Muse

Hey, guys. This is Stephen from Lawrence, Kansas. I would say keep catching those dreams. I really like this segment, so I say keep it up. I recently had a dream where I work in public radio, I should add, and I was in the running for a job as All Things Considered host at a station, and instead of me, they hired Danny McBride, Kenny Powers. So keep it up, guys. And as I said, keep it. As I said, keep working on the worst ending of a call ever. TBTL!

Jake, what are you looking forward to most about this film?

Well, I think I'm looking forward to cracking up. I hope I can, like, you know, totally crack up. So I haven't, like, totally cracked up in a long time.

I want to know when we're going to the macaroni grill. Have you been? it is delicious oh my god they have these italian nachos they're delicious they they don't have them on the menu anymore and i asked i said what happened and they said oh no nobody ordered

them i was like hello right here you know these these two are good very very tough to do a morning show this chit-chatty it kind of thing but these two have an intellect behind uh whatever it is

they're doing. Just like the drop says, I cannot contain my joy. I don't think I've ever related

to a drop so much right now. Oh, that's hella beautiful, though. Oh, that's magical, though. Oh, that's so splendid. Oh, this is really the happiest place on earth, though. I can't contain myself i can't contain my joy though this is hella tight well all right hello good morning and

welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live do you think y'all can handle this my name is luke burbank i am your host i just want you to be normal and clearly you're not coming to you from the madrone hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia river where it has been an adventurous past 24 or so hours oh and the adventure begins again there was something going on yesterday with bubbles the cat even And as I was recording the show that I was not letting the listeners in on, I guess I didn't want to stress them out. I didn't think it was going to be a big deal. It turned out to be sort of a big deal involving the cat and me having to tear some walls out in the house because of where she had gotten to.

You've got to be kidding me.

For those of you who desperately want more cat content, we are absolutely providing that for you this week here on the show as we've arrived at episode 4036 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

The TV host and comedian Hassan Manoj, who is well known for his time on The Daily Show and also his show Patriot Act and his stand-up comedy specials on Netflix. Jokes are really difficult, I must say. He tells a lot of stories during his stand-up specials about his life, his experience as a South Asian man living in the U.S. And the New Yorker recently wrote an article about his stories and him, wherein they figured out that the stories were pretty much made up.

It's bulls**t!

Do comedians owe their audiences any level of truth when they're telling us a story? Does it really matter? We'll delve into that. And we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. People bump into me on the street all the time, and they say, describe Andrew Walsh in two words. And I usually just say he's... Mythic and probably apocryphal figure. He's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. How many walls are standing in the house right now? That seems like a good place.

Fewer by the day, my friend. fewer by the day i mean should we just get into this let's just talk yeah i assume what's happening

here you sent me a photo last night well you sent me i mean let's be honest you sent me a link to your instagram page so you know why i did that by the way i assumed so that you would get the impressions that's not how screen caps work oh actually it was a link it was a link i'm just

teasing obviously no you know why i did that sort of subconsciously i don't like sending people in my life something that i'm also posting on social media oh yeah sure yeah because i feel like if they were to see it on the line on Instagram like if I sent you that picture and then I was posting it on Instagram I wouldn't want you to feel like I was workshopping it on you or that I don't know if there's something about I wanted you to know that it was also something I was putting out on social media and I can't explain why it may have

the three to five coronas i had during taco tuesday no i think that makes sense to a degree

and i don't want to get off on a boring tangent about our um about our online hygiene when it comes to social media posting but it is true that like let's say that i i created a little spoof or something like a little meme or something and sent it to the uh to the sports text chain that on the fun-loving criminals. Let's put some respect on that name. I probably would feel uncomfortable then posting the same meme to social media. I'm not saying I've never done that, but it would seem a little thirsty to me to be like, hey, guys, here's a thing I made. And, oh, I didn't quite get enough reaction, so I'm going to see if the wide world will give me the love I need or something along those lines.

It was some sort of tiny thread of that feeling for me that I didn't want you to think, I didn't want to misrepresent what was going on here

for whatever reason more on that later when we get to like honesty and comedy and life stories

yeah right no seriously actually that is probably a little relevant to this story we're going to talk about in the top stories but anyway so here's what happened yesterday I before actually coming out to do the show I was sitting out on this kind of partially constructed deck that's here at the house overlooking the mighty Columbia and having my coffee there's precious few days left where the temperature will allow for that or the lack of rain will allow for that so I'm really trying to soak it up and I thought it would be nice if the cat could be out there with me but of course I can't just have her running around loose because that would be dangerous for her I think she would just run down into the woods and I'd never see her again so I have this harness that she wears she wears it often when she's at Becca's house so that we can open the door to the balcony and she won't go out there and jump off the balcony because she has gotten pretty close a few times. And she doesn't love the harness, but generally putting it on her, I'm kind of good at it at this point. And I, we've got a system. Now, what I have found in my research is that I think that she, I think the cat that in this case, Bubbles is the cat I'm referring to. I think she's having a lot of anxiety about her new surroundings maybe that's not news to the listeners but i guess i hadn't spent a lot of time considering the topic of cat anxiety because bubbles has always just been very fearless and very just let's be honest pushy kind of a nudge kind of annoying like you put her in any situation and she's immediately running it like if there's multiple animals i mean there's been literal times where i think she's riding dj the dog um at becca's in her family's house she'll the cat will be riding a dog that's four times her size um like she just is so i don't ever think of her as being anxious i think she is pretty anxious right now because she's in a whole new environment so i put this harness on her yesterday um so that i could have her outside with me and it has a little leash on it too and when i put it on her she was not happy she was way more kind of agitated than normal and she decided to run down into the basement now careful listeners will remember that I told a story on, I think, yesterday's show or two days ago about how in the basement of this house, there are a couple of openings that go underneath the house. Now, I had blocked those up, Andrew. Now, had I blocked those up with some sort of sturdy wood? No, because I don't have a proper saw. I had taken some cardboard, I'd cut it to the right size, and I had sort of tacked it up. I figured that would probably be enough. I mean, it was fairly solidly in there. um well uh she runs downstairs i think okay i'll go get her in a little while i go downstairs and she has bashed right through the cardboard or at least one of the cardboard panels is like all kind of knocked down and i can tell that she has you know run into it in her wanting to get away from me and get this harness off so i look under the house it's very dusty and dirty and i

realize she's just kind of freaking out i'm gonna let her just chill for a while like she's just not happy i don't want to stress her out i don't want to climb under there and grab her a because it's really dirty and gross and because i don't want her to associate me being around her with i'm always trying to make her do something she doesn't want to do so i'm like like and also i know that there's no way to get out of this area like i've i've carefully studied it like she cannot leave the the parameters of the of the home so anyway she's down i come out here and i do the show with you. In the back of my mind, I'm like, yeah, the cat's down there. Let's see if she's come out by the time I go in the house. So I go back in the house after the show. I look in there. She's still not anywhere to be found in the house. And so I figure she's still in there. I take both of the little cardboard things off. So she has easy access in and out. I kind of talk to her. I give her some baby talk. I'm shining a flashlight in there. I can't see her, but I think she's just behind this one area where there's like part of the foundation of the house. So I get some of her little toys and I'm kind of like jangling some things around the opening of

this thing and I'm talking to her in a real sweet voice and trying to be very like inviting and she's still back there so I'm like whatever I'm just gonna let her do this on her own terms so I go about my day doing my various and regular job stuff then it's time for me to go into the big city to get some extra fixings for taco Tuesday and also to go on my little jog so I'm like by the time I get back from this she's definitely gonna be finally done with this whole charade. So I do that. I come back and I'm all sweaty from the run and kind of dirty. And I figure if I have to climb under the house to try to get her, at least I'm now at the point where I'm about to take a shower anyway. So I get down there, shine the flashlight. She still hasn't left. I get under the house. I start crawling around with the flashlight and I get to the area where I know she's been cowering behind this post. And when I get back there and flash the light on it I realized it's all solid concrete there is no behind there this place that I thought she was just like chilling is turns out she's not even in this area that I thought she was in and now I start to really freak out because you don't know where she is I don't know where she is I've looked throughout the entire house I've looked under every bed I've looked in every box I mean with a flashlight like this is a like the last place that she could have been was under the house and i'm now down there like in this crawl space uh getting around to this corner where i'm expecting to see her sitting there pissed at me and it's just like it's hard to explain but basically there was there's nothing back there there's not like an opening like i thought there was it's just like this big solid cement square so now i'm like what the heck i'm really freaking out as you might imagine because I there is not any place in this house including underneath the house including under the foundation that I have not now searched with a flashlight and I'm I kind of forgot I call Becca I don't know what she's supposed to do about it but I just was like I have some bad news for you the cat is MIA and as I'm talking to her I hear the faintest saddest ass meow I've ever heard like a like barely audible meow and i'm like wait what and i'm like i hang up on back i'm like hold on i hear the cat and then i'm like hello i'm meowing to the cat i'm talking to her i'm trying to get her to meow again and she like you're putting on your cat suit you got a little tail i was wearing that anyway yeah right okay if you see someone good one though if you see someone jogging around lake sacajawea in a cat kind of a cat woman outfit michelle pfeiffer era cat woman that's me okay great so yeah but then it's like and then i'm thinking did i hallucinate that maybe it was wishful thinking maybe she's not in the house so then i call becca and i go i don't think she's even here i heard one meow but maybe i just made that up then as soon as i start talking to becca i hear another i'm like no no i'm definitely hearing a meow the cat is in the house that's good

