Muse

Someone has mixed an amazing Spider-Man in with the Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man series. This will not stand.

Pardon me, but I wish to tender a serious cash offer for this stack of water-damaged little Lulus.

A, that is not water, it is Diet Mr. Pibb. And B, I... Tell me, how do you feel about 45-year-old virgins who still live with their parents? Comb the sweethearts out of your beard and you're on. Don't try to change me, baby. TBTL!

This stuff is so funny by the way. Did the comic come up with this? Because some of this stuff I feel like I could see somebody doing it in their act. Right? A duck that's friends with a monkey who he can't swim? That's hilarious. That's like something I would do. I would be like, could you imagine yourself being like a duck? But you don't want to get in the water? Yeah, that's the way I feel every day when I hop on the 48 freeway.

Are you taking my duplication investigation seriously? Seriously? Or are you disrespecting my duplication investigation? Isn't there a slanket somewhere you should be filling with your farts?

How does it feel like? I'm serious, how does it feel like? I've only seen one person ever have it as much as you currently do. Your vocals are amazing.

I think it's just a combination of our voices is what works, they literally become one.

I'm talking about duping, duping, duplication. Show me how this duplicating machine works. I want to learn all about the process.

All right. Hello. Good morning. And welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

It's a tuna, bro.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

I was just calling about the too beautiful to be heard. I can't believe you're still on the air.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where we are looking at a spectacular day. It's blue skies, still waters.

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

I'm already regretting my premature lawn mowing of a week or two ago, because now that we're getting a sunny day, but things are very hydrated, you can already see this lawn is, in the words of Alicia Keys, This lawn is on fire. I think I may have unleashed a beast. Anyway, speaking of unleashing the beast, let's get to episode 4145 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. It's getting absolutely beautiful here in the Pacific Northwest, that is. Right as I'm going to be getting on an airplane and going down to Los Angeles, where it's like atmospheric rivering, things are flooding. I'm going from a perfect weather pattern to a not-so-perfect weather pattern. But the bigger issue for me is that I have a bunch of IKEA kitchen cabinetry being delivered while I'm gone, and I have no ability to amend the delivery.

Hey, Lloyd! Do some delivery for the truck to the airport!

So I have come up with a scheme that I don't think will work at all, but I will tell you all about it coming up. Also, time permitting, Air Canada. says that their chatbot that offered someone a particular deal on an airline ticket was wrong, and it's not their responsibility because they're not in charge of the chatbot. That's a whole other thing. So we'll talk about that. And we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's Andrew Walsh, and he is joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke.

Is there anything more comforting than a cup of Lipton's Cup of Soup. A mug of Lipton's Cup of Soup. I just had one. My dad sent me some in the mail. Can't remember exactly why. He's like, you ever had this stuff? I'm like, well, not since I was a kid. So he sent me some, and I just slurped it down while I was waiting for you to dial up. And it's just like it made me feel, well, it made me feel like I was a kid pretending to be sick in the 1980s.

Now, first of all, I agree with you 100%. I would like the Lipton's Corporation or the Lipton Corporation to get at me with a style of soup that's exactly like the chicken noodle broth with the little tiny bits of noodle. You know what I mean?

I know. Is that what you're having right now? They're in my tummy. Yes.

So please make me a veggie version of that. Yeah. Because I know it's doable. This is, let's be honest, this only nominally could be considered legally chicken.

Right, and there's no chicken in there. It's just broth. Chicken flavored. Yeah, so you could just do it with a veggie broth.

Right, and I do, I will be honest with you, in front of you and the Tens and the American people, I'm going to admit to something. I have definitely consumed, I love that stuff so much. I mean, deeply in my heart. I love a lip.

in chicken noodle flavored or chicken flavored noodle soup. I don't like the kind, even in my more meat eating days, I didn't like the kind that had the chicken bits in it, because let's be honest, that was all

gristle anyway. It did have chicken bits

in it. I didn't remember that. There were ones that had little teeny tiny dehydrated and then I guess rehydrated little bits of chicken knuckle in there that was like, no thank you. What you want is that flavor, that umami. It's so high in sodium and deliciousness. I love that so much and I wish that they made one that tasted exactly like that but just was using a veggie based thing and please listeners I love you all but don't send me this thing that's like try the Amy's version or whatever like I want it to be in that box I want it to say Lipton on it that's what I'm going for it's like it's a particular kind of thing that you're right is so comforting now you think my rant is over but it's only beginning

can I jump in with a couple of things though because i may have some updates and i have a question now okay i want you to know that i'm only questioning you here because i have been truly mr soup lately and it's embarrassing i was looking at my um grocery list last night i added like one more thing to it and there's only a few things on there right now and it really does look like i am the parent of a sick child only i'm just buying this stuff on the reg i am always like for the past i don't know like probably year now i've gotten in the habit of always having Campbell's, like cans of Campbell's chicken soup, chicken noodle soup, or sometimes with rice in the cupboard, because quite often, I'm going to say at least twice, often three days a week, I get done recording the show with you, I march right upstairs, and I do march, knees up, and I go upstairs, and I fix myself a cup of soup. Sometimes I make a half a sandwich to go along with it. Often, it's just a cup of soup with a lot of crackers, townhouse crackers sprinkled in, And those definitely have the tiny, tiny little chunks of chicken that are not like you don't need them in there as protein. They're exactly as you describe. I do not remember that ever being in the little dry envelope packet of Lipton cup of soup.

Well, a couple of things. One, I could be I could be misremembering. We could have had some off brand thing when I was a kid, although I am looking at one Lipton chicken noodle.

doodle soup mix with diced white chicken meat all right okay i'm i'm wrong then and it's on the

safeway website and it's i think it's what i was what i was remembering from my childhood okay well

now let me ask you one other thing though while you're on that website try looking up um there is something called lipton cup of soup like exactly the same packaging everything but it's called spring vegetable and i am trying to ascertain whether or not this is just basically the the chicken free version of the same thing or is that broth a little bit redder i'm worried that it might be it's not it doesn't look to it doesn't look like a tomato based broth but i'm wondering if this is like a straight up you know like kind of equivalent without the chicken

product okay it's called i'm not finding it on the safeway website but it's called lipton cup of soup spring vegetable i'm on the walmart website for whatever it's worth Bring vegetable. I say vegetable in my head every time. You have to remember. Because that's the only way to. Let's see here. Is it not golden vegetable? It's not. Huh, that's weird. I am having some. Okay, I think I've located it. I've located it. We got it.

We got it.

