Muse

We have an amazing relationship. We both have so much in common. We both love soup, and we love the outdoors. We love snow peas, and talking and not talking. We could not talk or talk forever, and still find things to not talk about.

TBTL

This thing turns out to be half as important as I figure it just might be. I'd say that you're all in line for some important promotions and personal citations when this thing's over with.

Let me take off my assistant skirt and put on my Barbra Streisand in the Prince of Tides ass-masking therapist pantsuit.

Do not put that on the imaginary radio show.

Hey, I've learned a lesson here, but I hope you all have, too, about the vitality of shared experience. We will all remember this moment for the rest of our lives. It was dramatic. It was visual. It was stupid. It was stupid, but it was also theater. Ooh, fancy.

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

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

My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. You call hamburgers steamed hams. Yes. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia.

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

I may have set off a real trend up here on the hill. You know, I mowed my lawn, some would say prematurely, a few weeks ago because it was so nice out on a random Saturday. I just, I don't know. I just, I panicked and I mowed the lawn. And what I've noticed is that my neighbor Bob has now mowed his lawn, even though we're not really fully in the spring mode yet. So I may have started a trend up here on Madrona Hill, and I'm not ashamed of that. I'm also not ashamed of the fact that we have arrived at episode 4,155 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

And we're going to do something slightly novel today. After 4,154 episodes, you'd think that we, Andrew and I, and John Sklaroff, the TBTL employee numero uno, you'd think that we would really know each other pretty well. And yet, there are ways that we can know each other even more closely and become better friends and colleagues. You're here to make friends. Making friends is the name of this show. We're going to do that today. We're going to do a little TBTB group exercise where we get to know each other particularly well. and before we do that, though, I've got to introduce the other people participating in this. Of course, first we have the longest-running co-bro of the show. Unlimited. Maybe best known for his drawings of the tall ships. He's Andrew Walsh. Hello there.

Hello. If any of these questions are about fidget spinners, you should know in advance that mine is yellow.

So if this is like a newlywed game type of thing. Now that I see you, I see you fidget spinning, just like you've now seen me with my binoculars. My binoculars, checking out the boats out there on the Mighty Columbia. I've seen you fidget spinning at times, so I know that about you.

Not a lot of people fidget spin anymore. It seemed like it was really hot there for a moment, and then everybody else forgot about it, but I didn't forget about Fidge. And I'm sure it will soon be back in style. Probably. In the same way that you started a whole lawn mowing trend on your hill, like I'm starting a fidget spinning trend here in Seattle.

I wonder what all the people that used to be spinning their fidgets are doing now with their fidgets.

What are they doing with all their extra time, too?

Well, I mean, seriously, that was something I think that a lot of people, obviously it was a fad, but it was also just kind of like helped maybe turn your brain off for a minute. Has it been replaced? Is there something else? Are people walking around with unexpressed fidget?

They're all vaping. You know who really likes this fidget spinner is Bingo the Cat. He loves playing with my fidget spinner, and I love him.

I bet he does. Yep. And then, of course, what would a TBTB off-site meeting get to know each other, group exercise, trust Fall B without our friend? And again, TBTL employee numero uno, John Sklaroff. John, don't post this, John Sklaroff, who's joining us from Body of Christ, Texas. Hey, buddy.

That's, yeah, just outside, just outside.

Corpus Christi, you're down there on a little, I mean, you're working. I want to make sure the donors know. John is hard at work per always.

Yeah, every day, seven days a week.

Yeah, but.

But you are down in Texas right now and joining us. So thanks for doing that.

Yeah.

All right. So, John, I'm curious about a couple of things. We don't have you on the show quite enough. But I'm wondering how you feel about this growing trend of don't post that, John, becoming kind of a regular go-to on the program.

Well, I know on Slack, some of the tens were really digging it. Our friend Lynn especially was glad that somebody was defying you guys and, like, posting super cuts and stuff like that.

And because it used to be a don't grab that Lin. Don't post that John as the new don't grab that Lin. So he's probably very relieved to have the white hot spotlight of TVTL moved a little bit over.

I believe Lin's exact quote was, Luke, if it be your will, please take this burden from my head. Something like that.

Yes, it was very, honestly, I thought overly dramatic.

Heavy is the crown.

Precisely. Um, uh, so, so, I mean, what are you looking for in, cause you're the person tasked with, uh, grabbing snippets from the show and you've done a great job with this so far, by the way, and for the longest time now, uh, Andrew and I have been represented by our respective cats, um, little kind of animations, if you will, or little photos of the cats. That's when we talk. Now we have this fancy new system, uh, where we're all on, uh, on video and I, I'm, you I'm curious, what are you looking for when you're scrubbing through the show as far as content, as far as something that's going to really work to put out on Instagram and threads and other social media places?

Well, I know, and I think this is a phenomenon that, was it Taylor Lorenz, probably the best journalist out there right now, has written about cringe content, like intentional cringe. Like that, I think it came up before on TVTL, the guy who cooked the shrimp in the airplane bathroom, right? Was that, yeah, so. Well, that's more like intentional gag. Yeah, well, yeah, in the same vein. Like you're trying to rage, you're rage baiting the audience. So I think the more things you guys can do, like that's quote unquote phone throwy. Huh.

Well, that's never been hard for us.

Yeah, I think we can explore that. of course there's more of course our reba mcintyre your investigation luke that clearly was very popular uh so if you guys keep investigating uh music into music conspiracies great but but it's

got to be a very very specific venn diagram overlap of reba mcintyre and the music of flow rida and i guess throwing a little john in there too that really touched a nerve what's the latest on that T-Pain, excuse me. What are the metrics on that? How many people have watched that video? What's going on with that?

