Muse

It's like we're the two summer camps across the lake. Like we're the girl summer camp and you're the boy summer camp.

Yes.

Or I feel like in the 80s and 90s there would always be a cartoon would just have all male characters. But then they do a spinoff where it was like the girl version. Right. Which actually I was thinking we should call ourselves Alvin and the Chipmunks. Actually doesn't make sense because there's only three. So one of us has to be Dave. Someone has to be Dave.

Did we see Dave's face? We saw Dave's full face, right?

You know, I say that, but can I picture Dave's face? No, not at all.

Maybe that's by design, though. You imprint on him whatever you're saying. Nobody remembers his face. That's the art of it. Maybe he's an assassin.

In the live action version, he was played by Jason Lee from Malrats. My name is Earl. My name is Earl. So does that help?

No, that makes it worse.

TBTL.

well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a very special friday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live my name is luke burbank i am your host this is special this is special we're doing something today have we ever done this before andrew walsh longest running cobro of the show

I don't think we've ever done anything like this. We are joining forces. We are the Voltron of podcasting today.

Absolutely. We are, let's see, we've promoted other programs on the show. We've been promoted in other places, but we've never done that I can remember is actually combined with another podcast, in this case, our friends, Lindy West and Megan Hatcher Mays over at Text Me Back, which you've heard us doing promos for, we actually got together this week and we recorded an entire episode together and we're playing it as today's tbtl they're playing it as today's text me back the idea being that we want to introduce the very few of you who may not know about text me back to the product and the very many of the text me back listeners that don't know about this little show and kind of cross pollinate because it seems like our shows have a lot of shared kind of dna and we are imagining that our listeners would really like each other and like the different shows is that an accurate statement andrew we had so much

fun taping this this is a true story we taped this a couple of days ago in the afternoon and genevieve was working from home and i came out of my studio and she was all the way upstairs and i said that was so much fun and she's like i've never heard you laugh like that she was like

Well, I know you weren't doing regular TV show with Luke then.

She literally said, I've never heard you laugh like that before. And I said, oh, well, you know, I laugh a lot during TV show. She's like, you don't laugh like that during TV show. There are a couple of moments where I could not catch my breath. And I don't think I'm stingy with my laughs on here. So anyway, I say that in all honesty, it was an absolute blast. The only thing that I thought was a bummer was that I had to talk. I honestly just wanted to mute my mic. and not even saying that in a self-deprecating way. I was just enjoying it so much. So I think the listeners will too.

Yeah, it felt like the kind of thing where we could have done a four-hour show and I don't know what it'd be like for the listeners, but for us, the making of the show would have really flown by. So that's what we did. We started off doing, I guess, a segment that Lindy and Megan do. It's called Tidings. And then we do some top stories, which in typical TBTL fashion may or may not involve the actual top stories. Um, and, uh, and yeah, we did that this week and now we're going to present it to you. We are hoping that if you enjoy this, you will go check out text me back. I would say Andrew, that probably the only thing that I feel particularly good about in all this is that they only do one episode of text me back a week. They were doing five a week. We got, we got real trouble here in TBTL land. Mercifully, they're doing one episode a week and, um, they're independent too, the way that we are. and that's another thing that we really share with the show is they are supported through Patreon so if you enjoy what they're doing and you can support them please think about that as well because they're doing a really really good show and it's not easy to be out here independent in these podcast streets so take a listen to this it's our first ever we think someone's going to email and be like no no no you did a crossover show with Ron and Don. You did a crossover show with...

You did a crossover show with the Andrew Walsh show.

You did a crossover show with Michael Medved in 1987. No, I think this is new ground. I really do. And it's exciting ground, so we hope that you will enjoy this and take a listen to us and the fine folks from Text Me Back.

So on our show, we always do a segment. Nope, that's not true. On our show, we sometimes do a segment called Tidings, which is basically, what's up? What's going on? How you doing? What's good? It's like saying hi to your best friend, but you made it formal. yeah and you wrote a song to go with it and then the song changed over the course of many episodes of your podcast and then at one point a listener sent in a new song yep by handle called glad tidings that you now sing before you catch up with your friend what would you like to sing

what's the copyright on that handle music is that expired yet no it's in the public domain so

if you want to sing a version yeah good uh it goes a little something like this glad tidings glad tidings glad tidings glad tidings glad tidings glad tidings um so mostly tidings is actually it's developed into a musical segment but sometimes we also talk about our lives so megan and i have brought a couple of tidings to teach you two about tidings yeah um and then if you have tidings you can tell us your tidings yeah um so you know what i'm just gonna do my tidings first yeah it's very small and it's just something that i've been grumping about today which is that i was served a video on instagram a terrible terrible clip from howard stern of the band imagine dragons um showing off their tight harmonies and it's the so they really build it up like they have the first guy and he's like yeah well i actually take the high harmony on this part and then it goes to the next guy and then he's like yeah and then i go and then it goes to the third guy and he's like yeah and then i go down low and then howard's like okay put it all together let's hear it and then it's just a cacophony of hell it's so bad and so i was thinking about the band imagine dragons and then i was just getting angrier and angrier because i can't think of the name of a band more precisely designed to tantalize and then disappoint me you specifically Lindy West yeah I like to imagine dragons but not like that but not like that it's such a letdown for me specifically it feels aggressive toward me specifically and I just feel like they've taken something from me you know yeah I just saw a headline about imagine dragons too and it was they're doing everything possible for lgbtq rights and i was like everything possible everything say more but i didn't click on the headline who wrote that writing legislation i was like what do you mean by everything like what are you getting up to imagine setting yourself on fire for lgbtq the imagine dragons

newsletter is ready to break the news that imagine dragons is doing literally everything they can for lgbtq plus aren't they um like don't they have origins in being mormons i believe the members They were part of a heady time, I feel, in the, like, between 2010 and now, where you just had the, you had the killers and the imagined dragons and the neon Indian, and you had this whole, like, you know, second wave Mormon folks where the, like, the wives are on Instagram with the wide brim hats and the polished concrete floors and the music that didn't scream Mormonism right at first, but it was very popular, but somehow still kind of gets back to Brigham Young in a way.

