Muse

What are you guys doing here? Emergency band meeting. I'm working. This is my work. You're not working, you're just holding a sign. Yeah, well, I got the job because we didn't have any gigs. How can I give you a gig if you've got this job? Yeah, but that's why I got the job, because there were no gigs. Well, I can't get you a gig if you're going to always go and do a job. Yeah, but that's... I needed the job because there were no gigs. Well, I've got you a gig, so what's with the job? Yeah, but that's it. That's the thing. I got the job because there are no gigs, man. It's a chicken-egg situation. What do you mean? What's he mean, chicken? Well, you know, what came first, the chicken or the egg? Oh, that's irrelevant, isn't it? Or theality. Stupid. The chicken, obviously. Well, where did the chicken come from? Well, it came from the... Ah. You see, the egg. You're the egg. You're a bad egg. T-B-T-L.

Guess what day it is. Guess what day it is.

It's Friday, Friday. I'm going to get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend.

It's garbage. All I've been thinking about all week is garbage. I mean, I just can't stop thinking about it.

Allow me to introduce myself. Maybe you've heard of me. California Magazine just did a piece on me. With the exception of being misquoted several times, I thought it was a pretty good article.

I'm not trying to be disrespectful or anything, but I kind of feel like you're winging this and it's going bad. It's stinky!

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Can you verify? Can you give me some 411? My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. I feel cute today. Look at my outfit. The irony of me activating that sound effect is I wear the same outfit every single day during the wintertime now. It is a black sweater over a black t-shirt and the same pair of jeans. Once more of the TBTL video content starts hitting the internet, people will be amazed at how similar I look every single day. Although I do feel cute in this outfit. So here we are, coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia on yet another absolutely dismal day. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. Just very, very, very unpleasant weather. It is March 1st, though, so that's kind of fun. Hopefully this will turn around pretty soon. Hopefully episode 4153 in a collector's series will improve everybody's mood. Let the fun begin. I know that I was quite fascinated here to read and hear more about the situation in Scotland. I don't mean, you know, Brexit or other actually important world events. I mean, this Willy Wonka thing that went way off the rails. We talked about it yesterday and we talked about a person, an actor, who she's being described as the world's saddest Oompa Loompa. She's one of the people hired to be part of this disaster. She has now broken her silence and posted something on TikTok. And in her delightful Scottish accent, she says, people are being kind of mean.

The comments are savage. Very, very savage.

So we will play you some more of her statement and we'll look even deeper into this topic that just keeps on giving. Also, yesterday I found myself wondering about a song. I heard a Marianne McPartland piano song that reminded me of a different song and I could not figure out what song it was. In a case gone cold, could a podcast bring the heat? Thankfully, our listeners, they knew the answer. Boy, did they know the answer.

Smarty pants, dance. Smarty pants, dance.

I think I might need to do this more often. Ask a very obvious question and then just watch the responses roll in because it confirms that there are people listening to this. It was incredible when I opened up my email this morning and saw the many, many, many, many people letting me know what was going on. So I will let you know what I now know in a moment. As soon as we say hi to this guy, longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. It's a Friday. This is when he really comes alive, honestly. Who do you think you are?

I am!

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

Concrete, Luke. That's the big story in Scotland today, second only to the Willy Wonka story. When you mentioned, like, we weren't getting into other Scotland-based news, I just wanted to head on over. Is that the top trending news? I just wanted to go over to the Beeb. you have to go over to the Beeb people like to say the Beeb makes you feel like you're kind of like in the know with the BBC I was wondering do you know what this is if I were to say a certain kind of concrete R-A-A-C as a remodeler that is not

Apparently, it's a cheaper, lighter form of concrete that used to be used in construction, and now they've discovered it in all these buildings that are now unsafe in the Aberdeen area of Scotland. And so people have to find new homes, and there's anger. Anyway, that's what I'm bringing to the show today. Do you want to go deeper on that?

Thank God that is less important than a Willy Wonka festival that didn't go so well. I actually have an even more important topic to discuss with you than that. And I hope that this is not putting you on blast at all. You reserve the right to not answer this question.

What is the period of time before you set up a question like that and then you get to the question just feels like a lifetime, by the way.

It's, as I like to say, the longest unit of time is when you're in the airport and you're taking off your sweatshirt and your T-shirt pulls up slightly.

Yeah, sure.

That's the longest measurable amount of time. It may, in human time, it may be a tenth of a second. But in how it feels, it's over seven hours. Yes, this is a close second. You said to me, right as we were about to start the show, you said, hold on, I need to grab some lotion.

I wondered if that was going to come up. I can't say. I was wondering if that was going to come up. I'm fine with it. But yeah, I had to put in some.

I just feel like we rarely, I just, emergency lotion situations outside of a certain context are not something I'm totally familiar with. Is everything okay?

Well, first, I'm a wreck on the inside and the outside today. You know what?

I regret bringing this up. I don't want to make you feel like you have to explain anything you don't want to get into.

No, I want to talk about lotion. I was telling you before the show that I was having some issues with kind of a, well, I guess I'll just say because I set it up. I had some acid reflux issues last night, which is very rare for me. But I was telling you, like, knowing that some people suffer from that regularly, you know, the very relatively small encounter I had with it last night makes me really feel for those people. So I'm waking up kind of dealing with a little bit of that, but also like I have been wearing or using or applying lotion lately, like more than like the past six months, I'm going to say part of it. And I'm sorry, this just does get into my gross bag of flesh here, but I do like I have a constant but very, very low level like eczema situation, like around my wrist where I wear my watch, back to the knees a little bit. It's not terrible. Again, it's one of those things where I know people who have, like, major issues with psoriasis, right, and eczema and those types of things. And luckily, I only have a little bit of it, like, that pops up here and there. But it's kind of been more constant lately. It used to be worse but more sporadic. It certainly used to be. And because there are other little – Luke, have you ever heard the phrase, the body keeps the score? It's my buddy His name is Paul But he goes by the body And he's always the scorekeeper When we play Clue

Yeah Peter when we used to do Wiffle Ball He would keep score That's why we used to always say The buddy keeps the score

That's the actual expression Hey shit man that's a show title Sure is

About eight minutes in here we go I am familiar with that terminology

So there are various things That sometimes when I'm under a lot of stress Or I'm not getting the right amount of sleep or something that will kind of pop up. And this is one of them, but it's been kind of ongoing. But there's a – so all of this is boring and a little bit gross. But there is – the reason I kind of like talking about it is because it is a change in my life. I've become a bit of a lotion man in the past six months as opposed to just putting on like Cetaphil when I have like a flare-up. Like I've been using lotion on my hands, and I went to the store, and I wanted to pick out a really nice-smelling lotion. Now, what I got is, I don't even know if it's technically lotion, but I got a bottle of- What are you working with here?

I need to see this. I need to get eyes on this.

Oh, yeah. I don't have it in front. I mean, I can only show you my hands. Your hands look positively dewy. Radiant. Yeah. No, this is shea butter. I just put on a little combination of a little bit of Cetaphil, and then I have this pump bottle of shea butter that I've been applying, and I'm obsessed with scent these days.

