Muse

I will come to your house. I will go to your refrigerator. I will take your butter out of your fridge. I will eat the butter in front of you and your family's eyes. And I force you to watch me while I eat all your butter that you are going to have on Christmas evening. You will beg and cry and say, no, don't eat all our butter we need for Christmas. I will say, aha, not my problem. And take the empty bottle, I will throw it on the stairway. I will go home.

in this business of show you have to have the heart of an angel and the hide of an elephant

shazam you know these these two are good very very tough to do a morning show this chit chatty it kind of thing but these two have an intellect behind uh whatever it is they're doing

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, the area very close to beautiful Leavenworth, Washington. Yes, Christmastown, USA. The rumors are real. Also, the rumors that I'm still not able to do my normal full audio. I almost said audio-visual presentation, but thankfully for all of you, very little of this is visual. I'm still not able to do my full audio presentation with my normal microphone and those audio drops that you've come to know and love. So we're going to have to just do another recording on my telephone. But I did move. I am in a different room today, and I am surrounded by pillows. I've made a sort of pillow fort. And not only is it hopefully absorbing a little bit of the echo that was on yesterday's show, but it's cozy as hell, people. That's right. I'm actually in a bed. when they tell you what they're doing believe them i am i am in a bed right now surrounded by pillows hopefully recording this at the highest fidelity that our current situation allows for uh in my defense i'm in a bed under the covers because it's very cold in this room because i turned the heat off because the heat was making noise so this is all in the service of the highest fidelity recording here as we arrive and realize and make peace with the fact that we're at episode 4095 in a collector series. We have much to discuss on today's program. I'm really going to try to not make this yet another recitation about the audio challenges that I'm dealing with. I'm going to make it a recitation about how I think there's a possibility that my own podcast has turned against me and sided with another podcast, at least in the online space known as Instagram. We'll talk about that. Maybe my own podcast that I'm one part of, I'm a triad, I'm part of a three-person operation here at Too Beautiful to Biz. Maybe this podcast is turning on me because I'm dipping my toe in the waters of becoming a Grand Theft Auto 6 Vice City guy. Maybe that's why. Anyway, we'll get into that and I'm sure a lot of other stuff. And we'll talk to this guy, longest running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is Andrew Walsh. He is joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke.

I worry that I could possibly ruin the show here with a question. So I'm telling you straight up, you do not have to answer this right now if all will be revealed later in the show. but I am curious there is an acronym that I am unfamiliar with in today's show sheet later on and I'm wondering if that is an acronym I'm supposed to know what it stands for if it's some sort of luke code to yourself if it'll spoil things if I ask about it on the show do you know what I'm talking about spell the first two letters of the acronym IW

that is such an esoteric thing that i did not mean to leave in the show shade show sheet or show shit i don't know depends we'll see how today goes that

That's, I believe, my acronym for a topic that I put in that I'm not sure if we will actually get to on the particular day. And so I write in parenthetically, if we don't get to it.

I, I, W, D, G, T, I. At first I thought it was a religious thing, like what would top stories do? I wasn't exactly sure. I say, if we don't get to it.

That is just a note to myself. So when I'm putting together, like I was putting together the Monday show sheet and I realized that there was a decent likelihood that some of the topics scheduled for Monday were going to go unaddressed because, well, we had the whole technical, I had the whole technical meltdown. So I just migrated some of those topics to the next day's show sheet. So as to cover every eventuality, I write to myself. See, Andrew, people think that this whole TBTL thing just happens either by accident or with a minimal amount of sort of thought. But I would like to say it's at least one click north of a minimal amount of thought. I wouldn't call it a maximal amount of thought. But I would say there is a little bit of thought that goes into it. And so I note for myself sometimes this is something that I'm going to I'm going to kind of figure that it's likely something we'll talk about later in the week. But in case by some weird chance it does get addressed on the initial episode I've listed it at, I will put in case we don't get to it just as a note to myself.

And the irony is me asking about this acronym increases the chances that we won't get to.

Right, because we just took five minutes to address it.

We just took five minutes to talk about IWGTI. So my apologies for that. That's also the union that I'm in, Andrew.

Yeah.

International, wobbly, dedicated, good talkers international.

Oh, good talkers international is not. You kind of stuck the landing there.

Doesn't Good Talkers International also definitely seem like a public speaking group that meets in a church basement on Thursday mornings and local Rotarians show up to work on their public speaker? It's like if your town doesn't have a Toastmasters International, they might at least have a Good Talkers International.

I mean, the fact that it's called Good Talkers International means it's worth the dues. Would you say some people have way with words, others no have way? No have way. I told you, I see that you have some things that you want to get to here at the top of the show, but I just want to do a little PSA here, Luke, for folks who may not realize this, but I learned something yesterday, and I'm kind of still reaping the results of my actions yesterday. Today, as I'm kind of playing through some pain here, for those who are ever curious, yes, you can cut yourself with scissors. Why did I think you couldn't cut yourself with scissors? I'm not sure. I'm not talking about the good kitchen scissors that we have in the butcher block along with all of our knives or whatever.

Right, which you might even refer to as shears if you're being extremely precise.

But no, these are just some desk scissors I have here. Who is it? Oh, it's scotch. Scotch brand. So, you know, no. Now, wait.

Have you been drinking scotch?

Is that part of the issue? Yeah. Actually, let's go back. What was I doing when I cut myself? I got a 12-year bottle of Fiskars. I had some schmutz on my scissors yesterday, and totally without thinking about it, I just took my finger and I just ran it down one of the blades of the scissors. You know, I'm careful with knives. I respect knives. I think I have not been respecting scissors. All of a sudden, like, well, exactly what you think happened. But I ran my fat fingertip down the edge of the scissors to remove said schmutz. And what do you think happened? It opened up my skin a little bit. And not deeply or anything, but enough to draw a little bit of blood. And then, you know, so I put a, you know, I cleaned it up, put a little bandage on it again. It wasn't, it wasn't like, it wasn't a gusher. But it was irritating. And now today, you know what I'm dealing with, like the tiniest, tiniest little slit. but it's got like it was at an angle sort of so it's sort of like it's got a little flap of just a tiny imperceptible flap of like dry skin there that is just irritated i mean like you know typing or just putting my hand in my pocket brushing anything it's just like it's it's more painful

than you'd expect given what it looks like and it's one of those little injuries where it's in a place that you don't realize is getting as much action as it does until there's a finger till There's a pain point.

Yeah.

You know, I've had that before. In fact, you were busy not respecting scissors recently. I was busy not respecting not.

In fact, a knife, this is, we want to talk about a roundabout, I guess you would say, sort of plug for a one-time sponsor of the show. We did these ads a long time ago when we were back with American Public Media for a certain brand of kitchen stuff. And I don't actually remember, was it called Made In, maybe? Oh, yeah. Did you ever do any made? Yeah. Not made in, not like a thing that like Shrek might save, but like M-A-D and then like new word in. What was even the name of that company?

