll give it to you at a better rate than like what a credit card actually costs you. Like credit cards are like 20% right now. A HELOC might be 10%. So I get this, uh, HELOC, I call somebody recommends to me uh this particular company i call them this people this person had used this company they said they're great i called them they were very helpful they found me a heloc and uh it was with i didn't even realize the company i was talking to is not the lender they are a company that finds you the loan right uh and they're very professional they seem great again they came recommended and so from somebody in the real estate industry so i was like okay and then i start getting the first like whatever paperwork i get is from something called george's own credit union and that's when i should have been like hmm georgia georgia is in the state okay not george's

credit union because that's like a steve martin bit like bob's bank he's like nobody would ever give their money to bob's bank i'm like here's luke giving his house over george's credit he's

wearing a plaid ill-fitting blazer um and so uh it was like some credit union in georgia was who was extending me this heloc which is a little funky and uh and then immediately they sold the loan and uh i didn't i didn't even actually access any of the money in this account for a period of time for for months actually and when i went to do that i then learned that the loan had been sold to this company called symmetry and the problem with symmetry beyond that just being a lame name for your financial company is that they use a loan servicer called CENLAR, Central Whatever Loan Whatever. And this place, CENLAR is who I have to talk to if something is going on with the loan. And without getting too into the weeds, I went online. It's just because I hadn't, again, I hadn't borrowed any of it. Well, here's the first thing they do that's actually very shady. When you get this particular HELOC from this company, What they do is they put all of the money in your account, and then you have to remember to pay your entire loan off with the money they gave you.

Wow. So in other words, so you said you hadn't touched the money yet, but they're like, no, you will touch it, touch it, touch it, touch it. Exactly.

And what they did, and they got me with this, was if you don't immediately refund it to them, you now owe interest on this entire amount of money.

Oh, Jesus.

Even though you didn't ask to have the money, you just asked to have the ability to get the money, right? you wake up one day and there's a large sum of money in your checking account or whatever. And you go, wait a minute. And then again, if you're me and you're a procrastinator and you don't feel like calling sendlar, you stupidly leave it in your account for more than 30 days. And before sending it all back and in that time you've for one month, you've borrowed this amount of money and you owe them the interest payment. So I was annoyed about that, but whatever, you know lesson learned but i've never been able to get the um what my account says so when i go log into the system what my account tells me which is i don't have any i don't need to pay them any money i have since accessed some of the money but the account will say you don't owe us any payments right now your balance you know your payment owed is zero but then i'd get something in the mail that would say you owe eighty dollars and be like how are these two things why why are is not in alignment and i would call senlar and every single person i called would give me a different story about if i owed money if i didn't owe money i called them yesterday by the way andrew and the person was clearly in their vehicle they answered the phone well really what happened was i called i got all the way through the verification process with someone and then the line just cut out and i was back at the beginning of the phone tree then the next person said can i put you a brief hold and i heard the dinging of their car door oh my god and so this comp this comp i cannot i cannot give them a negative enough yelp review please i beg of you before anyone out there gets any kind of loan he lock she lock you name it ask the person ask the company who services your loan and if it is this senlar thing run for the hills i didn't have any say in this my loan got sold as happens a lot i yesterday finally oh by the way senlar turned the heloc off because they said i was behind in my payments even though i had paid it every time what they told me online i needed to pay and in turning my loan off and listing me as a late payment they they they

reduced my credit score by 150

points. Jesus Christ, you're

in this. I'm in this, Andrew. Yesterday, I googled reviews Senlar. How many stars do you think they have? That'd be a big one star.

I was going to give it 1.5 because sometimes it's hard to get down to just a one. The internet is

full of people reviewing this loan servicer with exactly my story they lose they lose your paperwork nobody there knows what's going on they tell you one thing it's something else i'm lucky that they haven't i haven't fallen into the into the void with them that the people allege they have where they have basically like um said people were behind in their payments when they weren't and then use it as a way to try to repossess someone's home like it's really bad stuff christ man yeah and i wish to god i wouldn't We shouldn't have put all of our business money into this HELOC, Andrew. Now I regret that.

Let me ask you an important question. Yes. And I think I know the answer to this. Did all of this, all of this was already in motion when I was telling you my story about freaking out because I thought some rental car company was taking $90 from me. Yes, it was in motion. You're just like, this idiot over here is worried about $90. No, no, I'm worried about a helicopter coming and taking my house away.

in the middle of the night because i will say that is kind of bitching how they repo the house like i don't want it to happen but i will sit around to watch that's why it's not zero stars

i mean people are like well the the black copters were kind of cool i have to give it to him on that kind of neat yeah yeah um wow that that is funny because like everything you're saying like i'm i mean i can't even imagine how the listeners are feeling as they listen to that story i know that well they're less stressed about bubbles yeah that is true like that is bubbles can't hide under a house that doesn't exist anymore hey are you are you do you maybe need to get somebody on your side you need um law tigers no those are motorcycles have you ever heard those commercials for law tigers it's the weirdest ads that i love i always think that there is especially i always figure that they really drive you bananas because number one you're you kind of dislike motorcycles and i think sort of by extension motorcycle culture and they probably are kind of like well i won't say that i won't say something that will get us in trouble who knows how good they are as a law firm But something called Law Tigers, advertised by Bob Stelton on 710 Motorcycle Law and everything that they're trying to, like, sort of project as being, like, manly lawyers for motorcycle men. It sort of feels like that is not something that you would appreciate. But anyway, whether it's Law Tigers or somebody else, I think you probably are at a point. Do you have somebody who you're working with looking out for you on this shit? Like, this is bad.

Seven on my side? Somebody? Yeah. Well, I mean, this all, I just found out the depths of this yesterday. And so what I did was, the first thing I thought was, I want to pay this off. I don't want to be associated with this company. I don't want them holding the loan. I just want to, you know, but it's an amount of money that I need to pay it down that what I really need to do is go get a different loan from, like, my bank or one of the banks I use and then just pay that one off and just be done with it. And then I'd rather owe my bank this amount of money than owe these shady characters in New Jersey where Senlar is based. although i guess technically they don't they're not actually the people who i owe the money to they're just the people that are standing in between me and the people i owe the money to yeah but um so i go in and of course i get the same teller who it turns out is actually the like manager of the entire bank and i just didn't know this because i've always encountered this person when they were just one of the tellers but then she says i said hey i wanted to talk to you about getting a heloc and she says okay and then she goes well why don't we step over to my desk and And then we walk over to her desk where she has the biggest desk in the bank.

Oh, wow.