Yeah, see, that looks a little bit more. It's a little red, huh? It looks a little redder to me. I mean, I'm sure it's quite tasty, but that looks like it's got almost like an egg flour soup kind of look to it, like you might get if you were going out for Chinese food. I'm not saying that's what it tastes like. I'm just saying that's the look of the broth. It looks a little red to me. And, you know, I don't know what amount of actual chicken, I'm just saying chicken flavoring even, is in the standard Lipton cup of noodle or cup of soup. And I want to also clarify here, we're not talking about, And I'm not talking about cup-a-noodle, like a styrofoam cup that has dry soup already in it. We're talking about the cardboard box, the small rectangle that then has packets inside it. That's, to me, the platonic ideal of this whole thing, is it has to be, you know, it's got to be that particular kind, which is why I would really love them to make one that tastes and looks exactly like the chicken broth, but just doesn't have any chicken at all. I will continue eating it with the chicken in there, or the chicken flavoring, I should say.

but i'd rather i didn't have you know what i'm noticing here and i don't i just brought the mug down with me i didn't bring the packaging and i can't believe like i'm legitimately like i i could i could we have better things to talk about today but i could go on this for a while and i just i

always i've got a lot of questions for you after you're done okay trying to shorten up your take

on the whole matter well i this is one of those moments where i really wonder like if we happen to have a new listener tuning in they're like this is a this is a joke

right like they're not really going this deep but one thing i'm noticing is that you describe the chicken noodle with white meat as a cup of soup i'm pretty sure the one i have which i'm looking at online here is actually something called cup of soup chicken flavor noodle that does not seem to have the chunks in there and that's what i've been eating well that's what i've been eating as

well because it doesn't have this is where this all started it's it's it just it's the flavor of chicken yeah is it though is it really as we talk about this does is that what it really tastes like it tastes like something that i love it tastes like like i said a big salty umami bomb but if you were to taste that would your brain like let's say you were blindfolded and they said taste this would it taste like chicken actually i mean i've never actually this it's a strong power of suggestion and that's what you go in expecting so we say that but i mean do you think it really

actually tastes like chicken i mean to the degree that we i would know it's chicken soup i mean chicken soup comes would that be context would that be well it's soup it has noodles in it no i think we know like so i i know i've told you this before but it's one of my fondest memories of of working at my dad's shop in cleveland ohio um they had a very old-fashioned coffee vending machine out in like the shipping room area and it was like straight out of the 60s and you could get coffee tea hot chocolate or just chicken broth which is you know like essentially it's probably Hot water and powder? Yeah. Why am I blanking on the little squares of chicken? Bullion. Bullion. You know, it's essentially bullion, right? But I think we associate that in the same way that I make chicken stock. Like, would I eat it and think, oh, this tastes like a chicken thigh? Not necessarily. But I think we all accept what chicken soup tastes like, what we call chicken soup or chicken broth. No? I can't separate it out.

It's like soot and hot water. I'm hooked. Anyway. But this to me Everything we've said so far While being unbelievably fascinating Is not even the most critical part of this to me You're doing something That I never do and I don't know why it is I don't do it because it's in fact depicted On the very box or at least one of the boxes Of this stuff I've been looking at online Putting it in a cup I was not raised in a family Where You were ever having a mug of soup a cup I mean look there's a thing literally called cup of noodle but I was always I was we were a bowl family no one ever thought to like make up a yummy broth and then just put it into an actual like a coffee mug or a mug of some kind and then drink it this is a perfectly reasonable possibly a superior way to enjoy this kind of stuff but it will it has never occurred to me and it probably will never occur to me to consume it that

way and that's my loss that's interesting for me this can't be consumed any other way and you just said something that reminded me. There was another, it wasn't Cup of Noodle. When you said Cup of Noodle, I thought of something else. Yeah, best pizza in a cup around. I ran the other Cup of Pizza guy out of business. When I look up Cup of Noodle right now, I see more of a ramen kind of thing.

And that had a big moment when I was in middle school. I feel like everybody was obsessed with that. Is it Nissen Cup of Noodle product? That was everybody was eating. I never liked it that much, honestly.

But we had something else that I swear was called Cup of Noodle or something that was like not Lipton's chicken cup of soup like we're talking now. There was something else that was like, if I remember correctly, a thicker consistency sort of that I didn't like quite as much. But anyway, if anybody knows what I'm talking about, get at me, whatever. Let me move on to this. For me, the idea of having this in anything but a cup would be antithetical if I'm saying that right and even using it right because there's hard – I just measured this out because I wanted to have the right proportions. It's a third of a cup of water that you're adding to this mix. It didn't even fill up my mug. If I were to put this in a bowl, it would barely cover the bottom of the bowl, I feel like. It's made for mugs.

Okay, we're, see, we've now, we've departed this, our paths have veered here because the stuff that I'm making, which is a Lipton branded product, is maybe yours because yours says cup on the box. They're just giving you a cup's worth, like a yummy little lunchtime treat. i've been buying the kind that you you fill up a you know saucepan or whatever i think it's like two cups of water three cups of water or something and then you've got it fills a bowl to the tippy tippy top you can fit it all in one kind of standard size bowl but it's like really right at the brim that's the amount of liquid you're generating um because i must just be buying a different amount of it but even so i like a cup is the way to go with this like I feel silly when I'm eating it with a spoon it's like what am I even doing I'm spoon I'm ladling like small not totally satisfying amounts of hot salty water hot ham water right into my mouth where drinking it out of a mug makes so much more sense it's just this is one of those things where it just depends on how you grow up if I'd ever once seen my dad do that as a kid that would be standard practice for him but it's just not yeah so we are

talking about different things because the the one that i'm talking about is definitely like cup of soup it's how it's branded it's tiny little packets it comes four to a box and you can still get that for under two dollars here on a walmart so like it is and you know it's depicted on the box in a mug like this is cup of soup that i'm talking about but i will say this i mentioned earlier i you might even call it bragging that i eat about a can of soup a day and it's what are you ted cruz i know as i'm hearing it but you know what i almost almost always eat that and oh and you know what my you know what my trick on that there is luke you put the can in and then you're supposed to add another can of water because it's condensed i always use my own homemade chicken stock instead of the water so it's a little bit richer you know what i'm saying Yeah. And so I always have that on hand. Augmenting it. I'm pouring that into one of those bigger, I'm going to call it because you and I are of the same generation, a pure one style, like one of those big coffee shop mugs that's like a bowl with a little handle on it. A central perk type of situation.

One of the central perks of listening to this show is you'll hear so much more soup content than you ever expected on a Tuesday.

Nobody knows how my body processes soup. So anyway, yeah, so I get the kind of the best of both worlds when I'm having that as my lunch, because like I can, you know, crumple up some crackers in there and eat it with a spoon for a while. But then as you're getting near the bottom and you just want to drain that puppy, it's a mug and a bowl. No, I'm I'm listen.

You're you're preaching to the choir here. I'm a I'm a big, big fan, although I we actually have a lot of other stuff to get to. I find it hard to believe more important than this. uh my my eating patterns have gotten very weird of late here at the house because two things one i'm starting to travel again um for work and so i'm disinclined towards wanting to buy large amounts of perishable food because it just seems like a waste so i but what will happen is i'll tell myself i'm going out of town in two days i might as well just get a pizza you know it turns out all roads lead to pizza um but uh so that's part of it and then the other thing is because I have a really substandard little kitchen set up right now. And what's going to happen is eventually it will not be the kitchen. It will be a bathroom. And out in the kind of main area of my little cabin, there is right now the footprint of what will be a kitchen. I'm very excited for it to be a kitchen, but it's not yet a kitchen. It's just the appliances. There are no cabinets. Those cabinets are getting delivered. More on that coming up. But what it's meant is i'm betwixt in between and like because when you start when you start talking soup andrew my thought is oh man i'd love to stock up and get there was a time in my life where i would be you know it would be pretty typical for me to open a can of hopefully relatively healthy soup for lunch and have that's a very delicious lunch sometimes under 400 calories and very satisfying uh would recommend but there's i'm i'm delaying acquiring i this is the silliest thing and i know I'm delaying really starting the next phase of my pantry and food life until I have my new kitchen up and running because something in me says, well, yeah, but what am I going to do? Get these soups and set it all up in this one kitchen area, this dimly lit, shabby little kitchen with no counter space that I'm using. What am I going to do? Trick that out with stuff and then have to just take it all out and move it into the other kitchen area?

