Muse

OK, class, settle down. I know it's the first day, but we've got a lot to get through. The earth is flat. The devil is real. The sun is crazy. And that is everything that we know. Congratulations, graduates! That's it? Well, no. You still owe tuition.

It's not great. It's fantastic. You totally undersold it. The pageantry, the costumes, wow.

I can't do that much jokes because nobody laughs at me.

Targets, targets.

Swah! Woo! Ha! Hee! Ha! Oh my god. Ah ha ha. Oh my god. That is...

The terrible feeling of coldness. Actually, you know what? I could email you. Or, you know, you could email me at splet2 at spletnet.net. Splet1's my father. I mean, I'll be sad to see him go. It'll be nice to get my hands on that handle.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Everything you're about to see is my real voice.

My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

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

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, a.k.a. Hummingbird Central, baby.

Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful.

It is an absolutely gorgeous day. I saw, I mentioned this on the show, I think on Monday, which was the first day around here. And I want to be clear, I know people are dealing with all kinds of weather situations that are actually dangerous and really awful. So a little rain here in the PNW isn't that big of a deal. But I said on Monday that I didn't realize how much I needed it to stop raining around here. And I saw somebody else online who said the same thing. They were like, like, I didn't know that I needed it, but I sure did. And I'm sure happy that it continues. You didn't know that you needed episode 4,376 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. But you do, and it's here, my friends. And we are going to get to this new segment called Random Audio. Louie, what is that? I'm like, I don't know. What is it? Round up. Wherein I play three random clips of audio for Andrew, for his enjoyment, and hopefully yours, too. You, the tens of listeners. Speaking of Andrew Walsh, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships, we are friends, dare I say, I don't know if I'm his best friend. I would like to think I am. Best friends are very cool to be.

Very best friends are dope to be.

He is Andrew Walsh. He is joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. You know, I heard a little bit of...

Would you say we're best friends? I mean, this is actually kind of a serious question.

I was going to talk about Sam Richardson at the top of the show. Now I feel a lot of pressure.

Well, I don't mean in terms of, like, voluntarily being best friends. But in terms of just the amount of time that we spend talking to each other, I don't think that there could be any other way to describe this other than a best friend situation, or at least a most time spent together friend situation.

I like the way you're like, not a voluntary best friend. No, no. A compulsory. Am I being rendered? No, you're being friended. You're being friended. My version of friend of Veep, which also goes back to Sam Richardson. Yes, possibly. I guess I don't think about best friends in that way. You and I rarely see each other socially, though, these days, because you do live in a different part of the state. but certainly we've taken a vow of basement chastity. And I've taken a vow of basement chastity, that is for sure. And of course, Luke, Genevieve is my best friend. Well, sure, of course.

And I guess this raises the question, can you have multiple best friends? I'm just thinking of people that aren't my girlfriend or my daughter or people like that. Oh, yeah, they're my best friends. Certainly, how dare you, certainly you are the person I talk to the most in the world. And I don't know what that means, but I'm going to choose to put it in the category of very good friends.

Of best friend-ism. Best friend adjacent. Best friend adjacent. I did, but I am curious, truly, if you are familiar with a show called The After Party, which I was just hipped to recently, starring, I believe, actually starring, starring in a starring role, Sam Richardson. one of our favorite best friends from the Detroiters take a couple Boston coolers wait I don't remember that reference what is that?

they go to some kind of an event and they just are ordering tons of a drink called the Boston cooler which I don't even think is a real thing

oh I think I vaguely remember

They got like 10 Boston coolers on their tray going back. I think it's like a charity auction or something.

Oh, my God. Anyway, have you heard of this show? Because I just feel like this, like, what's that drop we play from Workaholics? How did all these buff dudes escape my radar?

Yeah, I feel like we should know every time Sam Richardson does anything, we should be aware of it.

Yeah, exactly. And so, and this has been around since 2022. Oh, it looks like it's an Apple TV thing. Or is it Apple Plus? I don't know what you call that shit. Which, that would kind of explain why it's not on my radar. But I feel like that might be something that we, as best friends, should be looking into, potentially, as our next viewing obsession. I'm a huge Sam Richardson fan.

Do you know anything about the premise of the show?

That's what I'm trying to figure out here.

I don't love the name. I'm going to be honest with you. As your best friend, I would just like to clarify. I think you deserve my honest opinion. I don't like the name.

Here's what I will tell you. And I'm going to read to you directly from Wikipedia. My buddy was telling me about this the other day at the Kraken game, by the way. I went to a Kraken. No. I just cracked my first Kraken game the other day. It was fun. I'd never been before. There was a... Release the Kraken. That's the local hockey team, by the way. I think they're in their fourth season now for folks who don't follow that. And I'm not somebody who follows the NHL either. There was this... Why would I focus on the negative? I will say the one part that, like, really made me cringe, and, like, they have a whole bunch of, like, fun, you know, I don't know if you know this, Luke, but hockey is in three periods, which gives you two intermissions. I'm just hepping you to some of the, hipping you? I'm hipping you to some of the language that goes, I don't want you to embarrass yourself at your first Kraken game, which I assume you have not been at, right?

When I see the Zamboni, I don't know what's going on.

When you see the Zamboni, call it a Zamboni. You call the jersey sweaters, I believe. Oh, right, right, right. They are games, not matches, apparently. I was surprised to hear that. I think it's a soccer match, right? But a hockey game. That's important. And they're not in halves or quarters. They're in periods, right? They call them thirds. I don't want you to embarrass you. No, no, they're periods. So there are these two, you know, like. I fully believe you, by the way.

That tells you my level. I tried to become a hockey guy when I lived in Portland because I started betting on the Kraken games in the first season. They also had a weirdly auspicious, I think, first season. No, first season they were terrible. They were terrible. Maybe it was their second season. Second season they got better, yeah. They were actually kind of better than maybe they were expected to be. And towards the end of the season, out of just sheer boredom and not wanting to feel my feelings, I started just laying some heavy bets on the Kraken, and it sort of shaped up. And so I was a real hockey guy, and then I moved to a state where they don't let me bet on my phone. So I lost track of the team.

Now that you say that, you did talk about that on TBTL. You went through your, I think, three weeks of just intense hockey fandom.

Yeah, it was really – I was like, yeah, that's icing. That's right. Like I went from, are these called thirds? To I'm better than the coach at telling these guys what to do.

Right, exactly. You're just so angry at the decisions being made. But they did have – so during these intermissions –

By the way, on the subject of Zambonis, can we come back to something during my holiday break?