Yeah, that's how they get you. That's how they get you. Do the Mormons have like a dragon thing? Are they taking that from me too? They probably do.

I would not rule that out.

I bet they do if you think about it. I mean, they think lots of very fascinating things. So I can't, I mean, why wouldn't dragons be a part of their lore?

We have magical plates that were inscribed, which feels very like a thing that Frodo would also be on a mission to find. Totally. We have an angel named Moroni. Weren't there magic glasses that went with the magic plates?

I love that the angel's name Moroni, it spelled like moron with an I at the end. And I was like, that's your man's? The top of all your temples is moron? Okay. I asked my 22-year-old daughter who's here visiting us right now. I was like, who's Imagine Dragons for? And she was like, you want me to explain it like in a high school cafeteria way? And I was like, yeah. she was like she was like because to my credit she said i don't think you would have been an imagine dragon's kid she was like imagine dragon's kid it's like they're not like the weirdest kids but they're like one tier up you know like high functioning theater kids who play the saxophone and then i i was like losers and then in my head i was like that is me i mean i don't play the saxophone but yeah it's worse i played the bass clarinet megan which is a saxophone shaped clarinet for someone not cool to commit to the saxophone Nice. Nice. It's like a novelty fringe clarinet that has almost no use. Wow. I don't think I knew that.

Imagine Dragons serve a very important sort of role in the culture, though, which is to tell me about a car that I have no intention of buying.

Exactly.

Andrew does a whole podcast with his partner, Genevieve, called After These Messages, and they've delved into the music of commercials a lot. And would you say, Andrew, that Imagine Dragons is up there in the top, like, five of just absolute shite bands that are licensed the most for commercials?

Licensed the most or sound alike, you know, that kind of vibe. I also, tell me if I'm right about this, Luke, is this also the quintessential bumping out of a Seahawks game into the commercial break?

Well, if they've run out of Pearl Jam.

I was going to say, if the game is being played in Seattle, it's just Spoonman for every commercial break.

right oh you mean artists yes i used to live in port towns in washington and i would see spoon man riding his bike around town and i would feel legitimately thrilled and i want to i want to be clear this was in like 2018 thank you for clarifying i was gonna say i met him when

i was 12 and this was shockingly recent and i was geeking out i met him at the pike place market and was like hello spoon man and i got his autograph and everything and he was like really happy to meet me he played his spoons i was like this is the best day of my life you should get that autograph tattooed on you i don't think i have it anymore isn't that terrible i'm sorry i'm sorry but by the way that kind of leads me into my tidying which is also musical um it's really dumb i just want to preface well so since this episode is like a super episode and we've sort have formed a super group i was thinking of what of what we should call our super group and i was like what are some famous super groups and i was like crosby stills nash and young that doesn't really work none of our names really sound like that you know it's very specific west walsh and herbs yeah does that it doesn't really roll off the off the tongue you know and then it came to me text me back too beautiful to live tmbtl of the dog and the listeners are the ones going hungry spoon man really was a great lead into that so tumtl of the dog that's what we're doing here

oh that's so good what i like about it is it doesn't it doesn't take any explanation at all everybody will just get it right away that's correct no no yeah a thousand percent have you

all have you all megan and lindy struggled with that in your i would say relatively early in your podcast's existence uh of trying to explain what it is or do you have a a kind of a neat succinct way to just because we or 15 years in and we uh still don't know how to talk about what it is we're

trying to do five days a week i don't know well it's like at first our tagline was like a show about best friends animals and the worst people but that's not really true so now we just change the tagline every week something else it just kind of depends uh but we've also given up on explaining what we're doing to anyone they're just hoping for the best to be candid with you

this was a actually a large point of contention with kow because we would just be uh you know free associating and then they would be like stop you have to tell people what you're talking about and we'd be like why no so now we're untethered and it's just like i because to me as a consumer of media i like the scavenger hunt i like trying to figure out what that reference means yeah and so i like to plant little easter eggs for people and i don't want to explain it yeah so now we're

having mental breakdowns we're naming super groups we're writing songs you know i don't know

it's a gas we we one time i wouldn't say i wouldn't say i got in trouble but i got corrected when we worked for a network not all that long ago because i used the wrong color blue on the website i don't know even know if you know that luke but we had like official i was siloed from that information for your own health luke never learned how we were with that company for eight years, he never learned how to check his working interest.

He's like... The writing was on the wall. I mean, I couldn't read it. I didn't have access to that portal, but it was on the wall.

And I think you were proven right. Eight years and you're doing fine. You never really needed it.

And I don't know, this is, I'm sure, violates all the rules of broadcasting, but I just want to, becoming even more sort of inward looking for both of our shows. But if I can, first of all, congratulations on striking out on your own. You guys sound great so far. I was very, I really liked the way that you addressed it on that particular episode.

episode like I just I was I thought you guys you guys are doing such a great job and I'm so excited for you and we are this other weird podcast that's also kind of independent I love that I feel like we have that kind of in common yeah um but uh but yeah we we have made a some sort of a career out of doing everything wrong from a broadcasting standpoint and whittling our number of listeners down to about a hundred people who are willing to donate a significant enough amount of money that this is viable yeah that's the dream that's the dream yeah i don't

know we just were like i want to talk about pubes and you know i don't know just like make a reference to something we thought was funny in 1999 and not spend a lot of time explaining it and uh so far so good people seem to like it you guys feel have you lived up to the mandate of

talking about pubes more because i heard you guys mentioned that a lot in the first episode but i I was wondering if it was one of those things where you get your freedom and then suddenly you don't want to talk about pubes.

