Muse

Quarter to the four. I'm going to take a nap or something. I don't like to take naps. I don't like to wake up more than once a day, because when I first wake up, I get that shock of who I am and everything. I really don't like to do that more than once a day. Yeah. TBTL!

This is a show for dogs.

About dogs.

Starring one dog.

And one dirty dog. It's called the internet, and it's a fresh new way to check out sites, buy clothing, and surf music.

Hey, you either get it or you don't. I don't, but I am so excited to be a part of it. You're not oversharing. You are not oversharing. Boring people came up with that. Boring people made that up. They made up oversharing because they're too boring to handle an interesting conversation. You're not oversharing. Keep sharing. I want to hear everything. I want to hear it all. And then I want to hear a little bit more. Make the boring people uncomfortable Share Keep up the good work every week

All right, hello, good morning And welcome everyone to a Tuesday edition of TBTL The show that just might be too beautiful to live Sorry Billy Joel, we did start the fire My name is Luke Burbank I am your host He's a prisoner of his own grievances Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia where another just absolutely gorgeous day.

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

You know it's a nice day because my neighbor Brian is out on his tractor tamping down his gravel, one of his very favorite hobbies, the gravel on his driveway. So you may hear that in the background. In the foreground, you may hear episode 4,390 in A Collector Series. Let the fun begin. Because that is where we are in this show's journey. I've been on a journey with my iPhone. It's been having some problems, and the question is, do I get a new iPhone? When that also means I probably would not have the TikTok app on my phone, because you can't download it to a new phone. And something big happened yesterday afternoon, which we can talk about. But also, something big has happened for the Las Vegas Raiders football team. Boy, that's never going to feel normal. They've hired the sprightly 73-year-old Pete Carroll to be their head coach. And he had his first press conference. And it was vintage Pete Carroll. This is so confusing, Ron. I'm going to play you some of that tape coming up. And we're going to say how to this guy. Longest-running Cobra of the show. Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Hey, there, fireball. He's Andrew Walsh. He's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. You mentioned how nice the weather is outside, and that reminds me of something I do want to tell you very, very briefly at the beginning of the show, why I am so, so mad at myself. I told you before the show I had nothing to say at the beginning of the show, but then all I need to do is sit with my thoughts and your words for about 10 seconds, and then I'll be blabbing away.

Shake something loose.

Shake something loose. But no, I do think that you'll appreciate this, and it's an update on something we've talked about on the show. So I am so furious at myself. Starts off like a nice story. Yesterday got done with work and sort of like had a hole in my day and was kind of like, well, maybe not even a hole in my day. Just sort of like it's around, I don't know, six o'clock. I can't remember that how the timing of this all worked. I'm like, you know what? Like, I should just go for a walk. Like, just go for a nice long walk. Grab the camera. Walk on the inner urban trail, which is kind of a trail that runs sort of, you probably know it, parallel to Aurora. But it's, you know, kind of off the main track there. I'd heard of it before as it goes way, way north up to shoreline, I think. And you kind of cut through this giant cemetery to get there. And it was such a beautiful day. Evergreen Wasselli. Exactly, which is near my house. So I did this big loop, walked the trail, then looped back through the cemetery, took a bunch of photos. Just like really was enjoying the weather and thinking, you know, it's nice to be able to do this. I get home, I'm taking a shower, and I get out of the shower, and I see on my phone, I had a reminder that I was supposed to be at the movies yesterday. And it was already like a half hour into the movie dig before I realized I totally blew my date with Genevieve. She didn't remember either. I'm like, Veeves, we're supposed to be at the movies like right now. We were supposed to be there a half hour ago. I bought the tickets in advance. I mean, they were very, very affordable tickets, and I'm happy to support SIF. But I'm just so mad at myself. I had that on my calendar. I was so looking forward to it. But there was just something about waking up. I didn't usually have anything on my calendar there, so I didn't think about it.

It's just an irony in that I was just sort of, like, literally dinking around, sort of thinking, like, I should be doing some. I'll go for a walk. Yeah. Go to the West Coast. Wait, what am I doing? Yeah, have some fun. I don't know what I just slipped into there. But anyway, yeah. So anyway, didn't see Digg still. Maybe another two decades from now I'll watch it the next time for its 40th anniversary revival.

I want to say, like, I hope this doesn't sound like I'm trying to be insulting or something, but it's like, and I'm the same way, by the way. But it's not like you tend to have a ton of midweek or even early week plans. Like, what are the chances that like one Monday where you're planning on going to a film, this happens to be the same Monday that you decide to take an unprompted walk on the interurban trail. I mean, that is really that's that's crazy.

I know. And well, the funny thing is, is I think also I had a couple of surprisingly busy weeks. Like, I don't know, maybe not last week. last week was kind of normal but the week before that i think i went to like a i had like something almost every day of the week i had a cracking game i went to we had dinner with friends i was like you know so it's not totally uncommon for me to do stuff midweek but for some reason this just wasn't on my calendar and also maybe i just said midweek but maybe the fact that it's a monday um off you know that's the thing it's like every other monday i'm doing a podcast if i haven't recorded it over the weekend with hannah so that's sort of like a a standard thing it's like is this the spotless Monday or not like I just have certain markers in my life and for some reason I just felt like I felt marked like I had a sensation of something is missing yesterday and I just I can't explain it it was a rare feeling and I was like well why don't you just go out and take some photos and enjoy the fact that like it's it's sunny and it's a nice evening in the middle of the winter and so I did that and again you know like I'm glad I took a walk I'm I'm happy I wasn't just like you know throwing darts or whatever I think I would have been really mad at myself

I was going to say, and I don't want to sound like I'm moralizing, but going for a walk is a great, healthy activity. You could have forgotten this because for some reason you decided to belly up to a bar somewhere, which, you know, again, no judgment on that. But, like, a walk is a very good thing to be doing.

Yeah, if I had been doing something more, yeah, like dirt baggy, I said, never mind. I was going to go dark there. I don't need to go dark there. Anyway, that's why I'm mad at myself on this Tuesday morning. Why are you mad at yourself?

