Muse

Well, tell me how you both got started in acting as art. I started doing stand-up, Jerry Seltzer's Laugh Emporium. I was at Chortles, the Comedy Place, and no one really, no one really got it. I got it. I thought it was hysterical. What did she do? She is a one-woman show. Tell her the title even. No penis intended. No penis intended. Oh, I actually did hear her, yes. And what was that about? One critic described it as a humorless romp into Ms. Webb's dysfunctional psyche. It's a humorless critic. That doesn't make sense. No. TBTL!

Hi, Luke and Andrew. It's Irene, and I have a funny joke for you. Okay, what is a radish's favorite food?

Beats me. Ah! This gazpacho soup just burned my lips. The gazpacho? Yeah, it's been sitting out. It warmed up. It warmed up so much that it burned your lip. Let me explain something to you. If you're expecting something ice cold and you bring it up to your lips and it's room temp, it's going to feel like your mouth's on fire. It's going to feel like your body's on fire. Is there, and I'm just guessing here, some kind of medication that you maybe need a lot of and have taken none of, or maybe too much of today?

Y'allabeno.

I don't even know what that means. No one knows what it means, but it's provocative.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. It's your lucky day. You just found a USB flash drive in the parking lot. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Scat Man's World. Coming to you once again from actual Burbank, California, where we have arrived at episode 4,425 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Had my little conversation with the Duplass brothers yesterday.

You're like the coolest person I've ever met.

Have a full download on that. Also, speaking of downloading, Andrew had an AI incident.

Does this sound like a musical robot?

That we're going to talk about. Speaking of Mr. Andrew Walsh, this guy knows from humorless romps. He's been the co-bro of the show for many, many years. Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships.

I cannot believe he just told that joke.

He's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Did I hear you murmur?

I gave you a little Marge Simpson there in the background. I caught that. This guy knows from humorous romps. I'll take it. I think he can burn me more in the intros.

No, that's not that you are being humorless in the romps. It's that you've been dragged along a few humorless romps that I've subjected the listeners to.

I can spot one, in other words. I can spot one a mile away.

You sat next to it and you studied it.

I did.

What is that from, by the way? the the episode six of the white lotus the dry intro tape that we just heard i would love it if parker posey's character uh has also been trying her hand at stand-up she also is piper

in between pulling shifts at the um dairy queen she's uh doing stand-up and looking for her

lorazepam and looking for where is it all going by the way god damn it that's so stressful that plot line it is jason isaac aka uh somebody malfoy he's a bad guy on potter and he's also he played uh carrie grant in the archie biopic in the archie bio so there was a biopic of carrie grant carrie grant's real name was archie oh and there was a biopic about him on like hulu or one of the streamers and they spent the entire advertising budget in times square and it was a three second clip of that guy the guy that's stealing Parker Posey's lorazopam, her husband playing Cary Grant as Archie falling into a swimming pool. Oh yeah

you were looking at us out your window.

Yes. So if he doesn't fall into a swimming pool at one point in this White Lotus, Mike White has failed us as a show producer and a scary monster.

I just, my one nitpick with that particular thing And I guess we're kind of in spoiler territory. I've been enjoying The White Lotus. I am mostly caught up. I'm like literally half an episode behind because I... You're actually ahead of me now. Okay, yeah, so I'm only a half an episode. How do I watch half an episode and then get tired? I don't know, man. Probably something that's undiagnosed. But I was just like, I got to go. I got to go do something else. I got to go putter. So you were not watching with Genevieve, obviously. No, I was. I just said, okay, I'm going to catch up on the rest of this later.

Well, yeah, you know. She tolerated this. You getting up in the middle of the White Lotus and just leaving.

I think I took a shower. Whoa. I think I just, I just, well, we had, we'd sat down. We'd already watched.

Was her lorazepam upstairs?

We had already watched all of Severance. So that's a full hour. And by the way, she doesn't know this. And she listened to yesterday's TBTL apparently, which makes.

me think she's not going to listen to this one because you know she doesn't dip in it's not an everyday kind of thing i told her i'm like you gotta tell me when you listen she's like no you

gotta assume i'm always listening this is still not dipped into the episode that we intentionally made the uh the show description uh like catnip for her no mention of it did she

still hasn't even seen the description she's not even reading the descriptions anymore not even my boy the bloom is off the rose but um i can't remember what i was saying oh we had already watched an entire severance we sat down and watched an entire severance i was a good boy Oh, and I was going to tell you, I had actually pre-watched that one when she was out on Saturday. So you would look smarter? I pulled it off. I was just like, watch what happens here.

You pulled a Lake Titicaca?

I said, I'll bet you this is going to be a double. It's going to be a sure as shit. Parker Posey hit a double. No, actually, wrong show. Do you know why I said you pulled a Lake Titicaca? No, I don't.

Because Bill Murray in Groundhog Day has watched the same episode of Jeopardy so many times that he's an expert. Oh, yeah, right. And at one point, he gives the clue, the question, Lake Titicaca.

Ah, I see. I see.

Did you give in to the temptation to act a little bit smarter about that episode of Severance, having previewed? I did.

I was just like, well, clearly what they're going for here is an exploration of mankind's duality, is what I said. And she was like, please be quiet. I'm trying to watch the show. So that's how that whole thing went down. Did I ever answer your question? That tape is from For Your Consideration, one of those Christopher Guest movies.

So you and I were talking off air about those films and how we both kind of got to like probably best in show. And yes, did you you did a mighty wind? I'm getting a little confused. I mean, did you pass gas?

I did get a mighty wind. And that was one of the reasons I had to leave the room when was watching TV the other day. She said, you know what? You can watch this in your office. I can't remember where I left things off Because I did at one point realize These movies are getting too serious These mockumentaries are just making me cry And I think for your consideration Might have been the breaking point for me Or it might have been a mighty wind I gotta be honest with you If you had asked me Have you seen for your consideration I would have said no I haven't seen that one Yet I have this piece of tape That I pulled I think last summer Oh I thought maybe our conversation off air Had spurred you to go and watch one of them I think I forgot that I have started for your consideration several times, but I don't know if I've ever made it to the end, if I'm being honest. Honestly, I just can't remember. I get that era of Christopher Guest a little bit confused.

Here's what I'm wondering. Do you think that Parker Posey had the name of her one-person show or her comedy show in mind when her scene partner said, well, tell him the name? No, I don't think so. That is, I mean, talk about, talk about pushing somebody off the cliff. Tell them the name is if you have not already run through the scene once. And if you don't, if you're not, if you're Parker posing, you don't have whatever it was, what no penis required. That's what it is. No penis. Like if she doesn't have that in mind, I feel like that's actually not being a great scene partner because a great improv partner, because you're, you're putting somebody in a position where they have to think of something as opposed to whatever the, you know, the answer is always yes etc don't you think that that's kind of it ended up creating some comedy gold but please never do that to me is what i'm asking yes although i don't even think in a scene like

that like there if there's a lot of improv there's probably also a lot of takes you know so maybe they've i mean you know i mean that's what i'm wondering she might have already she may have

already thrown out no penis required in a previous take or maybe yeah like you know again i just i

I'm the last person you should ask because I've never been in a situation like that.

