Muse

We got Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 2 and it's just another one of these vampire movies, I guess, and it's romantic and it's full of these sort of situations, which turns out to be that's very interesting, very scary at times, but also a lot of romance and really well made. So I recommend it. Soundtrack. Good soundtrack. Good cinematography. If you're a film buff, you notice things like that. You can tell that they shot a lot of this stuff in the woods and in certain locations that really worked. I loved it. I thought it was great. Would it be a great movie to see with friends? I'm giving it. Or by yourself. Great. TBTL.

From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm sticking out my G-at for the Rizzler.

From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm sticking out my G-at for the Rizzler. Can't you say anything in a normal way?

The answer, sadly, is not yes.

Laughter, a sure sign of a good time. I gotta be honest with you, sir. The kind of work I do, I don't think it's as interesting as you think it is. It's not like in the movies. I mean, the things that I work with, I don't think that they would be interesting to an audience. I should have prepared, but I just watch TV.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

It is political correctness run amok.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, which is just again absolutely fogged in and you might even um hear during the broadcast the very large ships blowing their fog horns so that they don't run into each other down on the

river it's actually it's a for for for something that's intended to avoid a maritime disaster

It's an oddly comforting sound, I'll tell you here, as we arrive at episode 4079 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. So glad to be back home. Was working on Live Wire on Thursday night. By the way, thank you to everyone who came out, all of the 10s who showed up and showed out to make it a really fun night there at the town hall. Thank you. Then I spent a few days at a major software concern on the east side filming some training videos. And all of it was actually really fun and rewarding, but fairly exhausting. And so here I am back home bringing you this episode of TVTL, and I'm very happy about it. I was sad to hear about the passing of Rosalind Carter, who has passed away at 96, of course, former first lady of the United States. And somebody who I actually got a chance to hang out with Her and Jimmy Carter once In like a kind of back room At their church in Georgia And it's a memory That has stuck with me And I thought I could maybe tell that story today

Feast your ear tongues on these memory pops

Here as You know, we reflect a little bit Just a little bit on the life of Rosalind Carter So we'll do that Oh, and we'll talk to this guy The longest running co-bro of the show Speaking of maritime traffic He may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships, their grace, their splendor. Your voice is like a combination of Fergie and Jesus. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I just, like moments ago, got a note from our legal team. Somebody on the legal team. I can't even keep them all straight anymore. But I'm not going to read it verbatim because it gets into some pretty weedy details. But essentially, I need to announce here at the top of the show that that was not actually Terry Gross or Andy Rooney or Mickey Rooney. None of them are actually sticking out their G-ette for the Rizzler. That was a creation of artificial intelligence, which I don't know if there's been any news about artificial intelligence over the weekend. This is the first I'm hearing of it. I don't think so. It's been a pretty quiet, simmering story. But, yeah, just so you know, that was submitted by listener Steve. It makes me giggle. I'm not going to lie to you. He sent it to me, and I just played it 100 times in a row until I lost any semblance of sanity.

Then you sent it to me and television's Chris Hayes, and then we, in our respective locations, laughed our asses off for a good one to two hours. I will say, of those three people, Mickey Rooney, definitely most likely to stick out as G-ette for the Rizzo. In fact, it's hard for him to keep his G-ette in. I believe he was in trouble. I think there were some incidents on set over the years that were regrettable.

I believe there was an incident possibly even in Malibu where he couldn't keep his G-Iat in.

I'm not sure about that. Yes, thank you for clarifying. I mean, those are pretty convincing deep fakes. Actually, it's funny because I was filming at this big software concern over the weekend. And then this morning I got up and realized, oh, we were a very, very small incident at that company over the weekend. and there's this whole crazy shakeup with this, what is it called? Open AI. Open AI, and they actually created, did they create ChatGPT? I believe so, yeah. That's the organization that's very complicated. Yeah, and I don't, I honestly don't, there's a lot of things I don't know about, Andrew, that I'm happy to talk about on the program, like the music of Jack Webb. But in this case, I just don't know enough. I will, you know what I'll do, I'm going to be honest with you. I'll wait for either Today Explained or The Daily to do a 45-minute... Actually, that's a good call. Yeah. This is, I have really, between those two programs, I've really sort of, I've figured out the way that I'm intaking probably most of the information on news topics that I'm now intaking. And you could say, sadly, I guess, it's not so much because I'm sitting down with my, a cup of coffee and my printed edition of the New York Times. and kind of, you know, reading through the pages and then folding it the way that we like to talk about as I take the Long Island Railroad in to work. It's more like, let me just wait until Chris Hayes wants to talk about this. Let me wait until The Daily tackles it. Let me wait until Today Explain tackles it. And then I'll just listen to someone much smarter than me just give me basically, or even like the New Yorker Radio Hour. Like, I've really slacked on my New Yorker reading because the New Yorker Radio Hour is a really good show and they just cherry pick a couple of, you know, great uh articles from that week and then they talk to the people who wrote the articles and it's i'm that's how i'm getting more and more of my information it's it is essentially from the source but it's in a different format it's not just me reading it's them re-explaining it to me

well let me ask you this i think i know the answer but this might this i mean we might even accidentally stumble on an interesting conversation about media consumption here um i was having this conversation with genevieve the other day luke do you ever or are you ever tempted to hit the little button at the top of an article in one of the major newspapers let's just say the new york times here that is not a produced podcast but merely just a read aloud audio version of an article that i believe speaking of ai i believe is an ai voice sort of reading it but it sounds very human um do you ever do that in other words like i know there's a big article about what's his name sam altman i think is the name of the open ai guy i think there was a big kind of article explaining it all speaking of explaining things in the new york times this weekend and i started to read it and i ended up uh not finishing the whole thing but that is one that i could see myself clicking the little button at the top that says listen to this article and then walking around the house with my phone do you ever do that or get tempted to they if the voice is andy rooney i'll do yes okay gotcha sure yeah no i i assume that that's not sticking out his g at for

the Rizzo I guess that makes him bad I assume that's not your move well it's you know what Andrew we did stumble upon something interesting or at least I don't know if I'd say interesting but I would say I have I do have thoughts on that because one of the things that I've been really getting into now speaking of the daily podcast which is how I tend to consume that now although hold on one second Andrew I got to do something to wake myself up I've got a ginger shot here from trader joe's i love this is how i'm starting every morning it's so good we're not receiving any remuneration from trader joe's but i would like to recommend the organic no joke ginger juice shot it's uh hard to say uh and even sort of hard to drink but it really wakes you up it's got 10 calories the ingredients appear to be organic coconut water organic ginger juice organic a lemon juice organic cayenne pepper uh is this what the uh is this what the place

kickers are um yes drinking right before yeah exactly somebody should have gotten jason

some of it yesterday okay here we go whoo that'll that'll really open up the sinuses let me tell you i love these things i mean honestly i buy a lot of foodstuffs aspirationally and you know because like i'll think well if i just have a lot of healthy food around then that's what i'll eat and i won't be interested in taco time and pizza and things like that and a lot of times that is not a successful project for me but i will tell you i bought like a like not a flat of these things but becca and i were at the trader joe's in portland and i bought like a the whatever the little cardboard box that had all of them in them they're like individual little plastic bottles of this ginger stuff i'm almost out like i am legitimately going through these pretty fast because i love them okay well i don't know if

