Muse

Can I blow your mind right now? Chris is laughing because he knows where I'm going with this. Okay, there's not a single video of Abraham Lincoln. I'm serious. Look it up. Go on YouTube. Okay, think about that. He's one of the most famous Americans in history. He's the first president. He made slavery illegal. And there's no video. You can look it up. There's no videos of Abraham Lincoln. And every time I say that, someone goes, no, no, no, no, there's got to be. is Abraham Lincoln. None. So then you start to ask yourself, and if you really want to go down this rabbit hole with me here, just bear with me. Who's controlling what we get to see a video of and what there is no video of, right? Because there's no videos of Abraham Lincoln, but I can go on YouTube right now. I can go on YouTube right now and you can do it. And you can watch behind the scenes footage of Paul Giamatti recording his lines for the ant bully, right? But there's no

videos of Joan of Arc, TBTL. Beware of things that cost $1.99. Those are the membership dues for this club that I joined, the Columbia House Music Club. Turns out that wasn't really even a club. It was just a business for making money. Although it is how I found my favorite band, various artists of

the 80s it's embarrassing and it's gross but at least it's kind of funny be careful though

it's fun to see have a good show dummies what you do is so important

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live it's a kind of magic my name is luke burbank i am your host he was king of the tuck tuck sound comedy from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where we are looking at another absolutely gorge day oh ma pa it's just beautiful still battling through um some allergic stuff although it seems to be a little bit what i did uh hit pause on today i hit pause on the allegra continuum meaning i didn't take allegra this morning because it made me feel high as hell the other day now here's the problem i spent like 40 or something on this because i bought it at costco so it's like two giant amounts it's like a lifetime supply of allegra and then an additional lifetime supply of allegra and i was talking to Becca last night. I said, you know, I don't think I can use that stuff. It makes me feel really spacey and also didn't seem to actually work that well. And so we'll just take it back. It's like partially used allergy medicine. She goes, it's Costco, baby. So that's a plot line for the show. Can I return partially used allergy medicine? And really, should I be allowed to the The question of, will they let me, does not satisfy the question of, should they let me? Should you be listening to episode 4226 in a collector's series?

Let the fun begin.

Too late. You're already doing it, folks. And we have hot dog-related news, which we know the listeners sure do love around here. It's our brand. And Joey Chestnut has been banned from the Nathan's hot dog competition this 4th of July because he has endorsed a non-meat hot dog product.

And what's courageous about eating a hot dog?

So that would seem that maybe Joey Chestnut is rethinking his relationship with this sort of animal-based food industrial complex. But there's also a photograph, the Washington Post story about this. It's just about how, you know, he's got this contractual dispute with this hot dog entity. And they're not going to let him come, you know, choke down 500 glizzies. But then without comment, there's a photo in the Washington Post article that I had to then go source in some other places and go, how is this the photo they use and how are they not commenting on it? So we'll talk about that. Plus, we'll talk to this guy. He is the longest running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. he searched for his spark and he found it he sure did he's andrew fireball walsh and he's

joining me right now good morning my friend good morning luke i don't want to blow up the show and what i'm about to say could derail us i don't want that to be the case i want what i'm about to say to be a forward promo to entice listeners even more to stick around for that joey chestnut story because I'm going to gently say here, offer a little bit of feedback and say, I think you're sort of doing with your headline there a little, a little, you're being a little creative with your headline on that story in a way that I think we would criticize other news sources for doing.

I shouldn't have said the parties are.

over for joey chestnut you said the parties and i said the party's just beginning because now

realize that those hot dog uh competitors they tie their testicles up in a series of ropes so they'll be extra angry this of course for those of you joining the show for the first time for the first time yes amazing yeah somewhere some amount of cross promotion worked and we got a new listener thank you for joining us yesterday on the show we talked about the story of sisters oregon where um a bull escaped a bull that was about to be ridden escaped at a rodeo and kind of uh injured a woman and the and is now going to be basically just put out to pasture is not going to be participating in the rodeo anymore the headline was and the bull is called party bus the headline was parties over for party bus and i thought that meant something very um sad and an untimely end Like maybe they were going to put him down or turn him into T-Bone steaks. And then I read the article and it was like, no, he just doesn't have to be in the rodeo anymore. Which, if you've watched a rodeo, the animals, at least the ones that are running around in that ring, are not enjoying the experience.

Yeah, they're not signing up for it. They're not getting in line at the employment office and saying, you got any of those rodeo jobs?

Right, exactly. They're not hitting LinkedIn. in like they're not spiffing up their resume hoping to see if one of those uh some human

climbs on my back while my testicles are in a truss jobs are available experience petting farm

that was what did i do that was bunk journalism i mean do you want do you want to do it by the way

do you want to do it now or do you want to because i mean that's why i said i didn't want to change the director the direction of the show i mean you plan these things out i do but we always get to the top stories like why would honestly the show has to evolve over the years it's evolve or die

and the evolution for us is just talking about the top stories earlier that's our evolution and let's do it let's do it today let's stay loose okay let's be nimble let's be agile let's

fail fast and what did i do i have been failing too slowly i've been dragging that out for like

i've been putting it all in your i'm putting you on a performance improvement plan you're on a

right now my friend all right start pippin here's what i'm gonna do and i and i want to i want to seriously do this andrew walsh sorry i want to seriously say this not even to be polite or to save your feelings but because to to save to save embarrassment for me in case i am wrong because i read we were getting a lot of people sending us this joey chestnut story and i read the first one that came in over the transom yesterday i don't remember the source of that journalism um but it wasn't the best written piece I'd ever read so I may be misunderstanding something here but here I will start with what you said at the beginning of the show a best the best paraphrase I can do hey I'm already getting bells this is great I was trying to get positive I was trying

to put down this this carafe of coffee somewhere on my desk area and literally just accidentally

place it on top of a bell and I started salivating for some reason god an angel got its wings all i want is a uh is a snossage now do you remember snossages oh are you kidding me the

snossage commercials were so effective that it made me hungry for a dog food product like snossages it was like a dog saying snossages it'd come on like after school maybe and i'd be at like james demuth's house and i'd be like oh god do you have any snossages around here like i

I could really go for one at the dog's bowl. I believe those commercials did. They employed one of the only cinematographic tropes that I employed as a young, young filmmaker, which was you hold the camera down at your ankles and you just run around the backyard and you act like it's the viewpoint of the dog. I'm pretty sure the Snossages did dog POV. Here, let's check that out. Snossages.

Dogs in search of the ideal snack. Snossages. What is that special treat? Snausages. We know they love to snitch a snack. We know they love to sneak a sausage, so... Snausages. That's it. Sausage-style snacks. Snausages. Made with meat, a hearty taste, a healthy chew, and voila, the ideal snack. Snausages. But what will we call them? Snausages. Doggy snacks? Snausages. Little saucies? Snausages. Snausages. New kennel ration, Snausages?

Did I have the visuals right on that one at all?

Yeah, not really, but that might have just been a different commercial. So I'm sure they made a lot of them. I think I speak for all the listeners when I say don't miss this. Nossage Fest.

Nice. All right. Let me go back to my bunk journalism. So back to your bunk journalism. No, I feel like you're selling the headline a little bit more sensationally than it is. It was not my understanding that Nathan's hot dogs have told Joey Chestnut that he can't participate anymore because he is endorsing a.

meat-free product their statement actually said something like we have meat-free products over here too they're saying you can't pair up with another brand it's just a you can't we're Nathan's hot dogs we put on this event and you know we have meat-free over here too if you want that but you can't you can't endorse another brand's hot dogs meat or meat-free and then still expect to participate in our very branded thing well I'm you know I'll be honest with you Andrew

I sort of breezed through this whole article Because I Being like the show of record When it comes to hot dog talk First of all, heavy weighs the crown I mean heavier by the day if you're me Like I'm really leaning into the And hot dog ball Like being the hot dog show of record Is a tremendous responsibility And also it's ironic that I kind of find the whole Nathan's hot dog thing I'm kind of over it Oh, I'm with you yep we've been on this beat for so long and i've played in over time the guy george shea who is sort of the pt barnum of this whole thing he was i think an advertising writer in in new york and then he took over this kind of nathan's hot dog account and then he kind of ginned up this whole thing and in fact we went into a deep dive on him i don't know a year or two ago because there was a big piece probably in the new york times about him where he has just kind of created this idea Of this 4th of July competitive Hot dog eating thing he does these Extremely long Literary kind of Introductions for the different competitors That calls back to you know Faulkner and and Keats And all of this stuff but he's also Just at his heart he's just a salesman And so this idea Of him I guess I feel Like I kind of don't trust him as far as I can throw him Yeah although he does Andrew he does wear the Kind of hat that is commonly punched out if a horse either wins or does not win a race.

We got to make him angry or happy and see what he does.

Well, this would have been a perfect time when he finds out Joey Chestnut is endorsing a different company's plant-based hockey. He punches right through that hat.

But yeah, I mean, that's his whole, I mean, so I kind of didn't realize that he claimed to be anything more than, I mean, this is always, Nathan's hot dog eating contest, I thought has always just been a marketing event. And for what it's worth, I don't think I've ever watched it.

Well, it's been around for a long time.

Before it was Nathan's endorsed?