The last I saw, there was like 320,000 views on it or something like that. And then we had – Whoa. I think that was a scene by – I can do this in real time. We have 330,000 just shy of views. It's been viewed by 261,000 plus accounts. um yeah people seem to yeah are what are people saying i haven't checked any of the comments are

they saying this is a sounds like an amazing podcast i should go subscribe i should go like

and subscribe so interestingly uh we have picked up a bunch of new instagram followers since then like there's been a handful you know which has been nice to see but the comments are i think this is something we probably all already knew the comments are that people don't actually watch a whole video before commenting because it's like they're like it's in the it's like if you watch the video it's there and i'm like i'll respond like yeah watch the rest of our video and you'll

see we get to that you know so it's like oh i see so people because in case somebody is tuning into this show for the first time tbtl uh that we were talking about apple bottom jeans with the boots with the fur somebody else on instagram was was basically saying is it possible that that in the song the person is uh wearing a fur coat and then just boots and and then you know we talked about on the show and i i went to the video and grabbed a screen cap or something you're saying people are engaging with our video content but not getting to the end of it so their comment is dude just watch the video which is also the music video for the song which is essentially where we land in So the attention spans of America have gotten so – they've atrophied to such a degree that – how long is the video? 20 seconds?

I mean, the video is like – it's maybe like a 56-second long video. And you get in the content of our video. You say you watch the video, the music video, within like 33 seconds or something like that. So people are basically watching. hour video for less than 30 seconds even though there's more video to go and commenting about the

thing you're about to say and the amazing thing isn't just like you honed in there luke or homed in on the attention span and so that's one part of the let's say problem but honestly if you don't have the attention span to not watch a whole 56 second video by us that's fine but then but that you have to comment on it the fact it's the combination of not having the attention span right to actually watch the content but feeling the need to weigh in on it is really where your

brain breaks andrew what i it's actually to me that's the most logical thing that happened there because it's like what the internet has done and social media has done to our consumption consumption of all media like people read headlines right they don't read the article but they'll comment on the article as if they know everything about it so people are like oh i know what you're talking about i'm gonna comment but you don't know what we're talking about because you didn't finish

watching it i also was thinking where i thought you were going andrew was to the degree that this is a promotional sort of opportunity for the program for tbtl if you can't get through 50 seconds of us talking about something allegedly interesting this ain't the show for you right This ain't it, chief. The actual show is going to literally kill you.

Wait till you get to the blurs days.

I mean, really, what we need to be doing is these promotional videos need to themselves be over 50 minutes long and mostly trying to pick a blackberry seed out of my back tooth so that the people know kind of what they're potentially getting. It reminds me of a time – this was many, many years ago, but we had – you know, we used to have a TBTL app, which is pretty funny because I feel like there were fewer – there were way fewer apps out there, and somebody just made it for us. Somebody, I think, was maybe, like, experimenting with app design and just said, oh, hey, I made you all an app. Here you go, which kind of makes a lot of sense. By the way, since this is turning into somewhat of a TBTB meeting, maybe we should think about that at some point. Maybe having an app again. Because it was cool. You could play drops on it. You could get the show. It was pretty slick. But also, I think if I remember right, it was in the iTunes app store and it was promoted. We used to have a very cozy relationship with iTunes back in the day. It used to be one of those tiles that would rotate through the kind of top part of the iTunes podcasting section, which was pretty great for the show back in the early days. It would be a lot of exposure. But our app got up there on the app version, and I forget what the number was, but let's just say it was maybe, I don't know, 100,000 people downloaded the app or something, and I think it was 99,000 people deleted the app. the next day like i think they thought it was a video game like we got a bunch of attention and the overwhelming opinion of the people who engaged with the content was no thanks no thank you yeah so that would be that sort of birthed my strategy and as much as i have one around our show and how we should try to promote ourselves because like us us being exposed to the like i mean even though it's very it's kind of a fun thing to have made and i didn't make it you made it john but it's a fun thing to have a video kind of go around the internet like that i just the chances that the people who who watch it are also the kind of person who's wiring is such that they're going to like this is a little bit it's a little bit slim those chances i'm not saying we shouldn't try to go viral at every turn because if we pick up 100 people here and 100 people there that's really something but we are in this unique position where we're we're making like you know we're making marmite ice cream here and there are some people that are going to really be down for that but the majority of people are going to go what yeah uh first of all can i just say i wouldn't

like us to invest in uh marmite ice cream production that's not i don't think no that's

what i'm saying we're the podcasting equivalent of that well you're not into that i thought we

were going to double down on that uh what was the second thing you want to say john uh i also

should say too like i was quick to be like oh people are commenting without watching the whole video there's definitely a lot of that but there are also a lot of people that are just having fun with it too of like oh i always thought it was boots with the again similarly like they're not waiting to the end like but i thought it was that and then it's like yeah just watch we tell you it is that um but there's a lot of people that are just excited by the nostalgia in their memory so it's a lot of people are having fun with it too i don't want to be it's all just people disengaging and like being dismissive but it's it's some of that is are there any comments where

they're like god that one guy's voice sounds just sexy as all hell yeah they said that about flow right i think yeah yeah or as i call him little john i was i don't know why i need to bring this up luke this is a conversation that you and i had off air about a specific comedian i'm not going to bring up that comedian's name because it's somebody that we both enjoy their work and i don't want to dunk on them but it's amazing how as we continue to consume where you're going with yeah more and more like kind of um we're consuming more like kind of stand-up and little clips of podcasts through whether it's tiktok or for me instagram stories it's funny how there are little subtle things that can affect whether or not you stay on something there's a comedian who i've been following for a long time now who i like a lot and i watch his clips and um you know and most of his content is getting into my brain these days from the stuff he posts on social media but a while back he this is so bananas and i didn't realize it until it already had an effect on me he changed his font up so the font that is kind of on the front end of his little stand-up bit that he's posting it kind of is a title and then the the fonts that are used that are kind of like um subtitles for people who don't have the sound up or can't hear sound um you know and that's something that you do you have subtitles on ours as well and I realized the other day and I mentioned to Genevieve I'm like I realized I haven't been watching that guy's stuff because I don't like the font anymore it wasn't like it's not like I'm protesting it's not like right oh like and I know this person but it's like i realized that if i did not know this person and i saw this font i would make an assumption about the kind of material that they're doing it seems more aggressive than i think he actually is and how like these little indicators can have a huge impact on whether or not a video has 50

