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all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a monday edition of tbt all the show that just might be too beautiful to live podcast or the future of show business my name is luke burbank i am your host very mindful coming to you from midtown manhattan in um new york city that's right i was here on friday and then i was not here i was in portland at a wedding and now I'm back in New York.

I'm back. I've returned.

I'm back, y'all. And ready to bring you episode 4,299 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. I spent the first part of the day over at the United Nations General Assembly. Oh, la, la. My first time actually being inside that building during this big, very important event, and it's really quite something, I'll tell you. It's quite a scene over there, which I'll tell you about coming up. Also, speaking of political power players, kind of, very weird story about RFK Jr. and a relationship, apparently, with a reporter. And, I mean, we don't usually get into sort of this kind of tawdry stuff. We leave that for the TMZs of the world and the New York Posts and places like that. You've got to be kidding me. last week before we were actually recording andrew mentioned it in passing this story and i said i actually have thoughts about it not getting into moralizing or anything like that but just trying to understand is there something going on is there some sort of thing that rfk jr is radiating that is in a spectrum on a part of the light spectrum that is not visible to normal people but is very visible to abnormal people or something i don't know anyway if we have time You better pray we don't. We'll talk about that as well. We'll do all of that with the help of this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's known in some quarters as Mr. Unlimited. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

I'm willing to get tawdry, by the way. You said we're going to talk about this story maybe if we have time and we're not going to get into the tawdry details. I honestly am wondering if we need more tawdry on this show, to be honest with you.

Could that be what helps us finally break through as a podcast to the audience outside of the tens of listeners who've been here for the last 13 years with us?

Maybe, or maybe it's just me in general. Maybe I've just been playing it too safe my whole life. You know what I mean? Maybe I just need to lean into the seedier, sexier sides of life.

Well, as we like to say, why don't we earn that explicit rating sometime around here? Yeah.

Do you know that I individually mark the shows as clean or explicit, depending on whether or not we swore?

I did not know that.

That's what's happened, because we wanted to go clean for a while there because we were sponsoring a Little League team, and we will again someday. So we didn't want to scare the parents and have them think, oh, what is this? Well, what is this? I'll just say it again. Tawdry show that is trying to sponsor our children's recreation. And so we're like, let's clean it up a little bit. Let's let's flag our show is clean going forward. But then every now and then you and I will accidentally let a little.

A little swear word slip in, and so I'll sort of, I'll be like, you know what? I'm going to mark today's show as explicit. I'm very detail-oriented in that way.

Wait, doesn't that mean, though, then if you mark it as explicit, does that change? Like, do we get a little tipper gore sticker on the show that day?

On the show, I mean, I think there's some.

On that episode? I mean, like, I wonder, how does that show up in the world?

I think on the episode itself, there might be a tiny little E somewhere, which honestly is not the worst thing. You and I—

I'm on a tiny little amount of E right now.

Oh, God. Only. God. I want the show to be more tawdry, and I want us to be rolling more.

Hold on. Let me hit my DMT vape.

Can you vape that stuff? Really?

Oh, yes, you can.

Oh, I did not. I've heard. That's a part of the world that I am unfamiliar with, the sexy drugs. I don't do the sexy drugs. It grows in the ground, Andrew.

I'm just saying it grows in the ground.

Yeah. I'm doing a workout program.

75. Hmm.

75. 75.

Hmm. We need to talk to Luke.

I am all over the place. I think about five minutes ago, you started to say something and I barrel rolled right over you.

Well, you're talking about being edgy. And I want to tell you, I had to get real edgy for today's show because I was looking around this hotel room here at the Hyatt Place in Times Square. I know that, by the way, I want to apologize, like because I've been traveling a lot the last few episodes, so much of the show has been me just kind of like talking about travel stuff, which it can be fun in small doses. It doesn't need to be the main topic of the show every day. But I will just quickly say, I'm giving some full marks to this Hyatt place in Times Square that I absolutely, under no circumstances, wanted to stay in because it's not part of the Marriott Bonvoy universe. And I've stayed at a couple of other Hyatt places before and I've found them to be a little bit maybe less, kind of a little less tidy than I was hoping for, things like that. But because today is a day one of the U.N. General Assembly, the hotel rooms in Manhattan are stratospherically high, stratospherically high in a way that CBS was like, we will not be paying that rate. We want to be paying twelve hundred dollars a night, Mr. Burbank, for your room. And so actually, this is another side story that's, I think, kind of funny. Did I tell you this off air last week? Did I mention this? So at CBS Sunday Morning, there's this sort of different levels of production, and there's the folks that are called broadcast associates, and they're the people that are just kind of getting started at working in broadcast television. So they're employees, but they do a lot of stuff that you might sort of think of as being in the neighborhood of what you might ask an intern to do. Like, it's a real, it's pretty entry level. And there's a real range, because then, you know, a lot of those BAs end up being producers, and senior producers and stuff but um the hotel rooms were like so expensive in manhattan that last week when i was getting ready for this i basically was talking i was emailing with the guy in charge of that stuff and i said i don't know what you want me to do like the hotel rooms are just insanely expensive and he sent an email to the broadcast associates the ba saying hey um the hotels are really expensive in new york can you please help a correspondent luke burbank find something that's a little more reasonable here's the phone number for like the travel service we use and um there was a response from one of the bas we're also having a very busy week so um if you could call them luke that would be great and if you can't let us know but yeah we're also pretty tied up it's like okay that's a real um real boundaries from the gen z yes and uh gen whatever it is i mean boundaries or uh or or i don't know not maybe fulfilling some of the duties of that particular job title where you are now to be honest with you it would have been a much more of a hassle for me i did not suggest asking the bas to do this that was not my suggestion that was something that this other person kind of was doing to try to be helpful to me i didn't say

could you please ask these other folks to work on this and truthfully i will i want to get eyes on whatever hotel they're booking me in i don't want to be at the lincoln tunnel motel which is an overnight radio show that i have called that comes out of the lincoln tunnel motel i also don't want to stay there that's a true story by the way it really is the guy who runs yeah the guy who runs the lincoln tunnel motel it's a very interesting dude he's big on tiktok he posts all kinds of weird little wacky skits and videos with him and like his one employee and he also hosts an overnight internet call-in show that streams live on tiktok is this the one that you called into yes this is the one that i called into years ago i don't want to stay there though i might call the radio show i don't want to stay there my point is now you have this whole thing because you tried

in a second time and he didn't let you on the air a second time so you you would walk in you'd have so much baggage to i mean literally literally and figure what they charge you extra for there

in this case ain't nothing free at the lincoln tunnel motel you would keep on doing your like

radio call-in voice see if he recognized you does a little light go off in his eyes just dropping

business cards oh my god i'm sorry i just dropped all of these business cards they're just coming out of your list my employment like andy dufrane yeah right just but all that is to say it was actually better that i had to as i was driving from rochester new york or as i was driving from our filming location last week to the airport i called they said there's this still very overpriced but not 1200 hotel room at the hyatt place and i'm just such a like a delicate little flower now andrew with this stuff where i was like well okay it is what it is that's the place that is approved by cbs all right that's where i'm going to be staying and it i wouldn't say it ruined my weekend but it was looming very large i was like what am i walking into is this going to be am i going to feel uncomfortable like i can't fall asleep whatever the place is fine by the way this is one of the better internet connections we've had when i'm in a hotel room that's the thing number one the people at the front desk are unbelievably helpful did a great whole giant breakfast thing going this morning which i did not avail myself of because of 75 hard ish but um it's place is clean with a comfortable bed i have no complaints and my lesson there is don't assume that uh just because something is not exactly the way that you sort of fantasized in your brain that it's going to necessarily be a bad experience this has been a totally fine experience and i would stay here again but here's the thing they don't have any paper any stationary in the room andrew and i was looking around for something to write down the show sheet on because i have an email draft that has the show sheet, but I can't see that when I'm starting the show because I need to be playing the little sound effects and I can only have one screen up at a time. So the only piece of paper I could find was in my bag and it was the back page, you can see this, of our friend Chris Hayes' new book.

