Muse

The new sound of the 80s. Suddenly, you hear it everywhere. Rap music. It's all beat and all talk. It tells you a story and makes you want to dance. Steve Fox examines an overnight phenomenon, rapping to the beat.

There have been talking blues and things like concertos for drums. But right now, all around us, and so compelling you never miss the fact there's no melody, is a music that is all beat and talk. It's rap music, and it sounds like this. TBTL!

You should be on the radio. You got everything it takes, good looks, a nice speaking voice, and what a personality.

After everything that's happened recently, I want to make sure that what you're about to do isn't not well thought out.

We are still on for this afternoon, right?

Operation Monkey Brain. He taught me how to fish, skip stones, Whittle. He was like my best friend, you know, and my worst enemy. Awesome. Oh,

let's say I can't believe this is actually happening.

All right. Hello. Good morning and welcome everyone to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Our long national nightmare is over. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. I don't know who that is and I don't care to find out. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it was like 30 degrees this morning when I got up. There was a crust of ice across the lawn. It doesn't feel like it's late February, almost early March.

Didn't the beaver say it was spring? I thought the beaver said it was spring.

But that's alright, it's relatively warm and dry here inside the Broadcast Center And we are ready to bring you episode 4151 in a collector's series Let the fun begin If you have AT&T self-service and you were out of service last week I have great news We're finally going to talk about the story Where AT&T has announced how much money they're going to give those people

I'm trying to use the phone

It's been threatening to do it for like three days it's going to finally happen. Also, speaking of pricing, Wendy's is going to experiment with the dynamic pricing in 2025. Sounds expensive. And the economics of it are actually sort of interesting. And that's the bar for this show. Sort of. If it's sort of interesting, we might talk about it. Something just happened. I'm talking in the last 30 seconds. That's more than sort of interesting. It's a text from my mother.

I'll say, what's up, dog?

This happened last week or a couple of weeks ago where, like, right as we were about to start doing the show, my mom sends me a text that just stops me in my tracks. So we'll probably get into that as well. And we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. At TBTB, we have started to do some self-assessment. You know, we're trying to build a legit company. And this is what he wrote down in terms of his own self-assessment. I'm off-putting. I'm an embarrassment, but I'm also a legend, oddly. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. I should be off-putting. Is your mom cyber-bullying you? No, my mom is cyber-apologizing to me. That's better than cyber-bullying, I think. Dude, I'm not kidding. As the music is playing, and it's just about to be my time to start talking, I get this text from my mother. morning luke exclamation point i'm subbing in a special ed class today and they're watching scooby-doo i have no idea why i disapproved of you watching it all those years ago it's pretty innocent sorry there were so many rules and restrictions oh my gosh that's a big

one i mean it starts with it starts micro but it gets very macro yeah and then you know she

puts the emoji that's kind of like huh and then the emoji that's blowing a kiss wow how does that make you feel well you know it's it's funny because i you know i talk about it a lot on this show and really anywhere else that they'll hand me a microphone about how kind of maybe unusual my childhood was and the various rules that we had that were based on the kind of version of christianity that i grew up in but like the idea that i couldn't just like plop in front of the couch and watch scooby-doo in the living room of our house that i had to ride my bike down to the fred meyer on lake city way or go to like my friend james demuth's house or whatever like i that doesn't bother me so much as a memory i don't feel like my one of the things is the older you get i think the more empathy you have for your parents when you were a

kid because you realize oh god they were 27 you know they were 30 trying to navigate this life that is so hard so that's part of it and also like i to whatever degree i turned out sort of okay i think the fact that there were some pretty decent guardrails around my life were not it was not a bad thing um even though it was it was silly that i wasn't allowed to watch scooby-doo officially i don't think that it damaged me and i think i'm better for the fact that my parents were kind of like you know on the lookout for things that would have been uh corrupting my brain in a way rather than just like my mom's just taking another drag off of a virginia slim and being like whatever i had friends whose moms were like that and i feel like some of them their life ended up reflecting the fact that they didn't have as maybe as much parental oversight And if we can read Parental Oversight as a version of love, it isn't always, but at least it's attention. At least it's paying attention to the kids. And my parents, they paid a lot of attention to their kids, even if it was to say, that Scooby-Doo is fresh.

Well, you know, I'd like to explore this further, although it seems like we're really jumping into some real talk here early on a Wednesday. You know what? You can thank Susie B for that. I do think it's interesting. I'll say, what's up, dog? And this is this is your story. So I'm not trying to challenge you on this. But as I'm thinking about my own, do you think I messed up from that? I really do. I mean, I do think there's something in between like a very specific, especially religious based kind of protectivism, let's say, of your children versus totally not giving a shit, smoking a cigarette and saying, you know, do I stutter or whatever the example of a two hands off parent is. But like that parent is probably two hands on. Well, yeah, literally. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you're going with the do I stutter breakfast club, I guess, example that I brought up. But so for me specifically, I had different kind of parental oversight, but also kind of oppressive in a lot of ways and in this very protective way. And I know it came from a place of love for my parents, but that also shaped who I was. And I think the way I was overly protected at home probably led to a personality that was maybe somewhat maybe timid or reactionary or whatever it was that maybe led to bullying at school. Like, I can try to, like, kind of group these things together because the question is, like, you and I – and I don't claim to be an interesting person. I think you're an interesting person. I claim to be your friend, and you needed somebody to laugh at your jokes, and that's how I got this job.

That is the most inaccurate way possible to describe the dynamic of our show, but I don't want to delay us.

Having said that, like, you and I are at least interesting enough to have a show where we have for thousands and thousands of hours just, like, bantered about our lives. And, like, so there's got to be something in our personalities that people like to listen to. and so let's say for either one of us again there's not such a hands-off that it's almost like an abusively hands-off uh uh parents but like parents that just led us both into a more like very middle of the road normal sort of upbringing where like i was allowed to watch stripes and so therefore i got the jokes that the kids were saying on the bus you know like and i wasn't allowed to watch chips or the dukes of hazard you know like because those my parents didn't use the word fresh but kind of similar things like I might have been able to hang better on the bus but like I guess all of that is to say and I realize I've been babbling for a while but like was it these constrictions in our early life and the you know the resulting life that was built around that in childhood that made us who we are today it's really hard to go back and say like what would I actually change like I know that I would actually change okay so things I didn't like growing up was growing up in the country i wanted to live in the city so bad and i felt so isolated living in the country but looking back i don't think i would change that because that is kind of part of who i am and it's it's an interesting way of growing up out in the country um and now i live in the city so i've gotten to experience it both i would take away the bullying if there was some way to like not get like poison ivy rubbed on me in the back of the bus i would do that but having said that like especially with the parental stuff it's really hard to say that like if I could go back and change things, would I make my parents more chill? And maybe that's where I toss it back to you. Like, would you change that? Or is it what makes your stories

interesting? What I would change was that I went to bed every night thinking the world was very possibly going to end. And that I was, if I hadn't admitted all my sins, confessed all my sins up to that moment, I was rolling the dice on if I was going to be in a lake of fire. That was a very real concern for me and I think that is not a great thing to do to your children is to tell them

I mean, because kids are fairly easily scared as it is. Now, imagine sitting your kids down and going, okay, so there's a lake of fire. Yeah. Most people are going there forever. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The only way to not be one of the people going there is to make sure that you've got a clean slate when you die. That's a lot to put on like a seven-year-old.

Kids are already literal, and now you have this very literal interpretation of the afterlife.

That was something I wish my parents would have had the awareness of how much that freaked me out and how much that probably did a number on me that has played out in, I'm no longer worried about that specific thing, but it's hard to know how stuff like that, how just basically being kind of terrified a lot of the time, what that does to you psychologically. So that part I would definitely, weirdly enough, it was not the time spent in church, like the actual time spent at Gospel Outreach Christian Fellowship. Like me and my sisters have amazing stories of being at that church. I mean, it was just, it was, it was like living on the set of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It was just like the people that came through there were such characters. And me and, like I said, me and my siblings to this day, we sort of regale each other with stories and memories and like it was a very um maybe a better example is it was sort of like growing up working in a circus that was traveling around and you might say well is that good for a kid to like be breaking down the big top every two weeks and packing up the uh the trailers and and driving the tilt-a-whirl somewhere and it's like is it great for a kid probably not does it make for a more interesting kid definitely yeah um and so i don't i don't wish that we I don't mind that the church aspect of my life the actual going to church I don't I don't mind like I guess my I'll go back to where this started the Scooby-Doo stuff doesn't haunt

me ironically yeah right that's a good point but if my my parents would have gotten away with this