we've established that she's physically still here but i'm like i cannot figure out where she is and i go back downstairs and i check the under the house thing and i just going everywhere in house. And I'm like, it's like she's in the floor or something. And then finally, after like a good 20 minutes of wandering to different corners of the house and meowing, I'm talking about me in this case, me, I'm the one yowing. I finally, I'm in the basement and I look in the corner and I realize that there is a hole that's cut up into the floor. This is where they, when they plumbed in the shower in the bathroom to make room for the pipes they did some very actually sketchy things where they cut into the floor joist um but i i look up i see the leash hanging down from the the underside of the main floor of the house in other words she has somehow gotten up into this small hole that somebody had cut to run the drain from the shower and she's underneath the fiberglass shell of this shower that's in the bathroom and she refuses to come down and the thing that was annoying is she got up there so I know she she knows she could get in there so she could presumably get out so I was a really relieved that she wasn't you know just gone but now I'm in this whole like I really think somebody should invent a way to telepathically talk to our animals in particular to our cats because i was trying to tell her look if you just jump down here i'll catch you it's like you know i got you this will be easy you got in there you can get out of there but she was just so freaked out and i she still had this harness on so i'm trying to gently kind of use the leash to sort of guide her out of course she then shrugs it off now i'm just holding the leash in this empty harness i was like well that's not good that was my like I remember thinking, oh, it's good that at least she has the harness on so that she can't go that far into the wall. Although I was thinking, you know, you mentioned the harness and the leash at the beginning of the night. It's...

sort of left my mind when you reintroduced it a moment ago i was like oh yikes good thing like she didn't get caught somewhere that would be the other that would be like the yes the other side of that coin though that would make me a little bit anxious but so the fact that actually at this point in the story that the leash is off makes me feel a little bit better because if she recesses back into the wall at least you don't have to worry about her getting like literally caught somewhere

that hadn't even occurred to me but you're totally right i was like well now i have no ability to physically impact her movement but it also you're right and she's a little you know she could move around better without that thing on so what then uh happens is i because you know for all the construction that's happening on this house i don't have any tools really i mean i've got like a couple of crowbars and like a i don't have a a power saw that's like my dad brings down his tools when he comes and then also the guys working on the house bring their stuff so for a construction zone there was precious little equipment that i could use to try to sort of open up this this piece of the subfloor or whatever that she had gotten through because i i was like if i can just widen this a little bit it's just like old kind of as you might say grotty like pieces of wood that are down there they're not doing any actual supporting of anything because again the people who the people that worked on this house over the various generations they never found a support beam they didn't want to compromise i've noticed like as have all the contractors like oh that's really scab together so i i was like if i can just get this wood if i can kind of make the hole a little bigger then she'll look at it and her admittedly small brain will understand oh now this is an even bigger hole that i can come out of so the problem andrew is that the process of me trying to widen the hole is loud and terrifying to the cat so i was wondering like i didn't have a sawzall or anything i just had like a crowbar and a hammer and i'm and i'm i'm breaking this wood like piece by piece i'm also using like a channel locks was the other thing i had and every time i break a piece of wood she goes further into the wall and she's more just like her meows are getting more like scared to meow and i'm like again i wish i could telepathically explain to you dude that this is i'm doing this so you can get out of there so i finally widened the hole enough that she can definitely fit now and then i'm like okay she she's gonna get hungry at some point she's gonna want to come down uh and she's just gonna figure this out like she has a survival instinct so i make this big decision like i'm just gonna leave her to it i'm i know where she is

she's not in any danger she's not hurt like fine yes that's where i would be too um you know about 10 minutes yeah i was gonna say like i at that point like you're you gotta tell yourself like okay this is i i'm i'm feeling a certain kind of way here but if i can just remain calm exude that calmness and also put some food down here and then let things calm down like logically probably hopefully within a few hours like things will settle down these scary moments always always

happen when you move in someplace but there's more well i was able to keep up a that that sort of stiff upper lip and that brave face for about five to ten minutes because then it's like I want to take a shower but the problem is she's inside the lining of the shower and I start to get worried that if this is where my brain this you want to talk about cat anxiety my human anxiety was apparently off the charts because now I'm thinking like I can hear her like this is one of those kind of crummy like pre-made fiberglass showers that has like a little kind of bump out that you put your shampoo on or you could sit on or something if you're washing your feet she's like in that bumped out part of the fiberglass because i can hear her meowing at me through the fiberglass of the shower and now i start to think if i run the water is that gonna freak her out like i don't know what the what it sounds like in there with the water going but i also really want to take a shower i am so gross at this point but i'm just imagining her like her level of of fear and the this water sound maybe like sending making her even more scared and then i don't know what's going to happen like I'm trying to not stress her out anymore but I'm also trying to live my life a little bit so I end up building a ramp out of an old door and some other wood that goes up to where the hole in the floor is that I've made so that if she wants to because part of it that's scary for her is she's trying to go from a hole down about like seven feet down to a concrete floor now she is a cat she should be able to figure this shit out but I just don't know what her state of mind is so i built i built this weird ramp thing so that she can just go right through the hole and then go right down this nice convenient ramp that i'd make i put some food and water up there like so in case she's hungry or thirsty and then i okay fine like i take a shower did you make a

little sign like in that far side cartoon that says cat food f-u-d i did it was written in the

same font that the Chick-fil-A. Yeah, right.

use that says whatever that is, you know, on the billboards. Yeah, I just figured that's her reading level. So I take the shower, and as I'm in the living room, I hear a meow, and I realize, oh, she's in a part of the wall that is also accessible through this closet. Like there's a fairly thin wall between this closet that's kind of under some stairs and where she actually is and I tell myself I could cut a hole in that wall but why would I do that because then I'm just gonna have to fix it later when she has a ramp built and a sizable hole now she can totally get out of there like she's like she she has a way a way forward she has a way out of this situation so I go upstairs I get dressed I start making my dinner I put the Mariners game on and I'm just like what you're not doing burbs is you're not cutting a fucking hole in the wall of the closet about 10 minutes later I'm in the closet feverishly tearing out one of these pieces of wood because uh this now because now I'm thinking well maybe she doesn't understand that I enlarged the hole maybe she's too afraid to go back to that area so now I'm gonna actually and I don't have a saw mind you so I'm using like a like a utility knife and uh my my trusty crowbar and a thing and somehow i managed to actually break loose one of these wood like a basically a sort of one by four piece of wood that's in the closet that is that is you know creating the wall one of the walls of the closet so i've now destroyed that closet wall at least part of it so i get that thing out and now it's like it's definitely big enough for the cat i look in there and i can't see her because she has still now gone further into the shower situation and i'm like at this point i don't know i don't know what to do anymore like this is as much i mean like this this is now i've really made it easy on her to get out but she refuses and like another hour goes by another hour goes by i'm like facetiming with becca i'm like i don't really know what to do i'm also trying to follow a recipe how to make a lotte salad corn salad by the way turned out amazing do you make a corn salad uh i make a corn and

black bean salad that i bring to picnics often and then if i'm doing a taco night i will just kind of saute up some corn with some spices yeah i hadn't made that before so delicious would

recommend but um and the mariners are winning so in some way life is good but i'm still just like stressed out now it's like nine o'clock at night still no cat and i'm sitting there and I make the decision that I guess I'm going to go in and have to just take the rest of the wall down in this closet. Like, I'm going to have to, I don't know what else to do because she's refusing to come out. I think maybe if I take the rest of the wall down, I can just like physically reach in and grab her if I have to. And this is literally my plan, Andrew, and I'm not saying this is rational. I'm going to do a shot of tequila to get up the courage to tear the rest of the wall down. I'm like thinking in my mind, okay, as soon as this Mariners game is over, I'm going to have a shot of tequila And I'm going to get my tools And I'm going to go in there And I'm going to wail away on this wall Scare the shit out of the cat And then grab her and save her And I stand up to go into the kitchen to do this And who comes strolling in Without a care in the world That goddamn cat So All's well that ends well But it really was one of those things Where I had to I don't know I kept trying to release desire on it And I kept not being able to release desire on it But somehow me making the decision to walk in there and tear an entire wall down was what sort of karmically and psychically got her to finally come out. She probably would have come out from the hole, the original hole. She probably would have figured that out too, but I was just so anxious and so worried that she's so dumb she couldn't figure it out. Do you think there's a universe in which she would have stayed in that wall until she expired?