I mean, it's traumatizing for the soup, too. And I appreciate that you're thinking about that. That's the thing.

Like, I'm going to have to home it and re-home it. Exactly. And then just keep, like, you have to meet all of the other new shelf-stable foods in a whole different cabinet. And it's just, like, constantly doing that. It really wears on a can of soup.

What you can do is, though, to integrate them, you can put, like, a can of Campbell's soup on one side of a door. And then, like, you can put your other canned goods on the other side of the door. Yes. And then feed them together. Right. And then they kind of get used to each other's scents before you introduce them.

Or I could just keep ordering pizza and telling myself that there's no use in buying relatively healthy food at a somewhat reasonable price because I don't have the right storage for it. Speaking of the new cabinets for the kitchen area of my little house, I went down to Ikea and purchased these. It's a very elaborate process. I don't think you and Veeves have not put a kind of starting-from-scratch kitchen cabinet situation in your house. You had a kitchen that was already functional, and then the other places you were using were rentals. In New Hampshire, did you guys redo your kitchen ever?

No, nope, never had to do. I mean, first of all, down in our little kitchenette area, it is embarrassing how some of our cabinets are just absorbing water and are peeling apart. We really need to at least change the face on that. But again, it's in the basement, so it's always like you kind of give it a little bit of a pass. But anyway, no, I haven't dug into that yet, but it will be in our future.

I actually, believe it or not, had for the various projects that I've embarked on with houses, I'd never done this either exactly like this. Like when we bought the Burbank Springs place, we redid the kitchen, but we left the cabinets in kind of the footprint of the cabinets and then got new doors and everything for them because it's expensive and a hassle, obviously, to start from scratch on the cabinets. In this case, there's literally nothing there to even rebuild, so I sort of had to start from scratch, and I was surprised at how much geometry is involved, and there's just a lot of skill, there's a lot of art and science to it, and I was very pleasantly surprised at the folks at the Ikea down there by the Portland airport, when you go into their kitchen section, it is like the folks, and I was helped so far in the process, and we may not be done, And I was helped by maybe three or four different folks, all so smart about this kitchen situation, wielding calculators and doing measurements of like. So I brought in all these pictures and I said, these are the measurements I have. And the very first person who helped me, they said they were looking at it and they go, how long is that wall in the photo? And I was like, it's definitely like eight feet. And they go, yeah, I don't know if that's eight feet because and then they just did this calculation with their thumb where they're like, that's about four feet. And if you go from there up to the ceiling, like they were, it was some beautiful scale of your photo.

That's amazing.

It's some kind of rule of thumb that this person knows from doing this so flipping much. Right. And I called my dad. This was, you know, a month ago. My dad was at like Home Depot. We're just always at some, at one or another home repair related situation.

He's having hot dogs in the Home Depot parking lot while you're eating meatballs at Ikea.

So I was like, how I go, dad, what's that wall? And he goes, it's a six feet. He basically said it was whatever the person Ikea was telling me it was. That's amazing. I'm so impressed. It was, like, honestly, I'm impressed to this day. But so we got it all worked out, and I've now ordered these cabinets, and I decided to get them delivered. Now, if I would have not had them delivered, what it would have meant was I was going to have to get some kind of truck. You put them together yourself, but there's still, you know, there's still some volume to these things. I would have to get some kind of truck. I'd have to get them from the Ikea down in Portland and then drive them up here. Now, the good news would be I would actually not technically have to pay sales tax on them because there's no sales tax in Oregon. But that's a little shady because I don't live in Oregon. And also, like, I just didn't want to deal with all of that. So I bit the bullet and I said, let's just go ahead and have them delivered. And the person most recently when I was there said, okay, we think we can get all these different elements delivered by the 26th of February. I was like, that's great. i'm actually around that day uh it's i think it might be a tuesday or something i'm here i don't have any travel plans like that's ideal and they said okay so they put it all into this super complex system of like you know uh whatever you want to call it um the kind of um supply chain management because it's like some of it comes from one place some of it comes from another place there's a million little doohickeys and like oh this one little like um uh like what do you call it uh what's when you uh a hinge for a door this one's in sacramento but then the other hinge is somewhere else it's all converging at my house all of this is to say i got an update from them on friday going half the stuff's getting delivered tomorrow andrew and here's the problem with tomorrow i'm gonna be in los angeles for cbs and i went on the website to the fedex website to try to get this because some of the stuff is being delivered by fedex and some of it's being delivered by ikea again supply chain and so i tried to go on the fedex thing and be like can i modify this no you cannot modify it that's grayed out so what's going to happen is this stuff is going to show up i'm gone through next week like through next sunday so i'm not going to be around for a long time and this a substantial amount of wood things are going to be delivered to my house and the problem is there's not a very good covered area and there's always confusion about what house is my house I don't really have a good address marker currently because of all the construction and we've got this studio that I'm in right now talking to you which looks like it's kind of a house now so then sometimes people are like is this the house is that other little thing the house like it's they commonly deliver to my neighbors it's always a thing and since I can't modify it here's what i came up with this morning i set up a massive awning in front of my house that is now over the little tiny entryway of my house creating much more rainproof area

i stacked up a million rocks on the feet of this like this kind of little awning tent thing because otherwise it's 100% going to blow away. There's already an 80% chance this is going to blow away, but I'm at least reducing 20% of the possibility. And then I spray painted my address number on a big piece of wood and screwed it onto a handrail. I am trying my best to entice whoever is delivering my stuff tomorrow to both know what house they're bringing it to and then to know to bring it down and put it under this area that I've created because otherwise it's just going to be sitting out in the rain for like five days, which seems very bad for particle board wood furniture.

Can't the feral cat let them in?

Me and the feral cat have not been on speaking terms lately. Ever since I kicked her out during the cold snack.

Do you still see her around the town? All the time. Around the neighborhood or whatever.

All the time. Saw her this morning. She's drinking water out of a tarp in my yard.

