Muse

I know we've only known each other for four weeks and three days, but to me, it seems like nine weeks and five days. The first day seemed like a week, and the second day seemed like five days, and the third day seemed like a week again, and the fourth day seemed like eight days, but the fifth day, you went to see your mother, and that seemed just like a day. but then you came back and later on the sixth day in the evening when we saw each other that started seeming like two days so in the evening it seemed like two days spilling over into the next day and that started seeming like four days so at the end of the sixth day on into the seventh day it seemed like a total of five days and the sixth day seemed like a week and a half I have it written down, but I can show it to you tomorrow if you want to see it.

T-T-T-B-T-L Guess what day it is? Guess what day it is? It's Friday. Friday. Gotta get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend.

There are many ways to keep one's lips conditioned. I don't kiss, for example, 24 hours before a performance because kissing makes your lips mushy, and we cannot have mushy lips and be a champion.

Actually, you know what? I can email you. Or, you know, you can email me at splat2 at splatnet.net. Splat1's my father. I mean, I'll be sad to see him go. It'll be nice to get my hands on that handle, you know?

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Get on the magic carpet and ride. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

I'm above being bothered. The only person who can destroy my piece is myself, and I do it daily.

Coming to you from Midtown Manhattan in New York City. New York City. Where I have traveled today to do an interview with a singer-songwriter, rock star type person, and the interview's not happening. So here we are, together again on the Imaginary Radio. Just, I don't know, just the tens of us doing this podcast before I get on my hastily rearranged flight and fly on home tonight. By the way, it's episode 4298 in A Collector's Series. Let the fun begin. And of course, because I have been traveling a lot this week, I've had a lot of experiences while traveling, which I love to regale the listeners with. Now that's interesting. Including what I feel, I know this is, by the way, I'm having a sort of outsized reaction to this, but I'm feeling very embarrassed around a neck pillow that I've been schlepping to places.

This is embarrassing!

Those and other tales from the road here on today's TBTL. Oh, and this guy, the longest running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. You know, you think you know someone. we've been doing this show together for well over a decade considering one of my closest friends in the world and also an advisor and i think i know when this guy will be awake and when he will not be awake and yet i texted him this morning at i guess it was 6 30 local time for him and he got immediately right back to me i just want you to be normal and clearly you're not He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I know that we're supposed to talk about my early rising here at the top of the show, but...

I wanted to give you your flowers on that.

Thank you. I appreciate it. We can maybe come back around to that if it's interesting. But the reason I am... You might hear an excitement in my voice is because I just remembered something I've been dying to talk to you about, and I keep forgetting. Now, it's a little bit visual, but I will let the listeners in by maybe using this as the show pick for today's show, and then people can sort of get their visual side of the story that way. But here's the deal. We all know about targeted ads, right? We've gotten used to it. Some people still complain about it. Some people still say, I swear I didn't Google anything, yet somehow I was talking to my cousin about a special kind of scooter. And now I'm seeing that scooter all over my, you know, when I'm reading a New York Times article, I see ads for it all. Like, we're used to that. It's still sort of a thing. But I was on my phone scrolling through either the New York Times or the Washington Post a couple of days ago. And, boy, those things are loaded with ads. You know, you, like, read one.

graph and then you have to like scroll through like three ads and then it's like okay another

graph but well and i've mentioned this before i think that the washington post is there is the there is the greatest contrast between what i consider to be the very very good reporting and journalism that is done in the pages of the washington post and the absolute dreck that is the ads on their website they've clearly sold their soul to some sort of just like zerg net ad placement company that just puts in it's like a really buff guy in his 70s but he's wearing a t-shirt that you know says something about you know zero f's given today and it's like right next to like a thought piece from dana milbank right like it's worse than the other papers in

my experience the contrast really makes it stand out more it's the most it's the it's the highest contrast of that kind of thing well listen i'm scrolling and you know i'm pretty good at just sort of filtering out the ads in my brain or whatever. And then one of these ads stopped, I'm not joking, stopped me in my tracks. Almost took my breath away a little bit. And I wanna know, I'm sending this to you very, I took a screenshot of it, I'm sending it to you via text right now. So keep an eye on your phone. Because I think something, I am building a theory around this ad that might be some of the most bunk journalism in the world. But before I go into my newly created conspiracy theory about direct targeted ads, I want to wait for this photo to reach your phone. Are you emailing it or texting? I did text it, so I said, you know, keep an eye on your phone there. Got it, got it. I'm not crazy as far as the resemblance is concerned.

Welcome to an absolutely brave new world.

Is this happening? Welcome to Judgment City. Okay, let me explain to the listeners what I just sent you. So I'm scrolling through this article, and then there's one of those big, there's a big photo ad, and it says it's for AT&T business, and it says sleep tight. And there is a photo of a man resting his head on a pillow like he's sleeping. It looks like he's maybe wearing some flannel pajamas or something and a white T-shirt. But the face, and there's something uncanny about this. First of all, the face, I think, looks remarkably like me, maybe slightly more hair, maybe, but a receding hairline glasses that aren't exactly like mine, but but wearing glasses while sleeping and a beard that is about my trim and exactly my color as I get gray in it. and there's something about this photo that looks uncanny like not just that it seems like it resembles me but like it's an ai version of me like doesn't there something weird about his head

well there's a reason there's a reason that this face feels familiar to you in addition to the fact that it looks so much like your face and that's because it's the actor rain wilson

oh okay dwight from the office so that's i think so my theory is going to go away that is definitely And so, okay, my whole life, people have, not my whole life, since The Office came out, people have told me I look like Dwight because I used to not have a beard when he didn't have a beard. And then I grew a beard and he grew a beard. He's just all over me. Like he cannot. So that's definitely Rainn Wilson. Okay.

I think he's in a campaign. Okay.

Never mind. I had this whole theory that people were somehow using, that advertisers were using AI to create uncanny images of the people they're direct targeting to so that they have the moment that I have, which took my breath away, only to find out, oh, no, this is an actor that many people have said I sort of look like. Okay.

Well, I didn't mean to pop the air in that balloon because I don't think it will be that long before they're doing some version of that. Because what you raise is a really interesting idea of trying – an advertiser trying to break through the visual noise of our lives. And how do you do that? Well, show someone a person who looks pretty much like them.

Yes, show themselves. Show an AI version of themselves in an ad. I was like, that must be it. Okay, now if I'm wrong that that's what's going on, let's do it. Like let's be the marketing geniuses who do that and become rich and also hated but rich.

Too beautiful. that could be one of our first ancillary business exactly experiments is yeah because imagine if you were to you know i was just going to say turn it on tv but how quaint would that be i don't think we're doing that anymore but if you were to turn on your computer or your phone or whatever and it were like an ad for like a gmc truck but then you and your family were in the truck enjoying right right like honestly it's a pretty strong use case yeah you know what five out of five Andrews sleep well when they're using this AT&T business service and here you want the proof it's right here here's an Andrew sleeping soundly looking like he doesn't have a care on the world as opposed to being woken up at 6 30 by luke yes uh texting him saying um the plans have

changed it i am a little embarrassed that i that i was so excited about that only to realize that oh no this is just a photo of a guy a famous guy who sort of looks like me but i was because there was something about this photo though i still think that they used some sort of like photoshop ai thing there's something going on there's something weird about this photo but i was also like but why would a man be sleeping with glasses on like they i had this whole thing like somehow my systems know what i look like and somehow they used ai at some point wondering like

has my like has my uh you know ophthalmology portal been compromised like are they like i'm being serious did you wonder like because this is the kind of this is the rabbit hole my brain goes down is like if i saw myself in this picture and i was i wore glasses at night etc my thought would be like okay well clearly they have figured out a way to know what my visual prescription is and if they can tell what the how serious it is they can then make an educated guess on if i'm a person who sleeps with glasses on at night or not you know what i mean like i start to go into all this like okay how did they get the information where are they getting it from you know things like that

like did you start to go down that rabbit hole no i thought that i don't know that the the prescription thing not so much but more like if there was a really basic system that somehow grabbed an image of what they think I look like and I feel like there's you know our digital footprints are huge you know what I mean like I feel like particularly ours as celebrities I thought you meant as people with really big feet um I uh yeah as as um one of the more famous people in the world I feel like people can grab my my image and likeness no problem but no I just figured like okay i have cameras on my phone i have cameras on my computer like just like yeah some in or through my searches like it would be easy for some sort of ai slash algorithm to sort of assess what i look like and then create an ai recreation of it but the computer might not be so smart as to say yeah but the glasses are part of this man's face and when i put this in an ad when somebody's sleeping the glasses are going to stay on glasses on the andrew waltz story that's right So I guess it's a joke. If Rainn Wilson is part of a campaign and, you know, and he's a comedian, I assume then that's funny that he's sleeping in glasses. It's all just a misunderstanding. And I accused our robot overlords of doing something that they haven't done yet.

