Muse

I know it seems crazy, but Tracy and I are totally, totally in love. In love? Yeah. It's serious. She inspires me in ways that Linda never has. She even wants to read my novel. But you haven't written your novel. That's the whole point!

TBTL! Guys, I'm calling you from a karaoke bar bathroom. Somebody just put on Bohemian Rhapsody. Save me, please. I have a beta sequence I've been working on. Would you like to see it? That's our second Arby's in town. Some say it's better. The fries are curlier. Though, I wouldn't know it. I'm loyal to the original.

We have all the facts on this we need. We don't need any more facts. In the land of truth, my friend, the man with one fact is the king.

Hey, look here. Why don't we eat us a few thousand beers and you tell me what's buzzing in the big bad city?

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome to a Tuesday edition of TBTL.

Let's get it on. Oh, baby.

The show that just might be too beautiful to live. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

I don't know who that is, and I don't care to find out.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill Broadcast Center, perched high above the mighty Columbia. If I have an air of gravitas in my voice, of seriousness, it's because this is a big Tuesday, people.

Hey, cheer up. It's Taco Tuesday.

I think that's what we've all been obsessing over and focusing on and stressing out about for, I don't know, the last three plus years. Here we are. It's finally happened, folks. We have finally arrived at this pivotal moment in our nation's history. episode 4330 of tbtl let the fun begin in a collector series also i guess there's some kind

of voting situation today do you think people will vote for me heck yes i'd vote for you

which we may also uh discuss and if all of that gets to be too much as it feels like it has been for many of us for many a day uh we will uh go through a little like anxiety slash brain

palate cleanser it's like someone punching your brain but in a weirdly satisfying way

try to just like do a little fun exercise take a moment to just de-stress uh you know clear clear out the cobwebs and the anxiety of our brains together and just have a wonderful little tuesday uh together and this guy is going to be by the way really really pivotal in that whole thing happening he is the longest running cobra of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships and his notoriously unworried sort of vibe in the world this is how he describes

his his mood today i'm like seriously excited i'm kind of shy but mostly excited he's andrew

walsh and he's joining me right now good morning my friend good morning luke how is it that um We can have this date on our calendar for months, if not years, yet we're somehow never quite ready for the NFL trade deadline day.

And also, what, three and a half months from pitchers and catchers reporting?

That's right. I mean, there's so much going on today. Where will Miles Garrett go? Will he remain a Brown? I mean, there's a lot of anxiety out there. And I want to be here for the listeners as we sort of work our way through it.

Um, I, uh, I thought you were going to say that no matter how, for how long this has been circled on the calendar, I think I speculated, like, last week that this may have been circled on the calendar for since, you know, like, the Constitution was ratified or something.

Since we established the voting calendar.

I mean, we never got back to the question of if that is actually when this got decided or not, that, you know, first Tuesday in November would be the day. But it is the case that even though this has been a day that has been looming large in all of our minds and it's just felt like the various campaigns started so long ago. And then, I mean, obviously there was a there was a sort of a handoff. There was a flea flicker. There was a play fake on one of them, a misdirection, an end around.

Maybe you might even say a fumble ruski, a fumble that pushed the ball forward.

How do you feel about... I do think the ball was advanced because of...

That's a great analogy. I'm sorry. It was a good analogy. I cut you off just to celebrate my own victory there.

It's just two podcasters celebrating each other's victory. I was going to say, how do you feel about Andy Reid's delivery of Fumble Rooski and other such things in those State Farm...

commercials i haven't i don't think i've heard the new batch yet how does he say fumble ruski i remember seeing him in a new one but i can't remember what is going on or where they are are they giving him too much was he like the homer simpson where they realized oh he was the good part of the ads when he played a small role but is he now playing too large of a role i think so

i'm trying to find this too if i can get to the uh yeah here well here's what you need to know from the kansas city star andy reed does funny voices in new state farm commercial andrew that's the headline that's the headline and i want to be very clear as i start out with this conversation i love andy reed i don't have a problem with andy reed i like him in those commercials i think he's great this is not on andy reed this is i think exactly as you described it like they got a little good thing with him talking about give me those nugs or whatever he said

Yeah, that was a really funny, that was a great performance by him.

And I'm trying to get to this commercial, although I don't. Here, I got it.

Bundle Rooski.

A Bundle Rooski. I don't, because I don't, it's not Fumble Rooski, it's Bundle Rooski, because I don't subscribe to the Kansas City Star. I was having trouble accessing this story. Chiefs Andy Reid tries out funny voices in new State Farm Mahomes commercial. But can you play a little bit of this?

Yes, I'm going to do that right now. I'm having a little issue that I'm going to tell you about while I fix this issue here. But this is something that's been dogging me for a long time that nobody knows about except for Genevieve. I haven't told any of the listeners about this, whether it's on after. Is this a personal problem? Well, it feels like a very personal problem. But for years now, and I don't care about the morals or ethics of this. For my job, I've needed to implement an ad blocker. Now, I don't mind any ads on the web except for the ones that prevent me from playing a YouTube video on the fly. And so that's some listener years ago said, just download this ad blocker and you'll be able to play any YouTube video you want.

Like yesterday, I was trying to play some kind of music and we started to get jammed in with a political ad. Right. Which I'm getting absolutely bombed with here. Remember when I was in Pennsylvania and I was in Lancaster County and I was telling you how it's really weird to be if you're not if you're from like the state of Washington like I am, you're not used to being in one of the places where supposedly the election will be decided, you know, where the persuadable voters are and that the level of how hard they're hitting you with the commercials is off the charts compared to being in a place that's considered locked up for blue or red. and what's interesting is like where i am in southern washington is apparently you know at least as it comes to the congressional race between marie gluzenkamp-perez and joe kent it's definitely like entered the discourse like because she beat joe kent the first time around and it was a very close uh race and it's a red generally red area she's seen as vulnerable so millions and millions of dollars have poured in and i have unwittingly found myself here in my little old my little old cabin that I've been fixing up with my dad found myself like I guess a persuadable voter I'm living I'm living the the experience of somebody in a place where clearly a lot of big money is trying to get me to move uh in one direction or the other I'm getting a lot of

um messages from my phone saying we've blocked another spam another spam text message I get about 10 messages from my phone a day saying oh we just blocked another spam message and I know that that is because of um people trying to read because if i i one time i accidentally found the folder that shows you all of the spam messages that are texted to you i mean i'm familiar with that in an email way but i opened it up one time it was all just like they think i'm voting for just like all these like why have you not filled out our survey yet about why kamala harris sucks or it's like all this trumpy stuff i'm like oh my god thank you for that for blocking me from this

Luckily, mine is annoying. My texts that I get from, let's just say, Martin Sheen, Kamala Harris, Tim Walds. You go down the list every day, it's another one. But I have luckily not gotten accidentally on some real hateful Trump one. I do get some weirdly Dave Reichert ones. Like, hey, Luke, it's Dave Reichert. And I'm like, yeah, okay, we get it. Good job on the Green River Killer, but calm down.

Dave Riker actually probably knows you, huh? Do you think Dave Riker knows? I must have.

I'm sure that in the Cairo days, we must have had him on. By the way, you know, look, I don't want to get into.