The Siren's Call.

That's right. Pre-order now. But I had to write the show sheet in the notes section at the end of this book and if he hears this i hope he understands that that's meant with peace and love and respect and when i read the book i will still be taking notes i'll take take copious notes i will be dog earring i will be underlining but for today i had to use you know any port in a storm i had to use the back page of this book that's a weird writing in a book isn't it yeah well i do it a lot for live wire books but it's always stuff that's relevant to the book so I'll circle things or I'll write a little question to myself that feels like it's germane but writing something unrelated writing like a grocery list or a TBTL show sheet that feels wrong

I have a question for you that I hate myself for asking and it's been dogging because the thing is it's not going to be interesting to the listeners I can see you via the video screen right now it's a little bit choppy, it's a little bit blurry that's fine I don't think this is content that should be used on Instagram or anything, but I'm just personally very curious as to what is behind you. It looks like a trophy case hanging on the wall or something. There's some sort of three-dimensional case that is literally right behind, over your other shoulder, Luke. What is that? This shoulder? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's the television and the case, like the frame of the television.

Oh, it's a little cupboard that the television is inside. I see. Okay, okay. That's, again, not interesting, but it was a weird thing to have in a hotel room. It looked like you were supposed to bring your trophies and then display your trophies inside there.

I'm in a weird—

If there's one person who would bring their Daytime Emmy, it would be you. Can you see the Daytime Emmy? I put it there.

Also, part of what's throwing your eye is that I am sitting in a very bizarre little corner of the hotel room that is not designed for me to be sitting here. This is because of my long-running obsession with natural light. so the bed is over there i am in i have picked up the desk table thing that was in the back corner of the room and i've moved it over here to this corner of the room but it doesn't even fit i've had to drop it down diagonally this is the thing about new york city hotel rooms is that they are generally speaking very very small and i'm doing this kind of real sort of improvised situation here so that i can be talking to you but also looking out on i don't even know what part of manhattan i'm looking at but you know how it is it brings me some sort of i don't know calm to be because otherwise i was going to just be staring literally at a wall while i was talking to you and i don't i don't like doing that so anyway i'm in a weird part of the room which probably

Thank you.

adds to the confusion as to what is going on um around me um this tv by the way when i got in last night i was like first of all i don't know if this is just being 48 but i can't live in a world where sunday night football starts at 8 p.m okay that's not yeah i was like i was like oh man i wonder if i'll catch any of sunday night football and it was still football night in america and i was like oh you haven't even started this game oh no sir i i shan't be staying up for this entire game um but i turned on the tv and it was showing me like you know the netflix options all of the options of like ways that i could use my pre-existing subscriptions to watch television and i was like come on hyatt place you're not even again i'm trying to i'm i'm hitting the tv button and it's like there's no antenna and i'm like are you kidding me right now you're not even gonna give me good old-fashioned over-the-air television like no broadcaster cable television no broadcast television and i was like this is i mean i was like that's that's low that's dirty and then on a whim i just thought let me check the coax and i walked over here and i wiggled the coax in the back of this tv and boom oh no television sprung to life would and uh would you

so you wiggle it just a little bit let me see you wiggle it just a little bit absolutely glad

i interrupted you for that but i was like i was again that's such a small thing but that is outside of my normal i'm i think i'm trying to maybe channel my inner andrew a little bit i feel like that would be something you would check and i'm just a you'd be like well let's just take two seconds to see if everything looks normal in the back of this television where my first thought would be pick up the phone call the front desk and be like this room fucking sucks oh get we get

our e today i i am taking a note yes please take a note sorry i don't know that was early in the show for an f-bomb i apologize unnecessary did you um did you do maybe necessary did you do any firmware updates on the tv no you know it's funny that you say that downloaded a couple of drivers i um i am a problem solver in that way especially when it comes to av stuff and so i will you know i will take a look at stuff like that although i will say looking at the back of a hotel like i don't know i i am not like you at all as far as like hotels kind of if they're not pristine giving me the heebie-jeebies i'm not like that but i kind of don't love looking behind tvs in a hotel room

i just like oh because it's such a clean environment you mean because it's yeah right yeah it's been it's been it's been scoured clean right before you got there there's almost no chance that there's a bunicula style dust bunny waiting for you right it's just like there's

something like oh i don't know if i want to look me i don't know if i want to look behind well ever

since you found that hamburger in the saint paul hotel which is a nice hotel like i think it changed

you yes just as a reminder like that saint paul hotel is a pretty nice little historic hotel in downtown saint paul like no no you know i have no qualms with them but i was shocked when i checked into one of the rooms and i think it was like it was one of those refrigerators a mini refrigerator refrigerator that sort of tucked into cabinetry like below a tv or something that's my vague memory of it and i think it was maybe like on top of the refrigerator like kind of in this little area below the shelf and on top of the refrigerator there was just like somebody's old clam shell container with a half-eaten cheeseburger in it i remember just like trying to grab it with like the tips of my fingers as with as little contact as possible and just like put it outside my door

or something it really did if i remember right if i remember right it also was in the room for a significant portion of your stay before you discovered it right

you discovered it right away remember it i feel like i discovered it in my first night there

i okay i think but i thought it was like you found it day two which seemed even more upsetting like it was living with you for a while all i remember is it was delicious listen that was the trip where i got us all thoroughly lubricated and was bragging up and down how i was completely impervious to the effects of alcohol and then woke up so late that i missed like the first two pitch breaks during this american life which our friend amy woo had i believe brought us out there to do is that the same trip i think that might have been a different

trip i was i just thought of something that i want to tell you i don't this is so this is unrelated to anything except for me making sort of a dad like joke there with the hamburger being delicious i was on the phone this morning with this pharmacy this like specialized pharmacy without getting like i guess too far into this i guess i'm entering a weird part of my life like it looks like i am going to be somebody who's taking like some it's not going to cost me any money out of pocket but it's like this very expensive medication that I'm going to be poking into my belly twice a month or something for my rheumatoid arthritis it seems like This is the direction my life is going, and I know that in a certain way that doesn't sound like a big deal, but as I'm in this half-hour-long meeting this morning with this special pharmacy that mails you stuff that has to be refrigerated.