involving a zamboni when you're yeah of course um they have these various games their their mascot which i'm sort of on the fence about is a troll it's like literally like a troll character like that um and i remember when they kind of unveiled it but i guess he's kind of a in the in the modern tradition of fun mascots i guess he is kind of a bit of a a hoot in on social media or whatever people seem to like this this scamp i can't remember its name no certainly not um but anyway like they played musical chairs on the ice with these like blow up chairs at one point is like you know between period entertainment it was funny one of the one of the um you know one of the fans who was out there playing musical chairs on ice ended up popping he went and sat as hard and quickly on the chair as possible ended up blowing up on him i thought that was pretty funny i don't think that was planned anyway these little these little events were fun but then but they're so so tied to marketing in some way in a lot of cases and then there I am you know I have very um I have I wouldn't say complicated feelings about Amazon I have negative feelings about Jeff Bezos and Amazon and you know just we don't have to get into all of the things that are in the news lately that make me feel even worse about my relationship anytime I buy something off of amazon or supporting jeff bezos or any of these rich tech guys my i i broke a little bit yesterday and listened to some npr and my head almost exploded by the end of the mark zuckerberg piece i'm just like how how can i ever get back into paying attention to the world again when i listen to three to All right. minutes of the radio and my eyes are bleeding i do not know how i'm gonna do this we're not even

talking about especially bad week with you know january 6th and everything the the certification of things but like it has been rough out there for a a news consumer a person who tends to listen to public radio i have been i will turn it on and then i will just it's like i walk into a room and then I just do a 180 and walk right out of it it's like I cannot tolerate public radio right now because it is just so brutal and they've made the calculated decision that they have to cover the news of the world that is their job but it's like I don't know I don't know how I'm I'm with you I don't know how I'm gonna get through the next four years of listening to this coverage of what this guy is doing and what his hench people are doing like and I feel like it's getting normalized in some weird way like this is the latest like the latest sort of spin of this wheel is well now we have to treat him like a real president as opposed to um you know actually chris hayes had a really really great episode of why is this happening this week where he talked to somebody about basically ways that the democrats can push back against the trump administration and i i was telling him over text that i thought it was like very realistic but also it gave me some hope like i'm into those conversations but this this this other thing that's happening where we're just like a lot of Democrats are going well we got to work with the guy uh and and and then the media seems to be following suit where they're just treating stuff that he's doing like it's not bananas it's just it's it's it's it's crushing my spirit and I don't

know if you were following the Zuckerberg stuff yesterday but like that too like you mentioned the word normalization I mean that's it too like it's almost like the like you know these these tech guys Bezos Zuckerberg whoever else you want to group in there like this idea of them ditching any kind of fact checking them partnering up with non-profit news organizations to do general fact checking to try to stem the tide of misinformation which is a huge scourge in our society but not just saying hey we're going to low-key that but then taking the opportunity to just basically say the fact that we've been fact checking has been a huge overcorrection towards the liberalization of society or whatever you know i'm paraphrasing exaggerating i'm exaggerating a tiny bit there from it's almost like zuckerberg has been holding his breath just getting through the quote-unquote woke era so that he could just take this deep breath and inhale all of the just conservative maga bullshit where he can swim in these waters so much more freely and just like i i almost like you listen i'm not even joking i listened to one q a on all things considered yesterday with some tape of him and his announcement and like i almost deleted i came very very close to at least like kind of turning off my instagram for a while and like some of these tech businesses we need like i you know like google you know web tv web web google web tv these are the services i need you know cosmo.com and what was the pet the the pet website uh i can't remember anyway um but like i don't need instagram you know like i that's just a toy and this this guy is disgusting and so all that is to say i'm at this hockey game by the way on january 6th i'm there with my buddy and like you know we can we just say by the way this whole thing of like

excuse me uh they've stepped up security for january 6th for the certification it's like give me a flipping brock this kayfabe of we got to pretend like january 6th is now a really really controversial and dangerous day yeah it's like there's a one group of people who made at that and another group of people who have literally never done that and the way that they were covering it like you know extra security and can't be too careful it's like stop embarrassing

all of us with this play acting and so i'm there on january 6th and then i realize oh at the capitol right writing right yeah at climate pledge arena luke and then so i'm already like i hate calling it that and then oh it's rise for the national anthem and i'm like oh god and i like i then lean over to my buddy who like and I wanted to be somewhat careful he's you know he served in the army like he's like you know like I want to be respectful of that but you know he also isn't you know he's not a you know he's not a conservative man he shares a lot of the same concerns in the world that I do but I don't want to be like super disrespectful during the anthem but I did lean over to him like this is I said happy January 6th or something like this feels odd on January 6th or whatever like home of the home of the brave right land of the free home of the brave I'm to switch those up anyway like there's something about like standing and being reverent and maybe i'm just getting into like plain old like the lock me up territory for being anti-american but like i don't think i'm anti-american but i'll tell you what it's really hard to stand to be forced to stand societally forced to stand for that and listen to those words and pretend like that actually represents the country that we live in like it's just it's it's really tough all of that is to say one of the little games was like can you can a fan on the ice deliver all the amazon packages that are supposed to be delivered to the various like and it begins with this like this this big um they they show on the jumbotron like maybe five or let's say like five actual kraken players and they say what they've ordered And they start by saying, sorry if this is going to trigger your home devices, but they say, Alexa, order me some baby diapers because I just had a baby. And then somebody else says, order me one of these things. So, like, literally the Kraken players on the Jumbotron are saying, Alexa, order me this or that. And then the guy down on the ice, the fan, who has, like, this Amazon delivery hand truck has to remember. If he delivers all the packages, he gets health care. No, he doesn't.

He's not an employee. Why would a guy wearing an Amazon uniform driving an Amazon truck, why would you ever think that was an employee of Amazon? Oh, my. Are you crazy? Oh, God.

Anyway, and so I'm just like watching. And it's one of those things where I was like trying to examine my feelings. I have so much hatred for that company and the Bezos and myself for being there. I didn't hate myself for being there. I had a nice night. I doubt my buddy's listening, but I don't want to portray it like that. But I just have all these conflicted emotions. And again, on that particular day in this particular year, it's just it's just been a tough go. But I was like thinking, like, if this was a if this was an Alberto promo, like I'd be totally into that. If it was something like, you know, I was going to say local company. Amazon is technically a local company, but like there are certain brands I wouldn't even not only would I not blink at them, but I would actually appreciate it. You know what I mean? I mean, honestly, sprinkle some EQC on that ice. that's fine honestly but like there's something about sitting there sinbad how is it grandma's always got money they ain't got no job i'm just like they're just cramming this amazon propaganda down my throat like they're foie grashing me on amazon shit while i sit there in climate pledge arena on january 6th singing the national anthem it's uh it's uh it's gonna be a um it's gonna be

a challenge these next four years we're gonna get through it together i really mean that you know we were we were really talking about that a lot right after the election i feel like we've kind of you and i have sort of shifted into just you know our normal life and tbtl being its normal meaningless self and everything but i just want to remind everyone we can get through this together we really can i do not think it will be the darkest timeline it doesn't mean that we should you know relax or take our eyes off of things but i just don't think it's going to be the darkest timeline i think something's going to happen there's going to be an an exogenous event that we can't perceive and uh and things are not going to go the way that we thought they were going to go and i'm hoping that is for the better now back to the subject of zambonis and ice addy and i on christmas in seattle in your hometown andrew went to something called like enchantment at t-mobile park t-mobile field where they just go crazy on the christmas lights it's like a christmas experience, and one of the things... Does it raise money for a

second baseman? Wow, I really got you. You did. Sorry.

That's what happens when daddy doesn't use the

cough button, everyone. The good news is, I got you to laugh, the bad news is you have about one week before we have to say goodbye. How's that cough doing?

Oof. I was telling you before the show, I sound worse, but I actually feel better if that makes any sense. So, yeah, I think I'm on the mend. I have the consumption. Is that bad? they wrote a song about me ring around the rosie um anyway i sent you i actually sent the criminals a video from the light display out in like left field and then i zoomed my phone up to like julio rodriguez's like number it was a it was an odd kind of collision of things one being christmasy stuff and the other being like oh this is also where julio rodriguez will be playing in in the spring and I sure hope he has a good season or whatever but uh one of the things they had was this ice skating rink and you know we got you know ice skates and and did it and I was shocked that that is legal like just from a liability standpoint I cannot believe you are legally allowed to let a bunch of people who have never been on the ice before we're not like we don't live in Minnesota this is we don't we're not a culture where people are you know skating in their backyard from a young age this was i would say roughly 400 people who had never ice skated before strapping literal blades to their feet and then wading out onto a slippery as snot surface that also is not only slippery but extremely hard when you fall on it and people were just eating shit left and right and trying to take me and addy down with them did you fall at all i did not i am proud to say nor did addy but but the whole time we were just like looking around and it ended up being fun, but it was like, who thought this was a good idea? Like, again, because of the sort of, it's one thing if it's an ice skating rink and people are going there purposefully and maybe they've done some ice skating or whatever, to just throw this up as a pop-up experience, it is so dangerous to everybody involved. I can't get the sound out of my head of like the human skull connecting with the ice. at the enchantment experience at T-Mobile Field. Like, there is a certain sound that a human body makes when it is completely defenseless, hitting the ice, and you can't get it out of your head, and it haunts me to this day.