this is going to come off as a, I don't know how this is going to come off. off as a backhanded compliment but i do appreciate um that you are this is how we're different and this is why i'm not good at my job you are looking for content in almost everything that you do like right before the show i have my own like little routine too i crushed up a bunch of ritalin and did like several lines of it and it didn't even occur to me that i should do that on the show like for me that's just i don't know i just wake up and do that you know abc always be contenting andrew okay mitch murray sent me to tell you i got a note from the legal team they say i have to say that i was not actually crushing up riddling i don't even know if that's you and

terry gross were not actually doing lines of riddling well i mean yeah off of andy rooney i have off of his eyebrows i had i was working with a dog this weekend andrew named bronx it's the second year in a row that this dog has been in these things that we're filming And the dog, I'm going to try to find a picture of it and send it to you. If Andy Rooney has been reincarnated into a dog, it's definitely this 12-year-old mutt named Bronx that I was working with this weekend.

Macklemore's favorite dog. Was he wearing a New York Yankees hat and everything? He was.

He was wearing a Red Sox hat and a Yankees coat. And no one said anything, Andrew.

You and I will not let that go. I don't think there's anybody in the world who cares about that as much as you.

Absolutely. No one except us is as irked by Macklemore's adopting of various team logos, even though he is supposedly a Seattle sports fan and who is very identified with Seattle sports to the point where he's now the hype song at the Mariners games. And yet every time you see him in public, he's wearing like a Dodgers uniform or a Red Sox or Yankees. By the way, it's not just Yankees. He's all over the map with it, Andrew. It's getting worse.

He just loves baseball. Anyway, Bronx does sound like a very cute dog.

Oh, man, you would have loved old Bronx. For the purposes of our production, his name was Buttons, which was also throwing me because, of course, I have a cat named Bubbles. And so there were times where I was tempted to call him Bubbles while they were filming, but I avoided the urge. Okay, so back to the question of do I listen to the audio version of those New York Times stories? I don't, but what I've been getting into is this thing they release in the Daily's podcast stream called the Sunday Read. and that is a little bit more produced so they'll just take a really long piece from the magazine like it'll be like an hour of you know of audio content and they'll have it read by someone typically not the author and then they will it's it's light i would say it's lightly produced so it's you know there's music put in but it's not you know they're not putting in a bunch of sound effects or trying to you know take us on an overly complicated sonic journey um but like so I've I listened to one recently about the the the was it how do they say it again the Gelo Beach killer the investigation and what went wrong around trying to find I mean if it's G glow I don't know anyway that out there in New York Unfortunately where a bunch of people lost their lives and it was a very interesting article because what really got into was the police Situation in this particular county and the machinations between the like the DA and the city manager and the police chief and All of this bad stuff. I don't know if you're sitting down Andrew But it turns out there was a fairly corrupt police organization going on and it wasn't helping with the solving of the crimes In fact, the the guy who they suspect did it who's now in in jail, Rex Heuermann They could have caught him a long time ago because he decided to drive Like a one of the I believe I could be wrong. I think it was an avalanche who made the avalanche Like a like a Canyonero style car. No, it was more like it's it's it's notable because it was like a minivan with a Truck bed on the back of it type of deal Like it was one of those things that was like like there was a Pontiac Aztec That also every once in a while a car maker will try to get out there and really break up the format of cars and it's usually Wildly unsuccessful even though we all think we want an interesting cool car it's like it usually ends up being kind of going down as like another ed soul or something um so he was driving this um avalanche whatever like whoever makes that and um which is a fairly distinct vehicle kind of like i said sort of a truck van hybrid thing and because they didn't know if it was a truck or a van it had been somehow entered into the dmv system not as a truck and not as a car or somehow it was when they went to search for it they heard that a person who had been near where one of the people that had gone missing who ultimately lost their life somebody had seen somebody driving an avalanche and that particular vehicle and they went to look for it and it didn't come up in their system because it's some bizarro half-car half-man

half-nightmare something out of a well maybe it was like a center yeah it's

It's like an instruction guide, like how to get away with.

murder like rent some car or buy some car that is neither a car nor a van nor a truck it's a

chevy avalanche and what it looks like is a suburban in the front and then with like a truck bed on it a party in the back yeah so um anyway uh so i learned that listening to the sunday read and then i just listened to one um on uh this sunday uh when i was doing my little exercises about um space force just like a deep dive i'm like hey what is going on with space force like Like, is that is it a real thing? Was it just a PR stunt by Trump? Like, is it actually something we need? Why do we need? Turns out, actually, it's believe it or not, not a terrible idea.

Yeah, that's what I hear when we talk about on the show. We had heard from some listeners who were somehow in the know or at least more in the know than us who had sent us some resources that basically said, honestly, this was something that was in the works long before Trump took office. And actually, the fact that he heralded it in makes people like me very suspicious of it. and it seems easily mockable, but apparently they're, I mean, now you know way more about it than I do, but it sounds like there's some real reasons to have it. Have they done anything cool

yet? No, they do have some satellites that they can actually move a lot though, which is kind of a big deal because the satellites, Andrew, have little canisters on, pressurized canisters they can do that like like the thing they were doing constantly in, what was it, Gravity was that the movie with Sandy B and Georgie Georgie G wait his last name starts with a C why did I go with a different letter I knew who you meant Sandy B and Georgie C I feel like that movie there's just so much like like they're constantly recalibrating going with the little canisters so we have some satellites that have those on them which makes them like by the sort of standards of satellites like highly maneuverable or at least somewhat maneuverable so yeah so again this is I I don't I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing for me and I apologize if I'm not getting worked up It's the ginger shot. It's just injected me with energy on this Monday morning, which I'm badly needed but like I mean the good news is I'm I'm in the words of Ralph Wiggum I'm learning like I'm getting information into my brain that maybe I don't know if I would have read that Space Force piece So I'm I'm enjoying this way of getting information, but I'm also feeling like I might be kind of you know my ability to sit down with a printed article and just read all the way through it is is atrophying to some degree and so I don't know if this is if this is a positive or a negative

that this is how I'm getting more and more of my information I heard this is just sort of sort of um well whatever it's it's a I guess somewhat change in topic but while we're talking about consuming media I was listening to an on the media episode last night but it was actually I believe from the weekend prior but it was really good and very relevant to our interest luke it was about the rise and fall or at least rise and wherever the hell we are now with the podcasting industry right like you know the earliest days of how it was really kind of a quirk of coding of just like nerds trying to get audio out there yet we're still on that same system so going all the way who is it uh adam curry i believe of the former mtv vj yeah i think very i mean to most people an underappreciated pioneer in the space of podcast absolutely and i sort of feel like as time marches on more and more forgotten like i think we used to like kind of joke around you know about hey we're listening to this thanks to adam curry who would have thunk it um but anyway but then also you know the the huge business it became and how everybody started betting on it they even brought up and this is kind of a an issue that i think you and i saw during the podcast boom which was like they were just you know these huge companies were acting more and more like they were movie studios for some reason and hiring fewer and fewer creators and more and more. Oh you mean the conversation

where it was for a very brief moment floated the question of if TBTL was going to end each episode with a list of the credits

of the people in management at

APM and we politely told them to

literally go fuck themselves. Well not literally no we didn't literally say oh get another note from the lawyers we literally didn't say that What we did is we called, we called, we did something called slow walking that. We just kept saying, we'll figure out exactly how to work those in. But yeah, the idea of like thanking a bunch of people at the end of TBTL who had literally nothing to do with the show. And then we would find out later.

