Muse

Excuse me, Mr. Lavender. John Tesh is here.

Oh, great. Send him in.

Knock, knock. There he is, Mr. Entertainment tonight. How are you guys doing? Hello, everyone. This is my brother right here, Dave Tesh. Pleasure, pleasure. I did not know that you had a brother. Oh, yeah, you know, he's not just my brother. He's also the genius in the family. Meanwhile, I'm blushing. Okay, well, let's see what we've got for you. We've written a song that we like to call Round Ball Rock. Now, it started as one of David's poems here, but then it just grew into something bigger than both of us could ever imagine. It's me on keys and Dave singing. Can you believe this is our job? All right, fire away. All right, ready to do this? Yes, I am. All right, two, three, four.

Ba-ba-ba-ba-basketball, gimme, gimme, gimme the ball because I'm gonna dunk it! Ba-ba-ba-ba-basketball, gimme, gimme, gimme the ball because I'm gonna dunk it! Don't kill it!

Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba

I'm sorry, I think we probably, we weren't clear. We actually meant, could we hear it with just the music?

Oh, um, I defer to you. Uh, my gut is no. TBTL.

Guess what day it is? Guess what day it is?

It's Friday, Friday. Gonna get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend. 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.

Sweetie, have a good show. What you do is so important.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome to a Friday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. My name's Luke Burbank. I am your host coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia and right over there, just about, Oh, I don't know. A couple of hundred miles North from me up interstate five is my good friend, the longest running co-bro of the show. Mr. Andrew Walsh. He is joining me right now. Hello, sir.

I owe you an apology. I owe the listeners an apology. I think, you know why I think we made a face at, each other over the video conferencing software when we heard that for two times in three days i accidentally played the same randy savage drop my i i didn't know that it was in to be honest

with you the other day when we were talking about it i think it played on new year's day i kind of wanted to hear it again okay good well that i was saying how i felt like he was actually channeling a certain kind of feeling we all have going into 2025 and so i was able to confirm that Yes, it did sound the way that I thought it did. So you were doing me a favor, my friend.

You know what? I'm sorry. What I meant to say is I owe you N your welcome. N your welcome is a hard thing to say, by the way. N your welcome. I don't like that, by the way. That's one of my least favorite things, and people have stopped doing it so much. But there's a trend there where somebody would just send an email and be like, click this link. You're welcome.

Let's be a little bit less aggressive with our friendly emails. I have a bad feeling that I might have started the first episode of TBTL with some sort of a You're Welcome America. No, I don't think so. I've heard that intro before. I don't want to play it now.

No, I won't, but I will say that if you did do that, you were 15 years before the trend, or like 13 years before the trend.

Yeah, and I was whispering it, so probably nobody heard.

Yeah, that's right. You were doing your Ira Glass.

I was, oh, I don't know why that came into my mind the other day. I think I was listening to something else, and they were being kind of a little mousy, a little quiet, and it reminded me of, I wish I could remember what it was, some kind of a radio thing. Anyway, it reminded me of the first episode of TBTL, and I just had just a wave of embarrassment just coursed through my body.

Can I?

And I was like, I wish I could just go back and do that first episode over again. I would have been energetic. i would have been excited instead of i mean what was happening was i was very very nervous and i was trying to stifle that by being cool and then the way it played out was i sounded disinterested and whispery i don't think you for what it's worth i've heard that intro a bunch i don't

I don't think you sounded disinterested.

and whispery i do you hear an evolution in your approach and i do think there's some public radio in there that you were coming out of public radio um can i tell you about something that makes me cringe i mean i can't tell you about all the things that make me cringe when my brain lands

on them i have a lot we're trying to get through nine top stories today okay that i came i came

out of the bathroom after taking a morning shower last week i'm glad that ended with o-w-e-r And Genevieve said What are you okay And I'm like what She's like do you Do you know you just said God damn it under your breath And I said no She's like what are you thinking about And I said I was thinking about Actually a happy memory Like I'm not even joking I have I have such bad intrusive thoughts That sometimes You know I was thinking about A really nice time When somebody had showed Showed me a bunch of kindness And I don't even think I was embarrassing in the moment I don't think there's any bad association with it, but sometimes I just feel guilty about people showing me kindness or something, and I just was literally, I was having a memory of a happy moment, which I'm trying not to derail the show by getting into, but it was just a happy moment from years ago, and Genevieve overheard me thinking about it and me saying to myself, God damn it, that is my life.