Oh, my God. I'm just having a, I'm just trying to recover a memory that probably happens sometime over the holidays. I literally, you know that? I think there's maybe a Far Side cartoon where two people bend over and they bonk their heads together and it sounds like a coconut. I did that to somebody. me and somebody dropped something at some point and me and somebody bent over to pick something up at the exact same time and i swear the reverberation of the sound of two coconuts hitting is still is still reverberating out into space somewhere we both just looked at each other like are we in a three stooges show right now did you begin to think that you were a chicken

with my because i feel like on gilligan's island you would bonk and then you would think you were

chicken until you re-bonked no but i did forget who i was and then they had to bonk me in the head again and then i and then i remembered but um oh i did want i just had some questions for you like how so if you're picturing a baseball diamond and then obviously the outfield and everything like how big was this rink and where was it positioned it would have been it took up like

let's just say all of left field yeah although you can't see any of the mariner stuff it's like you know there's a floor down and there's like a million of these lights and things um but i would say it was roughly the size of maybe left field but and they sold way too many like tickets because it was just teeming with people to the whole thing or just the ice skating part specific well the ice skating was the most dangerous so that was where i noted it the most but uh yeah mostly the ice skating they should not have they should have like you know um staggered it a little bit they should not have let everyone out at the same time the thing that did help was eventually the herd thinned itself there was a lot of people who did one lap and were like okay no more so that helped they kind of got out of there and then some people got better me and addy included so by the end it was really fun but boy the first couple of laps i was just like this is a menace to everyone here

um and how did you get out into the field what was your entryway i'm just kind of curious because i'm at that ballpark a lot and like one time i was there my buddy had an extra ticket to like the fireworks on the field or whatever so I think it was last season maybe I like waited in this tunnel and got to actually go out in the field which I always I want to be more aloof about those kinds of things but then when you're actually on the field it's kind of hard it's kind of like oh my god this is kind of this is kind of awesome so how did what was your was it kind of a cool way to get out there do you remember

you just went down the stairs like you were going like you had good seats to the mariners oh okay so you just went down and but then you know instead of the whatever the fence would be at the very edge between the stadium the seats in the field

there was just like a walkway a gate oh interesting okay i didn't know that but there but it's actually

kind of funny because it was pitched as a maze and addy and i were kind of laughing because you know we were in there walking around and it was the the gimmick was you're collecting eight stars that like christmas needs or santa needs or some shit and you go around with these scratch tickets and you, like, whatever, it was a MacGuffin. Did you do that part? We didn't. We walked around and we saw the things. We didn't do the scratch ticket.

That's why Santa didn't come to my house this year. Thank you. We got fully lost. In the maze. I thought you were laughing at the ridiculousness of the maze. We started out laughing at the

ridiculousness of the maze and then we were in the friggin' shining.

I was gonna say, right. Were the hedge creatures chasing you?

There's nothing more humbling than laughing off the enchantment experience maze and then literally having to open an emergency exit that we thought was going to make a sound to get out of there. That's how we got out of there was we opened a thing that we were not supposed to open. Addie did it. She's a rule breaker like her old man. Because we were late for our ice skating appointment. And so we were like, we've got to get out of here. And we just kept getting actually legitimately trapped in this maze.

And you find yourself in Ichiro's office and he's like in uniform, sitting behind a desk at like 10 o'clock on a Saturday night, two days before Christmas, just like still like going over like rosters and pouring over like pitchers and catchers. I would not be surprised.

I would absolutely have believed that. That would have been amazing. But no. Anyway, just the ice skating thing. I was I was shocked at how. dangerous it is, and I was very happy that I managed to survive it. My dad used to ice skate

a lot. There's an ice skating rink in Cleveland, Ohio called Winterhurst, I think, and it is kind of like, you know, it's just like a roller rink, only it's an ice skating rink, and again, Midwest probably a little bit more experience with ice skates, and I think I went a couple of times when I lived in Cleveland to Winterhurst. That is one thing about watching hockey, too. you know obviously i really don't know anything about hockey that's the first hockey game i think i've ever gone to um but i know something about trying to rollerblade because i did that during the pandemic and it's so hard it's like and i know we've talked about this on the show it's one of the only things that i've really tried at and just said i've failed like i can't and it's just a hobby so it's not like i'm not super bummed about it although there are not a lot like there are very few hobbies where it's like no i tried and i went out there and i gave it not the 10,000 hours how much hours how many hours am i supposed to i think it's 10,000 10,000 hours yeah but by

the way i've been listening to a lot of pushkin lately pushkin industries or whatever it's called that's gladwell's podcasting he's gonna kill his child in one of those mercedes ads dude have you

listened to anything on push no no i don't listen in those first of all the entire thing is just a

high-end car ad all of the ads are for expensive cars with malcolm gladwell driving them with his kid in the car punching it like and the kid going faster daddy oh they're good ads but i'm like the kid is in danger malcolm gladwell is out there just racing around the hudson valley in a super fast mercedes to make these ads for pushkin industries but i mean but i can't tell if you're

to what degree you're joking here is it they're actually in a car you think it's they're in a car together i thought you were just no no he's literally like in a car no he's in a car unless

they're tricking me it sounds like they're he's in a car with his actual kid his kid is named speedy by the way oh well then i think they know what they're doing and and uh it's him driving this kid speedy around in the hudson valley but going he literally says like should we floor it

or something i'm like you shouldn't floor it malcolm no no how about you obey the track very

dangerous um but i was gonna say like you were doing your 10 000 hours of roll anyway point is

and i just eventually i was just like it's not getting easier it still hurt it literally was physically painful my legs i'm just like i guess i just have a body type and a balance type and a everything type that makes me the type of person who just cannot like kind of get comfortable on rollerblades and i was never comfortable on those things you know so all of that is to say one of the things that was the most exciting part of the game was when the when the referee had to jump up to miss the puck and just lands on his feet again or on his ice skates again I'm just like that is that is a miracle I mean just forget about everything else and then they're putting all these like crazy like designs and animations on the rink on the ice itself which is you know it's I gotta say it's such a cool spectacle to see that to see the entire rink basically become like a become like a movie theater screen essentially or a hundred of them put together but all that is to say the most exciting thing is just like the referees didn't fall down like they just like can just jump up take that angel hernandez right these people are elite level ice skaters that's right he's gone now right i think i think they finally finally rousted him out of the league but anyway um that was my experience at the game well i don't think anyone's comfortable

on rollerblades for the record Andrew they're not like roller skates make sense there's you know four of them it's four wheels stable four wheels it's kind of a spread out stable kind of thing relatively stable I mean rollerblades are I mean they're very awkward to be on I just want you to I want you to know I don't think it's you I think it's the rollerblade no I've seen people

comfortable on rollerblades I see it on social media all the time and anyway that I mean that's the thing about what you guys were doing you guys stayed up but like I do think that the casually ice skating once every couple of years is such an interesting thing because it is so it's so difficult i find it incredibly difficult to do like you said and it is like you're using in most cases you're using muscles that you don't usually use you know so it can be very i was sore for like

four days i believe it and and i'm you know in a pretty regular jogging habit i could not believe how much my core was engaged yeah and by the way trying to balance how little core strength i have

Yeah, I'm like a slinky You know what the core strength of TBTL is, Andrew? Oh! See what I did there? My comedy chops? No, can't be that

It is the donors It's the folks that Voluntarily donate their hard-earned money So that this thing can happen five days a week This steamy podcast

Can happen five days a week How did I forget about our new branding, the Sultrys. Towns of TBTL.

