Muse

Five, six, seven, eight. Trident gum is the chewiest gum. Give it to your friends and chew it with your teeth. Your teeth are bones that live outside. They hang from your lips like bats. Oh, outside bones, outside bones. Never forget your teeth are outside bones. They're bones that you wash. And when you're a kid, they fall from your head. And to make things less weird, we say they got stolen by a demon. at your parents? No! Trident! In lieu of my usual audition piece, that was a jingle for gum I just

made up. TBTL! I consider myself to be an absolutely dead center, normal, average American. Well, my friends are just beside themselves, and I'm going to get to work with the co-bro. Oh, God, no, please. Just, just Cobra. Let's face it, some people have a way with words. Other people, uh... Not have a way, I guess. The man or beast that I run from ain't been born. And his mama's already dead. I know those words, but that makes no sense. Hey, do you think you could be my funniness mentor?

I could definitely be your funniness mentor.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning. And welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. It is our turn. My name's Luke Burbank. I'm your host. I got the time if you got the diapers. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it's an absolutely gorgeous Wednesday here, the 12th of November. Oh, Ma, Pa, it's just beautiful. And I'm being supervised as I record the show by Gigi, the standard poodle.

I'll say, what's up, dog?

I'm dog-sitting for the next couple of days. And always was a little pep in my step. And makes me extra excited, folks, to bring you episode 4,596 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

Probably heard that there are problems at the airports still. Sky Jesus. Because of the government shutdown. even when that ends there's still going to be some issues and out in DC at Dulles Airport there is a move to maybe get rid of the Dulles people movers which are kind of a pain in the butt but also kind of an amazing sort of homage to sort of mid-century optimism and Aero Saarinen and also it turns out the airport itself Dulles generated one of the greatest I think one of the greatest kind of like 1960s era sort of like industrial videos ever i would have played some of the audio from it i can't stop watching this video uh so we'll get into that also speaking of watching things uh i um i'm falling behind on one of the television shows i like and i'm starting out on another one that i'm not sure if i like it television is no friend of mine so we'll talk tv as well oh with this guy he's been spending some time in airports i'm back baby he's the longest running co-bro of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships he's andrew walsh and he's joining me right now good morning my friend and welcome back thanks thanks for covering

for me i mean the problem here is as i told you before the show literally the only thing i want to talk about on today's show is the chair company on hbo it's not television luke it's hbo and well you know talk about it because we're a little bit uh you're a little bit behind bingo just jumped on me sorry for the scare there if you're wondering what's going on with i don't

have my screen up for that yeah like now it's actually interesting you would say that andrew because obviously you were listening to yesterday's episode of dbtl and you heard me musing on this very question of if we can call hbo television or not oh no i just remembered the ad campaign

from the 90s i believe oh i assumed you weren't listening yesterday that was a joke oh yes no i didn't but that was something that you were talking about yesterday well it came up i was

setting up the interview with jeff hiller that we played yesterday from the hbo show somebody somewhere and i said you know because of that campaign they did it's not television it's hbo i think you and i are both of the generation that's very sensitive about calling it television but then they went and changed their name to max for some period of time yeah does that mean now all bets are off does it if they're not going to even call themselves hbo anymore can we go back

to calling it television that's a really good question and when i say it's a really good question those are just words i say as i stall for a response to it i don't really know if that's a really good question i don't well the thing is i'm trying to remember where they are now are they back to hbo max remember that was the latest headline that they were re-adopting hbo in some

way that seems to have not affected my viewing habits at all i'm saying they've gotten all over the place with their naming and they're not in a position to tell me what i'm calling television not television that's how i feel well yeah

Yes, I would agree with that as well. I'll call people whatever I want to call them.