Well, because I think I'm going to end up paying, I don't know, $34 to keep this AllTrails membership. Because I just used it to watch the interurban trail, to preview the entire interurban trail. There's this great app.

While we were talking, you just spent $30 to take a virtual tour of the trail?

No, I spent it when I was in Hawaii. Because Becca and I were trying to find some running trails. There's this app. I'll give them a free plug. It's called AllTrails. I've used it for a long time If I'm in a new city And I'm trying to find maybe a place to run Or whatever And they now have this feature Where it previews the route So we were trying to do this little Figure out this little run Kind of along the beach When we were in Hawaii And what I realized is that If I signed up for I'm on my trial membership Started last week And it comes up on like this Friday Oh I see And if I don't If I don't tell it to stop It's going to charge me 30 bucks or whatever for the year. What's the year? Oh, yeah, you got to do that full access to this thing But I'm obsessed with this preview function So I just did it on the interurban trail where you put it in and then it shows you it gives you directions It tells you everything about this trail and then it says preview trail and you hit a play you hit play and it does like a Combination of like street view it starts overhead on like satellite and then it goes into street view and it just kind of traces the entire route of this thing so i'm like it's like i'm walking along with you andrew

you know does it get any this is this is rude i i'm glad that we have um a trail like that so you can get off of aurora which is like really really busy and really sketchy in places um having said that it's not my favorite kind of walk like i i've always said this to genevieve it sort of reminded me we'd go on long walks around new hampshire and as beautiful as new hampshire is in our little neighborhoods like just walking through like residential areas aside from like maybe seeing some you know pretty beautiful houses that are pretty old in that in that part of the country like it just gets really boring for me like I'd always rather see even if it's urban decay I'd read especially if I have my camera like I'd rather be taking photos of something urban like this path which you know I know Genevieve will take sometimes basically I walked up to Lowe's i think um so i know that genevieve if she has to go to lowes or something sometimes she'll take the path there if she wants to go the the slow way um and so again by the sprouts um that not quite up to the sprouts i think that's 125th oh the lows is yeah okay gotcha lows is across street by the crispy cream exactly i love by the way i know we joke about it but my new favorite thing is actually getting really specific with

streets around seattle i think for some people it just doesn't mean anything to them so that's fine but to the people who like don't live here anymore i think they love hearing about the specificities

there's somebody in japan right now who's just like i know where that crispy cream is right

exactly in the same way when i'm listening to the levitard show i like listening to them talk about various grocery stores they go to and like there's certain like pre-made food at certain grocery stores that will never touch my life in any way but like you know them just casually talking about So anyway, point is, it's a kind of a it's kind of boring. Like, that's the thing, especially this time of year. Like, I ended up cutting back around and walked all the way back through the cemetery because I didn't realize, well, Shelley is that big. But at least the cemetery has, like, some structures, some fountains, some things to look at. Whereas I don't know what your pathfinder is telling you there on your app. But, like, I don't know if it gets any more interesting once you get past 125th. But, you know, if you're looking for a safe place to jog around here or walk your dog, like, absolutely, I could see it being, like, pretty helpful. But it didn't spur a lot of creativity in me.

Right, because it's just kind of – there's a trail down in Portland that Becca and I will sometimes jog called the Spring Water, which is a lot like this. And sometimes she'll tell me, like, let's do something else because it's monotonous after a while. It's safe, which is great. I mean it's safe in terms of from you know being safe from cars and things but after a while it's not cardiac events yeah no those are those are always a danger but um but yeah like it is nice to me the ideal walk for me is well that's one of two things one is just in in in like the extreme of beautiful nature like to be like when I used to uh when I was living in Bellingham I had found I found these old logging roads and Rudy and I would go on these walks in the woods uh but where is just very beautiful and very kind of rugged but you had this gravel path uh that was you know well defined i either like that or i like walking around in a neighborhood where every like at about five o'clock at night people are starting to make dinner you get some good free smells you get to kind of like in a non-gross way in a non-weird way you get to see people kind of living their lives i i like a neighborhood walk where when the houses are fairly well maintained and stuff i love that or I love just being out in the middle of nature. Being one click off of Aurora is not, to me, the ideal either.

Yeah, no, it's not. My ideal is probably a little bit more, like, I want more, a little bit more activity than just residential. Like, I guess, like, Capitol Hill, Seattle would be my perfect, you know what I mean? I like people watching. I like, the thing is, here's the thing about me. I might not think of me. One thing about Andrew is, I like to watch other people having a good time. And this is something I realized when I first moved to Seattle way back when I was, looking back, a young 30-year-old or whatever I was. Oh, my God. I know, but I remember just like—

I'm not ready for you to have been in Seattle this long.

I loved sitting at my desk up in my attic office, looking out that window, watching people do things, or actually going for a short walk and seeing everybody going to shows and cramming themselves into clubs or whatever. I don't want to be crammed into that club, but my God, I would die for your right to do it. I love watching it.

You're a combination of Voltaire and John Lennon. You do not want to be the one riding the wheels going round and round, but you will fight to the death to defend your right to watch them.

I thought you were going for a life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. I was going with you're just sitting there watching the wheels go round and round. That makes more sense.

But then I had a hard time conforming it into the famous Voltaire quote, so we ran into some trouble there. Hey, Andrew, I got a decent update here on the whole cell phone situation. Now, yesterday I talked on the show about how my phone's been giving me problems for, like, months now, where it doesn't really take a charge properly. When I'm trying to, you know, use it in my car for, like, you know, directions and things, it'll come disconnected very easily, and I was really frustrated with that, and I was kind of, even though the phone itself, the functionality of the phone is fine for me. It's a cell phone. It works. That's all I really need. but um uh what i realized is that if i got a new uh apple iphone it was going to come with a usbc port which i want to say would actually get me out of a couple of jams because right now i have i have and you andrew you and i both there's nothing we like less than loose cables too much loose cables uh you know can really drive a person crazy when you say loose cables you mean

just having like extras in a drawer somewhere and just this is what i mean yeah the combinatorics

of my of my life of cables is too much and by that i mean i have some cables that are usbc that go