Oh, Andrew, no, please. Okay, good. Actually, now I wish I had sent you the song so you could put it in the media board, but we had a listener send in a song he composed called Segment Pubes, and it goes, Segment Pubes. And there's like a ring at the end. It's like the more you know, but pubes, it's so good. So I just, like the show, making our show has been amazing. Like we've gotten a lot of support through our patreon patreon.com slash text me back pod if you want to assist uh but like the community is so delightful i'm sure this is true for your show too people are like writing us songs sending us pictures of their cats and like people's kids love our show so we're always getting messages about how their kids love the songs that aham lindy's husband makes for our show and it's like yeah this is great i could i could do this forever you know that's how you know it's

working in in in our experience and we are very lucky that some of the people who still like support our program and email in stuff and and contribute to the show are some of the people that were listening during the first week of the show which was i mean seriously like four thousand and some hundred number of episodes ago and i mean i find it totally shocking but also really gratifying like we in our first week of the program we we would joke that we had literally tens of listeners and and then the people who's we would read any email that came in because we were just so excited that there was literally anyone listening and the folks that were listening that little hearty original group started calling themselves the tens of listeners and then that's to this day what everybody calls themselves but it is just yeah that was for me the sense that tbtl was kind of working was just people were voluntarily sending us artwork that they'd made or, you know, again, things with their kids and stuff. And like, that's something that's so fun about what I hear when I'm listening to your show. I feel like we are kindred spirits. We are not enemies. We are friends, these two podcasts. Can I just, do you guys, do you mind? I know this is maybe more the text me back segment. It's tidings, but may I activate a sound effect from the TBTL world?

I wish you would. Very quickly.

TBTL breaking news.

Lindy, you mentioned the chipmunks and I have some breaking news. I was recently at a FedEx office at a Walgreens in Longview, Washington, not to brag. And I was trying to return a pan from a company I just bought some pans from. And I noticed that they have a full-on magazine about labels and things that was just sitting there on the counter. And I'm going to just hold, I don't know how to do this any better, but I'm going to hold it up to my camera. It is chipwreck, but it's not Alvin and the Chipmunks. It's not from that universe. Somebody is obviously violating the trademark of Alvin the Chipmunk's chipwrecked. I was shocked, and I don't know who I need to report this to, but I cannot believe that people think you can just use chipwreck willy-nilly on your labels, and it's actually labels from Healthcare Logistics, Incorporated. Wow. So anyway, I'll be reporting this.

Yeah, to the FBI, I think. Uh-huh, yeah. They're the piracy people. Or to Dave.

anyway we're the chipettes you take your pick two of the chipmunks or maybe you have to be some sort of dark hybrid where one of you is half half Alvin half Simon one of you is half Dave and half Theodore

can I be part horse part chipmunk like a centaur

you'd be a Dave Simon

no I want the bottom to be a chipmunk and the top to be a mighty

steed

unable

to walk

i feel like here's the thing at a real company you can't do the riff about the chip tar because someone would say stop

go back explain what a chipmunk is what's a horse billboard the whole thing

don't you have an example of that andrew i feel like of like the worst contextualization in public radio.

Or is that I feel like this has come up on TBTL a lot because Andrew and I both worked in public radio and we both love public radio, but we have a lot of thoughts about it. And I feel like there was some example of well, there's certainly the tape we play from Parks and Rec where somebody is explaining what the Batman is.

My team and I are trying to build a park and we need input on the design from you, the citizens of Pawnee. So I guess I'm here to send out the bat signal.

A bat signal, for listeners who might not know, refers to the children's character, the Bat-Man, a strong gentleman who fights crime nocturnally.

That's correct. Well put.

This is a little bit far afield of what you're talking about, but I know that one of my pet peeves is every public radio promo, at least back in the day, and I think to a degree today, always talks about the intersection of something and something and something. like coming back after the break we're going to talk about the intersection of art and commerce but that's an easy one but they get real creative with the intersection of this and that we're here

to talk about the intersection of horse and chipmunk i would stay tuned have you guys ever

heard a forward promo that's so bad it actually makes you turn off the radio that literally happened to me the other day yes i don't want to call out any names but it's something like we come back it's food time with so-and-so who's going to come on and talk about her favorite recipes and just from the forward promo i was like i ain't got time for this and i have all

the time in the world by the way i am by the way we've gotten rid of forward promos entirely we just didn't want to write them or do them we were just like right coming up i don't know man yeah just see let's just see what happens what are we doing next week how dare you ask me that How dare you?

Yeah, I think.

Sorry, go ahead.

I just, I think that there's, certainly on the TBTL side, we've just kind of decided that if you're still with us 20 minutes into whatever this is, you'll just tolerate anything.

Yeah, that's correct. Like, what are we trying to keep?

I mean, we like to joke about sweeping the quarter hour and our TSL, which is all this, like, radio terminology that we learned. Andrew and I, one of the best things that ever happened to our show was actually a result of the radio show that Andrew and I worked on together. where they hired a big money consultant to teach us how to make a better commercial talk radio show. And some of the terminology that he brought out that it's, it's still to this day, like Canon, a one is called mad manning, which his advice was before every episode, you sit down and you write out every thought in your head, like a mad man. And then you go back and you circle things that might be interesting talk show topics. and then he also called your, was he super serving your P1s? That was also the same guy

right? I think he might have brought baby. We definitely knew we wanted to super serve our P1s at

Cairo Radio. Yeah like a P1 is your most loyal listener you want to really make sure, which I mean ironically is exactly the model for TBTL and I would imagine a model for Text Me Back which is if you like this we're going to make so much of it what you like. Most people maybe not are, maybe you're not going to like it so much but if this if something you like we're gonna super serve you you p1

that's correct i i think that we got a lot of i uh we got a lot of feedback that was like you gotta explain what you're talking about nobody knows what you're talking about which is true that's correct uh but i won't i won't i won't be doing that like this is like this

has worked for me for 41 years i'm just gonna keep doing this you know also not true because our p1s would be like ha ha ha ha we love it and then it's so cute because we have a discord now and in the discord the p1s are all helping each other out like people will be like sorry what does this mean that they talked about and then someone else will explain it and then they're all talking about how they're gonna they're gonna make a wiki of all of our inside jokes it's so

cute i love it and i promise you at some point you two are gonna be using those resources to remind yourself because there are so many things that Luke and I are like we have no idea what this listener is talking about and all these listeners will say well don't you remember on episode 2143 you guys said this no I don't remember that I drink a lot I'm just doing

