Muse

Can I blow your mind right now? Chris is laughing because he knows where I'm going with this. Okay, there's not a single video of Abraham Lincoln. I'm serious. Look it up. Go on YouTube. Okay, think about that. He's one of the most famous Americans in history. He's the first president. He made slavery illegal. And there's no video. You can look it up. There's no videos of Abraham Lincoln. And every time I say that, someone goes, no, no, no, no, there's gotta, there's gotta be is he's abraham lincoln none so then you start to ask yourself and if you really want to go down this rabbit hole with me here just bear with me who's controlling what we get to see a video of and what there is no video of right because there's no videos of abraham lincoln but i can go on youtube right now i can go on youtube right now and you can do it and you can watch behind the scenes footage of paul giamatti recording his lines for the ant bully right but there's no videos of joan of arc

beware of things that cost a dollar 99 those are the membership dues for this club that i joined the columbia house music club turns out that wasn't really even a club it was just a business for making money although it is how i found my favorite band various artists of the 80s

E-ha, e-ha, e-ha, e-ha, e-ha, e-ha, e-ha, e-ha, e-ha, e-ha, e-ha, e-ha, e-ha, e-ha.

It's embarrassing and it's gross, but at least it's kind of funny.

Be careful, though.

It's fun to see. Have a good show, dummies. What you do is so important.

All right. Hello. Good morning and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL. The show just might be too beautiful to live. Give me that. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. i'm joking i'm joking coming to you from the madrona hill broadcast studio perched high above the mighty columbia where if you had any doubts about its mightiness was featured on 60 minutes this week i got a dm from listener danny just said 60 minutes exclamation point i thought maybe Maybe they were profiling me for some sort of, you know, criminal activity or something. I was relieved to find they were just discussing where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean and a very, very dangerous section of water known as the Graveyard of the Pacific. This is the Graveyard for Listeners. It's called TBTL, episode 4,324 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. I have to say, though, it's been a mixed morning here, weather-wise. It was raining like crazy this morning when I was out doing my 75 hard-ish. Ish, ish. Now that that's done, of course, it's stopped. It's kind of, weather's okay. It's sort of blue skies. As the intro audio was playing, a whole V of geese flew over us. I feel like a bird throwing over these haters. You feel me, though? And I have to say, it is an absolutely beautiful sight and a beautiful sound. And it makes me happy to be alive and happy to have you all here with us for this program. I don't know if Walt noticed or not. He's busy working away in there. My dad's here this week. Who is my daddy and what does he do? We'll have plenty of dad-related content on the show this week. And some art-related content today. there's a new piece of public art in Washington, D.C. that I very much agree with the sentiment of.

For me to be able to condone that my artism is bigger than that.

I don't know if the aesthetics of it are 100% for me. However you feel your Monday is going, by the way, and you know Mondays can be a little rough, I promise you it is going better than a guy named Tyreek Stevenson. I've made a huge mistake. I want to say what we always say for this topic, and sometimes even hold to. This is not a story about football. This is a story about side way the hell out for everyone to see and how you handle that. Also, guess what? We've got this guy joining us. The longest running Cobra of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He doesn't have a case of the Mondays. He's got a case of the fun day.

He hates to be perceived and likes to dwell solitarily around the house.

He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I have something I'd like to tell you here at the top of the show, and I'm telling you, we're going to need a drumroll for this. This is exciting. Okay. I'll tell you that. Short or long drumroll? The longest one you have, I think. Okay. You are in luck, my friend. Good. So here's something that has started out of the blue, I don't know, just a few weeks ago. You know, we use square space.

This is not an ad, by the way. It's a fact. We use Squarespace to manage our online presence over at tbtl.net. It's also the tools that we use to send out our weekly newsletter, which you can sign up for at tbtl.net. And about, I don't know, I want to say like three weeks ago on Monday mornings, I started getting these email reports from Squarespace. They're called email subscriber reports. And they let me know how much change there is in new subscribers, people who've maybe unsubscribed, how many subscribers we have.

In the words of whichever Olsen twin was being filmed that day, how rude indeed.

I just realized how close my Olsen twin impression is to Jar Jar Banks. Jar Jar Binks.

Jar Jar Banks is a rapper out of South Florida. who's currently under federal indictment for...

Oh, that would be a good rapper name. Jar Jar Binks.

You know what I also did there was... I love that. I think I really kind of fundamentally misdescribed the Olsen twins' sort of whole vibe on television. And by that I mean... By that I mean, I said whichever Olsen twin they were pointing the camera at, as if the Olsen twins were presented as one child. But weren't they presented as two childs? Weren't they twins? Were they twins on Full House, or were they just one kid that they were swapping the twins out on because of, like, child labor laws?

I don't know if it had to do with child labor laws, but I think you're in—I mean, listen, I was not a Full House. My initial assessment was correct. I believe your initial assessment was correct.

So they were presented as one Olsen on there, and then it would just be whoever, you know, was in a better mood.

Well, I believe one Tanner. Two Olsens, one Tanner. Famously. Absolutely. Let's be careful there.

But here's what confuses the issue After that then the Olsen twins Were Unleashed to live Their true identities as twins Because they then made Many many many films where they were Out they were you know being filmed As two of them not as one of them

Your give me pizzas Your I am the cute ones

Your I am You know we are but trench coated One atop the other Yeah, so I think I forgot that the first that we ever knew of the Olsen twins was just as this one character on Full House, and then later they expanded into being both of them on TV at the same time.

I saw a, this is a disaster of a way to start a conversation, but I saw a little New Yorker-style cartoon in my Instagram feed the other day that I thought was funny. It was Halloween-related, as they almost all are recently, And there was I don't know if these were people dressed up for Halloween or if these were actual monsters. But there was, let's say, like somebody who's dressed up like a Dracula, like a vampire or something. And they were standing next to what would appear to be like the Invisible Man. It was like just a trench coat and a pair of sunglasses. But the Dracula or vampire, as they're known, is saying, wait a minute, you're not the Invisible Man. You're just three invisible children standing on each other's shoulders. That's a pretty high point.

I thought that was a pretty good joke.

it's dr dracula's vampire it's dr dracula i'm sorry i know it's like words matter okay yeah

no but i mean people know it colloquially i was trying to be i was trying to be dude i we're getting no closer to what you wanted to talk about as long as you still have that drum roll ready to go that's the important it's it's right here as like i spent a good part of my morning today just shadow boxing with a guy i heard being interviewed on the daily who's the head of the

maricopa county republicans because you feel like he wasn't present like because you guys are in line politically but he wasn't doing a good job of presenting the platform i think he was hurting

the cause you thought he was hurting the cause like i feel like yes let's all row in the same direction sir no it was it this is on the subject of like words and their meaning and if the word if what the person if we understand what the person is saying what they're intending to say then does the actual word they used or the word they misused does it really matter right and this was a guy he's the head of the maricopa county republicans actually he's he's the head of some some entity there i don't know if it's legitimately the the republicans or some group that's basically trying to go out and in my reading of things intimidate any democratic voters right by like setting up all kinds of video surveillance at the polling places and sort of like doing everything they can to try to disenfranchise anyone who might be voting against their preferred candidate and he became really politically radicalized by what he thought happened in 2020 which by his reading was uh an election that was stolen from donald but he and his background was like in aerospace he had a successful aerospace company by the way gives me zero confidence in flying on an airplane that this guy who thinks that the 2020 election was stolen is design is designing the aileron on my next flight no thank you well don't worry

don't worry i it's my understanding that boeing has a lot of checks and balances so you're in

good hands thank goodness for that so as he's talking to this reporter from the times um he first of all at some point he just casually says well i've seen stuff that just didn't look right to me and i was like i was like if you sir are trying to say that you are aware of things that the rest that the every court in the land was not able to find when it comes to irregularities can you please present some regularity into your speech i.e can you conform to what we all agree are generally the rules of grammar and word usage like scene is not a word i see well scene is a word but you don't use it that's thank you but not the way you use it then that wasn't even i was like he said scene who cares it was this point when he was describing watching election night 2020 and he goes um he goes and that was just i think probably my engineer brain just kicked in and now this is where my story is goes from being annoying to unlistenable i can't remember exactly the word he misused and and it was a word like um it was he was he was using a word that did literally didn't exist that was kind of close to a word that he wanted to use to describe the fact that he saw something in 20 on that night in 2020 that gave him pause and that started to make him suspicious and it was a slightly larger word it was maybe a three-syllable word and what he used was a made-up word that sounded it was like one neighborhood over from the word that i you know maybe let's say I don't want to make up an example but anyway point is he misused right after saying then my engineering brain kicked in which is a flex by him trying to say I'm an engineer I deal with logic I deal with facts I deal with you know physics and then he and then he just used a word that just doesn't exist and the rest of my jog Andrew I was just battling with this guy I was just going like, and yet also I understand that, like, that's not the important thing right now. It does not matter. That's I'm and you know what? If I if I heard someone who was being interviewed at a polling location and they were pro Kamala and let's just say that they weren't using what we consider exact, precise American English speech, I would have no problem with it. It's only because I think this guy is Working on behalf of The wrong side of history And because he was trying to flex with this That's when my engineering brain kicked in I was like, engineer some God damn Knowledge around the English language And then talk to me about stopping the steal

