Muse

What? The home of the Whopper is offering cash or credit.

I think it's pretty bad if you have to use a credit card when you go to a fast food restaurant for something as little as $3.10. If I use my GM card and I get a 5% rebate, if I eat here long enough, I'll be able to buy a pickup truck.

Burger King bosses say workers won't have to figure out how much change the customer gets back.

I just hope it doesn't slow things down at the cash and carry that people are going to going to be having to call New York and get the confirmation or, you know, whatever it is, because when I want a Whopper, I want it now. Just another way to spend money. I'm sure it'll

work for people on vacation when they don't have to do something, but I can't imagine it working

on a day-to-day basis here. So far, the smallest credit has been for $2.50, the largest just over

10 jamie costello news channel 2 tbtl this is the place to get something so different so beautiful the quality it's unbelievable um maybe try one cooler and faster and louder and better

and less insecure and more just cool.

I've only ever said I love you to two men my entire life. Stone Cold Steve Austin and a guy in a dark club who I mistook for Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Guys, I'm calling you from a karaoke bar bathroom. Somebody just put on Bohemian Rhapsody. Save me, please.

Poop, buddy, scoop, scoop. Poop, poop.

They say, you snooze, you lose. But we snoozed. And look what we lost.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Why now? What are they doing? And how can you steer clear of it all? My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

I say that does the trick. That'll do it.

Coming to you from the Madrone Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia. Another beautiful day here.

Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful.

There was a chill in the air, I will say, this morning when I was getting out for my little jog. Could see a little bit of my breath. Now, I also hadn't brushed my teeth, so that may have been something medical going on with me. I'm not sure, but you can feel the seasons changing around here. And you can also feel a change coming on in me, because I am pulling quite the Andrew today. I am very concerned about what is going on with my garbage pickup today here overlooking the mighty Columbia. Brother, who are you? We'll get into that, I'm sure. Also, we'll tell you about some other things happening here on episode 4037 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. Including the fact that you can get the iPhone 15 tomorrow.

I'm trying to use the phone!

It'll be hitting the stores with, I don't know, probably arguably the least fanfare. Every iPhone that comes out now seems like people are less excited than the one before. Remember when people were camping overnight outside the store to get their iPhones? Those days are over. The days of dynamic pricing in a wider array of industries, those are just beginning. Sounds expensive. We're used to the airlines and some other industries having a change in their prices based on demand. But it's now a pub in England is rolling out dynamic pricing for its beer. And actually a very interesting little mini history in this Financial Times piece that I was reading about when we started actually having price tags on things. So we'll get into that as well. And it's a Thursday, a.k.a. Blur's Day. So do some Blue's Day messages. And we'll talk to this guy, longest running co-bro of the show. He may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships, capturing their grace and power. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I owe you a little apology here at the beginning of the show. The good news is it'll make you feel good, I think. The bad news is it's really not interesting to the listeners in any way.

Oh, it's interesting to me.

But it'll make you feel good.

I'm getting the rare Walsh apology.

And I think it might also make your brain feel a little less itchy if it is feeling a little itchy after that sound check we just did before we started the show. There's a little device that sits on my desk now called a Motu. We don't have to get into exactly what it does, but it's got these awkwardly placed buttons on the very top of it. They put buttons on the top of a piece of electronics so you can't stack it, Luke. I just, I cannot, I cannot fathom what they were thinking when they did that.

That's a non-Norman design.

Oh, as in the...

Wait, what's a Norman design? Isn't there the Norman door?

Norman door. I think Norman door. Or is that something from Game of Thrones? Norman door?

Norman door.

Norman door. The high priestess of Norman door. Norman door. I think I could be wrong with this. Let's see here. The Norman door is any door that is confusing to you. So it is a... In other words, when I'm thinking about design, so this is bad design. And what I was trying to say is this thing, a Norman door, which is named after design extraordinaire Don Norman, is any door that is confusing to use. Their design elements visually show wrong usability signals. So, in other words, the idea is that good design should cause you to sort of instinctively know how to use whatever it is that you're dealing with. Oh, yeah, smart. And so a door should present itself in such a way that you just kind of, you just instinctively know if it's push or pull because it's been well designed. And when it's not well-designed, then I guess that's technically called a Norman door, which is sort of weird because I think this guy, Don Norman, was considered a good designer. So why would they name the bad door after him? That's why I was confused. You know what?

That's not fair. I feel sort of weirdly defensive towards Norman.

I mean, honestly, that's a non-Norman name choice for the Norman door.

I agree. Maybe he made a door with a doorknob right in the dang middle of it.

Uh-huh.

I'm reading up more. Maybe he's a good designer except for his doors. They're like, this guy's great, but Jesus, don't even mention his doors. They're awful.

Don Norman spent a year in England and became so frustrated using the doors and light switches that he wrote an entire book about it, The Design of Everyday Things. That's a pretty famous book, I think, actually, right?

Yeah, they made a movie out of it. I've seen the documentary. No, no, no, that's not true. Maybe I read the book. Holy cow, I think I read a book.

Hey. Holy shit. Norman tackles the troubles with the way we interact with the everyday objects around us and advocates people-oriented designs. Norman offers insights that bring together aspects of usability, engineering, and cognitive science. Well, that's all great, but I do find the idea that the poorly designed door is named for this guy. Yeah. That's kind of a bit of a—I feel like that's kind of a slight.

I agree. That's kind of, as you would say, the fuzzy end of the historical lollipop on your kind of reputation. Exactly.

Now, I'm sorry. Back to the apology that you were laying on me.

So I mentioned to you during the sound check that you needed to boost your levels a little bit. And you said we had a small conversation where you were kind of bewildered. You're like, I haven't touched anything since yesterday. It just doesn't make sense. It's no big deal. I can turn everything up, but I just don't understand why this would be different. Well, it turns out it was my knob. It was my Normandor knob. Okay. It was during your intro that I was like, wait a second, because this box situation is somewhat new to me, somewhat. Maybe I'm just looking for excuses here. But anyway, I turned it up and I was like, oh, that's the little boost of extra level I needed. That must have gotten knocked around on my end. So, again, not interesting to the listener. They're hearing about little boxes on my desk. But the point is you were coming into the show today just feeling a little bit odd. Like somebody was just like sawing a quarter inch off of the bottom legs of your chair every day. And you're just like feeling slightly off, right? Well, in this case, it was me. I hope you feel confident again and ready to do a good show.

I've gotten my groove back.

Good. Look at you.

Not as it relates to my garbage situation, though, Andrew. Oh, how the worm has turned, my friend.

I should go. Now you're just saying that makes me want to go outside. It's garbage day for me. I just want to go check on my boys, see how they're doing out there. Social contagion. Yeah. What's going on with you?

Well, it's not that great of a story, but basically I, so for, for a number of years, I had garbage service here and I wasn't even living here. Meaning for months at a time, I mean, it's not very expensive out here either. I don't know what it is, 10 bucks a month or something, but, um, it's like one banana basically. But so I was kind of really underusing the, the services. But now that I live out here, I'm overusing them because there's just so much, you know, I just have a lot of debris and just there's always something I can put in that garbage can on Thursday and try to get it out of here. So that's one less thing I have to pay my guy Jesse to come out with his truck and like haul stuff. So, you know, I might by myself between me and Bubbles generate a bag or two of garbage a week. I'm always kind of overstuffing it. But today I really went to another level. So this whole story starts back in Port Townsend, the small maritime village of when I had an office or studio or whatever you want to call it in the post office building, which I just realized things have really kind of come full circle. I mostly wanted to move into that building because it looked out on the bay in Port Townsend and I just found it incredibly kind of inspiring.

and calming and whatever you call it, to be able to look out at the water. And now here I am staring out at the mighty Columbia. So that's kind of cool, I guess. But anyway, it wasn't actually like the greatest setup for trying to do a radio broadcast. It was a big echoey room. And I could sometimes hear the adjacent offices, people talking on their phones, coming through the doors. and so in a fit of panic as i am sort of want to have i went searching around the internet trying to find soundproof material and i found some outfit in california i mean this was the dumbest thing and i bought a lot of dumb things this was probably one of the dumber things i've bought but i bought this shockingly expensive like kind of curtain material that when it showed up it was like rubber and then cloth. And it was, you know, suppose it was some guy in California who's been a sound engineer for all these years, had this business where he sold this stuff. And I basically bought enough that I could cover up all of the shared, there was a number of door openings that went out to the hall that I wasn't using because it was such a big room. Anyway, so this was an attempt to soundproof that room. I don't know if it ever even worked, but it was so expensive that have been carrying around andrew through multiple divorces and moves well really one divorce but multiple moves this huge tub of incredibly heavy rolled up sound blocking allegedly sound blocking curtain and it's just like i can't throw i couldn't throw it out because i paid so much for it but i also have no use for it i don't even know if it works like let me ask you a question

And I'm not suggesting that you do this, but if I were to be visiting you and you decided you wanted to take some x-rays of my teeth, would you lay this stuff down over, like, kind of my chest and torso?

That is a perfect description, actually, of, like, kind of what the rubber part of it is.