000 views or a hundred right the micro decisions of of of cruising around on the internet are are really kind of fascinating because so many of them are very subconscious right yeah i think you described it as it kind of looked like monster energy drink or something yeah that's not that's not the vibe i'm into either and so yeah it's like why do i and i'm an inveterate a tiktok scroller still um as much as i as much as i try not to be but um yeah why do i stop on the videos that i stop on and why do i next pass the ones that i next pass it's a million micro decisions

that i'm not even conscious of can i can i just make a point to uh you know i don't know if you guys have noticed on a couple of our videos now where it's not audio of you guys talking i have selected music by a one miss taylor swift that is very intentional like one i obviously love her music i think she's great um and i think they'll fit in in the cases where i've used them but there is i mean not to sound cynical you know but but i there that is also intentional a little bit too

you know get caught up in that whirlwind also because i've noticed that on on tiktok i was very mystified by this for a long time which would be a video where there's not even any audible music but then if you look down because on TikTok it'll tell you what the song is that's playing so somebody's just doing I don't know maybe like what we're doing but then you see the little indication that there's a song and it's you know something that's a very popular song whether it's Taylor Swift or whatever is big on TikTok and there's no music and I was like what the hell is that and I think what people would do is put the song underneath vault take the volume down to zero so that it's only there as an seo type of thing so that just basically if someone's like i want to see everything that involves monkeys spinning monkeys which i weep for you if that's the thing which by the way that is a a big song on tiktok it's not like by a pop artist it's like a little kind of it's like the sound of somebody just being i don't know kind of silly i guess but like you put that in your video you take the volume completely away but you get people coming to the video because they think that's where the song is and then ideally maybe they stick around

i thought you were actually saying that people were making videos of monkeys spinning other monkeys around now that i would watch same thing i was gonna say like how you were like if you're

into that i'm like i think i am into that indeed speaking of wild animals living in the home john i just realized something you and your lovely wife live yeah in the state of minnesota the great state of minnesota we do and yet you are down in the great state of texas uh and do you bring the dogs all the way down there and what was that transport like yeah so uh as folks folks

might know we have three golden retrievers so it's uh about 200 pounds of dog in our in our car when we travel um actually so we did drive with them they're with us we actually uh so everything's fine i told you guys this off air but i had a little car accident uh before we left for our trip why did you let modi drive well thankfully he wasn't in the car at the time it was a plow uh a plow ran a stop sign and and and t-boned me so that was fun what when you said plow is that

like does that mean snow plow does that mean like a snow plow it wasn't a city plow

It was, like, a guy who, like, owns his little business and, like, his own landscaping business. And it was, like, one of those plows on the phone.

A Mr. Plow type of situation.

Yeah, it was a Mr. – basically Homer Simpson. Although it might have been the Plow King Barney that day. I don't know. But, yeah. Yeah, so that was literally the day before we were planning to leave. So we spent that whole day scrambling.

And was that the car that you were going to take as well?

Yeah, the bigger of our two cars. But luckily, here's a plug for Progressive. i mean i don't you know give like they need our advertising uh the progressive people were so awesome they like got the car the tow they they got us a rent like got the rental figured out immediately so we end up renting um a minivan is what we have we drove down here so uh the dogs have plenty of room in the back seat although they kind of all um kind of conjugate towards the front of the back. Is that the right word? Is that convene?

It would make it for an interesting ride. Wait a minute. That's not the right word at all.

That's not the right word at all.

Are these dogs related?

Wait, you said conjugate, not copulate. Conjugate is what you do to verbs, right?

Oh, yeah, but I guess I think of it more in terms of conjugal.

Oh, does conjugate mean that outside of literature? I didn't realize that, Luke.

No, John, you know what? Andrew is right. Once again, John and Andrew are teaming up against me. I think you're right. I think conjugate is much more – it's just literary. It's not conjugal. Conjugal is a big one that I look forward to when I'm doing time, and that was not what you were referring to.

No, what I refer to is they all hang out together in the front of the back of this. So there's still two-thirds of the back of the van that's unoccupied, even though they have all that space. But they like cuddling with each other.

Do they get antsy, though? like you have to stop and take them out and like let them run around i mean driving with dogs can

be a whole thing yeah and it's like a 20 hour drive each way so it's actually we have like a whole system because when we used to live in new york and we would drive to minnesota to visit jess's family we would do the same basically this 20 hours also uh several times a year and so it's the routine is you wake up early everyone goes to the bathroom everyone eats breakfast i mean dogs too right you have a full ticket gas and you go and then about every four to five hours you have to stop to gas up for humans and dogs to go to the bathroom get something neat or whatever it is and then we just kind of and we and jess and i flip flop who's driving and we do that for basically as long as we feel comfortable doing it and then we'll stop at a hotel overnight uh and there's a lot of hotels that take dogs the the trick though is and nobody rat me out please is most of these hotels like La Quinta or like Days Inn only allow up to two dogs. So luckily, because they're all golden retrievers, we'll walk two in at one time and then go get the third one and hope nobody notices they're different dogs. Yeah, right.

Have you considered just one very tall dog in a trench coat? That's what I was thinking.

Yeah, no, unfortunately, the trench coat didn't arrive in time.

That's hilarious. Because that's a really genius idea of just kind of being like, there's no way they're going to figure out that it's three different dogs.

Yeah, even if you had three different dogs that all looked different, there's a pretty good chance that whoever's working the front desk at the La Quinta Inn probably doesn't care that much.

You and Jess had a three-dog night. Oh. That was terrible. That's not even. Was that the expression? It's a band that nobody even remembers.

Is that band named after an expression, though? Like, is a three-dog knight an old antiquated expression? Do we know?