whatever I'm just saying stuff man yeah yeah I do really want someone to make the wiki well because I think this has happened to us where like we've been going through our old yearbooks and old messages to each other and it's like what does this mean why did we say this why was this like a hyper fixation for like this three months final three months of high school and we'd have no memory of it at all it's like yeah i wish i had written that down so like the really nice thing about the podcast is it is kind of like a historical record of our friendship too where it's like oh good i can just go back and listen to it if i forget like what's kayak dad i don't remember that although

what was it i'll never forget him oh kayak dad i remember that from from your first episode was that the person that you

air to megan with your with your flagrant littering i littered in the parking lot of qfc by the way my

actual friends in real life were horrified by this tale i had a friend come up to me and be like dude you litter what the hell like they were like really disappointed in me and i was like i was 17 if that makes you feel better and you're like no no no by then you should know the difference between right and wrong i was like oh like who do you think you are kayak dad jesus christ uh so this guy this like very pacific northwest father like the architect archetypal pacific northwest father like fleece vest flannel shirt like before that was a tech guy thing because the pacific northwest fathers had the vest thing down way before like the internet even worked true or existed um and he was disgusted like i had like thrown a jamba juicing i just didn't want to walk all the way to the garbage and who cares it's you village gives a shit so anyway may i ask a question

was this old u village like that we have like the low slung ram sports bar and the storables extra space i worked at in college okay that's the real ones no the legit this new fancy world

of u village i can't yeah there was like a clog show uh clog store there for a long time which

i'm not sure if it's i mean i will say it was transitional u village you know that's fair that's fair the the it was the new qfc was already there okay that's where we would go burger's bagels yeah there was a cinnabon there at the time um but it wasn't it wasn't in its final form as it exists now but it wasn't like cute funky you village with the hobby shop and

stuff you know yeah not yeah it was transitional i think there was no lamonts post lamont rest of power king um so anyway the kayak dad was so mad he like slow-mo went to pick up the garbage and like made eye contact with me as he was doing it and he would go he was going so slow like lifting it up and he placed it on the hood of my car and was like you know like what are you gonna do and i was like what i'm gonna do is take it and chuck it again at you and he i don't think an adult that adult man had ever in his life had a woman of any age disrespect his authority he was so angry and lindy and my friendship was still pretty new and lindy was just like what's that who are you and i was like oh let's get out of here it's like screeching like corella de vil style out of the qfc parking lot just screaming my eyes are spirals at this point i was like i will not be disrespected by 50 year old men

but uh so yeah so that's who kayak dad was top five scariest days of my life yeah that's right

what's really i guess you could just say coincidental is all hell and maybe this is just personality types like how you two have been friends forever and how andrew and i have been friends for a long time you got one person that's kind of like this way and one person is kind of like that way i tried to fight a guy in pike place market who had disrespected andrew over a taxi cab oh yeah andrew had no idea any of it happened am i remembering that right

yeah vaguely we were recording something we're at the pink door i was having martinis it was like four in the afternoon yeah we were definitely day drinking i know that was definitely a big part of our early friendship and then i was this an actual cab loop i can't even remember if it was a it was a cab not a car service you held a cab that would have sorted and got into the cab this

is right kind of by where the og starbucks is and and what i witnessed was a guy yell at you for he thought stealing his cab but in a really i thought mean and and just ungracious way you got in the cabin left i then called the guy out and threatened to fight him in front of his wife and by the way my ex-wife who was there can't believe she's my ex-wife now but the craziest part is you were blissfully unaware any of this had happened you were in the cab you were heading away

he was halfway to wallingford amazing well i remember there was a moment where me and some other guy who was with a family or at least one i believe small children for the same cab and so i do remember a moment and i this is where luke and i are kind of different like i i think i'll be the first one to say oh that was your cab like i don't even belong in the city i'll move to avoid confrontation i will move out of state to avoid talking to you about this cab so i remember there was an awkward moment where i was going forward and then it was unclear and this guy was clearly not super happy with me but i just ended up like hurrying up and scuttling into the back of the cab and driving away and i don't think it was until i don't know was it the next monday carrie told you literally maybe like months later that you told me that like a little a little a little yelling went down and like again that did not go over well with

your wife i think the reason i was so insane

sensed was because of the martinis no because that was part of the gasoline on the fire but i think it was because i know you so well andrew and and again lindy and megan you guys know each other so well like i knew in no universe would you ever try to take someone's cab you would bend over backwards to be thoughtful in that scenario i would take someone's cab in a heartbeat as soon as look at him okay when he was mad at my friend andrew who i knew would never do that i felt righteous indignation over that entire thing no i'm the exact same way i carry grudges like

on lindy's behalf i'm like i'll be like you remember that person said xyz she's like i have no no i don't even remember who that is and i was like i have it good tattooed in my brain i will never forget yeah like like no no no we don't mess with that person that person is bad um but yeah i'm but like i'm a bad person you know but i feel like everyone else should follow the rules of society not me though not me though like i take cabs i take stuff you know what i mean um allegedly allegedly you litter yeah i litter i throw stuff around you know but if somebody else is violating the social compact like are you blocking the door i said excuse me you won't move you didn't hold the door open for me let it shut in my face it's like jail prison and i'll never forget it i'll never forget it and if somebody does that to my friend if somebody does that to lindy homicide yes i'm just a little baby she's just a little baby luke are you an oldest i am i'm the oldest of seven is that's why that's why you want to just kill anyone who tries

to mess with your family i'm very protective of the people that i email i would like to say care about but even just random people online if i think they're being in any way mistreated like I get my kind of like, and my sense of what I think of as justice in the world, and that's a very flawed conception, by the way, but if my sense of justice is violated, I get like big mad real fast. Now, that's so interesting, Megan, that you said birth order, because I do very much think that birth order kind of impacts us as people and how we behave. I'm a little less sold on astrology, and so I'm really glad you went with birth order and not like, what a Taurus.