That's a proper use of literally. I misused it. You used it correctly. Okay. Because they had literally nothing to do with the show.

And now looking back, realizing that there was a directive not to promote TBTL. Can you imagine us thanking the people who came up with the directive not to spend money on TV?

I mean, that's some real Cersei Lannister level of just kind of, like, or just, I mean, that's, that's actually, it's more Ramsey Bolton. Like, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to have, we're going to have a meeting or at least emails will be sent around of making sure that no resources are put towards promoting the show. But we're also going to make them thank us for it.

That's some real flayed man shit.

Thank you, Lily. Can I have another? Not a show title. Not a show title. Let's not leave Alex out of it. Anyway, okay, I'll beep all this. What I was going to say was maybe to bring that. So I just want to tell you that I heard an interesting episode of On the Media that you and our listeners might be interested in listening to.

I will check that out.

Yeah, I do recommend it. The headline doesn't have anything to do with podcasting, by the way, but it was like a week ago. Anyway, I did want to say, as you and I are sort of exploring, here how we consume media and like you know again you kind of come from more of a like a person who would sit down snap the newspaper and read the read the long reads but you know things are shifting i do wonder if the next sort of phase of podcasting or or audio or whatever you want to call it like is some sort of a amalgam is that is that a word yes okay it is some sort of i'll cut that out too is sort of an amalgam of podcasting and print and maybe using ai and like you said like light touches of maybe putting a little bit of music underneath it um but not like trying to do like turn something into cereal necessarily but just sort of meeting people where they are like i sort of feel like podcasting became too big for itself you know like it was like i i appreciated the people who were like well let's just all kind of treat this like some sort of form of radio that sort of reaches people in a different way it's all audio production like let's not turn this into like a podcast is the same thing as a hollywood movie and therefore you need four different studios how how is it that four different podcast studios were all working on one series and it was six episodes or whatever like maybe we will find a happy medium where it's something that happens more organically where we're listening to content that doesn't sort of

have that head of steam around it yeah no i think you're i think you're absolutely right i just did something that I absolutely hate uh when a response is yeah no I'm I just I really don't like that and I just did it I know that yeah yeah I do not I'm not feeling good about that please uh bleep that out as well okay but I I think that what will happen is what happens in every kind of industry which is eventually it sort of sorts itself out and you're right it was these heady times where just all of this money was getting injected into the industry and people were thinking it's the next Hollywood and people were thinking that every show could have a staff of producers and hosts and, and each episode could take months to produce. And there's just not enough ear balls to support a thousand of those shows in my, in my opinion. And so what we're seeing now is, you know, a few shows that are produced that way that are, that are, it's still a viable business model and then some shows where it's just a person and a microphone and they're just talking about whatever they're interested in and if their personality is for whatever reason interesting enough to folks that'll kind of work and then whatever this is which is you know you'll hear us thank some donors here coming up i mean this is only exists because of the tens of listeners who donate but i do think it will reach it will it will sort itself out but it's definitely involves in fact you know i was talking to sam sanders of uh npr it's been a minute fame and then he had a show called vibe check that was on vulture and and we were talking uh at town hall on thursday night about um about the podcast industry and he was saying yeah there's just not enough people listening to a lot of these shows that cost a lot of money to make and he said including mine because he had a show called into it that's not it doesn't exist anymore but he also has a show called vibe check which is really good and it's him and saeed jones and a guy named zach stafford and they're three queer black men who are very schooled in pop culture but also very schooled in politics and and just the way the world works and they just it started as a group chat between him and these other two people and they and then he said that one day he just was like we're having a lot of fun in this like you know in this conversation let's all just jump on zoom and let's record it and they did and that was the pilot and then they sent it off and somebody was like yes we should this should be a show we should make it and it's now very popular so that's an example of and i my guess is that the production lift is fairly low you know it's it's it's three people talking somebody has to assemble the show but it's it's not um you know something with with a massive amount of production behind it but it's three really entertaining smart people so i guess yeah it just i i'm here's what i want to say i'm really glad we didn't agree to thank any of those assholes who were not promoting the show and i really like and i and i and i hope one day to very much dance on the professional graves of those of all of the people who uh and not all of

it's like i don't want to go like you know i like i love the howard stern show but he's like he's got this like he has this like sort of like grievance he's just like you know he's just like this like personal grievance thing going at all times about the and i'm sure that it's of it's true and some of it's kind of just part of building the myth of like every program director who doubted them i don't want us to be that show um because it wasn't like there was a bunch of people conspiring against us there was just a couple people in key positions who i don't think really got what we were trying to do and um i i hope those people have a very very unhappy life hey let's thank some of our donors speaking of how this show still exists speaking of us continuing this long enough to see our enemies crushed before us andrew it's just eventually this is going to turn into conan the destroyer to hear the lamentation of the women no we want to thank the people that are making this uh a thing that can happen uh i uh you know over the weekend when we were filming this stuff so i was having sort of side conversations with various folks um and you know the topic of kind of my other jobs would come up and i would sometimes try to explain tbtl and they would you know say well what do you talk about and i would well it's me and my friend we kind of talk about our life a little bit of news but it's just kind of a running conversation around around um our life and what's going on with us and the and they would say does it have a lot of um listeners and i would say no but the ones that do listen are very supportive that's absolutely true and we and we're talking about people like natalie dennis who's there in portland thank you natalie not far if i if i get down to the columbia river and i rig up a foghorn on my little motorboat i could probably be down to portland in i don't know an hour tops natalie so some of my favorite jeeps are from portland i gotta tell you the uh drywall guys that came over this morning because i've still got the the willis yeah you can't give it back right once you get your hands on that uh well no i just have to wait for my car to get out of the shop but i can't actually can't get rid of that thing fast enough it's fine but it's not like actually when it was uh one of the people working on the on the shoot that i was on also drives a jeep like oh you're loving that jeep and i was like you know if i was in like the back roads of wyoming with the top down in the summer listening to life is a highway by com cochran yes ruined it but just using it as a way of conveying myself up and down interstate five it's it's fine but it's you know it's a kind of a big boxy loud car actually um but the when the drywall folks showed up they were like hey you get a new rig and i was like no no no it's a it's a rental i'll be going back to my mazda cx-5 directly and i could just see they were all

crestfallen they thought i had finally become a cool guy but i remain a guy who is just here to thank sarah bath sarah beth rebels in middleton wisconsin right there in the middleton stuck in the middleton with you i wonder if we were to google it or to map quest it i wonder if middleton is actually in the middle of the state, or if it's in the middle of a couple of places that seemed like the biggest places when they named it. You know what I mean?