I've also got some breaking news, some TBTL breaking news. TBTL breaking news. And it's literally involving the letters TBTL. I was trying to find our account, the TBTL account on Instagram, because while the intro tape was playing, I was remembering that our pal, John Sklaroff, TBTL employee numero uno, who by the way filled in admirably on monday thanks john had posted some a clip today and i just wanted to see how the clip turned out and so i was for some reason on my instagram account tbtl is not like the first thing that comes up you think it would be it should be probably so i went into instagram and i searched for the tbtl podcast and you know the first thing that comes up the truth behind the lens podcast a podcast it says tbtl podcast it even has a graphic and everything it's got the letters tbtl and an old time microphone is actually kind of a decent graphic zero posts four followers five following tbtl podcast how is that seoing to me before our

show where we work for our jobs andrew well i think it's because and i i'm not personally on instagram anymore although i am logged into that account i think that account was set up as too beautiful to live which is and i remember john maybe even had some concerns about that at one point because of the thing that you're actually talking about so i think we're like maybe it's listed as tbtl when you see it but if you actually look at the account it's at too beautiful to live

i want to say yes i'm finding that out right now but i'm also wondering i mean no offense to the behind the lens podcast but did you even do one google of the letters tbtl and the word

podcast when i was on i want to say instagram but maybe it was twitter as well there was this very seemed from afar seems like such a nice community outfit called theater by the lake and i would get tagged or we would get tagged in so many things people were like we just saw the best production at tbtl and sometimes i'd even responded like i appreciate the compliments but I think that you're looking, I think you're knocking on the wrong door here. So Theater by the Lake is another one that I think we are kins with.

Yeah, which I'm fine with, you know, Theater by the Lake. I think that was, you know, may have even existed longer than TBTL. It's also the name of their theater. It's somebody starting a podcast or thinking they're going to start a podcast, although there are zero posts. Somebody thinking they're going to start a podcast with the pretty specific letters, TBTL. and then the word podcast, and they're sitting around going, well, what should we call this podcast? How about the TBTL podcast? Wouldn't you put that into the internet, and wouldn't you immediately find that, oh, somebody's been doing that for 17 years? I'm just really surprised at the specificity of that and the word podcast that it didn't occur to that person that there was already somebody doing that.

Do you by any chance happen to remember the scintillating story of the naming of the After These Messages podcast, which Genevieve and I started, I think it was, i think we're maybe at the around the 10-year anniversary of us starting that show i think we started in 2015 thank you it's the uh 10-year anniversary is the um i don't know what you give me for that you give me a golden microphone by the way i was kind of surprised to hear you give a little um thumbs up to their logo with a microphone this new rival podcast that you mentioned because i i always think it's a rule of thumb of yours which i am on board with which is It's like to illustrate a podcast with an image of a microphone is a little bit lazy.

Yeah, I'm also not that into the kind of 1950s. That 1950s microphone as a kind of a throwback idea, I think, it's been embraced pretty widely. Well explored. It's not really my style. I guess I just mean it's a more legit logo than I would expect for a podcast that appears to have no episodes and no posts, but did take the time to name itself exactly the name of our show.

I'm going to actually see if I can bring in some audio illustration for the story I'm about to tell. Genevieve and I, I had been bugging Genevieve to start a podcast with me for quite some time. Not heavily, but she always made me laugh so much, especially when we were watching TV. And I think I had maybe even, we're probably going to hear a crash, because I accidentally closed my studio door and Bing goes on the inside of it. And he is crawling on boxes of tambourines right now. have you ever heard a pile of tambourines go clattering to the ground we might be lucky enough to hear that in a moment yes um but we i couldn't get genevieve to like kind of sign on to a podcast idea but then eventually the idea of doing a show all about commercials stuck with her and we started talking about it you know you know eventually a little bit more seriously and then we finally said okay let's do this but we took some time we didn't just like go into my studio which was not set up by

by the way, for a two-person operation back then in L.A., and we said, okay, well, let's think about this. What do we want to name the show, of course? And we tried to get all of our ducks in a row before we launched it, and we did exactly what you're describing one should do, which is we Googled around, and we came up with a bunch of show ideas, and we looked at which ones were already taken, and there was no show that was after these messages. And we're like, okay, great, let's lock it in. And so we went forward with that. We made some very rudimentary art and things to go along with it and I think maybe we waited about three weeks between coming up with the name after these messages and uh our actual launch and within those three weeks somebody else launched

a podcast called after these messages that's like a more crazy version of of something that happened to me which was I had for many years been threatening to try to write a book and you know never did and probably never will but uh one of the things one of the names i had for it in my mind was something like failure is an option and i just took so long in not doing it that eventually h john benjamin wrote a book called failure is an option now that's a less interesting story because that's about me procrastinating over the course of years and years and yours is like a very compressed timeline like you pick the name and then within the next two weeks someone else pops