it's a misoverstanding because what you've predicted even though you've sort of maybe not taken the exact right route there i think what you have predicted will absolutely happen in our lifetime though because it makes too much sense like you like you said you stopped in your tracks when you saw that because it there was something uncanny about it there's and i've even done the same thing i mean it's not quite as frequent maybe i don't have like something like a beard that i i guess i i feel like i have both a very bland very average face but also one that i don't feel like i see a lot of people in the world a lot of like guys of my age who look exactly like me but when i do see one i'm like oh like it i know exactly what you're talking about i'll be watching a tv commercial i'll be scrolling and it'll just be a guy who just so happens to have the same kind of like you know middle-aged sort of irish catholic increasingly doughy vibe and usually it's the hair if the hair is like the kind of short and combed the way mine is i will stop what i'm doing because it's there's some it's got to go back to the you know caveman days there must have been something that was going on like if you were a person who noticed that someone looked like you you you were able to figure out that they were part of your tribe or your family and therefore that was passed on i think that that is a thing though that it it gets our attention

when we see someone who looks like us there is a a radio commercial an audio commercial because it's not technically radio that airs when i'm listening to the mlb app and i think you have sort of a similar experience when you're listening to um to the games on serious radio you hear like just like the same canned ads over and over even more like i talk about that on local radio like you'll hear the same citing ads or the same drunk driving lawyer ads or whatever but it's even worse on the app it's like literally three commercials over because i listen on the serious app which is

that it's a it's just one hell over right it's the adjacent hell with their own three ads they're running for like um busted open the award-winning wrestling podcast with dave lagreca and also uh

the mad dog russo one right i i'm getting that one baseball the doggies got you covered i don't i don't hear that particular one i hear a different one i'm always waiting to hear the dog he's got

you covered i have another andrew another season has come and gone and i have and i have not taken the 10 minutes to record that ad for you you got yeah you gotta record on your phone and send it

to me uh that guy's such a character did you hear him now i'll miss

pronounce the the i think wide receiver's name too so it's not worth me bringing this up if i'm going to butcher butchered as well but the seahawks have a wide receiver named smith how do you say jackson smith and jigba and jigba right thank you for helping me out jsn jsn is how a lot of people call him but he did you hear the tape of him butchering that so badly on his show he was talking about the seahawks wide receiver i just heard it like a lot of local radio um jocks were like replaying him on his show, mispronouncing that name.

Who on who? Oh, Chris Mad Dog Russo. Mad Dog Russo, just butchering. Mad Dog Russo, just butchering. Yeah, that's a name, too, that if you, the last name, you want to be real, real precise with how you say it.

Yes.

You don't want to drop any letters. You don't want to get kind of weird. You don't get weird with that last name.

Right, exactly. And that's just, you know, it's just not a name in the style of the names that we usually speak in our language. You know, it's just like, it's just about getting used to something. I'm not trying to other the guy, but Mad Dog Russo just tried to plow through it, and boy, did it get rough. Of course, not worth me bringing up when I couldn't even remember it off the top of my head. So anyway, all of that is to say I hear an ad, and not unlike this Rainn Wilson ad, it sort of stops me in my tracks because for literally the first split second, like the first syllable, I think it's my voice. but then as the commercial goes on it's somebody playing a much different character than me i think it's like almost all the ads i hear are psa's for safe driving like i don't know why that is

whoever sells ads for the mlb app is has really really been phoning it in exactly because they're just running psa after psa after psa that's like an hour of the night when you're listening to if you're listening to over the air radio as i still do sometimes you'll just hear it's just mostly like ads for wearing your seat belt by the u.s department of transportation have you like the ad execs are not killing it here right now have you heard the one do you hear those a lot

on or you're not listening on the app so you don't hear the same batch of ads that i hear their car seat ads for kids you and i have talked about it before dad's talking about i'm anti length they've gone through um anyway but it's just like literally you'll hear three in a row that are all different commercials all for like the safety council or whatever and one of them is like a kind of a soul style girl group singing like a song about putting your phone on do not disturb and it's so good like i want the i want to hear the whole song okay so soul you're talking

like more like a modern era when you say it sounds like maybe it sounds like maybe en vogue

so not super okay not the supreme we're not like a motown no but it's kind of it's in that it's in that tradition right i'll actually see if i can find it if i can find it here and play it for you It's so good. I love it. Anyway, the reason I bring it up is there's this kid, like, I think he's supposed to be a young person. It probably is. The voice actor is probably a much younger person in one of these ads. And it begins with him saying some word, but the very first syllable sounds like my voice to my ear. None of the rest of it does, but it always, like, it startles me in that way. You're probably used to this now, but, like, on the occasions that I was working in public radio as a producer, but, like, maybe I would be filling in as a host or I don't know what it would be but there were occasions in my professional career where i would be at home chilling and then i would hear chilling do i say chilling funny i say the proper queen's english i was at home chilling when i heard a promo with my own voice in it and it always sort of stops you for a moment right even if you recorded that promo you must i mean you you're cutting those things all the time like literally weekly for live wire so maybe it doesn't hit you the same

way anymore um it does hit me this it is very weird to me because for all of the promos that i record i don't hear them that often then there'll be a something will happen with oregon public broadcasting where i don't know if they just have a lot of as we used to call it in radio avails i don't know if it's that you know they've just got some some some advertising space to fill and they're plugging live wire and there will just be certain shows where they have it in rotation which happening three times a day and i'm still never ready for it i'll be driving or mowing the lawn and I hear my own voice and it is it it's it's a very odd experience do you ever hear what

I'm talking about which is not you but for a moment you think you're hearing you and it's

disorienting it's embarrassing um because I have had that and then my next thought is how egotistical are you Luke that you think people on the radio sound like you're like where do you get off so I go from being like oh that's me to like oh how I'm so glad no one was inside my brain when I thought that was me because that was just such an unbelievably narcissistic thing to think.

Yeah, well, but you are on the radio and it's not uncommon to hear your own voice. So anyway, I mean, yeah, I definitely am. The funny thing is, is I will hear this. I've heard this commercial with this guy literally dozens of times at this point. Again, it's one of the I'm pretty sure it's a safe driving one. I think it's like a young guy. I can't remember specifically. But I'm pretty sure it's a safe driving ad and about, like, maybe it might be one of those where at first he's talking about all the stuff he's – oh, I know. He's like, I'm a good multitasker. I can do this while I do my homework. I can do this while I prepare dinner, whatever. But when I'm on the road, I can't multitask. I put my phone in the glove box or something like that. I mean, that's the quality of all of these ads.

Huh. But it's a kid, but it's just the first syllable sounds like it.

Literally just for a split, split second, but it still gets me every time.

Does he have a Cleveland accent? Is that what's making it sound like you?

Would it be NHTSA? I'm trying to see. Could I find these radio promos?