For some reason, I was getting, like, dental vest vibes from it.

You're absolutely right. That's a very good—people can imagine that because we've all gotten x-rays at the dentist. so it's basically that but then there's also like a fabric kind of layer over it almost like a shower curtain and i had rigged this thing up with these i was it was well this is what i'm trying to throw out and this is what has me nervous today um i had rigged it up with these pulleys for some reason so i had used like rope that would be used maybe for for sailing um cordage and then these pulleys so that i could like close them and i don't know what i was doing i was it was a rough time for me but uh back when i was setting this whole thing up um but i just have been i've been dragging this thing around for no reason other than i can't i couldn't seem to bring myself to part with it and then we now enter walt b my dad is a guy who has spent literally the last four 40 almost 50 years probably 50 years working he's a sign painter but he does all kinds of construction stuff as well and he is constantly down on like the floor like a like a hard wood or concrete surface and he'll be kneeling down doing something working on something and he never wears knee pads he has a couple of old rugs that he got at goodwill that occasionally he'll throw down like it's it's like he's it's like it's time to pray to mecca or something for him like that's the extent of like that's the extent of self-care that my dad puts into his work experience and also my dad will reuse anything and everything for as long as he possibly can he is just like he is loathe to throw anything out and he's loathe to like go spend money on something when he has a perfectly good rug he can kneel on occasionally instead of buying some 18 knee pads made by the husky

company at home depot i have a kneeling pillow that and this sounds exactly like your dad's move because when we moved in here we had some old like kind of uh throw pillows that we were replacing But it was really hard for me to like kind of just throw away a pillow like they were, you know, used enough that it didn't seem right to donate them somewhere. And I didn't know what to do with them. So I took it out to the garage. In fact, I saw one day Genevieve threw it away. She thought it was just garbage in the garage. And I said, don't you throw away my kneeling pillow? And what have you used your kneeling pillow for pulling weeds in the backyard?

And so, yeah, and so I do sell those little like foam rubber little mat with a handle on. I mean, those got to retail for about $3.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got a kneeling pillow, Luke. I don't need them fancies.

What I love is to imagine you on your kneeling pillow like a Precious Moments drawing. Yeah. Just a little kid on your kneeling pillow saying a prayer before bed with just really big eyes. I love this image of you.

And there's probably like a light bulb coming out of my ear or something. This is going to take us very, very briefly onto an aside. But I've got several people in my life I've inundated this with That I've inundated them with And I don't know if you're one of them Do you know that Instagram is constantly

months now trying to sell me weird little like lamps little decorative lamps and light bulb fixtures that you would maybe set on a desk yes and okay so you've seen these i i'm still getting them birds with light bulbs coming out of their mouths i got little angels that are kneeling with light bulbs coming out of their head so i was picturing myself as one of those andrew i have

found the best picture ever of you and your kneeling pillow and i'm going to email it to you because it probably should be the show pick today i was you know a lot of my references on this show are just factually wrong or i'm thinking of one thing and saying something else this is i found a precious moment of a kid kneeling on a pillow praying it's exactly what i was imagining your little kneeling pillow is so all of this is to say my dad um was like oh you could use he saw this so it's in this huge um like um not tupperware but what do you call like a plastic tub i feel like tupperware indicates it's something you might put lasagna in but this is like a plat it's a it's a plastic tub but it's huge i feel like you are the person in this relationship

who should have the answer to that since you used to work at storables is it the type of thing you'd

very briefly as people know and with a and with a real kind of fiery end to my time at storables extra space you're a assistant manager emeritus at storables yeah take that wendy anyway uh whatever that's called it's this giant you know sealable kind of like storage tub yeah and um so i thought well my dad was here working and my dad will reuse anything and i was like could you figure out something to use this for like drop cloth or something i don't know he goes yeah maybe maybe and uh so then it was time for him to leave a few days later i said hey don't forget that uh drop cloth and he was like yeah i don't think i'm gonna take that and i was like if walt b is passing on something it has officially lost any possible utility in this world and i need to just cut bait and throw this dang thing out so of course because i'm very impulsive this morning as i was about to wheel the garbage can kind of up the road to where the garbage guy comes and gets it i like i was like i have a little more capacity here i've got a couple of you know i've thrown a couple of bags of garbage in but there's still room and so i think what if i put some of this big heavy rolled up whatever this material is in there so i pulled one of them out and kind it's super heavy also by the way the rainwater had been filling this tub because it's been outside over the last however many months so there was a green brackish water in there which got all over me that felt great that was a good way to start my day and i like get one giant section of this crap into the garbage can and now the garbage can is totally full like this is where i should just wheel it up the hill and then maybe next week put the next chunk of this absorbent uh sound absorbent stuff in but you know me i can't like i just wanted to be done with the situation i didn't want to have to wait an entire week to try to deal with it i was like maybe it's so heavy that when i put the next section on it'll like compress everything like some trash compactor so i lift it out as i'm lifting it out of this green brackish water i realize it is covered in insects some kind of water like i've never even seen anything like this i hope they weren't leeches but like some kind of very like a potato bug that lives in the water and that there's eight million of was basically what i was dealing with and so i i'm also it's really heavy and i have to get it up kind of high to get in the garbage can i have to go basically world's strongest man like when they're lifting those stone balls and they always have to basically use their torso as part of the how they hoist it that was me trying to hoist this whole thing into the garbage can now i'm committed to it i would say easily 70 of the second giant roll of this shit is just sitting above the waterline of the garbage can basically like the lid of the garbage can and it's you know it's one of those typical ones where it's like it's permanently attached it you open it and

close it it's on there that thing is like almost doing like 12 o'clock it should be doing three o'clock in other words the the lid is is just at this point pretty much ceremonial and there's just a massive amount of this stuff protruding from the garbage can meanwhile my neighbor's garbage cans are all just like tidy and there's nothing protruding and i drove by it this i have to drive to do my jogs around here so i drove by it this morning and i saw this whole my can their cans and i was like i don't know if the guy's like i don't know if the guy is going to go for it like now luckily i think they use a mechanic like they use one of those big you know pincher things so it's not like the guy has to get out there and pick it up himself but i'm a little concerned about the weight yeah it might be maybe over the weight i'm also concerned about him just feeling insulted by me trying to pull this move like him going really dude I'm good because there was another time where I put out two or three extra cans and I painted my address number on them so that my hope was they'll just take these extra cans and they'll just charge me some fee per can and he was not going for that either so like I feel like this guy he did not empty them he just did not empty them yeah and you know I was trying to be I was trying to be a team player and and mark them very clearly these have my address these are mine i understand this will cost me extra like that's what i was trying to say and he was just like didn't even didn't even look at him and you said

he does not use the arm of the truck to lift these or he does use the arm of the truck i believe he

does i think it's one of those mechanical ones that's helped that's helping me yeah that's why

he wouldn't probably the other cans weren't the same size and shape right were they just random garbage cans that you put out there basically yeah i don't think the machines can deal with those too i think you have to like specifically i mean at least here in the city i don't know how they do things down there in the tri-town area but um you know you have to like kind of buy the official one and pay the city and then their arm you know their robots can handle it and everything

i i didn't um end up uh having the city come get those ones i ended up taking them to the dump myself andrew and whoo what a trip i scrapped metal i still have a check i'm a scrap metal barren now i have a check for like five dollars and 50 cents for scrap metal i basically my my trip to the dump was free because i also brought this giant cast iron sewer pipe that my dad and i took out because we were re-plumbing something and that alone the scrap value of that paid for

my dump run you should also there are these things called alternators and cars wait no that's not it what are people stealing uh what is it that people what's the value catalytic catalytic converter Wouldn't it have been a good joke if I remembered it? Definitely not a good joke.

Well, the thing I'll tell you is I can, from where I'm standing, if I walk away from the mic a little bit, I can see through the back window of this studio I'm in, I can see my garbage can and my neighbor's garbage can, and I think there's a decent chance that the guy will come during our recording today. So we will all find out together if he is going to take this away or not. I also found myself as I was driving down to where I was doing my jog today analyzing every single garbage can and trying to see if there were worse offenders than me I saw like one or two that were kind of on the line so I was like well they thought it was okay maybe and then I was also realizing so many people because this is out in pretty rural area people have these like enormous cans they seem enormous to me they're like very big they're the rolling kind and I was like there's no way those are full I should have just brought the stuff with me and then just like pulled off on this rural road and just like the cans already at the if the can is out at the end of the drive for the garbage guy to pick up would that be i mean i know we've talked this to death but i actually don't remember where you'd come down on this let's say it was your garbage was our let's say you lived in a rural place like the kind of thing where like it's a quarter mile down you like you drive your garbage can down to the road kind of thing you know and you drive your can down the road down to the uh you know the edge of your driveway and it's sitting out there but this week it's only half full and i come through and i throw something in there maybe say some kind of soundproof curtain material and then they dump it and then you're never the wiser is that is that poor behavior by me if i were to do that yeah