Did you read up on if that's good for a little bit of eczema, or is it bad for it? i'm sure that i'm sure the listeners have opinions i know and you know these these are

yeah i i didn't in fact i have a sneaking suspicion it doesn't really do i don't think it makes it worse i don't think the shea butter specifically does anything for eczema but my god i let i let my nose do the reading on this one luke i went to the store i went to a i went to a cvs or whatever that wasn't completely bombed out with genitive um i don't know a few weeks ago and I was like I you know I was running low on a bottle of see I've never I mean and again this is like me being like you know a white man in my mid-40s or whatever and the culture I grew up in like I just never bought a bottle of lotion before and now and it's kind of I won't lie look I'm being quite serious like it was kind of exciting for me to be like I'm a lotion guy now

I'm going to go to the store, and instead of just, like, inheriting little lotions here and there from Genevieve or other people in my life, like, I went to the store, and I was using my nose. I was smelling my options, and then I smelled one. I was like, oh, this is the one. And then I'm like, oh, this is shea butter. Of course, I've heard great things, so I brought it home. I don't think it has any, I mean, I think it's good to keep me, you know, it's not bad for my skin. I don't know if it has any, like, I want to say reparative, but I don't think that's a word. I don't think it really helps maybe with eczema. But, boy, it helps me smell my hands and feel fancy.

I'm also going to mention you might be on a relatively short list of white Americans using shea butter. It is culturally very, very associated with African-Americans.

I wondered about that. Is this cultural appropriation?

I don't think so. I mean, first of all, I'm not the person who decides that. But that wasn't what struck me. But also it's it's definitely something I associate with, like, you know, going to school with a lot of different folks from different backgrounds. And a lot of the kids I went to school with who were black, a lot of shea butter was in play.

Now you got me a little bit nervous. What about this Native American headdress I'm wearing?

John, don't post this. We don't want anyone to see how Andrew is dressed. But I'm looking very forward. You must be wearing small amounts of it, though, like a low key amount, because I was in the room with you recently. this spawned a whole other conversation about our smells well maybe if you hadn't bathed in cologne that day i didn't smell any shea butter on you but do you remember were you wearing it the other

day when i was at your house you know i i can't say for sure i don't know i mean i only apply it to my hands it's not like it's probably something that i think i don't think anybody in casual in casual proximity to me would probably notice it uh and don't forget i also had rubbed on my a lot of sense talk lately my little uh english or what is it egyptian musk uh boy you're really you're going back to the cradle of civilization i just as i was saying between your egyptian musk and

your shea butter okay all right now i hear now now now we can talk about the real content that i wanted to get into today which is andrew you ever hear about those people who um fall in love with non-living objects whether it be a bridge or a amusement ride there's a woman in seattle who married a building i think yeah that kind of thing happens and i i'm i'm very i'm skeptical about that kind of coverage i i feel like i don't like the idea that it feels like it might be talking about that is sort of maybe um at the expense of the person who's going through whatever they're going through or feeling the way they're feeling like it's kind of it feels to me like a little bit of like get a load of this person thing which is like is it you know it has it historically been my thing to fall in love with an inanimate object no has it happened recently andrew as recently as this morning yes i finally get it congratulations i would like to announce that i am engaged to my stacking washer and dryer oh it came it uh or have you had it for a while now i can't remember your delivery schedule it's been here for a while oh okay and um and i have it's the newest first of all i've never had a stacking washer and dryer before that's all new to me i've also never i don't think in my life had a brand new washer and dryer and i you know obviously there's a certain privilege associated with that i was approved for a home depot credit card so i was able to get my hands on a stacking washer and dryer but like i've just the my relationship with washing machines and dryers that i've used if i'm 47 years old throughout my adult life well and include my childhood in this it's always just been a washer and dryer that were in whatever house or apartment maybe either the basement of the apartment you know if there was shared laundry or maybe i rented a house and it had a washer and dryer you bought a house and it still had the appliances and then like one breaks and then you get maybe another one. Like I remember when we were in Bellingham, the dryer broke. We got a new dryer. I've never had a washer and dryer that were so closely aligned. I mean, literally these things are physically connected in a way and it's incredible. I feel so cared for, for one thing, when you wash something the dryer remembers what you just washed and it sets its drying function based on it the dryer keeps the score andrew the dryer keeps the score yeah i'm trying to tell you right now so it's like the dryer is the buddy of the washer exactly it's basically like hey you know um i noticed that you just were doing uh delicates on whatever here's here's a dryer setting that would probably work well with that like it's like a wine pairing it is amazing just that small thing every time I take the clothes out of the washer and I throw them in the dryer and I close the

little door and it

It's already set. Now, of course, you can override it. You can do whatever you want. But just the fact that it's like, oh, hey, we noticed what you were washing and what setting that was on. And we'd love to encourage you to use this setting because those are going to work well together. It's honestly about – that's not fair because Becca is a lovely, warm, and thoughtful person. But I'd put it up on the list of things that make me feel most cared for in this world is that the dryer knows what the washer just did. Not to mention –

Hope Becca's listening right now.

She's not. And that's another reason that I don't feel as cared for as I could.

How did she do on Wordle yesterday? I almost texted you. I wanted her phone number because Wordle asked me. Yeah, right. Good job, buddy. And then I was like, then we're going to go through that whole thing. That whole you can't have my girlfriend's number, Sherrod. But, yeah, do ask her if she remembers how she did on Wordle. Now I'm already forgetting the word, but I remember it took me a really long time to get. And in the back of my head, I was like, I wonder how Becca's doing with this thing.

She was very mad about it a couple of days or a couple of weeks ago and and asked me to ask you if you got completely like, you know, frustrated at Wordle because it was I think what she I get. I think what she gets really frustrated with and I'm sure many Wordle players do is when it is just the absolute luck of the draw, what letter you pick. so it's a word that it's it's a type of word that where there are five different examples of that

word the only difference being the starting letter or or like sometimes there'll be like two letters in there like you know the vowels or whatever and it's like there are just too many combination of words that would all fit and then it's like it's not like it was hard to figure out it's just like did I pick the right one I had one of those I wonder if it's this I don't remember what that word was but i know about less than three weeks ago now luke i lost my 182 day streak i'm like down to like 15 16 17 days or something now it's like this is you know it's good it humbles you it reminds you how other folks live but like 182 day streak luke gone was it was it like um riser

She was showing me on the plane the other day, and she was like, this is some BS. That was the one she was, I think, mad about because, again, it involved more just brute luck than guessing. By the way, we're getting a response in real time here, and the response is, I asked, how did you do on Wordle?

Yesterday, though, right? You didn't say today because I have not done today.

I said, how did you do on Wordle yesterday? I actually spelled yesterday Y-E-S-T-E, the number four and the D-A-Y. I just like to mix it up.

Sure, yeah. We're having fun with words here.

How did you do on Wordle? Yes, or four day? Question mark. And then she said, not good. And now I'm just watching the three little dots that are telling me that some typing. Now, what can you add to this conversation? Is this something that broke your streak?

No, my streak was broken a few weeks ago. But yesterday, I just remember it was one of those days where it wasn't frustrating in the way that you just described where it's like, well, it could be a million things. I'm just going to throw a bunch out there and hope that I get to the right one before I run out of turns. Yesterday was one that I just like I had a few letters that I knew were in there and I just couldn't quite. I mean, I got it eventually, but I feel like it was one that took me like a full day. I started it in the morning and kept putting it down and had to keep coming back to it. And now I'm now I'm blanking on what the answer was. I'm trying to look it up.

I think it's okay for me to share this I said this is a TBTL question So I think she's been Sufficiently warned this could make the error She says I choked I believe I got it on guess number six And if I understand you only get five guesses right?

No you get six guesses So that means she made it Which is good she survived to see another day

Now again the three dots Are dotting do we feel comfortable Do you feel you'll be spoiling for our listeners If you share what the actual word was and how you got there.