Why don't we do this? Why don't we thank some dazzling donors? But also, why don't we? I'm curious. What do we think a three-dog knight would be? You know what I mean? Maybe this is the beginning of our-

Is it illegal? I actually think I might know this, but go on. Yeah, let's get to the donor. I think I might know this, but go on. okay well just want what let's uh let's get cocky think of three dog now i'm getting cocky i think it has something to do with like yeah olden times when you were uh olden times i don't turn the 1900s if you if it was cold outside you need more dogs to keep you warm at night i feel like either i'm making that up out my pulling out my backside or i've heard that somewhere andrew is giving you

a bell of congratulations which makes me think you're absolutely right oh i'm sorry that was

the bell of you're wrong the bell of disappointment it's so it sounds so yeah the bells of disappointment uh that's a show title um a very very quick google gives me that ai automated result that says a uh the expression describes a night so cold that you would need three dogs in bed to keep you warm the phrase may have originated in the australian outback alaska or siberia okay

Okay.

That is, by the way, it may have originated in one, two of the coldest places on earth or a place where people regularly die of heat exhaustion. Can you imagine being in the Outback and being like, um, it's going to be a three dog night. Is it ever a three? Is it ever a three dingo night in the Outback? Like, it seems like the place where you do not need three dogs to warm you up. Also, the reason that that is surprising to me is because when I think of the music of the band Three Dog Night, it just seems like it's southern rock, humid, kind of like it's a warm night. It's a swampy night in the south, and they're singing, Jeremiah was a bullfrog. It is sweaty, you're right. It seems like sweaty music to me. It doesn't feel like, oh, it's so cold here in Antarctica, we've got to cuddle up with our three dogs.

Yeah, no, I'm with you on that. The only thing I'm not maybe with you on 100% is my rendition of Jeremiah was with you on is I now have to cut that out. Otherwise, we're gonna get pulled from Spotify. I would guess that the Outback, it's really cold. I bet you the desert parts of the Outback, it's really cold in the wintertime. That's fair. That's the one thing. But you're right about that music. I couldn't even remember what Three Dog Nights saying. It's that. And that is a song. I think we've talked about this on the show before. That song does not rest well with you, right, Luke? Oh, I don't mind that one. Oh, really?

But I'll tell you what. I think that's a Three Dog Night song, or it's a Blood, Sweat, and Tears song. Because I couldn't tell you one thing about those two bands. One's called Blood, Sweat, and Tears. One's called Three Dog Night. And I don't know which is which.

You are right. But Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog is the same song as Joy to the World. Oh, yeah, yeah. And it's like two songs jammed into one, which always sort of breaks my brain. I don't know how I feel about it, to be honest with you. I feel like you have to judge both parts of that song separately.

What's that Wings song? Band on the Run by Wings is another song like that, where it starts off sounding like one song, and then it hits that crescendo, and it's like, I'm listening to a different song.

Yeah, and then suddenly it's Admiral Halsey notified me he had a cup of tea. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Does that show up in that song?

I think that's that song. It just totally becomes a totally different song.

They did rip that off, though. The Beatles ripped that off from November Rain, right? The GNR song.

Yes. Wait, hold on. Does November Rain go through a whole thing?

Doesn't November Rain have five different time changes in it, too?

I feel like it does. And that also has Slash playing electric guitar outside of a church.

It looks like the church where Tarantino shoots the wedding scene in Kill Bill, right?

Indeed, and I know I've always said this to you, Luke, and I've been saying this since that video came out. Like, where is the amplifier? Where is it plugged in? It's like that Savage commercial.

You know where the amp's amplifying from? God's amplifying it, Andrew. God. Okay, gotcha. No, it's from Slash's top hat.

Or that. Or that. That would be great. You open a little door to the little speaker up there.

Slash and Otto from The Simpsons are the same person in my mind. 100%. All right. Hey, let's do that. Let's thank those dazzling donors, and then we'll get to some team building here because this team is falling apart. We need to get back on the same page, so we'll do that here right after this. We was hoping for some razzle-dazzle. Razzle-dazzle. That's right, man. Razzle-dazzle. On your mark. I thought we were coming in with Jeremiah was a bullfrog.

We don't have the rights.

don't have the rights uh we are gonna thank some dazzling donors john uh as has been commented on the show recently by me you um you really uh you're really making a lot of appearances in these dazzling donor messages it's only because it's your whole job to organize them collate them talk to the dazzling donors but but you really you loom large in these and as well you should

thank you i i definitely you know i read everyone that comes in and it does put a little smile on my face uh every time i see one of those so thank you to everyone who's been so kind it really should

and and and you're doing an awesome job of of um you know of kind of interfacing with our with all of our donors and all of our listeners it's one of the many things that's so great about having uh three people working for the show and this is only possible uh because of donors and dazzling donors like audrey houseman hey audrey akronish ohio now of course we know audrey because audrey has been on week in review uh and uh because audrey and her partner her husband i should say ryan they bought this very cool house that's looking out over a lake on a hill it's teal I don't know.

and they maintain the Instagram feed, Teal House on the Hill. And it's great, great content, although it makes me furious because they are a team and they work diligently and hard on their weekends to improve their really cool house. And I am just surrounded by empty, unassembled IKEA cabinets. So when I watch their Instagram feed, I'm inspired and jealous.

You should have proposed to one of them first. I think they're newlyweds, in fact, based on the Teal House on the Hill Instagram feed.

I did propose, and apparently it went into a spam folder.

Oh, what a bummer for you.

But you do have Walt. Luke and Andrew, congrats on your first year. Yes. LMA, congrats on your first year of TBTB. I'm proud as punch of you for taking the awe-inspiring leap into independence for yourselves and for the tents. Well, Audrey and Ryan, as we've been saying as we read these dazzling donor messages, it's so cool that this worked. And I guess I could say I am proud of us, the three of us, that we left our actual salary jobs to do this. But it only is working because of the dazzling donors and the other donors. It's only working because of folks like you, Audrey. So thank you. We can't get that proud because you're the reason and other people the reason why we were actually doing this. You should feel happy of yourselves. here's to many more thons to come nothing new to plug this year but my freshly minted husband there

you go there you go i seriously i mean i don't know if you're like that luke but i'm like i think it's okay for me to say that i think i saw that on a public instagram feed that they're newlyweds but like as i'm getting into people's personal business i'm like what am i doing just shut up

well because we with a lot of folks now you know who are listeners to the show uh we also maybe We follow them on Instagram or you chat with a lot of people through various Slack and other means, Andrew. And the line blurs about what is, as they say, outward facing.