that was your brain or that was your, I don't know, some part of you being kind of feeling some sense of embarrassment about someone showing kindness to you and then you audibly said, God damn it. Yes. Just like

in the same way that I have these thoughts of memories of things where I've acted in a way that I think was embarrassing in the moment I carry it around. And one of those is, and this is something I've had to suppress. I never told you this. And I've been tempted or I fantasized about bringing this up on one of these episodes we do with our friends from the text me back podcast but you know we've been in the past several months you and i have teamed up with lindy and megan and we've done some shows together and when i'm prepping them it's hard for me not to remember the time i asked lindy to come on my nighttime radio show i don't know if you know that she was on the very i'm pretty sure the very very first episode of my nighttime radio show or certainly in the first week and i think you know she knew me vaguely through you because i think she'd been on tbtl since i'd been a part of tbtl like i wasn't a stranger to her did she come over to your house once she did years later years later for a tbtl thing but at this point um this was this is a long long time ago now and um she agreed i reached out to her and asked her if she would be on the first episode of of what was then called the andrew wall show and she said yes and i'm sort of mortified that she did because it was so embarrassing the segment was because I wanted to sort of lean into her maybe like the idea of her as a feminist and like I'm a guy with a radio show the reason that it came up and I don't think I have the audio on my computer I think it's on a hard drive somewhere I had this idea of like like how to be a proper man on the radio or I don't even remember what the deal was but I had like a series of questions or something and she was supposed to walk me through like it was sort of like ask a feminist it was sort of like ask a feminist or or something along those lines but it was like so and i don't know if it was like so that i don't so that i don't act sexist or what it was and you know this wasn't like this was 20 what was this 2013 or something i was a full-ass adult i wasn't a kid um and i just look back at that segment and i remember her being generally pretty game um but also just realizing pretty early on this is terrible this was a really bad idea and you know and I was pretty nervous being on the radio and I think about that sometimes and I think about the fact that Lindy who like her star was pretty big at that point like you know and that she did that as a solid to me I don't know that she remembers that or if she remembers it that she remembers it was me like I'll bet you if she has any memory of that she might not even realize that I was the the idiot who did that segment with her at Cairo Radio she came into the studio for that and I still when I think about that I cringe so

hard well I didn't hear that segment and I'm my guess is that it was a lot less bad than your anxiety tells you it was but I also can say I know the feeling of realizing at the beginning or like early on in a sort of a segment or a bit or a premise that it

doesn't work realizing

when you're on the live radio that this is actually not going to work the way you hoped it would, that is a terrible, terrible feeling.

And me very much like literally trying to find my voice or maybe I should say figuratively trying to find my voice because like it was like I didn't know what the show was going to be yet. I was working with you on TBTL and so some people already knew me as TBTL and that's obviously a big influence on what I was doing on the night show but also the reason I was drawn to TBTL is because I already, you and I, shit.

air kind of an aesthetic when it comes to a lot of radio stuff and so like being myself and not trying to be my tbtl self on this other show but also being uh you know on cairo radio mostly as a news producer and people knew me as that way as like sort of a third voice on the old ross and burbank show so anyway i just remember like not knowing what i wanted the show to be just knowing that some guy named smoky gave me the job and when a guy named smoky gives you a job on the radio you take it and then like and i just wish like if nothing else if i had one if i had one lindy that i could play i wish i would have had her on near the end of the run of that show when i had a little bit of confidence or at least the confidence that came along with the fact that i was going away and it didn't matter anymore but like why why do that in the first week i mean i think that makes sense i've launched enough radio shows as a producer before to think like oh we want to be splashy the first week out it's got to be this or whatever so you you call in your favors or whatever, but it's actually the worst time to call in your favors because you don't know what the hell you're doing yet. Right.

