Muse

Christmas time, you force a smile. Everyone is joining in the group denial. Folks behaving infantile. Family Christmas time.

Hit after dysfunctional hit. Songs like the almost perfect Christmas. Can't you let it drop? It's Christmas. What I want, you can't buy me. Fruitcake and shame. And why am I the only one who knows what Christmas really means? And many more.

Daddy's nose is red and runny Daddy's voice is grump and funny And the only words I can understand Are God and Him and Christmas TBTN

Where do you think you're going? Nobody's leaving. Nobody's walking out on this fun old-fashioned family Christmas. No, no, we're all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here. Oh, well, that's a wonderful attitude to have on Christmas Eve. Ralphie, what would you like for Christmas? What I want for Christmas is a Red Rodder BB gun with a compass in the stock and the sing, which tells time. There's no singing in the North Pole. Yes, there is. No, it's not. We sing all the time. No, it's not. Especially when we make toys. A new holiday was born. A festivus for the rest of us.

All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a special Christmas Day edition of TBTL, a show that just might be too beautiful to live, born in a manger, misunderstood by most, but ultimately the savior of humanity. I think that applies to both TBTL and another guy who was allegedly brought into the world here on this day many years ago. It's episode 4104 in a collector's series. And it's the beginning of the TBTL Winter Games as well. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host right over there, my friend Andrew Welsh. Andrew, these Winter Games are already off to a spectacular start. I've both compared us. I've both made a messianic reference comparing us to the Christ child. And I am trusting you implicitly that we really are at episode 4,104. That to me feels like I am skydiving without a net.

Those were almost the first words out of my mouth. I almost said listeners have no idea the leap of faith you just took because I've told you that this is episode 4,104 because I was doing some pre-math on this as we were prepping these games. And in the past, for any of these pre-recorded shows, you would never say the name or the number. And now here we are.

This is essentially like a TBTL-specific trust fall. Yes, it is. This is a trust exercise that only applies to our—it doesn't even apply to our general business, that of podcasting, but to our specific show system of numbering the episodes and also of me commonly getting the episode number wrong. Now, as you and I are recording this, it's a little before Christmas Day.

But just a little bit before, by the way. No, we're not recording this in like April or anything. It's not. If you hear hula music behind me, that's just a weird coincidence. It's not August. I forgot how all those hula dancers come out in southern Washington in April. I forgot about that.

Exactly. And I'm wearing a coconut brassiere.

Just a normal day.

Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us on this special holiday edition. We are going to be bringing you some winter games over the next couple of weeks. We're also going to be bringing you some brand new live content. As this is being released to the world, Andrew, I am just a few hours away from boarding an airplane and doing something borderline ridiculous, which is flying to Germany to maintain my airline status and then staying in Frankfurt for a day or two and then flying home. But while I'm in Frankfurt, I will be checking in with you. We'll have a new episode of the show live and direct from Germany coming up. So please tune in for that. Also, I know you've got some special programming. Yeah, Andrew. So it's going to be a fun couple of weeks, everyone. Let's just have a good old fashioned fun TBTL holiday extravaganza.

That's right. I will forward promote that this Friday Phyllis will be swinging by my studio and we'll be doing a show too as well. So speaking of other Chevy Chase characters, that's right. Fletch F Fletch. Now, we are going to play a game today because, you know, there's nothing I like more than playing games. You know how people on reality TV say I'm not here to play games. Luke, I am here to play games. You're not here to make friends, but you are here to play games. That's right. And also, I'm I'm into making friends, too. Actually, I'm here to make friends and play games. Actually, I love it. Yeah. So that's good. But before we get into today's. very specific um christmas related quiz i wanted to tell you about some gaming in my life this is not dart related this is wordle related and this is something that just happened to me moments ago and i know i take wordle way too seriously but i am not exaggerating when i tell you i had i was panicking in my kitchen about an hour ago because i was having my lunch my a Campbell's chicken noodle soup, Luke. That's what I like to have for lunch. Sounds cozy. I break up some club crackers into it. That's what I have for lunch many days.