Yes, exactly.

Eleanor McNeil specifically requested, Andrew, that you do that voice. Eleanor is in St. Francis, Wisconsin.

Thank you, Eleanor, for keeping this thing going.

Thanks also to Lloyd Christensen in Bellingham, Washington, one of my very favorite places to be from. Yes, indeedly do. Thanks, Lloyd. Thanks to Lisa Arboleda in, ooh, Camas, Washington. I know where that is. That's just down the interstate from me.

Oh, it is? Okay, cool. Your neck of the woods?

Kind of. You go down to Vancouver and you hang a left. You hang a left at Albuquerque.

But where does Lisa live specifically?

The address? Well, just keep on telling us. 1-2-3-4 Mockingbird Lane. What is your go-to if you have to make up an address? Is it Mockingbird Lane?

It's still that. What is that from? Why do we say that Mockingbird Lane?

Somehow we were raised on that.

You know what I don't like, by the way? And I'm saying this quietly so that I don't offend anybody. I really hate the Mockingbird song. I was listening to some records over the weekend. You mean the Beatles? Mock. No, that's Blackbird. Yeah, Bird. Yeah. That is on a-

Oh, the one that Jim Carrey sings in Dumb and Dumber?

I've never seen Dumb and Dumber. I don't know if he sings it, but it's an old song. I'm trying to think. I have a, not Carly Simon. Yeah, yeah. I think I have a Carly Simon record I was listening to. Genevieve brought home a Carly Simon record recently. Hey, want to hear the most annoying sound in the world? And the Carly Simon songs that are good are so good And the ones that aren't good are not for me, my friend And I've never been a fan of that You know this song I'm talking about, right? Mock, yeah, bird

I literally only know it from Jim Carrey's character Singing it in Dumb and Dumb Okay, and I've never seen that I think maybe I thought he made that up or something No, it's a real song

I didn't realize it was a pre-existing condition Anyway, but luckily that is not actually where Lisa lives

It is not Lisa lives in a place known as Camas, Washington, which is, I would say, a good maybe two hours from Auburn, Washington, which is where Kyle Burroughs is. Ah. It's Kyle.

Yes. Thank you both.

And then Patrinka Seland is in, oh, Portland, Oregon, another place I love to be from.

Oh, there. Another place I love to be from.

So many places I love to be from.

Yes. Thank you, Patrinka. Appreciate that. And what is the jolly Roger that we should be sending Patrinka to for some fun?

I believe they shuttered that place. And not a minute too soon.

You were there. You and John were there. Sounds like I shouldn't be sending Patrika there, actually.

No, I don't think that. The health department, I think, finally had had enough. That was one of those places that had had one of those notice of proposed land use action things on it for the entire time I lived in Portland. And every time I would come in, I'd be like, this is still happening? They're like, yeah, we don't know. Finally. And then thanks to Gabrielle Hung In New London, Connecticut You know, I'm going to Old London In February, did I tell you that Andrew? No, why? Oh, I've been meaning to tell you I'm going to London for a TV job

Or did you mention that? In February Is Becca going with you for part of it or something?

No, I'm taking Gabrielle Hung

Oh, Gabrielle, I hope you

From New London to Old London

Oh, I hope Gabrielle realized that

Yeah, I'm going out there for a TV story it will not affect tbtl other than we'll have good hashtag content and i'll be doing the show at like

six o'clock at night i was gonna say it won't affect tbtl other than you have to do it at 3 a.m

andrew oh yeah uh that's the other thing i needed to tell you but it won't affect the show it won't affect the show but i need you to get up at 2 a.m and rollerblade into the studio sir exactly thanks gabrielle thanks to all of our donors today for making tbtl possible we just could not do this without you thank you Hello, and welcome to Top Story. All right, quickly, this is not the Top Story that I had promoted, but I just want to mention that I got really humbled last night by the internet, Andrew, and it was when I googled how to make the perfect baked potato, and I printed out the recipe, and the recipe was...

Wait, can I guess? Yeah.

32 pages One page

Oh, okay, okay

And it said, wash the potato Poke some holes in it with a fork Throw a little salt on there And put it in the oven at 425 Until it's cooked

Right, all you needed was the time and the heat Probably

I don't know what I was thinking I don't think I've made a baked potato In my adult life We used to eat them when we were kids Fairly frequently And actually, like Becca was saying, they're actually, they're not bad for you. I mean, you know, people talk a lot about carbs and things like that. But the thing about potatoes is they do have a lot of carbs and a lot of starch, but they have a lot of good stuff as well. So it's. better than some of the alternatives so I'm trying to become a potato guy first step was google how to bake the perfect baked potato and it turns out you apply heat to it in the oven until it's done

being cooked well you needed the time and I mean you needed the time and the temperature but it's I guess it's maybe funny that you printed it out whereas you could have just probably scanned it I'm usually um I mean scanned it with your eyes and just like applied it but you know why I thought it was going to be 32 pages though not out of the complications of the recipe but because any recipe online i mean i i feel hacky even mentioning this because people have already joked and complained about this for years and years and years now but like every recipe that i find online you have to scroll until your thumb hurts to get past all of like the background of like do you know that's some sort of an seo thing i i know that there are reasons for it yes

yeah it's some i don't exactly understand it but basically because i kind of made an offhanded joke about that last night on the ascendant social media platform blue sky i said something like just yes we're skipping to the recipe all of us novice cooks who are asking you know the internet for cooking advice um and i made that again it was a very it's a pretty hacky joke but i'm sorry i

really i did not know that you made that and i was just thinking in the back of my head i could have set that up i know it was hacky when i did it i regretted it as i was hitting send but yeah i

i do know that yeah there's something about you have to write all of that so that the internet somehow presents your like recipe up there with all the other ones somehow if you don't do that

you you don't get the clicks or whatever yeah i mean i guess the more words you use the more words that are keywords i guess in a search as well um and i thought i had heard another explanation for it as well um but uh yeah it is it is kind of ridiculous and it was kind of funny a friend of mine who's very much like kind of into food culture and stuff i'm it's somebody that you know and the who has actually been on tbtl before but i'm not going to name him because i'm going to shame him instead he wrote like this very earnest thing on blue sky like over the holidays saying like if you're not respecting like the if you're not respecting the lead into the recipe you're not respecting the recipe or the person right i'm just like whoa like and they were being serious yeah i think so and i was kind of like uh but i think that that's mostly just bullshit for like reasons like you say like very practical very just like internety not bots but like kind of knocking on the door of internet bot bullshit kind of like it's a it seemed like kind of a strange kind of a strange hot take maybe it was just a reaction to everybody just like sort of making the same complaint year in and year out i've somehow ended up on the corner of blue

sky that's a lot of authors or aspiring authors gassing each other up about writing it's odd and it's not you know people that i necessarily am familiar with their writing it's a bunch of like authors who i'm unfamiliar with who are like writing these long things about writing and i don't understand how that's what blue sky is delivering me well the interesting thing about

blue sky is blue sky should not be sending you anything that you aren't literally subscribed to right like there's that's why i like blue sky as opposed to threads or any of the other things it's like that you don't get like a lot of like promoted posts or anything everything that i get a lot of posts from people i'm not following but is it is it um are people retweet are people you're following kind of reposting them or sometimes is it a is it a um is it a reply because i will see that sometimes i'll see a post from somebody i don't know i'm like why am i seeing this and i realize oh it's because chris hayes replied to it and so the thing is it'll show me the original it's not

that you're just getting you're just totally random yeah totally random posts from people i'm not following that are not being reposted that are just like people being like you know kind of clapping back at haters in the writing world it's like a very weird corner of blue sky

