Muse

Does any duplicating go on around here when you're not present?

Uh...

Hmm? Huh?

Yeah, maybe.

Do you duplicate alone?

I think that's kind of a personal question.

You're laughing, Miss Tylee. Are you taking my duplication investigation seriously? Or are you disrespecting my duplication investigation?

No, no, I'm not disrespecting. I'm just saying that there's no real way I can check, you know, because I leave at a certain time.

I'm not... Duplicating is taking place. and when duplicating takes place that means there's more than one there may be two or three Miss Tyler two, three or four I do

y'all are joking

are y'all kidding with me? I'm talking about duping duping duplication

I just work here

you in charge of duplication?

yes sir

show me how this duplicating machine works I want to learn all about the process

TBTN so maybe this isn't exactly the most polished radio broadcast you've ever heard i know we suck i know we're taking a risk it's a leap of faith you don't say much friend but when you do it's

to the point and i salute you for you just sit around all day thinking of nice things to say

to people well it's not necessarily during the day but i do like to be nice to people dude give

Give me a brrark. This is grass clippings. Give us the real deal or we're out of here.

What I'm going to do for you guys is I'm going to hook you up to the best stuff, okay? But you got to jump into my van. Dolphinately. For sure. Come on.

All right. Hello. Good morning. And welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia. Right over there in Seattle, Washington, is my good friend Andrew Walsh. He's the longest-running co-bro of the program, and he is joining me right now. Hello, sir.

Good morning, Luke. I have a question I would like to start with today. This is going to be out of left field. It's just something that's been banging around my brain for a while.

Is it Fresca-related? Because that's the only thing I really want to talk about today.

No, it's not, but I have some in my fridge. We could have been Fresca bros. I love Fresca. Okay.

It's not too late. I can tap dance for a minute while you run.

Maybe we'll get some in a second. Let me just ask you this really quickly. Fresca is one of my favorite sodas. My question for you is I would like you to fill in the blank on something here, and I'm going somewhere with this. There's a reason I want you to do this. I think that maybe I'm out of step, but I'm curious about this. I'm going to say the first few words of a band name, a musical outfit from the 1980s. I believe their genre was called freestyle music. I'm going to say the first few words of this band name, And I would like you to complete the name of the band, Lisa, Lisa, and the cult jam. Let's say it again. Do it again. Lisa, Lisa, and the cult jam. Thank you, my friend. Or is it cult jam? It is apparently cult jam, but just hearing you say the means the world to me. Because, I mean, that's what we've all been thinking. I bet you Lisa, Lisa thinks it's the cult jam. Both of them. Yeah. I bet you both Lisas think that. I really do feel vindicated because, so this has been clanging around in my head for a while. It was actually, I made a reference to the band in a somewhat recent TBTL newsletter. I was writing it from a local watering hole and the bartender had put on a song and was getting everybody to sing along to a song by Lisa. I think you, I don't even know. Was it Head to Toe? I don't know. I think it was.

Ooh, baby, I think I love you from head to toe. Yeah, I think that was the song. There's only Lisa Lisa cult jam song I can do from memory.

And now we're saying it right. But anyway, so I was writing in the newsletter, and I wrote Lisa Lisa and the cult jam. And then I was doing, I don't usually give myself a very heavy edit, as most people know, or can intuit. But I was, before I sent it out, I'm like, is that right? This is not a band I'm super familiar with. They are Lisa Lisa and the cult jam, right? And I looked it up, and then I was like, no, it's Lisa Lisa and cult jam. And I got to say, it feels like just a tick off. It feels a the off.

We're missing a definite article there. We definitely are.

We definitely are missing a definite article. So let's move on to your topic of choice, which would usually be my topic of choice, which is Fresca, literally one of my favorite beverages.

So there is this, there was anyway, I think, this crazy deal going on with soda pop. I don't know if I mentioned it on the show back when I was amassing a small soda empire. Yeah, you did. But it was like, buy two 18-packs, get three 18-packs free. And it's like, I don't understand the math on that, how that could be a profitable idea. But because I was buying, getting so much.

soda i was starting to branch out and i was actually all the way back on thanksgiving addy and i were in the safeway in my parents hometown and uh i was i grabbed a you know a thing of whatever diet dr pepper and i was like you know what let's get some fresca and i bought this fresca and i brought it to my folks house and then i was disappointed when i looked at the box because and andrew i'm going to hold this up to the camera i think you'll be able to see this i don't know what the blurriness is you see what it says below fresca can you read that are you able

to read that i just can't believe we're having this conversation because i had this conversation a few months ago sparkling soda water is what it says under fresca and when i saw that on the box

i was like oh no i mean you know me i do love some soda water but that wasn't what i was trying to buy i was trying to buy fresca and i thought oh weird i guess they're making a club soda now they're trying to get on the club soda game and i believe one of my nephews was drinking one of the frescas and i said so is that like a club soda and he goes no it's a fresca huh And then I cracked one open and I drank it and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's just Fresca, but they're trying to fool Americans who have jumped on the soda water craze into thinking this is a soda water. It's just Fresca.