Have you ever been in a humorless romp?

That's how my love making has been described. Go back 30 seconds. Go back 45 seconds on your podcatcher. But you know what I mean? She could have also answered that question six different times in six different takes. Who knows? I don't know. Right.

Well, I mean, if she's got six different funny names for her one-person show, that's impressive. I don't even have one.

for the Luke Burbank

I mean if you were to say what was the name of the show

well I'm trying to think please don't

please do not say tell him the name honey

Balding Gray Presents no that was rude sorry where is my bell I love it I was trying to think of Laser Helmets

culturally we're forgetting the work of Spalding Gray and I love you keeping it at the front of our mind

that was a little bit sharper elbow than I was intending my apologies

speaking of television entertainment I did go hang out with the Duplass brothers

yeah let go

it was great they were extremely kind they were really good talkers I felt like everybody including the camera guy and the sound guy later were saying that was an incredible interview great job and they don't usually say that and it was not because of me it was because they are the Duplass brothers Jay and Mark are professional storytellers and are very

You

game and so they you know took my little questions and i did keep my script with me which i then actually never looked at so it's kind of the worst of both worlds i told you that normally i don't have any script in front of me and that's kind of my flex uh that's my way of being like we're just having a conversation but i was nervous and i wanted it to go well so i brought my script with me with all my questions and then i never looked at it so i was holding it like a little security blanket but then not actually using it which was kind of that was fine yeah it was fine it was like a professional hmm let's not get carried away i don't i don't want to start creating that standard of professionalism in my work for cbs television um they were uh yeah they were they're really game they answered all the questions and this is the thing when i started out working on this tv show i had very kind of uh highfalutin ideas about the kind of content we were going to be creating i wanted to be rolling all the time you know which is to say on molly no which is to say like i wanted the camera guys just constantly filming and the sound guys constant and i wanted it to be a real kind of radio lab of television where it's like it's the person sitting down and you know fixing a you know a spot on their forehead with a little corn silk etc like i wanted it to all be the kind of stuff around the stuff in the way that radio lab and other shows like that will use the person sound checking and stuff as part of the content and i learned very quickly that the union camera guys and sound guys are not having that shit like it's on or it's off and it's not like we're not you know making a student film here so i've kind of disabused myself of that notion and i'm really sad that i did because yesterday right after we called cut jay duplass and and part of the kind of the sort of arc of their brother collaboration is that mark duplass was always in the movies that they made and so he was kind of the quote-unquote famous one and jay duplass has been very open about the fact that that did make him a little jealous at times yeah you know just kind of being uh the director of things but not that when they went to a party nobody was looking for jay duplass then he became an actor in his own right he was transparent he's in this actually really good show called dying for sex which is like one of these many programs that's created from a wondery podcast which for me is usually like a bad start content wise but it's actually it's got michelle williams and uh jenny slate in it and uh jay duplass it is really good actually it's about a woman who is diagnosed with terminal cancer and decides to leave her husband and just have a ton of good sex she's like what do i got what i got to lose here um but uh but anyway so that's kind of the thing about jay duplass is that he's and he they write about in their book and they talk about he was a little kind of underappreciated okay so he made a movie called the baltimoreans that just played at south by southwest and he

was very proud of this film he kind of mentioned it in the interview we we call cut and he stands up and one of the producers from their company comes over and tells him that his movie won the audience award at South by Southwest and he is totally verklempt and his brother Mark comes over and gives him a huge hug and they're both tearing up and I'm looking at our camera guy furiously going can we roll on this and we were not rolling on it and it would have been a great ending to the story did you storm off the set I saved that for my Metallica shoots by the way Another one coming up in Marin County in about three weeks.

That's where you actually sit down with the band.

They're rolling out a black carpet for me.

Nice. Good.

No, but I was like, I was so bummed. And then it was like, and again, everybody that works with me on that show, like the tech guys are just amazing. And they have a very, very thankless job. Like they get there before everybody else. They're setting shit up for hours. They got to lug it all out. Like, you know, they do great work. But this was the one time where I was like, could we just not hit stop on everything all the time? Could we just let it go for 30 more seconds? Because it was, it really kind of, it sort of represented the entire premise of this TV story, which is that these two brothers really love each other and they really root for each other. And we had the incredibly rare unscripted moment of that happening. Now, I was trying to shoot it on my iPhone. So if you're watching CBS Sunday Morning this Sunday and you see the end of this piece is shaky iPhone footage, know that I argued successfully to get it into the story. mm-hmm how is that how is that footage it's it's fine it it's it's okay ish but the problem is uh there's no audio i mean there's the audio on the iphone but we also had cut the so it's it would be them hugging with no sound and also kind of a weird angle so yeah it's one of those um what you should have done and i'm not trying to tell you how to do

your job. But just in this one case, I'm going to tell you how to do your job. I mean, you

need to make him recreate it right there luke and you know jay offered to do that and i didn't i was i was trying to be are you serious he he kind of like looked at me i was like that's amazing i can't believe it just happened he goes oh you weren't rolling and i was no we cut and he goes i mean i

can try to redo it he literally said that was so game of him because obviously i was joking like that is like just you i mean then i literally said him i said have your moment dude yeah like

you know what i mean like he was in like filmmaker mode and was like oh i can try to redo but i was like i i felt so bad that he at any in that moment would be thinking about our television needs instead of just like enjoying this thing that he worked so hard for yeah so i was like do not under

any circumstances try to recreate that and also like i mean there are people in our let's say industries whether you're talking about radio or tv or whatever who would be much more willing to say well just ask him to do it again just do it again you know what i mean like the kind of gung ho person but like that is like the i can't think of something that you would want to do less other than maybe a one-man show called bald and gray presents um balding gray it's fully

balding gray hyphen fully

hyphen fully we're getting closer or further away i can't i can't exactly tell yeah it's hard in

these moments to know if we're making this better or worse yeah yeah anyway it was a really good day They were really nice. I'm going from here to meet them at this movie theater that they own in Eagle Rock. And also they have a video store there called Vidiots. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's them. They acquired that, I believe. Oh, okay. Yeah. Because I'd heard of Vidiots. I think they saved it or something, you know. Yeah.

Oh, that's really cool. I like it when LA people do that. I'm not joking.

I'm looking very forward to the smell of VHS tapes.