Maybe he meant my Engineered brain Maybe he was somebody

You know, there was a lot of rain Getting into my air pods and honestly I don't maybe you're right I might have misheard but he's the byproduct of some sort

of weird scientific manipulation and and um tinkering honestly he's he's fully engineered

I was just like and I knew it it was it's I'm I'm just I am so emotionally fragile right now it's a tough time like you want to as our I'm sure most of our listeners yeah it's and I know it's happening I'm like it doesn't matter this is not important whatever the dude misused a couple of words again if i was someone who had my political beliefs and they misused a word i would write a whole other story like underfunded public schools maybe this person didn't hear that that word you know in the way that it might technically be used etc like i could write a whole story defending someone talking this way but but with this guy it to me seemed like the most

existential threat to my life yeah you know and again we're very excited to report the the the new polling numbers on how many new or how many fewer i'm not going to give away the the end of the story here uh email subscribers we have but i will just say that like let's uh let's take a moment to just acknowledge how you're feeling and how like everybody i think you know almost everybody within the sounds of our voice is feeling right now like this is obviously the fact that election day is next tuesday does not come as a shock to anybody it's been on the calendar for decades, really, that it was going to fall on that on this particular Tuesday, right?

I mean, has it technically been on the calendar since 1776? Well, that was a declaration, right?

I'm not exactly sure when they actually said it's going to be on Tuesdays.

When the Constitution was ratified, I would assume, is the day that this went onto the calendar.

Was it that early on that they designated that particular day, the first Tuesday in November? I'm not even... I've seen a lot of...

things online i don't know which my engineering brain my podcasting brain is telling me something's

off so um yeah especially after you set that up boy nobody wants to talk after the setup you just gave like i'm like somebody who for a living uses the wrong words no and as do i and i want to be

clear i want to be clear like i know that this is an anxiety response by me and it's it's like i was saying this to becca the other day that it's really easy to convert fear into anger because anger is less scary for a lot of us being angry it feels like something we know what that feels like and and and it's sort of propulsive in a way being scared it feels scary and makes you feel at risk and small so a lot of times what we do if we're people like me is we we skip right past the scared part we go right into the angry part and me being angry at this guy was totally

a fear response yeah and that's kind of just what i wanted to recognize for everybody like there's something i think that happened maybe in the past couple of days even though i think again let's just say everybody within the sound of my voice right now has probably been feeling certain levels of anxiety and from what i see you know amongst our listeners chattering on social media and the tbtl slack a politics channel i know for some people that anxiety is very very high i would put us probably um up in those echelons and did i use echelon right I believe in my head about this but anyway all of that is to say this isn't like some surprise the Tuesday's election day but there is something that happened in the past few days where I think it's gotten really real for people or at least for me like it sort of has seemed scary but a little bit more theoretical and sort of realizing and I don't know if other people are like this as well but remembering how we felt in 2016 and you know looking at the polling and actually if you were somebody who was supporting Clinton, like kind of feeling relatively comfortable that that was going to be outcome. And then for me, it's remembering the actual feeling on election night of realizing what was actually happening and how wrong I was. And like, just like as we march ever closer to election day, and you know, there's some good sides of this too. I'm starting to see like a lot of people on Instagram are posting their, you know, them filling out their ballot or them leaving their polling places and getting out there and seeing democracy and action like that's a positive way of looking at but at it but it's also like holy shit this is real now this isn't just us you know gaming this out if you even just look at like all of the things that that all of the news that we have lived through in the second half of this you know campaign season from assassination attempts to switching candidates to everything i mean it feels like a goddamn lifetime or two and now here we are and now it's almost it's almost tuesday the the fourth and uh weirdly is it the fifth this year sorry i took a swing on that i took a swing i know because it's usually

the fourth it is it's often the fourth and and that is also throwing me this time around um

tuesdays i've i've this is my this is my uh platform here and people know it well tuesday should always be a uh on the second monday should always be on the first tuesday should always be The second I will, when elected, I will be rearranging the calendar. I almost said Greco-Roman, but I don't even know what calendar we use. Augustine? No.

Is that not the one we're on?

I don't know. Is it?

My feeling is I am so ready for this to be over unless it ends badly. Yeah, right. In which case I'd like another two months.

Or years. Gregorian?

Gregorian. Gregorian.

Yeah.

There we go.

All right, I'm about to strum it already. I was thinking wrestling, I think. I think you were.

I mean, honestly, I would accept that if it in any way moves the needle for Harris Waltz. Yeah. We want to switch to the Greco-Roman calendar. Okay, here's what we're going to do. Much more grappling than we're used to from a calendar, but I'm into it.

So, here's the setup. And maybe we can, you know what, this has been so successful, Maybe we can even do this without quite as much setup every Monday from now, and I can let you know how we're dealing with the TBTL email subscriber report. That is officially what this is. This is the TBTL email subscriber report for the week of October 20th through the 26th. I will tell you how many subscribers we need to.

or if we've lost subscribers to this very well written thing that you put a lot of work into each week that is funny and informative and has lots of links and things you might need if you missed something on the show if we have more people enjoying this or if we have fewer people enjoying this this is what we're going to find out

I'm not going to do the math on it I'm going to do it quickly I'm going to tell you how many unsubscribes and new subscribers we have but that's one drum roll we don't need two drum rolls we don't want to waste the drummer we need those arms to be fresh so I would have So I've got, I've got, uh, here we go with the drum roll.

TBTL. Okay. In the week of October 20th had zero unsubscribes and one new subscriber, ladies and gentlemen.

I have to tell you, I had this ready to go. And you know what? That's the classic TBTL undercount. And I have to say, I was worried that the data was not going to be going our way, but the data is absolutely going our way. We've increased engagement by one person, and there's been no decrease in engagement.

And no decrease. And so, you know, I don't know who that person is. I don't have the I don't have the detailed numbers or information behind this, and that's probably good. Let's have a little bit of privacy here. But there is a very good chance that this person who just subscribed this week is hearing us right now. And I would like to welcome you to the TBTL email community. I will try to do right by you and we'll give another update next Monday.

Now, just reach out to any of your friends in a swing state and try to get them subscribing to the TBTL newsletter, please. I want to just very quickly Andrew wrap something up from last week Which I don't think anyone Except you and I even minimally Cared about But because it was at the very End of Friday's show Like literally the music was playing I was in LA and I said to you like Or maybe I was here, no I was here on Friday But I said to you something about like Oh and that guy with the top hat who's the show pick From Thursday and you were like oh yeah What was the story on that it's not a super fascinating story but it does at least solve the mystery of who the character was because I was sitting I had this odd perch where I was looking out during the show on Thursday I was looking at Hollywood Boulevard and I could just see all the different kinds of costumed folks who show up and their hope is to get a picture taken with a tourist and then get the tourist to kind of give them some sort of money as a tip and you know it's not legally sort of obligated but it's maybe morally how you should handle it and so you've got minions you've got lots of spider-mans you've got uh supermans out there what i was struck by was there was a jesus and jesus was getting very limited play and i that was kind of kind of interesting to see it was weird like it's one thing when people aren't talking to a mini mouse it's another thing when a jesus is being super thirsty now this was not from the big lebowski this was jesus of nazareth No, in fact, although that's a really good character idea, although I wonder if the kind of person who is likely to be jazzed about Lebowski, which would be me, is the same kind of person who would be wandering around arguably the crummiest and most touristy part of Los Angeles, a.k.a. Hollywood Boulevard.