Let me ask you this, and again, this is not interesting at all, and you might not even be asking for advice here, but I'm just very curious about this, and maybe I'm realizing what's going on. I'm looking at Blue Sky right now. Now, I'm looking at it on my computer, not my phone, but I think it's the same thing. There are three tabs at the top. One is you can click on following. Those are just the people you follow. One tab is for discover, and that's where you'll see things that are curated for you, and then popular with friends is another curation thing. I only follow the one that says following. Maybe that's a difference in the way we peruse these things. Because I do. I have a very knee-jerk reaction to things being put in my feed just based on algorithms. Like, I want to follow who I want to follow. I'm very old-school internet in that way.

I am following somebody called More Mr. Nice Guy. Oh, yeah. He's really in the style of old friend 99. uh-huh he's got some he's got some really great let me see if i can find a couple of this um let's see uh this is great radio uh um forget it i was gonna try to this guy comes up in my feed and he writes very funny stuff but now that i'm scrolling through it's all

too weird and extremely online if i read it out of context it'll just seem crazy okay so i'm saving you all having to read someone's life story regarding baked potatoes 425 30 minutes and check on it throw some olive oil and some salt on there okay and you're not wrapping it in and you

don't have to wrap it in tinfoil or anything like that right that's if you're cooking it in a fire

or in coals yeah i did not put it in i put on some parchment uh and that was that was it and was pretty good i actually overcooked the potato andrew i managed to screw that up uh how was it overcooked it was believe it i was a little mushy oh interesting like which you think is what you're going for with the baked potato somehow was just not quite i'm still i'm still dialing it in yeah

i mean you got it you want to chew it it's got a it's got a it's got a yield but you still you still need to kind of use your teeth i actually do find this interesting because i'm with you on that like i feel like we uh i feel like i ate baked potatoes sort of on the reg growing up and like i remember at some age discovering that like eating the um skin is actually a treat like i don't know if you were like that or if you took the same journey as a young person but like yeah i feel like they were served at dinner a lot they were cut in half started by just scooping out the the insides and leaving the the skins and then at one point i'm like oh my god the skins there's so much like good flavor in that and then eating that it just sort of seems like that was a regular part of life And you're right. Like, I just do not eat very many potatoes as an adult. I made some mashed potatoes for our Genevieve and I just had a very low key Christmas here and we made a nice meal. We made some prime rib for the first time. Genevieve made that in our new oven. It was good. And I made some mashed potatoes. And, you know, for Thanksgiving, we make mashed potatoes and then you have tons of leftovers from a Thanksgiving meal. And mashed potatoes will work its way into your leftover meals. Right. but with thanksgiving we didn't have a whole spread we just had a few things and little by little we ate the leftover prime rib and broccoli or whatever but i just ended up with this big thing of mashed potatoes that i had one maybe i had one small bowl the next day or something but i'm like i'm just eating mashed potatoes like i can't explain like i love mashed potatoes but i was just too highly indexed on them i ended up throwing away this huge thing of mashed potatoes

Dude, we could have used you over at our house because at my parents' house, after Thanksgiving, there was an inquisition regarding what happened to the leftover mashed potatoes.

Oh, no. I wish I could have faxed these to you guys.

I got rid of so many mashed potatoes. My brother-in-law, Josh, my sister's husband, they run Pollo Bravo in Portland. Please go check it out. He is the mashed potato maker for our Thanksgiving, and he is so good at it. So incredibly delicious. but like that's the whole thing for me is the mashed potatoes and then the hawaiian rolls but mostly the mashed potatoes and uh the day after thanksgiving there was like four of these kind of restaurant style little plastic canisters containers yeah yeah exactly and um i put down at least one of them and then maybe addy had one or something and then like eventually my mom comes down and she's looking around for the mashed potatoes and she's like what happened to the she's calling my other sisters who've already left it was it was a whole situation check your car she was like absolutely gobsmacked that what she thought was a bounty of mashed potatoes had been harvested by 11 a.m and was now gone and then she got my dad involved it was it was a whole

federal case and does a lot of this play out on the family um text chain the hawk thing the hawk

squad text chain i do think it made its way on the hawk squad because my mom was like you know everybody except like me and addy had already left their house and so i think she was trying to reach out to the other people being like who left with the mashed potatoes what is going on with the mashed potatoes and i was just telling her mom i ate the mashed potatoes

if you want more go to andrew's house yeah that's right i have plenty of them all right i'm shipping some over to your mom's house so i want to play you some audio andrew i don't know

if this is going to work, but there were just three pieces of audio that came into my life recently that I thought might be kind of interesting in one way or the other. The first one is actually from a listener and I think it's our friend Cheryl in Corvallis.

Oh yeah, I saw this, yeah.

This is some tape of Bob Herzog, who is a meteorologist at the station in Cincinnati WKRC. So close. So close. if they start throwing turkeys if they do a turkey drop at Thanksgiving we know that they're stealing someone's IP he is, I think he hosts Good Morning Cincinnati, but then when it snows like it has been lately, they send him out into the field, and I have to say I started off kind of being a little bit like, alright, we get it, this guy's he's being a little over the top or whatever but then he kind of won me over, this is a super cut just imagine this is the meteorologist in Cincinnati just

running around in the snow just vamping basically I'm just one of these morning shows it's probably four hours long and he's just got to figure out how to fill 20 minutes of every hour out in the snow and this is what it sounds like I assume

that guy is probably in a ditch I don't know what it is all I know is it's hit me in the face wait wait wait wait wait wait I ran every red light oh oh you just heard that don't look at her license plates you just admitted to some kind of crime I'm having trouble breathing right now because it's both cold and i'm out of shape and i'll throw in a third thing also i'm old is it great snowman snow no man no i don't know where i'm gonna go when we get all this snow so you're either gonna give yourself cardiac arrest or you're gonna throw out your back and by the way it's sled riding and not sledding the station always looking for a non-traditional how do you feel about that by

the way sled riding versus sledding that's why i ring the bell i that's that's what stood out to me to this video uh from this video was that because an ohio thing i don't know dude all i know is i at some point in my adult life living outside of ohio probably when i was in you know living in new hampshire or whatever i referred to it as sled riding as i always have and never thought about it and genevieve and some friends thought it was funny and cute that i called it sled riding they said don't you just mean sledding and i'd say it's sled riding i for i don't know 15 20 years have thought that that was an andrewism something that i said that was goofy and it got in my head at some point at a young age hearing him say sled riding and also make a point as if it is like a debate in the culture that is shocking to me i didn't know there were dozens of us

dozens dozens i do think it's slightly wrong though right we don't call it like ski riding

we called skiing but apparently again two days ago before i saw this tape if you had said it's not sled riding andrew it's sledding i'd be like yeah i know i'm a dork i don't know why i say it that way i just always have and it comes naturally to me but knowing that this is actually i mean i don't know if there's a right or wrong i don't know if that's the i don't know if that's the right framework for this but knowing that not only is there a sled riding culture out there But the fact that clearly this guy is saying, by the way, it's sled riding, not sledding, means that he's gotten into this conversation, which means people around Cincinnati and, as you indicate, maybe all around Ohio are having this conversation. I'm intrigued. You are not insane is the takeaway from that. I guess so. Or at least there's a reason why I say that. Maybe it's an Ohio thing.