to an iphone lightning input okay i have some cables that are usb to a lightning cable yeah i have some cables that are usbc to usbc and then i have some chargers that are usb the opening on the charger the thing you plug into the wall that one it needs a usb and then i have some that when you plug it into the wall the little cube yeah it needs a usbc yeah do you have any micro usbs

because i'm still i still have some things that are being micro usb that's before usbc which is like the it's about the size of a micro of a usbc but it's like just different enough yeah this came first before the usbc and i have uh at least i'm looking around i have a speaker that needs one of those a camera that still needs one of those like i'm i'm stuck in that house from my life because

of them because of how maddening it is when you think you have a usbc but it's a micro or vice versa you're like ah yeah like um i so the point is i'm constantly grabbing the wrong cable for the job at the time i have like this little i have this little kind of uh you know zip up pouch that i try to keep all of this stuff in but it's like i'll be looking to charge my phone but i grab the thing that's usbc uh to a lightning phone thing and then but the charger i have needs a usb you know what i mean i need to i need this to all be brought under the the unified field theory of usbc every input and output just needs to be usbc on everything and it'll just simplify my life so that's the appeal of switching phones except for again i will lose tick tock which might not be such a bad thing you had proposed interesting idea yesterday of me hanging on to this phone I think I could get a couple of hundred bucks for this phone or more maybe by trading it in at the Apple store or, like, I don't know. I don't really want to get into trying to sell it on Facebook Marketplace.

What do they do with the trade-ins? I always see these promotions.

I don't know. If you go to the Apple website, there's a whole thing for trading in your phone. And they'll tell you right there, like, you say, if it's in good condition or not, which my phone, other than not charging, which I wasn't going to really tell them about. uh it's like you know visibly it's in good condition and they're like we can give you two hundred dollars for this phone or whatever the number was and i thought and then and then what

what are you doing with it it's not like an old car where it's like well i can you know i can use this engine in the you know what i mean i know that it's probably i'm guessing and hoping it's better for the environment if you're giving your phone back they're doing something with it

they're not giving you two hundred dollars for nothing so there must be some future life for this thing but anyway so yesterday afternoon we're done with the show you're blithely wandering around missing your movie date and I'm here at home and I'm I'm just had it with this phone it's I told you that on Sunday night it died sitting on my nightstand because uh because it wasn't taking the charge and I am like I'm in that moment where in my brain I have a little bit of a little window of time in the afternoon and I just decide, okay, I'm driving down to the, uh, uh, the, the, like, uh, whatever they call it, the, um, uh, Comcast store, the Xfinity store, and I'm just going to get a new iPhone. That's it. And I'm going to have them build it into my payments. It's going to add 40 bucks a month to my thing, which is going to suck, but whatever I'm doing it. And I think I might've had a moment where I needed to like use the restroom or something. But anyway, I pick up my phone, as is my want, and I look at Blue Sky, and Andrew, if I don't have a message on the Ascendant social media platform Blue Sky from listener Andrew, saying something to the effect of, let me see if I can actually find the exact Blue Sky post from Andrew. It was short and sweet. It said, you don't need a new phone. You just need to scrub out your lightning port. I wish I could say that was the first time somebody had told me that

There are some parlors around here that will do that for you

Just east of the inter-urban trail Yeah I bet That's why somebody missed their movie So I thought okay I mean what's the harm? What do I have to lose? So I go on like Reddit and I find some examples of people kind of cleaning out the lightning ports on their phone and uh i realized that it can be done without any special equipment i just got a toothpick out of my little toothpick holder and uh and then the people were saying on reddit like if you carry your phone around in your pants there's a really good chance that like basically lint has gotten up in there and now i was looking for my dream was that it would be an incredibly gratifying and satisfying experience where like it would just be like like there'd be like a kitchen sink would fall out.

I've had that. You didn't get that? Not a kitchen sink, but I've had very sad. I do this. I almost do it too much now. Like, I try not to do it so often because it's so satisfying. I keep pins around. I'm looking for my phone cleaning pin. I should have mentioned that to you. I'm not an iPhone person, so I didn't know that it didn't even occur to me. But I'm always cleaning out my USB-C port, and sometimes you just keep going. You're like, oh, there's nothing in here. But then you scrape it off the bottom, and then a big chunk comes out. You get some tweezers, and you pull the rest of it.

it's so satisfying i didn't get i was really hoping that there would be tweezing involved i was hoping that it would be like it would it would be this massive amount of of material that would be extremely satisfying to remove that was not totally the experience i will tell you a lot of blue kind of material blue lint came out that is the color of the blue jeans that i tend to wear and and i also noticed that i was trying to be careful to not like break the toothpick off inside this thing i was trying to be kind of gentle it still is you know a piece of electronics But I realized if I really got in there and it seemed like I got everything out And then there would still be more stuff in there. And so I ended up with a kind of a smallish pile of blue again I think just like my you know Residue of my of my jeans and I was like, I don't know if this is really enough to make a profound difference Like I will see but I plug that bad boy in Andrew and

Jalapeno Jalapeno Jalapeno Jalapeno

totally fixed my phone the phone is back baby it is like a hundred percent functional i could right here on camera in front of you and the american people i can plug it in to the charger that i have and it's charging away no muss no fuss and does it feel different putting does it feel different when you put the charger in there yes it wasn't seating in there properly and i thought instead of the most obvious answer which is yeah there's gunk in there i kept thinking maybe this is like the reverse occam's razor that is my brain i was like well somehow the port the lightning port has been dented like it's been it's been crushed in some way that it's no longer the proper shape which would be such a less likely outcome than just like bro you got denim junk in there and so i want to say thank you to listener andrew that was a game changer i now have a working cell phone again which still includes tiktok andrew so everybody wins mostly the

chinese government you this is interesting and you alluded to this yesterday when we're talking about it that you're you know your instinct on a lot of things it's like well i'll just buy the newest best version of this thing anyway is it how much is the tiktok aspect of all of this influencing your decision to keep this thing like limping along and maybe limping along and it's now unfair to the phone because you're happy with it again but like yeah if the tiktok aspect of this were not were non-existent would you have just bought a new phone by now you would have bought a new phone yesterday without even probably trying that right believe it or not i actually

saw the the loss of tiktok as a positive you know me and you know how i love to uh take as the drop says take on things we know we can't do and do them. Like, there's nothing I love more than a grand gesture about how different of a person I'm about to become. And the sort of, the act of trading my phone in, knowing full well that my new phone, or even just getting a new phone, knowing full well that it wasn't going to have TikTok on it. I was actually looking forward to that as a strong statement about my person. Sure, yeah.

