Muse

Now, I made you a very special dish. It's spaghetti, but instead of meatballs, it's raisin balls. They look the same, but they taste very different. Do you want to know what they symbolize?

Uh, yes.

So I'm the kind of gal who tries to make the best of things. And since meatballs will never ever exist again, I said, Carol, get your hands up, grab some raisins, and you smash them into a ball, girl. I know we're not each other's soulmates. Parentheses, meatballs. But if we give it a little effort, perhaps we can make it work, huh? Parentheses, raisin balls. So we might as well dig into the raisin balls, parentheses, life we've been given. These don't. These have turned. You might want to just eat around them. Yeah.

for the number one show in hospitals and on sinking riverboat casinos.

This is about respect. This is about personal space. This is about the violation. Hey, skip to the end. Got it. Here's the long and short of it. Someone has been touching my karaoke machine.

This is Mr. T, and I want to tell you, out there in radio land, you better keep listening to this station. And if you don't, I'm coming after you.

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

Feast your ear tongues on these memory pops.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. And I'm going to get all anecdotal on you. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it is an absolutely spectacular summer day here. Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. Well, sky is blue, the trees are green, the black standard poodle is sprawled out on the rug.

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

Things are going pretty well up here, I must say. That's right, I'm on day two of dog duty with Gigi, the standard poodle. And it has awakened, it has reawakened my dogological clock, I'll tell you what. So that might come up in the program. I know some other things that are going to be talked about here on episode 4,250 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. The rant and rave that I saw in the Seattle Times this morning that just absolutely stopped me in my tracks. It sent a chill through me. It involved sky jinx. Sky jinx. And a rave for a behavior by the TSA that is my idea of absolute hell.

You've got to be kidding me.

I was shocked by this. We will talk about it. That's the number one. We have that drop. This is the number one show on sinking riverboats. The number one thing we talk about on this show is the rant and rave column in the Seattle Times. That's how you know you're listening to a emergent, insurgent, youthful program when mostly we talk about the rants and raves in the local paper. And we always, of course, talk to this guy, the longest running cobro of the show, Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships and his absolute razor, his razor sharp wit that he brings to the show each morning. I'm joking. I'm joking. He's Andrew Walsh, and he is joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. Don't worry about that pause there. That was just me unmuting my microphone, remembering how to do this show.

Well, you've been through a lot in the last 24 hours. Since we last spoke, you had a doctor's appointment where you were just absolutely just chugging the Gatorade, hoping to be able to provide a blood sample if necessary. Then you were meeting with a surgeon this morning. I mean, you've had a lot going on. I'm amazed that you even remembered how to turn your microphone on.

I have been navigating the modern medical system, Luke. And my problem, my worry here is, is that I have too many stories from the world of medicine to share with you today. I will try to keep them interesting. I will try to keep them brief-ish. How does that sound? Brief-ish?

Well, here's what I have to offer today for content. I've been enjoying walking the dog. So now I've got that out of my system. We should move on to your pressing medical needs, which I do think, while a HIPAA violation on yourself, are much more interesting than the fact that I'm enjoying having a dog in my life once again.

I feel like, so I haven't told you this yet, but one of the things that we'll be building up to here is that I do have a date to go under the knife, Luke. Under the knife, as I like to say it. We knew that that was coming, and I'm happy with this development, but I will be having carpal tunnel surgery next Wednesday morning, and I'm so psyched. I will tell you later about how happy I am about this doctor I go to, the surgeon that I go to he's the guy who operated on

my hands when they were broken yeah it's interesting you have a hand guy and now I just have a hand guy exactly um I will not tell you the type of banter I have been going I have been engaging with with Genevieve about the language I might use when I say I need a job done on my hand um I will save that I will save that nothing comes to mind for a family-friendly the podcast what does that drop we have to walk it right up to the line of the FCC um I will tell you about that in a moment um oh I was gonna say though my guess is you will own your own dog by the time I am uh breathing whatever gas they give me to knock me out for that surgery by this time

next week there will be I will somehow have acquired a dog it's tempting I just my my travel schedule during you know the busier seasons for me is just so the whole reason i got a cat which i've now foisted onto my girlfriend is because i wanted a dog that was a little more a little more able to take care of itself i wanted a pet but i wasn't i i knew that it would be irresponsible for me to get a dog turned out i guess it would also be irresponsible for me to get a cat yeah i

should have started with gerbil probably an ant farm if you take care of the ant farm luke then

you can get a durable the cat has been out here but um one of the times the cat was here it she got into the floor and i thought that she had escaped down the hill and was already being eaten by a mountain lion was very traumatic so yeah uh but yes i'm definitely i was trying to do the math yesterday on some universe in which i could have a dog and that universe doesn't currently exist it may someday and that will be that will be a fun day for me and hey in the meantime i was gonna

gonna say don't sleep on plushies but actually you can sleep on plushies if they're soft every night you can use them as a pillow you haven't seen my bedroom exactly so um can can we though

can we actually rewind yeah let's rewind let's start with yesterday because the the first thing and again i don't want to set you up for talking about anything on the medical side of life that you actually don't want to get into or don't feel comfortable so you have you can uh demure on any of these questions but yesterday you were after the show going to like your regular doctor and this is the guy that you've been trying to sort of convince for a while that there's more probably than just carpal tunnel happening because you've had joint swelling and you've been uncomfortable and you've been googling things and and uh and also you were thinking you might have to provide a a blood sample which didn't go so great the last time so how did that all go yesterday because i was really worried about you yesterday i was talking to becca about i was like i don't it's not going to be good if if the if andrew gets just kind of another round of this doctor going eh, I don't know, we'll just have to keep watching it. I felt like that was going to be really frustrating for you. When you left the show yesterday, I was like, I really hope this guy gets some kind of validation tomorrow, or yesterday at the dock.

Well, let's rewind. Ooh, terrible. I just chose one. Love it. I mean, that's not the one.

That is the kind of high production value that people come to this program for. That was nasty. Dog talk and high production value.

I just pulled the first thing I could find on YouTube. That is, I'll find a better rewind sound effect, and then we will put it in our system for use in the future. You know what I really should have had here? And I love the way I said I'm going to keep this brief-ish. Do we have a harp sound effect? That's the one that really takes us back. That's what we need.

We need a little good old-fashioned 1980s television-style time travel. So let's go back, if we can, to yesterday when you went to your doctor who has not been taking your claims of autoimmune issues seriously enough.

Yeah, I want to just clarify one little thing on that, which is, and I guess kind of go into detail again, that this thing that has been diagnosed as carpal tunnel kind of sprouted up in both hands overnight a while ago, a couple of months ago. Which was very suspicious. Seems very suspicious. There was some swelling involved as well. And I've been hearing from a lot of listeners about their experience with kind of similar things and struggling to get proper diagnoses and what have you. um i will say that you know i didn't have any reason to believe anything else was going on so i was kind of following the the carpal tonal protocol i got a uh i got a test done a couple of weeks ago that involved needles and electricity and they um and notice i said electricity this time because i'm working on my pronunciation skills not electricity i kind of like how you

say electricity i think it's fun i mean i'm not even kidding i i actually i think that was like a That was a new way to say that word, but I kind of dig it.