I think it was a Coney Island hot dog eating content it may have always been associated with Nathan's the George Shea piece of it And he's the guy who's quoted extensively here the George Shea piece of it I think he maybe 20 years ago got on board with this and really made it a thing like so it's on ESPN We talk about it's big in the pop culture He's kind of seen as responsible for taking it from a thing that happened on Coney Island on the fourth of July that some people would show up for To being part of the national discourse Yeah, right. And so when I saw that it was the headline I'm reading from the Washington Post Joey Chestnut barred from Nathan's hot dog contest after impossible foods deal And then I see that George Shea is the person being quoted. He says We love Joey and support him in any contest he chooses. It's okay to experiment with the new dog meat eaters shouldn't have to be Exclusive to just one wiener. Oh, I'm sorry. Um, let's see Maybe this oh this is this impossible. It's a little confusing the deal with impossible Which is trying to attract more meat eaters with its new plant-based hot dog by the way? This is Tim Carman writing in the Washington Post does not prohibit chestnut from entering eating competitions including Nathan's famous International hot dog eating contest quote so this is actually what I'm this quote. I'm reading you is from The impossible meats people we love Joey and support him in any contest he chooses It's okay to experiment with a new dog meat eaters shouldn't have to be exclusive to just one wiener The California based company said in a statement, so that's I'm just gonna we're gonna do this live on the air We're gonna diagram this sentence right in front of the listeners, so that's impossible saying we don't care if he eats meat hot dogs We're not saying that he has to only eaten on you know plant-based hot dogs But Nathan's I'm just still reading from this piece Nathan's demands loyalty from its competitors at least when it comes to hot dog brands said george shea chair and co-founder of major league eating the governing body for numerous governing bodies a little that's a little august for what we're talking about here um a key agreement okay this is probably the crux of this thing a key agreement for all competitors at the nathans contest where people compete for the mustard belt and prize money in front of espn's cameras is to quote not represent a rival hot dog brand Shea told the Washington Post. The latest contract between Chestnut and Nathans had expired, Shea said, and the two sides were negotiating a new one when Chestnut announced he had signed a deal with a plant-based firm. Nathans didn't know then that it was impossible. Shea said that Nathans had asked Chestnut for a potential carve-out. Could he represent all other products in the company's line except for a potential carve-out? except for its plant-based hot dogs. So that sounds like they do have a problem with him pitching impossible plant-based hot dogs. Now, is it your contention that Nathan's has their own plant-based hot dog product and that's what their issue is?

Yeah, and I am scanning articles now, and I can't find whatever one was sent to me yesterday. This is why you always leave a note.

This is why you always print a note.

Look at this brick and mortar article that I have. Yeah, well, I saw that this was on the show sheet. And I'm like, I already read into this topic. I didn't know that you were going to come in with just this flagrant yellow journalism.

Hey, Andrew, pardon my take. I'm so sorry that I have a take on this that I'm trying to make this entertaining.

No, but I do know that I read a statement from, I believe, Shea, but definitely I think it was part of the Shea statement. And that is I don't think you quoted right there where he says something about like we, you know, Nathan's has its own line of meat free hot dogs that we embrace or something along those lines, making it seem very clear to me that it wasn't an issue with the hot dogs not being meat. It was the specifically the law of the land that says you can't be part of Nathan's if you're specifically endorsing a different brand.

I definitely agree with you that that is the issue is not. i don't think it has anything to do with the hot dog being plant-based um i think it has to do with the hot dog being made by someone that's not nathan's now whether or not nathan's has their own plant-based thing i i'm still trying to get eyes on that but i think you're absolutely right i don't think it's it's not that that they're they're somehow trying to push they're not trying to push back on the idea of plant-based products they're just trying to push back on the on the topic of non nathan's based products now here's i did want to talk to you about something else

related to this as well which is um and again i want to make clear like it's kind of funny because let's just be can we just be very transparent here luke yes i am a person who enjoys hot dogs i've eaten hot dogs my whole life i grew up in the midwest i think it's more commented on yeah and i just think it's more part of the culture where i grew up so um it just wasn't it wasn't like funny or silly or campy or or ironic eating hot dogs and still i'm always kind of surprised when I go back to the Midwest, how you'll find hot dog and hot dog related stuff just naturally on more menus and bar menus and stuff. You see this in Chicago. You see this in the Twin Cities. It's just it is what it is. And so I've always liked hot dogs. I've never hugely been into the irony of hot dogs. And I think that kind of like, you know, talk like a pirate day or the obsession with zombies that our culture went through at a certain point or whatever. I think that the topic became to you and I slightly cringy in a way that it's sort of like, oh, like, look, a hot dog. It's kind of phallic or whatever people think is funny or, well, you know what they put in hot dogs or like whatever, like the funny, campy side of hot dogs are was not really part of our, let's say, coverage. And so now you and I tell me if I'm wrong about this. I think I'm speaking for both of us and maybe even you more so. I think that you struggle with the topic because it comes up naturally on the show, but we don't want to be kind of part and parcel of the um ironic hot dog industrial complex right like

the whole the whole being a show that did make an entire clothing line that is true around hot dogs

because and we did a whole radio show about it too we did do a whole that is true about it salute to

the american hot dog yeah that's right so i mean i think here's here's what i think happens to us andrew on this program we kind of get into something or we have and again your point is You you've been unironically consuming hot dogs your whole life, and you have no plans to change that maybe Nationally like happens with things like tacos and bacon and laser cats the idea of the hot dog kind of became This kind of funny thing I to be ironically obsessed with it We I just made a very terrible passing reference to it from Detroiters I believe where Tim Robinson's character is going to I mean that's a recurring thing on that show I think is that he and Sam Richardson Exist almost completely on hot dogs and he goes to the doctor and basically He's he thinks he hasn't been eating hot dogs on a given day because he's been eating a hot dog bowl Which is basically a giant hot dog. It's chopped up hot dogs in a bread bowl a hot dog Chopped up and and so there is this I do there is some humor there We have embraced that humor we sold uh or gave away as a thank you hats with hot dogs on it we um we gave away t-shirts which uh had some we didn't really run it through r&d before we mailed those out they looked not great on some people or looked a little suggestive so it's not that we're over not that we're not into hot dogs or whatever but what happens is when we get into something it lodges in the brains of our listeners of our wonderful awesome generous hilarious list

andrew who can do no wrong in my book and it becomes like it was juggalos for a while in the early days of the show it was it was like anything with the insane clown posse because we played so much audio from them and talked about it incessantly what happens is we get into something we talk about it a bunch we make it a thing on the show and then we're kind of like we've moved on a little bit in terms of what's cracking us up in that moment and the forever in the minds of the Listeners, that's a thing that they sort of think of us when they see it and then they send us stuff And I by the way, please keep doing that There is no harm in my life to getting emails about juggalos and things that juggalos are getting up to But it's kind of like we usually I think have kind of moved on a bit from a topic before Let's say the culture of TBTL listeners has and we will continue for a long time to get a lot of Stuff based on that because the listeners associate us with that thing is that a sort of dramatic way to talk about it?

Yeah, although I will say, and now I'm hanging you out to dry here, my comments were less about our listeners and just culture at large. Like, for example, like one of the reasons hot dogs loom so large in TBTL lore is because of something we call hot dog stories. And a hot dog story is if there were a TBTL dictionary, which I've worked on many times, and it's a project I keep setting down. But if there were a TBTL glossary, a hot dog story, the TBTL glossary defines hot dog story as a story that is very, very long without any point and certainly no ending and no purpose. And so the reason that came up was literally I was talking about hot dogs in a way that I was excited about. I think it might have been the one of Wienerschnitzel. It was either the one where I was doing a taste test of Wienerschnitzel hot dogs, a fast food hot dog place that was by my old apartment in L.A., or it might have been the long story I told about buying a street hot dog on the way back from the gym. And I can't remember which one it was. They were both long stories, and they were both very pointless, and they both involved hot dogs.

I remember them, so they couldn't have been that bad.

I raise them a lot.

I keep them in front of mind for you. But you keep – let me just put this back at the top of your inbox.

Yes, exactly. Just nudging this here I hope this finds you well But I was going to say You know that was our listener I think that was Drew McFrizz Who was just kind of like He's the one who Rest in power Rest in power Said like Oh another hot dog story Or something It came up kind of organically And so then hot dogs Became even more part of Our show or whatever I'm talking a little I mean maybe it is true That it's amplified Because when people In our listening audience See a hot dog related thing They send it to us I have no issue with that at all. In fact, I think this is kind of an interesting story. But as far as the culture at large, even the TikTok glizzy craze of two years ago or just generally speaking, it sort of became like we were talking about hot dogs for a long time and then the culture sort of, well, caught up. Is that too much of a grandizing way of saying it? But like and then when it's all around us and everybody is doing it, it sort of makes it sound like we're just another show that thinks it's clever that we're talking about hot dogs. I have no I don't cringe at listeners sending me hot dog stuff. I just sort of don't want to be here in Our Lord 2024 when the world sort of has already peaked with its hot dog craziness and often kind of ironic hot dog craziness that we're a show that is still like, oh, don't we think hot dogs are so funny? It's like, no, hot dogs are life. Hot dogs are the way. And that's just a fact of life. Now, I bring up all of this. Jess, I wanted to sort of caveat that because I want people to know that I've literally never watched the hot dog eating contest, the Nathan's eating the hot dog eating contest. Like, I'm not super interested in that. And competitive eating actually seems gross to me. The idea of watching that contest probably would make me want to eat less hot dogs, which my doctor would encourage, but I don't want to eat less. Frankly, your breath. Chopped up in a little bowl or big bowl, I think. But anyway, so having said all that, I do think there's something sort of interesting about this, maybe as an outsider looking into the hot dog eating contest, which is now I have watched it, by the way, so I can be your guide on. You know, if I had watched it at all, it would have been around the time that you and I were working together at Cairo Radio and then had, you know, hosted our own sort of competitive burger eating contest in the at the radio station, which things were really kind of, you know, peak competitive eating in our lives around that point. So I might have watched them. I remember maybe like having it on in the studio with the sound down maybe during Ross and Burbank or something. But all of that is to say there are only two names I could possibly mention who are related to this world. Right. Kobayashi is a Kobayashi who just retired. I feel like since the last hot dog eating contest, right, like recently. And now Joey Chestnut's out on the street. And I just sort of think it's Crazy Legs Conti. Oh, is that? What about. Badlands Booker. Okay, so there you go. What about the Black Widow? I'm not in that world enough to know these other names. Are these real?