too if it weren't for those if it weren't for those meddling universities that all their kids went to and therefore none of their kids embrace like a particular religious worldview that like they do they still do but so yeah i mean i think i think we all if we look back at our childhood we all um have a lot of things that we wish would have gone differently i've been thinking about this a lot because you know i'm also a parent a parent of now a very grown adult and i think i think here's what i think about in terms of my my experience being a parent and also my my experience being a child and thinking about how no one's childhood is perfect i tend to think that all we can ask for from our parents in adulthood is that they are willing to confront the idea that not everything they did was the right move and and if if if parents of of children i guess of any age but particularly of like children that are becoming grown if as a parent you can kind of say yeah i didn't i didn't handle that right and that had a negative impact on you and i i apologize for that and i own that as opposed to certain kinds of parents that to question anything about their parenting is to question them as a human being or to question if they loved you or not there are parents that can't go there um you know who are just kind of like well i was doing my best or it's it's so threatening right and no one got a perfect childhood and no one was a perfect parent but as a parent if you can acknowledge that i think it goes a long way and even my mom and my it's interesting when i talk to my dad like when my dad and i are here working on stuff and i'll bring up something that to me is just funny something kooky that happened in my childhood like going to the healing explosion or something my dad's that's an oxymoron that is the biggest oxymoron i've ever heard have you ever been to an explosion of healing healing shrapnel is just hitting people everywhere after the healing explosion can we just go to the healing healing please you go no the healing explosions are the people on stage that have really profound things going on the explosion they're in like the blast zone they're fully healed but then if you're out in the perimeter you might just get like have a sore ankle that gets better sure healing shrapnel hits you right right like when i remind my dad and i don't i never do this to make him feel bad but if i just because again a lot of this stuff is just like funny weird stories to me but if i will remind him of something that he definitely wouldn't nowadays in 2024 like go to or embrace he kind of does a wince in the way that i sort of imagine you sometimes do a wince andrew and you are having one of your intrusive thoughts yeah yeah um and uh a little intake of breath a little intake of breath kind of ah you know and he just what the way we talk about that stuff is we just don't talk about it like if i if i if i accidentally hit like a pressure point or a sensitive point which i'm never doing intentionally i'm not trying to litigate my childhood with him i'm just being like oh remember when we had that guy david kimwele that Kenyan faith he

healer, evangelist, come to the church. Remember that? It'll just be like, ooh, you know. My mom, on the other hand, will just apparently be sitting as a paraeducator in a special ed class and just, they're watching Scooby-Doo and she's reminded of some of the rules and she regrets them. So thanks, Ma.

Well, I actually think that's really interesting and I think you've hit on something there. And I think, I mean, I've met both of your parents now. I know your dad is a very loving person. And I know that while I can't think of them now, you have relayed on this show some heart to hearts that you guys have had. Your father is not somebody who I think like digs in or is that kind of parent that you're talking about who wouldn't who wouldn't take a moment to think back about decisions he made as a parent or as a human earlier in his life. Certainly. But there is something I think especially special about your mom. Like, you know, maybe I could see a scenario where you're having a holiday dinner of some sort or something, a gathering, and the kids are maybe lovingly razzing your parents a little bit. And they say, yeah, maybe we were a little bit too hard on that. I mean, that's really nice in and of itself. But for your mom to be just having a moment of repose and just being like, oh, man, this is this cartoon kind of bangs. Damn, that mystery machine, though. And then kind of like even shaggy, kind of underrated or whatever. whatever thought she had but then to extrapolate that to like huh like man I was maybe a little bit a little bit too strict overall about media consumption and just to reach out to you like that's really I think there's something special about that and I'm not joking I feel really really

lucky to be a product of the family that I'm a product of and to have the parents that I have for that exact reason you know because because you're right and I mean with for my mom I would attribute a lot of that to her sobriety you know she my mom's been sober for like 20 years and still chairs meetings to this day and there's a lot of accountability you know in that movement and uh yeah i mean the fact that the fact that that my mom like i'm just repeating you but the fact that that's where her brain is going as she's as she's um you know watching scooby-doo as a substitute para educator is it's i i'm i'm very fortunate and uh and and uh and appreciative

that that's the the people that i come from i am not joking or exaggerating when i say probably the very minute that you were receiving that text message from your mom i was receiving a text message from my dad okay and this is another example of why i love this guy and i want to be careful here because he didn't send this as content nor did my mom but i just know there's no chance you'll hear it i think my dad's a little bit more sensitive about that and i don't want to make it sound like i'm mocking but i freaking love this so you know that i have a um subscription to Reader's Digest because it's a gift from my dad right like we like to we like to bro down over Reader's Digest from time to time like what sandwich represents your state you know like

we will text back and forth about that. That's also great TBTL content that I believe we may

have delved into over the years. Wasn't that um your mom was actually on that episode it was like what fruit like what what what is the snack of your state well whatever um but um also I have been sending him some snapshots of the far side calendar the the far side page a day off the wall calendar um that he gave me last time i was visiting because i love the far side and so like i sent him one that i thought was especially i'm sending my mom some far side photos but it's of the hip-hop group the far side right which your dad actually still thinks it's the same thing fresh she still thinks it's fresh right who was it it was wayne newton and little wayne that your dad thought were the same people i think for a while there but anyway so out of the blue like literally moments ago um while you're doing the introduction i just see here that my dad sent me a photo of um of a cartoon in the reader's digest so it's like a new yorker style cartoon and it's in the reader's digest and i will say it is and basically he's writing to me saying i don't get this so he took the photo and then the message is this and my dad i think i do this sometimes too my dad is a master of carriage returns in a text message you know what i mean

Getting a return, return, return.

Exactly. So it's like, so this is all one text. It's not a bunch of text, but it says, okay, next line. I cannot figure this out. Which guy is speaking? Is it the guy behind the desk or the offender? Anyway, he goes on, why is the chair knocked over? And then a separate text, don't get it. And then the separate text, March, April, RD. So now I'm looking at this, I'm looking at this photo and it is, Let me try to explain this to you, because I got to say, my dad's definitely right about this. This doesn't make sense. So can this be the show pick today? I think it must be unless something else pops up.

People really, because I feel like people are going to want to try to see, get eyes on whatever it is you're about to describe.

So it's a desk scene in somebody's office, right? And there's one guy, and he's clearly the guy whose office it is. And he's standing now sort of holding his mug somewhat nervously. And there are two sort of like thugs in suits, like they're almost like mafia guys, right? And a chair is. knocked over and one of them is dropping the guy's mug on the ground i guess he's got two mugs anyway the the caption is the a quote from one of these thuggish guys saying we're here to deliver jessica's out of office messages you leave her alone and my dad is unclear kind of who the speaker is i think it's pretty clear that the speaker is one of these thuggish guys and so this is like a out of office message joke like an automatic reply joke i guess only these guys are delivering the message more roughly than your email would like it's not a good cartoon no it's

not i guess that is i was initially i thought maybe the premise of the humor was people still trying to email you even when they've received your out of out of office and so now it's been escalated like if somebody keeps emailing you and the auto the out of office reply is not sufficient Then you send in the heavies, but that's like, but you're out of office. You're on a beach in Tahiti. You shouldn't even see that they're still emailing you. Like, although that's another side note. What percentage of out of office replies do you think are basically a sham? Oh, wow. That's interesting. I've always believed them. Well, I don't mean that the people are not out of the office, but what percentage of emails that are sent to someone who is out of office are actually observed by the person who's out of office in like within a 24 hour or 48 hour period and and it certainly depends on the job and probably the person but i think what most of us do is if we we really don't want to be responsible to respond to anyone we're going on a vacation something we've been really looking forward to i know you're going to be you and v's are going to be taking a trip like i will put an out of out-of-office reply on but i'm still seeing those emails because they just come into my phone what the out-of-office reply to me basically says is i have no responsibility to respond to you yeah

give me some grace here i could see that i think that you and i might be in a slightly different i mean not like not super unique but like the fact that the line between our jobs and our life is very very thin and even when we're at american public media like we had to like kind of make a deal of like keeping our usual like i kept my gmail address you kept your private email address and um and tried to get all of our bosses and colleagues to like use those not like a separate apm email and i think some people in certain jobs have like a work email and a private email and when they go on vacation they just turn off work email and they truly do not look at it because that's work shit and it's not bleeding over whereas if i'm using my gmail for uh well business and pleasure luke um you know i am gonna see it come in you know and i might then go back and like mark it unread so i can address it later so i'm sure some people really are unplugged i think it