I forgot. I think you're right. It was made in. And I think that one of the kind of, I don't know, it's not really a skillet because it's not a heavy bottom skillet, but like the nonstick pan. God, they make the rock and world go around though, don't they? They really do. But we got a nonstick pan from them. And I will say it's still my favorite pan, you know, non-skillet pan to cook with.

Well, I got a big knife from Maiden. Because for those that don't know, sometimes when you do an ad, at least back in the days when that calf was a little fatter, Andrew, is that one of the ones? What's PETA's take on that? Oh, I think it's okay to have a fat calf.

Just don't slaughter it. The problem is we know. I mean, what, do we fatten it up for its health? I mean, come on.

We are men of honor, Andrew. Lies do not become us. The only reason we're noting what the weight of that calf is is because of what is happening down the road for that calf.

Right. Okay. Let's just say a well-fed, happy, comfortable calf.

When that – well, I just thought of something worse. Okay. Well, don't do that. Trying to think of – okay. But point being, back in the day when there were a lot of companies doing a lot of advertising on a lot of podcasts, they would sometimes offer you a kind of a – I guess you could say proof of concept. You did the ads for something, and then they would send you some element of that product so that you could talk about it from personal experience, which is actually not a bad idea. I do think it's why most of these companies went out of business because the – The Drinkworks machine that I received. That comes to mind. And just so many companies that their sort of – their kind of hard launch was let's start – okay, let's start by spending all the money we have on podcast ads across a spectrum of different kinds of shows and let's send each and every one of those people the product we make. So let's – if we can start in the hole to the tune of everything we've ever had and made and build from there, we should be all right.

Sure, yeah. Yeah, I mean it works. I mean, I think it makes a lot of sense with some products, but like, yeah, the Drinkworks one was, again, I can say this now because they went out of business immediately, but they sent me like a couple hundred, you know, retail price, couple hundred dollar machine that is, even though you were explicitly not supposed to say this in the ads, I can say it now because we are independent. In fact, have we ever really addressed this on the show? We've addressed it like it literally was made by the Keurig coffee maker company, but it was, you know, they didn't use that brand, but it was the same company, Keurig. They basically made a Keurig for cocktails instead of coffee. It was called Drinkworks, but you were not allowed to say it's like a Keurig for cocktails. I mean, it is any person who is familiar with this technology would have described it to their friends as, oh, yeah, it's like a Keurig for cocktails. oh you get it immediately the copy said you are not allowed to use the word keurig at all in this ad i'm just like that would be it's this it's not like you're naming a competitor it's your company anyway they sent me this thing it was a couple hundred dollars worth of machinery and you pretty quickly i was not able to buy replacement pods for it because it went it went went belly up

well i got one and i thought i was mr hero i gave it away to becca's brother and his wife because they enjoy cocktails and they have a nice setup at their house and they had more counter space than I did in like my apartment. And I thought, oh, they'll really get a kick out of this. And they sure did. And for the one sleeve of drink pods that came with the thing. And then they were like, oh, hey, this thing is really cool, but it doesn't look like they sell the pods anymore. And I was like, someone, there must be some aftermarket. I was like, Google harder. And then because in there not being any more pods for this, It rendered this very generous gift that I gave completely obsolete really fast. So I wanted there to be a world where someone else had, you know, nature abhors a vacuum, as they say. I thought somebody could have made some dough making the pods, but nobody was.

So it's just that they just filled the landfills with these machines.

Whereas if we would have been able to call it the Keurig of cocktails, who knows? I mean, honestly, they could have maybe acquired Amazon by now. That could have been the most successful company in the world. but we weren't allowed to call it what everyone wanted to call it. Now, that's a business strategy. Should we... as a newly launched company ourselves consider buying Amazon? Should we talk to John Sklaroff about that? Do we have the capital? Right now we might.

I mean, you know, we've made a few very shrewd business deals. One of the shrewdest business deals we made was taking away my access to any of the TBTB accounts. And since that's happened, I think we've really righted the financial ship. So we may be in a position to make a bid for Amazon.com.

yeah it's funny apparently john listens to the show and then uh re rescinded your credit cards

or maybe could we sell the show on amazon.com if we just work on our seo could this be the number one podcast you get when you search for affordable podcast on amazon.com affordable podcasting i like

that you know we are probably i mean somebody is listening to us on an amazon device right now i'm

talking about if you just go to like the place i go to to buy unfortunately a lot of stuff what if we tagged what if it was hashtag podcast hashtag salad spinner hashtag best so when people are looking for the best salad spinner on amazon they also manage to find us and then they might listen or buy the podcast because i mean that seems to be the real game on amazon is you just have to figure out if you're one of those marketplace folks like as in someone who has your own company but you sell stuff by way of amazon it's just an seo game really and then there's also by the way the the boot of amazon on your neck which involves not being allowed to sell any of your products for a cheaper price anywhere else on the internet or they will delist you you know about that too

right i think you might have mentioned that it rings a very faint bell yeah essentially if you

sell something, let's just say some sort of Tupperware, and you also sell that on other e-commerce sites, somehow Amazon has written the sort of bot or spiders that crawl through the internet that are very, very good at finding out any other pricing on your product. And if you dare to sell it for cheaper somewhere else, they will then make you, they have all these ways of punishing you so that you then become pretty, pretty much a non-factor on Amazon. So therefore there, this is part of the lawsuit from the attorney or whoever it is, has brought these lawsuits of late. It is being challenged. It is. This is one of the things they point out as anti-competitive on the part of Amazon is that they've effectively made it so that if you sell a product and you want to ever sell it on Amazon, they can set your price of your product, or at least they can control what you sell it for. Because if you run afoul of them, they can

effectively end your business on amazon yes you know that is the context in which i heard it i probably heard it on marketplace or something along those lines can i tell you i know you have

stuff you want to get yeah i want to talk about stabbing myself with a former sponsor oh so you

stabbed yourself yeah i do want to tell you a story related to e-commerce that i think you'll be very interested in i'll keep it short but go ahead and tell that was the story i just stabbed

myself the other day with a made-in knife and what i would say is they're very sharp it's the sharpest two years later it's it remains the sharpest knife i own so much so that when i was cutting up some veggies to make a soup for me and walter uh i cut myself and i remember being surprised and then i remembered yeah knives are actually sharp if they're a nice knife from the company made in they are very sharp so that's the story now and they'll remind you of that from time

to time if you're not respecting their sharpness i needed a little reminder and i got one from that knife so what was your e-commerce story so here's the deal i will honestly tell an abbreviated version of this i went into a very long wine detail of this on spotless um with hannah because i thought it raised a bunch of interesting um i don't know conundrums that people uh who share finances in a romantic relationship uh maybe have to deal with and um and just the general state of online commerce. You're talking about Amazon, which I do think is a force for ill in this world as it gains more and more power. However, also something that I use a lot and have been using increasingly. And also because we're Prime members, not only can we get things shipped to us in just breakneck speed, but we don't pay the shipping on it. So if I'm ordering something that isn't from like a company like grove or maybe one or two others i'm probably checking amazon first um but i rarely almost never buy things directly from an instagram ad link yeah and um i was scrolling the other day and once again i saw an ad for this kitchen device that can basically it's pretty simple it can hold your sponges and soap and whatever but instead of sticking to the side of your sink with suction cups the way the one i currently have does this sort of like telescopes out and kind of rests on the edges of the sink and so it can fit your sink it's got that kind of like you know kind of cute instagrammy look to it i'd seen the ad a million times and coincidentally had been complaining loudly to anybody who would listen about the fact that i got this like little sponge holder in my downstairs sink that will not stay stuck like it just keeps on the suction cups

