Muse

Thanks for coming in. It's a great pleasure. Thank you. This ship that was involved in the incident off Western Australia this week. Yeah, the one the front fell off? Yeah. Yeah, that's not very typical. I'd like to make that point. Well, how is it untypical? Well, there are a lot of these ships going around the world all the time and very seldom does anything like this happen. I just don't want people thinking that tankers aren't safe. Was this tanker safe? Well, I was thinking more about the other ones. The ones that are safe? Yeah,

the ones the front doesn't fall off. Well, if this wasn't safe, why did it have 80,000 tons

of oil on it? I'm not saying it wasn't safe. It's just perhaps not quite as safe as some of the other ones. Why? Well, some of them are built so the front doesn't fall off at all. Wasn't this built so the front wouldn't fall off? Well, obviously not. How do you know? Well, because the front fell off and 20,000 tonnes of crude oil spilled into the Sea Court fire. It's a bit of a giveaway. I just like to make the point that that is not normal. Well, what sort of standard are these oil tankers built to? Oh, very rigorous maritime engineering standards. What sort of thing? Well, the front's not supposed to fall off for a start. And what other things? Well, there are regulations governing the materials that they can be made of. What materials? Well, cardboard's out and no cardboard derivatives like paper no paper no string no sellotape rubber no rubber's out um they've got to have a steering wheel there's a minimum crew requirement what's the minimum crew oh one i suppose tbtl hello did you say hello no i said hello but that's

close enough i am a social media brand ambassador for myself from my own account and for a third party account as well which belongs to my dog who's a pet who i do also brand negotiation deals for him as well and i do djing also for party and events and corporate and personal and public and i do also certified i'm a lash tech also but i haven't really done that in a while but i can i'm still certified to do it and i also just do negotiating brand deals for my own account as well and commercial acting as well as well as modeling and some acting as well i don't even know

what that means no one knows what it means but it's provocative all right hello good morning

and welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live gotta have that root beer my name is luke burbank i am your host another day another victory

for the og taking down the sweats the impostors among us coming to you from the madrona hill

studio perched high above the mighty columbia where it was raining this morning a lot but um didn't know you like to get wet though now it appears to be drying out maybe really ready for summer to be here i hope you're really ready for episode 4216 in a collector's series let the fun begin i was in a literal and figurative prison yesterday have you ever been in a in a turkish prison we'll talk about my visit to the coffee creek correctional facility just outside of portland oregon also we'll find out what is going on with my friend andrew's rants and raves regarding his garbage situation i mean trash is trash every day when i read the rants and raves and i don't see his rant and rave there in the Seattle Times, I become furious, and I want to know what's going on with that. Speaking of my friend Andrew, of course, he is the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, sir.

Good morning, Luke. We spend some amount of time on the show, possibly even more time as we get a little bit older, a little bit more middler-ager, complaining about, I don't know, and I'll put this on me i mean you know i'm not proud of myself when i get on the show and i complain about i don't know customer service or things not being as good as they used to be or whatever we get up into but it occurred to me that maybe i should just give a shout out to put up if you will put up a calling in of yes something that actually brings me delight every time i'm there which is And we hit on this a few, maybe a couple of months ago when I told you I was going to sign up for the Planet Fitness gym. You know, almost every time I'm in there, which is, I mean, obviously every day, usually about 20 hours a day. I am so thankful that I finally made the switch.

Basically just CrossFit my life away, get as ripped and jacked as I possibly could.

Oh, yeah, that was me. That was me actually last night around 11 o'clock. I was doing my last reps. I do reps of one, by the way. I do one rep an hour. Can we call it a rep? Yes. That's why I'm there so often. No, I just got to say, like, I switched gyms from another one, another chain gym that I had been with for, I mean, literally 15 years, if not more. And I had been happy with that original gym. And then it just kind of like turning up the heat on a frog. I stopped noticing just how awful that experience had been getting, that the gym, my former gym, was so gross and old and just nasty.

all around and it took me forever to flip and now every time I go to Planet Fitness on Aurora I feel like I took me way too long to make this decision I want to give a shout out to them I'm paying less than half of what I used to pay the experience is so much better and the reason is on my mind today specifically Luke is because something happened to me yesterday that um has never happened to me before while working out which is I did my cardio little little what do We call it a little Stairmaster, not Stairmaster, a little elliptical thing. You usually start with that. Then I'll go, I'll do a couple of the arm machines kind of randomly. And then usually I'll kind of, then I'll do some back exercises and some sit-ups on that draconian looking like sit-up machine where you got to hook your legs over it or whatever. Well, I'm through my cardio yesterday. I do my arm stuff. I'm just wrapping up my arm stuff. So, you know, I sort of see the light at the end of the tunnel, a few more things to go. And then suddenly I'm like, whoa, whoa, what is this? What is this rumble down under? I need to go to the bathroom. Now, this is never somehow when I'm exercising, this is not something that enters the equation for me at all. Like I'm I don't know.

Your body is fighting for survival. Exactly.

It is.

It is laser focused on the exercise. It has no attention available to any other bodily functions other than just getting that.

pump baby exactly so i'm like just doing my kind of my last couple of like reps on this arm thing and then i'm thinking about the sit-ups that i got to do next and then suddenly i'm like i mean i went in the course of probably 90 seconds went from well well i guess i better not do the sit-ups to well i better hit the shower and just get home this might be a thing to oh i don't i don't think i'm gonna make it home to oh my goodness i don't know if i'm gonna make it to the locker room and And now suddenly I'm briskly walking into the locker room. This has never happened to me before, just coming on this quickly, especially in a gym-like situation. Now, the reason my instinct when I said at first was like, oh, I feel like I have to go to the bathroom. My instinct is, well, let me shower off and get home as soon as possible. Because the idea in my old gym of using one of the stalls is, I mean, that is Ramsey Bolton stuff. Like, there's no chance. I mean, no, that's not fair. They don't have people in the locker room torturing you if you use the stalls at the old gym. But it was just like I would really have to think carefully about going to the bathroom in my pants versus going to the bathroom in one of these stalls at the old place. It was a pretty nasty place.

It's actually a coin toss.

It kind of a coin toss, yes. It tells you how bad those stalls are. Exactly. And so I'm like, oh, my God. And so I'm racing into the Planet Fitness locker room. And I've never been in the area where the stalls are. And I opened the two of them are taken up. I think there's maybe three in there, two of them are being used. And I'm like, oh, my God, I don't even have an option here. You know, like I don't know how most people navigate these situations. But I find that on the occasion that I need to use a stall in a public restroom, the first stall is not often for me. There's something going on there. Somebody hasn't flushed or somebody hasn't, you know, been super clean beforehand or whatever. Usually you look at the first one, then you look at the second one, and then you make a choice.