I don't know if any of those people are active, but they were at one time. They were real?

Because I was just wondering, like, it was an honest question. Like, is there less of a draw to the televised live event if you don't have a Kobayashi or a Joey Chestnut there? Probably. Are they all no names now? And are people less interested in watching? like could this actually have a hit right not just on that but also then the sale of hot dogs like i just i'm interested how this all ties together as a marketing ploy i will tell you that in this

washington post piece they mention with joey chestnut out who now the favorite is and that was a person i'd never heard of you know so it's not like uh you know show show hey otani is a scratch for this game but aaron judge will be also you know now it's going to be aaron judge it's like um it it kind of goes it drops off pretty fast from from joey chestnut yeah i think in terms of the kind of public awareness my guess is that the average person well first of all this is how i think people probably experience this thing as a televised event now you have like you have like maybe three or four categories of people category one like just just is flipping through the channels on the 4th of July, or just has ESPN on as a default channel. That's what they just put on in their house when they're kind of walking around. And if it's not golf or WNBA basketball or an Olympics qualifier of some kind, it's, oh, they're doing the hot dog thing. And you might glance at it as you're walking around your house. So a very passive viewer. Then you have somebody who thinks this is a fun thing to do on the 4th of July. It's kind of part of the tradition. Maybe they have a big get-together, a barbecue They make up a bunch of dogs And this is on, kind of like you might have the Super Bowl on Like, it's kind of part of the bit

You have it on while you decorate the 4th of July tree Precisely

But they don't know In the way that I like to, like, listen to A Christmas Carol The old Lionel Barrymore version of A Christmas Carol While I wrap presents on Christmas Eve It's part of the tradition But then, those people that have it on As they're decorating their house for the 4th of July They generally couldn't name other than Kobayashi they couldn't name any of these people so they're still it's on but it's not because they've got like they're playing fantasy competitive eating and they know who the people are and then there might be a minuscule and I'm talking under like 5,000 people who follow this like it's a real thing and my guess is they might be at Coney Island that day in the crowd because I mean and there is a fairly active world of tick talkers who are competitive eaters and they go around and do these challenges and truthfully during the pandemic i think i was i don't think i've ever gone to the lengths of following someone but i was letting it roll in my algorithm to where it was being delivered to me a lot and um and so i mean i do think that as a sort of thing competitive eating is still holding is still holding strong like as a thing that people go around and do sometimes and videotape themselves and put it on on youtube or tick tock it's still a thing but i I think it's kind of hard to make a huge living. I don't think we're in the salad days of competitive eating. And by the way, is that a category?

Yeah, I was going to say, interesting. Yeah, there must be, right? I mean, is there any food that hasn't been put through the competitive ringer?

To me, that's one of the more interesting aspects of this. The names that I was just reeling off are probably all retired because the time that I knew more about this thing was probably 10, 15 years ago. And it must have been because I was thinking about trying to do a story about it maybe for NPR or somebody else I don't think I was at CBS yet, but what I found interesting in kind of looking into it was that It's not like if you're the best if you can eat the most hot dogs of anyone It doesn't mean you can eat the most everything of everyone So these people and and it's not it's not exclusively men Sonia the black widow something is a woman and can really put it away way like the somebody will be like you'll go to their website or whatever a blog about them or some kind of wikipedia page and it'll be like they are the current world champion at pierogies steamed broccoli um sardines like it'll be this weird like different categories of it's not just like they can eat the most food of anyone ever in one sitting it's like no they really dominate the pierogi scene but they're they're they're not even top 10 in churros and i find that kind of interesting because you just think it's purely a volume thing if you can put more crushed up food in your stomach than anyone else in a faster amount of time you just win but there there's different foods that people are better at than others well that makes to me because there's texture things right like first of all you're you're i mean i don't know anything about this i'm going off the top of my head but let's say your body processes different foods differently not just once they're in your body but maybe in your mouth like certain mouths i mean i'm going to get too anatomical here but like certain foods might just break down in one person's mouth differently than another person based on acidity and saliva levels or whatever and so and also like i know in my own life and by the way i think this is why this is such a such a rich topic for talk shows not just that it happens on the fourth of july a time when both news shows quote-unquote news shows and sports shows have very little to talk about you know like it happens during a pretty low time in the like yeah oh i shouldn't even be here today what are we going to talk about well we got the hot dog eating contest happening and espn covers it so like that's something that you can you can hit on once an hour or something but also it's worth

talking about because everybody shift probably at some point i mean you and i were literally doing

this i'm almost wondering if you were doing a lot of this research when you and i were doing the ross and burbank show which would have been around you know 15 years ago because i just think that we kind of really got into it for a while and i think though you know all you know everybody eats or almost everybody eats unless you have some sort of like you know severe condition like everybody knows the sensation of being very very hungry and plowing into something and thinking how much of this could I eat right and there are various foods that I can eat more of than other like you're describing it as just being a space thing and I know you're just kind of throwing that out there but like like for me sushi is one where I like I didn't grow up eating sushi I started eating sushi as like a young adult and I really like sushi and the types of sushi I eat have definitely broadened over the years but sushi is I can go to a sushi restaurant super super hungry Genevieve is always team leader when we're eating sushi like usually it's us and maybe a few other people and I'd like to just say Genevieve you know what I like rack them up and she'll place the order and we'll tuck in but like Indian food for example I once I'm full my body wants to keep eating it like I can't turn it off whereas sushi is like an alarm goes off in my brain that says you're done I've never had a bad experience I have probably the opposite experience I can because

the sushi feels so light to me. I can eat, I remember being younger and saying, how on earth is it that, how do these sumo wrestlers achieve their physical size that they do? Just eating like rice and fish and veggies and some soup, like it made no sense to me. And every time I leave a sushi place, I have a little bit better understanding of it. I will just hammer some sushi and not realize how much I'm eating until I'm done. I'm like, oh, man, that was – I ate way too much.

Yeah, it's funny. I think the sushi is – like that's one of the reasons it's good – it's a good meal for me, especially when I'm really hungry because it is – it can be very, very satisfying. It's, you know, a lot of protein. It's obviously very fresh, you know, like depending on what you're getting. Like most of the stuff we're getting is not like going to be the tempura or deep fried, maybe like one of those, but mostly like sashimi or whatever. Yeah, firecracker roll going. Yeah. But so anyway, but because there's something in my brain that just sort of says, oh, this is maybe maybe just simply like, oh, this is raw fish. Maybe be done here. And again, I want to stress, I've never had a bad experience with it. It's not like I can't drink tequila anymore because of that one time down in Cabo Wabo. Nothing like that. But my body just kind of says, you're done now. Whereas in again, and it doesn't make sense because Indian food would be like the opposite. Right. Like lamb sog is just like I just pretty heavy.

Oh, so heavy, pretty heavy.

And I'm piling that on rice and I'm just like scooping it up. And it looks like the stuff that like Calvin wouldn't eat and Calvin and Hobbes. But it's just like one of my favorite foods. And for some reason, it just I can keep eating that until I am literally sick, until my body is screaming at me. And so anyway, there you go. There's an example of you and I being two different people who have just like foods react differently.

I'm going to I'm going to make a bold claim here and I don't think you're going to like it. mm-hmm so zip it this is this is the second day no follow-ups okay i wonder if and this is maybe at the core of all you're saying different people can eat different amounts of different things and you're right some of it just has to do with probably like literally how the kind of our biome breaks down stuff and our saliva etc but i would make the argument that you slightly prefer the flavor of indian food to that of sushi it doesn't mean you don't like sushi yeah yeah Probably it means you like the flavor of Indian food is so good to you that you cannot Contain your joy dough and you love sushi, but you can contain your joy dough and I for me. That's probably pizza mm-hmm I I Had I now have to be by the way. This is such a low bar for self discipline but because i primarily live alone and i will grab a pizza at poker pete's pizza of kalama washington sometimes so good or um i'll go to uh the place down in the other town that i need to get you a t-shirt from that place i can't remember the name off the top of my head but they you literally describe the t-shirt exactly without seeing it it's like red it's like an Italian-ish chef, a cartoon chef. But I don't need – what I will tell myself sometimes is, I don't know, it's $2 more for the large. So first of all, getting a small pizza is not even – that's not even on the table. That's been – I'm kind of surprised they still make them.

