Muse

Ooh, what you doing? Making a sexy piggy bank?

No, it's the collection box for the Donations for Carnations fundraiser.

Oh, romantic! How does it work? What do you do?

Students can buy carnations to be delivered to their special someone on Valentine's Day. They write the lucky person's name on an envelope, put it in the box, and then wait for the fireworks on Friday. There's not going to be actual fireworks, though. We couldn't get the permit.

Oh, still romantic.

What are you raising the money for?

That's TBD, either to help end hunger or repave the faculty parking lot.

Those are the big two.

Yeah, Sophie's choice. Sophie Martinson is the treasurer of the student council.

TBTL! My show's on the internet, where Beyonce and the president live.

And it's romantic, and it's full of these sort of situations, which turns out to be that's very interesting, very scary at times, but also a lot of romance and really well made, so I recommend it. Good soundtrack. Good soundtrack.

How did these buff dudes escape my radar? I thought I knew about every single buff dude. Are you sure this is legal? I don't know. It's fun though, isn't it?

All right, hello, good morning and welcome everyone to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. One part Dune, one part Mad Max, one part hippie gathering, and five parts what the f*** is this? My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

First things first, I love my job.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hills studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it is Valentine's Day.

Happy Valentine's!

Hope you're engaging in as much sure as little valentine's falderal as you care to hope you're either having a great hyper romantic valentine's day or you're doing absolutely nothing related to valentine's day wherever you fall on the continuum of giving a shit about the fact that it's february the 14th this is kind of interesting today is episode 4141 in a collector series let the fun begin think about turning that around and it makes 14 14 yeah right if i had the twilight zone music here i'd play it for you but i don't so you'll just have to um remember what that sounds like because that's kind of um interesting numerological uh we have actually some real stuff to talk about including some valentine's day breaking news that's recently hit my inbox

This is a serious message to everybody watching my update right now.

And have I been very wrong about something only to be corrected or to have the scales fall from my eyes because of the actions of one Reba McIntyre? I've made a huge mistake. And time permitting, we'll talk about the huge mistake that Lyft made. They had a typo in one of their earnings reports. I wish I hadn't done that. It had some repercussions. We'll talk about that. Oh, and we'll talk to this guy. Longest running co-bro of the show. Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. It is Valentine's Day, which is pretty much, I think, when he shines.

The sexy goth bad boy is back at it again, ladies and gentlemen.

He's Andrew Welsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. Can we talk about love for a moment? Yes. Seems like a good time to do it. Yeah, this is the day for it, I guess. If not now, when? Genevieve, my love, is not somebody who believes in fate, right? She doesn't believe that everything happens for a reason. That'll sort of set her teeth on edge if you say that. She doesn't believe that there's just one person for, you know, like one romantic person for somebody else. A soulmate. Right. I'm not saying that she's asking me to expand our relationship.

I was going to say, this might come as some kind of troubling news to you that she feels that people can love a lot of people. And I say that with peace and love to our polyamorous listeners, which we have many.

No, but in other words, we would say that because obviously we've been together for a long time now and really enjoy each other's company. But, you know, we've had conversations throughout our relationship. She's not somebody who believes like, I am the one. And if it wasn't me, she would have found somebody else. You know, that's the way life works. Having said that, it's not to say that we are not romantic at all. Because the other night, Genevieve accidentally said the most romantic thing to me. And I wrote it down. And I'm going to share it with you here. I was supposed to turn this into a Valentine's Day card that I was going to give her today. And I, well, I didn't. I never got around to it. I was going to make something you can vote. That's true. But I feel like I need card stock. Anyway.

what she said to me it's not that we were meant for each other it's that we're no longer fit for anyone else i feel like that is a great valentine's day card it's realistic it certainly is can you tell we're gen x we're young gen x but that seems like a very gen x kind of uh valentine sentiment

also yeah can you tell that i can't find my aw sound effect because that was if there was ever

a time for a, aw, it was right there. I saved that in my email, and the subject line is Genevieve's Love Poem. I emailed it to myself the other day, that's how I remember things. And yesterday I was on a meeting, trying to figure out some, or in a meeting, I was with a meeting, trying to figure out some technical stuff with our boss, John Sklaroff, and so I was sharing my screen with him, you know, and I'm never shy about that because I don't really i don't i don't mess around too much on this computer like i'm just like whatever you see is fine um and i realized i did have my email open but again it's like you know there's nothing in there isn't there's no there's no embarrassing subject lines except i realized that there was one it says genevieve's love poem and i wondered did um sklarov think i'm just a hopeless romantic as he was peeping my email subject lines yesterday don't um i would say don't give up

On putting I mean you can get card stock You could do something You can still turn that into something I'm kicking the can down the road I'm actually We're delaying Becca and I are delaying Valentine's festivities Until this weekend Because I waited We do tend to go Try to maybe get a nice little dinner And kind of Get some cards And all that kind of stuff And I waited way too long I mean it's not uniquely my job And also Becca doesn't really care Like if we just got together and had some pasta That would also be fine But I like to go out to a little dinner And do something kind of romantical And I waited way too long To try to get a reservation at anywhere You know That would be kind of a fun place to go on Valentine's And I've also I've got Live Wire tomorrow night I'm still reading furiously to get caught up for the show. And I was like, how about we do this on Saturday? And she said, absolutely. And I was like, three more days for me to steal Andrew's idea of writing something she said into a card. Would you mind? Genevieve's love poem, Genevieve hyphen Becca's love poem.

That would hit differently if you gave that card to Becca without any context. It's not that we were meant for each other, it's that we're no longer fit for anyone else.

I don't think that she would disagree with that sentiment. No, I think she would say maybe we're meant for each other. And I would agree. But, you know, give it a couple of years.

Get to know me.

We'll get right to that, you know. I don't know why I keep referencing, like, cartoons on the show. Yesterday I was talking about the Lockhorns. But for some reason now I'm imagining you and Genevieve as Crankshaft and whoever Crankshaft's lady was. I don't know that. Did Crankshaft have a lady? I actually don't know. I don't know that Crankshaft did. Honestly, I'm assuming a lot. I'm assuming Crankshaft was straight.

That's right. I have no idea if Crankshaft was involved with anybody other than his bus and his work.

By the way, I have a little bit of... I checked my TBTL email this morning, and I can't tell you how excited I was to find out that there's a media alert out that is... I hope you're sitting down, Andrew. Wait, is it? Yeah. It's not embargoed. It's not embargoed, dude. That's exactly what I was worried about. Dude, it's not embargoed. It's for immediate release. Like right now. Okay. Like I can right now.

Jalapeno! Jalapeno! Jalapeno!

I am allowed to tell you on the show right now that this Valentine's season, Starbucks customers in the U.S. can order the following beverages, which are also available to order in the Starbucks app. Are you ready for this, Andrew? Are you sitting down, stand up and then sit down?

You're 100% sure that it says for immediate release?