The National Transportation Safety Administration, NHTSA.

That must be it right here. NHTSA launches a speeding prevention campaign. That was July 2024. Could I find these on the fly? Maybe I'll have some homework.

to a real i was talking to a real nitza while i was trying to have dinner the other night in

rochester and he was from cleveland andrew oh really yes this guy was i'm i'm decoupling his

being a nitza from his cleveland roots because that's nothing to do with that and this is not a this is not um you know me being mean to cleveland um because i never would because i actually it was the only thing about this guy that i thought was even two percent redeeming it was the weirdest so i was in rochester and my hotel was conveniently located in some massive parking lot complex that involved like seven fast casual places that i could have my dinner at so there was an olive garden um there was a applebee's there was uh if you took this overpass across the road there was this uh mexican restaurant and then there was something that i made the joke the other day pjo tutors but it literally was like named like pjo tutors or something it was just it was like a local it was like their local kind of sports bar hangout but it also had like skill claw thing in the in the like lobby as you entered so it was like very kid friendly just was packed and i thought you know what when in doubt let me see what the local cuisine has to offer as opposed to applebee's because there's an applebee's in every city i know what an applebee's is like so i went to whatever it's literally called like pjo tutors where all of greece eats it was like greece new york so i go in and it's super packed and so i go and i grab a seat at the bar and i'm kind of looking at the menu i'm about to order my food and there's this guy next to me um who's like a kind of a tall pretty lanky guy probably i'd say maybe mid 30s and he's just like chopping it up with everyone behind the bar like the servers there's a kind of like a bus boy he the guy next to him he's slapping him on the back and i'm like oh this is definitely this guy's spot right like this is this guy comes here every day after work or whatever like this he knows everyone here and at some point uh he leans over and he goes have you eaten here before and i said uh no i haven't and also by the way i'm trying to do my like p90x situation not p90x 75 hard situation here which just means i'm trying to not order just a pizza or the grilled cheese sandwich i'm trying to see if there's something on this menu that's at least a little bit less kind of bad for me like do they just have a nice giant salad i can get or something he goes he goes uh do you wear anything good and i said well i haven't made up my mind yet and he goes chicken wings the chicken wings are great and my first thought was like who cares like recommending the chicken wings somewhere to me now maybe that's because i've never been like a huge wings person but i feel like chicken wings are now literally the main food eaten by most americans at all times like i just feel like for some reason like if you would have said their their beef on weck which is like a thing in the kind of like greater buffalo new york area if you would have said something interesting and like are there they're um you

know white pizza with like an alfredo sauce is amazing like just like somehow i'm saying the chicken wings that told me everything i needed to know about this guy i was like okay thanks so i get back to my trying to order and then he wheels back around and he's saying something to me and then the busboy comes up again and as soon as the busboy i say busboy i don't know this is a person the guy in his 20s who's there to clear things and stuff nice enough kid baseball cap he comes up and the guy who i'm sitting next to goes like what the hell man look at this clean this glass again he's got like he's drinking a beer clean this beer glass you you missed you missed this and the guy's like yeah yeah right and he's like chop chop and he's like just giving this kid so much crap right and i go oh is this like and they kind of look similar like he looks like maybe he's the older brother of the bus but i've never seen anyone be this kind of like ball busty to somebody if they don't know them. Or they don't have a long history And I was like oh is this your older brother And the kid laughs and goes no He goes he's just a guy who came in on Tuesday

So what day of the week is this now This guy's become like a regular During his travel

Basically like it's a Wednesday He had been in one previous time Oh jeez louise And he was like yeah He was like I live in Kentucky But I'm up here for work And I was like oh buddy read the room And the other thing that the busboy The kid said to me was i said something like is this your brother he said no he just started he just came in here he's just he's just a jerk unlike you now this guy is not an earshot during this conversation

no he's right there really he's just a jerk just like you and he's basically saying it to this guy

he's saying i'm not he's saying the guy is a jerk he's saying i'm not what the guy i'm doing a terrible job of recounting the conversation but essentially what the takeaway was was this guy next to me is not a regular there he occasionally comes to rochester for work he has been to this restaurant i believe one time before he thinks that he is the like i don't know which cheers character this fits into but he thinks he's like he's the he's the life of this party and he's he's he's decided that his move is and i observed this throughout the meal every time this like a bus boy bar back kid would come out he would just try to bust his balls about just like gotta go faster man what you know like what are you doing time to lean and and you can tell that the bus boy is so annoyed by it but he doesn't want to just say like dude shut the hell up so he's he's saying like yeah well this guy just a real jerk and then the guy laughs like the guy thinks that they're this is their repartee and i can tell that it is so not their repartee and i was very tempted had i been drinking i probably would have at some point you know a couple of martinis and i would have leaned to the guy and i would have said like i don't think this is playing the way you think this is playing with any of the staff because there were also then there was a uh a female bartender who came around and he said something to her he said he said thank you or like the meal was really good he said something nice to her and then he literally said to her it was the weirdest thing goes he goes um i would never talk to you the way that i talked to the kid or something like he drew a distinction between how he referred to the female staffers and this one busboy who he just wanted for some reason to just like razz to the ends of the earth anyway i was tempted to tell this guy like you're not like whatever you think is happening here it's not happening the way you think it is everyone here kind of dislikes you i didn't say that i didn't want to get involved basically had my giant salad i did go with ranch which that's why it's 75 hard ish you dump a bunch of ranch on a salad you're just pretty much eating ranch dressing and delivering it to your mouth with iceberg lettuce but whatever i had to have to have some fun in this world you're not on trial here before i'm always on trial with myself before wait are you

changing the are you changing the subject because i have some big breaking news here okay hit me

okay but i'm not changing the subject oh okay to the browns part oh okay oh i'm sorry i'm sorry

i'm sorry uh go ahead i i've just been i've been i've been i've been being the change i want to

see in the world uh oh you found the commercial with the person who sounds like you let's hear

it in the time in the time that you told that half of the story which i've now interrupted halfway through um I just signed up as a media member of the ad council like I had to go through

a whole thing just now you sounded only half interested in that I found the well the story

could use a little ranch dressing if you know what I mean no I um I'm sorry that if I did seem a little distracted but I was so excited I'm like okay I found the ad like literally I was like on the media page it's like download the assets but it's like log in I'm like I don't have a log and it's like well sign up and I'm I'm signing up and now as a host slash producer of the two beautiful to live podcast i now have media access i'm going to start to the national transportation safety administration assets no i it's actually the ad council so it's like kind of the partnership so i so i was able to but i'm pretty sure i'm going to start with this song i found two mp3s this one is just called dnd and so i'm pretty sure this is the song that i like let me see

if i'm right about that put your phone on dnd that means do not disturb when you're driving

And when you're going from point A to B

I need you to stay safe, please So always sing with me So put your phone on D&D That means do not disturb when you're driving And when you're going from point A to B I need you to stay safe, please So always remember this beat

Don't drive distracted Nothing ever pays off for me when I try that But that worked and it's good, right?

That's a really good song I want the whole song Baby, don't worry, cause I'm in no hurry Now I found another file called, that's like elements of like five different kinds of like neo soul songs that I like.

Did you, do you think my En Vogue, I always picked it like the En Vogue.

En Vogue is, yeah, definitely there's some En Vogue in there.

Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, that's good. I love that and I just love that it is actually, because there was very little description. It just said D&D. Now this one is called Multitasker. So I think this is the one where just the first.

The very, very, very beginning of this sounds just... Well, I think sounds like me, at least in the moment. Let's hear it. I'm a... Did it work? I'm...

Hold on, let me get this picture of Rainn Wilson. Yeah!

I'm a... Does that sound like me a little bit?

I'm a... Not a little bit. Play it again.