Why not just get Ritz, as we learned weeks ago on the program, Andrew, by which I mean like six days ago. Ritz crackers have some structural integrity problems. If you're already going to crumble the crackers, just get the Ritz. That's a good point,

although I break them into bits. I don't totally crumble them into crumbs. I see. And so you want some. I feel like you don't want dust. You don't want the crackers or not just dust, but it'll be just totally, you know, soggy. And you only want the crackers in there for a little bit. Oyster crackers, that's the move. I mean, that's what they're made for. But the thing is, I only eat those in clam chowder, though. I feel like if I put those in another soup, I will be wishing that the soup was clam chowder. You know what I mean?

It's a tough call, and I'm with you. But, like, I mean, oyster crackers facing us today. No, honestly, I think in this, you know, in this economy, I think the question of if one can eat oyster crackers in soup that is not clab chowder is it's honestly what is right now creating a lot of drag on Biden's reelection campaign. It's not the economy, stupid. It's not any of this other stuff. It's the oyster cracker conversation that he's just consistently under delivering on. So.

So anyway, there I am. Picture this. I'm at my little kitchen table and I'm looking out the window and I'm very excited. My soup is heating up. I bring the soup over the table. I set it down. I crumple some crackers into it, and then I open up my Wordle app. And, you know, this is my routine. I'm a man of routine, and I love it. I open up my app. Now, keep in mind, and I am saying this to brag. I'm not trying to humble brag here. I'm just straight up bragging. My Wordle streak is the highest it's ever been. This means that I have played consecutively and won like 130-some days in a row right now. Wow.

So at no, you have not been thwarted. You've never gotten to, how many tries did you get? Five tries? Four tries? Six. Six tries. You've never gotten to the sixth try and not been able to solve it.

Not in the last 130-some games. I mean, obviously I have. My streak has restarted. I mean, that's the beauty of that game. Like, connections doesn't have quite the stickiness to me because it's not keeping track of it, right? But when they show you your stats after every game you play, and it's like, okay, you have this. I have, like, a 97% winning percentage over the course of my entire Wordle career, if you would call it that. I would. I would, too. But also it says, you know, you've been going for 130-some days, which is awesome. I'm very proud of that. And I opened it up today, and instead of saying, okay, keep your 130-whatever streak going, it said, congratulations on completing today's puzzle. Click here to see your results again. I'm like, what? What? But I'm not going to lie to you, Luke. I'm not going to lie to you. There have been times when it has been well past midnight, and I have been well past my daily allotted number of beers, and I have opened up Wordle and done the next day's Wordle without fully remembering it until the next morning I open it up. Also, to get it out of the way. Get it out of the way. That's a dangerous game, Dano, because your brain isn't functioning great. sometimes it's great sometimes it's like jazz you just like don't overthink right i was gonna say

that's an that's an interesting sort of um test on like what your mental acuity is after maybe one or five beers in the big city exactly um so um that's i mean that's why some jazz musicians

like miles davis famously would only do wordle when he was on heroin i don't know if you're familiar with that i do know but that's why it's like jazz but anyway so there have been times where i've opened up my wordle the next day i'm like oh my god i forgot i got kind of hand boned last night and did the wordle early but this is a monday i was not drunkenly doing wordle and forgetting about it last night and so i'm like what the hell and then i look at my streak and it's a it's at 77 i'm like that that's even more weird that's even weirder i'm like why should be if it glitched it would be zero right or it should be at 100 and whatever and then i think i realized i think i realized what happened somehow my phone and that app momentarily thought i was genevieve because i'm pretty sure her streak is in the 70s right now that i've heard yeah a lot of people are saying no offense um and