It says it in all caps, and there's two asterisks and then four immediate release and then two more asterisks kind of denoting the whole thing. So I feel safe telling you that through Starbucks and also the Starbucks app, you can get the chocolate-covered strawberry cream frappuccino. And also, you can get the chocolate hazelnut cookie cold brew. And let's see You can also get the Starbucks Valentine's Day Drinkware collection which includes Tumblers, cold cups and more With heart and floral designs They can also be found through the app And on shelves in US stores And yes, again Virginia This is for immediate release Thank you

Luke, with Valentine's Day here, I'm sending this reminder about Starbucks Valentine's Day beverages that are available now. Thanks, Laura at Edelstein, the PR firm. Or Edelman, rather.

Edelman, oh yeah, yeah. I was going to say I know Edelman. Or I know of Edelman. I've known people who work there.

Yeah, so that's... And by the way, I was making a joke, and yet I just gave them exactly the kind of coverage that they so desperately hope for.

Yeah, we will find this out later in the show. the things we talk about on the show do impact our listeners words have power and that's something i learned listening to the voicemails today i'll play some for you later really it's almost no

thank you rich it almost brings us back to the no thank you rich gazarian days where rich gazarian used to pitch me and i think you right did you get the did you ever get those in your various radio

producer capacities tbtl related but rich gazarian he he got to me at kcrw even i think that late in the game but i think in new hampshire as well yeah yeah we had a whole segment uh back in the

radio days no thank you rich gazarian where we would just again you know in a way really give folks exactly what they were hoping for which was some attention to a particular uh you know sort of pr thing um i i which i guess is kind of counterproductive because i'm trying to my my ultimate point is this is not something worth talking about and then i end up talking about it i do have an endless fascination with how and this this one i'm gonna give this one like a a c like i'll give it a solid c in terms of um you know effectiveness well i'll give it an a in terms of effectiveness in that i'm talking about it on the show but i just listed exactly what starbucks wants me to list but i i don't have an example right in front of me although you can hear me trying to boot up my TVTL email, I'm constantly amazed at just how absolutely low the bar is for PR inquiries or PR, you know, things being pitched to us in terms of how the email is structured, in terms of what the actual topic is, and also even how the person who is being pitched to us even has the resources to have hired somebody to pitch them. I'm trying to find – most of my emails right now are about colonoscopies. I'm just going to be very, very upfront with you. But as I scroll back, there was something that happened.

I don't think colonoscopies happen upfront, Luke. Uh-oh. They happen.

I've got to get a new doctor. I've got to get a new proctologist.

Hey, actually, can I buy you a little bit of time? Would you, though? This is a total aside. Thank you. But speaking of – as Vives and I went over all of the Super Bowl commercials with more of a fine-tooth comb for yesterday's show and or whatever day we posted that goddamn thing. And some of the subtleties you might miss during the Super Bowl, one really irritated me. I did not realize this on Super Bowl Sunday, and I think this is the type of thing that will really irritate you. If you didn't already notice this, there was an advertisement for a Kawasaki vehicle, an off-road vehicle of some sort. Did you see this at all? Do you have any idea what I'm talking about? I did not take note of it. Okay, it was basically like, it's kind of like an ATV. It's kind of fun like an ATV, but it's also like a little mini truck. So it's kind of got like a little flatbed in the back. It's covered. So it's kind of like this little off-road vehicle. And the whole point of the commercial is this thing is really fun, but it's also good for getting work done in the woods if you need to, like, move a bunch of logs, right? And so what they do is they show these two young men with kind of, like, you know, trim haircuts, get into the Kawasaki vehicle, whatever it's called. And as soon as they turn the key, they grow mullets, Luke. Oh, my goodness. Mullets are so cool. And then they're driving by a bald eagle, and the bald eagle gets a mullet, and a bear gets a mullet, and then I think Stone Cold Steve.

Would you say America fuck yeah?

Yeah, it was very much like that. They go by Stone Cold Steve Austin, who's bald, but then suddenly he gets a mullet. Oh, yeah. And all of this is to advertise this little truck. Again, you can throw things in the back of it, so it's like a little work vehicle, but it's also tons of fun. And the whole point was what, Luke? business in the front party in the back they actually said that yeah at the end it says you know that's why they're using a mullet to advertise this thing but they have it totally backwards in this case the party is in the front and the business is in the back the flatbed is where the work is happening it makes me so irrationally angry that somebody must have realized that and said and just go with it anyway it's funnier this way and also just mullet humor is just like so goddamn played out like it just this pushed all of my anger buttons now think about how much more

fun that commercial could be if they jump into the little thing and all of a sudden instead of a mullet they have really long bangs i told and if the premise was party in the front business in the back that is a totally different commercial and i'm loving it right she said that genevieve

made an argument which is because i said like what if they had reverse mullets she's like that just might be a

lot to that might be a lot to convey in this commercial like it might just confuse things even more I'm like but at least it would at least try to make sense at least it would be a what do you call it a drive homer away homer you know like it's just it's so it's just so opposite and

wrong and also stupid yeah I mean and just just the fact that just the idea that that's not played out at this point yeah um and yeah just the the mulletification of of america the i guess you know the at one time ironic well at one time unironic and then ironic and now back to unironic although i think at this point we've moved we're we're moving through it's second wave mulletism

yeah right we might be a third wave mulletist third wave mulletism yeah because it's you know

i i was quite shocked when it came back and now it then it was so ubiquitous among a certain kind of you know person and then I feel like it's got to be back out of style like it's not even that they're missing the first wave of mulletism they're missing the third wave of mulletism with that commercial and that's what's truly shocking exactly and the third wave of course

is all about intersectionality and that's why they should have had the mullet in the front

that's the right silence is violence exactly um okay I did find the email in question and I don't want to be um you know what's the word I don't want to be overly negative but like uh the the email was breaking all caps comedian Shane Gillis returns to SNL stage amidst controversy I was like okay uh I had heard about that you know Shane Gillis obviously was a comedian who was actually cast on SNL and then they found some uh some offensive stuff that he'd said on a podcast and then he was uh unhired from SNL and then because of TikTok and I would say the pandemic to some degree he became a hugely popular comedian uh and is now hosting or maybe he already did I don't know he'll be hosting snl and it's become a kind of a somewhat of a cultural flashpoint i guess because it you know depending on your opinion of shane gillis i will let me put it this way it's a big w if you're shane gillis yeah right i mean like wow that's um talk about worms turning but anyway i'm like i see the headline and i'm thinking well i would be really surprised if this person is reaching out on behalf of shane gillis i don't even truthfully i don't even think we'd have him on um because i don't think that's really the kind of show that we're doing but uh i i scroll into the the email from somebody at a uh pr firm and there would you like to speak to comedian fill in the blank by the way comedian i'd never heard of on controversial comedian shane gillis's

return to host saturday night live i i'm a little bit jealous i don't get a lot of good press releases anymore i get stuff from the tv academy or whatever like the emmys people and what i'm flooded with in all of my email accounts is like kind of like spammy sort of like we can help your podcast stuff which i mean obviously they realize who does the real work of this podcast i'm not kidding which is you but i mean it's ridiculous i mean i get in my spotless account after these messages like and it's always just kind of like you have this many shows or not enough comments i got one the other day that said the subject line was something like 5 1100 shows or i'm sorry Like 5,000, whatever, 5,100 shows and zero comments, question mark? Like, clearly, like, you and I are on episode 4141, as you mentioned at the top of the show. But because of all the extra shows we've done that are in the feed, sports-related, Game of Thrones-related, bonus episodes, we're actually up to some number in the 5,000s. And some bot scanned our entire back catalog to know the exact number that we're sitting on. That's a lot of work. Yeah, first of all, it's a lot of work. I could have used it. Congratulations. But I miss good, old-fashioned press releases, especially the Bonkers kind, the Rich Gazarian kind, and the, what was the magazine we used to get? Radio Interview magazine? We used to, like, cut them out and hang them up at work. The pitches were so great.

