Muse

So let's fire up the Batman-mobile, go to a taco stand, and eat some feelings, OK? OK, I think it's Bat-mobile. Batman-mobile. Bat-mobile. That's what I said, Batman-mobile. You're putting the man. There's no man. It's just Bat-mobile. Bat-man-mobile. Bat-mobile. Drop the man. Batman-mobile. Bat-mobile. Bat-mobile. TBTL. Do you have any music, Carl?

I have the internet radio.

I love internet radio.

You've come to the right place, because I have that. My podcast is on life support. Hey, I need new listeners. Don't speak. No, no, don't speak.

Please don't speak. Please don't speak. No, no, no, go. Just what? Don't speak. I'm starting to feel like a corn dog at a hot dog party, and it ain't flattered, I'll tell you that.

Well, all right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of TBTL Show. Just might be too beautiful to live.

It is political correctness run amok.

Hi, I'm Luke Burbank. I am your host. Very demure. Also, in some cases. Very mindful. Coming to you from Times Square once again.

New York's hottest club is Kreese.

They're updating the digital signs that I'm looking at. Now there's a band called La Femme that they want me to know about here in Times Square. I don't know if we have any La Femme fans out there listening. But yes, I'm once again in New York City today for the program, which means I'm looking at far too much visual stimulation to deliver any sort of coherent, focused show. But honestly, why start now as we get to episode 4,118? Let the fun begin. In a collector's series, I have a different number written down on my stationery here from the Marriott Marquis, but I think I wrote down the wrong thing, but I think my brain remembered the right thing. I think we're at episode 4,318 in a collector series. Speaking of brains, thinking of things, and being so smart, chess, right? Chess, am I right? What if that was the whole promo? I just wanted to mention that chess is a game that you need to have a pretty smart brain for. Well, you do, but there's a story about a high-level Romanian chess player who's been accused of cheating. Well, we know you're good at lying. And I don't know if this person is good at lying, because the allegations seem to point out or indicate a real facility for chess and a real lack of facility for cheating at chess. Also, I learned about something called the Great Chess Yogurt Scandal of the 1970s, which we'll get into. Oh, and we're going to talk to this guy. Longest running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke.

I wanted to ask you about something, which takes a very quick comment that you made live on stage as you're spinning a lot of plates. I'm referring to our show in Philadelphia a few weeks back. You made a quick comment on stage that was kind of slightly incorrect, and I wasn't sure if you truly had forgotten about something, Or you just didn't feel like getting down into the weeds about it in the in the in the moment again, doing a live show. But, you know, listening to the very beginning of today's episode where we hear that very charming tape. That is some of my favorite tape. It's from Zooey Deschanel's show, The New Girl. Is it? No, you know, I always think it's just New Girl, isn't it?

You know what? I always think that that is for some reason. Now that you say that, of course, that is Zooey Deschanel, national treasure. But I always think that it is Chelsea Peretti from Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

Oh, no, I have some of her stuff, too, like Onesle plus Onesle equals Toodles. I have some wonderful stuff from her. But no, yeah, that particular one is Zooey Deschanel, who we mentioned briefly on the show. because her father is a Quaker that's right that's why it came up and you were kind of chatting with Genevieve you guys had sort of usurped me for that show you said you've lost your seat on the main stage we remember how it all went down

I believe beta cucking is the scientific term for what happened

yeah I know it's one of those things where I know that's the term but because I'm not a man of science I always get nervous like should I

porky pig it you just like use a different word altogether Thank you. Exactly. No, but you had mentioned something like, well, you know, if she had stayed together with Ben Gibbert, thank you, of Death Cab for Cutie and other works that we all enjoy, you said if they had stayed together, you would have had a chance to meet her. And do you remember that we did meet her through him once very briefly? Did you actually forget about that?

I did actually forget about that until you, no, I had completely black. What were the circumstances? Well, he was having what they call a swingers party. And that's where you learned that your beta cuck moves.

I have that wrong. Sorry. That was, that was a different band. This was a bunga bunga party. Oh, sure. I love saying bunga bunga party so much. It's one of my favorite things to say. And I don't have a very strong grasp on what it is. I just know that Berlusconi somehow got involved in that.

Well, I guess, look, I don't want to go dark here on this Friday. I don't want to start things off in a dark place. But it really, I think it really speaks to the power of branding. Because you hear about a Bunga Bunga party and you're like, that sounds ridiculous. You hear about a P. Diddy get together and you go, ooh. like i don't think there's i mean maybe legally and in terms of allegations maybe there is a pretty big difference but like in both cases it's like i see a bunch of it's a bunch of very powerful rich probably men getting together for some kind of bacchanal and uh and you know like bunga bunga just sounds so fun it sounds like you could bring your grandmother to a bunga bunga

party i wouldn't no i would probably recommend it in other words it's not it's not like just it's To me, I just use it as shorthand for like, oh, it sounds like a fun, sexy time where everybody has agency. But no, we are not talking about it. Maybe, I don't, maybe. Maybe not. But you're saying there's probably more people there who are doing it, who would be doing other things, potentially.

I'm just saying I've rarely heard about a large get together involving a bunch of rich dudes and sexual activity where, you know, where there was not some level of probably, you know, not super great. But again, I'm not trying to get us to a sad, weird place. I'm just saying it really speaks to branding. Speaking of branding, let's go branding. Is that a show title?

No, I think we've done that before. We've literally I think that is actually a show title.