Nation always looking for nontraditional revenue sources. So I think TR and Bob Snow Shovel Removal Service is probably next on the agenda. This fence right here, this fence didn't exist. I think my insurance company paid for this fence. If you've been playing a drinking game this morning based on how many times we told you not to go out, you are completely wasted at this point. Many local reporters, when they measure snow, they have a yardstick and they'll go, oh, there's that much snow. I'm not going to do that. If you happen to have a rubber chicken and you walk outside and you with great force throw the rubber chicken into the snow and it disappears, that means it's a lot of snow. That's how my people used to do it. I'm just kidding. That's not what my people used to do. I don't even know who my people are.

That was when he won me over, by the way.

I don't think I made it that far.

I don't even know who my people are. A moment of honesty from Bob Herzog out there in the wilds of the greater Cincinnati area. Hope everybody is doing all right, by the way, both in the places that are freezing and also down in California, where the winds and the fires are really awful today. Now, speaking of wind and fire, Andrew, I want to play you something that I somehow I have like become or I've stumbled into like astronomy TikTok. And by the way, apologies to our friend Summer Ash, our in-house astronomer. Astronomer. astronomer i'm gonna do a bad job with this but um somehow i think i just like followed started following nasa there was a cool thing from is it the discovery rover the whichever one is on mars okay it is eerie man it is the images that are being sent the footage yeah not just you know not even just still photos but just like there's audio and this thing is just it's real a kind of wally vibrations it's just going and it's just like it's just scanning you know the various topography of mars and stuff but it is just so unbelievably desolate and remote it's kind of intriguing and also slightly terrifying but in following nasa i then ended up on getting all of this uh like kind of astronomy stuff including this thing that i had no idea was happening which is something called the Palmer Probe. Have you heard anything about the Palmer Probe?

The kids gave me a Palmer Probe once when I was in sixth grade or something. It was pretty rough. I had to end my name, yeah.

The Palmer Probe is something, it is, first of all, it is the fastest object ever created by humans. It is currently, it's near the sun. It got within three million miles of the sun, which is the closest we've ever gotten with a man-made object. and it's traveling I think at like maybe almost 500,000 miles an hour and it got within Like I said three million miles of the Sun which is the closest we've ever been and this is the audio now

This is better with the video because Parker probe. Maybe there's no Parker solar probe. I'm not getting any that's got to be warmer Okay, gotcha. I'm looking this up here. I was thinking of the Robert Palmer

Which is a whole other thing. Yeah, sorry the Parker probe. Thanks looking here It is, just imagine the visual of this, which is blackness with sparks just going past. And this is the sound, Andrew, of being three million miles from the sun's corona, okay?

how about that yeah how about not that isn't that like isn't that it's freaky plus when you're

watching the video it's literally just sparks this thing is going a half million miles an hour it's it's covered in um in some kind of carbon material that allows it to withstand the heat of the sun at least being three million miles from the sun oh they didn't use wax wings this time they decided not to okay they decided to not do what the uh polish space agency was planning on

on doing which was going at night you remember that joke i do i had a drop i don't know if i think it was yesterday's show like of some like person being interviewed he said they were being called polacks they were being ridiculed online and i always worry about somebody being offended i just want to remind everybody that i come from a strong polish tradition and so you have a chacha i have chuchas and so i feel like we're we're covered on that stuff all right here's the last

piece of tape and this one is truly random it is just a guy in a giant eagle uh the grocery store which i think is an ohio thing as well by the way did you ever shop at giant eagle as a kid i did

um and i feel like it was a somewhat newer store that kind of rolled into town maybe at some point in my life because i sort of feel like i remember a pre-giant eagle existence in in my corner of the world and then a post giant eagle but um i did a i did a show maybe i already told you this i did a show uh you know an episode of after these messages with genevieve i think it was around halloween it might have even been on halloween day or something and i was trying to think what would be something that's kind of a halloween theme but not like just you know like vampires and commercials or whatever and so what i did was i put together a top 10 list of brand names that sound way too scary and giant eagle is on that list like why why are we going to a giant eagle to go grocery shopping it sounds intimidating yeah it's a beautiful it's a beautiful handsome bird but if it's giant now we're all in danger now it sounds like those things from the sun that you were just playing from the parker probe from the parker probe that's a giant eagle

that's the mating call of the giant eagle welcome to this audio is just a guy i don't know anything about this dude's backstory i'd say he's probably maybe 70s or something he's just a guy in a giant eagle who got a deal on a ham yeah great and he is freaking psyched i don't understand who's filming him i don't know what is going on he's just standing by himself next to a shopping cart in Giant Eagle, and he is friggin' stoked.

The best. I got a ham that I paid that was for $50, and I only paid $8.95. Where else you're gonna get a good deal like that? Giant Eagle's the best. Oi, oi, oi.

He sounds like he's doing a cheap local commercial, screaming in a parking lot with a bunch of used cars.

I just want to introduce oi, oi, oi into Canon.

Dying Eagle's the best! Oi, oi, oi!

That's pretty great.

I want whatever that... I'll have what he's having. Whatever is going on for that guy, I want some of it. He's just... It's ham, Luke. It's what you want. You know what? It's the only thing I can't have, actually.

You're like, I don't know what this guy's...

Google, how do I cook the perfect ham? He's got the perfect ham.

He's got high levels of sodium.

Yeah. Anyway, yeah, I love that guy.

You know, by the way, that I have been, new year, new me, I'm thinking about getting back into eating some amount of red meat, but only, and I'm not saying this to be, I don't know, highfalutin or anything, but like trying to find extremely ethically sourced red meat, you know, like grass-fed. There's a term called grass-finished. Are you familiar with this? No. Yeah, I don't even know what that means, but it turns out a lot of the places that you might want to get this stuff from, they are always clarifying that they're grass-fed and grass-finished. But there's actually a place up in, like, Elma, Washington, which is kind of near Olympia. It's like an hour from me. I might go to the farm and just, like, look around and make sure I think the cows are okay.

Oh, you can actually go to the farm. Okay, yeah.

Well, they have a farm store, but I'm planning on going rogue when I'm there and kind of snooping around a little bit to see if, you know, everything's on the up and up. But, yeah, because a lot of the stuff, first of all, I need to get more protein in my diet and I need to eat less garbage. Like famously, I've said this before, but like, you know, technically, if you're not being vegan, pizza is vegetarian, but it's not great for me. So I'm trying to think about higher protein, leaner things that I can have. And it turns out red meat is in that category, but I just want to make sure that I'm – if I'm doing that, I'm getting it from the most ethical place you can.