Let's see here. It looks like, I think we can share this, unless there's somebody like playing in the archives, which if you're that deep into this, you know that you're just fast forwarding this part of the show. Anyway, it looks like the word was image. Ah. So yeah, that's not what I remember. But yeah, so you had the I and the, yeah, that's right. I do recall that now, because I knew there was an I and an E in there. So then you're very tempted to make the word end in IE. but there aren't there are not a lot of five letter words that end in ie so anyway yeah it

just took me a really i'm learning a lot about even how this she goes i got the stupid few response today i got it in three impressive is there some kind of does it give you feedback now

when you finally get the right answer it'll give you a quick little flash on the screen that's not the wordle i grew up with no i mean it's a very small it's not it's it's got a flavor blast everything now. This is the gray lady. It's very dignified.

it's a small it's very small type it just says impressive if you got it in like three i don't know i can't remember what it says if you get it in two um but if you wait all the way till like try number six it's like phew you made it you dingbat there's also this thing that i don't

even of uh of uh of steven greenhouse just going like nodding who's who's i don't know if i don't know about labor for the new york times oh it seems like a person just seems like an odd person to gifify in the times to tell you you did a nice job like i don't know that gif yeah nobody knows that gif somebody make that please somebody fine and also let me double check every time i try to take a shot on a name i'm very very wrong no it's exactly who i was thinking of it is exactly who i

was thinking of does becca mess around with wordle bot do you know about this wordle bot thing well i Can I just give you her number? That's what I'm saying. In fact, can she just host the show with me? Do you do Wordlebot? Because I'll tell you what, I do not. So after you get your answer, you can then, in a different part of the app, have it run through something called Wordlebot, which is kind of interesting because it gives you all of the stats about the word, how many people got it, and how many turns. Like, from a numbers perspective, it's really interesting. but it's also hella judgy Luke like hella judgy and says well I would have done this here and it's like yeah but and then it does like a sort of a simulated what it would have looked like if the computer had done it and it will both neg you and say well I would have done this here and it's like yeah but I did it faster than you like I beat you Wordlebot but it like you it doesn't take that kind of input you're just yelling at your phone so I don't even open it anymore sometimes I finish a Wordle and I'll put it you know on the text thread or whatever and somebody's like oh what did wordlebot say about that i'm like i don't talk to wordlebot this is between us well i'm the worst

person to weigh in on this because i don't do wordle anymore and so i don't really know what i'm talking about i'm not gonna let that stop me though from saying does everything have to be sabermetric a ties to within an inch of its life does every single thing have to be broken down along various you know sort of data points in that way like it just seems like a fun game to play But turning it into, like, what is, you know, what's Camaro Kev's war on Wordle, you know, against Lefty?

It's just like, come on. I think, I mean, I honestly think the number aspect of Wordlebot is actually pleasurable. I actually like that. And, again, it's not nobody's forcing anybody to even play Wordle, let alone then running it through old Wordlebot. Also, I got Dartbot going over here. Like, do I want to invite Wordlebot and Dartbot into the same home? What does that even look like? Do you get two litter boxes? I don't know. Honestly, don't leave them alone. Right, exactly.

Wordlebot is just pregnant.

I'm going on vacation late next week. I'm wondering who's going to come over and check on Dartbot for me, let alone Wordlebot, get a house sitter. So anyway, nobody's forcing that. If you like the numbers, you can go and look at them. I actually like that part of it, but it's the judginess that I just think is totally uncalled for.

Well, Becca says, I don't know what that is. Oh, okay. And I don't care to find out.

Yes, exactly. Well, tell her to – well, don't – yeah, she doesn't need to get into that.

I think we should – I think she should be added to some sort of Wordle chain with the gang because, again, she's the most – between the New York Times crossword puzzle and the Wordle, she's just the picture of dedication, just does those things literally every day and I think would be a fun person to have in on the conversation, in on the discourse.

can i tell you what my wordle day is like now i first do the word so there are two puzzles that i play and that we share our answers with the other the wordle is the one and the other one is something and in the same app called connections oh you introduced me to connections on the show do you remember that one where you group words together so i play both of those games now i do wordle first i post that to my friend wordle group i send my result to listener bet in new york using a different app i now as of a couple of weeks ago i am now on the has family wordle text chain so this is genevieve's family so after wordle i take my results and i post it into three different places and then and i got to remember not to post the wrong one in the wrong place then a lot of pressure then it's connections time then i do my connections then i also send it to the friend group to the has group but then i got a side chat going with our friend phyllis p fletch fletcher and so she and i exchange our connection scores every day so i'm not saying that there's not room in my i'm not i'm not saying that there's not room in my life to share my results with becca i would welcome that but i will say i am getting pulled in a lot of different directions yeah i'm

I'm not saying you have to make a special like side, you know, breakout.

room for the two of you i'm just saying like whatever the whatever this big this big tent is that you're in with like a bunch of other people where everyone's just pitching in their words or

their results i mean that seems like the has family oh yes i'll send the invite that's exactly

what i was thinking of um the other thing i will say about my uh washer and dryer uh that i've named denise um is that because i've never owned a very like new state-of-the-art dryer i am Regularly shocked At how quickly it dries the clothes I think it has a sensor That weighs The clothes And or figures out maybe based On the difference between the weight when I put the clothes In and when The clothes are dry Of when to stop because like Right before I came out to do the show with you I threw I'm gonna be taking a trip And I was trying to Furiously do some laundry and I threw a bunch of wet clothes into the dryer and then i was maybe it was said it was going to be 45 minutes or something and then like 20 minutes later i'm walking through that part of the house and it's done it's playing that beautiful song and i go oh shoot it's confused or something and i went and i opened the door and it's everything is perfectly dried like i think it also realizes that even though it was like we were going to do 45 minutes but guess what these are running shorts these things drive i can feel that i'm now i'm in the person of the dryer now it can just tell like oh actually you know what this got dried like 25 minutes in we good like it's one of the greatest improvements in my in my life of the last couple of years is this washer and dryer yeah i was in the same exact position

like what was it whatever a year ago when we got ours and same exact deal like i'd never well it's a lot like lotion luke and people i'm not the first to say this obviously but washers and dryers are a lot like lotion once you start buying them for yourself you feel very privileged um and yeah and also you didn't even talk about the moment you first emptied your brand new lint trap like how many times in one's life do you get to empty a lint trap for the very first time it feels pretty

good point yeah that was that's again to use that word again that's real privilege describe your lint trap for me i'm for real here well it doesn't fill up that fast because again i mean i check it every time but like it takes a while to fill up because i feel like every efficiency i don't know how this could be lint related but i feel like every efficiency that this dryer could be doing it's doing so somehow it's not agitating the clothes because you know we've all had that experience of like a really old dryer and you pull the thing you know that big old like banana shape thing out and it's just got like a thick you know crust of lint on it and stuff that like never happens with this thing i don't know i don't know how that it's achieving that but it you know so i do change the lint out but you know what i still describe it though yeah i want to hear what

it looks like because the shape of my lotion the shape of my lint trap looks nothing like a lint trap that i would have that i'd ever seen before and so i want to know if all modern dryers okay like mine is almost like a panini maker folds in half um mine does not do that but i but in my old

apartment in portland i had that kind my mine doesn't mine is not like a a a clamshell or a pocketbook that clicks together mine is just a it's just a but it's shaped the same way so mine is okay shaped similar to yours except it doesn't it doesn't close it's just one kind of you know piece of mesh and it sits at the bottom if it sits at six o'clock where the if the dryer was a clock

it's at six o'clock and it slides right in there like a piece of toast yep or like a piece of bread when it's going in and a piece of toast when it's coming out i suppose thank you and just for the record i i mean i'm not somebody who has a desire to be an interviewer but i want to say that that was a good example if i were an interviewer i really hold my interviewees feet to the fire when i want an answer yeah i asked you a question you didn't give me a satisfying answer i prevaricated and you you brought it right back your media training i'm sorry to cut you do you know what

i've been realizing huh of late i am so bad at being interviewed i mean being interviewed being interviewed i am a remarkably bad at it just as as a thing um because you know we have the 20th anniversary of livewire coming up um in a couple weeks it'll be at rev hall by the way quick plug speaking of which it's also happening tonight at the reser in beaverton but um because of that i I have been on a kind of local media blitz, you know, just they've set up a bunch of interviews for me to do with the kind of papers in Portland and stuff, the Oregonian and Willamette week and the Portland business journal. I think I'm in, by the way, whatever, there's a magazine called like 1859 in Washington state. That's I believe associated with the year the state was founded. I'm in that this, this month or something. So I've been doing a lot of these interviews. And I regularly find myself completely at a loss for an interesting answer. And it's just funny because for a lot of the job stuff I do outside of TBTL, because you and I are just kind of chatting here, but a lot of the job stuff I do is interviewing people. And you would think I would somehow have like picked up through osmosis how what makes someone a good interview subject and what doesn't. But I am struggling, struggling with these interviews. I'm just, it'll be like, do you have a favorite moment from the show?