It was not a disincentive. And like thinking about what you're going to do with all your extra time now that you're not going to be a TikTok boy. Well, mostly how I'm

going to talk about it to people in the way that paints me the most heroically right exactly how are the ways that i'm going to bring it up on stage when we're doing live wire by the way this thursday at the research ricky lindholm will be there ira madison the third please come see us still tickets available the reser in beaverton i if i would have trade i'm put it this way if i would have traded my phone in it would have been the first 15 minutes of live wire on thursday like you know what i mean i do these things yeah or just like i i don't yeah but whatever my like this is what happens is I do something and then I talk about it across various media projects till the poor people like our friend Lynn Pham and other power users of the Luke Burbank experience have heard the same story. I'm on this Portland CityCast today. There's this kind of it's an interesting media project where I don't know exactly who's in charge of it but various cities have these kind of hyper localized podcasts now and it's called CityCast. It's a it's one company that kind of runs all these I think they've got one in Austin they certainly got one in Portland

and a few other places yeah and I'm blanking on his name right now but one of the hosts of political gab fest this is this was his big project oh really yes he used to promote it all the time and I don't think that do they have one for Seattle yet because I remember even tweeting at him one time like

Let's get on the Seattle train. I'd like to. I wonder if they think. It's right up my alley.

Yeah. I mean, and I hear there are fans. So Becca sent me. I didn't realize this thing was going live today. But Becca sent me a link. She was like, oh, my friend who loves the Portland CityCast saw that you're on this week.

David Plotz, by the way, is the name I was talking about. Oh, David Plotz. Sure. I believe he was one of the founders of this. I don't know if he's still with it anymore. So anyway, so you're on the CityCast? I'm on the CityCast. Who interviewed you?

One of the hosts there, Claudia, and her last name escaped me at the top of my head. But she and I were talking about music. They had me on. They were smart enough to not have me on to talk like Portland politics, because that's something I don't have a very deep knowledge of. But it was basically like, what are some songs that kind of connect to various parts of your Portland experience? And so I picked some songs, and I had a great chat with them. It was a nice afternoon, but I remember in the moment thinking, I really hope no TBTL listeners listen to this because what they're going to realize is I'm just trotting out all the old hits.

The subject line is from MF Doom to John Prine, the four songs that define, and now I can't see the rest of the headline. Like, you've got to pay extra for the rest of the headline.

but um the uh you know it's like of course the listeners of this show know that i love john prine and they they know that i love that one song that has that one lyric you know and it's like i just as i was having this conversation um with the city cast folks i was like i was like oh god look you gotta get some new material and or life experience because you just are have the same four stories uh and uh so if you would like to hear the same four stories told ever so slightly differently and with more john prine playing you can go check out the portland city cast oh they're actually playing they played the music yeah and i was a little before we started rolling i said something like i said yeah we used to do a music for your weekend on my show tbtl but then we started running into some rights issues and it it struck me that that might have been the first

they'd considered this i'm actually considering you just going back like i i sort of going rogue i don't know man it's an internal struggle i used to love that segment music for your weekend and We don't do it anymore, and I just wonder if I wussed out too early on that. I was just getting all these warnings. I'm like, well, clearly we're moving in a certain direction where they're going to start, and I just didn't – always my concern has been it's fine now, but at some point they're going to clamp down, and then they're going to clamp down on the archives, and then we're going to have years and years of podcasts that people can't access because one of these tech companies has made a decision.

and and i think that i don't think that's you wussing out andrew i think that's trying to future-proof this show like because you're right the the worst outcome would be because i'm you know i like i like playing music on the show you know and we used to do it a lot to just kind of punctuate things or to make a point or because just because we had remembered a donovan song and by we i mean you um like i i i i mean just think about all of the content we got from barabba jaggle alone but like but like it would really suck if and i fully believe this will be the case if yeah in some in in some future world they can clamp down on all of this in such a way that all of a sudden many many shows from the tbtl archives are no longer available for public consumption and that would really suck i don't think the because there are people uh who when they get into this show they want to go back and listen from day one and you know the fact that We've done, I'm proud of the fact that we've done 4,390 of these, you know? So, like, I don't think you're being a wuss with that. I think it's actually probably the wise decision.

I'm proud of, like, 4,299 of them.

Thank you for being a 10. All right, let's thank some of our donors today. Again, a heads up that our dazzling donor emails are going out or have gone out. So if you are somebody who is donating at a dazzling donor level and you wanted to share a message with us or any other sort of thing, look for that email from TBTL and our dear friend slash co-worker John Sklaroff in an inbox coming to an inbox near you. And again, as a person who doesn't like to do anything extra, I can't stress this enough. You also don't have to. But you absolutely deserve you. You have the right to, but you are not obligated.

You literally have the right to remain silent, is what we're saying here.

That's exactly what we're saying. We're Mirandizing the dazzling donors. And we're thanking today's donors, including Andy Jasky of Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Is Andy the person who helped you with your phone?

Ooh, I mean, it was an Andrew.

It was an Andrew.

It always is. Yeah. Except for the fact that you didn't suggest it to me, despite the fact that you are now, it sounds like cleaning out your phone maybe once a day.

I'm bummed that it didn't occur to me. Yeah, I guess I was just like, I don't know.

You gave listener Andrew the W, though.

You know, that's a good point. It was an Andrew W. It just wasn't this Andrew W. Somebody got a W. Yeah, exactly.

Thanks, Andy. Appreciate you. Thanks also to Abel Eng in Aberdeen, Washington. Nice. Thank you very much, Abel. Thanks to Julie Tasnady in Salem, Oregon. I know Salem, Oregon. I go there a lot now. That's where Becca's from. That's where all the witches are. Never thought I would spend... I think you're thinking of Gloucester. Thanks, Julie. Thanks also to Lisa Brines, who's in Renton, Washington. Igerow Witches in Renton, Washington.

