Muse

The goal of this meeting is to get everybody excited about their resolutions. Who's been good about their resolutions so far? Well, my goal was to learn a new word every single day, and I must say that it is going immensely. Creed, I noticed you don't have a resolution on the board. What's yours?

I want to do a cartwheel, but real casual. I can not make a big deal out of it, but I know everybody saw it. There's one stunning, gorgeous cartwheel.

How's it going?

I'm having a little trouble motivating.

One of the hardest parts about making resolutions is keeping them. In fact, most resolutions are abandoned by February.

Or sooner. It's not a joke.

But that's okay, because it's not about being perfect, it's about trying.

I said that I would eat more vegetables, and I haven't yet. But it's okay. I still have time. Since last year, I ate none. TBTL!

I saw a woman psychiatrist and she said it was OCD one cool dude and she understands the way I think right now and everything's cool everything's cool pathetic everybody's happy and I'm happy too

How drunk are you?

A lot to vary.

This is what happens when you hire two guys with a podcast.

Well, happy new year, everyone, and welcome to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, The show that just might be too beautiful to live. New year. New podcast where we are going to get to the topics that we promise we're going to get to in the show. We're not going to do like we did yesterday. What you have to remember is yesterday was 2024. It was a totally different show where we said we were going to go through a list of words that we use a lot on the show. And when we didn't, then we talked mostly about the film work of Gus Van Zandt. Today, though, because today is 2025, a whole new ballgame, my friends. And right over there, the guy who's going to help us do it, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships and for his getting to the point. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Copacetic was a word that was just used in that intro. Was that Macho Man Randy Savage? I can't remember. Yes. You sent me that tape, I believe. By the way, that was a recycled intro from last New Year's Day. I say that not to throw us under the bus only because I hadn't previewed it before playing it just now. I was like, oh, a New Year's Day intro. We'll use it. And then I realized we're kind of I don't know if the listener who wished us a Happy New Year from the other side of the globe really wants to wish us a Happy New Year this year as well. That was last year's greeting.

And I feel going into 2024 was a little different. I also feel like, funnily enough, Randy Macho Man Savage unintentionally channeled, I think, the emotional state of everyone going into 2025. If you hear him kind of deteriorating, him kind of trying to be, like, sort of evince this, like, you know, kind of vibe of being, like, a tough guy and everything was cool. But you can just hear the cracks forming in his resolve. I think that's the energy. Although I'm trying something new in 2025. I'm trying to have my hair be exactly like Conan O'Brien's.

You do have a big swirl there. I've got a pompadour today. I don't even have hair there. Look at me. I've got a little bit left. You can actually check your hair in the top of my head. It's so shiny.

I didn't put any gunk in my hair today. And what that means is over time, it gets Conan O'Brien's pretty hard. So that's what I'm bringing to 2025. That's my energy.

I'm looking at myself. I'm looking at the top of my pate here in the camera that we're using. And I honestly wish this tiny, this little bit of hair on the very front that's hanging on, I wish it would just let go. I don't want to shave it because that's odd. Go to the light. Just go to the light because it's like, it's not really hair there anymore. But by remaining, I have to manage it in some way. Then it starts to grow because it thinks it's still real hair. But it just looks bad.

It just doesn't know that most, it just doesn't know that most of it's, it's basically what it is, it's like that last Japanese guy fighting on an island somewhere in the Pacific. It doesn't realize that it's, generally speaking, kind of lost the war. I'm just using your words there.

No, no, no, no. I'm, yeah, just like, I just want to, just like, shh, let go. Let go. It's okay to let go. You've given it your all. You've given it 48 years. It's okay to let go.

I think actually, you know, I would say that the way that your hair is kind of leaving parts of your head is actually a nice it's the nicer version

version of there's a few versions a few ways it can go but I think it's I think I don't know how to say this without sounding either patronizing or like I'm insulting other people who've had their hair leave in a different way but like I think you wear it well I don't think it like

well you should mention the listeners who can't see me that I started losing it at the back of my neck first and it's crawling forward from there so it's well I thought it was weird how

you had sideburns behind your ears did you come up with that that wouldn't be the first time

That wouldn't be the first time you stole a Stephen Wright joke.

Oh, my God. That's so – I did not even realize how much I was walking into a Stephen Wright plagiarism spoof. But, boy, you got me. The first good spoof of 2025 goes down in the Andrew Walsh column.

There we go. All right. Should we remind people? Because we probably – I'm guessing that as the calendar page turned and we're looking at a new year, I assume we have a whole bunch of new listeners today. Is that how podcasting works?

I believe so, yeah. A ton of people have migrated over. A lot of people's New Year's resolution was to listen to a podcast that's very boutique.

Yes. Okay, so good. So let me catch people up from where we were. TBTL was started in 2008 as a radio show. Well, you've got to go back before that.

Because Jen Andrews and I had known each other for years. Starting with when she was a producer for Curtis Sliwa's The Guardian Angels show on W, I think it was WABC in New York. That was where she got her start in radio. And when did you start thinking about radio? Oh, very early, Andrew.