Yeah, I've been through that with various shows. I've never thought about it this way, but I've never thought about what a disservice it was to you, you know, unintentionally, it wasn't anyone's fault, but what a disservice it was to you for TBTL to have pre-existed in that time slot. Not because TBTL was some genius thing, but because there was a whole list of things that if you did them it would have been like well didn't they do that on tbtl you know wasn't that a segment and jen was just such a genius producer she just all had a million ideas so like to be because when we took over that time slot it was like there was no overlap between us and the sports show that mike brown was hosting we never had to go wait did he do was he making margaritas on the roof right was he having a push-up contest with nikki with two k's

like well the weird thing is is frank shire ended up doing a lot of the tbtl bits that you guys did when he took over when you left. But better. But better. And that's what hurt.

He got Dory to fry fish with him, which was the amazing thing. Exactly. I know. And that's honestly, like, that was a tough pill for me to swallow. But no, just the idea that you had, like, again, this is a way of me sort of, I don't know, glorifying TBTL, but it probably wasn't helping your thought process to have this other thing that had been there that you still worked on in a way and that had done a million things. So that you're like, oh, what if we did this? oh, didn't they do that on TVTL? You just keep bumping up against things probably that you wanted to make sure you weren't doing something that was too similar to something we had done, but then that leaves you with a lot more standard nighttime radio type of stuff. I can understand how it is that you got to the idea of, let's have Lindy in and I'm going to basically, she's going to coach me up on how to not be a dirtbag or how to not be a chauvinist.

Yeah, which was also just a weird thing because I'm not a chauvinist. I'm so confused as to what the bid is and now i'm like oh i should look that up what was the bid and it's like no no that's like that's like looking up whether or not this uh wire still has electricity coursing through it like the only way to know is to get shocked yes i would rather not i would rather not let's just assume that it's that it is still live well the good news is it did not

tarnish your relationship with lindy in any way such that you know she's still very happy to jump on the line with us and is a friend of the show. So you didn't do any permanent reputational damage with her.

Or your star power and friendship with her overwhelms all the negatives that go on. Well, that's kind of low-key what I was thinking. Emphasis on the word star power. Yes, anyway. Should we actually try to get something done

today? I guess. Why not? It's a Friday. We've done almost no useful work this week. All week. Let's bomb through these. The good news is it's actually only nine stories i think because we actually did brain rot we did and then forgot

which is a form of brain rot i don't know if you're gonna remember all the way back to last week but we did a whole show just setting up the idea of what we were going to do with the top stories and we didn't even get to that until thursday because we kept having other that damn We did a word list.

We did 20 minutes on Panopticon.

That's right. So we have a whole show from last week where we were just talking about what we're going to do with all these stories that we skipped. Didn't talk about any of them. The next day we did one word, brain rot, and then we did an entire week of not doing what we said we were going to do after dedicating a whole episode to setting it up. So here we are on Friday, and we have nine more top stories.

so i'm looking through these and i'm realizing that a good number of them i did not actually even read so i couldn't i we might have to just toss some of those out like um a mississippi town dealing with sour milk stink pond it's a good headline those are good words yeah uh So, let's go.

I don't think I read... Maybe I read it at the time. A Mississippi Town's Annual Battle Against a Lagoon of Souring Milk. Oh, God. This is an article by Daniel Wu, and it involves the city of Koskio, Mississippi, where they've got some kind of dairy farm, and they dump a bunch of, I don't know, waste from the farm, the spoiled milk, into this lagoon, and then the milk all, like, rots, and the whole town just absolutely reeks. If I remember right, some of the writing is pretty good. The scent is so overwhelming, said Emily Bennett, who lives near the lagoon on the east side of Koskio. It will wake you up in the middle of the night. You will think your house is on fire. Oh, my God. I believe that was the line that made me think we should talk about that.

It's described as gassy and milky. And according to resident Brad Stanley, it just smells like clabbered milk and burnt cat hair.

The burnt cat hair is such a weird kind of distinct note on the whole thing.

Yeah, well, honestly, I would say the headline here is don't let Brad Stanley cat sit while you're gone. Yes, right? Because why does he know what burnt cat hair smells like?