You've got to assume there's a certain sort of, you know, there's a loss rate on these things. let's say there's four stalls i'm guessing two of them have some kind of situation right one of them is permanently out of order there's about a 50 success rate on on bathroom stalls but i'm in

this mode now i'm just like a time there there is no there is no time any port in the storm and if it gets down to it any sink in the storm yes exactly any corner in the storm any shower in the storm um and so i'm like well i guess i don't have a choice and i go into the one open stall and it's super clean in there it smells clean there's no evidence of anybody even using this before me now there's one weird thing about it i will say this this is kind of weird but it's not a complaint because today is not for complaining no it's not a planet fitness really leans into their um kind of branding and their color palette and everything which is very purple right very purple but then also like kind of i think a lot of black like a lot of black porcelain i think the sinks are black or whatever which is a little bit weird for me it's like i i don't like drinking coffee out of a black mug usually like i like i didn't know this about you well it's okay if the outside of it is black but i like to be able to see where my coffee is in a mug and sometimes my black coffee matches the black into anyway that's there is no need for me to bring well any of this up but point is the toilets are black now again clean but it was it was the first time i think i've ever used a black toilet before which it took me an extra little second which again i didn't have a lot of um to make sure it was clean and it was but going to the bathroom in a black toilet have you ever gone to the bathroom in a black toilet before like a purely black toilet i not that i

can remember it's i don't think i've even ever seen a purely black it's kind of an odd thing i don't

it was definitely a little bit of a mind F when I when I was like, Oh, okay, it's gonna be a black toilet kind of day. But the toilet was clean, which was the important part. And then like, you know, the emergency passes after some time. And I was just reflecting on it later on in the day and this morning about like how different that would have been at the old gym, which also I wouldn't even been at the old gym because I hated it so much. I was just paying them to not go there for years so anyway a little put up i i made a change in my life luke that has paid off for me and so let's give these huge corporations the credit they deserve did you see the ghost of

dennis rodman in there was he doing ads for them during the pandemic dennis rodman oh i didn't know i mean that seems like a weird that seems like a weird person to put in there but i they were doing this thing where they were like hologramming in kind of famous athletes and famous people into

there into the i remember kim jong-un was in one of the commercials were you confusing him

i was i'm sorry noted noted noted north korea scholars

uh but no he was not in there i do feel like there's a cutout of somebody famous in there but i can't remember who it is it's not him um did you then continue your workout no um that that's a that's a great that's a great question you should you should be an interviewer for a living i um i went in there thinking well this isn't just the end of my workout but this is the end of my this is the end of my day right like my brain was a little bit scrambled this just felt like a very panicky situation to me and then i i did use the restroom and it was um you know i did need to take some time to to just take care of everything and afterwards i did have a moment of well i was ready to hit the showers after this but could i go back out there could i still do my crunches on the on the tilty sit-up machine but you know what i felt like at this point i've been through i've been through a lot yeah i just had a bathroom emergency i just used a black toilet for the very first second let's just call it a day and also i knew that today i would have a chance to go back there like if it was one of those days where i i don't think i'd be able to get back to the gym in a few days maybe i would have powered on but i was like you know what let's

let's save this for wednesday andrew um do you listen to music when you're working out

These are good questions, especially if I know how you're going to follow this up. I do. I have my, I can't use those earbuds anymore. So I have those. I've gone back to my big black headphones that clamp over my ears.

Which is kind of in style. Have you noticed in the gym? I feel like there's a lot of young people that wear, particularly those Apple AirPod Max now kind of headphones when they work out. I see that on TikTok and stuff. You notice that?

Yeah, I feel like I want to give some more credit to more people today. I feel like Dr. Dre gets some credit for that, too, because even I'm sure that the Apple when the Apple released those, I'm sure they really exploded. But I feel like Beats by Dre really ushered in an era of, you know, think of all the football players, you know, showing up before the big game or whatever. They would often be rocking those those big headphones. Here's one thing where I think that I might be out of step with most people. I have two pairs of headphones that go over my ears. One is a junky pair of Sonys that I literally have electrical tape taping parts of it down because they broke on me. And I have another nice pair of blue JBLs that are way better looking. I don't take the JBLs to the gym because I'm like, well, if I lose these things or if I sweat in these things or whatever, I want that to be my old ones. But the thing is, like, other people are like, I will use my old ones at home where nobody can see what a rat king I am. You know what I mean? I must look a fool there with these. I should tape an antenna to it so it looks like I'm listening to a transistor radio. Do you ever have one of those things when you were a kid, the really big headphones that had a transistor radio in them?

I had something a little bit smaller where headphones with a radio built in. They never worked very well. They just ate batteries. It was more of a dream than a reality in terms of their usefulness. I can't wear big over-the-ear headphones because I sweat like a pig in church. I'm like, why am I at this church?

Yeah.

I'm not even Catholic. And why did the heat turn up so much? I sweat so much when I'm exercising that it is totally destructive to the headphones and to the point where I think I'm shorting out my little AirPods, you know, the little wireless AirPods. so I have probably right now at least three sets of air pods that are missing one either the left or right pod because what happens is I will they'll be charging I will take them out and then much like my armpits one of which smells worse than the other for reasons that we don't know one of the air pods will be totally dead and the other will be fine so then i will wear the one that is fine because i'm listening to a lot of like talk talk content these days while i'm jogging i'm listening to a lot of the daily i'm listening to a lot of our friend chris hayes listening to a lot of scamanda and uh so i'll put in one headphone and then i will lose that headphone somehow or that airpod i will lose it so i have all of these kind of like just these these orphaned or maybe the more apt comparison is these war wives, Andrew, these widows that are just... But it's like one is the right ear, one is the left ear. They're all in different cases. I need to go online and find out if I can now mend this family. Can I take a right AirPod that doesn't have a left AirPod and then get a left AirPod that doesn't have a right AirPod, put them in the same case, and then somehow do an arranged marriage?