No, I don't, but I'm not dismissing your feelings or your actions here. One thing I keep thinking, And I don't know if this sounds like an insensitive thing to say, but, you know, Vives and I have had somewhat similar experiences, not to the degree that you're talking about a house that is sort of under construction and you kind of knowing the inside of the walls and the crawl spaces and everything. But, you know, when we moved into our first apartment in Seattle, we only had one cat at the time and we had just moved Theodore across the country. He was all spooked out because of that. We brought him home. It was not his first move. He'd moved within the city of Concord many times. So he was used to exploring new spaces. But he just straight up disappeared, like straight up disappeared. And I believe we even had to go to bed not knowing where he was. I can't remember exactly. I just remember at one point, like Genevieve and me.

absolutely freaking out and her saying if we don't find this cat i'm moving back to new hampshire and like that i can explain to you the irrationality of that but also the truth of it in the moment and how it explains how over the top this situation was genevieve was also just dealing with a lot of a lot of stuff at that time work related and new city related and everything and this was just like the cherry on top and just sort of represented a lot but like that feeling of just being like we were at one point like walking up and down the street in capitol hill calling for our cat uh which is again irrational that's not really how a cat is going to oh i was out in the field being

like yeah like a maniac in my socks oh did i can i mention that much of this wall tearing down happened while i was nude oh because i kept like almost getting in the shower like and then being like wait a minute what if i just do this and then i'm like okay i'm just gonna do it really fast so yeah I was unclothed for most of this situation uh at least the early parts so I guess so I've

mentioned this to you before and Veves and I said this when we moved with our cats I guess once one cat here to the new house at that time and just saying like we like there is a time where we think all hope we're gonna this cat is gonna go missing at some point we're going to rationalize it up to a point then we're gonna lose all rationality and we're gonna lose all hope and then right at that time where the cat's going to come strolling out like that is just kind of what happens and again i'm not trying to downplay what you're saying i'm saying like we were prepared for that that ended up not really happening in this house bananas did find a corner that we could not access behind like behind a bunch of water or a water heater and a furnace and stuff but at least we were able to see like the sort of glow of her eyes um but what i was going to say before that i was going to say i don't know if this sounds sort of insensitive but i'm sort of playing this out and how things might have been different if there was a second person in the house like because sometimes the two people whatever the relationship is but in a in a scary situation like this involving a pet you can ramp each other both up but also sometimes you can sort of balance each other out a little bit and then sort of say well let's let's just take a breath let's sleep on it let's see where we are in the morning you know that i i feel like i don't know what i would have done because you're right like there's this human thing of being like i can i will not go to sleep i cannot go to sleep until this is resolved because of all the care you have for the cat and the worry but also there's like there is a rational thing to say like if i've built this ramp and i've put up signs that say cat food and there is food like eventually like it's a smart you know she's a smart cat i should say and she will debatable she will not die in the wall or certainly you have some lead time

you know i was really starting to google like how long do cats how long can cats go without water because like i was really spinning out and you're absolutely right if i were there would have been somebody else here with me i could have been like she'll be okay right and they would have been like yeah yeah she's gonna be okay and that would have i mean and that's why i was like facetiming with becca yeah and trying to get my shit together but like yeah i'm i am not as far as i can identify i don't think of myself as an overly anxious person but there's something about this stupid cat that really brings it out in me i think because and and also by the way i i think that if i were i mean and this goes back to times when I've been married and stuff where there's been something going on with a pet, and I'm always the person who's like, they'll be fine. Let's give it another day to see if that limp irons itself out because I'm thinking, how much is the vet bill going to be? I'm usually, I think when I'm co-pet parenting with someone, I'm usually the one that's probably a little more laissez-faire, but since it's just me and her out here, and I also went, this is a weird and probably overly dark place to take it, And I don't mean to sound at all glib, but you know, one thought that I was having too was like, this was before I figured out that she was just in the fricking floor or whatever wall.

When you don't know where she is at all. I don't know where she is.

So I'm like, she's probably some, she has found some hole. Somehow she got out of this house and now it's like, is she going to have the brain power to like figure out that this is where food and shelter and safety is? like she didn't even know to come back to this place you know whatever but I had a thought like I can't imagine when a human goes missing whether it's a child or a senior citizen or somebody like this is the feeling I'm having about a stupid cat like I I cannot even imagine the feeling that must come over someone when when somebody that they love is is is is is missing like this like I can't like I don't know why that came into my mind but I was just like if this is what a cat feels like may i never please ever know what it's like when like a kid goes missing yeah it's just

crazy i was outside my front yard washing out a cooler about um six weeks ago i'm gonna say and uh i'm gonna say young man because i'm 46 now and I referred to anybody younger than 40 as a young man I'm gonna put this guy maybe in his maybe his late 20s and he is holding a packet of papers and he's standing also I look up from cleaning the cooler and he's holding a packet of papers and he's standing outside of our gate in our front yard and I'm like oh hey and I immediately know oh this is somebody who's running for city council or something and he wants me to take his flyer and so I start walking towards him but I see that he's a little bit nervous and he's like hey you haven't happened to see a long-haired cat around here i'm like oh no and he's like he's you know he's got he's he's serious but he's maintaining composure but the more i talk to him i can hear him fighting back so much panic luke i can hear and again he's not i'm i want to make this clear he's not panicking outwardly he's saying okay yeah um the last i saw her was here and i can just hear it i can hear the fear in the voice and i know that fear and the cat's name is willow i'm like okay listen okay and he gives me a flyer and i'm like with a photo of her and some information i'm like okay we're gonna look around for her but i'm telling you this has happened to me a bunch um we've i've had a cat that was missing for three

days and came you're kind of the expert on this whole thing i'm not even kidding doesn't paint me

in the best light but no it happened to me twice i mean once when i was like 14 years old my cat alex ran away and after like two days i was like he's gone and then on the third day not unlike a certain carpenter he came back um jason who's working on my deck yes remember when jason was on the lam um anyway uh then the big scary one that happened while i've been hosting this show was several years ago living in wallingford and um theo and professor bananas both got out bananas came back later that night but theo was gone five days five days and i remember i mean i know i've said this i think i've probably said this before but i remember like keeping a stiff upper lip we canvassed the neighborhood with our own flyers stapled things and I remember like it must have been night four me feeding bananas and just like sitting there weeping just like

I don't think I had a proper amount of empathy for you then because the only cat that I had was Olive who was just constantly out hunting in the night so like I couldn't I didn't have that like I want to retroactively say I am so sorry

I'm so sorry for how afraid you were because I can now very much relate. No, you were kind. And I'm sure I spent like many shows talking about it. But like after four days, I was like, well, I've seen this happen after three days. But four days, I remember just finally being like, you know, giving up hope. And then he came back on the fifth day and was like, oh, my God. So I'm telling this kid, I can't remember his name again. He's an adult man. I keep calling him a kid. But anyway, I'm telling this guy like, hey, listen, I've been through this. one time my cat was gone for five days and he came back healthy and with a tattoo that says mom on it and no I didn't say that part but he said Luke that's when I realized how much this guy was trying to hold back he said thank you so much for saying that he was just like this was his first rodeo and you know you never know our neighborhood both has wild animals in a cemetery that is near here that has a lot of acreage it also has cars speeding around on major roads you know what I mean like you can't guarantee anything for a cat that gets lost in this neighborhood but cats are smart and when they get lost and uh or somebody said recently your cat's not lost your cat left you um but you know when we don't know where our pets are it's just like it's hard to remember how smart they are they have these homing mechanisms they have survival skills bingo doesn't but most cats have survival skills um and so i'm trying to talk this yeah i'm trying to say hey listen you're gonna get the cat you know keep you're doing the right thing canvas the neighborhood like we're going to keep an eye out uh he gave me the flyer with an email address and i don't know if it had a phone number as well but like veves and i walked around that day i think just willow willow it's like fruitless but like we just wanted to help in some way i made a decision to email him and i i really thought about this i i can't remember what i put in the subject line but it included a question mark because i did not want him getting an email from a stranger that gave him false hope even if it was for yeah a second right so i think i put willow update question mark or something um and he did respond and i think this was the next day it had been 24 hours and i was like he's i know that willow's back home and he wrote back no sign yet thanks for checking in i'm like oh god damn it and then i wanted to just like check in every day and i didn't and i was like now and he the the flyer he gave me was made as some sort of boilerplate that was um based on uh some sort of like national organization where you're supposed to be able to type it in and track the cats like if they were lost are they now found or whatever but i think he just used the boilerplate without actually registering his cat as being lost because i'm like searching for willow and i'm not getting anything it's like no results found one way or the other i refuse to email him again i'm like this guy's got enough going on he doesn't need to like calm the stranger's nerves but again i am gonna say it was like four days later maybe i got an email from him just saying hey just want to let you know willow finally came home and oh just thanks for looking at i'm just like so gotten luke i was so