Luke, I owe you an apology because this is a journey that I went on somewhat recently and I should have brought this to TBTL. You didn't recognize it for the content gold. I brought it to various friends. I had text conversations about it. You were workshopping it. I did not know that you were in the Fresca business. So can I lay out here for a second? This literally might be the show. We might get back to listener Kristen's list of words used in 2024. You know what?

Don't get comfortable list of words because you too can be not gotten to.

Everything can be bumped. I'm not saying that's definitely going to happen. I don't want to overpromise on my Fresca content here. here, but this is, I just, there's so much about Fresca that you need to know about me and my relationship to it, which is, I did not realize until very, very, very recently that it is even considered like a diet soda. I just have always thought of Fresca as being a soda pop that I enjoy. I like it because it's, it is grapefruit flavor, right? Maybe with other citruses, but That's the defining flavor. And I like that, and I like squirt. And in my head, and they're both grapefruit flavors. How about a fresca?

Ooh, what is that?

What is that from?

Is that a commercial? It's Judge Smales in Caddyshack offering Danny a fresca.

How about a fresca?

Did you have that isolated, or did you just look it up online? It has been isolated by someone else. But it's, I think, a—

Somewhat iconic.

It's something that Bill Radkin and I used to say to each other for some reason just randomly in the newsroom of KUW.

How about a fresca? Yet somebody else in the world identified that as a two-second drop to isolate and put online. So there's something I kind of – maybe because that's kind of what we're getting at here. Like I think I have been a lifelong enjoyer of Fresca but on the wrong wavelength with everybody else. Like I did not realize it was – Is this in your diet book you're writing? Yeah, right. Like that it is a – it was released as like a diet low sugar alternative to other sodas. I never knew that. I just liked the taste of it. But now, of course, if I were to drink a Fresca and a squirt next to each other, I would realize, oh, one of these is almost sickly sweet and the other one is much more sparkly and light. And that is the Fresca. But Fresca, I'm not somebody who drinks a lot of soda. So if I'm going to drink soda, I never mess around with diet soda. I don't like the taste of it. And because it's not part of my daily routine, I don't feel like that's a place where I need to cut. I need to cut down sugars all over the place. But, like, I'm basically, like, if it's going to be between a diet soda and a soda, I'm probably just going to skip a soda and drink some water. You're not putting down 12 cans a day. Exactly. But I love Fresca, so I was buying it. And then we were talking about it in the friend group. And it turns out that our friend Katie, who's probably listening to this right now, also really likes Fresca. I didn't realize that it was kind of a locale alternative. And then when I was buying it in the store somewhat recently, like a 12-pack of it, probably for the first time of my life buying a 12-pack of it, i saw that it said sparkling soda as well and i was like i i was like is this part of the sparkling soda water soda water right even more bizarre it really and so i went through the same exact thought process as you is like did they change it and i guess they just changed the label in the packaging and are trying to be this middle space between like a full sugar soda and you know what you call bubbly water and what i now call bubbly water have you did you note the fresca

meter on the on the on the 12 pack no okay stay with me here i've got to go to the fridge okay