up with the name that's crazy now the thing about the other after these messages podcast which i'm looking for here it might have finally atrophied away totally yeah because i told genevieve like we just got to stick with it like we you know we didn't i don't think we realized it until we literally were posting our first show and then we looked it up and we're like why are we not the first result and about a week earlier somebody had posted their show and their show was a short form high production like a highly produced but not well produced i want to be very clear about this highly produced like five minute or seven minute podcast that was supposed to be like a parody of commercial breaks i but i wasn't sure if it was old-timey or modern but it was just like it was very very far from what we were doing and i said listen we started this one of the reasons we took our time to do it right was because we had a plan we're going to do it every single tuesday and we weren't going to miss a show we're going to outlast them yeah and eventually uh we did but i will say that damn show dogged us for a long time because we told people look for after these messages on your podcatcher or whatever you say i don't think people say podcatcher but if we told people that the first thing to pop up was this parody thing and i say parody i'm giving them so much so much credit and even i don't even know what to call it to be honest with you and um you know i guess now i'm now i'm leaning towards being a little bit rude about the whole thing but it really it was a bummer that i think people were going to listen to our podcast and heard something that not only did i not think too much of but was very very different

from what we were doing yeah um well that is the key to both after these messages and tbtl which is you just outlast them yeah what you and i both know andrew is that some have tried some have died but nobody has done more of this bullshit than we have and if we just stay here long enough we'll eventually be i feel like we will also outlast the two the the behind the lens podcast maybe we already have

I think I have told you about this before because guess what the name of the person who did this, okay so it looks like we're not at the 10 year anniversary because their podcast started in, oh yeah, November of 2015, which means we started ours probably in November or December of 2015 and they only made it to April of 2016 they released 11 episodes they range in time from four minutes to nine minutes it looks like and the name of the person who owns the podcast is jason newman but spelled differently than our friend jason newman the late jason newman that's right r.i.p for sure yeah and so here this is um this was their very first episode which was episode one from november 1st 2015 and it's called kjrc channel six so i think that they're making up either radio or television stations and then creating fake commercial breaks. I have no idea. Oh, there you go.

That must have, can you pause for a second? I don't know if you listened to this back in the day, but if you did, that would have grinded your gears too because that is very much sonically associated with your show.

In fact, I believe that is, I'm trying to figure out, can I play mine as well on a different... So that's how ours starts with our little intro every week, and then theirs starts in the same way. Now I'm going to hit play on theirs again. You know what I hate? What if we love this? What if you love this more than my podcast? I'm playing a very dangerous game here.

There's a non-zero chance.

I've really painted myself into a corner. we'll return to the godfather part four citizens on patrol after these messages

this is a child isn't it fetch mordechai

david what's mordechai doing to that other dog i don't know talia look at his peter

ew weird i think this is a child this is a young person's podcast at least they were back in 2015 You mean because of their voice? I think their voice and maybe this level of humor. I mean, I was hanging by every word.

Mom, why did boy had circumcised? You knew this day would come. But who can afford a costly dog circumcision?

It sounds like David Sedaris to me. It does, a young David Sedaris.

The money and a vet. Do it yourself in the comfort of your own home. Presenting the at-home dog circumcision kit.

Don't laugh at this, Luke. luke is laughing i don't like this you know i'm gonna play more clips of my podcast i'm mostly

laughing at you being angry about it do is lure your dog your boy who's a good boy grab your

dog you know i don't know if i want to i don't know if i'm comfortable i think we get the idea of it yes so that was what we were up against and i gotta say i didn't realize they made 11 podcasts but they did well that's the thing

like i don't i don't think that that's for me that's not the highest level of comedy it's um but i guess i'm impressed at the like you said the the production level and that they did 11 of those because that definitely seems like the kind of thing that you do one episode of and then you'd be like god that was a lot of work you know writing mixing producing those fake commercials and stuff so i i gotta sort of tip my cap to them for getting 11 episodes out even if it's not particularly for me.

