Muse

I will say this. I'm enjoying a long night of Miller Lite, everyone. Yeah, Miller Lite, sir. You know about this? All the kids are going crazy for Miller Lite. Miller Lite lets everyone know I'm here to have 17 of these. I'm going to gradually become a problem. In about five hours, I'm going to be an issue, but until then, Miller Lite. Miller Lite. The official beer of weekend custody, everyone. Miller Lite. She's not coming back. TBTL.

Big news, sports fans. I've decided to start calling everyone sports fans. Yeah, I know I'm not exactly the jockey type, But I watched Hoosiers last night, and I like sports now.

I have no idea what you just said, but I feel totally transformed.

Is this a joke? Because if it is a joke, I just want to say that I get it. I get the joke, and I'm in on it also. And it's hilarious.

Have a good show, dummy. It's what you do is so important.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBT All, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

No, thank you, Rich, because I'm in.

My name's Luke Burbank. I am your host. Come on, brain. Think of things. Come on, brain. Be so smart. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it's an absolutely gorgeous day in the neighborhood.

It's just beautiful.

Well, we are in that kind of weird moment of the year in the Pacific Northwest where it was, there was a frost warning last night. Got cold enough that like your pipes could potentially freeze over. But now it's like going to be 70 degrees and it's absolutely beautiful. And we are in high spirits, my friends, as we arrive at episode 4186 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. There's a scandal rocking the world of pub trivia in the greater Washington, D.C. area.

Do you realize what this means? It means scandal and prison.

Well, we will talk about what's going on out there. Probably have some listeners that have participated in D.C. pub trivia. Maybe they know the story better than we do. Actually, that wouldn't be a first on this program. Also, a reverse art heist has gone on.

For me to be able to condone that, my artism is bigger than that.

I've got white hot takes on the story. I've got fire takes on the matter, and I'll fire them off. Once we say hi to this guy, the longest running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He likes snacks and building things and nice cars. He's Andrew Walsh, and he joins me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. do you trust me as a broadcast partner implicitly great great answer because i'm going to ask you to trust me on something here i realize i feel like i've been very verbose on the show recently especially here at the top of the show and i don't want to do that again but there is something i

honestly helps like if you think about what we do as like we're just shoveling coal into the engine of a conversation train that's rolling down the line you've been shoveling a lot of coal and i

for one appreciate it well i'm glad you appreciate it i don't know if anybody else does but i have

some dream like a dream catcher came to life i got some dream cold to shovel here luke but i'm

going to keep it very brief and there's a reason i'm bringing it up on tbtl there is a tie-in to tbtl here but i have you ever had a dreams that that you um you had you could do anything. I had some very vivid dreams last night and the one that I remember most was in my dream I woke up in the middle of the night and I realized a car had just pulled into our driveway and I was like that is strange for a strange car to be rolling into my driveway this late at night and in my dream I wake up Genevieve and I'm like there's a car in our driveway and then suddenly we realize as we look out the windows that there are cars all the way around our house we are being surrounded now at first we assume it's by some sort of law enforcement although none of them are actually marked cars and so we start to wonder are these were these guns we saw these people holding or was it actual some sort of audio video equipment and as we're looking out the windows keeping the lights off

to figure out who is surrounding our house. We realized these are not cops. This is some sort of a media production crew, and we somehow deduct that it's a prank show of some sort, and we want nothing to do with it. And finally, when we don't answer the ringing doorbell, it seems like they're going to start shuffling away, and I see some gaffers and camera people kind of leaving our property, best boys, best girls, and then one of them spots us through the window. and I'm like shoot the jig is up and so they're like they yell to the producer or something like hey there are still people in this house and so they come knocking again and I turn to Genevieve in a way that I would never be so I think firm in real life I said to her Genevieve we say nothing we give them nothing I do not want to be on television and she says of course of course and so then the knock comes on the door and the leader of this production crew says to us first of all is it okay if I come onto your property and Genevieve and I both yell no at the same time and he said well then I guess that's that and he left and the entire camera crew left and nothing really happened but the reason I want to tell you this Luke was because in my dream I literally had the thought at least I have something I can talk about on tbtl tomorrow swear to god in my dream i had the thought at least i have something i can talk about on tbtl tomorrow and then then it turns out i did in real life except the whole thing was a dream so my apologies to the listeners who hate that shit and i understand why i mean you've really

uncovered an entire new source of energy for the show a clean fuel if we no longer have to even actually live through the experiences that we talk about i mean that's cold fusion right there that is like a that's a that is a limitless supply of conversation on the program if we can just now dream something happened and then talk about it on the show and call it content well like nuclear

energy it's definitely a double-edged sword controversial you want to be it's controversial and you want to be real careful there have been leaks and there have been leaks the environmental

consequences uh are are you know cannot be overstated um but Anna King will be doing

reports about where we're leaving our old episodes in the Tri-Cities area exactly uh Richland Hanford

those places come to mind um uh I I also think that this is it's just so interesting that this is a dream that that you're having when you work in the media when and you're not you don't just work behind the scenes in the media you work in front of the scenes in the media and yet i think the dream speaks to the inherent sort of conflict that you have about that the internal conflict of both having a job where uh you're a good more than the normal person's experience number of people are paying attention to your life on a daily basis um like it's less than tom cruise but it's north of a regular person and i feel and then this has sort of been coming up in one way or another on the show recently which is you having a lot of um sort of intrusive thoughts about about previous episodes of the show where you told a story that you didn't feel like um you know sparkled in the way you hoped or whatever so i just think that there's this constant tension for you of both having a job where your your job is kind of to like be say like look at me and listen to me and here are my thoughts on things but also that's very much not

your personality actually that's really interesting that's an interesting interpretation of this dream and again i will gladly continue to have this conversation but i will continue to apologize to the listener as we've now moved out of me telling you the details of the dream that i woke up from a couple of hours ago but now we are analyzing my dream and this has just got to just just a reminder that we have a fundraiser coming up the tpt elathon is coming up and it's going to be a good time and we really can't talk about our dreams without your support but uh that's an interesting interpretation i wouldn't have necessarily gone there but i don't don't want to dismiss it out of hand because um these things are complicated to me like first of all the reason i don't want to talk to the media was because i got the impression that this was some sort of a pranky kind of thing it wasn't like something that i was in control of i was going to be the subject of or even potentially the victim of whatever this crew had uh in mind there was

some sort of impractical joking that was about to happen the number one television program in the world i think by the way probably is that true i mean not really but it is i was thinking about this the other day um when i was walking around las vegas walking past the building where that show Pawn Stars is filmed, which just happens to be in a very kind of the sort of in between of Las Vegas, in between the glitz and glam.

of the new strip uh where all the big fancy casinos are and then old town and then in between there's this kind of no man's land and that happens to be where pawn stars is it's a very humble little building and yep and that's a that's storage wars but i do appreciate the attempt there are so many wars veterans of the storage wars thank you for your service you may now board

the airplane wait it's not pawn wars is it i messed up on stars oh okay well they're also hey

now you're a pawn star okay gosh thank you for the show somebody once told me this guitar was jimmy hendrix's why'd i pick such a complicated name to try to fit into that song if you give me five can i get a do-over on that i feel like i could do a pretty good a pretty good smash mouth version of all-star interpreted through the experience of watching pawn stars also you should

go with some somebody once sold me i think right away you can again it's easy to be the second guy into the breach andrew okay i didn't even finish that no no i'm not trying to steal your glory no i'm just like if you're going into the back room to workshop this a little bit that's another like opportunity there just consider it is what i'm no that's actually a very very good point but

i was thinking about because you get near that building and there's just the parking lot is just full of people that just want to take a picture in the parking lot next to the side of the building that says pond stars and it's not like they've fixed the building up they have apparently acquired an adjacent building where they have like a taqueria and it's the like you know pond stars taqueria and that place looks a little newer and nicer but the actual building is just a honestly crummy ass tiny single story building in the not desirable part of las vegas and then there's a banner on the side with like the guy the main dude uh going like basically i think advertising his cameo or something and my thought was whether or not these shows are very good and now this is getting me back to like impractical jokers or pawn stars regardless of the actual quality of the program if some of these cable networks decide we're gonna put this in heavy rotation like we're just gonna be playing this all the time it's just gonna become the thing that we throw up there and we can't think of anything else to put on the network just reruns in constant rotation you will at some point become a major celebrity in this country because like people have to watch something on the tv when they're getting their teriyaki and uh you know when they're like just doing whatever like there are there's mundane parts of life where just a certain number of people just have like the history channel which by the way i guess is technically who does pawn stars i learned because there was also some history channel like banners yeah that makes sense i mean i think we can all agree it's it's a scholarly dive into history i mean actually really i think what that show pawn stars is sort of like antiques roadshow for for maybe folks that um aren't power users of public broadcasting sure because you get into the provenance of things and stuff so but anyway all that is to say impractical jokers is another one of those kinds of shows that like I don't like that kind of stuff at all like it makes me really stressed out I did think that there were some episodes of Punk'd that were kind of entertaining and I do really like Jackass unfortunately um I just somebody just getting just taking a beanbag right to the sack is never not funny to me I don't know there's some primal I don't know how that kept my ancestors alive thinking was funny when dudes get pwned in the nuts like how did that how did that save my you know great-grandfather going back a hundred generations how did that help him or my great-grandmother for that matter well barney's

film had spirit but football in the groin had a football in the groin do you have any idea what i'm talking about camu can do exactly the film festival episode of the simpsons is one of my favorite simpsons episodes ever i'll see if i can dig up that actual tape because i think i probably butchered it a little bit you know jackass was something that i never thought i mean again i just said that like i had a dream about not wanting to be on a prank show so obviously jackass is probably not for me and i always you know when i heard anything about jackass i just sort of i didn't even have a strong opinion i was just like not for me i just blocked it out like it wasn't it just wasn't part of my life but when i met you and you know going back years and years ago when we were hanging out like all the time before maybe even we worked together i know that you and some friends loved jackass and people who are smart people whose opinions i respect so i was like oh that's interesting i didn't go and seek it out or think it's for me i still thought it's not for me but there must be something there and then whenever the last jackass movie came out i don't know if you remember this conversation did you go see it in the theater or something not on purpose i went I think I was trying to do like a double.