keep on unsticking and it's driving me bananas i would put forward the the the statement if you will the argument the clarion call that suction cup technology has not improved in the last 50

years how could it i mean a little bit i guess they do have those little tabs on there now for

the ones that click down yeah like i've got something that holds my shampoo in the shower but those things those got about three months on them until there's a thunderous clang in the middle of the night that has me convinced there's a b and e in progress exactly i mean there is not a louder sound that I've heard other than one of those the suction cups giving out on that

situation yes exactly I used to have a radio like a shower radio same deal it would just like randomly like it would be fine for weeks and then suddenly just in the middle of the night you hear a loud clanking and Hannah and I have talked a lot about that too so anyway here's the deal though this is what I want to get at so I've been like complaining about this this kitchen deal and then I'm like scrolling through Instagram I'm not gonna lie to you Luke probably while sitting on the commode and i'm just like you know what i'm so like i really am like relatively careful with my money i'm hesitant to buy things online but i was like you know what like i've been complaining about this thing in my sink i keep on getting offered this clear solution for a cute little product that i think will actually make my life a lot easier just spend the money on this thing it can't be that much right so i click through and it says it's 18 i'm like yeah that's reasonable then I'm like but they're going to get me with the shipping right okay let's see I'll keep clicking through then the shipping was like another eight dollars or something I'm kind I don't have it in front of me right now but it was something like that I'm like yeah I knew that was going to be kind of expensive so now we're putting this thing up it's like now a 26 27 dollar little sink apparatus probably not worth it but not a it's not going to bust the bank so then I go ahead and I hit purchase on it for some reason it didn't calculate the tax or at least I didn't see at calculating the tax until afterwards. And I don't know what they're pulling, but I don't know if they calculated the tax on top of the shipping or what it is, but the tax was almost 50%. It was like $8 tax or something like that. So next thing you know-

Thanks, Sleepy Joe.

I'm ordering this. I don't think it's even the real tax. I think it's, you know, they're fudging the numbers somehow. And this is one of those products that's coming probably from the depths of China where they treat their workers really well you know it's like it's something that's coming from so far away and I finally just hit go on this thing it was like 36 37 dollars total and I immediately immediately sort of started to have regrets about it like I was like that's too much to pay for this little plastic piece of junk that will probably not be that great when it gets here and I started to feel sort of bad like I don't even want to tell Genevieve about this like obviously eventually she's going to see it when it's in the sink down here but I'm just like I just started to feel bad and a little guilty about just not again I can spend $40 on something it's not going to break the bank but I just sort of feel like I've been doing a lot of stuff like that lately saying oh 40 bucks here 40 bucks there and for some reason this one just got me I felt like I had gotten had a little bit um and so anyway that's why I left things with Hannah when I was telling her about it on the show the other day and and we just kind of had a discussion around the various aspects of that um but this is one thing that Hannah doesn't know yet Luke and I'm letting you in on this this breaking news to this story yesterday Genevieve is by our basement sink and she says something to me I'm like what's that and she said you know this um sponge holder thing isn't sticking to the side of the sink anymore and I saw something on Instagram that looks good it like kind of telescopes out and just like rests on the edges of the sink I'm like Genevieve it's on the way it's literally in Ireland somewhere right now I don't know why it went through maybe it's not from China, but I just got an update this morning. It's somewhere in Ireland. I don't know if I'm ever going to get it. It's from the darkest parts of Ireland where they just pay their employees in Guinness. Right, exactly. So I don't know why, I don't know how it's getting to me or when it's going to get here exactly, but it's made a bunch of international stops already so far. But I will say that I did tell Genevieve, I'm like, I can't believe you brought that up. I think I kind of paid too much for it. But the fact that at least you saw it and also wanted it

means the world to me that's like the 2023 version of gift of the magi the new thing that we're doing it's just i bought something shitty online but you also wanted it i guess that's really the

opposite because the irony is the gift of the magi would be if she sold all of our sponges so that she could afford right right exactly Or this thing, yeah.

Thank you, baby. All right, let's thank some donors. These wonderful, generous folks are making TBTL possible. On this Tuesday, folks like Erica Mittendorfer, they're in Seattle, Washington. Did I actually leave? I might have even dropped a... There's an R in there, Andrew. There's an extra R. Mitterndorfer. Okay, there you go. My eyesight is so bad now. This is mine. If I weren't in bed, Andrew, right now, I'd get out of bed and go get my glasses, you know? I'm one to talk because I've been fortunate that my eyes have performed pretty well for me over the course of my lifetime, but I am finally hitting that point where I have to have my reading glasses on to read text on my phone, Which, again, I was really lucky that I got about 47 years before that was pretty much necessary, but I'm there now, and I'm trying to read these without the glasses, and that's how you lose an R in Erica's name.

Yeah, let me just mention that, too, and that's not even a pronunciation thing, and again, I'm not trying to make excuses, but it is amazing how hard it is to see a lowercase r next to a lowercase n, right? But the point is, Erica, we appreciate you so much. Thank you.

We absolutely do. Erica's been donating for years, and I may have been saying Erica's last name wrong for years. Probably. It only took me reclining in a bed somewhere outside of Leavenworth, Washington, Andrew, for me to get to the real heart of Erica's last name.

You know, I really appreciate you making that sacrifice of doing the show from bed just for the quality of the show. In fact, tomorrow I'm going to do it from a bar, if that's okay with you.

Well, there's, okay, sure, as long as you find a very quiet, bar andrew because as i said at the top of the show believe it or not this me being under these covers is not how this plan started it's because this cabin has all of these little heaters that are built there's no central hvac in here they got little heaters in each of the room because we're in you know in the alpine mountains here and by alpine i mean washington state not alpine at all but uh these little heaters are tremendously loud they're like it's like a fan that's you know got a little heating element and they're also completely not intuitive how to work they have three buttons and it's i don't want to belabor things this is not what erica is supporting with her hard-earned money but like it's very very hard to to figure out how to make these things heat the room to a certain temperature how to turn them off etc so i finally got this one to turn off which was good for the audio recording but bad for the temperature in here and so then i had to get under the covers because it's very cold in here but it was in the ultimate service

of the tbtl recording are you worried about getting out from under those covers later and

it's going to be very cold yeah a little bit it's not going to be great um the thing is i didn't want to bother the person who owns this airbnb yet again because i've been hitting her up for all kinds of things since we've been here like the sinks in the bathrooms there's a couple of bathrooms and they have a um the way that they drain is different than anything i've ever experienced so you know like um a typical the way that i think of the drain at the bottom of your sink you can do that thing where you you know you pull up that little metal tab behind the faucet and that brings the drain down it stops it down so that you could fill the sink up with water Although I'm going to be honest, I don't think we're filling sinks up with water very much in the bathroom the way we once did. Would you agree?