What are some of your earliest experiences? I mean, because we've got a lot of them.

Of course, I'm thinking about, you know, listening to Bruce Williams' show TalkNet in the middle of the night because I was worried I was going to overhear my parents having sex. That was a pretty formative time for me. I used to listen to the Top 8 at 8, and I would call in, and I would do a Ronald Reagan impression. Richard Belzer isn't the only one with a bad Ronald Reagan impression, Andrew. I would call in, and Chet Buchanan would answer the phones. He was the DJ. It was novel that this second grader called into the party line to do a Ronald Reagan impression, but the problem is I didn't have any material. I just had, well, so that was, and I remember him saying, hey, like he said something like, you got to kind of like, hey man, you know, great that you're calling him, but you got to, and I remember he, I don't know how I, I mean, I guess I know this through kind of retroactive stuff, Andrew, which is what I know was happening was during the commercial breaks and during the songs and during when he wasn't on the air, this guy was recording these calls under reel to reel tape. Because you would call in And it would ring and ring and ring I mean, first of all, you'd get a busy signal But if you got lucky and it started ringing You were like, oh my god It's ringing And then you'd hear that sound Of like you're being patched Not onto the air, but being patched through the board And then he'd say Like, K-Hit And then he'd be like, hi, I want to say something on the party line Okay, hold on, what's your name? Alright, where are you calling from? Okay, hang on Again, I don't know, I wouldn't have at this time identified it but what he was doing was starting a reel-to-reel tape that he was recording me on, and then he was going to edit that down later. And I got my Ronald Reagan impression on once, and then the second time, I think he was like, you've got to have some material. Like Belzer did, talking about, Nancy, don't forget my diapers. That would have killed.

That would have killed. Incontinence joke about Ronald Reagan. That would have killed. I used to be on the other side of that when I worked on this folk show, and it was public radio, but it was a little bit of a wacky vibe for public radio, I think it was this folk show on WKSU hosted by Jim Bloom and his sort of crew of student employees like me and Adam and some other folks who work there. And what he would do is he would put out a trivia question for the listeners and then he would put on, you know, like maybe a long song by Emmylou Harris or something like that. And then he would run into the tiny little booth and then a producer like me would be in there. sometimes we the producers would just take the calls and then and then like uh splice together a bunch of people giving wrong answers until we get to the right one sometimes jim would run in and we would just sort of engineer it with him or be there and he would like take it because people would love it if he picked up the phone right and then we would do that and then then we had that was one of my earliest like really quick turnaround things then you'd grab this tape and then by the time the emilu harris song was over or maybe the um god i wish i could i wish i could drop more he was always like that era late 90s um folk music um but uh he would he would put on another track and then we'd come rushing in like jim it's ready and i think we started doing it right at the ad maybe right as tape was going away to kind of international oh no bail a fleck we bail a fleck what about the fleck tones

probably got left they know they were all very well represented on the WKSU folk show with Jim Bloom I promise but all the point of that all is by the way new listeners we don't talk about

Bela Fleck that much I just want to like level set for 2025 if you're tuning in this is you

generally shows much hipper than this so um then TBTL became a podcast then I joined the show and here we are and what we started doing yesterday was um we went through we started to go through list sent in by listener kristin from thunder bay ontario who has been keeping track of some interesting just vocabulary words that apparently we tossed out during a year's worth of episodes in 2024 remember 2024 feels like forever ago it was yesterday andrew and uh we went through a bunch of the lists yesterday we got through celerity i know and rosh i really i missed my chance yesterday to say see you next year that's a real missed opportunity that's like that's that's the equivalent of calling somebody a short timer once they put in their notice there's just something about the guy hey short timer don't call me that is there anything better than putting in your

notice is there anything better than walking back to your desk at the job you don't like when you have put your notice in and how radically that reframes how you feel about the place yes exactly this is a sort of i think it's a pretty simple principle of the psychology of being a human which is the reason that bad experiences feel so bad to us is because somewhere in our brain, our brain says, well, this is just the state of affairs indefinitely. This is forever now. And that's a horrible feeling, including a job that you don't like. And then as soon as you are, no, I have this for 14 more days. It's like, I could do this for the rest of my life, 14 days at a time, as long as I only had 14 more days.

Right, right, right. And also there's a certain level of, you know, you could have your boss say to you, who do we have booked for the B segment? And you could just say, I don't know, Todd. Who do you have for the B segment?

Don't bring Todd Munt into this.

In this case, by the way, in this scenario, I am working for Todd Munt. He's looking for a guest who can analyze some of the later works of Bela Fleck once he left the Flecktones.

There is like one listener being so super served by that joke.

I am this close to making a thistle and shamrock reference that will kill. Fiona Ritchie. Okay. All right. Okay. So back to the list. I'm going to say, I think I'm going to, the word number three, we've got all the way through celerity in Russia.

Is words by dugs? Should we use that show title?

Words by dugs?

We have to work in some kind of doug reference today. We've got to get doug in there. Today could be words by dugs.

Okay. Words by dummies. All right. So the third word on the list, I'm going to say, I'm going to maybe kind of pass through this one quickly. The word is quell. I think quell is a word. Oh, I know that. That's a bit of a qualm. That's a qualm word, right?