Well, I was trying to steal entertainment. Basically, one of my favorite things to do because I'm still a child is if I just have like an afternoon free and I go to see a matinee, sometimes I will be tempted to sneak into another movie as well because it's so thrilling. So I can't remember exactly what the situation was. I feel like I went to see one movie, but then I was waiting on a friend to see a second movie or something like that. And while I was waiting on a friend or maybe it was Genevieve, I just looked for an empty seat in the theater to just sit and wait for a while. So I go into this theater and I have no idea what's playing. I don't remember why, but for some reason, when I went into this particular theater, I didn't pay attention to it or to a digital sign that was turned off. And I was in the theater and it was just me and a gang of like maybe five young men or something. And I think I put it together. I'm like, oh, this must be the jackass. Like these guys were just like they they weren't doing anything wrong. They weren't sitting near me. I was just sort of crouching in a seat I didn't pay for. And again, they're not even playing previews yet. It's just like kind of the lights are on, and we're sitting there waiting for previews to begin. But I can tell from the energy of these guys, these are jackass guys. And when it finally begins, and I'm sorry, I'm so out of not just the jackass loop, but just the pop culture loop. I can't remember who's the head of that show, the leader. Johnny Knoxville. Almost immediately, I got it. Not that it's for me or that I want to watch it, but I understood there's a magnetism there. And that there's some, it's more than just people getting kicked in the nads. And there's something about like, if you can get a little bit of buy-in with the characters and the, and you know, the, whatever, whatever creates a cult following, I get it. Also, people love seeing people get kicked in the nads.

That's the movie. You knew it was the Jackass movie when the Nicole Kidman preview said, somehow nut shots feel better in a place like this.

That's right. That's exactly right. Is that a show title?

I mean, I don't know. As long as it's a day we're not announcing any scores from the Junior Sluggers. Somehow, Hot Break feels good in a place like this. The thing about Jackass that makes it, for me, more watchable than those shows like Impractical Jokers is that most of the time the people getting, let's say, pranked or who are having a bad experience are very much signed up for it. They're the cast and crew of the crew. So it's like, hey, listen, if Preston Lacey or if, you know, back in the day, Bam Margera or Stevo, if any of these folks, if they want to like run through a thing of mousetraps while, you know, in a Speedo, like I'm they're signed up for it. And that makes it they're not other than when like they'll have Johnny Knoxville will dress up like, you know, like a very, very, very old guy. But then he'll just be out in the world just doing really bizarre stuff. And that does hit on people who are kind of unknowing. But even so, it's like, I don't know. There's something about it where I feel like most of the bad stuff is happening to people that have signed releases and are getting paid pretty well to be a part of the bad stuff. And I can handle that more than a supremely awkward moment that somebody didn't sign up for that they now find themselves in because there's somebody talking into an earpiece going, now, now take your shirt off. Now, you know, lie down on the floor, like whatever's going on with those like impractical jokers type of shows.

Also, the friendship when you mentioned that. Now, keep in mind, I'm somebody who had not watched literally probably even a minute of Jackass in my entire life. But by the time I'm sitting in this theater and sort of and I probably sat in there, I probably watched the first at least 20 minutes, if not half hour of that movie before, you know, it was time for me to leave. But the friendship comes through so much. And also I'm seeing it as almost a reunion of something that was a cultural phenomenon 20 or more years ago. And so there's already the sort of established language and this established love. And that really shined through as well. I mean, yeah, it's brosophy and everything, but like it was it again was sort of magnetic to see these guys who love each other and get each other in the balls. And then you mentioned something, though, there. I don't realize that that is a really good bit that Knoxville goes out dressed up as him as an old man. And then it's shocking to see him do certain things. Is that the impetus of just that aspect of the I think you should leave? I don't want to be around anymore. The fact that he's dressed up like an old man in that prank show.

Carl Havoc.

Carl Havoc.

I wonder if that, you know, wasn't in their brains, but, you know, I think they've spun that off into, I think there was that movie called, like, Bad Grandpa, or am I just confusing that with Bad Santa? I think they made a whole movie where the Johnny Knoxville character was just going around, this person who appeared to be very old, but, like, you know, it's the kind of stuff where, like, he'll be, you know, in a furniture store, and he'll just be, like, sitting in one of those, like, fold-up beds.

but then he'll fold it up to where he's just completely taco'd. People are trying to help him. That sounds like a Looney Tunes fun. I mean, it does make me laugh because he's still Johnny Knoxville in there, so he'll just be doing these crazy stunts, but in a body that we would normally not see that happening for. And it's more just like people being mystified at the whole thing, which I think is kind of funny. They did do one that I did not like, and I'm being totally serious, and I don't remember which movie this was in, or maybe it was just the TV show, but they did this joke where they like left a car seat on top of a car. So like, you know, the way you might put your coffee mug or something and then forget it, but it was like a car seat and they're driving around a parking lot and people are freaking out. And I was like, I don't like that one. Cause if I saw that in the wild, the adrenaline that would course through me trying to get to that car seat, like fine, tell me that it's a joke later, but I'm going to be like, you know surging for that's like that's a stressful thing to put people through like if I think a baby's life is on the line that one I didn't dig but generally they seem to fall into this category of kind of non-important things um like or even just you know on the show famously like stuff like they just put this like they made a gigantic hand like a hand that's almost like the size of a human body and then they just put it on this lever and then they just set up a camera and this is in the offices and every as i don't even as each guy would show it does and i already love it's just on this big like it's on a spring and as these like you know but like it's early relatively early in the day so it's like you know guys are the jackass guys they're coming in for what they think is going to be like a show meeting or a day of work but they're not in work mode and they like got their coffee and then i think the joke was like somebody would say high five and then they would just let this hand go it would just like absolutely just knock the snot out of these guys i don't know again it's so it's so sort of childlike but it just made me laugh so much so i also just kind of think that johnny knoxville is generally speaking kind of a rootable a rootable character like i haven't heard any bad takes from him he just seems kind of like an aw shucks dude. An interesting story about that show is, you know, the way that it came about initially was Johnny Knoxville was trying to, um, make it as an actor in LA and it wasn't really going anywhere for him. And he was also writing these like articles for these like kind of skateboard magazines and things. And he decided to write an article or to do a thing where he was going to test out like, um, a bulletproof vest. And he thought, well, the most compelling way to do this is to put it on and have somebody shoot me in the vest and I think he filmed it and um obviously he survived and it I think was kind of it was sort of viral and then he started thinking

well me and my friends we do a lot of dumb stuff like this maybe we can make a show but what I think is so interesting was it got on the radar of Saturday Night Live and Lorne Michaels tried to hire Johnny Knoxville to do Jackass as kind of like interstitial bits on SNL which is kind of interesting because it's yeah I sort of give Lorne Michaels credit for that's outside the box of what

I think of SNL content as being yeah and it sort of fits in with I mean you got it I agree we should give Lorne Michaels credit like he is a man who has spent his entire career his long storied career identifying talent and then finding a place for it you know yeah absolutely and what I thought was

impressive was that johnny knoxville now and he's got a kid he's living in la he's in his 20s he's trying to figure out like he is totally broke and i i think i think he bought the um i believe he bought the bulletproof vest you know with his own money and i think he was telling stern this story that he didn't have enough money to really get the good bulletproof vest because he was like to overpay for a bulletproof i mean right and so i think he i think he was like he got the the best one that he could afford for this you know for this experiment or whatever but you know it was pretty stressful yeah obviously but so he that's kind of where his life is at and you would think that like you know saturday night live comes calling and you're just like what yes but he was also getting some attention from mtv and mtv was like now mtv famously doesn't pay people like anything for those shows like i think the best case scenario if you do an mtv thing is you kind of blow up into some larger cultural thing and then you can monetize that later but mtv famously doesn't pay its talent anything and so i my sense is that they none of them were getting paid really anything to make that show initially uh you know i mean more than he was making uh which was zero dollars but like i my guess is he also turned he was taking less money at mtv but it was so smart because...