Yeah, that's the problem. As a culture, as we kept going west, what was the middle? Right.

It could have just been between two places that seemed really big in 1870. Yeah. And they were like, we're never going west of here. This is it. Maybe 1870 is a little late for that game. Maybe it was 1770. It looks pretty central as far as... Before we were an independent country, sure. That was 1770. That was when Middleton, Wisconsin was probably formed.

I'm looking, I mean.

I'm not a history guy.

And I'm not a map guy. But it looks pretty central as far as east-west goes. But it is more in the southern part of the state, if that makes sense.

Okay. Well, thank you, Sarah Beth. Yes. Thanks also to Steve Corley of Bellevue, Washington. Oh, I see why you did that. Steve's name is in all caps. And I don't know if that was our system or that was Steve, but I'm going to just go ahead and call him Steve Corley.

Yeah, at first, so, okay, that was interesting. You did robot voice at first.

Two interesting things in the same show?

Save some for the rest of the week. I'll break that down later. No, you did robot voice at first, and it made sense to me. Like, you said that, you made that sound. I looked over, and I'm like, oh, they were all caps. That's why you did robot voice. But really, I guess it would be yelling voice, which you did the second time, right?

Right, because it was kind of, well, you know what I kind of went to the second time? So the first time was robot voice. And the second time was more like Steve Holt from Arrested Development. But either way you say it, Steve Corley, we appreciate you. Also, thanks to Lisa Perry, who's in Oxford, Massachusetts. Nice. Oxford, Massachusetts. I wonder if all of the Oxfords of Oxford, Mississippi and Oxford, Ohio and Oxford, Massachusetts. I mean, they've got to be in honor of the Oxford in the UK.

correct i mean i would guess that's the origin certainly massachusetts right everything in new england is named after something in england not everything so i got another note from the lawyers um but a lot of those old towns were just like hey let's put a new one front in front of it right

yeah sure new york well that's not in you know the northeast i guess would you consider new york

to be the northeast northeast certainly not new england but even you know well there you go new england so you are a map guy oh my god such a map guy people are astounded by my knowledge right now they're just they're listening this thinking how could this guy get any more smarter or articulate

you know who's probably thinking that sarah templeton who's also in portland oregon we got to put sarah templeton and natalie dennis in the same room and just be like you you have friends

there is a support system i figured to say and make them fight i was like wow i don't know no

no no no like bond them be like if you suffer from tbtl 10 syndrome there is support there are other people who are on the same journey and maybe even in a town near you. That's right. Thank you, Sarah. And then thanks to Anne Peckinion of Everett, Washington. How do you feel I did with Anne's

last name? Pretty good. I got to say, I saw it there and I started to get nervous. I was like, what if Luke has a heart attack right now? And suddenly without prep, I would want to pronounce that name. It's not, it looks like a name that isn't necessarily hard to pronounce, but you need to know how to do it in advance. To read it cold was chilling.

Yes, it's got strong like French-Canadian vibes. Yeah, yeah. I feel like Anne's ancestors navigated their way down the St. Lawrence River, fur trapping their way to the United States before they landed in Washington. And worked at Boeing. That's right. Thank you, Anne. Appreciate you. Thanks to all of our donors for making TBTL possible. Couldn't do this without you.

Thank you, baby.

hello and welcome to top story um i don't have a any sort of huge insight into the life of rosalind carter per se and there have been a lot of really nice obituaries have been written about her she passed away at age 96 recently but this morning i was listening to something on npr and i had was texting with becca and i said oh did i ever mention the time that i like actually spent like a weekend with rosalyn and jimmy carter and she was like um no and i mean i know i've told the story a lot on the show about flying on southwest airlines with them but i had forgotten that i also hung out with them in their church in plains georgia just like i think it might have even been in the like nursery you know i.e where you take the crying babies like you know um so that they don't interrupt the service or whatever um and and she was like you've had a pretty cool life dude and i was like that is actually pretty like you know that's something that i forget even happened but and maybe because i was i was younger and i was working for npr i was covering congress and i was i think i just sort of thought it's sort of like when i don't know if something if something kind of that's a lot happens to you when you're pretty young i don't know if it's maybe i've never made a lot of money but let's say making a lot of money or having some sort of status thing happen sometimes when you're younger i think you can just assume oh well this is just my life now or this is just how it goes. Like, I kind of remember my editor, Ron Helving, being like, do you want to go interview Jimmy Carter? And he'd be like, yeah, I'll go do that. Kind of like not realizing like, oh, this is like a former US president and his wife, and also you're just gonna be kicking it with them in their hometown. Like, it's not just like a press avail. It's like a, you know. But I don't remember being like, holy shit. I just remember being like, all right, I guess I gotta go to Georgia now or something. But I just wanted to say that like, you know, Again, I'm by no means some historian of their life, but in the couple days, what happened was their son was running for Senate in Colorado, their son, Jack Carter. And so they wisely said we should make ourselves available to gin up a good amount of press coverage about our son. So I went out and interviewed him and and and, you know, walked around in like the Red Rocks with him or whatever, the hills outside of outside of Vegas. But then I also went to Georgia and hung out with them. And I will tell you this, when nobody was recording, I'm sure the secret service was hiding somewhere. I don't remember seeing a lot of secret service, but those two were legitimately adorable. And they were like the way that they were relating to each other. I remember Jimmy Carter was like eating something off a paper plate. Like there was, we used to call it a gospel outreach fellowship hour. I think they had just like had fellowship hour at the church or something. It was like a Saturday. and this was also i want to mention not like a like it's not it wasn't like a saint you know

peter's cathedral or something it was like a very normal little smallish church in georgia and i just remember like hanging out in this room with them and chatting it up and then you know the we got the audio equipment set up and then i interviewed them and i was watching their interactions and they were just i mean they you know they knew each other for 96 years that's a long time 96 years to know someone because it turns out that like when uh i forget which one was which one was born first but basically uh when they were babies like when they were literally newborns somebody brought i don't know if it was i forget the exact story but basically like their um one of their their parents brought the other one over or a nurse brought one of them over to see the other one like as babies like in the same like hospital or nursery or whatever so if you count that as a meeting they literally knew each other for 96 years like an arranged marriage it sounds like i basically i mean and thank god it worked out break it here thank god it worked out but then other thing too and again there are really well written tributes to rosalind carter so that's not what i'm here to try to do but one thing i thought was interesting was she was the first first lady to have her own dedicated staff because she saw this as she saw her position as something that was really important and it was not simply to um be like uh you know arm candy for her husband or to just you know whatever just be there like she saw this as a position of of importance and of something where she could really move policy and she did like she was very um troubled by the plight of people that were leaving vietnam um who were called the sort of quote unquote boat people because of how a lot of them got out of vietnam and she uh pressed jimmy carter to like double the number of people who are allowed to immigrate you know legally or basically have refugee status or whatever from vietnam like she was a really empathetic person who when she saw something she she thought was unjust, she would go to Jimmy Carter about it. And then he would a lot of times like push for policies that were based on the feedback that she was giving. I think that's probably similar to how it works with Melania and Donald. Don't you think? Would you say that's