Interurban Trail does not reach down to Renton. Doesn't go all the way to Renton, huh? No, does not. Does not, unfortunately.

We'll get on that, Lisa. See what you can do. Thanks to Heidi Fieldler of Boxborough, Massachusetts. Gloucester, Mass. Boxborough, Mass. Nice. Thank you, Heidi. Did you ever get out to Boxborough, Mass? No. You and Veeves were tooling around Boston?

No. I don't want to insult Heidi, but I don't think I've ever been or heard of Boxborough.

It sounds lovely. It sounds like a place.

That's not a typo, right? That Taylor would. Oh, it's Foxborough? Well, Foxborough isn't spelled that way, though, right? How is Foxborough spelled?

It doesn't look like anything to me, because whenever I see Foxborough, it's associated with the Patriots, and I just warg out.

No, Foxborough is spelled the same way, but is Boxborough, I'm just double-checking here.

No, Boxborough is a place, it's a town.

Oh yeah, definitely. In fact, I'm probably insulting them further by even confusing them.

It's in Middlesex County, population 5,506, and it's chiefly known as the home of Heidi Fiedler. That's right, and its chief export is Chrome. Yep, yep. And then Natalie Sinclair is checking in from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Now there I've been. There you have. And there you may again at some point. We've got plans. We're going to try to get through the Twin Cities sooner rather than later. So if you're there, watch this space. Anyway, thank you so much to our donors today. Thanks for making this something that can be our job here. I was thinking the other day, Andrew, that I feel I feel sort of bad for the the postal worker who who's like this is her route. My house in the studio, her route. She's just the best. I love her so much. I actually don't know her first name, but but, you know, we chat sometimes when she's dropping off the mail. I printed out a sign that I put on the glass door of the Madrona Hill studio that says, please leave all deliveries at the front door of the house alcove to protect from rain. Thank you. Because people get confused. A lot of delivery people get confused when they pull up. They're like, is the studio the address or is the house the address? And the problem is if I'm gone and the stuff gets placed in front of the Madrona Hill studio, it's just exposed to the elements. So if I was gone on a work trip or something it could just get like rained on and destroyed So I wanted to make sure people were taking stuff Down to the house where there's a little entryway where it's a little more protected, but the problem is now that means That like yesterday Was I was was gifted with some broadcast coffee from our friends over at broadcast coffee including CEO and chief bottle washer Barry uh they they sent us some coffee which was amazing bean counter my dad used to say bottle washer

no no i know bottle washer is the right use there but i was just sort of trying to make it coffee related beans oh yeah right good that's a good point just a little punch up there for you but

so the the the thank you you tagged it for me i'm like nikki glazer over here i we try we run these jokes thousands of times and then we try different tags and then we finally settle on the winners But like basically it would have been totally fine for this for my the the mail the post post person mail worker We don't say mail. Well, it's not a man, but also it's like what do we what's the more inclusive way to say mailman? I think I say mail carrier, okay The mail carrier pulls up and it would be very easy for her to just walk this box That has broadcast coffee in it and just leave it at the door and it would be fine because I'm in here doing the show but she gets and she gets out of her mail truck and then she looks at that sign and Then she has to walk down a steep flight of stairs to my house To place it in the alcove because of what I'm directing her to do from the sign and then walk back up and then look in the window She can see into this place and wave very nicely as she comes back up the stairs as I'm in here talking into this microphone Yeah, and I feel bad because I like I want her to know the sign doesn't apply to her and it doesn't if I'm here inside You don't have to take stuff all the way down

Don't update the sign though This is getting too complicated If you're getting tempted to be like Please put the deliveries under the alcove Away from the elements Unless you're the mail carrier that might

usual mail carrier whose name I don't know, but I see you every day and sometimes we have

friendly chats. And also, what do we call, what's the more inclusive term for mail carrier?

Parenthetically, but if you see me podcasting in my studio, you alone can leave the packages at the door. It's probably from my friend Barry. Period. Yes. You think that's

too complicated for a sign? No, it's perfect, actually. So all that is to say I am appreciative of our donors who make it possible that this is our job, Andrew, that I'm in here talking on this microphone to you for a living and our friend John Sklaroff is there in the Twin Cities managing the business boys side of things and sending out emails to dazzling donors to get their messages. And you're building the show and editing the show and putting it all up and encoding it and making the website work so well. This is all happening because of the donors. And I just have these moments of real gratitude

over it. Oh, you know what? Can I say something here while you are mentioning that? I got a note from a listener and friend of the show last night that I am not going to name the person directly. But I got to say, I just scanned it really briefly because it came in late. It might have been one of those emails where the sender sort of regretted it. But so I don't want to call them out. But actually, it calls out the original email called out something that I did yesterday on the show. that was a joke that is sort of outside my usual vibe, and I remember making it and having a slight cringe when I said it, and it hit this listener's ears in a way that I kind of don't blame them for taking some offense at it. I made a joke during the Dazzling Donors yesterday. We were just talking about love language or something, and we were talking about donors, and I said, giving me money is my love language.

Oh, you were just trying to get me out of a weirdo. I was talking about a listener and our love language.

