Muse

Okay, from NPR News in Washington, I'm Dave Mattingly. And I'm Jack Spear. I'm Nora Rahm. I'm like, yeah. From what? Larry? From NPR News, I'm Janine Hirsch. Damn it. Isn't it Janine Herbst? I'm Janine Herbst. I'm in for Larry Mantle. That's a good one. I'm Ari Shapiro. I'm Windsor Johnston. I'm Mary Louise Hirsch. No, it's Mary Louise Kelly. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. This is Marketplace. Ari Colvin? That sounds like it should be one. I'm Rachel Martin. Maureen McKinney? On the BBC News Hour. Is that Jack Spear? This is Marketplace with Sabree Beneshawr.

And I'm Kai Risdahl. Once you say one, then I can't, that that's the only one I can hear.

On all things considered, I'm Elsa. Jane. And I'm David Barncaccio. It's Weekend Edition, I'm Aisha. Roscoe, love Aisha Roscoe. Ari Shapiro.

Steve Inskeep. This is Weekend Edition, I'm Scott Horsley. And I'm Lakshmi Singh. I'm Lakshmi Singh. I'm Scott Simon. Zayne Martinez. And I'm Windsor Johnston. And I'm still Dave Mattingly. TVTL. Hey, you either get it or you don't. I don't, but I am so excited to be a part of it.

It's romantic, and it's full of these sort of situations, which turns out to be that it's very interesting, very scary at times, but also a lot of romance and really well made.

Can I blow your mind right now? Chris is laughing because he knows where I'm going with this. It's nothing like when your lips contact a skinless strawberry. Do you understand that this strawberry was created to be loved? I don't even know what that means. No one knows what it means, but it's provocative.

Well, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Isn't that for techno geeks with spreadsheets?

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. I'm back, baby! That's right. Back here live and direct with all of you, even though it is Labor Day. We love working here on TVChill so much. We are creating a brand new, shiny episode of the program for all of you.

First things first, I love my job.

I wanted to get back in the saddle right away because I have been traveling around, specifically Italy and a little bit of France. I'm sorry, I'm tan. I like to be tan. It just feels good. And I just couldn't wait. any extra time to get back and bring you episode 4284 in a collector's series let the fun begin i um weirdly have realized that i guess for me jet lag only applies in uh one direction of traveling the globe it does not appear to apply if i travel east but boy coming back home my sleep has been extremely agitated and weird and i feel like we're just

like in that tired mode where you're delirious and you're laughing at silly things.

Maybe that will help today on the show. Sometimes when we're in a silly, goofy mood, it actually makes for kind of like a fun, weird episode of the program. So that could very much happen today. Also, there is so much for me to get caught up on over the last couple of weeks because I've been out of the country. Can you verify? Can you give me some 411? I'm excited to hear about all of that from this guy, longest running co-bro of the show, may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships he was solo hosting the program last week and the reviews are in and they are very positive 100 fresh score on rotten tomatoes i'm feeling like it might have gone a little too well meet the next generation of podcast stars he's andrew walsh and he's joining me right now good morning my friend probably not how i would have handled

that intro but pretty good it's pretty good welcome back yeah are you just saying that um

A lot has changed since I've been gone, and there have been some new stylistic touches that have been implemented that I need to get caught up on, on how we do the show.

There's just a new—it's hard to explain, Luke. You've been gone. It's just kind of a new— It's a generational thing. It's a new flavor, sort of, you know, kind of a new flavor in your ear. No, it is very good to have you back. I am looking forward—what did I tell you in a text message on Friday night?

That was such a heartfelt—can I just, like, can we just start this here? because I don't think I responded to you about this, but I literally read this, and it made my heart grow three sizes.

Didn't I just say I'm looking forward to not having to work anymore?

No.

I thought that's what I said.

It doesn't.

feel as much work when you're just kind of doing anything and I just

interrupt you. Well, you kind of said that, but you said it in a very nice way. You said, we were just texting about different things for this week's show. Shows, that is. And you said, really looking forward to just talking to you on Monday instead of actually working. Yes. I focus less on the end of that sentence, the actually working for it, and more on the beginning where you said you were looking forward to talking to me. I

am. I have been. I have been. It's been a really long time. You know, we did a week of shows last week with various guests. Pet Sounds, too. Thanks, everybody. Yeah, and then the week before that, it was Pet Sounds. And to be frank, you and I were doing live shows, quote-unquote live shows, the weeks before that, but the schedule was all kind of messed up or whatever, and so it's good just to kind of get back in the saddle here. What are you bringing back? What are you bringing back from your travels? Oh,

stories, Andrew. And really, to be honest with you, insight. And valuable tips. Valuable tips for our listeners who may one day travel to europe andrew i have been spending days and days and hundreds if not thousands of dollars exploring every nook and cranny of the most obvious and popular places to visit major european cities like rome and paris and like eat your heart out rick steves if you want to really know about visiting the eiffel tower i'm your guy and actually what i i was thinking was we're just you and i have this sort of tendency after we have been apart for which you know really is such a nice kind of statement i guess about that this is our job right is that i'm legitimately excited to talk to you today i mean that'll be very different tomorrow but yeah right yes of course i just like am excited to catch up with you and usually when when we haven't talked for a while we end up just kind of you know jabbering on talking about soup and not talking about things that I figured we'll do that today. We'll just kind of catch up on what's been going on. I'll give you some of the broad strokes of my trip. But then tomorrow and for the rest of the week, I thought each day maybe I could present you my sort of travel guide for the various places that we went. And maybe the thing I'm the most excited about is the music that I came up for this segment. So it's going to be called the TBTL Travel Guide, Curing Lonely Planetness. And this is the music. Doesn't it absolutely feel like a public television travel show that you'd be watching at, like, 4 p.m. on a Saturday for reasons that you don't even understand?

It certainly does, and I've got to be honest with you. Is this not—I thought you were just going to— I've never seen—I don't watch a lot of travel shows, so I thought maybe this was a spoof that I wasn't getting. Is this actually the theme of a show like that, and I'm not getting it?

this is no i i wanted to use the rick steves whatever his show is called like travel music but then becca found it for me while we were traveling and played it on our phone and i was like it's not rick steves enough yeah i know it's his actual song but i was like it doesn't it's not culturally so andrew i went to ai this morning and said make me an italian song that's It's culturally Rick Steves, and this is what it did. We'll travel the highways and byways of Paris, France, and Rome, Italy. Coming up, visit the Colosseum with Luke Burbank. Also, I thought you'd be happy to know that this is completely original work. That's true. So we're not going to get taken down anywhere else. Because I actually wondered that, too. If I go and I grab real public television travel music, if it would get flagged.

I'm sick of everything being flagged. I'm not going to lie to you. You can't say anything anymore. You can't play anything anymore. I do like that music. I didn't know that it was AI created. I was going to ask you, what is that, an accordion? But I guess it's just a robot. A robit. It's a robit.

It's a robit playing. I can't log into the... I use this... Amazingly, now, I'm becoming a pretty frequent flyer with this website. It's like suno.something. But I found it in Reddit. They said this is one of the good websites for having it make music for you. And I've now I've got the TBTL Philly music I made in there. So that's in my file. Like I'm building quite the catalog of of stuff. And yeah, I just told it like Italian music with accordion. And it wrote me like 40 versions of that song.

This reminds me of something that I am not well equipped right now to explain it to you later on this week. I'm going to show for you maybe our copyrighted music woes are behind us, both with your ability to use AI to create music and my new career as a musician because a friend of mine was telling me about how he uh I don't even know the words for these things Luke and I was trying to google it on the fly I'm going to get more information later in the week but I have a new little device that is like I guess a sequencer it's about the size of like two decks of cards next to each other sort of like kind of a long like a like a and you can like kind of loop beats, I'm going to be a Reggie Watts.

to be like a reggie i'm basically gonna be better than reggie watts now i'm gonna show you this

thing you are going to you can loop on the fly and do like little repetitions and things luke

you are going to die when you hear who i'm dating reggie watts he is undifficult did i ever tell you

he is easy going did i tell you the reggie watt story very quickly here um which was we were doing a live wire fundraiser um and it was at the revolution hall in portland and the great ian carmel uh was stopping by he's a very funny comedian and uh portland native and first of all ian carmel showing up to perform on our show is just like a gift because he regularly sells out revolution hall so for him to go to the basement of revolution hall to a smaller room gratis um and then when he was there he's like oh hey by the way uh my buddy reggie is in town should would you'd be cool if he swung by it i was like yeah reggie reggie would be great um and so he just like calls him and reggie comes over and they both get up and they perform it's like the highlight of the night and then i don't know like a month later somehow it comes to my attention that when they did the final tally of the donations both ian and reggie donated oh my god to livewire so not only did they like show up and perform for free just to be nice they then literally got guilted into donating money to the show oh that is so sweet i mean they are both of them are just like beyond menches but like particularly i mean ian we're pretty tightly connected with ian at this point reggie is is is a little bit more of an outlier so for him to donate money was just like

i mean it just warmed my heart i don't know ian carmel other than you mentioning that now am i saying that right by the way did i yeah okay um but reggie carmel funny no i just i'm unfamiliar And so I wasn't sure if I was bringing if I if I was restating it properly. But no offense, I'm just unfamiliar. But Reggie obviously has, you know, through comedy, bang, bang. And I actually have seen him live in a couple of different. I've seen him live in both a comedy show and he opened for Nation of Language, I think, at the Crocodile around this time last year. He was really good. And for whatever reason, like I'm just more kind of aware of him. And he is one of those people. And by the way, I'm not I'm not starting any rumors here. I mean, but he is one of those people whose personality is his public persona is just so sweet and wonderful and laid back and lovable that if I ever heard the tiniest bit of like gossip about him, about him being anything but absolutely lovable, it would crush me. I'd have to take another week off of work.