probably exactly how that goes? That's my understanding of the situation, but I can't

say for sure. Yeah. So anyway, I am the other thing, the other story that I've mentioned a million times that I just thought was so funny was when we, they flew on Southwest airlines famously and I flew with them from Georgia to Nevada and they they shook hands with every single person on the plane and what was so because you know Southwest is like you can sit wherever pretty much well they had like the first two rows because there was a lot then you could see the Secret Service but they went to the very back of the plane and started shaking hands with folks and worked their way all the way to the front and what I've always said about that was it was both really touching and I think for the people who didn't know who they were totally mystifying and annoying sure yeah they're like can we take off now like it actually takes a really long time to introduce yourself to every person on an airplane and it was oh i know i've done it right and that's why i don't fly with you yeah it's a thing hi i'm andrew um i'm a bit of a nervous flyer and i really need to use the restroom a lot so i wanted to just kind of be up front with all of that no um but also i mean what what also was i'm only thinking about this in this very moment what was also i think kind of charming about that and maybe telling about their lifelong relationship and and sort of their love for each other and respect for each other was that it was both of them shaking hands with everyone on the plane so it wasn't just like well jimmy carter is the ex-president so hey jimmy go do your thing go start at the back of the plane and start shaking everyone's hands or whatever that the two of them and they were you know not young at this point they're probably in their 80s both these kind of like kind of getting sort of shrunk shrunken a little bit smaller older people standing at the back of the plane introducing themselves shaking the hands stepping to the next aisle introduce themselves shaking hands but it was but it was both of them that which which as i'm also thinking about it doubled the amount of time

this took yeah right it's also sure yeah you know the more you think about it this nice memory

becomes like can we know it's curdling it's curdling in my memory no but i guess i don't I just, I, a lot has been made of these two and their relationship. And I just want to say as somebody who observed it for like, you know, a number of hours on a particular weekend, it really seemed legit. Like they just seemed legit, like each other's people and stuff. And I thought it was really kind of sweet to see. And then I also, I guess, I don't know how I'm somehow centering myself in the story, but for me today, it was a moment of being like, wow, I've had a pretty like, I've had a pretty lucky kind of job life that that's a thing that I got to do, you know? And I, I'm so, I can so easily get hung up on the things that are not going ideally for me or, or, you know, just stuff about, I mean, this weekend, Andrew, whoo, boy, oh boy. It was an emotional journey for me because there's so much of my face being documented on video form. And like a couple of times they had the monitor turned around, so I would like be filming for, we'd be filming for a couple of hours. And I would kind of just be like thinking about the dialogue and maybe thinking about some dumb joke I could make and ad lib. And my mind would be elsewhere and it would be sort of fine. And then somebody would turn a monitor around so they could see something and I would catch what it actually looks like. Like what a close up on me actually looks like. And it was it was I did get a very big compliment yesterday, which I will take to my grave, which although with a caveat.

Wait, doesn't that mean that you won't tell anybody? You'll take it to your grave?

Okay, I will treasure it for the rest of my life. Because I'm going to tell you about it right now.

You've got to tell me about it.

I will, you know what? Much like the Jimmy and Rosalind Carter story is curdling in my mind, this compliment is curdling in my mind ever so slightly.

Because of me? Because I'm hurting it?

No, because I'm actually, now I'm sort of starting to parse it and separate it. I'm starting to say what really happened. So I was working with an actor named Allie yesterday, who's a fabulous actor, and we're sitting at a table and we're having this kind of silly conversation and then it ends up, of course, leading to a conversation about cybersecurity and then an expert from the company shows up and kind of does some explaining. And we were sitting at this table and we're doing the lines over and over again. She goes, you know who you totally remind me of? And I was like, who? She said, Jason Bateman. And I was like, I will take it. And she goes, if I close my eyes and just listen to how you're delivering these lines, And I'm only realizing now the part about if I close my eyes, which I feel really changes the nature of that compliment.

Yeah, no, I get that a lot, too. You remind me a lot of Brad Pitt. If I close my eyes while you're coughing, you cough just like Brad Pitt.

If I close my eyes and cross the room and listen out of one corner of my ear, you sound exactly like Jared Leto. I want to sound home. all right sorry about that um but uh yeah it was you know like i said the weekend was i really like i really enjoyed doing this gig because everybody that i work with the writers the crew the client everyone is so um nice and supportive and funny and like it's actually a really fun hang um so i love that but i have it is it is like a kind of a thing for me uh to really confront my like i don't know what you would call it uh not just low self-esteem

but almost like dysmorphia i'm gonna say yeah it's getting a little dysmorphic not and i don't mean that as a casting aspersion like no i know i'm very uncomfortable seeing photos of myself but also i just saw you on whatever i saw you last week when you're over here recording shows And while I know that I'm not the most observant person and eye contact is an issue for me, I certainly don't think that you are somebody who is, you know, should be walking around thinking like, my God, what is what am I putting out in the world? Like, that's I don't feel that we hired for this shit.

Well, that's what I try to tell myself. Like, I don't feel that way. I'm not like, you know, I'm going to go run some errands later today. I'm going to get some fixings for dinner and I'm not going to be in the safe way thinking like I'm a monster. Like, that's not what I think. but when there are so many people who have been hired i mean there's like probably 50 people in the crew between lighting sound wardrobe makeup i mean it is a serious production and all of those people i mean if i wasn't there they'd be filming with someone else but it's like i have been hired as this sort of like i guess you could say kind of the you know the center of this whole thing i'm the only person that's in all of it i have the majority of the dialogue i'm supposed to be kind of carrying the comedy in terms of my mugging with my face etc and there's something about that level of attention being paid and that many people that are all there to just facilitate this event happening that is a different it's just a different level of like self-loathing that comes out in me that i don't feel like again i don't feel like monstrous out in the world i feel monstrous as a person they're pointing a camera at saying yeah this is what we should be having more of like that is that triggers something inside me even the cbs stuff doesn't uh hit me the same way because i feel like well i can add some journalism here or i can add some there's something about the cbs stuff that i just feel like well you know i guess here's what it is i watch a lot of like network news stuff if you consider dateline nbc network news uh i watch a lot of stuff that goes on with the news and they're just normal looking people that have the job of being a you know a television reporter uh again it's much more quote unquote allowable probably if you're a dude which is part of the patriarchy but like there are normal people that have jobs hosting dateline nbc or being one of the correspondents so when i'm out doing a cbs piece i'm kind of like i don't know i just seem like a middle-aged dude journalist guy like that's fine but this other stuff that's more performative and more just like you've got that something burbs that's where i'm just like oh my god this is

everyone here just thinking to themselves like why did they pick this guy you know i mean really go into kind of a mental state that's like thankfully not typical for me but is a little bit i was sort of realizing that part of why i think i have like a little bit of a pit in my stomach before these sorts of three-day shoots happen is because i know that i'm going to be sort of i'm going to be kind of dealing with some internal thoughts which and i don't mean to drag you into this andrew but i feel like you've described sometimes just internal battles in your head about maybe like something that you said at one point that you are kind of beating yourself up over stuff i feel like i don't have as much of that but in this particular area it kind of flares up for me well i'm really glad