because you don't know number one if they're the wiser you don't know what their plans are also What could their plans be other than the garbage will be emptied? Maybe they know that they have more garbage they're going to be taking out there later. Like you don't know what their plans are for half of their empty garbage can. Now, if you're walking, this has come up, you know, with dog poop a lot. A few things make me as angry as like going to pick up my newly emptied garbage can and seeing that some bad-mannered dog walker has just used the garbage can that I personally pay for to throw their poop in that I've got to keep for a week now. now that's bad yeah now i soften on that if my if my bin has not been emptied yet and it's garbage day and it's sitting out there and it's full something that small you throw it in there the garbage folks are going to pick it up and empty it okay that's fine i would say anything like anything bigger than like a small grocery bag i don't know if they still sell them in other parts of the state or not but or if they still use them but they don't even charge you up here the little do you get the plastic bag can you get plastic bags there when i go to other states like ohio i was visiting recently and like there was just all this uh you go to the grocery store and it's just plastic bags plastic bags like i grew up with and i totally forgot that plastic bags exist

in grocery stores these the ones that i've gotten up here i say up here because i was important recently but i'm down here compared to you they're like the kind of they are plastic but i think they're compostable too because they have a different feel to them like get them at like Safeway, are they the really thick ones yes because okay those aren't compostable it's a weird thing that they've done they've gotten around how is that better for the environment because you're supposed to use it multiple times it's so weird and i know this because i have to buy these bags sometimes they're called like take out or to go bags and sometimes we pack food in them or always we pack food in them to give away to folks and like in seattle now if i drive to shoreline i can just get the good old-fashioned white plastic like thank you bags if you can picture them but here in seattle where there are strict laws about um plastic bag usage you can either pay a lot more for um actual well there's two choices you get actual compostable bags which are really thin and green and are literally made of that compostable material if you're you know using a some sort of a um municipal large-scale composting situation don't put them in your garbage in your garden compost but um but you can either get those or you it's like or you can get this other thing which is like a really thick plastic bag and those are legal because the idea is you're not just taking your food to go once you're reusing that as a tote bag in your life that is your bag now the thing is i just need to really publicize that do not use that like those things are super thick i go to like get some teriyaki and they're putting i'm like just don't even put it in a bag like just that's a dangerous game tano i mean it depends if there's more than one or not but like some kind of a soy sauce yoshita well no you have to worry about no you do have to worry about that that is true but like i do not like getting those super super thick bags because it feels like a huge responsibility i don't want to just throw them away but like it's just weird how i feel like this law has had this unintended consequence of potentially wasting i

feel like more quality plastic yeah that's the first that i'm learning that i'm supposed to be reusing that plastic bag from the Safeway or even again that we're talking about the really thick

ones I think we're talking about the same thing that we've started to see pop up in the past few

well these are available like when you do self-checkout they're there on kind of like this wire rack yeah is that the same one that you're referring to well the old the old ones used to be

on wire racks too so it really depends on the quality of the plastic bags the kind I'm talking about when you go to like Ohio or whatever and the kind that I kind of grew up with where you're like You only want to take one trip from the car. Crazy thin. They're white. They have some kind of red writing on them. Exactly. You can hang about like 20. You can hang two off of each finger as you go from the car to the house. Slowly cutting off the circulation depending on. Just destroying your hand to be like, it's worth it. What's the way? Worth it. I'm going back one trip, Andy. Anyway, yeah. So it was like those. Those were just like plastic. They went into landfills. And now assuming that they've assuming that the ones you're using are way thicker than that, I think the idea is, oh, reuse these a million times. But then people don't. Yeah.

Nobody told me that now that I know that I will. I don't know what I'll do differently, but I'll probably just get paper bags.

Yes.

Because I'll be honest with you. Some part of my brain is like, oh, this this plastic bag could have another life. You know what I mean? Like I could use it for something because it does seem more substantial. But I don't tend to do that. i tend to just end up throwing it out anyway so i might as well get a paper bag because you know that could be uh that's obviously something that can be recycled and i could use it to start the um the fire in the chimney in my weber uh grill that i use like you do there's a lot of use a lot of

applications for a paper bag yeah i use them for this is not interesting i use them for recycling anyway all of that is to say that you know if you have a small plastic kind of grocery bag that's wrapped up tight or whatever and anything is smaller than that yeah you can toss in your neighbor's can as you're getting ready to like even that seems a little bit like dumping to me you don't want to dump in other people's like garbage cans like you're walking by you have a gum wrapper in your pocket you just blew your nose or even like i'm saying even if you are a dog walker and the thing hasn't been emptied yet okay maybe you can throw your poo in there but anything like like hey i am i'm trying to get rid of all of this extra um material in my house i'm already anxious about how the garbage people are going to react when they see it in my driveway why

would you put that on your neighbors as well well i'm not worried about the material i'm worried because i don't think it's something i'm not allowed to throw out i'm worried about the amount of it yeah so if i were i mean i'm not i'm rolling the dice with this situation but my my theory was if somebody had one of those enormous cans and they were that and half of it wasn't actually being used it would not really impact the world negatively if i dropped one of these things when half of this curtain situation in if the lid closed properly and then the guy came along with the big pinchers and just dumped it it seems like it would i mean the chances of them coming down the driveway later and being like now it's time for us to put the next half of the garbage in seems slim to me but i'm with you it's there

property it's their stuff it would not be cool to mess with it to that degree yeah maybe they're

coming home from work and the plan is hey when i when i come home from work in my pickup truck i've left enough room in this garbage can to like dump the shit that's in the back of my truck into my half empty garbage can and then you see a neighbor has filled it up i would i would be so rip shit

yeah i mean i guess i might i mean yes i agree with you and i didn't do it um i think to me the big issue whether it's dog poop a gum wrapper or maybe even something more substantial is Is the garbage yet to be emptied If someone's garbage has been emptied I wouldn't even put a gum wrapper in their garbage Because that's just like They get to do whatever they want with it But if it's on its way To be dumped and emptied I think I probably have a looser policy Even as it pertains to my stuff I wouldn't really care if someone threw something in here I will say this Your garbage anxiety it seems like has really lowered Because you're in a different living situation Than you and Veeves were previously A lot of it had to do with the particular street you were on

Yeah, they pick it up pretty regularly here.

I have to say, even though I've had, you know, some cans that didn't get grabbed, which was basically my fault, I love having a garbage can. Like, because I've been living in apartments for the last few years. And, I mean, now we did have a garbage chute, which was kind of fun. You know, you get to kind of throw garbage in, like, a stainless steel hole, and then it just goes down to the bottom. but just like apartment living was not ideal for me for a lot of small reasons that I'm only now kind of picking back up on because I was doing it for a long time but it's like I like just being able to take my separate my garbage and my recycling by the way I have my recycling thing all dialed in now there's a recycling it's like a parking lot with all the different you know cans and cardboard and everything that's just down down the hill from me so now I just like stack up all my recycling and then about once a week or so I'll make a run I'll just throw it in the back of my car and swing over to that. So that's kind of working. I like having a garbage can that's just mine that I can put my stuff in. There's the autonomy of being in my own hovel of a home. I'm really enjoying like more than I think I was expecting. Like there was a lot about apartment living that I think was a sort of micro, not microaggressions, but micro disappointments for me that I just sort of was glossing over. I feel very lucky and happy to be

out here in this disastrous construction site you know let's talk about that from the perspective of garbage if we can stay there for a second the kind of surprising thing about that for me is that there must be a freedom in just having a um luke hey luke i'll cut this out later what's the name of the pit in star wars that thing sarlacc is it that's you got it okay don't you don't need to i'm not cutting that out i'm just teasing but i couldn't remember i did have to talk my way into that word but like you just have this open maw of a sarlacc pit that you can just throw garbage into and it disappears and you never think about again there must be some freedom in that too

right no because all i could think of was the really nice guy who i liked who did the like physical maintenance and all this like stuff and all i could think was there that that garbage kid okay first of all almost practically everyone in this apartment building either had a dog or a cat or possibly both and i knew that a lot of the dog owners were not the most responsible people why because every time you get back to the building there would be dog pee on all of the planters and things they were constantly sending emails out going please don't let your dog pee on the building because you just had people wearing like minions pajamas who were taking their dog out for like a 15 foot walk against that while staring at their phone the last thing they wanted to be doing and my thought was always maybe dog not for you in this particular living environment but with that level of of obvious care for their for their neighbors and their neighborhood i can only imagine the people who had cats were not like i was double bagging the cat litter so i would get the first the first thing is that um the you know that litter robot i have it it empties it all into a garbage bag i would take that out i would tie that up then i would put it in another garbage bag and tie that up because that is falling five stories before it hits the uh you know the dumpster or whatever i every time i would throw something into that star like i would just think oh julio like please god i hope everyone is everyone is taking care of you everyone is trying to really obey the rules of this situation because sometimes i'd go in there too there was a little garbage room right on each floor and it was like you're supposed to put your cardboard clean cardboard recycling in there you could throw garbage that was bagged not loose but bag you could throw that you know down the the chute and i'd go in there and there'd be like an old epson printer just sitting there and i'm like you know that's not clean cardboard anyone knows that's not clean cardboard you know at some point julio had to like just go up there and get a damn non-working presumably epson printer and go deal with it so i All right.