And it does have that onomatopoeia thing, right? Did Genevieve correct you on it? No, I mean, I think we've talked about it on the show before, and I think somebody else maybe, and again, not harassing me, actually saying they like the way I say it, but it got in my head on social media.

Yeah, it's one of the rare mispronunciations that's an improvement on the existing word, I think.

Because the Z's, like, sort of...

Yeah, it's like the actual thing is coursing through the word.

Exactly, electricity. That's why I like spelling...

Very onomatopoeic.

That's why I prefer the way the British folks spell color with a U.

i think it's literally more colorful right and gray with an e is more gray gray with an a is too happy it's too close to gay and happy gray with an e is a is a rainy foggy london morning do you

have we diagnosed you with synesthesia do you have a like a low level synesthesia going on because you're describing these things as almost having a color to them based on their letters i would say

i do not have synesthesia however if anybody tells me that the uh letter a is anything but red i will

punch them in the throat oh really i would i think a might feel kind of blue to me oh you're

but i don't i don't have i don't i can't reach i don't want to steal anyone's valor i don't want

to steal any synesthetic valor i'm not trying to board the plane first you know what i uh i don't really have synesthesia but i i don't think i don't think i would think of a as being red

I have some very strong opinions about what colors match up with letters and numbers, and so you would say that that would be synesthesia, but I also wonder how much of that is just about the toys we had when we were kids. I haven't read anything about this. I just like to come up with my own theories.

What number is brown?

What can brown do for you? What was UPS thinking? I will never understand that. I don't know that I can reverse engineer brown into something, but if you told me—

If you count to 10 and can you just tell me – oh, wait. Are we doing letters? We're doing letters. We're not doing numbers.

We can do letters and numbers, although I don't – I want to be clear here. I don't think it for every single one. There's just – so that might be a –

Just say pass if you don't. I'm going to go from A to, like, maybe – what comes after A? B? Just do a few letters. I would try to think of what about 10 letters after A is, and I actually can't do that without singing the song.

I don't – even though that is a very orderly way of doing things, I think that will lead to podcast frustration. Here's what I will tell you. I think that three is yellow.

If you're suffering from medium to moderate podcast frustration, you've probably been listening to TBTL.

There are some chewable candies we could give you that should straighten that right out. I believe that three is yellow. I feel strongly about that. I feel that four is green. I feel like the letter A is red. I don't think I have a lot of feelings about one and two. I mean, two feels blue to me, but that also rhymes.

I'm wondering, for me, how much of this is informed by playing Uno as a kid.

Right, sure, yeah. Or having those little magnetic letters. Those little magnetic letters, like, were there various versions that people had? Yes.

Okay, so let's go back to—

And I think the Green Bay Packers are green and yellow. Like, that's just a feeling I have.

And owned by the residents of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Okay, so— That's what I know about that. So what I was going to say was the last couple of times I saw my doctor, it was really to talk about my wrists and hands and the swelling and pain and carpal tunnel around that. I did say the first time I went in, like, I do struggle with some autoimmune stuff. I feel like I had a pretty bad eczema outbreak right before this weird thing. And I apparently took a note on that but didn't really follow up on that and just sort of went down the carpal tunnel road. And then again, I saw then a specialist who also, you know, did a bunch of tests and said, yeah, you have carpal tunnel and you get it taken care of via surgery sooner rather than later because you do have, you know, some nerve and muscle things that are going to start dying pretty soon, especially in my left hand. And I trusted that person quite a bit, too. In the time since my last regular doctor's appointment and yesterday's appointment, I had new symptoms throughout my body, which to my – I just want to give my doctor defense on this count. I had not seen him about this yet or talked to him about this yet, which was I – in the past couple of weeks, it was like – I remember it was right after I got back from Arizona. I went on a walk with Genevieve and came back with really swollen ankles and knees, and then that sort of persisted. I was getting really fatigued in my ankles and feet. And then about, I'm going to say about two weeks ago, it started to get more and more painful for me to walk in the mornings. There were some better mornings and some worse mornings. I had a couple of really bad mornings when we were doing the TBTL-a-thon. I was in my hotel room by myself. I would wake up and really Frankenstein walk my first few steps.

Which also makes no sense under the carpal tunnel diagnosis because you don't have carpal tunnel in your ankles. Right, exactly. It's not like you have repetitive, you know, movement in your ankles in such a way. So, like, that just says something else is going on.

Now, having said that, carpal tunnel is usually the product of something else. Like, they were telling me that often if you're pregnant, you know, you will have maybe some swelling that will then cause carpal tunnel or there are other conditions. I shouldn't refer to pregnancy as a condition, but there are other, you know.

I consider it more of a curse.

I think that's the word you were looking for. That's okay. We don't have any women listeners. A cross to bear. there exactly but um no there are other factors i should say that can cause swelling in your body which can then lead to carpal tunnels so i want to make it clear here that like while i don't think the car carpal tunnel diagnosis was wrong in any way, I've been getting increasingly concerned that there's also an underlying factor that might not even negate the surgery. But either way, I wanted to address it. So I had an appointment with my doctor on the books for like several months from now to follow up on all of this stuff. But the other day, I think it was right before the weekend before the THON, I woke up on a Saturday and I'm like, I need to let them know that something's going on with my body like right now. I'm like limping around. It was not right.

You mean to tell me all that pain is coming from your body?

My body. I need to speak with you right away. I am the president of carpal tunnel syndrome. Yes. So anyway, I was out of town last week, as you know, and so I made an appointment for yesterday, Monday, my first day back to see my doctor. Unfortunately, my doctor himself was not available, but there was his assistant, a physician's assistant, who I don't have any distrust in the system between my doctor and a physician's assistant.

At this point, honestly, I think a PA who knows their stuff is equally helpful, if not more than a person who's technically a doctor.

Yeah, so I only throw that in there for detail, but not to imply that I had any distrust of the person I was seeing, but it's not the same person. So I saw this other physician's assistant yesterday, and she was very, very nice. And I want to make it clear, like when I'm in the doctor's office, I do not feel like I'm not being listened to. Like, both of these people, especially her, I would say, very patient, never felt like they were, like, brushing off my concerns or pushing me out the door. It's always very pleasant when I'm in there. It's always later when I think about the conversation that I'm like, what? Like, why would you? Like, things just don't kind of line up. So I go in and I just tell her, like, things have been rough. And yesterday was actually happened to be a really bad day. And I was kind of glad because you want to go to the doctor on the day that your symptoms are worse.

Were you considering faking it if you were accidentally having a good day?

I got one of those neck braces that you would see in sitcoms in the 80s after somebody got into a minor accident. Fire bad. And I kept saying fire bad as well.

Weirdly, you started singing the song, Putting on the Ritz.