Yeah, like, are you a Gemini? that would have thrown me that would have thrown me because I'm like

I am a Taurus maybe they do know something

I make up birthday and just one really quick thing I am the same way like if somebody is like disrespecting a service worker it's game over for whoever that is like somebody was yelling at a Whole Foods lady and I was like what's your problem do you have something you want to say say it to me and he's like well oh well I know her I've been in here before and I was like what well now you're gonna know me I was like you don't talk to her like that okay buy your yogurt and get the fuck out of here I was so mad and he just was like what's happening

keep it moving if you've ever said keep it moving to someone in a public place you thought was being disrespectful to someone else you might be an elder sibling okay i want to say that we megan

and i also came up with one other sort of um archetypal divide um which is and i'm curious if this tracks with you two which is that we decided ironclad objectively for sure that between the two of us Megan's the Shaq and I'm the Chuck I don't know if you guys watch

TNT

what do you think

okay see I don't know the characteristic dichotomy but this is Luke 100% I think let's see we're thinking about well the thing is maybe a little more clarification of what you think is essentially Shaq versus Chuck because they both seem to say kind of whatever's coming into their mind

Exactly.

But Shaq is a little bit more with it. Chuck is a little bit more bewildered. And then Shaq, like, Chuck really will just say whatever. We did a deep dive into it on the show.

Like, Shaq is not trying to lose that Epson printing contract that has him dominating every Office Depot you've ever... Have you been in an Office Depot lately? It is just every product is sponsored by Shaquille O'Neal, including a life-size cutout of him. The office chairs, Shaquille O'Neal approved. The Epson printing section, Shaquille O'Neal approved. Amazing. I mean, he's like in the top 20 richest people in America. Yeah, because of that. And that's Andrew. He's one of the top 20 richest people in America.

Okay, so for us, here's a way to sum up the dichotomy. It's like Chuck will be sort of zoning out. They'll be having a conversation about the game. And then Chuck will be like, my toe fungus is itchy or whatever. and then meanwhile Shaq if if the light is making him too hot he will punch out the light you know what I mean like they're both sort of operating on a wild level but like yeah like like

Chuck will just be sitting there and all of a sudden Chuck Chuck will just be laughing so hard he's crying and everyone's like what is wrong with you we're talking about the basketball game and he's like someone just sent me a video of a snake jumping out at a man trying to ring a doorbell and he'll laugh and like he won't focus on the game at all and then it gets so bad that they have to ask him to text the photo to the producer so the producer can show the video to the audience yeah and like that's lindy like we're like we'll be filming or we'll be recording a segment and i'll be like okay are you gonna like are you gonna jump in here and she's like oh yeah one sec i'm just making a pyramid out of my mini m&ms you know it's like that's like and then whereas i'm i'm punching out lights and you know like fighting like fighting Keith Olbermann for saying something uh crappy about a WNBA player or something you know I saw Keith Olbermann in Central Park a few

years ago walking like six dogs at once and I just felt like it explained everything that's his new career that he's a dog walker no I believe they're all his dogs and they were very small and it was like they were surrounding him and as you'd be shocked to hear he was taking up the entire path

Yeah, see, she really did make a little pyramid out of her mini peanut butter M&Ms.

Those are good, by the way. I mean, that's good symmetry there.

Thank you.

Good pyramiding. I would say that if any of us here had bosses anymore at like a respectable podcasting network, they would say, hey, Luke, don't hold up a photo of Chipwrecked into the camera. And they'd say, hey, Lindy, maybe don't hold up the camera, the phone camera for an audio podcast. But that's just how unleashed, we're like Byron Allen unleashed of the podcast space.

That's the thing. It's like I can't be stopped. No, you can't. Can't. I just wanted to do it. I don't know. I want to show you my pyramid.

Those peanut butter M&Ms are so good too. Are those the kind that the whole middle is peanut butter? Not a peanut M&M, but peanut butter, right?

Correct. Correct. Except this is a new product that I'd never seen before, which is mini peanut butter M&Ms. and I still haven't figured out the structural makeup of it because they're so small, they can't possibly have the peanut butter core. They're too small, in fact, to even bite in half and inspect. I never figured it out. I'm downing handfuls of them.

May I throw one more candy-related thing in while we're on the subject? Please. I was done so dirty by the Mars Corporation or whoever makes Reese's peanut butter cups. Is that Mars? Do we know? Whoever it is. I've taken to buying these family-sized bags of mini Reese's peanut butter cups. They're so good. I mean, it's just the same thing you'd get in a different size, but I like to pop those things like Tic Tacs. And I got a bag home the other night and opened it, and they're all individually wrapped. What the hell? Like the full-on foil. You have to unfoil. It's like the size of a thimble. There's 100 of them in the bag. I have to unfoil 100 of these, and then it has the paper.

Oh, no.

The absolute degradation of my couch from this, which is beige, and now looks like somebody had explosive diarrhea on it. Because as careful as I was, there was so much chocolate still falling onto the couch.

The little ridges that are in the paper.

It's designed to spill shards of chocolate.

Yeah.

I don't know what the use case is for individually wrapped Reese's peanut butter cups within a family-sized bag of it.

My question is, why did they make a person? Imagine the person wrapping it in the first place. That's literally a human rights violation.

Wow. You know, the conscience of the crossover episode. Megan Hatcher maze, ladies and gentlemen.

like damn well you know what to bring it full circle uh to your question about are we talking more about pubes um segment pubes we have formalized as it's a segment um the full name is people using bad ethics and systems and it's an accountability accountability segment

so i think that mr reesey yeah needs to be taken to task so write that down for our next segment pubes yeah i will steven reeses you're busted sweetie these steven reeses jr those oompa loompas

are arthritic at this point it's horrific

hello and welcome to top story all right so this is our little tbtl top story segment where not unlike tidings mostly andrew and i just check in on how we're doing and completely avoid getting to whatever the top story is that i've promoted um raising the question why i even promote tops like at the big at the very tippy top of a typical tbtl episode i'll say and we're gonna talk about this and that what would you say the success rate of getting to this and that is um the actual news based stories is andrew 37 that's higher than i would have expected i'm an optimist yeah right like that sounds i mean we basically end up just talking about whatever's happening in our life for usually a significant portion of the show and yet I can't bring myself to admit that's what the show is. I think it's because of our radio backgrounds. I'm like, well, but then we have the top stories. We have the news stories. I'm going to do this very thing here on this Tum-tuk of the dog

episode. It's pronounced Tum-tuk-tul.