Like, I'm in charge of the bank. And she was very nice. And this was the moment I realized, by the way, this company had shot my credit. She was like, well, let's talk about different products and things and, you know, how, like, maybe we could do it this way or this way. And she was, well, what's your credit? And I go, well, it's pretty good, actually. And then I look at it, and then it's like, what? And then she goes, well, what happened to it? And I'm scrolling down and it's late payment. Sendlar is the thing that's on my credit. She's like, you need to challenge that, which I'm doing today, by the way. And that is the help of law tigers.

Just to be clear, that is a complete falsehood. That's not even like, hey, we tricked you into making it seem like you're we didn't get a payment because we didn't alert you or whatever. Like you literally made the payments. That's just a straight up falsehood.

well what I think it is is there may have been a small amount of the payment that was late because I could never get a straight answer from them as to what I owed them so what I'm hoping is I will I'm going to dispute all of this and I'm hoping that they bring the same rigor to because they have 30 days to respond I was informed so like if they don't respond in 30 days it drops off of my credit i'm hoping that they bring the same rigor to responding to my dispute that they have brought to every element of this experience for me which is non-rigorous so i'm going to start with just disputing it and seeing what happens and hopefully that will be enough um but yeah it's basically like i mean i it is such a confusing tangle and mess and again what was both infuriating but also weirdly kind of satisfying was reading person after person after person online reporting the exact same situation like i can't get anyone to tell me what the actual payment is this month like it just seems so straightforward it should just be like you owe this amount of money uh you know like you pay it to you like it's it is so unbelievably convoluted and i think maybe intentionally yeah it's just the worst customer service experience i've literally ever had in my life in fact i was dealing with this during the vacation which is obviously how you want to spend your time off and like when it was one of the days my dad was here working there was all these worker guys here and i was just like wandering around on the phone for i'm not exaggerating of the better part of three and a half hours getting transferred around from person to person who had no idea what was going on getting totally different stories from different people i mean it's just super duper maddening but anyway all of that is to say my my new friend at the bank uh was like okay well Well, let's look at some other products for you Log into the app for the bank And I was like, okay So I have it on my phone, I go into the app And all of a sudden, there's a cursor on my phone That she's controlling from her desktop Whoa And she's going, okay, hit this thing And then the arrow goes down to it Now, it isn't one of those, you know how you use Sometimes if you're dealing with an IT situation You can let them kind of screen share with you I had no idea I was even screen sharing Now, this person, you know i don't think that they had any nefarious intentions but like i was just all of a sudden she was on my phone point i mean she was only in the app probably part of why this didn't i didn't have to go through so many hoops was because if she wasn't really in my phone phone she was using

the app and that app is just giving you an access to information that they already have they already probably have more information about you than you have on yourself exactly um and so all of a sudden

i was like i felt weirdly personal because sure yeah i had not said yeah sure here jump into my phone she was just like okay log into the app and then all of a sudden she's just like moving things around all and the reason i bring this up andrew is because while we were talking i get a i get an email from the bank how was your recent co-browse screen sharing experience while you're still screen sharing no while you and i were talking about emails and when i said i don't want to tell you how you did uh-huh yeah that was because i had received an email from the bank asking me how my co-brows experience he's the longest running co-brows of the show well it sounds like it kind it went well it was fine and i like this person and i am definitely going to i'm considering uh you know um if i again if i could ever get my life back together my personal identity and my credit score etc i think i'm going to just actually consolidate my banking stuff uh with this particular bank um just because i like this person and and she was like you know a couple things she goes we are the ones who service all of the loans and she goes and it's actually at this branch if your loan is here you can call us and we'll i'm like oh my god why did i not just do this in the first place why did i go with this other thing that i went with but

why'd you go with lone tigers mistakes for me lone tigers for men

Thank you, baby. Hey, let's thank some Daily Donors. These are the wonderful folks keeping TBTL in business. Sorry if I sounded a little distracted there. I had the binoculars out, Andrew. There's a tugboat that's doing something with a buoy in the river. Ooh, that sounds fun. It's really fun. I'm like a small child with a book about tugboats. You know, like kids will often have that kind of period of their obsession. It didn't happen to me until 47, but I'm really into tugboats right now. I'll look them up on the Ship Finder app. I'm really into these working boats. Also, I think if I had to, I could fake my way through a tugboat-related conversation.

Just because of watching Patriot?

Yes, well, that was what I was referencing. What is it? It's Lakeman's dad, right? has to pretend that his dad was a tugboat captain because he's talking to Kerwin, whatever his name is.

First of all, I blank on everybody's names in that show, so that's not super helpful right there. But yeah, there is some tugboat talk, but if I recall, it's pretty straightforward. So the guy goes back aft, and the captain says,

No, you idiot.

The forward quarterbilt. God, I love that one. Me too. Yeah. Because it's so true. Well, you're damn right it is. I mean, picture this guy at the Morris lap halfway to the court nozzle. Picture that. Hilarious? Yes.

Anyway. That's me, Andrew. That's you.

That's me right now staring at a tugboat, by the way. You're getting closer and closer. I'm going to try to do this from memory. Kurtwood Smith

and Terry Quinn Terry Quinn you're very right I always think of him as John Locke from Lost even though I never really watched all of Lost I heard it had a good ending I'm building up to it

it involved tugboats let's thank Eric Jagger Petaluma, California I'm looking at some of Eric's finest work as we speak Andrew

practically a colleague of ours at this point of course and co-owner of the business

the uh wait hold on did we read the five the fine print when we hired eric to help us with the coins he um he really senlard us andrew he now owns the company did i tell you what happened

to my coins that i had five coins shipped to me by one john sklaroff at uh tbtl hq midwestern division and um they the by the time the envelope was sent back because there was a small typo in my address but it looks like it had gone to hell and back and the the envelope was beat up like crazy and there was a little slit in it and there were no coins just certificates that's wild yeah

somebody once told me the world was gonna steal andrew's coin perfect yeah no i need one of yours

i don't know if you have already if all of yours are accounted for but this is no joke because these were like kind of a special mine at the casino these were a special rollout so we didn't want to make too many there is not like this is not a lunchbox situation there are no extra coins around and i'm out here coinless in seattle luke i have one for you andrew or even two i'm happy

to share one will do it but i also really want to be a fly on the wall with whoever stole your coin i want to make a movie about the trip of this envelope yes because somebody once told me heard the RIP Steve Harwell um I I heard uh actually don't he was an Oakland A fan don't rest in peace or power kind of a bad dude yeah I mean he had issues what can you say um somebody was holding onto this envelope and feeling the heft of it in the coin and thought oh my god there are gold coins in here and then it sounds like slit the envelope and took them out I'm not