really depends on the job and the kind of job because i'm just thinking about people in my own life i don't know anyone that's not true i do know people but like of the most of the people I'd say roughly my age, like, so that'd be pretty much Becca and you. Um, most of the people that I know that are kind of roughly in my age cohort, I feel like out of just necessity, we get our work emails on our phones because it's particularly post pandemic with how much, you know, the kind of we're working remotely so much of the time and the convenience factor of having your emails on your phone so that you could be running an errand or doing something not sitting at your workstation but getting and responding hey it's you know the files are over here or whatever the convenience factor of having access to your work email on your phone I think causes a lot of people to do that and then they just continue getting them I just have been on vacation with with you know various people I've been in relationships with and my experience is that people are generally getting their emails on their phones now that's certainly not everybody you're right and like I guess what I guess I guess what I'm really wondering about is like what is it like to be able to like put one of those out of office replies on to go out of office and to literally disengage and not engage with anything work related for a week or two weeks and then come back and open your inbox and look through all of that yeah right yeah that's it i i'm that's almost worse i i that would give me not that i'm good at staying on top of email you work with me you know this but it's like the not the somehow the not seeing of it for that period of time even would would cause me a certain amount of of stress again not that i'm not that i'm very good at staying on top of these things

but um back to the original question remember when we worked with somebody who like it would like two months before their vacation would start saying i'm going on vacation in two months practically like that person do you have any idea what

i'm talking about here i want to be very gentle it's somebody that we worked with closely and who i i have a lot of respect for but my god this person when they unplugged from work they unplugged from work no matter what was going on in tbtl somebody we work with closely regarding some of our larger fundraising campaigns i would say oh sometimes choose times to go to take a vacation and those vacations were hard and fast and there was no seepage there was no

seepage during vacation time the key is to either in in reality or at least to build the narrative that you have a cabin in the minnesota woods with horrible cell service i am i am going i plan on

getting my leg caught between a rock and a hard place i will not be out for what was it 72 hours

i often walk around in the woods of minnesota where there are still many old bear and wolf traps it's the chances are better than not that i will step in one of them and will be unable to respond to you until then again on i wish that those now i'd have completely figured out who you're talking about i wish that those some of those things would have been timed better for the needs of our particular show but that being said i do have a grim respect yes people that are able to just have those boundaries because i think and i'm so fortunate that the jobs that I've been doing are very fun jobs, and I have so much support and help in the doing of those jobs from a bunch of people that work super hard. So my life is a little different, but I do have respect for people that are able to just say, like, look, this is the work time, this is the not work time, and I'm not going to, like, get stressed about what's happening at work because

I'm in my not work time. Yeah, and from a cultural perspective, and then maybe that's where I need to be careful because i raised that i raised that example to you to make you laugh yes but i could be but i realize now as we talk about it you know i'm coming off as such like a a gen xer like you know a younger generation would hear that and be like why are you why are you even slightly teasing somebody for having a good work-life balance like why why would you you know what i mean as people start to kind of explore their relationship with their employers and again we are our employers Like, I'm not sitting around ever being like, why are you emailing me, you know, on vacation about something? You know, in fact, I wish you would email me more on vacation. Luke, I miss you.

Well, the problem is last time I emailed you when you're on vacation, two mafia thugs showed up and knocked my Hasami coffee mug right off the table.

But for those who are listening who are just kind of like, yeah, no, that's good. I do respect that. i respect that person who unplugs because that is part of you know because their vacation package is part of their compensation and they don't owe anything to their employer you know it's a job so yeah i i see that perspective as well yeah i do think it's very generational um you know and that

ours is better as if don't post that john we're trying to appeal to the youth and that's not Helping. All right. Speaking of this being our job, let's thank some dazzlers and then talk about some Wendy's Baconator at a dynamic price.

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.

All right. Let's thank those dazzling donors. These are the incredible, generous supporters of TBTL who are donating a dazzling amount of dough. And it's how this thing can still exist, all these thousands of hours of content later. And we want to thank Laura Gherkin, who's in St. Pete, Florida. Beautiful, beautiful, bright, beautiful St. Pete, Florida. St. Pete. We call it St. Pete, huh? We saved some time. Yeah, Tampa, St. Pete, Clearwater I think that's all kind of in the same general region I've been The most over-the-top wedding I've ever been to Was at the Vinoy Hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida Was that the one that was filmed? The wedding? No, that was the Maybe that was the most over My friend Nihar, his wedding was in LA My friend, your friend Yeah I forget that you and Nihar know each other as well and the way it was, you know, it was a traditional Indian wedding and so those are very expensive things to put on and a TV show hosted by Tori Spelling offered to pay for it and Nihar and his then wife, Seema, were like, yes, please.

But what was the, so by the way, just really quickly, I want to make sure that I'm not being a total idiot here. When we say St. Pete, that's a shortened way of saying St. Petersburg, right? These aren't two, are these two different places and I've been an idiot about this my whole life?

I took,

Thank you.

it to me in st petersburg okay i just wanted to make sure that's kind of what i was spoofing on and it occurred to me could there be a st pete and a st petersburg florida okay so what was the

wedding you went to down there it was a friend of carrie's through some sort of acting connection and it was um like all i could it was beautiful there was i mean the food was incredible there was hundreds of people there was in this historic hotel in st petersburg that's right on the bay and as i looked around the room all i could think was this could be a house like you know like this could i mean again it was lovely but i just i mean also i sometimes the people that are able to throw a wedding like that are also able to give their children money to buy a house or to have a down payment so maybe it's not either or but i just i was just looking around the room just counting like just looking at the hors d'oeuvres and thinking man that's marble countertop in your a modeled kitchen like i was just like do it because i because the couple in question um they were um of the the white the then wife was a an actor in in uh los angeles kind of you know sort of breaking into the business her husband i think worked in set it was a set builder but la is a really expensive place to to live and all i could i was looking around at this wedding thinking god

i would just take the 200k you're like selling you're trying to sell hors d'oeuvres on the secondary market yes you can get some new tires for your car would anyone like some these are

lightly used mushroom caps my friend uh kathleen bowman rest in power um used to call it slinging caps because that's right she was a caterer i mean she was here's what she was she was a stanford law school graduate who had burned out on the legal profession and then had uh gotten interested in public radio and then was had volunteered at KUOW in Seattle and then had become a reporter there and a weekend host. But in the days between Stanford Educated Lawyer and full-time employment at KUOW, she had to supplement her income. And so she was a caterer and she used to always call it sling and caps. Sling and caps. Didn't she ask you to join her one time? I did actually. It was the day that I quit Storable's Extra Space. Wait, hold on. Let me see if I have another detail on

this which means it's during the nba finals here in seattle very good memory i'm starting to connect

the dots only 15 years only 15 years and 15 000 retellings of that story and here we are um yeah i basically was you know i had this just job at a place called storables extra space in a previous version of the um university village mall it was a humble one story little affair down there not anything like it is now. But anyway, yeah, I quit and was all huffy because basically like I was missing out on a chance to scam my way into the NBA. It might have been the finals or the playoffs. I seem to remember it was like Houston. Well, I don't know if anyway, Sonics were in a very important playoff thing. And I had figured out a way to scam my way into the game as a quote unquote media person, even though I had no real business being there. But instead, I had to go to my job at storables extra space and that was the same saturday that i went in and my manager um as we used to say balled me out it's really balled me out over something and i just quit and i didn't really know where to go because i had eight hours blocked out for this shift and i was a quarter karen precisely wendy wendy sorry but i was like but i was like uh i was just kind of wandering around in a daze because you know what happens when you do something like that i quit with this big dramatic flourish then you walk outside and it's kind of like the adrenaline is sort of leaving your system and then you just kind of don't know what to do with yourself because it's like that's over now i'm just okay i quit my job i don't have anywhere to be for the next eight hours so i just wandered up onto the uw campus wandered up to kuow where my friend kathleen aka chatty beau that's what uh bill radke used to call her chat with love with peace and love so chatty beau was up there like doing the weekend you know hosting during like only a game or something and i just was like ah so i just quit my job she goes you should come sling caps and i did and it was the greatest job ever it paid so much it paid like 14 an hour which was a lot at the time 14 an hour uh all of the leftovers you could eat when anything that the the wedding party didn't didn't consume if they didn't want to take it with them we would bring the dishes you know like the big serving things of like moussaka and and sandwiches and all kinds of great stuff we'd bring it back to the to the kind of commissary facility to wash it so like i'm a growing college boy and i'm getting if i if there wasn't great leftover food i would just make myself like a sandwich out of like a sunday morning comic strip and then go home to my dagwood i make myself a dagwood before like going home and like watching hbo on i had a cable box in my room that you literally went click click click click click click you know you had a cable box without a remote control i think it was the maybe i don't maybe i had a remote control i might i might have but i remember that if i wasn't doing the remote you could you you clicked it there was a dial i

didn't know that existed i didn't get cable until well into the 90s but i would eat my sandwich and

all that is to say um oh the other great thing about catering that i didn't realize was you also got tips so i was just like damn dude 14 bucks an hour like that was more money than i had ever

made at that point in my life that's a lot then and everyone i said 90s this is the 90s right this is or this is very late 90s very early probably 90 no like 95 okay uh maybe 90 95 96

and um uh and like so i remember going in one time to get my paycheck and then the boss going oh and here's your tips and she like hands me another check for like an extra 300 bucks or something i was like what is i don't to this day i don't know why i quit that job i was gonna say i

i honestly thought that you only slung caps one time for one event but no this was an ongoing

thing yeah you know for until i weaseled my way into more media stuff probably the thing that got me out of that was i started doing traffic reports at metro traffic but none of this brings us any closer to thank Laura Gherkin in St. Pete, Florida, who says thanks so much to the boys Luke and Andrew for being my best imaginary friends again this year thank you so much to the too beautiful to biz CEO John for being so delightful and helpful, I feel like John is really John has really been featured prominently, well yes in a way that's, you know I don't really like the palace intrigue of all of that, yes you know, and also I feel like John is John is showing up in more and more of these messages. Well, you know why? Because he writes them? Well, because he's the one who sends out the email. He's playing the game, Luke. I told you he's a game player. He's playing the game of doing his job really well. Yep.