Those were just absolutely wonderful. So this is offering us a chance to talk to this comedian that we haven't heard of about Shane Gillis. This comedian is available to discuss and provide commentary on the following. Why this announcement has caught the attention of many people and raised discussions within the comedy community. What questions will Gillis' return raise? Will it be about redemption or controversy? Or how SNL's decision on inviting back a comedian who was fired due to offensive remarks will impact them? Let me know when you'd like to speak to this person. Cheers, so-and-so from such-and-such PR firm. And again, my first thought was, I'm a bit surprised. This is how weird I am. when i got this email i then went and and googled this comedian to think to just to find out is this person uh kind of a more popular more well-known comedian than i was aware of and the answer is no there's a working comedian somebody i think who has fewer instagram followers than i do which is i don't have that many maybe a couple thousand or something uh it's somebody who's you know making looking to make a career for themselves and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that Somebody who's married.

a rosebud baker that's all it rhymes with handy zines um but uh it it's not our friend andy haynes for the record but it's just somebody i then i started to wonder did they is this has this person spent all of their money have they have they taken the the resources from their comedy career such as it is so far or did they cash out a 401k and did they retain this pr firm to try to You know go out and get them on Shows to do interviews about Shane Gillis So as to grow their brand Put their name in front of more people's ears Etc and is it Working and did anyone take the bait on this And I would say probably not Because the other thing that's happened with the fractured Media landscape and the realignment Of everything is there just aren't as many Shitty radio shows as there used to be Because there's not any money in it And when I say shitty radio show I say that with absolute love I love a good local AM radio show that doesn't really have enough to talk about. I mean, that's the roots of this program, honestly. But there are fewer of those. I mean, you used to have multiple radio stations in a market that would have multiple local shows. I used to fill in on Como sometimes from 9 to noon on a show called Scoot. I would fill in for a guy named Scoot.

Oh, that was the guy's name. That was the host's name, Scoot.

Also kind of a good name for a show. Scoot. Hey, get out of here.

Scoot. He needs a sidekick. It has to be Scoot and the someone, right?

Right. I think it might have been my friend Lee Callahan, who now does Mornings.

Scoot and Lee in the Mornings? Scoot and Lee in the Mornings.

I think Lee does Mornings somewhere in Seattle, probably has some listeners who are listeners of this show as well. But anyway, I used to fill in for a dude named Scoot, and I'd get done producing the morning show on KVI, and I'd have a pit in my stomach. Again, we were talking about this the other day. It's so weird that you and I have gone towards this, and you've said you kind of fell backwards into it. But like we've gone towards this when almost everything about it gives me a bad feeling. I just remember like finishing up my production because, you know, this was I wasn't like hired to be the fill in for Scoot. I was the producer of the morning show down the hall that like when when they were completely out of other options, I could come down and kind of keep the needle moving for a couple of hours on Como. And I would just have such a pit in my stomach to this day. probably most of my stress streams are involved when I used to fill in for Scoot because it'd be like 8.50 and I would be trying to put together some kind of a show sheet and some list of topics to go down and fill in for Scoot I would have died to talk to this comedian about Shane Gillis returning to the SNL stage or going to the SNL stage for the first time. What I'd like to

see and I've never been I've never like sort of connected the dots on this before and I'm making an assumption here but an assumption that I'm somewhat confident about but probably when this comedian this unnamed comedian, is it the unnamed comedian? It's the guy with the paper bag this whole time but they hired

because you know they want to get a little press What do you call a herd of masturbating cows? I don't know. Beef Strokenoff That was a joke the unknown comedian told in the movie Night Patrol He also did an impression of the first astronaut on the sun Those were the two unknown

comedian jokes i remember what i'd like to see is the other press releases that try to find news reasons or news related oh i've got them but this particular comedian because like i feel like this particular comedian probably hired somebody said hey go with this person or go with this firm or whatever yeah it's not that expensive they'll try to get you on some as luke calls them shitty talk

shows right well again sure and i love those shows but they just don't have many of them anymore you You know, there's just like the the potential outlets for this has gone way down.

But like so talk to this comedian about this other comedian is this press release. But are there other news pegs that are going out that they're still using to get this comedian in front of microphones? You know what I mean? Is it like, you know, have this comedian again? I know I talk about this too much this week, but like, you know, react to a certain Super Bowl commercial that is really turning heads or or have this comedian comment on Taylor Swift. and Travis Kelsey or something. You know what I mean? Like how many other things are they trying to get this person to comment on?

Right. Like I'm scrolling. We'll do two things. I'm scrolling the basically like spam folder of my email because that's where so much of this stuff just ends up. You know, like let's see. Super Bowl colon. We hate the teams, but we love the bets. Gambling addiction, PhD talks. So this is somebody pitching us on an expert psychologist. Dr. Gregory Jantz specializes in the treatment of gambling addiction, among other types of addictions, and he's the founder of Blah Blah Blah. The other thing I was doing, Andrew, was figuring out that Scoot is still on the radio in New Orleans. The Scoot Show, 1 to 4 on WWL.

I feel like Scoot... Scoot belongs in New Orleans. I've just heard about Scoot for the first time like three minutes ago, but that seems like a great fit. Scoot in the Big Easy?

I'm also just trying to figure out if this is, I mean, is there a chance it's a different Scoot? Oh. What are the chances there's a different talk show host named Scoot out there? I think it's the same guy, but, you know, he looks different. He's got these kind of large, chunky black glasses that I don't remember him wearing. You know what he looks like? he looks very much, I think, like the guy that I used to know, but plus 20 years, because that's exactly what's happened. I would fill in for him 20 years

ago. Oh yeah, I'm looking at him now, he reminds me of Kevin Cole, sort of, different haircut.

Uh-huh. Scoot is a legendary talent, trusted, authentic, and still hipper than hip. Scoot in the afternoon, live, local, and original, just like New Orleans. So, there you go. What I would say is that these people should reach out to Scoot, and I... Nobody send this to Scoot, because I don't... I don't want it to sound like I'm running down local talk radio. I love local talk radio. And I was just trying to pick an example of a show that doesn't exist anymore that used to be on the local station in Seattle, Como. Como used to have hours and hours of locally generated talk show and news. I wasn't trying to say anything negative about this particular broadcaster, who I think was probably great. I just picked an example at random, and I would just like everyone to be cool about it, please.

And I would like to retract my Kevin Cole comment. There's one photo where he's smiling at the camera, and he sort of has a smile like Kevin's. Nothing else reminds me of my apologies.

We all have stuff to apologize for.

I mean, all those KEXP heads out there who are throwing their phones right now. All those, the people who love Scoot and Kevin Cole. I apologize to you all.