convinced of that okay here's the deal i'm gonna sorry sorry eric or or you're welcome eric i'm not sure um but we're gonna pause here for one second and say there were several mistakes that were made and they were potentially all my mistake one of them definitely is so the um address that this envelope was sent to me um had a typo in it it is unclear whether or not i gave john my address with a typo or if it was inputted with a typo i am 100 but you live at one two three four proxium lane yes it's a 1313 mockingbird lane um anyway so i am a hundred percent willing to take the l on that i could totally see myself like you know it was just like one letter off like you know like kind of i just swapped a couple of letters or something so let's assume that i gave john the wrong address so then it was sent to me but again everything was right except for like one number was replaced with another number often the u.s postal service can sort of like kind of figure that out my dad sent something to to Genevieve and her roommates from Ohio to Massachusetts one time this is forever ago when we were first dating he had the state wrong he had the zip code wrong and I believe there was even a mistake like one digit mistake in the in the street address but it still found its way there like he had it going to Maine instead of Massachusetts or whatever but it still found its way there this had one little mistake in the street address and apparently then it went to return to sender now here was my second mistake and this one was definitely on me for a while there when i put our contact information on our website i had a one digit mistake in the zip code of our po box so it's not even a one digit mistake in the po box it's just the zip code this is a zip code for a post office like you would think that they'd be able to figure that one out i mean again it was my mistake john used the address that i had put on the website as a return address for these coins so after this envelope didn't make it to my house somebody was like this is the wrong address then they go to return to sender then they're like this is the wrong zip code for the return to sender this thing might have been bouncing around forever the envelope looks beaten up to hell so i think that the five coins these things are kind of heavy i'm guessing that in whatever happened to this thing they eventually just sort of like banged around until they they kind of slid out the side i could maybe somebody had malice but i could also look like i feel like that tear you can analyze it's gone now i don't want to go you know sarah whacked on it but i

feel like we can do a little forensic investigation gone i think i tossed the whole thing um like i tossed the envelope because i got a few more bounce backs from from people just a few uh where we had some address changes and stuff and these are all fine like they came back to me the envelopes look a little bit worn but for the most part you know they're gonna i'm gonna re-send these out to some listeners but it was just the one that was sent to me that uh just looked like absolute hell

i just really wanted to imagine a universe in which somebody tries to take these tbtl coins to some sort of like goal cash for gold yeah person yeah like how how long did it take the cash for gold person they have to put the that that what do they call that jeweler's kind of little uh you know the little magnifying glass whatever that is yeah yeah like did they even get

that out they did like did they even just like just see right did they bite it like did they

just look at it did they just see our mugs in a in a rowboat and go yeah no like how far did it

if it was in fact stolen well you have to but i mean again though there is a rarity thing i mean people a pawnbroker might look at that and say well i've never seen anything like this before

a million dollars a piece uh-huh i mean someday you never know andrew life is funny that way like this feels very ephemeral what we're doing but this could become like imagine if you had like a book that shakespeare wrote one of his plays in right i could be worth a lot of money that could be tbtl could someday be reflected upon as the shakespeare of our time and it doesn't have to

be a good thing either i'd like to just remind you that as my business partner it could be a terrible thing i could i could die in ignominity is that a word you know i could do something so terrible that it overshadows the rest of my life but also makes things like these rare tbtl coins like a john wayne gacy clown painting how do i have two people i was just discussing this this weekend i know two people personally who each have john wayne gacy paintings how do i have two

people in my life who have paintings that seems like two more than you should have friends with one of them buddy and you used to work for the other okay steve share and katie beck no i and

i think that this is public information if not my apology well bean bean baxter mentions oh that would check out so he has one and i believe our my original boss in public radio and eventually a guy who maybe wasn't your boss but was an executive at npr eric both of those stories Absolutely check out Absolutely check out

So you also have two people in your life Well I formerly had two people

In my life I'm reporting them to Senlar right now

Abby Vanderveer Is in Amsterdam The Netherlands Nice Exciting Thanks Abby

Do you have to say the there

No probably not probably Netherlands But it's confusing because it's also Holland right It, yeah, I don't know how that works Is Holland, Holland You know, I say the Netherlands Because think about it, what are these? These are the lands that are nether These are the, I'm guessing that that's Dutch For, for like, you know I don't know what, I don't know what netherlands is But I feel like I say the Netherlands

So a very quick Google says that Holland is part of the Netherlands So they're not quite interchangeable OK, but that's a really quick Google and I don't know what I'm talking about here, but that that would sort of make sense. I would like to just give us a like kind of a communal congratulations for lower countries, by the way, for stopping saying the Ukraine. I never thought I'd ever be able to say Ukraine without saying the Ukraine because it was hammered into my into my brain so much. But here we are. It's now Ukraine. Nobody's making that mistake anymore.

I never thought I would be able to pronounce Kiev correctly. Oh, yeah. because remember that boy what a different life that was when uh when because i think because of the dish we all grew up hearing about something called chicken kiev yeah did you ever hear about chicken kiev yeah now that you say that yeah so my only my only reference point for the for the city of kiev was something called chicken kiev so when i would see kiev i would say kiev and i I remember their, you know, like I think they may have even done like either the New York Times wrote a piece about it or the NPR did an investigation when the war started because we were all referencing Kiev much more. And that was news to me that you pronounce it Kiev.

Yeah, I know. I think some weren't even some internal NPR memos leaked about. that yes people like i'm debating how to say it yes you know who was never confused as to how to pronounce world locations kayla farzali who's in tampa florida nice home of a resurgent baker

mayfield i i know i was telling you before the show i'm kind of excited about that um also i believe it's pronounced tampa or wait maybe it's pronounced not anymore bonka now do it for bonka i am excited to hear how this turns out it's now bonka florida yeah yes exactly uh thank

you so much kayla also thanks to nicole thompson who's in carmel indiana i'm loving this distribution yeah you're right it is we got california we've got the lower lands aka netherlands that's what it stands for by the way i looked it up uh we've got um what do we say bompa bonka bonka bonka We've got Carmel, Indiana. And then Jill Brown is checking in from Denver, Pennsylvania. Oh, sans Blucifer. I love that. That's a real, that was a play-action fake. That froze the linebackers, Andrew.

If you want to live in Denver, but you're scared of giant blue horses, sounds like Denver, Pennsylvania is the place for you.

The thing is, you've got to go Denver, Colorado enough that the defense respects it. And then when you go to Denver, Pennsylvania, you set them up all game for Denver, Pennsylvania. Right. Thanks, Jill. Thanks to Mary Collins, who's in Charlotte, North Carolina. Beautiful. Yeah. What a great distribution, folks. You know what I saw on our Instagram feed, I think, which is TBTL employee numero uno running that? John Sklaroff? Yes.