It wasn't as it wasn't as freeing as I thought it would be because I couldn't get away from the fact that a human being was having to deal with the with the down, the downwind of all of this.

Somebody just speaking of like kind of the the robot arm garbage picker up or somebody. I get a lot of, as you might expect, Luke, people send me a lot of tick tock videos and various social media messages about garbage and garbage.

I feel like you could do a whole podcast on this.

That is that is a good point. But somebody sent me one that was it wasn't like super like hating on the haters, like full of tood. It was just like a garbage pickup guy in his truck. He sort of set up his camera so you could see him like kind of driving along. And he's like, OK, compare these two neighbors here. And like the one was just like a night, you know, it was the city issued bin, you know, squared kind of at the corners with the lid, as you described it on the joint. And you just pick it up or the hinge, I should say, and you pick it up. with the robot arm and it empties easily into his truck he's like now look at this one and he pulls forward you know 20 yards i don't know i am so bad at measurement how close do neighbors live uh anyway he pulls up to the next driveway and uh and it's like it's overflowing and there's garbage literally on the ground next to it and like somebody had left something on the ground next to it's like see this one he's like i gotta get out of the i gotta get out of my truck to do this one because i think also like is i don't even not leaking it's overflowing maybe he was able to get the robot arm on the on the can but it spilled stuff all around so he got out of his truck and cleaned it up which i was like well first of all yeah that it is good to see that perspective as those of us absolutely whatever but on the other hand like i wonder if he's always getting out of his truck and picking that stuff up or what city he works for because i don't think here in seattle they're getting out and being like well this person didn't follow the rules that's how garbage people talk um these people didn't follow the rules so i'm going to get out of my truck and just sort of mumble and grumble while i clean up their their mess i'm like that is not how it works in seattle man they will grab what they can grab with their robot hopefully put your can back on the ground and move on the rest is your problem i bet you size of city has a lot

to do with yeah you know if you're in a big city like seattle and you've probably got a pretty long route you're trying to get through you're just like we don't have time for you know high touch white glove service but if you're in you know mayberry usa and you know that uh you know um this family has had just had twins and maybe they're a little overwhelmed and they've got the you know all the stuff going on with their garbage but you also go to church with them or something you know you might hook them up or whatever i don't know but i told you what it's

like i think we've our listeners in lakewood ohio have confirmed this is still the case but when i lived in lakewood ohio for a few years with my dad and in high school it was like lakewood is um it's its own city but it's kind of like a suburb of cleveland and it's very just kind of residential and cute and a lot of kind of like post-war homes and stuff i think and uh and they come with these little carts into your driveway like these little uh golf cart types of things They come up your driveway wherever you keep your cans and empty them. They come onto your property, find your cans and empty them. Yes. I don't know if they were still doing that, but they were doing that in 1992, baby. That is, you want to talk about high touch? Yeah. I remember being a kid. I couldn't believe it. Thank you, baby.

Hey, let's thank some daily donors who are making today's broadcast. And let's be honest, this whole year of broadcasting possible. We had a little, we had our weekly meeting, our weekly Too Beautiful, Too Biz meeting yesterday. You and me and TBTL employee numero uno, John Sklaroff. And there was a nice moment, I thought, where we were just, the three of us reflecting on the wider industry trends. And I think you said it, Andrew, we're like, I feel very good about the timing of our decision to become an independent listener supported pod. We were always listener supported, but in this way that we fit into this larger organization, now we're just straight up independent listener supported. But it's rare that a decision that I've pushed for, and I mean, we all obviously agreed on this long ago, but it's rare that a decision I've pushed for actually works out. And this feels like this feels like we really we're very lucky to have these listeners and donors and we're very lucky to be, you know, piloting our own our own course now because of all the craziness in the podcasting industry.

And the amazing thing to me is that we hired a business manager who is so clearly skimming off the top, yet we're still doing OK. I mean, that's I mean, that's Sklar off over there is just getting his.

He soaked, I mean, just soaking wet with what he is stealing from the company. Yet here we are still afloat. So that is really a testament to these donors today.

Yeah, this is the part where I will clarify to the people whose names I'm about to read who are sending money in as interest rates continue to soar. Andrew's joking. No one is stealing the money. Nobody's stealing the money. I'm kind of responsible for like a lot of that yesterday. When I was talking about my whole HELOC debacle, I felt like that was reflecting on that later. And I was like, I hope the listeners understand that everything is OK. Like if I when I'm when I spend most of the show talking about how I'm in a possibly predatory loan situation. And then I'm also thanking people for sending their money. And I'm like, I probably should have been more clear that everything is good and firewalled and safe. And all of your donations are going to exactly what they're supposed to go to. In all seriousness, yes. To keep in TBTL going.

Yeah, there's no intermingling. We're running a real business here. When I say we really are, it's a little too real for me. And John is, obviously, I was joking before.

I don't like the operating agreement because it has to, first of all, we have an operating agreement, which, you know, go us. Well, it's a draft at this point. But, like, we're so legit with this that it's like we're going through every possible eventuality. Like, I don't have a will, Andrew, which I probably should. But we do know exactly what would happen if I either decide I hate you or if I were to pass away or like this operating agreement for our company is definitely the most detailed series of directives related to what would happen in my life that exists on paper anywhere.

It's weird. There's even a do not resuscitate in there, which I know, which I thought was.

And that doesn't even have to do with anything medical.

Do you have to apologize for me again? How many times can I try to absolutely sabotage this Daily Donor?

You know who loves this kind of content because she's been listening and supporting us forever? Hemi So.

That's right, Hemi.

In Alameda, California. Hemi is no stranger to our ham-fisted attempts to thank the donors. Thank you, Hemi. We appreciate you. Thanks to Karen Jenkins as well, who's in Kenmore, Washington. Kenmore. One-time home of the Savage Moose. No, still home of the Savage Moose. Is it? Yeah. I haven't been through Kenmore in a minute. Oh, you can't bring the Savage Moose down. It's too savage. No, you can't. It really is. Tiffany Johnson's in Camas, Washington. Lovely Camas, Washington. Camas, Washington has an absolutely adorable little downtown area that I found out about a while ago because my dad was putting up some signs at the Safeway in Camas. Oh, nice. And Becca and I went out there to have lunch with him and my mom. And I was like, we have been sleeping on Camas, Washington, and it's adorable little downtown core.

Hey, Savage Moose opens in 45 minutes.

How soon can you be here? Oh, my God.

I can be there.

Okay. I can be there in about two hours, probably. Actually, probably an hour 50.

Sounds good. I'll see you there.

Try to get the music going somewhere we like so we don't have to do that whole elaborate step down we did last time. Yeah, exactly right. Terry Hanberg is in Meridian, Idaho. Hmm.

I wonder if it's on the – I mean, Meridian, does that always mean – That's what I wondered. on the edge of something, or does meridian mean bifurcating something?

Wow, that's a great question. I always think of meridian as being something having to do with the dateline.

Oh, yeah, that's true. But also, though, if you're driving down a multi-lane road and there is a wall between northbound and southbound traffic, is that a meridian?

A circle of constant longitude. I am a circle of constant longitude. passing through a given place on the Earth's surface and the terrestrial poles. The European broadcast area extends from the Atlantic to the meridian 40 degrees east.

There's no other definition of that, huh, related to strength.

An acupuncture in Chinese medicine, each of a set of pathways in the body along which vital energy is said to flow. There are 12 such pathways associated with specific organs.

Nice. Okay, yeah. So there's no road term for meridian. I don't know why I thought there was. It's like, hey, don't drive on the meridian. I don't know, man.

The term meridian comes from the Latin merides, meaning midday. The subsolar point passes through a given meridian at solar noon, midway between the times of sunrise and sunset on that meridian. Likewise, the sun crosses the celestial meridian at the same. I feel like I know less about it now than before I started reading that.

Okay, what is this? This says, what is a meridian on a highway? Meridian lines, in addition to marking lanes, provide necessary guidelines, instructions, and restrictions on roads. Yellow and white are the most common ones.

And that's called the Meridian, right? I guess so. There's also a road called Meridian in Seattle.

Yes, that is true as well. I lived near it when I was in Wallingford.

I don't know what Joseph Baruch Warren in the Bronx, New York, knows.

about Meridians, but he knows about supporting TBTL and keeping this whole thing going. Thank you so much, Joseph. And then, hey, look who it is. It's Blow. Kelly Blower checking in from Whitehall, Michigan.

Blower on baseball. I'm here for it. Kelly, send us your thoughts. Welcome back, Mike.