it was already completed now she and i share a new york times subscription right but we both have our own logins you know mine is associated with my email hers is associated with her email because you know any family that gets a subscription to the new york times you can have various people logging in and almost like amazon like you might not want to you know have all the same things favorited or whatever so you can have your own logins to the same system so you know it's two separate accounts um that we kind of pay for as a family but something got miswired and i was kind of i was straight up freaking out i was like did they change something so that we only have one login now and it's going with genevieve's not mine not my 130 something instead her measly 70 something streak and also it was uncalled no it was called for she knows what she did and also like does it mean only one of us can play like that would suck like wordle i don't know if you're picking up on this big part of my day yeah the only thing i wake up for anymore apparently yeah the only thing i pass out for anymore um so anyway i i log out of my times app i log back in it doesn't quite fix it i blow on the cartridge like i don't know what to do i text the i text the world chain i'm just like guys i'm freaking out here i don't know what's going on i do some other things um and then come back to it and then suddenly magically it's working again it remembers me it says hey unplug it plug it back in exactly unplugged it waited 10 seconds plugged it back in um and maybe it was just like waiting for me to like eat more of my soup but anyway but here's where the i don't know if i set this up properly but here's where the moral conundrum comes in because when it thought i was genevieve i saw the answer genevieve had gotten it in three and I saw what the answer was so then once my system was working again and said hey welcome to your 130 whatever streak are you ready to would you like to play a game I said I would like to play a game and then I just typed in the word that I saw that Genevieve had used and bingo bango boingo as our friend would say and I got it in one now should I have just for the sake of because it does keep track of like you know how many times you've won with four turns how many times you've won with two turns should i have like actually made an analysis and said i probably would have gotten this in three i start with the same word every day and i know that none of my letters would have been in that first word so there's no way i would have gotten this in in one try let alone two or three should i have just like fumbled around and pretended i didn't know the answer before i typed in the answer which i knew what it was no i don't think you should

have because i don't think this was your fault that's true this was a glitchy new york times puzzle page thing and that's kind of on them i think of the fact that the social security department has been overpaying a lot of people for years because of understaffing and lack of organization and then they will try to by the way i also recently watched a 60 minutes segment on this is why it's fresh in my mind and so then the social security administration will try to The term is claw back the money, which I think just tells you right away you've got a problem when the official term is we're going to claw this back from like retired Americans who didn't do anything wrong. We're not like running a scam. They were just accepting the money that the United States government was sending them and thinking that they were doing OK and that they were following the rules. And then the U.S. government says we messed this up and you owe us $70,000 in 30 days. These are people that are, you know, usually living on this money There was a couple of attorneys representing them And the correspondent for 60 Minutes asked Why shouldn't these people have to pay this money back? They received it, it was technically not, you know, intended for them And he said because they made plans based on this Because they didn't know it wasn't for them And they may have funded their grandkids college Or they may have done, they made a lot of decisions once they got this money And now those decisions can't be sort of reeled back in And so this needs to just be waved off It's not their fault It's the U.S. government's fault Which I totally stand by This is not your fault This is the New York Times fault This is Honestly, I blame the Sulzburgers As a family

It goes all the way to the top

It goes all the way I assume that the Sulzburger that's running the New York Times now His name is like Arthur the Ninth But everybody just calls him like, you know i don't know biff or something but he's got some kind he says charmed i'm sure he's got some kind of a cool funny his name's fluff but really yeah but really he's like but but but it's it's like what is it albert salzberger the ninth or something like it goes all the way to the top i don't think this is your fault i think it's fine for you to put in the word that you know take it just you know take the w here on chris it's a christmas miracle that's what it is

It is. It's a GD Christmas miracle, although I'd rather have that cash, honestly. I'd trade the Wordle streak for some of that tax windfall.