I heard this ad on, I was listening to The Daily today, and they have some ad now running in front of The Daily that's from the nation of Taiwan. And it's really funny because I actually wish I would have pulled the commercial. I didn't think to. But it's clear that, you know, Taiwan is obviously a place where there's a lot of controversy and, you know, question of is it part of china or not etc and and and taiwan i i don't know i think they want to rebrand themselves or take back the the narrative or something but they're running this ad before the daily that i'm going to paraphrase here but it goes something like this it's like brought to you by taiwan rebranding itself the new taiwan branding will be very convincing to make you want to come to taiwan it's like it's written like the thing you would write in the email about what it's saying the quiet part loud it's literally like brought to by Taiwan now rebranded a Taiwan that's rebranding will make you want to come visit Taiwan. And I'm like, you guys didn't get the memo over here. We don't say that part in the ad. Yeah. Or it's like placeholder. It sounds like placeholder text. Right. Exactly. Yeah. TBD at Taiwan TBD are rebranding, which we hope will make you more enthusiastic to come here because we've rebranded ourselves. It's like TBD. Speaking of rebranding, this is really we're in the beginning of the

show too which means we have probably i always have this theory that we have more casual listeners at the beginning of the show and we can kind of sneak in things that are maybe inappropriate uh later in the show because i am hesitating here i think this is probably legitimately um

probably inappropriate for you think maybe i should not have raised the specter of p diddy four minutes in are you saying on a friday that's not that's maybe not the best programming decision

i think what i'm about to say is if not worse it's certainly following in your footsteps but But just remember that this is a joke that goes back to, like, my early 20s when Genevieve and I were hanging out kind of in Boston a lot. I don't know why Boston doesn't really play into this. I'm just trying to set the scene of young, you know, recent college graduates, Andrew and Genevieve and their group of similarly aged friends having a good time.

having there you're playing in a fountain sure drinking from an oversized coffee cup we've seen

and there was somebody who was this was It was not somebody I knew, but it was like we were talking to somebody at a house party or something, and they had a friend who had gotten in trouble and had to list themselves as a sex offender because, and this is where, you know, maybe if you're listening with kids and you don't feel like having conversations about some adult things, maybe this isn't the conversation for you guys. But it was we were talking to somebody who had a friend who had to register as a sex offender because this person was pleasuring himself by himself in a car. Right. And that's not good. And this was kind of I feel like the laws around sex offenders were maybe like the laws about like having to like, you know, announce yourself in a neighborhood or be listed here or there in some sort of public database or whatever. I feel like that was a little bit new or we were talking about it a lot. And there was something about this particular act, a victim, you know, technically, I mean, or hopefully in this case, a victimless act. This person was not stalking. This person was not at a schoolyard. Exactly. Although there might have been an issue where there was a school somewhat nearby, but that honestly was not part of the act. It was one of those things that made things more complicated in his legal defense. And again, I don't know this person. I'm not defending them. I'm just saying that this was the context of the story that Genevieve and I were contemplating when we thought, you know, there are certain things that could be considered kind of sexual misconduct, but they have cutesy names. This all comes back to you talking about branding, right? And, like, for example, you'd be like, well, like, streaking, depending on, like, the circumstances, like, streaking could be very, very, that could be a non-victimless crime, certainly, right? You don't expose yourself to somebody. That's not how we live.

guy runs onto the soccer pitch and he's naked i have to be honest with you i'm rooting for him yeah right i don't see him i don't see him instinctively as as as you know um sort of traumatizing people or sexually violating people i see him as a drunk oh i've got a good irish guy joke i want to tell you later that i learned at delmonico's but anyway i yeah a streaker you're exactly right it just seems like a fun madcap thing but then um you know somebody who's removing their clothes in public in a different context it's super upsetting and we even have a name for

that too like that would be another thing like we would call it like and again maybe this is a generational thing but you'd be like flashing like you could make a joke you could see like the boomer generation like making a joke on laughing or something about flashing you know there's a name for it and we're like boy like you really got away with a lot by like taking these sex crimes and giving them cutesy names like streaking or flashing and i think there are some other examples too and we decided you know at this party where again we were probably uh tipping back some cocktails that really what our our party goers friend needed was a name for his act that sounded less threatening cranking well we can in the car specifically though we came up with honking it and that like so if you're doing that in a car it's kind of like well your your honor My client was merely honking it. It just comes off. You can categorize it with the streaking and the flashing and the whatnot.

Yes. And it sounds like by the description of this person was, in the most classic sense, honking it. Like, they weren't trying to menace people or derive some sort of excitement because of their proximity to other people.

They just were maybe, you know, in the mood and in the car.

Then it raises the question, how do you get caught?

like yeah that's a there's a lot of questions about this yeah like i don't know there's two

things that i don't understand how people get caught doing honking it and it's working starting fire fire starting uh forest fires oh like that seems like the hardest crime to solve who started the forest fire like because it's in the forest it's like a person drives out in the middle of nowhere and they light some stuff on fire and then presumably they leave i feel like the success rate of of catching people who start forest fires is really high it's i would accept i would expect

the success rate to be zero you know what though luke and i don't know for sure about this but you and i i mean you have a little bit more experience than i do recently doing this but you and i are not people who spend a lot of time that's a dangerous thing to tell you um i uh on monday We're going to have a bunch of car horn sound effects. We're going to have a whole new TBTL. We are rebranding around the concept of honking it. But, you know, if these fires are starting in like national parks or even state parks, there's a lot of like sort of tracking of who's going in and out of those.

You know, you have to that surveillance state.

Yeah, right. Like on yesterday's show. But you have to, you know, you have to you have to, I think, buy a pass that your name is going to be attached. too i think often you're also either assigned or you choose like a specific camping lot in some of these situations sure i also wonder if just like the guilty factor is another reason i'll bet you people come forward more often than let's say with other crimes i could be wrong about that

but like they just caught this guy or at least they accused this guy in somewhere in northern cal who was also a firefighter like a wild wildland firefighter of trying to start these fires and And they weren't on a – it wasn't like he was, you know, had signed up for a campsite. These were just in these random places. And the thing that I thought was the most actually damning – well, first of all, who would do that? Like that's just such a terrible, mean idea and so harmful.

That's probably a mental disorder though, right? Like the arsonist and also – isn't there – and I don't want to besmirch the proud tradition of firefighting, but don't they say like there's a fine line between a firefighter and an arsonist? Actually, I think I did besmirch. I'm not standing behind that. But this idea of a fascination about fire could lead one to one or the other.