Yeah. Yeah. Did I tell you that my friends gave me these little tapes from our early 20s that we used to record? And they were handing them off to me because they want me to digitize them. And it's going to be a bunch of us drunkenly talking about things or whatever.

Wasn't there one where you were going around a bar asking people to wish a bride and groom well?

Yes, that was one that I've had for a long time, but my friend Pauly found like three more of them. And when I saw him and his wife, Catherine, and they were giving them to me for safekeeping recently, Catherine said, also, like, don't share any of that publicly before we hear it. And I was I was pretty taken aback. I was like, Catherine, of course I wouldn't do that. And she's like, you have a podcast where you talk about personal shit all the time. I was like, that is a really good point.

Here's what Audrey says. I invite anyone who might be interested to follow along with our Lakehouse homesteading journey at Teal House on the Hill on Instagram and Facebook. If you're into home cooking and preserving staggering waves of vegetables, ill-advised home improvement projects done by novices who should know better, a bearded guy learning to keep bees, a grown adult woman going through a horse phase, or the general mayhem of a Northeast Ohio Lake community, we might just be your journey. Jam. Thanks for another year of warm and fuzzy imaginary friendship. Cheers. Signed Audrey. I can confirm all of those things about a teal house on the hill. So do go check it out. And Audrey and Ryan mazel on the wedding and thank you for supporting the show. That was a secret. Maestro.

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

down. We also want to thank William Weinberger, who's in Paonia, Colorado. I don't know if I've ever heard of Paonia. I've heard of Plugola. Did you learn about Paola and Plugola at a young age as a radio person, Andrew?

As a young radio person, but not as a young person. So, yeah, at Kent State, I took a legal, like a broadcast legal class. So all the ins and outs of like slander and libel and all of that stuff. I actually kind of, I remember kind of enjoying the class.

Yeah, I took a class, what was it? It was basically like the media law class from this really great professor named Don Pember at the University of Washington. And I really loved that class. But I feel like, and then when I, in fact, I went to a high school that had a radio station. A radio station that I was never allowed to get on the air with. But I took an intro to radio class, and I feel like day one of any kind of radio class was watch out for plug-ola and pay-ola.

Yeah, so.

I'd have never had anyone try to plug-ola or pay-ola me in now going on a quarter century of working in this industry.

Do you remember the difference, though, off the top of your head? Obviously, I could look at.

it up but in an attempt to not do that well i would say payola is someone this is all music radio anyway right payola would be uh you and john are in a band called two dog night yes and you've just recorded a single and you're trying to get it on on kicksy where i work and um and and so you come to me and say luke here's a sawbuck i don't know what era this is happening

in i'm kind of all over the map with a lot of this i'm getting more and more confused now

now i'm googling sawbuck john is knocking a hoop down the street with a stick

you're offering me a sawbuck there's cars going awooga in the background yes i don't know what's

happening but so for for someone to pay money to have an album paid on played on the radio

that was i believe payola payola then plugola would be the same thing except talking about something promoting something getting some but it's still about cash changing hands but it's whether or not you're playing something or plugging something is that just spawn con then

sponsor content is basically i mean like i mean seriously like i'm sure also that there was if not like actual payola i'm sure there was a million ways that the back when getting your album or your song played on the radio was a big deal i'm sure there was a million ways the record companies figured out how to more or less financially incentivize radio stations to do

that i think one of the i'm not a musician um as you well know but i there goes two dog night i know now you're down to we're down to one dog night yeah geez man by the way i loved i loved that fantasy scenario the only thing is i think i want to be the person at the radio station not that i don't want to hang out with you and play bass or tambourine you just want to get bribed I would love to be – I think you guys are more like band guys, and I'm the guy at Kixi, if that's cool with you guys. I'm fine with that. I accept payola, by the way.

I've been dying to get into Two Dog Night since I invented it eight minutes ago.

And I've been dying to accept that cash bribe of yours on Kixi. But one thing that I will never have the experience of, and most people won't, and even probably most musicians won't, But the feeling of randomly hearing your own music on a radio station for the very first time must be a memory you never forget.

Yeah. Yeah. Because, I mean, I still get geeked up if I hear myself doing a promo for Livewire on OPB.

Right.

Literally, Becca and I got in the car the other night, and it was on, and she goes, are you used to that? And I'm like, absolutely not. First of all, I don't usually recognize it as my own voice. I think that's I do I know that person and like that's nothing that's me reading a 20 second script I cannot imagine sitting down and writing a song and and recording it and then hearing it on the radio in the wild that must just be an unbelievable experience and worth paying for yes there's you can't put too high a price on it William says a dazzling message is a bit of a high bar for me no pressure William you're a dazzling donor you've dazzled us with your donation the message does not need to be dazzling William says I'll just add my voice to the chorus of grateful listeners with heartfelt thanks to the beautiful biz boys

that's a great band name by the way that's a band name I was going to say Andrew

Andrew would you rejoin us if we go from two dog night to beautiful biz boys as long as I can keep my job at the radio station I'm in I mean honestly that's the whole way it works you're our you're our you know our person on the inside at Kixi so beautiful biz boys we're out here recording music and then you're sliding it on the air between episodes of intelligence for your life and intelligence for

your health on weekends don't forget it don't leave connie selica out of this uh heartfelt