When we hired him, he said, I'm here to play games and make friends. I was like, oh, well, that's interesting. We tried to call somebody else, but they were in the woods of Minnesota. Unreachable. But, yeah, they have to give John his tithing.

That's fine. You know what? He absolutely deserves it. Of course. Thanks to John for being so delightful and helpful. I'm sure it was a risk to leave that old job and trust the 10s to support you all, but we are so glad that you're part of the family. Indeed. Thank you so much to the extended TBTL community for being the best online friendos again this year. My 11 still doesn't quite understand why I got so many Christmas cards from friends she's never heard of before. This show and community have kept me going through good times and bad, hopefully more good than bad this year. I'm with you, Laura. Yes. We're all hoping for that for all of us. For my plug, I'm just here to beg and plead to all the tens to get registered and commit to voting this year. Crisis of democracy and blah, blah, blah. But also it connects you to your local community, which is becoming more and more important. For my request, I ask more kitten content and merch. And merch. Love you all. And power out. That's a really good point, Laura. like we think about voting um and sometimes it's it's easy if you live in a blue state or a red state a state that that that regularly and predictably goes in one direction if we're talking about national elections it's easy to kind of think well this is going to go one way and i'm i'm i'm either just going to be part of the the overwhelming majority or i'm going to be in a very small minority but the idea of voting as a way of building community is an interesting thing to think about um just so you kind of know your neighbors and you kind of you know are just more connected to what's happening so that's a good piece of advice from listener laura

um i may um i'm a i'm a fiscal liberal and a conservative wait no what is dennis i totally messed that up what does dennis duffy say on 30 rock he's fiscal he's fiscally liberal but culturally conservative mayhem says that oh we are getting will you allow me before you say maestro to do one thing so it's been an ongoing thing on after these we veves and i recorded a very fun after these messages yesterday if you don't mind me promoting that work down we're on the other side of the super bowl commercials now yeah use the promo code tvtl to get listen to a free podcast but um one of the things i don't know if you know this luke but sometimes genevieve makes fun of me for things sometimes I'm not the smartest person in the world and one of the things that has hung over my head for years now is talking about the mayhem commercials but the first time we talked about them I called them the mayhem commercials mayhem and she's like it's not a mayhem this is not an Easter meal it's mayhem it's not a mayhem and so I've always felt very stupid about that but I played her this uh the other day which is a commercial I'm sorry I'm playing podcast commercial.

during a dazzling donor segment but listen to this this episode is brought to you by all state all state wants to remind fans that mayhem is everywhere what's that what is what mayhem is everywhere huh oh wrong button but i by the way that was mayhem just created i did create mayhem

also why are you playing henry nilson everybody's talking mayhem um because that is what we play for

our when we check in on the ad council for the everybody's talking emails emails especially him

so i just kept playing that is that dennis duffy does he do the vo for that as well no that's not

him um what's his name dean winters no that's not him but it's somebody who um you know mayhem the way you do well the way i used to mayhem anyway or and maybe will again maybe will again i think

yeah that's a tough one i think i would have said mayhem i think i would say mayhem i think

That's why I said the views yesterday. I'm like, don't you think most people probably say mayhem? And she said, I don't know, but they're wrong.

I think saying mayhem is probably like saying February. You know, if you want to be official, you could say February. Connecticut. But nobody says that. Right? Yeah. Although, I know this person we're about to thank might. Maestro.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go.

I say might because the person we're about to thank, the next Dazzling Donor, is a very, very educated, academic, intelligent, what's the other word, eloquent person. It's our friend Zinzi Bailey in South Miami, Florida. I say all of those things because Zinzi was, at least at one time, I believe, a kind of a public health expert. Epidemiology. Expert in epidemiology. To the point that I heard Zinzi on NPR.

Oh, that's right. You told me that.

I was so starstruck. I was just like walking around my house, listening to the radio, and then they were talking about, probably during the pandemic, I feel like epidemiology was a sort of a relevant topic during that time. A little on the nose. They're talking to Zinzi Bailey in Miami.

I was like, that's our Zinzi!

I was freaking out. I've been meaning to reach out to Zinzi. I don't know if that's weird or not, but there is a, this is such a strange thing for me to say. There is an Instagram account that I have absolutely fallen in love with that is kind of a it's a designer and I don't know the person's name behind the account but it's called West of Chester I believe it's called and it's like a very and she designs and draws all kinds of like kind of Miami inspired scenes and whatnot and I think she's a designer at Adobe for a day job but she's got this whole other thing called West of Chester and I believe her partner is also sort of a designer artist who lives in the Miami area. And it's like, it makes me, of course, I listen to a podcast that's out of Miami, so maybe I'm just like becoming a Miami. Yeah, right. But I don't know. I love it so much. And when I see that Zinzi is from Miami, I always think, oh, you might love West of Chester. What a weird place to take that.

Well, an even weirder place, Andrew, is I just realized, thankfully, I think you're not looking too much at the screen at what I'm doing.

Oh, I saw what you were doing over there.

I, because I have the dazzling donor messages up on my screen right now. This is one of those moments where I forgot that we're filming this and I was doing a thing that I do sometimes, uh, which is like a, like a fisherman's wife waiting for her husband to return in Gloucester. I raised some binoculars up to my eyes and was staring out at the water because there was a boat doing donuts out there and I wanted to see what was going on with it. and I completely forgot that you could see me doing that.

I thought you forgot your reading glasses and you were trying to read the message that Zinzi sent in.

That would be hilarious. Let me see if I can do that. Let's see. No. It is a funny image, though. We'd like to thank our dazzling donors today.

Luke is looking at me through binoculars through essentially a Zoom screen right now.

Yeah, so thanks to Zinzi down there in Miami and also thanks to Laura out there in St. Pete. Look, it's a full Florida. Oh, yeah, you know, I didn't even make that connection. Fully Floridian dazzling donor message today. By the way, that made it so much harder for me to see who was on the screen.

Oh, I believe it. And we haven't read Zinzi's message yet, have we? I went on the whole Instagram aside that I can't take out now.

I just, you know, honestly, I just, I think we've said enough about Zinzi. Zinzi says, read it it's always fabulous to support my imaginary friendos but it's even more so now under the guise of too beautiful to biz it's another thing andrew that is very very gratifying and like very relieving to see is is is how um let me how do i put this how many people were actually I believe.

very happy about our transition and about us striking out on our own. That seems to be a consistent theme in these messages because yeah, it was pretty stressful and was pretty risky. We were kind of going away from having the three of us from having like a relay, a reliable salary and benefits and the things you get when you have a job to hoping that this group of listeners would, you know, close one direct deposit and open a new one and, and continue to support what we're doing. And what I'm hearing from these dazzling donors like Zinzi is that they were all pretty stoked we were doing it. So that's kind of, again, that's very gratifying. I'm proud of the direction the show is taking. The show has definitely been supporting me as I'm going through all sorts of career transitions to many more years ahead. Well, Zinzi, I hope those transitions are taking you to all kinds of new and interesting places. And thank you, as always, for supporting the show. We couldn't do it without you. hello and welcome to top story i think actually it was our friend the perfect 10 nick who who hipped me to this but uh at&t last week uh lost cell phone connectivity for about 70 000 people people living in atlanta la and new york um and uh this outage started around 3 30 a.m eastern time so about 12 30 in the morning if you're on the west coast 3 30 in the morning if you're on the east coast um at&t says that it lasted about seven hours and like i said affected about 70 000 people and they have announced that each of those people is entitled to a five dollar credit for having been offline for those seven or so hours, which I guess part of their logic, the credit is meant to refund customers for the day that the service was lost. Basically, was that that's about what it costs. $5 a day is what most people's cell phone bill is? That was what, in the article, the AT&T folks were kind of indicating. Basically, they said, we're doing you a favor. you only lost service for seven hours but we refunded you for a whole day because that's the

right thing to do well it's interesting i so i have not read this article i kept seeing the headline i kept saying i need to read that before we talk about it so i i i have to pose this more as a question i really wanted to do the math on this i just typed in here what is a typical at monthly sell bill you know and it says somewhere between like 51 and 85 so let's just say that the let's split the difference on that and just say like 70 or something like that like it's like