Yes. You know what I mean? People don't talk about the smell of a blockbuster video enough. It was just like plastic. I don't know, it was like plastic

Yeah, but it was such a good plastic smell It really was And I feel like They didn't do popcorn in Blockbuster, did they? I feel like Maybe when they started I think they were trying to be real Hollywood They might have in the early days But I feel like at some point The employees were like We're not going to maintain the popcorn machine

Yeah, I don't know about that I can't remember Because I was going to say Or maybe that was Hollywood video That there was a little bit of popcorn in the air But maybe not And I was not I did not roll with a Hollywood video crowd, by the way. Were you a Blockbuster kid? I was. That was all we had access to. And I remember at one point the excitement of renting my first NES cartridge from a Blockbuster. Oh, wow. Because my family was pretty much down the line. I think the first videos we rented were from a tiny little video store that was in downtown Valley City. And downtown Valley City is literally like two blocks long, and one of the main businesses is a tack shop. I'm not even joking. like literally a place like horse stuff yes exactly like i'm talking about this was like an almost an old westy sort of old-fashioned sort of downtown and that's where we rented our videos but then eventually blockbuster somehow you know finangled its way into our lives i can't remember if we had moved by this point or what but like i don't remember hollywood videos being around i remember blockbusters being around and you know my family's like you go you rent two videotapes like anybody else you come home you don't need to buy popcorn or candy or soda there and you I certainly don't need to buy Raisinets or rent any video games. But at one point, like I had the NES at home. I wasn't renting the system, but I remember my, I don't know. I just said, well, can I rent Contra or something? And I loved Contra. I know, like the gun that shoots the fireballs, but they swirl around. Wasn't there a thing where the guy would do like a flip? I don't. Did somebody do a flip in Contra?

I feel like you could make somebody do like a standing front flip.

uh maybe i don't remember um but all of that is to say there was something very special about renting video games i just remember like being like it was an exciting new world that like but it was difficult too because you know you knew that your time with this game was limited sort of like which was a strange experience usually it's like okay i have this game for better or for worse i only have like five games so i'm gonna play the hell out of them whether or not i really like them a lot whether or not it's the family generally win every game eventually no never no i've never completed a video game except i think two summers ago i completed that except minecraft cowboy game there was a cowboy game that i played on uh on the on the xbox i talked about it all the time when i was playing it like two years ago anyway i finished that one that was like i was 46 years old first time i finished a video game all the way to the end did it get does the cowboy game

get harder in the way that like Mike Tyson Punch-Out was you know or Super Mario Brothers the last you know level or whatever was extra fast and hard

it's really hard to compare modern video games to those types of video games aren't like levels and stuff it's a story but yes you have to complete a story and the challenges definitely get harder as they go along

I've also never beaten a game

but I have been sitting next to people that have beaten the game, which is the most fun thing you can do at age 14 is watch James DeMuth win Mike Tyson punch-out.

Before you throw their controller right in his kisser.

That was Peter, and that was MLB baseball that he just kept stealing on me, stealing bases until I eventually would commit an error. I remember, I've talked about this before, but I remember James and I, he got Mike Tyson punch-out, and we were like, let's win this game today. and by that i meant let's watch james try to win this game because he was better at than i was and then we got to king hippo and that was the guy who was kind of quite rotund and he didn't punch very fast but he had great defense you could never punch him and we could not figure out how to beat this guy and we had he had luckily james had a copy of nintendo power magazine oh Sort of the Costco connections of Nintendo. Imagine a time when Nintendo was dominating the video game world and also publishing a magazine about its own video games that children were reading.

Yeah, and published here in Seattle because Nintendo was a Seattle company, right? I believe Fred Kamarakev has some connections in Nintendo Power. He was a game tester. I know he was a game tester, but not for Nintendo Power.

No, just for Nintendo at large.

Yeah, but I think as a young person, he did, he used to write into Nintendo Power. Oh, okay, I can totally see that. I'm kind of messing up that story, yeah, yeah.

I remember us reading, so there was like, some, there was an article, it was probably like, I don't know, Tom Wolfe might have written this article in Nintendo Power, it might have been Gay Talese, I can't remember, but it was an article about Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, so it was like, and it had some kind of elliptical kind of thing about King Hippo that was like a clue it was like but but watch his waist or something and we so we had to unpack what nintendo power was saying about how to beat king hippo it didn't just say do this and so it was like okay it's waste his way there's something about his waist and then like realizing that if sometimes when you would punch him and he would block you his uh boxing shorts would slide down a little

bit yeah i remember that's classic that i didn't know that game band-aids on his belly button

and then if you did a straight punch, you could hit him in the belly and then you could just do that until you ran out of power and then you knocked him down.

By the way, I'm not here to sharpshoot. Uh-oh. Actually, the point for you, you are right, it was Gay Talese, but it was not in Nintendo Powers, the Paris Review where he was writing about that. It was Costco Connections. It was Costco Connections. Hey, speaking of baseball, which is something you said very glancingly a moment ago, and maybe we do this after we thank the donors, but you mentioned at the beginning of the show that i'm excited to tell you a story about a run-in with ai that means artificial intelligence that i had yesterday that is related to my fantasy baseball team oh no i know that's last night right that's right and i know that sounds like two things that people are not interested in my fantasy baseball team and artificial intelligence but i'm telling you i had an experience with artificial intelligence yesterday that i don't i don't know if it changed my opinion of AI, but it certainly has deepened some feelings that I have about AI, and I feel like yesterday was sort of a line in the sand between me and this technology. Well, let's do that then.

Let's thank some donors, and then let's talk about your musical robot. We was hoping for some razzle-dazzle. Razzle-dazzle. That's right, man.

Razzle-dazzle. On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody razzle-dazzle.

Alright, dazzling donor time. These are the wonderful, generous people supporting the program with a dazzling amount of dough. We're talking, of course, about Karen McManus in Seattle, Washington. Hey, Karen. Thank you. Pronounced Mick-man plus us. That's the pronouncer, and it's spot on. Karen McMahon plus us in Seattle, Washington. Karen says, I've been a listener and a fan since the radio days. I'm so grateful for the TVTL team who always seems to be there in times of crisis. I relied on you fellas to help me get through my bout with cancer Karen I'm so sorry and I'm glad that TBTL was a tiny you know bit of distraction bit of distraction there you go I didn't want to overstate it I was stumbling there because anything I said was going to be giving us too much credit other than distraction I felt like distraction even that's being generous to us

acknowledges the compliment without going too far

thank you I relied on you all through the pandemic to provide comic relief and friendship and i am relying on you now once again to get us all through the chaos and madness of the new dictator who is ruining our country keep up the good work you really have made such a positive impact on my life uh thank you karen you know this dazzling donor thing it involves the people who are giving us money also saying nice stuff to us but it's like it's right back at you in the sense that, and we've talked

about this off air andrew sometimes you and i will come into the show just kind of dragon for whatever reason often the news of the world and then we do the show and i think you and i actually feel better generally speaking after we get done doing this like it is also therapeutic for us

to do literally a distraction on the sea sometimes i mean i'm not trying to yeah i'm not trying to downplay it but it doesn't even have to be like oh well you and i talked about something serious we work something out no it's like literally you just wake up and you scroll through just like you go to your safest news source and you still just scroll through just like 10 headlines of just like mind numbingly appalling stuff that is happening it's like minecraft you're like well

this is rock bottom and it's like no we can tunnel down further he just keeps going um and