Are you ever tempted? And I know that this might be inadvisable. I'm just getting the lay of the land here. Are any of these cats, do you ever look at them and say, oh maybe that cat wants to be petted or are you ever close enough to it or is it just like this

is how nature says do not touch you know the other day we're actually doing the show and i started talking about the cat not the one that was in my house but a different one that likes to hang out in the yard yeah and it was being flipping adorable that's why i was thinking about i've never seen these feral cats be cute they're just usually like hovering like they're usually cowering somewhere and i don't know they're there and like i open a door and they go wow they go running off this cat got up on the deck it was raining and there was water going through a hole in the deck that we cut for the pre-charged line of what's called a heat exchange so all of those a lot of people now are heating and cooling their homes through these heat exchanges they're called or mini splits and so i have a mini split and we're going to run the line that actually sends the cold or hot air up through the deck so there's this hole that we've cut and the water was going through it in kind of an interesting way and the cat was going up to the hole and pawing at it it was being so cute and it really did something did slightly stir inside of me going like maybe i could be friends with these cats but um but that's about as far as it's gone that we don't have they are not into approaching me very much right now it would help because i am going to get bubbles back up here at some point like i've not fully signed away my parental rights to her and it would be nice to be on okay terms with the local cats if i'm gonna have my own cat here and if ever heaven forbid their paths were to cross because you're still toying with the idea of having her be indoor outdoor yeah i haven't everybody can pretty calm down i have not made a decision on that fully i'm gonna certainly she's gonna start out completely 100 indoor and i'm just gonna see how that goes and then i don't know what's gonna happen exactly but But to answer your question, I have now had a moment of observing these cats actually being cat-like. What I think of as cat-like, which is domesticated indoor cat, like Bingo. Speaking of which, should we take a quick break, and then maybe we can talk a little bit about why you have been sequestered in your own basement? Me and Bingo have just been basementing it up. Yes, we'll talk about that. Okay, let's do that. We have some dazzlers to thank on this Tuesday.

We was hoping for some razzle-dazzle. Razzle-dazzle. That's right, man. razzle-dazzle. On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody razzle-dazzle.

I'm sending you a picture, Andrew, of my whole crazy setup here. And I want to I mean, I don't know why, but I guess I want to at some point, either on or off air, get your thoughts on if any part of this is going to work.

Can I use this as the show picture today on the

website? Can you blur my address? Oh, yeah. I am actually I will say my spray painting technique was effective it's working um but the yeah the the initial problem i think the most i think the biggest issue is that the canopy is definitely going to blow away it gets windy up here it's not on grass if it was on grass i could nail you know you through it they give you some stakes with it you can nail down into the grass it's not on the grass is the problem it's on pavement so i've piled up these humongous rocks on the feet of it to try to hold it down but i don't think that's a very good system so i don't know it's uh it's gonna be interesting it's gonna be interesting to dazzling donor bobby pay bobby out there in boston massachusetts bobby says it's pronounced like lake char gog a gog match hog a gog shall boon a gun get mug i've been saying bobby this whole time. I know. It's one of those kind of kooky names with a silent char-ga-ga-mong-ga-bong-gong-ga-mong-gong-ga-mong-gong-ga-mong-ga-gong. Bobby's in Boston. Bobby has been such a dear friend of the show for all of these years and a supporter of the program and just the best. He says in his message, what a year it's been. In the past, this is where I've asked you to dive into cable management or video interpolation talk or ask you, who's the pitchers in this game? True story. But this year, as the world burns around us, I just want to take a minute to thank you guys and all the listeners and friends who make this little TBTL community such a safe and welcoming respite from, well, gestures around wildly. Respite?

Can we go with respite?

Respite? Yeah, respite. I think respite is probably more the, well, yeah, it's respite. I mean it is called respite

It could be an either or one I mean I was sort of correcting but sort of asking And correcting I mean I kind of

Well you know I think it's respite I do I just for some reason in the context Of the way that sentence was structured To say a little bit of a respite From I don't know why I wanted to say respite I don't think it's correct I think it's respite I know because my mom does something called respite care Which is like a long story My mom has over 1,000 jobs and she will more or less babysit kids that their parents are in the military and the U.S. military provides its members with Rob Gronkowski's personal phone number. No, if the kids have been diagnosed with certain things, then they're allotted a stipend for what's called respite care.

Visiting Angels is one of the names of one of these groups. That's interesting.

My mom's is called I Say, I Say, I Say,

what's up dog wait well they're there i say that's her llc therapy dog anyway uh it is respite it is

respite congratulations on your independence continued success and total lack of carvana ads as there's a drive into deep left field by castellanos it'll be a home run and so that will make it a 4-0 ball game this message hey by the way bobby nice job i did not i literally did not see that coming because i literally don't pre-read these as you can tell by me calling it respite um this message was written by bobby pape with production from luke burbank andrew walsh and john sklaroff at tbtbiz editorial support from george brad at hot mic productions with consideration by peter sagel and lions gate films distributor of dirty dancing to havana nights check out the full catalog of dazzling donor messages wherever you get your podcasts well

All done, Bobby. On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattle.

I feel like Bobby is bucking for a job as a writer on the show. I know. That's pretty good. And unfortunately, the way that being a writer for the show works, Bobby, is you both donate money and write the material. Yes, exactly. Nice job on that.

Also, as they would say on Levitard, the Stugatz is strong in you.

We also want to thank Dazzling Donor Tyler Strange How do you pronounce that? Chargongamong It says Like Doctor Strange Who's in Monroe, Louisiana

Oh nice

Down there in Bayou Country Uh huh Thanks Tyler Tyler says I've wanted y'all to go Independent for a while so that the show Could retain its soul And if anybody knows about soul It's Tyler down there in Bayou Country I guarantee You started it

That's the snort laugh that people I learned hate That I didn't even realize I was doing Remember somebody wrote in like stop snorting I was like what oh and then I realized That's part of my arsenal of laughs

Well you said people were telling me on YouTube to stop playing the sneeze One person wrote I remain unbowed

When somebody says to stop doing something

We just do it more. That's clearly a person who's relatively new to the program because if they had listened for a long time, they would know the worst thing you can do is tell us not to do something. Yeah. We will absolutely then lean into it because I'm about 11 years old. Tyler says, I wanted the show to retain its soul. I was afraid the corporate overlords would taint it with their greed. Now we are the corporate overlords of the show, Tyler.

No, no, John is. We always need to be able to punch up, so let's punch up.

And essentially, Tyler, you are kind of a part owner of the program with your donations.

Yeah, that's a good point.

We've got to get back to Beau on that. The soul is you two and the cosmic juices that swirl around in your brain buckets and pour out like golden nectar to my ear holes. Anyway, thanks for all you do. More than happy to pay my small part in keeping the dream alive. Oh, what a nice message, Tyler.

And it's not a small part, by the way. We're reading your message because you're a dazzling donor. That's a big financial lift. And we really, really appreciate it. We appreciate everybody who donates at any level. But the Dazzling Donors are really contributing a very generous amount of money. So I want to just acknowledge that. Absolutely. It is, you know, we've been fortunate enough to have folks, like you said,

step up at all kinds of different levels of...

donating but but certainly in a way and the dazzling donors are a big part of this in a way that that was honestly befuddling to people in the public radio fundraising class if that makes sense like there are people going people are like they're voluntarily donating to the show to this degree because they like the show and they just really want it to keep happening and it's like yeah they are doing that and we can't explain it either but thank goodness they are because it's how we're here doing it amen hello and welcome to top story all right my friend um you've been kind of going through it recently with cat stuff at your house what's the latest cat drama yeah i

didn't want to get into this yesterday because we were trying to keep the show uh a little bit

tighter in honor of abraham lincoln and george washington abraham lincoln was known for freeing the slaves and for appreciating holiday podcasts that were under one hour tall in stature but

short in desiring content yep uh but anyway yeah so our older cat professor bananas has been pretty sick lately so the reason why you mentioned i've been a basement dweller is we have a younger cat who's just i guess just over a year old now or maybe about a year and a half bingo we know bingo We know Bingo, and I love Bingo to death, but we have to keep them separated, just like that song from the 90s. The Offspring. The Offspring. Thank you. That was going to dog me until somebody said it. Thank you. But anyway, we're lucky enough to have an upstairs and a downstairs here, a nice living area.