I haven't finished my confession yet. Don't forget it. No, I was just buying you more time. I had it years ago, but go ahead.

Have you gotten your audio squared away?

Yeah. All I wanted to say before was, so I downloaded this ad blocker just so that I could play YouTube ads, and it worked fantastic for me. The problem has started in the past, I don't know, six months or so for.

After these messages, when I'm playing a lot of TV commercials, we almost exclusively use this site called iSpot.tv, which is, by the way, located in Bellevue, like headquartered in, I believe, Bellevue, Washington, by the way. So here it's a local organization. And it's a great local. It's a great repository for commercials, especially current commercials that are running every now and then for that show. And this show, we still need to play things off of YouTube. I say all of that because this ad blocker that I downloaded to help me with my YouTube issues, I've been using it for years and years. But starting a few months ago, it blocks out everything on iSpot TV now. So I have to – Because it thinks they're ads? I don't know if it's because it thinks they're ads or iSpot. I mean, they are ads. They are, yeah. But it's something about iSpot because I used iSpot and that ad blocker for years in, you know, congruously. That's not the right word. um but uh but now now become incongruous now exactly yeah they were i don't know what the

what the opposite of incongruous you're using them congruously and now you're using them

incongruously yeah no i think that's right but anyway i got it up here but it's just it drives me bananas that it's really really difficult for me to do my job if the ad blocker that that helps me with youtube totally obliterates my ability to use ispot tv so i just had to take a second to turn this whole thing off or whatever. But I'm not 100% sure I'm familiar with this ad. This is a State Farm ad and it's called Bundle Ruski featuring Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes. Take a listen to this. Hey, Jake from State Farm. Check it out. The old fumble Ruski. Or you can bundle home and auto and save money. The old bundle Ruski. Ooh, that's a better play. Plus it's more fun to say, bundle Ruski.

Bundle Ruski, bundle Ruski. Bundle-a-rooski. Bundle-a-rooski-doo. Try it.

Yeah, yeah. I'm not going to say that. Bundle and save with a personal price plan. He can, though. Wow. Like a good neighbor. There's something on all those commercials that just are so close, but just.

Well, the reason that I, that commercial gives me agita is because I have, I feel like I know exactly how the shoot for this commercial went down. and it was like because again Andy Reid is I think a very likable person and again I'm very pro Andy Reid in the world I'm pro him being at least I don't know two heads taller than everyone at the punt pass kick in Los Angeles low those many years ago I'm into him getting the nugs all of it but I feel like they were like we really need to capitalize on the fact that Andy Reid is really kind of here for this he's really down to clown with these commercials he's really willing to go for it i don't see bill belichick saying bumble ruski or whatever i don't see that in the belichick brand that's more dating people who are 70 years younger than you that's more the belichick way

right right anyway what he's now an honorary member of the rolling stones she's so young

so i um i i can imagine that what happened was it was like the premise of the commercial is Andy Reid really loves saying bundle ruski in various funny ways and the way that that shoot went was he got there they all got there and then this is when the producers of the commercial the director said okay so say like it's going to be fumble ruski and then and then you like saying bundle ruski and then you just say it in a bunch of crazy ways so why don't you just try to say it in all the crazy ways you can think of and what I feel is I feel Andy Reid dying inside a little bit because there's nothing more embarrassing than trying to improv in front of a bunch of people when you're not an improv person how do i know this because i've lived it it's happened to me many times and maybe andy reed is not sort of uh plagued with the same particular version of self-hatred that i have but there's just nothing that i would like to do less than be in front of a big camera crew on a big money commercial going how many different funny ways can I say bundle ruski and that's what I think happened there and basically I don't like because it makes me uncomfortable based on my history and it makes me feel uncomfortable on

behalf of Andy Reid and I will say this I don't think anything you said goes against this necessarily because you started by saying he's he proved himself to be so game in these commercials to really go for it and I will say even in this commercial while it might have been uncomfortable for him I don't catch a whiff of that like this is where I give him credit I think commercials or maybe even anything that is like this. Yeah, he seems to really like it. I'm not seeing any sort of shyness from him that he's working, that he's trying to break through. I actually see that more with Mahomes a little bit. There's sort of a, maybe in Mahomes' earlier commercials with State Farm, but I will give him credit that he seems really...

really here for this commercial doesn't make me laugh it makes me cringe um I'm not a huge I mean

Jake from State Farm is very handsome I told you that I once parallel parked in front of Jake from State Farm oh no I don't on on um I guess it's Hillhurst that's the one that runs right through Los Feliz I think oh Vermont and Hillhurst I mean either Vermont or Hillhurst is this like recently he was Jake from State Farm because I noted it well he's been that for a while though

Like, is it like because he's like he has blown up, I would say, in the past year or so, because like he was at the NBA All-Star game and like everybody's dapping him up. And like I feel like he is now like one of the most biggest stars in the NBA, even though he doesn't play basketball.

Andrew, I think I might have just and on this day of all days when we need me to be at my sharpest, I may have crossed a Rubicon. I may have gone over a mental waterfall that I will literally never come back from. do you know what i think just happened i think there's a commercial for a car where someone's parallel parking in front of jake from state farm and i think i confused my actual life with the commercial i don't know if i've ever parallel parked in front of jake from state farm he's not being jake is the point he's someone else it's like a hyundai commercial or something it's a commercial for a car and i think it was filmed the street looked to me like hillhurst or vermont and i am thinking i literally mandela'd myself into a lived experience that i did not have

that was only portrayed on television but not as jake from state farm it stood out to you and that

was the actor who played jake and he was this was i think i think this was around the time that he was really starting to have an impact on the pop culture with jake and i noticed that he's in i'm gonna just call it a hyundai commercial i don't think it was ford or chevy i think it might have been a car from overseas probably from asia and he's like watching someone parallel park is my memory of it he's sitting maybe at like a cafe and says something and i literally think andrew my brain is so broken and i blame the election by the way i blame our unbelievably fractured political process my brain is so fractured and broken that i think i literally thought that my life was a commercial where jake from state farm was watching me parallel park and it's a i think it's a tv commercial if anybody can get to the bottom of this i am looking it's you i would host a whole

i know well i'm also about but i'm trying to talk at the same time like i'm looking because so the actor's name is kevin miles and so i'm looking for like the oldest kevin mile miles commercials on ispot uh oh did you say it's a honda i can't say that something it's a it's a

commercial where he's sitting my memory is he's watching someone parallel park he's sitting on a street i recognize that as a street in los angeles um and he is uh let's see my it's not i know for a fact it's not state farm that's the thing that i'll say it's hon i don't know how to

say that i always mess it up it's honda honda honda it is a honda i'm seeing him right here

in a honda commercial there's no such car as a honda i thought you just said honda how do you say Hyundai Hyundai like like you're like saying to your grandmother Hyundai okay so Hyundai instead of Han got it but um well because Honda is a car so Hyundai I think is is a little