then you you talk for you know an hour and a half or whatever it is and it doesn't have to be about that stuff but at the end you're just like oh man i laughed a little bit i got distracted i read some dazzling donor messages and so it feels doable karen it's also a distraction for us so thank

you for paying us to distract ourselves we really appreciate you maestro on your mark on your mark

get set get set now ready ready go everybody rattle look who it is it's our friend chris

o'leary in brooklyn new york chris says uh by the way i follow chris on the various social media platforms that guy is all over the world like you think i travel a lot you think i put in the miles that guy is constantly globe trotting he's at a he's right now at a tbtil event that we haven't even announced yet yep in singapore that's right chris says hey dummies thanks for another year of feeding my ears with a much-needed escape from reality while we're on the darkest of timelines Right now having you guys as my imaginary podcast friendos friends is more valuable than ever and having the support network of fellow tens helps me get through the good times and the bad for tens listening that have an interest in beer and the beer industry. I'd like to plug my newsletter about beer and travel called brew York and beyond it's at brew York that's B-R-E-W-Y-O-R-K dot substack dot com. But more importantly, I'd like to raise awareness of the Michael James Jackson Foundation for Brewing and Distilling, an organization that funds scholarship awards to black, indigenous and people of color within the brewing and distilling trades to make those industries more just, equitable and dynamic. I thought he was going to say just, equitable and verdant, which is, I believe, what the one of the is it the Catherine Casey? It's one of the sponsors of NPR is creating a more just, equitable and verdant society. Oh, I'm not familiar. And I love that word verdant. I love whoever got it in there. You know, they were like just equitable and what are we going to do here? And someone was like, how about verdant? How about just green and growing and good and healthy? This, though, is the Michael James Jackson Foundation for Brewing, creating an industry that is more just equitable and dynamic. You can learn more about them at T-H-E-M-J-F dot com. Thanks again for bringing so much joy to my life and so many others for 17 years and counting. Power out. Thank you, Chris, for bringing so much joy to our life and for one time flying on that airplane by yourself. A thing I'll never get over. Hello and welcome to Top Story. All right. Top Story, Andrew, your run in with artificial intelligence. What happened?

After this buildup, I hope this stands the test of my expectations.

If not, I'll just run the show through some sort of AI podcast improver, and they'll fix it.

Yes. If nothing else, put my voice through autotune. I don't know if that's AI or not, but it could seriously improve what we're doing. I want to sound like Flo Rida. That's right, as I tell this story about AI and fantasy baseball.

Wait, is that T-Pain?

No, it's Andrew.

That's right.

Did we confuse Flo Rite and T-Pain? No, I just couldn't think of T-Pain's name.

So it was another guy who seemed like he's probably dabbled. He's dabbled. He's played in that space of auto-tuning, although he's more of a rapper and T.I. was more of a singer. But anyway, let's not get thought of that.

You know, if you say his name fast, it almost sounds like a state.

You know that I didn't realize that that's what his name meant for many, many years into his career.

I wonder when I realized that. I must have heard it a handful of times before I fully realized that Flo Rida was... Oh, Florida. Right.

He's riding the flow of Florida. Apple bottom jeans with the boots with the fur.

Oh, we should go viral with that. Okay, here is a...

I've been considering going viral with something.

Yeah. Genevieve used to work for kind of a PR firm. And this is back... in the mid 2000s sort of like the 2000 well actually it's like the early 2010s or something like that and it is like the the the era and the type of uh industry where people are saying well we need to make a viral video oh god i know you can't just like you can't sit around this you can't sit around bellevue yeah in this conference room and talk about a viral video and also you know that it's going to be a bunch of white people rapping in the office yeah like remember that era

I was making shows that was right about the time they started letting me make shows like be the person on the mic and it was constantly like well we should just go viral and exact same thing it's like it's really hard to go viral on intentionally it happens because something really bad happened it happens because you were at a Bank of America corporate event and you reworked the lyrics of one by you two to be about credit card products within your company. that's how you go viral let's do a straight out of microsoft video oh god dude i was involved in one of those two i mean not the ones i do now but like uh you know i've talked about it endlessly on the show but yeah carrie and i were hired to do something that was supposed to go viral and it did for the worst

reasons yeah okay all right let's let's talk about my story here um i had my fantasy baseball draft last night but don't worry this is not uh this is not a story about sports this is a story about the human and artificial intelligence condition i am not a huge baseball nerd uh i like my baseball i like my mariners but i don't have a i don't have a deep understanding of the rest of the league and the players and stuff i say that as a setup to be to say that like pretty early on in a draft i'm going to be kind of googling players or you know i kind of doing like um quick read-ups on them very quickly to kind of figure out like if there are somebody that i want on my team i'm kind of doing a lot of this on the fly i think other people might have a little bit more institutional knowledge when they hear a name they know about what round to pick that player or something so i i'm relatively okay at it i think last night went all right and i uh drafted a pitcher whose name i know and i recognize shane mcclanahan i believe tampa bay like there's a name that i've kind of heard but i don't know i don't know i don't know the story about shane mcclanahan i might even be wrong about the tampa bay thing but uh this is like kind of what we would call a mid round or later round pick like all the really good ace players are kind of gone by now you're filling out your roster and you're kind of taking a flyer on this person that player but i think he's like a solid person to pick up it's fine um but what you know i like i say like in you have maybe five to ten minutes in between your draft picks depending on where you are in the draft so you can start like looking ahead like okay well this guy is probably going to go before my turn which is going to leave these guys and i can kind of google them and look ahead and say well this guy hasn't taken i'll take him blah blah and so i do a little bit of diligence in that way and shane mcclanahan was one of those one of those characters that i looked up i'm like okay yeah i see he will supposedly be playing this year um he's missed a lot of time last year because shoulder surgery i think tommy john's surgery which is a shoulder right that's elbow right it's where they take a

ligament from one part of your arm and put it in a different part of your arm okay yeah i believe Tommy John was the first one who survived it. Hundreds of people died from the surgery until Tommy John. The anti-rejection drugs worked, and he was able to pitch four more seasons.