sounds good i should go to the fridge and get myself some fresca as well i am sorry i apparently threw out the box um uh or actually Maybe I left the box in my parents' house. The box of Fresca now has a little, like, meter that goes between light and I want to say heavy. Heavy is a weird way to describe it. But there's an indicator of how Fresca-y, the Fresca you're buying is. And these ones were marked as medium. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, no, no. This is not something I'm familiar with at all. Yeah, there's a little, like, you know, whatever, illustration on the box. that is, I don't know if the internet has taken a picture of this. Somebody's noted this. I'm looking for it. It indicates how fresca-y it is. And these ones are medium. They taste exactly like fresca has always tasted to me. I think they're just regular frescas, but apparently this meter, it indicates that there is such a thing as a lighter amount of fresca and a heavier amount of fresca that you can get. This is, this is, blowing my mind is the wrong word. I'm incredibly dubious not not in your story that they that they've put this on the rebranded box but do you think that there are boxes that have that meter needle in a different position or is it just sort of a silly marketing thing where they're all medium because like when i went to the store i you know you wouldn't want to intermingle those right like the only options i have here we go yeah i found a photo you found it good i can't find it but like i noticed that they now have fresca peach flavored and then Fresca something else flavored. I was not interested in the peach. I tried the something else. I thought it was too chemically, so I'm back to the original flavor. But I certainly never had a choice between strength. Yeah, I'm going to send you a couple of photos here of just the new rebranded Fresca box, and it's got this thing on it, which indicates. Oh, now I see it. Yeah, it's got a, I think it gives you a sweetness level, Sweetness level, touch of sweet or unsweet. Now, the one I'm looking at, oh, you know what it is? It might change based on which flavor. Because I am looking at a box of peach flavored, and that is listed at number two, original. Then there's touch of sweet is one and unsweet is zero. What is the one you're looking at saying? The one I'm looking at is the picture is also the actual thing I'm drinking, which is Sparkling Soda Water Grapefruit Citrus Original. And that one, I believe, is listed as a two as well. Okay, that's also listed as a two. So let's keep an eye out. I wonder if there actually are any. Maybe if you go to the actual sparkling water section instead of the soda pop section of your local grocer, maybe they have a Fresca product now that would be under the Unsweet, and maybe it's in there with what are the other brands,

Like LaCroix and Bubbly, Bubbly, what is the, Bubbly, Michael Bubbly, LaCroix, Bubbly, Waterloo, Waterloo, yes, yes, yes, a slightly more old-fashioned sort of looking label if I recall. Yes, yes. And I feel like Waterloo is more flavorful. Oh, yeah? Than like a lime Waterloo, I feel it's limier than some of the other leading brands. you know i see that they also sell soda stream fresca apparently you can pop this into your but like the thing is like our and maybe the answer is some people are we still have one soda stream in this house that genevieve bought that i thought she was buying as i thought she was buying a used soda stream yes it's still in our house and i appreciate genevieve's desire to find a good deal somewhere but when she bought a soda stream literally out of somebody's car in the parking lot of the 7-eleven on lake city way across from the mother airy i really thought it was like well let's see if we like this thing and if we like it and use it we will then buy a new one and for starters genevieve used the bottles that came with this thing first of all the bottles have expiration dates on them i don't know if you know this but any soda stream bottle has an expiration date on it because i think after a while they worry about the plastics breaking down and maybe fissures being in there and you don't want those babies exploding you know while you're pumping gas into them yeah jenna but also we're just human beings with a standard of living and i for one was not comfortable with the idea of just reusing the sort of single use not single use but like in a single serving soda stream bottles that some family that we do not know has been using for probably five years like can we at least splurge on new things we put our lips on right it's pretty intimate it's pretty intimate yes so she got this and a used bidet out of the parking lot no i'm just joking about the bidet part Dylan

Mix those up. So it was kind of a battle for us to get. Hey, was that Andrew I saw just shooting across the sky? I guess he finally is trying a bidet. But doing it slightly wrong. But, yeah, so anyway, I remember that being a sticking point for us. You're not supposed to put those in the dishwasher either. That's how I learned that lesson. Because I was like, well, at the very least, put them in the dishwasher. And I did. And it turns out you're not supposed to do that. Put it on sanitized. Yes. But then I guess if you do that, you weaken the bottles or what have you. We eventually got some new bottles. I basically don't mess with it. And I know that it's ecologically better to use the SodaStream. But it is not satisfying to me. I do not like the SodaStream.

Yeah, I've had a couple. In fact, I believe there is one in my basement right now. If Genevieve wants a different used one.

I'll bet you your used one is better than our used one.

I would guess it might be just because I don't think it was ever in regular circulation. But, you know, I've had them over the years, and it was kind of a – it was a quirk – not a quirk. It was a trendy thing we were all getting into. But I just – yeah, I just don't have the self-discipline to keep it around and to use it instead of just buying another, you know, half rack of LaCroix or whatever. I will tell you, though, who loves that stuff and loves making their own soda is Camaro Kev and Anita.

Are they still in that game?

Well, I haven't been to their house in a little while, since the restraining order. So I can't say. But there was a time where they were the only people I knew who were legit doing the thing where you're making your own soda with it.

Actual, like, soda soda, not just sparkling water with some lime.

Yeah, exactly. Because you can buy little powders and potions and things. And the dream of the SodaStream was it would replace any sort of carbonated beverage need you had. Yeah. But I never saw anyone making their homebrew soda except for Camaro Kevin Anita, who has got a soda stream of some mildly off-brand Coca-Cola product.