you said all that before i was gonna make the joke before we were strictly talking about your looks i was gonna make a joke about like oh luke honestly if it makes you feel any better i don't think you should worry about how you look i think you should worry about your ability to make people laugh but obviously i would never say anything like that having the vulnerable because you know fragile right now vulnerable no i appreciate no obviously i can appreciate what you're saying

but uh anyway i am really happy to be back here doing this though and talking to you honestly because um yeah anytime i spend a weekend trying to explain tbtl to people well first of all i'm also now i just realized this i'm probably there's like at least 10 new listeners today which would be 10 people that i talked about tbtl with if if if any of them want to actually take the time to look this up and uh i don't know how great i feel about uh about my performance so far but that's another thing that gets that gets in our heads is anytime we anytime we think i mean you know you never know we may have um some folks that are coming over from the ttfa world now that i think we're doing some cross promoting with our friend nora mcinerney so maybe there's a whole bunch of new people that are just getting to learn how messed up i am here i go once again with the email

every week I hope that it from a female no man it's not from a female busy day

out here again Andrew at the old ranch I'm just calling it a ranch now I mean I guess I can do that because you know famously the hidden valley ranch not a ranch it's not a very steep hill no ranching whatsoever the place where that guy popularized that salad it isn't a valley though it sounds like so that's I well how do you define a valley like Jesus even doing here okay okay it's

hidden but you know the thing is it can be picked up by radar it's neither

hidden nor a valley nor a ranch but other than that and it is owned by Clorox it literally literally is only Clorox well the guy who invented it you know was a plumber in Alaska and he when he was in Alaska he always had a dream of opening a dude ranch and calling it hidden Valley Ranch so he had the name before he ever got to California. Right, yeah. And then, you know, had this kind of sort of like, I guess it was a sort of a motel with a restaurant in it where he may or may not have thrown someone off a balcony, a person who passed away. There's a lot of intrigue out there at the Hidden Valley Ranch.

That's why it has to be hidden.

But there's a lot of activity here because we were actually making good progress. I think maybe, I don't know, by tomorrow, all of the paneling might be up on the studio, Andrew. so no more aggressive banging here and then uh tomorrow the inside of the the living room and what's going to be the kitchen is getting painted um so that's that's gonna be huge progress i am gonna be did i tell you this joke that my friend terry told me she and her husband toby uh have done many remodeling projects on their house and i was all excited telling her like oh the drywall's up she said well yeah but you know it's 80 of the way to get the drywall up and then you only have 80% more did I tell you that no I know it was like I know because you know the drywall goes up and you're like oh my god it looks like walls it just looks like a house and then you know there's putting in all the outlets there's all the trim there's you know there's just a million there's painting there's just a

lot more wallpaper the woven wallpaper that which is of course you know I'm big

on huge on there's God there's some Holly hobby ass wallpaper in the in the upstairs like where i sleep which we've talked about this a lot on the show andrew i'm in danger of just kind of like i'm in danger of of going west world on it of it not looking like anything to me like it doesn't even when the first time i went upstairs i think maybe when i owned the house and i looked around i was like this comes down tomorrow this is terrible like just this weird kind of country kitchen country kitchen wallpaper in the bedrooms like this is giving me like actual like an actual like kind of emotionally bad feeling and now i'm just like another day another win for the og yeah that's what i always say yeah when you move in another

day another victory for the og taking down the sweats the impostors among us you can't just play

the first half of that anymore i'm so glad i was like waited i was waiting with bated breath to see if you would play the full clip. I was thinking.

It always feels, like, unsatisfying when you only play the first part.

Well, it's because the back half is so satisfying.

Another day, another victory for the OG, taking down the sweats, the impostors among us.

The impostors among us just makes me laugh so much. Can we get a listener, Stephen? Can we please give that the AI treatment, too? Oh, my God. All right, here's what I'm going to do. Another day, another victory for the OG.

I wasn't going to do this. I've had these two voicemails sitting on my desktop for a little bit here, and I almost, a couple of times this weekend, I almost wanted to see if I could, like, do something that you and I do not do very often on the show, but, like, actually put some, like, old school public radio production into this. I was going to see if I could weave these two narratives together with music or something, but every time I tried it, it felt a little bit, felt a little bit like I was trying too hard. So I'm just going to play them in a row here. I actually.

We've just established that these shows cannot survive if they're overproduced. Exactly. See the scrapyard of podcast history

I Do I want to get into this I really want to play both of these voicemails Because I don't want to play one without playing the other So I'm going to skip the random thought that just jumped in my head Talk about a major point of insecurity I found something Actually I shouldn't bring attention to it on the show

You could just talk about your insecurity and we could play the voicemails tomorrow too

No, let's leave that Because it just occurred to me that I found something online from my past That I found at first i was like oh cool i remember this and then i checked it out and it was the first 30 seconds of it were so so so deeply deeply deeply embarrassing that i almost like i'm not even joking like i had a physical reaction i ran across the room to stop it uh and that's all i want to say about it because i and it's just something that i used to be proud of and i was like oh that's an extra bummer sort of but it also means that time moves on i was younger then And I have different, you know, I have different skills now. But anywho, so what I want to play with these two voicemails, I was really on the fence about it because the first one's pretty negative, but you just brought up Jared Leto again. And I'm like, you know what, I'll do this. I'm going to clear the plate here. I'm going to play this Jared Leto story, but then I'm going to about, let's just say it doesn't paint him in the best light. And I had some words for Jared Leto earlier on in, I guess, last week on the show. And I have not heard from anybody who said, hey, listen, man, why are you harshing my buzz? I like this guy. I like the music. I like the acting. And that's fine. I really don't want a harsh buzz. It was just a moment where. You don't want to yuck yum. I really don't. Like, what's the point? Like, if you enjoy it, you enjoy it. I find him really unpalatable on the screen.

And he also is. I mean, he represents the exact opposite expression of how a human can move through the world than you do. like in the sense of like what is clearly his desire to be observed and be in the center of kind of everything and i mean there's there's not anything much more showy than i'm going to climb the empire state building or part of it to promote my new music tour and that's just not how you would promote let's say a tbtl live event for a variety of reasons would i no probably not i probably wouldn't climb you're not so much into climbing mount everest or the empire state

building as you are into i would say sitting okay that one you can end early okay so here it is i'm gonna play for you a jared leto story from a listener and then uh but we're gonna we're gonna cleanse the palate after that with a nice story about a nice uh musician but let's start with

this one hey friendos i want to tell you listening listening to friday's episode and i want to tell you a jared leto story that andrew will stoke the flames in your secret heart okay i have a secret

heart and it's going to stoke the flames of it honestly that could come in handy when your

when your regular heart gives out exactly i want to say uh some swears are coming up here okay

in college i was working college radio and 30 seconds of mars was in town this is a small town in florida they're coming to town they're playing everyone's like oh jared leto jared leto and jared leto's people negotiate so let him do like a guest spot a takeover on the radio station the 30 seconds to mars is much more commercial than this weird college radio station did so like the people who worked at the station kind of had a chip on their shoulder they kind of felt like it Anyway, his people are very adamant to not talk about my so-called life. Don't talk about it. Don't mention anything about acting. Anyway, he gets to the station, and he's on the air, and he's very cool, all caps. He's very cool, the real Hollywood shithead. And he's on the air, and he says, what can't you say on the station? And I'm like, oh, well, you know, don't use language, yada, yada. The mic is on. And he goes, oh, what a provocateur. He goes, oh.