So anyway, so I pick up this guy, and then I go on with the rest of my draft, and, you know, I'm like, okay, I think this is fine. When you do a fantasy football draft, I do it through Yahoo, and Yahoo will give you a grade. Like, hey, like actually last year on my football draft, I got a really good grade. I got an A plus, which turns out is a cursed grade to get because I then lost a whole bunch of games right up front. But anyway, with baseball, we're using this different platform, ESPN, and it doesn't give you a grade. And I just don't know enough about it. I'm like, how should I feel? How should I feel about, you know, spending 90 minutes behind my computer doing this draft? Did I did I do good? Mommy is all I want. I just want somebody to tell me if I did good or not. Right. And so while I'm, you know, kind of in between rounds, I'm thinking, you know what? This is an example of where AI, as I'm hearing it described to me, could really help me out. Like, I don't use any of the AI programs. Sometimes I hang out with people, and they'll be like, oh, yeah, I just have ChatGPT on my phone, and I use that more than Google now. Or I was hanging out with a friend a couple of weeks ago, and he was waiting for me to meet up with him, and he was sending me, like, AI short stories that he was writing at the – that the computer was writing for him while he was waiting for me at the bar or something. I'm like, it's interesting. People are just sort of like integrating this into their lives and kind of a goofy way, but also just in the like, hey, we're just using this for research. And I hear about that stuff and I avoid it for various reasons. First of all, I don't want any of those A.I. tools to help me write. I like not this isn't me saying I'm a better writer than the computers or I'm a better writer than people that do use A.I. to help them. Right. But to me, writing is even when I kind of have to do it and, you know, I might not be in the mood to write a newsletter or a fundraising letter or whatever it is. The writing process is kind of an ends to the means like writing. I can't explain it, but like just having a computer tell me what to write just makes it seem like it's not writing. I'm just I'm averse to that. I'm old and I like writing too much.

like one of the main issues in our friendship is that i can't edit my texts to you because we're not on the same platform and it kills me because that means a good number of my texts have a typo in them and i am i'm such a micromanager of the things that i send to people that like i couldn't i couldn't trust ai to do it you know what i mean like i'd just be like if it uses the wrong word or does something that i don't like that doesn't feel like it represents me it's too stressful for me it's easier for me just to write the stuff i want to write yeah and i know like some people

say hey listen i just like it to to set out some bullet points for me i i was just you know reading some example the other day of somebody saying i inputted a bunch of um a bunch of history of the organization that i work for and then asked it to sort of like build some ideas around it for a speech or something it sounds like i'm describing genevieve's job i promise you i'm not describing

i don't think she really uses the president of the university of washington is not reading an

ai generated script no i promise you not although i do think that genevieve might even be slightly more comfortable with those tools than i am i think she has run some things through a processor before he clearly i'm up on my ai terminology and had it maybe spit out some ideas that she could work with but even me i'm just like i don't know i just don't play in that space i also know that there are you know some some uh people who are concerned about the technology about its impact on the environment its impact on culture whatever i generally speaking i just haven't played in that space and don't feel a need to or or even a want to yesterday was literally the first time that that had changed other than me playing around with some of those like you know input tools a few years ago it's like if what if you said what if you put garfield in a baseball uniform on top of a mountain and then it would create these really weird ai images i played around with that just as a lark to see what it was like but then i stopped well yesterday i'm like done with my draft and i'm like let's just go chat gpt is something that a lot of people talk about maybe that's the one that i should use so i go to chat gpt and i realized oh this is i tried it once or twice before years ago but it was like on a website and now it's like no download me download me andrew to your laptop don't you want chat gpt to be a program on your laptop i'm like yeah actually i should probably at least be somewhat plugged into this technology in 2025 i'll download chat gpt luke i am not exaggerating when i say i had the weirdest feeling in the 15 seconds it took that program to install because you felt like you're crossing a bridge right it did it felt weird and i don't know if i'm like being if i'm being extra here with this but like i i'm pretty i shouldn't admit this i'm pretty ballsy with the stuff that i'll download of my computer i mean going back a long time like from i would say gray market is a very uh generous generous way of describing some of the software i used to get back in the day

like i i played around and let's be honest most of your songs had a weird glitch in them because

you got them from lime wire there were there were some of those things but yeah like there are places there are places i remember on the internet and some have changed and some have given me viruses No, luckily, I've always been like kind of smart enough and careful enough not to like I've never had a run in with a virus that I can remember maybe once or twice. But I was able to like sort of panic and scrub it away pretty quickly. But my point of all of this is not to say what a bad boy of the Internet I am, but just saying that, like, I'm not somebody who's super nervous about downloading official software. You know what I mean? Chat GPT is not something to be nervous about downloading. But this actually made it just felt weird to me. I'm like, I guess I'm doing it. Like, I guess I'm an AI boy now. So I'm downloading ChatGPT. And I actually, when the app installs, I see that I actually did have two previous conversations. So I had to log in. It's like, do you have a login? I'm like, oh, I think I've tried this before. So I just tried a standard login for me, and sure as hell, it remembers me. But then I started a new conversation with it. And this is too much buildup for this, but I want you to follow along this conversation. I wrote, can you rate my fantasy baseball draft like how I did? And the computer said, sure, drop your roster here. Let us know if there's any kind of specific rules about your league and we'll tell you what are some strengths and weaknesses. So I copy and paste my entire roster of, I don't know what it is, 25 players or whatever. And I say, you know, we're playing a 10 team head to head tournament type of style. And the computer says this. Nice. draft here's a breakdown of your team based on its strengths and weaknesses and areas to improve in and i'm like this is great this is exactly what i want here i'm actually pretty excited about this it lists a bunch of strengths good run in power production a good multi-position flexibility which is something i was really going for there not to get into too much detail but because i have otani and he's kind of locked in that dh position you want another bunch of players who can like kind are utility players for my specific team like anyway the ai spits out a bunch of positive reinforcement that i wanted to hear i'm like okay good that's kind of what i was going for there that's awesome then it says what are your weaknesses and concerns and the number one weakness of my team it says is my starting pitching depth and it says burns that's corbin burns my my ace says burns is elite and so and so has an upside but mclanahan remember mclanahan I was talking about him earlier, but McClanahan is injured, Tommy John surgery, and likely out all year, leaving a big hole in your lineup. You're going to need to work the wire. And I'm like, what the hell? And I get panicky in this way that I was like, because I've come close to doing something stupid before, like drafting somebody late in the game who actually is literally a free agent in the real world and doesn't have a team attached to them. And I don't know how much the other— Therefore, we won't actually be getting any innings.

Yes. I mean, usually they find a home before the before, you know, the season starts, but it's just kind of embarrassing. And I don't know. I've literally never met any of the guys on this league that I'm a part of. And so I always feel a little bit of like kind of performance anxiety. I don't want to look like an idiot. If I if I make some ridiculously stupid draft pick, I'll feel stupid. And I'm like, wait a second, this is a mid-round pick. This is one of my main rotation starters. Did I just pick somebody who's out all year? Like, how would I have missed all of the signs of that? First of all, there should be a big red O. What will Joe Gerlitz think? What will Joe Gerlitz think is a big question that I have most times. WWJGT. I'm not even joking. What would Joe think of me? And so I'm like, did I embarrass myself? And, like, I'm almost getting panicked. I'm like, McClanahan is out all year? Like, how did I not see a big red O next to the name? Okay, maybe fantasy missed a beat there, but I would have at least read a blurb. I didn't draft anybody without reading a blurb. And so I Google his name quickly, and I'm like, wait, yes, I already saw this. He is scheduled to be the starter for Tampa Bay, like on opening day. He's the day one starter. And, like, I read all these headlines. Get it together, AI. Right, exactly. Okay, so I'm extending this too much. So point is right now, AI is telling me, hey, you're kind of in trouble here, buddy. you drafted somebody who is not supposed to play all year long it seems like the easiest thing for