Agree to disagree. Not where I was raised.

Wow. He's a regular Chris Cornell over here.

So in keeping with that tradition, instead of the top stories that I emailed you all before the show, some of which were news based about like Red Lobster or grammar related. What I really would like to talk about is this thing that arrived in the mail last night, which was some pots and pans from and I don't care because they're not sponsors of the show. they're it's called caraway and i was trying to i i have some really really beat up old like pots and pans that i kind of pieced together from you know i i bought some of them in the actual aisle of the grocery store where you can buy a pan i've always like i've always wondered like who does that it's uh twice divorced dudes

that's the demo where's your divorcee section who get their hair cut at the great clips and long

view all true absolutely true so i've been like i've been sort of like excited i've been working on my house and kind of like try and remodel my kitchen and the the big thing was when i have like a kind of a nicer kitchen that's redone then i'm gonna start picking up the pieces of my broken life and getting like matching, you know, stuff. And so I, um, I finally did that and I did a little poking around and this company called Caraway was fairly highly recommended. And I liked that the, um, I have dreams of someday getting like an induction stovetop, um, which I didn't do yet because, but, but I, these can, they can do both. I was like, okay. So I ordered some of these pots and pans and they just arrived last night. And it wasn't until this morning that I took out this little leaflet, which looks suspiciously like a religious tract. It does. And that might be foreshadowing because it's basically, it says, this booklet contains everything you need to know about your new cookware set. Have you heard the good news about cookware? And, you know, we're already an hour into this episode, So if I were to read each and every one of these little sort of pieces of advice, tips and tricks, I think it would take too long. But suffice it to say, what they want me to do to care for these pans before, during, and wait for it after the use is truly stunning. The first one is pretty obvious. It's like wash them with, you know, soapy warm water to get rid of any debris from like them being in the box coming out here. That's obvious. And then it's like carraways, a five ply stainless steel pans can hold heat more efficiently than traditional ones. I'm not like the other pans. So only users up to medium heat when cooking, which right away just feels like. So you're telling me that I should never take these pans north of medium because they're that good at conducting heat.

What if you need to boil water?

Not in these, not in these pans. not in these bad boys not in this economy they're too good for cooking this is what i'm starting to realize so uh point three in caring for your pants burning up uh let's see uh oh no that's that's medium heat sorry that's burning up the next one is discover your winning recipe for the first few uses monitor your heat settings to gauge your stovetop and ovens heat efficiency and adjust recipes as needed in other words adjust down everything you're doing so that you don't destroy these pans because they can they're they're fragile they can only go up to medium these

pans seem guilty of the sin of pride idolatry yes i mean these the pans are very if people have not seen these pans they're very aesthetic they're for the aesthetic chef uh and they are beautiful good chef yeah which would describe me perfectly yeah they are stunning and they come in like lots of different colors like the dusty pink and like navy blue i almost bought some because i think they're really beautiful but i i uh no shade did some research and all of the research was like these pans stink and you should not buy ceramic non-stick pans and i said okay goodbye and also you can't put them uh in And...

the oven i i got the stainless steel ones oh okay which i'm hoping maybe means they're they're on

they're on the three star yelp review as opposed to the one star that you're describing we've gone

up to three stars on these so they are like the you're gonna keep them well i took them out of

the box and put them up on there they i will tell you this is a this is a triumph of basically figuring out exactly what kind of sucker i am because everything unrelated to the use of the pans is perfect yeah they have these they're beautiful these magnetized little like um holders that sit on your countertop that the pans sit in and they're held perfectly there because it's kind of a small kitchen i don't have a lot of room for there is a um like a thing for the lids it's like a something that a like an artisan who is making you some like special like brisket would be wearing it's like a canvas thing with the the the lids sit in like the design of it yes it's like

an apron for the lids it's an apron for the lids yes i know what you mean i mean putting this stuff

out last night here's what i did i sat in my living room which by the way looks into my kitchen which tells you the square footage of my house i left only the microwave light on and i i admired how cool the pots and pans and the lids looked that was before i read the good news

that's i'm so sorry this is happening to you but they are beautiful they are beautiful i know i

am also i think i know how this ends luke this ends with your beautiful pans on display at all times with your shitty pans in the cupboard and those are the ones that you actually use

seriously the one from qfc i seriously it's a safe way in longview washington but yes same same general vibe i don't know if i need to keep gilding this lily but point five start at room temp let your food come up to room temperature before adding it into your warm pan food that's hot or cold can cause sticking i gotta check the food temperature before it enters the pan That's only one of many things related to the temperature of stuff I'm supposed to put in these pans.

Okay, so to recap, the pans, they're beautiful. You can't use them to cook, and the pans will also give you food poisoning because you have to unrefrigerate your food before you can cook it. Yeah, yeah.

Number six, ask the pan if it's in the mood to be cooking right about that.

I feel like the pan's mom has Munchausen by Brody. Is this Gypsy? Yeah, it's Gypsy Rose Pan.

Now that's a show title, Gypsy Rose Pan.

Oh my God.

And by the way, if the D is fire, be really careful that it's only a medium before you apply it to the pan. That was far too deep of a Gypsy Rose Lee joke. No, it wasn't. That was more maybe for the Text Me Back crew than the TV show crew. Again, it just keeps going. Before adding oil, preheat your pan for 90 seconds on low to medium heat. Avoid leaving an empty pan on the burner for a long period of time. That's pretty obvious. The water test. Add a few drops of water to your pan to know if it's hot enough to start cooking. This was when I just officially said I give up. If the droplets bounce around the surface, your pan is ready. If the water sits still, it's too cold. But if the droplets all scatter, It's too hot.

Oh, cooking is already the biggest pain in my ass. I'm not doing all that. I simply am not.