thanks to the beautiful biz boys for being there and to the tens for keeping them there that is very true i guess what we all do is important william you know you really low-keyed this and said that you wouldn't you weren't going to write a dazzling message but you've said a lot here Because what everyone does associated with this show is important Whether it's somebody who's able to donate Like William and like Audrey and Ryan Or just somebody who tells somebody about the show Or even just somebody who enjoys the show Maybe Lois on the list, us, making the show But what everyone's doing is important So thank you very much, we couldn't be here without you Hello and welcome to Top Story All right, we have, you know, we've actually gotten to know each other, I think, pretty well. We know about, you know, John's questionable hotel techniques with his various pets. We learned that Andrew has always dreamed of a lucrative world in payola. But maybe we can still learn a little bit more about each other on this. 150 best questions to ask to get to know someone better according to experts article that andrew found now i will tell you this andrew when you wait one quick second john because yeah andrew when you propose this i thought oh this will be kind of fun and then i just realized when i clicked on the url that the url is prevention.com slash sex slash relationships what yeah yeah i'm a trunk all right i thought this was a team building exercise is this something else are you trying to fundamentally change the nature of the three of ours relationship listen and i say this with

all sincerity just relax baby uh-huh sure just like let's just don't overthink it let's just go through some of these questions and just sort of see where it takes us this is a family program

i thought uh thank you john thank you for thank you for for reminding andrew of that

What did I do? No, you know where I saw this, Luke, is my pocket app email digest that comes out every day with like 10 clickable headlines. This was one of them.

So this is a list. We're going to do all 150 questions, by the way. Great. Tell Jess she's on dog walking duty this afternoon. Yeah. John. No, I actually do. I've literally only read the first question, but I immediately wanted to discuss it with you. We may only get one question into this. But the first question on this list is, what's your favorite sandwich, and where did you eat it?

I'm dinging in. I didn't even really preview this list.

Now, is that the correct bell, or is that the wrong bell?

That was the I'm hungry bell? Yeah, same, same. I'm actually, luckily, I'm not. You know, so often we have these conversations, Luke, and I am really hungry. Luckily, today I ate too much before I recorded the show, so I'm actually not hungry, and I can have this conversation responsibly.

Without being compelled physically out into the streets to buy a sandwich after we have this conversation?

Because this sandwich I can't get anyway. And that is part of the answer here is, you know, I've been going to Jersey Mike's lately and I really enjoy the sandwich I get at Jersey Mike's. I started going there because my beloved Tubbs left Seattle for like the east side suburbs. So I don't go there anymore. Maybe like, I don't know, maybe there is a time where I would have said that, but there is a sandwich that I think about that I haven't had in a couple of decades now, but I used to eat it at least once a week. And it was from a deli in New Hampshire called In a Pinch Deli. I've talked about this before. The original one was out of like a little like kind of a New England style house that was turned into like kind of a to-go sandwich restaurant with a few tables in there. John literally dropping his mic. I literally knocked my head. That was a baller move.

Honestly, that's how delicious what you're describing is, Andrew. It causes grown men to drop their microphone.

And they made their own bread there. It was like a very crusty baguette. Very soft, of course, on the outside. Very crusty, though. And they would kind of cut it in half, kind of subway style, sort of, with this really good bread. You know, baguettes are cut that way. And I think I would always get, like, turkey and I think just, like, lettuce and something they had called honey cup mustard, which is like honey mustard with mayo and sprouts was the killer oh no sprouts and cucumber were the killer apps for me on that and like I can I mean the sensation of button this was like a regular thing I would get for lunch when I lived in New Hampshire for almost a decade and then I moved away and like I can feel this sensation of me taking the first bite out of that GD sandwich

and boy do I miss it it does seem though like you could create this at home I thought you were like It's a sandwich I can't get. I thought you were going to be like, it's a plant that grows on the north side of Mount Doom.

Well, you can make almost any sandwich at home, but it's about the ingredients. And they made their own bread. Oh, yeah, that's a good point. I've had no bread like this anywhere else. I mean, that's really – and whatever they did for the mustard was – I mean, I could come close to that probably. But it was just a combination of their ingredients, but especially that crusty bread.

Okay.

What about you, John?

Best sandwich of your life. You joked about us doing all 150 questions, but I could literally give you a tight 45 minutes on sandwiches alone because I think it's pizza, tacos and sandwiches. Those are like my three favorite kinds of foods. And so I'm really racking my brain of like sentimental sandwiches or like sandwiches that just like I really enjoy. I think I'll give you this one. there's uh there's this place in minneapolis called clancy's meat market um and they do just like i think vegetarian joint probably yeah yeah totally uh and they do the thing you're talking about andrew with like that like crunchy kind of baguette bread uh and they have every day they have like a special i think but then the things they every have i have on the menu every day are like a turkey and a roast beef sandwich and they are just like

like

The perfect amount of meat, and then they have, like, some veggies, and they have, like, pickled jalapenos and onions, and just, like, it's just, like, this kind of perfect combination of crunch and flavor, and it's just, like, it's a very simple sandwich, I think, really, when you break it down, but it's just, it's, like, a chorus of flavors that just sing in your mouth as you bite into it, and it's glorious. so Clancy's I'm gonna give that I'm yeah I'm gonna give that yeah but we can talk about sandwiches mine is

mine is kind of a two mine's a tie for first place from two different places in Los Angeles and it's funny because you could not have different sorts of experiences of buying the sandwich and enjoying the sandwich but they're both delicious for different reasons the one is Bay City's deli in los angeles in santa monica actually and what it is is like a it's like an italian grocery store that's just one of those grocery stores first of all it's teeny tiny and it's piled up to the ceiling with just a random like like mostly food but then also just like a set of three coffee mugs that say italia you know what i mean like like it's i don't know who owns this place and what how they choose the products that end up being on offer in this overly filled grocery store but what what everybody loves and why everyone goes there is because they have a sandwich uh you know they've got a deli that makes sandwiches and it is like old school like you got to take a number there is a insane line all the time particularly on saturday and sunday they have the bread is really good they put a lot of peppers and stuff on there and that's what i really go for in fact because you know i don't generally eat a lot of meat this i've had the i've had the bay cities sandwich with turkey in it or turkey pastrami actually it's so delicious but now i get it with just a bunch of cheese and veggies and these peppers and everything and what the the crustiness of the bread combined with how kind of flavorful like i believe you called it a chorus of flavor john the the the like explosion of flavor of all of the stuff that's inside this very crusty housing of this bread is really something i mean it's i think it's one of the best sandwiches in america in fact i was just looking at tiktok the other day as i want to do and there was somebody ranking sandwiches and of course bay cities deli came up on their list of like best sandwiches in america now i don't know if it's the best if it's even in competition but the other place that i've had the most memorable sandwich of my life is in the back of a furniture store in los angeles off of la brea it's called mace the cafe is called maison midi there's a a furniture store that is kind of, I guess you would say, French-influenced. It's lots of little home goods and things and chairs and towel, like just things that if you had like a kind of a cool house that sort of had French styling or I don't know. It's like a very upscale, cool home goods store. But if you walk to the back of it, there's a little cafe. And that place makes a sandwich. This was the sandwich that convinced me I could actually be a vegetarian or I could actually lower the amount of meat that I ate in my diet because this sandwich was so good.