Okay, now I'm going to play the whole thing, and you're going to hear immediately it stops sounding like me. I'm a pretty great multitasker. I can wash dishes and do laundry. I can roller skate while walking my dog. I can even order lunch while doing my homework. I can't believe this paid off. Andrew, also, it really sounds like you. The whole thing does, you think? Not just that first syllable? No, no.

The first syllable sounds exactly like you, and then it totally stops sounding like you. It's exactly as you described.

Wow, everything's just coming up Andy today. Okay, so anyway, I'm so glad I was able to take you on that audio journey and that you were able to back me up on these feelings that I'm having during baseball games. But now, okay, so now this guy's ball-busting. He's telling the female server, don't worry, I'm not going to treat you like I treat this blockhead over here.

There was just two quick things. One was, of course, sports is running in the background, and something was, you know, some flashing about the Browns or whatever. And he said something about it. He muttered something about the Browns, and I was like, oh, are you originally from Cleveland? And he was like, yeah, outside of Cleveland. and this is where now he's already he's already established himself to be probably not my kind of dude i'm like i don't really want to get into talking about the morality of signing a quarterback into sean watson who had very credible allegations of sa as they say on places like tiktok because you'll get pulled down if you use the real words i didn't really feel like this was going to be my guy to litigate this with but i said so that's this is where i threw you under the bus and i said um i i said i've got a really good friend who's from cleveland but he just can't watch the browns because of deshaun watson and the guy surprisingly said oh yeah yeah i agree he goes you know he goes i've got daughters and i was like oh well this is great wow we've we've found some common ground on this um what i realized later was i think he actually is not that much of a browns fan so he was able to kind of be like yeah whatever screw the browns because he wasn't like he wasn't in the dog pound wearing that mask throwing batteries like this guy was not that engaged with Cleveland Browns life but I was surprised that he wasn't just kind of like media just lies up and down right like I was surprised that he actually seemed at least open to the conversation about that being a very and I said I really hope I was like I would really love it if the Browns could go back to having a non-sexual predator as their quarterback because I love to root for the Cleveland Browns I think that they're you know I think that the city of Cleveland is very rootable to me. My really good friend is from Cleveland. He was like, yeah, you know, we're kind of talking about that a little more. And then somehow he's like, what do you do for work? And I never know what to say in that situation. And I said, well, I work in TV and actually we're filming a TV story out here. And he's like, oh, yeah. And then I could just see him trying to process this and trying to, I don't know, like, I don't know what I thought he was trying to do. But what his comeback was to the idea that I work in television was, they make you wear makeup for that? And I said to him, I go, I wish to God they did. Because if you've, when I've been on a shoot where there is for some reason makeup people. Oh, that's not every shoot? I thought they don't. Oh, absolutely not. No, no, no, no, no. There is no makeup person that comes along with us.

that is not that is not a role that you're putting on some sort of tv makeup every time i'm i am like

applying some sort of cover-up that i bought at like a bombed out walgreens yes trying but like i don't know what i'm doing it's literally like let me cover the three most prominent zits with cover-up it's not like um whatever it is that professional makeup people do which is amazing and is like, I think I would be, I think I would not be bedeviled by all of the insecurity I feel doing this job if there was a person who's there just to try to have me looking at least a little better than I would otherwise. Like the idea that where this guy's brain went was this person works in TV, therefore, and there was definitely like a homophobic kind of, or, you know, in his mind, not that, not that even wearing makeup is associated with any particular lifestyle, But in his mind, where his brain was trying to go was, do they have you in makeup like some kind of sissy on that TV channel?

Yeah, unmanly, because he's a ball buster.

Was I unmanly? And I was like, bro, I cannot even tell you how much I wish they sent someone to put me in makeup like a sissy. It would be so great. It would be amazing, because what really happens is I'm often interviewing people who have their own glam team. It's exactly what happened when I was talking to Ryan Seacrest. he has a whole team of people he's also very nice looking person and there's a bunch of people making sure he looks nice i would like to have that treatment i was like my friend if you think that the worst thing that could happen to me with this job that i have is that they make me quote unquote wear makeup you have you've grossly misunderstood what my job is and also what my insecurities are

i'm trying to think of other jobs you could have like what do you do i'm a clown they make you uh wear makeup for that um now this i don't know why i need to say this and by the way i know you know this i'm sure i've said this on the show before and i'm guessing that you have similar feelings on it but like also like okay i'm glad this guy was on the right side of his feelings about deshaun watson or whatever but like it drives me bananas i mean in people in all at all statuses of life will say this i will hear male politicians people i probably have voted for in the past will also say like i have daughters or like right exactly you don't need to have daughters to know that rape is bad like i well i'm sorry for the trigger warning like somebody who doesn't have a daughter yeah right i mean it's just kind of like you need a you need a daughter to understand why that i don't have a daughter i don't have daughters but i still can understand why deshaun watson is a despicable human being it's just it's i i always i always

cream that when i hear that you're absolutely right that's absolutely the worst i mean that's

not the worst the worst is defending it or saying well you know i mean there are literally like when the latest you know i don't know how much our listeners follow this i hope not that closely minimally yeah but like more allegations on top of the two dozen allegations i think we're up to 27 now because new allegations have come out against deshaun well um there are they new old allegations they are new allegations from a time a while back yes that are but but much more um well we don't have to get into the details of it but uh but really awful awful stuff and um and but you still like when this when this news broke i was in croatia and i was just sort of like catching up on a bunch of like kind of sports news sort of and so some of those articles will take you to to uh what was once called twitter you know like i don't spend time on twitter but sometimes an article will embed a tweet and then you're on twitter and then you just see all these and it reminds you of why you're not on there anymore because the people are literally saying you know still saying ulterior motives and these women just want a payday and i mean just like that's the worst you know what i mean so i mean this guy's saying that like if you need daughters or if that's just the thing you say because you still because somehow that makes you a manly man and you can stand up for for what's wrong i mean whatever it just makes me cringe yeah it's a pretty lame

it's it's a pretty lame way to frame things because it feels like it's just a thing someone's saying as opposed to something they've considered deeply or that they have again i i'm gonna say that i attribute this guy's kind of laissez-faire or whatever come see come saw sort of approach to the cleveland browns it was more because he's not really a football fan yeah it's probably not which is not an insult by the way that actually is a compliment sure i want to compliment all of the non-football fans for having priorities but in other words if this was something he cared about i have a feeling his take would be really bad on it like if he was just just getting to spend 27 minutes in this guy's presence i was like the fact that his take isn't the worst on this is pure coincidence it has nothing to do there's you know what i mean like i don't even want to give him too much credit for the take because i i promise you was more driven by apathy about pro football um than it was about you know like like him him walking away from his season tickets because of his moral stand on the topic of deshaun watson here's the other thing about you luke

when i say other thing i haven't said anything about you yet but here's another thing about you um if we're counting is you also dislike chop busters or ball busters you know like that is That is a that is a quality that you don't like in both. And I've seen you sort of recoil in both men in interactions with both men and women. I think you are not somebody who likes a sort of like punch you on the shoulder, kind of like what's going on. Like, I have a friend who had just I'm just realizing who called me about six months ago after not talking to him for years. And I never returned his phone call. I got it. But we have a mutual friend who will remain nameless here who is a pretty good friend of mine, or at least was for a long time in Los Angeles, but I think that you've always held him at a little bit of distance because I think he's not a macho man at all, but he's a little bit of a ball buster, and I think that that really kind of imprinted on you, and I think it's hard for you to get over that sort of personality trait.