Yeah, you can tell because there's content there.

It's good content, too.

I think we're a pretty good follow on Instagram. I know we really I mean and again we I mean it's all credit to John like I had set that up years ago I think and there was like two posts and one of them was my cat and then John you know during the TV telethon is like hey any chance I could get my hands on that Instagram account and

I'll be sad to see Andrew go but I'd love to get my hands on that handle and now suddenly we're

actually worth following on Instagram so thank you John and also check us out is it I think it's Is it too beautiful to live, I believe, on Instagram.

But somebody put together or inspired John or actually put together some kind of a representation of all the places on planet Earth. The TBTL coins have gone. Yes. And when I tell you, Andrew, that I felt less shame yesterday looking at that, I felt very proud of our show and appreciative of the listeners and like, holy smokes. Now, you know, the vast majority of these coins are here in the good old US of A, But they it looks like they're, you know, certainly we know we've got folks listening in Australia and New Zealand and Europe and maybe even the continent of Africa. Like it was it made me feel very chuffed about this operation.

Yeah, I think that I think that John put that together. Well, he had to have because he's the one who has the information about where these coins were.

Oh, sure. Yeah. Well, he and Sendlar.

Sendlar. I can't wait for John to hear today's show.

do you know that i once did actually deposit a significant amount of cash into the too beautiful that's right i didn't the teller at the bank made the mistake and it was because they looked at the two accounts and one is just this little piddly savings account i have just for moving some money around and the other is our business account but the amount the cash i was handing her was significant enough that she assumed this is going towards the thing where there's actually a budget an account happening not this other thing and then i had to email john and say hey by the way you're going to see me removing some money from our account this is why he was like yeah okay try to be careful on that god we're so screwed well why was i tasked with setting up the business bank account that was our first mistake because of

course i'm just going to go with the bank where i already bank at no i'm you know what i mean like

I just was like, what's the least amount of work for me? I'm already going to this place. Why don't we throw a TBTB? By the way, I realized, too, that our business has some cool, has a cool, like, what would you call that?

Not abbreviation, but, like, TBTB. Yeah, TBTB. And by the way, for what it's worth, I heard a long pause there. That was not me kidding on the square. I don't actually have anxiety about that. I do trust you. Yeah, I wasn't offended by that. Yeah, okay.

I was me sipping my coffee and watching a tugboat.

Sometimes we joke, but we joke as a way of getting to the truth. That was me just busting your chops.

No, the irony is, and I think I've said this before, the TBTL accounts are in zero danger for me because I've already lost the debit and credit card.

And the login information.

Neither one was ever activated, and I don't know where they are.

Just treat the bank account like you treat your MLB subscription. Yes. don't know how to log in and we're fine precisely no i mean i wouldn't know enough i wouldn't know enough to embezzle from the company because i don't know how to get to any of the stuff so thank you to our donors andrew for supporting tbtl with their hard earned money we really do appreciate you hello and welcome to top story all right we're finally getting to this andrew mcdonald's to scrap self-serve soda fountains over theft and hygiene concerns according to a report this was ariel zilber writing in the new york post uh they are talking about mcdonald's in springfield illinois a franchise uh where the owner of that mcdonald's kim derringer told the state journal register in springfield um that uh that that well actually this person kim derringer says people are very excited about free refills and he's saying that he doesn't think it's going to go away but then you've also got other illinois-based franchise owners who have started taking steps towards doing away with the soda fountains by having crew members fill customers orders by taking the meal and soft drink directly to their dining table brad davis the franchise owner of a different mcdonald's in springfield says his restaurant has stopped giving customers empty cups since the start of the year they told the newspaper that corporate headquarters picked his franchise as a test case he said it was an adjustment for customers and staff but we didn't get too many complaints i find that hard to believe because i mean i i'm not a frequent mcdonald's customer but i will tell you and in fact i don't know if i would actually go in the actual mcdonald's that much which is also part of what they're saying i was going to say yeah that's the thing Is the issue here. They're saying that it's it's it's more and more rare for people to go and sit in a McDonald's and enjoy their meal. You're either going through the drive through or you're using the app and you're just going and picking up your food and leaving. It turns out that fewer and fewer people are like sitting and enjoying an afternoon, whiling away an afternoon, sitting in a McDonald's.

Yeah. I mean, if we want to talk about that aspect, there's a lot of aspects of this to talk about. if you want to talk about that aspect of it, though, it's hard not to think that it wasn't that long ago. I believe it was like kind of the early 2010s that McDonald's was pushing in the total opposite direction by making their spaces nicer and like trying to compete with instead of like cafe. Exactly. They were trying to they were trying to compete with more like fast casual as that stuff with your Panera breads or whatever. So McDonald's was investing in making their their dining rooms like kind of nicer and like you say more cafe-ish and um less kind of cold or whatever and now here we are you know many like most of a decade and one pandemic later and they're like let's get rid of this shit people are not sticking around these places

it's it feels though like they're they're these uh franchisees are giving kind of a couple of different stories to this local paper in illinois one thing they're saying is so they talked to this guy named Mike Michael Petro who with his wife owns like 14 McDonald's in central Illinois and he says that he is gonna have start renovating his McDonald's locations to have the plumbing and electric behind the counter for the soda machine they're they're trying to say that people like having their food this is more that like sort of fast casual thing that people like having their burger fries and soda brought out to them by the staff that it feels kind of fancy but he's also saying that they stopped doing these free refills they're trying to minimize human contact during COVID-19 which doesn't really make sense right because if you're having the staffer bring someone's burger fries and drink to them isn't that more human contact yeah like isn't a self-serve soda machine a very low level of human contact I mean

I guess. But then if they're like, well, we have a whole bunch of people, strangers, let's say, you know, 300 people a day touching something that essentially food comes out of. I could see that it can people out. But I actually think that like we've we I don't think that's how people are catching covid, though. You know what I mean? It's like the clean pen, dirty pen thing. It's like, you know, I guess if you want to maintain that system, maintain it. Why not? I'll take a clean pen. No harm in that. But I don't really think that that is preventing the spread of covid.

They're also claiming that people walk into the McDonald's with any old cup and just fill it up with soda and walk out. They are citing some amount of theft.