Andrew, we don't call it arson. We call it sparking. Your Honor, my client was just sparking. He was sparking it again. All right. But the thing that I, the thing that I, well, I mean, first of all, I thought, wow, that's, there's some deep, I guess you could say sort of irony there. and also that they did catch him which again I was like you're it's just strange to me that that this is that they were able they were able to figure out who did this because again it's happening in presumably largely remote areas without a lot of other people there to observe it presumably you'd go do it when no one was looking but here was the here was the little in the AP story or whatever the like small little kind of note that stuck out to me sentence was None of the fires were successful All of the fires Were contained immediately He couldn't forget his training Like I mean seriously He's out there arsoning He's out there sparking if the Charges are to be believed And he's not even good at it Is that the firefighter training? Does the firefighter training Disallow him? Does it stop him From being able to successfully Do an arson even if he's trying to Can you not override that circuitry?

It's like I could have been the world's best arsonist, but I'm so bad at it. I went into the other field. I went into firefighting instead. It was easier. Turns out I'm better at putting them out. I am about to make a huge left turn here, not even in the conversation. I'm actually abandoning, maybe temporarily, if you want to come back to it, this conversation, because there is something I have been meaning to address on this very show for quite some time. And it was supposed to be the first thing out of my mouth today. I realize for those who care about the ins and outs of my minor little life, all of the trials and tribulations that you probably shouldn't care about, but for some reason you do, I never closed the loop on something. And I just got a text message from listener Kelly in Rhode Island who out of the blue just said, hey, did you ever get your luggage back, question mark, exclamation point. And the answer is –

That's a great question. And I never – I should have – I'm sorry. I should have followed up on that. Oh, wow. That's like in there. I just was trying to find a car horn sound effect in my system. I figured I'd just use that jet for you since the airline lost your luggage.

Yeah, the airline, and then I guess technically they didn't lose it, but I arrived in Seattle after flying back from Croatia and making stops along the way in Iceland was one of the places we stopped. And apparently that is where my luggage did not get loaded onto the plane. I think that was Iceland, right? Yeah. And we show up in Seattle. Everybody gets their bags off the carousel. mine is the one that doesn't show up but the nice people at the airport like kind of took down our information on the back of another piece of paper for some reason they didn't have a form for this which i found curious there were a lot of things that i found curious about this uh and and made me not feel super super hopeful that i would get it back and i had a very expensive to me camera lens in there along with some some medicine that i really shouldn't have packed in my suitcase um And I should have kept it in my carry on. There's a there's a lesson for me and others who can learn from my mistakes. All of that is to say, yes, I eventually did get my bag back. It was delivered here to my home. I think it did take, you know, a little bit longer than I expected. I think it took like we landed on a Saturday and I got my bag back on a Wednesday, I think. So a little bit longer than I was hoping to wait for the damn thing. But the lens, the lens was still in one piece. I don't know if I've used it since then, but I'm sure it's in working order. And everything was basically in order. It just took too long for my bags to find me again, but I am whole.

I'm really glad that that's the end of that story. I was a bit worried about your camera lens. Yeah, me too, buddy. Now, let's get back to my Irish joke that the waiter at Delmonico has told me and the crew, okay? And I can tell this because I'm Irish, okay? So this is the one thing I'm allowed to say. You're Albanian. I'm both. Andrew, two things can be true, okay?

It is both.

Go ahead. Great callback to a conversation that the listeners are unaware of.

It's a reference to a Miller Lite commercial you all have probably seen.

We love that commercial. It's so good. So the, let's see, an Irishman, a Frenchman, and a German walk into a bar. Now, here was the thing. The guy that was telling us this joke, super sweet guy, he was a waiter at Delmonico's, But he also was from, I think, somewhere maybe in, like, Eastern Europe. So here's how he set it up. He said, an Irishman, a Frenchman, and a German break into a bar. And so immediately I thought, it's a caper. He just meant enter a bar. Oh, okay. So I've spared you all that. Okay, I'm not telling it. This has been edited for clarity, okay?

But I just want to say, though, also, it's kind of like, oh, I heard an Irish joke from somebody from eastern europe in delmonico's what's the name of the place again i assume it's an

italian name that you're saying there it is an italian it is an italian restaurant um delmonico's like the steak the delmonico's steak um so uh an irishman a french guy and a german guy they go into a bar and the um a german guy gets his beer orders a beer and the guy gives it to him and it's just full of fruit flies he's like oh yeah it's like yuck and then the um the uh the other guy we'll call him german uh gets uh his beer he orders a beer and the beer comes in it's also like full of fruit flies and he's like jeez louise the irish guy orders his beer and it's also full of fruit flies and he picks one up and he starts hitting on the back and he says give it

back give it back maybe you needed the visual oh i see he's like trying to get the little bit of

beer that the fruit fly is already the fruit fly spit the beer out back into the beer i thought he

was fighting the the the bugs for the mug but you know he'd already had this the the bug had

already sipped it and bugs were in the yeah you know i think this is a joke better told in person all um i'll tell you again when i met your house doing the show good by then the listeners will

have forgotten do that for a hey dummies video um next time you're on the schedule to do one of

those i saw a joke i want to tell people this is this is quickly to promote hey dummies this week I want to let everyone know this is without a doubt the most bedraggled I've ever been on a Haydum. Oh, good. So if you would like to see, I didn't even realize until I was in the midst of talking to this video, to these people through this video, Andrew, that I have not showered now for going on two days, two and a half days. Oh, yikes. Because it was the overnight flight, the bathroom change, which we talked about on yesterday's show. and then i just went to sleep eventually you know overnight and then got up and then was doing the show with you but still hadn't showered yet um i was waiting for the afternoon to go on my little run in central park also waiting for my knee to stop hurting but i didn't realize till i was looking into the camera that i think i'm on literally two and a half days of no showering and no like attending to my personal hygiene that's what you're gonna see in the newsletter

this weekend or we could skip the newsletter uh based on that description i gotta learn some of

those filters that everybody uses on tiktok and instagram oh wait i'm looking at this now you do

look a little bit tired and a little bit greasy but you do look like you have shrek ears and so i appreciate that have you seen the filter where you can actually put shrek sort of behind you sort of hugging you around the shoulders while you talk to the camera yeah that's a big one my friend monica uses it a lot i like it here's my joke for you and uh an irish guy an albanian and a guy who grew up in north seattle but now lives in portland and flies around a lot and rad break into a bar no uh no the the joke i'm going to tell you like i have a problem with this joke but if i tell it quick enough i can maybe trick you into thinking it works um but uh there's a in fact i'm worried that you may maybe told me this joke before and i just came across it again recently but uh a guy um is interviewing for a job and the interviewer says you know there's a period here that are unaccounted for there's like four years missing from your resume you told me this joke didn't you do you i hear you laughing you you know this joke i'm just laughing at how great this setup is okay have you have you told this joke on tvtl already but i don't remember

how it goes this is a true story i remember telling you this joke either on air off fair, but I've now forgotten the exact punchline word. So please.