Yeah, and I don't know that I've had that. I remember that being advertised or talked about, like, hey, you could also just make, you know, full-on sweet sodas with it. But, like, my guess is, and this is probably wrong or an exaggeration, but have you ever had the LaCroix flavor cola? It's like cola flavor. Can we look this up? Can we see if I'm right about this? Does LaCroix.

So it's a sparkling water, but the flavor that they're. So instead of a hint of lime or a hint of black cherry, they're going with. By the way, a Waterloo black cherry is really good, too. Would recommend. Oh, OK. But they'll go with cola.

Let's see here. As a flavor. That's my memory. And yes. OK. OK. LaCroix, Nicola sparkling water. But I think that might be. Well, so I'm typing in cola and they're calling it Nicola. And I, yeah, this is definitely supposed to be like a hint of cola. They call it N.I. cola. And I remember just being, this is the only, like, sparkling water, maybe you get a can that you don't love as much as another can. But, like, never have I rejected a flavor of sparkling water the way I rejected cola. It was so bad. And anyway, that's what I imagine. It's not appealing.

It is the name of my first wife, interestingly enough.

Maybe she's the one. LaCroix. Maybe she's the one. You know what? My first wife's name is Bubbly. So maybe, so yeah, anyway.

Very dour woman, too. That was the irony of that name.

It was one of those nicknames, like the way they called me Stretch in high school for a period of time.

Yeah, there's, I can't imagine drinking a soda water and thinking, I wish this tasted like someone poured a glass of soda with ice in it and then the ice melted. Yes. That's what I feel like the flavor of a soda water flavored with cola would be.

Although that might be giving it even too much credit. I remember one time, because, I mean, obviously, we're a little past the height of people talking about and being obsessed with the sparkling waters. That was a huge craze not all that long ago. And so everybody was, like, you know, describing it and joking about it. And I do remember one of my favorite descriptions of a LaCroix is like a LaCroix flavor is like drinking a regular soda and then having somebody yell peach from another room. Just like it's just a hint, the smallest the smallest hint of flavor. But yeah. And anyway, I would not be down with a like trying to replace any kind of like Dr. Pepper, let's say, with just like a soda stream Dr. Pepper. Like I just don't trust it. No matter who tells me, I just don't trust it. The thing I will say about Dr.

Well, first of all, I think we had some Dr. Skipper when I was a kid. We definitely had a lot of Craigmont soda. Yeah, there was a product called Dr. Skipper.

You're shitting me.

It was the store brand. I think it might have been the Albertson store brand of Dr. Pepper.

I am looking at it. And it's even like it's even a metallic red, like kind of a rich red can. So like you could really mistake it. Yeah, it was not. It was.

Yeah, it was definitely not. subtle in terms of what, yeah, Safeway Select, Dr. Skipper. Oh, my God. There's a whole, I'm looking at somebody on the website known as X has taken a photo of all kinds of cans, and I don't know if these are all made by the same company and just rebranded, but there is Dr. Choice, Dr. Thunder, Dr. Bold. Are you seeing the same thing? Dr. Perfect, Dr. Bob, Food Club, Dr. Wow. Are you seeing this? Yeah, real doctor. the dr dr right dr dr wrong dr shaw's dr shasta dr perky wow i had a dr becker um oh blue sky so

that's like one of those healthy sodas they sell at new seasons what is blue sky blue sky is one of those allegedly slightly more healthy sodas or less bad for you you know the kind that you If you were in, like, a co-op type of scenario and they don't have any good real soda, you might find a Blue Sky Dr. Becker.

No, I didn't know that. So you were a Dr. Skipper family. I wonder how much, like, how much does a family actually save by buying Dr. Skipper over Dr. Pepper?

I mean, I'm sure an incredibly small amount. I mean, this, I've talked about this a lot on the show, but it's, like, the bizarro foods that my parents bring over. because the chief driving force in the decisions they make around food are what is cheap. That's it. That's all they care about. So I'm sure that over my entire childhood, I'm sure that we saved less than $100 by going with Craigmont and Shasta and Safeway Select instead of the real stuff. You know, it was really a bum deal. We used to go down. we had a red wagon and we would put a cooler in it like a Coleman cooler and we would fill it up with ice and we would put a bunch of generic soda in and we would wheel it down to Green Lake and we would sell sodas to people and then we would use the money we would raise we would then go buy a pizza at Guido's Pizza by the waiting pool and eat this was my mom's so my mom would bring us down she would dangle us you know like bait people would buy these sodas from us and then we would use the money she would keep the money and use it to buy us pizza for dinner this was the this was the uh whatever you want to call it the pizza logical cycle we both earned the money and then the money was used to buy us pizza that we then ate but anyway what a bum deal if someone's like soda and you give them a dollar and they hand you a dr skipper you're pissed like you probably don't you probably you know kept walking till you got over to the um you know waiting pool area then you went up in a real store and got yourself an actual soda you wanted oh we also have candy would