You know why I do it when and I know that I don't shave my whole face, but I do still shave like, you know, kind of to maintain my beard around my neck, up on my cheeks and stuff. And I find the best way to get the hairs, the little whiskers out of the razor blade I'm using is to fill the basin up a little bit. and then um instead of running it underwater to shake my razor in the in the pooled water in the basin so i do it you know once a week or so that's very old school of you and maybe i should look

into that because i have a a heck of a time although i just use disposable razors as well

because i'm just so non-hersuit me too i i bought a bag of those really old school looking yellow ones the ones that look like they haven't changed like since the 1960s because i was like you know these are super cheap and also I kind of like the classic look of it they're made by Bic there's by Bic and I love the look of it I will say though you really do I was like there's no way for my very minimal minimal shaving needs like this would make any difference wow they're they suck like they're they are I mean any port in a storm um

But, like, there is a reason why, like, I always thought that that technology, everybody's always bragging about their razors, and we bought a factory in Germany so we can bring you affordable razors, and look how many blades.

Hey, by the way, I just want to let the folks at Harry's know, we would absolutely accept that account. Yes, we would. If you all need to advertise.

I loved that, because they also sent me some shaving cream, and I loved the smell of it. But anyway, yeah, so I was like, you know what? I don't need those fancy Ultra Mach 5 blades or whatever. I'm just going to get this classic-looking thing. I'm going to pretend it's the 70s. I'm going to shave with water in my basin. And boy, do they suck. They have one little blade and they're surrounded by plastic. It feels like you're not even getting in there. Anyway, what were you saying?

Now, we don't have time to get into this right now because we've got to thank Ann Richardson in Edmond, Oklahoma. Thank you, Ann. Ann is culturally Edmond.

We were.

I don't know if you had a chance to watch the Week in Review video, but we had our friend Amina on the video again this week. and that really spoke to her. In fact, we were talking about what is culturally Edmunds, what is culturally Shoreline, and what is culturally Mukilteo. Oh, I want to watch that.

I'm so bummed. I was on a plane, so I couldn't be there for that. But man, I wish I could have been in on that because there's nothing like throwing down with somebody who grew up in the Northwest on these kind of markers and locators and how we think of these areas of the sort of greater Seattle area. So I will definitely check that out. Thank you, Anne. And thanks also to Jennifer Strom of St. Charles, Illinois. The thing that we can't get into right now, Andrew, but I would love to talk to you about is this Gillette commercial that's got a guy and his dad like on Zoom talking Gillette razors. Oh, I don't think I've seen it. you it just must get to our football watching habits and the fact that you are either at your pop-up a volunteer gig or are maybe watching on some kind of a you know let's just say alternative

stream yeah i honestly haven't well i mean i watch thursday because i have as we were just discussing i have amazon prime so if i can if i'm done with my work i'll watch a thursday night game but i really have i've been listening to the seahawks game on the radio on my way to pop up

and stuff there is a a commercial running for Gillette that is so mystifying to me it's like a youngish guy and his dad and it's they're split screen and it's I think the idea is that they're kind of like you know I don't know if they're supposed to be on zoom or what but you know Gillette is a big brand out of the northeast obviously the the field where the Patriots play is Gillette Field and these two guys particularly the dad in this commercial and I say this with peace and love there's nobody that we're thanking today who happens to hail from the massachusetts area we've got amazing listeners out there in the northeast but the dad in this commercial is so amped about the razor technology his son is using it seems to embody an energy from the northeast that i am personally not super here for and i would love it if someday you see this

commercial and we can discuss it okay yeah i'm tempted to dial it up now don't do it right now

Yeah, because we've got, we're just, yeah, we're already, thanks to me, we're already too long in this tooth, but we couldn't wrap this up without thanking the rest of our donors, including Leah Farzin of Juneau, Alaska. Wow. Do you know the last time we had someone check in from that city, Andrew?

I see what you did there. You said Juneau, but it sounds like you know.

I don't – this – you know, we've got a handful of folks out there in Alaska, but man, oh, man, thank you, Leah, for checking in from Juno. Indeed. Thanks also to Megan Rodriguez, who's in Austin, Texas. Stop by our favorite bar there, The Front Page. I believe it is The Front Page. Is that the name of our favorite Austin bar, The Front Page? Definitely check out The Front Page. definitely support tbtl 10s in austin and support megan whatever megan's doing just if megan has a regular like if megan's a lawyer go to court just go there sit in the side whatever side megan's defending sit on that side and do the wave that's what i would like you to we get listener megan disbarred for the mere transgression of supporting tbtl suddenly people just start showing up in

court and just you know i missed a step there because i was double checking that it's the front page so you're saying you're you're just guessing like megan might just potentially could be a

lawyer you don't know i was trying to think of a job megan might have in austin that would not be the kind of job that typically you send like we're sending people out to support the front page

but uh and is that did i get the name right you did and it's listener schaefer who runs it with some other folks yes i just wanted to double check all of that congratulations um so yes i was just

guessing at a job that megan might have that's like the kind of thing where you don't show up and kind of support them in that.

Like a road crew along the side of a highway, maybe, just like pull up.

Well, those actually, honestly, road crew, they could probably use some gassing up. That seems like a tough job. A cheering section? Yeah, I'd take that. Maybe lawyers should have, listen, let's ask the Dannys, should lawyers have cheering sections? Would people be more inclined to do jury duty if they knew that each side was going to have fans and that those fans might do the wave. There may be jock jams playing. It just occurred to me that this is going to happen.

Before the eventual fall of the United States, they probably will start... This was an idiocracy, wasn't it? They probably will start deciding cases based on how big your cheering crew is and who cheered the loudest and barked. Let's start with civil court.

Let's start with issues where the stakes are at least non-criminal for this, please. Megan, please start with civil court with this. That's all I ask. Thank you, Megan. Thanks also to Jenna and Jeffrey Yardley, who are in Noblesville, Indiana. Wow. Unassailable. Noblesville, you know? I mean, it's the ville of the nobles. Sure, yes. Do they, though? Like, I think it's... Oh, goodness. When I did that impromptu road trip across the country, I stopped in... My memory is somewhere called Kendallville, Indiana, where they had a great classic pizza hut. And I'm thinking they do love the villes out there. They love to get into the villes in that part of the country. So thanks, Jenna and Jeffrey. Thank you to all of our donors today for making TBTL possible.