I was, I, I, this is on my mind because I saw it on Reddit recently and I was like, that joke is so close to being like perfect. Um, but now as I say it on TV, I'm like, I think you've, this is where the podcast has landed us, uh, for 4,300 episodes in. Uh, but anyway, yeah. So the guy, uh, the interviewer says, you know, there's a, there's a period of like four years on your resume here, just totally missing. Like what's going on there. And the applicant says oh i was in yale and the guy goes oh well that yale that's really impressive we're gonna hire you right away and the guy goes thanks i really need this yob which is such a good joke it's sort of but you wouldn't say i'm in yale that's the thing you got to say that part really fast because you would say i was at yale you know i wasn't i did i've never said i was in Kent State University.

What I usually say is, I was in New Jersey. I was going to school in... Wait, Yale's in... Where's Yale? Oh, wait. I was thinking of Princeton. Where's Yale? Isn't that Connecticut? Yale's in Connecticut?

Isn't that Connecticut? I'm so bad at knowing the Ivy Leagues.

I'm so bad at getting into colleges, they wouldn't even tell me where the Ivy League schools were.

Yeah, let's see, where is it?

They were like, this is not... Don't worry your pretty little head about this, Mr. Burbank. We're going to send you directly to the University of Washington.

Hey, we got there, though. It is in New Haven, Connecticut. we're not the biggest dummies hey let's thank some

some of our yoners it's not even how that joke works but I just wanted to say it

you got me

thank you to these fine folks who are supporting TVTL donating their hard earned money and making it so this can be our job and our friend John Sklaroff's job, we wouldn't be here without Mary Ellen Cavallon of Lake Forest Park, Washington. Hey, thank you, Mary Ellen. The camera district, if you're Andrew. That's right. I was going to mention it, but I didn't want to derail us. Ooh, look who's in Aurora, New York. Cynthia Wilcox.

Oh, I sort of live in Aurora, Seattle. So we're kind of like...

You do. We're kind of like neighbors. Exactly. You're wishing on the same Aurora. That's not true. It's different Auroras. It's different Aurora. similar names all right let's just focus on akron ohio where danielle cordaro is nice so close so close to the football hall of fame but not quite how close is akron to uh canton very close it's called like the akron canton area would you ever go to the pro football hall of fame would that be

interesting to you i would go i mean first of all there's probably a cafe with popcorn if i could wander around eating popcorn that would help i don't know why popcorn seems like the right thing there um but uh i would go i don't think i mean it's funny because i live so close to it i mean my friend tony lived in canton for a long time i've clocked i went to the quonset hut plenty of times in canton um but uh which is a hall of quonset hut here's a hall of fame for bongs and like those ponchos that you'd pull over your head and um donovan records and incense um was it called the quonset hut or was it the quonset hut was a very small like i think maybe two or three locations. There's one in Cleveland and Cam's Corner is where I lived. And there was one in Canton. That was the bigger one that I think actually was a Quonset hut, which is a style of building, right? And they were like great. You know, this was, I was you know, a young teenager so I was not interested in, or I certainly was not into drug culture in any way, but it is like I was very much into all of the other trappings of that hippie lifestyle from the music. And yeah, there's this place in Canton called the quonset hut they sold all kinds of stuff incense and all kinds of records and i saw my first mini

disc there go ahead we had a quonset hut behind our church oh the actual kind of building yeah the kind of building well i'm assuming the quonset hut that you went to also was a quonset hut right

i feel like the original one somewhere was i'm looking at it now the one i'm looking at here is definitely not a quonset hut but i think the original one was built inside when it's like a

half tube right yeah and it's military usually i think they're relatively easy to build and so i think what would happen is uh they would use them a lot of military bases and i wonder if maybe they would put them in you know when they were setting up a forward operating base somewhere they'd throw some quonset huts up but i always thought that was the weirdest word we used to have um sunday school in the quonset hut it always smelled kind of funny um yeah i thought it was like i thought it was kind of an odd place but um but yeah it's uh it's weird that we both had experience with quonset huts as children and yet neither of us served neither of us well yeah that did not

propel us into a life yet i'm still i'm still in my prime i just want to tell you a little bit about the quonset hut story which they're now being branded as a place to go for unique gifts and special somethings. But it says here, the Quonset Hut began as a hippie boutique that specialized in—this is 1969, by the way. There's a bit of a lead-in paragraph that I skipped. But 69 is a year that a lot of special things happened, and it's the year that the Quonset Hut was born. The Quonset Hut began as a hippie boutique that specialized in clothing, jewelry, and smokers' needs. We were also the one and only local supplier of Levi's. How about that? And then in 1975, we branch out into music and shifted from vinyl to eight tracks and CDs as time went on, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, yeah, I think it started off as what you would call a head shop.

The George A. Fuller Construction Company manufactured the first Quonset huts. In 1946, the Great Lakes Steel Corporation claimed the term as it applied to builders and building materials, trademark actually owned by the Great Lakes Steel Corporation. So I apologize if I violated their trademark at any time. Um, the, uh, let's see, I was trying to find if I was right about the military application. Let me read you some Quonset hut trivia, Andrew. After World War II, surplus Quonset huts became popular as housing in Hawaii. They became known as, uh, Kamaboko houses due to the Quonset hut's half cylindrical shape, similar to a slab of Kamaboko.

Hmm.

Yeah. I don't know who Kamaboko is. Chris Vild knew that. I guess where Chris Vild is. Chagrin Falls, Ohio, Andrew.

Hey, Chagrin Falls now. We always say this. That's Eastside Cleveland, right? I mean, I know it's its own thing. Last I checked. Yeah, yeah. Nice.