you like an nnn um would you like a would you like a dr right let me see hold on let me fish

around here i think we have a i think we have a a uh a dr thunder that uh do you see a dr a plus

is one of these things as well yes i like that here's here's the move here's what i think is the move you go to your your fred meyer right you buy uh let's say two 12 packs of so that's 24 for those counting at home of real dr peppers okay um or maybe you buy i don't know if they come in 24 packs you buy a 24 pack of those you halo reach is a game that excuse me what was that

that was somebody on youtube called dr skipper which i thought was going to be i almost fell for that too a second a dr skipper ad and i thought my computer was muted and i apologize

The giveaway there is Doctor on that one. It's spelled D-O-K-T-O-R, I believe, which is why I did not click on it. But I was going to say, get yourself some full-strength Dr. Pepper, some real deal. Sell it at a little bit of a markup. I'll bet you if you sell those for 50 cents a can, you're still making money on that. Go back to Fred Meyer. Buy yourself some Dr. Skipper for home use and pocket the extra money. You see what you could do? I see what you're doing there. Turning Dr. Pepper into Dr. Skipper plus profit.

It's kind of a real reverse alchemy thing.

Yeah.

You're turning gold into something worse, but you are getting some money in the process.

But you're getting money, real actual gold. Actually, you sell it for actual gold doubloons. What you were doing was probably illegal, too, right? Oh, I'm sure. Did Green, because the park now has a little concession area and everything, which I'm sure they wouldn't love it if you were trying to take their bill.

They didn't have, like, we would go to the, so there's two swimming areas at Green Lake. And there's one over by the pool, Evans Pool, and there's one by what we used to call the Bathhouse Theater. I think now it has a new name. It's called the Seattle Theater something. Anyway, they were doing a diehard Christmas when Becca and I walked around there around Thanksgiving, and it was sold out. But anyway, there was a small little kind of hut that could have been.

been for selling snacks, but it was never open. I don't know if the city didn't want to staff it or what, but there was, so there was not anybody competing with us. That being said, yeah, you, I mean, to sell a food or drink to random people on the street, I think you're supposed to have some kind of a permit for that. It's supposed to be some sort of a quality control situation, which we were absolutely running afoul of. That was just one of the many money-making scams that my mother employed us in. You know, I've talked about the coloring contest, talked about her paper route that we would have to go on with her um i'm trying to think some of the other ones i

mean there was a we were all we were hustling i thought of you guys the other day you and the in the burbank clan because this is this is a while back now in fact trying to think could it have been thanksgiving time i feel like yeah maybe it was maybe it was the march towards thanksgiving um the cultural march towards thanksgiving but i was in qfc and i was doing self-checkout and i just kind of overheard a snippet of a conversation between two people who work there and it became clear that what they were talking about was where are the rest of the coloring contest submissions oh wow they're still doing that this was qfc i don't know if that was the same one that you did as a kid but the thing is i heard them say they were disappointed because there was only one submission they're like this is all we have we just have this one and i'm like sort of just like beep you know it's like kind of like checking out my goods but thinking like if the burbangs could get in on this if there's only one submission right now they don't have to know how old you are you drop the four kids and their ipads andrew you drop the four from your age you're eight luke like think of it that way and that's the level i color at that's yeah i'm coloring at an eight-year-old level that's right you know you get to a certain age and they're like think outside the lines.

Do not tell my mother about this. It's too late now. If she hears that there's only one entrant in one of these things, she will literally invent a child. She'll have another baby. I mean, she's always capable of it, honestly. She will create a fake social security number for a fake child and enter that fake child in the coloring contest. I mean, I told you about the Barnes and Noble rule, the Susie Burbank rule, too, that where she have for a while had figured that she would go to garage sales and stuff and she would buy books that people were selling but they were relatively new books maybe they were six months old or a year old or they were books that were still for sale at barnes and noble and then she would return the books to barnes and noble with no receipt they didn't well they would give her credit she was packing like five hundred dollars on a barnes and noble card for a while and she had a whole wrap she would do because my mom the funny thing about my mom is that she's pretty sketchy this is where i get it from but she's also you know a fairly observant like christian who doesn't believe in actively lying so she would have to i forget what her exact she was explaining this to me at thanksgiving she had a way of they would say well was there something wrong with the book and she would have a way of describing she was like oh no i just don't need it or something she had some vague term she would use that wasn't technically a lie but that was misleading about like the origin of the book and uh so she was she like everybody was getting barnes and noble stuff from her for a couple of years and then one day she went in and they had printed and like laminated and displayed a sign at the at the customer service that said you have to you cannot return books that were not purchased at this barnes and noble they oh they really