I want to jump in briefly here and remind everybody that when you're done listening to today's episode of TBTL, Surf on over to the Terrible Things for Asking podcast and check it out if you haven't already. I think there's probably a 0% chance, as Luke might say, that you don't know what Terrible Things for Asking is. But just in case, it's a podcast hosted by our dear friend Nora McInerney, who's been a good friend to TBTL and TBTL listeners in ways too numerous to count, honestly. And it's a narrative interview podcast that talks to real people talking about the hard things in their life. In many cases, talking about the hardest moments of their life and how they got through those moments and who they became by going through those moments. It's not a bummer. It's quite inspirational, but it's also very real. Nora also hosts It's Going to Be OK and the Terrible Reading Club. And she's got a million great projects going on. And if you like TBTL, I know you're going to enjoy everything that Nora is producing. You can find Terrible. Thanks for asking anywhere you listen to podcasts.

hello and welcome to top story okay let me try to race through these andrew because they're the couple of things i want to hit are not interesting per se but they are things that i alluded to and in the interest of promises made promises kept great um one thing is uh yesterday's show at the end i said i was going to uh look into this hot tub situation here at this airbnb um and uh well i'll tell you well every every these are like gremlins that i've fed after midnight everything i say to you andrew then spurs three more thoughts in my head but um one of the things that i found very appealing about this airbnb that we're staying at was that i saw a hot tub a picture of a hot tub uh and the words hot tub listed when i scanned the uh advertisement on Airbnb for this place. And you know, it's winter, it's cozy, there's snow, a hot tub in the snow, that's one of the greatest joys in life in my experience. And so I even told Becca, I was like, you're gonna love this, it's got a hot tub. And then we got here and I looked all around the house and the outside area and I didn't see any kind of hot tub. And I texted the owner of the place and she said to me, I'm paraphrasing here, but in a kind of nice, but I think also kind of letting me know, she said, well, as it clearly states throughout the ad, the hot tub is a wood-fired hot tub, and it is closed in the winter. It is closed this time of year. And I was kind of confused by that because I distinctly remember seeing a listing for a hot tub. So I went back and looked at the ad, and to the credit of the people who own this place, when you click on the picture of the hot tub, it very clearly says it is closed for certain months of the year including right now but andrew if you're looking at the the listing and you don't click on the photo it doesn't say anything about that so if you were just kind of scanning it like i want to do with everything in my life you you see the hot tub and if you don't click on the photograph you don't see the disclaimer so i i i I...

I actually find the people that own this place to be very responsive and very helpful. This isn't like when we were in Denver and I was like just steaming the entire time we were there because of all the rules of being in the Airbnb. It isn't like that at all. But I kind of did think, well, you could – if the hot tub is not available for three to four months out of the year, you could just take those photos down from the ad. Like it has to be pretty simple to add and subtract photos and maybe just don't even have it there during the time of year that it's technically not available.

Yeah, I want to dig into this because you just telling that 45 second story sent me on a roller coaster ride. Because at first I thought you were going to say like it didn't mention it at all on the website that the hot tub isn't available at all times of year. If it didn't say it anywhere, I would be outraged on your behalf. That would be outrageous behavior. But that I want to say is definitely not what they did. Right. Having said that, and it's been a while, you know, I know that you're on Airbnb websites or whatever. You're using those type of websites way, way more than me. But I've I've been on them. I can picture the layout. There is a place where you can post the most pertinent information, the stuff that you need. Are you saying, like, in all reality, that the only place in this ad that it says the hot tub is not available at all times of year is when you click on it in the photo? What do you call it? In the photo gallery? Because if that's the case, like, there is not an expectation of the consumer to click on every single photo. Here's a photo of the kitchen. oh, I have to click on it to find out that you're not allowed in the kitchen after midnight? That's unreasonable. It has to be in the main description somewhere. It can't just be you've clicked on every single photo to make sure there are no caveats in the captions.

I will give, this is, I find myself in the very rare position, Andrew, of slightly defending the people who I'm renting this from. One of the things that they did, which I give them credit for, because I had, let me tell you, when i realized it was a an outdoor wood stove one that you've got to like you basically got to go out there and make a a legit ass wood fire like two hours before you want to get in it by the way which is also kind of an added step it's kind of cool but it's not just like go you know put on your swim trunks and enjoy a hot tub kind of a thing when i realized what was going on i was i went back to the ad because i had in my mind this whole other kind of series of events where I thought that the first photo on the ad is of the hot tub and that it's a different kind of hot tub and that it's listed in the amenities. I thought there was all kinds of shenanigans going on. When I went back, I realized it's not listed in the amenities. So that I give them credit for because I had this whole defense. I was ready to kind of like send a slightly snarky message that was kind of saying, well, if the hot tub is not open, please don't advertise it. because it definitely registered as one of the big perks of this place for me. But when I went back and looked, there'll be like, it'll kind of, there's a little area that's not photo-based, it's text-based, but it kind of just gives you the quick rundown of here's the stuff this place has. It is pet-friendly. It does have views of the mountain. It has, you know, all of the, essentially, the amenities, the things that you find that you're listing as a positive about this place. And what it does not list is hot tub. I give them credit on that because if they were trying to actively confuse people, they would have definitely left Hot Tub in there, which they didn't. I think this is just a kind of a – I don't know, an oversight by them in a way. Like a very, very – a non-generous interpretation of what's happened here is that they're kind of hoping for exactly what happened to me. You're kind of half distracted. You're scanning. you're possibly hosting a podcast while looking up an airbnb more and more and you and you just kind of just scan it real fast you you you read that you see that there's a hot tub there's a photo of a hot tub the word hot tub is written somewhere and you just go cool it has a hot tub and that's and that's as far as your investigation goes and so you click let's do this which is pretty much exactly what happened to me um and and you you know that the a person like me who's not detail oriented we'll just not figure this out till i'm already on site when i'm already on the property that's an un that's a not generous interpretation of what happened a generous interpretation of what happened was it's literally the final photo in the gallery which it is okay

it's not because i was going to ask you i'm trying to stalk you here which i'm sure listeners are doing as well so i don't want to get you in trouble yes send me the link because i got to say like i'm looking around here and i'm seeing one kind of in your area where the very first picture like the main picture is the view from the hot tub i'm like boy if that's what if that you know if it's this one that would be very disingenuous

ingenuous it's not that although my memory andrew was it was that that makes any sense i appreciate your honesty on that yeah because i know what you mean like we we see what we want to see and we

remember it thus i angrily stormed back to the internet uh-huh to like get like to find the evidence of this thing that i thought i had seen that in fact i had not really seen uh exactly the way that i remembered so my memory my memory was a little bit uh as we've been establishing the last couple of shows my memory is not what it once was i'm also trying to figure out how i just

share this with you that's okay i mean but i'll take your word for it because you're being pretty honest about it sounds like it's the very last photo um if i was not being honest you'd want to get eyes on this right yes if you were being very defensive i would want to i but it sort of sounds like you're admitting that like i do think they could probably take that photo down um but i it sounds like they mostly um i i still aside from not listening it in the amenities i would just based on what you're telling me and again i don't have eyes on it but like based on what you're telling me i sort of feel like i would list it in the amenities but then put in all caps not available december through february or whatever it is um to make it very clear but maybe that