I honestly would expect most places to have medium, large, and extra large at this point.

Honestly, the judge has disallowed that from even being brought into evidence as an option. The jury can't even hear about a small pizza. yes it's prejudicial okay um but so but for me like the thing about getting a medium is i think well what if i want to have one more piece and i've had a medium and all the pizza's gone and i mean a medium pizza for one person in a sitting if you're me anyway it's more than sufficient in fact probably half of a medium should be totally fine but ah three bucks more for the large and then i tell myself well what i'll do is i'll have you know i'll have for me like a reasonable amount of pizza would be four pieces right that's a pretty significant commitment to carbs and um i'll just tell myself well i'll have i'll eat some pizza and then i'll just save the rest of it and sometimes that happens but a significant amount of the time if i get a large if i bring a large into this house i will by the end of the night and it could be like 11 o'clock and i'm watching my you know my programs and i just like i know that that pizza is now cooled and congealed in a way that I really like actually like I love a good room temperature piece of pizza that's been sitting in the pizza box now for like three to

four hours I let it sit I let it sit when I order a pizza usually about an hour before I'm ready to

talk into it yeah there's a you know the the whole the everybody tries to tell you that like you want a piping hot pizza give me a room temperature pizza any day of the week I'm surprised by that i feel the same way i'm surprised you feel that way so i will i can so all that is to say i love the taste of pizza so much that now i will just tell myself you can't get the large because you're going to eat the whole thing pretty much you're not going to save some for tomorrow get the medium eat it a little more slowly it's a medium pizza for one person at least again i'm speaking for myself here it's enough pizza for me but all that is to say there are certain flavors and to to use a term that is um not great on the show mouth feel well yeah that's what you were saying taste

for me before with sushi and and indian food and actually or let's just say sag to be specific like i taste yes but i think texture even more so for me i think like texture is a huge thing for with

me and foods right like um if at like at thanksgiving if i get a bunch of those king's Hawaiian rolls and then put a bunch of butter in them and then when you eat them they're almost like they just they're so they get they compress so much yeah you know there's something about that something about mashed potatoes you're right I'm talking just purely the texture of these things um is is really good here's the thing about this Joey Chestnut story Andrew I've sent you a photograph via text or email I texted it to you um and I'm just now imagine you're scrolling through this washington post story and you're right that the technically this is less about meat based or non-meat products and more about branding but the headline makes it seem like maybe that nathan's hot dog is uh you know they're against this idea of of of non-meat hot dogs and i'm scrolling through the washington post story and there's just a post of joey chestnut's instagram feed and he is fully got somebody in a headlock during one of these hot dog competitions and he is about to because i've gone to the source and watched the video he's about to body slam somebody on stage this is not a joke this is not kayfabe okay when i first saw this i thought this was him

just posing with somebody this is in the middle of the hot dog eating competition andrew and this

person on stage who is in a headlock from Joey Chestnut has a Darth Vader mask and they're holding a sign that says expose Smithfield's Death Star. Smithfield is the, I think, maybe parent company of Nathan's. They make the hot dogs. And there is this processing plant they have, this facility where the sausage is literally made or the hot dogs anyway that is called the Death Star by animal rights activists. this is a person who straight up went soy bomb on it jumped on stage with pro protest meat-based hot dogs joey chestnut amidst hot dog gulping glizzy gulping grabs this person in a headlock and throws them down on the ground and goes right back to hot dog eating now considering the context of this story isn't that a weird photo for the washington post to include without comment without context yeah now i see that without context or comment he's freaking body slamming A person who would advocate for plant-based meat Now he's pitching plant Now I don't think in the moment Joey Chestnut knew What this person was protesting Because again I've watched the full video He's just up there and then someone's standing next to him And he realizes oh this is a protester Out of here with that shit And he very violently actually throws them down So I don't think he was connecting the dots Of like this person is advocating For less animal consumption But even so It is the weirdest photo for them to just include in the article without contextualizing it. So below it, it just says, Chestnut, so as you're reading into it, it says, Chestnut said in an Instagram post, I love competing in that event, I love celebrating America with all my fans all over this great country on the 4th, and I've been training to defend my title. And then you just see a picture of Joey Chestnut fully, just fully headlocking an animal rights protester. And then below it just says, Chestnut cannot be immediately reached for comment. His absence will mean that a new champion, it's like,

they just that's just in there it's just well can i can i off i think there's a little piece that and i don't know if this isn't showing up on your screen or or what it is but what this this photo that you're describing is not just like um clipped and included in the washington post piece it's actually an embedded post from instagram that is directly from joey chestnut's profile and on my screen the description or like the the caption of this um of this post is visible like i didn't have to click on anything to expand it and it's the post where joey chestnut is um announcing that he's disappointed to learn that he's being banned from the from the hot dog eating contest so i still think that they should have included maybe a caption explaining it but that would be why they chose this particular photo because it's the caption that is him speaking out it's like a

direct quote from him right i'm reading this now you're totally right now so now my question is why is this the photo that joey chestnut included in his instagram yeah now that's interesting and

there's two you see he's got like kind of two photos to there's one where he's celebrating having one or something but the other one i mean maybe that's his favorite moment of him like now that you tell me this is not k-fabe it's amazing to see him headlocking this person like it's upsetting to me as somebody who doesn't like fights um to actually see this photo and know that he's not goofing around with at first i thought it was a kid too um but clearly it's not but any because they're wearing like a small darth vader mask to mask their identity but anyway that would be why the post chose that why joey chose it is another question i mean that's just sending such

a weird message i think joey chesna thinks he looks badass in this photo yeah probably and he just wants it yeah you're right he included in his instagram post addressing the overall topic it's very weird messaging though that he's like you know i love the nathans i want to be there But I'm also endorsing this plant-based hot dog thing, but also I'm headlocking someone who Doesn't support animal, you know murder for these foods because I think probably my forearms look pretty yoked Yeah, that's right. I think that's it, right? There's like no, but there's no like It's just a very bizarre kind of Jumble of imagery and messaging and also Joey Chestnut is not somebody who's out there saying that he is uh not a meat eater anymore and that's the whole thing that these articles also some of them that i'm reading get into this larger thing which is it's clear that so like impossible foods is having problems now like there was the the narrative was and we talked about it you want to talk about things that became big on this show when i kind of stopped eating meat got i got really obsessed with trying to replace the the the meat that i wasn't eating anymore be it a hamburger or hot dog with something else it's weird i've kind of moved on from that for one thing and this is also right now in the in the news there was a recent report that came out that basically said the hyper processed plant-based stuff is is not any better

for you and yeah sure sure that makes total sense you know i mean yeah they're the the amount of

hydrogenation and trans fat and everything that's going into something that yeah technically it's not made out of an animal but it ain't health food right definitely yeah just like i like i like

those little morning star grillers i've been eating those for years not because i'm trying to wean myself off of meat but they're just they're they're a good little quick little thing to cook up but it's totally processed freezer food right yeah it's not yeah and and and so you

know i guess that's just something to to mention that it's kind of out there right now but um impossible foods it seems is you know they sort of had a moment they're having I don't know. getting getting their mojo back and so this campaign involving this Joey Chestnut guy and I think some other like barbecue guys and stuff is basically trying to get people who identify as meat eaters to just substitute a little bit of the meat they're eating with something from you know I guess impossible would be their dream and that's what they're trying to do now they're realizing that like they're not going to convert 90% of Americans into being vegetarian, but maybe they can convert some amount of Americans who eat meat into like having one of the veggie dogs, uh, on a day when they might have a regular hot dog. I don't know how far they're going to get with it. Honestly, like if I'm a meat eater, I don't know why. I mean, you've mentioned this grillers example. Maybe that is a good example of this, but I don't know. I feel like if I'm a guy who loves a ballpark, Frank, I don't know what the day is that I'm, and I'm planning on having a lot of them in my life. I don't know what the day is that I want to have a plant-based hot dog instead of my ballpark frank like yeah i i feel like they're doing this because they're like well we we've failed at converting americans to vegetarianism maybe we convert meat-eating americans into slightly less meat-eating americans i just don't i wonder if those people really exist because it's like if i really love a delicious cheeseburger that i grill up on my barbecue on a summer day what is the day that i decide i don't want that to be made out of meat and why is that like that's what i'm kind of confused about well i yeah i mean

like you said i might be sort of that person i mean uh hardly i mean hardly at all or or gen actually you know genevieve might be more that person because like right genevieve is somebody who still eats meat but she doesn't eat pork and now she hasn't eaten pork in years and years and years now quite some time um now she will carve out her occasional exception for herself you know and like because she's not doing it for anybody but herself she's well for the pigs she does it because she doesn't you know she learned about pigs and pigs are smart she doesn't want to kill them but there are some times where she's like oh my god if we're going to din tai feng and everybody's getting the the pork dumplings like i gotta get the yeah exactly i gotta i gotta try

that you know and so it is the most vastly superior one of those things i mean that's the problem it's not even like oh i'll get the other one that's still kind of good yeah like the rest of it is garbage compared to the pork shell the kura boda pork shaolong bao right and so you know

like she's somebody who cut out pork and then when um you know burger king started doing the impossible burger i think genevieve switched to that now i mean i think it's been so long since she's been to burger king it's probably been years but chances are the last time she went to burger king she probably got an impossible burger because it tasted she was very she just wanted to try it at first out of curiosity because everybody was talking about it and then when she got it I know she went back and got it again because she's just like, there's no point in getting the meat one. They're both equally as good. And I feel a little bit better knowing that a cow didn't have to die for this. And, you know, and and then me being in a relationship with her, like we, you know, you know, grilled up some sausages on on whatever Sunday evening. Not ironically, but just because we like sausages.