bit grayer um okay but anyway here is a commercial it's not quite parallel parking but it's called seize the moment let me see do I have a year on this 2016 um so he is already I'm thinking 2016 now maybe he's not quite Jake from State Farm yet I would assume that they locked him down um unless uh unless in the early days they didn't know it was going to be such a recurring role for state farm but either way and i've seen this this rings a bell in fact i'm wondering if somebody sent this in in this particular one him and a woman are leaving a coffee shop together okay and somebody taps something she taps a button on her smart watch and then it looks like the car kind of pulls up to them a tiny bit okay i don't know if he's going to have any lines it's just going to be his his handsomeness walking out with this woman let's see here okay they just walked out oh yeah take me to church take me to church this is your moment to start something better right now take advantage and now they're driving along the suburbs but i feel like i mean there's no parallel parking but i'll send this to you oh sorry oh no that's me i was trying to watch

i was trying to see if this was the same commercial to see if i was looking at the at the right uh if i was thinking of the right thing but that is jake from state farm he is in

it i couldn't see the commercial you were playing i just sent it to you but it seems like if you look at that later and tell me if you think you recognize sort of the street in la or something him and this woman walking out the coffee shop might be what you're thinking of and it is must to be yeah yeah and you had guests that is hyundai so um that is well commercial i guess well first of all it's sad it said how much i had wrong about that on every level including what's even happening in the commercial it's more sad that andrew and i'm not messing i'm not like trying to be funny here i'm not spoofing oh yeah it's sad that i thought that was my life what's wrong with me how did my brain again i'm still

did you email me or text me i texted it i wasn't sure if that was the right that's fine that works

for me I just I'm trying to get eyes on this while we're talking to see if if if we're and I'm also I'm also trying to not yeah I believe this is what I was thinking of yeah yep I kind

of had a feeling even though it's not actually parallel parking there is a car parked next to the curb and she pushes a button and pulls up a little bit it has like if just part of your brain remembered sort of the broad strokes of this I can see it that's that that has to be what I was

thinking of and what I know the reason I noted it was because I'm sure that maybe it was produced before he was jake from state farm or before they locked him down to some sort of non-compete but what i remember was he was in the conversation as jay he was being jake when i saw the commercial i thought boy this guy is really killing it um and i only noted him because i had seen him as jake but here again i don't know where to go with this and we have more important things to talk about i just can't believe that i took that moment and literally my brain interpreted that you know eight years later as i once parallel parked in front of the actor who plays jake like that's a thing i could have i would have said to somebody at a barbecue now and believed it well you've

started saying it to me and tens of listeners and believed it um yeah that's messed up it is kind of messed up i'm trying to think if there's anything relatable to me i mean there are definitely things i mean this is this does not speak well to my mental health but i feel like more and more i am confused about what happened in my dreams and what happened in real life like for example were you and i maybe i dreamed i parallel parked in front of jay were you and i talking like last week and then your head turned into a giant butterfly and flew away or was that a dream

that did no that did happen on the show that's what i thought we talked about it off air and then we said we brought about it on air yes and then we brought it up on air thank you because i thought like i was going bananas no no you're that that one did happen anyway okay listen And probably I'm taking this so hard because, first of all, that is kind of upsetting that I really and I could picture myself parking the car. I could picture where Jake was sitting. Again, none of this is even in the commercial. I could picture where he was sitting and I could picture myself in the car like I could place myself in this. But I think part of why this is hitting me so hard today is because obviously we're all in a bit of an anxious state. I guess I'll just ask, how are you feeling, my friend, about the election?

All kidding aside, my hilarious draft, I'm sorry, trade deadline joke aside, I'm not great. Really? I can be honest with you. The weekend was filled with a lot of anxiety. I found myself, and I'm finding myself, by the way, I haven't voted yet. I'm going to. I'm going to fill out my ballot as soon as we're done here, and I'm going to walk it over to the, I live sort of near North Seattle College, and there's a drop box there and that's probably like what maybe maybe it's not quite a mile from me but i feel like that'll be good for my mental health to like fill it out take maybe what will be a mile and a half walk there and back or something and as long as it's not raining too

hard i had to call the um local uh like elections office by the way i can tell you about that in a

minute oh really okay well anyway i um so anyway you asked how i'm doing i just i find myself i was driving somewhere on sunday and i was literally i wasn't listening to anything political I think I was listening to the disaster of a Seahawks game and everything's political. Yes. But like I just maybe I saw a yard sign me. I don't know what I saw, but it just got me thinking about like like I've been doing the thing where I'm trying to remind myself that feeling worried or anxious on Sunday or Monday or even Tuesday doesn't really help. Like catastrophizing doesn't really help. I will have this weird and I maybe this is relatable to you where I keep on swinging wildly back and forth about how I'm going to feel on Tuesday night like tonight or maybe Wednesday morning or something like I keep on thinking like oh my god it's going to be so great when Harris just kind of like wins and we can all breathe or I guess half of us can breathe a sigh of relief. um and then i but but those are fewer and far between much more and maybe when i have those thoughts i immediately self-correct into like oh my god remember 2016 like i honestly feel like it's having lived through having lived through the election of 2016 like my body is sort of like kind of remembering some of those feelings that i had that night and that was a shock to me and now my body's like i will not be shocked again like i'm ready for this and i don't know it's not a good feeling.

I think

that you're describing the feeling that a lot of us have and a lot of listeners have as this is airing on tuesday but like a couple of things one i i they was doing a q a on pod save america this weekend and somebody was asking like what do i do about all these thoughts intrusive thoughts i have about if let's just say wednesday or thursday you know the election has gone the wrong way and what i think it was dan pfeiffer said i thought was pretty smart which was like there's no use to expending any energy to think about that until it becomes the case like even if it's tuesday afternoon and you can there's something you can do you know call call your neighbor in your apartment building and see if they've submitted their ballot or whatever like the idea of like i think our tendency as liberals and as generally worried people is to want to and because of 2016 is to want to in a weird way protect ourselves by assuming the worst or at least planning for the worst or thinking about what it might feel like in the days this week if this goes really wrong i just i would say i would agree with dan pfeiffer and say i don't think there's any utility to that i don't think there's any usefulness to that i think what we should be doing now is making sure that we're voting like you are and that we're even at this late late hour like there are places where you can sign up to give people rides to the polls even on tuesday you know at 5 p.m. like there's stuff that can still be done and and putting our thoughts towards that as opposed to catastrophizing is probably a more useful and be just actually better for our emotional and mental health I am a couple of things one I did have to call they never mailed me my ballot or at least it never got to me so I went on the website for my county and I printed out a new ballot but then my obsession became am I allowed to submit my ballot in a regular envelope like can i just put it in a regular ass envelope like because you can print out you can you can fill the ballot out online you can print it out you can sign this declaration you can get this cover sheet i had all of that like i've printed it at home but i'm so worried and it's less presidential here for me and more congressional my concerns right where i am but i call the office to ask them about a if i can use a regular um uh envelope and b if i can drop it if i have to drop it at a drop box in my county or if i can drop it at a drop box in a different county that's in washington state and the funny thing was when the person answered the phone i literally wanted to as quickly as possible indicate her that i wasn't calling to stop the steal because this poor woman at the callitz county elections office must i mean the the the kindness in her voice when she answered the phone belied i think the fact that she must be mostly handling absolute crank phone calls right now just like what are you trying to do down there to our elections etc and i just wanted i wanted so badly for her kind of like when you were at

lens crafters and you wanted them to know that you were going to buy the lenses even though you ultimately did sell them out and buy the glasses online by the way one of our listeners i mentioned