would lead to more confusion i don't know i am texting you a link i don't know if this will work or not but i'm sending you a link uh to this this property and uh which brings me to the next thing very quickly which is when we got here what the sink in one of the sinks in both bathrooms were had like standing water in them which i think was because whoever had you know come and clean the place probably what they do is they stop up all the sinks and then they fill them with water and then they drain them and they kind of clean them up they had maybe missed a couple of sinks here which is not a big deal but i wanted to make sure that the owners knew that we didn't plug up their sinks because for all the world i couldn't figure out how to drain the sink it didn't have that little thing behind the faucet that we're all used to and it turns out so i texted her and i said hey just so you know a couple of the sinks were a little backed up is there a trick to it and she said did you try pressing on the the drain the stopper spring-loaded i got one of those i had never that i've never experienced one of those before in my life by the way it's it's a pretty good technology except you'd have to reach through the scummy water somebody else's scummy water which is kind of lame but as far as like a thing that's actually kind of cool i'd never experienced that before i pressed it it popped up it drained immediately like oh that's how that works but i I felt like between the hot tub, between the stopper, I felt like I was hitting the owner of this Airbnb up a lot for little things that made me feel slightly dumb afterwards. So I'm trying to kind of, I didn't want to ask, how do the heaters work in here? Because I feel like I've been peppering, I've been sort of peppering her with a lot of easy questions that maybe I should have known if I just had more experience with particular kinds of sinks.

I have a story about a spring-loaded drain. It's not a good story, but it is something that I'm going to say anyway. As you know, we redid my basement bathroom down here, and it was in really shoddy shape when we moved into the house about a year and a half ago, and it had a really, real piece of shit sink in there. But the one thing that I liked about it was the drain was that spring-loaded type of drain because those kind where you have to hook it up to the little lever.

Yeah, there's like this tiny hook under the bowl of the sink, which is always so difficult.

You got to line it up. And yeah. And so I hate that. So when we installed my new sink, which had, you know, the traditional even kind of actually kind of even a nice looking one of those little again, I don't know what to call it. The lever thing, the stick that you that you would pull up and down the one that's exposed. It kind of had a nice looking one of those. But I was like, you know what? Nope. I'm just going to use the spring loaded one from the other sink because those things are tend to be universal in size. So my new sink is all like shiny and bright and clean, but the actual drain is kind of scuffed up and scratched. But I love the convenience of not having to like hook up that lever. I also have a medicine cabinet that kind of hangs low over the sink. So I wasn't 100% sure that I would be able to raise that that stick up far enough to to, you know, like properly close it. But, yeah, if you're ever in my bathroom, Luke, and you're wondering why does the sink look so new but the drain looks a little scratched, it's because it's spring-loaded.

Well, I'm glad that I now know about this technology, and I may even use some of this at my place because certainly there's one, two, three, four. Four bathroom sinks that are yet to be purchased and or installed.

And maybe I'll use that in all of them because it's a very slick technology. But back to the hot tub really quickly. So this is another, I have to say, this is another kind of sort of check on the box that says these owners are actually pretty chill. So now that we know that there's like, you know, on the picture, it says like this hot tub is definitely not for use. I asked, hey, what's the story on the hot tub? And she responded, well, as we kind of mentioned in the ad, it's not available this time of year. then she goes but since it's not freezing out there it's actually kind of unseasonably warm right now in this area she goes since it's not below freezing this week if you want to give it

a try you can oh which is also very like your kind of person that's exactly my kind of person so

um i went out there uh when i finally got eyes on it i know i because it's not like on the house it's like out in the yard it's like down a slope and i i got all you know bundled up because it's it's even though it's unseasonably warm here there's still like four feet of snow everywhere so i had to kind of wade through like waist deep snow to get down this hill down to where it was and when i actually got close to it and took a look i realized that what they had done was you know presumably before there was any snow here when they were like winterizing and getting this thing all shut down for the winter they had you know i think it has a lid and everything but then above and beyond that they had put a um tarp on it i have never seen a tarp this origami to down on something i don't know how they did this it's hospital corners andrew like it's like there's if you ask me put a tarp over a kind of rectangular outdoor wood-fired hot tub i'd sort of like wrap it up and then i'd put like 35 000 wraps of scotch tape around it it'd be kind of like it'd sort of be you know like kind of tight around the box but like uh sort of puffing up like it would just be a shit show this thing was military precision it's like if you gave me a year of my life there's no way i'm ever getting this tarp back down in fact it's perfectly around the rectangle and then there's a there's a like an exhaust pipe for like where the fire goes and then it was somehow they had gotten the tarp perfectly around the base of that as well and it was also all strapped down with like those kind of you know ratchets that are on like a heavy kind of um you know canvas woven sort of a thing that you might a moving strap a thing you might strap down something on the roof of your car with or your truck like they had multiples of those going i'm just standing out there in like kind of like knee deep snow looking at this just realizing my job now is to trudge back up this hill and explain to becca that this ain't happening yeah and i i'm i'm glad that you

respect the that you would not be able to get it back respect the rat i'm really surprised like honestly like i was very impressed with the the chillness with which these people said oh yeah go ahead give it a shot if you want but now even more so given that i mean they've straight up winterized that thing like i think i have a theory hey listen we you know it takes us a while to like winterize that thing and get it ready so unfortunately it's just not it's not in use until the spring you know i think that would be a fair a fair response i still i still question putting the photo of it on on the website i feel like you could update that pretty quickly especially if it's closed for like let's say a third of the year i feel like you should be able to go into your account and just remove that photo i can't see the listing by the way with this link well

Let me – yeah, I wondered about that. Let me just – we're at a perfect place to move on, so that's why I'll just throw one – let me throw one more dazzling deet your way. And this is something Becca pointed out because it's in the notes. You're also not allowed to use this when there's a burn ban in effect. Oh, wow. But what's the time? I mean that starts to really – now we've got kind of a – Like, yeah, you've got a window in the spring. That's what it is. It's April, yeah. you've kind of got like you know when it's not like free like when there's not a bunch of snow out and it's freezing and then also when it's not summertime because around here this is like probably a permanent burn ban i mean i'm in the woods i'm looking at a bunch of trees that could all go up in flames um so that's also it was it's an interesting choice you know what i think it might be andrew they might have bought it on instagram i'm not kidding because i know i know about this it's a big ticket item man i'm complaining it is a big ticket item i know exactly what it costs because i have obsessed over this exact item one of the things the journey that i went on between thinking it was a regular hot tub learning that it was a wood-fired hot tub that was off limits to learning it was a wood-fired hot tub that maybe we could try a part of my journey with that was oh shit i want to actually try this because i every time i see this thing advertised on instagram like i my finger hovers over the buy this now button which is insane because it's like a six thousand dollar item wow

But, like, it looks so flippin' cool when it's working. And so I thought, well, what a great thing to get to test drive one of these and actually see how hard is it to start this fire? How kind of, like, does it really get the water warm? Like, this was the perfect, this would have been the perfect thing. Try one that you don't have to actually buy because you might buy one of these and realize, oh, man, this is way too much work.