This is a pharmacy in Canada, right? They're going to airdrop it somewhere in Tenasket right on the border, and then you've got to go retrieve it. Is that how this works?

Is this a reference to illegal drug trafficking? I'm actually not sure.

There was just a joke about the lengths that one has to go to in America just to get pharmaceuticals that you might need. Yeah, oh, I see. The idea that it's like a $20,000 a shot thing, but it's actually covered, but you've got to do some sort of insane. I actually, there's a 10, and I'll try to be quick because I'm interrupting your story and also vague because I don't want to bust anyone's spot. But basically, like somebody that I know reached out and said, you used to live in Bellingham. I have a good friend who is in Canada, who is an American, but lives in Canada right now and needs a medicine, a medication to stay alive and cannot get it in Canada for some reason. And do you know anyone in Bellingham? And I reached out to a 10 who has been for the last year getting this medication sent to them. and i don't know either giving it to this person when they come down across the border or driving it up to the border or something just like being an absolute incredible angel in all of this but again just that we live in a in a world uh and particularly in a country where this kind of these are the shenanigans that go on so that people can get necessary medication it's just um you know at least the saddlers are making their money andrew i think that's what i'd like

to point out i edited out as they i edited i did i edited out so okay little backstory here i in an attempt to make a quick off-the-cuff joke last week in an episode i referred to the sacklers as the saddlers briefly you didn't which is a better name for them because they're making us more sad and i bet you you noticed in the moment but didn't want to correct me because of just like why interrupt the flow of the show and then i think about five or ten minutes later in the show the conversation has completely moved on but suddenly like a light bulb went off i'm like son of a gun i know i called them the wrong name it's so interesting how the human brain works

right like that that it's like it it revisit you revisited that thought it's like something

it's i think it was snag like my brain was snagged on that the whole time you know what i mean like but anyway yeah i remember saying on the show oh luke i realized i just made a mistake and then i said i'm gonna edit out the first occurrence and then leave this in but i ended up editing out both occurrences so the listeners had no idea i made that mistake and now here we are well this is also getting edited out now i guess no no it's fine um but uh okay so you're taking this

medication i haven't taken it yet self self-administer yeah i mean it's just it's i have a

lot of emotion wrapped up in this that i'm still sort of trying to process because when you know i started to find myself in some pain and discomfort this summer and then it turns out i have rheumatoid arthritis right and i've been telling you about this and so i've been on some medications And I've kind of alluded to the fact that there are some very expensive medications that treat this stuff. And it might be that I might like just be on this stuff. But there's been I can't explain it to you, Luke. Like, it just seems like this is a there are a lot of people who take a lot of different medications. But as I was on the phone with this pharmacy, the special pharmacy that will start mailing me this, it really feels like I'm entering a very strange part of my life that I have been in a little bit of denial about. I've just been sort of thinking like, well, maybe the pills that I'm on now will just get me through it. You know, like maybe I won't need this stuff, but it's sort of looking it's sort of looking more and more like I'm going to this is going to be my life. And it's a little bit hard. It's again, it's like I will take one shot every two weeks or something and right in my belly. I don't look forward to that, but everybody says it's not all that intrusive and it'll make me feel good. So I don't know, like when you put it like that, it doesn't sound like a big deal, but it sort of is a big deal to me. and I just sort of have some weird emotions wrapped up in it. And it's hard for me to separate the cost out. So the main drug is called Humira, and that thing literally costs, and I won't end up taking that exact brand of it, but that is, I think I might have mentioned this to you on the show already, that was like a textbook case of a pharmaceutical company that would like keep on changing like small things in the drug so they could renew their patent and just like kind of balloon the cost up it was like a headline in NPR like a year ago and like the yearly price to administer that is $70,000 like $70,000 but like the way it works is insurance will cover some of it but then you go to the pharmaceutical company itself and you apply for a special like card a copay card and then so so the drug i am going to be taking is like you know kind of they don't call

it a generic but essentially a generic version of that a biosimilar I think they call it and this one is only $13,000 a year and even though I am apparently not going to be paying any money out of pocket for it I think you'll understand this Luke as somebody who knows me well and my weird I don't know stressors for some reason the the price tag even though I'm not personally responsible for it gives me some agita sort of like i just like the idea that right now i don't have to pay anything for it but god knows what the future holds you know what i mean god knows what will change in an insurance plan or in some sort of policy or in a pharmaceutical company deciding they're not going to do certain programs anymore it just sort of feels like my life is sort of in the hands of just like something changing a tiny bit and then suddenly me having to make a decision of paying $13,000 a year, which I don't think, intellectually, I don't think that's going to happen, but I just don't like this feeling of sort of like being tied to something that has that price tag to it. Having said all that,

I think that's totally rational. I think that's totally rational for all the reasons that you just stated. Yeah, well, first of all, I think to feel like this condition is chronic is like, that's a big mental leap as opposed, because so far in your life, and I've been fortunate so far in my life that if we are not feeling well, there's a solution for it, and then we go back to feeling well. It's not a chronic condition that has to be managed. That's got to be a real kind of mind F. Here, take that explicit rating off, please.

I'll give it a half a one for the other one.

Thank you. And I think the financial side of it, that totally makes sense because, yeah, it's great that right now it's not something you'll have to pay out of pocket, But if you become and if you're reliant on this to be able to live your life and something changes to know that it's that the cost is however many thousand dollars a year. I think you're I think all the feelings you're having are extremely valid.

Yeah. And that wasn't even you know, I brought this. I think that probably it's just pretty heavy on my mind right now, which is probably why I brought it up and went into all that backstory. That wasn't even the point of what I was going to say. All of that is to say this morning, I thought I'm making kind of a quick phone call for some help with this thing. But it ends up becoming what I will call here douchely a an onboarding call, sort of. I'm like on the boy. I'm on this phone call.

Do we have a new sponsor on TBTL? Don't call it a gun.

You know what the pain points are? My belly. I got to stick the needle. But anyway, I'm on the phone for this woman is helping me. She's an assistant of some sort. And then she says, OK, well, you know, we have to do this phone call. that we have to do this sort of like process that'll take like 25 minutes. Are you ready to do that now? I'm like, oh, okay, sure. And so there was part of something that I applied for online that didn't work out. I was rejected for it. She's like, well, let me try doing it through my portal on my end. And so she basically has to go through the same process that I've already been through, which is answering some very, very simple questions. But then when I was doing it online myself you get to that screen that has just a just a wall of text right like saying by clicking here you are acknowledging and like all this legal stuff like blah blah blah blah which I sort of scanned when I when I tried doing it myself and then I accepted it but now she's doing it for me via the phone and she's like well I got to read legally I kind of got to read all this legal stuff to you I'm like yeah go ahead boy and so she's reading it and she's going on and on you know i'm sort of listening and i don't know it must have taken her at least two minutes i would say to just read all this legal text and then and she says do you agree and i just i paused for a couple of seconds and i said i'm sorry i wasn't listening could you repeat it oh andrew and luke i will say to amanda's credit she said oh yeah of course and i said no no no i'm just joking i'm I'm just joking. I'm sorry. That was just a bad joke. Yes, of course. I said, it's too early for a Monday for that kind of stuff. And she laughed. But I couldn't help it. I think I said this last week on the show. But the only thing I regret about not having kids is that I have to subject adults to my dad humor.