I mean, I was just transitioning, but I remember thinking, like we don't we don't talk about our donors as giving me money there was something coarse about it like it's not that big of a deal but there was something coarse about it in the moment that i said that i was like ew like that doesn't sound like that doesn't sound appreciative you know what i mean and this listener i think and again i sort of scanned this in preview mode i'll go back and read my emails more carefully later was a little bit taken aback by that because they hadn't donated for a long time and just started donating and sort of felt like they're not maybe giving as much as they they want to or whatever and i was like god damn it man i don't want to ruin anybody if somebody who is actively involuntarily giving us money to something that we're giving away for free but somebody who cares about it enough to keep it going to donate which is what we're doing here deserves a little bit better than me just saying give me money which is what i said

but that's not on you but i understand you were trying to get the nose up on a weird place I went involving me and a listener having a love language you were just trying to that was I mean honestly it was like I was drowning in a river and you just jumped in to try to save me and I just pulled you down

never do that but anyway it was just sort of funny that like I did have a quick moment of cringe then obviously completely forgot about it because the conversation keeps moving but then somebody who actually does you know hand over their hard earned dollars was like yeah that didn't feel great and so I respect that thanks for letting me

know and apologies yeah yeah thank you to everyone uh who is donating or has donated or or is considering donating at whatever amount uh works for you i i will occasionally when i'm i don't know it's like i'm driving and zoning out i'll just have this like weird like kind of fear will course through me of like what if everybody just stopped like because on an individual level So any one person could say, well, if I stop donating, it doesn't end the operation. And that is true. But of course, if everyone had that thought at the same time, or if, you know, we went through some, like some sort of a financial crisis, which doesn't seem un-possible considering the, you know, like basically the bridge is out ahead and we're barreling along towards it as a nation on about every possible level. right like i was just thinking what if everyone stops donating um i don't think that's going to happen but uh but i just want to say i appreciate uh all of the fine folks who have kept tbtl going for all these years and we hope to be here uh for many years uh in the future hello and welcome to top story i don't really know uh what all what all i'm adding to the discourse here but i noticed a clip of uh tape online yesterday posted by the las vegas raiders team uh welcoming their new head coach pete carroll who i gotta say andrew for 73 years old this guy is in top shape like i mean you look at the dude and you just can't believe that he's 73 i mean he is uh he is fit as a fiddle i mean him just running up and down the sideline

and excitement is more exercise than I get in a year yeah I mean he's I I you know and and again I've I've I always have liked Pete Carroll um like as a person I think I think he's a force for good he did of course famously think that he he indicated that he might think 9-11 was an inside job and he brought Jordan Peterson in to talk to the team he did yes I I feel like my thing with Pete Carroll is I think he suffers from a lack of critical thinking like him every we probably said this when the Jordan Peterson thing came up or when the you know what was it fire can't melt that steel or whatever I feel like the problem with Pete Carroll is he's somebody who thinks every single possible idea and theory is of equal merit you know what I mean like I don't think

that's kind of Rogan-y though right kind of like yeah we're just asking questions

we're just asking questions yeah and it's i don't think i don't get the sense from pete carroll that it comes from a sinister place where he's like i'm trying to red pill you know the culture at large or something whereas like a gruden like a john gruden i think is just probably kind of a probably pretty bad person yeah says pretty bad things when when he thinks no one's listening i think pete carroll's just kind of a moron but who is like good at motivating dudes kind of like a kind a marmaduke character sort of he's got and it's giving it's giving marmaduke marmaduke exactly so this is p carroll at the press conference and i just when this when when he when when he was talking about uh you know coming on and coaching this team uh it just it just reminded me of so much of my life as a seahawk fan when pete carroll was our head coach where he just there's something about his style of speaking where he never he somehow never manages to choose the right word for the thing he's trying to say and i understand that it's just i just no but that's not even the same you you might forget a word but you can also identify when you're not using the right word to express yourself and i don't think that's something that p carol really has i mean first off i will say that the question from the person this is a press conference i don't want to listen i can hear in the voice of the guy asking the question that he's probably a little nervous He's like a younger guy. He's got an iPhone on a tripod in front of him, like, which he could be writing the most, like, successful Raiders blog anyway. He probably has a million more readers than we do listeners. I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to denigrate the guy's work, but he seemed almost like maybe a younger guy who I could hear he was a little nervous to ask this question of Pete Carroll, which is, I think he's asking, like, why are you doing this at 73 or something? But his question's a little all over the place, and then Pete Carroll's answer is a lot all over the place.

Hi, Pete. You know, you're set to make history as the oldest tenured coach in NFL history. I know you mentioned you don't really do this for accomplishments, but you have accomplished everything. So what makes you still want to coach at this age and also believe that you can still do it at a high level at an age no one's been able to do it in the NFL before?

Well, first of all, I don't think the term tenured coach really applies here. It's on the tenure track.

but the basic question is a tough question to ask i will say because it's a very personal thing asking somebody about their age anyway it's relevant it should be asked i mean it's relevant i think but it's also i mean we have laws about not asking people's age hiring practices you know so but it is a storyline so i think it's a tough question i'm thinking that could have been handled

worse i think way worse and then and again yeah pete carroll is probably sick of talking about the fact that he's going to be like the oldest coach in NFL history, at least to come onto a team or whatever in the NFL

before. Yeah, well, first off, I'm not real proud of wearing this number 73 on my back. You know, but that's not what fires me up. But

so wearing the number 73 on your back is not what fires you up. Okay, so we've got

that out of the way. But it isn't about accomplishing things to say you were worthy. you know it's what you gotta do next accounts you know what's the next thing up and so uh we're i laid low in during this football season and i'm teaching a class at usc that's been a

thrill well you lay sorry can i interrupt for a second you laid low but you were also on the payroll of the seahawks i believe he was remember they gave him some bullshit yeah some sort of

special assistant then a special whatever kind of a thing yeah um i've not been one step away from what we're doing and at any time and what you laid low but you've not been one step away

from what we're doing at any time he was always underneath that's why he's laying low he was

but not one step away you've been laying low and teaching a class at USC but you've not been one step away from what we're doing here okay okay all right I'm following I'm tracking I've not

been one step away from what we're doing and at any time and what we're up against here I'm just so grateful that I've had, have been given, I guess the Raiders organization. He has been more than one step away from the Raiders organization, I would say.

When he wasn't laying low, he's been laying low this season, but when he wasn't laying low, he's been not one step away from the Raiders.

From the Raiders, and he's been working this whole time for the Raiders because this is news to the people who were paying him before he took his job a day ago.

There are some rules around what you can do for which team at certain times.