That really underscores how different we are. I'm like, I just like me fretting about thirty six dollars and having immediate like regret over like buying a sink contraption for thirty six dollars. You're like, well, I don't know.

Should I buy this thing for six grand? We'll see. Well, if you saw our bank accounts, you would know how silly it is that I don't think harder about a six thousand dollar purchase than I do. And that you I would again, I don't want to count anyone's money. But the irony is that I have definitely through this whole remodel process have – I'm in a – let's just say I'm cash poor right now, which is OK. That happens with big projects and I think that on the other side of this, I'll be really happy that I've done this – undertaken this huge project. But it is not a statement about my financial health that I at some moment after some number of glasses of wine think maybe I could buy a wood-fired hot tub. like that's yeah that's just pure bad personal finance on my part you could boy dave ramsey oh uh please take a note someone out there let's let's at some point andrew talk about my latest obsession on tiktok which is watching dave ramsey who's just seems to be a truly bad person watching dave ramsey just judge the hell out of people's finances when they call into his show i am obsessed with watching these clips now now that's like isn't that an old school show i mean

that name dave ramsey as a financial broadcaster of some sort rings a bell to me because i feel like you've talked about it because he was on back in the day right or am i totally off i missed the

i missed i was a bruce williams talk net guy and bruce williams talk net was uh i don't think it was as popular as the dave ramsey show became but like when i was in my listening to a lot of am financial advice stuff era as we now say it was more talk net with bruce williams and then later on you had this like dave ramsey is kind of the dr laura of what he does he's on like hundreds if not thousands of am radio stations and you basically call him and you just go i have two hundred thousand dollars of uh debt and i make forty thousand dollars a year and then he yells at you for 10 minutes that's the entire program i wonder you know what maybe i don't know this

from you but just from listening to too much am radio which i do like if my am radio station just like you know like let's say i was listening to kick see but then i turn it on and then this would more likely be like a am 1000 or something there's a very real possibility i just turned on my car on a weekend when the programming is slightly different and i listened

to some of this you definitely caught some of it i think it's it's it's some of the last not uh what's the word i'm looking for pay-to-play programming you hear there's just there's less and less original content that they're just playing for you and more and more like you know people have bought an hour of of of time to talk about whatever their sort of you know um elder care law is or what have you um and dave ramsey is one of those things that i think is still kind of it's still making some money for somebody somewhere but he they've now tiktokatized it so So somebody had the wherewithal to set up some cameras in his studio and film him looking apoplectic as people list their finances for him. And it's just the weirdest thing because it's the same thing every time. It's somebody who is in a pickle because their debt greatly exceeds their ability to pay that debt down, which people find themselves in that position for all kinds of reasons. Some of it's their fault. Some of it's not. there's a whole range of ways you end up in that spot and the thing about dave ramsey is and this is this the sort of the masochism of of of america if you will or maybe what is the schadenfreude of america people love listening to other people call into dave ramsey and talk about how financially screwed they are and then dave ramsey gives them no quarter like i don't know why this is as

intriguing as it is but it sort of it sort of is here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female no man it's not from a female all right speaking of messages received

andrew i i mentioned this at the very top of the show we'll have to get to it on tomorrow's episode but i think that there i i think that the the tbtl instagram feed has turned against me and i want to i want to clarify some stuff i want to draw some boundaries i want to get into this on tomorrow's show okay okay does this read

relate at all to my behavior in posting the show no no this is this is uh no no no i had something else and i think it's a misunderstanding maybe but i we we may need to get to the bottom we may need to do some back channeling we need to get in touch with some of the other people that work on this program some friends of the program there's a there's a lot going on but i just wanted to let now i want to i wanted to let everyone know because at the beginning of the program when You are probably still kind of double-checking levels and recordings and such. I said something like, has this podcast turned against me? And I want to make sure that everyone knows I have not forgotten about that topic at all. Yeah, that's intriguing. We'll get into that on tomorrow's show. But in the meantime, an email or email?

We have been talking a bit on the show, especially a couple of weeks ago, about various sort of phishing scams that you need to avoid online. And also, I think, phone scams and that type of thing. And listener Max wanted to share this story from that world. But I will say Max gives a little trigger warning in here, and I will sort of reiterate it here at the at the beginning before I hit play on his voicemail. This his story does describe some pretty a pretty upsetting scenario. So if you are somebody who lives with some sort of trauma or something and are triggered by things like this, I'm not joking around here. This might not be the story for you. It definitely had me on the edge of my seat, but it's legitimately upsetting. Take a listen to this story from Max.

Hey there, Luke and Andrew. This is Max calling from Seattle. You just read my daily donor message today, so I figured it was a good sign from the TVTL gods to call in and share this story with you. Um, it is a, uh, uh, on the subject of some cyber hacks and, uh, scams that seems to be going around the zeitgeist at the moment. And, um, before I began, I wanted to issue a slight trigger warning as, uh, it involves some discussion of, um, hostage situation and some domestic violence. But, um, anyways, uh, a couple nights ago, uh, my partner and I were asleep and it's about 2.30 in the morning, and I kind of woke up because I heard talking in the other room, and I kind of realized that she was on a phone call with somebody in the other room, and I didn't think too much of it, but then after a minute, she came back into the room and was kind of hysterical and told me that she'd just been on the phone with her, or she got a phone call from her sister, and it was just her sister sobbing, you know, incoherently, and then a man's voice came on the phone and started issuing, you know, threats saying, you know, I'm going to kill her, I'm going to hurt her, and that kind of thing, which was, you know, obviously really terrifying. And then after, you know, about a minute, the call ended. So she, you know, frantically tried calling back, and no answers, tried texting, no answer. And so it came to get me, and we, you know, we didn't really know what to do, so we started calling everybody that we could, that were friends and family, and couldn't get anybody on the phone because it was you know 2 30 in the morning and then finally uh we decided to call the police to just let them know what's happening see if they could send somebody over uh we could see from her you know cell phone location that she was uh at her house so you know eventually she ended up calling back and was totally fine didn't know anything about what we were talking about and she and her husband were both you know asleep and everything was was fine and the police came and checked it out. But, um, you know, what we, we figured was that, uh, somebody had spoofed her contacts or stolen her contact information or something and, and used a phone number spoofing to call, uh, my partner, her sister, um, and, you know, pretend to, to be in the situation. Um, we did a little research online and found some reports of similar things, where people were kind of demanding money and kind of trying to get people to send money or whatever to kind of, I guess, ransom their loved ones, even though it was just a hoax or a scam. But I wanted to share that because it was pretty startling and also just kind of share for visibility and awareness in case that does happen to anybody else.