glad i didn't i knew this guy for 45 seconds of my life but i mean vives and i spent i mean we didn't spend a whole bunch of time but walking to the bus we would go various directions we would walk around the neighborhood literally calling out a strange cat's name i i also future tripped

right into the lost cat flyer uh-huh this all happened in about eight tenths of a second like what went through my mind as i was standing in the middle of the living room with no cat at that point was i can't believe that humans go missing that's terrifying also what am i going to make how what is what am i doing with this flyer do i have any photos of the cat oh i do oh i have 1.7 million photos okay that's covered we've at least got that going for us but yeah I was I was like am I I'm gonna I'm gonna because you see those things all the time and I mean I actually do whether it's any kind of lost pet I actually do have a pretty strong emotional reaction to that in the moment I was about to say you see those all the time you don't think about them at all

I actually do think about I take a photo every lost cat flyer or dog flyer I say I take a photo of it in case I see that cat or dog I have the that is really next level I'm gonna start doing

that not that there's a lot of telephone poles or flyers out here but that was the other thing i was like what am i going to go up to go up to gay yeah and give gay a flyer of the cat and go like if you see this like by the time that the gay sees the bubbles it's too late because there's nine mean alley cats that live around here although i did see two of them lounging in the sun together yesterday as i was driving back and i was like well maybe again the human mind is such a strange thing at this point i i didn't think the bubbles was missing yet i just thought she was down in her little hole but i literally saw these two there's a tabby that's enormous and then a midnight black cat and i see them both in my yard fairly frequently and they were just chilling next to each other in the sun and i was like well maybe they're not super violent like yeah they're

not killing me plus bubbles is a big athletic cat like bubbles can handle her very small actually but she's very athletic oh okay maybe the way she's oh she's tiny okay you know because she's built athletically like that and she's kind of got that like wild cat look and i don't see her And scale a lot I picture her as being bigger

Well that's what I mean I've said before If I think if I did Turn her loose here And she didn't die If she just had some Survival instinct That kicked in I feel like I would The next time I would catch glimpses of her Over the next ten years And she'd be like Four to five feet tall And she'd be wearing Like a She'd be wearing a necklace Made of bones and teeth Just like I feel like she might Really thrive out there I mean she is a bangle She's only like One or two generations Genetically or or whatever, generationally removed from some fairly large cat living in, like, the jungle of Indonesia or some shit.

She comes back 20 years later to check in. She's got a whole new life now. She's married. You know, she had her wild days, but now she's a professor at SUNY.

Anyway, I'm glad that. I love this story for her. I didn't see that. See, I had a much more Lord of the Flies, and you had it being. She lived through their wild days, though. And you have it more like, you know, Grandma, Abe Simpson's wife, who ran off with, like, the Black Panthers, but then later just became kind of an older kind of matron-like character. I like that.

That's right, yeah. So, anyway. Well, I'm glad it worked out. Anyway, she's fine.

And we have a hell of a show pic today, if you'd like to use Bubbles staring through that hole in the bottom of the floor.

Oh, yeah, right, from Instagram. I can grab that. Or I can just take a picture of what I think. Like, sometimes the show pics are so bad. Like, I think I took a picture of a box of brown paper the other day because we were talking about that. Literally, I believe that was a show pic from, like, four days ago. Oh, that's Andrew's box of brown paper. So, yeah, this sounds like a better option.

I've also got a picture of the ramp, and I have a picture of the hole that I had to break in the wall.

Yeah, you should send me that. We can put more than one photo on the blog now. We can do anything we want. That's a real journey. We've got nobody telling us what to do. That's right. Do you – let's wrap this up with a moment of reflection. Please. Looking back at everything, do you wish you had done anything differently? Do you wish you had just waited and slept on it? Or are you glad that you took the actions that you took so that you could at least sleep easy?

I'm glad that, like, I didn't have to go to bed not knowing what the deal was. I'm glad because then by the end of it, you know, I'm watching TV and she's asleep on my lap, you know. So it was a good end to the night. I felt like it would have been Although of course it was then a sleepless night Because what she likes to do is just Run down the hall Jump on the bed, meow at me Aggressively and then leave

She does that about every hour Yeah.

throughout the night oh my god our two cats now i mean the only time that they get along although it's a just a whirling dervish is uh in the mornings now when they realize it's time to wake up me and genevieve two people who do not like waking up uh they we we wake up at 7 a.m and give them food and starting around sometimes 6 a.m sometimes a little bit later or if we sleep past their feeding time they together just do this thing we have kind of a high headboard and they will come screaming into the room one of them will jump on the headboard the other one will jump on the headboard and scare them you know like kind of a tall headboard if you can picture it up against the wall then they genevieve and i each have a nightstand on each side of the bed with like similar lamps on them and they will jump down bingo's whole thing is he knows that genevieve will ignore a lot but she will not ignore him knocking the lamp literally onto the ground so he'll do that and just gets more and more chaotic with them tearing out of the room then tearing in the room and then jumping launching sometimes off of us onto the bed then onto the tables and just like again and again and again i'm like well at least you guys are a team i was gonna say it's nice to see them working yeah exactly yeah so anyway i i almost realized i almost just started another cat story here but i this is a lot of cats no this is plenty let's

take a few days off from this hopefully it will be relatively uneventful around here so i don't have to keep belaboring all this cat content. Hey, let's thank some daily donors who are donating generously to the program and are how this is all happening five days a week. All the cat content you can eat. You can't take any of it home, though. Don't slow down, elf. No Please Call me Gordon Shumway

Sorry Mr. Shumway

We want to thank Corinne Reese Out there in Florence, Alabama Corinne Long time

I'm going to buy a hot air balloon Dummies That's right

Is that Corinne?

It is an emailer A caller in her And a long time friend of the show Hi Corinne Absolutely Also Lindsay Joy

Is in Palo Alto Thank you Lindsay California So that would be Hi What is Palo?

It's like what you call a friend. Hey, Palo. So it's like your high friend? Yeah, exactly.

It's your friend that smokes a lot of weed.

We all have one.

Andrew, you're my Palo Alto. Thanks, Lindsay. Thanks also to Brandy Unruh of Woodinville, Washington. And then we've got Mark Cui checking in from Tarzana, California. I must have been in Tarzana at some point. I think it's up in the San Fernando Valley. but it's always it's just such a fun thing to say Tarzana, California and I, you know, of course Tarzan comes to mind makes me think it's a lush jungle environment for some reason

and it makes me think of my favorite movie trailer of all time about the guy who wrote the Tarzan stories is it possible that it's all he's ever known it's all he ever will know it's all he ever wants to know is it possible that Palo means stick or tree I could see it being tree like high trees Palo Alto

you know what Because I think there's something called like Palo Santo or something, which is a that's like a particular a scent that's very popular right now. OK, that like I bought an overpriced candle one time from Rudy's. I mean, it was smelled great, but it was like thirty dollars or something. And it burned, you know, burned down in a couple of days. But I think, yeah, I think that that could be I mean, it would take me one second to Google this. But I'm busy thinking Suzanne Olson of Renton, Washington. What do you think Renton stands for? What do you think the definition of Renton is?

It stands for football robot. Renton.

Palo Alto meaning? Do you think they're ever going to... The tall tree, Andrew. Oh, okay. There you go.

Because I only looked up, I guess, Palo.

So it's not the high friend. Although I like the idea that it's your high friend.

Yeah, exactly. Just like, oh, man, you need to ride again.

Do you think they're ever going to replace NFL players with robots? And would it be, I think we've talked about this before, but would it be less fun? I mean, it seems like it would be less fun, instinctively, to watch, I mean.

I was having an imaginary conversation with you about this the other day, that you were not a part of. Because we don't talk enough.