I feel like I maybe did read a different version of this because I didn't read anything about them admitting that this was a way of tamping down on loss. Because all the quotes I read were people spinning it, like these various franchisees saying, no, we still are going to give free refills. You just have to ask for one now, and that's fine. And it's like, yeah, but there's still a psychological. barrier there as opposed to the kids just running up and refilling their drinks 15 times in a meal

i just wonder though also if this will like somebody coming in and stealing five cents worth of soda and walking out if that's the downside or you know people putting their grimy mitts on these various buttons if that if that downside is greater than the downside of your staff having to like constantly be dealing with sodas as opposed to just handing someone an empty cup like what's the i wonder what the sort of like um efficiency loss there is if now you have people because that was i mean again that was part of probably the theory behind it in the first place was we want our people flipping burgers and putting salt on fries and whatever making cones we don't want them constantly like putting ice in a thing and putting a soda and handing it to them and then doing a refill again also i just remember feeling like we 2004 was when mcdonald's started the um you know self-serve soda fountain by the way i just felt like we had entered an era of of prosperity in this country where we just had officially decided we're pretty much going to give you soda as much as you want as long as you are willing to deal with it and fill it up yourself

you can kind of just go after it get at it yeah and this is well okay so whatever the real reason of them doing this is and again i'm very real reason i think is that they they want to save money on soda yeah that's got to be it which still shocks me because soda is just so like relatively cheap compared to everything that else that is sold there and the markup on soda just generally speaking in our society has got to be one of the greatest markups of all time especially at like a ballpark or something right like it's it's sugar water and and co2 you know and right we charge you know seven dollars for a large one at the ballpark or whatever um so it seems like a weird place to sort of like be looking at profit loss or what have you i do sort of buy this idea that more and more people are just turning to apps and that's the way the industry is turning like hey i'm ordering my mcdonald's on an app and if you don't also have a soda machine back behind the counter and you have your staff leaving the food prep area to go out to the dining room to fill up i actually could see that if that's the case yeah that actually that's the point but the thing is nobody in the article i read raised what i think is the biggest issue here which is the lack of ability to order what you might call a graveyard right or a suicide or i grew up calling them suicides we probably don't do that anymore but like i do that at the ballpark we have a refill you're still currently doing a graveyard oh my goodness i can tell you that what i mean The best graveyard, I think, is going to be Dr. Pepper, orange. I think orange is critical to a graveyard. Like Orange Crush mixed with Dr. Pepper. Obviously, it's got to be the carbonated kind, not at McDonald's. I don't know if McDonald's went back to the non-carbonated orange or not. That was a huge disappointment to me. I hadn't been to McDonald's in years and years and years. I go through the drive-thru. I think it was maybe at some point during the pandemic. Everything was shut down except for drive-thrus. And I ordered a thing of chicken nuggets, chicken McNuggets, my apologies. and an orange and i was so ready for that sensation of the extra wide mcdonald's straw and then you you take a sip of it and that orange non-carbonated drink just washes over your tongue like i was so excited for that moment and i took a big pull on the straw and it was carbonated and it was like i had drinking a mouthful of fire i was not ready for the carbonation but yeah no i'm very into mixing my sodas don't put any seven up or sprite in there by the way it doesn't really add to the flavor at all but definitely mess around with like orange dr pepper root beer mess around with those a little bit if you can just go one third one third one third to start if you want and then you know mix to taste but yeah no i love that i was thinking the other day why doesn't

somebody come up with that flavor and sell it well have you by the way i saw somebody walking out of the safeway with a a six pack of starry oh yeah i guess that worked on one person yeah

Like, are we doing this? I saw that being sold. I think I had to order one the other day because it was the only, like, kind of clear, like, carbonated beverage they have. No Sprite, no 7-Up, just a Starry.

But, so then, have you used one of these machines? This tells you, by the way, like, the, I hope she doesn't, I don't think she'd be embarrassed about this, but, like, Becca is the cleanest eater that I've ever met, just is, and comes from a family of clean eaters. I don't know how they do it. Like her mother, Sudell, who is just an absolute gem I think has like literally been through a drive-thru maybe once in her life And there's no pretension there It is not like it's beneath her It literally doesn't occur to her Like she just is like, well, I just whipped up this quinoa and this edamame They are just people who by nature go in the right direction with food And I am a person who by nature goes in the wrong direction but I was telling What's that? I said quinoa. I was doing my best.

Smoked salmon and quinoa.

Alec Baldwin.

Here's my point. When I said, well, how about those machines that they got every kind of soda under the sun? She goes, I don't know what you're talking about. I was like, oh, right, because you haven't been in a fast food joint in the last 10 years. But have you seen one of these machines that's got every single possible flavor of soda? Oh, because when I was in Chicago, I was going ham on zero-calorie Powerade. Oh. Yeah, because the hotel, not my hotel, but the hotel across the street, it was so hot in Chicago that day. It was like 105 degrees, and the heat index was like 120 or something. And I went across the street. They had a Starbucks, and what I was really craving was one of those, a giant Starbucks cup of ice water. Oh, okay. I don't know why I fixated on that. But then the guy was like, yeah, I'm sorry, but it's a dollar if you want the biggest cup. And I was like, all right. And so I paid the dollar, and he goes, it's over there. And then where he sent me was one of those machines that has everything.

And it's in a Starbucks.

Well, it's like a Starbucks and a cafe, and it's in the lobby of the Hilton. It's a little – it's kind of complicated.

It's a shared space probably between several companies.

Sort of a shared space where they send people to that thing to get their water. And I was like, well, listen, bro, speaking of soda theft, I was like, well, I paid a dollar for this cup. I'm putting whatever I want in it. And it was so hot. There was a certain level of heat exhaustion for me where something like Gatorade or Powerade starts to sound really good to me. I love Gatorade. Probably from all the indoctrination when I was a child of this is what you drink when you're very, very hot. Yeah. The electrolyte replacement and the whatever. So they had some Powerade that was like fruit, zero calorie fruit punch Powerade. And I filled that cup up and I drank it And it was so good that when I got across the street back to my hotel and I realized I now only had half of the cup left, I turned around and went back into the different hotel and refilled my cup to the tippy top with Fruit Punch Zero Calorie Powerade. It was so good. Anyway, what do you do when you get to those machines? Because it sounds like you've kind of, you know, you've been life hacking this buddy for a while. But, I mean, the world is really your oyster when it comes to mixing and matching with those machines.