Well, what's the qualm in usage? No, I know why quell is circled.

Why?

Because it is a Waxahachie lyric that grinds my gears. Oh, okay. And I brought this up on the show. It's that song, Swallow My Pride, It's Mine to Quell. I put you through hell. I put you through hell. it's for me the only miss on an on a record of otherwise otani levels of home runnage that's that that album is saint cloud by waxahatchie i think it's a phenomenal uh and i love it so much and it's just the fact that she says uh swallow my pride it's mine to quell i put you

through hell i don't i did not i did not like the ending that's how much you live in my head i will be hearing a song potentially for the first time and if i hear a cringy rhyme like oh you're only using that word because it rhymed i think like oh don't play this for luke good my work here is done well not he will not put up with that great recall on that by the way i'm glad we didn't

totally skip that's how that's how angry i am about that word in that song okay now this next

one i don't think i'm familiar with this i mean i'm pretty sure that these are all words that

you brought to the table i'm guessing panopticon oh yeah sure tell me panopticon well Well, it was an idea of incarceration where one guard could keep eyes on everyone, basically on all of the inmates. So I believe a Panopticon design would be the guard tower in the middle and then a circle, and you could keep eyes on all of the inmates at once. And I think it was—I wonder—I don't know exactly why I would have brought it up, but I think that's what Panopticon is.

And you were doing some reporting for CBS about prison stuff. You know, that reminds me. Have you ever toured that famous prison in Philadelphia, right in the heart of Philadelphia? And it's it is a it's like an octagon, essentially. And I don't know why it's so famous or infamous, but you can take tours of it. Let's see here.

I don't think I've been to one in downtown Philly.

Maybe I say downtown. Maybe it's, I don't know if it's technically downtown, but it's like in the city. Let's see here. Famous prison. Yeah, Eastern State.

Yeah, I've been to Eastern State. Okay.

Is that not in the city? I thought that was in the city. No, no, it is. You're right. I'm looking at it. No, you're absolutely right. In the Fairmont section of the city, it says.

Yeah, no, definitely. No, you're right. I visited that. Carrie and I went to that place. Did you? years ago and it's there yeah it's a very um yeah it's it's i mean the the it's chilling it is chilling because i i think i think it was now this is where i start off with one fact that i'm mildly able to grasp which is like the panopticon and then i start rapidly going into territory that i don't know much about but there you know there has been these sort of movements in how um in how we incarcerate people and i believe that eastern state was one of the first or at least whatever was there maybe even before eastern state the there was this sort of um idea of incarceration where you isolated a person and that hadn't really been done before and the idea was that by isolating someone they would have to think about what they had done wrong and then they would mend their ways but of course it just is psychologically super damaging to people to do that and i think that that that particular school of incarceration that theory of incarceration maybe in the u.s kind of got its start in pennsylvania maybe even at whatever became eastern

state it is eastern state is a panopticon um so i'm looking this up now and i'm also well i'm trying to type and talk at the same time but i'm also realizing something incredibly ironic about what we're doing with this word list so what we were supposed to do what we had planned on doing was spending a few days around the holidays talking about the top stories that we never got to yeah on tbtl in 2024 last year uh see you next year um no god you got me what i'm doing it's short timer what i'm doing instead or what we're doing instead is probably rehashing the conversations that sidetracked us so that we Like, not only are we not doing the top stories that we missed.

We're redoing the few boring things that we did.

We're redoing the bullshit that kept us from doing the top stories.

We should be probably isolated. We should be put somewhere alone where we can't keep hurting people with this content.

There are more good words on this list, so I will soldier forward. Thank you. How about abrogate? Abrogate.

To abrogate a treaty, right? I couldn't tell you why it came up, but I think to abrogate, you know, So it's basically like not keep your word. Abrogate.

To repeal or do away with a law or a right or a formal agreement or to evade a responsibility or a duty. We believe the board is abrogating its responsibilities to its shareholders. Abrogate. So I think you were pretty close.

I mean, it's ironic that growing up, there was a term that we would use that I would never use now to sort of indicate, oh, you gave me something, but now you're taking it back or you're changing the terms of this. Oh, yeah. And my read on that as a kid who knew nothing about the horrible history of this country was, oh, that was something that Native Americans did. They would give you something and take it back. That was where my brain filed it. and if you couldn't have a more opposite actual history like is that when you heard that term as a kid that was i'm guessing that's what you also imagined right well yeah i mean i guess i to the

degree that i would have examined it at all i just knew that as a phrase i think i mean it was still even the common usage like i think wasn't there a whole thing about i think there's a really there is an episode of seinfeld there are several episodes of seinfeld that don't hold up and i think that is one that really doesn't hold up i think you're right that was hanging around in the culture for way too long yeah and I think like Jerry Seinfeld Genevieve was talking about this recently I don't know if she happened to stumble on it or because Jerry Seinfeld had been sort of talking about you know pushing the boundaries of comedy and political correctness and everything like that but she brought it up she's like this there's this episode where and then he is like I think he's maybe dating a Native American woman and they go to a cigar shop and there's like the the statue and like and he keeps leaning into it and they he does like like noises with with his mom like all all the stuff i mean it's again it's just it's it's not only is it just

deeply offensive but it's so deeply the opposite of what happened unless yeah yeah going back to your point yes and maybe maybe look if you look into the history of it maybe the first i doubt it though knowing knowing what i know about this country i was going to say maybe the person who came up with it was trying to point out the fact that we kept abrogating our agreements with you know native americans in this country um and and And that's what the reference was. But I doubt it. I highly doubt that. Knowing how infrequently what we're doing is on the right side of history in this country, I doubt it.