Yeah, well, the other thing, too, and this is, of course, why people turn to TBTL on Christmas Day, is for a rehashing of a 60 Minutes segment. It's from, like, three months ago, but that's because I just caught up on it. Like, I'll let a lot of 60 Minutes kind of build up in my DVR, and then I'll go through and watch them. and um what happened was when 60 minutes these people one of the people andrew who the u.s government was looking to collect four thousand dollars back from was a guy who i'm going to say is maybe in his early 30s he was born with cerebral palsy he was his he grew up in a household that did not have a lot of money and his mother had received some disability benefits on his behalf um over time uh you know that money was used again we're talking four thousand dollars i think um was used to pay for things that were necessary within the family his mother ended up ultimately passing away the u.s government was coming after this guy he was 11 years old when this money was put into his family economy oh my god he's like 30 something they're coming after him to get the four thousand dollars which is just i mean it's laughable when you hear it said out loud but this was the thing at the end of the 60 minutes piece none of these people were able to get through to somebody who was able to help them at the makes me feel like my um he lock my home equity line of credit with senlar is a walk in the park compared to dealing with social security after this after 60 minutes reached out to social security on behalf of these like three or four people that they profiled guess what social security did wiped the debt which means all you have to do is get 60 minutes to feature you in a piece and then you should be that's that's now apparently the most effective mechanism for getting some kind of traction with the u.s

government on something like this well good news i just i did post to my friendly neighborhood wordle text chain my score of one out of six and i just got confirmation from our friend anita who says, thank goodness you were able to fix it and take that one out of six for all that trauma that you suffered. There you go.

So you admitted it to your friends, too.

Yeah. I said after logging back in a bunch of times and blowing on my phone, I apparently got it to fix itself. The only problem is that I saw the answer. And so then I posted Wordle, one out of six. So I like to keep it honest. But speaking of keeping things honest.

Andrew, can I tell you one thing? Yeah. What's wrong? i'm not right a lot on this show but i was just loud right i'm looking up who's currently like at the very top of the new york times food chain you know the solzberger family has has owned it for generations i believe it's it's arthur ox solzberger jr so maybe it's not maybe this doesn't go back as far as i was thinking arthur this according to wikipedia arthur ox solzberger jr also known as pinch i mean i mean i said fluff yeah i was not far off that was a hell of a guess

by that is really good i used to pinch i was laughing too because there was this guy who was a regular at teddy's who's maybe a little bit older than me and the type of guy who i i you know i don't think he was a super moneyed guy but he was the type of guy who like would you know golfing was a big part of his his sort of lifestyle and personality or whatever and he went by uh fluffy he was like a very tall guy you know whatever but his nickname was fluffy and i was like yeah that's kind of that's kind of similar although i know what you're talking about you're talking about the sort of like that that elite class where um yeah you're like you're the seventh in a generation with the same name as your great great great granddaddy but they they all call you

you've got a kind of a kind of a funky nickname that seems really playful and it's just because you know, they basically you've completely, you've strip-mined the actual first name over the course of many generations, and there's nothing left there, so you're just going with Pinch or Fluff Alright, Andrew, let's get down to some winter, enough of this jibber-jabber let's get down to some winter game action

What are we dealing with today? I'm actually really excited about this, I have a whole list of Christmas related questions we're not going to get to all of them we have a list of 75 and these all come from cosmo magazine in fact listen to this there's a lesson in this uh ann listener ann in edmund oklahoma sent this to us for a winter game three winter games ago i looked at her email this came in and i think 2020 or maybe 2021 but i think 2020 and um other things have just sort of put have risen to the to the top and then today i'm going through it i'm like wait a second we need a christmas related quiz and here is this email that I see from Andy. from several years ago, and it's great. And I even see that they've updated it. You know what this is, basically?

This is a ghost of Christmas past.

It is.

Oh, my God.