They've spent millions of dollars trying to fix the smell and to no avail. They spend $212,000 a year just trying to treat the lagoon with aerators and chemicals. um and if i'm trying to remember how the story ended um uh as far as let's see uh as uh cut as koscio i keep saying the name different every time stews some are weighing their options uh so and so spends her weekends in texas where she has family and is considering moving west to start a restaurant in dallas she said others like reynolds who's previously mentioned stories can't stomach leaving home most of the people uh grew up here and just stayed here said reynolds i want better for the town so it looks like um there was not any immediate uh fix in sight for this mississippi town with their sour milk stink i guess not how about costco checking ids for hot dogs and sodas

yeah i was thinking about i was looking ahead at some of these too and which ones sort of speak to me i do think that that i like that in your notes you mentioned here we first attempted to talk about that in march uh of this year late march march 28th and i do remember reading this one my memory is somewhat uh fuzzy on it but it's sort of uh part of a bigger group of stories about costco that all happened in 2024 about both i think maybe cost saving measures or maybe trying to

stop some cost leakages first well cracking down on people um coming in who either didn't have a costco membership or maybe using someone else's membership it used to be very lax on that stuff And now I know when Beck and I went into Costco recently, you have to show the ID card to get in or the Costco card to get in, which I don't think was always the case.

You used to have to flash it, but now they've started scanning it because it was still kind of there was always somebody there at the front who would just sort of wave you in and look at your card very briefly. But I don't know what your experience was, but there was another article after this one that said Costco is going to start scanning the cards when you come in. So like, you know, paying more attention to it. And I think you and I, I'm surprised we didn't end up talking about this because I, oh, you know what? I might have talked about this on the KOW podcast because I was surprised that it's a, they consider it a loss for somebody without a membership to come in and buy their super cheap hot dogs. And I know that hot dogs are super cheap, but I just sort of figured that like, if you're that deep, if you're somebody who's going to Costco to get the cheap hot dogs, it's only a matter of time before eventually you're getting your Costco membership. and because you know what i mean you're like yeah you're more entrenched in the cost of culture

than i am and i have a card consider it a lost leader like right any business would like to have people coming in their store that's like 90 of the battle right so if people are coming in you think you're that's a win for you um maybe you're michael pennix jr recently minted starting quarterback for the atlanta falcons who said he got the news that he was going to be their new starting quarterback while he was at costco with his girlfriend eating a costco hot dog oh i didn't And then he said, when I got the news, I wasn't hungry anymore.

Yeah, I know that feeling.

It's like very humanizing to think of Michael Penix Jr. standing in the food court of the Costco eating his hot dog when he gets the call.

And then putting the rest of the hot dog down. And also, too much bread on those hot dogs. I hate to be a hater, and I've said it on the show before, but man, I heard from people for years about, oh, people know I like hot dogs, and you're going to love the Costco hot dog. You're going to love the Costco hot dog. Boy, was the Costco hot dog a disappointment to this, Andrew. Way too much bun. I mean, they're served on hoagie rolls. Why are you? It's a waste of bread.

The chicken bake. I think that's the real sleeping, that's the sort of secret menu item that I think people should enjoy more.

the chicken bake yeah which isn't for me so much because of the ingredients i think but i have heard

good things how about america's biggest band in 2024 is credence clearwater revival an article by rob sheffield and rolling stone i remember this one really well do you remember it um yeah i mean i think that the the thrust of it was basically that my takeaway from it was that bands are not a thing anymore like you know what i mean you have performers you have singers like sabrina carpenter or Chapel Rhone or, you know, Harry Styles, but, you know, you don't have, like, bands anymore that are topping the charts, that are, like, you know, four people playing their instruments standing on stage. That's just not the kind of music that people are buying huge amounts of anymore. Was that your takeaway from the article?