Nice to have him back, too. Exactly. And it's nice to have Kelly supporting the program. Thanks, Kelly. Thanks to all of our donors today for making TBTL possible. We would not be able to do this without you. hello and welcome to top story this is a very very long piece in the financial times andrew about the rise of surge pricing do i read the financial times regularly absolutely not was this listed in one of those sort of like long read type of little what would you call that those emails i get i get one called the hustle i think and they had a link to it um but the gist of it is is that there's a place in central london called the coach house and uh my sense is that it's a pretty popular this was a piece that it was so long that it had oliver barnes uh philip georgiadis and laura oneida all reporting on it this is a three-person operation sometimes i

wonder about that honestly when i see like multiple reporters names in a byline i always wonder about like the the editing process how they all tackled that together whether it's easier

whether it's harder it seems complicated also is it like that like a group assignment in class where one person ends up really doing most of the work and then you have the free rider problem for some reason i feel like laura onita was probably doing all the work and it's like oliver barnes just kind of tagging along just getting his name on there um they're talking about this bar coach house which is uh has announced that they will charge customers um 20 andrew i am such i am so not a man of the world i don't know what 20p extra for a pint of beer actually means they're going to be charged a little bit more for a pint on busy evenings and weekends it's their new dynamic

It would be pound, right? It would definitely not be pound.

Yeah. And also, that'd be a lot. That'd be like crazy. Oh, yeah, okay. An extra 20 pounds. Yeah, right. So I don't know what that P, is that, Andrew, is that quid? What is, I don't know, I don't know how much more that, I should have, in all of my research for this, I should have taken the time to actually. I'm looking it up. Anyway, they're going to charge more for beers on. Pence. Pence. 20 pence. None the richer.

I think. So there's 100 pence in a pound. I think the more I talk, the more I'm likely to get this very wrong and then get very angry emails. But let's just say Pence.

Only from Paul in England. Other than that, I think people, you know, I don't know how many listeners we have over there in the UK. But anyway, they're going to basically charge more when it's busier. And this article goes into great detail talking about all the different industries that are starting to use dynamic pricing. This was really surprising to me. I don't know why it was surprising to me, because nothing from Amazon.com should surprise me. They said in this piece, powered by algorithms and artificial intelligence, the dynamic pricing is being introduced at a rapid pace by a growing number of consumer industries. Amazon changes the price of its products on average every 10 minutes, using millions of real-time data points to benchmark against competitors and track demand surges. so like the price of something you're buying on amazon is changing every 10 minutes that's that's wild and shows you how not sort of careful i am about or how much i don't track what things well first of all a lot of the stuff i buy on amazon i don't buy it all the time i just bought an inflatable hot tub on amazon that our friend katie beck has and swears by now i don't know how much that cost 10 minutes before i bought it now how much it cost when i bought it but i'm also never going to buy another one probably so i won't really be able to go like didn't this used

to be 300 bucks you know yeah i kind of wonder what that data means because i mean obviously i mean you know millions and millions and millions of products are on amazon and obviously like i i've priced out computers and stuff on amazon and you go back to it over the course of a week while you're doing your research and it doesn't seem to be changing a lot so i wonder what sectors have

the most kind of fluctuation yeah well uh that's a good you mean sectors of amazon or sectors of

you know yeah sectors of amazon because like i say like i don't know that if you were to go look at your inflatable hot tub that you'd see much change in that right now it's sort of a big ticket yeah right when they maybe it's like small things like i don't know some pack of underwear or

something uh-huh yeah very possible by the way i'll let you know how it goes with this inflatable hot tub situation.

it's a story of a man i was looking for a brothel of a home and an inflatable hot tub that he was literally sitting in last night with no water in it because i was so excited oh so it did arrive but there's the water has not uh no the water comes separately it's to ship the water so expensive it's that stuff that your foam was soaking in i'll tell you though i mean speaking of amazon it was it was it was wild i ordered this i don't know a few days ago and then uh But yesterday I went on to the app and I looked at my orders and it showed me, it was like, your item is the next drop off. And I just see an icon of a truck that's in Windlock, Washington, and it's heading south down I-5.

Wow, now they're showing the little icon. I didn't notice that on my app. I get that, like, your thing is 10 stops away and you get kind of excited. But I didn't know it's like a ride share service where you can watch that little baby come closer to you on the map.

Maybe because it was actually a larger truck. like it was like a panel truck that was delivering this although this wasn't really that huge of a box but i guess just it wasn't like you know amazon they've and again we everything we say about amazon has to be prefaced by saying it's making the world manifestly a worse place other than the super convenience that it provides on a moment-to-moment basis but like you know a lot way that that amazon is getting this done is they're they're incentivizing people to deliver amazon packages and i don't think the pay that those people are getting is probably fair etc so a lot of people just driving their private vehicles as amazon drivers now this was like a full-on amazon truck that backed into my driveway and then the guy got out and then lifted the box

out and gave it to me but this isn't uh important but out of curiosity was it an amazon truck did it have the smile and everything on it okay yeah so it wasn't a third party interesting yeah exactly

and maybe that's part of why i was getting the full like the full detail i mean i'll be i'm going to be totally honest with you, Andrew, I got home yesterday from my, I did my jog in the afternoon and, um, I got home and I was, I took my running clothes off and was about to step into the shower. But before I did that, because I have weird compulsions around my phone, I was like, looked at, Hey, where are the, um, the people delivering the, uh, the inflatable hot tub. I wonder how long it takes for them to get from winlock washington down here and i looked at the icon and it said the icon was right in front of my house the truck was right near the dot that represented my house and i looked out my bathroom window and there was the truck and i was like this is almost the worst case scenario i live in a pretty remote area there's nobody can really see into my house i can just traipse about you know in the all together if i want to what are the chances that i'm in that mode literally as a delivery driver is showing up so i quickly quickly put

some clothes on and ran outside to help them wait a second the window in your bathroom does not expose you to though right it's up high enough it was designed in a way it's not a norman door of a

window no it was not and it's it's the window is is elevated so you can't see if i was like seven three maybe you could have seen something but no you couldn't see anything it's also a smallish window and it's hidden behind a japanese maple so there's like nine different things going on that make it uh and i think it actually might even be sort of opaque so i don't i love a bathroom

window man i love to especially if it's in the actual shower area i know this doesn't sound like a a huge thing to dream about but my bathroom is in the bat in the basement down here and i like my bathroom i keep it um i keep it spotless as it were impeccably clean genevieve upstairs has her own bathroom it's got a little sliding window you know in the shower area but again like up high enough so that it it can just let the steam out like on a on a winter day to take a hot shower and have that steam go directly out the window and kind of breathe in the winter air is one of

my favorite things in the world actually uh one of my big plans for the remodel on this house and it is so so far away um in the words of dire straits so far away from me so far i just can't see but what is currently the kitchen of this house is ultimately going to become a bathroom and one of the things that i really want to do is put a floor to ceiling window in you know i'll i'll have like a shade or roman shade or something but then i'm going to put a bathtub in and you one would be able to take a bath and look out this window and look at the the river and the twinkling lights and that is one of those coat hook moments for me like if and when i ever get to that point like that will be a very exciting thing for me because i like the idea of being able to i mean it's going to have a shower in there as well but um like right now like i'd never had until the last this is i'm just all over the map now we're barely talking about dynamic pricing i had never actually had like a non-gross bathtub like anywhere in a home that i that i owned um really until we redid the bathroom in the belt wellingham house because i grew up in a home that had one bathroom and it was the kind of thing where it was like a bathtub that you stood in and took a shower and i i'm you know happy to say that i grew up in a home that was relatively tidy like we you know for all the kids and everything it was like a it was a clean it was a pretty clean house there was vacuuming and and and cleaning and dish doing every single day like it was it was and the bathroom got clean so that was nice but i don't know if that bathtub ever really really got the scouring that it needed i mean and if it did you'd have to basically wash it before ever taking a bath because there was always someone had just been standing in there taking a shower like pretty much at any time and so it wasn't until we redid this bathroom and there was a stand-up shower and then there was also this bathtub and it was also a newer bathtub i don't know what it was made out of but like i went from being somebody who never took a bath to being like three times a week i would be taking a bath because it was because the bathtub was never used unless you were taking a bath nobody was standing in it to shower and it was also like i said it was made out of something where it held the heat really well it was just a whole different experience i was like this is this is how the other half has been living all these years with like a functional nice bathtub that's not full of a bathtub ring and grime and it's all like you know immediately starts losing the heat of the water where was this that you had a separate bath in bellingham carrie and i remodeled well basically had a bathroom remodeled the main bathroom in that house and it went from it had a it had like the kind of thing where there's a shower like a stand-up shower that has a big glass door and uh and then a bathtub and we we tore that all down and replaced it so that it still had a stand-up shower but like a nice one and then a

bathtub but like a nice one okay yeah that's why i was wondering if you also had the the option of