It was very influenced. Peter Boyle style. It was very influenced by Mel Brooks, who was making a lot of appearances in reference on the show this week. You grew up in poverty. Were you unclean?

See yesterday's show, if you want to know why I said that about Mel Brooks in a Jiminy Glick voice, please.

So anyway, I go in, and so the appointment is fine, but, you know, as I'm telling her, like, I literally can't, like, this morning I could not walk. I had to, like, kind of grasp the wall, and I almost had to butt-scooch my way down my set of stairs to get to my studio. I'm like, things are not normal, right? And she's, like, listening to me, and she's like, oh, yeah, okay, right? And she's like, and I can tell she wants me to go back down and get more blood work done. And as I think I had mentioned to you, and I'm starting to rat hole on some of the details here, I was concerned about some blood tests that I had gotten back a month or so ago that everything was normal except for one had a bit of a spike in it. And the thing that had a bit of a spike in it was something that is associated with rheumatoid arthritis. It gets a little bit complicated because it wasn't a huge spike. It was just higher than normal. It wasn't a super huge spike. And also there are two different tests for that same condition. I shouldn't call it a condition for that same condition.

Health journey.

And, you know, I was talking to this doctor about it yesterday, this assistant, and she was saying, yeah, you know, it's a complicated thing to diagnose. There are two different factors we look at. One you were, like, totally good on. The other one was just slightly increased. Now that you're having more inflammation, we're going to take a look at those same factors with blood work today. And I'm telling her about it. And she does look at my ankles a little bit, but like this shocked Genevieve when I mentioned I'm like, you know, I've never had to even disrobe for my doctor. She's like, what do you mean? She said something like, well, when you get into the little like paper robe or whatever paper robe, I'm like, I don't even take off my outer shirt when I see the doctor.

Like are you familiar with the character of Tobias?

Exactly. I'm what they call a never healthy. But it's not because they've asked me to and I've refused. And I am somebody who is very shy and very uncomfortable in a doctor's setting. So when I'm going in for a regular exam and I get out of there without having to shed any clothing, I always consider that a bit of a win. Right, a W. Yeah, but now that I'm kind of actually like literally like kind of suffering from something, it wasn't until later I'm kind of like, boy, she didn't even – she looked at my ankles a bit and kind of examined them and prodded them a little bit. But I never even took off my shoes. And I was telling Genevieve this. She's like, you went in there because your feet and ankles had been swollen and hurting. And they never even really looked at your shoes. I'm like, yeah. And I have this, you know, I'm having issues with one of my shoulders that I think has propped up or cropped up around the same time. I told her all about that. She never even looked at, touched my shoulder, looked a little bit at my wrists. And she said, oh, yeah, you might want to talk to your surgeon tomorrow about the swelling. Maybe he'll know. I'm like, wait, I thought you're supposed to know.

It was, like, in the moment none of this seemed, like, bad to me, but, like, later on last night I was, like, really angry. I'm, like, all – I told them I can't walk in the morning, and all they did was send me essentially back down to the blood lab again to get a bunch of blood taken. Now, I leave her office. I'm, like, I was really hoping that she was going to prescribe. She goes, oh, like, clearly you have rheumatoid arthritis. Here's some Clarexa or whatever.

Does it feel to you like this doctor and the doctor's staff are just blithely acting like the data that they're getting back doesn't indicate a very bad outcome for you down the road, and yet they just keep putting their head down and saying everything's going to be fine and just staying the course and just completely blocking out all the noise? This is a tortured Biden reference that I'm making right now.

I see. I wasn't quite—you know, I really wasn't following that at all.

You and the listeners were like, where is he going with this? I see.

All right, sorry. why are politics on your mind today luke i don't get it i can't can't think of any specific reason but anyway i've been thinking about what you said yesterday when you said and i know that you are very engaged with the news and i mean i am too i think you more so though um but like even you saying yesterday that it's you don't even want to read the news anymore it almost like gave me like your voice has sort of been echoing in my head as like kind of an excuse because like i you know what i mean like i'm just like i can't like for all of it i don't want to like rat tail or rat hole on any of this in particular but just like all of the news this week i'm like can i just give myself permission to just turn on like an archived edition of comedy bang bang and can i

tell you what i've been listening to the last two days very quickly then we'll get back to the doctor i have listened to uh harper's magazine story about a granite town in new hampshire that used to be the granite capital of the world, but now people aren't paying as much for granite headstones. Oh. So some timely, timely reporting on that topic. I listened to the great New York Times show, The Interview, Lulu Garcia Navarro, talking to Robert Putnam, the guy who wrote Bowling Alone, who's now, there's a movie out, like a documentary kind of about the fact that many of us are socially isolated.

Do you know that he's also a product of New Hampshire? Are you consuming only New Hampshire-related content?

I did not intentionally, but maybe that's what suits me during these trying times. But he just seems like an absolute delight. He's 83 and he's just sounds still full of life. And he's got very interesting thoughts on things. I've also I don't I don't know what's been going on with me from just like a mental and emotional health. Maybe it's I'm coming down off of the high of the TV telethon. And maybe it is just like the news feels so unrelentingly bad that it is causing me to feel a kind of an anxiety that I just don't think I felt in my life a lot. I've been very fortunate. I'm not a super anxious person. And I usually can find the good in things or I can find the thing that I get excited about. I'm usually able to pull myself out of a spiral. And the news of the world, particularly the news of this country the last few days, have created a spiral that I'm not totally able to pull myself out of. And it's a weird feeling because it's not how I normally feel. This feeling of like, oh, am I having like a mental health crisis come on from anxiety, from how the world feels to me right now?

That is exactly how I feel. And that is how I felt a lot during the last administration. And it's just and what has happened. But I would actually say the news cycle of like what set this up like in the past, like I'm going to say three weeks or whatever, all combining to where we are on the 16th of July seems utterly overwhelming. And like we don't have to talk about what it is.

And then it leads into this coronation.

Well, that's what I mean. Like that's that's that's almost like the cherry on top of all of this, the what is coming out of Wisconsin. It's just it's just I didn't again. I don't want to I don't I honestly like you. I don't want to talk about it. But I am glad that you acknowledge that yesterday. Like in a certain way, like you saying that to me is somehow like made me feel like, OK, we're all in this together. And some of us are just going to listen to, you know, Robert Putnam interviews or old comedy bang bangs. And by the way, I do want to say for the record, I love Bowling Alone. And I think I understand that it's just an allegory, but literally he couldn't have picked a worse example. Bowling Alone is for you. I love Bowling Alone so much.

His follow-up book, Darts, While Listening to Old-Timey Radio, also, I think, felt like violence to you, right?

Did you know I got another push notification yesterday letting me know that Gunsmoke was about to start on Sirius Radio? I'm like, can we just choose a different old-timey show to try to entice me back to my old man ways?

Okay, so I'm not going to play that.

The doctor is, you're talking to the physician's assistant, and it sounds like you're not getting a lot of, or at least you're reflecting on the conversation you have, which doesn't sound like it was particularly helpful.