And I'm like, I, I don't, I mean, I don't know. Well, now let's ask ourselves about good interviewees versus, I mean, I don't want to put anybody on blast, especially if you're.

I feel like I've asked versions of those, like, is there a memorable moment from your, I don't know, like, I wish I could put this.

Like, your favorite this or your favorite that, it's like, it's such a broad question. do you remember the interview and I'm it's so rare that I'm on the answering side of an interview but um we did one with current magazine like this summer when we launched you know I felt pretty good about that and you and I I think we that's right we did a zoom call with the reporter but you and I were on together and I thought that went really well right because they were good

questions and we had it helps that you were there though like I like can you do more of these live

yeah sure sure yeah i'm like it's like prairie home companion only more handsy

i need someone to actually you know what why don't you just stay home on this one can i even leave that in tvtl i was like listen i don't edit the show but um but uh yeah i i just it's maybe maybe the takeaway for me and again the people that are interviewing me are all i thought they did it i thought they were asking good questions and i thought that also they're all really lovely people so i don't want to put this back on them but maybe what i'm learning from it is a couple of things to avoid asking when i'm being the interviewer because i have just found myself really really struggling there's there's two questions that come up a lot that really if i was a professional i would have just come up with an answer a stock answer and then deployed it the two questions that i never have a good answer for are do you have a favorite moment from the show and who is your dream guest you know who i've been saying my dream guest is not

me probably charles barkley i'm gettable by the way um charles barkley that's a good answer yeah

i mean truthfully i would love to talk to charles barkley and it's not completely out of the question oh i think it's pretty far out of the question i mean there is some scenario where that could i could maybe talk to him as part of a cbs production and then maybe if that's more likely he does have and he does have a history of bonding with regulars and right exactly went to that funeral yep of that that writer's dad who was just a random person he met so if i if i could get to the level of talking to charles barkley through maybe cbs or something or maybe he's on wait wait or whatever maybe that could we could build some kind of a friendship where i can drag him on to live wire but but um yeah just you'd think i would just come up with some good

some good charles barkley is a good answer okay and then what did you say the first one is your favorite moment yeah i mean i gotta be honest and again this is this isn't even my story but you and i were talking on the i think on the show or maybe it was off air recently um about the origin story of how you kind of started how you first were asked to fill in as a host on live wire uh and then that ended up becoming you know what you're doing today um and so like sometimes when you because sometimes people will submit uh like um hey dummies questions or ask me to answer the the questions we ask our tens in the 10 of the week column in the in the newsletter and like one of the questions used to be like what's your favorite tbtl moment and like it doesn't have to be i sort of feel like it can be tangential to it doesn't have to be something that happened on stage you know like it could be like that's a well that well that moment where i was supposed to be a guest and then i found out moments ahead of time and that's my least favorite moment well that's true i mean i don't again i don't want to put thoughts in your head but i sort of feel like you can you can sort of expand out a little bit as to like how how you define that question actually no joke sort of how how i didn't get a satisfying lint answer at first like you know what i mean like right you took that you took that question into a place you were more comfortable with

what i think is it's much easier to answer that question about something that you listen to than it is to answer it about something you make because if you ask me oh favorite moment from uh you know the howard stern show or favorite moment from this american life or whatever i would i don't have those answers ready to go but they would come to my mind much more quickly

than if you said favorite moment from tbtl yeah tal or this american life i think it's been a really long time since i've been a regular listener of that show not for any particular reason it just kind of felt you know as podcasting um took up more of my time my listening time i

just don't listen to that as regularly but I used to be such a regular listener and I'm sure you remember this story Luke I used to do like late night board op shifts at the radio station the first public radio station I worked in and um the This American Life for that week they were running like two back to back on the station or something so there were always two dat tapes digital audio tapes yeah that were sitting in the traffic director's like um some piece of furniture in her office and I had permission that I could go and grab those and dub them onto cheap cassette tapes um one episode per side i want to say and i would do that during my air shift i'd go into another studio and sort of record those two and then i would take those home and i'd spend my friday or saturday night like listening to those two episodes of this american life and i ended up with a whole briefcase filled with these all white cassette tapes of this american life which i would kill for right now and also i had a bunch of you for sure don't have those anymore 100 don't have And it really, it really bums me out because what else I had in that case were a bunch of behind the scene bootleg wait, wait, don't tell me is before it was live on stage. When they were basically like ISDN hookup. Exactly. And whenever they were in New Hampshire, quite often I would engineer that. And I would just get rolling like, you know, a half hour before the show started so I could get all the banter between the guests who were remote. But anyway, if you were to ask me this.

Who was going in in? No.

Who was in New Hampshire? the conservative oh pj pj yeah o'rourke r-i-p o'rourke yeah exactly um so anyway i would say though that this american life the first thing that pops into my head was the camp episode do you remember the camp episode it was like one long documentary but to various reporters like i think maybe ira went on the boy's side and maybe it was a julie went on the girl's side or something and i i that the way they wove all those various stories together i'm still blown away by

that it's funny because those are usually my least favorite episodes uh-huh like when they're like we're at a diner all night yeah we're just gonna be here 24 hours which again conceptually is an interesting idea and uh i think maybe i just i don't know i got i got sort of locked in on a certain format for them a certain way of telling these stories and then when they would deviate like if they would do a live show or on a stage show i'd be like hmm or if they would do uh like They did one that I actually ended up kind of enjoying, but it was like, we're going to do as many pieces as we can in an hour. So they did like 25 pieces instead of their normal two or three. Anything that broke format, I was always like, hmm, I don't know about that.

Oh, you didn't like that one? Oh, I liked that one as well. Yeah, I know what you mean sometimes because if you're not into the topic and if it's not definitely done, then you're locked into this thing. And you're like, I'd like to move on. I do like the variety of that show or I did like the variety of that show. But the camp one was just so well done. And also, I think they did put, like, personal essays in there. I remember somebody told a story about being on a kibbutz or something like that. I don't know. But anyway, that stood out in my head. I was just trying to prove to you that I have a favorite This American Life.

And you know what? You did. You proved it.

We're all better for that.

I was trying to prove to everyone that I knew who the labor reporter for The New York Times was, Stephen Greenhouse. Turns out he left The New York Times 10 years ago. What's he doing now? Here's what he said in 2014. On Twitter, he announced, thanks all, with great ambivalence, I'm taking the New York Times buyout. Oh, wow. Circa a decade ago, he is now at something called the Century Foundation. So that shows you how current I am on the various journalists in this country. I'm talking about somebody who hasn't worked at the New York Times for a decade.

Well, I can't say anything.

