Muse

You've got your hands full of yo-yos right now. You got to what four yo-yos per hand, right?

Right and what I do is it's called the blue flying angel. Okay. You know what we do or I'll do is the kids I'll get in the room and the kids will be running around and they'll be all excited and so I try to start things off on their level and try to hook them with something like a wrap. Yep. Okay. So it's, and it's kind of clever because it includes me. Okay. And it goes, hey, they're up in the sky. It's the K-Strauss, the yo-yo guy. And then I do the, boo-da-da-ba-ba-ba-da-da-da-ski-dee-dee-dee-da-ba-ba-do-do-do-do-yo-yo, you know, and I get them going and I get them into it. Okay. And so when, once I do that, they are ready to

learn i read poetry and sonnets and he plays the upright bass he sort of feels me out i feel him

out in 1971 bill greats invented microsoft wouldn't it be cool if i could remember my

dingus password for my email i have a beta sequence i've been working on would you like

to see it. How can they say this about me? I don't believe it. I show them. I record everything.

Well, all right. Hello. Good morning and welcome everyone to a Thursday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Meet the next generation of podcast stars. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. I like turtles. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where oh ma pa it's just beautiful absolutely beautiful day here beautiful thursday morning so happy to be with all of you for episode 4397 in a collector's series let the fun begin it's been an interesting 24 hours not even 24 hours been interesting uh i don't know 12 hours or so as I've been preparing for my colonoscopy, which is about now a couple hours away. And I will tell you, it didn't go the way that I expected it to go. And I'll tell you the story. From my point of view, it's a beautiful story. I love your story. Also, and possibly even more important developments for the show, we've got an interview with our friend, televisions, and now the New York Times number one bestseller in the nonfiction category, Mr. Chris Hayes. The guy is a nut bar. A nut bar. And then it wouldn't be a Thursday without a little Blur's Day messages. And we'll do that as well. Not before we introduce this guy, longest running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. You probably have some kind of idea what I've been doing around here at the Madrona Hill studio. a lot of it's a mystery what goes on at his place when we're not broadcasting slab jacking he's

andrew walsh and he's joining me right now good morning my friend so have you gone from broth man to soup no i guess broth man to water boy are you or broth boy to water man what no no more broth

just well so last last night uh starting actually all day yesterday i believe yes when i woke up it It was no solid food. The most sort of satisfying thing I could consume in terms of satiating my hunger would be broth. So I was having a lot of vegetable broth. I accidentally bought the low-sodium, which is just like, I mean, I know some people need that in their life, and that's fine. But something, low-sodium vegetable broth feels like it's almost not a product anymore to me. Yeah. It's like, what are we really consuming here? So then I added some sodium, and I think I probably added far too much sodium, and then I was constantly trying to get the ratio right throughout the day. I took to microwaving a cup of broth, telling the microwave it was a mug of tea because it has a setting for that, and then drinking my broth. But then starting at some point last night, it was—I think I was maybe allowed to have broth throughout the night, but I literally just got tired of it. And at 6 p.m. I had to take 12 pills of something called Sutab, which is basically just the, I think, slightly more convenient version of what people have done in previous generations, where you mix this really foul-tasting powder with all of this water. I actually paid $50 extra because, of course, Kaiser doesn't cover the less terrible stuff. So they were willing to give me the powder stuff as part of my coverage. But if I wanted the Sutab, or as I put it on the show sheet, A Boy Named Sutab, I thought that was decent. Considering...

The caloric deficit I was in, I was pretty proud of that joke.

No, that's really good. I was thinking immediately, Sutab? Sutab for what? Sutab for what? A little Rocky 5 humor there.

Also good. But anyway, so I took 12 pills last night. And I actually, I recorded it. I did not think, oh, you know what? Let me just play you. This is not gross. I want to be clear. This is just, I realize I can actually do this from this computer. um this is i don't know what the level is going to be like this is me recording myself on my phone andrew right after i took these 12 pills okay that it says in the directions are going to really kind of do a number on you well it's uh 5 30 ish west coast time and i uh just downed 12 tablets of something called Sutab and then drank a bunch of water and now we play a waiting game the instructions say that I will have to go to the bathroom very shortly after taking these 12 tablets you know what this feels like like one of those like army films like World War 2 where they know the enemy is coming and all they can do is just kind of dig their foxhole down and set up their weapons and say a little prayer and just kind of wait. It's all quiet on the Western Front right now, but it feels ominous, like there's about to be a truly spectacular fire fight. But so far, it's quiet. I'll check back in a little bit.

Did you have a black and white photo of Becca? I did, tucked into my bra

I was, you know, I was sort of curious slash nervous slash didn't know what to think about what this was going to do to my body and I will say, maybe this is just how my body reacted to it, Andrew but I don't know, I'm a little worried I might be built different because it certainly allowed me to evacuate the situation but there was, I didn't have any cramping I was assuming it was going to feel like when you have when your stomach is bothering you and you're kind of in that mode of like I need to get right to a bathroom right now Mm-hmm, and that's what I was worried about was that I was taking so I was knowingly taking something That was going to put me into an actually physically painful situation, and that's actually not Sort of how it works or at least how it felt to me It's more just that if you were to go in and use the bathroom Over in a very short amount of time the consistency of what is coming out of you changes pretty rapidly

But how many times? My picture of this from other people talking about it is you take this stuff. I don't know if the pills also maybe hit slightly different than the thing. But was it like, oh, yeah, so I probably went to the bathroom, I don't know, 10 times over the course of eight hours? Or what was the consistency, not consistency of the, you know what I mean? What was the frequency, I mean?

Frequency. Kenneth, can you please help me with this? I'm trying to tell the listeners. um i i would say that i'm here's the thing i maybe i maybe i made seven trips to the to the bathroom but it wasn't because i was clutching my stomach yeah you weren't and i was like oh i gotta go like it was there was never a near miss there was never like if i don't get to the bathroom right now right here as i sit and talk to you and by the way i just took 12 more of them per the instructions at um at about 9 30 this morning so um it's i i i'm a little worried that i mean definitely again i don't want to get too graphic but it's we've we've long we've we've long past departed uh from the the realm of there being anything solid coming out of me but now i'm just getting into really analyzing sort of shades color shades because i think i was i was under the impression that this we wanted to be i mean this wanted to be essentially gray water this is the kind of water you could use you know for various things it's non-potable but it's you know it's pretty close to something that you could just like you know use around the house that's my expectation i didn't quite get there it's definitely it's definitely pretty close to that at this point but it was i guess i was expecting to have this because people were saying oh luke's not going to be able to record the show with andrew like you know we pre-taped this thing with chris which which was actually awesome and i'm glad we're gonna get to play it but we're building in all these contingent i was saying i might have to be in the bathroom for this andrew might be on the telephone with you and it's like none of that has been my experience i think i had

you like a balloon with the the air coming out the bottom of it with you flying around the room

well that's the other thing you know i had to take this gas x which i'm a little also a little worried about because uh it's the the gas x that i bought unknowingly it's like Thank you. some kind of- they're trying to make it like candy and I'm worried that- I looked at the- at the label after I took half of it, which was does it have red number five in it because you're not supposed to eat anything with red number five it's just like, they tell you in the directions, take Gasex and then you buy Gasex and then you're taking it and you go like, well shit, does that have red number five in it? because generally speaking they're trying to make it palatable for people also, you wanna know how hungry I was this morning, Andrew?

you were eyeing the Gasex

damn, that's the best half of a Gasex tablet I've ever had in my life

Now, let me ask you, Chris asks you this in the tape that we're about to hear, but I don't think we really spend any time on it or get a direct answer because you are so hard to pin down on things. And very private. And a very private person. You know, I think the casual listener, and maybe myself included, I consider myself a casual listener to your stories, would think that you're well-suited for this because you've done so much fasting. You've done so much fasting. i've never i've never done any kind of a cleanse or a fast i don't think i've ever gone more than five minutes without eating a hamburger so like i'm curious like are you do you feel like you're a little bit more suited for this process than the than the average andrew well i'm worried that

when i ate i think i'm a little worried that i ate too much fiber like four and a half days ago monday night i'm first of all i told you about those illicit peanuts that i ate a week ago because starting seven days out you were not supposed to eat any peanuts i did eat some peanuts on thursday night so that was my first transgression father i have sinned i have eaten peanuts from the gas station at the alien a casino off of a roar off of a i-5 um i get free gas there the most expensive free gas you'll ever get in your life uh but anyway i i that but i haven't i haven't had anything i haven't had anything prohibited since then except monday night i steamed up a bunch of brown rice and some black beans which i thought was a good healthy meal um you know nothing processed and then i ate it and then i don't know if we got into this on air or off air maybe this is you've you've spent a considerable amount of time with the chris interview so you would know but like part of what's been challenging about this for me is i've been getting mixed messages, or not even mixed messages, but just like a cascade of different sort of lists of what I'm not supposed to consume or what I wasn't supposed to consume. And so the first list said, you know, a certain number of things, mostly seeds and nuts and stuff. I was like, okay. And then the next list was like, oh, also, you know, watch out for these dyes and things. And then the third one that I got from the website of Kaiser was like, oh, also you're supposed to be on a low fiber diet. You are supposed to be actually eating the exact opposite way of how doctors would recommend. In other words, white bread acceptable, creamy peanut butter acceptable, but not things that have fiber in them, not things like black beans or brown rice. And so I had already consumed that on Monday night.