I like that you and I, because I do the same thing. I like that despite talking for roughly an hour to an hour and a half, five days a week, there's still some meat on those bones. Let me try to trace back what I was doing here. Let me also thank Chris Walton in Arlington, Massachusetts. Thank you, Chris, Suzanne, Mark, Brandy, Lindsay, and Corinne. We absolutely could not do this without you.

So I think I was thinking about sports. I had a really bad sports weekend, as you know. I actually went to a couple of really tough baseball games. Oh, I got another baseball game on the schedule, Luke. I thought that last one was my last one for the year um but anyway and i was thinking about my relationship with sports and how it's not very mature and not very healthy um and why do we do this and then thinking could i man i can't remember how you got involved in this uh argument but like maybe i was thinking about the health of players as well i don't know but i started thinking about like just general like robot battles and i thought i could for some reason i imaginary luke said in my head but you can't bet on that if the if the outcome is preordained and i and i said real andrew said to imaginary luke but they're not preordained it could be like that thing where you kind of people build robots and then yeah and then they then they fight against each other exactly we have listener jay i think who's like a an educator in the robotics field i think has partaken in those types of things before and so i was like i and i was like no luke you can bet on these robots in fact like the outcome would still be very interesting based on like what people are bringing now it wasn't i wasn't picturing foot that's the thing taking a sport that exists and then replacing like the players with robots i don't see that but i could see a world where our attention turns towards the outcome of robotic challenges and hopefully violent robotic challenges

some kind of a new like like there's like drone racing and stuff sure yeah right like in that world humans controlling machines but but you know it's that's kind of fun to watch i think

or but i mean even if you have something that is sort of similar with you you have various robots on either side of a scrimmage a line of scrimmage you know and having to achieve a goal and there's clashing i do think the clashing would be important because otherwise if there isn't like if you're not trying to if you're not trying to get around the violent aspect of it why even bother like you can still watch the the non-contact human sports but anyway that was a fake conversation i

had with uh fake you i think it's gonna be it'll be a long time it's the kind of thing that seems like totally ridiculous to me right now but i could also see in 20 years going can you believe yeah we used to have humans doing this yeah right i heard like howard stern of all people make a really interesting comparison of like what happens in a football game and it was you know like 80 percent of howard stern says caused me to do a hard eye roll considering i pay hundreds of dollars a to have Sirius Satellite Radio, mostly to listen to his show. It's much like this program in that I'm the least favorite person to the listeners. That's the burden of being the host of one of these things.

I'm working on it.

Number two with a bullet, Andrew Walsh. Basically, we're down to John Sklaroff is the only likable member of this operation. But he said, because it was in the wake of the Aaron Rodgers thing. I mean, Aaron Rodgers got four plays into the season. and he's stern said something like it's like a sport where you're just standing on the freeway trying to not get hit by a car that's the sport but like yeah that's kind of what it is 300 pound guy sprinting at you um it's not i mean that analogy has been used a lot like it's like being in a car crash like you've i've heard that over the years but something about like standing on the freeway like and i know you'd probably like this image but aaron rogers standing on i5 dodging cars like that just sounds so obviously ludicrously dangerous that you that that wouldn't be a sport even a sport where you're out there dodging um people on mopeds like it just there's something about that that made me realize all of a sudden like oh yeah it's it is very dangerous and violent

it is and i i don't want to argue the other side of that having said you don't want real andrew

to have a conversation an argument with imaginary howard stern with imaginary howard stern by the

way howard stern's back from vacation i take it uh yes yeah did he come back this week no they've

been back for uh for a couple of weeks i think now so um phyllis fletcher and i have our constant side chatter related to the show that's back up and running i mean i don't know i mean i i don't

want to i don't want to defend the sport i would just maybe the analogy doesn't hold up quite as well because i mean sometimes vives and i'll be watching a football game and just say can you imagine just like one hit from one of these people where they just get up and play another play another down and another down and another down like one hit would be the worst thing that would have ever happened to us in our entire lives like it would have life changing impacts on us having said that we didn't start as children playing this game against other children and then grow up to get a little bit bigger with those kids and then spend more time in the weight room and then have the and then have the people who continue on to the next phase also kind of keep pace with us to a degree now the you know a quarterback versus you know somebody who's making a sack on a quarterback like there are going to be some body differences there but it's not quite the same as just me walking out into traffic right now I mean there is there's more to it than that having said that I really hate myself for making the argument that football isn't dangerous obviously it is it's socially irresponsible like I mean I'm a hypocrite on it like I was watching you know the red zone this last Sunday, and, you know, I still enjoy the sport, but I would be lying to tell myself it's not irresponsible.

Yeah, it's, you know, we've talked about it at length. It's a quite conflicting thing. I do think that, oddly enough, this year we're all of two games into the Seahawks season. I have been, you know, you talked about how you were kind of going into this with a little bit of a different mentality this year. i think i'm kind of having the same thing happen because of geography because what basically happens is like becca and i are gonna you know most weekends we're trying to hang out because i'm now living in a different state and so what it means is my i mean i could if i wanted to but me holing up here all sunday to watch the game and making it that whole thing we've talked about where it's like start the you know start the the crock pot with the chili in the morning and the whole deal that's just not really an option if i want to continue to be in a functional relationship so like the like last week i watched like the first half of the game here and then i just got in my car because i needed to go to portland because we were going to go do stuff and so i just listened to part of the game in the car and then when i got there i went to this little um there's a place across the street from her apartment building that was showing the game and then she came down and we watched a little bit of it and it just wasn't like like a high holiday for me where it was like nobody talked to me i'm you know nobody spoil anything for me i'm time shifting turn my phone off make the chili like it isn't that vibe and it just has to do with like i don't think i can really afford to just not socialize on a sunday yeah no i mean

that's it for me and that's what we're giving up and in a certain way like we're kind of giving us feel about it well vives the last two sundays has gone and watched the game with friends and you know the usual meetup places i think she watched one at a friend's house and one watched one at the eagles um but you know and we do the same thing with with baseball as well like you know you and i have talked about our little rituals as well like opening day is the probably the most meaningless game of the season i guess statistically but like there are no meaningless but how exciting is it to like literally go grab for me it's like a bag of these you know in shell peanuts you know um you whether you're making hot dogs and the hibachi grill on your porch or whatever like these things like we and there's I don't think there's anything wrong with that I think that's the best part of sports actually like sort of like really getting into those little rituals and for me the football thing like I watched the entire Seahawks game well actually I missed the first part of it but like I essentially watched the whole Seahawks game this Sunday but I watched it on a laptop in my kitchen while I was preparing food and I you know for volunteering but it wasn't like oh like you said like oh I've been making chili I got all the ingredients last night i'm gonna settle in i'm gonna make a bloody mary shut out the rest of the world like i love that part and it's kind of funny it's like i i asked you this the other day or i raised this question the other day it's like do i like football or do i like drinking on sundays you know like what like what is like where's the line there i mean i don't think it's either or because clearly i like both and i really did enjoy watching the game but it is like that sort of ritualistic like sunday like for so long i've trained myself that like you know luke what i do what do i always say sundays are for the boys right like you won't stop saying i just i say it i mean i got the tattoo you gotta say it uh but anyway yeah so i'm just blabbing now but yeah that's kind of the hard part like can i have a casual relationship with a sport the way like i listen to more baseball games than i watch i don't have to like sit down and like drill down

on the baseball games but yeah that's the nice thing about baseball there's so much of it yeah exactly that you don't feel like you can't make it a high holiday it'd be 162 high holidays so you just like it fit it into your life and it's like of course one of the fun things is like oh you got to do some yard work you got to trim a hedge you got that baseball game on the radio while you're trimming like that's a win whereas with the football stuff we've i've certainly trained myself that it's like somehow sacrosanct yeah although i i will say i was trying to explain to becca and i am going to have one of these days before the season is over i do like a good just ridiculously long day of football consumption if my team wins so i was explaining to her i was like i was like what's so great and again peace and love to our listeners in michigan the seahawks beat the detroit lions in an overtime game um and that obviously stings for including by the way tim robinson and sam richardson who are on the sideline oh yeah and they're of course died in the wool Detroiters and they're so excited about their team and I was just like oh I hate that

these guys are feeling pain yeah I didn't know that they were there I know that obviously they're fans and there were some amazing shots of them I think at a Tigers game recently at a baseball game but um yeah that I you know you you like the Detroit fan base you like that team you like

the story yeah but so I was explained Becca was like right when they went I was like what's so great about this is now it's like let me take this from something that's just boring to listeners to something that's actively gross.