I have to figure out if the scattering of the water droplets is enough, but not too enough to indicate that this fragile ass pan is ready to receive the room temperature food that I will be placing within it.

i can't believe they're telling you to make your like get your chicken up to room temp it's i mean

i'm not even kidding i'm giving you eat only about 30 percent of what is in here but i think the point the point has been made that these now i guess my question is is this really the the thing where can i probably ignore almost all of this feedback and just use them like normal ass pans yes yes right that's what you all would do if you had like me taken them out of the box and

rendered them impossible to return i probably wouldn't even have ever read the booklet if i'm being honest with you and i wish i didn't i wish i didn't and you're fine this is where this is

again a triumph of design if they had just given me some folded up flimsy little piece of paper that was like here's the do's and don'ts it's straight into the trash but because they gave me this goddamn religious tract that's designed to within an inch of its life what did i do i took it into the bathroom with me this morning, and I read it like a devotional while on the toilet.

I'm kind of surprised that you did read it, Luke. I'm not surprised you went to the bathroom. It seemed like there was good info in here because of how designed it is.

Yeah, I tend to skip unless when I have a new anything, usually an electronic or something. I'm only opening up the instruction manual if I've hit a dead end already or I'm scared that I broke it. Yeah, I'm not really cracking.

Not to change the subject from the pants, but Lindy, what is going on?

Something's been happening to Lindy's face over the last like 45 seconds or so.

and i am dying the biggest spider walking around on my wall and like occasionally stumbling and falling well here this is um bad radio but um uh we've established that we all all shows have

the bounds of good radio years ago lean i'll mention too that lindy is in a very beautiful

attic but a place that looks oh my god it's oh that's big yeah that's really big we can see it Oh, there it is. It's on my poster. You know, it's the kind of-

What's your- What? How do you deal with it usually? I don't know. A spider.

So this is the kind of spider that I'm not that scared of, but I am still obviously-

Is that what we would have called a daddy longlegs back when we were kids?

Thank you for asking. So in my region, that is not what I would call a daddy longlegs is what some people would call a harvestman, which is actually not a spider. It is an arachnid. It lives in the garden. and this is called a cellar spider but some people call this a daddy long legs and i think it's regional um these are just like spindly guys there's a ton of them here in this cabin they're not that scary except that they tend to drop down from the ceiling right in front of your face but they're not like you don't get the impression that they want to bite you they just want to sit in the corner and like eat little bugs so i don't know i'm not that this one's really large though it looks very big i would say like uh i don't know the the the the diameter the leg span of like a uh sausage patty jesus like a jimmy dean like a jimmy dean sausage patty yeah wow yeah like a mcmuffin like a mcmuffin yeah it's just sort of wandering around on the wall i wonder if it's close to death because it does keep like tripping and falling it's been

listening to tbtl this week it doesn't have the will to go on do you feel like there is a point of a spider having really long legs where it becomes less terrifying unless its body mass is keeping up exactly you know then it's just a giant terrifying spider but there are those cellars like as in like c-e-l-l-a-r cellar spider is that the name right yes there's those kind of or harvest spiders those ones were not terrifying to me i grew up in a unfinished basement on 77th street right off of aurora there were some spiders so that i could see the hairs on their legs because the legs were thick enough that they had hairs and that was unsettling those giant

house spiders that we have in seattle oh yeah those are not right i don't care for it no

we have a we have a kind of a finished basement here where my studio is and we saw one of those house spiders i didn't grow up in this area so i'm not as used to spiders i guess as you guys but like there was one of those i guess was a house spider i don't know it was a scary spider and i mean i took some photos of it from as far away as possible and then my only way of dealing with these and it's not like um i guess nice or sympathetic to the spiders and so if people are listening and they care for spiders a great deal maybe hit forward by 30 seconds we don't

know the text me back listeners we're trying to account for every sensitivity exactly trigger

warning here i kill spiders because um i'm scared of them so i have one of those bissel like you know cordless vacuums and i just put on a little attachment and i'll just like suck the little guy up into there and then i let it live i call it a terrarium it turns my vacuum cleaner into a terrarium where i can then watch it like live out the rest of its days or hours or whatever until i empty it out i has a little oh yeah go ahead you tell them about your little thingy yeah i i was

gifted um by a dear friend a contraption called the bug zuka which is um it's uh it's analog it's not um you don't plug it in it's uh good it's future-proofed yeah exactly and it and it nobody can hack into it it's not connected to the cloud at all exactly exactly when the freaking when the cylons return they're not taking over my books hell no um my cold dead hand yeah your your dyson is screwed but um it's turning against you for sure but it just uses like a plunger basically so it creates you push this thing down it creates a suction and then you put the end of it over and then you you know pull the trigger on the bug zuka and it goes and it sucks the bug in and uh It's great, except that I had a terrible, it also creates. a little terrarium and oh god the spider's going out of sight i've done nothing see that oh it's

going okay whatever um the two worst days of being a spider owner when you see the spider and when

you don't see the spider um but this thing happened with the bugzooka because i'm still kind of a novice with the bugzooka because i'm actually too scared to even use the bugzooka because i still you still have to kind of like i don't know um and then and then i there was a baby dragonfly in my house which first it was terrifying then i figured out it was a baby dragonfly so i was like i'll just delicately get it in the bugzooka and i did and then i put it outside and it wouldn't come out of the terrarium so i was like i'll just leave it out here so it can go on its way and find its mommy and then um i went out the next day and i realized that i had done the bugzooka incorrectly and i had just left it trapped in the terrarium in the yard where it

slowly died oh oh wow and it saw it saw paradise yeah that's all you did yeah and I was like I'm

saving you little one and then be free I just left it damn is it like no country for old men

when you're using this thing are you like call it friendo and then just like sucking up the bug

yes literally I just saw a tiktok that said that call it friendo I saw a tiktok that said And I don't know, it's TikTok, but it was a person I know, a comedy writer named Alex Falcone, who said, and is very smart about most things in my experience, that when you catch a bug, particularly a spider, and you put it outside lovingly, it will just die outside. Like, it's just not going to be, it's not going to build a new life for itself.