I wonder why. Is that because you're early on and it's actually for your own comfort? Like they don't they want more stick to the rib stuff early on to make the process better? I don't understand.

It has to do with what fiber fiber stays in your body longer. Now fiber is ultimately good for you. It helps move things along and it helps kind of clean things out if my if I understand right Part of it is I don't know anything about fiber because I've never had a problem in The regularity department and so how great is it that this is the lead-in to us introducing the Number one best-selling author in America right now New York Times bestseller Chris Hayes people have to wade through They're like Andy Dufresne. They literally have to climb through a mile of shit to get to Z-Wantanejo so i don't i i so so that was monday night and i was like ah man like i literally was like on the kaiser website reading further down because what happened was the first thing i got was in the mail from the clinic that's a that's a separate entity and i went off of their list then in the app my kp.org app then it had a new list with some additional stuff on it which i didn't see till a couple of days later then on the website of kaiser there was yet a third list which had even more things and that was when I first got hip to this is a low-fiber diet kind of thing and so I'm again I don't I don't I don't want to get into describing too much what's going on for me I will tell you it we seem quite cleaned out my only I think I'm in my head about this because so many people have got at us and oh here's the other thing Thursday night when I was talking about this at Livewire my friend there Elena Passarello said oh I've been through that and and I just wanted to tell you that I got an A plus from the proctologist. They said, I don't know if that's actually a proctologist. I got an A plus from the doctor. They said the prep was perfect. I was like, okay, really? Wow, well that's a lot of pressure. And then I was talking to somebody else backstage who heard that and they said, I also got a really good score. And then this morning I was texting with one of my friends, a producer at CBS, and he said, can we jump on this call? And I said, I'd love to, but I'm kind of in the middle of something. And I sent him a

picture of this thing of Sutab and he was like, oh yeah, I've done that too. He goes, and guess what the doctor told me? Complimented me on my prep. I just feel, either this is the thing that these doctors tell people coming out of anesthesia, I don't know, just to put them in a good place, or there's a lot of pressure. They're really, these things are being graded and I'm worried about what my grade is going to be. And not because of any cheating on my part. Like generally speaking, when there are rules, I don't follow them. I have been trying my absolute hardest. in fact i think i went to the broth thing early because i could no longer figure out what was and

was not allowed well this is all interesting for me too because i mean this is going to be on my horizon sometime in you know this or it's on my horizon for some time in this coming year so my questions are kind of uh maybe even selfish the broth thing did you were you drinking the low sodium vegetable broth because a you don't mess around with animal products and b it's supposed to be a low sodium diet or was that just what you had like am i allowed to grab the wrong boxes of

pacific broth at the grocery store there's nothing nothing in there that i saw about sodium being part of this but you what about the chicken thing well no you can't have so the broth broth means broth so i mean you could have vegetable you could have a chicken flavored no no you could have a chicken flavored broth you can't have pieces of things oh yeah no i knew that i just much more textural i think than even ingredient based i mean conceivably if you really liked something and you could turn it into an absolutely clear liquid i guess you could probably consume it

the reason i'm asking is because and i know that this is um far from reality and i'm sure it'll be miserable the time but like i really do love chicken broth i told you there used to be a vending machine that would vend out like chicken broth like you know low level low grade chicken broth and I would like be doing my work of data entry with like a cup of coffee and a cup of chicken broth. And I was kind of like, I could probably, I could probably down a lot of chicken

broth. Absolutely. No, yesterday I actually found once I, once I took it from low sodium to dangerously high levels of sodium, I was, and it was also really cold yesterday and my house is still, it's still a work in progress on the HVAC. Like it's not, it's not quite as cozy as I'd like to be sometimes and I was sitting there with a sweater on and my steaming piping mug of veggie broth and I thought this is not the worst thing you know so I I this is yeah that's that was that's that part I don't have any complaints about it's mostly just that I feel like believe it or not as a semi-high functioning person in the world and a person to when I put my mind to something there's a lot of stuff that I am low functioning on but it's because I don't care but if I'm like I'm going to really take this seriously. This is a big hassle. This is the plotline on the show. I want it to, I don't want to have to do it again. I don't want them to get in there and be like, sir, we thought we were in the bat cave or something. Like, you know,

like, sir, there's a Honda parked

in here. Yes, I mean, do you know this? This is, we're going to try to take it out if we can. Like, I really didn't want to have to do this two times and so I really was trying to take it seriously and follow the directions and I literally found the directions almost unfollowable. Let me throw this last thing in the mix I was talking to my dad about this the other night because he's of course been through it and he said I go well what about yellow number five what about this what about he goes I don't know I don't think we did any of that I honestly think a lot of this is new now we've got medical professionals in the audience and they can tell us but this is where this is the emotional journey that I'm on Andrew I like trying to follow it really closely but then also on the other hand low-key being like are they being extra with this because i haven't until i got this paperwork and i'm sure we have lots of people who said that yeah we they've been through it my feeling is this might be a relatively like adding in some of these things like a week out might be a relatively new development i wouldn't be shocked to find out that it's been getting stricter and more complicated as time has gone on because of just how we are and because probably of maybe getting better results, et cetera. But when I heard my dad say, like, he was like, I don't remember doing any of that. I just drank a bunch of this horrible stuff and went to the bathroom for an entire 24 hours. Like, that was the only report of this I'd ever heard before I got into this game, you know?

This is like the, you have to turn off your cell phones of the colon, right?

I worry that, well, actually, I don't worry. I'd be relieved because it would mean I'm going to be in okay shape, you know what I mean?

Yeah, right, right, right. You're just sort of like, listen, I know back in the days, well, I mean, I guess the cell phone analogy breaks down there.

No, it's a good one because I don't turn my cell phone off.

When we're on the plane, we're told we're supposed to turn off the cell phones. And we've actually heard from actual professionals who explain how it can interfere with equipment. So it's not just a total made-up thing that they're just doing to try to control us. There is a reason for it. But also, we know that we've left our phone on.

many many times in airplanes accidentally or otherwise and nothing bad has happened so you're just wondering like how much I do how how letter of the law do we have to follow this because I've

been really and this is uncharacteristic for me I have really been trying to follow the letter of the law like I have this lime powder that actually Becca got me and the reason that we got turned on to it is because if you're on an Alaska Airlines flight and they give you and you get like a soda water they'll give you this little packet of lime and i love it i don't know why i irrationally love

it's called true lime you love it on the land too or just in the sky i love it both i love it in the

land on the land i love it in the sky i love it on the sea i've never had it on the sea but i would bring it it started with it was just a real happy place for me to be on a flight with my sparkly water and then throwing this lime in it just was kind of a treat for some reason maybe owing to the way that we taste things a little bit differently on planes and so you know it's also i'm trying to drink more water i have i've tried to drink more water for a while now as i've documented on the show and giving it a little flavor a little pizzazz is a nice thing but i wanted to put something healthy this true lime is literally the only ingredient is it's it's shred it's it's just finely powdered lime it's citric acid that's it it is so it's so kind of um uh what's the word i'm looking for uh it is so uncomplicated and it is so it's just lime that's it and it's a powder and was putting it in my water and then i kept going around around like well am i allowed to have lime powder in the water the water is clear but what if these tiny little i mean it's it's again it is a it's powderized it's not even like pulp it's powder but i was like am i allowed to have another lime packet like that's where my mind is at with this like i'm really trying to do it right and maybe that's why i'm having a hard time because i'm not used to ever trying to follow the rules of anything and then when i put my mind towards it that i feel like i'm still failing at it it's It's leaving me in an uncomfortable position, so to speak, which won't be the first time or the last time today.

The last solid food you had was 24 hours ago, 48 hours ago?

It would have been with you and Chris and John.

I had a salmon salad at Vaughn's. That looked like a good meal. It was a healthy salad, but it had protein. Hold the tomatoes. Yeah. Oh, that's right, tomatoes. No tomatoes because of the seeds.