What's so great about this is it's like when you have a really great meal and then you burp later and you're like, God, that was a great meal. Like when your team wins an exciting game on Sunday, you then know that as you watch all the other games. So let's say it's the early game. Then when you're watching the afternoon game and then they go to the halftime thing, you're going to get to see another highlight of your team winning. And then they go to Sunday night football and you're like, I find that Carrie Underwood song so annoying. but there's just like some just you feel the sense of joy because you your team has already done what they were supposed to do you've already accomplished all of this is house money now and then like whatever happens that night to the teams like you know there's going to be some uh some some highlights at halftime and you're going to get to see your team again they did that thing tyler lockett hit that pylon with the ball and then it's time for scott van pelt and then it's time like i just like there's i could i could really watch i mean i know i just said i'm morally conflicted about it and i am but if i'm also being honest i could watch i could watch easily 12 hours of football on a sunday and not and be slightly bummed when the sunday night game is over yeah it's ridiculous my capacity for watching this terror sport i hate to do this to you because

i know that you don't love the song but for those who don't know what the carrie underwood song sounds like carolina panthers with sharp teeth and claws we grow to win this game we call pro

it kind of grows on you after it absolutely does and you know what i mean that was the week she did that for the carolina game but it was such a hit they just said stick with it stick with it every sunday night football game that's it i was like trying to so becca and i were walking uh along the kind of waterfront in portland and we went by this like fx mccrory's or i think that's what it is um and uh and they had you know i saw carrie underwood and i was like i had like a pavlovian response and i was like trying to explain the whole thing and i'm like it's the worst song ever it's basically like set to the tune of i hate myself for loving you by joan jett i didn't

realize you and chris hayes tipped me to that like i'd heard it i feel like we might have even debated that on the show or on a text chain or something like no no no no you're like no it is like it's a fact it is a reworking of i hate myself for loving you which is such a weird thing messaging wise what a strange origin of that you couldn't just come up with a random song like you

know just gonna write a song or or a song that doesn't have i hate myself loving you as the

chorus that doesn't have self-loathing in the title what a weird what a weird how did they end

up there but then i was trying to explain too that it's like the song is just so bad because it every if i remember right every week she has to you know sing about the two teams that are playing with like a very very terrible rhyme that's like you know like uh i can't i'm not gonna be able to do this on the fly but it'll be like um the saints and the chiefs are in for a real hot time like it's just like but then they have to make a different one up each week because it's two different teams but they're like they're just so simplistic with what their rhyming is it's just horrible but on a good sunday on a sunday when your team has won like an exciting game. It's just, it's like a warm bath, you know, which is, which complicates everything. Yeah, absolutely. Hello and welcome to Top Story. 58 minutes in feels like a good time to finally get to the Top Stories. Have you been following any of this stuff with Hasan Manoj?

Not until you sent me this this morning, but I did read the article. I find it very interesting. I'm not familiar with Hassan's work, honestly. So that's how deep of a cultural hole I've been living in.

Yeah, well, part of why I'm familiar with him is because he, on his show, I think it was Patriot Act. People started sending me this at some point. He actually used a clip of me. He didn't name me.

Oh, yeah, I saw that clip. Yeah, yeah.

It's like me doing goat yoga from CBS. And again, I don't think it was specific to me at all. I forget what the punchline is. I think they were maybe the point was like there's real shit going on in the world. And yet we also have people that are doing yoga with goats or we have coverage of goat yoga or something. I forget. I forget what how exactly it played out. But it was kind of odd to see my physical fat face on a TV show that I had no idea, you know, I was even tangentially associated with.

But that's good context for me, by the way. Thank you. Because the name rang a bell. And I was sort of thinking, like, was this a live wire guest? Like, why does this name ring a bell? And then when you mentioned that clip, but also the name of the show was Patriot Act. And that puts things, maybe that helps some other listeners, too, who are not familiar with his work.

Well, there was this New Yorker piece. Now, I saw the headlines about this before I actually read the New Yorker piece. And I had it a little bit misunderstood. I thought that basically there was like probably just a profile of him that was kind of a, not a puff piece. I don't feel like the New Yorker really does puff pieces, but like the New Yorker decided they wanted to write about him. And in the context of interviewing him, he mentioned something, which was that the stories that he tells are not strictly true, but they're emotionally true. That's what I kind of thought the vibe was. And then I went back and actually read the New Yorker piece by Claire Malone. And I'm sorry, Claire Malona, like the tree. by the way you're usually deep in thought and work when i'm doing the intro but i did go with madrone hill studio today i didn't notice that um let me just quickly just say because i don't

have them like kind of stacked up in front of me we did get some pushback from listeners who are saying no it's like an accepted regional term now you know i mean listener sarah the arborist who said actually it's a madrone tree not madrona like i sort of feel like you know if you're an arborist i'm taking your word on that especially well up here said she worked at the arboretum did she say she was an arborist well that's a good point um i don't know she works in the gift shop um i uh that's a good point i don't know but a lot of people were saying listen this is just one of those words where as sarah almost indicated in her voicemail like it's been used this way for so long it's a regionalism so take that for what it's worth

too luke somebody sent me an article we could talk about this during emails actually there's some interesting stuff on that but so I what ended up happening was it appears that Claire Malone writer for The New Yorker for whatever reason was trying to and I don't know I get this is what she doesn't get into in the piece but for some reason was trying to sort of fact-check some of the stories that Hasan Minoj has told in his stand-up specials and was not able to verify them now I don't know if she was working on a larger profile of him at some point and Or if she heard the stories and thought, I wonder if this really happened or not. But he's got a Netflix special called The King's Jester, where he talks about, he tells a story of being, because he's a Muslim as well. And he tells a story of basically like an FBI undercover informant attempting to infiltrate his mosque in like the Davis, California area. And how he sort of knew He could tell from a long ways away That this guy was actually working for the FBI He was a white guy He claimed to be a convert to Islam And Hassan Manoj tells this story Of basically like messing with the guy By like telling him that he was going to get his pilot's license Which because of course how 9-11 unfolded Could be something that would make an FBI informant Feel nervous I guess And that after he tells this guy Who's called Brother Eric this he kind of intentionally drops this joke on him about i'm getting my pilot's license that basically like the police show up and grab hassan minoj and throw him on the hood of a car and uh that story did not ever happen um by his own admission he says that the seeds of that story were that he used to play pickup basketball as a kid and and that there was a lot of guys that played in these pickup basketball games who he suspected of being cops and that they were basically rude to him and one of them like threw him on the ground during a pickup basketball game so that and then other news stories about attempts by fbi informants to infiltrate mosques that kind of he blended that together for that story he also tells a story about how anthrax was sent to his house or what could have been anthrax a white powder because when he was doing patriot act he was getting a lot of you know he was saying a lot of sort of politically um incendiary stuff stuff i tend to agree with by the way but like that he was you know people were coming for him and somebody sent him this envelope with white powder in it and it spilled on his daughter and they had to take his daughter to the emergency room because they didn't know if she had anthrax and then his wife had this big heart to heart with him that basically said i don't care if time magazine has named you as an influencer you endanger our kid again and i'm out of here this is the story that he's telling during one of his comedy specials turns out really none of that happened he claims that he got an envelope in the mail that had powder in it and he joked

with his wife what if this was anthrax even that seems pretty hard to verify um and there are other examples of stories that he has told where he has really centered himself in the story and as a way of making a social point and these things did not happen to him in this way at all now what's also interesting is in the new yorker piece he doesn't really seem particularly apologetic about this His point is these are emotional truths. These are things that really do happen to people, particularly black and brown people, particularly people who are Muslim. And so me telling the story is just a setup, a way of getting somebody to take, I think he called it an emotional roller coaster ride. And it's totally OK for him to do this because he's telling emotional truths. What do you make of that?