Yeah, I mean, that would be asking a lot. It's like just one woke person in 1801.

But also decided to try to also keep it pretty racist while being woke.

Yeah, let's see here. It says that that phrase originated in the 1700s. but I trace it back to the roots to at least the 1700s. Anyway, I was reading off of NPR there, but I am not going to read that cold anymore. That seems like a dangerous game to play, Dano. It sure does, my friend, but that's abrogation. And you know what we just did? Actually, we played right into this list because we didn't say specifically the phrase we were talking about. We alluded to it. That is the next word on the list. Hi, Marge Alluders. What'd you say?

My friend Caitlin Duffy is listening right now. That was for you. I don't know why everything comes back to reel-to-reel tape on the show today, Andrew.

Did she sling caps with you?

No, that was my friend Kathleen Bowman, rest in power. I always ask. But one of the jobs I had when I was the work-study student for the weekday program on KUOW was helping edit commentaries. So on this local show, they had these commentaries. By the way, it was a good idea. Somebody should bring it back. It was interesting. It was, you know, instead of a commentary in the newspaper, it was a commentary on the radio. And there were different interesting locals who came in that were just regular people. one was a guy named jeff sadiki and he would come in and i believe he was originally i'm not going to guess at the country but he was from somewhere outside the u.s and he had that perspective and he would come in and he would so you'd write this op-ed op-ed piece i guess you'd call it or editorial yeah then they would vet it a little bit commentary and then you would record it on a reel-to-reel tape and then my job would be to like like get rid of the very you know the like basically whatever wasn't the commentary before and after but one of the commentary commentators was this very kind of brassy um lady from somewhere in i i feel like she was culturally edmunds andrew and her name was marge looters and she would say i'm marge looters that was how she would i believe that's how she would either start or end her pieces i'm marge looters and caitlin and I used to just say that to each other all the time to just make each other laugh in the offices of KUW. I'm Marge Looters. And so when you said allude, I made a Marge Looters job. I see.

Okay, so that wasn't for me. I'm not a fool for not catching that one. I want to say, though, that I did similar stuff. We had commentators who'd come into WKSU, one of whom was Harvey Pekar. He was somebody. Now, Harvey Pekar was a pretty big name. Now, that's a big get. When he was coming in, I don't think, I mean, I might have done a little bit of editing or heads and tailing some of his stuff but i remember i think a woman named betsy um usually i'd maybe betsy was the one who sort of brought him on board by doing like sort of occasional commentaries on wksu but i know that he was handled a little bit differently because he was such a big name and maybe it was betsy's connection so i think she produced those and i was a student but we had a bunch of other people who would come in and record those those commentaries as well i remember feeling a great deal of responsibility when i was tasked with those

I'll tell you I believe Marge Luter's time at KUOW Has lost to history Because when I'm googling that Have you ever gotten to the end of the internet?

Yes I have

Where there's a devil that's fishing?

Oh yeah on Google Yes yes why does it have horns?

I don't know I just got that guy I mean that's upsetting That's like you got to the absolute edge of the universe And you peered over

You must have used quotes or something I don't know if I

I'm trying to type in As we say, I'm trying to type and talk, but I put in Marge Luter's K-U-O-W commentary, and I just got, I got, I got like the devil fishing. I got that weird monster fishing. So anyway, I'm pretty sure it happened. Okay.

Okay. I have another good one here. This is a, this is now, this is interesting, Luke. Now this, this is interesting. Is interesting. The next word, I put air quotes around that. The next word on the list is scoogling, S-C-O-O-G-L-I-N-G. Does that ring any bells to you at all?

No. It makes me wonder. I mean, we were just talking about Googling. Is it Google? Do you know what that word is?

Do me a favor. Do me a solid. Google the word scoogling, S-C-O-O-G-L-I-N-G. Nothing else, just scoogling and tell me what the first result is for you. Oh.

Ha-ha. Ha-ha. Ah, episode 4,207 in a collector series featuring a photo of Dan Wilson.

Exactly.

Current Mariners manager Dan Wilson.

That's right. And this was from May before he was named a mid-season replacement for Scott Service. Episode 4,207, the only thing that the internet has on Scoogling is our show, which we titled Scoogling. It must have been a word that we came up with. And I love the fact that it's a young, fresh-faced Dan Wilson with a bat literally over his shoulder from probably an old baseball card.

Fresh out of the University of Minnesota.