The amount of money that those guys have made on those films is shocking. Because think about it. They cost nothing to make. They just, I mean, you know, there's like a stunt coordinator budget and some catering and stuff.

And probably a pretty hefty insurance budget. That's probably the number one cost.

It's really an insurance problem parading as a movie.

It really should be Allstate Presents.

Actually, that would be, I bet you somebody's thought of that. um that would be pretty funny but like uh but but the you know compared to uh you know a big budget film those jackass movies are very very cheap to make but then they just make so much money and they just have the longest tails it's and then i my sense is that they're all getting paid you know pretty well off of those films because they own the you know they own the ip or whatever so i don't know all that is to say um you don't want the impractical joker showing up your house in the middle of the night and trying to do some kind of a prank on you and i and i

respect that if i'm anything i am a very very practical joker almost to a fault so i don't want is that a show title practical jokers i think you know what luke i think it is a show title in that i've already made it a show title probably like i think i've literally probably said that before and turned it into show title and you are right bad grandpa is the name of the movie is jackass presents colon bad grandpa which i think it'd be funnier if it was bad grandpa a jackass story like they do with like fast and furious and star wars but uh yeah this one looks like i was watching the trailer while you were talking we can wrap it up here we don't have to like talk about me interpreting a trailer with the sound down while we talk but it seems like it's a combination of like yeah him doing stuff in public that might catch people's eye but it looks like there's a lot more acting in bad grandpa i'm seeing a lot of setup scenes it looks like at various weddings and funerals and stuff but again i'm watching it with the sound off uh while i'm

recording a podcast i think it's interesting too that the the other movie that johnny knoxville made like i think he's had very good success with jackass and very limited success with anything that steps outside of that world even though one of the ideas i thought seemed like a good idea although i then never actually watched it so that tells you i guess it wasn't compelling enough but he made a movie called action park and what action park was was a kind of semi-fictionalized but also based in real events story about a guy who's running an amusement park where he's building a lot of the rides himself and they're not safe oh yeah there's that place in new jersey that was very very famous for having all of these like slides and things that were like often hurting people and so the idea this was the idea of this movie action park was uh it would be a movie about this guy who you know owns this amusement park that's kind of sketchy but then the stunts would be real so you would have this element of jackass which is this real physical danger being presented to the people but you would weave that into a larger narrative of like just kind of a standard comedy film and i don't i i seem like an interesting idea to me but i i my sense is it did not make a big splash um and then he was in some movie called the ringer which i'm guessing it's it appears to feature him being in like the special olympics pretending to have a some sort neurodivergence or whatever to yeah that's I don't I've never seen that movie I can't imagine I cannot imagine that it was a it holds up or wasn't wildly offensive so uh he's probably should stick with jackass stuff because he seems to be doing pretty well with that yeah definitely

so um not to push things uh along too quickly but I gotta say I'm I am I am fascinated and sort of excited to see that something made the show today I'm fascinated if it made the show sheet for the same reason i think it did so if you want to take a break here do some dazzling donors i feel like

we got to get to top stories today okay we will get yes and i andrew it will be so funny to me if if we had the exact same experience with the top story that you're referencing and the moment at which we decided okay this is probably top story material if if if we were if we're wishing on the same star looking at the same moon for this it will crack me up because it just furthers the notion that you and I are like the exact same person when it comes to our media consumption. We'll see. Now I'm starting to wonder. Now I'm starting to think maybe we diverge on this. Interesting. Okay. Here we go. Let's thank some Dazzling Donors.

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.

Everybody razzle dazzle. Razzle dazzle. These fine folks who are keeping tbtl here we would not be shoveling this conversational coal into this friendship train

I know I'm changing the analogy, but we would not be doing this. We would not be able to do this as our job, nor would TBTL employee numero uno, John Sklaroff, be able to work here. This would not be an operation for three people to work as their job without people like Christina Homer in San Francisco, California. Christina says, hi, friendos. I'm an infectious disease doctor who studies a fungal infection called valley fever that's most commonly found in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Infections are on the rise right now because of the heavy rains we've gotten in the past two winters. But because it has been such a niche fungus for a long time, a lot of doctors still don't think about testing for valley fever. So I wanted to use my dazzling donor message to make sure that the tens who live in these endemic areas know about this infection and can advocate for themselves or their friends and family. If you have a pneumonia that is not getting better with antibiotics, especially, sorry, especially, I want people to know, especially Dr. Homer, that I know that it's

not especially. Okay. Well, you've had too much espresso today. I've had way too much espresso

So and I'm having an especially hard time reading this. No, especially if it is accompanied by profound tiredness, joint aches and or a rash. Ask your doctor if it could be valley fever so you can get the right testing done.

Well, I literally would not have known about that. I wouldn't either.

Yeah, I don't want to go into a whole digression about the sort of about the medic, the world of medicine and medical culture. But it is actually it's surprising to me how often highly trained doctors who are hardworking, you know, lifesavers are also kind of sort of giving their best guess on things. Right. Like and it's based on like, well, what's the most likely thing that this could be? And, you know, Occam's razor, as we reference on the show sometimes like and how often something that's obscure is not on their radar. or even on the radar of doctors who know a lot, you know? So yeah, if you live in one of these areas and you've been under the weather and you've had pneumonia and they've tried to fix you with other things, maybe that's what you're dealing with, valley fever. Ask about it. If this dazzling donor message from Dr. Christina Homer, Andrew, leads to one person getting this thing properly diagnosed, that would essentially justify the existence of TBTL for the year 2024, don't you think?

I kind of thought that my dream talk earlier already justified it for 2024, but this also seems very important.

Consider this gravy.

This is exactly the cherry on top.

Also, if you've been drinking gravy, you should probably see a doctor because that could cause some whole other situation. Noted. But, yeah, if you're living out in California, Arizona, New Mexico, or Texas, and you have not been able to kick some kind of a pneumonia, it could be valley fever. So do ask about that. And thank you, Christina, for supporting the show. Maestro?

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

We've also got to thank Elizabeth Tuchel in Seattle, Washington. I'm going to say this is definitely the first year I've said Elizabeth's last name correctly.

I feel, but we've had pronouncers for a while, but also when I was reading this, yeah, when I was reading this, I was like, Tuchel, oh my, We've said tuckle so many times. I've said it in my head that way. But you know what? Elizabeth Tuchel is somebody whose name we recognize because it is always on these supporting lists.

And because she's too cool for school.

Too cool. Right now she's like, just go back to tuckle. I know, right?

She's like, I've never heard that one before, Skywalker. Elizabeth says, ahoy, hoy, friendos. congratulations on going independent and becoming masters of your own destiny what an awesome achievement well elizabeth this is where i am um legally compelled to uh point out that uh this is uh the achievement of us going independent has only worked because of donations it's your achievement it's really your achievement we've had a lot of really nice dazzling donor messages where people have said you know i'm i'm proud of you guys and and like you should be proud of this and you know it's amazing what you've done and it's like well what we did was turned on the microphone and asked all of you if you might perchance spare a farthing or two tuppens which was a weird pitch you insisted

on going with that language and i was like no let's keep it american currency the birds for podcasts um and uh and you all at least enough of you have stepped up and so elizabeth right back at you um elizabeth says i love the show my day doesn't feel complete without listening to my imaginary friends chatting about whatever they feel like including dreams i added that but i think it's implied i'm excited to see what the future brings for tbtl keep up the great work all the best listener elizabeth um well again thank you very much elizabeth uh for uh keeping this whole thing rolling we absolutely could not do this uh without you and if you've had a pneumonia that you haven't been able to kick i know you're in seattle but i don't know can't hurt ask about valley fever or somebody in your life yeah call the people that you know in the southwest and make sure they're doing okay and make sure they know about valley fever that's now going to become the And the highest salience issue amongst the TBTL listeners will be the eradication. First, the identification, and then the eradication of Valley Fever. So thank you so much to both Elizabeth and Christina for keeping TBTL going. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. All right, our top story from the Washington Post. Actually, an article that you sent me, Andrew. the caveat well the caveat was you had not read the article you'd only seen the headline yes

so i mean i don't want to okay if you don't mind let me just tell you before we even get into what this story is i want to tell you my relationship with this story all right on monday as you and i were dialing up to do the show i said oh hey i saw a headline in the washington post i didn't read the article it sounded like something that could be up our alley it's about a trivia scandal in washington dc he said oh yeah no i haven't seen that i'm like i'll find it and send it to you i sent it to you i emailed it to you and i wrote again in the email just to reiterate i said i haven't read this yet but here's the story and then i think that was on monday and then it wasn't in yesterday's show sheet and then yesterday afternoon i was like oh yeah that story wasn't in the show sheet maybe it wasn't very good i started reading the story and i hated the writing so badly i i didn't even finish it i'm like oh there's no way we're talking about this on the show like this is so self-indulgent and not funny and not cute but written by some writers who seem to think this article is very funny and very cute and it irritated me so badly that i read about half of it and i put it down i'm like well that's not for us then i woke up this morning i saw the show sheet and i saw that you put it in there and i was like oh he only put it in there because we're going to drag the hell out of this story i just thought we're and the link that you put in the show sheet today wasn't to the story but it was to the the the one of the articles in the box one of the um writers oh who has the byline on the story oh you went the same journey i did you were just looking up what other bullshit stories has this person filed but as i was sort of hinting about that before the break it sounds like you actually did take something away from this story that seems worth talking about other than just dragging people that we might meet someday or that you'll have to interview on LiveWire. So I finished reading the article during the break just moments ago, and I see that it does get maybe there's a little bit of meat on these bones as the story goes on. But I thought that you put this in here just to drag the writing.