I do think a GIF of him, though, kind of going nodding or doing that, like Leo DiCaprio from, I don't even know what it is. Maybe it's Wolf of Wall Street There's so many of them right But like something where he's like Cheersing you or something That's got to be Wolf of Wall Street He wasn't in

I thought it was Django and Shane

I thought that gif comes from Am I wrong about that I think it's that Maybe so Anyway Steven Greenhouse doing that That's all I ask Internet get to it Speaking of the internet And speaking of our listeners Andrew We have I bet you we have a record Listenership 39 minutes into the show because really all anyone cares about is did I figure out what the hell song I was trying to sing yesterday? And we're going to find out if I did right after we thank some Dazzling Donors. If you are looking for something to augment your TBTL listening with, I cannot recommend The Sporkful highly enough. You know about this show, right? Produced by friend of the show and friend of me, Dan Pashman. They like to say that it is a show for eaters, not for foodies. You don't have to know a lot about food. You just have to enjoy the experience of putting food in your mouth and chomping down on it and swallowing it. I'm very jealous of this other thing that Dan did a while ago. He invented a new kind of pasta. It's called cascatelli. bought it in the store and then made stuff with it. It's amazing. It's delicious. It's toothsome. It's all the things that Dan was trying to set out to do when he invented his own pasta. They talk about all kinds of interesting stuff on the Sporkful like why is the shallot super special? Is there such a thing as halal pork? What kind of fast food should you eat on vacation? And stuff like that. We love Dan. You're going to love the Sporkful. Get it wherever you get your podcasts.

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 unbelievably generous folks who are keeping tbtl in business with their dazzling donation of dough it's snowing up here by the way andrew oh i mean literally It's not sticking, but it's literally snowing right now. I don't know if you can see out the window. It probably seems like rain to you, but it is, in fact, snow. Hopefully I'll be able to get down off of this hill. I think I will. I don't think this is going to be any big threat, but still got to get to Portland and do live wire tonight. But first, we've got to thank Andrew Stephen, who's in Los Angeles, California, where my guess is it's not snowing right now. I don't know the weather in L.A. I'm going to check right now. Now, this is honestly very useful information. What is it doing at 1113 a.m. on Friday, March 1st in Los Angeles, Andrew? It is 59 degrees. That sounds right. Sounds exactly like what I would have guessed.

59 degrees.

Maybe I would have guessed 62. I would have thought it would be warmer, too, to be honest with you. Andrew says, hey, thanks for making a great podcast, even though you all sometimes disagree. I think – I'm going to read that to be Andrew saying we sometimes disagree that the podcast is great as opposed to sometimes you and I disagree, Andrew, or do you think – what do you think? I don't agree with you on that, Luke.

Oh, no, you're right. I was going to ask you what – I thought there was a typo there that Andrew sort of meant that he disagrees with us because you and I don't do a lot of disagreeing on the show, I don't think, or certainly not in a way that it would be the first line of a dazzling donor message. You're right, though. I see. This is Andrew kind of acknowledging our self-deprecation over the podcast. Thank you for that.

Like a few other listeners, I regularly listen to TBTL while long-distance hiking. In October, I walked about 500 miles across Spain. All right. You're the better, Andrew. I'll give it to you. Whoa. That's a lot. And each year, I try to spend some time backpacking through the Sierra Nevada mountains, et cetera, et cetera wasn't it et cetera man this would be a more interesting reference if I could call it up in my brain but I know that there is a there's a particular hiking I guess you might say path in Spain that a lot of people do that's called the via something or other I wonder if that's what Steve or Andrew was doing because I've known people that have done it and I thought that sounds like a lifetime like a once in a lifetime adventure Sounds like it's a once-in-a-year adventure for Andrew. Wow, that's amazing. Is it the, I'm not going to guess. It's the Stephen Greenhouse Trail in Spain.

Actually, it says that he did the Spain thing maybe once, but the yearly thing seems to be the Sierra Nevada.

Yeah, which is still kind of a big thing to tackle. Downloading a batch of TBTLs to keep me company is always a welcome treat. And, selfish plug, if anyone wants to hear my podcast, Chronicling a year of my life As I lost 100 pounds And gained 100s of confidence That's my addition to this Tried backpacking for the first time by attempting A month long high Sierra adventure And talked with experts And guests like Olympian and filmmaker Alexi Pappas Writer Wait, Alexi Pappas Why do I know that name? Alexi Pappas, Olympian and filmmaker Olympian and filmmaker I'm going to google that Right after this Writer and filmmaker Dan Harmon We know him We were just talking About him the other day And Chris Kelly As well as science Journalists And outdoor authors Florence Williams Dina Giglio Whitaker Dan White And more Please check out Please check out I can't say this Drangus message Andrew Please check out Trail Wait So this is the name Of Andrew's podcast And project It's called Trail Wait And there is a website Trail Wait and that's w-e-i-g-h-t.com. That sounds truly fascinating. It's amazing, yeah. So it sounds like Andrew really, really radically changed.

His lifestyle and also, I mean, the idea of if I'm going to go back and reread this, trying backpacking for the first time by attempting a month long high Sierra adventure that isn't like going from, you know, maybe I'm going to go on a like a day hike. I'm going to go to the high Sierras and be up there for a month. That is ambitious.

We couldn't start with Wallace Falls. Andrew, where's that? Wallace Falls is one. It's a little trail in Washington. It's one of the few that I've been to multiple times because it's like it's a pretty it's it's not a super difficult trail, but you get some good height. And it's just like it's literally a lot of, you know, waterfalls and stuff. So it's incredibly beautiful.

Have you been to Mailbox Peak? No. By the way, Alexi Pappas is a runner. Yeah, I just looked at that. Is a runner. Mailbox Peak is over, I think, kind of towards like Issaquah and that area, kind of east of things. And the big appeal is that there's a mailbox at the top. I haven't actually done it, but I've heard people talk about it. There's a mailbox at the top, and when you get up there, there's often whiskey in it.

Oh, really? People are leaving whiskey. What a nice little tradition.

It's take a whiskey, leave a whiskey. I see. So you get up there, and then you have a little celebratory nip, and then you go on back down, and maybe you leave some behind. Anyway, Andrew, thank you for supporting the show. And I'm actually very intrigued by this whole project that you did. So I'm going to check out trailweight.com. Thank you.

That's a really nice website. And I will say, like, great, great eye for design with all the logos and presentation here. I'm very impressed, Andrew. Andrew, do you do web design? Yeah.

Okay. As featured in Outside Magazine, Forbes, Adventure Journal. We have a lot to learn from Andrew.

Yeah, no kidding. I think I should be a dazzling donor to get my message on Andrew's show. Look at this logo for Trailweight. Yeah, right? That's what I'm talking about. The backpack? Yeah. It looks beautiful. All right. Good job, Andrew.

in all seriousness congratulations that's amazing jealous i like this whole vibe maestro

we're also going to thank our friend jen senior who's in dupont washington

beautiful dupont washington mere steps from manic meatballs andrew uh is that um is that true

It's very true. You know what? It'd be a weird thing to say if it weren't. I was thinking about something else. First of all, I was trying to remember. So Jen and her fam, they were part of the German tens, right? Yeah, the Americans and Germans. The Americans and Germans. They're sabered. Exactly.

They've been all over the world and all over the country, often at military installations. Yep.

And when you said DuPont, Washington, because I was thinking about something else, I heard like DuPont Circle. So that's why I was, because I was like thinking of D.C. Sure.

Here's what Jen is saying. Jen is saying, I listened to the very first episode of TBTL on Cairo Radio and was hooked.

Really?