Wait a second, are we going back in the past now?

so again it's yeah you're gonna take that drop away from me by the end of i love it honestly

it feels like some of the highest production value we have i totally support it it's also soothing as hell it is that's what i've been listening to on repeat andrew while i'm on the treadmill is a harp that takes me back did i tell you about how i completely lost a crowd of people in port townsend last week when i was talking about preserving the land because it was a fundraiser for this jefferson county land trust and i said the the money that we're raising tonight is going to preserve this this wild beautiful land for years will america be here in 60 years probably not wow i just came out wow and then and what happened it was what well it was a real mixed response some people laughed and some people were sort of horrified yeah and i definitely i

don't think i ever really got him back after that that's a limb man you went on a limb and i didn't

mean to go on it it wasn't like i was like oh this is what i'm gonna say that's what i'm saying

andrew i'm in a very fragile place right now anyway so truly a lot of people can relate but um so yesterday everything seemed fine in the doctor's office except as i was leaving i really was thinking i did finally say to her i'm like well so i'm you know i know that i'm gonna go get some blood tests but like that's it i was hoping that i could leave here today with something you know like clearly i'm having some sort of a autoimmune response like i can't walk right like this is a problem and she's like well she she said well um it's so you said you're taking ibuprofen that's been working for you and that's one of those things that sort of like stuck out in my head as i'm thinking back about this i'm like i didn't say this at the time but i'm like no i said i'm taking it i didn't say it's working for me if it was working for me i wouldn't be here right now yeah um so anyway she prescribed for me something that i haven't even picked up yet that is apparently like a once a day very heavy dose of something that is ibuprofen or ibuprofen that's

anti-inflammatory right because that's what should be anti-inflammatory but it doesn't really they've

got to pump you full of some anti-inflammatory yeah which which should be good and she's like but make sure don't take any other ibuprofen with this don't take a leave like be very careful with this is going to be strong i'm like okay that's fine but again that gives you too much of this you literally disappear which is fine you shrink down to non-existent let's go back to previous conversation give me more give me that um but i uh anyway so that's fine but i was like i really wanted more of a diagnosis or a let's talk about this but it's again just like go back down get your blood work done okay this is this is the point that i really want to that i really want to come to and tell you in this narrative is so i go down to the blood lab as you mentioned there's a sort of a secondary a secondary story going on here in that um i thought i'd gotten much better about having my blood blood drawn except last time i went in there apparently i had not drinking enough water and they couldn't find a vein and they poked me a few times and two different people were trying to get blood out of me until I almost passed out and then they just let me go without getting my test done. That was a couple of weeks ago and I never went back. I was like, well, whatever. Probably another test that they'll tell me came out fine anyway. Which, by the way, is good. It's weird to be complaining about tests that are coming out. No, you just want an answer. I just want some sort of an answer. So all day yesterday, I had also been preparing, or all morning I had been preparing by drinking a lot of Gatorade as my friend Hannah Brooks Olson suggested. She has to get blood drawn a lot. Just stay really, really hydrated. I made sure to even eat a bowl of cereal in the morning and then a little bit of protein in the afternoon before I went over there just to make sure that because, you know, the time I almost passed out, I realized I hadn't eaten anything all day and it was like three in the afternoon, which is not, you know, it's not good habits really for anybody. So anyway, so I go down to the blood lab. In fact, I share an elevator with a pretty elderly lady who moves very, very, very slowly on her walker and a woman who I'm going to assume is maybe her adult daughter, who this woman's probably in her 50s or 60s herself. And so I kind of get—

You don't say large adult daughter. We say large adult son, but never—

Did I say large adult daughter? No, I'm just thinking about that.

It's never large adult daughter. It's always large adult son.

Well, because wasn't that specifically a— Was that a Trump thing? Not Trump. Oh, goodness gracious, Huckabee. It was a photo of Huckabee and his two large adult sons. And I don't remember who originally captioned that. Anyway, probably Stu. So anyway, this is definitely an aside, but I kind of get stuck behind this woman who's walking very slowly as we're kind of approaching the elevators. And so instead of kind of brushing around, I just really slow my pace and walk behind them. And it turns out we are going to share an elevator down me and this woman and presumably her adult daughter and uh i i said oh you guys going to the blood lab too or something somehow i recognized that we're all going to the blood lab and then so i said to the older woman who was using the walker i'm like how do you do with that by the way you good with this she's like oh yeah i'm good with it and her daughter's like yeah yeah no we have like vampire blood which i wasn't exactly sure what that meant but i think it meant easy to easy to extract or whatever so i kind of made friends with them and also sort of helped me. I'm just kind of like, this woman's just going to go in there and be a tough lady like i just kind of like i can be just a little bit like i mean listen we're all different we all have our you know what whatever we all have our ways of dealing with things but there was something about being and also just sort of i kind of i kind of chummed it up with these two a little bit which i found sort of charming as well i liked them both um but i get it i go into the the uh blood lab um i make it there before them i felt a little bit like i was cutting in front of my new friends but let's face it like i walk a little bit faster than them. I get there, wait a couple of minutes, and then they take me into the small room that I've gone in several times with good results. I know it's not the room that's going to determine how this goes, but it was just nice not to go in the room where I almost passed out last time. I was very thankful to go into a room that I associated with successful blood draws. I told the young woman who was about to take my blood, I told her, I'm like, hey, last time they weren't able to find a vein. So I've been drinking water and stuff all day, but I'm also very squeamish. So I'm going to look away. Also, by the way, you might want to check in the records to make, by the way, talk about advocating for yourself. I'm like, by the way, you should check to see if you should draw blood for that last test too. Not the one I'm down here for today, but the one that I missed a couple of weeks ago when they couldn't find a vein. And she's like, ah, it is in the system. Thank you. You would have had to come back for that. So I was very proud of myself advocating for me as a patient but here is to me the beautiful part of this story or the ironic part of this story she's kind of looking at my chart she's looking at me she's starting to get ready to like find a place to take blood and she says oh so you have arthritis huh and I'm like what I'm like oh well I don't know I mean I think that's what we're trying to determine I'm like wait why are you saying that did you see something on the chart are you seeing something on me she's like well look at your wrist she's like I have arthritis me and my mom have arthritis I mean look and I'm just like son of a bitch i'm like are you kidding me that i just keep going to my doctor's office i've seen two different doctors in that same office and they're just like that is please do