during that of the story that we have a lot of optometrist listeners who've waited on things over the years one of those listeners reached out to me and said you were in my store i don't understand where i was if i was on a lunch break or whatever but those were my colleagues they work at that store yes and actually i'm gonna leave their name off of this and also just say they had some interesting there's some interesting insights on it that um sort of sort of backed up some some of my um some of my concerns about the current model of of of eye care but anyway go ahead

well i uh i wanted very much like i was in the way that we were talking in that lens crafters thing about like real main energy character that you and i bring to the experience i was like proud of myself that i was going to be asking legitimate questions about my my ballot as opposed to like arguing based on some internet conspiracy bullshit that i read with this person like i was very proud of myself that i'm one of the quote-unquote good ones so you're which just tells you how insane i

am so you're for the steel is what you're saying i'm a little exactly one of the good ones now let Let me ask you a question. This is going to sound like a really dumb question. I'm actually being serious here. I always have to differentiate between when I'm playing dumb and when I just am dumb. But is that something that is going around a lot that you're hearing about is people already calling the polling places and harassing?

I don't know if people are calling polling places, but there's been a lot of media around the, like in Washoe County in Nevada, there was this really upsetting thing where basically this crypto, this Bitcoin billionaire has funded this big movement there to essentially make it so that the, basically the people who are supposed to certify the elections and the job of the most, in most places, the job of the

people certifying the election is not to be asking was the election quote-unquote legitimate it's literally to rubber stamp it as certified if there's a question of legitimacy that's supposed to go to the courts but anyway i just obviously just listened to this long um i think it was a daily the other day about places where at a grassroots level the steve bannons of the world and i think this guy's name is robert beetle of the world have managed to wrest a certain amount of control from these, you know, voting districts. And so anyway, I'm just assuming, and also all the other stories about how people that work in elections now are getting just a raft of shit from people constantly. So that's like, I just, I don't know what the, and also I know that Cowlitz County where I live is a very, I think it's a generally red place. It's like, I don't think that maybe the person answering the phones in Multnomah County where Portland is, is getting those same calls. My sense is this person is getting those calls. I didn't ask. This is just my assumption about the whole situation. So I felt proud of myself that I wasn't asking a bunch of bullshit questions about voting machines, although that doesn't even apply to our state because we don't even do voting machines here. But you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. And

I definitely know that feeling. And I think it's a good comparison of me trying to somehow use whatever body language I could in this physical eyeglasses store to say, like, I'm not just here to to, you know, try on glasses, then buy them from a competitor online. I somehow was like trying to fluff myself up as some sort of I got to stop using that phrase. Yeah. Self-fluffing. It's not something the listeners like us talking about. Sunday night, I came home and it was kind of a little bit cold and feeling autumnal outside. And so I made a whole bunch of chicken stock left over in the freezer for whatever the last time I made stock was. Uh-oh, the bone collector is back. So I made some soup from my frozen stock that I had made a while back. I just made some basic chicken. I was just like, I stopped at the store on the way home, and I'm like, all I need is some carrots, and I can come home and make some chicken soup. And so I was telling Veeves, I'm like, there's always this moment where I'm never sure exactly how many noodles to put in, because when you first put the noodles in, they don't expand. It takes the noodles a long time to really get a sense of how whether or not you put the right amount in the soup and I just said to Veeves because Veeves often likes my soup but likes it on the second day as well not the first day which I agree with I think the flavors mingle more all of that is to say I at one point said well let's just see what happens once these noodles fluff up and I think she for the rest of the evening whatever topic we were talking about she would just say well let's just see what happens once the noodles fluff up and I was like you know what I will leave you I know that

let's just see what happens when these rock hard noodles fluff up They go from being rock hard to fluffed up, and that's the natural word of things.

Anyway, I know what you mean. You're trying to give off an air and right away to let them know, I'm not trouble here. By the way, I'm filling out my ballot as we do.

I saw that. I'm hoping that you obviously know who you're going to vote for, because I see you filling out your ballot. Usually you play Hex Empire. I feel like you're playing Hex Empire with the future of King County.

I know. I'm voting no on all of these bullshit initiatives.

Okay, okay. As did I. As did I. You know, that's funny, because now that we live, I mean, we've lived, I guess, in the same state. for a while but like we were wishing on the same star like i was going through being like no no what are you talking about yeah i'm like they got this guy on the ballot yeah yeah no out of here with that here's what i'm gonna say andrew and again this is airing on the tuesday and i i understand i want to tell you something right now and i want to say this to the listeners i understand the risk that i am taking with what i am about to say are you going to be optimistic i'm going to be very optimistic and i know that there is no upside because if this goes badly all that i will look like a fool and i probably will become the the the subject of some of the ire of some of the listeners uh much like on the in 2016 i became the i became carrie's ire because i kept just i couldn't my mind could not conceive of the fact that hillary clinton was losing this election and i just kept saying it's going to be fine and it wasn't fine and like that gave carrie some something to focus on instead of the macro issue the micro issue was my husband is an idiot and uh i know that i could be providing the listeners with something to focus on if heaven forbid there's there's absolutely terrible news but i just have to tell you here on this tuesday with zero returns in i think the math is pretty straightforward on this And it is this. Women in America tend to vote at the highest numbers of any group of people. There are more women in America than there are men. And Kamala Harris does much better among women than Donald Trump does.

that to me seems like a fairly straightforward math proposition if you if you could if you were a candidate and I told you you can be more popular than the other candidate amongst the demographic that there are more of in this country and that historically is more disciplined and dedicated about voting I feel like you'd say that's that's the spot we want to be in and I I feel like that's the spot she's in. And I just have this, I have this sense that this is not as close as we have been told it is, and I have a sense that this is gonna be okay. Now, I could really regret this tomorrow, I could really regret this on Thursday or Friday, but I just think, I think we're looking potentially at something that's the reverse of 2016. I'll give you one data point, And then I can we don't need me prognosticating. We don't need me trying to break down anything about this election from a sort of data perspective, because I don't have that brainpower and I don't have that information. But I will say it's kind of interesting to me that the same person, the same pollster in Iowa for the who published this Des Moines Register poll that found Kamala Harris leading in Iowa going into Election Day also found Donald Trump leading in Iowa in 2016. and that was a very very out there thing to say in 2016 and i i think that's notable i think there is some i think there is a lot of stuff that's energetic in terms of like just energy and like i'm not going to do a good job describing this i think there are things that are going on in this country tectonically that are hard to nail down in a poll and i think we're going to see the evidence of them very soon in a good way. Because again, if you throw out all of the polling and all of the confusion around it, and you ask yourself an essential question, an essential question is, has Donald Trump expanded the group of people who want to vote for him with anything he has said or done? And I think you'd be hard-pressed to answer that with a yes. I do not think he has in any way expanded the group. He lost the popular vote, obviously, against Hillary Clinton, and barely won the electoral. He lost both of them against Joe Biden. I don't think he has found a way to get more people to join him than he had in, say, 2020. And I also think we have to ask, where are the Nikki Haley voters going? There's a significant number of Republican voters that are very, very burned out on Donald Trump. And if even half of the people that voted for Haley just go vote for Kamala Harris or even sit it out, I think that's a problem for him. I just I keep looking at the data that I can see and putting the polls aside and I keep coming back to the same answer, which is in my gut just says, I think we're going to be OK.