Wow, Jen. I was there for that. And I am really shocked that anybody who heard that, maybe it was because of Jen and Sean or something, like Jen, Flash Andrews and Sean. You want to talk about something that I just feel deep, deep embarrassment around. my performance on the first episode of tbtl it would have been enough to drive any sane person away from the program for life i don't think that's true did not happen back we've gone back

and listened to that and i know it's embarrassing to you and i'm not going to try to disabuse you of that because i've obviously you hear your performance it's not how you picture yourself like there's i can associate with the feelings you have about that but what i what i find interesting is as somebody who is a big fan of tbtl uh long before i was a part of it i was somebody who was in a different part of the country and I was dialing up on my podcast catcher, you know? And I always wonder about the experience of somebody like Jen who, like, if she heard the very, very first episode of TBTL, I'm always curious, does that mean it was a total coincidence? Like, were you driving somewhere? Huh, good question. And, like, the Ron and Don show ended or what would have, I don't know what your lead-in would have been. I think it would have been Ron and Don, probably. And then they hear, like, these drops

and then and a guy you know a guy nervously whispering but i mean that's what that's all

you hear that's what you're focused on but it must have just been incredible in those early days to just land on that and be like what is going on and then to lean in a little bit closer and then yeah it's not super polished as the drop goes but it's certainly way more interesting than somebody just like dialing up some like conversation about those lawmakers in olympia i will definitely give

the show credit it did not sound like anything else on the commercial radio you know so I'll I'll um I'll take some pride in that again that mostly credit goes mostly to Jen but um so this Jen Jen senior was listening she said she was hooked it was my first year as a high school

And my husband was deployed for 15 months straight. I was exhausted that year, and I usually listen to the show while still lesson planning at school or driving home from work. It was a comfort to me then and now, 15 years later, it's still a comfort. Gosh, Jen, that's so nice to hear. I have two requests for the 10s. Number one, be nice to your kids' teachers. I mean, that is great advice. I can't believe we even have to tell people that. I mean you know my are you pro teacher yourself I tend to be my sister Hannah is a principal and was a teacher and no I didn't know that um I I feel like well I don't know I I don't want to generalize here but I think that the life I think that the the work of being a teacher has become tremendously harder because of a different way that parents in some ways I think probably for the good but in some ways for the bad i this is why i'm i'm i'm being halting here because i don't want to like say today's parents are bad they're not bad but they just are empowered in a way that is again both great if they're advocating for their kids but also i think can make life really challenging if you're a teacher is that did i say that in a diplomatic enough way um yeah i think so

i also i mean the first thing i think of though is also just how teachers are caught in the middle of kind of culture wars and politics and stuff now and like that there's also that that erosion of of us respecting teachers as a society is the first thing I think of too I mean I think you're absolutely right to say that it is probably harder to be a teacher today than it was like when I was

growing up I from what I hear from the teachers that I know for one thing it's a tremendously online thing now as far as all of the homework assignments sure how the kids doing what the All this stuff that used to be just exist in like a spiral, some kind of spiral notebook on the teacher's desk is now part of a portal and the parents can get in on the portal. And it just sounds like so much of being a teacher has really changed and I think probably presents a lot of challenges. So be nice to your kids, teachers. Give them some booze a haul as a gift. This is Jen's advice. And sneak them a disguised encyclopedia to keep in their classroom if you live in Florida. And then inside the encyclopedia You cut the encyclopedia And inside that have a book that actually Advocates for like inclusion You gotta hide that inside the encyclopedia That has to be hidden inside a hustler Oddly enough you can have a hustler in the classroom Yeah but you can't have a history book That's the problem Number two support the people in your lives the way the ten Support each other Take a neighbor a casserole Mow their lawn send a card While I love Luke and Andrew and all the hosts That came before, it's the tens That make this podcast truly unique Shout out to all the Lil Bacon lovers out there

Lil Bacon That goes back

If I would have known that, if I would do any kind of pre-reading Of these things, and if I wasn't getting called by CBS At all times Andrew, I would have had Should we just do it? I have Lil Bacon Edited open, so I don't just have Bacon is good for me, I think because I put in L-I-L. Can we just hear a low bacon-related open?

Yeah, it's been a while.

Okay, here we go.

Very happy to be throwing this away. Bacon. No, I want my bacon. I got to tell you something.

Bacon is good for me. She thinks at the Blues she's a smart little girl that she can do whatever she wants. No, that's not how she can do it in our family. She's the queen and we're the sorry people.

joy i have been nice to you but now i'm coming to the edge i promise you one thing okay if you do not have at least one food that you like i will buy you a piece of junk is that a deal no i keep losing it deals and i don't want to make a deal anymore wow wow classic and some

classically terrible edits in there from me well it sounds like do you think that's how it aired or was that just like re-restoring the tape? Oh, I promise you that's how it aired.

I just paused it. I'm sure it says TBTL right after that. You know what? Let's find out. Nope, just silence. Just dead silence. I promise you. That actually, it's terrible compared to your level of kind of audio care, but by the standards of TBTL before you got here, that wasn't the worst.

No, actually, and again, I don't mind that. I don't mind that so much. A little rough around the edges. That's why Jen's a listener.

All these years later, thank you, Jen. Thanks also to Andrew. Thanks to both of you for keeping TBTL happening all these years later. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. I said this at the top of the show, Andrew, but it really was oddly gratifying this morning to see, I mean, a shocking number of emails in my inbox of people going, I know the song, I know the song you're thinking of. I'm going to give credit to... listener caramanza who said that um he had stopped the podcast had paused the podcast to send in a link to the song that i was thinking of so i guess the lesson is stop if you hear us asking for help just don't even don't wait till the end of the episode or caramanza is going to like beat you to it um you got to just stop everything drop everything and then send us uh or send me the information that I so deeply need in that moment. Anyway, I think the first email came in from Caramanza. But anyway, this was the thing that was going on yesterday. This Marianne McPartland song called Twilight World that I heard. And when I heard it, I thought, oh, this is like that other song and i was singing some kind of like thing about like um i'm gonna knock on your door and i was thinking is it maybe a deon warwick song i googled yesterday knock on your door song and I got the same thing that you got which was some kind of like 1950s hooting and hollering number and anyway so I was at a loss and thankfully lots of listeners knew the answer which is that it is a song by Aretha Franklin Until You Come Back to Me this is the song by the way how similar is that

wow very similar I don't know if I know this song. Oh, you do? No, you don't call it anymore.

I sit and wait.

If they... First of all, if you want to just like, I'm not saying anything interesting here about the career of Aretha Franklin, but if you have forgotten for a minute about the influence that Aretha Franklin had on the American music scene, just get on old Spotify. And because I was trying to find this song To like load it in And it just so happened that it was you know Showing me the top 20 songs by Aretha Franklin It's just like it's Shocking how many Incredible songs Aretha Franklin You know recorded Over her career again that's not I'm not saying anything interesting with that but it's like I had maybe forgotten a little bit You know this is not like in terms of the popularity I wouldn't even say this is in the top 15 Of the songs that people know from Aretha Franklin Although again our listeners really know about it and uh here we go okay so there she says i guess i'll wrap on your door tap on your window pane right so i was like all right i guess maybe that's why the internet didn't internet didn't help me side note at the end of the song she switches it up and she says i'm gonna knock on your door raising the question what gives internet don't you think by the way thank you to everyone who um you know sent me the correct answer i've listened to this song like

three times this morning it's so so so good did you get any wrong answers because i was getting tons of emails last night that said luke's mystery song luke's mystery song i didn't open them up Until just now And I had about 10 in my inbox And everybody got it right Everybody got it right Except listener Bobby Pate Oh that's right Yeah he sent it To another email Yeah

He sent it Directly to me And he said It's Berlin's Take my breath away But I mean the song Is so good What I was going to say is She At the end of the song She starts I said she kind of Mixes up the lyrics and says, I'm going to knock on your door, I'm going to, like... Okay, I keep trying to guess at the part of the song I'm at. But anyway, point is, she literally says that I'm going to knock on your door. The thing I was singing, I would say almost as good as Aretha. I think we can all agree. It's close. I mean, better? Would you... Well, maybe not better. That's not for me to say. But, yeah. But I'll accept it. how is it if you put I'm gonna knock on your door song into the internet and if you're you can see this Andrew this is what it looks like when I type into the internet yeah I know it looks it looks precise yeah I'm not big on touch typing no he's just pounding his fist JK center semicolon how is it that that this song didn't come up

this is the first time somebody's complained that ai isn't working hard enough i'm just saying like like let's see if this is where

let's see if maybe this is where she says it No, wrong again, Burbs.