Can I offer a suggestion on this? I would try to integrate them slowly. start by when you feed them sort of feed them near each other maybe and feed them both in their own cases but keep the cases close to each other so that they're during dinner time or whatever they start to feel like oh okay this is a safe space for me to be and then slowly bring them closer together maybe even put them on either side of a door and put a toy underneath the door so that they can each play with it at the same time without being too freaked out about being too close to an earbud that they're not familiar with either these are things that i've learned

online yeah i'm actually looking this up and that's exactly the advice that they say on the internet yeah you know what i did today for my little jog was i used now this is what i'm down to the corded airpods again i'm back to that i've done that a few times recently too because those still work there's no way for me to lose one half of them and like i'm flying to new york later today and that's what i'll well becca kind of expropriated my airpod maxes uh which is to say she borrowed them for a trip to DC and then she was wearing them around town and then she would send me pictures of her walking places and wearing the headphones and she loved them and they kind of give me vertigo so I was like you can just have them so now I'm down to like a couple of weird orphaned AirPods and then the regular plug-in thing which is what I will be listening to when I'm flying to New York tonight I'm officially back to just using corded headphones

is my point. I had to finally give up the ghost you know i've been using over the over the ear um bluetooth headphones for a long time now for years now and i never had cord i never had like good usable cordless earbuds again i'm not an apple person so i have to butcher the language to you know but essentially air pods right um and i finally got my first pair of those things i told you on the show that they immediately created ear issues for me i was like for like a couple of months i was like i'm a real boy i'm like everybody else i'm not like going to the mariners game and then have like listening to my over-the-ear headphones on the train but then having to carry them around the game the rest of the day you know like they're just like less portable and so i was like oh now i have now i have my version of airpods like everybody else and then that didn't work out so well for me but i and genevieve genevieve the lovely opportunist at one point said to me so uh you're not uh not using those air buds anymore are you because she has a she has a couple of pairs kicking around but as you know it's always nice to have an extra pair and an extra charger as well she has a similar she has the same brand we ended up buying the same models when i told her how much i liked mine um and so i was like okay yeah maybe i can give you my my old jbls but i was still looking at them like well maybe someday my ears will be normal and then i talked to my ears about that And they'd be like, no, we have no plans of being normal anytime soon. Why don't you just give your girlfriend these earbuds? And if we're ever normal again, you can buy yourself. So I did sort of, as you were saying, sort of relinquish them. I sort of had to hand them over to Genevieve.

How is it that both of our partners managed to outmaneuver us on headphones that we purchased?

Yes, exactly. I've also been sending Becca various headphones as well as sort of a, I don't know, a friendship courting sort of thing.

I've instructed her not to open any packages that you've sent her because of some previous issues that I don't think you want me to get into on the air. That's by the way, if you look in your text message program, you will see a picture of a very ghosty Dennis Rodman from a Planet Fitness commercial. He, in fact, they did a Super Bowl ad where the concept for some reason was, I think, kind of, you might say somewhat notorious people because I believe Lindsay Lohan was also in the commercial.

right yes the super bowl commercial i i'm forgetting conceptually why maybe it was something along the

lines of like you know a sort of uh you know a homecoming a return to you know if you haven't been going to the gym now this is a time to come back and and we're also welcoming these people back into pop culture or something i'm trying to in my mind reverse engineer what the concept of the commercial was that involved lindsey lohan dennis rodman and my exercise needs i'm trying to

Thank you.

remember as well but i will say that planet fitness has a lot of sort of like um their whole thing is like no shame right like like we're here for everybody and like they have all kinds of signs around that sort of are trying to be like kind of making the gym sort of a playful place but also like kind of discouraging anything that would turn into i think the and i've never i don't want to disparage this other gym across the street that i know some of my friends go to But I get the impression that, like, you have Planet Fitness, which is like the no shame one. And what do you have across the street on a road? It's not. L.A. Fitness? Yeah, L.A. Fitness. Or as Camaro calls it, La Fitness. La Fitness. You might have the idea because that has L.A. in the title that maybe that's where you're going to have a lot more people taking selfies of themselves or recording themselves doing various weightlifting things. A little bit more of a selfie culture. Whereas in Planet Fitness, I think it's more like, no, no, no. It's like no shame here. It literally says it on the walls and, like, no grunting or any of the things that might go along with.

Wait, they actually have a sign that says no grunting?

They have something, Luke, that I have been trying to suss out because I thought I wanted to tell you about it on the show, but I haven't quite figured it out yet. But they have something, and there's a special name for it. I don't want to Google it now because I won't be able to talk in Google at the same time. It's a skill I'm working on.

Well, then I'm your fact-checking cus.

Okay, look up something like no grunting alarm, Planet Fitness, Because they have one wall where they have like, if you can picture like the kind of strobe light that in a 1970s cop movie they would slap on the top of the car. Like if you had an unmarked car, but then you found yourself pursuing a perp, you would take that and you would slap it on the top of your, I don't know, Camaro or whatever you're chasing down the bad guys in. They have like one of those things, like a bulb style kind of. Is it called the Lunk Alarm? The Lunk Alarm is what it's called. Now, I've never seen this go off, but there's some big, like, kind of, you know, dynamic text on the wall talking about, like, it says Lunk Alarm. And it's like, Lunk, definition, something like, you know, the noise that, you know, beefcakes make when they're. That's actually pretty genius. But I'm not sure how it works. Like, so if I'm working out in the freeway area and there's some Lunk next to me who's making those, like, really loud grunting noises, am I supposed to hit a button and, like, narc on this person? Will that actually light up that alarm? What are you learning online?

Here's what Quora.com tells us, Andrew. And so take this with, I guess, somewhat of a grain of salt. The Lunk Alarm is a feature found in many Planet Fitness gyms. It's essentially a loud siren or alarm that is sounded by staff members when they believe someone is violating the gym's rules or code of conduct. So I don't think it's there's a complicated system of microphones that are monitoring the situation. It sounds like this is a way to just tell someone to lay off it. Planet Fitness is known as a judgment-free zone. This aims to create a non-intimidating and welcoming environment for individuals of all fitness levels. The lunk alarm is typically activated when someone is behaving in a way that goes against this philosophy, such as grunting loudly, dropping weights noisily, or engaging in what the gym considers to be overly aggressive or intimidating behavior. So I guess they can just hit the lunk alarm if they think that you're being a lunk.

But the staffers can. That makes so much more sense because I was like, how can you? It's like when you go into a bar and there's like that bell and it says you can ring the bell, but then you have to buy everybody a drink in the bar. I'm just like, how can you just have the lunk alarm open to anybody? Like, I just feel like people would be hitting that all the time. But no, I see a staffer can step in, an officially deputized staff. Yes. I see.

Recognized by the state of Washington.

A lunker is what they call it.