No tomatoes because of the seeds. But I'm looking at the lettuce. Is this too much roughage? Is there fiber in this lettuce? Like, I tend to know now because of all my obsessing, I tend to know what to go towards that is the healthy stuff. Like, I'm not saying I choose it all the time, but I know what it looks like. What I don't know is what of the healthy stuff is bad for me in this particular context of this week. Like, was that lettuce, did that lettuce have too much fiber in it? I don't even know if lettuce has fiber in it, but like, you know what I mean?

But anyway, what I don't know about fiber could fill a toilet, but I'm surprised to hear that when you said that fiber stays in the body longer than other things that really that seems like I was shocked goes against conventional wisdom.

I was absolutely shocked. This is because I looked it up on the Internet because of the exact same thing. I was under the impression that what happens is you take the fiber and it it leaves your body like a 12 year old Luke at Wild Waves getting on one of the slides. And as it's going down the slide, it's just grabbing anything it can find, like a 12-year-old Luke at Wild Waves when it was getting too fast and he was scared. That was what I thought fiber did. And what I'm reading is it's a little more nuanced than that. It does ultimately do that, but it does not do it at the rapid pace that I understood it to.

So that is one thing that I'm learning from your experience with this is that the fasting does go on longer. So just for the timeline there, you said that the last actual meal, kind of solid food you had, that you already had to be conscientious of no seeds and no tomatoes, et cetera. But still, you were able to have a regular meal. But that was Tuesday night. You went all day Wednesday. And here it is. It's almost midday on Thursday. So that is a long. What is your plan for afterwards? Because are you already eyeing? And maybe you don't want to have this conversation. I would totally respect that. But are you sort of thinking, like, on the way home, I'm going to get in the car and I'm going to stop at, fill in the blank?

Well, I'm getting a ride from Becca. That's part of the whole deal. You're not allowed to drive yourself. Sure. And that's a complicating factor because I feel like I might still be high as a kite. If I, right now, in front of you and the listeners, I would say what I really want to do is order a large pizza delivered. Yeah.

To the hospital?

To the hospital and also my house just to be safe. And maybe in between somewhere. Maybe the recycling place in Rose Valley that I dropped stuff off at That's about midpoint I feel like I want to eat a bunch of food later today But also I'm going to be out of my I'm going to be suited I don't know what my state of mind is going to be You know what I mean? I'm going to be coming out of a pretty intense anesthesia experience And so I don't know if I'm going to be like Becca, take me to Stuffy's 2 Which is some weird restaurant it's like the sadigis i was not allowed to watch stuffy's too as a kid i feel like it's the if you remember

long-time listeners though there was a restaurant in bellingham called sadigis that i could never figure out what's going on with it yeah i never saw anyone in there once i darkened the door just as research and i believe they went across the street to the fred meyer to get my food

it was really weird didn't you order a gin and tonic or a vodka tonic or something and they didn't know how to make it it was like one yes it was like mostly i think it might have been a vodka tonic vodka soda soda with one ice cube but they didn't know how to put it was in it there's a

place uh there's a place down in longview called stuffy's two that's kind of a similar thing like i've never been in there but i'm like is anybody going to stuffy's two i don't know what my i don't know what my mental capacity is going to be on the ride home i don't know if i'm gonna be able to operate the the pizza uh delivery system if i'm able to call papa pete's and say get something up here so and honestly to be honest i've been it's been now enough self-denial that if i could just go into my cupboard and just like open up a box of like or a tin i really like these like this sounds like such a weird thing but trader joe sells these these white i've eaten them in meetings with you and john before they're these big tins of beans white cannell cannellini beans

maybe you did a hay dummies all about them once oh yeah yeah i'm obsessed with those and and because

like that's the kind of stuff that i haven't been allowed to eat for a week i'm i'm craving even that what i learned last night was an inordinate amount of my tick tock viewing is food related and i did not know that until i was like i can't i don't look at this right now the other thing that was unexpected about last night and maybe this is just how my body reacted or maybe i'll rue this because it'll turn out that i didn't do the prep hard enough but it was a weirdly cozy night here's what i did i took the pills i got into some really comfy sweats i put on a really comfy sweatshirt and a sweater i turned on the fire i turned on the heater i put a little my little a little beanie on a little warm cap i put a phone charger next to the toilet it was just like i was just like prepping my whole house for this whole thing and then andrew i unapologetically looked at tick tock for four hours and i felt like you're allowed to do this tonight not every night but tonight uh tonight you're allowed to do in the words of patience and prudence tonight you belong to me tick tock this is a totally acceptable thing my job is to drink lime water look at tick tock stay cozy and try not to have a bathroom accident and something about that being the ambition for the night was kind of lovely i believe that i i don't get like

bedridden sick very often but two tbtlathons ago after we it was the first one that we had done uh as an independent organization and we were leaving your parents basement and packing up stuff up and what is it is it like a is it a two-hour drive maybe from from your folks house

to my house yeah depending on traffic and you didn't do the ferry right we didn't do the ferries went down a couple of hours yeah and it was like also particularly on a friday traffic it was a

friday yeah rush hour so anyway whatever that was but i was i was not feeling great in your parents house that morning as we were leaving but like again because i don't get fevers very often boy the last two times i've had a fever were both related to tbtl in some way because i got covid when you know right before i landed in philly but um both of the times i was very confused as to what was going on with me because i don't get feverish very often so i don't recognize that And before this one, two TBTLathons ago, I don't know if I'd had a fever in a decade or two. So it was like, I didn't know what was going on with me. I just felt spacier and spacier and weirder and weirder until by the time I got home, I was like, just like crawling to bed, right? I'm like, I got to get in it. But then once I was in this mode, I was like, well, this is interesting. Like, I'm definitely sick. I need to be in this bed. It's the beginning of the weekend. There's nothing for me to be doing anyway. I don't have to make any kind of work arrangements. Like, let's just like have a sick day. Like, I hadn't had a sick day since I was a kid. And so I'm like, well, maybe I should go downstairs in the basement and, like, get a bunch of blankets and, like, just watch a movie. I'm like, I never watch movies because I don't have the attention span because I'm getting up too much and playing darts, like, whatever. Like, I'm just going to watch a movie, have a sick day, and I do that, and I pull up the covers, and I spend, like, probably an hour trying to choose a damn movie. Like, all these movies that people have been telling me to see, you know, over the years, but I never sit down to watch them. I'm going to finally watch it. And I turn on the master. And I don't know if you remember the beginning of that. I still haven't seen the masters end of this story because the opening and I love a weird, uncomfortable movie. But the opening scene of that movie with him on the beach having, I guess, mommy, daddy times with the sand. It was just so and I don't I still don't know how any of that is going to play into the rest of the movie. All I know about Scientology. I know that. I know that.

part i didn't know the part about the i didn't know the part about being intimate with the earth and so that's because you have too many engrams i certainly do i need to clear some of those out yeah exactly so anyway my point is i just turned off the tv and just went to bed like i still did not have a good like i think i chose the maybe i just needed a good like winnie the pooh movie or something but something challenging like that literally sort of made me feel sicker and again I don't shy away from uncomfortable cinematography.

Yeah, I was, I kept, so I was lying on the couch and I kept thinking, okay, I'm going to look at a little more TikTok and then I'm going to put on a movie. I'm going to put on TV or some Netflix product or whatever. And I just kept not doing it because there, I was wearing a bit of a path to the bathroom. But again, and, and, you know, we can, we can probably wrap this up here because I've said what I came here to say. And the only thing left is for me to go to the place and get the procedure. But when I was using the bathroom, it was surprising to me how voluntary the exercise was. I was going because I was like, I should probably do this again. I just had it. I think I was expecting it to be a thing where I was always like, I was like, am I going to need to bring like a folding chair into the bathroom and just sit right next to the toilet so that the amount of time between me sitting down and me being at the toilet are minimal? But that just wasn't my experience. Once again, some of that could have to do with these tabs. Some of it could do with me not prepping enough. Some of it could just be that, as I said earlier, I'm just built different. You've just built of a tolerance to assume it. Well, I wonder also if a person who in my younger life had a lot of like stomach distress and then, you know, told many stories on the show about like moments when my bowel control failed me. I also just kind of wondered like, am I just, for people that have never struggled, I don't think there are that many people out there, But for people maybe who haven't struggled with having kind of regular stomach issues, is this just for them like, oh, my God, you're not going to believe what this feels like? Because I'm like, I call this Tuesday. I could poop you under the table. I mean, honestly, like I really had the thought a couple of times like this is this is what the hype has been about. Oh, I've done this plenty of times. Welcome to my world. I mean, Bruce Williams voice. Like I really again, I don't know. So the real question, the real, the test for all of this quite literally and figuratively will be what they say to me coming out of the procedure, which I will give a full report on tomorrow. If they're, if they, if, if they say, yeah, everything looked good, or even if they say everything looks bad, but we could see it, that's, that will give me, you know, then I'll just be like, I guess, I guess this wasn't as bad as I expected it to be.