It's not a joke. You don't buy it as a joke. You don't eat it as a joke.

Right. Exactly. Just keep my. Well, actually, you know what? I'm not going to finish that thought. But I was going to say, what do we grill up? But we mostly grilled up like chicken, like kind of like these chicken-based brats that you can get. Aserno's, by the way. Congrats to Aserno's for offering those. And, you know, like I've eaten those for so long now because Genevieve is off of pork. So that's just the kind we keep in the freezer that, I don't know, maybe it was last summer or something, I had an actual pork brat. You know, the thing that I grew up with in the Midwest. and i had one and i was it was good but i was surprised and almost slightly turned off at just how kind of fatty and greasy it was which is usually what i would like out of a bratwurst like that's the good stuff right but i've been eating the the chicken which is a leaner meat for so long now that i think i might even prefer that because i was at the store i remember looking at the chicken and the pork thinking i could get myself some of these pork brats and just like earmarked the chicken ones for Aviv's I was like no I don't think I want to do that actually I think I'm I think I just like the chicken ones more now so I could sort of see you know I know that's still all meat but I could see like people like slowly integrating more plant-based or less pork-based or whatever into their into their lives without drawing a line in the sand yeah I wonder

I mean I have no data to back this up but I wonder if you and Genevieve are fairly unique in that that or maybe based on the people that the other people that I've seen as part of this campaign it's like you know um Terry brisket and I'd make you know um Texas barbecue champ or whatever it's like I feel like they're really going they're trying to really get people whose identity although I guess your identity is to some degree brats so maybe maybe I think it's ironic that you talked about earmarking pork um but really you're talking about earmarking chicken because earmarking and and pork barrel pasta.

Politics are a thing that happens in Congress. No, that is a good point. You were doing it differently. You were earmarking the chicken peril politics.

Right, yeah. For Genevieve. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, coming up next, what food can we eat the most of?

We was hoping for some razzle-dazzle. Razzle-dazzle. That's right, man. Razzle-dazzle.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody razzle-dazzle.

Oh, look what time it is. It's time to thank some dazzling donors These Wonderful, supportive, awesome People can send us Any kind of article they want Andrew

Why are you looking at me?

I was just pointing into the camera for emphasis

I was reading the dazzling donor thing I'm not the one who went After the listeners earlier today Let's see here Chex Notes co-host These are the financial

and not just financial but the lifeblood of tbtl in multiple ways because there's the financial piece which is which is significant but there's also just the like interacting with us the coming out to things that we throw the um you know hanging out with the stens and the tens and all of that like and and there's nobody who's been to more things or been more central than our friend danny kuntz who's in little rock arkansas indeed we've visited with danny in multiple states the pronouncer Danny says I think Luke knows he's always been correct before thank you that's the only name I can say that that I've always been correct on you know I was going to

try to I was going to try to spoof on like mispronouncing Koontz which is spelled K-O-O-N-C-E but there is a county in New Hampshire that is called Coas County but it's spelled C-O-O-S And it's another one of those kind of local things People from the outside come in They're like oh you're going to Coos County And you're like dude it's not Coos County Come on act like you've been here before it's code Gotcha Yeah exactly

Danny says I'd like to encourage Luke to read or watch the Tennessee Williams play Or movie A Streetcar Named Desire The movie stars Marlon Brando and Vivian Lee It's set in New Orleans Oh Danny Oh Danny boy The burbs is way ahead of ya I love that movie. It's incredible.

Because, I mean, not to get too personal here, but Carrie was a huge Marlon Brando head, right? Huge, huge. Did you guys watch all those movies together?

Yeah, it's what broke up the marriage.

Yeah, she was too big of a fan.

But weirdly, it was Island of Dr. Moreau era Marlon Brando.

Yeah, it was.

I simply could not match. She's a cut's head. Yeah, exactly. That's right. I couldn't keep up. She would come home and I would be in a dark cave ladling water over my bald head going Blanche Dubois is the character who says I've always depended on the kindness of strangers Now I wonder if Danny is mentioning that because I think I've attributed that line to somebody else mistakenly I also have mixed up I think I mixed up Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Streetcar Named Desire recently I can't remember if that was on this show or just out in the world But Streetcar Named Desires is a very, very compelling play and movie. Danny says, I've been a listener since the very beginning. I was a fan of Luke's since the Bryant Park Project. I did not, I mean, I'm not kidding. I did not know there were any listeners to that. And yet sometimes I'll hear from TBTL fans that they found out about me from the Bryant. I just like, I looked at the data. Well, first of all, I quit the show. I officially quit the show before it started but they made me stick around for like a month of the show and it just felt like it wasn't making an impact on the culture so to the degree that it at least got on Danny's radar I'm stoked about that can I ask you a question I was looking ahead

here to see if it comes back to um Streetcar Named Desire um and you mentioning and confusing it with the uh Cat on a Hot Tin Roof which I don't think I've seen the second one tell me if I'm right about this um street car named desire that is stella famously right there's several there and also people from people from poland aren't polacks they're poles he yells that that's on the water front i think oh is that on the waterfront okay yeah those are the two walls stanley

kolowski no kowalski kowalski i could that's i could have been somebody i could have been a

contender i think you're right i think that's exactly what i sort of getting at i knew there's another movie i think they're both black and white and they're both with marlon brando that i get them in a very you know young super hot marlon brando um just want to really let's just take a moment to respect that carl havoc i mean oh well let's not get ahead of ourselves uh but anyway yeah so i do thank you for saying that because i think those are the two movies i sort of start to conflate in my head a little bit

And I think, let's see, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof film, is Newman in that one? Yeah. So in fairness to me and other people who've confused it, these are both Tennessee Williams. If we take On the Waterfront and we put that off to the side, if you take Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Streetcar Named Desire, they're both Tennessee Williams. One of them stars Marlon Brando and one of them stars Paul Newman. You could really jumble this up in your mind Because there's a lot of Kind of similarity there Who wrote them The general vibe and the Incredible hunkiness Of the two male leads And by the way, the female leads Ain't no slouches A young Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof No, that I have not seen And then Vivian Lee, of course, from Psycho In Streetcar Named Desire Okay, so Danny says I've been a listener since the very beginning I was a fan of Luke's in the Bryant Park Project Parenthetically, if you want to see something funny Watch Luke play ping pong with Mike Huckabee Who at the time was my governor And a much more moderate man I, until I read this line Completely forgot that I did play ping pong With then-Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee

Janet Leigh, sorry Just gotta say it, not Vivian Leigh Oh, did I say Vivian Leigh? Yeah, just for the record

So Janet Leigh is Psycho and Vivian Leigh is I think Gone with the Wind Gone with the Wind, yes

thank you um and stan lee is the hulk and stan lee as the hulk right i got lee's on my head but

don't call me a lee head bruce lee's on my head okay um i forgot that i did play ping pong with mike huckabee and this was of course because this was at the time the bryant park project low those 20 years ago when we were at we were so far outside the box andrew we almost couldn't even see the box from where we were like oh mike huckabee other people are like interviewing about like you know policy but i'm gonna just like play ping pong with him and get him out of his comfort

zone the reason i'm distracted right now is because i'm um looking for i'm looking for the video of it which is fun and i'm guessing it doesn't exist anymore because i doubt that npr wants to pay for the server space but you know what i preserve you know what i find when i google it quickly is a blog post from the Bryant Park Project apparently you guys were maybe going on a break or something and the headline is we're not regurgitating we're recycling uh which was written on September 27th 2007 by one Dan Pashman ah long time friend of yours and friend of the

show and I think I had probably had I already like was I even physically was burbs even in the

building or had burbank left the building at that by 2007 yeah you might have been just well because

it's the end of 2007 and now remember tbtl starts in january of 2008 yeah so the door is probably just hitting the door is about to hit me where the good lord split me exactly that's something they say down in arkansas danny knows that danny says when i started listening i didn't know what a podcast was neither did we uh but i listened to live on cairo.com and then in the three-part podcast form which means six hours of listening when andrew got his own show oh cool uh bottom line i'm super proud to be a dazzling donor for the first time all the best danny danny thank you yeah thank you so much man we really appreciate you and thanks for donating a significant yes chunk of change to the show um to keep it going it really when we went independent last year the number of people who kind of i think uh maybe out of fear jumped up to the dazzling donor level to say like let's keep this thing going was really heartening because it really felt like well somebody somebody up there loves us that's also is that also is that Newman somebody up there somebody up there likes me is that the Rocky I believe that Rocky Graziano story which is not actually the Rocky that Sylvester Sloan based Rocky off of but I think it's called somebody

up there likes me oh really no I had no idea I thought you were spoofing no I think there's a

movie called somebody up there likes me and uh let's see yeah it's uh starring paul newman based on the life of middleweight boxing legend rocky graziano oh okay but look at you if but

yeah come on that's how you land those npr gigs like brian just not just not the difference between a vivian lee and a janet my i know i know there was something when you said i googled that you said you said vivian lee and there was something that just seemed slightly off so i i will say that i googled that on the fly i just figured save the listeners some time and

no i appreciate it honestly if we can fact check these things in real time i think i think seriously that's like the best way to do it uh although you it's lightning fast how quickly people can

write a correct yeah i know somehow in the time between we haven't even posted the show yet and somehow somebody's already writing that email when do we get a kickback from the mobile phone

companies of the world can we you know oh yeah a lot of shows have an amazon store

Like if you click through, like the Wirecutter in the New York Times, which I read all the time for my reviews, they'll have a click through where if I go buy that thing somewhere, they're getting a cut of it. We need that for when people have to throw their phone.