My point is, if she says it anywhere in the song, this has to be the most famous song where someone says, I'm going to knock on your door. And I find it amazing that yesterday, when I put into the internet, I'm going to knock on your door song. This didn't even come up in any of my search results, nor did it for you.

Well, you didn't count on Little Willie Jenkins.

That's what I'm saying. We both ended up at Wee Willie Jenkins. It was the B-side off a cold potato. There's actually a great, what's his name? Little Dicky something. and he has a great song called Cold Potato and something that I was obsessed with for a while.

Wait, is he the guy with the TV show?

No, no, no, not that guy. Not David Berg, a.k.a. Lil Dicky. His name is like Dicky something. But my point is... Did you hear it? I'm going to knock on your door. This is the most famous song where someone says, I'm going to knock on your door. How does the internet not know about this? How are they pointing us to the other one, the other song, and not this song? Like, I know it's not the opening way that Aretha states it. She says, I'm going to rap on your door or tap on your window. But she gets to the knock on your door part. I'm genuinely shocked that the internet hasn't figured this out yet.

do you think that by the end of our lives the world will have moved on to a different type of search engine you mean i'm kind of being serious because i've raised this on the show like there are various aspects to this and i won't go into the whole the whole kitten kapoodle kitten kapoodle again but um i do think in many ways google and very and all of google's um products and services in some way have gotten worse but including the search function yeah and part of that literally is ai they're trying to like kind of keep you on the site longer by giving you like sort of answers that are based on things it's picked but without having you go somewhere else right without having you go somewhere else and that's a big part of it but um yeah but generally speaking like in in various ways it just seems like and i'm almost wondering like this sounds like i'm making a joke but what if we had tried binging this yesterday is there a chance that duck duck Go, which I always forget DuckDuckGo. I don't think it's a search. That's a browser and security. I can't remember. But, you know, there are other ways of searching the Internet, and I do wonder if we get so frustrated and we start trying these, is there a chance that we're just stuck using the one we've always used when there are better options out there?

Well, I went to Bing.com, and I typed in Knock on Your Door song, and what did I get?

Little Willie Jenkins.

Eddie Hodges.

Eddie Hodges. That's what I said. i mean it's not a bad song we said this yesterday yeah i mean you gotta be in the mood for it

i don't want to hear this at the dentist's office no but like i mean again uh bing uh let's see here i'll go back i mean granted it is literally the name of the of the song uh so maybe that's what's kind of you know elevating it but i'm just i'm just old time music i'm sorry i'm just i'm i just can't believe here's what i this is what i assume about the internet and like you said particularly with the advent of ai i assume that if i and i assumed incorrectly if i type in any lyric to any fairly well-known song even if it's at the in the back way back of the actual song even if it happens eight seconds before the song's over i mean this is like this is actually a pretty light lift for the internet right shouldn't you be able to put in the last four lyrics to the song butterfly by the band crazy town fronted by shifty shell shock should you say barterfly or butterfly oh oh i may need to reconsider my music for your weekend like don't you think that if you were to put in the last three lyrics like if you did them in order if you If you put in the last, you know, four words of almost any widely circulated song, the Internet should be able to quickly grab that because those words in that order are probably, I don't know if unique is the right word, but it would point you in a direction. Yeah.

I don't have a good answer because I didn't go deep on this. I only did a little bit of Googling around while we were on the show together. So I don't know what page two or three of Google ended up. But it sounded like you went on a pretty deep dive.

Well, we ended up in the same place you and I did. You know what I mean?

I'm just saying mine was very cursory. Well, so was mine. Yeah, I'm a busy guy.

I'm busy doing interviews with – I'm busy doing underwhelming interviews with the Oregonian, Andrew.

What was your favorite part of this journey?

When they gave me the money, I think. All right. We did not get to the Oompa Loompa sound, but I think you really heard the best part of it, which was just my new favorite drop, which is the Oompa Loompa in question saying that the comments were savage, but in like a very Scottish accent.

The comments are savage. Very, very savage.

so i was i didn't read any follow-up of that willy wonka story i thought this might be another person who was involved in the production she was but was complaining because she realized that she got into something um that was not up to snuff but she's actually sort of from a position of

defending the no no no she's not defending the thing what she's trying to contextualize for all of us is something that i actually said yesterday which is this is really not on the performers the performers were just hired to be at a thing and when they got there they learned pretty quickly that this had not been well organized and the ones who stuck around her name by the way is Kirstie Patterson she's the the woman who's become other than maybe the what's the name of the person in the Jabberwocky mask the unknown other than maybe the unknown she's the face of this operation now because she was standing behind this she was standing at this thing that had all these beakers and vials and potions on it which people kind of said look like a candy meth lab and she looks very just kind of you know the particular photo that was snapped of her she looks very over it and so it was you know it's been held up as an example of like just how bad this was even though what she says was like i only she knew that this was going to be a disaster pretty quickly but she also felt bad for the kids who were coming to the thing this was the impossible i'm going to include the unknown in this i'm going to include everyone who stuck around every actor that stuck around to try to help with this thing i'm i'm i'm going to include them in a group of people who actually felt like we have to do this so as to make the experience at least a little better for these young people come to this they're the sort of heroes of this story in a way and the irony is they're the ones that look really bad because they're standing behind a bunch of crummy beakers and potions. But really, they were only there because they were trying to actually make this a little bit less bad.

At least the great unknown is still unknown. We don't know who's behind that mask.

Right, exactly. The comments are savage.

Very, very savage.

Mostly I wanted to integrate that into the canon, and now I have. So we can talk, Andrew, about music for your weekend. What would you like to play?

I would like to play something that I had the opportunity to hear last weekend. So remember last weekend I told you I was going to see a show at the Fremont Abbey.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. How was that?

Joanna Sternberg was somebody that I kind of stumbled on, I don't know, six months ago or something. It was amazing. It was absolutely fantastic. And as I was kind of like looking at my digital tickets the night before, I saw that somebody named Joanna Samuels. And actually, this is spelled, there was two Joannas. Now, this one is spelled with an H. So I think I heard them both sort of pronounce it, pronounce the H, which I didn't know that was a thing. Like you sort of emphasize the Johanna versus Joanna. Did you know that? Do you know anybody who spells it that way and sort of does a little emphasis on the H, Johanna?

I don't think, but, oh, wait, they do an emphasis, a Johanna. I know some Johannas.

You do know some Johannas. Yeah, but H is in there. I thought it was just a silent H, but I'm wrong.

Yeah, because I think my experience with that is that it would be, there's no H, right? That's a Joanna and the yeah, but I also grew up knowing a Johanna. So that might have impacted my awareness of the time.