They need another alarm for if you're about to S your pants on the elliptical.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I don't know. Well, never mind. I was going to make a gross joke. But anyway, all of that is to say, you know, everything about the branding of Planet Fitness, about it being sort of a no-judgment zone or anything, I actually think is really genius branding. Like, for the longest time, I just thought, I don't know, 24-Hour Fitness, like Planet Fitness, LA Fitness. Like, I didn't really think about them. But obviously, they're kind of going for different things. clearly 24 hour fitness at one point their thing was we're open 24 hours that quickly became like 20 hour fitness and now i think they're down to like 15 hour fitness which is interesting as far as their hours are concerned um but then once i realized oh planet fitness now that is not the reason i joined it it wasn't about like i i don't dude you've mentioned this you you said a friend of yours said this like 20 years ago like he reached an age where he's not even feeling shame anymore he just feels invisible around like cool people or young women or whatever like yeah that's kind of where I am in my life like I'm not worried about going to the gym and feeling like people are judging me because I'm telling you people are not seeing me like there are a lot of young people go to this gym and I'll see them sort of looking at themselves in the mirror or whatever and like trying to like they just got done like hoisting some weights or whatever and they come in they see

what that did to their lats. Lunk alarm. I don't know anything about this, right? But like, I'm not kind of like, oh man, there was a time in my life when I was younger, if I was their peers or something where I would feel maybe threatened or like I did not go to Planet Fitness because I would feel safer there. Having said that, I actually think it's a really good idea for a branding because there are some people who are going to feel intimidated by that. But mostly I'm there for the cleanliness, Luke, and the black toilets.

Yeah, mostly you're there for the toilets.

Apparently the turlets, yeah.

Come for the elliptical. Stay for the clean, clean toilets. Planet Fitness.

I'll start a gym for older people like me.

Is Dennis Rodman the custodian here?

He's doing an amazing job. I'll combine some of the exercise equipment with toilets maybe so you can just sort of skip. There you go.

It's all about functional strength, Andrew. Thank you.

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 rattle, dazzle, everybody rattle.

Let's thank some dazzling donors. These are the wonderful people who are donating a dazzling amount of dough, keeping TBTL in business. And, of course, we're talking about Susan King of New Prague, Minnesota. There's a new Prague?

Wait, it wouldn't be Prague, huh?

Well, I feel like this has come up before, and I think it's one of those quirks that if you were to call a Culver's in New Prague, Minnesota, they would probably say New Prague.

Okay, yeah, I'm with you.

But now that I'm saying that, I'm starting to doubt myself.

Well, I'm not sure. I have no information on this, but we appreciate Susan King's support.

Absolutely. Also, I think I get some credit for that Culver's poll. Yes. What is a restaurant that I consider to be deeply Minnesotan? And I think of Culver's as being deeply Minnesotan.

That's where we made friends with a server who had some interesting ideas.

Some questionable political takes.

Yes.

We were at the Culver's in Rochester, Minnesota, where the Mayo Clinic is.

That's right. It's where they, if your mayonnaise is sick, you take it to the Mayo Clinic. Yes, that's right where you send it.

Mm hmm. Susan says to the TBTL team. I'm a longtime listener from here it is again. Boy, I'm I'm really committed to this. New Prague, Minnesota. I was proud of TBTL's affiliation with APM and admittedly was a little nervous when TBTL announced it was going independent. That would track, by the way, because Susan's in Minnesota and we're working, you know, for American public media, formerly known and sometimes still known as Minnesota Public Radio. So I could see that being a strong connection for Susan. And then Susan says, that was until it was disclosed that John was joining the team. With the new edition of John Sklaroff, I would like to say this. Now there is a new and even better reason for Luke and Andrew to visit Minnesota. Better than APM. John should be promoting a TBTL-a-thon in Minnesota. Lots of beauty here with 10,000 lakes and rivers and bluffs and prairies and farms. Let me read over to the side. Boundary water canoe area. Most protected natural area in the U.S., Lake Superior, and lots of Minnesota nice fans. That's a good idea. We should do the THON in Minnesota. Have we? This is such a dumb question. How can I not remember this? Have we ever done the THON from Minnesota? I mean, we hitchhiked down from Minnesota.

Yeah, we started one in Minnesota, but I don't think we've ever done one completely.

We never posted up at the mothership and, like, did the show for a week. No. And it was the fundraising week. That would actually be very fun. Let's put that. Take a memo. Guillermo, put it on the poll. We should do the Thon from Minnesota sometime.

We should do it from APM is what we should do.

From in front of APM?

We should do it from the roof of APM. Yeah, in fact, I would still, we always say this, and then it's kind of like dangling it, and then if we don't pay it off, it's not fair to our listeners there. But, man, I had a good time doing the show at the Minnesota State Fair. I would love to be able to do that again at some point.

Could our friend Eric the Viking Stromstad. leave a door unlocked for us at the Minnesota State Fair

can he close a door but open a window is what we want to know

Eric never closes a door without opening a window he's a huge fan of proper ventilation he runs that whole thing or at least he has in years past the broadcast from the Minnesota State Fair I feel like he could just leave the headsets out and kind of just just turn the other way yeah exactly turn a blind eye to what's going on And then we throw just kind of like a sneak party there. That was really, really, really fun. Even though it was, speaking of those headsets, really disorienting. We couldn't hear anything. It was actually mildly stressful doing the show. Extremely fun being at the Minnesota State Fair.

Don't let Becca know about those headphones. She'll have those in her possession in no time. I just want to say that a brief internet search on things like Reddit and onlyinyourstate.com seemed to back up your pronunciation of New Prague. So congratulations.

Here's some guys on the internet talking about New Prague. Let's see.

Born in the district in New Prague on a farm with five brothers and two sisters.

That was Darlene Miller at some sort of, it looks like a school-born meeting, but I'm feeling pretty preg of myself here, Andrew. Pretty proud of my new preg pronunciation. Susan says, I love it when John joins the podcast. He's right up there with Genevieve and Susie Burbank. Now, to protect John from Luke's suspicion that John may have manipulated this dazzling donor message, my signature below confirms that this message is from me and me alone, made of my own free will, unaltered by John. After the reading, however, John does have my consent To elaborate on his own behalf regarding Any and all of my above statements And to add to it, if so Inspired Okay, guys, be well, be happy And keep marching towards episode 5000

What are we doing for episode 5000, by the way? Do you know yet? New Preg We're doing it in New Preg

Thanks, Susan Thank you for supporting the show And helping us do this thing independently We really do appreciate it And that is a good idea for us to spend more time in Minnesota. So we'll look to that.

What about from Prague to New Prague or from New Prague to Prague? What if that's the thon?

From New Prague to Old Prague? Yes. Andrew, I prague to the New Pragues and the Old Pragues. That made no sense, but it made you laugh, so that's good. Maestro?

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. I got it. I got it. Okay, okay. Eat, prague, love. I just, I knew there was a joke in there.

That's why I was just like, I was just like, can I, can we stall before the music? And there's a good joke in here somewhere.