Do you read Wirecutter? Like for me, Wirecutter is just. I just read it for the articles. See, that's where you and I are different. Ooh, la la. I like to do the classic thing where I'm holding it vertically. vertically i spread it out vertically and you walk in and i'm just looking at look at this hot water heater i'm looking at a brother printer um i uh no i was gonna ask you do you read it when you're not in the market for something for me wire cutter is nothing but a tool like i don't read that as a column just like oh that's kind of interesting if i were in the market for these hot water heaters like do you actually just read it to stay up on things or is it just when you're going to buy something you use it as shopper's guide purely when i'm about to buy something yeah

me too and and i mean although that's still because i buy a lot of things that that means i'm there you know pretty frequently i was there the other day andrew i don't know if they actually i don't know if they actually had this but i was trying to figure out the best home ice cream maker oh because of the conversation by the way danny thank you so much um the conversation that you and i had regarding this big bag of frozen costco fruit that i have i almost said put it on ice

cream but i was like well that kind of defeats the purpose i was sitting i was sitting there

thinking you know me i'm i'm mr homesteader now i'm you know what i had for dinner last night i got the rest of that rice out i i threw it in the pan i kind of warmed it up sauteed it up a little bit threw in a little fresh garlic chopped up some onions and then tossed that in the um actually know what i want to tell you about this believe around rice talk well it's not just it's not a one day thing andrew it's a multiple day event but i need to thank our next dazzling donor so maestro

there's more story to tell on your mark get set get set now ready ready go everybody rattle

i was going to tell you about rice at the top of the show and my pans this is really andrew this isn't a story about rice this is a story about stainless steel pans human condition But then we sort of got into our hot dog talk early, so now we've moved that to the back 10% of the program. First, though, we've got to thank Michelle and Mike Rudowitz. Excuse me, Rundowitz. It's right there, Andrew. Right there. Mike and Michelle Rundowitz, who are in San Jose, California.

Oh, San Jose. I love Go Giants. It's their AA team, I think.

I got a San Jose Giants hat so just the Giants they're not the like yeah and they are a feeder

team mighty Giants and they're this and they're a feeder team for the San Francisco Giants so it looks almost they have the same colors but the logo is different don't they go like isn't there

usually some kind of a clever play on the like sometimes there's a play on the major league name team or it's how rare is that that the minor league team is just named the same as the major league team as opposed to like you know the modesto nuts right exactly ever arkansas travelers yeah

yeah i wanted i'll double check myself here but it does look like yeah san jose giants it seems rare to me it seems confusing to me i don't i'm not in a position to say how rare it is because i don't follow the minors but it definitely seems confusing to me as i can speak as a dumb person who's easily confused and um just naming your i want to see are they oh they're single a affiliate so they're single a so they're they're down there is such luke honestly one of my favorite baseball going experiences first of all it was the first time i'd ever been to san jose and i'm not just saying this to be to patronize michelle and mike i immediately loved san jose it was like everything that i sort of liked about la and everything that i sort of liked about uh um seattle now that was just a quick drive through the town i have no idea if anything i just said is accurate but that's what it felt like in the moment then we go to the single a baseball game and it was like it was somewhere between a you know it was like a somewhere between a college game and a minor

league game it was so much fun one of my favorite memories i i think i've told you my recent san jose experience uh not that i experienced it recently like being there but it but but i was watching some kind of because you know i'm looking at tick tock a lot of the time and i i saw a couple of uh it was i i want to say it was like carissa thompson and aaron andrews who are both like sportscasters you know both kind of like sideline reporters one of them was telling a story about having been having done a game probably it was a niners game you know so it was in the general bay area but they were flying out of san jose that'll happen sometimes you know you'll be because SFO isn't convenient for whatever. reason and the story that was being told between the two people was this like how wild it was that after the game because they had some time between when the game ended and all the broadcast stuff was done and when their flight was so they had all this time to kill so they end up going to this casino in san jose and the way the story is being told is like can you believe we went to this grimy san jose casino and hung out and had beers and watched the sunday night game or whatever and i thought i love that casino that's where i always go and you know it actually i thought you were

I'm just going to say it sounds like a wonderful place. Oh, yeah.

No, no, no. It is a wonderful place. I had bad luck there, but it's a wonderful. Like, I just thought it was – they were telling the story like, can you believe we did this? And I was thinking, yeah, I can believe it. It's one of the reasons I fly out of San Jose sometimes. Kill a little time at that. There's like a casino like 10 minutes from the airport in San Jose that, you know, again, I wish they had more games. That has to do more with the state of California and what's allowable in terms of table games and such. But that's when I think of Michelle and Mike Rundowitz. I think of the fact that I am a D-Gen and that the people that call the big football games can't believe, they could never, ever live this life, Andrew. Mm-hmm, I know. Michelle and Mike say, Hi, Luke and Andrew. We're longtime listeners and donors, but first-time dazzlers. Hey, let me put down my coffee pot on that bell. Thank you. we always enjoy your banter on both funny and serious topics and we often listen while cooking dinner with our very young five Caledyn we don't have a business or anything to plug but would encourage the tens out there to try eating and buying plant based options whenever possible Andrew I would like to say

I chose this dazzling donor message yesterday long before I knew that Joey Chestnut would be rocking the headlines with a plant-based story.

And you don't believe in a plant-based dog. It's good for the animals, good for the planet, and good for your health. So this is amazing. So, Andrew, I started off by saying, I don't know who these part-time plant-based consumers are. And you pointed out you and Genevieve, so you gave me two concrete examples. And I said, yeah, but it's only you, you weirdos. And now Michelle and Mike are like, sounds to me like I don't know what their plan is but they're certainly advocating for the idea of going a little plant based when the option presents itself and I heartily agree Michelle and Mike and Kaladin with that we'll leave you with this AI message based only on the prompt write me a funny message to go along with our donation to the TBTL

podcast okay I have not pre-read this here we go so can you do in a robot voice or is that no

robot Bill Clinton maybe so to AI write me a funny message to go along with our donation to the TBTL podcast here's what AI came up with hey TBTL crew we are thrilled to contribute to the cause of keeping you guys in enough coffee and therapy sessions to keep the laughs coming consider this donation our vote for more ridiculous games impromptu singing and Luke's laugh attacks keep making our commutes and workouts tolerable thanks for being our

daily dose of humor and sanity end quote thank you michelle and mike for your donation it's so funny that's just laugh attack yes i was like there's no way that's a real laugh

well it just says yeah i forgot about laughing and loose but i was so thing though i was so

focused on my performance there that i was a little bit lost as to what you were doing it was good

but here's the thing if if it's if it is really the case that michelle and mike simply put in write a funny message to go along with our donation to the tbtl podcast that this ai went out and it actually figured out some things about tbtl like it was able to because this not is because like you know what i mean it's not just a general write us a funny message to go with our donation to this podcast it's not like there's specifics in here that are not exactly us but they're adjacent to us enough coffee and therapy sessions when we talk about therapy or i have in the past i you know we talk about coffee our friend barry at broadcast coffee and stuff like that um ridiculous games impromptu singing i do sing in an impromptu fashion sometimes so i don't

really have laugh attacks but like hey andrew that's kind of my thing yeah sorry here here's i'm gonna say some i don't want to hurt your feelings but i had an immediate different interpretation of this and may i hope you're right maybe you're right maybe the ai like put some feelers out on the internet to learn what tbtl is i read this as oh we're not doing anything that different like this oh we are though

do i thought this was just like a generic what like what we probably do a couple of dudes on a podcast probably do this now they didn't apparently say a couple of dudes hosting a podcast so you're right maybe maybe you're right i hope i'm just wrong and and self-loathing um but i read that as like oh wow they just wrote a random podcast description and it sounds like

what we do but you're saying you are wrong and ironically this will add to yourself

loaded you can't that's where i win no you can't go any lower i you know i consume by way of the

internet now a lot of podcasts that are a couple of dudes talking and they really aren't like this at least you know there are some of them but but but they're well they're usually better and they usually involve you know maybe famous comedians or whatever but like truthfully what we're doing Five days a week is I think slightly outside of the norm Just in that most people That are doing this kind of show Would have never found a fan base and would have run out of steam A long time ago and here we are doing it Five days a week which I think puts us in a slightly Unique category and also we do have I think A fairly decent Digital footprint at this point internet Footprint just from doing it so 4,226 times So I read this to be if an AI program knows there's a podcast is being sent on a mission to go find out about the podcast called tbtl it just runs around the internet picking up little data points about the show that makes more articles yeah i mean they're all kind of wrong like again i don't have as far as i know many laugh attacks it's probably more me honestly um and and uh keeping you guys in enough coffee and therapy sessions to keep the laughs coming again that's sort of again it's sort of adjacent to us it's not exactly our vibe um but it's interesting nonetheless it's i guess what i'm saying is it's better than i would expect based on that prompt it's more on it's more on the nose than i would

expect based on that prompt now you've you've convinced me i've come around and andrew's

classic being convinced by luke it's another it's another tent and classic luke misrepresenting

headlines on the important topics of the day no you were right about that though i think that was

a decent clarification. Although, I am mad, though.