Right. Because it's going to come out somewhere. It's got to get. It's got to be. It's leaking out all over the place.

Exactly.

You need a different medication for that.

Yeah, exactly. You don't poke that one in the belly.

You know where they don't like jokes, Andrew? the various and multiple security perimeters of the united nations oh i would guess it was really something today being over there and it was it was like almost engineered in a lab to just make me kind of low-key furious slash high-key if you

curious. So, um, I've been working on this TV story over, uh, a bit of time about this artist out of, he's based out of LA, he teaches at UCLA. His name is Rafiq Andal, and he does, um, some really interesting kind of digital art and uses a lot of, um, kind of data. And then there's some AI involved. And anyway, he makes these very, very arresting kind of huge digital, uh, you know, pieces of art that are kind of ever-changing and stuff. Anyway, and we've recorded with him, but he has a big piece in the United Nations, and it's kind of like in this corridor that everybody has to walk through, and it's related to the environment, and it's related to AI, which are two really big topics at the UN. So we're going to film me and him in front of the art talking about it. We did that this morning, but that necessitated me getting all kinds of clearance and submitting you know various passports and things like that so this morning um i'm in the um i'm in the lift and i'm on my way over to dag hammershould plaza which is the where the un is and i was kind of surprised at rating right there well i was i was like looking at the thing on my phone and i was like i can't kind of can't believe this is letting us drive on first avenue because that's the avenue that the united nations is on on the kind of like far east side of manhattan right on the river there i was like i was like huh and then of course we're just going and there's just like the amount of like militarized security just from the nypd like in terms of like they have these up armor like trucks that are like i've never seen anything like it they're like they're they're like um you know primer black that like they're probably 15 feet tall with these giant studded like rubber tires and all this armor on them and there's just like 20 of them just parked as we're getting closer to the un on just like a side street i'm like this is 20 million dollars of like armor probably more i don't know what those things cost probably 50 million dollars i don't know i mean it's like and these are just on these aren't even in front of the un these are just on a random side street we're driving to get to the

un i'm like oh my god that's just elon musk trying to get a cup of coffee that's right that's his

that's just his personal security detail um but we speaking of which not elon musk but personal security details more on that in a moment but anyway so i get over to kind of in front of the un and i need to go to this one specific address to get my press pass and i have an email from the un press office it says go to this address um 801 first avenue i'm like okay we're getting close and all of a sudden there's just cops everywhere and barriers and this long tunnel that goes under first avenue and i tell the lift driver i'm like let me out here because i don't we don't want to go in that tunnel that's going to take us way far away from here he's like okay so he stops for one second like a nanosecond i open my door all of a sudden police yelling from every direction you can't stop there don't stop there you know like okay okay okay i'm like i'll keep my hands where you can see them i'm just trying to get to this one thing so i get out of the lift i go over and where i'm standing andrew there's like a block like a city block if that maybe not even half of a city block between me and this overpass that i need to get to which is where 801 first avenue is and there is a random nypd cop and he is just guarding this half of a block and this half of a block is not significant it is not like i'm across the street from the united nations okay so if you can picture it like this is a i don't even think there's anything on it there might just be some scrubby grass or something this is a completely unnecessary half block that this guy has been told he needs to guard he does not he's not allowed to let anyone through even though if he were to let me walk on this sidewalk for half a block i would then rejoin the area where people are moving about and where i could then get my press pass the office i need to get to i can see it right and as you might imagine i said hey i just need to go to that office and he's like no i'm sorry and he was nice about it but he's like you can't walk here and i was like he goes you gotta take the tunnel i'm like the tunnel he goes yeah i go where all the cars are going goes yeah there's a bike lane i was like uh okay so this was the thing i was trying to avoid in the first place because it's like really long it's got to be like easily a half a mile of tunnel and so i'm like all right so i go walking in the tunnel and it's like commuters on their bikes zooming past

me and then me just like walking i'm in a suit how does everybody else do it i'm confused how

you found yourself in this tunnel well one thing was i took i put in the address of the press office in this lift and this is where it took me now later i would learn that there was this whole other thing i had to come from second avenue i could only come through 45th street etc etc but it was not spelled out any of the directions i think everyone had various problems getting to this i mean people were having breakdowns left and right at various checkpoints like seriously so this wasn't in my defense this wasn't just me it was a very confusing situation in fact there were other people walking in the tunnel with me who were like i've never been in a tunnel before oh that's good to know okay gotcha but there was also people just like zooming by on their bikes and e-bikes and all this i come out of the tunnel in front of by the way this is just a great feeling all the time the trump world tower you love being in a overly militarized security environment and then you look to your left and you randomly see trump world tower which is not the same as the trump tower where he lives that's over on like fifth avenue he's got a few buildings here or at least his name on a few buildings but again it just adds to the overall kind of like dystopian feel

of the vibe and walking through a tunnel is very dystopian too by the way just like it is i've never i don't think i've ever had to do it before but like whenever i'm driving through a tunnel and seattle has sort of a significant tunnel and one of our main freeways here now and so you kind of drive between underneath downtown and like there's this you know every what is it like a couple hundred feet there are like kind of emergency escape doors and along the walls are always they'll show you like a stick figure of somebody running and it'll put an arrow in one direction and tell you how many feet that door is and then an arrow pointing the other direction. So if there were an emergency in the tunnel, you would know which direction to get to to get to one of these doors. And every time I'm driving through this tunnel, I can't help but think about the state of emergency I would be in if something went sideways down here. And then what do we see tunnels used in cinema but zombie attacks? There's just something so dystopic about walking through a tunnel that is built for cars.

exactly um and yeah that's all because i think of i think that there was a um a tunnel fire in i think maybe i think the tunnel that connects france and italy called the mont blanc tunnel and they had a crazy fire in there um and uh in i'm looking this up now 1999 and a bunch of people died unfortunately i think it really changed like the safety protocols for that stuff and you're Right, it's like, so that tunnel under Seattle is very much a product of that, and it's a good thing that they have those, like, little, basically they're fireproof rooms. If, heaven forbid, there was a fire sweeping through the tunnel, theoretically you would get in one of those rooms and it's heatproofed in a way that you would survive, maybe. But it's weird to have them constantly telling you the worst case scenario. Yes, exactly. It's like, you're reminding me all the time of how bad this could go. But, so I come out of the tunnel and I'm met by the Secret Service, and they go, you're not supposed to be walking in the tunnel. I was like, how did you know? They're like, we have cameras. I was like, the NYPD told me to walk through the tunnel. I was like, yeah, he shouldn't be telling people that. I was like, okay, well, take it up with that guy, because I'm only doing what he told me to do. And so then the Secret Service guy is, I go, now I'm on the other side of 801 First Avenue. I've now, because of going through the tunnel, I've now gone past the thing I need to get to, but it's blocked off from the other direction. And I go, I need to go to 801 First Avenue. And he goes, yeah, you got to go over to 2nd Avenue and then down to 46th and then enter. And I'm like, OK, all right. So this is this, you know, each one of these things is literally I'm not exaggerating a half a mile of walking, which is, you know, fine. If it's a Sunday afternoon and you're on a stroll, if you're in a suit and you're trying to get to this thing, it's like, oh, man. And again, NYPD, one thing, Secret Service, another thing. So I go all the way down to 2nd Avenue. i get to 46th street different nypd people and i go so i have my passport with me i have the letter from the un press office which they said you have to print this out and have this with you i go and i present it to the guy at 46th like he's like do you have your pass and i was like no my pass is at the press office i need to go get it he goes yeah you can't get through here i'm like i go but they just just told me the secret service just told me i'm supposed to be here he goes yeah no it's not supposed to it's the and then he keeps giving me this other address for some other press office and i'm like i have the email right here it says 801 first avenue he's like yeah i don't know what to tell you got to go that way and i'm like i've been very lucky in my life that i have gotten to live in a largely functional society but my feeling in this moment was this must be what it's like in like soviet russia or some other kind of place where it's