I'm going to zig here when you think I'm going to zag and I'm not trying to be difficult. but um i ziggle zag it let's get back at it don't think those machines are good for making my kind of mixtures because they're using some sort of different technology luke here's here's the best here's the best way to start this i believe to maybe make people understand and it's important that people understand so listen up um let's say that you are at a place that has coke diet coke and cherry coke right but it's not one of these fancy machines where you're mixing and matching and it's a touchscreen or whatever it's just like three options on the on the kind of classic good old-fashioned tumgis exactly right and you get yourself a cherry coke which by the way i do love me a cherry coke sometimes i'll buy that in a bottle oh so good um but if you go to one of those machines where it's kind of like you know it's very futuristic and it's got a touchscreen and you get you know you can get orange mellow yellow diet like what the fuck even is that excuse my language here's like okay but the thing is it's doing some sort of alchemy back there that is somehow not the equivalent and i'm sure those old-fashioned machines are also just putting a little bit of sugar syrup into the stream with the with the bubbly water or whatever i don't know what the difference is but i'm telling you a cherry coke from one of the future machines if you'll go with me on that is not the same as a cherry coke from like an old-fashioned machine where it's got the actual like sort of like let's say original recipe in there so i don't trust those machines to make me a graveyard because it's already the alchemy is already off on those so i i honestly

just choose one and go with it yeah huh i i'll tell you though man i my my ice machine broke you know that like stupid pebble ice machine that i bought what do you mean stupid i thought you loved it i did until it broke now it's stupid okay now it's stupid and it's like so humongous I'm sure like the shipping cost oh to send it back would have been the cost of you know I don't even know if they would take it back I am trying to score one I was supposed to be in New York this week but then they couldn't get a crew for the shoot so now I'm going later in October and the rumor is there is because we did a whole story I didn't do it but CBS Sunday morning did an entire story about ice and as part of it one of the producers had two of those ice machines shipped to them and they're just sitting in her office oh okay and I was like can I have one she's like yeah if you want to get it out of my office it's like in the box i'm like yes because i will go to this specific taco time andrew that's like i don't know 15 20 minute drive for me because they have that good ice i love that good sometimes called sonic ice sometimes called hospital ice i still don't understand

why we haven't just it's like why have we not converted over to that ice nationally i just

feel like it's superior yeah yeah i mean i i celebrate the diversity of ice out there i don't want to lock into one but you're right it should have a bigger market share certainly diversity

equity and ice that's what you that's what you're talking about when you talk about dei yeah i was paying attention during the classes this story of this kid i say kid he's 25 years old this person named kevin um i'm gonna say his name is pronounced smeed s-z-m-y-d how would you how would you pronounce it how would lenny samaski pronounce this i wonder if lenny samaski knows

what a big role he plays on this show real life childhood friend of mine um this person's last

name is spelled s-z-m-y-d s-z-m-y-d yeah smid i maybe i'm going smid but i don't know we're going to call him kevin okay this guy kevin he's 25 years old i believe it's kevin he is and he lives in new hampshire and he found out recently uh as did a lot of people that there was going to be effectively a ban on incandescent light bulbs um because the problem well not the problem with incandescence is just that it doesn't last as long as led and so it is much more energy efficient to buy an led bulb which is mostly what you'll find in you know the store now um and so i guess this is like uh the government wanted to try to get more people wanted to get everybody it's the department of energy i think wanted to get everyone onto led bulbs and so i does incandescent have that little it's got that little wire in it right i mean that's the kind like when we were a kid and how would you test to find out if your light bulb was bad or your outlet was bad when

you were a kid andrew you'd shake it you mean after it goes out and then you'd be like is this is my lamp broken or did the light bulb go you'd pull out and i still do it it's a very well i don't i only do it to the old light bulbs because now they don't do this anymore but like yeah it's very satisfying and almost like it's a um involuntary reaction for me now when a light bulb goes out i shake it to hear that tiny little ding ding we are probably the last generation of

people that will be doing that because now it's all led bulbs um but it turns out that this uh This guy, Kevin, was already kind of very interested in light bulbs. He was part of a Facebook group that was called Antique Incandescent Lamp-slash-Lightbulb Collectors. And so when he found out that they were going to be basically getting rid of incandescent bulbs, you weren't really going to be able to buy them anymore, he decided to start amassing them. And he went on Facebook and Craigslist and in all these various communities of people who love incandescent bulbs and the light that those kind of bulbs produce. And he spent $1,700 getting as many of them as he could. And he now says he has enough incandescent light bulbs to last him for 75 more years, which he's 25. He feels like that's probably the rest of his life. And he's very happy about this. Now, the crazy thing is, because a lot of people have figured out that you're not going to be able to get these bulbs anymore, his collection of incandescent bulbs are worth a lot of money. He got them for $1,700. They're worth much more than that. I don't have the exact number in front of me. But he was considering selling them, but then he learned that he could be fined by the Department of Energy or by whomever it is up to $2.5 million for selling incandescent light bulbs. Because then he's not a consumer. he's a marketplace selling it it's like if you went it's like home depot wanted to sell incandescent bulbs when the government had said hey we're moving off of that and i guess this is even slightly controversial i mean very slightly but like basically uh you know some people are saying well there's a reason why we're getting rid of these because they're not energy efficient so if you're hoarding them and trafficking in them you're being kind of anti-environment i don't know it seems that seems like a pretty a pretty weak criticism of some guy who just wants to light his house with horse hair wasn't that the original thing that was in an incandescent bulb i think it was like it was a horse hair or something i thought it sounds like something that it sounds like something that has maybe come up on this show before anyway um i didn't know that there was a community of people that are this obsessed with the light that comes from and he he basically says that an led bulb has a bluish hue to it that most of us are not noticing but he notices it and He wants the warm sort of yellow, I guess, the warmth, he calls it, of an incandescent bulb.

I sort of, I mean, I sort of believe that. I mean, that is when those LED lights were new, the ones I was buying felt very cold to me as far as the light that they threw off. I feel like they've come a long way. Now, I'm not some, you know, I'm not an expert on lumens.

And I trust this fella more than I trust my own eyes. What about Lumen Field? Is that what it's called these days? It is now called that. I wonder how long that will last. What were all the different names? Can you name all the different names of the Seahawks stadium over the years? What did it start as? Was it always?

Was it CenturyLink?

It was CenturyLink when I got here in 2009. Was that the original name? I want to say that was the original name. And they were trying to call it the Clink. No, you know what? That's not right, Luke, because I know it changed to CenturyLink when I was here. I'll look it up later. Because I remember people being like, well, I guess we can call it the Clink. And that was a new thing. So I'm blanking on what it was before that. But I can look it up later. But anyway, I can sort of see that now there are options for light bulbs. I just bought light bulbs at the store. Quest, that's right. I just bought light bulbs the other day at the store because a couple have been burning out in my office. And I realized we didn't have any. It's kind of weird. It's like light bulbs in my life just are always there. It seems like very rare to me that I have to go and like actually buy one. You know what I mean? You just always have some storage place where there's some light bulb and maybe it was used once for something and then it was pulled out or whatever. Like, I don't know. But I was like, oh, we're legitimately out of replaceable light bulbs. So I went to buy some at the store and, you know, they they're marked pretty clearly now. Like these certain ones have a warmer light. These have a cooler light. Like it's pretty clearly marked on the boxes. and I'm looking now these ones that I bought they look pretty warm to me they're okay I will say light bulbs have gotten very confusing I was telling you this off the air the other day I just can't I don't know what's going on with them anymore I sort of feel like when I was growing up when they were incandescent all you needed to know was the wattage right I remember like oh 60 watt bulb is somewhat low or 100 watt bulb was standard that's what I put in my desk lamp that I would do my homework under and then sometimes melt crayons you ever do that you ever melt crayons on your light bulb on your desk lamp as a kid i would do anything to avoid homework i'd be sitting there doing my homework that seemed like a thing that would get a young