Two Ohioans back to back. That's right. Danielle and Chris. And then we've got someone checking in from Illinois. It's Angie Panion in Naperville.

This is very great for the Great Lakes states.

We love it. The Blue Wall. Let's form it. Let's keep it. Please, dear God, let's keep it. And then Aaron Crabtree is in Olympia, Washington A little bit less pressure on Aaron I do believe that Washington looks reliably Like it's going to go in the right direction As far as the top ticket goes But you never know Hopefully you'll be able to get out there And vote Aaron I don't want to tell you how to vote But just vote But also vote the way that I'd like you to vote Yes That's implied in all of this I do think it's funny Like on MSNBC By the way, thank you to all of our donors We could not do TBTL without you It's funny that on MSNBC, they will often, particularly Rachel Maddow, will often say, you know, you've got to register and you've got to vote. She'll never say which direction to vote, but I think it'd be pretty funny if you were watching MSNBC, but you were also going to maybe vote for Trump.

Yeah, right. Those are probably not where you're going to find your undecided voters.

I also think I was listening to, oh, you know what it was? it was jamie loftus's great show the 16th minute and she was talking to ken bone remember ken bone he's still making the hay out of it huh well he i have to tell you he came off as very likable and relatable like he was the guy who was at this town hall that involved trump and hillary clinton and he asked a question about energy because he worked at an uh like a power plant in wherever they were probably ohio actually or actually i think they're just they're near he's near st louis he's just in on the illinois side of the whatever that i guess mississippi river probably the mississippi and he he got up and asked a question and um he was wearing this kind of red sweater and he's kind of an interesting looking dude and his name was ken bone and he became this internet sensation um and then they found that he had written some comments like he did a he did some kind of reddit thing where he used his real reddit handle then people started going and seeing what other things he'd done with the reddit handle and he had like commented on some like pornography about the kind of pornography he enjoyed and he had also weighed in on the sort of Trayvon Martin thing basically saying that he thought that this was terrible what George Zimmerman had done but he also did he thought because the way the law was written it wasn't going to be illegal i wouldn't be deemed a murder he just kind of was like writing stuff online that was kind of bad takes um but written at a time when he didn't think anyone would ever see

it uh-huh but and also and you're you're carefully laying that out like he wasn't he wasn't like saying egregious things about trayvon martin or whatever no generally on the right side but was

making yeah he was basically saying what had happened was terrible but because of the way the laws are drawn up it's not going to be found illegal and other things that are just like stuff that it wasn't a good look for him but he owned up to it right away he has never taken the comments down by the way he left them up there and he apologized immediately he was like yeah I really regret that those were really hurtful and dumb things I was saying when I didn't think anyone was seeing it and you know

So he comes off as a pretty likable guy, and then Jamie Loftus interviews him. The other thing that's interesting is that he's become much more progressive. He was kind of probably a little more, like, libertarian or, I don't know, generally sort of a maybe center-right guy. But he's become now, like, he's really become more progressive over the course of the last 20 years of his life. Actually, it hasn't been that long. It's been eight years. But he's sort of landed in a pretty good place on politics. And he just had a very, he had a very nuanced and I thought kind of interesting take on what it's like to go from being a non-famous person to being kind of weirdly like a Saturday Night Live character and people dressing up for you for Halloween, like you for Halloween. And like all of a sudden you're like a thing and then going back to not being a thing. I thought he had a very nuanced take on it, but this is where I'm going with all this, Andrew. He said he was a little bit disappointed that they called him an undecided voter because he wasn't undecided. he said the better term for it is uncommitted at that point how he felt was he didn't like Donald Trump and he didn't really like Hillary Clinton he was uncommitted as opposed to undecided and I thought doesn't that probably really describe the people that we commonly throw around as uncommitted or undecided rather because the thing is you're always like how could anyone be undecided on this like I mean how could anybody be uncommitted honestly but uncommitted makes more sense to me as a thing than undecided that's interesting and i boy he still got some in the

tank doesn't he old ken bone because that's actually really that's pretty thoughtful yeah word parsing there i think um because it does make sense because you said now even now who could be uncommitted i think tons of people i think there are so many people who have been republicans their entire lives and they've voted for people like i mean i'm sorry to be so cliche about this. I don't have better examples. But let's just say you're Romney Republicans or Reagan Republicans, whatever, like people who are just like, I believe in I believe in small government. I believe in various things that Luke and Andrew don't believe in. But like I have voted that way my whole life and I can make an intellectually sound argument for these things. But I don't associate with this this Trump party anymore. But I can't just like, you know, I know like it literally we're talking about like literally this week the headline was how kamala is reaching out specifically to republican voters she was on fox news a couple of days ago um you know and so i know that that is what we're looking for but like i guess there there are people who are just like republicans and i actually respect that because i you know there are people in my life who i love that are that were those types of republicans but have just sort of moved with the flow over to the right to the fox news right

even further well i said this before and i don't want to be my tiktok feed is just flooded with sort of regular people who have decided to take their own temperature check on the early voting results and the electoral map and declare this is going to be a kamala harris tim wall's landslide and as much as i desperately want to believe these people i don't see any sort of formal training they're just people that have figured out how to post on tiktok you know but they're delivering a message that i desperately want to believe so i kind of like i cling to it even though i'm like what does this person know so let me just be that guy for a minute i i said this to you before on the show but this idea of uncommitted or undecided that the group of people that i feel like you just described someone who's been maybe a lifelong republican voter but has just hit their limit with the behaviors of donald trump and the the drama surrounding him now i don't know if you won a few of them back on Monday when he just swayed on stage to Ave Maria what people aren't talking enough about that whole episode and I think we can only describe it accurately as an episode is at some point it shifts into nothing compares to you the Sinead O'Connor version of the Prince song which first of all rolling in her grave wherever Sinead O'Connor is I would presume him but uh as probably would be prince although i i could see prince being maga by the way like just just to keep us guessing just to keep it moving at all times but anyway because he was

on the wrong side of prop eight or something like that wasn't he was bad he was dealing with a lot

i would just say like of of the people that i venerate to the highest possible degree for their art prince is the number one person who would also most likely be maga for some reason like vying like battling kanye for the title of person whose music has meant the most to me