Yeah, probably. It's been a long time, too. That's a little bit niche-y, a little bit cult-y, although I'm just having a realization. Well, I'm having one memory and one realization. First of all, I thought it was, actually, I was going to say funny. I don't think it's funny. I think it's somewhat annoying that the other day I was, like, flipping through my smart TV. It'll, like, categorize movies for you. And I think I told my TV, I'm like, I want a 90s movie. It's like, okay, here are a bunch of options for you. and it put things in categories. It was like 90s sports movies, and The Big Lebowski was listed as it. Because of bowling? I guess, too. Clearly, you're not a golfer. I was sort of surprised to see that, but then I wasn't because I was like, these algorithms are just so goddamn lazy these days. They want to make it seem like they have more content than they really have. They have a lot of content, but it's like a bunch of garbage that I'm not interested in, so they make it sound like, oh, you want a sports movie from the 90s? How about The Big Lebowski? I found that somewhat irritating. But then also, as we kind of discuss this idea of the Big Lebowski and a character in the Big Lebowski whose name was Jesus or the Jesus played by John Turturro, a real sleazy kind of bowling alley guy. is is is that sort of a comment on the fact that that the dude the Lebowski dude is sort of a sort of casts a Jesus esque figure in his like wandering around in a robe and long hair and a

and sandals and sandals believe he has or he's got kind of like jelly we used to call those jellies when I was a kid yeah that's right they're almost pink or are they pink kind of

They're kind of like plastic and translucent. Yeah, I forgot about that. What a great detail. I love that movie, and I'm sure enough has been discussed and written about it,

but I wonder if there's something messianic about it.

If there's something there. But anyway, okay. That's interesting. And yet, yeah, there's this other character that is, you know, you could, I mean. look we could just do this right now you could sort of you could say that the john troturo character is essentially the antichrist right he's sort of claiming to be jesus but he's somebody whose actions are very destructive to the world and then you've got this other kind of messianic guy who's just going around just kind of you know being making a piece just going around being pretty chill i i promise you or at least i hope anyway that this is something that has been given great theological or theologic thought somewhere is there is there a messianic subtext to the big lebowski um well the messianic subtext on thursday on hollywood boulevard was i saw this guy dressed as jesus and my i said to you right when the show ended if i if i can get down there in time and i can get a photo with him i will do that well got my stuff packed up um and then went down to the the uh the lobby of the hotel and then i went out on to hollywood boulevard i got somebody one of the bell guys to watch my luggage um more on that i i lean too much into sky jinx but i will tell you i was i was told at one point i was not allowed to board a flight um on thursday night which i didn't even get into on friday but it had to do with my suitcase but anyway i uh i run out to hollywood boulevard and the guy playing jesus is nowhere to be found but who do i see walking

He works in mysterious ways

He really does And I see This other guy that I had been commenting on Who sort of looked like a I kept saying he was like the guy Off of the vegan mayo or something He was kind of like tails A top hat And like Kind of looked like maybe a Like a circus Like ringmaster or something

And notably had a red umbrella right He had a red umbrella

And I noticed that people were coming up and talking to him. And I thought, this has got to be some kind of character that I'm just unfamiliar with. Well, I saw him walking down Hollywood Boulevard, so I ran up and accosted him. He was actually walking away from me. Now, let me just paint the picture for you, Andrew. The lift is arriving at the hotel. I'm looking at the app. The lift is pulling up. I can't—Jesus is nowhere to be found. I see, like, ten steps in front of me, this ringmaster character. and i think well that's better than nothing uh and this is something that was referenced so i run up to him and i also grab five dollars out of my pocket so i run up to this guy he has two people with him by the way customers a couple of customers i guess and i run up and i go hey and he doesn't turn around i go hey uh hey mr uh top hat i don't know what to call him hey hey and if it's you know it's a cacophonous place hollywood boulevard and the guy finally like kind of turns around and he's just totally confused because what is written on his i don't have the photo in front of me but i think it might be his hat or something it's like what

hollywood tours hollywood star tours on his black top hat he's just a guy who is going around

getting people to pay money to to jump onto a van and go take a hollywood star tour which i've done with addy although actually we did self-guided we got a map and we drove around but um he's just he's just wearing that outfit to get attention he's got the red umbrella to get attention he's not a character but now i'm too i've like stopped him in the midst of his work he probably was annoyed at me because he was getting close to getting these two dudes to jump you know onto the bus he's got a couple of live ones and now this podcaster is yelling at him sir hey sir so i go can i get a quick picture and now this is where i realize when i see his hat that like oh no one takes pictures with this guy he just works here but you saw i think you mentioned

on the show that you saw but you're like this guy seems popular people are going yes i was misunderstanding but people weren't going up for selfies no one was taking pictures to engage in business with him it was what if he was a drug dealer that would be amazing i mean for practically

the drug he sells is happiness andrew and you get to see the outside of sandra bullock's house somewhere in Brentwood so like like I've totally misunderstood the situation like people are not taking photos with him he is I don't want to say harassing people at all he seemed a pretty chill dude but he is he is out there trying to like as we would say um you know sort of um like he's trying to you know grab people by the lapels and get them onto this Hollywood Star Tours bus And that's why I was seeing him engaging With so many people So now, I'm realizing all of this In the moment that I finally get him To turn around and the two guys turn around And he's got the hat And I can see, oh, oh, oh But now I'm committed, I've already said Can I get a picture with you And now this is where, and again it's amazing What the human mind can do In under a half of a second But now I go from being like Can I get a picture with you To thinking, don't get cocky dude We'll be right back. like i've i've just misunderstood the situation here like i i know that people don't take pictures with you his response to me andrew of going from can i get a picture was like okay quickly like

and that's what i thought you mean you you went to okay quickly no no no sorry i'm describing this

in a confusing way okay so yeah yeah so your exact order of events you yell after him i yell after him i finally get his attention he turns around i realize oh this guy just is a dude that works on hollywood boulevard getting people to go on this tour bus i've now already said though can i grab a picture and then he goes yeah quickly and then i think don't get cocky that's what yeah that's don't get cocky dude no one even i don't even want a picture with you but i'm already here and i've already made you stop and turn around like if i would have known you just worked here I would not have chased you all the way down. So I don't know how much of that comes through in the photograph, but it's me taking a picture with a guy who I misunderstood whether or not he was dressed as a celebrity, and now he's kind of annoyed at the photograph, and I'm thinking, you don't get to be annoyed at the photograph. This is exciting for you.

And did he – so it looks like he's mid – by the way, this is the show picture from last Thursday's show, episode number 4322, Not Today, Satan. and he does seem to be caught mid word he seems to be talking uh to you while it's like but it's not a bad photo it's not unflattering but it does look like he's talking but can i tell you how dumb

i am with my engineering brain when you seen something in there that didn't look right keep

it yeah keep in mind my perspective this whole thing is you've told me that you're looking down on Hollywood Boulevard all during the show. You see somebody dressed up like Jesus. People are taking photos with him, the usual cabal of minions and Spider-Men. But then you tell me about this character in a red coat, I think with maybe tails. That's how I was picturing it, an umbrella and a top hat. And we were trying to guess who it was. On the show, I was like, oh, is this sort of the modern version of Willy Wonka? Is this some sort of steampunky kind of thing? Like, what are we talking about here? And then later on, as we wrap up the show, you're like, I'm going to go get a photo with Jesus. And then you, I think you email me.

In fairness, I end most shows that way.

You do. You email me and you said, Jesus was gone or something along the lines of that. And then without comment, it's just a picture of this guy dressed as you described him. But this time I can see the front of his hat and I see that it says Hollywood Star Tours. This is where I go. I'm like, oh, I guess those Star Tour guys are so iconic now that they're a character, the people that dress up like this. I still thought it was cosplay until this very moment. I was like, that's interesting.

Oh, you thought he was cosplaying as, you didn't think there was an actual, it's not real, it's a jib jab.

I totally thought, I was like, oh, that's funny.