I can't say, fuck. And the quick thinking DJ who was there goes, oh, no, you can't. We're here to talk about music. Tell me about your so-called band. Oh, snap. And he played one more song and left after that. All right, bye. Would you say that to Tom Petty?

You wouldn't say that to Tom Petty, would you? In fact, I did edit that a little bit down for time, and the listener did mention. And he's like, this whole thing really reeked of the whole Billy Bob Thornton. You wouldn't say that to Tom Petty. Wow. And also that idea, that's the thing, too, is like, I'm going to be a provocateur. I'm going to say the F word on the radio. I know. That's just like it's so lame.

That is the least creative response you could give. I mean, you know, to that situation of just being like, yeah, but what if I just said the F word right now? What are you going to do with your radio station, man? Mr. Radio Man.

Looks like you got some real nice airwaves here. Wait, what am I doing? Suddenly I went from cool guy to a mafia extortion. I don't know why I did that.

It would be a real shame if something happened to your beautiful radio station.

Okay, palate cleanser here. Let's take a listen to this message from listener Nikki.

Hi, listen, Andrew. This is Nikki from Worcester, Ohio. Cool. It's my first time calling in, so I'm a little nervous.

I just wanted to mention the reason this came up on the show was because I think we were thanking a donor named Kathleen Manley, which led to a long story about my friend David Manley, who I knew in eighth grade and how I really wanted to go see Tom Petty during the Into the Great Wide Open tour. It was the first time, I believe, in my life that I was obsessed with an album while the band was on tour supporting that album.

Because it would have been like Beatles or something.

It would be Beatles, Zeppelin, you know, all that kind of, or Donovan, of course. Sure. How did we forget? We forget. Actually, I don't know if I was listening to Donovan in eighth grade. I think it was more of a mature man's game. But anyway, so that's why I was just kind of saying I never did get to see Tom Petty in my lifetime. It's a bit of a regret. And that's what Nikki is referring to here when talking about Tom Petty concerts.

I'm seeing Tom Petty. It was, I think, 2006 in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I was in the lawn with the guy I was dating at the time, seeing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and we're sitting there, and these two people come up and approach us and say, hey, do you want to exchange your tickets for two front row seats? We're like, who are these people trying to scam us, like, out of our lawn seats? But they're like, no, no, we work for Tom, and he really wants the people who are the true fans to be in the front row. so we reluctantly kind of swapped tickets and walked up the front row and they let us in and and it was real we were there in the very dead center of the front row in front of all the people who were probably paying you know thousands of dollars to be in row two and three and and it was it was great like that's all I have to say about it it was really amazing show and like I looked down the line and I saw a young boy who like had to have been Tom Petty's son if not like I don't understand how they could not have been genetically, like not genetically related, but I don't know. That's all. It was really great. Although, either later that night or the next day, that guy broke up with me, so he's a little bit of a mixed bag. But seeing Tom Petty was amazing, and, yeah, apparently he really cared about his fans. So that's all I got. Power out.

The person who ended up breaking up with her, Jared Leto.

Uh-huh.

Amazing how that works. Exactly.

Is this where I play his song?

Okay, I do like that.

That was some of Jared Leto's best work. Wow. You hear stories about that with different artists. Like, I think that Bruce Springsteen is sort of well-known for saving some front row area for true fans and maybe for people that are, like, using a wheelchair or something. I mean, I know now because of ADA there's a lot better sight lines and stuff, but I think before that was more widely done, like, I think he was pretty well-known for, like, trying to really look out for his kind of super fans and true fans who maybe didn't have thousands of dollars for the front row i think billy joel has done that although billy joel also has come under i had the tom sharpling on from the best show and he like went to a billy joel concert once i think at madison square garden he was sitting behind like an obstructed view pole in an area of the theater where he said most other artists don't even sell the tickets because they're such bad views so maybe a mixed bag on billy joel but um that's really cool to to hear i'm just such a tom petty fan like to this day of his music you know it makes me very happy to hear that uh that he did something cool or his folks did something cool for listener nikki in

ohio yeah and i'm guessing i'm trying to figure this out here i am guessing that nikki must have seen him at a blossom sorry it took me a second to remember blossom music center

that's where like that's the big outdoor like kind of venue where you'd go see summer concerts like that and I'm trying to think that's probably where I saw Lollapalooza I know I saw the B-52s perform there that was sort of a similar thing where I think somebody somebody I think I had lawn seats but then somebody got me up to the front for both that and Sonic Youth I think of the of the Lollapalooza tour so yeah Nikki I'm sure I'm guessing because that's all like kind of Cuyahoga Falls area I'm guessing that you are Blossom Music Center much respect

I wanted to make a joke about this person who may or may not have been Tom Petty's kid saying, well, was he wearing that Mad Hatter hat? Because then that's probably a dead giveaway. But now that I Googled, I was trying to, first of all, I wanted to reference whatever video it is where I think it's the, it's the one where it's all kind of an Alice in Wonderland theme. Yeah, don't come around here no more. That's don't come around here no more. Okay, I was trying to find it. So I was Googling Tom Petty top hat. there's a lot of internet chatter about tom petty's hats including at fedoras.com the many hats of tom petty i think you should leave sketch fedoras.com but well hold on and

this is a real question like did tom petty really wear that was that an iconic tom petty hat outside of that video and i'm just misremembering i always think of him as having like a bandana on or like kind of a bandana pulled kind of across his forehead but was he like touring and stuff with the top hat is that something we saw outside of that particular video where he was dressed up

like a specific character i think it was more i i think i don't it wasn't like his signature look it wasn't like stevie van zant with his with his you know do rag that he wears but i do think it was it was a um it was a sort of a consistent theme because of course there's the video like you said that don't come around here no more but then i'm looking at oh yeah this is all at fedoras dot com andrew which is by the way pretty smart idea to try to like you know basically piggyback off of tom petty related news to sell more fedoras but somebody on twitter had said rip to tom petty the only man in history to make this hat look cool it's a bunch of pictures of him in different contexts kind of wearing that sort of top hat thing and i'll be honest with you it actually looks okay like it's not uh it's not a look that i uh personally would ever embrace or that i even

think of as being a particularly great look but it worked on him though right like don't you think can you go to fedoras.com yeah i think i'm on there yeah can you go to that tweet from somebody named

brody logan and can you go to the final picture and the thing where tom petty is not only wearing it's not a super high top hat but let's call it like a modified top hat and then he's wearing a t-shirt where the guy is wearing a top hat and on the t-shirt the guy in the top hat has a bullet going through the top hat this is a highly top hat forward outfit for Tom Petty and he actually looks cool in the picture like I can't believe he's pulling this off are you seeing what I'm saying Brody Logan