Actually, I kind of gave up. I am surprised that I can't find... And Andrew's classic giving up. I need to not give up. I need to re not give up.

Always be re

not giving up. Wait, never not be re giving up. Not giving up. But I want to find that full statement because I swear I just re-read the article that I thought they specifically said we have plant-based options and now I cannot find heads or tails of that. and this is the internet. Like, I don't have a newspaper that, I mean, they update and change these stories. I think the story I was reading was ESPN, and that's no longer in that story, and now I'm trying to figure out, did I start this show with the whole premise of an argument that is actually off base, and now I'm looking for the, I need to find full Nathan's statement on Joey Chestnut.

Well, I mean, here's, let's see here.

Oh, no, I didn't mean to get us back to this. I'm just saying I'm having self-doubt and loathing.

I'm just trying to find, let's see, include six of, I'm trying to find out, here's the easiest way to solve this. Does Nathan's sell a plant-based hot dog? And they do, apparently. The Nathan's famous online grocery shop, the kit retails for $44.99 and includes six Nathan's famous meatless farm hot dogs.

There you go. Yeah, I was pretty sure.

Nathan's famous debuts plant-based hot dogs. So that, to me, that makes sense that they would have said it in that article because if they do make that product, which they do, then I think I feel confident that you're not losing your damn mind.

I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. But now that I'm looking for this again, there's another thing that as I was reading this yesterday, before I knew we were going to talk about it on the show, frankly, I didn't think you would put it on the show. But there was a quote in here, apparently the Joey Chestnut, I'm sorry, the Nathan side of thing also put this in their statement. It would be like back in the day, Michael Jordan coming to Nike who made his Air Jordans and saying, I'm just going to rep Adidas too. Okay, that's a better quote than the one I read originally. Somebody had paraphrased it as something like, that's like Michael Jordan talking about how great Nike is to Adidas or something. and I thought there was a pretty – I was going to rely on you as the sportsman to tell me if that was a tortured comparison or not.

I think that that comparison kind of works except for this. I had to Google does Nathan's hot dog make a plant-based one. It is definitely not like their basketball shoe of what they do, if that makes sense. In other words, it's like – I think that that's a very, very small part of their business. And so, um, that's the only place the analogy, kind of, the comparison slightly

breaks down is that it's like nike making a basketball shoe and adidas making a basketball shoe although truthfully adidas is also not really known for their basketball shoes they're more like tennis and stuff i used to have adidas torsion do you remember when torsion no what wasn't just something you were worried was going to happen to your testicles but was a whoa whoa i don't even

know what you don't know about torsion no but i'm honestly i can do my own research this is anatomical

This is not sexual If the testicle becomes sometimes twisted Internally And part of the blood flow can be cut off That's called torsion And you want to avoid that if at all possible

I'm going to

But I think torsion just speaks to Kind of like a It also speaks to a way that What's the word I'm looking for I had these Adidas torsion tennis shoes And they had this Basically like plastic eye beam that ran through the middle of the sole of the shoe and the way it was from toes to heel right from toes to heel yeah basically like from yeah not the entire length of the shoe not from like the back of the heel to the front of the toe but imagine like mid-heel to like the ball of your foot kind of thing yeah and it was this i think andre agassi might have been their spokesperson and i was a real i wasn't even a tennis guy i just thought andre agassi had it freaking together when i was a kid he had that rock and roll hairdo he had that that look at me lifestyle he was doing those nikon rebel ads and he was dating brooke shields and i was just like my goodness and he

and you knew that he was wearing a wig this is something that i just learned recently and because i was very confused veves and i were talking about a commercial from back in the day that he did for those rebel for that rebel camera and there were two guys who looked alike and one had male pattern baldness and one had long locks and i knew the guy with the long locks was agassi but i was really confused as to who this other guy was in the commercial and i almost said like is that agassi but what do they shave male pattern baldness into his head like how did they make that so realistic and people were like no no this was a whole scandal well i knew by the way i definitely knew

that agassi was losing his hair i don't did he i i think i lost the plot a little bit on if he actually fully was wearing like a toupee i just thought that he was his hair was thinning as happens and so he was wearing a lot of like creative bandanas and growing his hair way out and kind of styling it away where there was less and less hair on top but he was kind of throwing out a lot of distraction and again wearing a lot of kind of performance headwear that that kind of masked it until finally he just decided this is a hassle he just shaved it all and then still played tennis very effectively for many years but it really went from like oh he's got that bleach blonde rock and roll hair to like oh dude has no hair and apparently i mean he did and then so

listen a bunch of listeners wrote in to be like oh there's a whole thing he he wore a wig he later like talked about it how it actually even affected his play like he was rocking a wig i don't think

i realized it was ever an actual wig i think i thought he was just trying to kind of um you know As I've done in my life by the way So no shame in this game You just kind of like try to comb your hair In a more flattering way Or put some kind of powder product in Or do all this stuff I thought that was I didn't realize he went to the extent Of a literal wig That seems like that would be The worst to try to play tennis in

It seems to be that way According to the listeners of After These Messages Who I trust implicitly

I don't know There are no TBTL10s When it comes to accuracy um anyway andrew back to rice talk oh yeah before we wrap things up today uh you know what i did uh last night was i got the leftover rice out that i had cooked very effectively the day before and i uh chopped up some some onions and i got that whole thing going again and it was um you know made a nice little kind of yummy rice dish and then this is what i was in the mood for i don't know if i was trying to channel my inner like korean restaurant or something But when I went to Costco I bought a bunch of eggs I have not made an egg I've never made an egg in this house And I've been here for a couple of years now It's weird, I like fried eggs I never think to make them One, because I don't eat breakfast usually But I just thought, you know what would be great On top of this rice as a protein A couple of well-made, like, over-easy eggs Where you crack, you know You cut into them with a fork And then the yolk just kind of distributes through the rice Are you into that move at all?

Yeah, I like to make I also like to make homemade fried rice, which I haven't done much since I've been in this house because our stove is so bad that walks don't really work very well on them. But I, for a while there, got my fried rice, and you're supposed to do exactly what you did, which is, like, the best fried rice is if you don't just – Day-old rice, right? Yeah, it should be day-old rice. Then you saute it up. And so you're obviously putting a little bit of egg in that anyway. But one of my favorite things is the next day when I have leftover, like, fried rice, especially if it's homemade, I will take that fried rice. I will then. cook exactly as you said like some sort of like over easy eggs and then me personally i'll if i have some kielbasa uh or or even better if i have like um what is the the classic hawaiian sausage oh spam uh well spam is good but i was thinking of the the sausage anyway people know what i'm talking about anyway portuguese sausage that's exactly it yeah and like fry that up with some really loose eggs and put pile it all on top of the rice and then as you cut the things everything that's almost like minus the gravy

is that like a moco loco kind of a vibe

it's kind of interesting yeah a little bit

so I was all excited to do this the mariners were on I've got these fancy ass caraway pans that I've purchased at great expense that we when we did the crossover show with text me back I was reading the directions for these things I you know these are the most expensive pans I've ever purchased in my life and I mean they're not I don't know where they they're somewhere like north of the of the regular pans you might just get at like target like a you know a box that you get all of them in which is maybe a hundred bucks or something they're north of that and they're south of like a really nice you know you go to williams sonoma and you buy some sort of lake crusade situation but to me they seem pretty expensive and and um so i expected them to just be like the best pans i've ever used well i think i confuse stainless steel with non-stick and the thing is stainless steel is very much not nonstick it's stick yeah and those directions i was reading you and lindy and megan about water and heating up and we all agreed i was just going to ignore all those directions well i ignored them at my own peril last night because i like get the pan going i put some butter in there i've got all these eggs that i have from costco and i'm like you know like crack the first egg into the pan and it's sizzling away and then i go to move it with the spatula and just locked on sports just absolutely attached to the base of the pan and then i was like well maybe there's not enough butter so i put like another giant dollop of butter in i just scrambled that egg i'm like okay fine you i'm just and i put that on a plate and then I'm like I put two more eggs in and like I'm able to get one of them one of them breaks when I try to flip it it's just like no hope but it stays kind of together so one of them is like over hard and then the other I actually managed to get it flipped over and it cooks over easy and I somehow get them into the the rice so I sort of have two eggs one over hard and one that actually the yolk was sort of perfect but I immediately ran to the internet to figure out What is going on with this? And it turns out all that shit, you really have to do that with the stainless steel. You've got to, like, heat it up to this very specific temperature that's not too hot and not too cold. And then you drop some water on it. And then if that water forms like a ball and moves around the pot or the pan, rather, that's the right temperature. And now we're in the zone where it is supposedly nonstick. Oh, interesting. And then you throw your butter on or whatever your ghee or your kind of fat is. And then you supposedly can cook on this thing like a regular nonstick pan. But boy, oh boy, it was it was not what I was hoping for last night.