In fact, I wasn't going to start with this one because I don't think it's as interesting, but let's start with this one. And by the way, I'm just going to be giving this quiz to you. I have the questions and the answers in front of me. Don't Google around, Luke. I'm trusting you. Oh, and I need to make sure I have two TBTL sound boxes here. I don't know. The battery is dead on one of them. Yeah, I was trying to play one of them when i was at your house a while ago and it wasn't really working yeah that was the spooky sound effects one but okay i got this that's if you get it right and that's if you get it wrong that's how we do things on this christmas no um okay so how many ghosts show up in charles dickens a christmas carol that's your first question there's no multiple choice here either this just straight up do you know your shit i mean i think i'm i'm sure i'm going to be wrong because i feel

confident about this but i i think i think this is a pretty straightforward one i think it's three i think it's a ghost of christmas past it's the ghost of christmas present and it's the ghost

of christmas future before i make any sound effect though i want you to just think about the story though and if anybody anybody guy have you ever seen scrooged i have seen scrooge some of robert loge's finest work uh is there maybe i think robert loge has a golf ball come

out of his head in the movie he's one of the ghosts um so you got christmas past christmas

present Christmas future but but who wakes up old Scrooge um who wakes you mean wait after it's all

said and done to start the journey Jacob Marley Jacob Marley shows up yes so it's I built it link by link yeah so sorry got it okay I forgot about so it's four that's a good one though that you know that's a fun christmas question it is about ghosts and you can and then and you can you can wow if you're hearing this in the morning and you're going to be doing other christmasy things you can you can wow people with your knowledge your detailed knowledge of course because jacob

marley is there yes exactly okay i like question number two we're not again i'm not going to go totally in order because there's 75 of these things and we only have time for a few but i like number two in home alone where are the mccallisters going on holiday when they leave kevin behind oh by the way spoiler alert they leave kevin behind but where are they going

where are they traveling going to my hands over the bell i know you got this they're going it's definitely europe and it's they're going so i do i need more than the continent more than the

continent if possible the answer here is the city but um i'm going to guess come on come on you got it's a lot of pressure i wouldn't know by the way i'm not pressuring you like come on man everybody knows this i don't think i would have gotten it under pressure but i just believe in

you more than i believe in me oh well first of all that explains a lot about the dynamic of our friendship and also why i let you down so much because i don't think there's any evidence that you should believe in me more than you but like wait wait i haven't even no that was that was about our relationship okay um because i'm overthinking this but what i'm thinking they're because they're leaving for the holidays so it makes me think it'd be like if i doubt that there's this level of like of kind of forethought in the the writing of the movie like they're going to um they're going to berlin because christmas in germany is a big deal uh and also italy seems like an odd place to go for christmas so i'm you're so close though you're so close you're It's either Paris or London. I'm going to guess Paris.

Indeed, the City of Lights, my friend. Or maybe Lights. That was pretty good, like, deductive reasoning by me. Is it the City of Lights or the City of Lights, Luke? That's not one of the questions on here. I just don't know.

I think City of Lights.

Yeah, I think so, too. Well, anyway, that's all that's on this list of questions. I'm feeling good. I mean, I'm one for one. Let's see here. You are one for two. What year did Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You come out? What year did that song come out? Oh, boy.

I saw a very interesting comment from the singer Dee Snider from Twisted Sister recently. Oh, yeah, sure. Which was, he was talking about a time in his career when he had gone bankrupt. he had sort of was really in a tough financial time I guess just you know people there was not a big market for like the music of Twisted Sister or the touring of the band Twisted Sister and he was really really down on he said nobody would at that time buy his catalog like he just had he was he might have even doing a day job I think he was working in an office somewhere which would be kind of odd to walk into an office and see Dee Snider there presumably in full you know

hair and makeup yeah like there are some some kind of like rockers who could kind of fit into a business environment d snyder seems like it'd be particularly distracting kind of distracting but he said that he i think his wife he said his wife said to him you should write a christmas song and so he wrote some christmas song that went nowhere and then somebody recorded it wasn't on the level of like all i want for christmas but somebody like a pretty famous i want to i think but like was it like vanessa williams or somebody recorded d snyder from twisted sisters christmas song and put it on their album and he said it's the most money he's ever made on licensing on any song he's ever written i believe that was which is the the crazy economics of writing a christmas

song that actually gets out there is there any chance you're thinking of the magic of christmas

by celine dion celine dion did a song written by d snyder from twisted sister and that is the most money he said that he's ever made off of any song

in his career. So that is right, right? That is right. It was Celine Dion. The Magic of Christmas Day, God Bless Us Everyone is the name of that song. This gets us

no closer to me figuring out when the song All I Want for Christmas is You by Murat Carey. Put yourself, I mean, I know

this is going to be hard for you, but put yourself in the story. Like, where do you think, sorry, that was a little dig.