Oh, I did not. I want to say I did not read. the new yorker piece i did not read the original piece i read the new york times article that you read yeah that you sent yeah the jason zinneman piece exactly a critic who is kind of like who had read that piece and was familiar with the work and had his own take on it um and uh gave some of these examples that you gave um i think that this is really problematic obviously like because and i'm trying to like kind of think of examples i mean there there are certain things that are hard to define or describe when it comes to stand-up comedy like there are certain stand-up comedians who their style is going to be so silly and ridiculous that you're not going to take anything they say any premise that they set up seriously or if you do it doesn't really matter that much if Amy Schumer talks about a bad date she went on but the punchline really just has to do with I don't know sex or dirty humor or whatever it's fine if she tells that story though and she's like a victim in that story and then that story is is told as a way to highlight some serious issues with that that women face in the dating scene or whatever it is like then if that's like kind of told as a truth then you're like wait wait did amy schumer make that up or is it true like there are certain you can just sort of tell and i don't know how to define it but there there's a certain kind of there's stand-up comedy is one thing social commentary is another thing and those things usually blend together not always but they do if John Mulaney totally made up going to rehab totally made up going to rehab that I mean he's upset a lot of people anyway because of some of his life choices whether it's their business or not but like obviously people would be really upset about that because there are certain things that we present as a certain truth I mean not to put me in this category too but even on this show like it's it's obvious when you and I are just being totally silly about something and it's obvious when i tell a story about my cat that is emotional and true you know like we present things in a certain way and and if hassan is somebody who and again it's my own ignorance that i was not familiar with his work but like if he's if he's got a show called patriot act and he's somebody who hosts the the daily show and could potentially host the daily show on the reg like no no this is social commentary these are truths these are people who are using examples from the real world to fight certain fights and you can't just make this stuff up and be like oh well it's just an emotional truth no i this is a

huge betrayal from my perspective and for the record um he does say samanosh says that anything that happens on patriot act was like thoroughly fact-checked and vetted and what he what he has what he did when he was hosting that show was different than his stand-up specials um but i mean yeah jason zinneman who i think is a really good writer about comedy and writes a lot of profiles of comedians and stuff. I really like his work. He basically says, this is in his piece, he says, lying in comedy isn't necessarily wrong, but how you lie matters. Manoj has told a story about his prom date reneging on the day of the dance because her parents didn't want her seen in photos with, quote, a brown boy. He now admits to some untruths in this story, but not all, and he left her perspective out. The fuller story on that is kind of wild, actually. So he tells this story in his stand-up special of how he's supposed to take somebody to the prom he shows up at her house and she's she's pinning a corsage on a white guy and then he learns it's because her parents didn't want her prom photo to feature him being um him Hasan Minoj being in the photos because he was quote-unquote a brown boy um now what the woman in question says is no no she had already turned down this proposal or that she had she had she had said I'm not going to the prom with you like days if not weeks before the day of the prom which hasan minoj admits to with the new yorker and that that this was absolutely not how this went down like it doesn't like he showed it's like something from like a a like a john hughes movie or something where you're like you show up and you're all in your tuxedo and you're waiting and then like you look through the window and there she is having a corsage pinned on her by another person by the way i don't know if this matters or not but interestingly enough this woman is married to an indian american fellow it mentions in one of the pieces and her this woman and her husband have been doxxed for years because when hassan minoj was first doing this story on broadway he had a photo of them where their faces were blurred but over time had given had told this story this made-up story and had told it with enough detail that people were able to figure out who she was and she says her life has been really a hassle over the years because people see her and her family as racist um when you know like that may not be the full story of them yeah so it's like that's a real that's a real world harm that you're doing with this story also it makes me think like you know it's like i is hassan manoj the most zelig like figure of all time he's at the center of single thing that happens he's like getting a fbi uh informant is infiltrating his mosque but he's also getting anthrax mailed him but he's also getting he's also having his uh potential prom date uh go to the prom with a white boy uh you know like it's all happening so cinematically i'm kind of surprised that nobody was like really all to the same guy all of this in such a cinematic fashion like it's it'd be pretty unlikely that this would all be happening to the same person

in this exact way and um the you mentioned the the story the made-up story of this fbi agent like i think even coming to his home was that part of the story as well that here he i don't think so maybe i'm inserting that part now i'm just making shit up but anyway but the thing is this fbi uh informant really was a person i mean that's the other thing too it wasn't a generic name he used this brother eric yeah was did you say that was somebody who actually exists in the real world and has news stories about so like like that's not an emotional truth my dude well yeah

and also the story on this this supposed informant is and this is pointed out in the new yorker piece i believe that what what appears to have happened because in in hasan minoj special this is the way that he describes it's like there's this guy trying to infiltrate the mosque and he smells a rat and then he messes with the guy and then the police show up and then years later he's watching tv with his dad and he sees the same guy who's now being exposed as having been an informant and he goes there's brother eric to his dad and that's like i guess the punchline or something that's a real guy who really was infiltrating um mosques i believe but that guy the real person was in jail when hassan minoj says he was infiltrating the mosque and also says i was only doing this in southern cal i mean he would this there was a guy really doing this but he was like i only did it in southern california not in northern california side note i was in jail when supposedly i was infiltrating hassan manoj's mosque like it would appear what happened was he saw a tv story hassan manoj did and then thought that resonates let me just reverse engineer it to be about me and to take this person this real person and just put them in a place in time they never were you know like and again i i i find it and i say this genuinely i find interesting the one person that they found to kind of defend him was another writer from Patriot Act and who had been in these writing rooms with him and a person who based on their name would also in my mind potentially be a South Asian person and what and what I was thinking when I was reading this this person kind of sort of standing up for Hasan Minhoz was I'm never going to understand as a white guy exactly what Hasan Minhoz's journey is and exactly what you know the journey of people who are black and brown is and so i want to be a little careful too about you know i don't want to give him a pass on something that just seems pretty cut and dried like you made these up these stories up and we believed them and people took more away from what you were saying because we believed it happened to you i think that's a real fact in this case but then also i want to remember that like i haven't moved through the world as a person of color and it's maybe it's a it's it's a wildly different experience to the point that something like this makes more sense or is more understandable if you've had a different experience in life than I have so I just want to kind of like throw that out there that like I don't know what it's like to be a person of color in this country and so I do have to kind of like to some degree say I don't know the full answer to this yeah certainly and

it's always good to remember that and acknowledge that having said that it's hard for me not to feel like this does damage to the cause a cause yeah causes or whatever his points are I would stand with him but it's like i don't know honesty is obviously very important to me if there's a way to get to these emotional truths without like actively misleading your audience about personal experiences or if you i mean the art oh by the way really good news uh good news for people who like andrews uh there is a line in this that says that he infiltrated the mosque and had dinner at his house brother eric did so i didn't totally make that up it's not an important part of this story it's just that i for a moment felt like why am i making shit up um but you know there this article in the new york times that that um xeneman is that his name jason xeneman wrote um you know he also brings up mike daisy you know that was another thing where mike daisy is trying to shine a light on a on a real issue which is sweatshops in in china that where people are where workers are terribly terribly treated so that we can have cheap iphones or whatever like that's an important thing guess what mike daisy did by making up bullshit stories gave foxconn and the chinese exactly right like these things have real world consequences and to to say after the fact well these are emotional truths like if you really if this is the best way you can present your art need to let the audience know what the art is and if it's if it's made-up storytelling with with an emotional truth you can do that don't do that after the muckraker has started asking tough questions right and also I don't

think that it's impossible for Hasan Minoj to tell these interesting stories and jokes where he's not the center of it yeah like that's the other thing this you know versions of this stuff happen all the time it's not it's not that there aren't fbi you know ham-fisted fbi informants trying to infiltrate mosques in fact i did stories about this back when i was an npr reporter in la about a mosque in orange county where you basically had like the fbi infiltrating it so as to try to entrap and get people in the mosque to like agree that they wanted to go do some jihad and then arresting these people you know through like ice detention facilities there's a lot of bullshit that goes on and you can talk about it and you can shine a light on it and you can even find the dark humor in it you just don't have to lie and say it was about you yeah like honestly at the end of the day it's almost just like bro calm down like about making this about you like these are all topics that can be addressed through your stand-up format uh and you don't have to pretend that it all happened to you 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

all right uh i don't know if you had other non-madrone madrona let's call the whole thing

off why don't you start on that if you have some thoughts on that because i mean i think various comments came in via various channels right and it sounds like you were all anti-sara

thankfully i think that's the important takeaway if you missed yesterday's show uh we had a actually a very funny voicemail from listener sarah saying look i don't mean to be a wet blanket here but what you've been calling the madrona hill studio that's what i decided to call where i am broadcasting from now because i'm on a hill and there are madrona trees and i like them i've always been fascinated with them um and i thought it'd be a nice name and what sarah was pointing out was that it the name of the tree is actually madrone it's it's not madrona it ends with an e and i was just absolutely shocked by that because i have you know mostly grown up in the northwest i've always thought these were cool trees they're kind of a little sousian like if you haven't seen one they have a real like a kind of copper color to their bark and they're very twisty and they can grow in kind of unusual places where the soil might be kind of rocky um and i just think that they're a beautiful tree and i like the i've always liked the word madrona for whatever reason and uh so uh sarah was just clarifying that it is technically madrone and I was literally this morning up until I said the word Andrew in the intro I hadn't really decided what I was going to do I guess I thought I'd take Madrone for a test drive it does feel like it's very TBTL in that most of this show is hard for people to understand it's kind of nice because like TBTL it's sort of confusing and pedantic you know to start the show every day by saying a word differently than most of the people hearing it would be familiar with it being said although that's the other thing i found out uh let me see if i can find from uh which listener sent in an article it was a link to an article talking about madrona versus madrone and it was oh here we go it was hillary uh uh listener hillary sent in this article says i was in agreement with sarah but your conversation made me look into it this might help luke justify his studio name And then Hillary included a link to an article from the Key Peninsula News, the voice of the Key Peninsula. The headline is, You Say Madrona, I Say Madrone. It's actually a very beautifully written piece by somebody named Chris Rurick, who was just writing an essay about, I believe, why they named their daughter, or excuse me, their first child. Their middle name is Madrone. i've been visiting the tree for years and this winter it has new significance for in november my wife and i named our first child george madrone madrone like madrona tree we're asked yes we explain in california and in most field guides the tree is known as a pacific madrone the a at the end is an appendage attached only in the pacific northwest the madrone madrona divide seems to be somewhere around the Siskiyou Mountains. So I also didn't know this. I guess this is the only place where we're calling it Madrona. Like, we've just decided, and that would also explain

why that's all I've heard growing up, because of where I am.