Oh, I love it so much. And the description here is Andrew realizes he has some verbal tics that he really needs to eliminate from his vocabulary. Meanwhile, Luke is floored by something that his parents did with their lattes this morning, which I don't know that one. Do you have any idea what that is?

So I wonder if they were at my house on that day.

they might have been and floored

I mean almost nothing from them floors me anymore

what do they do to them with their lattes

with their lattes were they making out I can't those two I wouldn't put it past them seriously get a room but I mean one thing I can't imagine that this would have floored me but one thing that i do know that they are like weirdly obsessed with is they i don't know which one of them started this probably my mom but my dad my dad now does it religiously when he's just here by himself in the morning is when so i'm brewing up a pot of coffee and my dad always microwaves a cup of water and then dumps the water out and then puts his coffee in the cup i think because the theory is it warms your cup up in some way that then your cup will keep the coffee warmer longer. I don't know about the thermodynamics of all of this. But what I know is that both of them, it is like their number one life hack. And they love doing it. And it's kind of what gets them out of bed in the morning. So for that, I'm grateful. I don't really know how much of an impact it has. You also might just get an insulated cup or thermos or something. But I don't think that's what would have been flooring me. I wonder what they were doing.

I don't know. I mean, do you want to, I mean, this is a very dangerous game, but we could just try, like, let's try three needle drops in a row.

That's all I'll allow, because every one of these takes 5% off of my battery for the rest of my life.

Yeah, okay, so this is not counting as a needle drop. Let's just hear what the intro tape was. Wait, five, six, seven, eight. Okay, so it begins with outside bones, and now I am going to, let's see here, fast forward to about 15 minutes.

Does this mean, well, actually, that doesn't make any sense. Does this mean Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Is now leading 2025 in terms of tape But that's not true Because we had different intro tape

This is 1504 into the episode

I did not notice Anything out of the ordinary About that conversation And I was very in favor Of putting it up on the internet Because I thought it was A nice little moment Which you said it's doing some decent traffic

Now this is what it sounds like to me it sounds like I'm beating we you and I have a certain rhythm this sounds like you talking me out of beating myself up over something I said or did and published on the internet oh yeah okay yeah that's what that sounds like and that's I hear that and then the fact that Andrew realizes he has some verbal tics it sounds like I was having a bad Andrew day um I am now so that was one needle drop I am gonna fast forward to I feel like whatever your parents were doing I feel like it comes after the break but i'm just going to go ahead maybe like 11 minutes here 12 minutes at 27

mark people i know they were just on anna maria island in florida with their friends cliff and cindy this is them they had the time of their life like they are very happy people and they very much enjoy being alive and they very much enjoy being together so all of this is kind of a gift but i would you couldn't pay me enough to have their life okay that was our second needle

drop we are close you're in the area do you think i go forward or backwards from here we only have

one more chance to figure out once and for all i think backwards i think it started with me

saying you're not going to believe what my parents did with their coffee okay so you tell me you guide me i first needle drop was at 15 that was me beating myself up and we think i just fast forwarded uh to 27 you want me to back up to what 21 ish i would say 22 22 would you settle for 21 49 yes 21 49 i don't know why i'm closing my eyes daddy daddy needs a new pair of shoes why does this feel so important to me right now it really does to me also we're never gonna figure

what scoogling meant the milk and deemed it to be not great but still consumable until though it had said when you steam it it really releases there it is okay sorry there it is we

got to it so your parents were using old milk but steaming it to get the devils out to get the

demons out of this steam off the whatever the what happens when milk goes bad there you wow Andrew, that was such a good—I want to smoke a cigarette right now.

Yeah, but what is scoogling?

I don't even care anymore, dude. I can't believe that actually worked. First of all, that was a really good call on your part. Great producing, great producer mind there.

The three-needle-drop system.

Yeah, I mean, that really worked. And I'm also glad, by the way, that you went back to 2147. 22 might have been too late. We really might have needed that 13 seconds.

You're right. That was really important.

I mean, what if we would have missed it by 12 seconds and then we just would never know? I would go through the rest of my day in just a state. Instead, I have the complete relief of knowing what I was shocked by, and it was them using milk or half and half that was essentially had curdled.

Now, let's have a little editorial meeting on the air here, okay? So we've been recording for a little bit over a half hour now. And I know that we needed to keep things a bit short today.

Yeah.

So here's what we can do. I'm wildly hungover. I could. I can barely get it. Every word is tortured. You still have that lampshade on your head. It's funny that I didn't mention this at the beginning of the show when we were talking about my bald head. Like you are wearing sort of, you're sort of half wearing these glasses that say 20-24 on them. But they're only hooked on one ear. Your eyes are literal spirals Yes Spirals as you look at me right now

Yeah, no, it's honestly It was a pretty crazy night And I can't I've basically expended about all the gas I have in my tail

Oh, he's shaking confetti Out of his suit jacket

I'm definitely what has been described as a rolling 08 Legally, I'm not allowed to drive this morning Okay, because even though I'm not consuming My blood system is still poisoned

Okay, so here's what I think we should do. It is a holiday. We should get out of here. We shouldn't even be here today. We have more than half of this list to go through. Would you like to continue this game? Yes, I would love this. Okay, I'm having a good time. I just don't want to.