After 50 years in radio, WWL's Scoot Paisson is still talking and still loving the 80s. Good for you, by the way. Yeah. 50 years in this business is not, uh, an easy thing to, uh, to accomplish. And just again, to continue to find the, find a home on an increasingly smaller landscape of local talk radio stations. There are some stations down in town near where I live that I've just driven by their building. And I don't know where this comes from in my brain. It's like one of those clusters. It's like, you know, the country station, the, um, the news station, the whatever. And they're all in the same little kind of cinder block building on a corner that i drive by and i don't know where this impulse comes from because i i guess i would say i'm fortunate that i have pretty employed at the moment that could always change but every time i drive by i just think if i walk could i walk in there and could i get some kind of job could i just do afternoons on the local station in longview washington um i mean first of all someone probably has a job and they'd be like uh no thank you we have someone doing it but like i'm i am so enamored with local radio still to this day i just love local radio and i i'm sad to see so much of it kind of going away well

there's another twist to this particular story but your fantasy there if i can use that word please on this valentine's day um reminded me of what bean our friend bean baxter talks about on his podcast quite a bit which is you know he um is also a resident of england i think he's moving back there pretty soon but his whole thing is like he is literally a hall of fame broadcaster a hall of fame radio guy in the United States, but he can't get on like a local British radio station for his life. And he's doing it for free. He's filling in for people's weekend shifts, but he can't get a paying radio job in England. Right. And I mean, that that's got it. That's

probably exactly. First of all, I don't have the career nor will I ever have the career that our friend Bean Baxter has had. But but even so, I bet you. So I'm not trying to compare our resumes, But I bet you anything if I wandered it I used to think about this a lot with the Sports Talk station that was in Bellingham The Zone I think it was called Or something, no there was a show called The Zone What was it, what the heck was the name of that station I used to listen to In fact that's how I started getting into Levitard back in the day Was because they used to play Levitard on This local sports station In Bellingham, Washington that had Exactly like one hour of local Produced content, it was from like three to four called like the zone or something. And I loved it so much. But anyway, I, I often fantasize about walking in there and trying to get a job. I'm sure if I were to go in there, if I were to go into one of these stations down in town, I would totally not get a job. They'd be like, okay, cool. You do a podcast or you're on what live? Like that would, I don't think it would in any way have the currency that I, in my fantasy version of this, that I would think it would have where they'd be like, Oh my God, the Luke Burbank is here. Um, uh, yeah, please. What,

what shift would what air shift would you like sir we don't want to do this we we won't follow through but i just had a little idea so i was i mentioned earlier this like this kind of catalog that we used to get as radio producers a physical catalog that would come in with like some of the most ridiculous pitches in this press release form it's called rtir radio television interview review? Report? Something like that. It's like Christmas when that came in the mail. Anyway, I think it's digital only now. I'm on their website, but before you can look at any of the headlines, it says, do you want to be a guest or do you need to find a guest? There are two paths here with RTIR. You must choose one. I'm clicking on, I need to find a guest because I want to see what they have these days. To be a guest, you've got to think like a guest. You've got to act like a guest. And you've got to be a guest. I was going to maybe suggest, should you and I try to get an RTIR magazine and see where they put us? What are we commenting on?

Are we commenting on Shane Gillis? If they still produced it as a physical thing like the newsprint, like we used to get, I would think that would be an amazing use of some resources. Just only because it would make me laugh so hard for us to be in that magazine. And I would like to say that only once or twice did I get on the radio and just read examples of bad guests we weren't going to have on. But no, that was a common go-to for me in various hosting capacities and fill-in capacities when I had nothing else to talk about. It would be to break that thing open and just mock the people in there, which isn't very nice. I wouldn't do that exactly now. But yeah, I would love for some poor radio producer somewhere in America to be just like racking their brain for a topic or a guest and to be flipping through that and to see you and me in there as potential guests for their radio show.

Our headshots would be like, oh, it would be one photo of you and me standing back to back with our arms crossed in front of our chest.

Yeah.

What would our topics be? Garbage anxiety? Yes. Well, here's what is in today's newsletter. I guess yesterday's newsletter. forgetfulness isn't forgetting Biden brains and aging unfortunately I only this is not a very good website so I can't read to you from the actual press releases they're not hyperlinked Luke it's just a block of text I'd have to scroll down and find the actual stories but the Super Bowl is over let's talk baseball the hidden history of Valentine's Day bad boys bad girls and why you're addicted to them oh that's what we wait are we already being booked is that I mean

I'm the bad boy of public radio like like elvis mitchell i'm gonna tell you this uh i'm very i'm looking up these stations that i drive by sometimes one is um cook and country 105.5 fm they're pretty robust staff here they've got the morning show uh hosted i think maybe by a guy named pork chop they've got um a sports department they've got a news team i mean a person is the news team and a person is the sports department they have a sports director um and uh it looks like they've got they've got a pretty good staff of people going here which makes me very happy also someone doing traffic which i don't know how much traffic i'm gonna be honest with you there's not a lot of traffic to report i don't know what that sounds like in the morning like you know i5 is you're gonna hit the brakes near the mcminimans like i don't really know i don't know what we're talking about it on the lewis and clark bridge on your way to rainier oregon you may see those brake lights there's a sunshine slowdown right now on ocean beach highway, but I'm, I'm, I'm being totally honest. I am very heartened to see that this radio station has a pretty, a pretty sizable local staff and that they're doing radio. I love that that's happening. If you are looking for something to augment your TBTL listening with, I cannot recommend the sporkful highly enough. You know about this show, right? Produced by friend of the show and friend of me, Dan Pashman. They like to say that it is a show for eaters, not for foodies. You don't have to know a lot about food. You just have to enjoy the experience of putting food in your mouth and chomping down on it and swallowing it. Um, I'm very jealous of this other thing that Dan did a while ago. He invented a new kind of pasta. It's called cascatelli. I've bought it in the store and then made stuff with it. It's amazing. It's delicious. It's toothsome. It's all the things that Dan was trying to set out to do when he invented his own pasta. They talk about all kinds of interesting stuff on the Sporkful, like, why is the shallot super special? Is there such a thing as halal pork? What kind of fast food should you eat on vacation? And stuff like that. We love Dan. You're going to love the Sporkful. Get it wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to Top Story. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole this morning. It actually started, I think, maybe yesterday afternoon or maybe even over the weekend. I was looking at the TBTL Instagram feed, or I may have been looking at TBTL employee numero uno, John Sklaroff's Instagram feed. They sometimes blend together in my mind because I follow both of them. Both great follows, by the way. and I saw a basically a screen cap of something that involved a person commenting on a post from Reba McIntyre okay does that make sense so I basically it's one of those internet chain things

where I'm noticing John Sklaroff noticing someone who's noticing something Reba McIntyre did on Instagram and I'll just play you well first I'll contextualize it a little bit Reba McIntyre Took a picture She was in Las Vegas Presumably for the Super Bowl And she was wearing a fur coat And she had some boots on And she was standing in front of a window And the caption of the photograph was Boots with the fur You know, like the song That we all know so much

I noticed, by the way

That I think it's T-Pain I mean, this is T-Pain singing

and then Flo Rida is the

you know main dude on the song I think it's T-Pain that says let me talk to him right before the beginning of the song it's so freaking cool like I edited it right to the kind of relevant point apple bottom jeans with the boots with the fur but I'm considering starting every TBTL with let me talk to him

I love it I mean obviously I know this song but I can't kind of picture in my mind's eye, the beginning of it as you describe it. Should I try to find it on Spotify here? I'm doing that too

but no, actually I don't know if it's particularly well known or not. That little moment. I hadn't noticed it before and I was very familiar with the song. Do you want me to play it from here? Sure, if you got it there. Here's the full unredacted version.