I don't remember that being my takeaway, although as you say that, that does seem right. Sort of you and I, of late, have been sort of talking about i think we've had a lot of these conversations actually off air but talking about the um kind of the idea of rock and roll and like kind of the older i get and then also the the more that sort of like the rockers of yesteryear get old but still like kind of live a rock and roll lifestyle i just hate the term rock and roll these days i hate the idea of rock i hate the fact that seattle's head coach mike mcdonald says rock and roll all the time i don't know if you know that but that's like no let's just get out there and rock and roll I hate that. I hate when somebody in a workplace environment says, you're a rock star. Like every example of this just like grates on me. Please, nobody ever call me a rock star. I don't think I'm in much danger of that these days. So what you just said sort of plays into my bias against that bit of it. I did think it had to do with sort of streaming and the weirdness of streaming, because if you'll recall, and now I'm blanking on the name of it. But like the number one song on Spotify by the by, you know, the indie band Pavement, which is a very famous band in some circles. And you and I are big Pavement guys. Is it Harness Your Hope? is Harness Your Hopes, a song that only appeared on one of the bonus tracks. Was it a Wowie Zowie bonus track? Or maybe it was Bright in the Corners. I don't recall which album it came off of. But it didn't come off of the album. It came off of, it was a bonus track. But for some reason, was it a TikTok thing, Luke? Yes. Or was it a, okay, it was a TikTok thing. It blew up on TikTok. It got swept up. Yeah. And so that becomes like, in the streaming age, that's Pavement's most famous song. I saw them live and they performed that song.

Oh, wow. I saw a version of Steve Malcomus playing that song so badly. Oh, really? That I was like, I was like, I went from not knowing that song existed. I literally didn't even know that song was a Pavement song. And then I saw it on TikTok and I was like, I love this Pavement song I've never heard of. To seeing him play it live thinking, I'll just go back to listening to the recording.

Yeah, and when I saw him perform it live here in Seattle, it was a good show. Like, he didn't phone it in. I remember it being good. But I just remember thinking like, oh, wow, if I had seen you when that was Bright in the Corners. And so I think Bright in the Corners was came out in like ninety nine or something. I'm not sure about that, but I don't think that that would have been a song they would have toured with, you know. But in twenty twenty four, certain things get caught up into the upstream and they become super popular. And that was the thrust, I believe, of the CCR article and how like this, I guess, streaming numbers on Creedence Clearwater Revival are huge. And I got to be honest with you. And this has nothing to do with my bias against rock and roll. Like, I love so much stuff that you would categorize as classic rock or music from the 60s and 70s. But CCR has never been it for me. Like, I've always sort of actively disliked.

Andrew, have you ever seen The Rain?

There's something about the growling nature of the vocals, which I think is the selling point of the band. I've always disliked the sound created by CCR. It has always made me, it always feels dirty to me. I could, yeah, kind of swamp rock. It's kind of muddy, the muddy banks of a river that I don't want to put on galoshes to go visit.

There are a couple of Creedence songs that I do like, but I think that they're generally, yeah, I don't need to hear Proud Mary again or, you know, Fortunate Son again personally. Also, I remember there was a Creedence Clearwater revival. Like, my first sense of that band was actually when there was some sort of like a double album set that was being advertised on television. Do you remember those days?

Yeah, you mean this was of their stuff or a compilation of stuff from the era?

I believe it was literally just their stuff. It was like Creedence, Clearwater Revival's Greatest Hits. And it was like, you know, going between the different songs and stuff. And I remember they looked really corny to me because it was probably like the mid-80s. And so they were, you know, this was songs that they had recorded maybe 20 years ago. It was kind of, it felt, I don't know, it felt uncool to me. And so I always filed it under kind of uncool music.

even though I definitely have come around on it probably more than you have. I'm trying to scroll through this article and figure out, let's see, here's from Rob Sheffield's Rolling Stone article. There just aren't any comparable examples. Bruce Springsteen doesn't have any records that are this big. Neither do Pink Floyd. He's referring to the Creedence Clearwater's, let's see, Green River is the album, I think, that is charting really well still for Creedence Clearwater all these years later. He says, Bruce Springs doesn't have any records this big, neither do Pink Floyd or Van Halen or the Beach Boys or the Eagles. Any other music franchise this popular has some larger-than-life personality or drama in the brand. To pick the most obvious example, everybody who loves Fleetwood Mac, which means everybody knows the real life, whatever, this is now just getting into the weeds. The point is, Rob Sheffield noted that this CCR record was still doing really well all these years later.