Yeah, no. So anyway, so you had a you had a Johanna opening up for a Joanna and this person's name is Johanna Samuels. And the day before I went to the show, I'm like, oh, I should check out what Johanna Samuels sounds like, what Johanna Samuels sounds like. And boy, was I impressed. This is from her 2021 record Excelsior, which I was able to buy on vinyl and even have her sign, which was a little bit awkward. But you know what? I was like, I'm here. Why not have her sign it? I'm excited. But I fell in love with the record the night before. Then I got to see her perform in a much more kind of a acoustic sort of setting. And so it's a little bit hard for me. I'm a little bit new to this record.

It's hard for me to pick out one song to play, but I'm going to play this track off of the album Excelsior by Johanna Samuels. This one is called All Is Fine. I think you will enjoy it. Okay.

A message that would just be met across the other room With seven or eleven days if you found this lady you My heart, it is wide open And I'm looking at my shoes Just praying that we never have to be in the same room Would you sing the song you wrote for me? What would you ever do? Just find another pretty girl To harmonize with you

There you go. All is fine. Dig it. song it's great the whole record is really good does this make you want to go to more things yeah i mean i go to i think i go maybe not more but i go to a decent amount of shows these days i didn't for years and years but i'd say over the past year or so i've been going i guess i say that

i'm really i'm really kind of i'm projecting there maybe because i live on a mountain in the snow now um but i feel like that's the kind of thing because the i my guess is you would not have been familiar with this person's work had you not gone to that show exactly and it was like

Joanna Sternberg I stumbled on that and then we bought the tickets I'd never been to the Fremont Abbey that's one thing it's like a lot of the shows I've been going to over the past like summer were a lot of like kind of reunion tours or legacy tours like pavement or death cab or breeders all of that stuff which were awesome but I'd never been to like a small or I had I've been to places like this but it's been a long time so I've been to a small like intimate acoustic little setting like the Fremont Abbey which is a totally different vibe and you feel like everybody who's there I can't explain it you're not going to get a lot of hop-ons you know what I mean it was like as a very specific no one's yelling play free bird right and so like by being in there you sort of even though they were like all like most people there were so much younger than me like you sort of feel an immediate kinship because you found yourself at Fremont Abbey to see this these performers who aren't like huge headliners you know

Right. Yeah. That was great, by the way. I'm absolutely going to delve deeper into her catalog of music. I delved semi-deep into a world I didn't expect to go into today, which is basically what was described as a hip-hop boy band from the mid-2000s called Brockhampton, formed in San Marcos, Texas, led by someone named Kevin Abstract. um it was uh it was a self-described boy band this is all according to wikipedia but they were trying to redefine the term boy band a complex magazine called the group a gay black white diy ambitious all-inclusive and would-be pop stars i'm looking at some pictures of brockhampton they're all dressed in this one photo like almost like in a kind of like a prison jumpsuit but it looks like again i know nothing about this about this group but it looks like what they were trying to do was as i just said do some sort of idea of a quote-unquote boy band but with way more interesting ambition than just we're gonna you know go do a dance at the mall of america and hope we get signed with lou perlman or whatever um but the reason i found about brock hampton was because i saw a song that was bouncing around on spotify called slug by somebody named matt champion and this just came out and then i was like well who's matt champion And then I was Googling him and it turns out he was one of these people in this thing called Brockhampton, which, and again, that was kind of early 2000s. You said Brockhampton, I think it was from 2010 until 10. Yeah, maybe they may still exist. I don't actually know. It says years active 2010 to 2022. So maybe they've just kind of wrapped things up. But there's actually a number of websites. People were into this thing called Brockhampton or Brockhampton or however you said it. And it just had me thinking like wow it never even occurred to me that you could do a group of people playing music together a group of

guys and call it a boy band but not have it just be what we all think of as a boy band that's you

consider Wu-Tang Clan to be a boy band well that's what I mean I wouldn't have but you could

make the argument right it's a bunch of guys they've all got cool nicknames they make music together how is that really very different than say the Backstreet Boys or O-Town or whatever so uh that's that's the way from whence this person named Matt Champion came I like this song slug though just because it's got strong zap and roger vibes it's got either i don't know if this is a vocoder or what what this little instrument is uh that's also been very co-opted by like bruno mars and stuff again you know peace and love to bruno mars but i really like this sound can you uh play a little bit of this this is a this is a this is a danceable number this is gonna get you all hyped for the weekend me or the listeners everybody involved

No matter what you do Oh, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why But you say it's dangerous, it's dangerous, it's dangerous to look in your eyes I can't explain it, explain what, how I got so mangled in your life Get back away, ask for children

All right, there's a little Matt Champion doing the song Slug, right?

Yeah, it's really great. Catchy. I really like his voice, even when it's not vocoded or whatever. Yeah, that's good.

The listener suggestion for this week comes from our friend, Malisande in New York. And Mally says, on a repeat episode of Threedom, which of course is the, that's our friend, Paul F. Tompkins, Scott Aukerman, and Lauren Lapkus. Is that the Threedom crew? I believe so, yep. Lauren Lapkus played this song That is so beautiful And ethereal

I didn't know that They played songs on that podcast I haven't checked in in a long time And I wonder what their rules are We should ask I can ask Tompkins

He'll probably be on LiveWare in the next three episodes Mally says I know this is self-indulgent But I'd love to hear it played In honor of my cat Roxy Who suddenly and very precipitously deteriorated over the past few weeks and I had to let her go. It's been an unexpectedly devastating time for me. And I also understand how lucky I am that this loss has been one of the hardest so far for me. That's an interesting way to look at it, you know, for Mellie. She lived with us for 17 years. She was a kitten her whole life. Sometime in 2020, she decided I was her person and became my closest companion she would wait for me to come home in the morning uh more for pets than for breakfast dart into my room any chance she got and would follow my hand around so i might get that under ear spot that only i seem to understand oh cats do that that's a big move with cats that i've only realized since bubbles has been around which is um that kind of like bringing the mountain to muhammad like you're just sitting there with your hand and they want

you to mess with their head so then they get the head under your hand yeah yeah you know they like

the head butting the nose nudging the like hey you've looks like you've got a limp hand there while you're reading a magazine what if that hand was actually on a part of my head that i wanted it

to be on you got time to set you got time to pet exactly that's what roxy used to say um uh we were

just starting our attic flat era that's attic flat i'm guessing melie and roxy were up in an had a flat up in an attic somewhere um we were starting our attic flat era and i still can't believe i have to do this without her trilling inquiries into why i'm still painting this dresser and not paying attention to her i always made sure to drop everything and

or the surprise bounce onto the bed from seemingly nowhere and the adorable demanding flop on her side to get the gravity assist on scritches. I am an atheist and I wish that I wasn't right now. It's comforting to pretend she is being her kittenish wild child self out there on the astral plane. Love you guys. Melisande. Sorry, this is so long. Uh, this was after hours of revision edit away. I clearly edited none of that out, Melly, but I'm so sorry to hear about Roxy, and we'll be thinking of you, and we love you. By the way, this song is as advertised, although I've now managed to. You have the link, but I don't think I have the name of the artist anymore. It's Valerie June performing a song called Astral Plane. Okay, this is a very beautiful song, and we'll all be thinking of Melly and Roxy. Indeed. And pets we love and pets we've lost here as we wrap up the show for the week and head into the weekend. But I have good news. We'll be back here on Monday with more imaginary radio for all of you. In the meantime, take care of yourselves. Hug your cats. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

So much, follow the signs, slowly be steady, don't rush, the day will come when you're ready, just trust, dancing on the astral plane, only water cleansing rain floating through the stratosphere around me you see so clear is there a way for you to shine out of fear from other worlds but you can't say what keeps you here There is something about the soul of a cat. There is something intrinsically secretive about a cat. Power out.