He, in my experience now of a few times meeting him Because he also performed on Livewire when we were in Chicago Many, many years ago He, there's absolutely, there is no separation He is tightly coupled His public and private persona Like he's the absolute nicest person offstage And completely chill And just completely relatable Like when I met him in Chicago And that was the first time he had um like lost a significant amount of weight and it was because he was like eating like just eating really clean and like we just spent like an hour talking about how like he was basically just eating chicken breast all the time and he had this special meal backstage but it was so charming because it was here's the thing about reggie's he is so manifestly talented and creative when you see him you know looping and doing things that like you know the art form that you are soon to redefine but when you look at the old guard of this reggie look at if we can look back for a moment exactly um we he's he's so absurdly talented and creative that you kind of wonder if that's also going to be a guy who's just going to be talking about keto with you backstage like like i wondered if he was going to be like a kind of eccentric in a way that was hard for me to relate to because his performance style is so in the best way all over the place yes and and and and he was So, I mean, that's what's amazing about him is that he's able to be both super unbelievably talented and incredibly relatable and just kind and not like, OK, this is a mad genius who like you get him on stage and it's great. But offstage, you're like, I don't really know how to relate to this person. That is also not the vibe.

Yeah, I can see that now that you say that, because there's there's an absurd again in the context that I see him like, again, the old comedy, bang, bang TV show, which is absurd itself. There's an absurdism to what he does in a certain way. And I do poorly with that.

Usually I'm into certism.

Yes. I mean, it is. I'm highly absurd. Yeah. If somebody is too absurd, it would be hard to find common ground to relate to, you know, just kind of like, oh, I see you're eating raw chicken. And the answer to that is just boop.

I want to mention. Yes, exactly. I would. And then looped it. I want to mention the chicken was cooked. It's not. I don't want to. Did I say raw chicken?

I don't want anyone to think we're advocating for a raw chicken diet on the show. That's the second time I believe in two days that I've done that. I think I was talking to Genevieve. You want to know what's been going on over here. luke i do i actually really do i i mean a lot first of all i got wordle in two the other day you weren't here for that you're just out gallivanting i'm getting drawn into that world

because i've been traveling with becca like would spend every morning deeply even internationally deeply immersed in the new york times puzzle section did you do connections the day that

they said brats or something that go with bratwurst oh i can't i just don't even they had both brats and bratwurst the category was things to bring to a or things that go with bratwurst and the one of the things was brought well brought they were i have already talked about it on the show with genevieve i've talked about it said anybody who will listen i don't even do connections anymore because i just because of this bullshit um but when i hear people are angry about it then i'll go in and i'll like kind of solve it just to see what it is and i got that one right by the way but i just because but they try to be clever and they had like in one puzzle the clues were like one of them was what looked like brat and another one was coconut and another one was tree and i was like oh and i say they but it's really yeah and so but they were so they were trying so hard to get brat slash brat slash i'm practicing my it's black it's brat slash fall scoring at home brat slash brought they wanted to get that in there and be clever about it which is you can do that but then don't make it things that go with brought worth what are you

no no no yeah that's not that's that's that's a real stretch but i'm forgetting the exact ones that I was doing, I don't think I was like absurdly riled up about it, but I do understand the frustration that people feel around connections.

I was going to tell you though, the reason the raw chicken thing came up was because I've been, and this is the big change in my life, is little by little, I think Sprouts is starting to compete for my grocery store attention. It's a grocery store around here. The former Kmart. Yep, off of North Aurora. I think there are a couple of them maybe sprinkled around. I don't know how wide the footprint of Sprouts is,

But it's like I've been to a Sprouts in like northern California while just driving and trying to find a place that had, you know, I don't know, basic groceries. So I think it's made its way to at least northern Cal.

And it's one of those stores that I usually don't go to. Like I like a very generic grocery store around here. They're all owned by Kroger, essentially. I mean, I don't have that quite right. But you have your your your Fred's Meyer, your Q's FC, your Safeways, whatever. We're just like, I want to go in, I want to get the brand of cat litter that I like. I want a Popsicle brand Popsicle. I don't want a Nature's Way fruit snack, you know, whatever. I don't think I'll ever cut traditional grocery stores or generic grocery. Generic is the wrong word there, but just sort of like traditional grocery stores out of my grocery store diet. But I don't go in for Trader Joe's. I know it's like a religion or a cult for some people. The few times I've been in there, I feel claustrophobic. I don't like it. I don't want to learn about all the other, you know, their sort of branded stuff. Whole Foods, not really for me, blah, blah, blah. But there's something about the Sprouch that is, I don't know, maybe a mile north of me. They call themselves like a, you know, a farmer's market. It's not a farmer's market. It's a grocery store. But, you know, I would pop in there every now and then out of convenience. They have a few like kind of prepared foods, which is like a like a turkey carnitas that feeds. Like carnitas is a good flavor, but usually that's pork, of course. But they kind of like when they're cutting up the turkeys or whatever, they take the extras and they package it up and turn it into carnitas, which is really good. So things like that had me going back there. And that's good for Veeves too, right? Because missing her with the pork. Exactly. So I'm like, okay, I'll go back and get some of that turkey carnitas. Then I'm in the door. And then, and this is a true story. This sounds like a testimonial, Luke, that you would put in a Sprouts commercial. I grabbed a bunch of produce there, actually specifically fruit that I was going to just kind of cut up and just throw into a bowl together, like poor man's fruit salad or whatever. I don't know what makes a fruit salad a fruit salad. If you just cut up strawberries and pineapple, is that a fruit salad?

It would be to me. I think maybe where it's sort of been transubstantiated into something else is when you start adding like ambrosia, like weird, which I'm not into. Jelly, yeah, yeah. But that's what I think of. It's like, oh, I'm bringing a fruit salad. It's like it's going to have some kind of whipped factor to it or something.

Yeah, yeah. I'm not – I don't go in for that. But it is very common, especially during the summer months, for me to come home with, let's say, some pineapple, some strawberries, and maybe blueberries and just throw them all into a big bowl together and eat it throughout the week, right? That's kind of standard behavior. And I usually just buy the stuff at my usual grocery store. And I was in the sprouts, so I'm like, oh, I might as well buy the produce here. Luke, I brought that home. I ate one of those strawberries and it was a Eureka moment for me. And this is the content that we needed you to go to Europe so that you could come back and hear this.

What I do and, you know, it's it's it the thing about it is.

make it seem so easy and simple but i'm able to extract from you the truly interesting parts of this story it's our special relationship over these years to now create a dynamic where we get into the real stuff yes by way of rome this strawberry that i had for real though i was like

oh my god this strawberry just tastes so much better than the stuff i've been getting at the grocery store like i'm not somebody who i don't know considers that stuff all that often i guess i don't know i just buy the grocery i buy the strawberries i bring them home i cut them up and i eat them and because i'm not somebody who spends a lot of time at like real farmers markets or what have you it hadn't really occurred to me that there was going to be a vast difference i had one of these strawberries from sprouts and i was like oh shit like there's a difference here and so now i'm going there for my produce i'm sort of i'm like kind of i'm a little bit split here in my grocery store personalities i'm going up to sprouts to get like some of the some of the more whole foodie kind of stuff not the brand but the actual description of food and And then, you know, when I want my pet step, you know, cat litter or whatever it is, I'm going to the, you know, QFCs for that.

Right. Because I feel like this is outside of your self-conception, by which I mean, I think what you like about going to a typical, we're going to call it typical grocery store. You go there a lot. You kind of know the people. There's low pretension. there's not like there's and it's like you said you like to just get a popsicle brand popsicle instead of um something that's probably allegedly healthier who knows if it even is but there's just like the stuff that the sort of staples you just don't want it to be some weird thing that's trader trader mike's you know whatever whatever um ironically you do go to staples for your staples so that is that one is actually a little bit less complicated yes and i use so many staples The same reason that you... I do a lot, by the way. Do you really?

I have a stapler in my drawer, but it's got staples in it from 1972. You're going to like this stapler. Sorry, we're on video. The listeners can't see this. But look at this Cold War era stapler that I've been carrying around.

Did you get that at the University of Washington surplus? No, I've had this. Surplus.

I think this came from my dad's steel fab shop when I was a kid. Oh, my God, that is great. You can kill somebody with this thing.