If they're like, I don't know that I followed you if they can see it.

well that there's clarity the whole process of this is to create clarity for them as to what's going on in there they don't want to see but so in other words i don't it's not even about the outcome it's not about do i get a good colonoscopy report or a bad colonoscopy report in terms of the

state of my colon does that make sense yeah you're more worried about were you a good boy during

prep i'm less worried about a polyp that looks dangerous than i am about them saying we couldn't see what was going on in there yeah it was like that garbage shoot they go into in star wars when Princess Leia shoots out the grate and says, somebody's got to save you flyboys. Yeah, right. That's, to me, I mean, you know, famous last words. I really am not, and maybe this could, you know, I could really regret this as well. For whatever reason, I'm not particularly worried about the medical report about my body. I'm really worried that they're going to say, we got in there and all we found were organic black beans from Trader Joe's. and you need to come back in a month, sir, when you follow directions. It's not going to happen. It's been so long. Isn't that rare that you hear that coming from me? Yeah, that you're worried about. Famously overconfident person, underprepared and overconfident. That's kind of my approach to life.

No, it's going to be like when you go to one of those beautiful beaches in the Mediterranean and you're in a boat, but you can look down and you can see all the way to the bottom of the ocean floor. Glass bottom, colon. Show title. No, we're going with a boy named Sutab. You had that one locked in. Thank you for being a tab.

All right. It's time to thank some donors. They didn't know that they were sponsoring. Andrew, with my fecalist out of town, I can solicit money from anyone I want.

What these listeners don't realize, if there is any sort of conflicting emotions about, like, hey, I get to support the show that Chris Hayes is on, but also to get there, we have to crawl through a half hour of Luke talking about bowel movements and colonoscopies. They should know that there's an alternative history in which I talk about how goddamn confusing garbage pickup is this week because of these snowfalls we've been having.

having oh yeah to have and the alerts from the city are not helpful like yesterday i got one that says put it the next day then it's like okay now some people are canceling and i don't know where i fit maybe we'll get to it tomorrow but i just want definitely put a pin in that but i want kristen orlick to know she's in pittsburgh pennsylvania by the way our first donor today i want her to know that she she did avoid a worse outcome if if you could believe it um what about

bill pollock in kingston ontario formerly toronto are founding torontan and now uh kingston

now i know bill pretty well he's been a long long time listener and and and a writer inner to the show friend of the show friend of the show contributor and so i think i can say this i wouldn't say this if i didn't recognize the name but i do think it's interesting that we're talking Pollock on a day where you're thinking about polyps. I think that that

seems, and I

think that Bill would be open to that as being a blessing coincidence. How do you feel the estate

of Jackson Pollock feels about that?

Is that acceptable?

Thank you, Bill. We appreciate you. Love to see your name on this list. Indeed. Thanks also to Brandon Volbright of Vashon, Washington. I was watching in my intense and long TikTok scrolling last night, which, by the way, did feel like old times i really have not been doing that very much i don't see myself going back to it it really was kind of it's like saltines and ginger ale right it's like it felt like a thing i was doing because i was in a way under the weather but it didn't feel like i don't want to eat saltines and ginger ale for the rest of my life for every meal um but it was an interesting experience to just dive back into that like intense long-running experience with tick tock but in the midst of all that i saw a clip from the conan o'brien needs a friend and he was was interviewing Caitlin Olsen, who's one of the members of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Oh yeah, right, of course.

I think she's got a show called The Mick, I think she's got a new show out now that's something else where she might be like a teacher or something that I think is very popular. I didn't realize this, but she lived on Vashon, and at some point, I think her parents were kind of back to the landers, and she was talking to Conan, and Conan was going off about, I mean in a good way, about Vashon Island and about Seattle, because his wife is from Seattle. And it was like four minutes of Conan's thoughts on like Seattle and Vashon and it took me back to a time I knew where Conan O'Brien's in-laws lived. I knew where his mother and father-in-law lived. They lived down in Seward Park, which was a little south of where that house that I had with all the steps in front of it was. And I used to go on these runs down in Seward Park and I would run by Conan O'Brien's in-laws house and I would dream of it being a day that Conan O'Brien was just like walking around Because apparently he was often, and maybe still is, often spotted in Seattle, although I believe his in-laws may or may not have passed away at this point. But, yeah, anyway, that's Vashon Island for you, where we've got Brandon, Volbright, and occasionally Conan O'Brien and Caitlin Olsen.

Nice. Well, yeah, were you dropping your scripts out? Like, just, like, accidentally dropping a script as you jogged by? I don't know if Conan can get scripts greenlit or not.

I had a real fantasy. This was around the time, too, that we stopped being a Cairo project, and remember we did those shows, I did those shows, at the Columbia City Theater. And I was like, this is too perfect. His in-laws live, like, an eight-minute walk down Genesee Street from here. Like, we were, the Columbia City Theater is very close to Seward Park, and very close to where his parents, or his in-laws lived. and i was like i gotta run into this guy down at you know like one of these little places in columbia city and then invite him on the show and then he comes on the show and then it becomes the number one podcast in america and then and then i don't have to be talking about colonoscopies 12

years from now to try to move the needle it turns out he would just someday have the number one

podcast in america exactly i knew one of the people in this scenario would have the number one podcast in the world i just kind of thought it was going to be me kevin and beth shumway in late in utah they knew the whole time that we were going to be doing tbtl they were like it's not the number one podcast in the world it's not conan o'brien needs a friend but it's something

we like do you and we thank them i got to be careful with people's last names i really don't want to get into riffs on people's names or just say the same word association like i was going to say jokes but this isn't even a joke but I do wonder if Kevin and Beth are of an age in which they had to live through people being like Shumway like Elf like I think I think of Elf I think of Gordon Shumway when I think of Shumway but they might not they might have totally missed that

yeah that's a you know what that's a really good point I was gonna say let's not let's not bore them with that tedious reference but that may be such an old and tedious reference that they've never been bored with it i what was i listening to oh something popped up last night again the thing about the tiktok is it does give me a lot of material is it good material no is it material yes it there's something flashed across the screen that was the sundays uh you know that band the sundays oh yeah and it was i forget which song off of like you know that that that first record of theirs that hit the u.s reading writing arithmetic and it's got the doesn't it have a little kind of like a not a trilobite but some kind of a fossil on the cover maybe yeah shell of some kind one of the songs i mean i was obsessed with that cd i mean i just wore that cd out but it came out in 1990 and i was doing the math on that that's 34 years ago rounding up that's essentially 40 years ago and i was like this music sounds as fresh and good to me today as it did when i heard it and i thought imagine in 1980 if you bumped up against someone and they were listening to a song from 1940 yeah yeah and they were like what do you mean you haven't listened to bill and the broadsiders like oh these were huge when i was in high school like it would be insane for someone to be telling you about music from the 1940s in the 1980s and being like oh you gotta listen you gotta give this a listen and that's what i would say about the sundays you gotta give them a listen yeah somebody on levitard was like

kind of listing quarterback performances of all time or something and almost all the quarterbacks were modern because i think that position is getting better and better um or more and more protected more and more protected yeah that's part of it too it's just changed a lot but it makes sense that but anyway quarterback smoking fewer cigarettes at half time somebody threw in um uh oh geez how am i blanking on his name i was just about to say the denver broncos quarterback from the 1980s elway somebody said elway and um one of the younger people on the show is just like yeah it just doesn't look like anything to me or i don't know how she put it but she's just so young she's like it's like yeah that's like mentioning somebody that's what would be on like crackly black and white yeah like how do you not know about elway there's a lot of things from 40 years

ago i don't know about right yeah yeah wait you don't know about ya tittle don't worry i'll beep it you know who knows about ya tittle probably brandon lucian in milton washington look at that

a two brandon day i call that oh yeah good point love it thank you brandon and then we've got tim

and Katie Mackie in Tacoma, Washington. Great. Tim and Katie, Kevin and Beth, Brandon and Brandon, Bill and Kristen, all keeping TBTL going today. Thank you so much. Couldn't do it without you. Hello and welcome to Top Story. All right, our top story today, we're chatting with our friend Chris Hayes. I don't probably need to over-describe his career here on the show because we talk about him so much already but he is the host of the uh 8 p.m on the east coast 5 p.m on the west coast uh msnbc show all in he's got a great podcast why is this happening and he has this new book out called the sirens call which he was promoting in seattle at town hall and uh was having quite the day which i think we're going to hear about um just in terms of busyness but was nice enough or honestly andrew calculating enough i mean to move a few more books maybe to come on tbtl in between all these other things he was doing this is a controversial take but