Oh, no, he very much was trying to get people on a van to go on a Hollywood Star Tour.

i mean i have also a picture of the van if you need that no i get a picture of me with the van um no i that makes so much more sense it's the only thing that makes sense but i just didn't give it that much thought i thought it was a really funny photo but i was like man people are now those those star tour guys are so popular that people are dressing up like the star tour

guys nope actively doing the star tours again i'll send you a picture of the van if we want to use that for today's show pick that could be somewhat meta but um no uh hey luke i think

there's some people outside your house not far from you who are dressing up like starbucks employees will you go to that there's a there's a fake they even set up a fake starbucks will you go in there and get some photos with all the cosplaying starbucks people it's just me in

there going can i get a photo and the person being like okay and then he'd be like don't get cocky

exactly why are you strangling that fake starbucks employee this poor guy like is chased down by me

can i take a picture he seems mildly exasperated probably because he was trying to do his job yeah and then i'm internally annoyed at him because now i'm feeling big dogged by this guy who i don't think is probably doing a lot of photo ops and then i take the picture and then i give him the five dollars which he is this is how i know this guy doesn't take pictures with people he's totally confused by the five dollars yes i was gonna ask how that went down i like force it into his hand he's like i think he thinks i'm giving him like a some kind of religious tract or something and he looks and he goes oh uh uh thanks and then they just then they're just off and i'm like running for the lift it was as is often the case uh with me a completely weird unnecessarily weird interaction totally engineered by me that's a good story that's better than that's

better than i had it in my head that's for damn sure that's great i'm glad that we have a strong

lead into thanking the donors i feel like it's a good what we've just presented is a is a good Use case for TBTL and why you donate to the show. Thank you for being a 10. All right. Speaking of our fabulous donors, let's thank some of these generous folks who are keeping TBTL going. I was listening to This American Life this weekend, Andrew. And I don't know if this is because TAL is now part of the New York Times, or is it the whole empire? Is it just serial? I'm a little unclear on who's in charge of what, but Ira Glass came on before the episode, and he said, hey, Desira, I wanted to just follow up on something we sort of talked about last week, which is that we're rolling out a new subscription model. And he just said this, which again This is why I love Ira Glass He said, our ad revenue is down by a third From last year And we gotta figure out how to replace that income So we're starting this subscription service Where you can get the show with no ads They're also calling it, I think This American Life Partner, which is a really good name Like be a partner

Be a partner of the show

Yeah, but also life partner is a thing people will say You know, it's my life partner Anyway, and he said, very casually At the end of it, he goes you know i think the subscription model is really the future of where this is going and i just thought like yeah no shit sherlock well that's we've been over here we've been over here doing it for a minute thanks to uh folks like julie correll you're gonna quibble with

subscription and that's fair i think it's a different thing i think when people say it's a subscription service it means you you have paywalls you you're you're paying to subscribe

and it might not be that's what i'm here to announce today the only people who can hear this episode are the following six names i'm going to read one person who signed up for the newsletter last week if you're not julie correll of keswick virginia keep scrolling that's right no i would

say we have a unique funding model in that yeah we have the old school public radio we are making everything available to everybody and we just hope that if you appreciate it and you want it to stick

around well you'll donate let me actually your response is completely correct to what i said Andrew let me let me walk that back a little bit what he said was and and I can't believe that I left this out because this is critical I'm being totally serious and I'm doing this from memory but he said something like you know you can help us make this American life and he goes I think this and we want to make the show with you the listeners helping us make this American life I think this is the future of where this is going so that's a little bit more of a malleable term like sure you know these donors today help us make tbtl um so i think he mentions subscription but then he says you're helping us make the show and that's the future of it like listeners helping make the show um and i i just thought boy if this american life is struggling with its ad revenue this is a this is a media landscape that is um really shifting uh underneath all of us and i am i was once again made very grateful for our donors and for and for this this model which you're right it's not subscription it's totally voluntary which is mind-blowing that somebody like cheryl gordon of winnetka california um would be donating just because cheryl wants the show to keep going but not because i mean cheryl would have access to the show either way there

is no paywall thank you cheryl and luke thank you this is probably an inappropriate thing to say during the donor segment but maybe it's or contrarily it's the perfect thing to say during the donor segment because you're right like i i was talking to somebody this week who's asking me how like or over the weekend i should say he was asking me how the show was going and i uh i you know i kind of told him you know we had our our fundraiser our tbtl-a-thon this summer and it went really well there i had a lot of anxiety about it but it ended up going really well because we have wonderful listeners who you know voluntarily donate and i just sort of said like you know that was one of the reasons why we left our former employers was because they were stacking our show full of these like really cheap ads, sometimes the same one in a row and sort of like ruining the, the, the sonic landscape. Yes. I'm going to say, I'm going to say that the sonic landscape of TBTL, they were sort of ruining the sound of the show for really nothing in return. We learned later for absolute peanuts. I mean, we knew, I mean, I had, you know, we had a sense of that at the time. And like, here's what I'm going to say. And this isn't directed at our old employers, although I would, between you and I, so listeners, don't repeat any of this.

And what about Carolyn Oliver and Allison Park, PA?

And Carolyn, for sure. She's in on this as well. Thank you, Carolyn. I was going to say, I have a little residual anger, and again, not at our former employers specifically, but some people who maybe worked for our former employers. And people like that around the industry who really did, I feel like, damn the future of podcasting, at least that model of having good, strong advertisers support shows because not every show. can be as lucky as we are with the these donations and the fact that like the model has been hey listen we're going to stack three carvana ads up in a row in order for you to earn one dollar and fifty cents for your podcast that is the result of money grubbing non-creatives who wanted who saw an opportunity to turn this new this new i'll just call it a creative art form and they're like we can turn this into the hollywood model right away and of course they couldn't because there's

a huge difference but andrew the hollywood model's going great right exactly and it's like hey how

about we have a how about we have credits at the end of a podcast that rival it's like we literally have two people joking around for a half hour podcast and then you get to the end of the podcast and 92 people are thanked and you know and and carvana is thanked several times you know and it's kind of like i just sort of feel that there are people out there who were not who didn't have their hands in the tape but had their hands in the in the till if you will yes exactly who really kind of created that problem not for us and again this isn't a complaint about us i i'm taking this moment to appreciate where we are but the fact that that ira glass is kind of like this isn't working anymore and when ira glass is saying this isn't working anymore that's kind of dire and it's

not his fault right exactly i'd say i'm a uh i'm about a b on cookie jars to answer your question

I give cookie but that's about to pee

Maya Swains of Seattle Washington apparently gives TBTL an A because Maya is supporting the program thanks Maya thanks John Jacobs in East Grand Rapids Michigan thanks also to Molly Simon who's in Stanwood Washington Stanwood oddly a hot zip for us hot zip for TBTL

can I tell John Jacobs something sure this is just for you john anybody else can listen if you want if you donate um but my parents were just um they were sort of i mean as near east grand rapids as as you get without being in east grand rapids that might not be true but they were in traverse city and even interlocking they were taking a little

road trip recently and to the place that could have been for and exactly the first job offer i

had out of college was in interlocking and i went to traverse city and i think the closest city aside from Traverse City was Grand Rapids. And I'm assuming, and I don't know this for sure, Luke, but I'm assuming East Grand Rapids is near Grand Rapids, maybe even on the eastern side, maybe just to the east. So anyway, John, thank you for making them feel welcome.

I'm so glad that's where you went with that, because the listeners may have heard me sort of audibly indicate my nervousness about what you were going to say, because I thought you were going to say, just confidential to John Jacobs, Jingleheimer Schmidt, that's my name too.

Oh, no.

And I just felt like that was a tired—that's from that same tired old playbook, Andrew.

It is. Yeah, I think maybe—yeah, that's probably a joke that's been made on the show before, which I cringe to think about because I'm sure John has lived his whole life there. I'm just glad that neither one of us brought it up.