Eat, pray, love. Is that a show title? Possibly, possibly. Hey, we've also got to thank our friend Steve Ellington out there in Alexandria, Virginia. Steve, of course, he may mention this in the pod somewhere or in the message somewhere, but he's the guy that does that podcast about plants called Root Bound. That's right. And we've talked to Steve before on the program. Steve says, I know you don't like it when people use their dazzling donor messages to praise you, so I won't say congratulations for going independent. I won't say congratulations for possibly being the longest-running daily podcast of all time. I won't say congratulations to Sklarov for being TBTB employee numero uno, and I won't say thank you for all the podcast listening that has filled these last 15-plus years. I won't say any of that. Good. Yeah, thank you for not saying that, Steve. You know, that's an interesting question, Andrew. Are we the longest running daily podcast in U.S. history? Daily? I feel like we must be. I actually think we would have to be. I'm not talking about radio shows that then post their show as a podcast, because that still happens. And, you know, there are some morning shows and stuff that have been on for years and years, and they're also technically a podcast, or you can get it as a podcast. What I'm talking about, like, just a podcast, two bros bro-ing it up five days a week, has anyone been doing this longer than us? I don't think so. I mean, there are other podcasts now that happen every single day, but I just don't think any of them have been doing it as long as we have.

I can't figure out what it was, and I don't want to take the wind out of our sails here, But when we were transferring our huge back catalog of podcasts over to the new service when we went independent about a year ago now, I believe that the people we were working with at the new company did say, oh, yeah, because we had something like 5000 files or something when you included all of the podcast plus extra bonus episodes we've done and everything. and he said something like oh yeah no i've done i've we brought over like mark and molly or some podcast that i had not heard of that was like two people's names it's not mark and molly though

there's no way i got something in the girl is that true yeah it's isn't it like somebody in

the girl and they might be daily and around as long as us because they had even more files than

us i think i'm looking up something in the girl podcast and it's not a keith and the girl keith the girl so let's see what episode how what's their deal you know i i'm i'm not sure but um i do think that they're doing a well although i'll say this if they're numbering their shows it looks like their recent show as of yesterday was episode 3821 okay so quantity were out ahead a little bit

they did start in 2005 apparently so they have a couple of years on us but maybe they weren't

Although it also looks like they might be doing it weekly now.

I'm looking at May 21st is two shows ago, and then May 28th, yesterday, they posted again. So I'm guessing it is a weekly product.

I'm on the part of their Wikipedia where they list what their download numbers are like. So I am going to close this tab and throw the computer away.

Because you are feeling so good about our downloads?

It just made me feel so good about our downloads that I need to throw away my computer in celebration.

Do they have, though, support from Steve Ellington?

They most certainly do not.

That's right. Steve says, I will use this time to plug my own podcast, Root Bound. Root Bound is a podcast about plants for when you're stuck inside. Each week I invite a guest who joins me on the show to share with us all about a plant that means something to them, and then I share with the guest about a plant that means something to me. And through this process, we can all learn more about plants and learn more about each other. If you've got any interest in plants or you just like TBTL, I think you will enjoy Root Bound. You can find it at RootBoundPodcast.com or wherever, period.

Yeah, check out Root Bound Podcast. Steve was also on our Week in Review video roundup a few months ago. I think you, me, and Steve were cutting it up. And didn't Steve also crash your Livewire van?

Famously, Steve and I believe listener Jen showed up at like the hotel in D.C. where we were all staying, all the public radio types one year. I must have mentioned it on the show or something that we were going to do this like public radio party bus. And they they very astutely assessed that I would probably not turn them away from such a thing. And so they jumped on the party bus and we we drove around D.C. partying it up and trying to convince public radio program directors to add live wire to their

station. And now instead they're all carrying the Root Bound podcast. Yeah, it did

not work out the way that we had expected, but at least they're not carrying Keith and the Girl. Our arch rivals, Keith and

the Girl. Keith and the Girl is distributed by American Public Media.

Well, now they've gotten rid of the angry therapist. They've got room. Thank you. Thank you very much, Steve, for supporting TBTL and helping us do this for all these years and being a friend of the program. We really do appreciate you. Hello and welcome to Top Story. So yesterday, Andrew, I spent a very long day in the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility located in, I think, Wilsonville, Oregon, which is maybe 20, 30 minutes outside of Portland for a TV story that I'm doing, which is also why I'm flying to New York. I'm flying into New York to interview somebody at the ACLU about the subject of people, the work that happens in prison. People might not know this, but certainly in the state of Oregon and in a lot of places, if you are sentenced to prison time, you are also required to have a 40 hour a week job. Or if you don't want to do that, you are required to be in like taking classes for your GED. You have to be doing some sort of programs. And in other states, it's not voluntary. In some places, it's like you have to work 40 hours a week regardless of, you know, in addition to being incarcerated. And this raises some real questions about, like, forced labor and indentured servitude and things like that, which is why the ACLU is not a big fan of the whole thing. But what we went yesterday and toured was this program that they have at Coffee Creek where the adults in custody, I've learned is the preferred nomenclature the AICs We're doing this thing called prison blues, which is actually this pretty cool denim line that they make Parts of it down in Pendleton at the men's prison and parts of it up at coffee Creek It turns out that one of the last remaining manufacturer of blue jeans is the Oregon Correctional system. I don't think it really pencils out for like a private business to do it anymore because it's expensive and you know that this is usually done in other countries except here we have inmates doing it so I was interviewing some of these inmates yesterday and the people that run the program

and stuff like that to ask you a question about this I'm sure this isn't where you want to go with this but out of curiosity but like if so first of all I was a little was I surprised I passed the background check yes well I was gonna say first of all if you have to be in prison if you can be in prison in a place called coffee creek it's sort of something that's a good place to do it um where we teach you how to be a barista against your will um no they do have a coffee cart

at the minimum security prison at coffee creek and it's probably and it's run by inmates or people i don't know because we were in the medium we were in the medium security but but what happened was this story is very much on the radar of the oregon uh department of corrections because casually the head of the entire prison system for the state of oregon just happened to saunter through You and introduce himself and chatted up with us, which I don't think was an accident. I think that they are interested in the story and are curious kind of what our coverage is going to be like. But he just mentioned offhandedly that the facility next door, the minimum security facility, had a coffee cart. So that's what I know about that.

Well, I was going to say, you said that in some states it's mandatory. I was a little confused. In Oregon, it's not mandatory, but strongly encouraged to engage in.

Well, you have to do one of two things. You have to either be either doing classes and getting, you know, continuing your education or you're working a job. No, the thing about working the job is you do actually get paid.