It took me a minute to actually remember that you were that that was a dig i was like yeah that is hard oh wait no i get okay oh okay got it merry christmas but like smoke them up what is it smoke them up merry christmas

i feel like you know you and i were around before this song existed and we're clearly around after

its birth so you know do you have a sense i think i'm thinking late 80s i think it's late 80s i think i'm gonna say it's either 88 or 89 i'm sorry it was 1994 later than you'd have later I was overcompensating because I felt like The thing is I still to some degree Think of that song as new Because in 94 I was graduating high school So of course it's now been out For over Three decades Yeah three decades it's been out But it still feels new to me because I was kind of a Semi formed adult when I first heard the song

Now actually speaking of I really like this one skipping down to number 14 On the list what is the best Selling Christmas single of all time. I feel like you have a good chance on this one.

Yeah, I'm guessing White Christmas. By? By Irving Berlin.

By Bing Crosby's version. Bing Crosby's version, but written by Irving Berlin. Of course, yeah, but you're absolutely right. I mean, I'm giving it to you. Absolutely. Better. Bing Crosby's White Christmas, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. And we know from reading one article in the BBC about how seriously they take their record giving.

I think I said this a while ago when the movie White Christmas came up on the program. So apologies for repeating myself. But, you know, Becca and I watched that. And what I find, there's just, I actually love that movie. But there's so many things that are so kind of funny about how they made movies back then. And the, you know, the plot is that Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby are in the military, which is already laughable because Bing Crosby is 51 years old when the movie was made. It's, it's, he's, he, and he looks all of it. He looks every, every year of that 51 years and they, uh, you know, are very inspired by their leader who is like, let's just say, I don't know military rankings, but the Colonel or something, right? Like the guy who's in charge, they're fighting in Europe and they've got this, this Colonel who's, who's tough on them, but loves them. And then he's relieved of duty. He ends up running a vacation, uh, like a vacation hotel and resort in Vermont. and there's no snow and he's on hard times he's about to lose the whole thing so Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye who now have become entertainers after the war and have this big successful Broadway review they're going to go to Vermont and put their show on to bring people out to stay at the resort so as to save the business of this like you know colonel that they love what's amazing is the only thing that seems to distinguish the colonel from Bing Crosby even though he's supposed to be a like a father figure to Bing Crosby is that they've clearly applied a massive amount of gray hairspray to the colonel. And when I looked it up, the colonel, the actor who played the colonel is exactly 51 years old when he makes the movie Wait Christmas. It'd be like you and me being in a movie, Andrew, where I'm supposed to be a father figure to you and what they've done, we're literally the same age, but they've just spray painted my hair silver so as to indicate that I am many, many years older than you.

Well, you are like a father figure to me in a lot of ways. That explains a lot about our troubled relationship. And you do spray paint your hair. Well, that's true. Wow, I'm making a real dick to you on Christmas. My apologies. Also, I shouldn't use that kind of language on Christmas. You know what? I'm looking at the clock here. I'm going to say we only have time for one more question.

I don't know if you agree with that, but let's try to get at least one more in here. And now I'm asking you this specifically.

I want two points, by the way, for getting Irving Berlin and Bing Crosby. So that actually negates my, please, just for Christmas. All I want for Christmas is my two trivia points.