So the one thing I don't remember is whether or not they made the obvious jokes slash observation i'm going to say observation because it's not really funny but it's literally

a credence clearwater revival i i don't think he did but i think it was a missed opportunity i do think so as well the rare missed opportunity by rob sheffield why don't we wrap things up by quickly talking about ralph nader's latest crusade which is why are his pens drying out

do you see when i'm sitting here this is what i always uh am fiddling with and taking notes with during the shows is that we're using a paper mate flare felt tip medium point i have an entire kid i don't know if you can see this and of course the listeners can't although maybe i can clip this for the show pick i have this multi-colored can you see my screen i have this multi-colored collection these are well except for that uh except for that exacto blade that just fell out But nothing like an X-Acto blade falling out onto your hands is a problem. But, yeah, I have one of almost every color of the rainbow.

I dropped a steak knife the other day and tried to catch it. Oh, good lord. Instinctively. Oh, no. I was, like, putting it in the dishwasher or something, and it slipped. And before I could even realize, I was, like, catching it, and it was poking me. Luckily, it wasn't super sharp. But I was like, I got to not do that. Yeah. So Ralph Nader, of course, the longtime consumer advocate, the guy who may or may not have given George W. Bush his first election, who wrote Unsafe at Any Speed.

I think it was the Supreme Court that did that, honestly.

Well, yeah, but I don't think Nader helped necessarily in stealing votes from Al Gore or whatever. I guess he's not stealing them. He's allowed to have them. But anyway, Anna Marie Conte of the New York Times, I think of the wire cutter, which, by the way, is my go-to for practically every consumer whatnot. It's like, well, what's the wire cutter got to say about this? Ralph Nader, I think, reached out to them to complain that his pens that he's been using for, I'm going to guess, 100 years, however old Ralph Nader is, this aforementioned Paper Mate flare tip pen, he wanted to complain to the New York Times that they're drying out faster than they used to. Which led them on this incredibly Detailed kind of testing Process to try to figure out what was going on with these pens

So detailed and that's why I can't Remember the ins and outs of it now but I remember being drawn to this because Obviously Ralph Nader is an interesting guy And I love these pens myself And it fits into again the kind of the Broader conversation we've Had over the past several years about Sort of like in this case I'm going to Group it in with sort of what they call shrinkflation But that's not really the case didn't we do dryflation dryflation we did a story or we talked about a story on this show about how like if you have nostalgia for some sort of like um brand of like food like cookies or crackers or snack food from the 80s or 90s and then you eat it today and you're disappointed it's not just because your memory was better than reality but it's literally because these companies are swapping out all kinds of ingredients to like try to make more money save money and make more money And so even though the Times reached out to the Flair people, or is it a Bic Flair? I can't remember. No, Paper Mate. Paper Mate. Reached out to Paper Mate, and Paper Mate either gave no response or insisted that they've never changed their ink formula for years. They went back and found boxes going back to 1966, unused pens from 1966, 83, 89, and 2023. and the pen from 1966 has a bolder stroke than the 2023 one does.

They actually tested a bunch of pens. This is what's kind of funny, too, is the Wirecutter staff tested, I think, four or five different kinds of pens, and unanimously and universally, they all rated Ralph Nader's pen as the worst. The pen that Ralph Nader's been using, somebody said it felt like you were trying to, the ink was too sticky to the page. Oh, I see. trying to draw With the adhesive side of scotch tape. In other words, not the year version of the pens he's using, but just generally speaking how bizarre it is that a paper mate would be your pen of choice.

Right, like nobody on the wire cutter staff thought this was actually a good pen. Yeah, no, it's not really a great pen. Ralph Nader has been using it for a million years. Yeah, yeah. And he also has a theory that they changed the design of the cap, which maybe dries the pen out and also is easier to lose. therefore the pen not having its cap on and drying out faster that was a ralph nader theory i love that applying the scientific process to that that's good yeah so by the end of this and they go through all these different pens and you're right to do this exhaustive research and they basically decide that yes these pens are getting shittier but ralph nader is sticking with them it's the and the the paper made people offered to send ralph nader um some if he sent in his old dried out pens they were going to send him some replacements and if i know ralph nader and i kind of do i did meet him once i spent a couple days with him he probably took them up on

oh you think so i thought that he'd be too proud to like kind of cave into big business in that way

you know i big paper mate that's that's possible too i what i remember about hanging out with him was he was not a guy who was a particularly great at reading the room oh i believe oh yeah oh i can totally see that absolutely struck me as euphemistically maybe a little neurodivergent