Well, it's funny because I had the same experience you did. I didn't know if my brain just wasn't firing on all cylinders this morning, but i started reading the piece and i just was like where are we going with this yeah like it was it just it felt like it was really it felt at the top to be quite overwritten to me first of all the headline is inside the cheating scandal rocking dc's trivia scene what you realize pretty quickly upon reading the article is that's kind of tongue-in-cheek like it's not a cheating scandal that has not rocked DC's trivia scene very widely. What it is is basically, this is written by Sophia Solano and Travis M. Andrews, the writers of this article. Who I respect very much, by the way. What you realize is that one or both of them were just basically doing pub trivia in DC like one is want to do. I'm guessing, I don't know this for a fact, but I'm guessing both of these writers are considerably younger than us. Yes. And just kind of honestly, part of this part of my journey with this story was just like, God, it would be amazing to be 33 living in D.C., writing for The Washington Post, going to pub trivia. The world is your flipping oyster.

I see them when I saw that it was a double byline. I was like, oh, this is these these two probably are just like friends and colleagues at the same time. And so they have a routine of Wednesdays going to do pub trivia, pub trivia together.

And then when, you know, when it looked like a little quote unquote lowercase s scandal broke out, they're like, oh, we can sort of like write about this in a cheeky way and make it seem like it's a huge scandal when really it's just them.

yes but as a practitioner of this exact brand of journalism i.e like you know if i were to find something that seemed funny or weird or notable in my own life if i could i mean what do you think these commentaries that i throw up on cbs sunday morning are they're like i had a thought the other day about something and now let me expand it out like i actually this is the kind of stuff i tend to do anyway so i can't really i can't begrudge somebody else wanting to do it going like okay we went to trivia night. So it all unfolds at this place of the red bear brewing company where, um, where these, uh, these reporters, or at least one of them apparently go to trivia. And, uh, when they went to trivia recently, um, the people that were running the trivia, uh, basically made an announcement before playing, uh, that, well, first of all, what they noticed is that the prior week's winner of this trivia night had had their name taken down off of the, uh, the list. There was a photo, I guess they take a photo each week of the winning team. That photo was missing. Um, also, uh, they put a slide up on the, on the, you know, screen or whatever, uh, warning people against cheating. Then the trivia hosts made this announcement at beginning of this night of trivia don't use shazam on your apple watch to figure out the songs on the music round don't throw your arm up in the air while shazam is still on your apple watch so everyone can see that you're using it to cheat just for example there had been speculation among competitors that the previous week's winners a two-person team that had been crowned champions several times in a row were running a con um so uh so the reporters are trying to figure out who uh who actually like how they were caught uh who the cheaters were although you have a sense that the reporters know who the team was that they thought was cheating because that was the team that won the week before and now their photo has been scoured or scrubbed from the record so they know but they're trying to confirm because it's the washington post they're trying to confirm that there was some cheating going on and who it was and they can't get confirmation from the owners of the bar they can't get confirmation from the person running the trivia nobody will give them any names they'll just kind of say like yeah something happened we're not talking about it they then with one of these reporters goes to another bar to do trivia a different night it's a harry potter themed trivia night and i believe they named their team red bears golden snitch which is actually kind of a funny i think it's actually kind of a funny name because i think isn't snitch is it snitch part of the harry potter lore i mean i i would guess from the context of

that sentence but i would assume that i know less about harry potter than you i know nothing about harry potter except whatever we learned in a summer games quiz three years ago i think even that mostly i've forgotten i'm house what i'm house all i know is whatever house i belong to when i when i told genevieve that she said yeah i'm not surprised and so i took it as an insult

Hufflepuff or something maybe Gryffindor or something uh this is in the article the only sign something was off this is when they go to the Harry Potter trivia night at a different bar uh the only sign something was off came when the host announced smartphones needed to be hidden during gameplay because quote this is not Red Bear Brewing also one team was named Red Bear's Golden Snitch but in full transparency that team belonged to a reporter on this story and did not get the laugh he hoped it would okay so now we can assume that this is travis andrews writing i thought that was kind of a funny little aside like i like the fact that this reporter is saying you know look this is just me doing trivia and noting that somebody apparently cheated at one of these things but i'm still at this point in reading the article andrew i'm i'm i'm still thinking this just there's just not enough they're there this is not a story of how like why there's widespread cheating in in the dc pub scene this is a story of like one team got caught shazamming on their watch and now they're not there anymore and these reporters this reporter in particular just wanted to kind of like write a funny story but then when i when i got to that

part of the story that might have been the last line i read or that's certainly like the straw that broke my back on reading this story i'm just like oh there's no there's no fire here like there's nothing substantial here to the story this is just these people going to pub trivia and writing about it. And I got to say, I don't, and again, this is just getting really, really personal. And so I hope I never have to look either of these writers in the eye, but like I could see this being like an interesting gambit. it was well written but like I was like slogging through this like you said overwritten thing that never once made me smile till I once get to this point I'm like oh this is just you guys dicking around and I was so disappointed I just like throw it away that that's what that's what for

me the turning point was I had a moment where I literally laughed out loud I audibly laughed and that was the moment and I wondered if we had the same moment you sound like you you're still waiting

for that moment you know as i read on today and you knowing there's something in here that you were looking for i was reading it through sort of through that lens so i don't know you just did an extreme close-up on yourself i uh don't i don't know what uh too real for you yeah what

made you laugh out loud um it was this part of the article so the reporters are talking about how they're trying to get some somebody on the record somebody to actually say these are the names of the people who we caught cheating is how we caught them and the reporter says a week after the scandal broke the cheaters identities remained a mystery reckless internet sleuths had dragged other teams names through the mud was it gays in space or destiny's children it was neither the post confirmed still refusing to let democracy die in darkness oh yeah yeah that was that's a good

line yeah that was okay that line but i mean that's the that's the point of the whole article Right. They're writing this like in this over in this arch way, you know, because like we're we're we're writing for the publication that brought down a president. I mean, they don't say that explicitly, but that's the whole thing. Like they're being faux. Yes. Serious investigative journalists. And it really honestly reading this whole thing made me question how annoying my newsletter might be, because this is like something I do. I'm like, oh, God, I think I'm being funny. I think I might just be obnoxious like this.

I see. I'm with you that it was it felt a bit overwritten to me and it could have probably maybe used one more funny moment. But the fact that I that they said refusing to let democracy die in darkness, which is, I think, a funny shot at the at how serious the Washington Post takes itself. obviously their tagline is democracy dies in darkness like the idea of them applying that very high-minded kind of uh you know way of of describing what they do over something that's so obviously unimportant that made me laugh and you know this is something that i actually think about a lot with like tbtl and and live wire and sunday morning any kind of job thing i'm doing and maybe this is kind of you know the bigotry of soft expectations andrew i i tend to think that if we can make a person lol one time during the show it's been a success like because what i'm hoping is that the average person's listening to us do this there's going to be so much that's really not for them there's going to be so much that's just going to be us making sounds them living their life and hearing it and kind of being like you know no reaction no reaction no reaction but if one time they actually like they're like laugh at something that we said i i think of myself listening to the show love line uh when it was dr drew and adam carol and i loved that show so much but if and it was like i think two hours long now was every phone call super compelling no was everything adam carol has said hilarious not always but like i had such a positive association with that show i think because in a two-hour session there would at least be one thing that would make me laugh so that's where my personal bar is when i'm creating content and i think for the washington post for this article them saying we're not going to let democracy die in this darkness that made me laugh out loud and that saved the whole thing for me because that's all i ever that's like i mean on a good day that's all i'm saying that i might create during an hour plus of tvtl content is one moment where someone kind of laughs a little bit

you know i don't hate that line to be clear i think you know i might have made me grin a little bit and if it was like up near the top of the story i was just already so done with the voice of the story it already was so obnoxious to me that like that didn't turn me around on it but i was in a pretty deep hole by the time i got to that line but just for the record i'm not saying that that line isn't smirkable hey i made you laugh we're done for the day no we're definitely

done um they did point out in the article though there was some you know news you can use or at least some sort of like they talked to some you know people who study this thing like why would somebody cheat it at bar trivia like why would you even do that and they you know the thought was well some people just kind of would like to you know impress the other people in the room even if they do it by nefarious means some people just would really want the free you know pitcher of beer or whatever you win for winning but then they also pointed out that like most of these Pub trivia things now You have to be on your phone To play the game Like they're all App based or whatever Like you know what I mean So that seems like That creates a little bit Of a challenge too because it's not the kind of thing where you can necessarily say no one have their phones out because you actually are using your phone to do the game so you could also conceivably sort of like cheat I guess if you had your phone out although again that the social stigma of being of being caught uh cheating at one of these things would be so mortifying to me that it would usually for me like the only things the times when I operate as a moral individual are not because i'm inherently moral it's because the consequences of not being moral would be so bad that i can't even handle that like that's why i would never cheat at pub trivia because the embarrassment of getting caught shazamming something would be so would kill me just like when i do interviews on the radio show i always read the whole book and uh that is not because i uh am you know some i'm dedicated to the craft it's because if i were to ask a question of an author that indicated that i had not read the book i would be so embarrassed so embarrassed that it overrides my natural laziness right so most of the things that i do is just to avoid that kind of stuff i just thought you know the other thing too that i thought was interesting

was the irony there is 98 percent of the other interviews they're doing it's just known that the person hasn't read the book i think it's pretty rare i think it's a public radio thing it's a very public radio good that you do that but often when somebody would come on one of the shows i was producing keep in mind i'm producing it not hosting so i didn't read the whole book uh usually the hosts i work with would have read the whole book and the author was always shocked by that because they had just done you know depending on what the content was either just like am radio or like kind of talk radio in that way like a lesser form of it or just like you know a quick hit on a local news thing or whatever and these people are not reading the book so the fact that you're like reading every single word of the book is actually above and beyond what most people would do in that situation, I think.