Yeah, no, that makes sense, and I'm not doing that, although when you do go to – and I'm not even talking about going to a farm like you're talking about, but even just going to a local butcher shop, it feels a lot better than just going to the QFC, which is owned by – I kind of forget. I was just reading I think over the weekend I think it's Kroger there's an actual really interesting piece in the Seattle Times um somewhat recently that kind of talked because there was supposed to be this big grocery store merger and luckily it fell apart and I think that's good for the industry um because you look at what happened with the mergers of all of these um drug stores like there's mergers and then these companies just bought up all these stores and then they just slowly went out of business and it's just I just can't believe what is happening in the marketplace right now and so i was pretty worried about this like consolidation of grocery stores and there was this seattle times article that talked about what happened with the deal why it went down and then also or why it kind of i guess didn't go down why it kind of fell apart and then also kind of a backgrounder of the reputation of qfc and the roots of qfc here in the pacific northwest or here specifically in the seattle area and then how it sort of like merged with fred meyer and then kroger bought fred meyer and thus the qfc brand and then like i didn't realize and i know you did and maybe you've even explained this to me before and obviously i'm just sort of i guess i'm just at an age where i'm just sort of obsessed with grocery stores but um like i didn't kind of realize that qfc used to have this reputation of being almost like a prototype of a kind of a whole foodsy kind of it was definitely the fancy place when i was it was the fancy place and it was like and it was like locally run and then they kind of expanded and it's kind of funny it's like at what point do things break down in the capitalistic society right because I'm not against a local company being successful serving its community expanding out becoming more popular continuing to expand but then eventually what happened was you expand you get bought that gets bought then investors like faceless investment companies start switching things around you know and next thing you know people are like why am i going into a qfc it's all the same products at like basically qfc they leveled out the the quality of the stuff they sell compared to their brethren at fred meyer but they never changed the prices like people still thought of fred meyer is the place you go for the discounts and qfc is the place with the good cheeses and wines and whatever but at some point they were all just owned by kroger and they're all just they're they all have the same products but for people who've lived for me i've never differentiated really between brand names of grocery stores around here as far as that mid-tier level qfc safeway maybe just those two because i did think of fred meyer as being the place that you're

supposed to go to like if it's not sars you won't go fars yeah right i always say um so anyway like i do know that there are different tiers but i didn't i never thought of a difference between qfc and safeway and now i'm kind of like oh now i kind of understand the roots of all this why people who grew up here would see qfc as the as the place that used to be more like what are the other pcc is a is another like kind of higher end grocery store well and that it's also a co-op oh is that what a co-op is oh okay oh that's the c right yeah okay but like yeah qfc when i was a

kid first of all we didn't shop there and then when i became an adult and i lived on capitol hill around the corner from one.

I would shop at the QFC on Capitol Hill, and it felt like my life had finally come together.

Yeah.

Because that was like, yeah, Quality Food Center. It was like, that was, like, Albertsons was kind of like the bottom of the barrel in terms of, like, this was before there was a Winco or, like, Walmart or even before Fred Meyer sold food. I still think of Fred Meyer as the place you go to get electronics. Oh, right. The Fred Meyer in Greenwood. like i'm still like the fred meyer in my town has like a murray's cheese counter now which is like i can't process that because it's like fred meyer was the you know place you went to get like trapper keepers and stuff but yeah definitely qfc was like was highfalutin and uh and and going there uh we were talking the other day about how like you know you want your house to be a blanket you want to run the heat at the temperature you want it to be just to be comfortable as an adult who pays your bills. That was me going to QFC. I was like, I am going to be the kind of person who shops at Quality Food Center.

This is just an aside that is kind of changing the topic a little bit, but I got to say, there is something about, there is a lot to love about this job that you and I have doing TBTL. Would you say,

would you say,

oh no, sorry.

I was going to try to play oi, oi, oi for you, but I screwed it up.

You can do it in the clear, and I can, here, do you want to do it in the clear, and I can edit it, and it'll be super smooth?

No, I think the listeners

actually find it more interesting what you just said i would agree um but uh i was gonna say there's a lot to love about this job and there's a lot to love obviously we just thank the donors right about the people who allow us to do this we say this we say this a lot but i just want to like kind of give another example of how sometimes i'm just like what a world we live in and how tickled i am is i guess was it yesterday on the show we were talking about oh yeah i was not very proud of my performance in yesterday's show, I was telling somebody, I was like, I just felt like I was just maybe starting to warm up, and then all of a sudden I looked down and we'd been talking for almost two hours and the show was over, and I was like, well, I guess we're just putting that out in the universe. But we did get on the really heady topic of thermostat maintenance in our respective homes and where we keep our heat levels or whatever, and I mentioned in passing that a good friend of mine who lives in LA right now and I hope she's doing all right uh with the fires down there um but a really close friend of Genevieve's and a friend of mine used to say a house is not a blanket you just mentioned that like you're not supposed to keep the temperature up that much and you know she probably said that because her dad or uncle or mom or somebody said that when she was growing up in Dayton you know and it's just like this weird thing that I associate with my friend Jessica never heard anybody else say that and I just saw on social media today I think on the slack page like I and I'm sorry I don't remember who it was I was just scrolling quickly but it just one of our listeners is like oh I'm so glad to have this phrase now because now I can say that to my kids because I used to say something else and like there's just like the ripple effect of that like tickles me there are other there are so many things that are just been like private jokes just between me and Genevieve like nobody in the world would get these jokes that we've been banding about for 20 years and then I'll tell them to you on the show and the next thing you know the listeners are in on that joke or even sending me like DVDs of what is that what is that movie that we make fun of the trailer about um uh the i'm playing the whole wide world yeah good for you thank you for bailing me out there but i don't know like or are you saying let me slip into something more upsetting right yeah just like there's something like that is so special to me about it it never feels it never feels like i'm giving something up it feels more like oh my god like this this silly little thing that has been like just literally an inside joke for years or something I just associate with one person in my life. We just say that as an aside and you kind of realize, oh wow, now other people are kind of using that and sharing that joke in their families. That just gives me a feeling that I guess I'll just describe as unprecedented for me because I can't think of anything else that sort of gives me that feeling. Well, I'll give

you an example. Speaking of the Palmer probe, the Palmer family out there in Utah, I was not, as i mentioned yesterday really up on my email for the last couple of weeks but i did check it yesterday and if the palmer family of utah uh did not take the most adorable photo i've ever seen of the whole family decked out in tbtl tall ship hoodies oh yeah of course yeah i mean incredible incredibly adorable behavior by these folks i immediately sent it to becca like i don't know what she's supposed to do with this information but i was just like this is my job yeah that me and my buddy chat with each other and then these wonderful people in utah buy these sweatshirts and wear them out to christmas dinner where the server is like what's going on with the shirt right exactly you know i mean like we are so unbelievably lucky to get to do this and have folks like that out there in the world taking part in it yep exactly oy oy oy here i go once

again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female Oh, man, it's not from a female. All right, Lee, what do you have? I wanted to share with you an email regarding. Here it is. Could you tell that for a second? I couldn't find it. I got a couple of very passionate emails from folks who love Gene Shepard. We talked about Gene Shepard. He's an old time radio guy. Christmas story. Yeah, it was his story that was adapted. a collection of his stories that I believe were written in a book and some adapted for radio that ended up becoming the movie the basis of the movie a Christmas story and heard from a couple people who are like boy as guys who love radio and me especially who loves sort of classic radio kind of surprised that we were not more hip to the Gene Shepard backstory this is a backstory that pops up from time to time people tell me about it and like I said I think I even helped produce a because he's the narrator of the film right he's the narrator of the film and it's his stories but he was like a uh you know a long time radio guy and he would just tell these very you know like kind of calming old timey stories and um our our friend Mellie in New York sent us some clips and she's like I'm obsessed with it I used to listen to him like I would I would sneak and listen to him with like one earbud in to go to sleep at night and I got this uh great uh email from listener genie this is a little bit of a long email but i thought it was really great so if you'll uh if you'll allow it um genie says i wanted to comment on luke in your discussion about gene shepherd who wrote and narrated a christmas story gene was a radio guy from w o r w o r a m in new york and i lived you know i almost got a job at w r no really

what yeah producing the joey reynolds show it was like an overnight show from like midnight to 5 a.m. It was like five hours of live radio overnight. I believe it paid $31,000 a year. That's not bad

for early on in your career.