ai to know this gets so this gets so much worse the up-to-date information on this player like i mean what's so uncanny about it and and and in a way upsetting is the way that it can perfectly in a lot of ways mimic human writing and speech and all these things this should be a slam dunk for it is to know the current status of this guy's arm wait wait till you hear where this is going

so I I google him again I'm like no no McClanahan is in so so the computer gives me all of this it gives me an overall draft grade of a b plus which is I actually the feedback I was looking for like tough but do you do you love me now mommy but it's still based on the fact that it's saying one of my players is going to be out all season right that would be an a if it knew that the guy doesn't have Tommy John surgery so I write why do you think Shane McClanahan is injured he's scheduled to start on opening day and the computer responds this and i can't do that dave it starts with the word actually and i could not what i'm gonna swear i could not fucking believe that this you were getting well actually my main gpt mansplain me here's the response i said do you why do you think shane mcclanahan is injured he's scheduled to start an opening day actually Shane McClanahan is all bold out for the entire 2024 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery in August 2023 so it's like bolded like actually you're wrong human and then it goes on to say here are some other pictures that you could slot in instead does it not know that it's

2025 so I wrote you wrote you wrote what's his name Shane McClanahan you said Shane McClanahan

is clearly in the driver's seat for 2025 i wrote actually in all caps because it wrote to me actually shane mcclannan so i wrote actually in all caps it's 2025 do you really not know what year it is the computer writes back you're right it's 2025 my mistake there but unfortunately my point still stands are Shane McClanahan is out for the entire 2025 season as well in all

bold it's yelling at me actually Shane McClanahan is still out for the 2025 season since he had Tommy John surgery in 2023 he's out for 2024 and most of 2025 it's like now starting to walk back it said actually I'm looking at this now it says Shane McClanahan is out for the entire 2025 season as well then the next sentence is he's going to be out for all of 2024 and possibly part of 2025 so it's like two sentences that are contradictory and the computer just showed its ass it's giving me a grade on a fantasy baseball draft it doesn't know what fucking year it is i'm just putting explicit on the show today i don't care yeah so i write back then why do all the headlines say that shane mcclanahan is starting on opening day like this article from the mlb.com and i put a link in there chat gpt says apologies for the confusion earlier what no you were wrong confusion yeah the confusion actually you're a dumbass so sorry for apologies for the confusion earlier Shane McClanahan underwent Tommy John apologies that we all got a little carried away earlier yeah I think the I think the printers got everybody a little bit too excited of course it did so anyway then it just goes on and like kind of barrels forward with a whole bunch of information that is like about Shane McClanahan I'm like yeah oh yeah here's what I wrote back I I wrote yes I know i told you that i'm now i'm fighting with a machine and i'm not doing this ironically like i'm furious and then the machine says haha fair enough you got me there my bad for the mix-up earlier it looks like mcclanahan is indeed back and ready to roll blah blah blah blah so then i write again so if i re-entered my entire lineup will you remember that shane is not injured or will you still give me the wrong information and then insist that i am wrong and the computer says next time you mention Shane McClanahan I'll remember that he's healthy and ready to pitch no more mix ups on that and I'm like and I literally wrote great let's test that here's my lineup and I put my lineup back in there expecting this just to be like to make the same mistakes again and I'll give the I'll give it credit here it says

McClanahan deceased

exactly the goldenest of girls everything checks out this time Shane McClanahan is healthy and set to so like the the bot remembers that i am in an argument with it i sort of thought like inputting the same information would just send it back to square one and i'd get in a loop but it is like learning and it didn't know why i put it there and it kind of remembers where we are in our conversation and then here here's how the conversation ended um the the computer tells me i'd still suggest keeping an eye on starting pitcher depth since mcclanahan is coming off of surgery that is actually good point but this is a well-rounded squad with strong hitting good relief pitching and plenty of power If you want any lineup tweaks or waiver wire advice, let me know. And then a muscle emoji and a baseball emoji to which I wrote, yeah, of course, you seem super reliable. Real polite bot. And then the bot said, ha ha, I deserve that. But hey, now that we've got McClanahan status straight, I promise I won't mess that up again. If you ever need trade advice, waiver pickups or match strategies, I've got your back. Baseball emoji fire. Like it got sarcasm. it got sarcasm like this is what like is it's both it's astounding how it does work like a conversation and it does feel in a certain way sort of human human and when i tried to like confuse it by just putting in the same information again it did remember oh we're in a conversation we're in a fight now about mcclanahan like it realizes that shit which is amazing but it also is spitting out advice because it doesn't know that it's 2025 the machine thought it was the wrong year like it it was both amazing and so infuriating that people are going to be relying on this technology for things that they think are answers to things like it could not have been more

wrong i think that's exactly the issue with where it's at right now right i mean you've stated it very clearly that like the fact my mind is blown that it got that you were being sarcastic when you were like you're really great at this yeah yeah of course i'm going to turn to you again that's insane that it it gets something as nuanced as that but then it doesn't know what year it is It thinks it's Y2K. And it actually is me twice in a row. That's the number one thing that they should write into the code or the prompts or however this large language model is trained. Actually, as the start of a sentence, should be banned from the software.

Who writes this shit? It's a bunch of guys who are telling people, oh, actually, all the time.

It's a bunch of people who are drinking Soylent and, you know, like retweeting Elon Musk.

Yes, exactly. And well, actually, there are few female colleagues, I'm sure. It's just like the tone of this thing and being so just blatantly wrong and being pompous and telling me I was wrong twice in a row and then just sort of being like, sorry, bro, I got your back.

Now, I want to burn the whole thing to the ground. I don't even know if I'm talking about computers anymore.

Yeah, there must have been a moment where you considered just throwing the laptop, what, into the street? Yes.

It's just like, I don't, I really do. It's sort of, I mean, I'm not afraid of technology, but this did sort of make me want to crawl into the woods a little bit.

Did it regrade your team now that it knew that McClanahan was healthy?

Didn't give me a new letter grade, but it just sort of said, you're right, it's well-rounded.

Also, if it was a B-plus when they thought that you're a pitcher who's the number one starter for a team, when they thought he was out for the whole season and now they know he's actually going to pitch opening day, that doesn't improve your grade?