i believe that and and certainly like kind of single-minded in a way that that you could see kind of going hand in hand with that this article and i don't even think i did end up finishing this whole thing but they like had a whole bunch of theories like what about this theory and they run them all through the through the scientific process including they're like well what if i'm not putting the cap on as often like could it be an outside factor i'm just seeing now theory number eight is nader's environment is too dry could that have been it and apparently this is a false that they they ruled this out but it says what if nader's environment has become drier then his pens could be drying out due to the lack of humidity they said it felt like he moved to tucson see is that true no oh i was gonna say that would be like that would be a great uh thing to explore

but apparently they ruled that out if you want to read the world's most detailed article about paper mate flare tip pens check it out Anna Marie Conte writing in the New York Times from earlier this year

do you mind if I just we don't have to talk about them but let me just rattle off the other things that were on our list of skipped stories from the year fruit stripe gum will soon be over are wired headphones actually better tallest matchstick tower accepted by Guinness after controversy we didn't get to that one I can't believe we didn't get to that one three-year-old complaining of monsters in her wall was right yeah should we do laundry every day i thought that was a good conversation but not such a great write-up honestly i remember that was um not exactly conclusive in any way um and i believe the other ones we've discussed so

good for us yay i'm actually i'm i'm what is that word less shame yeah feeling less shame about us on this friday thank you for being a 10 all right let's thank some of our financial supporters some of our donors who are keeping tbtl in business with their incredible generosity and we really really appreciate folks like good old gather kenyon gather out there in chicago illinois

Thank you, Gether. Gether's real name is not Gether, but because of a typo. I was going to say, it's actually Kether. But because of a typo in a spreadsheet that we had years ago.

Many years ago now.

We called her Gether. And now it's become like a whole sort of alter ego, I think, for Heather.

It's kind of like our friend Michelle.

Exactly. Exactly. I kind of forgot about that. We have two people with similar supervillain origin stories on TVTL.

Yes, called us messing up their names when they're giving us money. Exactly. Thanks also to Margaret Kearney out there in Whitefish, Montana.

Hey, thank you, Margaret. Appreciate that.

It's a winter wonderland right now in Whitefish. That's right. That's why they're white. Yep, Michael Plastina. And the ones that aren't, they paint them. Yes, you have to. Reminds me of one of my old favorite jokes when I was a kid, which was um what's um what's what's red and wet and hangs on a wall what's red wet whistles and hangs on a wall and the person goes like i don't know you're like a fish a fish isn't red well it is if you paint it a fish isn't wet well it is if you get it wet a fish doesn't whistle or fish doesn't hang on the wall what does if you hang it on there a fish doesn't whistle i threw that in to make it hard i think i remember you saying that i'm totally massacring that joke But there's something about, I threw that in to make it hard Always cracking up as a kid

I saw a Blue Sky post Recently where somebody said I'm just throwing this out there to protect others in case you have a child in your life if they ask you if you're smart and you say yes and they say well then spell it just say it and save yourself some time from getting dragged by a six-year-old dude they tried to uh uh the old uh what's his

name will shorts the puzzle master tried to mess i can say this now because the the real answer has been has been revealed but he said okay this was a quiz he said this is going to be a what did he say a tricky one he said oh shoot this is not going to be very interesting because i can't remember the exact details but he said you um let's see um you change two letters in a place on earth okay so it's you change two letters in a place on earth and then you get a yuletide

greeting that we say gosh i'm so bad at these and i don't know if i should do that if i should try

to attempt it on the air the place michael plastina can help from morgantown west virginia thank you the donors i think i talked to michael at the philly after party oh okay and michael had an incredible story um and uh and was telling me about how tbtl this is the same person how tbtl was pretty important when he was going through some health stuff and everything it was really nice to get to meet michael so michael appreciate that and if you're not the same michael you're also cool but the michael i'm thinking of is extra cool from the after party um yeah if you change two letters okay it's a place on earth you change two letters in a place on earth and you get

a yuletide greeting can i ask you a question i know that you're somewhat dubious about this in some way in some way you feel like the puzzle master has betrayed your trust is it because is the phrase place on earth seems weird to me is that part of the hang-up here yes because it's It's not like a location.