called her out so they okay because i have i thought that i was like is she going to a whole bunch of different barnes and nobles is she spreading this scam across like the greater tri-county area no no no she's returning i mean it would seem like by by the second time she almost wanted to get caught that's that's what it is she wanted because of the second time you walk in there like i wouldn't be able to i would be nervous returning a book i legitimately bought from there without a receipt because it's like the whole point of a book is it's information like when you're done with it you could we could all return books i didn't like the ending yeah right like What do you, we could all do that.

How is there even a return policy? I mean, I guess maybe you bought a book for someone as a gift, but then they already had the book. Yeah, okay. So it was unnecessary. Maybe that's, I'm just trying to think of, yeah, like once you've consumed the story into your brain, you've now basically, you've drained the book of its value, at least to you. What are you returning?

It's like returning a newspaper. But, and also I'm thinking about your mom, like if she's truly, she's trying to do this, Which, by the way, this isn't, again, with some due respect to your mom. Like, this is where you really get into this whole thing of, like, well, I don't want to lie, but I want to pull off this thing, which is generally a big lie. But, like, if I use certain words, it's okay. Yes, I agree. But, like, if you really do want to, like, stick to that, you can't even use the word return.

anything right because you didn't purchase it you didn't purchase it is itself a lie the word return from the jump is a lie so now i'm thinking if your mom is sticking with this is she walking in and she goes to the customer service and she we could have her on the show to break this down i think i shouldn't be on the show because clearly i have like i'm dealing with this like a like a da like i have too many questions like but you set the book down and you can't say i'd like to return this you have right what's the first line and you have to say i don't need this i would like to

receive credit right yeah yeah i would like to receive credit on this gift card for this book

that now that actually that's really good what you just said that's not none of those words are a direct lie i would like to receive credit those are all true things i would like credit for this book and so maybe that's it but then you got to really parse that language to like Because you can't use the word return.

Well, you know, this is the same woman who, like, and again, I say this with just absolute peace and love, and my mom is hilarious to me. But she reported to me at some point, as if she was, my mom is also a person who's sober, she reported like, you know, like people talk about their sober date or I'm five years sober or whatever. she reported with great pride that it had been i want to say like two months since she had gone to value village and randomly gone through all the pockets on the jackets to see if someone left money in that now that i haven't even done that for two months now that i would say is not a crime

that is that is just like being there and open to the universe and working one time and it changed

the chemistry of her brain oh i believe it she bought some i think she bought a jacket or some pants and they had a 20 oh that is the goddamn dream i love it like literally sent her into a spiral where she was going she had a route of secondhand stores in her town where she would go and just rifle through everything looking for money not buying anything which my dad thought was

poor form i thought it was fine spending time in a store not buying anything eh well just going

through it to take the money it's one thing if you buy some pants and get them home and there's a fiver in there it's another thing if you're just you know sort of going through the pockets of everything with no intention of buying anything at all to just and then leaving the store with the money you went into the store without the money you you you separated the money from a product in the store and then you left the store without buying the product in my dad's mind that

is theft you know i might have been a little bit you know i came down a little bit hard on your on your mom with the book return thing i'm gonna i'm gonna take suzy b's side on this one like if you have the time and wherewithal to engage in this project like you're not I don't think you're doing anything wrong I don't think there's anything wrong with going into a store spending some time in there and deciding you don't want to buy anything I don't think there's anything wrong with while you're in that store being like I wonder if somebody left some money in this pocket so if it becomes like if you just sort of stretch that out to its illogical conclusion and now you're just like making a a circuit of the of the second hand stores in your neighborhood and you're looking for that particular thing but you know my my relationship with found money is somewhat psychotic too like I love I there's nothing I like more than found money I love and I still dream someday I mean I tell you I go to a hotel room and I asked Genevieve don't forget to look for the money belt like you know let's pull out all the drawer we don't actually do it but I have this dream because of one episode of of Cheers that I saw when I was a kid and they introduced the idea of a hidden money belt to me that i think that there are hidden money belts all over the place and if we're not finding them it's just our own fault for not looking hard enough