Yeah. Well, I'm sure if I had in the moment said, okay, now give me a new grade based on this. I mean, do you want me to do that right now? Yeah. Because it saved my conversation. I don't know if it's going to say, good morning. Did you sleep on this? okay can you give me a new letter grade now that you know what's up now that you know the year absolutely now that i know mclanahan is healthy and ready to go here's your updated draft guide a mine or draft grade rather a minus okay i did an improvement i did get it uh final verdict a minus strong contender still watch the wire for starting pitchings in the sp4 and sp5 option which i agree with um anyway i just grade and it's probably a minus so anyway there it is that's my story i could just keep on repeating myself but like you could hear how yeah galled and

fascinated i was at the same time i think that's the exact uh way to describe what's going on with this it's galling and fascinating yeah and i totally get how you felt like you were crossing a rubicon by downloading it because it just feels like once this thing sort of once it really starts and i know like you said there's a lot of people that are already using it but there's a lot of people like you and i who aren't already using it and when it sort of once it's on all of our computers and phones and we are actually like just it's it's sort of second nature it's like everything's going to change you know and so i can see why it felt to you like okay this is the

beginning of everything being different and i'm hesitating here because i can't remember if i've gone on this rant a lot off air and a lot on after these messages but i don't know if you and i have vented about those ai commercials for um the the matthew mcconaughey commercials with woody harrelson in them as well and it's for some sort of business to business software but they're trying to integrate something new called um um uh it's called agent force is the new thing it's part of the sales force oh that's funny they were huge commercials during football season weird and then they released one new one on super bowl sunday that was like the third in the series but the first one maybe when i describe it you you might remember it it is matthew mcconaughey and they're well shot like expensive commercials i mean they have matthew mcconaughey and woody harrelson so that's a lot of money right there and i think it's for sales force but they're advertising something specific called their agent force which is some sort of ai plug-in if you're like a business and you need the software business a business software i don't know anything about that shit but either way the commercial shows matthew mcconaughey sitting outside at a table at a fancy restaurant but the problem is it's nighttime it's pouring rain and everybody else is inside eating at tables but he's outside in the pouring rain eating and a waiter comes out while he's talking to us and serves him a big plate of shrimp. And McConaughey is saying to us, the viewers, like this restaurant didn't use agent force with AI, which is why I'm sitting outside in the rain, because I booked a table outside and AI didn't tell them to move me inside. And they're serving me food I don't even want. And he kind of pushes the shrimp away. And there's several of these commercials, but like that's basically the premise. Like this company doesn't know how to treat me because they're not using AI. And seeing companies like that in society as a whole trying so desperately to make us think we need A.I. for things we don't need A.I. for.

Because if you don't have A.I., Matthew McConaughey will sit in the rain.

It doesn't make any. I mean, I guess I guess the only explanation is maybe in Simpsons voice, that's the joke. Like maybe they're trying to. I don't give them that much credit. But no, I don't either. It's like they're really trying to make it seem like you can't run a business without AI. And it's like, yes, you can, because when you show up to get your table that you reserved and somebody says, sir, it's raining outside, we've moved you indoors. You don't need AI for that. And you don't need – what, did he order his food? How did AI cause him to get food that he didn't want? Or lack of AI. Yeah, like how did a lack of AI end up giving him shrimp? Like who, where did the shrimp come from? Has everybody. been getting the wrong thing brought to them while sitting in the rain for years and years since time immemorial

and it's just so bananas because it's like I'm not saying that there isn't some use for these tools and I'm sure there's I'm sure that they've been being used for a long time on the back end of things that I don't even realize AI is playing a part in and so it's making things smoother maybe in my life and in the lives of the services that I use or something but like this really trying to jam it trying to rub it in our face of you know this idea that like everybody must use ai and if you're not using ai you're behind the curve and it's like oh well how so it's like well restaurants are serving shrimp to people who don't like in the rain that's not a problem like i'm just yeah i'm

exhausted well i look forward to hearing how your team does yeah i'm serious listeners i'm glad no i'm glad you're still doing it because you were almost no no i'm being serious you were you were

toying with not doing this right sort of basically i started playing fantasy baseball for the first time was it is this my fourth you and i were supposed to be cobras on it and i i treated you like bubbles that's yes that's right well i clawed i went out for a pack of cigarettes i clawed at the couch and you were like no more so you know at least some of the people in this 10 member um uh you know squad yeah my friend joe my friend graham and so they invited you to play fantasy baseball you're like that's a big commitment how about me and you andrew and and luke team up and we manage a team together that was about four years ago i think um very quickly you kind of bowed out which was fine because i was getting a little control freaky about it anyway and i was kind of learning but i knew nothing i know especially you know i'm always learning a little bit more about baseball but i'm certainly no baseball expert and i knew nothing about fantasy baseball and i was nervous and i was overwhelmed and we didn't do very well that year but each year since then i got a little bit better and last year like you know i went through some embarrassing discoveries of not of going through like a whole season of not realizing some very basic tools were there to help me and stuff like that but like i just didn't know and i'm also not patient enough to be like listening to a lot of like tutorials about how to play fantasy baseball i just don't care that much like i think i mentioned this to you on the show the other day like there were certain like digital card games i used to play and it was like you're supposed to collect all the cards and that's where the fun is i'm like i don't care about collecting the cards i just want to play like just give me a bunch of cards can we just play the game i've been like that my whole life i'm not a very good strategy guy so fantasy baseball is probably not a good fit for me but last year was my third year doing it and like i had learned a lot of lessons and i ended i believe in second place in the league i was very what's the it's not pride but i would just say less shame and i was feeling less shame and then the playoffs came i told you all this off off air and then there are like you know various moves you can make on your team like throughout the week but during the playoffs i'm like i don't know i just have the best roster i don't see anything good on the wires i don't know what i'm supposed to be doing here and then i just lost all my playoff games and i was just like done and then there was some chat afterwards amongst these fellas i don't know but i'm on the chat chain or whatever and there's kind of like yeah what happened to walsh was he trapped beneath a refrigerator during the playoffs and like that will echo in my head for the rest of my life i was like no that's like that's your worst fear coming true it was because it wasn't that i it was and i literally wrote back to them kind of humorlessly actually going back to that i wrote a humorless romp because after like two or three people said yeah where is walsh is he still caught under a rock somewhere like what's going on i wrote back i'm like guys i wasn't caught under a rock i literally still don't know how to play this game i didn't see any moves i was supposed to make i don't know what i did wrong and somebody's like well just keep otani i'm like all right fine um because i inherited otani so i felt like my

entire season was chalked up to the fact that i had otani i was like no i was making moves like I was actively making moves. Remember, it's a keeper league. Did we have him? Yes. So when we inherited this team, the person who gave it up.

We took it over from somebody who had Ohtani.