And I want to make clear a couple of things here, starting with what I said when I kind of jokingly said, are you going to be optimistic? I said that in kind of a tone of voice that was somewhat teasing for entertainment purposes but I do not believe that there is any reason that anybody should be feeling pessimistic about this as much as I don't believe in superpowers unless it comes to sports or political hexes and jinx I'm not really bringing my Mariners rules to this I'm not saying everybody you have to worry because the only way we can pull this off

this if you worry that's not honestly that was a young Andrew philosophy though it was you got to

worry about yes but like that but I didn't say that to you like in earnest that I didn't want you to say that or that I think if things go sideways that you have ruined it that that's not really how I look at this at all honestly and I want people to be to be in a good state of mind today if possible I will say that and this and again now the second thing I'm going to say is not me pushing back against you this is me the only things i will say today is how i feel and sometimes that will manifest as what my worst fears are and the only thing i'll say today is

what is going to happen exactly down to the vote no that's what i mean like i don't there's no

reason for me to put my poison in other people in this case my poison just being a really high level of anxiety um and so i'm not what i'm about to say to you is not me pushing back on your argument in any logical way it's just me expressing kind of feelings that i've been having because like i described to you and i always wonder like sometimes i have these little snapshot moments that somehow end up representing an era sort of and i almost sort of wonder nothing drastic happened on my drive to my volunteer gig yesterday i just will always wonder if that is the moment that i kind of remember that was just pre-election as i was sort of like trying to like give myself exercises to somewhat calm down. this stuff is like i started to either remember or possibly fantasize and make something up to worry about which is that there is a phenomenon in front of jake that is as bad as we know polling is in 2024 compared to let's say 1994 just as far as like reaching people and getting a more accurate polling wasn't there something along the lines of and again i'm not i want to be careful here i'm not trying to scare other people i'm just saying i had this moment of like wait a second Isn't there this whole thing about like people, potentially, especially women in 2016, saying one thing to the pollsters out of shame for their support for Donald Trump that like people not only is it trouble reaching people to get accurate counts on this stuff, but there's a sense of like, well, I know it's not in a certain way, like in some maybe more like moderate areas of the country. It's kind of like, well, I actually I can't vote. I just I worry about my taxes. I worry about that. But the word Trump is such a trigger for people. I'll just tell the you know, I'll just tell people I'm voting Harris. But actually, I'm probably just going to go vote Trump.

Well, I think a couple of things. I think the stigma around voting for Trump is sort of gone for people that are going to vote for him. I think there probably was. I mean, Trump was underpolled. That is to say, he overperformed the polls in 2016 and 2020. Like, you know, that's and I think that in 2024 for the pollsters, there's this huge fear around that happening again. And so some people speculate that they may have like sort of over corrected on that in the various ways that they do try to account for, as you described, either just Trump voters or someone that might be described as a shy Trump voter. But I just kind of think here's what I think. I don't think there are a lot of people in 2024 who are undecided on the topic of Donald Trump. And I think if anything, what we might see, and I don't know statistically how significant this will be, but, you know, you've got people in swing states. You've got women going into women's bathrooms and putting post-it notes up on the inside of the stall saying your husband doesn't have to know how you voted. You know, I mean, this is real community aid person to person kind of shit going on, you know. And if anything, and again, you preface by saying this is just how you feel. I want to say this is just how I feel. I don't have any, I don't have any special insight. I'm just, for some reason, I, this is how I'm choosing to talk about this today. And again, I'm putting, I'm putting myself at great risk doing this because either it works out and it's all fine or it doesn't. And I just look like such a moron. But I guess I'm willing to take that risk because that's how strongly I feel about it here on this Tuesday edition of the show. But like I think that we there could also be a phenomenon of a lot of women in America actually voting for Harris or maybe just not writing in the top of the ticket when they go into that booth because of I mean, I think I think the Dobbs decision and and and that, you know, just the continued absolutely hateful kind of misogynistic rhetoric from the Trump campaign. and JD Vance and all of their kind of spokespeople and surrogates, I really think that has made a difference. And I think if anything, I would imagine we'd see more people voting, more women voting against Trump and keeping it a secret than this time around it being like, I want to vote for Trump, but I'm afraid to say it. Again, I don't have any, I have no special research to justify that theory it's just sort of my i don't know my theory at this point i just again i i i feel like i know the electoral college is tilted against the democrats that's always a tough issue um for them they're kind of like you know they're running uphill from the very beginning of this but i just keep going back to this question of like if if i came down from space and you described the sort of the prevailing forces in this election and then how the two candidates have actually behaved and and i don't mean behave like trump behaves badly we all know he behaves badly i mean trump has

behaved in just such an undisciplined way that i just think it's only hurt him he's just he has not done anything at any time to reach out to anyone i mean i think there was a point where he i will obviously when it was still him against biden i think he was the we all thought he was going to win and he's had so many chances to like kind of expand maybe bring in some people that think the economy by the way it doesn't hurt that gas prices are actually down right now it doesn't hurt that the jobs reports have generally been good like there's also just some other stuff out there that's like it could be that could be way worse for Dems it just I don't know I just think that if you if you said to me you got one person who is who lost last time around and is doubling down on the very stuff that helped them lose last time and then you're like, you have this other person who's reaching out and on SNL and telling people at every turn, I welcome everyone, even the people that don't vote for me, and has energized women in a country where women have lost, many of them have lost their reproductive rights. It just, I can't shake this feeling that this is going to turn out okay for us. That's the feeling I have today as the show goes on. Again, there's no, maybe I should just be betting, quietly betting this and just try to see if I can make some dough and shut up about it on the show because again this does not look good if things go really badly in the next 24

hours well again like people whose job it is to prognosticate this stuff don't know what's going to happen tomorrow so i don't think this has to be and it sounds like you have i i kind of i maybe you've mentioned in passing that sort of sounds like you have a bit of a personal demon there if somebody in your private life held you accountable because of your predictions last time

I understand how I just mean there's nothing worse than somebody being like, you know, we got this. And then we don't got this. Like, I know that like the I know the move right now is to be like, well, here's part of why I guess I feel unleashed to do this. And I'm sorry, I'll let you get back to the reason I feel I guess like I can finally come out as an optimist is because at this point, the work is more or less done. like i wouldn't have i wouldn't have wanted to say this three weeks ago because to the degree that we have any kind of platform here and again our listeners are smarter than us and more motivated than us and more everything than us i'm sure that they're all out voting doing what they need to do but like there's this theory that to say three weeks before the election i actually think this is going to be fine is to somehow demotivate people is to somehow like have people take their foot off the you know the gas or something so I guess part of my thought is like look this is airing on Tuesday probably some people I mean might be listening to it after the election and um and like there's I don't think it's going to affect anyone's motivate I think what's I guess what I think is what's done is done more or less the votes are probably have been voted the it is it is what it is and before we know anything I guess what I feel is and this has been a journey for me but somehow and this could just be some optimistic brain fungus I have in the last two weeks I've gone progressively from totally terrified to cautiously optimistic to feeling like I think this is going to go okay and I feel pretty strongly about that obviously I hope you're right