My two trivia points. That's what way Christmas actually knocked off the charts, actually. That had been the best-selling, highest-charting Christmas song of all time. Not Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer What was I spoofing with Genevieve about the other day Oh, I accidentally called I Saw Jesus Kissing Santa Claus Or something Maybe I was working on a remix of I Saw Mama Kissing Santa Claus Maybe like a new gay anthem for the modern era I don't know

I want to say that I was in the car With Becca and the I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus Song was playing and she turned to me And this was a very Andrew move She goes, did you actually know

that santa claus in this is his dad yeah i know that she said it with such solemnity that it did not see it coming it really killed me that's so funny because that's what veves and i were spoofing on the other day in fact i think we're having a lunch or something that's what brought this up i was like you know i just the one thing about that song i don't get is where was the dad the whole time that's literally what we're spoofing on when we came up with the new song i saw jesus kissing santa claus okay here's your final question for all the marbles i'm letting this all or nothing on this one and i'm asking you this specifically because you are known as the make out king of westchester county yep what color are mistletoe berries oh what color i think they are white

whoa look at you see well you don't get the title of make out king of westchester without knowing

your mistletoe my friend yeah i close my eyes when i kiss so i don't know uh-huh i would have

guessed red uh yeah that's holly um and uh but you know it is a it's a great time for me to bring this joke back out that i think i told a while ago which is um if athletes get athletes foot what do astronauts get mistletoe which i believe we decided doesn't really make sense wait that's your joke no no no i i read that in a joke book as a kid oh yeah and i remember thinking it was pretty funny but then upon reflection it's like i don't feel like astronaut and missile yeah no it should have been storm and norman right it should have involved more norman schwarz exactly exactly what this holiday needs is more norman schwarz Hey, let's thank some donors who left a little present under the tree for us, Andrew. That's right. A donation of money. Also, if you could go ahead and digitally send that to us. Leaving it under the tree is like no help. Yeah, exactly. We have to document that differently with the IRS. It's a whole thing. So I'm going to let that go because it's Christmas. But for future reference, we need these to be ACH transfers. Thank you. Yeah, because poor IRS. ACH or EFT? Electronic funds transfer. But then ACH is one for paychecks, I think, right?

Oh, is ACH a company or is that a thing?

I feel like for a while, I think ones that are like your direct paycheck, some companies will refer to it as an ACH.

Oh, I'm thinking of ADP. That's a company. ACH is the type of payment.

But you also get EFT. I feel like EFT and ACH seem interchangeable, but I bet you they have different. Technically speaking, there's different things going on.

Then, no joke, what do we call what used to be called food stamps?

Snap benefits?

Oh, that's right. I thought there was something like ES something is accepted here. EBT. EBT.

Electronic benefits transfer.

There it is. Okay, gotcha.

The main difference between EFT and ACH payments is that EFT is an umbrella term for all digital payments, whereas ACH is only a specific type of digital payment.

Oh, nice. Well, we'll take it all. You know what?

Merry Christmas, everyone. That's your gift from us is a detailed explanation of EFT versus ACH.

Along with a story from several months ago about people suffering from Social Security withdrawals. All of those things. I didn't say that right. I didn't say that right. Clawback? Clawback. How did I forget the best part of that story?

Thank you to Christina Mayer of Wenatchee, Washington.

Nice. Thank you, Christina.

Beautiful Wenatchee, Washington. Home of the Cosmic Crisp.

What do you call people who live in Wenatchee? Wenatchers?

Wenatched?

Wenatchkies?

Girl, that look is Wenatched. Yeah. That was a joke about snatched. Have you heard that term? No, I thought you were making a Mean Girls joke, which is also kind of a holiday movie. Snatched is like when something is snatched. Oh, man, that outfit, you're looking snatched right now. That's good. That's good. It's very good.

Thank you.

Very, very good. Like the fact that Kirk Eldred of Woodinville, Washington, is also supporting us. That's very good.

Thank you, Kirk. Thank you, Kirk. Consider me snatched for your donation. I think I nailed it.