not interrupt the crowd um yeah some of them are murmuring he has arthritis but uh yeah she's just like oh yeah me and my mom both have it i kind of got an early age i have to and then we're talking about how she treats it or whatever but i just like the way that i keep going to these doctors like well the blood work says it's nothing the blood work says it's nothing i don't know blood work is fine and this woman who's just you know just looks down at me and somebody who has it herself she's not a doctor she's she's a very underpaid uh lab technician by the way yeah and that is something i've been learning about too some listeners have sent in articles about this particular lab i go to is like they're based i believe in arizona and they're just like kind of in hospitals and and medical facilities around the country and like they don't pay their workers hardly anything while i was waiting to go in there i overheard the people at the front desk talking about a new contract that went through and how awful it is and how they're only getting like $1 an hour raises or something, which is like nothing. Literally, somebody sent in an email, and I can't remember the details. One of our listeners sent in an email saying that I can't remember if it was them or somebody in their life who was a phlebotomist who worked for this exact company, and they made so little money that they went to Dick's Drive-In with their kid and saw the sign that had mentioned all of the benefits of working there and the money that you would make it wouldn't be a salary but you know the hourly wage or whatever and i can't remember who's the kid who said the dad why don't you work here and it like kind of changed the trajectory of their life they're like oh i can do better by working for dick's burgers than i can by being a phlebotomist so i talked to this woman a little bit about that too i'm like i'm sorry i overheard your conversation a little bit i'm but i just really appreciate what you guys do you guys have a really hard job and she took my blood very successfully and it was a good time but i just could not believe i buried my point i just could not believe that like this person just looks at Oh, yeah, so you have arthritis, too, huh? I'm just like, why? That must have been so validating. Can you go upstairs and put a stethoscope around your neck and say that to me, please?

So that's kind of a diagnosis, if you will. That's a matter of opinion for this person. But does that move anything forward as far as the people that are wearing the stethoscopes and are allowed to declare you? What did she say she does for it? What brings her some relief?

She says she gets some sort of transfusions twice a year, and I didn't want to ask too much more about that because there was a needle in my arm at that point. I was already starting to get a little bit lightheaded than I started thinking.

They did actually successfully find a vein, and they did actually draw blood from you.

Yeah, and so they drew blood from me. Now, one other thing that I kind of didn't mention in the doctor's office when I'm talking to the physician's assistant is she did say, I don't think I mentioned this to you yet. She said, well, we, you know, we'll probably, depending on what the blood work says, you know, maybe get you in touch with a rheumatologist, I believe is the proper term for that. Vives and I have taken to calling them rude boys. Have a whole bit about that, which I'll spare you. But she said that we'll probably need you to see a rude boy, you know, depending on what the blood work says. And then so they took my blood. I will say this about my doctor's office. They are very quick with getting back to you on blood results. And and.

The doctor's notes is attached to them. And so I woke up this morning to a bunch of blood results, like seven of them, including the one that my doctor prescribed a couple of weeks ago. And literally they all just – I guess you can just write one sentence and attach it to all of it. But it says your inflammatory markers are mildly elevated. But basically everything else are normal. I'm not going to read this entire thing because now I'm starting to get into – I'm hippying myself. Yes. Your initial test for – Stop hippying yourself. now somebody's right in do you understand how that works people are always correcting us about you can't HIPAA yourself I'm just like I know really but I can make jokes

it's interesting somebody would tolerate this show but not understand that we're being sarcastic when we say that I wonder who that person is

anyway it says your initial test for rheumatoid arthritis is negative and uric acid oh she also said uric acid in case it was gout or something which I am always so scared that they're going to diagnose I've known a cup I don't want to shame.

I know somebody with gout. Sorry, I'll let you finish.

But I've known a couple of people in my life who've had gout and they lead lifestyles that are pretty unhealthy. And I'm not trying to gout shame anybody out there who's had it. But I have lived with this idea of just like I feel like if I get gout, my version of it will be very akin to the version that these folks have had. And if I look at these folks, I look at them and say there are changes these folks should make in their life. and I don't want to have to look in my gout mirror.

I used to have that opinion, and then somebody that I know who I will not identify who is very much not that. This person lives a very active, I think they enjoy having a pint of beer now and then, but somebody who is, it just is a thing that's happened to this person. Their body is not clearing the uric acid the way that it's supposed to, and they got gout, and uh and it really changed my opinion of it because i had also kind of had that idea that like it's gout was something that 100 of the time you gave yourself through poor lifestyle decisions this is a person who's totally not in that category from like snorting pork tenderloin and drinking right exactly and this person this is this person is um is somebody that i that i work with in another capacity and and he was being like yeah i just you know my my doctor said you know because i do like you know whiskey and i'm thinking yeah but you have like one glass of very like not even a glass you have like one serving of very nice whiskey every two weeks i'm like get at me when you've got a couple of empty jamos jangling around and like i'm like it's not the

whiskey yeah exactly i'm gonna play for you an audio recording of my um of my recycle bin being emptied every other thursday like he was being kind of hard on himself right like he was being

like well yeah i gotta lay off the brown liquor and i'm like what that one thimble of whiskey you were having every two weeks if that's what gave you gout buddy i'd be king louis anyway sorry so all of that is to say your your gout levels are are uh are where they should be

so i wake yeah that's so in other words basically everything is fine that it says there's just something there's an inflammatory marker that is mildly elevated and they did take this on yesterday which was a pretty bad day for me i was limping around that office so i don't even feel But, like, because point is, today I actually feel really good. I woke up kind of angry because I woke up and I saw all these test results. I'm like, okay, so, and by the way, I do have insurance. But these doctor's appointments and the blood, the constant blood testing, like, it's not all covered by insurance. Like, I'm plunking down quite a bit of money on each one of these visits. And I just, and it's just like, oh, guess what? I went to the doctor again, told them I can't walk. And they said, well, your blood's fine. and like that was and it's kind of like okay now what like is somebody going to tell me because of this but still like let's set up a point with a rheumatologist or a rude boy as we call them in the medical industry like I'm just like but okay so you just I keep on going in and telling you I'm in pain and you keep on saying wear night braces and get more blood drawn and then tell me my blood drawn my blood results are good again weird thing to say I am so psyched to see that my blood results are good But anyway, all of that is to say I'm probably going to start looking at switching providers unless they recommend me to a rheumatologist right away. I'm thinking about just maybe moving medical, moving my medical stuff over to a different provider and then seeing a rheumatologist over there because I'm just kind of like sick of this at this point. And I don't know if this is maybe this is the state of modern medicine. It's not like I'm making some drastic change where I'm going to leave Swedish and then go and see, you know, somebody who practices Eastern medicine.

yeah right yes well actually you know becca had a suggestion yesterday because yes andrew most of my conversations with my girlfriend now are about your medical needs my swollen ankles nice and she was saying it might be worth talking to a naturopath yeah um and she was saying you know there's a whole range she goes it's not all crystal because she knows how I am on that stuff. You know, I'm inherently suspicious, but she's like, you know, you've got some naturopaths that are very, very about kind of like energy work. And then you got some that are very rooted in, you know, in some pretty scientific stuff that might be, you know, it's kind of like, well, what's the downside, you know?

Okay, so we've been talking about this a long time. I warned you before the show that I had a lot of this. Here's the final chapter of this so far. Because if I've been complaining about doctors, I now want to write a love letter to my doctor, who is my surgeon. This is the same guy. My hand guy.

The guy that does the job on your hands.