I can almost see the heft through the screen. I've got something that I purchased more recently But you can see, Andrew, that it's definitely Made in the style Of that same kind of industrial era And, you know There's very little that I find More satisfying than a good stapling Because, you know, I've always got these Papers and scripts around You're printing a lot, yeah So that's why the staplers But anyway, I just think that In the way that you talked about In LA, a certain kind of brunch scene not feeling quite right to you because of you would like to go get some a chicken fried steak and maybe read your book and or chat with veebs and just have some breakfast and you don't want there to be any kind of posturing that you need to do or long line you need to wait in or anything that's just kind of a little bit too as they might say extra and so like finding the sort of organic maybe uh produce or whatever uh as opposed to what they have in your local grocery store which has been fine and dandy for you all these years now it's like oh So the water is being, the organic broth is being turned up on my friend Andrew.

Yeah, I mean, so here's the perfect example. You were talking about sort of like, say off-brand is wrong, but like, I like Cheerios, right? I don't eat a lot of cereal, but when I do, almond milk and Cheerios hits right. So I like to keep both of those on hand. Almond milk, I wouldn't have expected that. Yeah, I made the switch maybe a couple of years ago, only because, I don't know, I don't eat that much dairy. And if I think about it too much, it's a little bit weird.

It really is, as he adds half and half to his coffee.

And so, yeah, and so I started trying almond milk, and I really like it, and so why not? But anyway, when I was at the Sprouts, I was like, now, they're not going to have Cheerios here, but let me just see what they have. And I found the cereal aisle, and it really was something like— Can I try to guess at the name? I don't—yeah, I mean, I could guess as well. I'll try to look it up. Oh, you didn't buy it? No, and see, that's why it was like Nature's O's or something. I don't think that was it, but I'm just like, I'm not there yet, Sprout. like I'm there and that's the thing like let's keep checking in on this over the years Luke at some point will I become such a sprouty that's what we call ourselves now that nature's o's will be I won't even remember the Andrew who only ate Cheerios because he's cool with uh with nature's

o's I don't know yeah that's a that's I thought I thought the end of that story was going to be you had like decided to take a flyer on these nature o's and then you actually like them more than you like Cheerios, but you're saying that's a bridge you're not quite yet ready to cross.

I'm not there yet. I might be there. I want to keep an open heart, certainly, but I'm just not there yet. But strawberries, produce, turkey carnitas. But if I, you know, one thing I want to say, though, is, and this is kind of important, if you live in... north seattle and that turkey carnitas sounds good to you just remember if you're at the grocery store and there's only like one left maybe leave it for me because that does go pretty quickly at

the sprouts yeah that's all you know a couple things one that sprouts location lives very large in my mind for a couple of reasons and remind me to get to that in 10 seconds because first i wanted to say that's a really smart idea to substitute turkey for pork because if you flavor it enough I think probably from a consistency standpoint, if you're using – particularly if you're getting the kind of oilier part of the turkey, more the brown meat, I bet you that it's not very different than pork because pork, I think, has a little more oil in it and stuff. And then you can probably have a very good experience with something that is maybe a little bit less inhumane, at least in Genevieve's estimation and mine for that matter, than the pork.

And honestly, probably healthier, right? A bit healthier, I would imagine. Yeah, but it is very rich. That's the one thing about it is it seems like the type of thing that we might just keep in the fridge a lot. But the thing is, when you get to the bottom of, you know, it's in those sort of like takeout little kind of flat trays in the refrigerated section where they have various kind of prepared foods. And it is very rich. So by the time you get to the bottom of one, after you've had it for a day or two in your refrigerator and you've been kind of eating it and, oh, you know, it's really good, too, is just wrapping it up in lettuce. I wasn't even trying to be healthy, Luke. It was late at night, but what was handy. What is going on? I swear to God. You really have changed. Dude, I swear to God I was not trying to be healthy. I wanted that to be very, very clear. I think I was just stoned, and there was lettuce in the fridge next to this carnitas, and it was that big romaine, so I had really big leaves of it. And I was like, I don't know. And you know what? I've been on a hoisin kick. God, you've missed so much. I've been on a hoisin and sriracha kick. Your beard is all grown out, by the way. It looks very nice. Oh, yeah. I really like that. But I would just stood in my kitchen making these like quick wraps with like lettuce and this carnitas and dipping it. I know it's a weird flavor combination. It's different cultures, but dipping it in a little bit of hoisin and and sriracha. My God, it was so good. But by the time you're done with that, you are going to want to rest on the carnitas for a while because it is very, very rich is my point.

That sounds like a really crisp bite. Oh, so good, man. You know what I mean? It was so fresh. Okay, the other thing about that Sprouts is, you know, it used to be a Kmart. For my whole childhood, that was a Kmart. And it was, as that little kind of strip, I think, started to, I would, actually, I don't want to say it was dying. But it was, there was a pretty decent amount of turnover in the other businesses that were in that. Because it's kind of like multiple storefronts, the primary one being Sprouts. By the way, since I've been in Europe, I call it primary. So that's one of the many changes in my life.

Oh, God, I'm looking forward to all the...

The primary flagship store is that now Sprouts, and it was a Kmart. Anyway, my dad and I, my dad used to do these jobs for a thing called CPAC Realty, who just managed a lot of commercial real estate. And we used to go out, and I don't think he does this anymore, but we used to go out and dig these post holes and put up these really big, really heavy-duty signs, or sometimes we'd hang them off the front of the building, where sometimes we'd put them on these skids and just put them in the parking lot so they were resting on the concrete but they weren't going anywhere. And we put one up in front of that Kmart. I mean, really close to Aurora. So really there used to be like a hill. So you have Aurora Avenue, this hill, and then the parking lot for the Kmart. And we put those up and it just happened to be that there was a documentary called Hype that came out years ago. Do you remember this? I could have seen this getting on your radar in New Hampshire or even Ohio. It was basically like a doc about, I think, the explosion of the grunge scene, but made with a really high level of awareness of the scene. So it wasn't like a kind of a shitty, like, you know, and I don't say this with any disrespect, but like the way that Cameron Crowe, when he made singles, it was like the Hollywoodized version of the grunge scene. Which, by the way, I was very there for as a viewer in my 11th grade of high school. I was like, I love this movie so much. but this was my memory of hype is that it was made by some cool filmmaker who's probably made other cool stuff anyway i think it's like the opening scene of hype they're just showing all this seattle shit and they showed the cpac realty sign my dad and i put up in front of the sprouts and i swear to god the jolt of adrenaline i got off of seeing that cpac realty sign that i had helped my dad put in in the movie hype now it wasn't annotated they weren't like sign works with walt burbank special assistant producer credit luke burbank that was lost on in fact I would imagine I'm the only person who was who even noticed that that was a CPAC Realty sign next to the Kmart. But boy, was I happy about it.

To answer your question, I had not seen hype, but I think I've heard of it through you. I think that probably is very story. I don't know if I've heard that exact story before, but I feel like if I've heard of it, it's probably through TBTL. But yeah, the. The filmmaker also did Scratch, which I'm pretty sure was the documentary. Oh, I loved Scratch. Yeah, which I don't think I've seen that one, but also Art and Copy, which was about, if I'm correct about this, was about, like, font and design, I think, which I do think I saw. We're talking Garamond. We are talking Garamond. So, anyway.

Okay, so you now eat only raw chicken.

I only eat raw chicken. Oh, that's right. So Genevieve told me, stop calling it raw chicken. It's cold chicken. It's different. I'm like, okay.

Interesting. So you have been like – were you referring to your carnitas as raw turkey?

I think – I don't know. I swear like just yesterday Genevieve had to correct me and say it's not raw chicken. It's just cold chicken. I don't know exactly because I will also sometimes just get like shredded chicken there as well. Again, it's a smart system. Like they're carving up, you know, turkeys and chickens or whatever and they have a little deli in there where we'll make you sandwiches or whatever. So I'm assuming that they have, you know, this stuff sort of like leftover that can't be sliced up. And so they turn it into delicious leftovers.

That sounds that sounds quite maybe the new policy, since we're sort of hitting refresh on the entire program, is we only talk about healthy food during the show. Because then I will be craving healthy food at the end of it versus unhealthy food, which I will. I'll crave whatever food is being discussed. By the way, my house is boy, the cupboards are bare. I believe it. The refrigerator, because I've been gone not just on this big trip I went on, but I was gone the week before that because I was in Nashville. And so I've really been gone for like three weeks.

You were gone the week before that, too, though. I thought you were on the West Coast. Pretty much.

Yeah, I was in like L.A. or something. I think I was home for a day. So really for like a month or so, I've been not home. And it's, I have to say, it's really nice being back. Without getting into the TBTL travel guide Curing Lonely Planetness Can you tell I'm proud of that title?