No, I'm—exactly. Let's—you know, this is about the future, not the past, Andrew. So thank you to all of our donors today for making the TBTL future possible. hello and welcome to top story all right um quickly here uh i want to talk to you about a a quite dramatic football event that happened yesterday and i've already sent um i've already sent a text message a trigger warning to our friend television's chris hayes this is a real thing i said with peace and love i want you to know we might be discussing the end of the bears commanders game today on the show and not because of any sort of like you know football implications in terms of playoffs or I don't know whatever the standings just because a kind of insane moment happened last night at the end of this game between the Bears and the commanders the Bears had scored a touchdown really late and gone up by a few points and then the commanders who are like quarterbacked by this rookie who was the number two pick in the draft a guy named jaden daniels who's just a total phenom um he throws this hail mary pass like that that means that you know there's no time left on the clock the game is now effectively over except for this play he runs around runs around chucks it all the way down the field by the way he had like very injured ribs during this game like he kept getting like medical attention on the sidelines which only kind of builds the legend and he chucks it all the way on the field and kind of goes into this scrum of players and then it kind of bounces up in the air and then there's a guy named like Noah Brown just standing in the end zone who catches it and the commanders win the game now that's a pretty wild ending for a game it doesn't happen very often because football teams practice a lot making sure that kind of play doesn't happen that they have a whole system of who's supposed to swat the ball away and stand where and whatnot well it wasn't I believe until a fan like a person in the stadium in i think they play in virginia presumably landover no they play in maryland right don't the commanders play in landover or something that i'm not sure of um a a like this is one of those i i swear this is like some zapruder style shit because i i don't think any of the regular like 80 million cameras that the network has has going were particularly zeroed in on a dude named Tyreek Stevenson, who's a cornerback for the Chicago Bears. But after this crazy play happened, some fan who had just been kind of like with their phone filming the play from the kind of down by the end zone happened to notice that this guy, this guy for the Bears, whose job it is to make sure that this crazy Hail Mary pass is not caught. After the ball has been snapped, the play is underway and he is just looking at the crowd there of Commanders fans and kind of like dancing around and kind of like pointing at them

and basically trolling them. And it's only about two to three seconds into the play before he actually turns around and realizes the play is happening and then proceeds to kind of jog over to the area where the ball is coming, jump up, and himself bop the ball up in the air so that it goes to the dude who got the eventual winning touchdown i don't know if i have ever seen an example of karma so close to the the moment of like i it's just i've just never seen that sort of karmic revenge if you will come so close to the inciting incident like it's like out of a movie or something that you would be doing this and then you would also be the guy who bungles

this thing hello Tyreek uh this is your petard calling um you might be hoisting yourself upon me at any moment um I'm looking at the um the the play again you're right the the the film that went viral was from somebody's phone although I do see that there's I don't know that it was broadcast during the game there is some professional shots of this now that were shared on like get up or whatever that were actually captured by the you know stadium or broadcast camera so you can kind of see it from different angles now one thing that it really um one thing that it really sort of illustrated to me is sort of how when you're playing so deep like that how now keep in mind this is not a usual play as you said this is a Hail Mary throw so like I think this play starts somewhere midfield like let's just say the 50 yard line or something and so Daniels is like Wait, Daniels, right? Yeah, is Jaden Daniels? Yes, the quarterback? Yes, okay. Sorry, I got caught up in my engineering brain there. I've seen it coming. Just absolutely launching this thing, right? Like, that's why it's called a Hail Mary. But in this extreme sort of play, just sort of how far away when you're playing deep like this, you are from the action. Like, the action is already, I love this view that you don't see on TV often, because it's kind of taken from a fan who's kind of behind the end zone. so you can sort of see the the um the defender takes a while to develop yeah and he's like kind of out there like he's spending a lot of time interacting with fans while you can see behind him the people are scrambling around they're fighting you know just at the line of scrimmage which is really really interesting you just don't get that view on tv much and it reminded me of something i heard somebody say on the radio this weekend i think and you know part of the the seattle seahawks um broadcast which is um i think it might even been michael bumpus or it was it was somebody who was a wide receiver speaking about the wide receiver um experience and how frustrating it can be after a loss when you're asking a wide receiver what happened out there and the wide receiver can just sort of be like i don't know i was running my routes well the whole time like they didn't get me the ball and he said something like you know you're out there you run your route and then you look over your shoulder and you're just seeing everything collapse behind you back by the line of scrimmage the quarterback is already on his ass or whatever i don't think they spoke as crudely as i do but that's the beauty of podcasting i mean um and it's sort of like earn that explicit rating as somebody who never plays sports you know and the occasions that i played football back when i was in seventh and ninth grade like i didn't see anything but the grill of the face mask of the person who's about to knock me on my ass i had no like perspective of anything i certainly wasn't running routes it was just sort of like a very it really seemed to sort of put me in those shoes a little bit that feeling of i'm running i'm running i'm running and i look back and there where the play is supposed to be developing is already just a

massive humanity already on the ground sort of and then to see this video which i know you were trying to make this a story i'm hearing it now you were making this a story about the human experience and i'm turning it no but we have gotten into the x's and o's which is where we thrive. Right, exactly. But it is a really interesting perspective to see him out there sort of like jumping up and down, pointing at the fans or whatever. And then from the perspective that we have in the cell phone video, the play is like well, well in progress.

It's like well in progress. Yeah. And I mean, I will say this for this guy, Tyreek Stevenson. This guy knows a lot more about football than I do and a lot more about playing cornerback in the NFL on a Hail Mary. So my sense is that he he has a better sense of the inherent timing of these things than I do. So what he knows that I didn't know until this point, which you're pointing out, is that you've actually got a couple of seconds to play with. I think of it as like the ball is snapped and then everyone's just like immediately at like 100 percent effort. But for a play like this, it's almost more like a punt return. It's kind of like you can kind of, you know, I mean, under sort of like, I guess, ideal circumstances, you might have a minute to kind of wait for the play to get to you. Ideally, your back isn't to the play. Yes. And you're also not chirping at the fans. Yes. So this is like, you know, I was, you know, the Seahawks had a guy yesterday, I think his name's Daryl Hall, which, by the way, it just occurred to me that he's got the name from Hall and Oates.

Is it Daryl? Okay, it's definitely Hall, the guy who got real heated.

Derek Hall, maybe? I'll take a look. It's a guy named Hall who committed a really dumb penalty at the end of the first half, which allowed the Buffalo Bills to get another chance to score a touchdown, which they did. When players for the Seahawks do something like that, a kind of what I would call an unforced error, it's one thing if somebody's running around and trying to tackle a guy, and then they accidentally catch the face mask a little bit or pass interference even. You're trying to not let the guy catch the ball, but too much of your hand is on him. I think of those as just priced in. But a guy just doing something that's not necessary that if he would have not done it, we would be in a much better position. Those kind of things, they make me so angry. I turned the game off. I was listening to it on the radio. I was hanging out with Becca and then I was heading north to meet my dad. and I was like, eh, this is making me too mad. And my spidey sense was right. It ended up being a frustrating game for them. But I just, like, I didn't know what to do with my anger at this guy for kind of, like, I thought, making a really dumb error. But I can't even imagine what Bears fans are thinking today about this Tyreek Stevenson guy because it's, like, that's, like, literally one of the worst unforced errors I've ever seen a player make in an NFL game. And this is his response. First of all, he did not make himself available after the game. guess unsurprising but now he has officially made a statement on twitter and i would describe it as underwhelming this is from tyreek stevenson to chicago and teammates my apologies for lack of awareness and focus the game ain't over until zeros hit the clock yeah no uh can't take anything for granted notes taken improvement will happen hashtag bear down i'm gonna tell you if that was Seahawks player who did the same thing and that was their response I would find that to be unsatisfactory

just a fact check you were right it's Derek Hall and he was chirping with Jaron Oates just joking a little Hall and Oates there but you know what I mean because he's chirping because he's on their field and he's chirping at these fans because he's already said like listen these Hail Marys they never work we're ahead we are going to win this game and there's like zero seconds on the clock and so he's already like not just pre-celebrating but pre-being an asshole and and like yeah that's the thing when i used to get really mad at um um oh my gosh you had to uh cam newton um way back in the day like he's a quarterback who like the reason i would get mad at him is because he was so obnoxious when things were going well this is a quarterback who played for the panthers right luke either way not among other places yeah that i did not root for but i think the panthers were like were the was his kind of first team or his first main team where i would picture him but like he was inconsistent in his personality things going well then he is going to be the biggest personality out there he's going to be just like celebrating in this way that is obviously a sort of taunt to the other fans as well maybe not directly maybe not pointing out fans i should be specific about that but then when things don't go his way get real mopey and put the towel over your head and i don't have anything to say and not making yourself available for press availabilities i just sort of feel like you got to be one or the other you got to be steady eddie and just be like i keep my head down and for you know good things you you praise other people and for bad things you take it on yourself that is just like may not it might not be it might not be fair but i've seen some things and that's just kind of what we want to see.