And this is a sort of overused way to describe it, but sort of like just very Kafkaesque, very like the kind of place where if you want anything from the bureaucracy, you're going to have to invest a week of your time because every office you go to is going to tell you something different. And they're going to say you have to wait here at this time and then you will. And they'll say that's not what you do and you need this paperwork, but actually this other paperwork. I actually. this weirdly gave me an appreciation for how smoothly things tend to function for me in this country. If I go to the DMV, I pretty much get what I thought I was going to get, etc. It's like this was this moment of like, wow, no one here is on the same page. There are like five different layers of law enforcement or security, and none of them are talking to each other about what the actual thing is. So I call the producer for the story. I'm like, and I don't, I'm a grown ass person who oh wait we just got the e yeah sticker back i just said ass i'm a grown butt person

and i do a lot of things like really explicit somehow and like i did a thing that i rarely do

i like called the producer and i was like they won't let me in like daddy come help me basically like which is not my move i feel very self-sufficient most of the time i was like and he was like oh I think it actually might be 45th it's like oh okay 45th the other guy secret service guy told me 46th okay so I go up to 45th and sure enough and thankfully 45th the guy's like let me see your passport let me see the email he's like okay no problem head on through so now I'm inside the like perimeter which is again just unbelievably secure for blocks and blocks in every direction if anybody hearing this lives in New York City You absolutely know that this week of this General Assembly is just it absolutely pones everything in New York because New York is already a tough place for traffic. And now you just have these constant motorcades. And when a motorcade is going down some street, everything else has to stop. So I finally make my way to the press office. I get my press pass after some amount of figuring it out because some various things hadn't been moved to various systems. But I come outside and I'm talking to our sound guy, Joe, and our producer and some of the other folks. And we're just kind of waiting. And it's so funny because now we are in the beating heart of this thing. We're standing right across from the UN. There's still more layers of security, but we're in a very secure area. And then I look over and there's this like truck, the kind of weird truck with like New York PBA on top of it just kind of comes driving down the middle of First Avenue. in like in the middle of all the security and it just like parks right in front of the un and it's like it says like new york's finest pba and i look over and all of these you know andrew when i tell you there are like i would say roughly 30 000 suvs that are parked in and around this area of new york just in the street they're all law enforcement they're all running they all have their lights just going for no reason right that's the vibe all of a sudden multiple police people start getting out of their suvs and going towards this truck because andrew it's the snack truck for new york police officers the guy parks the truck he opens the flaps on the side it's and i'm not kidding literally full of donuts and coffee and all these cops who are it is so important that they frisk every human being in sight immediately abandoned their post to go get their snacks and i thought if and i'm not but if this movie was a die hard like situation you know what the terrorists are driving a snack truck a hundred percent they're driving a truck hans gruber is in a police benevolence association snack truck that is what he's driving because this is

like wave him on through you just slip him a donut wave him on like this thing was this was somehow this was the one thing that could make its way into the secure perimeter with a snack

mobile i'm having an idea regarding snacks in this situation this could also be a moneymaker for us as we try to expand to beautiful yeah we really do need to figure out i don't think that this

I don't think this podcasting thing is going to keep us in business much longer.

We open a coffee shop in the UN. We call it Coffee Anon.

We're print 100 a day, 500 a week.

That's rich. That's rich.

I really want to follow it up with a Ban Ki-moon coffee pun. I can't get there. I wanted to flex to show that I know. Or even just a Boutros Boutros Ghali, if you want to go even Boutros Boutros Ghali, that's good coffee.

Of a Vietnamese sandwich place called Ban Mimun, possibly, but maybe I should back away from jokes about people's names. But I'm still a little, by the way, PBA, have we figured out what is it?

Police Benevolence Association.

Oh, PBA. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gotcha.

This is basically like if you are a cop and you're working this thing, then these are your free snacks. and it was incredible because because everybody knew exactly what was going on. And I just thought it was funny, because, I mean, their body cavity searching us because we're carrying a tripod, but definitely let the largely opaque snack mobile in. Like, it just felt like, here's the movie version of this. It's like you have, I really was seeing a kind of diehardian dichotomy of, or maybe not dichotomy, but just the, all of the movies are always about, like, there's the one street smart cop who knows what's going on, played by Reginald Vell Johnson, and then you've got the feds who think they really know what's going on, and they're coming in and they're big-dogging the Reginald Vell Johnson character. And I could just see it all playing out here. It was like, oh, there's going to be an NYPD cop who realizes something is up, but then he's not going to be believed because he's rank-and-file. There's going to be some hotshot FBI guys from Quantico that think they know everything, but they're actually going to be screwing this whole thing up and then you by the way this is the big problem with this and it was wild trying to get into we had all the proper permitting and whatever you call it just getting into where we were trying to film literally every single security checkpoint we encountered they told us you sorry you can't come in here with that gear we had stickers for the gear we had our press passes it's because you have all these different security you have nypd you have the secret service you have the united nations security service you have the personal security details of the dignitaries like somebody saw lavrov from russia walking around with a bunch of friggin thugs clearing out areas for them it's like it's nuts because all of these different security groups none of them are talking to each other there is no agreement about what the rules are and i hope this is not an indicator of how the actual u.n works because it does not seem highly functional having been there for four hours this morning

and when it comes to security it's not in anybody's interest to say yes you know like it's always you err on the side of caution and i mean i was very and and and to be fair i mean there should be this should be the highest security in the world right you have all these world leaders we have you know we we have assassination attempts on somebody who's running for president right now like it is you need you need high levels of security you need the highest level of security in this situation but you also need it to be functioning right it just felt like a tower of