Even though you did point out. You did point out.

The ultimate irony.

The ultimate irony that is just, it's rich, Andrew. It's rich that not only are we not finishing conversations that we should have finished a long time ago, we're redoing conversations that we shouldn't have done a long time ago happy new year yeah

thank you for being a tan

we simply have to thank some of our donors today these are the incredible generous kind folks that are keeping tbtl in existence with their voluntary financial donation this is this is how we're able to do the show. It's because of people like Andrew. Are you sitting down? Yeah.

Steve Nelson. Steve Nelson.

Our old boss. Steve Nelson of St. Paul, Minnesota. But for the new listeners who are just joining us as part of 2025, this is the person who hired us, who somehow convinced his bosses that they should create two full-time staff positions for me and Andrew and got us over there working at American Public Media for many years, which was a great thing for us. It allowed Andrew to come be a full-time employee of the show. It was a wonderful time. And now that person, Steve Nelson, and has been for now many years, is donating to the program. Just phenomenal stuff.

Something stands out in my head about that that I was just thinking about the other day. I had an issue a couple weeks ago getting an episode of TBTL posted because of some issue with the service provider we use. It was technical times. And so I had to do this thing that I do every once in a while. I had to write to the company that hosts our podcast. and say, hey, we're having an issue here. Today's show isn't posting. And I keep on checking the feed, and I realize that the show that I was posting didn't have a particularly objectionable title, but the one the day before was Farts All the Way Down. And I feel like any time... I love it.

You need to reach out to a technical person. Back when we were at 8 p.m. or now that I'm reaching out to this third party about it, I'm like, hey, we're having an issue. Yes, we're the podcast where yesterday's show was called Farts All the Way Down. And do you remember when Steve Nelson was sort of in the negotiating phase of getting us on board? He wanted to bring us on board, but he had bosses he had to answer to, and they had bosses they had to answer to. And he was kind of passing around TBTL links saying, hey, listen to the show. and one of his colleagues potentially one of his bosses the show that we posted that day we were

still independent but we posted a show we were courting them we were hoping that they would

decide that this was uh worth doing and i can't remember if it was in the show title or i think it might have just been the intro tape was like 110 percent fart based and he was just like can he have this conversation we're having like these kind of like private meetings he's like guys you're kind of you're kind of killing me here like i listened to my colleague in the next cubicle

was it the show that we titled in the fart was it was it the show we titled in fart in fart net guest

that should be today's show title but that seems a little bit i mean nobody can tell us no andrew maybe john scoff yeah um but anyway i actually texted you know i texted steve and the stew bot

a couple of weeks ago because yeah there was a monday night game and it was the uh the minnesota vikings were playing and they came back this is like in the fourth quarter they came back to the stadium and there was just a shot of three guys sitting with each other one guy in a green bay uniform jersey one guy in a seahawks jersey and seahawks hat and then another guy in minnesota vikings gear and i said it's when the three of us go to the game yeah right so that was that was

Steve Nelson, the stew bot, and the real Norm Charlton.

That's it.

And it was nice to check in with you guys. Thank you, Steve, so much. We really appreciate it. Thanks also to Dave Austin in Snohomish, Washington. Dave was my boss at the plumbing company. Oh, really? And vouched for me. No. I just think it would be amazing if every person today had once been my employer or my boss.

I used to cover the copy desk for Emily Lind in Mounds View, Minnesota. I don't know if you know that. Look at this two Minnesotas.

What do you think they can see from where Emily lives?

Probably like the mound. I don't know. Can you see the mound, or do you have to be on the mound in order to get the view?

Yeah, are you on the mound, and the view you have is because you're – I mean, that would actually make sense, right? If I know anything about mounds, it's better to be on the – some days you're the mound, some days you're the view.

That's the one thing you know about mounds is that someday you're the mound.

No, I know that if you're standing on it, you have a better view than if you're standing next to the mound.

No, that's definitely true. If you're standing behind the mound, you have kind of a terrible view, unless you just love the view of mounds.

Now, Craig Berenger knows all about the work of Marge Looters, who I think was culturally from Edmonds, Washington, which is also where Craig Berenger is from.

Thank you so much, Craig. By the way, I don't think it came from Craig, but a while back I got a very sweet email from one of our listeners in Edmonds. That subject line was culturally Edmonds, and it was a guide. It was like, please come spend more time in Edmonds. And it was a Michelin guide to all of the places I need to go in Edmonds with links and background. I love it. And I'm not joking. I think about this email a lot. I really got to get over there and spend more time there.

There is absolutely no good reason to not be spending more time in Edmonds, Washington. I mean, it's just absolutely as idyllic as can be. Right there on the water, great restaurants, great people, Rick Steves sightings. I mean, probably, if you're lucky, a Craig Berenger sighting. Hopefully. It's the place to be. It's almost like the Eugene, Oregon of the Pacific Northwest, which, of course, is where Heidi San is. Eugene, Oregon. Yes. Thank you, Heidi. I'm going to be running a half marathon, I believe, in Eugene, Oregon this spring. Really? I got roped into this deal. Becca and I are going to try to run one half marathon every month for the entire 2025. Okay.