out of leaders and then for the people who are just kind of like no i can't control my emotions and i'm gonna be like i'm gonna because i remember him specifically literally not making himself available for press opportunities after losses yet you know when he would win he would just be rubbing it in your face so much and that was the type of thing that as a fan just like drove me

bananas about that guy yeah you have to be willing to if you're going to celebrate the wins you have to be willing to you know even and again we're not fans of this guy but i will here's what I guess I will say for Aaron Rodgers uh he generally shows up for the like they had a horrible game yesterday they lost to the Patriots it's like the Aaron Rodgers experiment in New York is officially a complete you know failure and I feel bad for Jets fans but also put it in my veins exactly but like you know I just yeah back to what you were saying and I agree it's like if you're going to if you're going to celebrate when it goes well you and you're going to celebrate in a way that's pretty sort of ostentatious or or in their faces or other things that rhyme with those words I'm saying then you got to really be willing to deal with the fallout if it didn't go well the thing about this tweet or whatever from I think this was maybe on Twitter I don't know where it showed up but from Tyreek Stevenson is can't take anything for granted notes taken improvement will happen I'd be like oh the next Hail Mary with the game on the line you're going to pay more attention okay thank you for taking those notes like it this feels like such an incredibly specific uh moment that i doubt would ever unfold this way again in this guy's

career but he's speaking to the larger thing though like what do you what would be a good apology for you because i don't know what it would be i am officially retiring from football i'm sorry to cut you off i don't like doing that but in this case i'm just sort of like well i mean you would say that the notes taken are like i need to be more humble i need to be more focused i'm not you know what i mean not that this exact thing is going to happen again but generally speaking as a player on this field i'm not going to be pre-celebrating i'm going to you know what i mean like you you would take from i think what i would here's what i would

appreciate seeing from because this apology or this whatever mea culpa reads to me like it's just like well i've now i've uh i've sort of studied more data points and i will i will behave differently now based on this new information going forward where i would like it to say like i just want to apologize to everybody in the chicagoland area for that boneheaded play i feel really sick about it all i can say is i am going to absolutely play my tail off the rest of the season and going forward to make this up to everyone that would be to me a good way to handle it instead of like uh game ain't over till zeros hit the clock can't take anything for granted

notes taken improvement will happen hashtag bear down somebody somebody on twitter because i just i'm reading this article which links directly to his tweet so i clicked on it sort of accidentally and now i'm looking at all the replies and somebody just no chat gpt please write an apology

anyway um so that was uh that was a pretty intense moment of football there's an intense It's a piece of art that's happening in D.C. right now at the U.S. Capitol. This is Joe Heim writing in the Washington Post, which, by the way, I'm wondering about my Washington Post subscription, Andrew.

Oh, God. I'm pretty unhappy. What about your Amazon Prime subscription? That's the bigger sacrifice. That I'm keeping. I'd rather, in all seriousness, and I don't even know if we need to set this up or just let this fly, But, like, really, if you want to make a difference, you stop your relationship with Amazon and you don't hurt the journalists who are working over at the post. Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking. That is such a tough—that is, God, they got us. God, they got us.

Anyway, this is because the Washington Post is—I mean, let's just be honest. This is because Jeff Bezos has decided to not endorse a candidate in the presidential election because presumably of not wanting to alienate a potential presidency of Donald Trump is all the only way I can read that.

Of course. Yeah. Basically, the endorsement of Kamala Harris was written and ready to go by the editorial team. And then the owner of the company, Jeff Bezos, said, nope, I'm not comfortable with that because I might need to do business and get tax breaks from Trump.

Well, Andrew, you've never owned a small business, so you don't know how hard it is to make it. And the fact that this guy is just trying to look out for his startup, his mom and pop, I can't begrudge him for that. Anyway, Joe Heim writing in the Washington Post poop statue appears on the National Mall to, quote, honor January 6th rioters. When I read this headline I was like Oh I'm amazed this stuck around long enough For Joe Haim to actually get to write a piece about it No

It's completely legit and allowed to be there, which I think is kind of amazing. Let's see. Protests take many forms in D.C. On Thursday, this is last week, it arrived in the shape of a giant poop on a desk in direct view of the U.S. Capitol. In addition to the soft serve swirled poop replica, the desk in the middle of the National Mall held a rendering of an office phone and a nameplate with Nancy Pelosi's name on it. Quote, this memorial honors the brave men and women who broke into the United States Capitol on January 6th, 2021 to loot, urinate and defecate throughout those hallowed halls in order to overturn an election. The plaque reads on a pedestal below the desk, quote, President Trump celebrates these heroes of January 6th as unbelievable patriots and warriors. This moment stands as a testament to their daring sacrifice and lasting legacy. It turns out that an artist, I believe named Julia Jimenez Pizik, put in for a permit and was granted the permit to put up an art installation. The Park Service, that's who runs this, said when issuing permits, it, quote, does not consider the content of the message to be presented. As federal land in America's premier civic space, the National Mall provides a forum in which citizens can exercise their constitutional rights of freedom and assembly. So this thing is there, and it's not going anywhere, and here's the thing. I love this. I absolutely love this. I'm also a little nervous now that this has been publicized because I don't want to see whatever MAGA nightmare shows up next time around.

Right. I'm kind of surprised that they don't consider the content at all, right? Yeah, right. Because there must be some restrictions around that. I mean, there's always the caveat.

If it was a swastika, if it was lewd.

Yeah.

More lewd than poop, I guess.

There's always there's always the caveat of, you know, something that that would cause that could actively cause harm or like threaten. You know what I mean? This is language that has been discussed a lot when you're talking about the protests on campus, about the situation in the Middle East and, you know, pro Gaza protesters. You know, it's like, well, what what are the lines between like kind of free speech? And almost every campus is going to say, well, people have free speech to say whatever they want. But when it crosses the line into threatening speech or potentially something that could actually cause danger or inspire somebody to cause danger, I guess, inspires a weird word to use there. But that's where the line is. So I feel like there does this article and I'm sort of scanning it now as we talk, does it get into that at all or does it just say basically anything goes?

It just, the part I read is the only reference to sort of what the content is And then the rest of the piece is Joe Haim interviewing people for their thoughts on the piece of art And Andrew, you'll be unsurprised to hear that it tracks, it maps very neatly over people's pre-existing political feelings So clearly like the first like three people that came through are lean Democrat And they're all like, this is pretty funny, we think this is great and then uh all of a sudden you run into uh janice grout great name loved you in charlie and the chocolate factory i'm glad it's temporary said grout of bend oregon who was visiting the district with her husband for the first time i don't think it's necessary this is a beautiful place and this

messes that up by the way grout supports trump well i mean honestly everything about this could be the same like literally nothing changes on this statue or this uh i guess is it is are we calling it a statue a uh art installation installation or whatever um everything about this could be exactly the same but the the wording on the plaque could say yeah we improved your desk pelosi you know what i mean like everything exactly and i would not have it not have it be sarcastic and we would be yeah so i don't know as somebody who doesn't like looking at poop um

i'm not well that's what i wondered about and you know the poop is the sort of poop emoji yeah which I find particularly gross because I think what's so upsetting about that emoji is it evokes an ice cream quality, which is not, I don't want that associated with number twos. There's a person who, how can I be slightly elliptical with this? There's somebody who's in the outer, outer rings of our friend group, or at least is a friend with Camaro Kev, who I really don't, I don't tend to click with this person. And this person once said to Camaro Kev, this person, in my experience, I thought was, and look, it takes one to know one, but I think this person was living a pretty unhealthy lifestyle of bad decision-making, et cetera, and had said to Camaro Kev that he hadn't taken a solid shit in six years. And to me, that just typifies this guy's soul. And that's what I don't love about the poop emoji. I'm, again, I think this is kind of funny trolling, but I also...

kind of really hope that it doesn't lead to just dueling banjos of yeah trying to roast each other there beyond because not to agree with janice grout but it is a beautiful place the national mall it's lovely um and i think represents the best elements of this fragile democracy of ours and so to have a poop i you know i'm glad it's from our team but i kind of it's sort of like when you benefit from a a pi call that shouldn't have happened you're glad it happened to you but

you don't want it to become a trend right exactly you know i mean but i don't know if you're saving this for the end of the conversation or not but i'm just going to bring it up right now maybe this is the end of the conversation but like you mentioned that this was written by joe haim how do we feel about the last line of the story i mean i think i know how i feel about the last line of the story is this the minnesotans chris and ann blunt uh behind them visitors line is this the last line yeah this is the last line behind them visitors lined up to take selfies or self feces with the statue and the business of america marched on yeah there was a couple of there was

unfortunately a few of those kinds of turns of phrase including uh these people from minnesota this is what i thought you might have been referencing they were on their way to georgia they poo-pooed the naysayers oh boy oh boy oh boy i know i've told you this before then my number one sort of uh bright line when i'm doing these uh cbs pieces is always pushing back on wordplay as humor like i don't know why to be it's like just and you know peace and love to joe i'm glad you brought this to our attention but like i i find like it's a story about poop and And then just using every kind of euphemism you can to reference number twos, it's not for me. It's not for me. It's not for me.