It is honestly just so that it's basically like a way that I feel pretty confident that the person, the writer of the book will try to turn in their best performance as the interview subject, you know?

Oh, interesting. You've turned in your best performance and now you kind of expect, you try to... It feels like they will,

if they know whether or not they find me to be a fun person to chat with on stage or whatever, If at a bare minimum I can let them know that I invested the time to really understand their work, my experience is it usually goes okay after that. Because even if they don't like me, they're like, well, at least the guy did spend six hours of his life reading this thing.

Yet your first question is always, why did you name the book that?

Yeah, I know. And I've got to really rethink that. I feel like that's closing some doors instead of opening them in the conversation. But the thing I was going to say that I thought was kind of a slight, maybe this might not be a dazzling detail, but a slightly interesting detail from the piece is that the people who were, um, uh, caught cheating and they were caught cheating. Like that's this, you know, at least according to the trivia people and the bar, like this happened, the people were caught, they were punished. They're never allowed to play trivia there again. they are allowed to come back in as customers though which is interesting to me because like would you want to go back and have beers at the bar where you're not allowed to play trivia anymore and i'm guessing that this is the kind of thing that everybody who does trivia they probably all kind of know each other like it's probably pretty obvious they all know who the cheaters are just nobody wants to go on the record and say who it is which raises another journalistic question If the writers of the piece in the Washington Post are also eyewitness, eyewitnesses to what happened, can't they say who the people were because they were there? It's like you show up at a crime scene. Let's go with the kind of the slightly the tone that they were using in the Washington Post piece. You show up at the scene of the crime. You start looking for people that were there when the crime happened. And you start asking them what happened, you know, and like if they can identify the person who's alleged to have done the crime, you could put that, you know, you could say, you know, according to witnesses, it was so and so. Well, they were witnesses, so they could have theoretically put this in the piece, I think.

Yeah, I mean, well, obviously they could have just said, hey, who won last week? Like, that's the question. Who won last week? And then they they with their own eyes witnessed that that person was no longer featured on the list of winners. so they could but that would ruin the hilarity of this cheeky piece the um that's what i mean like there's just nothing here as far as that's concerned when they actually back up a little bit and like it's interesting i i was wondering if you knew this professor they talked to a professor at the university of washington here in seattle michael blake and i wasn't sure if that was a name that you recognized from your from your tenure there that makes it sound like you were

a professor there which you were i'm not even allowed on the campus anymore and you're not

Even a lot on the campus, yeah.

But anyway, I...

You know, talking about what would drive somebody to cheat in a situation like this when the stakes are so low. And the answer being that people are somehow more compelled to do it when the stakes are low. Like if it was a huge thing, like stealing a million dollars, you wouldn't do that. But you're like, it's just like, I don't know. It's just like we're having fun. I'm using my phone anyway. It's so hard not to. And this is one thing that I found, if we can now make this about me, I found sort of like compelling about this was thinking about how it applies to my own life. I don't do pub trivia, but obviously, as you know, Luke, every day I play Wordle, and I play the Connections game, and I now play this game called Strands. All these are these New York Times puzzle games, right? And I'm on lots of text chains now where we're sharing our answers, and, you know, it's going back and forth. And if you're not familiar with these games, I think you are, but if you're not familiar with these games, there's a way of sharing your results that doesn't spoil it for everybody, but does sort of show your work. So you can sort of see, did you get it in four? Did you get it in five? Did you get in six? Like, where were you placing things? It doesn't ruin the game for those on the text chain who haven't played yet, but it is a way of comparing notes like, oh, I see this hung you up or whatever. and with the game connections especially the writers of that game bring so much subjectivity to it i find it it's weird it's the only thing in my life that i do literally daily every day of the week seven days a week for entertainment purposes yet it makes me angry even on the days which are most days that i get them all right i'm still like oh come on you really an example the other day and this is going back at least a week so i don't think it's a spoiler for anybody unless you're going through the archives of connections it was like was it spat it was that one did

spat in the singular becca was mad big mad about that did pop up it was things that the mr peanut character wears but then it was also ways to describe an argument but the problem was they used spat was and of course that's that little thing that goes over your shoe they use spat in the singular to make it extra confusing but really mr peanut doesn't wear a spat he wears spats it's

a plural yeah you know that i do remember that i got that one right that one didn't irritate me as much but that's the type of thing and here's the one that really got me was again i think it was last week and it was like i'm gonna get some of these wrong but it's like clown king mermaid and i'm blanking on the last one but the answer ended up being fast food mascots it's like okay burger king and that is a mascot clown mcdonald's or jack in the box i guess um i can't remember what the other one was but mermaid and first of all this is how a lot of people realize that the logo for starbucks is a mermaid i got it right but i was fuming i was burning up everybody's text line saying a uh that is a logo not a mascot like starbucks does not have like a mascot walking

The mermaid is not, yeah, she's not like interacting with the fry guys or something.

And secondly, if you polled most Americans, and I'm talking about Americans who go to Starbucks every single day for their morning cup of whatever, if you ask them to name their top five fast food restaurants, none of those Starbucks people would name Starbucks as a fast food restaurant. No, 100%. And so like, but that's, that's the whims of the world, of the connections creators. I also made the mistake. Like, somebody shared, like, a cute little, I'm taking this shit. What is wrong with me today? I'm taking everything so personally.

Well, you've moved off of Apple TV, so that's, we consider this progress.

Yeah, no, I'm just all hot talk now. Just, like, coming with my hot takes. But, like, somebody shared, like, jokingly, when somebody was complaining about connections on one of my text chains, somebody said, well, you can blame this person, and they shared, like, some little TikTok.

Yeah, is it the lady with the, like, with the kind of, sort of, like, a fashion mullet?

i don't remember what her hair looked like but it was like it was a woman who was younger than me and she talked about her process i think it spawned a whole bunch of parodies now i've seen but i'm pretty sure i saw the original one i mean i know i did it wasn't particularly funny but now like i kind of didn't realize at the time that this was maybe already a joke in the zeitgeist but i found her to be so irritating knowing that she held my emotions in her hand every day and and i was just i just take i take connections so personally i should really stop playing it Again, I would like to say, for the record, I'm not terrible at it. I actually usually get it in four, but it makes me so angry. So all of this, back to the article, if you don't mind. Sorry about the long. Clearly, I just had some shit I needed to work out and get out there. But there are things where I'm tempted to use my phone, and I don't know what the lines of what actual cheating would be in the context of a connections puzzle, but I feel more accountable because I know I'm sharing my results with like two or three different groups of friends and family now that, for example, let's say, and the thing about connections is you group words together.

you know as they fit into categories you got to figure out what the categories are but as as Becca sort of points out or you point out with Becca's example there is they will have something that can definitely fit into two different categories spat could mean argument or it could be something you wear in your shoe so you really have to do a process of elimination before you start entering your answers in to see how the see how they're going to try to like actually trick you and let's say the word is like pike I don't know I'm making this up totally Luke but pike is it has a couple of meanings right it's a type of fish but is it also like is is there some other meaning that's like a spike or something i don't know it's maybe i'm making that up it's a foreign like uh it's a

kind of dive a pike is a kind of dive move like as a dive move like diving off of a diving board when you pike it's oh i didn't know that there's also a british i think there's a british use of piking to mean something else but um yeah and also a pike is a pike i think also can be like a large

like a spike of some kind like a spike that's what i was picturing so anyway i don't even know if i'm right about that but just to throw this example out there let's say that i realized that there's a group of one of these categories is probably going to be types of fish and then i see pike in there but i'm not 100 sure pike is a fish is it unethical of me in my gamesmanship to google is a pike a fish you know what i mean like as i'm trying to sort this because what

What you're supposed to be doing is using your brain to figure that stuff out. Exactly.