200 is that just your cell bill i think so verizon i should really look this up anyway keep going

okay wow okay so anyway i i was curious how the math broke down because you see the headline that says you know these folks who were without i mean we were talking before about being connected at all times like seven hours i'm assuming these are these are seven like critical hours during the day Not nighttime when usage would go down, but to be without your cell phone for basically the majority of a working day is a huge pain in the ass. And to then get a $5 card seems very paltry. But on the other hand, if you took your average bill, which again, I don't really know what it would be, and you divide it down and you figure out exactly how much do I pay per hour for my cell phone service. i wonder if this does actually scratch out on paper but it kind of misses the point though

right exactly because uh yeah technically speaking if uh and in fact this is this is so corporate so they're talking to um let me see if i can find uh the name of the uh person i know his last name is uh stanky the chief executive of at&t john t stanky wrote in a letter uh that they apologize. And then he also said, I believe that crediting these customers for essentially a full day of service is the right thing to do. I feel like that should be Wilford Brimley should be delivering that. It's just the right thing to do. So on the one hand, it's like, I love that they're somehow taking the moral high ground. They're like, yeah, sorry, sorry, you were trying to call like, sorry, you were trying to call 911, you know, or sorry, sorry, you were trying to like look something up that was really vital, but we are going to give you the cost of a full day of service or that we're going to credit you back a full day of service even though that was only happening for seven hours by the way the best deal would have been if you were on the west coast and you didn't even know this happened yeah right you go to the time you go to sleep you wake up at 7 30 in the morning and you turn on your phone and you have no i mean that's the perfect crime you had no idea that you even were your phone was even down um but yeah i it's it's not one of those things that breaks down strictly along the actual map.

of the cost of what your cell phone bill is every day. Because if you were driving somewhere and trying to find someone's house and it was late at night and it's dark or whatever, I can think, and you need your mapping program. When you need your cell phone to work in a moment, it's like the actual cost of per day, it's not a $5 event, if that makes any sense. There have been times where I would have paid $1,000 for my phone to work. Where you just, again, you're in that moment of, crisis might be overstating it but literally like i'm late for a shoot and i'm trying to get there i'm driving and like ways is just giving me this red screen and it's just like keeps constantly resetting and i'm like oh my god i'm in so much trouble right now and i can't find the place i'm trying to go to or you know again whatever the scenario the scenario is you're trying to fish finish an episode of rick and morty like something like that yeah pickle rick whatever sure yeah Yeah, like so it's one of those things where in a way $5 is like, yeah, that is what you're paying a day maybe, but also like the inconvenience. How do you put a price on the inconvenience that could happen when you really, really need your phone to work?

And there's another aspect of this too. I think they're issuing – I think I have this right. They're issuing – no, they're not. They're not issuing cards. I think I read that mistakenly, and I was picturing them actually giving people, like, little cards, you know, how you can get a gift card or something for $5. And I'm wrong about that, so everything I say after this is, I guess, kind of pointless, but I'll keep going. Because I guess what makes sense is they'll credit your AT&T account. That makes so much more sense, which, okay, then it's like, okay, $5 crediting account. But when you think, I guess what I want to do is explore the idea of $5 in 2024. for like if you had an isolated five dollars on a card or even somebody gave you a five dollar bill I mean that you would maybe mix in with your other money if you have if you have cash money or if your account is credited or you just get an extra five dollars in your bank account like that's one thing but like if somebody were to give you a card say hey happy birthday Luke here's a five dollar card from AT&T that really raises the question what does that get you these days because like can you and I don't go into coffee shops all that often anymore because I work from home so I make the coffee here but like if you had a five dollar gift card to um starbucks or any coffee shop and you get a pretty normal cup of coffee but a large like you're still gonna have to need to reach into

your wallet after that five bucks i think you could get a large drip like a venti drip at starbucks for under five dollars i think i could be wrong about that usually i get like but it gets close it's very close yeah close you have five dollars do you think five dollars could get you a baconator at wendy's though good transition that's a transition for you so this is one of those stories that came out the other day and i put it on my list oh we should talk about it and then i heard an interview this morning or at least a reference to it on npr that made me wonder if it's still a topic but i kind of do think it is so basically the ceo of wendy's told shareholders recently that they are going to be testing out dynamic pricing in 2025 anytime the ceo is talking to shareholders you know it's going to be good news yeah for the consumer you know they're they're like usually ceos are getting on those calls going we've decided to charge less and have bigger portions yes to you the shareholders we've decided to improve the customer experience even though it's going to cost all of us a lot of money and the shareholders usually go huzzah huzzah we need to be better people yes classically what happens on these calls yes but um uh so so the story the other day was oh my god you know you're gonna pull up to wendy's and you're frosty because it's a 85 degree day your frosty is going although that's now like usually spring because it's 105 degree day your your frozen treat at wendy's is now going to be nine dollars instead of being uh you know whatever four dollars or something and then today the the wendy's folks clarified they said oh no no no we're not going to raise prices ever what we're going to do is drop prices during slow periods so we are going to use ai first of all they're replacing all of the menu screens for some digital ass thing that can very very quickly respond like a stock that's exactly what i was thinking this is going to be like this running thing of prices along the bottom of just like the nasdaq is priced in what these spicy nugs are going to cost you know but like what they're saying is and again of course it's using ai because doesn't it always they are saying that they are going to use some sort of ai program that is going to um kind of track when people are not coming to various wendys and then they're going to drop prices on things by like a quarter They said in and then if you are someone who uses the Wendy's app

do you are you like me andrew there are certain apps that you just feel insulted when they ask you if you're going to use it how so i don't know there are certain things that i will use an app for and then there are certain things like i feel like more and more when you go try to order something are you using the quiznos app today are you going to use the jimmy john's app today and

i'm like no oh you mean you get a little push notification on your phone no i mean the people at the stores now ask you oh i see i'm not in that situation you get a lot of teriyaki which

is a different scene but if you're going to a lot of jimmy's john's and and even like i'll hit a mcdonald's drive-thru i'm not proud i usually am a a large fries chocolate shake kind of guy but like um if you go through a lot of the court big corporate drive-thrus and big corporate places the first thing they ask you is are you going to pay on the app are you going to be ordering with the app and it's a very intentional they're trying to move everyone on to the apps for all of these programs and i i always find that annoying but now i'm realizing one of the things that this wendy's is planning on doing is let's say that you you do order on the wendy's app and you like to get your spicy nugs then like they know that that's a thing you like and so it might be like 3 p.m on a tuesday and no one's going to the local wendy's and you get a push notification on your phone hey we got a deal going on spicy nugs right now come through um and so that's I guess, how they're planning on using this. And so that's how they're planning. That's how they say they're planning on using it. I guess I would say, though, like, I mean, I don't know. Do you part of me thinks, well, it's corporate America. Of course, if there's a way for them to make more money on this eventually, like by charging more when there's scarcity of something, of course, they're going to do that. But on the other hand, I do think that if you pulled up and all of a sudden your Frosty is way more than it would be normally, or you pull up and your Baconator is way more than it would be normally, I think that would piss people off to a degree that it would be counterproductive. So maybe this is really only something that will work for discounts and not for increasing prices.

Yeah, and if that's the truth, well, then actually I think that's a pretty good, it's kind of a good gambit, actually. If it's kind of like, hey, listen, our stated price is always this. Like, I don't know what it would be, $6 for Frosty? It's one banana, Michael. You know, that reminds me of something that I feel that I've been living with for about two weeks that I still feel bad about. A little moment that I've been reliving. And I made the right decision for myself. I can't quite explain it other than being old and a little bit cranky, but also feeling terrible. So there is a Thai restaurant not too far from my house. And it's some kind of a, you know, I live off of this road, Aurora, that we talk about a lot that has a lot of like, you know, it's kind of a rundown area of town. It's not one of the nicer parts of town. In fact, I raised that because this Thai restaurant that actually had really good food, I only went there a couple of times. It's like very fresh, very good. It's in a very modest little building. Like literally the last time I was there, I talked to the owner about the shooting. Is this the one that's on Aurora? It's on Aurora, and he saw a shooting across the street. I think it's kind of near the donut shop, I think, the Krispy Kreme or something.

It's in the Krispy Kreme district.