i think that of the many things we've lost in this modern society because we're so digital yes the cash finding experience because we're using so much less cash like the kids of america will have so much less of a chance of kicking over a paper bag and finding money in it like tony

yeah which was the dream because we're all using crypto and power gloves you're you're exactly and you're you're just you have such a good grasp on these things and um i uh and also you're right like we are more likely to find a phone and where the where the virtual money is kept like i think in the past let's say a handful of years i know that genovie found a phone that she found on like the walking bridge over the highway near the bus and i think so she made an effort i think she might even printed out some flyers and put them around the area that she found this phone because losing a phone you lose so much stuff you know yeah and and so she even put up some flyers i found your phone we never found the owner of that phone and i think eventually she just took it to like some sort of e-waste place um i did try to hack into it by the way i'm not going to lie to you i spent a good deal of time thinking i could i could hack into it i could not and were you trying to see if you could figure out whose it was or were you trying to find some tasteful nudes um do you know Isn't that the food that we feed our – actually, maybe not so anymore, but there is a brand of cat food that is called Tastefuls that we –

feed or used to feed our cats and i just couldn't believe that they didn't call it tasteful foods because it's so close decent show title to be honest with you and this doesn't paint me in a very good light but it does explain why we take it classes or cyber security classes to like not put like found usbs into our computers is because what if it's my lucky day it's well it might be the thing is like i totally associate with that if i find a usb drive it's very hard for me not to want to know what's on there and it's not because i think oh i can see nudity because i don't want to like i don't i don't want to tell any tales outside of school but yeah i can find nudity like online i don't need it doesn't need to be on a usb drive underneath the tire of a ford focus you know what i mean like there's nothing on a usb drive or a phone that's more

more upsetting than what you are able to look at all on your own that's exactly or that i can create all on my own stick with the pink panther gifs please sir stick with your space tv but uh

i i love my space tv i made a new space tv recently um but i uh i was uh yeah like i was once we had this phone and we'd made a genevieve made a real deal effort to find the rightful person and if i were to find anything like um you know personal banking information or anything like that i would i would not touch it i have no desire you know i'm not trying to be a creep or a or a thief but once i have a phone that has been totally abdicated and lost or whatever and we couldn't get it back like yeah i'm just deeply curious as to what's on somebody a random person's phone i would not feel that way about your phone or anybody that i knew or you know what i mean but the fact that it was totally random absolutely totally random made me incredibly curious and i wanted to see you were unsuccessful i was unsuccessful so by the way i will say and this was an android um i don't think i would have even had a i would have known where to begin with uh with an iphone because i probably wouldn't have the right connectors but um congratulations to them for having it locked in well like i thought well if i can't get their password i could still So, like, I extracted, this is terrible.

It said Luigi Mangione on the home screen.

It had 3D words. I can't remember what they were.

Yeah, okay.

But anyway, I even took out, like, you know, they have a little SIM card in there. I'm like, well, I can probably at least read the SIM card. But no, whatever security measures are built into those phones, it truly worked, at least to this, like, wannabe hacker. I've never hacked anything before, so maybe somebody with more skills could have gotten in. The quarterback remained untoasted. The bread was very soft. The bread is soft. So anyway, that probably makes me sound like a really terrible person, but I was very curious, and I don't know why. I'm a bit of maybe a voyeur, a digital voyeur.

But again, you just wanted to see – you're just curious about what someone's – it's basically like finding a diary in this day and age. Kind of, yeah. Or a lost note. You know, because it's like you get to send, like, what was their home screen? What are the apps that they, you know, prioritized? What, like, just, like, little details about a person's life. And, again, maybe. I do feel like looking at the photos might be a bridge too far.

Yeah, maybe you're right. And the truth is, if I had actually, I think it was just a challenge. And maybe it sounds like I'm digging myself out of a hole here. Maybe I'm just an asshole and a creep and people don't like this. But the truth is, if I had actually gotten access to that phone, I'll bet you within moments, you, like, you saying that makes me realize, oh, open up Lyft. see what their profile says you know and if they have any kind of a unique name then probably the first thing i would have done was start googling this person and try to contact them and let them know i have my phone and i probably would have never even gotten to the photo app or anything like that i i think i like a mystery remember that time i found a wallet i'm really just trying to like gild the lily and make myself sound like not a terrible human i found a wallet in los angeles and i was so proud because there was no there was no id in there but i used the medical cards inside like the the insurance cards to reach the the the phone service from hawaii or something indeed they were they gave me some macadamia nuts as a thank you and i did not tell them that i don't love macadamia nuts um but yeah they didn't have an id in there but they did have some medical ids or like a medical insurance card so i called the insurance company that put me in touch with the doctors and i remember it being so quaint it was their actual answering service it wasn't a voicemail and so i told a human being just like what about bob remember there was an answering service for uh for the psychiatrist i was just like hey i found this guy this person's wallet like outside i have it now if there's any way you could get a message to the owner of this wallet it was such a weird thing to go through blue cross blue shield but those people end up getting a hold of me and i gave it back like i think i i do like a miss