a shower yes uh yes and now i'm back to now i'm just standing in this incredibly crummy fiberglass corner unit thing that's like there's no bathtub in this and frankly i'm fine with that i don't think i'd want to take a bath in a bathtub that had been in this house for any duration of time but um i'm looking my point in all that is to say i'm looking forward to looking out the window while doing bathroom stuff because i'm with you that's a very fun there's something kind of fun about that experience. Back to dynamic pricing, this was the thing that surprised me upon reading this article, which is when I think about a beer being more at 7 p.m. than it would have been at 4 p.m., I think, well, bonus, because I'll be there at 4. This really rewards the day drinkers. No, what I think is like, oh, this is uncalled for. And then as this article points out, for most of the history of human commerce, dynamic pricing was the norm, with customers haggling and bartering with vendors over the price of every item like i didn't i kind of forgot about that like that was that used to just be how it was right like you'd go to the market and you'd haggle and then you'd get your whatever it was you needed and that was kind of life until a guy named john wanamaker introduced price tags at his department store in philadelphia this was in 1876 the reason this jumped out at me is because i'm my mom grew up in philly and would always talk about wannamakers like which did not make its way out to the west like i i think i've i had been i went to a wannamakers in philly when i was a little kid i bet you're not even there anymore but i grew up with my mom talking about going to wannamakers all the time and it's crazy that that's cited in this article as being the first place they started putting price tags in And then Macy's, which was also under Quaker ownership at the time, did the same. John Wanamaker was a Quaker, and there was something about putting a price and standing behind it and not haggling and not trying to get more money out of one person than the other that seemed to fall into a sort of a Quaker philosophy. Yeah, okay. Right? I mean, that's kind of interesting that we have not—price tags and just saying this is how much this is has not like been the the thing we've done since time immemorial i mean that's actually a relatively

recent invention yeah can you imagine just like going to the grocery store but knowing you have to haggle on everything i mean i guess there's so much was different then too right you're not you're not filling up a grocery cart with a bunch of you're probably buying you know fewer things that can apply to more things you're buying more more raw materials or whatever you're right you're You're not buying flour. Yeah, exactly. And lard. You're not buying, like, a pre-made pad thai that I might pop in the microwave for lunch later, you know.

Imagine if you had to haggle over that. Amy's, some kind of Amy's Thai food frozen thing. I don't know. I could go four for this.

Yeah, right. And you know, like, what's going on in the shopkeeper's life. You know if they're hard up, if they need cash.

i guess i'm wondering if the setting for little house on the prairie because i remember they'd always go down to the mercantile i think that might have had prices i think I think probably whether or not in real life, in the days of Laura Ingalls Wilder, that was actually the case. I'm sure that the people making the show were not like tracking when price tags showed up.

Yeah, probably not. But yeah, I remember that always gave me kind of a good feeling like you would because you wouldn't shop around. You would just tell the shopkeep. What was do you know his name? I don't know his name. But yes, Mr. Olson, Mr. Olson. He was such a kindly guy. He was great.

His wife was a real piece of work. Oh, she was domineering. Yes, Nellie. Terrible kids. And the other kid, they were bad news.

Terrible kids. Nellie and Willie, maybe? And you would just say, hey. And he would know what you needed. He would see Laura come in and be like, does Pa need some more tack? More hard tack? I don't know.

Sure. They'd get that. They'd get a bolt of material because Ma would be making dresses. But it was a simpler time, Andrew. By the way, there's a really good. I have been grooving out on 99% Invisible lately. I kind of go through phases. I always like the show. And then I listen to all of them. and then time goes by and they drop more episodes but they have a they have a very good actually you know you know what i don't sorry i don't think this was 99 invisible i think it was the um anthropocene reviewed the um is it hank green or john green i mix those brothers up sometimes it's either hank or john green who did this really great podcast called the anthropocene reviewed who did a great episode of the podcast and i think it's also in his book about the origin of the grocery store as we now know, and it's credited as starting with Piggly Wiggly.

Oh, yes. You know what?

I've heard that somewhere. This idea of, like, you go into the store and you go get the stuff you want and you bring it back to the front and then you pay for it. That was obviously not the case for a long time. You went in, you told the person behind the counter the stuff you wanted, they got it for you, brought it back to you. And I guess Piggly Wiggly was the first maybe large-scale operation where they put the food out where everybody could get it.

Just to be serious for one second here, is there a better grocery store name than Piggly Wiggly?

And, you know, I think that he mentions it in the in his, you know, episode on this. There's a story behind that, too, as you might imagine. Of course. Yeah. Actually, I think that maybe the story is that there's no story. I think the story might be that the guy just thought, well, that'll be memorable. Well, that'll I mean, it's I love how frivolous it is.

Whimsical, maybe, is the word I'm looking for. I just love it. kroger no piggly wiggly kroger i'm working on a bit it's like carlin's baseball versus football

only i'm doing i can't wait to see a picture of you i can't wait to see a picture of a cat online with your voice going kroger a robot yeah saunders reason for choosing the intriguing name piggly wiggly remains a mystery he was curiously reluctant to explain its origin one story is that he saw from a train window several little pigs struggling to get under a fence and the rhyming name occurred to him then i don't remember hearing that story but um one other quick thing well two other quick things on podcasts andrew i like a week or two ago mentioned a podcast that i was excited about and then never said what the podcast was and people have been in my dms asking so i First of all, I'm sorry about that. The podcast that I've been enjoying lately is called Who Shat at My Wedding. And it was recommended to me by a listener. And I am really sorry I don't have that listener's name right in front of me. It's been a while. But I'll try to see if I can find it on the fly. What it is is it's a couple who they were having. They're two Australian women who got married in Amsterdam. I think they must live there. and they had their wedding on a boat and it was by all accounts just a wonderful affair um there was the incident where somebody uh did not make it to the bathroom in time and there was a shit on the floor of the bathroom and so they have then they they've all they've talked about it with this friend who's kind of the third the third part of this show who has decided to take on the role of the detective trying to get to the bottom of why this happened and who did it the dynamic between these three women is so unbelievably delightful they are just an absolute stitch and it's obviously not even as much about the like you know trying to and they're not for the record they're not mad at the person they just want to know what happened and so they're in I haven't gotten to the end yet I don't know how it ends but just there that they bring their friends, they get this really janky lie detector test, which they're using on each other to try to figure out if it works or not. They like are calling in various friends and interviewing them. People are pointing fingers in various directions.

it's just this whole podcast trying to figure out who shat at their wedding wow i wonder how the

guilty party feels right now and i wonder if it's one of the three hosts well that's one of the

things that they said at the beginning that i actually really made me like and they go we're so fascinated by this because all three of us are people who potentially would shit at a wedding like so they're not like they're not like being like this was such a disrespectful thing they're like oh we've all had tummy trubs yeah like they're just so likable and down to earth and it's just like you just want to be friends with all three of them so and I don't know how it ends I don't know if they get to the person or not but I've been enjoying it so far let me ask you this

and I'm glad that you haven't gotten to the end because I when you were telling me the story I was wondering how I can broach this without spoiling it for for our audience but especially since you're not at the end now I'm interested in knowing if it is a somewhat disappointing ending as far as the narrative arc is concerned will you be disappointed or was the ride good enough that If they're just like, I guess we'll never know or something along those lines, because some of these podcasts, like you like them and you get into them. And especially the ones that I'm talking, I'm probably talking about more serious podcasts that are actually trying to get to the bottom of a true crime or something. But like I have I've dedicated time to some of these and I'm just like, but they're trying to solve it as they produce it. So there's no guarantee there's going to be a good ending. and then you get to the end and it's like well if you have any more details please reach out to us we'd really like to solve this case I'm like are you kidding I gave you the best years of my life sometimes the not knowing yeah right exactly fuck you exactly you can always tell how whether how good an ending of a podcast is going to be based on how much like kind of personal stuff they're putting up front and i had to ask myself am i the killer what no in a way aren't we all killers

no no we're not we're not this is not that because i'm enjoying the i'm just enjoying the dynamic between these three people so much and their friends who they're bringing into interview that like if they get to the bottom of it or not it doesn't really matter like it's it's it's a delightful it's a delightful listen the other thing that i listened to this morning actually um on my jog that i thought was great and you and i and john were talking about cross promotion between different podcasts and i totally this was on the subject of 99 invisible i completely got sort of horn swoggled in that i went to tune into an episode of 99 invisible and it was roman mars telling me how excited he was to play this episode of a different show for me um that's called cautionary tales i think it's one of those it's a pushkin show and it's it's it's hosted by a guy named i believe it's tim harford and it's the story of the creation of the sydney opera house and it is fascinating like it is a well-told story i went right away and downloaded a bunch of these other cautionary tales episodes so once you've eaten all your tbtl people if you're interested in design as i am um definitely uh this cautionary tales show seems at least the one episode i listened to about the sydney opera house was really really interesting or you could

go back to the beginning of this episode and listen again sure and download it you could

scrape it from your phone yes you could uh and then re-download it and then and then like and

share with you and then like and leave us a review on itunes using your zoom

There's a right way to rock And a wrong way to roll You can just listen to your soul Just remember that life is number one You can be having so much fun Just remember that life is much fun You can be number one

Do you think that this little mashup of two different Tim Heinecker songs would be better if I dropped a Y'all Ready For This right where it transitions into the bass solo? I think give it a shot. I feel like a good, a well-placed Y'all Ready For This can be such a pump-up.

Yeah, and also, I mean, sometimes I'm genuinely curious. Are y'all ready for this?

Right, exactly, and then you wait for an answer.

And you wait. We're not going to go forward until we've heard from all of y'all if you're ready for this or not.