i take most of the credit for his success writ large yeah and i know that he already had attained a certain amount of success long before i even came on tbtl he was a tbtl listener long before i was on tbtl so he didn't even know who i was yet there's something back when he was writing for national review yeah i believe it was the costco costco connections the costco connections i uh yeah i don't know there's something i feel like just spiritually i've sort of been like sort of a mentor and a guiding light to him throughout his career i think he would i think he would uh

he would agree so this is our conversation with chris as we recorded this in this teeny tiny room possibly the worst uh room in terms of acoustics for doing this but that's that's the room we had backstage at town hall take a listen wait so the colonoscopy is happening

thursday afternoon and you're doing why are you doing the real one well let's start here chris um uncharacteristically i'm like six or seven episodes behind i am not in september like that one listener who was listening to us talk about the car rental oh that's right yeah i loved a her being apologetic and b like just working through sequentially she's like i'm not skipping ahead obviously right i have to see every episode i gotta well i mean the thing is out the thing is we've we've captured their attention you have um so i'm like six episodes behind but i know that

the colonoscopy is coming up and in fact when this tape uh is playing on tbtl um we will be it will be airing on the day that i am about to go in under the hopefully it's not a knife under the watchful eye of the colonoscopist you have done this before i have never done this be No, you opted for the other way.

To answer your question, Chris, and it is a good one, why did I not just go for sending in a little sample on a piece of paper? I got bamboozled by big colonoscopy. And by that I mean—

Were they like, it's not as good or it's not as accurate?

A, it's—you know, this is described as the gold standard. Right. And also, there seems to have been this – there was a real concerted PR move on the part of the colonoscopy industry to, I think, recruit people like – Wrench people back from the – Like whether it was Dax Shepard. Poop in the box. Are you avoiding saying poop in the box? Yeah. They somehow, I think, got a lot of people that I happen to listen to and take seriously to say, A, the procedure is no big deal. Right. B, the drugs are actually fun. And David Sedaris is on the record saying it's the best drugs he gets ever. And then see that the upside of this is if they're in there and they see something that's just like a small little something that like we could just snip that out right now. They do that. And therefore, if you were to if they were to see some reading when you sent in your sample and they didn't like it, then you'd have to go in and maybe for a couple of rounds. This is supposed to be if they get in there and everything's fine, then you don't have to do it for 10 years.

I feel like you're about to sell me a timeshare. You're like, you've got the whole pitch down.

Dude, Marriott Bonvoy tried to sell me the least compelling deal this morning. I was calling it to do some kind of scheduling of something, and the nice person on the phone said, would you be interested in a vacation for starting at $1.99 a night? And I said, maybe. Where's the vacation? There's a big question there. She goes, I'm not sure I will transfer you to somebody who will tell you about that. so i the here's the thing as we're recording this it's still we're still a couple days out from the procedure and i'm already i've already shifted into intense denial mode of like what i'm allowed to eat you like that etc well i do under normal circumstances but i was checking into the hotel today and just a few minutes ago and people were just sitting around like ordering like doordash and jimmy johns and sitting around in the bar and i was so jealous of all of them because I'm going to be on broth for the next day and a half. So anyway.

So it's only, at this age, if you do the real thing, the gold standard.

The gold standard.

And it's clear it's another 10 years?

10 years before you have to do anything. Have you not done it yet?

No, I've done the other option. Oh, okay.

Also, it's worth remembering. You can say poop in a box. I can't say it. It's worth remembering. Chris is considerably younger than us. Yeah, it's true. Considerably more accomplished. We're the same age. And considerably younger. I'm pushing 50.

Yeah, we're all a few years ago. It really diminishes as you get older.

As I was buying a family-size thing of a Gas-X in the Safeway, the most humiliating part of this process is you go to the pharmacy to get the stuff that you're going to take that's going to really clean. The clonic. Yeah, although I paid the upcharge to get the pills instead of the powder.

The powder that you drink into water.

The powder has to be mixed in so much water.

So the only – the thing that's most appealing to me about the gold standard, and I think the listeners won't like this and I hate to admit it, is the like colonic aspect of like – because you get – you kind of drop some – you get a little drawn in the face. Like I've been around someone who just had their colonoscopy and it's like you – you know, you –

I'm still waiting for that to kick in, but I haven't gone through the real stuff yet. They do include a helpful visual guide, which is four glasses of water. It's a photo. And the glass of water on the far left looks like black coffee. And the glass of water on the far right looks like a Poland spring water. And that's the color you're supposed to. They're basically saying, do not even think about coming in here until that's what's coming out of you. But were you going to say that you had some embarrassment getting the stuff at the store? because i was going to say who's a fan of self-checkout now you know i i should actually i did do self-checkout but i had to ask the pharmacist where the gas x was because so when you're the worst of all worlds when you're reading the instructions from the from the you know colonoscopy folks they say you know take this stuff every so many hours and drink this fluid and also take like two extra strength gas x i thought that was going to be in the prescription when i got it you know what i mean i thought it was going to be part of the deal it's a supplemental thing you need to purchase i didn't know i had to go out of network for this gas x and i am luckily not an overly gassy person i have not usually been walking through the safeway with a jumbo size price check on gas exactly so uh let's talk to the star of the show today mr chris hayes uh you are in the midst of an i can only say a spectacularly successful media blitz for your

book i mean it's a lot i i didn't think it's working it's not usually possible for me to get tired of the sound of my old voice Like, this is a lot more than last time, right? Like, you're all over the place. I've never done anything like this. I mean, the other thing, it's been amazing. The people that, my publishers are incredible. The publicists, everyone's done an amazing job. Like, I feel incredibly lucky. The thing that was a little strange in the pre-publication run-up is that some of the people you're talking to have read the book, which is awesome. But the book isn't out there. So there's this weird thing where, like, you're talking about the book. But the whole reason you wrote the book and went through all the effort is that fundamentally some belief that the text itself can speak in a way that a summary can't. So then you're in this sort of weird paradoxical situation where you're kind of distilling it and messaging around it, which is fine. It's what you have to do. But what you really want is like what's been really gratifying is just encountering people now who've read it. You know, just readers saying, I really enjoyed it.

I saw that you've been seeing people in like airports and stuff.

So someone in Moynihan Station, as I was like waiting to get on the train to go to my first event, I was ordering coffee and I was talking to my mom and someone looked at me and he like made a motion at me and he re-snoosed back and he pulled it out. I love it. That was a cool moment. That's great. So no, it's been fantastic. And yes, it's like it has been – I've just been doing a lot of publicity.

I mean I have to say it's – again, it's been very successful in that you are – and I'm not – this is not sarcastic or meant in any kind of critical way. You are flooding the zone. I am flooding the zone. And it's good. It's like you're doing what Kamala should have done. You're everywhere all the time.

Well, it is a little form and content. You know, like it's a book about attention and it's really right up in your face. And Levitard, I loved your recap. I love the recap. Getting inside your head. Oh my God, it's so true. But I heard you on Pablo. I've heard you. That was really fun. And I heard four or five and I do not hear you repeating a lot of stuff. That's nice of you to say. I feel like I am, but I've been really trying to come up with fresh things.

Isn't that hard, though, because because, you know, there there are some themes in the book and you did a lot of research and there you wrote it the way you did, because that was maybe the clearest way to express the point. Yeah. But then you're like, I've got to figure out a different way to say this now. That seems like that'd be hard.

The easier thing is just to try to move things in like different areas as opposed to say things differently. You know what I'm saying? Like, if there's things you haven't talked about in one interview and you're like, oh, I haven't done that riff on spam, you know, and spam spam as pollution. And well, that's, that's a riff I could do that I haven't done somewhere else. So like it, but you do end up, I mean, the, the two things that it's most similar to are politicians on the campaign trail who there's a reason they call it a stump speech. They just develop material and then they could go, you know, stop by stop by stop, give the stump speech and comedians with like a tight five or a tight 10, whatever they have, like they have their routine. They can go to four different mics in a night, get up and do it. Like you do, it does get a little similar to that. One of the things that's awesome about this tour is that at every stop, at the actual events, I've had, like, an interviewer like you, Luke Burbank.

Or, like, even some people more famous than me, I've noticed on the tour. Who have you been in conversation with? It would be everyone else interviewing Chris on the tour is more noteworthy. No, I don't think that's true.

Last night was Michael Lewis in San Francisco. Oh, wow.

And then Jen Psaki coming out. Jen Psaki did it.