You can phone a friend. You need to phone Alex Hawley of Seattle, Washington, one of our donors today. Alex. Alex is a very helpful type. Also, Carolyn Rose is in Truckee, California. Carolyn solved this within one minute like I did. I never get these right, and I literally got it right away, and then... Oh, you got it right right away.

Yeah. Okay. But it also betrayed your trust, your intellectual trust in some way.

Well, it was...

How do I put it? It was a trick question. It's a trick question. A place on Earth. Do you have anybody else? I hope the next person's name is super, super long.

I know this guy is very smart. Why? Because he's lifelong friends with Phyllis Fletcher, and that's only smart people do that. It's Ivan Chaubert in San Francisco, California.

Thank you, Ivan. I wish your name were longer, because I need more time to puzzle this out. I don't even think I can take a swing at this. A Yuletide greeting, you said. So let me, you know what? You changed two letters. I've been trying to think of every place on Earth. What I need to do is think about every Yuletide greeting instead. I can tell you're near the end of that can of Fresca. You just did something which is the most disappointing thing in the world. You knew that can was empty, but you were trying to get the last drops out of it. We need to get out of here. And it's mostly backwash. You need to go get a fresh can of Fresca, as do I. Let's see. A seasonal greeting. Merry Christmas. Ho, ho, ho. Do you say ho, ho, ho to people? You say season's greetings. You say happy holidays.

Merry Christ-mas. that was an old Vern Funk commercial

oh really really leaning into keeping the Christ in there

there was the weird guy who was actually not Vern Funk but who did their ads and he had this one where he was just going Merry Christmas

and then did they go on to say why it's important to say it that way or it's just

no I think he was just saying a bunch of different weird ways he also I think was like a deeply religious person so maybe he was literally trying to make the point that's not leave? Are you getting anything that you put in Vern Funk? No, no, I'm cheating.

I'm looking up other holiday greetings. Happy New Year. I think that we need to end this because it's not very entertaining and I'm coming up with literally nothing to throw your way.

Okay, I'm going to buy you a little more time because I'm going to play Vern Funk wishing you a Merry Christmas as soon as we get done with a different auto-add, which is kind of...

That was on television in Seattle.

Him just yelling out holiday water.

What was happening? It was totally insane. In Seattle at that time. I feel like Seasons Greetings, is Seasons Greetings the greeting that we're looking for here?

No, Peace on Earth. So you change two letters in a place on Earth, and you make it into Peace on Earth.

So that's why A Place on Earth, you're supposed to think, oh, is it Chicago? Is it, you know, is it some far-flung country? Is it Timbuktu? But that's actually the phrase. You change two letters in A Place on Earth.

It's not a greeting. Take it up with Will Shorts. It's not a greeting. Listen. Take it up with Will Shorts. Have you gone up to anybody in your 48 years? You might not have said greeting. And said, no, I know. All right. That's okay. No, no. That's the fact that I knew it was a trick, but I was still, like, thinking very nearly.

I don't think I think I set it up poorly.

So did I tell you that I think I maybe didn't tell you this on the air because I didn't want to dox myself too much in case it became a thing. But I tell you, my my weird neighbor from across the street, the old guy sent in a and I don't think it was the first time he was successful in doing this. He sent in a puzzle, a puzzle that he made up that will show. He wasn't on the show. He sent it in. So it was like so and so from Seattle has this. And it had to do with, I think, soldiers and their horses, like war heroes and their horses or something. This was probably like in the screen.

Think about how much money you can make in Vegas if you knew the answer to the puzzle before it airs. Oh, good. Just go down there, put some money down. I don't know how that better. Where would you do that in Vegas? Whatever the nerdiest casino is.

I would like to check out that casino. Public radio producers. Yeah. All right. Well, this has been fun. It sure has. And you know what? We did what we said we were going to do.

We absolutely did. Promises made, promises kept. That's the TBTL way. That's right. All right. That's going to do it for today's show and for our broadcast week. Thanks for hanging out with us. We will be back here on Monday with more imaginary radio for you. Please join us for that. In the meantime, have a great weekend. Take care of yourselves. Happy Christmas. Belated. Belated.

Or early. Or very, very early.

Never too early. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all. Power out.