That is where the voicemail ended. Holy moly.

right is that not that's really upsetting to hear is it not yeah and just the fact that obviously part of the scam is calling someone in the middle of the night so you're like completely disoriented your defenses are like way down because you're just woken up from a sleep like the i mean the fact it didn't even occur to me until we got further into max's message that so the call was coming the call looked like he was coming from his partner's sister's phone so So that adds to it's not like a blocked number says like.

you have your sister it's like you're the person that you know is calling you from their phone so of course like if i just got you know andrew walsh is calling me and i answer the phone think about how different my state of mind is from seeing your name as the incoming call versus if it comes from another number if it comes from a number i don't recognize i'm like already my antennas up but if if i see that it's you my brain just immediately goes andrew's calling me and now everything that happens after that is based on this initial premise that I am really talking to

you. Yeah. And also keep in mind, like the details that we heard there, it doesn't sound like words were spoken by the person who was supposedly Max's sister-in-law. I'm just going to say sister-in-law for ease of talking here. I don't know the extent of his partnership, but it sounded like it was just sobbing which means like you it's like the same deal like if i got a if i got a call that looked like it was coming from genevieve's number or any number like if there are no words spoken i might not realize right away in the middle of the night oh that's not genevieve's voice or that's not whoever's voice because you see the number and so you automatically assume it's them and then the sound of somebody um who's completely upset like that it would be very difficult to identify uh identify the voice, which is strange. Now, Max did not get into it, but I don't know what the kind of call to action was here or what the, it sounds like the call in this case just ended abruptly. So I don't know if the scammers were planning on calling back or if they wanted, if they wanted them to call the number back. I don't know what it was in this particular case, but I mean, again, that's just like really, really upsetting. I can't even imagine. I mean, honestly, I'm thinking about Max's partner and what she was feeling in this, let's say it was a 60 second phone call like just imagine the years of life that would take off of you just

the cortisol yeah just the stress hormone that is released into your system in that moment i mean i my guess would be uh nobody went back to bed that night you know feeling particularly sleepy or restful and also i mean like it's just it's so messed up the the sort of complexity of the thinking on the part of who whatever the scam is that like they've realized well it's probably really hard to spoof someone's actual voice for a long time even with ai being what it is i mean unfortunately that day will probably come but for now it's like it's it'd be hard to nail the voice so what you do is something that's not specific like what's not specific somebody who's like you said really upset and maybe just crying you could you you play on the fact that the person who answers the phone already assumes that they're talking to the person they think they're talking to then you throw in a kind of upsetting but not overly specific sound of someone's voice which is how they arrive at that you know what i mean that's how they arrive at somebody sobbing is because you can't it's just it's you can you can reproduce that more easily and it's not specific and then you throw in the the the person talking who who knows if that was a live person or if that was just a program that started you know saying directions and who knows if it just cut off early Like that's the weirdest thing about these scams is that they're – my sense is they're perpetrated with – at such scale that half the time they probably don't even close. Like they don't even close the deal.

Half the time, I mean I'm sure it's like a tiny – 90 percent of the time.

It's like such a blunt attack like as in it's so many – like if you could rig this up so that it like grabs someone's contacts. It starts calling everyone in their contacts. It calls them all with this sound effect that's now built in that sounds like someone in distress. You hit them with this prerecorded, whatever, AI-generated voice that's saying, we have this person you love. Here's what you do or whatever. It's just so – and then half the time or like I said or like you said, most of the time, it doesn't even get to the thing they think they're trying to do to try to get the money from you. it's like it's just they're throwing so many lines in the water that it's not even it's like you scared the living shit out of a bunch of people and you didn't even do the part where

you get the money asshole yeah yeah i'm it's honestly just even hearing that story from from somebody um who i don't know personally is like upsetting to me so i feel bad yeah that they had to go through that and then everybody that they called in the middle of the night and

yeah awful awful awful well i mean i don't i guess is this is this the part of the life cycle of a show that we're in andrew now where we just mostly do news you can use exactly because that

was part of it i mean i asked you before the show i kind of i didn't play the voicemail for you but i did kind of tell you what was in it i'm like i think it's worth playing and honestly like um it it is sort of like oh yeah well this one will stick with me you know what i mean right and and

i do think we're in that part of the life cycle we're mostly people helping now andrew well i actually have some tips on how to beat the heat this summer um oh

Drink a lot of water and play in a sprinkler. Isn't that one that bugs you or is it driving in the snow? What is the news you can use that you particularly –

Well, I don't love tips for beating the heat because they usually involve try to be somewhere with air conditioning.

Yeah, right.

And then the travel tips around the holidays, the packing of your patients. Pack your patients. And there was one that I heard this year that struck me as particularly egregious, And I forget what it was, but it was like, it was something to the effect of leave more time, like leave yourself some extra time. Like, wow, you've, you've really, uh, you've really, you've really changed my life with that advice. But no, like legitimately, thank you, Max, for calling that in. Sorry for you. Sorry for your partner. Sorry for everybody involved. But if one person in our audience hears this and unfortunately find themselves getting hit by one of these, because that's not statistically unlikely. maybe somewhere in their foggy brain when they wake up they will remember that they heard this and it will help them be a little bit more kind of suspicious of it so they don't go too far down the road with it, you know? So this is quite literally news that our listeners can use. Yeah.

In fact, let's look at rebranding the show around that concept. We don't have to get into it right now. We should probably wrap things up. And again, you have to now brace yourself for whatever is outside that blanket.

it's very cold the world could have ended i i want to say too like you know there's there's what listener max described that's a serious matter but also sometimes when you're booking an airbnb just because there's a picture of a hot tub doesn't mean you're allowed to use the hot tub

hot tub that's some news also that you can use that's right exactly click on every photo and

read the fine that's what we're saying pack your patience read the fine print and um you'll you'll get a good outcome so all right i guess that's probably as good a place as any for us to wrap this up so thanks for listening everyone we will be back here with more imaginary radio for you tomorrow it'll be my last day in the greater leavenworth area and then we will return to our uh normal uh sort of broadcast technique you'll hear all those drops in fact maybe i'll play too many drops on thursday's show you're a very high for drops oh thank you no that's too many drops you're very high for drops did you say that was a that was a overly convoluted joke that was probably hard to take down the line uh too much tuna you have very high mercury levels oh thank

you tuna reference right is there a chance though that after leavenworth you're not going home you're going to the you're going i was going to say to the west coast you know you're going to guess

what i'm doing andrew i'm going home for like one morning and then i'm gonna do tvtl with you and And then I'm going to Revolution Hall in Portland to do Livewire. And then I'm going to Los Angeles to interview Taylor Tomlinson more. So it's going to be a busy, busy time.

You've got to get your rig fixed before you head down to that. I know.

You've got to figure that out. Listen, from your lips to God's ears, my friend, I'm on it, okay?

All right. Yeah, no, I didn't mean to stress you out. I was just thinking out loud.

Well, it's too late.

People say that the best podcasting is when people just sort of mumble and think out loud. That's what I bring to the table.

Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you tomorrow. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. You know, I'm bored. This party is officially boring. I'm bored. And you people are very rude. Let's get out of here. Power out.