Let me talk. Let me talk.

Actually, I think it might be Flo Rida saying, let me talk to him. The irony is he then immediately hands the mic over to T-Pain.

Yeah, right. I thought you wanted to talk. Let me talk to him.

All right, T-Pain, could you talk to them, please, for a minute?

That's like when you introduce me and I know I got to make some sounds because you need to take a sip of coffee after your intro. Like, what are you doing? Don't just set me up like that.

That makes it an even more apt thing for me to say it to be, let me talk to him, let me talk to him. Andrew?

Floss, it has an expiration date.

Okay, so everybody knows that song, everybody loves that song. And most people like me have always assumed that in the song when they're talking about apple bottom jeans with the boots, with the fur, You're sort of picturing boots with like fur on them But this Instagram post from Reba McIntyre Has caused a whole generation of people to wonder Is it possible that the person in the song Just had a fur coat on and was also wearing boots This is a guy on TikTok kind of going through this

She tweets boots with the fur And she's wearing a fur coat and boots And this person says This is the first time I have considered That the boots themselves did not have fur Did you always interpret that as a woman wearing normal boots with a fur coat, boots with the fur? Or did you, like me, and I think the rest of the world, assume that her boots were furry? I'm sorry, I still think it's this. I think Reba McIntyre has it wrong.

Shots fired. I think Reba McIntyre has it wrong. Now, the other thing we can't know is, was Reba McIntyre in on the joke? Well, here's one thing. did Reba McIntyre even actually do the Instagram post? Probably not. Reba McIntyre probably has a team. And probably the team took a cute picture of her, and then somebody on the team, some part of the squad, then put in boots with the fur. So I would be unsurprised to hear that this entire thing is news to Reba McIntyre, that any of this has even

happened. At this point, I'm sure it's gotten back to her because it's kind of taking over the internet. This, by the way, is our chancing into rtir magazine like this is what we should be experts on with the fur question mark and we can take opposite sides of it we can be um nation's longest running podcasters way nation's most tedious podcaster andrew waltz so there's a reddit about this that i was scrolling

through uh i asked becca about this because she's very much of the generation i was like what did you think she was like I just assumed it was fur on the boots yeah which I think we all kind of did and I spent a good amount of time this morning again in a bit of an emotional free fall thinking have I this whole time have I been picturing the wrong thing and then Andrew I did something that I was kind of surprised I didn't see anybody else do which was uh I just went to the video oh yeah Okay.

Yeah And I watched the video Let me talk to him And at first I was very unsatisfied Because the first like Maybe 40 seconds of the video That's in a dance club T-Pain's on stage Flo-Ride is about to come out And like The way that the video was shot You couldn't see anyone's Feet or shoes And I was like are they Are they seriously messing with us Is this going to be like some kind of a Zapruder film type of deal Where we never really know what happened Then they cut to the scene where Flo Rida is rapping And guess what

There's a lady right next to him

Wearing boots with fur There you go I mean move over ProPublica I mean how am I the first person That I saw anywhere on the internet I did not see one other person in the subreddit discourse on this just screen cap the video where there's a person with boots with the fur sitting next to uh flow rider i feel like this might be we may have broken this case wide open

have you platformed this anywhere else other than tbtl at this moment i just listed it in rtir you know as you were describing going back to watch the video it occurred to me that you know I've heard this song a million times in my life and I might have never seen the video, but I feel like I can picture the video in my head because that is because of the descriptive language that is used in that exact line. Apple bottom jeans,

I think boots for et cetera.

Every time I hear that the zillions of times I've heard that, I think my brain automatically just sort of like imagines a club scene that I picture as the music video. And I'll bet you I've never even seen that. Well, I feel like I must've seen the music video at some point, but I'll bet you it doesn't match. Like I, it's almost like trying to describe something you listen to on the radio all the time.

In your version of it, there's a lot of waxed mustaches

and penny farthings. Yes, exactly. That's basically the video. A lot of hoop and stick games of that type of thing. No, I feel like I can picture somebody dancing with the fur on the boots kind of in slow motion. Maybe that happens later in the video. But no, I think I just always picture it that way.

I don't know if I'd ever seen the video myself. And maybe later in the video, the woman I'm thinking of or someone else with boots with the fur gets up and dances. But as far as, you know, I think I got two minutes into the video and then I saw what I needed to see. I don't even I don't know if there's a person literally dancing with the boots with the fur in apple bottom jeans in the video. They might just be they might just make a quick appearance near Flo Rida as he's doing his thing. I would, I would say for a certain demo, a certain generation, a certain age group, that might be the song that most reliably will get people dancing.

It is.

I mean, that is one of those songs that, and then there's, there's also Hey Ya, which is maybe, maybe goes a little bit younger. but i think that song low is one of the is one of the um most like reliably will get people of a certain age dancing particularly in my experience women love that song women love dancing to that song i mean everybody loves it but but particular many women that i've known in my life in various capacities have really loved that song do you know that i have never felt like more of a scold than when during the halftime show Lil Jon came out to help Usher Raymond and started to go into Get Low and I was like, tsk, tsk, my pearls were clutched so goddamn hard because, you know, I'm on about that whole thing that's my, like, the fact that, like, to the windows to the walls has just been completely normalized now is, I don't know why I'm so scandalized by that, I just feel like it's such if you listen to the real version of the talk it's so hypersexual and i would say so degrading to women the fact that it's showing up in just like commercial people are singing it to their babies and then little john comes out and he's i'm like i was going around collecting up the children at the viewing party we need to get you guys outside right now something and then he didn't even do it because a child and family services yes uh on the east side boys yeah right how old are the east side boys and are they legally allowed to be with little john on this they didn't even do he didn't even do the song He just was, it was, it was like the very beginning. It was like whatever the first 10 notes of the song were, but then they never got into the, like, to the windows, to the walls stuff.

The Hey Ya, that's why Hey Ya is so safe. Exactly.

It is about a divorce, I think. Oh, is it?

I didn't realize that, but it sort of seems like you mentioned like Low and Hey Ya, like both of those seem like wedding songs to me, like at a certain point, if you have a DJ wedding.

wedding like maybe those come on and everybody gets excited and they're they're all dancing like but hey yeah is just like it's seen i i feel well i don't pay attention to lyrics enough so i could be um completely wrong about this but there's something about that that just seems so hand clappy and fun you don't have to really worry there's the whole call and response the ice cold

what's cooler than being cool i think i've played it at all of my weddings all of my all of my The wedding receptions have probably featured Hey Ya, but it is, in its truest expression, lyrically, I believe a song about, I don't know if Andre wrote it or if it was Big Boy, but it's about the divorce of your parents, interestingly enough.

Oh, I see. It's not even about the divorce of the narrator, the perspective.