And what it is is just bread that's toasted and then a bunch of spinach, believe it or not, which I know people are like medium on spinach, and then a bunch of really good fresh Havarti cheese. so it's like a really big bite of Havarti and spinach and there's something about this combination of these two things while you're sitting in the back of and let's be honest I was probably having a glass of wine while this was going on I just remember taking a bite of this spinach and Havarti sandwich in the back of a French basically furniture store while this great music was playing and I was having some white wine and just looking around and just thinking well this is the top of the mountain um and when i'm in la and i have time i go to this place by myself sometimes and sit in the back of this furniture store and eat this sandwich to this day like i did it like three months ago are we a better team now uh we're a hungrier team yeah can i even i'm starting to get a little did we break through andrew did we break on through to your that's what i'm trying

to figure out like do we have to assess after each question like are we are we there are we

gelling i i mean i ask this guys i feel closer to you all i know i'm supposed to be like financially

responsible one for the business but i can i use company funds to buy a plane ticket to la to go get these sandwiches that luke is talking about because it sounds tremendous i mean if we're ever

there as a crew as a dangerous knights crew i want to take y'all on it because we'll also have to stop by like well didn't you like to go to uh land

Langers? Weren't you a Langers man?

Well, that's the thing. The second you said the word L.A., I realized, oh my gosh, I've abandoned all of my L.A. sandwiches. I've abandoned my child! I've abandoned my child! I have never been to either of the places that you're talking about, but I could make a map. I could make a sandwich map of L.A. just based on my own preferences. In fact, this one is a little bit out. I loved Langers and Cantors as far as a pastrami sandwich. For me, it was also part of going to those places on a Saturday afternoon, whether I'm sitting in a giant booth, you know, at Cantor's or sitting at the bar at Langer's. Like it was the entire experience that goes along with it. That meant so much to me. But also the sandwiches meant a lot to me. But then also there was that place. And I I'm trying to think, Luke, did I take you there? I feel like I might have taken you there. Maybe I just tried to take you on a virtual trip there via Google Maps one time or something. But there was this outlier on the west side. It might have been Santa Monica, but I think it was Culver City called Johnny's Pastrami. It was not a standard pastrami sandwich Again it was more of a french roll But not super hard and crusty Very soft french roll With the pastrami on there And I think maybe often served as a dip And like that one I could hear as soon as you said LA Johnny's pastrami started ringing in my head Like how could I have left that off Of my very short list

Can I revise now that you keep saying pastrami So talk about sandwiches You can never get again um there was this jewish deli near where i grew up the mount kisco kosher deli and that was a place that we would go to and like the best corned beef pastrami all those things and you can't get anymore because years ago they had a kitchen fire and they never reopened and so like oh yeah and it was it just also represents like i feel like a time in my life like of going there with like my dad it was like a lot of good memories and like it was always like a treat to go there and like i've eaten at cats's deli and all these places you hear about and they're great but they're also tourist traps like this was like you know if you talk about like a kosher jewish deli like the best i've ever eaten and that was like that and that's the thing too knish

oh what is wait a sec okay a knish what what exactly is a knish what's it made out of uh so

kind of it's dough and and mashed potatoes is the most basic version of it it's stuff stuff with mashed potatoes and they can either be like deep fried in like a pocket or baked you'll see them sometimes too there's different variations but that's like the very standard and if you eat them with anything but spicy brown like golden's mustard or something i mean no yucky yums but i'm

gonna tell you you're doing it wrong and there's not usually cheese in these things kosher deli

you can't not mix in the meat you're not gonna have a sandwich and cheese oh wow andrew this

could be the place for you yeah i was gonna say because often like that's the thing like i grew up you know polish can you grow up polish and then stop being polish but you know like in other words like uh my family is polish or a big chunk of it is and like um pierogies or something that people love from that but like pierogies are also like often they're gonna have cheese involved in some way so i have to so i've basically kind of like in most pierogi circles if i'm somewhere where people are selling pierogies i've got to opt out of that because usually it's sort of cheese related things so just having a little dumpling that is just the potato sounds great to me if

you're in like a real kosher deli i you're hard to press really find a lot of cheese because most people most people i think are going to be eating like a pastrami or corned beef or something if you're doing that in your meal you're also not eating any cheese with it so like you know like

so interesting yeah because a reuben always has cheese right like i always think of those places

having rubens yeah yeah that's we have a jewish deli near my house in st paul and it's great but it's not like a true authentic kosher deli because they have rubens and all that stuff too it's not the same thing it's delicious but it's not not the same you know we're exactly four or

almost exactly four years away from the next presidential primary in new hampshire if you guys want we can start planning a tbtb coverage i don't know what our election coverage plans are for the um 2028 race but maybe we should prioritize that and i'll buy you all a in a pinch deli

sandwich only if you agree andrew to wash your own uh wash your underwear in the sink dave ross style my biggest memory of new hampshire and maybe the only time uh i've even been there was with you and me and dave ross and i remember andrew you and i standing at sea tack airport and he just walked up he rolled up with a roller bag it was the smallest thing i'd ever seen in my life and i think we both said like wow that's um that's incredible that you pack that lightly and i feel like he said well yeah if you wash your underwear on the sink of the hotel

yeah he saved all of his extra space for any kind of radio equipment he might need and so i mean that that i mean that is dave ross in a nutshell right like just practical to the point of just kind of like well don't Don't worry about my bodily needs. I am here as a, I am just here as an extension of radio. I am radio incarnate right now. I don't have to worry about eating or underwear or anything like that. Radio comes first.