You're very much right. A thing about me, another thing about me is I am not into ball busting at all or just kind of like, yeah, that's a style of communication that I'm really, really, I just don't. like even when it's working i think this one really galled me because it was also clearly not working i guess like if it would have been that this guy was a regular and that everybody there just kind of bust balls and that's the vibe i would have also just eaten my meal quickly and left because i don't that's just not the energy i want to simmer in but i would not have been so thrown by it as i was by the fact that this guy had literally been there one previous time and And that, and the bus, again, I really, I did a terrible job of kind of, of sort of re-describing that conversation, how it went down or that moment. But like, there was a moment where the bus boy basically said, he basically said to me, you are a nice person. This guy is not a nice person in front of the guy who he was saying was not a nice person. I think trying desperately to get the message to him that he wasn't really trying to sign up for this kind of interaction, the bus boy, you know. But, but yeah, you're right. That's also, I'm probably the most sensitive to that kind of thing of anybody. Cause I just, which is weird because I'm a pretty gregarious person, generally speaking. And also, um, you know, I engage in a lot of behaviors that are probably traditionally associated with ball bustery. I do really like sports. I, I'm, I'm very much at home in a casino or a bar environment. Like I'm not really a shrinking violet. It's weird that I'm so, I'm so put off by ball bustery.

Just imagine how just impossible to be around this guy is when he is in a place where he's a regular. Like if this is how he's acting at a PJ McTutor Toots in a place on his second day there, imagine if he really does feel ownership over a location, how he talks to like the barbacks or whatever. Where did you say he's from? In Pennsylvania somewhere?

He's from Kentucky now, but he grew up in the outskirts of Cleveland.

Okay, yeah. So anyway, maybe I know him.

Let's thank some daily donors who are making TBTL possible. I was filming in Naples, New York last night at this really cool distillery called Hollerhorn, where they do all kinds of cool stuff, including making what they call tree spirits. it's basically like a kind of a you know a spirit that's similar but not exactly like a bunch of other ones be it whiskey or vodka or things like that made from maple trees and anyways really fun but we had some downtime i'm chatting with the crew and the other folks there and invariably the topic of tbtl comes up and everybody's talking about it everybody aka me inevitably i bring up the topic of tbtl um but uh you know tbtl came up and then every single time i was explaining it to our sound guy clint i was explaining it to the guy that carl the guy that i was interviewing and every time i bring it up people are just absolutely floored at how long the show has been around the first question is always what's the show about i don't i still don't have an answer for that and then how long have you been doing it and then how does that work what do you have advertisers i'm like nope we have donors like joe scott of kirkland washington what's amazing was i just said joe scott's name i just took a flyer on that and i was totally right that's right and he

happens to be on today's lift list of donors i mean and what's crazy is i also said kenneth

mejia of san francisco california it was that's okay now was clean about this parlay it was a three-team teaser because the third name i said was steven shore of brooklyn new york you said them in that order in that order it was a it was it was an exacta i think it was isn't that what the uh i'm so bad with horse racing terminal there's one where all three have to come in in exact order uh-huh i think that's an exacta and then or maybe that's yeah and then there's one where they just have to be in the top three but in any order this was an exacta this one i said joe i said kenneth i said steven i wish i would have said john lynn in spokane washington um i

I have an X-Acto blade here, by the way. It's an X-Acto blade. That was a little joke.

I thought, you know what? We have the audio, we have the video turned off today because I'm in this hotel room and it has a little bit of spotty Wi-Fi. We thought maybe that would help our audio connection. But when you did that, I imagined you had a little book of racing form tickets that you were just going, like you were thumbing your thumb through. That's what it sounds, because you'd said I've got an X-Acto right here And I immediately pictured you like in an off-track bedding, like an OTB, like the saddest little windowless room that's got a couple of video screens with the ponies on it. And then the second, by the way, I'm happy to report that that is not just a depressing thing in America. It's also very depressing in Italy. As Becca and I were walking around, there were these places that were basically that. They were like little, some kind of place you could gamble on.

sports but you know just on tv and the floor just covered in non-winner tickets that's there's something i think that when you don't win in that environment the human spirit will not allow you to put the non-winning tickets into the proper recycling bin it's just it's it's basically marshalling all it's putting put the engines fully on thrust aka get us out of here we don't have any energy to put no glucose can be put towards properly disposing of these racing forms because they were everywhere on the floor in italy they're everywhere on the floor when you see them in new york um and that's what i pictured you were thumbing through like a little booklet of racing

tickets now my kids can't go to college where's your recycling bin

zach labby is in mcfarland wisconsin thank you Zach and then Julia Bush is in Providence, Rhode Island boy that's a great distribution today we got some Washington we got some New York City California and Wisconsin and Rhode Island checking in all over the country people agree they love TBTL and they love support these people agree and we couldn't do this without you thank you so much hello and welcome to top story well a quick update andrew as to my uh my early morning text to you which i felt bad about i just wanted you when you got up so our original plan today was going to be to record the show a little later than normal because i was supposed to be at actually this part i was pretty excited about i was supposed to be filming at electric lady studio oh yeah in greenwich village which is where like jimmy hendrix i think jimmy hendrix founded it and is it electric lady land or electric maybe electric lady land um but i was supposed to be uh that's where we're going to be recording an interview with the singer maggie rogers and so you and i were going to do tbtl later because i was going to do that early and then come back to the hotel for this and also i had my hotel extended through tonight so that i could do the show with you later and then uh just uh be here and then leave early tomorrow morning because i'm going to this wedding in portland well i i get a call from our producer on the story this morning saying that and this is by way after not a insignificant amount of traveling around to get here you would think rochester new york it's in the state of new york it's like how hard could it be to get from there to new york city pretty hard actually it turns out last night like first of all it was like a two-hour flight which i don't know it's a five-hour drive in a two-hour flight doesn't that seem like you're not getting enough benefit from the flying part

Honestly, yeah. I mean, that's negligible because, I mean, for somebody like me who gets to the airport pretty early anyway, and then depending on, like, how quickly you can get out of there. And also just, like, how much I hate being trapped in the tight confines of an airplane seat. Like, that's, yeah. I guess I'm making the drive.

Yeah, like, there's sort of like a rule of thumb. Like, a five-hour flight should be a 40-minute or five-hour drive should be a 40-minute flight.

Oh, I see. You're going for it. I'm just talking about, like, okay, well, if I'm doing the math, what am I more comfortable? And you're saying that, yeah, like, why is that?

how is that taking so long like like you can fly across you can drive across the state of washington in probably five hours and you i believe you can fly across it in under an hour so i think it's because jfk airport is just a living nightmare more than that in the moment although i you said this you said this on the show earlier this week and you're right it's like the show is not at its best when it's just us complaining so i don't want to go down that that that you know whatever that road if you will but anyway it was it was oddly challenging to get here um and then i did get here and then i got to the hotel i was pretty wiped last night by like i don't know i seriously got in here at like 10 or 11 and is that red eye starting to catch up

to you too you know last we heard from you about the red eye you were like just hours into it and you had slept on the plane but did it have so one of the reasons i think i was up early today was because of my jet lag is still a little bit playing with me not too much like it was earlier this week But anyway, so here we are a couple of days after that red eye. Do you think there's some lingering effects?

I wonder, because I felt really tired this morning. And literally, I got here to the hotel, called Becca, went downstairs and got some street food from a bustling Times Square at 11 o'clock at night, just teeming with people. Love it. and then came back up and then ate that and then went directly to bed. So I got a really solid sleep last night, and yet I still felt quite exhausted. In fact, part of me, 5% of me, was a little relieved when I got the call from our producer saying, so, funny story, Maggie Rogers, not this part isn't funny, but basically was kind of under the weather. and was not going to be doing the interview today and i was like part of me was like part of me was like wow okay i can never explain to anybody involved in this other than the tens and you andrew like how kind of borderline life ruining this has been to try to get to new york city for this because now i'm going back to portland to go to this wedding and then i'm coming back to new york city on sunday because i'm filming we're filming at the un on monday for this other story So it's like a really it's a pretty kooky thing I'm doing. And then to find out that, like, it's not even happening today. Part of me was like, wow. But then part of me was like, OK, I can go back to sleep for another hour and a half. That's kind of nice.