Are these like really heavy bottomed? Because I here's why I ask. And this is probably just something we should text about and not put on the show. But like, you know, obviously I have like a skillet that is a cast iron skillet. We talked a lot about that as I sort of like kind of reclaimed it a couple of summers ago or like kind of refinished it. and everything but then I have something else that I call a skillet which it is a skillet but it is stainless steel like you're describing I'm pretty sure it's a pretty expensive pan that Genevieve bought at one point kind of a bigger one and then a medium-sized one and they're very heavy bottom but they're not cast iron they're stainless steel but they act like a skillet in that way that like you have to like you have to it takes a kind of a long time for it to heat up because it's such a thick bottom but once it's heated up it also contains that heat for a long time so like you can't be i can't just turn the heat on it down quickly and have it react quickly you know what i mean i'm sort of locked in are they like that they're not super heavy okay so

it but it is i i think there's some of that going on i by the way i ended up seasoning this pan yeah i don't know if it'll work or not but like you know i went down a whole internet situation yesterday so what i ended up doing with this particular pan was cleaning it then putting you know heating it to a certain temperature and then putting vegetable oil in it and then waiting till the vegetable oil just hit its smoke point and then taking it off and then letting it cool and then dumping the vegetable oil and then wiping the whole thing out with a paper towel that works with stainless steel too according to somebody on the internet i'll tell you next time i try to fry

an egg yeah i mean because i mean yeah even i don't even like frying eggs i'm like because i know that people who really use their cast iron and i just have never been able to crack this nut like even after all of the stripping and re-seasoning and when i say stripping i mean i did it just

totally naked just totally naked so that it wasn't grease burns from the bacon yeah it's the way i felt alive never bounce back it was just like the only way i could feel

life um but uh no even after all the stripping and seasoning and everything and now i'm very careful with how i use the pan and like and not like overly scrubbing it and not introducing soap into it or whatever i still am not i have seen people i've gone to people's houses or people like kind of brought food over and their cast iron is has been so lovingly used and naturally seasoned over time that you could literally crack an egg in there with a little bit of butter and it would be nonstick and i just don't i just i can't get you just have a nonstick pan that you cook eggs yeah we have some nonstick pan we just have a menagerie of pans i'm debating just like

buying an which is so silly because the whole point of this pan situation was i'm in pans

labyrinth andrew it ain't fun because the whole idea was what that's about i knew it was scary i

didn't know it was this scary it is it's about eggs that keeps sticking to the pan um but in Guillermo del Toro's classic style I mean the idea that I have to Just buy a nonstick pan To just keep on hand for when I want To cook an egg it's kind of a bummer to me because I Wanted to have this whole I mean again We'll see I'm actually Because I'm in one of those periods Of kind of like sort of growth Andrew where I'm like How do I put it When I'm coming up against a challenge I'm Trying to see what can I learn from this And so like Like last night when I found out that this stainless steel pan was not going to work for these eggs, what I would normally do would be, first of all, go write the Yelp review of a lifetime on the Caraway website and see, can I just mail this shit back or be like, I want a refund or maybe more likely buy a whole different set of nonstick pans in the mail off of Instagram and just put these ones somewhere else and just be like, well, failed experiment. But instead I was like okay people do cook eggs on these this must happen What's the process? How do they do it? Can I learn the process and can I become good at instead of just blaming the product and just going Or instead of just going well this will never happen for me going well how do I fix this? With keeping these you know these pots that I paid a bunch of money for in pans rather in my life So I'm going to continue trying I'm going to try to figure out the exact temperature I'm going to try to figure out if seasoning works and and I'm going to keep you all posted breathlessly, you know, week in and week out as to how it's going.

Well, let me ask one more earnest question about this. What does Becca say about all this? She's like amongst us.

Well, she's the one that told me these were worth buying, but I think, honestly, she just wanted to change the topic.

You were just like, I don't know. I was just on one.

I think I said something like, what do you know about this Carraway stuff? Because she just has like, I don't know, she has normal pants at her house, and she's seriously the best cook I've ever met.

That's why I'm asking. Yeah, because she knows this. I mean, you and I, I feel silly if she or so many people in our audience know way more about this than both of us combined. Like what is it like when you tell her about how these pans sort of cook and react? Does she have advice?

Well, I mean, I think she probably has. She doesn't have like a crazy fancy set of cooking implements. I think she has probably pretty standard. Maybe it is just like nonstick or maybe she just knows the temperature. But I asked her, I was like, what have you heard about these caraway pans? And she said, oh, they're – she goes, well, my mom has one and really likes it. Now, what I didn't realize at the time was there's a range of stuff that this company makes. They make a bunch of ones that are nonstick. You know what I mean? Like they – and a regular-ass nonstick pan probably works exactly the way you think it will. I, because of aesthetics and being adult, not adult, A-D-U-L-T. Oh, actually, I needed that. D-O-L-T, because I am, in fact, a – Dolt. Dolt. I literally did not realize that stainless steel pans were not non-stick. I did not realize that. So she might have been referencing a non-stick pan made by this company that her mother owns. So I did not do my due diligence per always. And now instead of, but here's the thing, Andrew, this is what's different about New Luke. Instead of just tossing these things or again, giving up on the project, I'm going to see if I can learn how to use these Because here's the thing that's, here's the good thing about stainless steel. They don't have any weird chemicals on them. The nonstick stuff. Ah, yeah. The nonstick stuff, in order for it to nonstick, you're spraying some, you know, there's a pretty un, in the words of Sam Smith, there's something unholy on those nonstick pans. That's how they're able to be nonstick. Also, supposedly, you sometimes have a tough time getting a good sear. Not that I make a ton of steaks, but if I was going to try, you can't get as good a sear on nonstick because that nonstick material, which keeps things from sticking, also keeps the heat from doing what you wanted to do to, say, a steak. And also, you can put stainless steel in the oven very easily. It doesn't, in fact, it works great. So there are some pluses to stainless steel, and then there are some drawbacks. And what I'm going to try to do is breathe through the drawback.

Learn how to use these things and, you know, be okay with that as opposed to just cutting and running, which is my typical response to any sort of mild challenge in my life.

Well, you know, as I mentioned, our pans, we'll just keep pan talk going on a little bit longer here. We don't have, like, kind of any consistency with our pans. Like, we have, you know, like, various pans we've collected over the years, although they have increased in quality. Like I said, Genevieve invested in these, like, heavy bottom stainless steel nonstick skillets. They make the rock and roll go around. They certainly do. I am certainly going to – I need fried rice for lunch in some way. I'm trying to figure out exactly what I'm going to do here. Do I just make it for dinner tonight? I've got to figure this out. But, you know, we have my cast iron – or our cast iron skillet. I shouldn't say mine. Genevieve is the one who found it in the first place. But then we have various pans. My point is every now and then I like to remind you of things that we've sponsored on this show and tell the listeners it wasn't bullshit. One of my favorite pans is by that company Made In. Oh, dude, I got a knife from them, and it's so good. I still use it. It's so good. Now, they make both stainless steel and nonstick, and this one happens to be a nonstick pan. It is like one of my favorite pans. Now, I don't know enough about this stuff. If I dig deep enough, if they have the same issues as Carraway or whatever. I know that you said there was a New York Times article that was sort of kind of a takedown of Carraway lately.

Well, I don't think it was specific Carraway, although I still haven't read it. I think I'm not ready for that hard truth. I think it was a number of products. I don't think it was, for what it's worth, I don't think it was aimed squarely at that company. I think that was part of a larger conversation.

Okay, gotcha. So anyway, I just knew that listeners were like, uh-oh, don't let Luke see this. But anyway, I loved my made-in pan, for whatever that's worth. That's such a bad way to end the show. Can we come up, what's a better way to end the show? Anything more entertaining than me just like meandering and sort of just petering out on a pan I like?

I feel like that's fine. I mean, the listeners are used to it. Honestly, if they're – this is another – Andrew, this is another hour and 30-minute show that we turned in. Do you have any more jokes? Anything that happens after the one-hour mark, I consider it to just be bonus content.

You're just – you know what? If you're listening after the one-hour mark, you're just eavesdropping on me and Luke. And you are the one who has some issues. That's – honestly, like, you're crossing a boundary there. But thank you for donating. We do appreciate it. But also, yes, thank you very much. And next year, we can consider charging extra for the last hour, but that's the TBTL private reserve. Ooh, I like that. We use different barrels to age this TBTL content. Tomorrow, Andrew, let's discuss these, okay?

What are you holding up there to the screen? Blink 182. They passed away, and these are their cremains. No, blink cameras from Amazon.com.

Oh, like security cameras or cameras for podcasting?

I mean, security, do we call it security? I just want to know, like when I'm not here, I just want to know, like, did a package get delivered, stuff like that. But I had these Google cameras that they've just all died on me, like literally just stopped working at various points. But the reason I think this is kind of interesting is because I ordered these, and then, Andrew, I started reading on the internet about what a bad idea they are.

The careway of security cameras. The careway of security cameras. Anyway. You have to let them heat up to the perfect. That's right.

You put water on them, and if it forms a little ball, you know that it's recording somebody trying to steal stuff off your porch. Yeah, that's right. Thanks for listening, everyone. We're going to be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. In the meantime, have an amazing Wednesday. Take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

I'm 36 years old, and I just now realized that Stephen Malkin, at the end of Cut Your Hair by Pavements, is not saying Korea, Korea, Korea. He's saying career, career, career. I can't believe I went this long without knowing that.

Power out.