Oh, you're done with that one? Jen Psaki, I did Lawrence Lessig, who's a law professor. Oh, wow, yeah, of course. um david remnick who's a new yorker editor sure how's his podcast actually pretty good i think i honestly listen to it every week how's his colonoscopy yeah thank you exactly how's his gas ex yeah did he ask you about pooping in a box yeah we did like 20 minutes on that but no it's been great and i actually um it's nice to be it's actually been the events have been nice because being on the road is nice and it's actually nice to be around people right now i think people are really needing that you know people are getting up off the mat a little bit so you feel like you're seeing that yeah i can see it it's it's still people are still knocked out and groggy and like yeah spinning a little but i can see people getting up off the mat which is pretty crucial yeah the longer everyone stays down like i'm afraid they're gonna count to 10 and then we're gonna have a problem so it's like uh yeah so but but it's been good and it's been good to be around these crowds of people who are like energized and looking for you know i don't know answers what to do like are concerned about the country are your um the the folks at the

publisher and the folks that are trying to get the word out and all that they must be so happy to have you as the spokesperson for this book because you're so good at it i interview a lot authors for you know my live wire job and being able to write a book does not mean you're necessarily able to describe it and you're going back to the original thought right like about writing the book

like it yeah i mean i always the thing that really strikes me that this with is actors who sometimes can be just the most brilliant artists in the world and are incapable of talking about their work act like you want to talk to me yeah i mean i've done interviews with actors that were great actors that were like

tough you're white knuckling the whole time yeah i mean i think i'm you know like you guys i talk for a living um and partly that's just it's reps and practice i mean yeah i was running the math the other day i've done like i've done over 10 000 segments of cable news in my life you know it's like a lot wow that's it's a lot it's a lot of segments yeah there's a lot in a collector series exactly yeah collector series yikes yeah so you know it's it you you get pretty

like anything you know uh how how much prep did you do for your abraham lincoln for the audiobook

luke was analyzing that on the show today because you got to kind of throw your voice a little bit to signify yes yeah there's someone different i actually did that is my daniel day lewis in

lincoln impersonation in exactly seven days you'll hear the part of today's show where i said It's Chris influenced by Daniel Day-Lewis in the Spielberg movie.

Weird high-reedy version. Just a little bit.

And Andrew pointed out.

I asked. I was like, did you do the classic deep voice like we all used to think? Before that movie came out. No, it was the DDL.

I love it. What a kind of vocal downgrade that was for Lincoln. No one was going to know. Exactly.

It's so true. And yet it was so shocking and worked so well. I love – I actually love that movie. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a great movie, and I think that portrayal is fascinating because it embraces the fundamental weirdness of Lincoln, who is a weird guy. People said this all the time about him.

I really liked – I mean I read – I probably read 80 percent of the book. I probably listened to 20 percent of it if I was driving. And I really liked how you sort of handled reading something from somebody at a different period of time. You put just enough acting on it. A little bit. But just a tiny bit, not like crazy, you know, over the top, but also not just like reading it in your normal voice. I felt like your theater background was on full display.

I really like doing that. That's the third one I've done. And I really like doing it. And also I think one of the things that's happened in my writing is that through the experience of doing the cable news show, it's gotten more like oral. It's gotten more spoken-y the way that I write, which makes it easier to voice. you know because i i write you know i write in a pretty chatty register i heard that your uh

imitation of apu that's coming up in the last chapter is a little bit on the line the definitive

history of the simpsons right with where you play every character oh my god how does it work with you you just were here backstage at town hall in seattle um and you i presume flew in today

Yeah, I woke up this morning at like 6. In San Francisco. I took a flight in San Francisco after the event last night. I took a flight this morning. I flew and I went right to a software concern on the east side. Oh, I'm familiar. Expedia. Expedia. That campus is the most insane thing. I mean, it's just, first of all, it's endless. Second of all, it's like the most beautiful, sun-dappled, cushy place. And there's just like food and drink out everywhere. Everywhere. It's just unbelievable.

evil when we film there first of all it's the only time that i have even the slightest sense of what it must be like to be chris hayes because i'm not a celebrity in any sense of the word but i on the microsoft campus because every employee is literally everyone does actually obligated to stare at my fat face for x amount of hours and did i ever tell you this too like it was they you know they make these sketches that are actually i have to say pretty funny not because of me but because the people that write them and direct them are funny good people like i i'm proud of these things for what they are but uh there was like a bloopers reel that they put together and they were like so i'm doing the whole voiceover module and i'm like and also check out the bloopers and the number one piece of feedback they got from the engineers and other employees was are the bloopers mandatory so now i have to say watch the bloopers they're not mandatory mandatory but when i'm over there it's like people will stop and be like oh my god you're the guy training guy um so that's just what normal life is like for you but yeah it's a cool campus that's

that's its own thing i mean i was i was i was i did an event there today and the people there were it was actually a great event people were awesome um i did that event i signed a bunch of books i went back to my hotel very briefly and then i went over to the studio and i did my show at five o'clock local which we had this trump came out into this predictably insane press conference with benjamin netanyahu in which he announced that the new u.s policy in gaza was going to be that we own gaza or something we were going to take ownership of gaza long term and ethnically cleanse the 1.8 million people there that we're going to depopulate it and transfer them where do you stand on that it was a truly i mean again it's like is this real is he riffing who knows anyway so we did that then we did the show we tore up the rundown we led with that so you're like going to this studio here in seattle to do to host your national television program that is you know typically routed out of new york city but you're in a room you have a couple of producers with you from the show a couple

producers and then some local foot like a cameraman an audio guy a hair makeup guy and all we really all we really need to do it is a camera impromptu a screen behind me yeah and then just an ifb you

know in my ear so i can connect and microphone when you were doing the show from home during the pandemic a lot of the time i remember i think you said kate was helping you out at times like was that insane and how did it ever go down like did you ever lose the connection no i had a few

kate would staff me and then at a certain point i got comfortable enough that i just do it solo like a like an early astronaut in the cockpit you know seriously and there was a ground control to made your Chris. Exactly. I had a few hairy moments where we like lost power. There was one where we lost power from a thunderstorm and I was like running the whole thing off. I had like a Honda general camping generator that I had the whole rig set up on. And then I had an iPad on the cell network that was giving me the prompter and like an iPhone earbud in my ear. And we were able to get it over the air. Unbelievable. That was, there was a few pretty close calls, but then, yeah, then I got better at it and this, and this is like, you know, got a bunch of professionals. So we did that from five to six. I did my call on the car ride over from the flight landing to Microsoft.

So your editorial meeting with your all-in staff.

Exactly. To figure out what the rundown is, although part of it got altered. so I did the show then I walked over here and then we'll do the other

and then we immediately yeah just do some podcasting into this room I'm I guess you could say proud to note that we are the only podcast of the amount of reach that we have that you would be doing this for

well I was like let's do it in the green room

if we weren't bizarrely some kind of weird burr under the saddle that is your life the people at Penguin would be going I don't know we heard from

deeply woven into my brain

we heard from this weird Seattle podcast and you would have been like absolutely not have you heard what my schedule is on this Tuesday

there's two tens books I signed so far and there will be more than two actually but two that I one was someone told me they were a ten and I wrote what did I say

what's the buff dudes drop oh yeah from workaholics How did these buff dudes escape my radar?

How did I escape buff dudes escape my radar? I thought I knew every buff dude.

Yeah.

Just random. That's what I wrote. And that wasn't in person, right?

No, it was like a special order at a local bookstore. And then last night I had one in San Francisco, and I wrote, that's a tuna bro.

I think that could have been listener Danny. Somebody sent me a photo of that tuna bro. Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

And I think I saw a picture online of you and listener Bobby, too, maybe out somewhere in the northeast.

That might have been in Boston, yeah.

there was a tbtl hat yeah in boston did i um so we've sold four books for you so there you go so i mean speaking of so uh what's our um yeah i see that is the book is it outselling the bible

currently what religious text is it out i know it was it was it was the you know the constitution right the constitution it was outselling constitution briefly boy that's a real kind

of uh good news bad news it is wild because i never look at that i never look at that list on amazon like what what the top selling books are and until you have a book yeah and it's pretty fascinating it's like the constitution there are tons of dystopian fiction so like 1984 animal farm handmaid's tale parable of the sower by octavia butler like all this dystopian fiction and then there's a bunch of romanticy novels like this onyx do you guys know about this onyx

phenomenon uh i just heard about i literally just heard about it through this and then was

talking i was actually been talking she just put another one out like a couple weeks ago right it's already sold like millions yes and this i was talking to i've been talking to independent booksellers at the various events about this and they're like yeah it's like just unbelievable it's like romance is classic romance call it romanticy so it's like i think it's real fantasy yeah it's like right it's like a it's like a it's like game of thrones but steamier you know i think there's

more and there's yeah there's another our listeners uh are going to i kind of want to read it now kill me because there's i'm i shouldn't even try to guess at the writer's name but i think her name might be like sarah moss or something not the one who wrote the onyx stuff but this other one that's like a court of thrones and every plane i get on somebody's reading it what i love about

it though is that it's like a totally organic phenomenon in the sense that there's no

No, like, advertisements, billboards. Like, no one pushed that, you know, which is what happened with things like that happened with Fifty Shades of Grey. It happened with Hunger Games. It happened with Harry Potter. Like, all three of those were just, like, books went out into the world, and they just captured something in people who then told other people, and there was no top-down big push. They just exploded.