Okay, so now I'm confused, because I didn't know that there was any debate over the spelling. I thought we all, and again, I want to say, I had not heard of this tree until this came up on the show, but I thought that Sarah was saying, yes it's called it's pronounced madrone but people People say Madrona, but I thought everybody spelled it with an E on the end, unlike the Madrona neighborhood of Seattle, which is actually spelled with an A.

Yes, exactly. My daughter went to Madrona Elementary School. I forgot that yesterday in the conversation.

But that's spelled differently, though. So that's why I kind of dismissed that. I'm like, oh, well, yeah, but that's a different thing. It might be in honor of, but it's spelled differently. Is this article, which I didn't read that you're quoting from now, are they saying that even in the Pacific Northwest you can spell the tree with an A?

I mean, I think so. He says the A at the end is an appendage attached only in the Pacific Northwest. Huh, interesting. So, you know, I think it's one of those things where basically we, for whatever weird reason, have been mispronouncing it so long around here that we're actually writing it incorrectly now, like the Madrona neighborhood is with an A. And also, by the way, the Madrona neighborhood is so beautiful. I'm sure that was subconsciously part of why I wanted to, you know, use that term here and why I've always been fascinated with the tree because just like that's one of my favorite neighborhoods in all of Seattle. So I do think, but I do also think it's one of those things, like I think Sarah even mentioned this in her voicemail, that it's probably one of those things where it gets misused so long that it just becomes acceptable, which I'm not usually a fan of that, as I said yesterday. Irregardless. Exactly. I could care less, Andrew, about what Sarah is saying about Madrone versus Madrona. But anyway, I guess to sort of settle this once and for all, I don't know what I'm going to do. Maybe some days I'll do Madrona. Maybe some days I'll do Madrona. To me, the only downside is people in the Pacific Northwest thinking that I don't know what the tree is called because they have also been misinformed over the years. That part kind of makes me feel a little uncomfortable. And also, who really cares? Are people listening that closely? Does it matter?

I think at this point in the conversation is, again, all the caveats. I didn't know about this tree. I don't have a strong opinion on it. But I think after all of this conversation, Madrone seems more interesting to me. Yes. But this is interesting as well. And I don't think that this really solves your problem of what to call your studio because I don't think you're going to latch on to this. But did you know that it's also nicknamed the refrigerator tree due to the fact that its bark contains water and it stays cool in the summer?

What?

Well, that's Wikipedia.

Coming to you from the Refrigerator Tree Hill Studio. Right, exactly. And that the football player William the Refrigerator Perry was named for it.

Now that is, in Chicago, they call it the Refrigerator Tree. Yes, they do.

But only on the south side of Chicago, Andrew.

I thought you were going to do a Super Bowl shuffle thing there. Since it's Wednesday and we won't be doing any emails. We've got Thursdays tomorrow and music on Friday. Let me just play one voicemail that's been sitting on my desktop here before the original topic gets too far in the rearview mirror. I actually don't remember where this goes exactly, but I know that this was kind of prompted by our conversation about, is it, people were correcting us, the Tacoma aroma or the aroma of Tacoma? Somebody said we were saying it wrong. What did you grow up saying?

I grew up hearing it as the aroma of Tacoma.

I'm going to go with that. I kind of like it. It sounds like kind of again, kind of a wrestling kind of vibe there. Why did I say again? We weren't talking about wrestling anyway. So there was a pulp mill in Tacoma that was creating the smell for decades. And that's why it was called the aroma of Tacoma or the Tacoma aroma. And that that pulp mill is going away. It may go to Luke's neighborhood where it may become the strong pew of Longview. We will find out about that. You're really trying to make that a thing. That's your joke, by the way. I'm not trying to amplify my own. You said that during the show. I thought it was hilarious. But anyway, this is listener Chris who had some experience with that mill.

Hey, Luke and Andrew. This is Chris from Reno. Just finished listening to the episode where you talked about the paper mill and the smell. And brought me back to when I was in community college. I was on year four of a two-year degree. Don't worry about it. And I went and toured that very paper mill for, I believe, an environmental class, which seems strange. But the interesting part was they took us into the room where the pulp was, basically the origin of where that smell comes from. And I just remember going in there and people were actively getting sick. And in the words of the guy from I Think You Should Leave Now, it was indeed stinky.

Going into just the heart of the stench.

Yeah, I was thinking about this actually yesterday, maybe, or the day before.

because, you know, I am a downwind from Longview, Washington, and there is a pulp mill there where many of those employees who are leaving the Tacoma operation, I guess, I think they make cardboard, but I don't really know the difference, but I'd say maybe once a week you get a little bit of a hint of that. Mercifully, it's pretty light down here, which, you know, that could have been one of those things where, like, I show up and look at the house on a day when the wind's blowing the other direction, And then when I actually move in here I realize every single day You're blanketed in pulp mill smell That is not the case I'm happy to say But I was noticing it As I was kind of working out in the yard And I was like It didn't bother me for some reason Like it just Again, I'm far away from it But I was thinking I wonder if you could just If I could do a mental switch And actually tell myself That this is a pleasant smell Like Because all it is Is It's just pulp It's just chopped up wood That's soaking In some kind of a solution that then is being turned into something more fibrous that can be used for cardboard or paper or whatever. You know, it's not like it's, you know, it's not animal waste. It's not fertilizer. Like you drive around in the country sometimes when they're fertilized and that can be pretty pungent. And when you think about what it is, it's like, oh, that's kind of gross. That's number two. It's not that. So I was thinking, I wonder if I could just kind of flip my brain's script to where I'm like, I don't mind this smell.

Yeah, that is interesting. I mean, and also like smells tend to be cultural as well, you know. But I am somebody who's kind of sensitive to smell, too, so that's a tough one. But we also get used to things, right? Like I think I probably mentioned this when this came up originally about that mill closing or moving in Tacoma. Up in the north country of New Hampshire, they had a pulp mill or maybe several pulp mills. I can't remember. Again, I believe those might have mostly closed down now, which is a huge economic problem for that area, which is a very rural, you know, just corner of the country. But anyway, like that was just part of the experience of going up to the north country like you would. We had a friend up there who had just the most beautiful house in the mountains. This was, it doesn't really matter, it was my boss, Mary, and her partner at the time was one of the producers for, I think it was the Car Talk guys or something. I think you would probably know him. Anyway, they had this incredibly beautiful house up in the mountains, and they were just really outdoor people, and it was wonderful. But to get there, you had to swim through the stank, Luke. It was just kind of part of the culture, you know?

That's like listening to the show. Yeah, exactly. You've got to swim through some stank to get to whatever part of each episode actually works for you as the listener.

Yeah, weirdly, I feel like that story might have been stinky. So sorry about that. It didn't really go anywhere. I don't know. I think that might have been one where I just was keeping the needles moving. Sorry, everybody.

Well, I think, you know, at about 87, 88 minutes in, I think we've probably put in a full day of podcasting. I think we can probably wrap things up. Yesterday, after the show was over, you and I were talking, and I was talking about how bad I am at ending the show. And here we find ourselves, Andrew, at the end of the show. No, it's good. With me struggling to figure out how to rap.

Look, you got the music. Oh, beautiful.

Love it. All right, thanks for listening, everybody. We're going to be right back here tomorrow from the Madrone Hill studio bringing you another episode of TBTL. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

We'll be right back. I thought, is this home for Andrew? Love you. Bye. Power out.