Brody Logan posted four photos right please go to the fourth photo okay fourth

photo it'll be the one where he has a t-shirt where the guy's also wearing a

like a fedora or top hat yeah I see yeah so in the on the t-shirt the image the cartoon of a bullet going through a top hat i see but he's also wearing it or no it's going through

a fedora i guess right probably but then he's wearing a kind of a sort of top hat ish hat but doesn't he he actually looks cool like if you describe this outfit on anyone else i'd be like that's we're gonna want to go back to the drawing board on that but like he just maybe it's because he's freaking tom petty but he just looks badass and he looks badass all the time because like

whatever his style was it was his own it was authentic you know and i think i've probably told you this before on the show. This is such a weird memory for me, but I think memories about things that maybe confuse you at the time or when you learn something new stick with you. And I remember being not like a super young child. I was old enough to be like pretty well into Tom Petty. So let's say I'm like 12 or 13 years old or something like that. And I remember seeing or hearing the term role model and not knowing what it meant, which I guess isn't great for a 12 or 13 year old i guess you should probably know what a role model is but we didn't i didn't grow up having the movie role models as a reference point of course but anyway i remember asking some adult i'm like role model what does that mean they're like oh you know it's like somebody that you like kind of really respect and would like try to emulate or you want to be like this person and i remember without missing a beep being like oh like tom petty and like that's actually pretty cool that's just that's just what lived in my heart and i didn't even know it and And to this day, I can't hear the term role model without thinking of Tom Petty. And I don't think that it's safe to say in 2023 that Tom Petty is my role model. I think I don't know who would be my role model right now. I'm sorry, Luke. Don't ask. But I don't know who my role model would be. But it's just so funny that a 12-year-old Andrew thought that Tom Petty was his role model. I didn't really take that Tom Petty path in my life, though.

I love that that was, though, like who came to mind for you.

He's just naturally himself in everything he does.

Yeah. Well, I...

learned the term role model from the Charles Barkley Nike Air commercials where he said I'm not a role model I am not

a role model I'm not paid to be a role model I am paid to wreak havoc on the basketball court parents should be role models

Tom Petty should be a role model

basketball doesn't mean i should raise your kids that's a pretty edgy commercial it is and it wasn't just

a marketing thing right like this was the result of and this is something that i heard later on like sports radio i again i think i heard one of those weird sunday national shows a while back and somebody was dissecting this period of time when like that was his thing in like post-game interviews or whatever he would just say what he ever wanted to say and he would just always say Like, I'm not a role model. Like, I will say what I want to say, and I'm kind of a badass. Like, you were obviously following the sport back then. Like, that was his persona that they then made a kind of a campaign around. Do I have that right?

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. I just did it again, Andrew. Yeah, no.

Yeah, no. Yeah, no. Do you think you were around somebody this weekend who does that? I mean, I can't say whether or not you often do that.

I don't think I do it a ton, but I want to do it even less. Two times in one show is way – I might need to back off the ginger shots before the program. The thing with Charles Barkley that is funny about those ads to me is that he is now as an adult probably is my role model Because I freaking love Charles Barkley Like he is first of all that the show that he does with Kenny the Jet Walker and Ernie Brown and Shaq that's the basketball halftime show is really one of the best things going on television because they're just all so funny and interesting and like when they're not talking about basketball is always the best part of the show um but Charles Barkley just is somebody who speaking of Tom Petty being authentically himself I think Charles Barkley has been authentically himself throughout his life in a way that I just absolutely adore like he uh you know is he's somebody who um you know has had his struggles like he's gambled a lot of money away but he's also like yeah you know um I could afford to do it. And it was my money and it wasn't a great idea. I'm trying to do it less. But like he was a person who got picked up on a DUI charge, which obviously is a really terrible idea. But he just kind of was like, I made a mistake. It was really dumb. Like he's just somebody who is he's he's he's unapologetic, but he's not unapologetic and kind of like a jerk way. Like nobody gets to tell me what to do. He's unapologetic in a way of like saying, look, I'm living my life. I'm not perfect. I'm not a role model. Like he's really stuck with that. But in a way that doesn't feel like he's just being like, F you, you can't cancel me. You can't say anything anymore. Like, that's not his vibe, you know? And I think, no, I think actually, let's see. Yeah, is there a, was he the one that was at This American Life? There was a crazy story in This American Life about Charles Barkley showing up at the funeral of this guy who he had met, I think, at the gym of a hotel.

And it was told by the daughter, who I believe was a journalist, or certainly the person who was telling and producing this piece, was the daughter of the man who died. And how, like, I think her dad kept saying, like, yeah, no, I'm friends with Charles Barkley. And she'd be like, sure, dad, whatever. And then Charles Barkley shows up.

And I feel like her dad might have been, like, Chinese-American. Or he had come, I believe he might have been first generation to the, he might have immigrated to this country. And this reporter might have been first generation. So it was an even more sort of unlikely pairing that like Charles Barkley became friends with his dad or her dad, I believe. And then like they just kept in touch. And then when when one of them was in the same town as the other, they would go get dinner. And then Charles Barkley shows up at the funeral, which I feel like was not in like a major American city. It was kind of a journey. So, yeah, I the irony of Charles Barkley saying I'm not a role model is that he has turned out to be my adult role model.

You know, it's amazing. and I don't know if you landed here too but it was an only the only a game story from 2018 by Shirley Wang or possibly Shirley Wong I don't know how she pronounces it um yeah my dad's friendship with Charles Barkley by Shirley Wang and it looks like um uh the dad's name is Lin Wang so yeah there it is I mean that is just like that's amazing that's so cool that is not for

anyone's benefit that is not a PR move by Charles Barkley you know what I mean he's not like as in to be like hey i'm just like a normal dude who's friends with regular people like that is something that he was doing there's no way he could have known that this guy's daughter was going to put some story together for only a game right he literally was just like yeah this is my buddy and like we hang out and now he's passed and i want to honor him like that to me is a very very strong character reference on charles yeah absolutely i love that thanks for reminding me of that you're welcome andrew all right you want to get

out of here now yeah that's it all right i actually am looking i wanted to end the show

on a high note which was me being thanked by you for reminding you of something nice from now on

just when we get to the end of the show you just pause like that until i thank you and i say you're compliment you for something that's all that's the ultimate power out is you appreciating me

and my hard work so all right abc andrew always be content always be complimenting always be

Complimented. There you go.

All right. Hey, thanks, everyone, for listening. We're going to be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. So please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Ms. Hovel, do you recognize these text messages? Yes. And they are between whom? Myself and Vincent Allen. Vincent Allen, your co-defendant and colleague at Nortrip? Yes. I will now read from these text messages dated April 12th of this year. Brie, did you talk to Dan at Qualstar? Vincent, he said they are laying off 300 people next week. Brie, we need to unload our shares before then. Vincent, I'm on it. Brie, be discreet. Vincent, of course. Brie, oh my God, did you see Brian's hat? Vincent, oh, ha, ha, ha, ha. Bri, he looks so stupid, I can't breathe. Vincent, what the hell even is it? Bri, it's a fedora with safari flaps in the back. Vincent, holy shit, he looks so stupid. Talk later, I'll take care of that thing. Sounds like more than a coincidence to me. Power out.