mystery and it would have been satisfying to maybe break in here and i'll bet you i would have been able to get it back to the person so you're the takeaway is you're a perv with a heart of gold that's exactly right they should make a movie about me and i'll eat a i'll eat a pancake like a cookie thank you for being a town all right let's thank some donors as we're heading out the door today um you had a great idea for tomorrow's show andrew uh which is uh we should just go through all of the top stories that we didn't get to in last year that we didn't get to during these segments where we're going to talk about them and just give our one sentence thought on each one in many of these some of some of which i have read and forgotten some of which i never read and didn't have to forget and some that i probably only remember a tiny bit from so yeah i don't even know if i've read all of them so it's going to be really interesting tomorrow great in the meantime we want to thank britta jackson of aberdeen washington hey i know that somewhat recently we had another aberdeen we have a good showing has been showing up and showing out here nice thanks to lindsey llewellen who's in westfield indiana nice thank you lindsey appreciate it don melnick well how would you say that yeah don melnick yeah that's like a solid last name in Highlands, New Jersey. Thank you, Don. You're my favorite Melnick. Yes, appreciate you. Also, Amanda Triggs is in Cedro, Woolly, Washington. The Wolves. You've run through that town, being chased by law enforcement. Wait, was I being chased by law enforcement? No. I have done a run there. You did do a run there, though, didn't you? Yes, and I have been chased by law enforcement. I'm just trying to figure out if that was all the same event or not. I was conflating some stories there. A different time. Jessica Shard is in Portage, Michigan That must be on a lake That must be on Lake Michigan Because Portage, that indicates That you could park your boat there You know what? Of course, Portage Because I was thinking there's a very small restaurant It's not a small restaurant But it's like a chain It's not really a chain What do you call it when you have just like a small business But there's more than one location? Is that automatically a chain? A Spiro's There's a Spiro's of restaurants called Portage Bay, right? Oh, yeah, the Portage Bay Cafe. Yeah, exactly. And there's maybe like four of those in the Seattle area or something. And so I always think of Portage Bay. It seems nautical. By the way, Portage, Michigan appears to be nowhere near Lake Michigan. Completely landlocked. That's probably climate change, though. It's close to Kalamazoo. Okay. So it looks like it's maybe an hour drive from Lake Michigan, but it's not on the lake. So that name, Portage, is a little confusing. Is Lake Michigan shrinking, though? That's what I'm saying. It's like when Jessica moved there, was it Lakefront property? That is a really, really good question. I'll ask that when I go to Michigan this summer with Becca.

We are going to a place called the Milkweed Inn that's run by a chef named Lane Regan. And they have this little, tiny kind of inn where it's all inclusive. So you go there, and every meal they make for you, and you walk around in the woods, and it sounds like a really nice time. And the food looks really good on Instagram, so we're going to be going there in June. And I'll swing through Portage and see how everybody's doing. Get me those dates. Do I need to find a fill-in? Do we have to pre-take some shows? We'll figure it out. We'll make it work. Chris Murray could fill in for me. Chris Murray's in Kingston, Ontario. Kingston? That is a second. That's two. That's two Kingston 10s. Yeah, we used to have Bill the Torontan is now a Kingston 10. Exactly. So you guys could cut it up as well, Canada style. Oh, Kingston 10s. That's my UB40 impression. They do a song called Kingston Town. Oh, okay. I don't know that song, although I have generally good feelings about UB the 40. Is that what it's called, UB the 40? Or is it UB40? Yes, it is. Man. It's Lisa Lisa and the UB40. That's what Lisa Lisa and the UB40 is. I love that band. Thank you so much to all of our donors. Thanks for making the show possible today. We are all wrapped up for this Thursday, but we are going to be right back here tomorrow with another show for you. It's going to be a doorbuster. It's going to be a barn burner. We're going to try to rip through 10 top stories. In 20 minutes. In 20 minutes. What are the chances we get through two stories? Two, I think the odds are good. I think two and a half. Ten, the odds are bad. I'm taking the under on two and a half. Yeah, you're probably right. All right. Thanks, everyone, for listening. We'll be back here tomorrow. In the meantime, have a great Thursday. Take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. Power out.