I think the thing that is I've said a version of this a thousand times over the past eight years But the thing about the Trump campaign – I'm sorry, the Trump presidency, but also I'll say the campaigns as well that sort of hurt me the most personally because I want to acknowledge here a lot of the terrible policies, a lot of the terrible things that are even said, a lot of just all of the terribleness of Trump writ large as a political figure in this country actually doesn't affect me that much. I mean, that's the one thing is I've been dealing with coping mechanisms. Sometimes I'll tell myself, hey, listen, you survived four years of it last time. You can survive it again. And then I remind myself this. You need to be there for other people. You need to fight for other people, whatever that looks like when the time comes and to support other people and just be there because I'm not a member of the communities that are going to be the most that would be the most harmed by a Trump presidency, a second Trump presidency. um having said all of that um the thing that makes it so difficult for me and i think for a lot of people as well this is obviously not unique is the uh feeling of being gaslit right but also combined with that and i don't want to make this too personal because i made it a little bit too personal after the the 2016 um election and that didn't land me in in in on solid ground with some people in my life but um the fact that i know and love people who don't don't see what seems so obvious to me is like the hardest thing for me and in these last let's just say the last seven to 14 days of the campaign as trump has become from from the the starting point incredibly unhinged and is getting more and more and more publicly unhinged imagery of violence against reporters of talking about barrels of guns being pointed at Liz Cheney the things I'm not even hitting the top five of his greatest hits lately it doesn't matter you all know what they are I don't need to rub them in your face here but then knowing that there are people who I think are in many cases, in some ways, very, very good people just somehow aren't getting those messages because of the media landscape today, whatever. And also, here's what I was going to mention earlier.

ties into all of this too is um on sunday i mentioned to you yesterday on sunday i watched um maybe like half of the seahawks game right and um i heard i you know i maybe heard two trump commercials or the same trump commercial twice and two different kamala harris commercials and um and it's like the normalized like when you hear a trump commercial it just you're like oh i understand why if you're not following all of the antics on the trail and the just the most terrible if you're not if your lens isn't focused on the most disgusting things that come out of this man in this campaign and you heard this trump commercial you would just be like oh yeah it's reasonable i'm a conservative and i'm gonna vote for this person and like every time i heard that and i'm not even saying that like oh listen to the nfl meant that my perspective was skewed because then i heard two really good kamala harris commercials in the same you know half of football But it's just sort of like it reminds me of how some people can make this decision and vote for a man who, in my mind, is just like so indescribably beyond the pale of what should be normal for any position. If you were hiring somebody to be the manager of your bank branch of the fuck of your Baskin Robbins branch, you would not hire this person based on things that he says publicly. And the fact that people would make him the most powerful person in the world for the second time after, you know, saying the things he's been saying is so it's like literally Luke incomprehensible to me. And that's where I get emotional.

Yeah, no, I hear you. I feel—I've been very fortunate in my personal life, as far as my family goes, that my immediate family and even—well, you get one ring out and it gets actually—it gets kind of bad. But, like, I have been very fortunate that even though my parents are, you know, evangelical Christians, they are somehow in this very narrow slice of people who are into the things they're into but are very anti-Trump. And I think a lot about how, like, if that were not the case, how devastating that would be to our relationship and how devastating that would be to my conception of them. And and I feel really lucky that that isn't like I'm imagining me and my dad here working on this house, you know, for literally years at this point. And when it's like, you know, when I'm listening to Morning Edition on the speaker or we're watching Chris Hayes' show or something, if I had to constantly be like fending off little like bullshit comments from my dad about like but her emails or whatever, you know, that would be really, really tough for me.

And and and I think I think it's just so just so, you know, just to be clear, luckily, I don't have that in my life either. I just know there are people out there who see the world differently than I do. But luckily, I don't have anybody who is kind of like who I get into it with politics about.

Yes. Yeah. I guess what I'm I guess what I'm what I'm saying is like I I can probably other Trump supporters pretty quickly and pretty easily because I can't think of a person who I'm really close to and love dearly. who also holds those beliefs i think if i did it would it would really really throw me for a loop because then i would have to be really considering realistically the way a lot of our listeners do that there are people that you love and that you know are good people who are just so um kind of like turned around on this thing and then it's like how do you how do you continue to relate i mean this is a conversation that's been going on since the guy got elected like how do you basically maintain a relationship with people who think that this is okay or who even are supporting it but i i guess i'm just calling out my privilege i'm checking my privilege on the fact that i i luckily haven't had to haven't had to think about that too much i just again i where i'm going with this right now on this tuesday with zero results back in with zero time tsk with zero time spent kornacki um what i'm what i'm thinking is time spent kissing i got excited well there's two cases time spent kissing kornacki i i keep going back to what i think of as the fundamentals of an election like this and it has to do with things like money well kamala harris had more money ground game all reports are all indications are that the the ground game for democrats has been much much better much more robust much more disciplined and that like uh you know in places like pennsylvania there have just been thousands and thousands of people out doing the hard work of knocking on doors and calling people and organizing and i just i i guess where i'm choosing to take i'm choosing to take my anxiety andrew that we all feel and just bundle ruski it into

a little ball and just chuck it right out of the...

the stadium like Andy Reid like Andy Reid at that pitch pass and punt competition I choose to punt it right out of the stadium and just go like you know what we're fucking gonna be fine like I really I mean look we're gonna be here tomorrow and we're gonna know a lot more we may not know the full answer we'll have some sense of things I think and again I'll either be the happiest boy in town or I will be in a tough, tough spot for having gone out on this limb, but I guess, I don't know, that's how I'm feeling, that's how I feel today, I sure hope I feel this way tomorrow.

Yeah, and I just want to reiterate, and there's no purpose for you to try to twist yourself into feeling any other way, you're not doing the world any good by trying to be more pessimistic than what you're feeling, I'm glad you're feeling good.

I just still have, like you and like everyone else, that 2016 trauma, and that general kind of thing that liberal thing of like if we ever for one second take a breath and think things are going to be okay then we're just setting ourselves up for a crash you know and and i know that's like the instinct a lot of us have i i sort of have it but i just i can't shake this feeling that it's going to be okay and so i don't know if somebody needs to hear that look it might here's i guess here's what i'll say before we go thank the donors i can't shake this feeling that's going to be okay Now, could it be not okay tomorrow? Yes. Well, let's deal with that tomorrow.

Yeah, right.

That's, I guess, what I'm trying to say. Right now, I feel okay. And I feel like I trust the good-hearted people of this country to stand up and make a difference. And I feel okay. And like I said, it might be not okay tomorrow, but let's just deal with that tomorrow or Thursday or whatever. For right now, I feel okay. And I'm hoping that maybe somebody out there who's hearing this, that maybe that like helps their little like, you know, barometer there and their their internal, you know, what is it? The RPMs kind of go down a little bit, because, again, if it's screwed up tomorrow, it's going to be screwed up and we'll just start, you know, we'll start digging out then for today. Let's all try to, like, take be nice to ourselves, be nice to the people we love, take care of ourselves and and just take a breath. I guess what I'm trying to say.

And apparently they're saying that Myles Garrett probably won't be traded.