But if I've recognized the pattern, I'm like, well, these are definitely fish. And I think a pike is a fish. Can I double check this before I punch my answer in, which I've done before, but then I sort of feel guilty about it. I'm like, do I need to put a disclaimer? Am I going into the Hall of Fame with an asterisk? Well, that's because I've because I've Googled it. So anyway, I did sort of. You're not first ballot. We know that much. My time's running out as my as I was reading this article. and it got a little bit more introspective with that stuff and a little less cutesy, I did start thinking, oh, yeah, the stakes are so low, yet it's one of the only things I would, like, try to cheat on, you know what I mean? Or potentially do something that one of my friends would call cheating. I'm not sure.

Becca and I go around with that when it comes to the morning, like, the weekend edition, the Will Shorts puzzle with Aisha Roscoe. go because there are there you know there is a certain amount of googling you can do that isn't actually trying to google the answer but it's trying to kind of cut down on the work your brain has to do of like states that begin with the letter you know whatever and then you could just be like well let's just get that list and then then we'll narrow it down from there and i'm always like we should we should try to do zero googling because what we're trying to do is use our brain for this but then becca if we get frustrated enough then we will well it's like trying to do an amount of research that will help us solve the problem but not actually give us the answer therefore ruining the whole experience yeah and again it's a little bit and it's even a little

bit different because it's you two puzzling this out together for like the ends are simply entertaining ourselves on a sunday together as a couple as opposed to if you were then sharing these results with npr and hoping to be next week's win you know yes or if you were just like at me it's low stakes but you're sharing your results with friends there's always a little bit of like hey look how well i did here i got it right but if your friends don't know that you did some googling it's kind of like in your case it's totally up to you guys what is the most fun

for you right exactly like you guys i mean it's amazing to me how much of your communication with this group of friends is based on and and just with not random people but just like a whole kind of list of folks that you have your different like sort of game-based conversations with

you know and it's i mean it's a way so i have you know i've mentioned my what i call my like wordle group which is i don't know if it's like seven or eight of us or something like that but then since then like and i don't know if i've mentioned this to you on the show but like i trade my um i trade like connections results with our friend phyllis p fletch fletcher i've heard And now I'm on Genevieve's family's thread. So it's like her mom and siblings and like and you know what I like about it is it is a way of just staying in touch. Yeah, that's a really good point. Phyllis and I just like trade the results and we don't comment on it, which is sometimes the case. It's fine. But like often it'll be like, oh, yeah. And how'd that thing go? Or also, aren't these connections puzzlers out of their goddamn minds? You know what I mean? And certainly with Genevieve's family, it's a way of like hearing from her family every day and maybe just a small sprout of a check in will happen sort of around it. And I actually really like that, especially not being on social media. I could use little check ins like that.

The way that I check in with our friend Phyllis Fletcher is to just every day try to drop a subtle Howard Stern reference that goes right over your head. But she hears it yesterday, like 45 minutes into the show, I said noin, which is like a Gary Delabate joke. the producer Gary Delabate Cause I think he said, he said, this is what's great about that show is like 22 years ago, he said the number nine in a weird way, noin. And now it's just become like, if you, if you're talking to somebody who listens to the story, you say noin, like immediately people know what you're talking about. So I slipped that in yesterday just to see if our friend P Fletch has listened that far into the show. And sure enough, last night I get a text, I just get a text from her, noin. I love it. Hey, speaking of slipping things in, Andrew, let's talk about what's going on in Berlin at the Pin Kotech der Moderne in, I guess it's actually in Munich. they reported recently that an employee who worked at the art museum age 51 who was helping to install an architecture exhibit about philanthropy he walked into the the museum he was carrying tools that's why he went totally unnoticed said tyne kneller a museum spokesperson as a technician he was able to move around all the areas of the building outside of uh opening hours uh unfortunately for the workers burgeoning art career his ruse was discovered what was his ruse he had hung one of his own paintings among the museum's modern art collection i love this i think this is so great the museum said the artwork was about 45 inches wide and 25 inches in length but it did not say what it depicted or provide any details about the workers artistic background the museum and the worker agreed to part ways the museum says The man, a well-respected employee whom the museum did not identify, was also banned from visiting his old workplace.

That seems, I can't believe, this seems, I mean, I guess you got to take it seriously, but like, this seems like a pretty harsh punishment for me, especially if he was super well-liked.

Among, by the way, among the aspiring artists' troubles, police said Wednesday, they were investigating him for property damage for drilling two small holes in the museum wall to hang his paintings. Isn't this why we all love Banksy so much? Right. Isn't this like, isn't, isn't, isn't this an artistic statement about art and who gets to decide what is and is not art? I feel like this is a art. This is guerrilla art at its finest. As far as I'm concerned, like, I think I think they should have left it in. I mean, I really do. Like, I think it's an it's an interesting idea around, you know, it is like I said, it feels like a piece of art, just the installation of something without permission. The fact that he's fired and he's not even allowed to go back there is it seems pretty intense.

Yeah, it sounds like and, you know, I'm just reading up on this a second time now, because I think maybe you sent me this a couple of weeks ago and I'd forgotten about it. or just skimmed it but something similar happened in another museum potentially another german museum um i think yeah in uh in bonn germany um where somebody hung up a piece of art that that that wasn't supposed to be there and then they that museum they realized that when they were taking down the exhibition that it was added to and they actually posted on their instagram feed and identified the artist like i'm also curious does it say how they caught no caught this person or identified him as the person who added artwork it doesn't say in this particular i think ap piece that i was reading and by the way i don't have the author of i think it's new york times for what it's worth it's new york times it's christopher shoot say okay great thank you

um i saw it republished in the seattle times so i don't have all of the um the attribution that i wish i did but um it's it does not uh it says like yeah the ruse just says the ruse was discovered and the painting was removed from the wall it was not clear how long the painting had hung unnoticed i'm also surprised that the ruse was discovered like this is a big museum it sounds like with like a lot of paintings like imagine for just honestly and we don't have any junior sluggers listening now imagine being the bitch ass who reported this painting like you're walking around and like you're like okay that used to be there that used to be this wasn't here before like I just I'm shocked that anyone noticed and then went up the chain with it like this wasn't like

this is definitely not supposed to be here I am less surprised about that because I think about places even institutions that I go to as a guest like let me put it's been a long time since I've been to the Seattle Art Museum or the Sam here but you should go by the way this um Calder exhibit they have with the mobiles very very very cool i've seen but it was like 10 years ago i saw a calder exhibit and i can't remember if that if this is the second Second time it's come to the SAM or if I saw it maybe at the Boston Art Museum. But Genevieve is a huge Calder fan. So I would recommend to an exhibit. Yeah. The scale of some of them are are just incredible in the balance. But anyway, if I were to go, if I were somebody who goes to the Seattle Art Museum on the reg, even as a guest, I would start to remember like, oh, yeah, well, this is here. This is here. You really do, especially for institutions that you love in the same way. Maybe for me it would be like going to the ballpark and they move a concession stand. That's my eyebrow contribution to this art conversation. But then if you're somebody who actually works there, and certainly if you're somebody who's a curator, and that's where I'll, again, I wish they had left it up. I wish that they had taken this a little bit with a little bit more of a flight of fancy. With that famous German humor. With that famous German flight of fancy. But I do understand that the work of a curator, I find that to be really a fascinating field. And I could also understand that is your own art, you know, in choosing how to display other people's art or whatever you're displaying. But like that is an art form in and of itself that I am fascinated by. And I would understand why if somebody came and messed with your art, why that would bother you.

Sure. I mean, if we want to take the slippery slope conversation here or the slippery slope approach, it would be mayhem if if people were just putting their own art up in every museum without any kind of process for for, you know, curating that stuff. And, you know, the stuff has been curated for a particular reason I have, weirdly, this sounds like some kind of a flex I have been in a lot of art museums lately I went from, like, no art museum attendance To, like, what feels like a lot I was in the portrait gallery at the Smithsonian with Becca I think it must be that when Becca and I go on a trip She's just highfalutin And we end up going to museums We went to the Chicago Museum of Art Which was really cool we went to the um uh the the met in new york recently and then when i was in palm springs i've been doing this story about this thing called the illuminaire house um and i went in the palm springs art museum and i have to say like i i'm very i'm i'm really into this right now like i don't know what is going on with like 70 of the art in the museum it's mostly confusing to me But I just feel like my mind, my, the richness of my experience has been expanded or increased by looking at stuff, whether or not I even understand it. And yeah, it's been kind of like, it's, it's, it's been nice actually to like, to see some of this stuff. But, but yes, there is a larger conversation about like, who decides what gets to be in these museums. And and if we probably have people listening right now that are literally art curators and are like, yeah, we really frown on people just putting their own shit up.