So now one thing that I sort of when when we were doing a sound check, you mentioned that the kind of you mentioned almost not to me, but just while we were kind of like sound checking that the that the interview was canceled. And I was like, oh, my God, you flew all the way out there. But no, you still, so you'd still be in New York state anyway to do like the, the maple whiskey story or whatever. What's that?

Well, I would, I'd be home now. I mean, what I would have done is.

You would have left earlier. Okay. Yeah.

Well, I would have last night when I flew from Rochester to JFK, I would have just gotten on another plane and gone to Portland. Yeah. Instead of coming here to New York city. So this kind of, and that's the thing about this town is like, you know, you're sort of getting in and out of New York city is sort of like being one of those people looking for like the city of lost. gold in the amazon in the like 1700s you're just like chopping your way through vines of traffic and like there's no like you're not waltzing one does not simply waltz in and out of new york city it's just like it's so much of a hassle all the time in fact the reason i texted you to say can we actually do the show closer to regular time is because i'm doing a very uncharacteristic thing for me which is i am leaving myself an exceptionally long amount of time to get out of the city tonight to get to newark airport even though the ways says that i should be fine i just don't trust i don't trust the organism that is new york city to allow me on a friday afternoon to easily pass out of the city and to the airport i just feel like something's going to go down there's going to be some sort of john mcclain style incident where uh i don't know i may be pressed into duty to try to solve a terrorist attack who knows but so so that's why today's schedule changed uh a little bit uh for you and i and made this it's not totally unnecessary i mean i didn't fly to this coast to do this story exclusively so i'm going to take that as a win because otherwise i'd be pretty bummed about that but back to the topic of jfk being a living hell and me promising i wasn't going to go negative the funniest well the slightly most funniest thing happened last night which was i get off of my flight and i get i'm walking around looking for the um like where the lift also i was flying on delta which i don't ever do so i don't know where anything is i'm not familiar with that part of jfk it's a totally different terminal but i get to where you should be getting the like ride share like the lift to come into town and again i'm really i'm pretty tired i'd also driven a couple of hours out to this rural part of new york and then a couple hours back to the airport so it was like a pretty long day for me on on thursday and all i want to do is just get in this lift and just like kind of fall asleep in the car a little and just get to my hotel and i'm looking around and i see because jfk is under massive construction like it is tore up from the floor up all of the exterior areas everything it's just like it's just all construction debris and weird orange cones and like it's a nightmare and uh i realize oh we're getting on buses aren't we we're not going to we're not walking over to a parking garage where uh somebody's gonna pick us up we're getting on buses they're getting us on buses and i was like this is not how it used to be and i'm walking out there and they're like ushering us onto this bus and you get on the bus and it's like 80 trillion degrees because it's still kind of humid and there's too many people on the bus there's no ac and we start going on the bus and now you know me andrew and this is where you and i could not be more different i have already

summoned the lift driver because the lift was saying that they're 10 minutes away and i was like first of all i thought i was just going to walk out to where the lift drivers are that used to be the case like as of like two weeks ago that's what you did and i get on this bus and the and i i look down and i see that the driver's on his way to the meetup spot you know it's nine minutes away or something and then the voice comes on the pa system it's like a recording And he goes, like, it's like, JFK is becoming a world-class airport. I was like, this is not going to end well. And as part of that, congratulations, we're getting you out from the traffic. So this whole VO is designed to try to tell us that we are the lucky ones who are getting to go on a bus to, like, Weehawk in New Jersey or something. They're like, before you know it, we'll have gotten out of the traffic of the airport and all of the construction. construction that's made

making JFK a world-class airport with two international terminals and four new terminals. And they just keep going on and on about the, that we're the lucky ones. And then at the end of the first VO, it drops within 20 minutes, you'll be at your stop. It's like a 20 minute bus ride. Like that's halfway to Manhattan. And they keep going like, and they're like, you'll have access to the Van Wick expressway. They're trying, I'm like, you, how dumb do you think we are that you are trying to tell us that we got so lucky to get on this this um you know delorean that's taking us to a better place like like and then so then i was like now of course i'm really steaming because i'm tired and i also am worried that the lift drivers are going to charge me for waiting or be mad by the way he turned to be totally nice i texted him i was like i'm on this bus he goes no problem so that was really so even with the

20-minute bus ride you still were able to salvage that same trip that you held he waited for me he

was chill also i i ordered a black car which is like the it's like the big one so those guys are very like oh they're very chill about everything because they're getting paid like 120 or something

oh okay and that's like that's on the tbtl card it's on your card oh good the person that's the tbtl card was declined that's why you wanted my personal you told me that was the backup

up no no that teal card bounces use your car that is good and actually i think i signed over just

actually the routing number of my bank as well because it's like sometimes why even put a card in between you and my finances so it's honestly it's just creating more hassle for you to have to okay it or know about it exactly the money so money that i wired you okay gotcha so like

so then i'm just on this bus and i'm just like so mad and then the guy comes on again they've got like a second one it's like jfk is becoming a world-class airport and you're on the fast track to avoiding the traffic and by the time we're at the stop you'll be near the vanwick expressway and then it's like and then there's a pause and i know this is a recording so this is just my mind but i swear there's a pause and then the voice goes we understand this can be frustrating and we know you're probably upset right now but but this is all to make jfk a world-class airport they built in an apology they buried it in the end of the second VO recording because even they could not with a straight face try to present this information as like purely a benefit to us they're like here's what we're really doing we're putting you on buses like in the movie Red Dawn we're giving you the Harry Dean Stanton treatment we're throwing you on your bus we're taking you to some pen some kind of pen surrounded by cyclone fencing where we're going to keep you until an Uber driver shows up to get you out of here And by the way, this is absolutely not in the direction of where you're going. I mean, that's really what was happening because side note, there's not like some big open parking lot near JFK within the bounds of JFK that they didn't think of anything to do with. Like they've got to get you way, way the hell away from the area where you were trying to be in order to find a place where they could queue up a bunch of cars.

And they were not able to get like the bassist from the Goo Goo Dolls or whatever. I feel like every time I'm hearing, like, on some sort of, like, airport-related public transport or an announcement. That's SeaTac for you. Yeah. Is it just SeaTac? Is that it? Because Seattle considers itself, like, a music town. It's always like, hi, I'm Ben, the bassist for the Goo Goo Dolls. And I just want to remind you to check your tag on your luggage so you don't grab somebody else's accidentally. Thanks, Ben, from the Goo Goo Dolls.

I think it might be Ben from Pinback, just for the record. Is that a real thing?

I don't even know.

I think so. I feel like they're Seattle bands. Oh, that's true. You know, it's like Seattle is the city of music. But the thing that's, I want to be very, very careful how I say this as a person whose celebrity is so microscopic as to almost not exist. And in fact, probably doesn't.

And whatever you're going to say, there's a very good chance that you will someday be doing an auction with them somewhere. Ideally. So you've got to be careful, yes.

Ideally. Or just they have a friend who, they would have a friend who would hear this. And then it would seem kind of dismissive. It's funny because clearly somebody at SeaTac was like, you know, well, they, first of all, they have that sub pop store, right? And they're like, what's Seattle known for? One of the things is the grunge music scene. So what if we did this? And again, this is, I think, a good impulse. It's like, we got to have these like sort of boilerplate announcements that go over the PA system. And they've, they're just saying like, make sure you don't leave your luggage unattended or whatever. Wouldn't it be kind of more fun if like those were people that were big in the Seattle music scene? And it was a good idea. The thing was like Eddie Vedder passed. you know like all like the you know like people the the the the the most maybe well known like the voices in seattle music that if you like they started talking you'd perk up oh wow eddie vetter's telling me to not leave my bag unattended okay that wasn't who answered the call it's a lot of folks that are in the industry and are i'm sure wonderful people and are probably more famous than me but this is the same reason they shouldn't have me do those announcements hi it's luke burbank from TVTL.