I've not been one step away from what we're doing at any time and what we're up against here. I'm just so grateful that I've been given the opportunity to do this again and define it. Because to me, it's the very next step that we get to take that fires me up. It's the very next challenge. It's coming back or it's overcoming or it's celebrating the success that you just had

and making yourself come back. Wait, I thought it wasn't about the thing you just did. It's about the next thing. At the very beginning, it started by saying it's not about the last thing you did. That was the main point that I think you wanted to make is it's not what you've done. It's sort of what, you know, what challenges lay ahead. But now we get a sort of a reverse here. We get a, and maybe this is a trick play. Maybe this is an RPO. And he's just decided at the last second to hold on to the ball because now he is saying that it is about what you've accomplished.

It's coming back, or it's overcoming, or it's celebrating the success that you just had and making yourself come back to basics and continue to be uncommonly consistent that drives me.

Okay, so hold on. It's about celebrating the accomplishment you had, bringing yourself back to basics, which fires me up to continue to be uncommonly consistent.

That's so good.

I believe is what we just experienced as a culture.

I got to say, this chat GPT thing is getting better and better.

Is this the new one from China that's tanking NVIDIA?

It's coming back or it's overcoming or it's celebrating the success that you just had and making yourself come back to basics and continue to be uncommonly consistent. That drives me, you know, so.

is uncommonly consistent there's a lot of there's a lot of russell wilson in this too oh my god so much these two were just such a great when they were getting along they were so good together i

mean that was such a wild time because we just had two absolute nincompetes who were kind of lovable in their own way and creating so much joy for me on a weekly basis like there was nothing in the world i liked more than russell wilson and pete carroll and there are not two people who i would absolutely trust less with anything of value in my real life outside of the football field like there's nothing i would trust these two morons with i would actually wait hold on i am

getting a vibe here a picture of like a wacky movie where you're because i immediately thought would you trust your kids with these guys and like what if the two of them like have to babysit for like what a week or something like maybe an uncle buck kind of situation maybe where russell wilson and pete carroll have to live in your house and we have to leave town and the only

people we can find pete carroll insists on being uncommonly consistent we have we have uh we have

triplets we have three-year-old triplets that those two have to babysit oh that's so great

i'd watch the success that you just had in making yourself come back to basics and and continue to be uncommonly consistent that drives me you know so um the stuff that you guys have heard you know about pete and what you know being having fun like you mentioned about throwing the ball around all that yeah that's part of it that's part of it but it's it's about the competing and and proving that you that you have value and you have worth and you can add to it i don't care how old you are and for anybody out there that's old and wants to know how you do it you freaking battle every day and you compete and you find your way to get better look out dan campbell there's a new kneecap

biter on the seed yes there's a new freaking battler on the seed it's peter carroll to know

how you do it you freaking battle every day and you compete and you find your way to get better and everybody needs to be coached up and that's what's been happening for me and i'm and i would like to extend that thought to anybody that wants to hear it because we can get better and we can do more things that are of value and we can love our families more and our people around us i mean all of that stuff so obviously i'm freaking jacked up so that shouldn't surprise you but

i find it like so interesting that he has been as successful of a football coach over the years as he has i mean he must really understand some things about the like the x's and o's like or at least hire good coaches because as far as as far as being able to describe a clear like inconsistent message i don't think that's uh you know a strong suit of his like he's it's it's this it's just such a jumb

it's such a word salad it's just a vibe right it's like here's what i know about pete carroll he's really excited to be the raiders new head coach like that's what i can take away from that and everything he's saying with in in that statement we just played is complete nonsense

he might as well be barking he might as well be barking when your dog is barking and excited to see you know what that dog is saying the noises just convey what he's trying to convey and that's what's going on with pete carroll here what family was thrown in there at the end because he realized he hadn't hit that word like what that's what gets him freaking jacked up some more things that

are of value and we can love our families more and our people around us i mean all of that stuff so obviously i'm freaking jacked up so i mean that doesn't i shouldn't surprise you but uh but like

i just wonder what it's like in team meetings or like in strategy sessions and stuff when he is like trying to communicate again i think it's just a vibe and i think if you what people have reported in playing for him is that the vibes are good. Like Pete Carroll is going to be over on the sideline encouraging you. He's going to be clapping. He's going to be chewing that gum. He's going to be energizing you. And also, let's be honest, there's a good number of the players who play for him that probably are also not, you know, like exactly wordsmiths. And so maybe to them, it's like, yeah, this all checks out. This is just a guy who's is just uncommonly consistent

and stands for family and is jacked up there is a um commercial that i haven't even seen it's like a autoplay commercial or like i should say an ad really that genevieve sees consistently i believe when she's doing her french homework uncommonly consistently um i do feel like that could potentially be a show title although it's giving marmaduke is up there as well

Mr. Uncommonly Consistent.

It's become a conversation point in our house. She played it for me once. It's somebody, I believe, I'm going to mess this up. I don't know if she can hear me. But I believe it's somebody who is telling their story of overcoming maybe some of life's adversity or whatever. And in a good way, it's like, and I think going back to school maybe being part of it. But the person says, and I believe I quote here, I don't want to just be a wordsmith. i want to be a action smith whoa and notice i didn't misspeak when i said uh action smith by the way that's one of the small things like first of all even if you said an action smith there's still a lot to dissect there yeah yeah yeah but then genevieve's like you're but like the point is this person already is a wordsmith but now they want to be a action smith and that That is not – you're belying your wordsmithiness, my friend.

And they're saying – I'm guessing that they're saying this to the camera like they're being kind of interviewed and this is the motivational quote.

I feel like it's a voiceover thing maybe while they're in a classroom or something.

Well, that seems like a real problem because if it's a voiceover – it's like one thing if they said it in context and it was like, well, it's not perfect, but we love the message behind it. And that's the version we got. If it's VO, somebody wrote that down.

No, no. Well, I think it's VO in the way that somebody was being interviewed, and it's very naturalistic. You know what I mean? So in other words, we don't see him talking to the camera. We hear his testimonial. It's more like a testimonial audio only while we're seeing a montage of him doing other things. I think. I got you. I've only seen like a snippet of the commercial, and Genevieve just played that line for me. We just talk about it all the time. It sort of feels like it fits in this Pete Carroll conversation, though. I feel like he wants to be an action smith, too. And uncommonly consistent.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. No, man, it's not from a female.