Thank you for being a 10. All right. Let's thank some donors. These folks are supporting TBTL through good, through bad, through correct, and even what may turn out to be incorrect prognostication. The Douglas Del Paggios of the world in San Francisco, California, are here for it.

You know what? Douglas has got my vote. Thank you, Douglas. And you know what? We had Douglas's vote of confidence that we would be here. I stand with Douglas. That's right. And Douglas stands with us. Thank you.

And thanks also to Morgan Madison, who's in Seattle, Washington. Hey, Morgan. Thanks, Morgan. Thank you so much.

Appreciate you. Susan. Maybe I'll see you at the ballot box.

Yeah, except they don't. Oh, the ballot box where you drop it.

Yeah. Sure.

Oh, that was the thing, by the way, that the person at the county voting office said. I go, can I drop it in a box? She goes, not a mailbox, but a ballot box. I was like, yeah, okay, okay, got it. Thank you.

Oh, they said regular envelope is fine. Did we ever get closure on that?

Regular envelope is fine. Regular, I hope it was. Regular envelope is fine. But if I dropped it in just a random mailbox somewhere else, it might not get back to them in time. So I had to drop it in a ballot box.

Yep, that's what I always do. It's a nice little tradition. I don't know why I always wait until the last minute, but I do. So I'll be doing that today.

I bet you're going to feel so much better after you do that. I bet you. Like, it'll just feel like, okay, well, that's one person, one vote, but I, you know, did it. You know who else did it? And by that I mean supported TBTL, Gregory Murdoch of Kuna, Idaho.

Thank you, Gregory.

Kuna, Idaho. Sounds tropical. Sounds like it could be in the Hawaiian Islands, but it's in Idaho, and that's where Gregory is. Missy and Joe Boyle are in Watertown, Massachusetts. Oh, yeah, Waterton.

I don't know. That's got to be. Is it Waterton? You know, that I don't know. I said Waterton there to be a little bit goofy, but that actually is the part of the country where it would potentially be called Waterton. I think it's Watertown, but maybe it's Waterton. Is it near the water is the question?

It's landlocked. Uh-huh, sure. The Cobbler's children go without shoes. Always. Watertown goes without water. Well, thanks, Missy and Joe. And then Katie Isaac is in Seattle, Washington. Another ballot box friend who you're going to run into, Andrew.

Yeah, that's right. But also, can I ask you a question? Did I blank out for a second? Did we maybe accidentally forget to thank Susan Rotschafer of St. Paul, Minnesota?

Oh, did you do that? I did miss Susan and Andrew, much like the voting system.

where there are backstops, there are safety checks, there are people going back. I feel like election integrity is actually very strong in this country, and I feel like donor thank you integrity is very strong on TBTL because you're backstopping me there.

Well, my problem was I couldn't remember if we thanked her or if I just dreamed that we thanked her.

I was parallel parking in front of Susan, and it was very memorable. Susan, thank you, and thank you to all of our donors for making TBTL possible today of all days. We couldn't be here without you.

Hello, and welcome to Top Story.

All right, my friend. After my whole, I don't know what that was, but thing about the election, maybe a little amuse-bouche. Actually, maybe more of a little. Is amuse-bouche the thing that you have?

It's a palate cleanser, right?

Yeah, palate cleanser. I think amuse-bouche is like a little bite. I don't think it's a palate cleanser.

Oh, is it not? Is amuse-bouche something you have before dinner? You have a bouche. You have a bouche. Yeah, you bouche it. Our bite-sized complimentary hors d'oeuvres served before a meal.

But a palate cleanser is something more like a cracker. If you're, like, tasting wine, it kind of, like, neutralizes everything.

Is sorbet a palate cleanser? I think it is. We don't have time to get into this. Okay. Here's what I wanted, because I offered this up to you as an idea yesterday, because I discovered something over the weekend. Actually, you know what? Hat tip or shout-out. I prefer hat tips to shout-outs, because shout-outs can be loud. but just a nice little hat tip to our friend hannah brooks olsen um for hbo my my podcast co-host on the spotless podcast um told me about a word game you and i love word games we had a lot of fun a couple of weeks ago when we played wordle on the air together on that um that was a hit show infamously um difficult uh wordle day she told me about another game now this one is not even on an app yet it has not been um kind of uh requisitioned by the new york times i believe this is absorbed absorbed i believe this is still just an independent project and it is something called alpha guess can i tell you about alpha guess here for a second luke alpha guess beta guess how did i not see that joke coming um yes okay so we will call our version beta guess no this is i'm actually going to play this from the website here this is how it works luke you're just trying to guess the word of the day okay the people who created this and by the way i have this rigged so that we are playing yesterday's monday's edition okay so if you're somebody who already knows about alpha guests don't worry we're not spoiling tuesday's results this is actually

monday's results this is one of the things you do want to have rigged this right exactly we are not

stopping any steals um okay so the thing is the people who make this game just choose a word and they say this is our word of the day and we the contestants have to guess what the word is and we just start with totally a blank slate here luke and you're just going to give me you're going to play here and i'm just going to enter the words you're going to give me a word and unless out of all of the words in the english dictionary you somehow land on the word of the day which i think would be very unlikely for your first time out here. The game is going to say, that is not the word, but your word comes before or after that word in the alphabet. Or the word that we're looking for is either before that or after that in the alphabet. So you might want a pen and paper, because visually you might have trouble dealing with the alphabet. I sent this to a bunch of friends over the weekend, and somebody said, I didn't realize the alphabet was that hard. So anyway, give me...

You're talking to a guy who has to sing the alphabet song. Right. Anytime he's dealing with something that's in the middle of the alphabet, if it's west of C and east of X, I'm in real trouble.

My recommendation would be to start somewhere in the middle of the alphabet for your first guess. What do you want to do for your first guess?

I want my first guess to be kite. K-I-T-E. That's not in the middle.

That's stupid. No, that's in the middle third. Sure. Okay. Because you don't know where it's going to be. your word comes before kite so okay so that was going to be before ki it could still start with a k it could be ka or it could just start with a oh i see okay okay so i'll keep telling you each word you guess i'll tell you if the word we're looking for is before or after that in the

alphabet and eventually you're going to narrow it down okay so uh okay well then i guess the smart move is to split it so I'm going to go um uh french fry well those are two words but I'll go with okay I'm going to go france can I go proper are there proper names I think you can

do french let's see here french is a word it will hit how about yes um say fruit I just want to get to the f it comes before french so it's early in the alphabet okay okay um and is there do you know what the word is yet I don't know what the word is the thing is I do have visual clues it's you know It's going to be especially hard for you to do this without seeing it because the one thing the game does, it will start listing the words in alphabetical order either below or above the guessing box, which is sort of a good visual representation of where you are in the alphabet. So you're a little bit more challenged here by doing this.

Do I ever get a hint about the nature of the word?

Nope, it's just it comes before F. It comes before FR in the dictionary. Or it comes before FRE. It could be Franz, I guess.

All right. Is it, is the word, hold on a second, is the word castle, C-A-S-T-L-E, castle.

It comes after castle, so somewhere between C and F.

Okay. But it could be C or F. Yeah, is it, is the word dive?