Yeah. And so anyway, I had passed this place a lot and I hadn't gone in. And then I finally went in and they had really, really good fried rice. So I went back there a couple of times for lunch or whatever. But I haven't been there a lot. Anyway, I know that he was kind of struggling with business and also seeing shootings around his place. And he had a pretty terrible neighbor. We ended up having this whole conversation when I was paying my bill, like I'm going to say about a year ago or maybe six months ago. In fact, it was one of those types of conversations where I paid my bill. We're still talking about the neighborhood and everything. And I love talking about my neighborhood. I like meeting my neighbors and stuff. But then the phone rang. You know, he's at business. He's at work. He's in this place of business. And he picks up the phone. And I make a motion like, I'm going to leave now because you have business to conduct. You're running a restaurant. He's like, he gives me the, no, no, stay here. We're not done with our conversation yet. In a very nice way. not like a bullying way he was my point is like he was very engaged and I kind of enjoyed that

conversation I thought you were going to say he just hung the call up and I was like this could

be why the business isn't thriving yeah right exactly no but he um I don't know if he took an order I don't know what it was but I stuck around because I wasn't in a hurry and I kind of like little moments like that so anyway the place closes for quite some time and it says closed for renovations I noticed um and then it was it reopened the other day they have uh some some new like windows were installed they have a little tent sign outside of it a little chalkboard sign you know talking about specials or whatever I'm like hey the place is back open and I go in and what you know it's again it's a modest place it's clean um last couple of times I was in there I'm the only person dining in I'm sure the vast majority of businesses take out but I'm like I want some of that fried rice so I go in but instead of seeing him it's a different person who greets And it's an Asian woman who speaks English as a second language, kind of a short lady.

very very nice she seemed excited to see me I walk in I'm the only person that I see anywhere and then she comes back from from the kitchen to say to greet me and it looked like she had been cooking or something and I'm like oh hey and I know what I want I'm there very specifically to read my book and eat this fried rice that I had one time that I liked and she's like oh hey and she like kind of gives me a menu that is still handwritten it's like sheets of paper and it's nice handwriting but it's like clearly a temporary situation and there's these pieces of paper that are that are you know put into these plastic sleeves and she hands it to me and she explains to me that everything is by phone now and if you sit down like i can order by phone and then she gestures i can get my own water and stuff over here at a little like kind of water bar area and i was so turned off by the idea of sitting down and ordering by phone off of this new menu like I was just kind of like I was in the middle of my work day I just wanted some fried rice I knew exactly what I wanted I knew what the routine was going to be and I just kind of I stood there for a second holding this menu looking at her thinking about do I really want to sit down here and then order by phone and I just said oh is this under new ownership and she said yes yes and I said you know what I'm going to come back later this isn't this isn't what I'm here for right now or something like that and oh she even asked my name she asked my name right away she's like what's your name I'm like Andrew and she's like oh it's so good to see you Andrew but then I hand the menu back to her I'm like okay you know what this isn't what I'm here for right now I'll be back I'll be back I said I'll be back she didn't get it get to the chopper I said get to the chopper um and and then she's okay Andrew and I could hear like sadness in her voice and she said my name she said okay Andrew as I left and I couldn't like in that moment I don't know why I was so turned off by the idea of like having to explore a new menu and then order by phone and it makes sense this woman probably bought this place and is probably doing literally every job she is probably clearing the plate she's probably making the food she is the host who greeted me and she's going to be bringing of course to survive in an industry that has such small margins it probably the only way it works for her is to treat every order like a takeout order whether the person is sitting at her table or not there's nothing inherently wrong with that but i just wasn't there for it that day and this is about three or four weeks ago and every time i play every time i pass that place now luke i'm not kidding i feel a twinge of guilt i'm like i gotta get some takeout from that place i gotta

support i love how you've constructed a universe in which eating fried rice makes you the hero

no you're like not i know it doesn't they're not eating fried rice made me the villain

right but the way but the way that you you undo that damage is you go in there today you march yourself in there yeah with your cellular telephone you order that fried rice you sit and you eat it so did it even occur to you in that moment i'm by the way i would have responded exactly the same way i know most of the eating that i do if it's not in my own home is because of a certain almost physical experience that i'm looking to have and looking to have a certain kind of room i'm looking to be sitting in a certain kind of smell a certain kind of like that's what makes it all kind of enjoyable and when that gets thrown off it changes it did what was there any universe in which you

could have said can i just order it from you i you know what there was a language barrier i didn't feel like getting in she seemed very busy like i didn't really feel like i just didn't feel like getting into it it was like this isn't what i'm here for like again i would very much like you luke like sometimes i'm just like i have walked out of places before if i can't sit at the counter And again, not in a huffy way, but like I like sitting at counters and bars in some scenarios. And so if I go to a lunch place and I'm picturing myself eating like a, you know, country fried steak or chicken fried steak at a counter and there are no counters, there's a chance it's like this isn't how I pictured my lunch or my brunch or whatever. So I'm going to leave. And that it was just one of those moments like I just didn't and I definitely do have a bias against ordering on my phone from a place when I'm there. and you know what I mean it just makes total business sense for her to run it that way in order for her to remain probably solvent yeah but like I just didn't want to do it yeah now the

thing though is if you invest the time although this also might not really reflect how your afternoons work typically but if you invest the time to actually figure out how to do the dang thing on your phone you could also then start ordering like 10 minutes ahead and then show up like there's a universe in which it's actually like very convenient but also that's maybe not what you're what you're going for um it's also just the the the door dashification of our society is really is really fascinating i was talking about um the the the delivery of vacation of our of our life now with the supply chain how yesterday i had two two different subcontractors who clearly get a gig

Thank you.

they own trucks and they deliver things for Ikea although I don't think they work for Ikea and I had two different guys showing up that do this bringing me different like you know pieces of hardware from Ikea like how is it all in the same truck I don't know but like also this idea that more and more places that serve food are are just going to become sort of computerized food what what do you call it computerized food retrieval locations where you just your phone you know and eventually what'll happen is your your your phone uh will be talking to their system and their system will know what you usually like and you'll walk through the door it'll be like the reverse of one of those amazon stores where you just pick everything up and walk out and it charges you you'll walk in and it'll like your food will be like they're ready for you because it knows what you ordered last time i mean there's a there's a convenience factor to all of this but it is definitely like the way that we live and move through the world at least you know in these in

the U.S. is really changing pretty rapidly and I mean I could see a scenario maybe even like let's say like pre-pandemic before like the idea of ordering on your phone was sort of you know became kind of a necessity for various reasons but let's just say that like let's say five years ago a friend of mine said hey this wouldn't apply to this particular place because of the location and Again, kind of the expectations. But if somebody said, hey, there's a really cool new Thai restaurant that's in, like, the U Village, like you mentioned before, or, you know, even just in the university district or something. And it's kind of like, and it's really great. It's really fresh food. And you order by phone, and they bring it out. It's kind of a cool thing. I'm like, yeah, I'd try that, you know. And then it might be a place where I go. I'm like, hey, I'm going to go to the order by phone place. It's like now I just sort of have this bias against it. And, again, I will go in there at some point, and I will order food, whether it's to take out or to go. And it was just like a kind of just I am just a man who is it wasn't great when I was young and it's much worse when I'm old. Like if I just have certain expectations, I just get kind of very stuck in them.

Again, the irony is that half of the time when I'm talking to human beings, something is happening that I'm finding to be irksome. Most of this show is me complaining about a customer service interaction. so in a way to walk into a restaurant like particularly a kind of a sandwich shop or something and then just to go up to one of those screens because again if you go into most fast food restaurants now there is a big screen that you line up and you just do your order and like then they just haul you pay there and then they just holler your your number and you go grab it from the thing like that's the typical thing and it's way more efficient and honestly Probably my ability to poke that order in accurately to what my desires are is probably better. Although I will tell you this, in Germany of all places, so it was when I was in Frankfurt, I was starving. And the only thing that was still open was this McDonald's that was around the corner. And so I was getting a large fry and what I thought was a large soda. And I'm poking into the big digital thing. and then finally like and then uh for the first thing that happened was i put this whole thing in there's all these like young people that have been out partying and they're all just like standing around get and i'm just like this weird kind of dude by myself just in the corner like just trying to get my stuff and it's not happening it's not happening and then i realized i have a receipt but i haven't paid yet like i needed to go up and like somehow i went to the screen and ordered my stuff but it didn't i hadn't finished the process in some way so i had to go up and i was like hey i'm just curious where's my stuff and the person was like well you haven't actually paid i was like

oh okay did they speak and they spoke enough english for you to have that conversation yeah

you know germany is pretty they're pretty pretty great on the english honestly most of my experience with people in germany is them speaking flawless english and apologizing for their english

and you speaking no german exactly there in their country by the way with no apologies with no americans don't apologize luke so that is i mean i don't i apologize it's such a me thing to drill down on this but did you ever figure out what the system was it seems weird to have a kiosk and then but you don't pay with the kiosk you go to a it was this a drug deal i do you place your order

at one place and then pay somebody else i don't understand how or why i why this was how it happened but somehow i had not activated the i had not finished the process i had finished it enough that i was holding something but i had not maybe i didn't put my card and i don't know what was going on but the point was i was waiting and waiting and waiting and i'm just like wave after wave of club kid is coming through and getting their chocolate sundaes and leaving and i'm like so i go up and then the person says well you actually haven't paid yet i was like okay well i'm gonna pay now so now i realize oh all that was a waste of time so i pay i get my new receipt or whatever i go sit i'm waiting now and then they give they bring out my fry

And they bring out my soda

Thank you.