All right, emails and V-mails.

All right, I have a voicemail here for you. And this is from our friend and listener, Stephanie. who we met at the bead making party um and uh mom exactly and oh that's right it's august not

gus right i think it's i i i i'm not i'm trying to remember i mean i i know it's august and i

don't know if this is an august who's a gus or not yes i might have referred to august as gus at one point sorry about that stephanie anyway stephanie is time banding as you will hear um and is way back uh listening to you and chris hayes talk about uh italy and i believe your experience in italy and what do you recall i mean i think stephanie sets this up okay so we don't have to go into tons of detail but do you recall having some sort of a conversation about whether or not you're being sort of duped when you're in a country like italy and everybody else speaks the language and you don't there was something going on maybe with a car rental or something

that you were well well one of the things that

came up a lot was that americans because chris also had a a terribly stressful experience with a larger car a larger rental car in italy okay um and that's what what i had had happen as well and basically we realized was it seems to be the case that they give out the big cars to americans because it's really that's actually like a bad thing you know over here in the u.s if you got the SUV or the large sedan, that'd be kind of an upgrade. Over there, it's bad because some of the roads are so narrow and the alleyways are so impossible to get through that basically what we realized, and we had other listeners that called in on this, it's sort of like the joke's on us, and they literally give Americans the worst cars. Yeah, the worst cars

in this situation because you're driving on these tiny, tiny cobblestone roads and getting stuck places. So anyway, Stephanie

sent this in. This is so embarrassing. I've never been this far behind on TV Okay, I think I've been listening for about 10 years, and I've never gotten more than a week behind, but I'm listening to September 2024, and I'm listening to the episode where Chris Hayes is on with Luke, and the two of them are talking about Italy and Italian customer service, and maybe they're trolling Americans.

Did you hear me EQ that on the fly there? Did you just hear how much better that sounds while I was EQing it on the fly? You did not notice that.

Do you want to start it over again in full fidelity?

Yeah, let's hear it. I pulled back the lows a bit, heightened the mids a little bit here, and I think it might be a little bit. Let's take a listen.

This is so embarrassing. I've never been that far behind on TV show. Okay. I think I've been listening for about 10 years, and I've never gotten more than a week behind. But I'm listening to September 2024, and I'm listening to the episode where Chris Hayes is on with Luke, and the two of them are talking about Italy and Italian customer service and, like, maybe they're trolling Americans. And it just reminded me of this time. So I've been going to Italy. My mom is – my mom's sister married in Italian, so basically every summer from the ages of 7 to 18 I went to Italy. So I speak pretty good Italian. I used to, not so much anymore now that I haven't been going. But the point is is that I went to Italy with my now husband, Ben, boyfriend, and we ordered, you know, a carafe of the house wine, And it was 100% watered down. And then I started talking to the guy in Italian and the second carafe was not watered down. So I definitely think that they probably are trolling Americans or like, you know, doing something because we're American. I mean, they were perfectly friendly even before, like, even when we got the watered down wine, they were perfectly friendly. But they were definitely trying to pull one over on us, which, you know, kudos. I guess everyone's trying to pull one over on everyone else. Right. So whatever. But when he came out with that second carafe that had like proper wine in it, it was just it was very, very funny. Sorry about the gigantic car.

Put on the pole, Guillermo. Is everyone trying to pull one off on everybody else? Is that true?

i feel like i would of all of the things of all the ways you could do me dirty give me a giant rental car and and and see you know dare me to drive it around the streets of sorrento that's fine um you know bring out the i don't know slightly smaller pizza do not mess with my carafe of house wine though yeah do not bring out a watered down carafe of house wine

there's something about i've i heard this voicemail for the first time yesterday and then hearing it again today and both times my takeaway is i just want to be at a table in italy with carafe so there's something specific about a carafe of wine for me at an italian restaurant because i've never been to italy proper but there's something about a carafe and depending on the wine if it's a slightly slightly like kind of a lighter wine if it's slightly chilled because you don't usually chill red wine or especially like kind of big red wines but like a slightly chilled carafe of house red at a nice italian restaurant chianti yes so it's always i

mean that's and that was the thing that we noticed in italy was like we luckily weren't getting the watered down carafe but like the you could get at you know one of those just like there's millions of them little kind of cafes that are along the street that you know we've got all the outdoor seating like you could get like i don't know yeah a carafe of the house wine and becca really knows from wine she used to work for this really fancy winery called um domain serene and she knows like a ton about wine and was like she was like this is completely fine for being like five dollars like this is so much better than you would get in the u.s uh you know for the same price point if you were at you know whatever a place where they were going to bring out a carafe of wine it would not be as good as as it was in italy so i'm very sorry for um

For the listener that they tried to do her dirty But I'm also I have fantasies I would never put in the work to actually make this happen But one of my fantasies is Speaking a language other than English And then being in an environment Where people don't know that I speak that language And then at some point Just revealing it like a superpower I would love To be able to do that I'm not going to put in the work to actually learn another language So this will never happen

It's like the power of invisibility almost Right. Because you're invisible to the folks who think you don't understand what they're saying.

Yes, exactly. And then you throw out a sentence or something that clarifies you do know what they're talking about. You can say j'accuse.

Maybe it's French, and you can say j'accuse.

Or, I mean, try it in Italy, too. Maybe they speak French. A lot of people there speak a lot of different languages. But anyway. Well, all right, everyone. I think that's going to be the end of the line here for this Tuesday edition of the program. Let's get some wine.

Nice pasta, nice veal.

I said I'm not going to be judgy about if you miss your movie because you're at a bar. I am going to be judgy about if you beeline it for an Italian restaurant right now and begin your veal and wine celebration.

I thought you were going to get me on veal. It didn't occur to me that I'm picking one of the most fraught.

I don't feel great about the veal either.

Sorry, I think that's the last Italian veal I had.

I'm going to put some foie gras on my veal and get a couple of gallons of house red.

All right, you stop listening. I'm just going to keep this show going with fantasies about the meal I'm going to have later.

All right, everybody. Thanks for listening. We are going to be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. Good luck to all.

Power out.