and who is letting me down the hardest now and eric clapton you're a huge eric cocaine anyway i love i love it but every now this is the gen x in me when every now and then somebody's disdain for a person that can just come out in one word like

that I call it I call it Odenkirking like I love just hearing the absolute disdain sometimes and that can just seep out of a Bob Odenkirk side I love I love how you could hear everything you

need to know about my opinion of Eric Clapton expressed in it is shared it is shared my friend but but um what the the group of people that I feel like I'm not hearing from a lot are people who are historically have been democrat voters and who are now moved into the let's say uncommitted or undecided yeah yeah i feel like that's not really a person i hear about a lot what i hear about a lot are people like i just said who have been lifelong republicans who just kind of they can't take it anymore and they never thought they'd vote for a democrat but they're at least considering it that seems to be much more of a profile of a person that you hear about You don't see a ton of people going the other way. And it makes me think there has to be something to that. And there has to be an experience that is replicated. And if the whole fight is for these uncommitted voters, it has to be a good sign that it seems like most of the non-committed sort of tendencies seem to be going from Republican to maybe sitting this one out, maybe voting for Kamala Harris. But you just don't hear like I was a Biden voter in 2020 and now I'm really considering voting for Trump. I just don't feel like I hear about that.

Yeah. If anything, it moves. And I gave an example of this when we were talking the other day about some people I know who were like more solidly like they would call themselves Democrats or whatever, who've moved further to the left and are uncomfortable with. Yeah. And I guess that is that's a different but that's different than what you're saying, though. And I think that's I think and hope that's a pretty small majority. I'm sorry, a pretty a pretty slim section of I don't know why I said the word majority there. It's the opposite of what I meant. I think it's a pretty small section of the voting public.

I hope it is, of course, because The New York Times can never let me have a moment of peace in my life. That episode of The Daily I was referring to that started off with Taiwanese branding was Let's Go Branding. Is that a show title?

keep saying that um for a second i really was like wait a second we talked about like we need to talk about yeah exactly wait luke now you know let's just take the next 38 minutes and sway to some live look at luke swaying in his room to ave maria by himself um turn it up hey you want to do the yms my favorite part of that video and i did not watch much of it you know i watched chris

hayes's sort of mashup and i saw other oh did you see chris's did you see they released this great thing which was chris off camera like on camera but not part of the shot just reacting to it was

so good yeah just just laughing his ass off yeah and my favorite thing is like and by the way maybe this hits close to home because it would be like me like i'm so uncomfortable dancing or whatever it was the um it's the the the non-commitment and i'm i'm uh what is the name of the woman uh boem boem who's christy gnome gnome gnome yeah i knew i had the wrong letters there But anyway, Kristi Noem was up there like and she's trying like I love how for a moment, for a split second, she'll be committed to a dance. But then as soon as Trump isn't into it, then she just sort of like and the YMCA version was the perfect example of that. Like she starts to do YMCA, but then like doesn't power out of it. Just sort of like the energy just seeps out of each dance they try to start. It is so painful.

I love it so much because it's like you. Oh, if it isn't the consequences of my actions, you know, I love every time. Like when you see Glenn Youngkin just getting absolutely freaking dog walked by Jake Tapper because he had been on a stage with Trump and Jake Tapper is talking about how Trump said, you know, the enemy within and basically send the National Guard after Adam Schiff. and Glenn Youngkin the governor of Virginia said well he's not talking about specific people and then Jake Tapper's like he's talking about Adam Schiff he mentioned Adam Schiff and Glenn Youngkin goes well that's not what I heard when he talked and Jake Tapper goes I'm literally reading you what he said and you just see Glenn Youngkin just friggin sitting on a bicycle uh with no seat twisting on national television it's like good you deserve it and Christy Noem trying to figure out what the hell is happening on this stage right now and how do I act chill with it okay we're dancing I'm okay he's not dancing now he's not dancing okay I'm not dancing I can't leave the stage even though I desperately want to so I have to just act I have to stand out here and act like this is a normal behavior like it's so great I love that for her so much because that kind of cringe moment is that's something that I spend so much time trying to avoid in my own life because i do host a lot of things nothing you know high profile like that but like there's nothing worse than being on stage and

not knowing what the hell your next move is and for her to experience that just feels like a tiny just the tiniest glint of of sweet sweet justice and from a performance standpoint you

really it's like for me it's a lesson that like you it you either really have to commit or don't try it at all you know and again just like that did the ymca example is the perfect one she's like okay okay we're gonna do this and she starts to do it and then he realizes oh i'm the only one doing it which isn't really how that's supposed to work anyway and then it just sort of like and then just like just to watch this painful moment as the dance sort of melts and her but she's still like just trying to smile her way through it it's kind of like that's why maybe i have good boundaries i'm kind of like no i'm not gonna do halloween at all or if i am i'm coming out on stage as the phantom of the opera i'm at least gonna like do it as big as big as i was able to in that moment because it's like don't half do the bit because that is that's gonna be rough yes

you've got to commit to it and the um the fact that he was singing along to nothing compares to you which i don't know if he'd ever heard that song before he was he was like trying to lip sync it but it was like that improv drill where you're trying to like sing a song that someone else is singing and making up on the fly it was uh it was really uh it was really quite something to see but anyway enough about the impending end of democracy and let's talk about the impending end of uh krill sevchenko's chess career krill kirill excuse me sevchenko is uh the number i think 64 chess player in the world a very highly ranked chess player from romania was uh recently at an event in Spain and, uh, was playing a chess match and kept going to the restroom kind of seemingly randomly and for long amounts of time. And, uh, so eventually the people in charge of this chess event in Spain went into the bathroom and found in the stall a phone, which they think he was using to like look up i don't know some sort of computer program that helps you win at chess i think we've reached this point and you can tell in my voice that i don't understand chess or where we're at with it but the sense i have from reading this article oh by the way this is a good article in the time by victor mather but um like i get the feeling that at this point like uh hello um hello hot air balloons it's blimps you lost like i think the computers have beat the humans right Like, we're at a point where humans can't compete with computers, and so they have to be very careful about humans that are in a chess match not relying on the help from a computer. And they think he was going in the bathroom and checking on his phone as to what his next move should be.