Luke, this is what I'm saying. A spider you find in your house has adapted to live in your house. It doesn't want to live outside. That's why it's in your house. So you can humanitarianly catch it and put it outside. And all these people think they're so superior because they put it outside. You're putting it outside to die a slow death in the cold.

Yes, I think you're I think you're right, actually, about that. And I have been doing that if I it's all about how this is going to be gross, but like it's about how mangled did the thing get with me trying to catch it. So I will take a paper. No, because if it's really like in a – if I had to chase it around the house like Nathan Lane in the movie Mouse Hunt, then dive on it and smash it. And then I don't put it outside because it's like it's not going to – in my mind, it's like it's not going to survive. But if I was able to take a paper towel and very gently like yoink it, and then I used to take it and let it go outside thinking I'm doing it a real favor. But I think you're exactly right. It's going to die outside, probably the most humane thing. If I've decided this is not going to be allowed to live in my house, is it just smash it quick, you know, clean death and then, you know, just toss in the ground.

Yeah. You know, if here's my philosophy, if I was in a regular room in the house where the ceiling is far away from my hair, I would leave it.

Interesting.

But it's this room. The ceiling is so low that I can't have it that close to my hair because it could it might want to go in there. so like it's just sort of like if it's being peaceful and it's far away from me and it's doing its job getting bugs i can i can leave it because i also have tremendous guilt about killing a creature even if it's you know a creature that spooky that spooks me yeah

now and because you don't have any kind of sleeping arrangement in the room that you're in right now or do i have that wrong how dare you oh see oh okay this is the thing like you do not want to wake up next to a spider no yeah exactly exactly there are three beds in this room one of

them is a built-in bed under tucked under the eaves and i just prime spider apartment that one is for the tragic irony is that that's the greatest bed of all time you'll get the sleep oh my god it's amazing in there and i haven't slept i didn't sleep in there for 20 years because i thought uh i just i can't guarantee that there are no cellar spiders spindling around in there and then i did it for the first time the other night and i was like oh my god it's just like i

remembered yeah it's incredible oh just beautiful it's it's dark uninterrupted it has a little porthole so you wake up you look out your little porthole and there's freaking hood canal it's my

favorite place so you you've you've slept there megan and you survived it you lived to tell the

tale i have never um had a you know early morning run-in with a spider in the built-in uh but i did last time i stayed with lindy i i went up there to go to bed and there was a stink bug on the comforter like hello they're everywhere the hell where did you come from i just and what just the one so i did i picked him up with a candle and i mean like a glass candle i flipped it over on top with him. And then I carried him downstairs. And then I remember

I remember that thing about, oh, you put bugs outside and they just die. So then I was like, well, so I just flushed them. Alive. Down the toilet.

Wait, so stink bugs also die outside? Because I've been throwing a lot of them out, and I talk to them. We're talking about they look like a mini beetle. They've got a little, like, right? Not a potato bug, but a stink bug. I have a lot of them happening out here where I am, and they make their way into the house. And for some reason, they're the bug that I've just, like, I don't feel like spiders speak English. I don't talk to the spiders. but i like talk to the stink bugs you're not supposed to be in here dude like i feel like the stink bugs have a job like they go to work or something so i and i can also pick them up without hurting them too much i'll pick up a stink bug carry it out the sliding glass door and put them outside and be like that's where you belong but i might also pick them up with your bare hands well do that's this is actually a question i've been and lindy you just might be the naturalist to answer it but like do they stink if you smash them is that how they got the name How'd they get the name Stinkbug? Because I've been picking them up gingerly, dropping them outside, and I haven't noticed any malodorous event.

I mean, you know, I don't know. I think probably if you scare the shit out of them, they spray a little art.

That's why you talk to them.

That's why. So if you're being nice and friendly and diplomatic with them, I think.

It's working so far. They haven't done any stinking in there. But I also haven't smashed them. And maybe I'm actually, in trying to be nice to them, I'm saving myself some bad smells in the house.

I'm scared of the stinking so I also don't smash them even though we are having kind of a plague of them the last couple years I wrap them loosely in toilet paper and I put them in the toilet and flush them or I put them in the Bugzooka

by the way one of the best I think literally stole that show The Good Place Jason Bugzooka I love that guy I cannot get enough of his work cannot get enough of his work great range wow that seems like a really good place to wrap this up what a solid joke Lindy's about to be devoured by a spider. I've been waiting eight minutes for a Jason Manzoukas joke. Megan's got to carry her laptop over to someone else's house to figure out if this can go on the internet.

I'm like, make four squares if you can. If you can.

So I don't know how much of this will be in the final recording, but if I could just say on behalf of TBTL, text me back, folks. You are so awesome. The show is so, so good. And thank you for doing it. Thanks for being part of this big crossover with us today.

Thank you. Thanks for having us. And I just want to acknowledge that I have stolen so much from you guys. Megan and I are solving mysteries. And I know you guys like to solve mysteries.

We've really slacked on that. So I'm so glad that you've picked up the torch.

Yeah, we have a little detective agency going. Yeah. I hope we can do this again because it was really, really fun. And you guys are such a delight.

Well.

And thanks for supporting our show and loving our show. And if anyone listening would like to listen to our show and support our show, you can do so at patreon.com slash text me back pod. and you can support it because we do not run ads and we're just two little babies with no money.

If you're a Text Me Back fan, which I'm going to be honest, I think there are many more than know about TBTL. By which I mean to most of the people hearing this, we're called TBTL and we're over at tbtl.net.

We'll compare numbers after. I don't, I would rather.

It's shocking. Can we not? Listen, some have tried, some have died. we have this conversation with many friends in the industry and it's always like no you're just being modest and then they go they they go they they pick up the rock that is libsyn and they look under the tvtl downloads and they go whoa put that back down the reality is this data cannot

contain our two illustrious programs and therefore we should not discuss analytics because it doesn't

matter takes take that alex schaefer at american public media oh we're naming names we gotta get out of here thanks everybody bye thanks bye

did we just become best friends power out