Just reminding you to make sure you keep your luggage where you can see it at all times. That would also not benefit anyone in their life, you know. So it's just funny because I'm in SeaTac a lot, even though I, you know, I'm in Portland, but I have to fly through SeaTac so much. And I always hear those. And I always, my mind goes to, like, where did the list start and where did the list end? Who's telling us to make sure that our bag is where we can see it?

Right, right, right. Exactly. Oh, by the way, speaking of Seattle music and musicians, I always hate it when I correct you and I'm wrong. The Hendrix album was Electric Ladyland But his studio was called Electric Lady Studio So you were right all along I did not need to introduce any doubt into that conversation Thank you, and I was mad I could hear it I was mad when I

Speaking of music We've got to do some music for your weekend here But before that I just want to close the loop This is only because I mentioned it I don't want to spend a lot of time on this It's not even a great story But I will tell you that I am feeling a great amount of embarrassment around this neck pillow that i'm bringing everywhere because i've been on a lot of flights that are in my mind too short for a neck pillow like the duration of the flight is not long enough to justify the bringing of a neck pillow like i and again my this is my own hang-up everyone should just live their life everyone should do whatever they want to do and not worry about if luke agrees or not but because i did that red eye that was a long flight and that neck pillow did actually really come in handy i and also because they're like 30 and also because i have a collection of them at my house i probably have 10 of them they're like usable grocery bags buy them but

then you never take them with you you just buy them on the i never remember to bring them and

then i'm like and i was glad i had that one for the cross-country flight but i'm like i'll be damned if i'm gonna just throw this pillow out it was 30 bucks i'm bringing it with me but that means i'm also like i'm getting on like a one-hour trip from supposedly a one-hour trip from seattle to or for Portland to Seattle and I've got it with me or I'm flying from Rochester to JFK and I've got it with me and it's like I could just feel people being like when I get on the plane for like a 1.5 hour regional flight and I've got a neck pillow and an eye mask I can just feel people being like everyone's in suits everyone's just commuting like this is a five o'clock flight where you're just like getting from point A to point B and they're all just like all right little buddy calm down I don't think you're gonna need I don't think you need the eye mask and the neck pillow and i want to say to them no no no no this was for something else but you this was for you

know intellectually that literally nobody's even seeing you or that like i would be thinking that if i saw somebody but when you see somebody on a plane you have no idea what their flight before after may be even a regional well that's what i'm learning that's see andrew now i'm finally

getting to walk a mile in those you would really if you saw somebody i think i didn't think about that until now i think i do i have a lot of i have a lot of deep terrible thoughts that i should keep to myself, but I'm going to share with the listeners, which is like, because I spend so much time traveling and I feel like I have a certain kind of knowledge around it. I will admit that sometimes if I, and this is not a good side of me, this is not a, this is not a good look. But if, if I feel like somebody has got like a full on pillow, like a, from their bed pillow, and we're going on a kind of a shortish flight, my thought really is, and they're like in their pajamas, my thought is like, I don't know if you're going to really need that for this flight. You're right though. They could have done a red eye from Osaka. I don't know. But I never thought about that until I was that guy, which I have been. And I will be that guy as soon as the show's over and I go to Newark because I'll be toting my travel pillow. Also probably be, you know what else? I used it when I flew from Rochester to JFK. See, you used it anyway, yeah. I conked out. It was a pretty, I got a pretty good 45 minutes of sleep. I am fully converted to the Church of the Neck pillow, though, by the way, now. Like, I'm embarrassed to be bringing it around, but I am utilizing it. Did I use that word correctly?

Yeah, I mean, I think. I mean, I don't know. My argument used to be that utilize and use are different words, but people just say utilize when they want. I think you're using it. I think the original definition of utilize was to use something in a way that it wasn't intended. So, like, if you're using a butter knife to screw in a loose screw on your VCR, which, why are you doing that, buddy? I'll let you borrow a screwdriver. But if you are doing that, you'd be utilizing the butter knife. But I think we found that, like, that's one of those words that just, It's been used as a synonym for use for so long that I think either definition works now. That does kind of make sense, though,

because the I-zed part, utilized. Yeah, like why do you need two words that both be used? It's like you're kind of making it work, but it's not really what it's designed for. All right, a little music for your weekend before we get on out of here. Now, I'll remind everyone that the newsletter now features me and Andrew's picks so if you would like to have some music for your weekend from us that now creates it reduces by two thirds the chances of our show getting pulled down from YouTube in Romania please get the TBTL newsletter

yeah I was thinking about this on vacation I mean, for the longest time, as these digital services have become more and more strict about using copyrighted music, I've been thinking eventually we're just going to have to, like, we've always been sort of breaking the rules and getting away with it. And I was like, you know, we just got to get used to the fact that we can't play music on the show the way we used to. And when you and I made this change a couple of months ago, I was like, it's fine. And then I had like a real panic on vacation. I'm like, am I killing TBTL just because it's easier for me not to get a warning email from YouTube or Spotify? So I don't know. Did I kill TBTL? Is this a good time to bring this up?

Because, wow, by the way, I think Air Force Two just went by. I think that the helicopters that the vice president flies in, does that mean? Is Kamala Harris in New York today?

I'm looking it up.

uh the two like the marine they're called like marine one right marine one and two they're those like gigantic helicopters they just flew right past well i'm in time square so they didn't fly through time square thank god but they just flew right down like the hudson river or something i'm having her in georgia i like my veep down in georgia uh let's see here that's my impression

of justin bieber i hope that doesn't get us pulled uh 12 minutes ago harris is uh giving a speech in atlanta georgia and then uh heading to wisconsin but i don't know why would marine to be leaving

from new york and maybe is biden here and is he flying on i think sometimes maybe when they are going from dc to new york maybe they don't take the plane you know what leave the big plane we're gonna take the helicopters i wonder if biden's here today i definitely just saw the helicopters that either the president or vice president flying unless someone's joyriding them i bet you biden Oh, you know what? Well, the U.N. General Assembly starts on Monday. This would be a little early for him to get here, but anyway. Sorry, that's just me seeing things in my field of vision and then commenting. There's a bird out my window. Back to did you ruin TBTL. I don't think so. No, I mean when I replace Jen. Well, we consider that the original sin. Here's the thing. i think that at this point i don't think that like right now if we play if we're playing music if it's going to lead to the end of the show but i also like the show being pulled down and not distributable to people on the other hand here's what i would say i don't think that they're going to become more lax on this kind of stuff over time and and so at some point we have to just get kind of used to not just playing a song because it's on our mind and in fact i could see a day in which like let's say right now nobody cares it's we joke about being pulled down on youtube in romania but like what if in five years they have really good systems and they can just kind of go back and crawl through every show we've ever done and then just like basically you know make those shows somehow inaccessible to people that would just be a really bad outcome so i don't think you ruined tbtl i do think probably your wiring is more uh you probably have a lower tolerance for getting hollered at by youtube than i would but i think that this is a good thing for the show because if we just ignore it and ignore it and ignore it one day we could wake up and there could be some legit problems with the distribution of the show and that would be that would be the worst outcome rather than just like sorry that i can't play steve winwood right