Exactly. Now, he was the surgeon who fixed my fingers when I busted them up pretty badly and had those weird pins that went all the way through them for a while. And I had asked, you know, I had asked if I could go back to this place if I needed any kind of, you know, orthopedic surgery or OT, occupational therapy or whatever. And so I kind of didn't realize he was going to be my surgeon again. But when I saw his name on my paperwork, I'm like, oh, that's great. So I go in there and I tell him the whole story, like soup to nuts as fast as I can, much faster than I did on this show. And we did not talk at all about politics or our mental health regarding them. But, man, he's just like he heard me all out. He did some tests to kind of test exactly how numb my fingers are using not needles that hurt or went in, but just like kind of are you feeling me poke you with two things now or one thing now? two things are one thing and sort of like tech check the severity of numbness in my hands but like really heard me out about all of the the swelling that i've been having and he said you know you you're certainly having some sort of you know issue with swelling you should see a rheumatoid doctor a rude boy as we call him in the industry come on rude boy give it up that's what i that's the joke take it take it put him up put him up put him up if i could doc i wouldn't be here that's my joke um but anyway so he's like yeah you should see somebody about that having said that yeah you definitely need to have the surgery anyway and i kind of thought that that was the case it's like you have you do want to see somebody about the swelling but you also have carpal tunnel pretty advanced in both hands right now you also have some tendinitis in there if it was just tendinitis we wouldn't maybe operate right away we would try to other things but since we have to operate on the wrists anyway let's go in there and take care of both of those things right away um and uh and i just like really believed his clear-eyed answers on all of this like it just really felt like i was really being heard um and then also and this is where this guy is so cool i just i love this guy he's like okay um i'm like okay there's one other factor here you know i do have a um a trip coming up in early september and i'm kind of concerned about like having two surgeries on both of my wrists and then recovery time for both of them and still being able to go to Croatia, as I believe I've said on this show, is my plan. That's a pretty big trip for me, right? I want to be in my best health for that. I don't want to be Frankenstein walking around and not being able to use my hands. He had said-

Putting on the wrist!

He had said, you can do one wrist at a time or both. He said, it's harder to recover from both at the same time, but you can do it. He's like, if that's the case, we'll put you under a general anesthetic, and it's hard for me to say that word, but just roll with me on that. You all know what I end um and uh and we'll put you under and you will have to you know keep your hands dry for like probably four days bandaged up for four days but you can still manage i i even said i'm like all right this is a sensitive question like can i go to the bathroom by myself i don't need a caregiver or something if both my hands are bandaged he's like no you can you can handle this just like don't get them wet i'm like okay you have no idea how i go to the bathroom but anyway that was all the assurance i needed and then i'm like okay but i do have this trip coming up like let's count on me doing both at the same time so I can get this maybe done before the trip but that's early September I know I need to get the stitches out afterwards like that'll be a couple of weeks like how fast can we get this done he's like well they just opened up an operation day for me on Wednesdays now I used to not do them on Wednesdays so but maybe I so I can maybe get you in tomorrow morning and I'm like tomorrow morning that would be that would be amazing and I realized that maybe caused some complications with the podcast but I figured that you and I would get around that um he's like if not that I can't tell you exactly when we have to look at my schedule he's like come on let's go talk to Diana or I can't remember what her name was let's go talk to Diana and so we leave his little office and he's like Diana Diana and he's kind of calling to her through the hallways and then we get to her desk and she is the surgery scheduler and I don't want to talk like ill of people but oh my gosh she emanated the word no in every way a person can emanate the word no like he's like diana so uh he's he needs a he needs a carpal tunnel surgery pretty advanced we're trying to get it done as fast as possible he's got a trip coming up what about tomorrow i still have a slot open tomorrow right that thing just opened and the woman said no the guy who was just here the guy that you just saw he just took that slot.

And I kind of made a joke.

I'm like, screw that guy.

And I said, that guy.

Does that guy have a trip to Croatia coming up?

Right. And I said, oh, that guy. And she just looked at me and looked back at the doctor. And she said, also, you're going to need to get, there's no way it could be tomorrow because you have to get approved by insurance. And they will not approve it by tomorrow, especially just for Carpal Tunnel.

What kind of signage, if any, did this woman have up in her work area? None. Were there like none? So no kind of like, I hate Mondays. No. Like there was not, you could. I'm just curious if a person's sort of first response is, that's not going to work. And we've all encountered those kinds of people in the world. And I think some of it probably has to do with the job. Probably having that job, unfortunately, turns you into that person. But I was just curious if she had a lot of – if the signs around her cubicle indicated how kind of uncooperative she was going to be.

Nope. No signs. But I kind of made a decision early on. I was kind of like, listen, this is a person who – I don't know how or why I judge people or sort of assess situations like this. but i'm like i'm not gonna let this person get my hackles up too like this is a person who i think is probably a difficult person in a lot of ways but i'll bet you i'll bet you that's her initial reaction to everything and if you just treat her like a human being like everything is gonna go better for everybody not that i would ever treat anybody like not a human being well maybe that person who cut me off on i5 but anyway um she so the doctor's like well what about next wednesday She's like, and like, I can't explain, like everything is even from the surgeon himself, the doctor, he's like negotiating for me. And he's being like, Luke, and I don't use this phrase lightly, such a cool dude. He's just kind of like, well, what about Wednesday? Well, what if I move that? And he's like taking a personal interest. He's like, well, what if I move this thing? What if I come in and add a slot on Wednesday? Can we do it next Wednesday or whatever? And she's kind of like, I don't know. She's kind of grumpy about it.

But then she finally must be feeling like, listen, lady, this is a way bigger impact on the surgeon's life than yours. he's offering to make this work all you have to do is say yes like we're not asking you to do the surgery we're not asking you to scrub in for this and there's probably aspects of her job where if

things get overbooked she probably takes shit from people i mean i don't know i don't want to totally dismiss her experience behind that desk which is probably harder than my experience behind this desk having said well i do have to put up with you um having said that i just loved the way the doc and then the doctor disappears for a while then he comes back and he's like hey i just moved this thing so i can do it next wednesday or whatever like he's just like actively moving his schedule around for me so that i can like have surgery like i didn't even know that was a it just seems like the total opposite of what i was getting elsewhere where it's kind of like well here are your blood results you're fine i'm like can't walk well blood's fine and like here i

got this guy who's just kind of like your walking blood looks totally normal making it happen for

me and then so like i'm feeling this woman just puts a form right in front of me doesn't say anything i'm just like would you like me to fill this out she's like yes i'm like then i start filling I'm like how are you doing today she's like I'm okay and then like I could then I don't know she softened up a little bit and we chat and then she's like which wrist is it I'm like both and she's like you're doing bilateral I'm like yeah she like shakes her head and she's like you're not gonna be able you're gonna be bandaged for two days you're gonna be both your hands are gonna be bandaged you're not gonna be able to do anything I'm like I need to get this done and I said I think it's pretty advanced and she just like shakes her head at me like she just did not want any part of this for some reason and i do realize it's easy today you know a week before this just to say hey i'm so excited i got this scheduled and whatever i'll deal with recovery when it comes i'm going to be the biggest whiny baby when recovery time comes pre-surgery you