Which, I'll be honest with you, I kind of—my understanding of computing vis-a-vis chess ended in, what was it, 92 with Blue Steel. it wasn't blue steel uh what was deep blue um i was kind of like oh yeah i mean computers are smart now they're they're as smart as people when it comes to chess i kind of didn't realize that no no it's not even close anymore like the robots are so much better at chess i this this article sort of like if not open my eyes to it at least like sort of um maybe maybe pulled the scales from my eyes a bit i'm like oh okay so yes even the little phones in our pocket like it's not even a competition anymore the robots will always win if possible and it's amazing so the The allegation here, which sounds pretty credible, is he's going into the restroom like Michael Corleone. Why did I say Corleone that way?

I didn't know if I missed part of that movie.

Corleone, right? Michael Corleone? Corleone. Is it Corleone?

Corleone or Corleone?

Corleone. What am I doing? Why am I just adding all kinds of letters to that name? But anyway, have you seen that movie, right, where he goes in and he gets the gun from the commode that has been taped up there waiting for him? Like, it's a very, you know, my dad ruined a lot of scenes in that movie for me because he loved it, but I wasn't allowed to see it. So he would just tell me about it. But that was, I think, one of the scenes I maybe didn't know about. So it was really, really shocking to me when I saw it. Like, I just can't believe the I just can't believe the gumption of this guy. Just be like, I'm going to put a phone in the bathroom with a note on it.

Well, that's the thing. They find this phone. So, first of all, you didn't hide it very well in the bathroom. And there was a handwritten note on the phone that says, don't touch. This telephone has been left so the owner can answer it at night. What does that even mean?

Exactly. I love this story so much.

Like, what a weird note to leave on the phone. I figured that maybe the bathroom has one of those drops.

ceilings and you kind of like put it up in the ceiling or something or like you said put it in the tank but it like you just apparently didn't hide it very well but you thought maybe this note that said don't touch this telephone has been left so the owner can answer it at night that doesn't even make sense no say like it doesn't phone is here in case someone gets locked in the bathroom so you can call for help also by the way a stretch but it would at least kind of make some

sense but as you read the article further you start to understand why the person who might have uh hidden this phone there for uh illegal chess purposes put a note on it this time because it wasn't the first phone right or did i miss did i i did not misread this right somebody already found a phone presumably without a note on it in the stall and turned it in and so he's like damn somebody stole my phone i'm going to put another phone in here and this time i'm going to put a note on it that says don't take this phone we need it for uh calls at night night calls night

this is my night call phone yeah somebody stole his first cheating phone but likely they couldn't connect it to him because it was just a phone so he got away with he's still playing in the tournament then he puts he gets a new cheating phone but so as to not be foiled again he leaves a note on it here's the problem the article continues the handwriting on the note was similar to mr shevchenko's and the ink resembled that of a pen that he used the spanish newspaper el mundo reported the newspaper also reported that mr shevchenko had made several moves very rapidly seemingly without reflection immediately upon returning from the bathroom now this is the

most basic thing i thought of you immediately as i heard that because i knew like this is such a good dazzling detail of this story like if you're going in the bathroom and taking a long time in the bathroom which first of all yes you need to do that fast you need to get that thing you need to get that phone in an easily accessible place you need to do that fast and then when you come back you need to look like you're thinking so hard you cannot just come back from the bathroom and

then suddenly just zip through three you can't move super fast you can't come back from the bathroom just under your breath muttering macchiato defense three night like you're trying to remember a license plate of somebody that like hit and ran you or something like you you can't just walk right back in and then just fire into your move like this guy did every single thing that you should not do when trying to cheat which you know it's just interesting that your brain i mean he's clearly a brilliant person at chess but that you could be that brilliant and yet this bad at this cheating thing i feel like i'm i wouldn't be a good chess player i could come up with a pretty solid cheating policy though or way to cheat and it makes you it does make you wonder

like where did things start slipping for this guy or the other like um and i know this article gets into it i don't have the article in front of me right now but we talked about the previous cheating scandal on this show it was 2016 i want to say like yeah it was this guy hans nieman who was

playing against magnus carlson who's like the world's best and magnus kept quitting their matches at a protest because he was trying to say that hans nieman was cheating yeah and i think with

that guy he never admitted to cheating in those matches but he had admitted to cheating in some like online competitions or something in his past or something and it just sort of makes you wonder Like, for this guy in particular, the guy that we're talking about, like, at some point in his life, he'd never cheated at all, but he was the best guy in the room at playing chess, right? Or the best person in the room playing chess in some scenario, whether as a kid in chess club or college or whatever it was, probably had never – but at some point felt the pressure. Or maybe this is like steroids, too, or any kind of competitive edge like that. Like at some point he realized I because it didn't start with the elaborate, although not well thought out scheme of hiding a phone in the bathroom. There were smaller, easier ways to cheat in his journey before this. Right. If we believe that he's guilty of this. Like, so what was it? What what turned him? What was the pressurized moment where he's like, I need a little extra help to get through this because my chest is not as good as the person I'm going up against.

What's his like villain story?

Yeah, I guess I'm just saying, what is his villain story? Just kind of like what when did it start to turn? I mean, I say this not somebody who has a lot of cheating in my life, but I remember I got caught cheating in high school one time. And by the time I got caught, I was so brazen that I had written a bunch of answers to a test questions on a tiny, tiny piece of paper that I held in my hand while I was taking the test. And the priest, who was my teacher, came up to me and he said, open your hand. And of course, I opened up the hand without the piece of paper in it. And we just had to. do the whole thing like it was a high school movie. He said, other hand. And I opened the other hand and there was the piece of paper. But that wasn't my first time cheating. My first time cheating was when I had another class. It was a Latin class with a really old priest who would give us these weekly quizzes. But they were very simple vocabulary quizzes. And he insisted on us using a cover sheet so that we would take the quiz and cover up our answers so that people couldn't cheat. The irony there is he never left his desk. And I realized I can just write all of the week's vocabulary very, very lightly in pencil on the cover sheet, and he'll just never see it from his position at the desk. That's what got me cheating, a much more simple – it was a quiz thing. But then once I got away with that, I started to get more brazen. I started branching out to other disciplines, and then there was another teacher in another class who ended up getting me for it. So anyway, that's all I'm thinking about is like, what, what, what does this guy have in his past when, what led to him eventually hiding two phones in a bathroom?