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

All right, an email or a, unlike you, Andrew, I did not eat a bunch of food before the show. So I ate half of a Granny Smith apple. I'm trying to— Half? Well, yeah, because it was getting really—

You mean because the show started and you had to stop eating it? Basically. Or you were cutting apples in half? Okay.

No, I was eating it. Like, I didn't cut the apple. I was just eating it, and then the show started, and it was getting sticky on my hand, and I just chucked it into my yard, which was weird. Oh, okay.

Yeah, compost.

But also, I'm trying to—Granny Smith apples are a very, very healthy snack. they're like you know they're delicious and they have all the you know fiber and they're just like i'm trying to uh change my brain so that when i'm hungry i eat a blueberry some blueberries or blackberries or granny smith apple the thing is it did nothing to curb my hunger i'm so hungry and all this food talk has me has me uh ready to uh run outside and run directly towards some sort

of sandwich shop so not until you finish that apple you have to go outside to the yard pick up that apple finish it then we'll talk about dessert um i have a quick voicemail i'll play for you here because i know that we're kind of short on time but um you know john i think you know this but when we worked at american public media i remember writing a diss we were trying to do some sort of i don't know publicity or trying to get publicity to yeah do something for us that worked out pretty good we're still there but anyway i remember one thing that really irritated me was like We had written a description of the show to try to attract kind of new listeners or something, and we had used the term kind of like a cult following. We have kind of a cult following on TBTL, and somebody who I've never met before apparently up the chain said, no, we are not. We can't be describing our shows as being culty. Like, we're striking that. Did you even know this, Luke? No. It's stuck in my craw because I'm like that – whatever. It's stuck in my craw being told that we weren't allowed to use the term cult following because somebody had a stick lodged somewhere in their body. So anyway, I say all of that now because after you listen to this voicemail, it's really hard to argue that our following isn't somewhat cultish.

Hi, this is Laura in Tucson, Arizona, and I wanted to give you a story about how TPKL has maybe taken up a little too much real estate in my brain. I was having dinner with some people that I had never met. They were sort of relatives of relatives, you know, and I asked them, you know, to make a small talk, oh, so where are you from? And they said, we're from Bothell, Washington. and i said just reflexively uh for a day or a lifetime and when i tell you the silence what that came over the table uh everyone was staring at me and he said oh you've you've been to basel and i said no he said oh but you've you've been to seattle no no i've never been to the pacific northwest at all it was sort of a okay and everybody moved on with dinner um but yeah i just wanted to uh thank you all for that uh awkward uh social moment uh listen you paid for it

i'm not sure that i take full responsibility for that okay that story did not play out the way i was expecting because i thought i mean first of all i don't know about these people from bothell right because if somebody drops a little bit of local wisdom on you particularly like a funny sign that's been outside your town forever and you're in arizona wouldn't you be like oh my god how do you know about the sign like absolutely silence at the table right what are the chances i think these are they're the agents i don't think they've ever been to bothell they

just picked that name they're like i don't know bothell washington exactly that's where we'll

embed and i think what the listener read as them being unimpressed was them trying to figure out how to get out of this situation where they had been completely exposed as as being some sort of secretive, you know, double agents from somewhere who, uh, who have never even been to Bothell for a night, nor a day, nor a lifetime.

You know what, Luke, I'm going to one up you there. Aliens. They're, they're not even, they're, they're not from Russia. They're from, they're from outer space potentially, and they're trying to live amongst us.

Yeah. And they don't even.

even understand what an earth day is why do you think they were so confused there's a lot of

there were so many awkward pauses during that conversation i really i really thought that

story was going to be about how tbtl with our bizarro obsessions had had sort of equipped our listener with some fun dazzling deet to drop on some people from bothell and they were just like oh my god this is so great and instead she was like so thanks for helping create that awkward

moment yeah well here's the deal and i will say this to all of our listeners just remember that like sometimes it's just easier to and i've used this one time actually describing a podcast i listen to a lot uh just say just refer to us as your friends if you don't feel like getting into the podcast thing just say i got a couple of friends who live in seattle and they they always talk about the sign outside of bothell just like call one time luke and i think i've told you this this is year oh it was during the um during the pandemic it was during the bubble season of the nba you know i don't really follow basketball at all but because i'm so addicted to the levitard show the heat was in the um the championship game that nba championship right that's a thing yeah the heat was in the championship and i was watching it at a bar and rooting not loudly but rooting for miami and somebody and i was sitting there with genevieve and somebody said oh you're rooting for miami you from miami and i said no my friend is from my friends are from So I root for them and they're just like, fine. And they left. And then Genevieve looked at me like, your friends are from Miami. I'm like, shut up. They are my friends. Anyway, I want all the listeners to know that we are your friends in Seattle or friends in Washington.

Exactly. And we'll back you up on that. Yes, exactly. Like if it ever comes up, we're a great liars. We can keep a story going for as long as you need. But also it's not a lie. It is the truth. We are your friends. You are our friends. It's so much easier to explain it that way. So Andrew, I'm glad you pointed that out. Yes. So, and I do feel closer to both of you now after this offsite. I need a sandwich.

149 more questions to go. See you guys tomorrow. Yeah.

I'll meet you guys at Bay Cities. All right. Thank you for listening, everyone. Thanks, John, for being here. Nice to see you. Safe travels back north. Thank you. With the doggins and the wife. Thank you. All right. Thanks for listening. We'll be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all. i love pickles you know it's my heritage i love a pickle power out thank you for doing that