Who fit some music for him

Well, someday Without getting too much into that travel talk I will say that I'm so glad to be home And that is itself a really good feeling When you get back And then you're in your house And then you're like, I like it here You know what I mean? That was a really I will say this it was probably the most fun vacation of my entire life it was it was just the best um becca is an amazing travel partner and um and like it was just a really really great trip uh but i was also just so happy to get home but i have like not i'm existing right now on uh trader joe's cannelloni beans in the can because those things are pretty shelf stable and like whatever else i can dig up from the dry food section of my kitchen, but I had thrown out all perishable items. This half-and-half that I'm using is really on the line. Oh, I don't like the sound of that. Yeah, it's, let's see. It's best if used by August. Well, it just, August 10th. Oh, my God. It just stopped being August 10th, right?

Oh, wow. This cottage cheese I'm putting in my coffee is still good.

It didn't. The sad part is it started out as half-and-half.

Oh, that kind of turns my stomach a bit.

All right, let's thank some of our daily donors today. These folks are making TBTL possible with their donation, and we are extremely grateful for the support of folks like Holly Barnett-Riba of Lakewood, Ohio.

Lakewood, Ohio. Shout out. Hi, Holly. I feel like recently or somewhat recently I made a mess of things by accusing Holly of leaving Lakewood, but it turns out we might have more than one Holly listening. I can't remember exactly what my mistake was, but I'm glad to see that Holly is still there representing my old stomping grounds.

Absolutely. Paul Richardson is representing my old stomping grounds of Harrogate, England. Oh, that's right, because you're European now, right? Now, yes. It's actually my primary residence now was in Harrogate, England. Is this our friend Paul? Wait, is this Paul the Comedian?

Oh, yeah.

Saul?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, Paul goes by a lot of... Paul got into some trouble with the law at some point, right?

Honestly, this kind of seems like somebody who's on the run from something.

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, that's him. So let's not dig into it too much.

Yeah, thank you, Paul Saul. Also, thanks to Teresa Slusher in Tumwater, Washington. That's my secondary residence over there in beautiful Tumwater, Washington. It really helped. I know this is so basic. This is so Ziggy of me. You're so Ziggy. Um, I, uh, when I got home on Saturday night after a truly, I don't want to say it was harrowing, because anything went especially badly, but boy, it was a long trip coming home. Like, you're going to the place, you're excited, it's like, it's all starting, and then just the coming home is like, oh man. Then I had to, like, get a lift from the airport out to here, and that's just, like, everything was just kind of, like, I was really, really dragging by the end. But I got home and kind of, like, got into the house, and I opened all the shades, and it was, like, the most amazing sunset that I'd ever seen. And I, like, took a picture of it, and I put it on Instagram, because that's how I process anything good happening in my life. And I just was like, oh, it's so nice to be here. And I was just feeling it for the state of Washington. You know, I live in southern Washington. this is on the subject of Tumwater I just was like, I have been recently to some of the more noteworthy places in you know, I guess in Italy and England, where's the Eiffel Tower?

I forget. It's in Scotland I believe. Edinburgh. That's it, yes

the McEiffel Tower I just had been in these places that were very much like the stuff of postcards and then I was at my actual house And it was the stuff of postcards And I was like, go Washington State Like I was saying to Becca, we were running on the Seine River In Paris, jogging And it's just like, you're literally The Eiffel Tower's on one side of you And it's just like this And the Seine River with all the bridges That people put locks on the bridges Because it's like a sign of their true love, etc And I was like, you know, it's gonna be different When I'm running Lake Sacajawea In Longview, Washington I was like, it's gonna be a real come down But being back here, I'm not coming down I'm like, I also like this place

People come out here to visit, you know That's right I mean, I don't want to speak ill of another place But when you talk about how good it is to be home Well, I'm somebody who is all Even when I'm leaving for vacation I'm usually looking forward to the moment I come home

I want to talk about this in the coming days When we're getting closer to you Launching out on your big trip Because I had a thought in the airport I said to Becca, I was like I bet you Andrew is jealous of me

That you're coming home Yeah, my vacation is done That you're at the end of your vacation I love coming home, leaving is hard for me, but I will say, and this is going to sound negative towards the great city of Los Angeles, and I don't mean it to be, I ended up enjoying some of my time in Los Angeles greatly, in fact, but my first couple of years there, I was under a lot of stress, and just personally, it had nothing to do with the city, but just personally, I was in a pretty bad place, and I really missed Seattle. And it was one of those things where I was like, did I make it's the only time in my life I was like, did I make the right decision and moving here? And I remember leave, you know, I've said this on the show a couple of times, but I was up in Seattle visiting as a visitor, but then coming home to L.A. And not and not having the good feeling of coming home and having the bad feeling of being here. And then also, I mean, that's why, you know, I think, you know, L.A. airport has a lot going for it. Some of my favorite movie intros are taped with Jackie Brown walking across the colorful tiled walls of LAX and Die Hard. But anyway, but like LAX became a symbol of me coming back to a place. I went in like in like I'd walk out of the the sliding doors of the airport and just like and I wasn't somebody who was obsessed with smog or whatever. But just like specifically there, just like breathing in a big lungful of just car exhaust and like this really hot sun blast of heat in a blast of heat, knowing that I left my very green, clear skied Pacific Northwest behind. And here I was. And like that, that was such a bad feeling for me. And again, I want to make it very clear. Once my life changed a bit, I loved Los Angeles and I still miss parts of Los Angeles. This is not a statement on that. It's about where I was at the time. and what a bummer of a feeling to not be excited to come home and so i think ever since then i've really appreciated that i do live in places i love specifically seattle i have an attachment

to this place you were basically returning to the la that's in blade runner 2024 or whatever which i watched on the plane oh did you was that your first time watching it yes yeah yeah i love that so good yeah i am a totally in the bag for a denny villeneuve yeah right when i started watching it i didn't realize that he was the same guy who directed dune and i was like oh my god this is exactly like dune this is just like a vibe exactly like an incredibly well filmed vibe

and i was like i'm here for this well i don't know if you know this but on tuesday's show we

had uh nick jarron on and our oh i mean listen people won't stop blowing my text about how good

it was do you know what we talked about though um no so nick's been very into this app called letterboxed where you can like kind of you know share the movies that you love and rate movies and whatever it's his social media obsession now and he's been really into films and he creates these various lists of like movies to watch with whatever and one of the lists that he created was movies to watch on mute at a bar and so he and I just created our two lists and we actually we were talking about more ways of maybe like kind of expanding this into like sort of vibe setting lists or whatever but it was so much fun for him and I just to compare Thank you.

notes about and like the thing is the reason I bring it up is um Blade Runner 2024 with was on both of our lists the first Blade Runner was not on our list and I love the first Blade Runner but when you want to just talk about something that is absolutely just visual candy for me and you have you have both like this sort of like futuristic sort of sci-fi-ness of it all but also the neo-noir-ness of it all and neo-noir is like that's definitely where I live like that movie is high on my list of movies just to have on as visual spackle in the background the only

reason that i would maybe disagree with that is because i feel like the soundtrack is so essential the soundtrack is good too yeah to the vibe like so much of it and i feel the same with dune it's just like a shot of like some desertscape and then it's just like this weird like high-pitched i know it's probably not johnny greenwood but just kind of like almost like there will be blood you know which he did do the soundtrack for where you're just kind of like I'm just looking at this like kind of windswept thing and there's just like a in the background but it's like creating a whole feeling

yeah that is true

I think it really helped I was watching it on a plane to where I'm very predisposed to feel intensely whatever is happening cinematically so anyway back to the folks that we are thanking today which did include let's see Teresa who was in Tumwater and then just up the road Laurel Price is in Seattle Washington

again one of the most beautiful places on earth

well I mean I get this I get kind of a Blade Runner the original Blade Runner feeling when I'm driving up I-5 and I hit like the construction in Tacoma on my way to Seattle but I'm not holding that against Laurel Price or Tanya Rettinger who's in Renton Washington the gateway to Seattle

The light rail will be there in no time I don't know, since you've been gone, Luke I mean, again, you don't even live in Seattle But the light rail has extended all the way to Linwood now Three light rail stops have opened in North Seattle Since you've been gone Things are happening

I am, I will say this I am very jealous That they got their light rail together And extended it After I had decamped from Seattle Because it could have really changed the places That I thought of as a reasonable place to live

Uh-huh, sure, yeah

I mean, like, you could live, you could absolutely live anywhere along that line and have a very, very convenient way to get to things and work potentially or whatever. Like, it's game-changing when there's proper public transportation. And they didn't really, I mean, they had buses and stuff, but, like, it's very cool.

I was going to say, a little E-line erasure there, sounds like.

You know, I don't want to go dark with this because Philip Brock of Richmond, Virginia hates it when I do this. But I did at some point on my trip, I think I saw a note that there was unfortunately like a sort of a some sort of violent event on a bus in Seattle.

It wasn't in Seattle. Somebody. Yeah. A shooting. Yeah. I read about that.

And I was like, if this is the E line. No. If this is how I found out that Andrew is no more. No. This is going to be tough. And I looked it up and it wasn't the E line.