Well, that's why I was going to say, I mean, I can I again, having done literally zero reading or learning about this at all, except for what you just said. I can sort of understand where it's coming from. If the idea is we don't want prisons just to be a place where people are sitting and potentially not like kind of improving their life at all. And then we're putting folks, you know, kind of back on the street without any new skills or any kind of new income or anything. What are we doing? Recidivism rate is going to continue to be high. On the other hand, I understand why people are like, yeah, but you can't force people to work. Then you have what we call labor camp. So I understand why it'd be complicated. But it sounds like this could have been born out of something much better than the typical, you know, kind of industrial prison industrial complex. So my question for you now you've answered it is you can earn money. So if you're making these denim products or whatever, not only are you learning skills that could potentially, now I sound like I'm a spokesperson for the cause, but the idea is you can learn skills that can help prepare you for the outside world potentially, but also you can start like kind of feathering your nest a little bit so you're not just broke as a joke when you get out of there.

yeah they do keep 80% of the pay for what's called room and board so so that is you know greatly reduces what you can earn but but yeah at the end of the month you could probably generate a few hundred bucks depending on and the different jobs have different sort of pay so people often when they're first sort of put into the the state prison system they'll have a job maybe working in the kitchen and or they'll have a job doing laundry at the at the prison and And then over time through the application process, if they can kind of move up to different jobs and then there are the sort of a lot of the if you call the I just found this out. If you call the Oregon DMV for you having some problem with your license, you are very likely to be talking to somebody who is incarcerated at Coffee Creek. There's a whole call center there and in fact call centers are a big part of The and this is nationwide a big part of the jobs that incarcerated people do is oftentimes call centers And this is interesting because it very much bucks this idea that inmates are a bunch of just like Kind of hard-boiled, you know, sort of thuggish people who are just a completely impervious to like interactions the call center jobs have the highest turnover of any of the jobs because it hurts their feelings a lot of people's feelings to get hung up on constantly oh really

yeah it is yeah i mean as a former telemarketer that is a trip yeah it's not fun and that applies

to people who are incarcerated as well as people who are not nobody likes nobody really enjoys the sensation of calling someone and having them hang up on you or yell something in fact the person who runs this program this OCE program told me something kind of funny she was like we have this software that basically kind of goes like speech to text of everything that's said on these calls and the the idea behind the software was we want to make sure that the AICs the adults in custody are if they're on the phone with somebody that that everything that they're saying to the person is appropriate that there's not some other like communication going on that's like not okay

or whatever you're behind on your payments so we're going to need you to send us a cake with

a file in it right precisely they want to like so the system was set up to basically monitor the adults in custody but it has these certain words that are trigger words sure that if that's you know if that ends up in the text then something goes off it gets emailed to the whoever the supervisors she said they hit our experience our experience that the lunk alarm goes off constantly because of the civilians and what they say to the oh i believe adults in custody oh i believe that it is generally speaking not the p not the inmates that is the problem it is the the people on the outside who are being real rude oh i believe that yeah that's when you're calling

the people in maine no offense to our friends in maine but and i don't even know if this holds true anymore but when i was doing my telemarketing uh which was in college is a long long time ago and specifically i was working for a company that um was calling people to ask them to quote unquote renew various uh magazine subscriptions but some of them had been you know either canceled or in arrears for or just like dormant maybe is a better way of putting it for years and years and so we'd call somebody and be like hey we're calling about your field and stream magazine and then um they'd be like field and stream i don't get field and stream like well you did the year was 1985 you had you had a teenage son living at home and he was subscribing to Field and Stream you know so there's a lot of that but like and again I'm not trying to put I lived in New England for a long time I consider the New Englanders to be my brethren in some way but when I was living in Ohio at that time calling around the country I knew if you got you know the Glengarry leads that led you to the New England area of phone numbers you were going to be hung up on and um kind of sharply um sort of criticized at best by these folks whereas in the south or even parts of the midwest you could have a pleasant conversation like you're never going to get them to sign up for this magazine but you can talk to them for a while learn about their kids who left who you know who grew up and left home a while back like you could have nice conversations but no no there was a brittleness in the new england area well um that's what i was learning

about yesterday was the uh the the jobs that people have in prison and by the way it was also just it you would have let me tell you this andrew you would absolutely love working at this place like the particular facility they took me to where these these inmates these adults in custody these women were sewing they were doing these sewing projects it was very now granted this is where the the oregon department of corrections is bringing us there because they very much want us to see this side of the operation so this is going to be the most kind of calm um sort of rehabilitate rehabilitative is that a word yeah kind of area of the of the prison um but it really was it was like it just felt like a job they had the radio playing there was like a lunch break people had their coffee and people were you know doing sewing projects i thought this particular part of this is would be i think surprising to people who are on the outside to see just how kind of similar your life inside of a prison can be to someone's life outside of a prison you get up in the morning you make your coffee you go to your job you sit there for eight hours you take your lunch break you know it's it's strange how typical life is how typical elements of life how typical they can be inside of a prison because it just seems like such a weird scary place where you've just got a bunch of people that feel like they're just constantly menacing or something and That's not at all what the vibe was in there.

Were they listening to yours truly, Johnny Dollar?

No, they were not.

Okay.

They were listening to, I realized, I think, and this actually kind of happened with TBTL a bit. We would get letters occasionally from people that were listening to us at Monroe, which is the state prison up in Monroe. I think that the adults in custody are keeping are like sort of personally keeping the like radio, the over the air radio business in in business because they listen to a lot of radio in prison, it turns out.

But was it music radio, though? Or it was music radio. I wasn't sure if there would be. I wonder if there is higher instances of people listening to talk radio in prison, because I do feel like you've mentioned the example of when TBTL was on the radio. And I've worked for various shows as well, where it sort of feels like inmates or people in prison or whatever you're calling them, you know, it's a connection to the outside world. So you're not. Yes, you can listen to the classic rock station and hear she talks to angels for the eighth time that day. Or you could actually listen to people who are having like live conversations, even if it's not a topic that you're particularly interested in.

Yeah, they were listening to music radio there But I'm sure that there's a variety of, you know Stuff that people like to listen to, depending I also thought it was interesting to talk to One of the women that I spoke to Had been incarcerated for over 10 years And there's no internet access in there I thought maybe there'd be like some limited internet You know, you can go to the library In some kind of monitored situation That's not the case there And like this one woman was talking about how she had developed these skills and she was she had talked to her mom who said that there were websites where you could sell you could sew your own things and sell them and she thought she might do that when she gets out and i go well do you know what etsy is and she said no i've never heard of that oh yeah it's kind of interesting to talk to a group of people who have been really like on that sort of not on the information super highway for like a significant amount of time yeah and

But not to, you know, draw broad stereotypes, but also whatever led these folks to prison. They might not have been living a life that was like heavily Etsy focused ahead of that.

Yeah. They weren't crocheting gloves for their cats.

Right. Exactly.