My baby, don't mess around because she loves me so, and this I know for sure, but does she really want, I'm sorry, there's nothing cooler than me reading these lyrics dispassionately.

You're adding soul to it.

Don't try to fight the feeling because the thought alone is killing me right now. Thank God for mom and dad. Oh, for sticking two together because we don't know how. Maybe it's about the person writing the song getting divorced and mentioning that their parents managed to stick it out. You think you've got it. Oh, you think you've got it. Just don't get it until there's nothing at all. We get together. Oh, we get together. But separate's always better when there's feelings involved. If what they say is nothing is forever, then what makes? Then what makes? Then what makes? Love the exception. So why are we so in denial when we know we're not happy here? Oh, wow. Well, like I said, perfect song for a wedding. I'm telling you, I literally believe at my most recent wedding reception, it was, I consider it to be the song that saved the reception. But ended the marriage. Well, other things would play a role in that.

I can't blame that on Outkast. I'm going to do something really stupid here. But I need to hear this. I can't wait until after the show. I want to see if I found something for you here. Okay. It's going to be terrible. This is on YouTube. oh no i wanted to see if i could what is that okay i was trying to get an isolated vocals of him saying i'm what does he say at the beginning that you're enamored let me talk to let me talk to him but what you have is like you know you can so much music under the version i played for you yeah that just sounds terrible because sometimes you can get real isolated tracks of vocals but what happens online now is people just like you know randos try to isolate the vocals and post themselves using all kinds of terrible filters that do not work. Right. They're just trying

to sum it out, but they don't have the proper equipment. I do love, as you know, and on this show, we do love a good isolated vocal track.

But it's got to be real. Oh, God, I'm running. Oh, yeah.

Uh, uh. Run on one more time.

Hey,

ah.

A little running with the devil. Yeah, Reba McIntyre.

Yep, some of her absolute finest work there. I feel like this is a story that's going to take us in a direction that is not playing to my strengths anyway, which is understanding how finance works.

We should start a company.

Headline from the Seattle PI. I'm thinking this might be an AP story that they were reprinting. It is, yep. Do you know the most Again we may still even know some folks That work at the PI and you know I just said I love local radio I also love local newspapers and I want them to thrive I was shocked today when I was scrolling through the Seattle PI and I noticed that I believe one of the most viewed stories Remains Billy Graham Colon will likely meet in heaven Two of the Top five most viewed stories on the Seattle PI's website have both been are both Billy Graham columns which would have to be, by definition, because he's no longer alive, years and years old. For the last however many years, when you go to the Seattle PI's website and you scroll around between the ZergNet ads, the occasional snippet of original reporting, you will see one of the most read stories is Billy Graham will probably see each other again in heaven. Oh my goodness

gracious. Yeah, that makes me so sad. It does. It makes me very sad. Do you talk about a ghost frigate? Does anybody work there anymore? I'm going to click on local here. It's just, it used to be It used to be a real newspaper.

I mean, I wasn't able to I, you know, I was supposed to be one of the people, I think, that helped revitalize the Seattle P.I. with my billboard that I was in once.

Oh, really?

Yeah. When TBTL had stopped being a radio show and I think we had become a podcast and we were like getting some local media attention, somebody at the PI I think was a fan or had heard of us and they were launching this campaign to try to, I think, highlight local people of note in the local community and they would put those people on billboards. And it was, I forget what the name of the campaign was.

But it was sort of like, you know, basically like we're the Seattle P.I. We're still here and we're super local and check out these, you know, these people that, you know, in the local community. And for some reason they picked me, which involved a photo shoot where I think because, you know, the word beautiful was in our name. They had me in a prom dress. I was holding flowers and they took a picture of me and it was a billboard down in like Interbay. I think they put me in probably the lowest trafficked spot in Seattle. But for some period of time, there was a billboard for the Seattle P.I. with a photo of me in a prom dress holding flowers. And somehow that wasn't able to turn around the fortunes of this local newspaper, Andrew.

Are you sure? Because actually, I should, you know, I said this used to be a real newspaper. And now I'm starting to rue my words because I went to the local section of the Seattle P.I. And I'd like to share with you the top four headlines when you click on the local link. OK. Local news. Hearst Foundations award three grants to Washington groups.

Cool.

Next one. Hearst Foundations award Emergency Food Network with grant. Third one. Hearst Foundations award WSU with a-

God, Andy's been busy.

Yes, $150,000 grant. And number four, Hearst Foundations award Seattle Art Museum with $250,000 grant. Hey, Luke, guess who owns the PI?

Oh. The Hearst Corporation.

Andy Hearst, exactly. And then the first article that isn't a press release about their charitable efforts is from 2022. It's from the August of 2022, and it's about the Space Needle. So, yeah, this is truly just taking up Internet space at this point. This is truly just the art. RTIR actually has a more robust editorial section at this point.

Well, now that we've been added to the list.

Yeah, right. Okay.

The podcast team that cracked the case on fur, boots with the fur. So anyway, I saw this article, Lyft shares rocket 62% over a typo in the company's earnings release. And apparently what happened was Lyft was putting out its fourth quarter report and they accidentally said that something called their basis points, which is a profit metric, was going to climb by 500. They were going to climb by 500 basis points, which would be 5% in 2024. And I guess what happened was, there were there are at all times a bunch of bots that people have set up that are crawling the internet or crawling the financial information the world of financial information and particularly those bots saw this number of a five percent growth 500 basis points growth which i guess would be like a lot and they all started buying lyft in fact they pushed the shares up 37 percent before Lyft figured out and said, oh, we meant 50 basis points. We put an extra zero in there. And so then I guess everybody got out of the stock. I wonder, isn't that, I mean, can you get away with it just being a typo? Because I would, if it were my company, if TBTB were publicly traded, I would be throwing out a typo, pumping the stock and then dumping the stock. That's exactly what I was going to ask you.

I'd rob this place silly. Well, fantastic. I was going to ask, I was going to ask. Does John listen to the show? I was going to ask you that, too. I'm like, well, is a typo an excuse for something like that? Because any company could just say, oh, oopsie, but thanks for buying.

I mean, I guess where you would catch them would be if they somehow divested themselves. They sold off a bunch of the stock when it had jumped up by 37%. But to me, it just—and this is why I said this is we're going in a direction that can only end poorly because I don't understand this stuff. but I mean it just points out what a weird world the idea of stocks are because at a certain point in the earliest days my assumption is you would buy stock in a company let's say you know because like I'm opening a a car maker and I don't have enough money to to build all the cars before I can sell them so I come to you Andrew and I go would you like to buy a piece of this company and you're like sure and you and a few other people give me enough money that I can now start the car company, you are shareholders, and now I sell cars, and when I make money, you get paid out a percentage of what I make because you're part owners of the company. That seems to me to be the original idea behind being a shareholder in a company. How does that work when the company has so much stock that you own one one millionth of a company? Most companies don't pay dividends anymore i think there are still some but i think that i think it's more typical now that a company does not pay dividends you own a very fractional piece of tesla or i'm but i'll probably accidentally pick the one company that still does dividends but like you own a microscopically fractional piece of a company and the only value of that piece of paper is if somebody else decides they want to pay you more money.

than what you got it for. It seems to have no tangible value that I can really tell. Am I missing something?