Yeah, no, definitely. Thanks to Elaine Olsen. Thanks to Elaine Olson of Buckley, Washington. Thank you, Elaine. Thanks to Alan Jones of Los Angeles, California. Beautiful Los Angeles, California, which on Christmas Day, I'm guessing, is very warm, very pleasant. When I lived in L.A., people would sometimes say, and I know you and I had sort of different experiences living down there, Andrew. I think some of that was kind of circumstantial. But I really liked it down there And people would say, don't you miss the seasons And I would say, not really I remember my first Christmas in Los Angeles that I remember Me and my first ex had, I think, had moved into this house in Echo Park And there was a little orange tree growing in the backyard And my memory is that it was about 75 on Christmas Day And we had a couple of mimosas and opened a couple of presents. And I just thought, I can get used to this.

I moved to Los Angeles right before Thanksgiving Day back in, I think that was 2014. And I remember, like, I think I'd literally been in town like a week or less. I think maybe I started my job on Monday and then Thanksgiving was on Thursday. And so I spent Thursday, brand new to the town, just driving around L.A. with zero traffic. I drove like all the way out east for a sandwich somewhere.

What have they been talking about?

I was like, it's great out here.

Easy breezy. Thanks also to Chris Rupp, who's in Seattle, Washington. Thank you, Chris. As this is being broadcast to the world, I'm with you, Chris. I'm also in Seattle, Washington right now, getting prepared for my flight. Oh, that's right. And then Dave Bledsoe is in New York City. Dave. Get a tree. Thank you. That's right. Get a tree. Appreciate you. New York is a very special time during Christmas. Beautiful. That's what I hear. Thanks to all of our donors. Thanks for making TBTL possible. This will be an interesting week of Winter Games, Andrew, because since we're working off of a Google Doc, I can actually see the notes that you keep for yourself in real time.

Yes.

I've never seen the process. I've only heard about it. Wait a second.

But you're always in these show sheets when I make them and send them. Maybe you just don't see it. But, yeah, I'm taking some notes here about what we talked about in the show because eventually, you know, I'm going to need to come back and write descriptions and everything.

Maybe I've blanked it out because, you know, our typical day, I'll send you a show sheet and then you will format it to your liking and you kind of have a doc of those. But I'm just, I'm not in that doc. I'm just over here looking at my printout.

Oh, you're not usually looking at the, oh, I see, you print out the docs I send you and you're not looking at it live, I see, gotcha, usually.

And so I'm looking now live at all the donors today and the different things and I see that you've noted Oyster Crackers and Wordle Story, So I'm assuming that will be in the description.

Maybe I just wanted something or maybe those will spark an idea for a show title for today. Because I don't think we've landed on one like naturally yet. And so I'm going to have to unnaturally come up with a show title. I also maybe for tomorrow's show. I don't know if you're into this idea or not. So I think Wednesday you're going to be joining the show from Frankfurt, Germany. So maybe tomorrow we should talk a little bit about what you think that will look like. whether or not we should do a quiz with you in Germany. I have.

Well, another thing is I'm going to, I've already decided to allow myself a certain amount of latitude while in Germany. I'm basically German single, Andrew. I'm single the entire. No, I am going to allow myself a certain amount of latitude in Frankfurt. I can tell you on tomorrow's show what that is.

Okay. I'm excited about that. And then we can hear how it pays off on Wednesday then. Yeah, exactly.

So, all right. Something to look forward to. ye hearty souls who tuned in for the christmas edition of tbtl tell your friends it's it's good right it's good programming i've been a really defensive crouch over the winter games this year i just it's a lot of work primarily for you andrew it's a lot of work to do this new original content that i personally think is pretty decent at least by the standards of tbtl no i think it's i want to get i'm really trying to get i want more buy-in from the listeners for winter games i don't want to be hearing from people that it's when they decide to take a

couple oh i listen i listen to every show well obviously not the winter games everybody shares

that with us like it's a secret well i have to be honest with you i i do check out for the winter games.

All right, thanks, everybody. We'll see you tomorrow. In the meantime, happy holidays, Merry Christmas, and please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all.

I will be ordering a bowl of soup as an appetizer, not a cup. Chuck, I know people say I'll fill up, but you have no idea how my body processes soup. Power out.