That's where all the fun drama happens.

In the basement. It's one of those real upstairs, downstairs situations. Exactly. Every now and then, me and Bingo go upstairs to serve someone food under a cloche.

That system of bells that relate back to the different rooms in your upstairs, that's really, that's a great plot device.

That's right. So it's real Gosford Park over here off of Aurora.

Gosford Park on Aurora.

Gosford Park on Aurora. That's the show title. But anyway, yeah, so actually, and I'll talk a little bit about bananas here. A couple, this actually started late last week. I didn't want to talk about it on the show because I thought we were saying goodbye to our dear sweet professor bananas last week. And you know me, like if I start to even talk about that on the show, I get too, you know, kind of too emotional. Not that I'm embarrassed that I cry over the pets that I love, but like, it's no fun to be trying to talk on a podcast and just be so choked up that you just, you know, can't get, can't get anything out. And I'm afraid that that would probably be what happened if, you know, when we eventually do have to say goodbye to our sweet girl. So but anyway, last week, I was a little bit more emotional about it because it really seemed like we might be. I mean, it came. So she's 14 years old now, Professor Bananas. And I think it was Wednesday, about midday, you know, a few hours before dinnertime. She like threw up a little bit and I cleaned it up. And if you don't have cats, you might know this. But, you know, cats that happens with cats quite a bit. It's not a huge deal.

Cats are more or less college sophomores. They're going to throw up at least once a week.

Yeah, right. Exactly. They're still trying to do it.

Until they learn what's going on, what they can and cannot mix, et cetera. There's going to be one vomit episode a week at a minimum.

Exactly. As soon as I saw it, I was like, oh, bananas, beer before liquor, eh?

Got into the mic's heart again.

But anyway, so I cleaned it up. I'm like, okay, well, she'll eat well at dinnertime in a few hours. And then when I went to feed her later, it wasn't even like she came over and sniffed the food and didn't want it. That was something we were dealing with a few months ago. I was talking about on the show I think we kind of got a bad batch of food a while back but this time like she just did not come for dinner time and she all I mean she you know she's pretty food motivated both of the cats wake us up very aggressively in the morning for breakfast and they both start getting really antsy for dinner around 4 p.m. and I feed him at 5 and we have to feed him on different floors otherwise bingo wolf is down and eat her so anyway so I feed him and then I come upstairs I'm like bananas dinner time I'm like oh she's gonna be really hungry because she up chucked uh and she didn't even come into the kitchen she was just like chilling in a corner somewhere I'm like uh bananas do you hear this do you hear the sound of this can opening like what's going on here I'm doing this for my benefit and she's like in earshot she's not far away and she's just like no interest in food and I'm like oh this doesn't seem right yeah and I can't remember exactly what I do with it and then Genevieve and I were supposed to be meeting um somewhere to meet up with some friends on Wednesday and uh I remember calling Veeves I'm like I'm not sure if I should leave because like bingo will harass bananas you know the young one will sort of try to get her to play and she's very meek and mild and has been a trooper in putting up with this and in the past few weeks we've really seen kind of an increase of them tolerating each other more on their on the same level and it's been really sweet Genevieve's really been putting in the work to like socialize them even you know a year and a half later and we're seeing some real improvements there but the thing is like he still is a kitten who likes

to jump on her and play aggressively or whatever and usually she'll get out of the way or get away from him or maybe even hiss every now and then if she's too worked up or bat him away a little bit but this time like he went up to her and she just started making this sound like this you know like some sound i'd never heard before and i'm just like oh she's she's in distress here so we just separated them for a while and i was like well maybe by thursday she'll get her hunger back thursday morning no interest in food and now she's like kind of sequestering herself in places that she doesn't usually do like she's kind of starts living in genevieve's closet not a place that she's ever really hung out before and again you're like oh not not eating you know taking herself out of the action at this point we're keeping them i think already by this point on different floors the two cats and then um oh god luke thursday night we get her appointment for friday so keep in mind it's wednesday that she stops eating wednesday night that she stops eating We have an appointment on Friday afternoon for her at the vet. But Thursday, like she's eating hardly anything. And then Thursday night, we watch her go to like to hop up on something and she can't barely use her back legs. Oh, and then I'm like, oh, we're this we're saying goodbye here, aren't we? And Genevieve's keeping a very stiff upper lip and being very optimistic. Genevieve, I think, sometimes just feels like she can will. And I believe that maybe she can do this, just sort of will will life into things until she's ready to say goodbye. I mean, she's been doing it for you for years. Have you seen my diet? It's a miracle you're still here. Honestly, there might be something to that. High compliment, though, that she wants you around. Yeah, exactly. A lot to unpack there. But anyway, when I saw Bananas not being able to really use her back legs, I mean, she's not dragging around like Theo was in his last day, but we've suddenly seen a precipitous fall off in our cat's behavior and appetite and health really quickly. Genevieve's like, we're going to get her taken care of. We're going to take her care of. She's not dying. Like, I'm going to take her in tomorrow. I'm like, okay. And that was Thursday night. We wake up on Thursday again where she's eating little bits of food. She loves these. Do you mess around with churrus, by the way? Do you know what a churru is? No, I don't. Oh, wow. This is something that they seem gross to me when they were first introduced into my life. But I don't think there's anything cats like more than these things that are churrus. They're like little. Oh, you know what they're like? they're like your mom's um yogurt yogurt they're like go-gurts they're like those icy pop things only there's like some sort of dreadful stew of protein in there and you kind of squeeze it out for the cat and they eat it directly from from the little pouch like as you like kind of work the bottom to the top and um cats love that so anyway so bananas would eat a little bit of that from time to time we're trying to get her sustenance but we're watching her her neck become more prominent as you know on like day four or something and um Genevieve went to I think it's I think it's okay to say this you know Genevieve was very optimistic this whole time even leading

up to the doctor's appointment but she had a lunch date with somebody with a colleague um right before the vet and she went you you and I were recording the show she left went to this lunch date and then she comes back and it's about an hour before she's supposed to leave for the vet for the vet and I can tell that now Genevieve is upset like I can see that she's kind of fighting back some emotion herself as we're talking and I'm like are you okay and I later found out that at lunch this person when Genevieve said oh yeah I gotta take my cat to the vet we're seeing these you know these signs of her not being well and the person she was having lunch with was like oh yeah I've seen that and my cat had cancer and that was the last we saw her and it's just like yeah like I don't think this person you know I think that they were just you know just probably speaking from the heart and like kind of didn't think about what that what mindset that put Genevieve into so So we took her to the or Genevieve took her to the vet on Friday. And I was I was pretty convinced that I thought the most I thought that the most probable scenario would be that she would bring bananas back home. But for knowing that we might get one more night or something before we had to call, you know, a doctor for euthanasia. Pardon me. But it was sort of inconclusive what happened at the vet. Like they they took all kinds of all kinds of like tests and blood work and all this stuff and tried to give her a couple of ultrasounds. But apparently she was so packed with gas, Luke, that the ultrasounds wouldn't work. I mean, I don't mean to laugh. Yeah, no, I guess she was just like she's totally compacted. Like, again, like the gas can't feel good. No, the gas, I'm assuming, is a symptom of something. It's not like, you know, like the old joke. The word was F-A-R-T. Yeah, I just got some gas, but they they gave her some medication for like to both make her more hungry, which we rub in her ears, by the way. I thought it was a joke. The medicine that makes the cat more hungry, you rub it inside of her ear or I guess more specifically, Genevieve rubs it inside of her ear and then some pills.