Douglas? Douglas, I said. We need your attention. Eyes up here, please. Are you ready for this? Ready for this. You know who's ready for this? Alex in Kew Gardens, Queens. Nice. I see that. When Alex writes in, off and signing off, Kew Gardens, Queens. Do you know that area, Luke? I don't know New York. Kew Gardens. You know, I didn't spend a lot of time there.

but I have certainly I believe there is an actual Kew Gardens, right? Nice. And also, well, no, I don't want to get into speculation. I'm thinking it might be somewhere near where the Mets play now. The Mets play in Flushing, but I think maybe there's a stop, the Kew Gardens stop on your way there. I don't know. I'm out of my element, Donnie.

I will say this. I love the specificity, Alex, and I like the neighborhood pride for sure. I'm not just saying that. And because of that, I will read your message alex says please wish my amazing wife tara of 15 years a happy blurs day i couldn't have imagined a better life if i tried she's the most caring compassionate loving person i know

with our fur babies barclay gansevort and dudley jeez stuyvesant stuyvesant those are some very new york names for their you know how do you know stuyvesant is that a old family name or is Yeah, Stuyvesant. So, so Stuyvesant, I don't know the exact story on when the Stuyvesants came to Manhattan, but I'm assuming early, you know, when the Dutch basically got the land from the local tribes. And then, so there's a lot of stuff that's named Stuyvesant around there, but there's famously the high school, Stuyvesant High School, which is, it's a public school, but it's very, very difficult to get into. It's like an incredibly academically rigorous place. and then Gansevoort is another big New York name, also obviously Dutch and what was the other one? Those are the two

What are the names? What are the full names? Barclay, so is that Barclay Center maybe? Barclay, Gavinsvoort and Dudley Stuyvesant is that how you say it? Stuyvesant? Stuyvesant Anyway, with our

fur babies. That might be the most New York those are the most New York named pets I've ever

ever heard of. And it all comes together with the Q Gardens as well I love it. With our fur babies, Barclay and Dudley, we make a hell of a team in our small corner of Queens. Happy birthday, Tara.

I'm looking this up, by the way, because I'm trying to figure out. There is a Dunkin' Donuts there in Kew Gardens. There's also a Davis Vision Works. It's not a Dunkin' Donuts. It's just a Dunkin'. You know, you're right, Andrew. It is literally just a Dunkin'.

It is just a Dunkin', but why? Oh, I know why. Because they wanted to stop competing with Mr. Donut and start competing.

Well, and also because they're really what they are, storytellers. Right. What I really do is storytelling. I mean, the way that I tell my story is through Duncan.

You know, I'm going to say something here. I'm going to quote something that the woman that I call my sister-in-law, Julia, Genevieve's sister. She said something years ago that is stuck in my mind. And she works. I don't want to say she listens to the show, which is why I don't want to mischaracterize what she does for a living. But she's in finance of some sort. And she was an accountant. She's a bit younger than us. And so I think we remember when she was sort of like kind of choosing her career path and getting into the business. And she was doing some accounting work. And she said she was being serious. And I think about it all the time. She says, you know, there's something about the industry that she works in that just speaks to her. And for her, she's she feels like it's telling the story of money. Oh, that's that makes sense. Yes. I know you were being a little sarcastic with that. But, like, there was something about that that was just, like, my brain doesn't work that way, so I could never see it that way. I just see spreadsheets, and everything starts spinning, and I get hot, and I just want to leave the room, you know, whenever anything about finance comes up or accounting or what have you. But for other people whose brains work a different way, it's like, no, no, no, I see a story here. I see a story here, and I just find that so fascinating. I'm an ideas man, Michael. I think I proved that with F*** Mountain.

Like I that actually what you just described telling the story of money that that resonates with me and makes a lot of sense and is a is a really is a really clear way to describe something that can be opaque to people like you and me whose brains aren't good at it. the storytelling thing the joke that i was making there is because and i think we're kind of emerging from it thankfully but there was a period of time where every single person in every single industry was melt was was sort of was was sort of summarizing what they did is really i'm a storyteller i i sell carrera marble for all of your backsplash needs but really i'm a storyteller

i work at art marble 21 right as a dishwasher but really i'm a story really it's the story of

these dishes and you know again god bless but people can kind of think about what they do in any way that they want but it just was it was showing up everywhere and a lot of times it was also with like i almost think like you know the dishwasher might have a story to tell certainly they've seen some things like i'm more interested in this dishwasher story but there's people that are like i'm a brand i'm a branding specialist for you know this and like really what we do is we're storytellers yeah because your biggest client is exxon what story are you telling

Yeah.

us they're not ruining the planet is it a true story this is probably not very tangential we should get to the blurs days but i i noted something that i meant to actually even i think tell you about or tell genevieve about um our buddy hauser who also listened to the show of

course jay dog uh famously uh i was at a ball game to be a pretty righteous hombre i was at a ball

game with him i think over the weekend and we were there with a couple of other guys my friend paul who we both know well, and Paul's friend, another person named Andrew, who me and Hauser were meeting for the first time. He was a very nice guy, a very warm fella who I found to be, like, very easy to kind of meet and get along with. You know what I mean? Like, some people are very nice but are a little bit awkward or what have you, and he's just, like, kind of a really good guy. Anyway, we're sitting there for a while watching the game, and, again, we've all just met, and then I think Paul goes to get a beer or something and it's just me and hauser and andrew and um hauser starts a conversation not by saying so what do you do andrew or the typical he just said so what have you been up to andrew and it was an interest or what how's it going what have you been up to lately and i thought it's a very interesting thing genevieve in la stopped saying what do you do because um a lot of people what they do for a living isn't how they see themselves how they define themselves What I do for a living as I'm working here at the bar, but what I'm interested in telling you about is the studio that I'm building at home, you know, for my band or whatever. And so I thought Genevieve's approach to that saying, like, what are you into is interesting. But Hauser just like straight up being like, so what have you been doing lately? Even though we didn't know, like, kind of the background of this person, I thought was a very interesting way to start a conversation without painting somebody into this sort of employment corner. Do you remember what his answer was? Yeah, not specifically. He was working on a project, and it did end up coming around to the fact that he's a carpenter. And so it ended up kind of coming back to that. And that's fine, but it kind of gives the question-answerer an option about talking about what they do specifically for a living. I mean, it does tend to often define us, but it doesn't have to. And I like seeing people sort of avoid that conversational trap.

Yeah, it can be very reductive. Yeah. I can't talk about it enough, personally. I hope everyone opens every conversation with me with, what do you do for your job? You're like, yeah, at what time of day?

I'm a storyteller. I'm a storyteller. Actually, you kind of really have. Literally. All right, how about Claire, who says, happy.

If you've got cute hair, I'm going to say, damn, girl, you've got some cute hair.

If you've got cute Claire, I'm going to say, damn, girl. Oh, I like that. Claire says, happy Blur's Day to my dad, Harley. He's always complaining that we never send a Blur's Day greeting for him. So here we go. Happy birthday, Dad. You're 49 now. One more year till you're 50. Love you bunches. This is a good sign-off. From your most favorite, beautiful, amazing, funniest, most talented, and best dancer and best singing daughter, Claire. Happy Blurs Day, Harley, from Claire. Laura says, happy Blurs Day to Sue. Enjoy your birthday cruise. I wonder where you're going. That's where you're going. Enjoy that. Kristen in Thunder Bay says, I'm going to wish myself a happy 45th birthday on Saturday. I have a birthday on the edge between Virgo and Libra and the official start of fall. Oh, classic. Watch out. It's almost Virgo. I would say, can you please stop doing this stuff? and finally laurel in west seattle says happy 50th blurs day on sunday to me see you at the ballpark and go mariners oh cute nice indeed we need those mariners

happy blurs day everybody yeah happy blurs um we need to uh i've got to wrap things up andrew Because speaking of the new economy, I have a couch that's being delivered here to the TBTL studios. It's a couch that is also a sleeper. It's not a hide-a-bed, like the kind with the springs and the bar. But the idea is that if a bunch of people are coming and staying here, folks could sleep in here if they needed to. But they decided to use this service. The company that I bought the couch from uses some third-party thing called Dolly. Have you ever gotten anything from Dolly? No, D-O-L-L-Y, like the sheep? Yeah. Oh, you know what I just realized? This is funny. I think that years ago, Carrie might have been hired to do the voiceover or something for Dolly. I know it seemed familiar. It's basically like the Uber, I think, of delivering stuff, of delivering large things. So instead of it just being like, I bought a couch.

online from this company and now you know fedex or somebody will bring it because i think of probably being a sizable piece of furniture it gets subcontracted out to some other person via this service called dolly i got this email or text like two weeks ago they were like okay well we'll be delivering your couch tomorrow i was like awesome and then i just get this message sorry your dolly driver had to cancel uh so we can't deliver it and i was like that's weird and then it was like two more weeks before someone else i guess decided they wanted to pick up the fair and drive it out here well thank god we built you like i know by the way better and better you know what the delivery you know what the delivery fee was after i bought this couch