Well, I don't know anything about this either. I am the wrong person to weigh in. Having said that, my question is, why was God unable to forgive Judas? Oh, wait, that's another Billy Graham. That's another Billy Graham. Is that the fourth most viewed story on the Seattle P.I.? It's literally the fifth one that is listed in the margin. The second one is, we're sure to recognize each other in heaven. But I don't think I realized that he wrote a syndicated, like, column where people would write in questions and he would answer them.

He would, I believe, you know how they have, like, Dear Abby and stuff? His thing was, let me talk to him.

Let me talk to him. Billy Graham. Billy Graham, let me talk to him. Let me talk to him.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. Oh, man. It's not from a female.

Oh, man, Andrew. I just had one of those moments where I took a sip of my coffee out of this Barsouk Records thermos that I've been using a lot of late. And I got this little hit of maybe soap. Maybe I didn't get it completely rinsed out. You know that. And it could have just been, it may or may not have been soap, but now that's in my head. And I'm already on a real losing streak with my coffee today. I ruined an entire pot of coffee.

Oh, can I guess? Did grounds get into the coffee pot?

No, I'm very careful about that. I hate that. Although I wonder why I hate it so much. If I see two or three errant grounds floating, I will not rest until I get them out of the coffee, even though I could just drink them. It wouldn't kill me. No, by the way, shout out to our good friend, Broadcast Barry and Broadcast Coffee, who are nice enough to send us coffee. Thank you. Super duper sweet and appreciative and appreciated.

And while we're thanking him also for donating coffee to the Ravenna Pop-Up Kitchen, which I volunteer with?

Barry is the absolute best. But, well, I did two things. I'm having a rough week, honestly. I think I promoted this, and I didn't get to it. You know, I have my system, like a few days ago, I have my system where, and I know you have your elaborate note system you do for Genevieve about tomorrow's coffee today. And I did my whole thing where I listened to Dreamland, and I did the dishes, and I got my coffee all ready to go. And this was a few days ago. i guess i forgot to put the coffee grounds in i put the filter in i put the water in i put my cup out i have my splendor ready to go i had my metal stirrer that i stole from thin air because i thought it was so cool and um and then i got up in the morning and then i hit go on the coffee and i did all my puttering and i got ready you know and i was all excited to go in and have my coffee and and it was just a giant cauldron of clear hot water.

Oh, yeah.

I had run the entire—I mean, I guess I descaled it to some degree. Yeah, sure. But I had run the entire thing. And also, it was the last coffee filter I had, and then I was very perplexed because I thought, can you put new wine in old wineskins? Can you put new coffee grounds for broadcast coffee in a coffee filter that's been run through already? Because it was soaking wet and translucent, but it had not really been used instead I just used a paper towel yeah because you were out of them it was literally talk about bad luck that was literally the last one how did the paper towel

work you were just saying you hate grounds were you able to capture all the grounds yeah oh I've

never done that move before yeah it were x if anything it's probably too much ply oh really it filters out too much the ones that I you know I'm a brawny man but I'm not to brag oh I know So here's what happened to me this morning. So I have still not yet quite solved the dilemma of how to handle, because the coffee maker is down in the kitchen, down in the house, and I want a cup and a half of hot coffee up here, you know, and I can't run back and forth during the show because it's a little bit of a journey. So what I've started doing is I have like a carafe, like a vacuum-sealed, you know, insulated carafe. Yeah, perfect. I can picture it. And so what I do now is I'll make a whole pot of coffee and then I'll pour the whole pot of coffee into the carafe that's insulated and then I'll bring that out here. So I've basically got – and it works pretty well. Today I thought – because what I've been doing is I then have to carry the carafe. I have to carry the half and half. I have to carry my little Splenda. The coffee cup itself, I've got too much stuff. I was like, what am I doing? Why don't I just make this coffee exactly like I want it in the carafe? Why don't I add the half and half? Here and the Splenda and just bring the carafe and and leave the half-and-half and the Splenda behind And then the craft will have coffee. That's pre-made for me essentially Thought this was a real breakthrough and it would have been except I open a brand new thing of half-and-half and I start pouring it in And it's chunks chunks

right and again it's the fact that it was i had to literally open it it was it was sealed but what was the date on that it was pretty recent i bought it maybe a week ago it's super pasteurized it should have been okay um you know what i had to do i had to dig out from the garbage the other half and half that i had thrown out that had a little bit left in it what happens is when my dad's here he will sometimes make a grocery run and as you know my parents they buy a lot of like woohoo stuff and for some reason with half enough I really like to buy like organic like as as hormone free as I can get whatever the most expensive most hippy dippy looking one I can get that's what I get my dad does not do that calculation he buys one that's like you know brought to you by Clorox who interesting enough to own the ranch dressing company Hidden Valley ranch. So I guess I also get food from Clorox, but like I had this large thing that my dad had bought of some kind of like the most like Walmart store brand half, like half and half from like, you know, the least humane way you can get milk from a cow, et cetera. And I kept thinking, and I had this little small from pain point farms. Exactly. Exactly. So like I, every morning I would open the fridge and i would look at this pain point farms half and half and i would be like i should just throw this out because i don't really want it i don't like the labeling it's not for me you know what i mean like it's made for people like my dad who aren't obsessed with design who don't need a happy cow on the outside to assuage their kind of like you know constant dread about the world and about how the cows are doing or whatever you know like there are people like my dad who were just like, Hey, I don't know. It says half and half on the container and it'll work fine. I would look at it. I would kind of think about throwing it out, but then I would pick it up and there would be like half of it left. And then over on the side would be my little fancy organic whatnot sealed and ready to go. And so finally this morning I got down to where there was maybe 5% left of the pain point farms, half and half. And it felt to me like it was finally time where I could throw that out in good conscience and switch over to the stuff and switch over to the one that's the dwell magazine half and half that I like. And so that's exactly what I did. I threw the, I threw the pain point farms one out into the garbage and I got out my fancy whatever one that is going to make me enough. And I opened it and I started to pour it into the brand new carafe of coffee and it just chunked its way into there. It was so disgusting. And then I had to dump all of that out, wash it all out, stifle the need to throw up, and then go dig the Pain Point Farms half and half out of the garbage and use it because there were still enough left. So, you know, shout out Pain Point Farms.

Yeah, I guess so. It was the Toms of Maine of half and half that you were using.

I know. That's the problem with most of the stuff that I like because of the design element or the cruelty-free aspect is it is very commonly an inferior product in terms of the UX.

Right. I have two things that I want to say that is related to that.

Yeah, you did some forward promoting earlier.

Oh, yeah, yeah, and I also do want to get to these voicemails, but very quickly, just because I want to brag about something. You and I never ended up talking about this on the show, but, of course, those big new Stanley Thermos mugs are huge or were huge for, like, a hot minute around the holidays, and I just, you know, I like your method of filling up a carafe. Do you have one of those cute little 60s-looking carafe or something?

You know what it is? It's actually part of a fancy coffee maker that, guess who sent it to us, our coffee daddy broadcast berry.

Thank you, coffee daddy.