So that's like, what is that like between eight and 13 miles? Okay. No, no, no. How many is that? That's 12. One a month? Okay. That's 12. One a month. Okay.

12 of them. Oh, okay. We'll see.

So it's a leap year? I don't know. I'm not going to math.

Leap year William?

Mm-hmm.

Anyway, so one of them happens to be in Eugene. And I guess the sales pitch is, well, first of all, Eugene, I mean, that's Tracktown, USA. That's where all the University of Oregon is and the Nike stuff. Yes. If you stay in the, what's the hotel that we love? Not the college inn, but the Graduate Inn. University Inn?

Or the Graduate. Oh, yeah.

If you stay at the Graduate Inn, Eugene, it's all track stuff, you know, like the one in the, the one in. And Seattle is UW-associated. This one is associated with the University of Oregon. And it's a very fun, cool hotel. And they've got, like, in some of the rooms, like, a waffle iron statue. Because, famously, that was the first thing they used to make the kind of Nike running shoe soles. They kind of cooked them in a waffle iron to get that distinctive shape, that waffling of the sole or something.

They should just put a working waffle iron in the room.

I mean, that actually, honestly, would probably taste better, be more useful. But anyway, that's where Heidi is down there in Eugene, Oregon. And then Scott Pomptier is in Paulsbo, Washington. Do you remember when we went to that Mexican restaurant in Paulsbo, Washington? I do. And I believe we were trying to watch the Mariners low-key, right?

Yes, that's right. Because we were doing our fun drive week, which was a very busy, stressful week. But then we blew some steam off there in the bar section of a Mexican restaurant. I believe I had one of those margaritas. there john sclora i love those margaritas that are like not you know i mean listen i like a real good margarita that's not made from mix obviously that's the ideal but sometimes you just go to one of those places you get your refried beans and and orangish rice and you get a margarita bowl that you can just like jump into dive in like you're in a busby berkeley production you're

esther williams exactly like i uh oh man there is yeah there's just a certain kind of extremely predictable mexico quote-unquote mexican food that i just sometimes i just crave it like you wouldn't believe i believe that was also a night where i don't know if it was that night or maybe it was at some point in that week and that was a big week for us right because we were this was that was our first independent week we were broadcasting from my parents basement yep you

me and john got an airbnb somewhat nearby um genevieve came and spent some time with us that

was also the trip where my mom because we all had to leave on friday to go to our various places but we had the airbnb for one more night that was i believe the week where my mom then stayed at the airbnb randomly because she was like hey free airbnb one extra night and i think it was a little

bit i think it was a little bit of a tussle to figuring out if for your parents to figure out if they were both on the same page with that plan, if I recall.

I believe that was part of the case. I believe also that my mom called me in a panic because she could not figure out how to lock the door upon leaving. Join the club. There was something where I feel like I was on the phone with Airbnb help or Vacasa help or whoever it was. And it was a classic kind of experience with my mom, which is like no good deed goes unpunished. Because it was like now suddenly it's a Saturday and I'm like panic calling Vacasa because I don't want us to get charged because of, like, a situation. And, by the way, she never went to the rummage sale she was going to go to that was in Poulsbo because the line was too long.

Oh, to get into the rummage sale the line was too long?

Yeah, she drove. She said she was driving. Her whole thing was, I'm going to stay over, and then I'm going to get up the next morning and I'm going to go to this really good rummage sale in Poulsbo. And then there was just a line of cars going into the parking lot, and she just said, nope. Oh, wow.

I kind of respect that. God, I hate a line.

You know who was one of the people there? Scott Pomptier. Yeah, in Polsbo. No, but he was at the rummage sale. He was taking up space.

So if he hadn't showed up, your mom might have had the perfect weekend, is what you're saying. She got pretty close, though.

I'm sure she enjoyed going. She probably went and put her feet in the water, which was very cold, I believe.

Genevieve's the same way. If she's anywhere near water, she has to be at least partially in it.

absolutely my mom if there is if there's water she's going to be in it and does not matter the temperature um and i you know addy got that from her really at least when addy was little i remember times where like when we were living in la we'd go to the beach and you know people think southern cal like it's uh you know it's it's it's warm all the time the water can be pretty cold if you're talking the middle of winter i remember once it was a red tide so the water was i don't think was on safety right isn't that that's algae bloom but i remember it was a cold sunday morning like windy and also a tinge of a red tide and this kid's just bouncing around in the waves happy as a freaking seal and i thought you are your grandmother's granddaughter i was that way when

i was a kid when i was a young person a very young person well one young person despite the um despite needing glasses well you know that's a funny story for another day no uh there was there was a period of time where my family went to vacation for the same like we had we took some pretty nice long vacations down to florida and our family would drive down there from ohio and then spend a week in your minivan right that had blinds it was a van van it was a conversion van and it did have blinds and it had a vcr and a little tiny mini tube television uh we're a little spoiled but anyway pretty slick we shared it i think we shared that van with another family with my uh my uncle and his family like my dad and my uncle kind of shared that van so it'd go between the two but anyway um we would uh drive that down to florida and i think there were three years in a row that around i think it was siesta key i want to say somewhere maybe near sarasota i believe siesta key might have just