No. And it wasn't technically Seattle. It was it was. I believe it was a sound transit bus. And because I see that stuff, too. And again, because both, you know, I care about it, but also I mean, I don't know if this is right or wrong, but I'm also defensive of transportation as well. And so when there's and listen, that wasn't some exaggerated story. That was a really tragic event. And it is news. But when I first see a headline, I always I'm like, wait a second. Hold on. Like, what is going on here? Because there's a lot of fear mongering, I think, around some of the public transportation options around here, too. But as we saw, sometimes things do go sideways.

If anybody gets to be defensive of public transportation in Seattle, it's you. And I mean that because, like, you've been hassled a couple of times. Like, first of all, you use it all the time. And you also have been through some of the maybe less great moments of being in that space. And you still really appreciate it. Like, to me, you get to say whatever you want about public transit. Like, I don't get to say whatever I want because I don't use it. And certainly some right-wing radio person or whatever doesn't get to say whatever they want about it not using it. Like somebody who lives in ex-urban Seattle. Like, there's a bunch of people that don't get to weigh in on it. You're one of the people that does get to weigh in on it.

Yeah. Oh, I think it was, and I'm going to get the S in the wrong place, Des Moines, I believe. We say the S on Des Moines, right?

We do. We put some S on that name in the Seattle area. Anyway, thank you so much to all of our donors today for keeping TBTL going. I am just starting to feel this weird combination right now, Andrew, of sort of exhaustion, but also the coffee really kicking in. Which is, I'm 5% in that part where my head is feeling a little loopy. I'm a little balloonish, a little head detaching from body. So bear with me, and I may need you to support me. as the newly minted breakout star of TBTL. I'm going to need you to help me through the next time.

half hour of the show or whatever it turns out i was a backdoor pilot the whole time you sure were and you're really i mean don't google backdoor pilot by the way i feel like that's probably

gonna take you to some other weird places why do they call him the backdoor pilot

but um i am loopy because my sleep has been so weirdly kind of changed up by this what we we flew to um from new york i met back up in new york because i've been working in nashville she had been working in Portland we converged in oh this isn't even part of the travel guide but let

me just tell you the TWA hotel at JFK oh yeah you I think it was on the show did you mention that

you were going to be staying there I don't think I had I might have mentioned it in passing but I hadn't been there yet I mean if you are a mid-century fan the way that I am or my kind of modern I don't know it's maybe not even quite mid-century it's more sort of like Pop art go-go 60s or something If that makes sense Like if you are a fan of any of that kind of stuff And you happen to be passing through New York It's very weird who would stay at this place I guess it would be me Because I got there on Friday Becca was showing up late that night Then we were flying out on Saturday So it created the opportunity It wasn't even worth it to try to go into New York City Because that's like an hour long process And it was like we're going to get into the city Pay a bunch for a hotel room and then just have to go back out of the city to catch our flight when it was all happening out of JFK. So I was in, I thought, this unique position to want to stay at a hotel that's connected to the airport. Turns out a lot of people are in this position. But it used to be the TWA terminal. And it was designed by a guy, Aero Saarinen, who also designed the St. Louis Arch.

Oh, okay.

And you can see the real similarities of that, of those projects. He was very into a sort of a swooping kind of curve.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say. Yeah, I can see that. Kind of vibe. Yeah.

And also my weird way into Eero Saarinen that I've talked about many times on the show is that beer commercial I was in when I was in my 20s was directed by his son, Eric Saarinen. Oh. And at that time, I had no knowledge or thought around like mid-century stuff. But had I been Like if I were now to be in a project That was directed by Eric Saarinen I would ask zero questions about the production And one million questions about his dad So maybe it's better

Eric dodged a bullet is what you're saying

Huge, huge bullet That I didn't understand that his dad Was this incredibly influential architect But anyway Yeah, it's just like the whole thing is set up So cool I mean it's just like a time capsule They still have all the signs The sort of signs you might see a train station still where the letters and numbers flip over that kind of thing it's just it's a whole vibe and there's this pool on the roof which is barely functional as a pool it's

tiny oh is it that small because you i i saw photos i can't remember if they were photos that you posted or i think when you told me you were staying there i went to the website as well and i looked at it and um it sort of hangs off as it's kind of is it quasi they called an infinity pool But anyway, I'm sorry to interrupt your story, but I didn't realize it was so small. It didn't come off that way in photos.

Yeah, it's pretty tiny, and also you have to pay $25 for a one-hour-and-45-minute session. Oh, wow, that's weird. At the pool, and then they kick you out. Even if you want to do back-to-back sessions, they kick everyone out every hour and 45 minutes so they can kind of clean up the area and then let people back in.

Because they live for the images that come out of that place, right? And I was completely, yeah, I was helping with that.

Like I said, barely functional as a pool. It's really shallow. I didn't even go in. I just wanted to see it and sit by it. And so that's what I did. But like, if you were a kid, it was fun to splash around. But like, it's not very deep. It can't hold that many people. You can't do like, in fact, there was a whole incident where these kids were playing, which is what kids do in a swimming pool. But then this woman and I presume like her husband or whatever partner were like drinking like white wine in the corner of the pool. They had like, you know, plastic wine tumblers that had been given to them. And the woman thought the kids were like getting splashing pool water in her wine. So then she was like, this woman was like 55 or something, was then splashing the children. And then the mom next to me was like yelling at the lady. And then like the hotel staff had to come out and try to deescalate. This is all as I'm just sitting there, like, day, hour one of my vacation.

That is not the vibe that the TWA wants to nurture. No.

And I was like, I'm not even getting into this. I love that I have no role, or I just, like, had my headphones on. I was listening to Empire of the Sun. I was, like, I was chill.

You didn't go and headbutt one of the kids?

There was zero headbutting on this trip, I'm happy to report. Nice. But. But yeah, that was because it's not really a real swimming pool It's like a place where some people my age want to have their drink and reflect And then we're like, the kids in the hotel are like, it's a swimming pool We want to be kids in a swimming pool But anyway, other than that, the entire hotel is just an amazing vibe and very cool So anyway, we flew from there, we flew from JFK to Rome And that was all fine While in Europe, my sleep schedule I mean, poor Becca probably got three hours of sleep the whole time because I'm such a snore monster now. But I was cool with that as far as the like the jet lag. I was really expecting it to be bad and it wasn't. But man, getting back here. So I got back Saturday night and I was deliriously tired but couldn't fall asleep.

Because Saturday night here, Friday night. Wait, hold on. Okay, so Saturday night here is going to be super early morning in Europe. Is that right? Or it doesn't even matter? You're just all mixed up. It doesn't matter.

Yeah, well, that's the thing. I thought I was going to ride it out, and it would be like I was going to be able to because eventually we flew from Paris to Iceland to Portland and kind of missed a day because you're on the airplanes for so long that an entire day sort of goes by, but you're going backwards in time. So you're like we left on Saturday and we got here on Saturday even though this whole thing had transpired And I just thought well I'll push through and then I'm very proud of my sleeping skills as you mentioned during our sound check I'm a person who notably can have a cup of coffee and go to sleep But that has not been working for me since I got back I tried to fall asleep really late and then couldn't And then was just like looking at my phone which was dumb that never helps And then got a little bit of sleep, but then just was like wired at like 5 a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep. And then last night, I fell asleep at like 8 p.m. I was like, okay.

Yeah, that should get you reset.

Yeah, I was like, this will be great. I'll go to sleep at 8. And again, a thing that I'm weirdly proud of, which is what a sad flex, is that I am the kind of person who, if I've been running a sleep deficit, I can go to sleep at 8 o'clock at night. And I will probably wake up to pee, but I can sleep all the way through to like 6 or 7 the next morning. And that's a ludicrous amount of sleep to get Most people are like, if I go to bed at 8 I'm going to wake up at 2 and I'm going to just be awake now And that has never been my move Except last night I woke up 2 in the morning Could not sleep And then I just thought Screw it, I'm just going to be productive I did the dishes at 2am I was like getting everything ready for today I was putting show sheets together I basically just worked I was folding a bunch of laundry I'm very proud by the way that I have unpacked all of my luggage and washed everything that was dirty and put it away now and like things that i hadn't worn i just put them away like i'm completely unpacked from this trip that is a

record for me yeah you will not be surprised to hear that i am the opposite of that like we were saying before sometimes when i go on vacation the thing i look forward to most is coming home from vacation because i'm what they call fun um and so those moments where i get home And then I unzip my suitcase immediately, pop it open on the couch downstairs, put on something on television, and I'm just going to spend the next hour puttering and putting everything away, do the laundry, wash the bag that the dirty laundry has been in with the laundry, put everything away, empty my little, what do you call it, a dop kit or my toiletry bag or whatever. Just like slowly, meticulously make those headways into sort of restoring normal life. Yes.

Yeah, I think I'm going to start doing that more regularly because it was actually a very gratifying feeling. It was weird that it was happening at 2.30 in the morning.

Sure, yeah.