never remember how i'm bracing for it it's gonna be it's gonna be intense i think the listeners i'm really glad we're doing this after the thon let me just put it that way this story has gone

on too long but um anyway i am really excited to get they'll put me under i'll they'll cut me open next week and i know some people were like hey with people are very concerned about this and i've been getting some pretty impassioned emails from people like don't go under the knife until you know what's going on with you i truly believe i need to get this surgery done i've talked to a lot of people about this now from the people that i saw who put the electricity or electricity through my veins to this doctor to people that i really trust and who are very clear with me this is something that needs to be done no matter what and I will also take care of the other things as well in one way or another I also I think I told you it helped that I woke up just feeling really good today totally coincidentally I don't think it's because the blood said I'm okay I just felt today was the first day I got out of bed without hardly any issues so I feel pretty good about that I'm in a good mood and hope is a hope is an incredible

medicine yeah I was actually one of the things I was listening to instead of the news of the world was a new york i think it was maybe a new york times magazine story about um treating uh glioblastomas which is a very aggressive brain cancer brain tumor with immunotherapy and they were they were kind of profiling this one this one particular guy who who had really good results from this immunotherapy Um, and, but they were saying he's doing so much better partially because his body is doing better, but also because when you, when you feel a sense of hope, it really can change so much about how you're feeling. And I'm wondering if getting the news that you were going to get the surgery, put a big injection of hope into you, which you're seeing the results of this morning.

It all, I do believe that, but in all seriousness, I woke up just feeling physically better before any of this happened, before I saw my blood results, before I went to the doctor, I just woke up and I got out of bed and I wasn't in pain today it was just like I said like some days are better than others but today is honestly the best I felt in a really long time and I also I think I fell asleep really early yesterday like I was in a yesterday was a really bad day for me kind of physically and so because of that as soon as I was done with my last responsibility around like seven o'clock last night or whatever I just I parked myself on the couch I put my feet like literally elevated my feet which i think is good for all of this and i put on the x files and i watched one and a half and i fell asleep about halfway through the second one and then i think and then at some point i went up to bed but i slept through the night so i got tons of sleep um i am gonna try to you know the one thing the doctor said yesterday is you know try to it kind of irritated me at the time because i'm like saying clearly something is going on with me she's like well don't eat so much salt no more processed foods i'm like that is good advice i am not rejecting that advice, but that is clearly not what's going on with me. You know what I mean? It's like, this is not caused by processed food. This doesn't just crop up overnight. Having said that, it has inspired me to try to stop eating. Just in the past 24 hours, I've been trying to eat a little bit more healthfully and not just eating like Totino's pizza rolls all the time or whatever. So hopefully a combination of these things will make me feel better until I get a more like kind of concrete diagnosis also i will say the surgeon said by the way you can have rheumatoid things without it showing up in the blood work and so i felt very validated by that

as well well i'm i'm i'm really really glad that there is some light at the end of the tunnel for you on this um because i mean yeah i i've been i've been thinking about you a lot and also just feeling like kind of like sympathetic wait i always mix up empathy and sympathy i know and We always look it up. I've been feeling kind of, I've been feeling very, I've been feeling very bad on your behalf and also very frustrated on your behalf over this whole thing. And yes, of course, we, you know, as a medical, the medical world we live in, sometimes surgical intervention is something that we maybe go to too quickly in certain areas. That's probably what people are reaching out to talk about. But like, I mean, this is something that has, has really like been with you for a while now. And also it sounds like you said something that there is the potential of some kind of irreversible nerve damage that the sooner you the sooner it's addressed the the better the chances of recovery are whereas if it gets as you're talking about this this makes me think about my dad right who who i'm working with all the time here on the house and he's definitely got some carpal tunnel stuff oh and because i was talking about i just am all over town talking about your medical problems

no this is i almost never stop discussing it i know you're not going there with it but there's always a part of me too that i'm just kind of like well i haven't dealt with much pain and stuff and medical stuff like this in my life there's always a little voice that's kind of like well am I just being extra about this I can't imagine having carpal tunnel and doing the work

that your dad is doing I can't pour coffee um it's I don't understand how he does it either but I also feel like they're just like listen we're just from a very wimpy generation if I had even if I had five percent of what you're dealing with we would never hear the end of it on this show so um I think it's sort of generational I did also buy him for like Christmas or something One of those paraffin It's like a wax thing and you heat it up And then you put your hands in it And then it warms into all your joints It's supposed to be very Very kind of It's supposed to create a lot of relief And he's never used it once So if it was that bad Walt, you'd be using that weird Heatable wax thing I got you, you might want to get one too I don't know But anyway, he was saying I was like, well yeah, Andrew's dealing with some carpal tunnel He's like, oh yeah, I've definitely got that And I was thinking, well, then maybe when you were talking about some of this stuff, like the sooner you address it, the better the long-term recovery is. I'm like, I should talk to Walt about getting this thing looked at because, like, you know, Lord knows he's probably had it for 20 years and been doing nothing about it.

Yeah, that's right. At one point, too, because, like, Diana or whatever her name was at the scheduling desk even said—

More like, don't, Diana.

Yeah, what did she say?

She's like, well, it's just—I'm like, well, I need to get this done before I travel. She's like, you can probably travel with it. It's just carpal tunnel. I'm just like, Diana, I got this doctor over here. More like Dirty Diana. Yeah, don't. You're really making me. You're taking all that validation I had 10 minutes ago with the surgeon, and you're really flushing it down the toilet.

Yeah, seriously.

Anyway, I am very excited. So next Wednesday, we'll have to figure out what we're doing for TBTL, maybe do a prerecord or something.

I am excited to have this on the book.

I assume you can still run the show. Come back from surgery. You're totally zooted out of your mind and neither of your hands work. I think that should probably work fine.

I mean, I won't lie to you. There was a tiny part of me that was like, well, the surgery is at 7. Would it be funny if we did a show at noon? It would be funny, but I don't know if we want to damn you what the dentist do that way. I don't think so.

I've told you that I'm actually very, very nervous about having any kind of being knocked out for anything because I don't know what I'm going to say when I come back to you. And I don't, you know, I just, I worry that I'll say some very regrettable things when I'm in one of those deluded states. Now, what we found out about you is that you're just nicer, right? I just apologize a lot. Wasn't that when you came out of your hand surgery? You were just, you, also, so interesting how central your hands are really to the plot line of this show. Somebody tried to fight you on a bus over your hands.

Yeah, you might want to go big-ass hands.

You hurt your fingers really badly trying to preserve your camera that you bought at the Lake Forest Park Mall or whatever. This thing, you got a hand guy who sounds like he's chill as hell.

Yeah, he's really cool, man. I'm not going to say the name on the podcast because I don't think I've said any of these people's names. But if you are somebody who needs, what do you call that kind of surgery that has hands?