He heard me at one point years, literally years ago, talking about some sort of coffee challenge, and he took the opportunity to literally send me a coffee maker that's much fancier and better. And I have not yet fully integrated into my life, but what I have been doing is using the carafe. Nice.

Yes. Now, what I use, and you know this because you've seen me do it when you're over here. I fill up because I'm down here in the basement and the coffee maker is all the way upstairs. I have an old school Stanley classic thermos here that I got for Genevieve when we were first dating because of the movie The Jerk. Have I told you this story? It's because of that song, I'm picking out a thermos for you. He's picking out a thermos for – he gives Bernadette Peters a thermos as a gift, and then he writes a song on ukulele about picking out a thermos for you. So I got this for Vives when we were first dating, and now I use it like every single day. And so while, you know, everybody was talking about their little Stanley sipping cups or whatever, I just want everybody to know that I was a Stanley girly before all y'all. The second thing I wanted to say was as we're like all of the dads. All of my friends' dads, including my dad In the 80s in Seattle Because I believe it's a Seattle company, right? Oh, I didn't know that It was a very, maybe Tacoma It was like all of the dad Because I, you know, grew up in an era of Seattle Where it was very blue collar Like I didn't, there were not very many dads who went to offices They were like fishermen And like, you know, construction dudes And most of the village people And my dad included Everybody took Stanley lunchboxes And thermoses to work It was a very working class thing.

And I don't know if that was, I mean, maybe it was increased regionally here. But for me, this was always like just the classic, like, yeah, working man's thermos, right? Like, I fill this up with coffee, and then I'm supposed to go sit on a high beam somewhere on a construction site. Instead, I come down here and I podcast. That would be the worst job for you, by the way.

Yeah, you think?

Mohawk iron worker. Yeah, right, exactly. New York City. And my job. Eye beam. Yeah, and my job is to manage all the spiders up there. Like, I'm trying to think, how could it be worse? So I wanted to mention that. Also, just on the topic of dairy, like, I'm not a big dairy person anyway. If I were to put cream in my coffee, I would probably buy, like, almond milk or something like that. But I just – I don't. But anyway, I just have a weird relationship with dairy. I don't eat much cheese. I don't drink milk, blah, blah, blah. I was trying to, like, kind of clean some stuff out of the refrigerator the other day. And we have a little bit of tension in our household. I shouldn't bring this up on Valentine's Day, just like there's just there's never room in the refrigerator and it's just filled with shit that I don't eat or want. And also just stuff going bad. And like we always have this dance where I'm like, Genevieve, can I throw this away? No, it's still good. I'm going to eat it. And then I'm like, OK, I'll wait three days. And then I'm like, Genevieve, it's turned now. OK, now you can throw it away. It's like we could have nipped this in the bud. I found like three containers of Yoplait yogurt. And I looked at the expiration date or nothing. I should be clear, not expiration date, but the sell by date. this is yogurt this is a dairy product the sell by date was june for one of them in august for the other of 2023 i said to genevieve later i'm and again not not judgy i try to really make sure i'm just like hey you have a couple of um yogurts in there that are like over six months old at least past sell by date and she's like no no they're fine i'll eat them they're still sealed i'm just like do we do we want to roll the dice on that like why like can i just go i mean i will glad maybe i'll just do that today instead of complaining on the radio about it what if i just go to the grocery store and buy three new yogurts and just replace them and don't even tell her but it'll make me feel better knowing that she's not eating yogurt or potentially eating yogurt that is past the sell-by date by months from a different year at this point that one definitely seems

because of the fact that it's a dairy product i i do think there are plenty of things that i disregard the expiration for the use by date because i just think eh i mean how bad could it really go but dairy would not be one of those things as i just learned today i should go back in and actually look i am sure that i was nowhere near the expiration date on that that half and half but um yeah yogurt that's a dangerous game dano i would yeah don't don't play that i was going to say what you should really do is go in clean those things out get new yogurt put it in the old yogurt container reseal it just to kind of like so that jenny can get the w but then she's going to eat it and it's not going to be rotten she's going to be like see yeah and then it's

going to perpetuate this and then we're going to be eating a year old yogurt hey i have a voicemail i want to play for you actually two quick ones before i get to that really quick question a listener just wrote in this is listener margaret uh wants to know what was the dyson like vacuum that is not a dyson that you said you're using now um do you do you remember that is that what you bought or is it a Becca's house you were touting what is it called I'm gonna go hold on

Andrew okay I don't know if my headphones are gonna stretch this far I'm going around the corner

hold on looking at it's called a Tyneco Tyneco T-I-N-E-C-O Tyneco all right I just wrote that in real time to Margaret saying he's checking now okay it's a Tyneco okay there's your response uh now here's one for the rest of the listeners I was mentioning at the beginning of the show that You and I do this show day in and day out. We talk about all kinds of ridiculous things. Words come out of our mouths. And sometimes we forget about the impact that our words can have on people. And that is usually on me. And that was right on full display in the voicemail line this morning.

Hey, guys. It's Maggie. I'm driving in the middle of kind of a snowstorm. So I'm driving very carefully. And I'm listening to Monday's episode. and you guys are talking about yawning and I can't stop yawning because you're talking about yawning and I love a good sleepy time yawn but I like you do not like driving yawns and you guys are creating driving yawns in my snowy commute I will be fine I will be safe but I just thought I'd tell you that

hey this is Stephen

I'm Port Orchard. I'm driving in heavy traffic over here, and you guys are talking about yawning, and I started yawning. Doesn't feel great. Thanks for that.

Words have power, Luke. Words have power.

I guess that's sort of a version of echopraxia I'm reading on the internet. People yawn when other people yawn due to a phenomenon called echopraxia in which a person sees a certain behavior and if they're sensitive to it will mimic it. I guess it also extends to descriptions of it. So in other words, us playing those voicemails and talking about it is probably sending a whole bunch of other people into a yawning fit right now.

I guess so. In fact, I wasn't prepared to play this, but I'm going to play this right from the voicemail line. Since you bring that up, we also got this voicemail the other day.

Hi, it's Anna from the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle. Talking about yawning, it's funny that that came up today. You know when you yawn, if you see somebody else yawn, it frequently makes you yawn. Is this true with cats? Because I was in my office today, and I looked at my cat, Maverick. He yawned.

This sounds like a person who would have a cat named Maverick and a cat named Goose.

It happened like four times in a row Until I finally turned around Now I don't know If that just happened to be coincidence Or if that is a thing That you know people who yawn When they see others yawn Just cats do it too

That is interesting I don't know does the internet have any answers on that

Cross species echopraxia

We can write a paper on it

Yes we can be the first That's what we'll put in our TIR

That's how we get on the god damn radio

Does your cat yawn when you yawn? Talk to two of the longest-running podcasters in America about that.

Talk to two men who really know from yawns. They've been making people yawn for years. That's our angle. Uh-huh, exactly.

Takes one to no one. Luke and Andrew are experts on making people drowsy, and they're going to bring that expertise to your radio show. Absolutely. All right, that's what I got. Nice. Thanks, everybody. Thank you all for listening today. We're going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. Please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Again, have a great Valentine's Day to whatever degree that impacts your life. And we'll see you tomorrow. In the meantime, please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. Wow, we're just blowing through nap time, aren't we?

Power out.