for um to to fight nausea uh so you know if she does eat that she doesn't throw it up and at first we didn't really see a lot well when she first came back from the vet they had shot her up with something too and she seemed a little bit more normal her back leg seemed more normal she ate a little bit and then retreated to the closet again but then over the course of the weekend it was like it was a whole thing like i was living in the basement because i didn't i just felt so bad our little bingo cat is such a social creature and he just like when we lock him in the basement he just sits at the door and cries the whole time and brings his little toys to the top of the stairs. Like he's just wants to. So I've been like hanging out down here with him and we have a big couch now that is like pretty comfortable. So I've just been kind of sleeping downstairs with him, but definitely starting. I told you in a text message, like I love basement dwelling. I love sleeping in a basement. I like hanging out down here, but like it's even starting to get to me a little bit, you know, like it's sort of like, I feel like I should be getting some vitamin D shots or something. Like it's just a little bit weird.

it's me and him down be careful what you wish for what do you mean well you you know sometimes oh yeah it'd be so fun to just be in this basement with bingo yeah that's my whole life and then it is and you're like actually okay this is even too much for me it's like gray gardens down here

seriously and bingo no but uh the good news is um as of recording time bananas is showing like some great improvements saturday night we genevieve gave her the medicine around five saturday night I dropped Genevieve off at the Eagles, and then I came home, and Bananas popped out of the closet as soon as she heard me. She's moving slowly, but, like, came out, and, like, I would give her little snacks of this and that. She would eat a few bites here and there, and every day it seems like she eats a little bit more. And I think of, as of this morning, Genevieve said, like, slowly and in, like, kind of various, you know, maybe over the course of an hour, she ate, like, a full can of her old cat food. So, like, we're starting to feel optimistic, at least in the short term.

Like, it's unclear what's causing any of this. Okay, so they don't know how or why it is that she was kind of sort of impacted in that way.

We only paid $1,300. Why would we have answers? No. That's kind of a shot. I mean, listen, I know this shit is just expensive. But we're still waiting for results on the blood work. It was right, you know, before the weekend. So there was that Like I said the ultrasound was inconclusive I mean chances are like you know Depending on what's going on with her Genevieve was already Genevieve is just somebody who likes to get stuff done And also just likes to feel like She's getting stuff done too So she was like moving money around in our account She's like this could be an expensive journey We're going on here but god damn it I'm going on it So we'll see what it is Freeing up

Moving the household Into a more liquid position

Exactly. We're now pushing off our plans to turn the garage into an ADU back by five years. But anyway, so as of right now, we're feeling very optimistic, at least in her trending in the right direction. She hasn't gone back. And I don't think she's in the closet now. She's been kind of like out and about a little bit more. We're still keeping that. We're like letting the cats visit each other a little bit under supervision until he he crosses a line or something. And so we're feeling better about it. But honestly, like, we don't know what the what caused it. And if it is something like a cancer or a blockage, we could be. I mean, I don't know. I will say this, though, like whether we're entering. I feel like we're entering a new phase now, whether or not the new phase is weeks, months or years. I don't know. But we'll probably have to start caring for her in somewhat different ways now. But, you know, I was thinking over the weekend, like if she does pass away, like I don't want to talk about on the podcast. I can talk about this because we're talking about the process of it, but when it's actually time to say goodbye to a pet, one thing I learned is it just brings up all kinds of emotions. It's about the whole life, however many years you spent together as a family with me and Veeves, too, with our little kitties and stuff. So anyway, there may be some day in the future where somebody sees on social media that we say goodbye to a cat, yet I come on this show and just pretend like nothing is wrong. I just want everybody to know that doesn't mean that I'm a monster or a sociopath. It just means that I need to sort of, you know, kind of what's the word I'm looking for? Sort of compartmentalize that. Yeah, that makes sense.

I think you have every right to apply whatever self-care you need in that time, which hopefully is still many years away. Let me ask a more fart-based question, which is— I would expect no less. Was there any moment that you could detect, if we do think that Professor is doing better, did she let a tremendous rattle go at any point? Was there a sense of her just like, you know, did she fart for over 11 hours at some point? Because that sounds like, as uncomfortable as the gas buildup would be, God, that sounds like an amazing relief to just let it rip for a good, you know, one to two hours straight.

I was just upstairs before we started. recording this and she was like shooting around the room like a balloon. Oh yeah that was probably related. I don't now that you say it I think maybe it was related. No actually you ask a really good question because I was getting deep in the details of my saga this weekend and probably was not as universally entertaining as one. No no no that wasn't I wasn't trying to back lead you on the way we're talking about this. But you have honed in on the much more entertaining part of this because the day that it right into my butthole it's like a fart transplant we so Genevieve brings her home so this is Friday she's still sort of in the depths of things here but she's gotten some hydration from a shot you know how they'll like kind of give her a shot in the back with like I can't remember is a saline or something or whatever gives her electrolytes so she's got that she actually even looks a little lumpy because of it she's um and the and the doctor had given her some sort of an appetite thing. And I'm guessing that the nausea medication while she was at the at the doctor. So she comes back and she's she's a little bit feisty, a little bit hungry, relatively speaking. And then we've set up a litter box for her upstairs so she doesn't have to come down here. And she and we're sitting in the room where Genevieve had just like I think given her some more medicine or something. And Bananas walks over to the litter box and then Vives is sitting right kind of next to the litter box. I'm sitting on the couch and Genevieve is just staring at her she's like this is amazing like she's clearly constipated she clearly has to go and she's just sitting she's just sitting on the litter box i'm trying not to look at her to give her some sort of sense of privacy which is like the most ridiculous thing in the world like i would do the same thing by the way apparently she's just sitting there and she's like oh she's farting she's farting she's farting and she's just like sitting there like on the box like for a really long time and then one tiny little marble no compacted no i wanted

it to be like i wanted it to be like a version of when you make yourself a soft serve sunday at all you could at an old country and i just wanted to i wanted her to just basically go all the way up to the ceiling of the house getting all of that impacted stuff out well anyway it It sounds like she's doing better, though.

There is also, and I'm trying to think if it was later that evening or the next evening, Genevieve and I were getting ready to go out somewhere, and she bends over to say goodbye to Bananas. She's like, oh, oh, you're so stinky. Did you just fart? She's like, we're so excited about farts in this house right now. It is so different. And then on Saturday night, like I told you, I dropped Genevieve off at Bingo, and I came back here. And Bingo the game, not Bingo the cat. It all gets very complicated. But I come back here just to sort of keep an eye on Banan and see if she wants to come out of the closet, which she did. And we had some real bonding time on Saturday night. But at some point on Saturday night, she had her first real poop. And my instinct, I didn't quite do this, but my instinct was to take a photo of it and send it to Genevieve at the bar.