Sure.

I don't go. Would be a story about a particularly bad cold and flu season? Yes.

I remember that. I used to remember the fella's name, and maybe it's best that I don't. But when I was training at Cairo Radio, the earliest days of me working at Cairo Radio as a fill-in desk editor, the name of the person who was doing overnights or something was Dan something. I actually think he's broadcasting in the Portland area now. And he trained me how to write some very basic copy for newscasts. And what I quickly learned was like, oh, the more puns, the higher the journalistic integrity of these spots. You know what I'm talking about? And it'd be literally something like that, like working in like whether it's like little poop references or snot references if it's cold season or I don't remember them. I should I should I should walk that back a little bit. I don't remember writing anything that would be kind of like kind of what I would consider kind of gross. But just generally speaking, like if it's about icy roads, you're working every little icy pun in there. Not in the part. You know, the problem was, is I was kind of good at it. I like Atta Boys, and I just remember this one moment. That shift is really weird because you're waking up. You're not waking up early. You're waking up late at night to go into work to start prepping the morning show, sort of. And unless you're already on that schedule, your brain is not working right. I remember being at some stand-up desk and said, okay, take this story. Go write some copy about it. And again, I'm not a young cub reporter here. I've already been a senior producer on talk shows. I'm just kind of new to this.

Well, that must have added to the allure of the entire situation.

Well, I kind of did enjoy it, though. Like I was always in public radio and I loved this sort of like more intense sort of commercial radio experiences, real live newsroom sort of experience. And so I wasn't like looking down on the experience, but I really did need training. I was like, I haven't written this kind of stuff before. And I remember walking over to a standup desk and being like, oh, Dan's going to love this. And just like, you know, writing probably 40 seconds of copy or something that had like four or five quick little word plays in. And Dan loved it.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. No, man, it's not from a female.

All right, emails or v-mails? You might have seen that I texted you and your brother, David, from the basement last week. Oh, yeah, DFTB. I used to romp with him. It was a strange experience when I, I think it was like, I don't know, mid-morning or something. I get a little notification on my phone. I get a notification on my phone anytime somebody calls or texts the TBTL listener line. And usually I just sort of dismiss it.

By the way, I want to say that's a real sort of incentive for people to call or text the listener line, which is 206-414-8285, 206-414-TBTL. If you want to know that you are taking up at least some real estate in Andrew's brain, send a message to it. He will see it.

I don't respond to every single text message I go through. And I, you know, I'm just saying you'll get the alert. But I actually like I have a lot of, you know, I'll text with listeners. Sometimes I just can't in the exact moment. But, yeah, I have some text chains going on with various listeners in various parts of the country. It's kind of a fun way to kind of stay in touch. I don't want to overpromise and underdeliver.

I wasn't even obligating you to respond. I was just saying if you want to make Andrew do something like subservient chicken, if you want to make Andrew look at his phone, even for half a second, send us a message or call the TBTL. line because he will go oh okay and then he'll go back to his life but that oh okay moment you

will create that here's the one thing i won't do just so if i can make this negative for a second i will not pass things along to luke if you want to reach luke you can email luke at tbtl.net but sometimes people send like a really long text message and say pass this along to luke i'm like how do you want me to do that like you can just reach out to luke directly um but anyway um so i did but this time i got a call coming in right it was a voicemail not listen to your dreams we will not listen to your dreams and i saw that it came from and this is what startled me so a little quick background on how um this all works it's we use our tbtl voice line is set up as a google voice line uh and i have a bunch of google voice lines one for myself one just from you like my my regular sort of phone or whatever and then one for my various podcasts including tbtl um and if i have a contact saved like a personal contact saved on my phone from you know my personal ad book but i get a call or a text in for the tbtl voicemail line my phone might recognize oh this is this is david from the basement texting in or this is so and so just recognizing it for my own address book and i got a text message that seemed to be from our old boss at cairo radio somebody i've never spoken to you never your boss really no i never formally recognized this person as my boss no okay but he was during the ross and burbank days he was running the show there really yeah certainly um you and i both work for this guy um after what was the name of the guy who had the nickname um smoky remember smoky left and then oh yeah right i forgot about smoky we had a we had a we had a boss this guy but this guy didn't take over for smoky yeah

yeah so this guy went from being the ross and burbank producer to smoky and then you came in

to be the ross and burbank producer okay no no this is this was our boss this is the guy who was the news director i'm just going to use names here because there's no reason not to

pete gamel was the program oh i thought we were talking about our friend brian i got confused i'm

no no no so okay sorry we were talking about it there was no reason this guy was 100 our boss yes so anyway the point is sorry this was a few days after i i would nervously shared a voicemail or an email uh with you from dave wyman who was kind of one of our colleagues there and on the and he had emailed me like kind of post our employment some funny poop stories from his days in the NFL and I was never sure if I could share that publicly and then I did share it publicly on the show with you and I sort of redacted some of the names of the people involved and then two days later or three days later I see the TBTL voicemail line is getting a call

from our former boss at Cairo Radio and I'm just like why is Pete Gamble calling the TBTL

voicemail line he doesn't work there anymore he hasn't worked there in a long time and again this is somebody i haven't talked to in forever all of that is to say what a terrible way for me to set this up i really wish i hadn't done that all of that is to say it was your brother david from the basement calling from a communal phone at cairo radio that at one point must have been pete gamel's phone number you know they probably mess you know they probably rewire things and stuff all the time over there so apparently your brother was calling from a studio and it was identified as pete gamel

we are not in trouble i'm surprised that you and i want to credit you for this andrew that you had the um fortitude to go ahead and click play on i'm being serious this is something that i that i struggle with that i'm really trying to work on is when there is a piece of mail that comes in that i think looks a little dicey for me or an email that like i can just put myself exactly in your shoes we talked about something you felt a little bit nervous about if you were sort of oversharing that was something that was from the cairo the kmu wait the mcu the kcu the cairo comic universe you were basically feeling kind of like you had you'd mentioned some cairo business that maybe was on the line and then you have a v-mail from a person at cairo who we haven't talked to

forever like i would on our tbtl line too which i would have just not i would have probably just

like delete i don't want to know what who's mad at us about what but no thank you not today change

So, anyway, all of that is to say that was just a little side story for you. But, no, it was just your brother, David. He didn't want to use his cell phone. He thought this voicemail would sound better if he used a studio phone.

I'll be the judge of that.

It has to do with a drop that you sometimes play on the show.

Hey, fellas. David from the basement. This is neither here nor there. But I just wanted to call because I last week, my wife and I were watching some really old episodes of Project Runway from like the mid 2000s. Side note, the fashion was crazy. But I had the experience while we were watching of in the wild hearing a TBTL drop that I didn't realize was associated with with Project Runway.

and so uh the without giving it away because david does a good job of telling the story are you starting to remember what this drop might be luke i am wondering if it is give it away

i i there's only one thing oh oh no no you know what i know exactly you know i was okay i was thinking of the wrong thing and now i'm thinking of the right thing i'll let uh david take it from

here uh of the designers tim gunn was talking to one of the one of the designers and he uh He uttered the words that I feel like have been, like, bouncing around in my head for decades now, which is, you've been living in the monkey house. You've been living in the monkey house.