And was it Twilight that was Fifty Shades of Grey fanfic? Other way around. Other way around. Fifty Shades of Grey was Twilight fanfic. They said take out the vampires and you get yourself a deal, basically, right? Wow. How is the book doing? Are you hitting the benchmarks they want you to hit? I think so. I mean – You've got to be.

I think so. I don't – again, it's like – it's one of these things where you can't – you can only control the inputs. You can't control the outputs. So most of it have just been focusing on the fact that I'm just trying to get through my schedule every day.

Well, right. Yeah, so –

And do these events and get the show on the air. and also try to just stay informed about what's happening during the day.

Well, that's the thing, too, because it's like you have so many jobs right now or so many things sort of –

Not as many jobs as you.

But see, none of my jobs matter.

They all matter. That's silly.

No, but what I mean is you're trying to interpret what is potentially very dangerous news of world events involving a mad person. I don't want a gender madman. Yeah. Thank you.

There's a whole range of ways that people can be met. I was at this church last night. God, these people were so amazing. It was Cavalry Presbyterian in San Francisco. And the pastor was there. They were hosting the event along with the bookstores, 800 people in this church. And just a bunch of the parishioners were there, you know, and they're just like, just salt of the earth, like wonderful, gracious kind of people.

Not necessarily these people were, by definition, people of faith, but I would imagine there's some amount of that.

They were, like, the people I was talking to were parishioners.

Like, the best expression of what a religious life should look like.

And one of them had a button, you know, that was, like, God, the original they, them, which I love. It's like, that's pretty good, actually. That's great. Yeah, that's actually. Yeah. No, it was awesome.

But I guess what I mean is it's like for you, because I can, again, on a very, very, very, so much lower level, identify with having a day where from the moment that you open your eyes, there are some group of people that are requiring your attention, feedback, and then it's stacked against another thing and another thing and another thing. But for you, it's like the TV show you just hosted that so many people will see also involves potentially describing the future of the Middle East. so it's like not the kind of thing where you can just kind of like you really can't phone it in you got to do a you really got to do a good job you do and the other thing the other thing about

the job is that you just have to be generally pretty knowledgeable because if that happens at seven o'clock or 7 15 you have to know enough yeah about what's happening in gaza and Palestinians and the Abraham Accords and what Mohammed bin Salman's conversations have been about normalization and what the Arab League has said and all this stuff to make it, to be able to, you know, put it in context or talk about it. So it just requires being like reading a lot.

Yeah. I, I, I'm not sure what the plan is for tonight. If somebody is introducing us or if I'm introducing you, but that was something that I was actually going to probably mention, which is i'm constantly impressed and amazed at the number of different things that you actually have a pretty deep knowledge on and i get a lot of that through listening to the with pod but it's just like yeah you you really have somehow managed to wrap your brain around a lot of different topics and kind of a wide you know and wide variety of subjects and i guess you you have to but also your brain

seems to be well suited yeah i like to i like that um you know i wouldn't it's it's not it's not like super it's deep enough um it's pretty deep you know but yes i like you know i like i like reading learning about things and i've always loved that and i get i feel lucky that that's basically my job is to learn stuff i mean i was i just went down the you know i went down this rabbit hole about the whole water system where he released these water from the two reservoirs yeah it's all just fascinating how like california hydrology itself is like insanely complicated and fascinating and fraught politically and battled over and who controls what in the Army Corps. Oh, I've seen Chinatown. Yeah, exactly, exactly. A little movie maybe you've heard of. But yeah, so it's a real, it's a pleasure and a privilege to be able to, that part of it feels like I get to like play a sport for a living almost because I enjoy it that much. I enjoy learning stuff. And then I enjoy telling people what I just learned. You know, that. that gives me a lot of joy yeah i just i just learned something on sunday that i was with addy and i told her watch out world your dad's got a new fact which is that it's gonna get it's gonna get worn out oh boy i'll tell you what people people who don't know that astoria oregon is the where cable tv was invented they hate to see me coming because i got a story we were in this little this little store and they had a bumper sticker that said astoria oregon home or the original home of cable television that's amazing and i was like huh and this actually super hipster woman who owns the store uh we were like what do you know about this she goes well i made the bumper sticker i go really she goes yeah i'll give you the short version that there was a big tv station here in seattle i don't know which one it was but it might have been king five anyway it was one of the original TV station on the West coast and in Astoria, Oregon, they didn't have any television, but this guy wanted to watch TV. So he put an antenna on some building tallest building and he ran a cable down into his apartment, into a TV and he could pick up the signal from Seattle, but then everybody started coming over to his apartment because they were so fascinated by it. And so then he was like, people stop coming to my apartment. I need some peace. And so then the hotel said, well, maybe we'll put a TV in the lobby. And then so many people came to the hotel lobby that none of the people staying at the hotel could get to the front desk. So they took the TV out. But then the bars in Astoria started saying, we would like to have a lot of people here. So they all got TVs. And this guy was running these cables. Wow. So this was like the first that anybody had thought to do that. Astoria, Oregon. That's a good fact. That's a pretty good fact. I'm workshopping. Like, I'm still, you know, I'm still kind of working out the kinks, but anyway.

Okay, well, I don't want to sort of wear down your brain power any further, your battery, your social battery. My battery's high. I'm running high. Yeah, do you get stronger from this? In other words, like, for a limited duration of time, do you almost get energized by the process?

Yeah, I like to do it, and I like, you know, the biggest thing is I just miss my kids and my wife. Like, I like, I do really like being home with my family. so that's the heart that's honestly the hardest part is just like the like and i'm you know i'm very lucky like i my house is pretty comfortable you know i like to be there when you describe your schedule sometimes i get like a by proxy anxiety attack but this is the difference nobody

loves me that's nobody's nobody is being no actually i do i i want to throw that out as the last thing no i i i'm very loved and i feel very lucky but that is another thing too chris that's just wild to me about your existence is all of the stuff that you do professionally and also personally like you and Andrew and I are constantly trading like I think you should leave memes like all this stuff is happening all the time and we're just Andrew and I are just two people of I'm sure a long list in fact tonight we'll talk about the group chat and can the group chat really save us but which is from the book I'll beep it hope you enjoyed that Phyllis but it's what's wild to me is that that you you know you are so incredibly prolific and then you also have this incredible family and this incredible spouse and like a super rich personal life usually your amount of professional success comes at the expense yeah like i've met ralph nader okay you're hung with ralph nader i'm sure you have i would say it's come at the expense of a personal life and that is not you you have like you have such a rich personal life that that could be your whole

thing yeah i mean i partly well i gotta say like partly that's just the luck and privilege and grace of like we have an au pair who's amazing and my parents live it like there's a lot of that that is facilitated by a lot of labor by a lot of people um but yeah i'm really lucky like kate and i both work really hard but also both we just both really love being parents we really do and we like and and not if that's not true of everyone people feel differently about it doesn't people can not love it and still be i think good parents or people have different relationships to it at different ages with kids some people don't love really little kids and they love 10 year olds people people go through a hard time in teenagers and maybe that'll be what i just have found I just genuinely love being a dad

You got lucky though that they're cute kids They are cute kids Mother Nature really stepped in to protect these They're very cute kids

They're doing really fun stuff So yeah But it's a lot Kate's working in Philly now She's traveling The household schedule My daughter's commuting There's a lot