come in for some unfortunate weather or something either you've just talked about it a lot or i have the name siesta key at the front of my brain i know that i've mentioned it before and it's just

like such splendid childhood memories of just such a because we would leave in the winter time and then we would show up in um florida and i remember the whole area smelled like oh i finally as an adult learned what they were they were these tiny white flowers they were some kind of the tiny little jasmine they look just like star jasmine it might have been does star jasmine have that really sweet smell to them in my experience yes yeah because i've i've like i've googled

will star jasmine grow in the pacific northwest it will yeah because i know some people around

here but actually our friend rodent is growing some star jasmine i believe i think this is the one the one that really smells really nice and some people that i know uh have some growing outside um in their uh in their yard as well but anyway there was an archway of this stuff and i'm pretty sure it's star jasmine we're talking about and it has such a perfumey smell and i just remember like we would get down to that area and we'd roll down the windows you could just smell the jasmine as we got clothes and i loved this place so so much and i think but we're i was still pretty young and i think that by the third i was a very you know my parents were very strict so i followed all the rules especially around any kind of danger like water or pools but i was so comfortable swimming and i think i felt so like kind of comfortable coming back to the same exact like it was a place we rented a condo or something i don't know if you can call it a resort but But because it felt like a home away from home for me by year three when I was like 11 years old or something, maybe I feel like I was younger than that. I just saw this pool, and I was wearing my trunks, I think, but some part of my brain shut off, and I just beelined to the pool. And I picture this now as an adult. I beelined to the pool and just jumped in. And I couldn't have been 11. I was younger than that because I remember jumping in and then suddenly realizing I'm not touching the bottom. I'm not touching the bottom and then getting a little bit panicky. And then at some point realizing I'm still wearing my glasses and a shirt. And then I pop up and my parents are freaky.

They're flipping their wigs, Luke, because they're doing what happens in every 80s movie when there's hijinks around the swimming pool.

They're just like he just jumped into the literal deep end with probably his shoes and his glasses. This little this little dude was so excited. And I remember my parents freaked out. Is this when the fire went out? In my soul. They hollered at me, and then I stopped loving life.

You got hollered at.

Yeah, that's right.

Oh, no. I said, you know what? Didn't you have another experience there where the ocean picked you up and showed you who was boss? Was that in Siesta Key?

No. At first, I thought you were just joking because it's so cartoony. No. No, I think that maybe that happened, I think, as more of an adult. I hadn't.

Oh, even like you and Vives were on vacation.

Yes, in fact, because I was so comfortable swimming and my parents, again, I was very, very lucky and privileged, like my parents would take us on these vacations to beach places in Florida. So I grew up at least once a year, like jumping and playing in the waves. I was never afraid of the ocean. I was never afraid of water. And then decades go by since I take a regular vacation like that. And then I think I was with Genevieve's family as a young adult, probably in my 30s, or I guess an adult adult in my 30s, or maybe late 20s. And they all went somewhere on a little journey. And I was like, I just want to stay back and splash in the waves like I was a kid again. And so I went to the beach by myself. And I jumped in the ocean for the first time in literally probably 10 or 15 years. And I got swallowed up by the sea, my friend. It whipped me around and punched me around. And then I remember like washing up on the, you know, I jumped into a wave and then it kind of dragged me along the bottom and then washed me up on shore. And I was like, oh, wow, this is a powerful, powerful world we live in with the power of nature. I just remember feeling like in awe, like the ocean had to remind me who was boss.

Yeah, I've been very lucky in my life of swimming in the ocean that I haven't had like a scary riptide kind of moment where I've been. And my mom swears that she, you know, they used to go down to the New Jersey seashore every summer. And she swears that she got pulled out by a riptide and that she very, very nearly died. Like, she very nearly drowned. Like, she said she was waving and waving and waving, and she couldn't wave anymore. And she just went under the surface for the final time and then felt someone pulling her out. And it was the lifeguard.

Somebody actually pulled her out.

Yeah, the light. They had to be. saved by the lifeguards. Now, interestingly enough, that didn't in any way dampen her enthusiasm for the water. She'll be swimming in Daybob Bay, which is near their house and is unbelievably cold. She's like part orca or something. Anyway, thanks everybody for donating to the show. That's one way to say thanks to the donors. It certainly is. That's one way to keep it short. You know it. The good news is, if we decide to, do we still have plenty of words? We got through more today than yesterday. Yeah, we still have plenty of words. We could keep going, certainly for another day, but I have a feeling this will take us right through Friday if we want it to. Honestly, this might run us all through 2025, and feeling the way I do about the news, it might be a good thing. I know, man. I know. All right. Thanks, everybody. We will be right back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for all of you, so please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. Happy New Year. Welcome to 2025. Like it or not, we'll all be here together, So that's the good news. Please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. The sea was angry that day, my friends. Like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli. Power out.