D-I-V-E. D-I-V-E. Oh, you're narrowing it down. It comes before dive, so somewhere between castle and dive. So it's going to be a C or a D word.

It feels like we're playing one of those MASH games as a kid. You have 14 children. You live in a castle. You live in a mansion. You live in a mansion. Your car is a dive. What?

I swear if you grew up to Mary Christy Green, I'm going to be so mad.

Didn't you save her? Didn't that mean anything to her? So many times. What a hero. Okay. Okay. So it's after Castle but before Dive. So is it catapult? How do you? C-A-T-A-P-U-L-T.

Okay, it's after catapult.

Okay. Is it, let's see here. Let me try a day. Is the word day, is it D-A-Y?

Good thing. I was thinking you should start with a D-A word. Is it day? It comes before day.

Okay, so we're in the Cs. We're probably, or...

Although D-A-Y... It's pretty late in the A's. Is it dab?

Are we dabbing them up?

Dab? It comes before dab. Okay, you're looking at the C word.

I think we could, at this point, I think we could pretty much know that it's in the Cs.

It's after Castle. We'll call today's show the C word. Okay, okay, so after Castle... Isn't that the name of the boat on Arrested Development, only it's S-E-A? It sure is, the S-E-A.

and there's a whole scene where, remember, where they're talking about the C word and I think it's Michael thinks they're describing their mom

okay, sorry it feels good to laugh I realize that we're actually a little bit tight on time here

if I can solve this today, Andrew, it means all my predictions about the election will come true it's after catapult thank you, it's after catapult after catapult before dad Q-R-S-T-U Oh, okay. Well, let's see. Vowels. So it could be coal. It could be A-E-I-O-U. What would be U? Cut. Is it cut, C-U-T? C-U-T. It comes before cut. Okay, okay, okay. So the vowel is not going to be U. A-E-I-C. Is it city? Is it the word C-I-T-Y? City. It is after city. Okay, so it's after I, but before A, E, I, O. So it's going to be an O. Is it coal? C-O-A-L. C-O-A-L. It's after coal. Okay. Is it coat? C-O-A-T. That's getting pretty close. That T. Coat is still there. Yep. Okay, it's after coat?

Mm-hmm. It's after coat. Sorry, I said it's still there. That's not how.

I know what you mean, though. Is it comb? C-O-M-B. Comb. It's after comb, but before cut. After comb, but before cut So I feel like it's an O word That the It's an O word that the third letter Comes after M

Can I offer a suggestion? Because I don't know what the answer is What about cozy? I'll phone a friend Because that'll get you to the near the end of the O's

What about I have not entered that What was the wordle word that we hated? Comer? Is it corer? Put in corer

It is after Corer What if the word was Corer That would have And you don't believe in a dog

Alright it's after Corer Okay so So it's C-O Q-R-S-T What about cost? C-O-S-T C-O-S-T It's after cost And it's C-O Did I already try Cove? C-O-V-E.

No, you didn't. C-O-V-E. And I never put cozy in there either, just so you know. Cove. Cove. It's after Cove. How about cozy, Andrew? Oh, my God. Let's get cozy. Did you call it, dude? It's after cozy, my dude. What could be after? It might be in. early u it might be a c u something else how about curve c u r v e it's before curve isn't this fun

it is actually weirdly fun not for the listeners but i already feel my anxiety melting away okay so it's before curve so it's a c u what's that yeah yeah c u l t yes it's after cult oh my god

It's a C-U word. We know it's a C-U word, but it's got to come after cult, but before curve.

Cumin.

C-U-M-I-N. M-I-N? Cumin. For the win. It's after cumin.

Oh, my God.

I'll tell you what. We've already won, though, because so far we have not said anything out of order. I've played this game twice by myself, and I've put in words that aren't even in the right. You know what I mean? I've wasted turns by inserting stuff that I should have logically known comes later in the alphabet, but I just had a brain fart. But so far, we've been narrowing it down closer and closer. After Cumin, but before Curve. What about Cup? C-U-P, Cup. C-U-P. It's after Cup.

Pooper.

C-O... No, no, no, that was a Cooper Cup joke. Oh, oh, ha ha. Don't break your streak. Yeah, sorry, that would have been bad. Nothing bad happens to you if you do that. You just waste a turn. And it judges you by the end when you share your score by how many turns it took you, and also it times you. Apparently, we're up to about nine and a half minutes right now.

And we said curve.

It's before curve. It's before curve. I feel like it's in, but we know it's a CURSE. C-U-R-S-E, ladies and gentlemen. Is it CURSE? It is above CURSE. It is earlier than CURSE in the dictionary. CURT. C-U-R-T. C-U-R-T. No, wait. That would come after curse. We don't want to waste it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Let's see here. How about, let's see. Culmination would be too early. Could it be the filthiest word in the English dictionary? Oh, wait. No, no, no. It's after cup. It's after cup. Cupertino. I'm running out of CU words.

And it's got to be after C.U.R. or before C.U.R.? I'm losing a little bit of track.

It comes before Curse.

Okay. It comes before Curse. Okay.

But after Cup. So it's definitely a C.U.R. Okay. C.U.R. So it's either a P, a Q, or an R. Coquettish? Oh. Wow. No, that's C.O. Coquettish is C.O., right? Coquettish. Yeah. Why can't I think of CU words

So V is too late right Yes because it's got to be before And then what's too early what if we establish is too early I'm trying to make my own

So somewhere between cup and curse Okay I don't know what you're late for but we're making you late for it Is it a plane to Seattle Oh great That really raises the stakes here

This is supposed to be a de-stressing event I know now suddenly it's No, I will not rest until we've done this. So it's, let's see, L-M-N-O-P-Q-R. Oh, wow, it's such a narrow range.

That's what I'm saying. It's C-U-P-Q-R. That's why I said coquettish before.

How could there be something after cup? If cup is before it, can we add a letter? Would that make it further? Like if it's cups with a Z?

Yeah, how about cupboard? C-U-P-B-O, cupboard, right? Oh, yeah. Let's try cupboard. Cupboard, nice.

You got it. You got it. That was you, 100%, my friend. Jalapeno.

Jalapeno. You know you're a winner when you say, how about cupboard? Which is what I think I said first. That was so good. My brain was like, yeah, no, cupboard. Oh, my gosh. 22 guesses. 22 guesses. I don't know if that's a lot. It's probably a lot. I don't know. I shared this after Hannah showed it to me.

That's Andrew?

Andrew? Everybody on all of my various text chains for Wordle are now doing this. It's called Alpha Guest. If folks are into it, it's called Alpha Guest. And again, we just did Monday's Alpha Guest, so if you're interested in maybe a more diversion from today's election, go check out Alpha Guest. Again, it's not an app, it's a website. Andrew, that

was actually really exactly what I needed.

I appreciate you doing that. I'm glad you enjoyed that. I'm glad it worked on the radio, because I really enjoyed

that game. Well, that part I don't know. I know I enjoyed playing. I guess I'm sort of in the role of the listener here, because I couldn't see it. Yeah. No, that was a good, that was a needed distraction. So, all right. That's going to do it for today's show. But you will be unsurprised to hear that we will be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. So we'll see you then. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. Go democracy. And please remember, no mountain too tall. Good luck to all.

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