This, because I'm a generally sketchy person, where my mind goes with this is, and thinking about your story of cheating, of writing very lightly on the cover sheet, like, I think that's a good life skill. Honestly, I think figuring out how to kind of game the system, like, might be more useful than knowing the Latin. like problem solving like okay here's the problem i don't want to actually sit down and learn all this stuff what's the solution cheating i think there's an argument to be made that you might actually like get more useful life information from solving the problem the way you did then just learning the latin and just memorizing it um but also that's because i you know probably am a generally overly sketchy person um not unlike uh well let me tell you before we get to the great yogurt scandal let me tell you about one other quick thing that happened in 2006 um the uh it was the world championships and a chess player named vaseline topolov or vaseline topolov claimed that another chess player vladimir kramnik had cheated he was citing this guy's frequent bathroom breaks officials responded by closing each man's private bathroom and requiring them to use a common facility raising the question to me why did they have private bathrooms she should have just called them their cheat rooms why is it like we have a chamber that you can go to and close a door but you better not be looking at a phone in there like why was there even like there should be one bathroom and there should be a an attendant like you're going to a strip club in the 90s there should be a bathroom attendant in there giving you a piece of gum spraying some cologne on you whatever you need but there should be somebody in there making sure you're not looking at your phone i can't believe in 2006 they had private bathrooms no wonder there

was a problem now this also underscores for me how because i know how to play chess i know the very basics i have a chess board when i was young i liked to play chess but i never had the patience to really learn truly how to I think I even joined chess club for a very hot minute in like eighth grade or something but I never learned real strategy right um and it occurred to me that like even though these guys are cheating allegedly um they're still like I wouldn't even know enough to know how to cheat chess you know what I mean like let's say that you were in the middle of a chess match Luke and you're like wow I'm in over my head here I'm gonna go to the bathroom and use my phone and then come back and know that the next three moves would you even know where to

begin with that no no right you could literally give me a phone at the table and i would lose to

you right right exactly could you leave the instruction manual that came with my uh with

my game board no i that's the thing i it's sort of it would be a little bit like somebody trying to cheat at poker who had never played texas hold'em like i mean i guess that's a little different because it would just be like you could maybe just be like bet more money or something but like so it's a little less there's just usually to cheat you need to have a certain amount of basic knowledge to understand how the cheating is helping you and i don't even have that basic level of knowledge for chess now that brings us to 1978 the world championship before computers when victor korchnoi uh was uh accused anatoly karpov of cheating through yogurt apparently this guy karpov was getting regular regular delivery of yogurt throughout the matches and the other guy said he thought that the flavor of the yogurt or when it was being delivered was a signal from his camp to make a certain kind of move so you had this you know chess match unfolding in public and he didn't have a computer he could go to but he did have a brain trust and the thought was his brain trust his coaches if you will were trying to tell him what to do based on the kind of yogurt when they were delivering again

again why was yogurt delivery ever allowed as part of the process well i mean again i i mean

i'm just so impressed with the the concept of being able to be so next level that you can tell that because you're getting a strawberry yogurt that's already mixed that you're supposed to do bishop to rook nine or whatever the hell i don't even know if that's a thing um but like here's my silly question about that like if somebody who isn't at the table has better answers why aren't they at the table is it because they're able to put their heads together you know what i mean

like if this person the guy who's sending key lime pie yogurt should just be playing

exactly and maybe it's because they they have the ability there's several people and they have the ability to to see the board and then chat and then come up with good solutions and then say hey crowd like crowdsource it send in the yo play or is it just that your coach is smarter than you and if that's the case just like put your coach there he's the one or she's the one who should

be competing what's the like the hive mind what if you're the guy and you forget what the yogurt flavors are supposed to indicate you just get a delivery of you know like i don't know diet fudge you're like what does this mean what am i supposed to be doing with information anyway i what uh my takeaway is that i would never be a great chess player but i think i could be a pretty decent chess cheater so if there are any grandmasters listening to this who are good at chess but bad at cheating like this guy was hit me up because i think that's a service i could provide a life

a life a long life of being sketchy if if you're playing luke at chess and john stamos walks in you better call a foul right you're not laughing which means that either wasn't funny or i have the wrong guy did he was he the greek yogurt guy for a while wasn't he was wasn't he i just think

it was uncle jesse he was the oikos guy yeah that was a good you know what andrew that if you

could have said oikos that would have helped a little bit it's rare that oik it's rare that stamos isn't the funniest word in the sentence but when you have oikos right there you gotta

go full oikos you do all right should we call that good for the week my friend that was i think that

was kind of a high point yeah that sounds good to me let's get out of here here's some music we can

play all right hey thanks everyone for listening thank you for uh spending this week with us on old tbtl we really do appreciate it it really means a lot uh we are going to be back here on monday with more imaginary radio for all of you so please do come hang out with us for that in the meantime have a great weekend take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too

tall and good luck to all hey co-bros uh this is dan in aberdeen um i had a dream and uh it was the most tvtl dream oh my goodness so go like this i'm listening to a monday's edition of tvtl This Monday, Andrew came back from vacation. Luke is playing a clip from the previous week where Jen, slash Andrews, is the co-host. In the clip, Luke is playing an AI song that he had written about an Internet character named Linda O. The song is playing for Jen, and there's this horrendous cut in the middle. and Luke starts apologizing about stopping the song early because the Internet or the AI song kind of goes in a racist direction and so he apologized for a while. Jen has a reasonable and justifiable argument about how AI songs is ruining culture and it's not good for the artists and all that. And while Luke is playing this clip for Andrew, Andrew is just cackling and covering up the whole thing. And so because the upcut was just so terrible. And, yeah, that's it. That's the dream. So cue the dream court music or whatnot. And yeah, that's that's it. That was my dream. All right. Power out. Power out.