I don't know why you stifled that at all. That's the love language that many of us who have pets now share with our partners.

I did not I'm like I'm not going to take a picture of a piece of poop and just send it to my girlfriend like I'm not doing that but I did tell Genevieve I'm like I texted her I'm like hey you're not going to believe it good news she pooped and I was like I almost sent you a picture and she's like well dot dot dot dot dot I'm like I'm not going there Genevieve I'm not sending you poop pictures

Oh, see, come on. I mean, you've gone this far with it. Like, think about the pep in Genevieve's step that would have created for her just to see a giant log from the professor as she was KJing, presumably at the Eagles.

You know what? It was bingo night, so I think she was just there for enjoyment. Come stay and play. But actually, it occurred to me, this is the type of thing I specifically didn't want to tell you as a friend, but it occurred to me as a responsible podcaster. this is actually probably a topic I should bring up and I'm not even being serious as I did this I thought like Luke would burn down the house before he would do what I'm about to describe but I'm texting Genevieve I'm like she pooped she's like describe it for me I'm like whatever man it's a normal turd and then she's like well save it in case they need it for a follow up appointment at the vet and I'm like well will it stay that long she's like I don't know can't hurt just put it in the refrigerator oh wait no no no no No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

What about the freezer?

We don't do that.

The freezer seems better than the refrigerator.

Yeah, it does, right? And that is how you store medical samples and stuff.

If we learned anything from the Hoth ice planet scene in Star Wars.

I just cut open the turd, and I went inside, and I said, I thought they smelled bad on the outside. What I did was, and you're still not going to like this. I don't think there's enough barriers in the world for you to accept this, but I'm looking at my cat. I'm like, we go through, we go, we do things that we don't want to do when we love something. And so I took it, I put it. See. Like, to you, this won't be enough. To other people, I'm going to sound psycho. I put it in three. I triple wrapped it in three Ziploc bags. So one in the Ziploc bag. I could live with that. I could live with that. Then I shot it to the moon. No. Then I put it in one of those takeout soup container things, you know, like the plastic lid. You get a lot of takeout soup like I do. Yeah, yeah.

Like we get Thai food, and it's like what a Tom Guy would have been in.

Yeah. So it's triple bagged and sealed Ziploc bag. Like, then put into one of those soup containers and then wrote on the top, like, bananas and the date so that it can't get confused with anything else.

Then submerged in carbonite.

And then we submerged in carbonite. Who are you? Somebody who loves you. I buried it in the backyard. So much Star Wars-related content to this.

And I sent it to Yucca Mountain.

And then I put it in the basement refrigerator because the basement refrigerator is mostly, like, you know, there's not as much food. There's, like, beer and cans of soda and that kind of stuff in there.

And so there's a little bit of like, I honestly, you've described to me, I think, from a biohazard standpoint, I did wear a suit. I think that no, no, no, I could live with that. I could absolutely live with that, like triple bagged in the in the sealed soup container. I mean, that's I think that, you know, and on a lower shelf. I don't know why, but it needs to be on a low shelf.

No, actually, it really does. You know that that's like the rule for chicken. If you get your food handling license, like chicken always has to go on the bottom shelf.

Yeah, so if it drips, it doesn't drip on anything. Well, I'm really glad that things are feeling a little bit less dire, at least right now, because previous to me getting bubbles, I probably would have just thought Andrew's just emotionally fragile again. but now as a as a as a cat parent um i can i i relate to even retroactively like you know stuff around theo and everything i relate retroactively to all of that stuff as just like oh my gosh i would be i you know as as would anybody in our audience who's had a pet i would just be devastated beyond belief if if little bubbles wasn't okay when i thought bubbles had escaped the house part of why she hasn't been here in a long time is because i'm still trying to figure out what the containment situation is because when when I thought she had run out the front like out the sliding doors which I don't think were even there yet like I think that was part of the problem was that one part of the house didn't exist currently when she when I thought she was gone and just running around in the wind here the devastation that I felt in that moment the complete emptiness the bereft the feeling of being totally bereft that I felt until I realized she was in the floor and then i was really super mad at her again for the for the like 10 i called becca like very close to crying you know like it was you know this having been through your cats getting outside you know before that feeling is so so so terrifying and intense and like you know that's what that is is a preview of of what the end of their life might feel like because the fear in that moment is that this cat is gone and they are never to return which is also what happens when a cat isn't alive anymore you know so anyway all that is to say I'm really glad that things are

looking at least a little bit more positive and the one thing and I realized because like when I was doing the show with you on Friday I was fine we did we recorded a a video after that for the weekend review video and I think right before I before I dialed up with you and Cassie I was feeling I kind of got into my emotions a little bit because Genevieve was starting to get a little upset and then you know and the thing is when you've had a cat for a long time and I should say that like you know I've known people who've had very young pets pass away so unexpectedly and that just seems that seems like a special kind of cruel to me to have to deal with that kind of pain but one thing that I sort of realized when Theo passed away who lived to be over 20 years old not quite to 21 and bananas is 14 which first of all I feel like Theo sort of um spoiled us a little bit I hope I'm getting all my cats names right by the way Genevieve just when I'm talking about the cat She keeps giving me this look that I recognize as you're getting the cat's names mixed up now. I call Bananas Bingo. I call Bingo Theo when I'm talking about our old cat that died. Sometimes I call him Bingo, and that doesn't sound right to Genevieve's ears.

Behind your back, I call you a well-meaning elderly man.

When I refer to Bingo, I'm talking about the president of Mexico. Yes, exactly. so anyway um what i was gonna say was the thing that you sort of not i mean as part of the mourning of a pet when the pet's been around for a very long time is you're just kind of also consumed with what has happened in your life and your relationship your relationship with that pet but also with vives and i luckily we are still together and share a relationship and we kind of we look at ourselves we got together in our early 20s and now we're in our mid 40s and it's like oh wow we kind of grew up together in a way and this cat was around for all of that or like when we got bananas that marked a certain phase of our relationship and you

I think it's about the passing of time as much as missing your little guy, you know? And I realize, like, that's the kind of stuff that you can really start to spiral on, which I don't know if it's spiraling in a bad way, but that you can just get emotional. And again, that's the type of stuff that I kind of want to avoid on the podcast because I become a mess.

Well, again, I'm with you 100% that, like, it is a very natural thing to feel emotional talking about our pets when they're in distress or when it's time for them to kind of cross the rainbow bridge. It's both a thing that is totally, it's reasonable to be emotional about that and it also feels embarrassing in the moment. Crying on the podcast is the strangest thing and it's just like, it's sort of like crying in real life in public settings or maybe even private settings with other people where there's something about the legitimacy of the crying or the, however understandable the crying is, it does not impact the weird feeling of vulnerability that we feel when we cry in front of other people to where we're always apologizing and we have nothing to apologize for but we instinctively do and i want to understand at some point what is the natural selection around that what is how did why are how are we the descendants of people who feel embarrassed when we're crying about a legitimate topic how did that keep our forefathers alive on the serengeti a little bit more than the people who weren't embarrassed about crying because there's something about that that was selected for there's some reason that we all got that and it's very weird to me i just typed in

what is the evolutionary imperative of crying one theory is that crying has evolved as a kind of signal that was valuable because it could only be picked up by those closest to us who could actually see our tears huh i need that's from npr by the way i need to dig deeper on that though

all right should we dig deeper on an email or vmail before we hit the road i mean i would

strong bad that oh how do we do the show again what is podcast i will not perform it under the

under anything with the perfect conditions with the email every week i hope that it's from a

female oh man it's not from a female it's only tuesday it's not good that i'm forgetting the

basic formatics of the program um i have a voice i'm going to play for you i really love this story I don't want to spoil where it's going, but if somebody was listening closely, and I don't know why you wouldn't, if somebody was listening closely to the Blur's Day segment last week, you might have an idea of where this beautiful little story is going.