andrew walsh in trouble didn't your parents smell that and what the heck are you doing i don't think

it created that much smell it created smell in the area i do remember having light bulbs that then had like crayon marks all over them but um but it was my own little desk lamp with a little like um what do you call this this uh gooseneck thing that i have my microphone on now i always had like goose neck gooseneck lamps or whatever but all that is to say i don't know what the numbers mean anymore used to be 60 watt 100 watt whatever now i go in and it's like talking about lumens and cool and and it's just going to be one of the spiral light bulbs or just going to be why do i hate those spiral ones so much they're so weird like yeah i don't know i just i'm too old

for light bulbs now yeah it is uh and then i always you know me because i'm such a sort of maximalist i'm like well if this is if one is 50 watts and one is 100 then 100 is better right right like i don't ever even consider like what am i like am i doing oral surgery do i need a

thousand watts i mean that's the thing though i mean you and i while we don't know shit about light bulbs i think you and i are both pretty specific about lighting like um who's the comedian glass um oh todd glass glass is obsessed with light he talks about it a lot he'll have a party he'll like crack the refrigerator door a little bit there's a great modern comedian which

is this my friend scott moran made this really great series of comedy docs which i hope he starts doing again i think he is going to and yeah one of them is the comedian todd glass getting

ready for a party i haven't listened to his podcast in a while i assume that it's still um he's still making it i recommend it um but anyway uh you know i when i come into a place whether it's a public establishment like a bar but like the bar is way too lit like I'm turned off immediately I've left places that have bad lighting and then in my own home like the only people that doesn't want to be at a bar that's lit yeah well in all the different meanings of that word I certainly don't is there an unlit bar what is the most unlit place in Seattle that's where you can find me but uh you know like at the end of the day when I'm just relaxing here I don't want like i remove the wiring from this uh overhead uh light fixture in my office like it simply does not work anymore because it was the only way to like turn it off from the light switch was to disconnect it because like i'm very particular about the the lighting in any situation i think

you are too uh i don't yeah i don't like it to be you know shockingly fluorescent that's why the one nice thing about this uh construction project that's ruining my life and my finances is when you start from scratch, everything's on a dimmer because my dad and I are wiring everything. So that's kind of cool. I have a lot of flexibility on the lights.

This is really interesting from a broadcast and audio perspective. Is the technology such that it is not an issue for noise? It used to be if you didn't have special casings or whatever on any kind of a dimmer switch, that's where you can really get interference.

on mic cables and stuff huh well it doesn't seem to be happening yet but you know what I just noticed Andrew and this is gonna bother me now so I have recessed lighting where I'm where I'm standing right now is in the little kind of studio area of this of this kind of adu and it has you know can lights right so like recessed lighting and what I realized is when I was painting the ceiling the light bulb must have been in the recessed light just so that I I painted, there's a smudge of white paint on the light bulb and it's going to really bother me now. Now that we're talking about light bulbs, like I've never noticed it before it doesn't have any impact but it looks kind of grotty And this is on the light bulb itself

so if you change the light bulb years from now, it will go away with the light bulb it's not some sort of glass that is protecting the light bulb You can get that off, actually get some goof off I'll bet you that'll come off in a second

Are you hearing a crazy sound from our little device here? No. Do we need to stop

down? What's happening? What are you hearing? Oh, no. You know what it

was? It's my little recorder. My MixPre is telling me that I just ran out of space on the SD card. Oh, okay. I've never done that before because the SD card has like 75 hours on it. Yeah. But I just did. Yesterday was a long show. Yeah, it was for everyone. But I didn't... It does this little bo-doop, bo-doop in your ear, I guess, just to tell you, hey, bro, you're not recording anymore. So I guess we better not say anything Brilliant Anything brilliant for the next 5-10 minutes Because it will not be recorded on my end Got it, nailed it

Here I go once again with the email Every week I hope that it's from a female No man It's not from a female

I'll write all the emails V-mails

I've got a voicemail here for ya uh this sentiment or this fact i think i saw come up in an email or something as well i don't know if it's from the same listener or if several people are flagging this for us i know that you like to stand during the show are you standing there are you sitting you might want to sit down are you can you you might want to sit down for this in my chair i'll give you um that option

should i be sitting um with the back of the chair you know with my back to the back of the chair or should I turn the chair around like I'm a tough-talking juvenile counselor who wants the kids to know that this is when we get real?

Are you wearing a baseball cap to the side? I am not. Then just sit in it normally and soak this up.

Hey, guys. This is listener Sarah in Ballard. I really debated sending this voicemail or saying anything at all because it's pretty nitpicky and meaningless, and we will probably be like, how's your podcast studio and most importantly um if you play this my boyfriend will give me endless shit for it because um so i'm hearing a lot of downside i just also had this conversation

you know what you're right we should just probably not play it all right um good luck to all

yeah no okay we'll go back to it i just also had this conversation with him uh the tree that luke has named his studio after is the pacific madrone um it's not madrona uh really yeah i just i work at the arboretum and it's really hard for me to like let that go uh a lot of people call it a madrona um but like you know whatever people know what you're talking about when you say madrona and probably enough people call madrones madronas that one day they'll just change the name of the tree and i'll be wrong and you'll all be right um so much emotion but since i'm going to be hearing luke say madrona every single day i just needed to know that i said something so pacific madrone a really great tree he's super lucky to have uh them on his property because they're beautiful and if you try and actually cultivate them and grow them they will say screw you and die so they kind of just have to grow where they want anyways i'm gonna shut up now pacific madrone It was a great tree Love the show Power out

How's your podcast studio, Sarah?

What a journey I love that voice

Okay, this is incredible, Andrew I was totally unaware Of how this is spelled Which is M-A-D-R-O-N-E Which looks exactly as Sarah says Madrone I have grown mostly up in the Pacific Northwest I have heard this tree referenced thousands of times as i've stated i'm an admirer of it at no time have i ever been informed that it's madrone everyone i've i'm not disagreeing with sarah sarah is accurate and correct here i'm just saying i can't believe i got this far in life never hearing the correct pronunciation of of this tree.