There was I think the reason I started thinking about like kind of curation was, well, a couple of things. Genevieve took some sort of a for her master's degree in in history and some sort of specific kind of history. She took some classes that had to do with like curation and museum display. So she had to kind of curate her own thing, which I just was this was like years ago. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's like a that's kind of like my I told you one time on the show that I didn't really grow up wanting to be a filmmaker, but I was tempted to be somebody who takes other people's films and makes trailers about the way we take somebody else's art. And then but then we sort of like take it into our own hands and then present it in a way that we think it has impact. And then there was this person and I'm sorry that I can't remember his name, but his whole thing was he would come to museums and keep in mind, I was in New Hampshire at the time and I think he came to the Dartmouth Museum, whatever it is, where you have some real old school shit. Right. Like and he comes and he goes into their archives and grabs the stuff that hasn't been on display for a long time and then brings that all out of the attic or the basement or whatever and then tells sort of a different story of the institution of the region based on the art that hasn't been shown. I recall. Yeah. And I think he was like a black artist. And these are like very white institutions and very New Hampshire, New England institutions. Dartmouth. What? Oh, and so for somebody to come in with more of a sort of a progressive and and to look at like kind of race through this lens. And then to like I like that to me, I was like, oh, my God, this is a whole art in and of itself. I'm really sorry that I can't remember that person's name. It's been like two decades since I since I heard that story.

Well, it sounds like the guy who installed his own painting is in more trouble than the people who cheated on trivia at the Red Bear Pub or whatever. They're at least allowed back at the pub. That's a really good point. It's a good power out. It's not even banned from the premises.

here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female no man

it's not from a female all right emails or vmails today yeah let's see here okay i'm gonna play um

if i can't i'm gonna play two here uh a quickie from a listener kate and my setup on this is gonna be somewhat disjointed i might need you to help luke here we were thanking i believe a dazzling donor named Kate about a week or so ago and that Kate mentioned in her message that she was one of the three Kates who came to Cairo radio and TBTL was still on the air because producer Jen at the time had an idea of gathering all the tens named Kate for a radio segment am I

right on that setup I believe so yeah that that we she noticed that we had a lot of people a lot of listeners with that name and so she just invited them in and and we just had a conversation I will say a fairly rambling conversation thanks to me about how it was going being named Kate and so the person and somehow there was food involved if I remember right now

yes I think I have some they had to bring some more on that here yes and so um I think it was a dazzling donor message maybe it was a blur say but I'm pretty sure it was a dazzling donor named Kate who said I was one of the Kates who came to the studio and now we have a voicemail from one

of the other kates hi this is kate and benny i um and the time bandit and i was just listening to an episode where luke was talking about getting together with a different kate that listens to the podcast and how years and years ago she was on the show and jen had this idea to bring the kates on i am also one of the kates that was on that show luke was talking about um kate's having to bring food it's true we were supposed to bring our favorite snack We were also supposed to bring our favorite beverage, and I would bet that all the Kates that listened to the show that many years ago are still listening to TVCL, because I think there are three of us, and so two are at least accounted for. I'm guessing the third one listens as well, but I'm curious. Is the third Kate out there? Can she confirm? Anyway, power out.

All right. Seeking the third Kate. The third Kate, wasn't she the dates with Kate person?

Oh, Kate. Oh, maybe. I'm not sure. Well, I think Kate still dips in and out of the show, or I could reach out to her to find out, but that would make sense.

Yeah, I feel like my brain is such Swiss cheese, and I just like Mandela effect so many things now. I thought that I actually was talking to a person in real life who was one of the Cates, like after, I think it might have been after Livewire at Town Hall.

I apologize. So my whole thing about it being a dazzling donor or a Blur's Day was wrong. I just misunderstood that you brought it up on the show.

But I don't know because then, did I though? I mean.

I don't know. This listener says that when Luke was talking about meeting or talking with one of the Cates, I think, sounds like you and the listener are on the same page with that.

My memory is that I was talking to this particular Kate, IRL, and then I think in that conversation, she confirmed that one of the other Kates was our friend who did the like a kind of a podcast and website thing called Dates with Kate. She was going on a lot of dates and she was documenting it. This was long before TikTok was saying, you know, get get unready with me after my latest bad date. Our friend Dates with Kate. She was way ahead of the curve.

Yes, exactly. And I also say her last name because she has written a book about it. Kate Bergstrom is her name. And I can reach out to ask her if she was the third Kate in this scenario. Because we saw her at the 4,000th episode that we recorded not all that long ago. Yes, that was fun. So I know that she's still generally speaking in our circle. So anyway, that's interesting. Maybe we could. Can I just say one other thing? And like when I, you know, I was a fan of TBTL in the radio days before I'd met y'all. And how did you like that? Very cash. How did you like the y'all? I mean, honestly, like, I wouldn't even. It's good when I stop after I say it.

No, that adds to the casual nature of it.

But, you know, that little thing, and this sounds like, well, it could have been either you or Jen. This one sounds specifically like a Jen thing.

Oh, very much a Jen thing.

Well, just the idea of inviting the Cates, but then also to say, like, I think that's a good idea. I could, even me, with my waterlogged numbskull brain, could come up with the idea of, hey, let's get all the Cates together. That's a fun idea. but then to say also each of you bring your favorite snack and beverage is both a fun thing and also it's a way of sort of comparing notes between the kates hey do all kates love funyuns yeah you know are they all are they all code red people like i'm kind of doubtful but like that is like a nice little twist on it that i don't think that i would have thought of that i really appreciate about what you and jen were doing back then i mean all credit to jen honestly

in fact i texted her you know how uh how excited It's...

I am by the existence of the TBTL Junior Sluggers and in particular that photo that I put on Instagram I think we probably use it as a show pic of uh our TBTL Junior Slugger whose name I actually don't know but their jersey number is number one and there was just this great picture presumably manager Ben took of whatever so I sent it to Jen because I was just like can you believe that this kooky ass thing that that you and i came up with you know at azteca basically like still exists in the world and now there are young kids running around with those letters on their jersey and she had such a sweet response it was you know basically saying it's one of the great joys of her life you know having been part of the founding of tbtl and and it is an amazing thing and like yeah that that little note from one of the kates so now we have like you said two of the kates accounted for the one that i spoke to i think in person and then that kate checking in and now we just need kate bergstrom to confirm or deny if she was the third kate um but the idea that all three of those kates would still be to some degree interacting with this show it's also just so heartwarming like it just i can't say i can't describe how happy that makes me feel

Yeah, me too. I'm happy to help coordinate a reunion if that's what it takes. Get Jen on the line, too.

As long as they bring food.

As long as you bring virtual food. Oh, did I say something? You know, since it's Wednesday and we won't have time to play voicemails the rest of the show, or the rest of the week, I should say, because of Blursdays and what have you. Let me play one more voicemail. This was in response to you and I talking about our lack of experience in skiing and how the only time I've been to a ski slope was literally the only time I put skis on my feet and immediately went up a ski chairlift and didn't know how to get off. And the whole thing was I went down the hill one time slamming into a tree bit by bit until I found myself at the bottom and I never skied again. Well, that prompted this story from, hey, look, KD.

Hey friend, it's Katie in Salt Lake City and had to call in regarding the ski situation you were talking about because when I was in middle school in sixth grade, I started going to a fancy middle school. So I was not a fancy person and suddenly was in a fancy middle school and all the kids there skied. Ski bus. And I had never been before. So my fancy friend took me up to her ski cabin. They quote taught me how to ski. So the first day I was up on skis, they put me on a chairlift. I was with my friend, and she never taught me how to get off the chairlift. So guess what? I flailed, and I sort of screamed, and I stayed on the chairlift and rode it all the way down to the bottom. And it was, like, up until that point, the most embarrassing moment of my life. I was in sixth grade, and people skiing down, including my friend's, like, kid brother, they pointed up at me and left. they didn't stop the ski lift somebody wasn't watching I didn't hit the little bar it was really embarrassing I've only been skiing like a handful of times since then but I always think about that and how mortifying it was anyway power out

Katie mentioned that that is just the most embarrassing moment of her life up to that point which of course raises the question yeah what's happened after that what's beat that out I didn't even know that was an option that you could possibly ride it all the way back down

You would have availed yourself of that option if you would have known.

I would have just kept going. I'd still be on the chairlift.

I bought a round-trip ticket.

I got this on Travelocity. Yeah, I can't.

No returns on this. I need to. What are you trying to make me? Skip lag this, people? You know, the other thing about that that I hadn't really thought of is if you're writing it down, everybody who's on their way up also sees you. And they also know you're like you're the outlier. Like, OK, it's an empty seat, empty seat, empty seat person in a seat. What's going on with this person?

Right. Right. Exactly. And, you know, if you're somebody who is, you know, and again, this is sixth grade. Katie, everything's feeling very self-conscious and everything. But like if you're somebody who is maybe older or a little bit more self-possessed in the moment, if it's a more comfortable scenario for you, it could be really hilarious as you're going down. just sort of like waving at everybody going up. But I understand that that is not the situation in this case.