You don't, by any stretch of the imagination, have to tip your cap. Easy drill. Have to tip your cap. Easy drill. I'm looking. They must have had a bunch that were in the can because they were really steady on a one-week release podcast for their first month. It was very clearly. Every seven days, they were dropping them throughout November, and then immediately things start pacing out. There were two in December, and then a couple in January.

it's like you're running, you're in a race, you're doing a half marathon and there's somebody that just zooms past you and you have to ask yourself in your mind, is that sustainable? And they go, and then you can't see him anymore. And then eventually at about the 10 mile mark, you start to make out a figure and you realize it's them and they're not going as fast as they were at the beginning. And now you're catching up to them and now you're passing them. That was, that was your experience. Speaking of running, do you know that I've got a, I've got a malady going on i think it's i think it's adductor tendinitis and i can't run right now and it is really bumming me out and that is not some kind of a humble brag i'm not trying to be one of those people who just like you know it's just like my mental reset man running but like it's throwing me for a loop i'm i'm realizing how much of my sense of well-being and by the way this isn't healthy on a given day is related to if i feel like i checked my list of things and a big part that is the running um so yeah i'm kind of struggling with that a little bit so what where's what's the issue it's basically like um uh a pain like a pulled tendon or an injured tendon that's kind of in not my groin get your minds out of the gutter not so much like towards the you know my crotchal region but more like the front of my leg where sort of my my leg and my hip meet but the front right like when i think about hip pain i think of it as being the sides of your hips that i've never had hip pain um per se before this so i always thought of when people talk about a hip replacement i always assumed the pain was on the outside like the edges of your hips i don't know why that's just where i pictured it this is more on the front of my leg uh the top part of my leg where it meets where that joint kind of where the ball joint of your leg is going into your hip, I guess, socket. And I've had it for like a year, but it hasn't been when I was in England this summer. Sometimes we'd be walking and it would just kind of flare up. But the weirdest thing is it would then just go away. So we'd be walking somewhere and it'd almost be like I could barely raise my left leg because of the pain. And then it would just kind of like go away and then it wouldn't hurt at all and uh and and about a week ago actually we were in new york we ran central park and from then on out it's been it was really sore and then i ran the other day i was basically fine then i went on a run and then i went and did an event on sunday for livewire and i literally could almost not walk into the the venue did you start to feel it during the run or did it only No, that's what's strange. It felt fine during the run. And in fact, generally speaking, when I'm running, it doesn't hurt.

which is very odd. You think that would be the most painful. But what happens is then after a while when I'm like sitting or something post run, like if I'm in the car, like I was driving from here down to Portland for this event, any kind of like sedentary thing, it like all of a sudden when I get up to walk my left leg, I can, I can almost not lift my left leg. Like there've been times where I have to physically use my arm to pick up my left leg. If I'm getting like out of bed or something. And now, now that I've, I've been laying off running the last couple of days, the last three days it's not um hurting as much but it's still there it's like it's it's certainly i can walk around fine i took gigi for a walk this morning but it's i can still kind of feel it and i definitely have the sense that if i went for a run today it'd come right back with full force and i know that well first of all i tried to set up a physical therapy appointment with kaiser and despite how great you've heard about the american health care system uh turns out sometimes not great i was like trying to make a physical therapy appointment i think it's in like maybe i want to say february or march it's the next time i can get somebody well this is what was crazy i was looking this up this morning at about eight o'clock right and i could get a physical in-person physical therapy appointment at 8 30 that morning in clackamas county oregon or in march it was like we can see you in 30 minutes by the way i'm like a hour drive from that location and was not going to go to the doctor at that moment or the the pt but it was like either in 30 minutes or in five months those are your options mr burbank a couple of questions

about this so your description or the name you put on this which i don't self-diagnosis it is self-diagnosis that's kind of what i figured is this something that um your other running friends like becca or others have also had i thought maybe somebody said oh i had a running friend with benefits yes well i i know i know i didn't want to get into that but i mean if you'd like

to expand on that i will i don't know anyone else who has this particular issue i'm sure it is you know semi-common the thing a lot of runners that i know what they get is plantar fasciitis yeah because that's just a repetitive use injury sometimes and you know people can get that get stress fractures fractures rather there's also the t-band t-band is something that a lot of people deal with which is i think something that kind of goes over your hip on the outside that can get kind of injured in running i don't know anyone who has this but when i looked it up on the internet it sounded exactly like what i'm dealing with and then i went to like a a website for some sort of sports medicine clinic and they literally had like the like so the sort of human form you know what i mean the like a human body but they don't have any skin on them it's just the muscles yeah and they had a pinpoint on where adductor tendonitis hurts and i was like that's exactly the spot where

You were watching Mr. Goodbody videos, weren't you? That was last night. Do you remember old Mr. Slim Goodbody? So unsettling. Always gave me a bad feeling when I was a kid. Unbelievably upsetting. Not for me. Also, I think there was a period of my life when I was a little kid where I thought he was Richard Simmons. I couldn't separate the two of them out in my head.