250 dollars wow that's pretty expensive for the delivery for the delivery where it's on the whim of somebody like is are you saying i don't understand why this is better for the consumer

or the i don't think it is i think the delivery i think it's cheaper for the company who's uh who's who's shipping it to me i mean first of all i think i just paid for the shipping they're paying

for the shipping anyway i'm sorry you're paying for the shipping anyway yeah i don't know why

they've gone with this mall now we'll say the guy that i've been texting with this is what i figured i thought i was just dealing with some giant monolithic thing i'm dealing with a guy named gabriel who's like hey i'm your dolly guy i'm on my way out to your house right now in fact he's going to be showing up in probably five or ten minutes so whereas i thought i was just talking to some gigantic company i'm just talking to a guy with a truck who he and his buddy are bringing

the couch out here i guess now i want i want you to think about this question before you answer because there's only one right answer what are you going to say think about this okay you hear those alarms in the background yeah that's showing the import of this question what are you going to say when the dolly drivers drive up your driveway and get out of the car first words what is your greeting hey there you got the first letter and the second letter hello hello hello dollies

hello dollies here's the other question i just know this is the real question andrew

do i have to tip these guys god damn it that's what i turned to you for i can't answer that question i don't know because i mean it seems like the answer is yes you tip for services like

this but also like it sounds like i paid 250 to get this couch here it's also by the way a very easy lift like there's no stairs they're going to be able to pull the truck up i will open the door to the tbtl studio the madrone hill studio and then they will carry this couch right through a door and they will place it right down in the middle of this room like it's not like a thing where they're trying to, you know, wind it up some stairs or anything crazy. Like, but on the other hand, like, movers I tip, you know, if I, I don't know.

Here, I'm on a website, okay? I'm on a website called move.org. Isn't that the thing that Michelle Obama started? Uh-huh, I believe so. This is something else, I believe. This is about moving, you know, this is a website dedicated to helping people through their process of moving homes, and it says, Should I tip my Dolly helper? Okay. Now, this sounds like it's a different situation, okay? This is maybe if you hire Dolly to be your mover, but it says Dolly, and I'm not on Dolly's website. I'm on a different website. It says Dolly strongly encourages you to tip your Dolly helpers. Of course they do. We recommend, and this is not Dolly speaking, we recommend tipping about $20 per helper in our guide on tipping your mover. Now, again, that sounds like you've hired people to help you move your whole house, not just make one drop off of a couch.

And also it's to the larger issue. Now, I guess in a way it's me. I'm the customer here. I'm paying the $250 for the couch to get delivered. But it's like, just charge people more and then just pay people what they're worth. I really resent so many industries now underpaying their people and then shifting the burden over to us, the consumer to then tip them. And that's the excuse for underpaying people. Like, I really don't. It takes us back to the like the it takes us back to the question of like when you had to barter for everything. I don't like bartering for everything. I would have probably just paid three hundred dollars and just had it been done. Like, you know, it's I don't. This is just as the listeners can tell, this is only occurring to me in this very moment that there would even be a thing where I need to like. Because like what like what cash do I even have on me? I've got to go check like, oh, you know, it's interesting.

I mean, Dolly is and now we're just talking about Dolly. So maybe this plays into their master plan here. But so Dolly really does seem to be mostly aimed at like moving services. Like but let's see here. Somebody is describing it from the perspective of somebody who worked for Dolly or picked up picked up gigs via Dolly. I did it for about a year. This, by the way, was posted about a year ago. Basically, jobs are listed in the app and it gives you a brief explanation of the task at hand. it pays on the difficulty and size of the task you can either haul stuff with your truck or van or you can just be a helper customers can add additional tasks when you get there but in order to get paid more you have to submit it into the app and the customer has to approve it so that's sort of interesting so it's it's weird they're using this app that is more like a helper situation but they're using it just to deliver one couch so i don't feel like we're any close i guess i'm closer to understand the dolly business model but not really understanding what i wish is that we

were just back with uh your couches coming on a big truck from our company or from a moving company that we've hired you know like i don't know why this is this just feels i went from being like annoyed that it was a monolith to being excited that it was actually just a guy named gabriel to now wishing it wasn't just a guy named gabriel because i feel like i probably should tip him

yeah i gotta be honest with you luke oh god well i never want to be on the side of arguing not to tip it's such an ugly look right yes um but let's see here if you were ordering what if it was coming on a truck from just a delivery to the baseball to the stadium what if it was just somebody delivering let's say it was a home depot purchase and it wasn't a couch but it's something

similar right same like yeah just like a a washing machine from home depot would you tip the the

person delivering the washing machine assuming they're not doing any installation just dropping

it off no i probably wouldn't think to tip that person then i think you got to treat this the same way but now the difference is they are going to carry this couch into this studio like like they're not going to just leave the couch in my driveway yeah and and that's part of what's in the written contract i had to i had to mention like they basically there's this thing they're like the dolly contract says they will they will put the item of furniture in the first dry place they have Like, there's, like, these weird, like, you know, basically, like, they're not going to leave it out in the rain, but they're also not going to, like, they're not agreeing to bring it into the, like, fifth floor of your Victorian home that just has, like, stairs. You know what I mean? So this is, like, a very, as far as these things go, this is going to be very easy. It's all ground level, and it's, like, I'm in a converted garage. They're going to pull up out in front of what had been the garage, and they're going to carry this couch 15 steps in and put it down. That's the whole thing. So it is, from that perspective, a very easy job for them. Also, I need to see how heavy the couch is. Like, you know, there's a lot of facts. Honestly, I'll probably have, if I have it, I'll probably have 20 bucks in my back pocket. And if they seem nice, I'll kick them 20 bucks, which is only $10 per person. But that's, you know, I don't know. I think that's fine. You carry a couch at 20 feet?

Yeah, because that last part is only going to last a couple of seconds, or, you know, a couple of minutes. I think that that's fine.

I mean, I tipped those movers that helped me move in here.

But that's like a whole, that's a half a day of work usually. Exactly.

Like, I tipped them a lot. Yeah. And to the point where the guy was like, you're the best, and fist bumped me. And then you're like, oh. And he was the guy who had been taciturn. So I was like, yes. Oh, wow. I bought his love.

Would you do a hundo a piece? More than two hundo a piece? What'd you do? You don't want to say, do you? I did 150 a piece. Uh-huh. And there were a couple of them?

There was two guys. And they were great, you know, and they were really helpful. and I could also tell that they were genuinely appreciative because I was tipping them at the end of the thing and then they saw me like trying to move something myself. It had nothing to do with them. It was this box that has what's called a mini split in it. And I was like, hey, I got this and like jumped. They were like, anything they saw like that they thought I needed help with, they were like on it. So they were good guys and I think they were appreciative. But that's a whole other level of like, you know, of sort of service and of like, you know, like you said, it's half a day And they're, you know, carrying things up and down stairs in my apartment and into my house. And they're wedging this king size mattress from eight sleep up these narrow ass stairs. There's a lot going on. Yeah.

Yeah. Did I tell you my cats destroyed my second eight sleep? Are you the one I gave you? Yeah. I think I must have told you that because it happened almost immediately. As soon as we got bingo. I don't remember that.

But that's kind of I mean, maybe it's not hilarious, but it's kind of.

Yeah. Yeah. We have a huge stain on our mattress now. oh no because the water because the yeah like the water sprung a leak and i think it might have happened well that's the thing we can never move again or hire not with anyone helping you because anybody who sees this mattress is going to be like my god what horrors what horrors go on in the bedroom get keith morrison on the line we've got a dateline nbc yes yes exactly i mean it's so i mean you don't even need a black light okay let's get out of here but it's just water It was just the water that would cool and heat your mattress. But I'm telling you, when I clean the sheets and make the bed or whatever, I'm just like, my God. I honestly think about that all the time. I'm just like, if anybody were to ever see this, what would I say? Andrew, tomorrow, I think I will tell you about my experience tonight. For the first time, I'm going to sleep with tape on my mouth, something called Mito Tape. Have you heard about this? Rings a vague bell. It's all the rage now, this theory that, like, if you breathe through your nose, you actually sleep more restfully. And it cuts down on snoring, which has been an issue in my life for the last however many years, when co-sleeping with people. And supposedly this tape you put over your mouth. it's not over your mouth but it just kind of keeps your mouth closed and you it's supposed to be like this game changer the cover the bag that the tape came in is the most ridiculous thing i've ever seen i'm going to send you a picture right after the show okay i'm almost afraid to do it here by myself tonight because i feel like if i suffocate no one will know i was gonna say i guess i'll be somebody else here so that if i you know maybe they could if i start thrashing about somebody could, like, do CPR, but I happen to have the bag here in the studio is why I'm thinking about this, but... Well, I'll put together a backup show sheet in case I'm doing the show myself. Yeah, I do. I'm seeing if Veeves is available tomorrow. Yeah, probably a good idea. All right. Thanks for listening, everyone. We will be back here probably tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. I'll be here. And we'll be here, tape-free. In the meantime, have a great Thursday. Take care of yourselves. Go Mariners. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

just trying not to judge the book by its cover and and what book are you referring to the book to which i'm referring is called phil miller sounds like a good book it's the story of a man with a brothel of a home and a pool filled with human excrement power out