But this is why I say I was in a literal and figurative prison because because of all of the security stuff and because, you know, you had to be escorted everywhere. Usually what happens with these CBS shoots is and this is what will happen in New York tomorrow when I'm on a shoot is The crew gets there way before I do and they begin this kind of arduous process of setting up all the light

and the cameras and kind of getting it all put together and then I usually show up a little before the interview is about to start and um and then when the interview is over then I usually skeedaddle pretty quick but because I needed to be traveling with the crew they weren't going to just like let me in later I had to be there so early and then go through all the procedures and then be there during the whole setup and then be there as we're leaving and we're trying to get more b-roll and there's all these rules about what are you and b-roll is just kind of like filming parts of the prison which as you can imagine there's a lot of rules around that and i was i was like so stampy andrew to get out of there and like our camera guy our camera guy who i absolutely love paul he's so great he's just trying to do his job which is get as much footage as they will allow him to do and i'm just like this place is a prison i am trapped here with these people and i hate it like i i realized how unbelievably spoiled i am that i don't have to be there for typically speaking for all of the before and after of these shoots echoes of

thinking your dad is Quincy to shades of Quincy um like your dad taking too long like doing the final measurements on a door when you're just like it's good enough only this time I know it's

your buddy with I literally said out loud we're not even going to use any of this it's just so unprofessional of me it's like just deal with it burbs but it was funny because I was in a prison But the thing that made me feel trapped was not that I was in a prison. It was that I was trapped waiting for our camera to get more B-roll. Yeah.

How long were you there?

Like 20 minutes.

15 minutes.

No, we were there a long, long time. It was very early morning into very kind of late in the afternoon. But, yeah, it was a very interesting experience. I'd never been in a prison before. And it kind of actually made me, I don't think I have anything to offer. But what it made me sort of want to do was figure out a way that I could volunteer with folks in there on some level, because, you know, it's a it's very eye opening to interact with with these with these, you know, adults in custody. And it really does not it doesn't match up with what the stereotypes are about people who are in jail. You know, I mean, a lot of times they're much more similar to us than I think people would realize they've done, you know, they've made mistakes. They've potentially harmed people I don't want to minimize that 95% of people who are incarcerated are going to get out So we better try to do everything we can to help these people Have the best shot at resuming normal life when they get out Which was another thought I had They had a cosmetology school there And I was observing the students in the cosmetology school And this was a thought that I had I don't know if it's really my place to have this thought or not But I did And it was for for some of these women, particularly women who are incarcerated, I wonder if there is a certain amount of relief of being in this place because you don't have all of the drama and trauma of your life outside the prison. like who knows what your domestic situation was who knows what your parenting situation was who knows what you know who knows what you were sort of dealing with on the outside and now you come to this place where I mean granted you don't have your personal liberty you can't leave that part is obviously bad but on the other hand you're going to cosmetology school with like a bunch of gals and you're hanging out and you're watching videos and you're practicing doing they do tattoo removal is one of the certifications you can get in there i just thought i wonder if for some of these people this you know within reason feels like a little bit of a relief you know to just be away from all of the outside stuff again that's not me i'm not trying to assume anyone's feelings but i did have that thought and then to

think you you get out of the program and you're ready to be a cosmonaut which is you know a pretty

big deal yes exactly you get up there with that dog like i believe that's is that the name of the

first dog in space i think so but i don't did like a meet it was either dennis rodman or like i was just i wanted to be careful because i don't think like uh did that go well for like uh

oh i assume not i mean i don't think no i think i think like a survived it but oh really oh okay who knows what who knows what the knock-on effects were for like having been in space i assume not

great yeah i didn't i didn't know i wasn't sure if the dog had made it back down or not i couldn't

remember those details i do believe let's see laika the dog uh oh my god this dog is so stinking cute laika was a soviet space dog who's one of the first animals in space and the first to orbit the earth a stray mongrel from the streets of moscow this is also your bio andrew this is so weird she flew like it was a girl but i can't believe i misgendered laika i am so

Sorry. God, patriarchy much?

Yeah, exactly. If you're going to space, you must be a male dog.

Probably, like, that's men's work. Are you kidding me? She flew aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft, launched in the low orbit on November 3rd of 1957. And I'm just trying to figure out if she did come back. If she did come back. Oh, oh, no. Wait, maybe it didn't go great. As the technology to de-orbit had not yet been developed, Leica's survival was never expected. Uh-huh. She did not trigger alert. Yeah. She did not make it back.

I didn't think so. I just had this weird feeling.

Why did I think that Russia in the 50s was going to be very, very progressive in terms of their treatment of animals? Why did I think that was going to be a thing? Of course, that was why they sent a dog and not a person.

Oh, now I am looking at photos of Laika. I'm sorry, Laika. Thank you.

Do not look up Laika if you want to enjoy the rest of your day, because Laika is about the cutest thing you've ever seen, and to know that Laika did not survive the mission is really kind of a bummer.

Glad I brought it up.

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, V-mails, other depressing animal-related stories. I'm the one. Hey, by the way, I'm the one that brought it up. So don't be too hard on my friend Andrew.

There's always a straight trajectory, though. Why do I say that word when I know I can't really pronounce it? There's always a straight line, though, between bringing up cosmonauts and Laika, I think. It's going to happen. Yeah, it's going to happen. I got a text message on my personal line today, Luke, from a man we like to call the stew bot, saying that he had a couple of sharp shots for us. Sharp shot.

By the stew box

Related to yesterday's show So I said okay well Alright I'll check the voicemail line And I tightened my jaw And I braced myself for the worst

Hey Poyos Locos It is Stew from St. Paul Just a Couple sharp shots from Tuesday's Podcart One as a long time Listener and even longer time Last Catholic I can tell you that CCD stands for Confraternity of Christian Doctrine.

What was the first word there?

Confrortunity?

Confrortunity? What did he say? Are you sure about that?

Can you back that up? Are you sure about that? Are you sure about that? Are you sure about that? That's why.

For an even longer time last Catholic, I can tell you that CCD stands for Confrortunity of Christian Doctrine. Confrternity?

I think it does have a good confraternity of Christian doctrine.

When I was a kid, it was just called like catechism or catechism class. I don't know if that's common for anyone else who wasn't going to St. John's Catholic Church in Hector, Minnesota, but that is what that is. And, Andrew, you were trying to remember Mr. Mister's other song that wasn't Kyrie Eleison. That song was Broken Wings, which was number one for two weeks in 1985. I believe it held off Eddie Murphy's party all the time from the top spot. What a juxtaposition. To both of you, and just have a great Wednesday, guys. Miss you.