babble like you know what i mean like it just felt like a place where there was nobody really in charge and every single group had formed their own little set of rules that were kind of distinct from the other group's little set of rules i was very proud of how our producer anthony handled things at one point because we finally we had this all of this gear and we needed an elevator because it's way too much gear to try to carry upstairs it would not fit on the accelerator on a big cart it's camera gear and we get to somebody who's the lieutenant this woman was the lieutenant of united nations security at this one checkpoint we were at and we had an escort from the u.n who was taking us and our gear to the elevator we have an escort from them but because this escort was not from this particular brand of united nations security in other words our escort was from a different side of u.n security the lieutenant of of of u.n security goes what are you trying to do and and uh our producer said we have this uh we have this gear and we need to get it to where we're doing our shoot she goes no no no i don't want to know what you're trying to do then i want to know what you're trying to do right now it's like well we're trying to get to the elevator um because we need to go up to i don't want to know about what floor you want to go to i want to know and it was like the weirdest thing like i don't know if i've ever seen a person it was like it really was like a bizarro world where this person was clearly incredibly high on the supply of power that she had at this checkpoint like in to where it was it was it was like literally absurd what she was saying because she would ask a question and our producer would just very matter-of-factly answer the question and then she would declare that the answer had involved more detail than she cared about and it was like i don't know how we can give maybe we can write you a haiku i don't know how this answer could have less information in it for you and i was like this is gonna go badly because she was just like so it was as if we had royally screwed up in telling her exactly the information she had requested and our producer to his eternal credit was just like totally unflappable just kept giving her a shorter and shorter answer until finally she was like i i don't know she maybe didn't want to deal with us anymore she finally like waved us through and and still kind of yelled at us about other things but ultimately let us go to the elevator to go do our shoot i mean it was just wild scene in there i am trying to formulate words that you will understand that will get us past this check but like at a certain point you have to be sarcastic and then that's where you get in

trouble they don't like sarcasm i was way way in the back i was like i cannot get anywhere near this yeah yeah i i am to be seen and not heard and hopefully not even seen like i am way i am not getting in on this because i know that i something inside me will break and i will get

us kicked right out of the united nations if not out of the country just writ large right

okay let's thank some daily donors these are the super duper generous amazing folks who would never even if the way that they get their finances to support tbtl even if it's from being a lieutenant in the United Nations Security Force, he would never be as intentionally obtuse as some of the people we ran into today. These people are intentionally acute. And very cute, by the way, as well.

I'm an obtuse man, so I'll try to be oblique. I love that drop so much. We love that guy.

Didn't I accidentally kill that guy once? Oh, by claiming... I think I thought he had passed away, and he hadn't, and I was like, rest in power and then we looked him up and he's very much alive. Principal Onyx

Blackman. That's right. How can I not find... Oh, Windows 11, you screwed me again. That's one of my favorite drops. I'll try to find it later as you thank the donors today. Let's thank Sean Marie

Hegman, who's in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Is this our second Pawtucket donor this year? Is it? I believe so because we had a conversation about the beer in Family Guy and that it's based in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. So Sean Marie, Thank you for supporting us. Hope you know the other 10 in Pawtucket. There can't be many of you, so you should meet and become fast friends. Maggie Lewis Stevenson is in Milton, Delaware. Maggie Lewis Stevenson. Almost like Maggie wrote Treasure Island. Treasure Island. But I guess that's Robert Lewis Stevenson.

We have to bro down still on The Count of Monte Cristo. I'm shocked that you've read this one before.

Shocked? I mean, I think it was assigned reading for the record, and it's been a long time.

It's so crazily long. I just can't believe any—I feel as I read this, I feel like that I am the adventurer because I feel like I'm the first person to ever actually read this book.

Maybe I read an abridged version, too. I don't know. I mean, I'm not calling— It was a long time ago.

First of all, I'm a very slow reader, and there are—I mean, obviously people have read this. Like, it was written as, I think, very accessible, like, just serial adventure writing. It's not like some highbrow literature by any means, but it's just so it seems so archaic to me. And I stumbled on it so randomly and now I'm sticking with it. And then to hear that it was one of your favorite books that you read growing up just really, I guess, sort of shocks me.

It doesn't shock Molly Jameson of Tallahassee, Florida. Molly knows that I have a lifelong love of learning and that I'm a real active reader. when I'm not marking up the back page of Chris Hayes' book so as to write down my show sheet

can't do that on an e-book that's for damn sure, do that on your Kindle

yeah exactly, forget it I actually I actually don't own a Kindle or an e-book kind of thing I mean I think I have the Kindle like feature, but I'm I am pretty averse to digital books and I don't know why that is that's one of the weird holdouts in my life Like, I actually am more inclined to do a book on tape. Like, right now, I'm listening to Shalom Auslander's book, Feh, because we're having him on Livewire on Thursday, by the way, at the Reser in Portland, Oregon. Come see us. It's such a good book. It is an amazing book. But I've been listening to it, and I've been really enjoying hearing his voice delivering the words. So I'm not against consuming a book in a nontraditional manner, but I've never been a Kindle guy.

Why is it called Feh?

feh is a yiddish term for a kind of being sort of cursed and the book is about sort of how he has really felt like he's sort of feh in his life he's a bit you know charlie brown trying to kick the football or just that he just has a kind of a an unhappiness in him that uh you know he talks a lot about meeting people and they have the same feeling and he'll say feh understands feh oh i

see i'm looking i'm looking at the the penguin random house page for his book right now i guess the direct translation is it's yiddish for yuck yeah but he uses it in a whole bunch of different

ways like yuck recognizes yuck right like like like a person can be yuck a thing can be yuck you can feel yuck you can see yuck in other people it's just kind of like this general thing for a certain kind of way of being in the world and that is a way

that i know julie prescott of chantilly virginia is not why because even on a day when julie is feeling yuck she tunes into tbtl and she's like i support that i'm paying for that and then she feels amazing she has no fat she's on what's what would be the opposite of fat unfedible in every way unfedible that's how you'll stay jeff mckee in linwood washington loves it when I sing. Loves it when I do a little Nat King Cole, sort of Jeff's favorite things. You're welcome. Oh, and look who it is. Rounding out the list, it's our friend Mariah Spicer in Chicago, Illinois. We love Mariah. Mariah is a true joy in this world. Thanks, Mariah. Thank you to all of our donors for making TBTL possible on this Monday. We could not do this without you. Hello, and welcome to top story all right you said you want to get tawdry today andrew let's get let's get down and dirty let's get into the private lives of public people and speculate on things we know very little about it's it's what built this show and uh you know you got to play the hits like they say this is one of our hits that's right which is the story of rfk jr allegedly or apparently i guess sexting with a reporter for new york magazine olivia um newsy um is that how you say it i always say it wrong i always said nuzzy well i i'm not the expert i think i feel

like i've heard it as newsy you were right about walls and i would trust you more on this than me i i said that not as a as a as a gentle correction but just as a god damn it how do i keep getting

these things wrong well it's again i don't want to keep going around getting at the story from this direction but it's like i really and truly don't generally feel like on this show talking about what consenting adults are doing in their private time because i just feel like first of all heaven forbid anyone get into phases of my life and what i've done in my private time as a consenting adult i don't want to be the more the morality police at all i think it's a bad look i don't think it reflects well on me etc etc but when this story came up and the story is that olivia nuzzi who's a and i'm just going to keep saying it in different slightly different

ways you chose a middle way i'm kind of splitting the difference now sorry i shouldn't have brought