100%. I was going to say that exact thing. They looked similar. I think they both had a lot. Wow, you put Slim Goodbody in and you don't. Really? Okay, now you get, well, until I did an image search, if you put slim good body in, you get some TV shows or something, the internet, the first result was not just a picture of the guy, then I went to image, and yes, he looks so much like Richard Simmons in that era, and I sort of understand the idea of teaching kids about the human body, and maybe demystifying it, But what I can tell you is that this was so upsetting to me as a kid, to see a guy in a skin-tight, like what, leotard? Like a body suit? A body suit that's then painted so that you're seeing all of his organs, some of his bones and muscles. I mean, I don't know who greenlit this, but it was a bad idea.

Oh, wow, and it looks like he, I'm now looking at it, I'm going to play the beginning of this. It looks like he's kind of inside of a body maybe, or at least is on a stage with a bunch of organs around him. And I don't mean the kind you have in church. This is swinging.

Better be Leon Redbone. Drop, kick your brain. When it falls to the floor.

This is the inside story of your whole body. The Body Symphony. And here to tell you about it is the one and only Slim Goodbody.

your body is incredible it's busy every minute amazing things are happening to keep you living in it your heart is beating lungs are breathing blood is circulating mind is thinking eyes are blinking skin is insulating billions of cells are working together all in harmony creating the music which i call the body symphony so that's intro tape right uh-huh uh that is incredible too late to make that the intro for today's show and then i have to uh explain it wow that is uh that's actually incredible i gotta say i actually that's that didn't leave me how i thought it was

going to leave me which is wanting more let me give you a little update on slim good body also known as the superhero of health also known as mr good body is andrew not was good is a recurring character created and performed by john burstein burstein created the character in 1975 he performs wearing a sometimes white sometimes peach colored unitard with various tissues organs and organ systems, painted in biologically accurate locations and sizes. Each costume costs $4,000.

What an interesting thing to have in the very first graph. I promised you John Burstein wrote this Wikipedia page. Yes, I think you are right. 100%. Which I thought there were rules against that. How did they let this one slip? Well, Slim Goodbody wrote it.

Or John Burstein wrote it, who is not Slim Goodbody, for the purposes of Wikipedia. This is a very interesting thing. I also assumed, oh yeah, okay, he had a television series called Inside Story on PBS. I was going to say this was very PBS-coded for me as a kid.

Oh, and Captain Kangaroo. Between 76 and 81, he appeared twice a week on Captain Kangaroo.

Yeah, he grew up in New York City, began working on songs and skits to entertain the children. Oh, he was working at a hospital in New York City and was teaching these kids about anatomy. It doesn't say that he was a physician, so I don't know what exactly his job at the hospital was teaching children. And he now lives in Maine. He has two sons, Devin and Luke. You know, I never met my biological father. Yeah. I heard it was some guy named Jim Lane, but I don't know.

We could have seen how it actually happens. It would have been a very interesting perspective on your formation.

I really wonder what the appetite for slim good body appearances is in 2025

well I wonder what the appetite for slim good body appearances is on the e-line like what if you just showed up well like on the bus like does he ever take the outfit out of the box when he's not on television or you know at a hospital and did he show up at the hospital with the gig in mind or did he just show up this way and nobody stopped him

It was pre-9-11

It really was He's just like, I'm here And they're all like, ah, okay The kid's wing is down there

There's a comedian named Fahim Anwar Who's very funny And I saw him doing some stand-up on TikTok the other day This is kind of an edgy joke But I'm going to go for it So kids, turn up the volume Kids and sensitive people, I guess, maybe This is his joke I don't want to claim credit for it, but he said he goes, he goes, sometimes I wonder what the security was that the 9-11 hijackers had to go through at the airport, you know, because it was pre-9-11. Like, it couldn't have been more pre-9-11 than that day. I don't know. There's something about that idea.