I'd never heard of it before you mentioned it on the show the other day. So I don't have like a lot of, you know, I don't have a lot of input on this. I mean, it's also like, does it change anything for you?

It's, it's, it's a tough call because I think I've always liked saying Madrona, you know where part of this came from, by the way, I remember when I was young, there's a venture capital company in Seattle called a Madrona Capital. It was a Madrona Venture Group.

Now, do you think that was spelled the same way with an E in the end?

I'm looking it up right now. No, it's spelled M-A-D-R-O-N-A in the way that I thought the Madrone tree was also spelled. Guess what their logo is? A tree. Guess who one of the founders of Madrona Venture Group is? A tree. the late William Ruckelshaus who was an attorney and was uh I believe the assistant attorney general under like I don't know Nixon or something and then I believe later had a big I think he might have been the one of the original founders of the EPA like I remember William Ruckelshaus coming on weekday in Seattle on KUOW and it being kind of a big deal because he was somebody who knew a lot he was associated with the EPA at some point and so if William this is sounds like I'm trying to disagree with Sarah but what is William Ruckelshaus one time I think director of the EPA or very

important you are right he was the first administrator of the EPA he was the US assistant attorney general for the civil division um so yeah you got all that right but i'm not seeing him founding this thing i need to keep scrolling on this um i but yeah how is it that

this person this knower of the environment of the protecting of the environment you're saying how is he naming his company madrona he's passed away by the way but and then spelling it the way that i've always thought the madrone tree was spelled and then their logo is a tree What is going on here? I'm not even kidding I think this is part of what threw me off because I remember hearing about this This was one of the first sort of venture capital firms I'd ever heard of And I remember thinking as a young person, wow, that sounds pretty That sounds pretty cool, Madrona Capital or whatever Like, can I call this the Madrona Hill studio Because I'm referencing Madrona Capital of Seattle Founded by William Ruckelshaus

What about the Ruckelshaus Studios? host like honestly that's the best one i've heard so far i mean it takes some explaining

but we have time can i call it the this the problem is the real name doesn't have the same zest for me which i'm usually not this person andrew you know that like i'm i'm kind of a pedant and kind of like i don't like it when we say i you know like um you know i could care less And then we just say it so much that now that's what we're saying. Like, I don't like that, which is what Sarah is saying eventually will happen. We'll just be calling these Pacific Madrona trees, even though they're the Pacific Madrone. Yeah, I don't know if I can live with I don't know if I can live with actively mispronouncing your I mean, York studio, your call.

I don't have I again, I don't really have an opinion on the matter. I do have an opinion on this, though. I don't want Sarah's boyfriend giving her shit for calling in. She said that if we play that, he's going to give her shit. That was a great voicemail.

It tells you how strongly this bothered Sarah, that she was willing to alienate both me and her boyfriend.

But also win points with me for some reason. No, so yeah, this is a direct statement. Nobody gives Sarah shit for that voicemail. It was a good voicemail. And like, you know, knowledge is power, even if it's sometimes uncomfortable.

Kind of, but I wish Sarah would have told me this before I started calling this the Madrona Hills Studio.

Did you check in with her, though, before you named it that?

I check in all of my arboreal-related content with Sarah.

Okay, then that is on Sarah. Now I'm kind of disappointed in Sarah.

Yeah, I know. Also, I will say, Sarah, that voicemail hurt me. But also, I was excited to find that the Madrona is a fickle tree and that you can't just grow it. Yeah. Because I told you, or the Madrona, excuse me. Because also, I do tend to drone on.

I was going to say that, too. We do tend to Madrona on. Is there something there? The Me Drone Hill Studio.

Because I think when I was talking about why I came up with that name and my love of the Madrone tree, the other problem with this, Andrew, is do I want to be a Sarah? Am I going to be moving through life constantly explaining to people that even though they've been calling it a Madrona tree, it's a Madrone? Do I want to be a Sarah? That sounded dismissive. I don't mean it that way. What I mean is like, you know, like if I if I commit to this lifestyle of calling it the Madrone, it means I also then need to correct people or just let them.

know nicely that i know we've all been saying madrona it's madrone sorry yeah they're gonna think i'm wrong like if if i had met sarah in a different context and sarah was like oh hey i i am you know i'm a listener to the podcast and uh i hope it's going well in your new studio and i it's so cool that you have those madrone trees i would leave that conversation thinking this lady doesn't know what the tree's called like i bet you that the majority of people who would hear me call it a madrone tree would think that i didn't know it was madrona tree and i don't know if i

can live with that either it's the forte problem right and i'm not talking about precisely or as i like to say precisely it's fort like what is it like what is your forte it's we say that but really i believe the proper pronunciation is fort but then if you say fort you feel like you need to stop the conversation and let people know that that's the proper way to say it like you know

I feel like Julianne Moore, I believe, was like maybe accepting an Oscar or something and used Forte correctly. Really? I didn't know that. And I was like, this was in the early days of the show, I think. And I was just like, what? Somebody tell her it's Forte. And then we looked up. I was like, no, it's Forte, actually.

Oh, really? Oh, I thought you, I figured that maybe you were already hip to that and you were like very proud of her.

Oh, I don't think. I'm not going to play you Her entire best Actress award from 2015 but I do think in that Speech she may have said forked

And you're right that's the exact problem

Do I say Madrone And allow everyone who didn't hear This conversation or isn't as wise As Sarah is To think that I am just Not informed on the tree name Or how about this this is actually what I'll do Every day I'll say the Madrone Hill studio But then I'll explain that it's actually Madrone, even though a lot of people think it's Madrona.

Yeah, you know, Madrone, you just said Madrone Hill Studio. That sounds nice to me. I mean, again, it also does cut down on the Jonah Hill confusion. It does. And also you save time because it's one less syllable. I mean, think about that over the course of a year. How much time have you saved? Right, hours probably.

Hours that I can obsess over if the Mariners are actually, you know, capable of beating a team that's over 500.

Yeah, like over the course of one year, you'll have saved several years' worth of time somehow. It's amazing, the math. Well, I'll try it out tomorrow, okay? Okay. We'll see how it feels. Oh, that's something everybody should tune in for.

Yeah, especially Sarah's boyfriend.

Leave her alone.

All right, that'll do it. Yeah, I'd say that'll do it for today's show. I'm so obsessed with that tape.

It's like an earworm for you now.

I know, I can't get over it. I know, it's so dumb.

I say that does the trick. That'll do it. We should end the show with that every day. I mean, it is a good show ender, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean that, yeah. All right, thanks, folks. We'll see you tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Go Mariners. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. Trees. They're all around us, but who gives a shit?

Power out. I'll see you next time.