Hi, Andrea and Luke. I am calling to tell a really cool sliding doors story that happens on Valentine's Day. I just moved into my new art studio about two weeks ago, and the first Thursday after moving in, I had a new client come in for an art session. and at the end of the session I was showing her around the art studio space and telling her that I was looking for studio mates and fast forward a week and a half later she has moved in her name is Gretchen she's really cool and she's my new studio mate so today I was setting up my studio she's setting up her studio and we are talking about lighting because it's fluorescent lights and I was showing her my lighting solution and she was you know she liked the light bulbs and so I showed her the light bulb that it was and I was telling her I was going to take a picture of it because I needed to buy some more for myself and I could send it to her if she wanted to know because it is hard to find good light bulbs it's so complicated now and she said oh my gosh they were just talking about that on my podcast and i interrupted her and i said tbtl are you a 10 and she looked at me with a look i've never seen before and i thought oh my gosh did i just talk over my new friend and ask her a question in an interrupting way, saying something that she has no idea what I'm talking about. And then I realized it was bewilderment and surprise. It turns out she's a 10. And so we were so incredibly giddy. We hugged over it. And she has been a listener since radio days and i have been a listener since 2010 and uh we were just so incredibly excited and now when i go to work i have a 10 friend and it's uh like curing global loneliness it's beautiful power out oh there you go that's amazing i mean we we were talking

Thank you.

about how the thing about tbtl is you have you grow closer to the community of people that are listeners of the show but potentially further away from the people in your immediate life but this is not an example of that this is this caller did they leave their name this caller you know they

didn't leave their name but i went back and checked the dazzling donors from or i'm sorry

the blurs days from last week and i think this was jennifer so this is like jennifer both growing closer to somebody in the community and a person she has sharing an art space with so that's great because they can talk about tbtl if one of them needs to catch up on the show they could potentially listen without like deeply annoying the other person i mean you know i'm i don't know how big their space is that they're sharing but it's like you know it's great that they're both in in on this thing because of the you know the fact that they're also sharing a space and if one of them wanted to play the show sometime and you were not into tbtl which by the way would put you in about the 99 percent of the worldwide population actually let's be honest 99.9 it would be annoying but i'm saying these two cannot annoy each other with tbtl stuff because they both like

tbtl yeah exactly it's wonderful and it reminds me of like this idea of both for us and our listeners when they meet each other randomly to have this absolute earnest surprise wait you listen to that show too like you we were talking yesterday about um you know pod save america There's nobody who says, wait, you like that show, too? Like, everybody likes that show. Right. It's not like, wait, you even know about this thing? Which reminds me of something, and maybe this is an opportunity to let our listeners know about this as well. But we mentioned a few weeks ago that we were on Mika Brown's podcast on Wondery. Misha. Misha, I'm sorry. The Big Flop.

I'm on Mika Brzezinski's podcast, but they didn't. They just wanted me.

Sorry. It's not a contest. But anyway, and that episode is out now if you want to check it out. It's called The Big Flop. You can look for it on your podcatcher or whatever. But Misha had just posted on his Instagram a little preview for it and tagged us or whatever. This was earlier today or yesterday. And I was looking at it when it was still brand new. And there were only a Misha's got a huge, you know, Instagram and TikTok following. At least one of my nieces. Really? Well, that's what I thought was interesting. is so right after he posted it I looked when there were still only a few comments and one of them was somebody who wrote oh you got the tbtl guys that ought to be pretty fun or that's going to be crazy or something like that and I was like that is such an interesting comment because I feel like that is somebody who sort of knows of the show and has heard it before but like I feel like if it was one of our hardcore listeners they'd be like oh my god that that's my secret little show you know but instead it was kind of like oh you got those two you got those two clowns that's gonna be a riot i'm just like oh what an interesting perspective on our show like

borderline a compliment by the way yes right because yeah because you and i we know very well that this is a show that has a very dedicated very loyal very small audience and so we generally the the two reactions to tbtl are complete lack of awareness that it exists and excitement that is at a very high level what you rarely get is kind of a sort of like oh yeah i've heard of that yeah and that's sort of that's not a that's not a demo it seemed like a yeah i took it as like a

weird it made me giddy like this person who like kind of seemed to have a casual understanding or relationship with our show was like oh that's gonna be fun you got those two guys i was like oh how why am i like we have so many wonderful listeners and supporters who would go to the ends of the earth for us but i'm like oh this person it's like that meme of me looking over my shoulder at like this casual compliment from a stranger while i'm walking next to bobby pape

you know what i'm saying exactly shout out to bobby exactly re-shout out to bobby re-shout out all right uh let's go ahead and wrap things up i'm doing something before i leave for california andrew which is i'm rigging up my outdoor camera i've moved positions i thought you're gonna say

you're putting flowers in your hair this is less that's a normal thing for me i did put a carnation

in my lapel for some photos they were taking of me the other night in Portland and everyone was very complimentary about this carnation. I thought, maybe that should be my new look. Just all the time.

No matter what you're wearing, coveralls carnation. And then I'm setting everyone up

for when I switch to the flower that sprays water. Yes, that's a good one. You've got to put in like a year or two of carnation that does not spray water.

And people sniffing your rose or your carnation. But then you lull them into a false sense of security. Exactly. Why do I feel like I'm going to be

victim no i'm gonna i'm going to um set the rig this camera up and uh tomorrow i don't know what will happen by show recording time but we i should have some real-time information about how my delivery situation is working out with my tenting and my that's a good idea addressing and my you know i have a bad feeling they're just gonna dump the stuff on the outside of the studio and then it's gonna just get rained on but we'll we'll find out uh so that's something something exciting for tomorrow. In the meantime, everybody have a great tuesday hope you're doing well hope you're able to uh take care of yourselves enjoy your tuesday and join us tomorrow in the meantime please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all hey guys uh this is randy over in bellevue uh just heard my name come up on your donors list from a show a couple weeks ago. Yeah, I'm a bit of a time bandit. But, yeah, it was great. And, yeah, it was one that I feel really good about sponsoring the talk on iMaps, the Apple iMaps versus Google Maps. That was fun. And getting to hear the coffee and bubble water spill on Luke while he was raising his desk or lowering his desk. So, yeah, I was proud to sponsor that. and got to hear my name several times on there talking. Felt like I wanted to talk back to you, so this is the best I can do. Anyways, yeah, that was fun. I guess I owe you guys some content or something after all that air time you gave me. So I'll make this my new year's resolution to call into your show, see if I can contribute anything. So hope your algorithms are doing well, and we'll talk to you guys later. Bye. Power out.