And I was also eating Thai food. I told you my cupboards are bare. I ordered Thai food yesterday. But then when it came, I was so sleepy that I barely ate any of it. and then i fell asleep on the couch and then i went upstairs and fell asleep and then i what part of what woke me up is i was ravenously hungry so i'm also just like mowing down on this thai food like it was a very weird experience for me um uh but just to be that nocturnal to be that like wide awake and it feels different than just i don't know it feels different than normal not being able to fall asleep there's a like and then when i woke up this morning finally again i was expecting that i would like now it's like four in the morning and now i'm actually getting groggy again so good i'll go to sleep i was supposed to get up at 6 30 i decided to cut myself some slack and move it to 7 30 because i was like i've been working on show sheets i've been like getting ready for the the coming week and also um it's labor day and i'm going to let myself sleep in i woke up at like 7 a.m just completely wired again after like three hours of sleep okay so you went so i don't know when i'm gonna Right.

So you went back to sleep around four or something after doing this. I went back to sleep. Around four-ish and then five-ish.

And I would have expected that once I fell back asleep, my body would have wanted to put in another six or seven hours of sleep. But it was like, okay, three hours. Now we're awake. Everything's fine. I woke up. Didn't even use the alarm. I'm waiting. I am imminently expecting to have some sort of a crash at some point. Because I just feel like I'm not getting normal, sustained sleep right now. So I don't know when that's going to happen. Maybe during the show, but I'll try to power through.

Fantastic. I'll let you know if you fall asleep.

The big question, I think, about my trip was what was going on with me and these Tevas. Or, Andrew, as my own daughter, my own blood took the time to text me, they're Tevas.

Yeah, I know. I don't care.

I don't either.

I got a note from a listener saying I love these and also they're Tevas Stop calling them Tevas and I basically said no I love you listener but no I will call them Tevas When I say Tevas People know what I'm talking about I've called them Tevas my whole life

I am with you on that It's just tough when that information It's one thing when it comes from a listener It's hard when it comes from your own child How you play that exactly And she said something like you probably already know this And basically like this is this hill that I've been dying on So she was aware that it's a silly thing to point out but i was like yes this is a been a painful journey for all of us i believe was my

response to that but you know i've been having trouble with nike lately i've been going back to calling them nikes i've had to get i'll tell you more about it later but i've had to get like kind of special i've had to reconsider my shoe choices because of like the the arthritis and um and so i'm i'm now uh whatever i don't want to get into the whole story right now but i've been talking about shoes a lot lately and i have an old pair of nikes that i'm sort of retiring for something that maybe works a little bit better in my current condition, and I found myself calling them Nykes like seven times this weekend, and I don't know why. Growing up, I think we called them-

Did you call them Nykes?

Growing up, we called them Nykes. At some point, somebody corrected me when I branched out into the wider world. I thought I was good. I don't know what's happening to me, but I kept calling them Nykes, and I'm a little bit worried about my brain.

Yeah, like you're reverting to- I'm going to have to start just playing a song, you remember from the 70s to get you back on track to connect with the very early part of

your memory i'm concerned that somebody has me programmed to kill a politician i mean i want to

say this too growing up in the northwest and also being an obsessed obsessed michael jordan fan i think i always knew it as nike but if i was living in ohio and it wasn't like near portland you know the locus of nike stuff and it wasn't like obsessively like going to the store and looking at the latest jordans or air maxes or whatever like i could i would totally read that word as nike the first time i saw it how would you ever know there's an emphasis on the e it makes no

sense yeah it's not you know if somebody's name is mikey it's not spelled that way so anyway i

know it's related i know that word nike has like origins in greece or something like i understand that oh i didn't know that i think it has some old like i don't think it's an invented word i think it might also i could be wrong about that but i'm saying it's not crazy to me that you would have thought it was Nike if you were somewhere in the Midwest anyway it is Teva but we don't care we're calling them Tevas we're calling them Nikes up is down dogs lying with cats that's right you name it it's all happening here on new TBTL so I bought these Tevas because I was really like wondering about my footwear situation when I got over there and I don't know if the listeners will be happy or sad to know that i basically never broke the tevas out except for one part of the trip where becca and i were completely alone at an airbnb that had been rented and i would wear them between the house and the little swimming pool that was it because you were self-conscious

about being seen in them even by people you'll never see again in your life uh probably yes

and also because there was so much walking on this trip this will probably come up during the travel guide but like the thing is um becca is very into the steps getting the steps and she's a real regular runner but there was it was not really ideal for running in a lot of the places we were so there was a heavy commitment to the walking lifestyle in fact i i did the math and i think we walked like over a hundred miles on this trip which sounds excessive except if you're going like 10 miles a day most days it just you just adds up and uh and so i ended up just wearing basically the same pair of nikes i just had these nike running shoes love it that were not my actual i know right yes i brought my own i brought running shoes which i used a little bit but then i just brought like running shoes that i walk in i guess the difference in these two things for me is one i'm okay if they reek and the other one i'm trying to keep them a little bit less like kind of

funky if that makes sense like these were basically literally the same style of nike running shoe that i got at the nike store in beaverton one of them is designated as shoes that i walk in and one of them designated as shoes that i run in and it's it really is almost indistinguishable except i feel like the ones i run in are going to get more jacked up somehow are they the zoom pegasus what are you what are the what are the nikes the nikes in front of me but they're i can find them and and get you that info for a future broadcast, but I just ended up wearing basically this pair of running shoes and like white socks for, and it was just, it was so comfortable and so kind of like lent itself to covering these far distances that I don't know if it would have been okay in the Tevas. But now here's the thing, because the Tevas were $24 on Amazon. I bought two, why would I buy two pairs? What is wrong with me? Like I should have bought one pair. They seem so cheap. I was like, maybe I'll fall in love with these when I'm in Europe. And then they'll be the only thing I want to wear. And then I will want to have two pairs because they're basically like almost free. It was so, actually, you know what? I should check and see if I can mail back the second pair. You should try to return those. Because I don't need two pairs of these. I will say, the couple of times I wore them, they were comfortable. But I, I mean, they were physically comfortable on my feet. But I was never emotionally comfortable with them. Even in complete isolation, away from everyone else. And that's not a statement on these shoes or sandals or whatever. It's a statement on me. But the point is, if every time I look down at my foot, I feel uncomfortable, like I feel like, oh, this isn't me, then it's just probably not the shoe for me.

You know, first of all, I do want to talk about my shoe journey a little bit because everything that you're talking about has really triggered so much stuff that has gone on with me and shoes in the past few days and sort of another Sprouts-esque revelation that I've had about myself. You know, generally speaking, I am not somebody who considers myself to, like, be, well, obviously, I'm not fashionable, and certainly, like, I don't portray somebody who, like, who cares about fashion or the way I look all that much. But it has become more clear to me in the past several days that I really do have pretty strong opinions about the style of shoe that I wear. And you talking about that moment of sort of looking down, seeing your foot in like these strapped sandals, something that you are not used to doing, and you look down and you're like, that's not me. That reminds me of a moment I had probably 15 years ago. I remember I was working at Cairo Radio, and I don't know, for some reason, instead of wearing whatever sneaker that I was usually wearing at that time, I wore a pair of, you know, like lace-up, you know, more like dress shoes of some sort, some sort of leather loafer, right? and I liked these and I remember specifically looking down and being like just wear these more often and that started sort of a phase of my life of being like more I think maybe more thoughtful about the shoes I bought in that case I was buying a lot more I guess what you would call loafers or sort of dress shoes with with jeans and I remember just sort of having this moment of like when I look down I like that look for me and it gave me sort of a sense of okay this is who I am and so what you just said about the Teva is sort of the opposite story of that I think there's a lot of validity there and one thing that i've sort of realized in the past few days is um not to get too deep into my physical health stuff but like i'd still been struggling pretty mightily with mobility issues the past kind of several weeks and you know i've been seeing this doctor and i was on these medications that were supposed to make it better and so whatever that's been sort of a whole journey but i will say this this is good news it was we're a little confused about why the meds weren't working or whatever and we're lining up this other stuff that is just we're looking at medications that run between twenty thousand and ninety thousand dollars a year now not that i would have to pay for that myself but like that's what these things kind of go through what a system my doctor my doctor is literally negotiating with various pharmacies my insurance company basically refused to to fulfill one of these things and so now he's found another pharmacy in portland and he's finding a similar drug it is it is bananas it also speaks so well of the new rheumatologist i have he is be a for-profit industry definitely yeah no it's great i mean without a doubt but having said all of that i don't think i'm gonna the doc i'm telling you something here the doctor doesn't even know yet i don't think i'm gonna need the new medication i think this stuff is finally working this last week i had luke so happy was i don't feel a hundred percent like i did before all of this started but i'm gonna say 90 like i'm gonna say the past six seven days i was throwing darts the past few days like hanging like i there were several moments

where i did something and then a few minutes later i'm like i didn't even have to think about that whether it was something about like getting out of a car or veves and i walking across like the parking lot i remember realizing like well we've been walking several blocks and i haven't had any issues like anyway things are trending oh i'm so glad to hear that yeah it's been i gotta say this last week has been great health wise and it's really it's really made me appreciate i i think whatever just like good health and mobility um having said that i am going on a trip where There's going to be a lot of walking. I am also going to a different part of Europe soon. And I need to think about shoes. And one of the things that's been going on with all this health stuff is I now have plantar fasciitis in one of my feet because of all that. Oh, geez. So that adds to it. Yeah, one thing kind of leads to another sort of you start walking funny. And that's pretty painful.