now because i'm having a winwood on the brain oh see a doctor um you know the thing that i think i'm remembering my thoughts i was wandering around croatia i think it was the day that my friends all went on this long ass boat ride and were swimming in caves or whatever and i was enjoying my time um just sort of like i had a little pool day and then i was wandering around the streets of i never know how to say the name of the town you were there weren't you were you in these when you were there yeah but it's like komiska komiska oh i've actually never been there i've only been to split with them oh okay well um anyway beautiful towns where all the cats were on this little island or whatever and i'm wandering around uh taking photos and uh and listening to this is one of my favorite things about going on vacation i actually write about this in my music for your weekend in the newsletter this week which will be going out in just about an hour uh as we record this but um one of my favorite things about going on vacation is those moments like the the like i remember listening to the first spoon record telephano which is relatively kind of boisterous and short record by them by their later standards um and I remember just like I will always associate that with walking up and down the beaches in in North Carolina when I went with a bunch of friends back in 2004 or something like that you know like there's certain music that I will always associate with a specific vacation where I just like got obsessed with a song or a record and listened to it over and over and I was listening to this song I guess we'll sort of uh just ease into this I was listening to this song which is my music for your weekend pick which you can click on in the newsletter it's called boom boom back by a band named

lines they're a spanish uh band they're a duo now they were a full four piece band and then two people left and now they're out as a duo and it features a quick verse by beck as well it's called boom boom back and i was just like wandering around listening to it over and over it was just hitting right and you know what i realized was not just like i know the listeners enjoy music for your weekend they like hearing the songs but i just miss playing the songs for you like i can email it to you but like it's just like it's a yeah i realized i didn't think about that aspect of it it's just fun to play music for your friends you know and it's kind of you and i i think have

pretty similar music tastes or at least i always like the songs that you suggest which helps by the way because if we had just like wildly different vibes can you imagine this segment just like every week i'm just playing like it's the latest from puddle of mud but like we like

similar things but we i think our eyes are often in different directions as well so like that's one thing that's nice about the segment that i killed um is that like it was a way of like truly like sharing that moment with you like telling you to go listen to boom boom back which i'm telling you to do go listen to boom boom back by this duo heinz i think you'll like it um but it's not the same as playing it for you i always i've mentioned on the show before like the first time i heard a lot of songs off the beatles white album it was because tone my friend tony played them for me over the landline phone because we weren't allowed to have that album in the house and so like you know like music for your weekend is an extension of that that is so great well

let's you know what this is a this is a an evolving journey and uh it's a it's a living breathing document tbtl um we're not strict constructionists here so we could bring we could bring it back um if we want to let's talk about it um my song that i'm recommending is by a band called royal otis there's some australian youngsters and the song is oysters in my pocket it and i will tell you this first of all it's just a peppy catchy song that i'm really really enjoying um the other thing andrew is i was watching the music video this morning and it starts off not next to larry no the lobster i was literally gonna ask you if you saw this big thing

like it's it's a it's a it's a um prawn right it's a large yeah but i think yeah exactly i think

it's a giant prawn and for a moment i was like are you like are they really in kingston yeah are they at larry and then i looked up larry and it's not the same i wanted it to be i had the same

literal thought because i was putting it in the newsletter and i was like i wonder if luke has watched this video and for a second i was like is that larry the lobster but no it's like um peter

the prawn some other big thing like they love in australia but anyway this royal otis song is is really catchy and i always say this about music that's made by sort of younger people but it's so interesting to see you can very much tell the music that their parents were playing in the house when they were growing up and even the look like one of the members of the band if you squinted you would think it was Kurt Cobain like he has his hair long the way Kurt Cobain did he that wears sweaters that look like the kind that Kurt Cobain used to wear like it's just it's just so interesting to see the way that music styles and music culture kind of gets you know passed down through the generations and then kind of reimagine and push back out this song that I recommend it has like kind of sound like the Smiths to me almost sounds like the drums in fact the drums which i think of as a new band could have been a band that these royal lotus kids listened to growing up because i was listening to the drums 15 years ago and they might have been 10 yeah getting into it with their parents like anyway so that's my recommendation the listener recommendation comes from listener matt who is in colorado um the band is the unlikely candidates and the song is called ringer and matt said andrew has me branching out for podcarts uh after you all first to levitard and kornheiser listens i heard this song and i thought of the tens um so is this a

song that man i was a little confused by this was this is is that just uh is that just are those two separate thoughts that just hey i've been listening to levitard and kornheiser now and also i like this song or is there a connection i think those are separate thoughts i think uh or maybe matt is

saying, Andrew, you've expanded my mind on what's possible with podcasting, and now let me expand your mind on what's possible with a band called The Unlikely Candidates. I don't know. We could say that it's all part of a sort of connected thought, but it is.

Go ahead. Sorry.

You were going to say something?

I was just going to say, I should get more into Kornheiser. Whenever I see him on TV, I'm always like, oh, I should listen to the podcast. I know it's a beloved podcast. Yeah, The Littles, I believe, is their

version of The Tens, and we've got we've got at least one listener who's deep in both worlds yeah i uh everything i everything i experienced from kornheiser i've always liked i mean the to me i don't even know if they're doing it anymore together but like the the early part in the interruption days with tony kornheiser and michael wilbon was just like prime a certain kind of sports talking television for me that's

been repeated and kind of diluted and it's just you know it's just uh you know guys just shouting

at each other there was this real beautiful moment that's the thing like they're real journalists i mean that's the kornheiser is getting up there in age um but he harkens back to an era of like they're not they're not out there blowharden you know no that's exactly right

like it was it was like the show was mostly factual and smart and interesting and then occasionally a blow-up and then what they somebody realizes well the blow-ups are what people are really tuning in for so then the show becomes all blow-ups and then no nutritional value in as much as talking about you know shohei otani is nutritional value but you know what i mean you want to talk about shannon sharp by the way are you following that unk oh um believe me i i gotta i gotta go catch my flight because i got a lot of thoughts about unk and instagram live baby I can't if I were a regular sex haver that could happen to me Andrew that could have happened to you 15 years ago it's so easy to I find myself constantly in some section of Instagram I wasn't trying to be in because all of these social media platforms and I really do have to go but they they want you to be streaming all the time they want you to be like sharing with your like they they want you as enmeshed as possible and so they've got it all the buttons set up so that Like this happens to me. I'm like often just scrolling TikTok like a loser, but then all of a sudden I'm, I'm making a TikTok and I don't mean to be. Luke on the toilet. Yeah. And I'm looking at myself from like, the phone is down in my lap. I mean, And it's like, that's a view of yourself that you're never ready for. Like, so I can see how Shannon Sharp was. He was engaging in the little adult times with someone. and the audio of it went out to his millions of Instagram followers because he had inadvertently, and I believe this, he had inadvertently started streaming live on it. He said, I don't even know what Instagram Live is, and I believe him when he says that.

Yeah, I wouldn't have believed it if he had a history of doing Instagram Live, but he's never done an Instagram Live before. So my first question was, this is getting a lot of attention. Like, it's not really bad attention. It's not really a scant. Because you're usually pretty suspicious of these kinds of things. But I think I came around to where you are. I think it's really easy to trigger that stuff, which reminds me of something that happened to me today. But I'm not going to tell you. I'll tell you about it next week on the show because you've got to get going there. So this is a song called Ringer that was sent in by listener Matt in, was it Oklahoma? I can't remember. It wasn't Oklahoma. Colorado. The band is called The Unlikely Candidates. So here it is, Ringer by The Unlikely Candidates.

And it's how we're going to wrap up our week. Thanks for listening. Hey, guess what? I'll be joining you from New York City on Monday. so do tune in for that but also well I was going to say go Mariners I don't even know what to think I can't I can't open that door at all I'm going to open the door to this song The Unlikely Candidates doing Ringer thanks everyone for listening we'll see you on Monday in the meantime have a great weekend take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall

and good luck to all

She's a real

Hey Puttering, puttering, puttering Around her fingers Gotta know, gotta know, gotta know She's a real Hey Puttering, puttering, puttering Around her fingers Gotta know, gotta know, gotta know Gotta know Hey Hey

She's a lady Gonna be richer than her daddy Thirsty She's sippin' on a 40 Her love is free But it won't come cheap She'll rob all the boys If the shit's too weak She told me Her love is like the dollar greedy

Cause I never really had her She won't be my American dream Who am I rich? She said it won't be me

Power out