And it's like a small soda And I had tried very hard to order A large soda because I was thirsty From all the clubbing I'd been doing And so I had a small soda And I said oh I think I had a large soda And this is the point of this story Is this is the difference I think between Germany and the US I think in the US It's like okay whatever Like hey oh I had the large soda And some harried McDonald's employee would just be like Oh sorry here's a big one this is water with sugar in it here you go here's more of it the manager comes over takes my ticket and goes well you paid for a small soda i was like oh okay so that i just took my coffee cup size tiny diet coke and my french fries and was eating them as i walked out onto the streets of

frankfurt but i was i was struck by lucas imitating a troll while doing that by the way

that's exactly the audience didn't get to see because i had a soda in one hand i didn't have a free hand for my fries so what i did i see the fries were sticking out the top of the of the packaging of the little you know whatever container and for the longer fries i was just

going in and pulling them out of there pulling them out of the sleeve with your teeth because

you're not sitting down at the table no you think i'm gonna like be kicking it in a frankfurt

mcdonald's by myself at 11 p.m i thought for a split second when you said i believe i ordered a large they were going to say that is a large like the difference between like an american large and a european large because that could have been a situation too i just i was just shocked that there

was this level of rigor around yeah my soda order at a german mcdonald's it just seemed like i mean i'll tell you what usa usa i feel like most of the time in the u.s if you were to say oh i think i had the large soda the person would literally not even but also considering they were slammed, that you'd think they would just be like, let's just get the guy the damn large soda pop and get him out of our hair.

And Germans are known to be super laid back. Exactly.

Jawohl.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. No, man. It's not from a female.

This is one of those shows, Andrew, where there's been far too much food talk for me. I know. I've been wondering. For me to stay on my straight and narrow of my general skipping of the lunch. I don't know if today is going to be one of those days.

While you were talking about Wendy's, I was like, well, I guess it's working because now I'm thinking I haven't had a Wendy's in years. And I go on Google Maps and I look at where the nearest Wendy's is.

There are not that many Wendy's. Will you be using the Wendy's app today? Actually, you know what? I'm going to give you the ultimate cover, Andrew. This can be content creation. If you go to Wendy's for lunch today, I know you're not a big drive-thru guy, right? Would you walk into the Wendy's or would you drive through if you went? I don't even know.

I was looking. It looks like the nearest one is Lake City, which isn't too bad, but, like, it sort of seems like, I don't know.

If you do find yourself going through there and you do go through the drive-thru, I'm curious if they're going to ask you, will you be ordering through the Wendy's app today? Because that's the big push.

Why would you order through the app if you're already in the drive-thru line? That's where I'm. So like Jersey Mike's, I use like not the app, but the website because I can order it at home. Then I go and it's ready for me when I show up. I think you gave that example earlier. It's very convenient for me. I didn't realize I'm collecting points. I now have enough points for a free mini sandwich, which I'm probably never going to use. But unless it becomes like a super like maybe it's like now you have a free Homer sized sandwich that you slept with for.

I can't stay mad at you.

Exactly. But, like, I guess I am out of the fast food culture enough, unsurprisingly, that once you're in the drive-thru lane, are you then supposed to use the app, like, sitting in your car?

I think so, and I think it's all about points. Like, when we, when Becca and I are in a Starbucks, she has the app on her phone, and she very much, you know, buys things with that because if you do it enough, and again, you know, I'm obsessed enough with my points when it comes to travel and stuff that I can, I can identify with it there's just I guess what I when I said I feel insulted when certain places ask me if I'm going to use the app because there are certain purchases to me that just seem like am I ever going to buy enough Jimmy John's sandwiches that I get a significant like rebate of sandwich from them I mean I guess I should test the theory but so much of the time I just feel like out of here with that shit I just want to talk to a human being and get my sandwich

because we're young and we're cool and we're the future uh-huh uh did you already play the email sounder i think you did right um i'm gonna i'm gonna give you an option here and it might sound obvious but maybe you'll surprise me i'm gonna give you a choice here do you we have two voicemails do you want to talk about well do you want to hear from somebody who has a question about dreams or a pilot talking about baggage on airplanes pilot talking about that i knew it i'm saving the dream one though for next week i'm not i'm not

I'm not anti.

Maybe tomorrow. This is listener Mark. This goes back to a conversation we're having about.

The master of transport.

Former truck driver. He will set this all up. And we were talking about like this article kind of. Would you describe it as a think piece sort of about like the baggage that we bring on the planes and then store in the overhead containers? And somebody was saying we just need to totally change that.

What it was was a very clickbaity article that I then tried to create a clickbaity conversation around, which was, is it the end of overhead baggage containers? Although no one was realistically proposing that, but it was just a conversation about, yeah, kind of why it is that we so often get onto the plane with our carry-on luggage and find that there's no room for it.

yes and mark um actually brings up an economic point that makes a lot of sense that i can't i don't think we said explicitly but maybe we danced around a little bit but um i have a quick question for you about the clickbaitiness of this looking back was this an atlantic article it wasn't it was an atlantic article i believe it was in the atlantic because genevieve just the other day and we um subscribed to the atlantic um she was just like the the atlantic is getting so much more clickbaity these days and i don't know if you've noticed that oh yeah as well i i literally talked

about it on stage at livewire a couple weeks ago not as part of the recording but i was saying to the crowd that like i because i get an email from the atlantic every day i don't subscribe anymore i used to but i still am on their email list and you know they email me all the stories that i'm you know missing although there's links to it and they're getting very they're like one was like why you shouldn't be worried about the russian space nukes and that was i think the first i was hearing of russian space nukes and i was like that's a pretty i think you heard about it first on the

show because i mentioned something on morning edition maybe shortly thereafter like like

basically framing the headline is why you shouldn't worry about russian space nukes if for a person who's finding that out for the first time that's a pretty click-baity way to

structure that sentence right that yes and i and what was the one like i get that i think you get this as well like an email from that app pocket that you can sort of save articles in to read later and they send out a daily digest as well um of various like you know headlines that fit that kind of thing and there be i'm seeing more and more atlantic headlines in there like yesterday's had two atlantic headlines and one of them being like why why we complain and four step four steps to help you complain less or something like that and like the article did not reflect the headline And the headline was so clickbaity and the article was interesting. But anyway, they do seem to be going in that direction. But all right. So this is a listener, Mark.

Hey, dummies, it's Mark, the former truck driver, current pilot. I was calling to respond to your talking about baggage today. Two thoughts. Number one, I agree that we need to do something about the overhead situation. It doesn't make any sense from an economic standpoint to charge for something that's fairly unlimited, i.e. under the plane checked baggage. And it's not charged for something that is fairly limited, i.e. overhead storage. So let's change that paradigm. Number two, gatekeepers.

So that's kind of interesting, right? Yeah, unlimited, of course.

Mr. Unlimited under the plane?

Yeah, it's funny. They're charging us for that, which, I mean, I guess in a certain way you would say, well, the convenience is you don't have to be responsible for your bags. But, like, in this day and age, it sort of seems like it's more convenient just to have your little rolly bag, as I call them, and throw it overhead. So it's like the whole economic model has sort of been upended.

But again, the idea that there is an unlimited amount of space, like we could just like, is there a significant portion of the belly of the plane that is currently not being utilized? Oh, I see. You're questioning that. I'm not questioning and I'm surprised to hear that. You know, Mark, if I remember right, the way he phrased it was you're going for something that's essentially unlimited, which is the amount of baggage that can go in the underside of the airplane. And you're charging for that, but then you're not charging for something that's a more finite space issue. But I was keying on the idea that, like, I guess I just assumed the whole underside of the plane is just packed with baggage, but maybe it's not.

I always assumed that it was pretty cavernous down there, but I don't know what I'm basing that on. I thought, and this is probably just maybe an urban legend that I heard a long time ago and I internalized or something, but, like, I thought that airplanes, just passenger planes, will sometimes use the dead space underneath there for, like, deliveries. It's like I always thought that there was space underneath there for things that needed to get from point A to point B that were not related to the people on the plane itself. Have you ever heard that? Or am I making shit up?

I well, I know that sometimes I'll put pets down there. Yeah. I don't know what the deal is on like human remains. Like maybe, you know, somebody being somebody's body being moved from one place to another. I don't know what the rules are around that. I mean, I'll tell you this.

Like, FedEx doesn't have, like, a deal with Alaska to be like, hey, we're going to put, like, this – we're going to use this much of your cargo hold for – I mean, I –

I would be shocked if they weren't doing that at this point. I mean, I would be shocked if there's any part of the air travel experience, or I should say, of putting one of these big mechanical birds in the sky where there's some kind of valuable space that's being underutilized. I would just the market wouldn't stand for that.