We took it over. That's prime real estate. Exactly. And it's a keeper league. So at the beginning of every season, you get to choose your five best players to hold over for the next year. So obviously, I'm never giving up Ohtani. And again, all of these guys, none of them were trying to hurt my feelings or be even all that ball busty. I'm a super sensitive person. But it just bummed me. I'm not mad at anybody on this text chain that nobody did or said anything inappropriate I was just feeling really sensitive because I was like no I was working at this time baby I was really trying to work it and that's how I ended up in second place but clearly there's some strategy for the playoffs that I don't understand and I don't know where I was supposed to get better players for that week but I didn't have them and so I was trapped under a rock so anyway at the beginning of this season I was like do I want to do that again? Do I want to spend all season like streaming pictures and like looking like spending like literally stay

in the shower like looking at the waiver wire because it's like because i have a few more that sounds like the commercial that i would see during the game i actually i do a lot of fantasy and you're just getting rained on while looking at his phone i'm not joking i'll bet you if you look at the pie chart of where i do most of my fantasy baseball wire searches probably a lot of it is in the shower but anyway i was feeling tomorrow yeah you know they're pretty waterproof these days i know they are but i'm afraid i bring it in there because i listen to podcasts and it's too quiet if it's outside the shower so i set on a little shelf there i have a bluetooth speaker

for that exact thing oh yeah i used to have one of those but like just because it's too loud when i shower and if i'm listening to like chris's show or yeah you know whatever the ezra klein show oh i meant to tell you i was uh coming out of a restaurant last night after getting a little bit of dinner first of all i forgot it was st patrick's day holy smokes god yes it was an s

show like at least you're in la though not like boston or new york you'd think i was in boston i

couldn't believe it i went to this place the smokehouse in burbank which is kind of a legendary industry joint and they had it so saint patrick's up and i was like oh god i didn't want any part of it um but as i was walking out there was a table of guys and a guy literally said to his friends you don't get the show and i stopped and i said lebitard and he said yep and i just kept

moving that's great and you kept moving as well i love that i i told you there's a street food vendor, right, in the U District that Genevieve's like, I think that guy listens to Levitard because I keep on hearing the fanfare sound or something coming from his booth. Hey, Luke, I know you've got to get out of here because we're running a little bit tight on time, but I told you before the show that I'm excited to do something here at the end of the show today, which is I have been listening to a lot of voicemails, as I always do, on the tbtl voicemail listener line 206-414-8285 206-414-tbtl is the voicemail number you can call and leave us a voicemail and we play them occasionally on the show but it's kind of hard to pick the voicemails that work at the end of the show where you and i are going to say something about them and they stand on their own and everything we play maybe one out of every 10 voicemails we get maybe one out of every 20 and it's hard to find a home for a lot of these things And it bums me out because I love listening to the listeners leave these messages. I just don't know what to do with them in the show. So I thought, I'm kind of stealing this idea from our friend Bean of Cup of Tea and a Chat fame, because I heard him put together a long, long montage of listener voicemails one time. And it was just so good. And it was so random, but it didn't need you and I setting them all up and explaining them. So at the end of the show today, after we play the music and get out of here and say, good luck to all, I'm just going to sort of open up the voicemail line and just play a hell of a ton of voicemails, one after another, after another. And it'll sort of give the listeners a sense of just what it's like to listen to the voicemail line and just hear people delighting in things we said or asking things or telling their own little stories related to stories we've told. That is awesome.

I may even stick around and listen. I may miss my Duplass shoot. Probably worth it. Nice. I'm excited. all right thank you everybody for listening uh we are going to be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio i'll be back home at the madrona hill studio so we will see you then in the meantime have a great tuesday take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

hey guys i was just listening to um i think tuesday's show maybe i'm a little bit behind And Andrew started talking about his thermos, and immediately they start singing in the shower, I'm picking out a thermos for you. Not an ordinary thermos will do. Best thermos you can find with vinyl and stripes and a cup built right in. And I just wanted to say I feel super served by thermos talk. I always appreciate any thermos or jerk-related talk because that is one of the best movies that there is. Well, mainly the first half, but we don't need to get into the details. So, anyways, have a good thermos, dummies. What you do is so important.

Hi, guys. This is Stephen in Lawrence, Kansas, with a question about Seattle geography. I've been listening to TVTL on and off for about 15 years, since around 2010. And at what point do I get like an honorary Seattle residency? How many years does it take to be like a 0.5 Seattle resident? Thanks.

Hey, friendos. Thank you so much for playing the Chipmunks on doing the Bob Dylan song. Oh, my God. You brought me so much joy. When I first heard that, I doubled over and had to grab the counter. I was laughing so hard. and to hear you guys just your complete glee i've played it

about 15 times since then you brought me so much joy thank you so much um you guys are the best and i'm walking into work right now and i am going to play it for all my co-workers and i'm going to bring them joy today so anyway uh love you guys not in a creepy way um power out hi it's listener

dave from new york city with a quick update uh about the baseball thing in the bathroom thing I was not the caller from the beautifully cleaned mall bathroom, but I wish I was. And after consultation with the Tins on the Facebook group, I made my choice for my team. I am going with the Baltimore Orioles, partially because I used to live fairly close to Baltimore, so I have a connection, but mostly it's about the bird logo. So, yeah, I'm an Oriole fan. And Josh Lourouf did come in and try to convert me to the evil empire of the Yankees, but I resisted. Thanks. Power out. Love you guys.

This is so random, but I just wanted you to know that I have a gynecologist appointment coming up, and now I have to always refer to that as going to the lady doctor. It's for ladies. So power out.

I just had the funniest experience. I dialed up my pond catcher. I hit play, and I hear this background noise, and it sounds like rain. And then Luke is kind of through his intro, and he hasn't addressed it. He said, it's a beautiful day outside. And I'm thinking to myself, is this something that's going on in the back? Like, is this like a joke that Andrew's playing? Like, why is this? It just sounds like rain. It's just a straight. I had my white noise app still online. I didn't close out the app. So it was raining while Luke was doing his intro and throughout the intro tape. And I was very, very confused. But I found that pretty funny then. So, great way to start a Tuesday. Thanks. Bye.

Hey, guys. It's Cheryl in Corvallis. I am listening to Friday's show on a Monday morning on my way to work that I don't want to be going to. And I just wanted to thank you, Andrew, specifically, who said, I can't quiz myself. I'll go blind. And I was taking a sip of my coffee, and I nearly spit it out all over my lap. as I'm driving down Highway 20 from Corvallis to Albany here. So thank you so much for the chuckle. Thankfully, I did not spill coffee all over myself before I have to go interpret. But I just appreciate you guys so much. I really needed a chuckle today, especially the way the world has been. So love you guys. Take it easy.

Bye. Help. I've been watching college basketball on Fox for the last few hours, and they keep playing around ball rock before they go to commercial. And I can't stop singing, ba-ba-ba-ba-basketball. This is Kristen in Kansas City. Bye.

Hi, Luke and Andrew. This is listener Annette from Livonia, Michigan. I was calling in regards to Andrew's adventure at Goldie's and the waitress that recognized him and said goodnight to him. Last week I was at the dentist with my son. and something funny must have been said because I laughed and then the next day I was at work and a co-worker said I heard you at the dentist yesterday and I was like oh and he said well he was being worked on so he couldn't actually talk to me but he heard my laugh and knew that he recognized me and so you just never know who knows you who recognize you recognizes you who sees you So it was pretty weird because I didn't think my laugh was that recognizable or remarkable, but just thought I'd share that. You guys are great. Power out.

This is John Smith from Tacoma. I bought a new microlave today, and I just had to tell somebody. Power out.

Hi, my name is Brian Shade. I live in Barrington, Illinois, and my joke is, I couldn't understand why the ball was getting bigger. And then it hit me.

Say power out.

Power out.