I don't know. What's it say on his office door?

It says Bob's Hand Surgery.

Oh, okay. Oh, you're going to Bob's hand surgery. I got a Groupon for that a while ago, but I didn't use it in time. Yeah, what is that? I don't know what a hand surgeon is.

It's like orthopedics. Yeah, if you have it, that's the word I was looking for. I'm not going to be giving out people's names on the show, but I would highly recommend this office, both the OT people that I went to.

Just know you're going to get some pushback from Dirty Diana.

Yeah, exactly. Watch out for Dirty Diana. Anyway, Luke, I think we spent the whole show. You've got to get out of there.

okay i think this is the this is the relevant news of our time this is this is i did ask somebody in the bank yesterday if she knew what a podcast was which sounded and i believe this person was younger than me and then i regretted immediately yeah what they say she said yes why did it come up did you just start with that i was signing some papers at the bank i had gigi with me by the way which is also um which is a whole flex now is like i'm a guy who brings a poodle to places

Yeah, and kind of well-groomed in that classic style. She's very well-groomed.

She's very quiet. She never barks around people. And she's a very, like I said, it's a reverse Turner and Hooching, where the dog is very put together and the human is a complete slouch. That's actually kind of a good pitch. Right? It really kind of is. You said it's a joke yesterday, but now I'm thinking about it. So that's helpful. That's all that anybody wants to make anyway is something that's already been out there. So it's a reboot of Turner and Hooch, but the roles are reversed. I was signing some paperwork Down at my local bank And brought her in with me And the person We were waiting for something And the banker was asking me That classic question That is the hardest question to answer In the world And it is, got any other big plans For the rest of the day? It's just the most difficult thing to answer Maybe it's because I never have any big plans For the rest of the day I don't know, but I was like Oh I'm just going to be working on my house And you know I just I don't know why the conversation went here but I was like So yeah I've been I've been remodeling my house There's always some kind of project And I said something like You know I converted the garage into sort of a radio studio Because specifically What I was going to do which is not even related To the show Andrew you know what I was going to do Last night and I did was I put poles on all of the Cabinets in the little kitchen Area because when you remember when you and John were here? If you ever had to reach into the cabinet to get like a coffee filter, it was like trying to solve some sort of like escape room.

Because they didn't have handles. So you say poles. They didn't have handles. They're the long handles that kind of go up and down the whole length of it, sort of?

These ones are more horizontal, but basically I had to put these poles on. And I had to make a jig. Are you familiar with the jig?

I mean, I dance a little jig every now and then.

I bet you did when you found out you're getting some surgery. I made a little thing. I measured where i wanted the poles to go and then i measured how far the screws were apart on the pole and then i drilled through a piece of wood and made it so that i could use the wood as a template as a guide for where i drilled all the holes did you yeah i was actually kind of proud of i i i have to say this is not a high level of home home remodeling but the fact that it actually worked and that they look pretty good that's very smart it was i felt and i and i you know i came up with this plan myself i'm sure that it's an existing thing that people do but anyway all that is to say i could have just said to this person any big plans for the rest of the day oh i'm just remodeling my house so i've got to put some kitchen you got to put some handles on my kitchen cabinets that would have been sufficient it doesn't need to get

into the podcast but i said well i've got this studio and i kind of do i was going to call it a radio show but i didn't want to lie so then i said do you know what a podcast is and it's just like that's just like asking somebody like you know do you know what a do you know what a hot air balloon is it's like yes you know have i been in one maybe not but i know what they are

and so how did the how was that received or what happened i know it was she was very nice she said

oh yeah i know what a podcast is and and so i said well yeah i do a podcast um joe rogan I'm signing these papers under Luke Burbank But that's just my real name My professional name is Joe Rogan My professional name is Dr. Andrew Huberman I don't know if you've heard of my lab But anyway I don't know why I decided to Somehow back into the conversation About having a podcast And all she wanted to do Was just kill five minutes While the other person was retrieving some paperwork I don't know why I needed to fill that With talking about kitchen cabinets in an ADU that's also where I do this show and do you know what a podcast is

and so then she must have said what is your podcast about and you must have said

she actually didn't we moved right on to something else unrelated and then also again this person was I believe younger than me which is another reason why I feel kind of embarrassed about asking that question I feel like the younger you are the more likely it is you've heard of a podcast it's not an obscure thing anymore what i really need to get through my head is it is not an obscure thing a podcast it's again regardless of you listen to them you are aware of them people understand that's like saying do you know what television is yeah like yes i know what that is i need to stop calling it a radio show because i think that people don't know what a podcast is i just like you said it's with with the woman the the woman who brings the mail around here And just yesterday looked through the door And waved at me as she was dropping off Some broadcast coffee by the way Shout out to our friends Thanks Barry She looked in here and I always say how embarrassed I get Because she will have no idea what I'm doing And you're like she probably thinks you're doing a podcast I've got Madrona Hill On the goddamn building It's clearly a whole thing I'm in here doing it at the exact same time every day She must have figured out that this is just a podcast It's probably not that shocking to her

If you think of, I always think of, like, I was listening to a lot of podcasts around 2008, let's say. That's when you guys started on Cairo Radio, but you were also podcasting the radio show, and I was definitely listening then. Maybe I started listening in 2006 or something. But my point is, anybody who's about, I'm trying to do the math on this, what, 14 years old has never lived in a world without podcasts?

Yes, exactly. So I need to just own it. I need to start telling people I'm a, as we like to say on the show, I'm a podcaster and I don't care who knows about it. So that's right. Hey, I'm looking at the clock though. And I'm realizing that I'm, uh, I'm due down in Portland here pretty soon. Gigi and I are going to go down for a live wire meeting. I've scoped out the place where we're having the meeting. It's not our offices. We don't even have offices anymore, but it's a different place, but they do let you bring in dogs. So guy who brings poodle to places that continues to be my brand. Um, and, uh, tomorrow maybe we can talk about the rant and rave. And also the demise of the necktie Adam Gopnik wrote a great piece in The New Yorker As he always does About the demise of the necktie Which has, Andrew, a surprising connection To the nation of Croatia Where you will be visiting

I saw that, I read most of this article I wanted to send it to Anita

Because I sent her all Croatian related information That's so funny

I almost screen capped that graph And texted it to her from the doctor's office

Anyway, so We will have to wrap things up here though today and we'll be right back here tomorrow though of course with more imaginary radio for you so please do join us for that. In the meantime have a great Tuesday. Hope you're doing okay out there with all of the things out there in the world that can make us feel not great. Hopefully TV Tales is a place that's making you feel a little bit better. Certainly works for me getting to talk to my pal Andrew. Alright we'll see you tomorrow have a great Tuesday and please remember no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

I get dizzy spells, nausea, cold sweats, hot sweats, involuntary trembling, dead hands, numb lips, fingernail sensitivity, pelvic discomfort. What if my heart stops beating? What if I'm looking for a bathroom, I can't find it, and my bladder explodes.

Power out.