Not when you're in sixth grade, not when you've failed at this or been incapable of getting. Again, this is what we said when this came up last time. There's not enough attention given to the fact that it is actually very hard to get off the ski lift your first time with skis or a snowboard. A snowboard arguably might be worse because the snowboard is not fully on your, both feet are not attached. at least in the bad old days when I snowboarded there's probably some technological

solve for this now but when i was doing snowboarding um you'd have one foot strapped in and then one foot that was just kind of loose and that made it also hard to get off the lift so they need to they they need to account for that a little bit more yeah snowboarding seems

even more difficult to me because again you wouldn't have the ability to move your feet freely on the board that seems like that would be very problematic for me i was sort of tempted

this winter and i started saying to becca like maybe we should just like uh one saturday go up you know to the whatever the mountain is around here i guess it'd probably be like mount hood and uh go you know go do a little snowboarding see how it goes but i don't know i mean i just i'd i remember how hard some of the falls i took were when i was in my 20s and i'm just like i don't

think i'd survive that now yeah like yeah i feel like well you were talking about changing you know those light fixtures in your house on the ladder and i was thinking are we gonna get him a life alert when he's out there in the middle of nowhere i i don't want to like yeah i don't want to jinx

anything and i also don't want to make light of a situation that may you know people may have experience with or their loved ones may have experience nobody thinks this is going to be

the day i fall off a ladder right electricity coursing through like that's just not no i mean

i think well it's been you know i've had 47 years of that not happening i should be fine but yeah no nobody who goes through some sort of like household accident thinks this is going to be the day that that happens until it happens and i really am trying to that's why i was so that's why i was so hyped about my new ladder because it actually like feels very stable when i'm on it and like um i i realize that if i'm going to do any stuff that kind of puts me at any sort of risk, I've got to really make sure that the equipment I'm using is really functional and up to code. Cause I am like, I don't even like that story about you on that rickety ass ladder trying to cut your hedges. And now you have a good one. I'm happy about that. I was wondering, I guess it wouldn't really make sense because of the hedge, but if you could almost get like a scaffold going of like two ladders and then a thing between them, although I don't know if that's really, if that actually would make things easier or harder for you with year are you doing your hedges this year again is that a yearly thing or like every couple years

it's funny well yes definitely a yearly thing at least once a year I didn't do the top of my back hedges last year so I need to get that done but I was just talking to Genevieve the past couple of days and even this morning she gave me an update on it I'm a little concerned our hedge all the way around seriously thinking about reaching out to Karen but Karen has been fielding so many questions lately i don't want her dealing with this too but like our hedge for the first time this will be our kind of our third spring here it's a little yellowy it's like it's not like usually at this time of year it is sprouting major bright green new leaves right in the balls they're beautiful but it's also like i got my eye on you i'm giving you guys a haircut pretty soon you know and this year it's just been like it does it's yellow and brownish not not drastically It's still mostly green, but there's not a lot of new growth. And then Genevieve was listening to NPR today.

To save the tree, what we used to do at Seattle, we'd cut it down about once every 15 years, let it grow back up. Just so you know, that's one theory.

Thank you. Thank you, Cisco, for being there for me, since I can't get Karen on the line. No, just joking. But anyway, Genevieve said, you know, I was just listening about how we're in drought conditions here, you know, here in, I don't know if it's a statewide drought or my region of the strait. of the state but i thought that was more about snowpack and not about rain coming down but now the going theory is that maybe our hedges are not getting as much water as we thought they were it seemed like a rainy season to me i don't know if that's true or not if that's the case that'd be a bit of a relief because if there's something going on with my head like the hedges around this house i mean are the number one feature of the house and if i'm ever complaining about trimming them It's only it's all part and parcel. But I love my hedges and I love caring for them. And this I mean, just the house would have such a different character if we didn't have this little kind of almost like walled off little little space in the neighborhood walled off by these very tall hedges. So I'm a little bit concerned about that, but I'm hoping that it might just be they didn't get quite as much.

You didn't cut them back in a way that could be bad for them, right? I mean, would you know? Did you do that kind of research?

It's my understanding and in talking to people like Karen who do know that, like, these things. I think Karen even said to me one time, like, she's like, they'll just grow and grow and grow. They think they're trees or something. I can't remember. There's some funny quote like that. They think they're trees, which sort of stuck in my head. The back hedges I cut deeply into, like, with a – Trees. They're all around us, but who gives a s**t? I love that drop so much. That's from the onion. Yes. Some like some onion.

thing i saw someday this drop i think we sat on that drop for years before we finally started using it because i guess i got hedges but anyway even the ones i cut really really far back back in the kind of alleyway that faced the alleyway like it's not growing back super quickly but i don't think that's the issue at all i think that like you can cut these things back that's not where the yellowing is happening it's just not growing back as strongly it's just not growing as strongly as it usually does in the spring so i don't think i don't think it's that okay but i am i have been like i've been burying religious statues that's good that's good i think that'll

help to help definitely yeah because you're right like when you when when i can't remember if it was you or veeves i think it might have even been veeves when you guys were on the hunt for your house and she sent me the link i was like oh my god that house looks great and those hedges are like they they really tie the room together like you're right totally yeah completely makes this private sanctuary of of the house possible um and so yeah i'm you got you got to take care of like bury fish guts whatever you got to do yeah you got to take care of those things so did i tell

you i saw on reddit you know i follow a lot of the we gotta wrap up sorry man i just started a new conversation but um uh real quick i i've been spending more time on like reddit like seattle reddit and a couple of different subreddits i follow that are like either what is this thing or help me identify this or whatever and it's things people find here and there and somebody held a or somebody showed some photos one of them holding up a jar with some cloth inside and then photos of what was inside the jar and the note was like I've found three of these buried in my yard I've been doing some heavy gardening or something like that or like re-landscaping we found three of these jars that seem to contain like old women's undergarments in the yard does anybody have any you know in any one of these posts on red it could be just

just what's that that was just throwing in a ham hands bill joke for uh phyllis he's a guy on the show whose catchphrase is saying punties

any one of these posts could just be a cry for attention online i'm sure people fake things all the time but in this case you know the photos looked real enough and people were like oh yeah This is like a kind of a Wiccan love spell or something like links to like, yeah, this is something that some people do or did at some point. And so probably you had somebody who was living in this house who was Wiccan and was trying some sort of a romance.

I thought it was a guy who, you know, had some some undergarments that he was using for, you know, personal pleasure, but also didn't want to get found out. So it was burying them in the yard and then digging them up later.

no yeah in this case any of this could be faked but in this case I sort of feel like oh yeah that makes sense and I love that the community sort of takes it seriously like they will say well here's a link on this and here's some research on this and then you find yourself in parts of the internet learning about shit that maybe I need to get I really need

you couldn't understand I need to get on reddit I should because what I really need is another screen time thing to just lose my life

away on but like too many thoughts

I don't know how, yeah, I don't know how it is I haven't gone down. I feel like probably when I went down the TikTok rabbit hole, if I hadn't gone down that rabbit hole, maybe I'd have gone down a Reddit rabbit hole, like, you know, but now I'm spending most of my time watching videos of Sketch playing Madden going, Tuesday, Tuesday.

Hey, brother. You sent me a TikTok.

I just wanted you to know that I'm not hallucinating.

Yeah, no. I didn't watch until this morning because usually if you send me a TikTok video, I'm like, oh, this is probably intro tape, but I don't want to open it now because then it'll get lost in my text thread, sort of. So I save them for the morning. And I realized it was just somebody. It wasn't the original person who does the Twitch, but it was somebody who was going around with her cell phone. I guess it's some NBA event, huh? And asking NBA players.

I think she worked for the team. So, like, this is the progression of this meme, if you want to call it that, has been this guy called Sketch who plays Madden online and says these kind of, like, silly little quips. Those kind of went viral with a certain kind of probably, let's be honest, barstool sports kind of bro. and so then the joke became uh women telling each other go up to your boyfriend and just say and videotape this on your phone and say hey brother and just see their reaction and so then that became kind of the meme and now it's like oh you work for the publicity department of the Dallas Mavericks and it's the Mavericks I don't actually know if it was the Mavericks but like whatever the team was and you now go around and you say hey brother to the players just to see what their reaction is and i've seen this with like a whole host of teams

College teams, pro teams of different sports that just to a temperature read on how many of the people who, you know, play these sports will immediately know what you're talking about. Special teams, special plays, special players. Yeah. Whoever the very last one in the montage totally got it. Right. That's why that's the reason I sent it to you because I was like, he literally said the thing to her that I said to the guy on the strip in Vegas, like which which was weird of me. I know. But here we are. All right, well then, I guess we'll probably wrap it up for today's edition of the program, but I have amazing news. We're going to be right back here tomorrow with more TBTL for all of you, so please, if you can, join us for that. Tell your kids, tell your wife, tell them to tune in to TBTL. We can always use more people hanging out here on the show and with the show. If your name's Kate, that also helps, but it's not necessary. Okay, well, thanks, everyone. We'll be back here tomorrow. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Go little sluggers. And please remember, no mountain too tall. Baba buoy? Noin. Ski School. It's not about learning how to ski. For Dave Marshall and his gang Life is one big party Welcome to my kingdom I will bet you all before the night is through They're the best at what they do I've been watching you ski You're really good May I present to you Section 8 But the competition is fierce They're dead I control this mountain And I say this is your last year with their backs against the wall they'll do anything to win if they don't win they'll lose the mountain forever scum let's settle this once and for all the best against the best what do you say sure and we ski the dome so for the wildest most outrageous ride of your life check into ski school anyone for hot tub i love my life ski school it's not about learning how to ski did we win power out