that up now i'm in your head um that while after i guess reporting a big story about rfk jr for new york magazine then got into some kind of a texting relationship that was you know something that uh certainly the people her fiance and now ex-fiance and presumably rfk jr's wife cheryl hines would not have been very excited about like some kind of sexually charged conversations were going on between these two people this is notable because now olivia newsy has to um well she's on leave from new york magazine it's considered to be journalistically a pretty bad look to be you know involved in any way with someone who you're also reporting i mean that's pretty pretty straightforward but when you brought it up the other day i was first of all i thought it was interesting that it made it into your world andrew because i feel like you're just a little bit less obsessed with like these sorts of things than i am and i mean that as a compliment um and but then the thing i said to you was is there something going on with rfk jr that we you and i and the other i would say good-hearted people of america just can't comprehend because there is a not insignificant number of people that did want to support him as president and a not insignificant number of women who have married him or dated him or helped him cheat on whoever he was married to or dating with them like there's I'm what I'm shocked by in this whole thing is that there are people that are buying what RFK Jr. is selling

you know before he was in the in the headlines it's kind of so prominently in the past year or so I would often forget that he was married to Cheryl Hines and that's one where again And it's so it's so basic for me to even try to, like, kind of comprehend that because everybody leads their own life. And like for me to know what it's like to be a famous comedian, an actor or to be a famous politician from like, you know, one of America's most famous political families. I don't know what goes on between them or what kind of conversations they have. But given his stances on various, you know, political and social things, it's always it's like it was always baffled me. like wait those two are together and then you got to remember well Cheryl Hines is not the Cheryl who I know from Curb Your Enthusiasm you got to you got to remember like that was an act you know that's an actor portraying something and then but it was in a show where everything was presented as very lifelike and where there's a lot of overlap between who the characters are and who the actors are.

know especially um with larry david so anyway that that's always shocking to me anyway i don't know why i'm somewhat obsessed with this story like maybe it's because for me a lot of times stories have to do with timing if i missed the sort of triggering event or the the initial kind of splash in the pages then i got to play catch up and i can't remember who people are and i don't care but there was so i think i brought it up to you pre-show the other day because the news was

literally breaking and yeah you actually had more intel on it than i did like i was like did you

hear that she and ryan lisa are done so and like i'm talking like i'm writing for the new york post like i and i was like kind of somewhat kidding on the square at the top of the show when i said like let's just get not scandalous what was the word we were playing around with tawdry i said let's let's get tawdry you know like i don't know let's get tawdry katane on this shit like i don't know why I put me in a white snake video somebody wants to describe a friend of mine a woman once described that video as um Tawny Katane slathering herself on the hood of a car and there was something about the word slathering that is so evocative it will always stick in my head um but yeah like I don't know why I'm obsessed with this and then I sort of like read the backstory apparently even when maybe it's because it's like these these high echelons of journalism and political journalism and and nuzzy or newsy already sort of had this sort of strange reputation of oh goodness I'm never going to get this guy's name but the the Trump aide who's been Corey Lewandowski Lewandowski right exactly like that whole thing a couple years ago about her like just going uninvited into his house and taking photos like there's something just always very strange i don't know very very strange about her i think and these like weird scandals

that she sort of finds herself in well that was the thing for me that when this popped up it really kind of it lit up my brain because i had been walking around for like a week and a half having a one-way conversation of disappointment with new york magazine reporter olivia newsie because she wrote this piece called donald trump's afterlife which was for new york magazine and it was basically like the question was did almost getting assassinated change donald trump and she went down to florida i mean this seems to be by the way a big part of the kind of um political writing or journalism that she does is she is able to get really close access to these people that she's writing about and really kind of write as a sort of a fly on the wall um and the thing about this trump piece was and this completely just shows my kind of where my politics are i was so mad about this story because it was written she clearly decided to take this certain kind of journalistic angle it was almost like um sort of in the third person like first of all she starts off the first i want to say like page of the of the piece is just analyzing donald trump's ear literally his ear like it's a beautiful ear it's barely damaged there's almost no scarring on it like it's she's writing about his ear because that you know obviously was where he was shot and then it's like it's it was this whole article that i kept waiting for her to finally drop the hammer on trump but because of the kind of writing conceit that she embraced which was this sort of omniscient voice talking about donald trump in this way that was sort of meant to be dispassionate it just ended up being a big wet kiss to donald trump i felt like there was never the sort of part in the article it was taking very look maybe this is actually good journalism i just don't like it because it doesn't satisfy my desire to have donald trump brought low but like in the way that she decided to write this article instead of just being like let's see if donald trump has changed from being shot the answer is no he hasn't and here's the reasons why he hasn't and here's what it might mean it was this attempt in my mind to be sort of too clever by half and write in this special style about donald trump that at the end if you weren't reading carefully and again the readers of new york magazine are probably 99 card-carrying democrats so i don't think this is going to move the needle but it felt to me like the kind of article that if you didn't understand the larger point of view of the person writing and if you read it literally on its face you would sort of just think this is a this is a huge endorse in a way a large endorsement a big endorsement of donald trump just as a kind of pretty cool dude like because she would do these

things where she would quote trump and he of course is always saying these unrealistic claims about himself but she would just sort of

of like quote him talking about himself but then not really put it in context so it just kind of seemed like the piece was saying he has a spectacular ear it's the best healing ear anyone's ever seen like you had to really be in on the joke to understand what was going on in the article and if you just read the article as it was written it felt pretty pro-Donald Trump to me so that was before all of this and I was like kind of in that weird way where like I'm just so easily triggered right now about this election I'm just so nervous all the time that like I was walking around mad about this article for like two weeks and then i see this other thing happen where it's like this person's apparently sexting with rfk jr and i'm just like you gotta be flipping kidding me keeping that e off of this show andrew that's my big goal here that e keeps popping up popping down it's

like it keeps like now can can i can i attach myself to the episode now are you saying i have not read this article that irritated you a couple of weeks ago are you saying that this um this intentional sort of distance with which he tried to write the piece was a sort of tongue-in-cheek approach, or you think it was actual? Yeah, okay, that makes sense.

I think what's happening is the writer of the piece has their eyebrow arched so far up that it's hitting the widow's peak of their hairline, but the problem is, if you don't know that going in, and you just read, you know you read the piece as written in my opinion you don't understand that the writer is writing from a very arch perspective you could miss that and then if you take it literally as written it's just kind of it's mostly it felt to me like kind of giving donald trump a pass right like it just i don't know i it to me it felt like an attempt at a right a device in writing that i think did not really land and instead just made it kind of a again maybe not pro trump but Not nearly hard on him enough. Although, is there anything that could be hard enough on him for my liking? Probably not.

This isn't a reaction to what you're saying or a point or a counterpoint, but it does remind me of something I heard on the radio just, I think it was on Friday, and I'm not going to do it service because I can't even attempt to recreate it here. I'm not a good enough improv artist, but it was pretty stunning what I heard on the radio. I was listening to AM1000, like a lot of the kids have been doing lately.

No longer Como now, right? It's like Northwest News or something, Seattle News now.