Do you need to sleep with one of those boots on?

I was thinking about it. Luckily, I've got a little exercise ball under my desk that I'm using right now, and that sort of worked. And so anyway, things are generally better. but i still have to be very conscientious about like the shoes i'm wearing and even when i was buying sneakers and like i realized oh i always buy like sort of some sort of like i bought these pumas right before all this shit happened that are so sweet luke i love these pumas that i have but they're all like i always buy these flat bottom kind of sneakers you know um and i realized

oh that's not a hard rubber sole that's not providing a lot of cushion yeah and i realized You've got to get on this Nike tip, bro, because the trend in shoes now, running shoes, is let's put roughly seven inches of the softest foam you've ever experienced under your feet, which to me makes sense.

Well, I started doing a lot of research on this, and here's the thing I was going to say is I'm just not somebody who – I think running shoes look fine if you're running or if you even look like somebody who is a runner, sort of. I can't explain it. If you're wearing kind of running shorts and it looks like you just got done running or something and you're wearing running shoes at the grocery store, I don't think twice about it. I don't judge other people's footwear. But that idea that you're talking about looking down, like being, let's say, going to brunch or something. So I have this pair of Nikes or Nikes, if you're one of the modern people. That's the reason I asked if you had Pegasus Zooms. I probably bought them four or five years ago. They were my gym shoes. I only wore them in the gym like treadmill or elliptical or whatever and they're a pair of Nike-y running shoes and I put those on and those were working for me for a couple of days but then whatever, I started to have issues with those as well and I'm like, I need to get some of those really, really cushy running shoes I was going to say, I was wearing those Nike shoes out because they were what I needed to get through my day but Vives and I went to have brunch at some place and I didn't realize that everybody was going to be all dressed up, it turns out this place we had brunch on Saturday we also had like a drag show going on in the back and everybody was just like there to kind of be seen and it was very young we were just there to eat like the chicken and waffles or whatever but it was a very young beautiful crowd and I felt like I was wearing white socks and shorts and running shoes and again I know a lot of people wear that to brunch that's fine I looked at I felt so embarrassed I felt like everybody in that place was like look at that man wearing nikes at brunch you know and i'm sure and i know nobody was but it just to me it's not who i am so i've been struggling with this idea and i'm sorry to like be blabbing so much but to tie it back to your teva's thing i've been doing all this research and it turns out like sketchers are shoes that like really um are made for people with like often mobility issues because they they're always you know tony romo is always advertising the slip-on nature of a lot of sketchers and some of them are lace-up or whatever. And I was doing a lot of reading. Like, for instance, if your body

is wracked with pain because you were a human gladiator in football and you have a hard time

reaching your feet, these are the shoes for you. Exactly. I think Martha Stewart advertises Skechers in the back of my Reader's Digest magazine, if that, again, kind of tells you where a lot of these things are marketed towards. But I was reading a lot of forums about best shoes for rheumatoid arthritis and issues with feet and blah, blah. A lot of opinions out there, things were pointing i almost but i wanted something that also i could wear out and about and not look down at my feet and feel like this isn't me and like those shoes like whether they're the um what do you cannot hookahs uh what are the hokas which were very popular for a long time it looks like you're walking on clouds they look super comfortable but they don't look like me i finally i finally pulled the trigger i ordered some that aren't going to get here in time so i'm have to return those and instead veves and i went up to the sketchers outlet store on saturday i want to say and i bought myself a pair of these shoes that like look nothing like what what i envision myself wearing especially just like wandering around you know like it's just it's not me they have huge huge cushions on the soles and they are you don't have them in the room with you that i can see them do you um i don't have them right here i could show them to you uh maybe before tomorrow's show um but the thing is and i tried on several and the thing is they are the most comfortable shoes i've ever worn yes they are i mean they're supportive in a way that i need with everything that's going on with me but i was like if i'm gonna wear a shoe like this that has that much cushion i want to feel bouncy i want to feel like i'm walking on clouds a little bit and they better be super super light and man i'm glad i tried on several pairs and i have these shoes and Genevieve is looking at

them she's like Andrew everybody's wearing shoes like these now they don't look bad like I'm like yeah but they don't look like me and that's kind of the struggle that I've been having is just like to wear these around as casual walking shoes they do everything I need them to do but they don't

feel like me I think you need to think of them as walking shoes and not running shoes because I think that's your your hang-up is people are I'm wearing these and I'm being a poser about running but all i use these for is walking but i can tell you having just been in europe a lot and watching i mean i wasn't there a lot but i was there and it's a lot of walking and i was looking around and the hokification of the walking shoe game in internationally at this point is incredible in fact they really i think you know because i was i was wearing hocus for running for a fair amount of time there's been this whole i feel like there's this cycle where it's like everybody was like you got to run in those like distinct toe shoe kind of like what you want is no cushion because that makes your tendons do the work that our cave ancestors would do you think they had a cushiony thing on their foot when they were running after a wildebeest and then i was never into that because i was like that hurts my feet i want a lot of cushion please and so this movement towards a really thick really light foam kind of sole or not sole but bottom of the shoe i was a fan of and now you just see it in pretty much everything um that's meant for like walking or running or whatever it is you do i don't think when people see you in that they think oh this is a guy who wants me to think he's a runner i think they'll be like this is a guy who's walking around croatia like they are walking shoes we have to stop thinking of his running shoes so this is

the this is sort of the broader issue you don't want me to mention you're going to be in croatia

because now people will be showing up yeah on the island of vis yeah right well now they know

exactly where i am um i uh and this is like i don't know how to say this without both being cringy because it both makes me sound like i have more fashion than i actually do and also like i'm more judgy about other people which i'm trying not to be here but obviously if i wear these shoes in the way like i wore these shoes to my pop-up volunteer job yesterday and for the first time in weeks like i wasn't thinking the whole time i gotta get off my feet like these shoes are great for me and they're not even that they're really i'm gonna i'm gonna try to show them to you maybe in the break or something they're they're not i think you're gonna look at them and be like oh yeah um but to me they're just so basic and like that's the thing and like i'm not somebody who i again pride myself on uh how i put myself out in the world but like i guess it is true i guess i just have really strong feelings about my shoes and i've always liked having cute little if they're gonna be a little hipstery sneaker types of things or if i'm gonna be wearing and they're not expensive i'm not somebody who blows a lot of money on shoes whole you know cole han or whatever like you find yourself a decent yeah shoe with like kind of a decent heel or whatever and you can look kind of spiffy and it turns out that i just don't like being i just feel like yeah of course nobody's gonna look at me i'm almost a 50 year old guy on the airplane i'm gonna be wearing white socks and these shoes that look like they're built on top of a couple of clouds nobody's gonna look at me and nelson style say haha but i'm just gonna look down and feel like i am the most basic B in the world right now.

So it's not even that you think, it's not like you're wearing a hat of a baseball team that you can't kind of give exhaustive knowledge on, which is another thing that I think you kind of think about. So it isn't that you're worried people will think that you're posing as a runner. It's that you just think they're kind of basic. Yeah, people aren't even going to see me. They don't have the kind of style that you're used to.

I'm going to look like a 50-year-old man who's trying to be comfortable, you know. Yeah, I get

that. I get that. I'm just telling you, and you've already noticed this, but it's going to change your life. And I'm glad, I'm really glad that you did this. I'm also just, dude, I'm so glad that you're feeling better before this upcoming thing that you're going to go on. Me too. Because, man, I was like that. I was thinking about you a lot on my trip because we were going all over. And I just thought, boy, if I was struggling with mobility and trying to do this, that's just, that's a really tough spot to be in. So I'm very, very heartened by this news.

Thank you. Me too. I was really worried about that. there's going to be a huge walking and like you you know time zones airports like it's going to be

it's going to be killer here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a

female oh man it's not from a female oh dude i just realized this morning i was trying to sign up for something and uh i was trying to get the 20 discount because you know how all of those like every internet basically i was going to this this store that i have bought clothes from before it's called i'll give him a free plug for some reason taylor stitch ever used them i have never

used them i'm trying to remember if you've mentioned that specifically on the show before

i just they sell these like white i used to wear these these oxford style shirts from penguin and and then they became harder to find. So now I've switched over to this Taylor Stitch thing.

and uh i i wanted to get a couple more of these white shirts i mean it's sort of like for me it's like real life is now beginning again i've got a lot of live wire stuff coming up we've got our big show in philly uh september 28th um i've got a lot of cbs projects so i wanted to kind of and i bought a bunch of these i bought three different like blue wool very breathable blazers in italy and um And so I've been kind of thinking about, like, I want, you know me, I'm all about the uniform. I just want to have, like, a supply of the stuff that I need and then just, you know, get up in the morning. And if I'm packing my bags, I want to just throw it all in. I don't want to have to make any kind of complicated decisions around what I'm going to wear or how to pack for trips.

Like Obama.

And that always involves, what's that?

Like Obama. I've always said you're.