If I can ask, if this is too much information Feel free to demure or we will just cut it out but you have like a podcasting

studio now at your place right yep and and your wife is also one of the hosts of a very successful podcast trick scrutiny and does a million media hits all based on her career do you guys have

like is this the family podcasting studio yes it's a family podcast i love this what a 2025 phenomenon exactly we made this joke because the the house that we're in it's in the like the lowest level of the house which is like the proper like cellar right it's not a basement there because nothing it's like all the way down which is a perfect place to put something like this house and this little thing had been at one point not in the previous owners but the previous owner before then the 70s like a little like steam room like a roman bath like a sort of roman bath i think

you showed some photos when you were ripping it apart yeah it was just like we were like it's so

weird and also so 70s to put one of those in your house and then we were like how how 2025 is it to have a like when we're if we're selling the house in 30 years and we're like that when everyone has like you know ai neural links in their head or whatever it's just going to be such a hilarious time stamp to be like this is where we did our podcast yeah a total like atomic ranch house

exactly with like the wife is pulling the perfect podcast totally like a podcast in every home

it's so funny to imagine explaining that yeah oh man that's great um well how soon before the kids

get on the podcast are you implementing them yet because we try to like be mindful about their you

know i mean i i how soon before they start their own podcast yeah pretty soon probably in fact one of them had a podcasting class at school which is pretty funny or like an extracurricular thing

could i audit that are they interested in um you know going into like the media or performance in some way or living a kind of a public life like you have into some degree so i think they have

different relationships to it um i think yeah and they're they're they're young enough that i don't think i mean the might like like you said this the other day on the show about how like when you were 10 you were like i'm gonna be an nba player like that's yes what i want to do and my 10 year

old son that's what if you ask him yeah i did ask to be part of the donchich trade i asked to be the

player to be named much later one way to make this trade even more insane much later portland podcaster and media celebrity also also thrown into the deal one time north seattle christian

lion now i understand why people are freaking out phenom um yeah we could uh you must have been thinking this today when you were racing to do your tv show and trump is absolutely upending the middle east because why couldn't he have said something about the donchich trade why couldn't he have just said something unhinged about a fun topic someone was like

someone had a tweet that was like he was oh what did he say he said um the donchish trade elon musk in the treasury trump and uh and kanye they're all related but i have to get more mentally ill to figure it out i was like that is such a perfect encapsulation of online life well i have to say

Chris, it's been heartening for me to hear you say that in promoting this book and touring around and being, you know, in spaces with people, you feel like you're seeing some people get up off the mat. Like that's like, honestly, that like put some pep in my step because it's just been, I mean, I'm not saying anything, but it's been pretty brutal.

No, I think you guys have been, I really have been, you guys have been great on all this. And I just very honest. And I think it's been a good space for like, you guys did a very good job of like, not you're not doing a politics show, but you're also not going to like not say it. And I think just expressing this weird feeling of relationship to the news and like, just the bad feeling and like that, you know, and how to navigate that. I think it's very, it's sort of important, just in almost talk therapy terms to express it. Because I think it, it takes the power away from it a little bit.

And it's on a whole other level for you because I'm often repeating your opinions. I love when I hear it. Why is this happening? I love it. I mean, honestly, because I, and, and I say it on our show all the, I guess this is our show technically, but like, yeah, your podcast is just like, it is, I listened to it the second it's dropped like Tuesday morning. It's like the first thing that I listened to and I always learn something. Um, so I recommend everyone check it out. so you can repeat Chris Hayes' isms and his guests to your friends and seem smart and informed.

I'm going to use that cable thing.

Yeah, dude. Astoria, Oregon.

I got that in the back box. Yeah, sure.

Break that out next time you're on Jimmy Kimmel.

Yeah, exactly. Hey, Seth. Did you have to know? I got a fun one for you.

Yeah, exactly. Well, Chris Hayes, thanks, man. Thanks, guys. Thanks, man.

Appreciate it. There's a right way to rock and a wrong way to roll. You can't just listen

Listen to your soul. Just remember that life is number one. You can be having so much fun. Just remember that life is much fun. You can be number one.

All right, Lukals, we got some Blursdays here. If you want to wish anybody a happy birthday, you can email me, andrew, at tbtl.net and put Blur's Day in the subject line. Our pal Jesse in Cincinnati says, could you please wish a happy Blur's Day to Maggie in Delaware? She's a wonderful person, wife, and mother. Happy Blur's Day, Maggie.

I feel like we're over, not over-indexed, but we get a good assortment of Maggie's. It is true. Because when you said Maggie, a handful of other Maggie's came to mind. Swarthmore.

Sure. Middle Shelf. Yeah. A lot of mags. Happy Blurs Day to Maggie in Delaware. Also, Debra says, shouting out a Blurs Day for my awesome cousin and Blurs Day buddy, Carolyn. Now, when we say Blurs Day buddy here, does that mean it's also Debra's Blurs Day as well? Is this a dual Blurs? Like they share the same Blurs Day? Or thereabouts. Well, happy Blurs Day to Carolyn for sure and maybe to Debra. Debra says, hoping you have a fabulous day and that bugs spoils you rotten.

Aw. Not bugs spoil you rotten. That S is doing a lot of lifting. Yes. Because if bugs spoil you rotten, you've got a problem. Yes. We need to call the medical examiner. Exactly. But if bugs spoils you rotten, then it sounds like a really fun Thursday. Good clarification, yes.

You know what to do, bugs. And finally, we're keeping it short today, Luke. Well, I mean, we're not, the universe is, because you're running to the bathroom.

Well, not running, but what I would say is I can feel that one more trip wouldn't be the worst thing before I go down there. I mean, that's the other. I didn't get into it at the beginning of the show. It's probably just as well that it's tucked back here in the Blurs days. But I'm also very, very, very concerned that that region of my body is at its absolute most pristine. I'm rarely lying on a table with multiple people observing that part of my body. And by rarely, I mean never. Oh, wow.

So you haven't been to one of Genevieve's parties.

So not in a couple of years. Things have really changed. Everyone's in a horse mask now. But so I'm also like really obsessively, you know, hygienically dealing with that part of my body. Like I probably should have just waited to take a shower before until like I was getting in the car to go over there. I took a shower before we did this recording, but I do have wet wipes. I'm threatening the future of my septic tank by using some wet wipes. I really, if I can't get a clean, if I can't get the good boy award for the inside of my colon, I would like to at least get the good boy award for the outside of my colon.

So, really quick story here that's related to it, and I think it's going to make you feel better. We recently had a new stove and oven installed, right, in our house here. And this house we bought about two and a half years ago. We believe it was a rental property before that. So a lot of people probably coming and going and living in this house over the years. The stove that we replaced was old. And so stoves and like the areas around them just get pretty gross anyway, unless you really stay on top of it. And I was very nervous about what lies beneath when the workers came here to remove the old stove and bring the new one inside. and so I cleaned around it as best I could and then they pulled the stove out and I was standing there I think I said to both of them I'm very nervous about this I don't need to see what's under this we're clean people and they pulled it out and I saw there's a lot of black gunk under there that had to be cleaned up I don't even know if it was black there was a lot of stuff that had accumulated but even by my eye it wasn't as bad as what I was picturing down there and they were like Oh, buddy, this is great. You wouldn't believe the things that we see when we pull out stoves. You are doing so great, my pal. And we saw one the other day that was wet under there for some reason that we still can't figure out. And the other guy is like, yeah, yeah. So anyway, I just want you to know that I have a strong feeling that the fact that you're even putting this much care into it means underneath your stove is going to be very clean compared to what these professionals have seen in the past.

It's very important to me. Again, I don't know what the bill of health will be, but I need the cleaning. Who's the department that handles that kind of stuff? I need a clean bill of health from the Department of Clean Butts.

Well, also, I don't know if this is good news or bad news.

but it's my understanding that the guys who moved my stove are also the guys who are giving you the colonoscopy. So, you know.

Is it turbo time?

I believe it's turbo time.

Is that why I was having problems? Is that just a joke toilet for farts?

All right, one more blurs day here for an unfortunate person who just walked through that conversation. Erin with two A's. A-A-Ron would like to request a very happy birthday to Terry. After what was about six years, the TBTL pen pals finally brought these two friends together. She's amazing. A kindness upon this world. And you should get to know her. Thank you for getting chowder with me, Terry. Happy birthday. That's from Aaron to Terry.

I used this sarcastically at first, but now I'm using it genuinely. That's sweet. Also, I would absolutely fight a nun for some chowder right now. Oh, my God. I shouldn't have said chowder. No, it was in the message. It's not your fault.

You've got to be true to the blurs days. Have you ever had a Manhattan chowder? i haven't had manhattan chowder since i was a child what's that it's a red it's the red red yeah you can't have that now obviously but i'm just curious of your thoughts on that but again you know maybe we should not be talking about food right now because i'm getting i'm honestly

i'm in the i'm in the home stretch now like i can't even drink water at this point this is no liquids no i don't think i can have hard candy not that i'm got a bunch of hard candy around but like i believe yeah i think well there was a period where you can have hard candy but it's but nothing with red number five in it. So now we're down to it. Now it's no liquids shall pass my lips until I'm coming out of this procedure.

Well, good luck with your fart transplant.

We'll have a full report tomorrow, so please do tune in for that. In the meantime, have a great Thursday, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all, but especially you. I'll take it. Power out.