Yeah, I mean, our friend works basically in that same radio station building, although he works for a different entity inside of it. But it's a sister station for him. And I listen to that station more than he does. I can never. They went through this whole rebranding and rebranded themselves something so generic that I can never remember the name of it. When it was Como, I don't know. You just remember Como. It's Como. But now it's like it's not Northwest News Network. That's a different one. It's just like Northwest News now? I don't know, man. All of that is to say it is old. I've talked about this station before on the show. It is good, old-fashioned AM news radio. You know, it doesn't have a lot of bias in there. It's straight. I mean, I'll always find the bias, but like, you know, for the most part, it's pretty straightforward, dry AM news reporting. It's not talk radio. It's news wheel. It's not talk radio. It's not we're going to do a newscast at the top of the hour and then we're going to have some chuckle heads like me and you, you know, like chew on that news until the next update. It's like straight up like news across the board. And, you know, it's a lot of local news punctuated by national updates. And I got to be honest with you, I don't know if this was a local kind of anchor doing this or had the feeling of maybe a national political news reporter who was calling into the station or something and doing a report. All of this is to say it was a reporter who was covering the Trump rally somewhere, and I just sort of turned it on mid-sentence. So I didn't hear the buildup for it. I don't know where Trump was. It doesn't matter. All I heard was a bunch of Trump quotes delivered in a very straightforward news manner, but they didn't clean them up a lot. So it was like it was like a dry news reporter just quoting dryly Trump's actual words in a way that was almost more damning than it coming from Trump, if that makes sense. And I don't think it was with an arched eyebrow like we're saying with this. I don't think it was done for effect. I think the person was really just trying to do his best to cover this as if it's normal. And it's just so not normal. It was so weird to hear the little like because he kept in like he was reading from his notebook or whatever, but he kept in all of the verbal mannerism. for lack of a better word of trump it was very very bizarre but it didn't it did not sort of

normalize trump it actually made his stuff sound like what it really is yeah hearing it presented

dispassionately that way more more the latter in this case yeah and i don't think that the it wasn't like if you or i were doing it and we're trying to make the point of like get a load of this guy i mean whatever maybe maybe the reporter does have some some bias or whatever but like it just was it was it was almost stark hearing like these maddening words and then like punctuated by he then said it was the best whatever the country had ever seen or whatever you know what i mean he said it was yeah he said it was pure evil or or whatever whatever we hear trump say all the time but but like kind of unfiltered through the news of through the voice of a

reporter it was very strange i was very speaking of bunk journalism or just journalism i was so i was so hot at wnyc this morning here in new york i always like to listen to the local public radio station wherever i am i don't know why i don't need to know about the traffic usually although today maybe that would have been helpful but i just feel i like to feel connected to the town that i'm in and i like to hear how different local stations do it but anyway the the guy on wnyc he was like nevada is going to be a important state in the election and we're going to be finding out how we'll be talking to joe ralston coming up and if you've been in covering politics for more than five seconds this country you know that the guy is named john ralston he was at the las vegas review journal for many years and then he started his own thing he's like the he's the larry sabato of what's happening in nevada which if you know what a john ralston is you know what larry sabato is and like he just kept saying joe ralston and i was like this is killing me like i was trying i was i didn't but i was close to trying to find the control room number for wnyc to call this guy and go it's john i don't know who wrote joe i don't know who at npr probably it started with someone at npr who probably wrote joe ralston in the notes you know for promoting what's on the show but it was like it just kept happening i was just like oh this is this is a knife in my heart every time you call this guy Joe Ralston because I know his name is John Ralston.

Do you like that thing? This happened to me watching some football yesterday morning. I'm a real Tampa Bay Bucs fan these days, Luke. It wasn't a great day for us Bucs fans yesterday. But the announcer misspoke. Now, I'm in an interesting position here because I speak into a microphone for a living, but I am flawless. I don't make mistakes.

That's why we have a hard time extending grace to people who do make errors because we have been running an error-free show for 4,000-some episodes.

It is amazing how I hate myself. I will sometimes be listening to the radio or, like I say, watching a sports broadcast or something, and then somebody will make a very small misstatement or they will misspeak, and then I will correct them out loud. And then I will say, why do you, I didn't write them an email or anything, but then I hate myself for correcting them because I think of all of the mistakes I make and then how it like, you know, irritates me if somebody wants to correct me on that. It's like, come on, man. Do you have any idea how many words I say? They're not all going to be right. Anyway, I corrected the broadcaster. I think somebody said catch instead of pass. And I said, you mean catch, not pass. And then the broadcaster said, I'm sorry, I meant catch, not pass. And I was like, oh, that's great. It's a dialogue.

my mind it's a dialogue exactly 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 all right um emails or v-mails yeah i know that you're

in a bit of a hurry here so um i got some fun stuff i want to play for you this week but let's start with this one um this is from listener maria of course a while back uh we were asking people to call in and sing us the songs that they sing to their pets and uh we've been focusing on

those lately here's one that maria sent in hi friendos it's maria from minnesota and here's the song i sing to my dog stella when i go into my home office every day um she thinks she deserves a treat um and so i hold my hand up into the air and i start singing it's raining treats hallelujah it's raining treats hallelujah and that goes on for just a little bit and then i hold up my hand as if i have no more treats left on the desk but i still do and then she goes down and has a little nap

so anyway power out, bye man it's amazing how much I want to pet Stella I have never met Stella before but just from that voicemail I want to

I want to do that thing where I scratch Stella behind the ears, you know? What was the name of that person? That's Maria who left the voicemail. I love Maria's whole, like, delivery style. It reminds me of, like, a stand-up comic from the 80s or something. She was like, and that just goes on for a little while. And then I hold my hands up like I don't have any more treats. But I do have some treats. But I do. I really was like, I was really liking the rhythm of how that. also uh is that the the weather girls is that who does it's raining men hallelujah oh uh this is

oh i have to sing it's raining men hallelujah it's raining men i i the weather girls i wouldn't

have known that i don't know i'm i'm that's right off the dome so and this is a dome that's pretty tired i gotta tell you like i'm not gonna go on and on about this because i've been feeling very good today but i think i'm i'm realizing that there is there is an effect of the the crisscross in the country and the um the getting up i i got up pretty early today to do my jog in central park which was really fun i'd highly recommend it just me and the pizza rats and the giant mounds of untended to garbage that they were sitting on but boy you really got the city to yourself at about 5 30 i mean there is i was running down fifth avenue without a without anybody even looking at me it's great you didn't see other i'm a little i'm a little plum tuckered so you didn't see other joggers huh i would expect five no in the park in in no in the park you definitely start to see the hardcores um which to me was so weird because i'm like i'm doing this 75 hard project this is me really forcing myself into some sort of like unusual behavior but these people aren't this is their real life like i found them on a monday morning just running central park at 5 30 like i'm here on this podcast bragging about it i haven't stopped telling people i was texting broadcast barry about it because he's also in new york i was like for me this is something to trumpet from the mountaintops to them it's just a monday morning that's a level of this

stuff i'll never get they might be equally annoying at their workplaces you have no idea

you know what screw you put the e back on the show please all right that's gonna do it for today's episode uh we're gonna be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for all of you so please if you can join us for that in the meantime have a great monday take care of yourselves please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

i'm an obtuse man so i'll try to be your blink power out I'll see you next time.