Exactly. And people often refer to me as the Obama of podcasting.

Didn't he say that? Am I remembering that quote? Am I attributing that right? He said, like, you have so many decisions to make as president that you want to take off the table as many non-important decisions as possible.

I do remember that being something he said, and it's very smart. And, again, what I'm doing is almost that level of importance in my work life. More so, I mean, to some people. According to some. So I was trying to buy some stuff from this Taylor Stitch, but, of course, they were throwing out this, like, 20% off game. But then, of course, they're associating my account with I've already bought stuff. So I put it in there like, you're not eligible. And I was like, why are you punishing me for being a valued customer? Because I'm not doing it for the first time. So then I tried to sign up with my TBTL account. It still didn't work. And I just paid for the crap. But I was thinking as I logged in, boy, I haven't checked my TBTL account in a minute. I'll do that after the show today. I've probably got a lot of stuff in there. Are you seeing anything in the TBTL mailbag you'd like to share with us?

You know, we mentioned at the beginning of the show that it was just a couple of weeks ago that we dedicated an entire week of programming to people singing songs to their pets. It was a very popular little kind of mini segment that we did. And then last week, people kept on sending them in, even though the kind of official week. As you predicted to me, by the way, off air. And as we encourage people to do. And so last week on the show, listener Navi and I went through some more pet songs. They're all just so great and so adorable, but they continue to trickle in, and I want to give them all their fair due. So let's just play one here. This is, and it's a shorty, this is from Listener Jesse.

Hey, dummies. This is Listener Jesse from Hanford, California, calling with the song that I sing to my white boxer, whose name is Boomer. He goes, this is my boom, this is my boom. I never travel without my boom. Power out.

A mall, what is it, a mall? A mall in the night visitors.

A mall in the night visitors. This is my box. And very nice singing During that week I was struck by just the musicality Of our listeners Sounds to me like There was some formal training there In the singing department That was pretty nice I'm not saying it was a flex It was an accidental flex Also, I'm a fan of the boxer Dog Big fan of that breed Used to have one named Flea Although I did find out from my mom That everybody in my life Except me and my ex-wife hated the dog Which is always tough news to get 20 years later

Did you just learn that recently? Because you've never mentioned that before

Are you being serious?

If you've mentioned the fact that everybody hated that dog I don't remember it

Oh no, I've mentioned the fact Okay, good, I was worried that I just told that story and forgot I had told it or something But like, my mom If I want to get my mom riled up Which I do a lot of the time The easiest way to do it It is kind of fun to wind her up the only thing I need to do is say you don't like dogs and it just is like lights a fuse under her because she doesn't like dogs which is part of the problem and um but she doesn't like being thought of as a person who doesn't like dogs and so she's like constant like I'll say that to her actually I said that to her like one time and then for the last five years since I said that she will always bring up examples of how she does like dogs and this is an example of it she'll point out some dogs but see i like that dog you think i don't like dogs but she did say it was just flea jumping on everybody which by the way was true boxers are very very active dogs and uh as much as like you know we would get out and try to like take that dog to the dog park and that actually the having that dog was the way i got my most celebrity sightings in la because i would take her to the silver lake dog park okay yeah where i would see the john c riley's of the world another i mean that was a hot zip for seeing famous people with their dogs who just wanted to

be left alone am i remembering that one right though that it's not that i i don't have a dog so i never went to a dog park but i would pass them sometimes is the silver lake dog park though not

that nice i must be thinking yeah it really sucks right it's just a it's just a patch of dirt it's like yeah really yeah i was gonna say i remember like a gravel lot almost oh yeah maybe it was

maybe they graveled it it was it's got nothing going for it at all but that's but people live in silver lake so that's where yeah that's where you want to let your dog run free with other dogs this is the most convenient spot so you just kind of go for it but all that is to say i really do love boxers and white boxers are very kind of they're exotic looking they almost seem like they they like shouldn't exist they're like an albino alligator or something they just like look very

they're very uh interesting looking i'm i was stalling here i know we want to wrap things up

but you know google white boxer you're mostly just going to get probably like greg the mutt

haugen and other white people who were boxers i thought you're gonna get results you're gonna get

It's the Pasmanian devil, Vinnie Panzaenza.

Underwear ads. The tape that we heard at the beginning of the show, which I found very delightful, is a couple of people on TikTok, Emma Pope and Melissa Stripe. I think they're both comedians, and clearly they're friends. And so I was looking at their other stuff. And on Emma Pope's Instagram page, I'm now following Emma Pope, she did this thing called, this is an off-leash dog owner at the park. I think you'll enjoy this if I can get it to unmute this wants to say hi you wanted to say hi

oh she got your sandwich really don't hurt him sorry Amelia come she's not bothering you guys is she just making herself at home that's the way she does it hey where is that little scoundrel oh she's with your baby got it how old is your little one uh-oh does someone have a snack I think She smells your cheese. Amelia, come here. She comes when I call. Hup, hup, hup, Amelia. This time I'm really serious, come here. She'll know the difference of tone in my voice. What do you have in your mouth, little one? Is this someone's, is this a wallet? Did anybody lose a wallet? My dog found a wallet. Did anybody lose a wallet here? Hey, my dog found a wallet, is it yours? Okay, you really shouldn't leave that just unattended.

dangerous in your pocket anyway all right a good follow there by the way emma pope i will check

her i did i saw that clip uh of the those two folks trying to name uh npr hosts and i was i was thoroughly delighted by it my first thought was like this is a hundred percent on whatever npr's internal website is i promise you it was like are there slack or something was posted immediately i'm sure if you were my my friend lakshmi singh if you got a name check on there If you're like my pal Jack Spear, you're pretty stoked. I also absolutely adore that they also picked up on Kyra's Dolls. There is Marketplace.

I also thought it was interesting that they said when they mentioned Larry Mantle, which is a L.A. reference. That's how you only have sort of a local one. They said filling in for Larry Mantle. I'm like, oh, that could be Libby because our friend Libby was like the go to fill in for Larry Mantle for a long time while she lived down there.

I also thought, like, and what a weird flex, I would put my naming of NPR hosts up against, like, just about anybody on planet Earth, honestly.

I believe that. I mean, you also work there. You know some of them.

I listen. But, I mean, I'm just such a P1. Yeah, that's true. Even the new generation. It was so funny to kind of, like, see people who have – they're actually probably pretty – the fact that they could name as many as they did is impressive. that's how most regular it's almost like the politics thing i guess in that i obsessively consume political information particularly around this president i mean specifically around the presidential thing i should consume more of it around what's happening in my local areas you know and the important things that affect my life more directly i don't pay enough attention to that but i do think a lot about and just i'm just mainlining um you know pod save america and our friend chris hayes show and anything in the new york times audio that i think will somehow give me clarity on these issues and it's useful to remember that that is not how the regular americans whatever their political leanings are probably most people are not this freaking obsessed and and uh yeah so and i guess that's how i also am like with because i listen to so much npr i could i feel like i could name 50 i could name 50 public radio like uh this is like an unfun version of cool hand Luke says he could name 50 public radio hosts I could do it I could absolutely do it if I had to in fact maybe that'll be our next time we do like special programming yeah it'll just be like Demi Adichie ebay the very funny writer and performer who I just love so much he's been recently performing he was at the Edinburgh Fringe Fest and the name of his show is

Demi Adige Ibe will do one backflip, which I think is just the greatest name for a one-person comedy show. And then I believe maybe after a while, he changed it to Demi Adige Ibe did one backflip. Did one backflip?

Because I'm wondering, is the bit that he can't do it? I don't know, because I haven't seen the show,

but I'm on the edge of my flipping seat, so to speak. Isn't that a great name for a one-man show?

Most people, this is probably obvious to say, but he's the one who did the September videos every September. And he did hang that up. He threatened to hang that bit up a while back, but I think that he did not do it last year and maybe the last couple of years. No, he really did.

He followed through on that, and I understand why, because that thing, the production lift on it was just getting...

It was out of the world.

He said it was like taking up half of his year. I believe it. As soon as it was done, he started stressing about doing it the next year and how to top it, and that's why we try to keep the content kind of where we keep it on this show. So there's zero pressure to top it. Let's keep the bar low. Love it. All right. That's going to do it for today's edition of TBTL. It's been fun. We're in the honeymoon period. You know what it's like, Andrew? It's like we broke up, we moved on with our lives, and then we realized at some point that we missed each other, and we've gotten back together, and it feels amazing. But it's not going to last. It ain't going to last. But boy, did it feel good today. It's called rebound podcasting. Love it. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We're going to be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you, so please tune in for that. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Hope you're maybe getting to recreate and enjoy this Labor Day. We will see you tomorrow. In the meantime, please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Hello, this is Sandy. I have a little puppy Donald song. Oh, there she wants to sing. Oh, there she wants to sing.

Oh, come here.

Oh, no. Okay, here's the song.

Okay.

Okay, here's the song. Franny baby, put a present under the tree for me. Franny baby, hurry, can you see me tonight? I have three dogs, and they're not cooperating.

Thank you. Bye.

Power out.