And I'll let David finish his voicemail here, but this is not a drop that bounces around my head a lot. You must have played it more back in the day. I feel like I'm not as familiar with it.

Well, it's coming back now because I've just dragged it over onto my sound tile page. So look forward to this tomorrow, everybody.

Okay, let's let David finish up.

You've been living in the monkey house, which I didn't know was Tim Gunn. I thought it was hilarious. My wife didn't really care. But, yep, just thought it was funny. I know I'm sure lots of listeners have had that experience. Anyways, love you guys. Love the show. Pow, pow.

Take care, David. But I loved getting that voicemail, and I think that is a very relatable—

You loved it not being from Pete Gamble is really what you loved.

I loved it. I was also a little disappointed. I like being hollered at. But I was going to say that I got a text message from a listener, speaking of text messages. Actually, several people pointed out that one of our favorite shows, The Detroiters, has just moved over to Netflix, making it more accessible. I can't remember where it was living before. I know I had it on one of our streaming services because I kind of binged it a couple of weeks ago, but now it's accessible to a wider audience on Netflix and people are like, I cannot wait to watch this entire series because I think it's only two seasons and just like identify all of the drops you guys have been playing because I know when I hear a Detroiters drop, but now I get to hear it in the wild.

although i will point out that the intro that was played i think on friday's show or thursday show the splat net yeah that is actually not from detroiters right that's from veep well the weird

thing is is yeah he plays a character named richard splat on veep which is just such a one this is a richardson um uh sam richardson um and uh the thing is the character the the i would call him a tertiary character but i mean a real scene stealer but a tertiary character on veep was richard splett and that tape that i played of his voicemail line isn't from the show his character was so fascinating that they created i believe as a marketing thing i think it was actually an hbo thing they created an entire fake blog from the voice of richard splett and i don't know how much sam richardson had to do with it but there would be audio embedded in there like that voicemail we put a fake outgoing voicemail message there would be videos from richard splett but it was really set up like an old and this veep is kind of old now but it was set up like an old school blog jam website i think yes i think it is still well it's a little bit newer than that it's a different era but still an antiquated era at this point of internet life and uh i i think it still exists if you are a fan of veep and don't know about the i think it might be splettnet.net i'm not sure but either way look it up there's some great stuff there i really would like

this week to be watching uh somebody somewhere but my dad is here and we that's not really it's there's nothing inappropriate about that that's the the hbo show that i so many people have emailed me about this andrew i must have really gone on and on about it's the bridget everett show on hbo i'm such a fan of it um but i kind of two things one i actually was going back to the second season i'm just talking to the many people who've emailed me now about this topic i'm not going to be as up on this show for a few weeks as i would like to be because i went back and i was like looking at the second season and so many of the descriptions didn't seem familiar to me i was like i not watch and i i realized i did but i wanted to re-watch some of them a little bit just to re-familiarize myself i think you can identify with that yep definitely um and then also like i really want to like enjoy watching it on my regular tv or whatever but like you know my dad is here this week and it's more of a world war ii history kind of vibe or british mystery or as i got him on last night which is an exciting development I got him onto the show Alone Which is that show Where they put a bunch of people out in the Canadian wilderness and they've got to film themselves And just try to see how long they can last

And it's actually

Really, I'm kind of stoked Because if I'm being If I'm being 100, Andrew I do, I enjoy the Experience of Watching these British mysteries With my dad because I enjoy the experience of Watching television with my dad And having our little He has his little Haagen-Dazs I have my little, right now Unsweetened dried mango That's my version of a dessert On this stupid 75 Hardish And I like the experience of having that With my dad The actual content a lot of the time Semi-lousy And it's because it's content that my mom and dad Have found interesting And I love my mom and dad But it's like It's sort of like when we were at the Savage Moose And there was not great music playing, and we had to figure out, and I believe this was you and Kamero Kev, how to get from the not great music into the good music without anyone noticing.

The transition, sure.

And I feel like this show alone is a perfect transition into some other kind of content that we can watch that's not just like a 15-year-old British mystery that's really not any better than an NCIS episode, except they have accents, you know? and my dad's loving this show alone and there's like 12 seasons of it so we may have entered a brand new phase of Walt and Luke television viewing but anyway none of that involves watching somebody somewhere so I'm going to wait get everything done here in terms of home improving and my dad being here and then like I just see a world in like three weeks Andrew where I've got two to three episodes of somebody somewhere just like in my back pocket from the new season uh kamala harris has clearly won uh the race for president uh donald trump is due in a manhattan court and there are no problems on planet earth andrew that is the future that i am going to

manifest right now why how did you just put a pit back in my stomach how did we get the pits out of

the stomach and then what do you mean i just told you about a beautiful magical universe that i think is very likely to let's hope let's vote would you rather andrew would you rather that you're getting elected was dependent on many many low propensity voters doing something that historically they don't ever do which is vote or would you rather it rely on a group of voters who historically show up and vote that being women in this country i'd rather be us than them here's how i see it

If I'm running for president, what I want is some really, really obnoxious billionaire to go outside the lines of legality, to buy a bunch of people's votes and to basically buy a place in the White House for myself.

What about but what about this? What if you invite a comedian to open your like last really big rally? And he starts off by saying incredibly racist, insulting things about Puerto Rico when a large percentage of the voters in Pennsylvania, particularly in Philadelphia, are, in fact, Puerto Rican American. How's that for a How's that for a real It's the second largest group of Latinos in America Are Puerto Ricans And then what if Bad Bunny Who has 45 million Instagram followers Just immediately Full-throatedly endorses Kamala Harris Right after that

Wait are you talking about Pete Gamble again?

Hold on I'm getting a call

Wait is this

I'm getting a call from Brian Buckaloo

Who was the comedian Buckaloo or Gamble I'm just confused

Oh, you haven't kept track of Pete Gamble's post-Cairo career? He's got an incredibly toxic comedy show called Kill Pete. What?

It comes out of Austin. What are the rules of slander in the podcast universe? Slander is spoken.

This is how you remember it. Libel is written and slander is spoken.

I do remember that, and that is how I remember it, but I just wasn't sure if the same applies to podcasts as broadcast. We'll have to get old Ira Glass on the line for that one as well.

He thinks that's where the future of this model is going.

I feel like he could use our help.

I mean, I really did want to, like, reach out and go, you know, we've been a more, like, financially dependent. It's dependent on the listeners more than almost any other show that I can think of for a long time. Some people would call that a charity case. I call it a close working relationship with the listener's bank account.

Absolutely. It really is. I mean, not to go back to what we talked about, but it really is special. And here we are, you know, what, a year and—are we up to a year and a half? Not quite a year and a half, but a year and a quarter or so into independence. And it's nice not to have commercials.

It sure is. It really is. And nice to know that the listeners are still putting up with this. By the way, I'll mention splatnet.net is not a working website.

Oh, but I wonder if I have the wrong address.

Error establishing a database connection.

Let me just type in Richard splatblog, and let me just see if they gave it a different. Would a splat have two Ts? I believe it has two Ts.

Oh, I was spelling splatnet wrong. Let's see. Yeah, let's see. Splatnet.net. Let's see. Oh, yeah.

Well, it just takes you to Veep. Oh, okay. I think they might have taken the blog down. What a bummer.

Keep the bit going.

Oh, it was so funny. It was so wonderful. And all that's left of it.

I'll find it on the Internet Archive as soon as I learn how to operate the Internet Archive.

Perfect.

All right. Thanks, everyone. We're going to be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. So please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all. Don't let them take it.

My fellow Splett-Americans, Richard Splett here with a special DC edition of Splett on Snacks in what could be billed as a no-holds-barred snackdown, pitting the three leading brands of blue corn tortilla chips against each other in a blind taste battle. First up, this one. It's got good crunchiness, good salt, can't really taste the blueness though, so this one is next. Salt is there, good salt, crunchiness is pretty crunchy, but you know, the blueness is not coming through on this one. And finally the third contender, this one, yep and salt and you know it's got crunchiness to it. But to be honest, if you blindfolded me and told me this was a yellow corn tortilla chip, I wouldn't know. So the winner, my fellow split-americans, is you because these are all three great snacks. We had to pick just one.

You can't be here.

No, I know. I'm leaving, actually. Power out.