It was not enough for a parking space in Manhattan.

Oh, that's true. This is New York. My first job in radio paid me $25,000 a year.

I think I made $31,000 at my ultimate first job at KVI. That worked in Seattle. It would not have worked in Manhattan.

Yeah, and my 25 was in New Hampshire in 2001. So anyway, back to Jeannie's email. Gene Shepard was a radio guy in WORAM in New York. I lived in Connecticut. I became a daily devoted listener in 1968. His show was broadcast from 9 to midnight on weeknights. I'd put, oh, this is another one. I would put my little white transistor radio under my pillow with its one earphone in my left ear so my parents wouldn't know that I wasn't sleeping when they checked. Gene was an incomparable storyteller, a humor—incomparable, I guess you would say there—storyteller, a humorist, a political commentator, a kazoo player, and had a huge following of young and old folks. He introduced me to Robert Service Poetry. He had a big influence on my life. This is where things get really interesting. I was editor of my high school newspaper, says Jeannie, my senior year, and wrote a column for my town's weekly newspaper. One night, Gene said he was planning to hold a news conference in New York City for senior editors of school newspapers in the Tri-County area. I lived in Connecticut and really wanted to attend. I planned to pursue a career in journalism, and this would be my first big presser experience. A friend who is also a Shep fan asked his dad to drive us into Manhattan, and he agreed. I applied for press credentials for us, and I had the school principal sign the document stating that I was, in fact, the editor. We scored and excused absence. The event drew 150 kids to a midtown hotel ballroom, the name of which escapes me. Gene told us about questioning authority, what makes a good story, how to pose the right questions to get the best answers, and how to write an impactful lead. Genie spells lead correctly here, Luke. I thought you'd appreciate that.

So Genie did become a journalist.

Exactly. He took questions from the audience. After about two hours, he made sure we all had our official press packets and shook each of our hands. I gave him a hug. He was polite and seemed really interested in what we all had to say. This experience greatly impacted me. I had a career in journalism, then moved into creative work for ad agencies as a writer. I have such fond memories of him, this experience and my nightly devotional. I love the kazoo to this day. So anyway, I mean, just like this goes on with more interesting details about Gene Shepard. But like I love that story that he held he held an event specifically for high like a conference, you know, like like you and I going to the PRPD or something. But it was a conference, a presser for just high school newspaper editors. That's so cool.

I think you need to delve into the Gene Shepard verse when you're done listening. I think I will. I Johnny expense report or whatever for people.

And I have no sorry. I was only half listening there. Johnny Dollar, the man with the action-packed expenses.

report um i do listen it's so goddamn good um i am going to not not to try i mean his stories are kind of long and you know i mean we're not going to play a whole story here but if people are kind of curious of the tone uh melly sent in some clips these were kind of i think coordinated by hearing voices remember hearing voices luke i'm kind of an insurance pr related project anyway way. And here's a sort of a random sample. This is an hour long file that Mellie sent us. And she said about halfway through is a story she likes. I have no idea what this is. I'm needle dropping in the middle here. I'm hoping this will actually be Gene Shepard, not like the host. I think Harry Shearer introduces this. So hopefully this is actually Gene Shepard here.

And believe it or not, it got to the point with me, you know, I'll tell you, there's a funny thing in human beings where I began to feel special myself because they talked to me yes this is the kind of nuttiness that must have created a hitler must have felt good to a guy you know to walk in and see that Hitler I also um I sort of and and I mean again I should have

previewed that maybe I should have found a better um piece of tape because I think of him as talking in a radio studio, and that sounds like this is some sort of live thing. Yeah, I sort of imagine him

like, yeah, just in the top of a skyscraper in Manhattan broadcasting to the whole North East.

Yeah, so that was not, that's on me, that's not on you, Melly. I should have identified like maybe a piece of tape that better represents kind of the vibe, which is what we want to do there. Where are you talking about

Idi Amin or something? Right, exactly. Pol Pot?

Where he's talking about Kony 2012?

Oh my god, I forgot about that. what a what a time Kony 2012

what a time indeed alright so anyway sorry about my kind of misfiring of the audio no not at all we'll leave it all in

thank you to folks for sending in those Gene Shepard memories I might check it out too I'm sure it's all on YouTube and yeah and yeah I mean my version of that was of course like well listening to Larry King in the middle of the night and also Sally Jessie Raphael and then critically a show called TalkNet wait tell me about this

Sally Jessie Raphael had a radio show or you were just listening to TV

She had a radio show. Oh, I didn't know that. Like, in the 80s. Yeah, I think maybe before she even had her TV show. You know, it was some sort of, like, I don't know, it was like an advice call-in show. It was whatever they played on, like, King 1090 in Seattle when I was a kid. So they would, it would be, I would listen to Sally Jesse Raphael. They would do a simulcast of Larry King, meaning it was just his TV show. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And I remember listening to an interview with the Wayans brothers, and I had never seen in living color I had no context for them and I remember just listening it like totally fascinated but having no idea what was going on on this interview because it was a TV interview that they just played on the radio and then this show called TalkNet with Bruce Williams which probably more than anything else formed my whole idea of radio and it was like a financial advice show and I had absolutely no need for any of the financial advice but I still think about it this day his advice to everyone was get a second job flipping burgers whenever anyone would call in with money problems he would just be like get a second job flipping burgers i um i know that i

have not done a good job of firing audio in this segment but i will say i just looked up sally jesse rafael talking about stalin uh radio and the thing that popped up and i think this is interesting is it sounds like the show you listen to is called talk net but did it also become a network is that what net meant because i have here sally jesse raphael's talk net radio show

1987 and it says here she must have been part of i don't think i put that together but yeah bruce williams must have expanded or somebody must have expanded into multiple shows including one from her which would have totally made sense should we just try to see if it yes this is the theme yes tune in turn on talk net we care

Hi, welcome to TalkNet. Hi, Sally.

How are you?

Fine, I think.

What's wrong?

Well, I have a very bad problem.

All right.

I'm 15 years old, and I'm 15, like, five weeks pregnant.

Oh, dear. With Hitler's baby. What happened?

Well, I went out on a date with my boyfriend.

Mm-hmm.

and well we parked all night and then i had a home pregnancy test and that i was pregnant

is this a taxi cab confession i know right this kind of got into some serious stuff pretty early early in the tape as well although i will say the sound quality of my world that i gotta say had me on the edge of my seat like it was good radio i heard that kid's voice now i'm kind of sad But that is good. I love that she opens the segment just by going.

to do to do yeah that's great bruce williams used to have this this uh i'm serious like this he would say this patter at the top of the show which i'm sure influenced me with doing this but he would say like we'll cut up a couple of jackpots oh yeah like i don't know what the hell that even means but like he just had his whole rap going and i just absolutely loved it and and loved the

sally jesse raphael as well so yeah well it looks like there's a lot of the sally jesse raphael audio like the radio show is available on youtube if you're interested in um doing that late at

night luke with your one earbud in i think just as long as my parents don't know exactly as long as walt doesn't know that i'm listening to the radio at night right all right well uh that's going to uh wrap up today's radio broadcast well podcast whatever it is uh thank you everybody for spending the time with us we are going to be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary we'll cut a couple of jackpots tomorrow we'll talk about all the things that make you that very special person that you are now i'm just directly doing bruce uh thanks everybody have a great wednesday hope you're doing all right depending on which part of the country you're in and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all power out