So, yeah, especially airplane or the airline industry where we see so much monetization of monetization and also just like, you know, overbooking passengers and then having to adjust. Just to make sure that there's no dead space at all I have to say it's pretty funny

Like I'm flying to New York on Saturday And That's a pretty big flight And there's not a lot of them I'm flying from Portland to JFK maybe And it's clear That there's something happening With that flight being potentially overbooked Because I get these come ons from Alaska That was like are your plans flexible Here's a $25 Credit if you want to change your flight And I'm like yeah right $25 sure someone's going to completely change their right cross continental flight that you know over 20 like you need to start a lot higher my friends like that is not even a good opening bid you need to read you need to talk to your AI program and get you need to get

real dude because who is the person that that works on because I sort of feel like for somebody that $25 would be a big incentive is not somebody who's traveling so lightly that their schedule is fungible. You know what I mean? It sort of seems like somebody who could possibly rearrange their flight is somebody who's flying constantly anyway, and $25 doesn't go very far if you probably live in that kind of lifestyle. So, okay. And then this next part of this email or this voicemail is about actually we should address this because this is something you and I, I think, were disagreeing about something, But I was confused about what we're disagreeing about. I'll let Mark set it up. This is about, what do you call it, gate checking bags. Oh.

Number two, gate check baggage. Gate check baggage can definitely mean you're going to get it at the plane site or at baggage claim. It depends on the kind of sticker they put on your bag. If it's one of those white sort of printed out stickers that peels off and sticks to itself, that's going to be at baggage claim. If it's a brightly colored tag that just sort of has a piece of elastic on it, that's gate sign. Third of all, if you're coming to the plane with a bag that you know will not fit in the overhead, don't do that.

That was my life hack. I know. I was advocating for that as well. You had texted me the other night, and you said, like, they gate check my bags, and they're telling me it's going to be ready for me. But I was like, I don't think I disagree. I thought you were saying that there might be a different name for it when they take my bags, and then I have to pick them up at the.

I think Mark was ultimately agreeing with you. So what had happened was we were talking about it and I was saying something about gate checking and how I had had that experience on my flight that landed in Chicago where they had gate checked my bag, meaning they had pulled it from the underside of the airplane and put it in that area right when you get off the airplane. And I didn't know they were doing that. So I walked out to go to baggage claim. And then when my bag never came off, they said, oh, no, we gate checked it for you. And now my bag was trapped on the other side of security. And it took hours and hours to get anyone to go get it and wheel it out to me. So I was making the argument that gate check, in my experience with Alaska Airlines, means you're going to get the bag right when you step off the airplane. You were saying there's a broader definition, and you were looking up like a website travel something that was saying to gate check just generally means you checked it at the gate.

Yeah, that's the action is at the gate, not where you pick it up.

Right. But I guess what I was talking about was a specific terminology on Alaska Airlines. And then when I sent you that photo was because they had gate checked something of mine. What I mean, the only thing I was trying to say, I mean, you're right. And and Mark is supporting your ultimate point, which is like gate check just means you didn't check it at the counter. When you got to the airport, you're checking it at the gate. And whatever happens after that is it'll either be at the baggage carousel or it'll be at the thing. What I was noting is that's very hyper specifically to the world of Alaska Airlines. And probably first-class Alaska, because it happens to me a lot on Alaska. If they say, oh, we're going to gate-check that, then my experience is that specific thing of saying, oh, we're going to gate-check this for you, is their way of telling you this is going to be waiting for you, or at least when you get off, don't go to the baggage carousel. It's going to be right here. But what Mark was saying was gate-check just means you're checking it to this person, and then whatever happens to it after that is what happens to it. So he's actually supporting your point of view on this, which angers me deeply.

Well, because that's what I was a little confused about. I thought it was just a language thing because I don't think I said that. I don't know if I said this or not, but maybe you don't realize this. But, like, this happens to me, like, a lot. Like, it's one of those annoyances of flying now.

where I'm one of those people who's waiting at the gate and I almost exclusively fly Alaska. And then they'll start the announcement and they'll say, hey, we don't have enough overhead room. We're looking for volunteers to gate check the bag. And I'm always like, I'm not going to volunteer for that. I don't even know if there's an incentive for doing it early, but they basically say, if we don't get enough volunteers, we're just going to make it mandatory. And I'm always like, oh, and then I get the little squiggle over my head. And then usually I'm always sitting in the back of the plane, especially if I'm traveling solo, because I'll do anything to get an aisle seat. And so I'm sitting in the back of the plane. Usually I'm one of the poor suckers who they take my bag from me. And I would say that probably happens to me. It feels like half the time, but maybe not quite half. And then depending on where I pick it up, 90% of the time of this happening to me, it's at the carousel. Sometimes it's at the gate, and I don't know if you've ever had this, but sometimes it's actually, this is very rare, but actually on the concourse. Have you ever had that where they hand it to you off the rack? So I've had it happen all three ways. I thought you were saying if I'm picking up at the carousel, it's not called gate checking, but I was just arguing. I think that the action of checking happens when they take it from you, not when they give it back to you.

See, this is the thing, though, too, that just overall, i have become a fan of the idea of being unburdened of my bag now maybe not now maybe mark's pointing out that's i would be curious mark um i believe you but i'm curious what the explanation is of why it's he said don't do that like don't bring don't wheel your luggage that you kind of know is probably not going to be able to get on top or i should say under um yeah in the overhead like don't knowingly bring a bag that's too big to go in the overhead knowing that you can gate check it don't do that because i was saying that's kind of a life hack it buddy i wonder if that's because it delays the flight if that's because it causes you know there's always a person a very hard-working baggage person whose job it is to run up and down these steps that are like you know right when you on the jetway and they're like bringing up this like car seats and stuff like that maybe it just makes that person's life way worse i'm curious from mark what why it is that that's a you know kind of a bad idea um to do that but anyways what i was going to say is just if i'm you with the squiggles if it's not costing you anything is it just the idea that you're worried the luggage will be lost is it that you don't want to wait for it on the carousel

is that you just feel like it's that yeah because it usually like i say for me it's usually a carousel and maybe that's because again i'm like because i'm flying in the back of the plane as opposed to first class whatever it is usually i do not want that extra step for me when i go to the airport i'm just kind of like okay okay i got to the airport now i got to get through security Like I'm always checking off like the little the little the mini legs of my airport trip. And when I land somewhere, I just don't especially on the way home. And I feel like it usually is happening on the way home because I can just I just have gotten to sort of know that that area kind of in the basement of the Alamo. I mean, in the basement of SeaTac Airport.

Dude, that place sucks now, by the way. They're remodeling the baggage area at SeaTac. And it is a bunker. I don't know what is going on there. But is I Beck and I landed there on Saturday and I couldn't find my way out. I mean, literally, I couldn't find my way out of the building to go to the rental car shuttle.

I would I just want to go back to something that Mark said. And like, in all seriousness, like peace and love to Mark, like I do not want to make anybody's job, you know, at the airline, you know, whatever it is, whether you're a pilot like Mark or the people who are running those bags up and down, anybody in the chain. I don't want to make their lives harder. having said that the only reason people like me started thinking about that life hack and i told you that genevieve's dad i think has been sort of uh an advocate for a while of just like don't check your bag because they're going to charge you for it and then wait till you're at the gate and then ask them if it's too big or whatever they're going to try to confiscate it from you at the gate for free yeah and i understand from a systemic point of view like everything is happening in the you know like the margins are so tight from like schedule wise and and profit wise I mean, I don't want to talk about profit because the CEOs of these of these airlines are doing fine. You know, it's like where the money is going. But either way, like my point is, like, the only reason that life hack exists is because they're charging. And by the way, overcharging for us to do the right thing, which is just to check our bags where they should be checked. Like when you first when you first arrive, they have forced that issue by, I think, being greedy.

Right. I mean, there is I hadn't thought of it this way, but there is a deep irony to the idea. that they're charging you more and more for your bag until you're at the gate, in which case they're begging you to please give your bag away for a period of a few hours. And like, you don't think that people are going to, you know, nature abhors a vacuum. You think that people aren't going to naturally start figuring. out that there's one place where they're like, we will literally do anything to take this bag off your hands. Of course you're going to start doing that. We would do anything for bags, but we won't do that. We can all agree Mark was wrong. Sorry. Across the board. Get back to me when you're a train conductor, Mark. The last cross-country conveyance you've yet to master.

Did you notice that it sounded like Mark was driving when he left that as well? I think that's interesting. Our unofficial Flying the plane or possibly flying. All right.

Thank you so much, everyone, for listening. We are going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

hey Lloyd do some delivery for the truck to the airport power out