Thank you, Stuba. Yeah, you know, I honestly, I think I was trying to think of, when you brought up Mr. Mister, I was trying to think of the other band that I get confused with, Mr. Mister, Who you pointed out was Mike and the Mechanics Another double M band But again, Take These Broken Wings A very wistful Kind of over the top emotional Kind of song from that era There's a darkness about it

Take these broken wings But I do think it's hilarious That America I mean just like the duality Of existence That we were whipsawing between take these broken wings and my girl wants to party all the time party all the time

she parties all time yeah that is true uh that song is it is amazing because that song stew bot didn't say this did he allude to it i think wasn't that like topping the charts for a long time the my girl likes to party all the time i feel like that yeah and wasn't rick wasn't rick james in the song too oh that would make sense if so i didn't know that or i didn't remember that that's

the funny thing about that was you know i was just a kid really when that song came out i didn't know very much about rick james i didn't know his background i didn't know you know his kind of place in in sort of like music i guess previous so the first time i really learned there was a guy named rick james it was when he was on the Thank you.

party all the time song with eddie murphy and he was the weirdest dude ever by that point he had really just become a complete weirdo so i was just like fascinated with this guy rick james like what is even going on with him but because i didn't realize the evolution of rick james over

the years rick james wrote and produced the song apparently i don't know if he wrote and produced the whole album i mean that's the other thing to think about here like this was the lead track off an entire album by Eddie Murphy singing songs. It says here, by the way, this is on Wikipedia, it says when Murphy informed Richard Pryor that he was going to do an album, Pryor offered him a $100,000 bet that Murphy wouldn't be able to do a purely musical album without jokes. But apparently he was, it says Pryor never paid him the money. So there you go. But yeah, I do, I do, that, that, just the fact that that song, what a weird time for American culture, I feel like.

A reader in the Los Angeles Times, Barbara Bryson, criticized the song, characterizing it as Gumby Goes Disco, referring to the character parodied by Murphy on Saturday Night Live. The publication also placed the song at number one on the video bottom ten list. Meanwhile, critic Scott Bernard in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel awarded the song his worst single for 1985, calling it a catchy, up-tempo dance number, but asserting that Murphy adds nothing but his ego to it. His voice is paper thin and buried in the mix. Anyone could have sung that tune the way it was produced. Murphy should stick to imitating Gumby. So that seemed to be the common criticism. It was all Gumby related.

I will say this. I'm looking at the video now, and it is one of those just like it's them in the studio. It's, you know, like kind of Eddie Murphy and Rick James kind of hugging or whatever.

I love those kinds of videos, by the way.

Although I would expect more from Eddie Murphy, you would think, like. Girl, I can't understand it. Why you gonna hurt me? It is kind of paper thin. After all of the things I've done for you.

Why put it in this register for him? It's clearly at the top of his range. Roses, put diamonds on your finger.

Diamonds on your finger.

There's your ring. Still you hang out all night. I mean, it's not terrible.

You do feel like it's a good hook.

Has anybody used this hook in like a good, like a decent hip hop song? I feel like you could sample this.

Yeah, I wonder about that. I wonder why that hasn't been, why that hasn't been sampled. I mean, it was such a mass. And you're right. That was such a weird time. Like, I'm trying to think of who, like, who is the Eddie Murphy of right now? And could they put out a song, like a pop song, that would just, you know, shoot to the top of the charts?

Yeah, and I also don't have a good grasp on...

Could Kevin Hart do this song? Could Kevin Hart release a record, you know, that would be, like, the number one record in America? That feels like that was something only the 80s would tolerate.

Yeah, and also, what I'm trying to put my finger on is, like, is Kevin Hart even a good comp there? Not that I'm coming up with anything better, but, like, I'm trying to put my finger on the level of fame of Eddie Murphy at this time. Because Kevin Hart is very famous, but I feel like Eddie Murphy was beyond, yeah, like, I feel like Eddie Murphy was, like, kind of beyond famous, you know what I mean? Like, almost cultural icon status, which I'm trying to think of an actor right now who isn't known already for singing, who sort of, like, kind of fits that, you know, kind of mold or that model. Anyway, I'm not coming up with any good comps either, but it just seems like – because 1985, that is – you already have Beverly Hills.

Is Beverly Hills cop out?

I feel like it is, yeah. And so, yeah, anyway. I'm not adding anything.

Well, Stu, thank you for the clarification on that weird word that I've literally never heard before in my life.

Oh, yeah, I looked it up. I looked that up too, I guess. What is the word? It's like, yeah, confident. Hold on. I just looked it up. um it is stew had it right confraternity so confraternity so it's like the word fraternity with the word con on it is that something that you learned about during your time in prison um fraternity for cons confraternity a brotherhood especially even come up with a charitable or

religious purpose huh well you learn something every day andrew hey we gotta we gotta get out

here and i'm really not i'm the opposite of proud of whatever i just did at the end of that um eddie murphy conversation where i just realized i'm making noise and i need to just peter out and but let me just raise something with you that i heard on some other podcast uh somewhat recently and i can't even remember what the podcast was but somebody brought up the the movie con air and somebody said oh yeah it's a play on words speak.

because of, like, the hair dryers, and then they got into a, maybe it was this Scott Aukerman podcast Scott hasn't seen, but everybody's like, wait, that can't be right, like, Con Air, like, we just accept the fact that there's a movie called Con Air, and yeah, it sort of sounds like a play on words, but, like, did they, when they named that movie, were they thinking, oh, yeah, this is kind of funny, because there's a hair dryer called Con Air, like, that's a weird

play on words, right? Yeah, I guess you're right, they could have called that movie a bunch of different things yeah but they picked a word that already existed in the pop culture as something else like they love like yeah do you think it was when what it's real it's really hot on that plane because of all of the criminals all the super criminals i'm just wondering what the connection to con air would be like if they were trying to make a play on the hairdryer thing right yeah and

i don't think that there's any kind of like a direct line between the hairdryer but like kind of like oh that would make sense like because we have a bunch of cons and they're in the air so It's like Con Air.

Nicholas Cage's hair is glorious in that movie, I believe.

Yeah, it is pretty. It's like shoulder length and pretty. Probably a wig. Yeah. Oh, you think so?

Well, at that time, I don't think he had a whole lot on top. Oh. But yeah, I mean, we'll think about him in like Raising Arizona. He's losing his hair pretty fast there.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's true. Anyway.

Raising Arizona, by the way, got to be top 10 movies ever made in history, right?

Oh, that's interesting. It's not even a top 10 Coen Brothers movie for me. That's actually not true. It would be definitely in the top 10. It would be probably in the top five. I don't know if it's in the top. I haven't seen that in so long. I remember always enjoying it, but I don't know if I'd put it in my own personal top 10. Have you seen the latest It's Only One of the Coen Brothers released a movie? I'm going to say four or five months ago, and it looked really good. I saw some Instagram ads for it, but then I never sat down to watch it. It's about, I believe, women going on some sort of a road trip, or they might be on the lam, or they're running from someone. This doesn't ring any bell to you at all? No. Well, that'll give me something to talk about tomorrow.

Okay, good. And I will let everyone know how my trip to New York has gone so far, because that's where I will be joining you all from for tomorrow's program. All right, in the meantime, thank you for listening. Thanks for being part of TBTL. We will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Go chaos ball. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.