Oh, I thought he was – I'm sorry. I thought that he was going to – you were going to expand on that via him, but just generally speaking, like, yeah.

Yeah, he just wonders what the security was like for them because it was pre-9-11. The people who created the conditions that we think of as post-9-11 and that we all live with in so many different areas to this day, there was a moment that they were going through security at the airport and were, I'm sure, subjected to much less scrutiny because it was, by definition, pre-9-11.

Yeah, not to be too dark about it, but yeah, they really just coasted right through, didn't they? They probably did. Their last check-through went really smoothly for them.

They were the last group of people to get to go through the airport with minimal hassle because of the thing they were about to do. Back to Slim Goodbody, if we could for a minute. Andrew, when I put Slim Goodbody into the internet searching, one of the first things that also came up was Slim Goodbody cosplay. Oh, wow. Because I thought, well, I've got my next year's Halloween costume picked out. Oh, God. Oh, God. Here, what happens if I type in— Did I show up for Genevieve's party that way?

Let's see if she has one. That'll be great for me because that'll give me a really good excuse not to be there. I'm going to type in slim, good body, horny, and let's see what comes up here.

I've got an article from the Sioux City Journal. This is from 2006. I'm thinking Sioux City. Where would Sioux City? city b iowa maybe sioux city iowa is what i think i believe st luke's that's a hospital i assume uh gears up for slim good body famous children's entertainer will perform next week at the orpheum theater what year is this i'm sorry 2006 and it's it's our guy slim good body in 2006 by the way looks great keeping it like honestly looks better than he did in the 1980s uh much uh shorter haircut, very fit person. He's got the suit on. We now know the suit costs $4,000. He's keeping it transparent. That's good. He really is. For the past 30 years, I'm reading now just from the Sioux City Journal article, for the past 30 years, one man has been providing youngsters with insight on the inner workings of the human body. Hold on, let me fix that. For 30 years, one man has been terrifying

youngsters about the innards of their guts. Dramatizing children uninvited.

On Thursday, May 18th, and Friday, May 19th, Slim Goodbody will bring his Bodyology show to Siouxland. I guess that's what they call the greater Sioux City area. Thousands of local youngsters are expected to pack the Orpheum Theater during Slim Goodbody's live Bodyology shows, which are being sponsored by St. Luke's Regional Medical Center with cooperation from St. Luke's Children's Miracle Network. Tickets remain for this two-evening presentation and it can be purchased at your local Hy-Vee food stores.

Oh, good.

Did you have Hy-Vee in Ohio when you were growing up?

No, this is the first I'm hearing of it, but I love it. Like, I feel like I can picture it immediately. It might be wrong.

You know, my first, the first that I ever heard of Hy-Vee was related to the football player, Kurt Warner, because the story on him was he played college football. He was not able to get any interest in the pros, and he was working at Hy-Vee post-college.

Oh, this is H-Y-V-E-E. I think I was picturing it wrong. I thought this was going to be like a larger corner store kind of thing, but it looks like this is a full-on grocery store.

Yes. Okay. And he was stocking shelves at Hy-Vee, famously, and I think there was even some story that he used to like. This sounds pretty apocryphal, as I'm saying it out loud, but he would like throw paper towels down the aisles. I don't think he needed to practice with rolls of paper towels. I bet he still had access to an actual football, even though he wasn't in the pros. And then, of course, he went on and he managed to get a contract to play in the Arena League, and then he was the all-time leading quarterback of the Arena League, and then he got a shot to play for the Rams, and then he led the greatest show on turf.

It looks like Peyton Manning went to a Hy-Vee to talk to Kurt Warner about his Hy-Vee times. Oh my gosh, you know what? This was just posted on the Omaha Productions YouTube page only three weeks ago, Luke. Wow. I thought I was finding some in the archival gym. Yeah. No, the name of it is Peyton Manning meets the grocery store clerk who became a Hall of Famer. And it begins with them in the parking lot walking towards a Hy-Vee. We were just singing the praises of Omaha Productions the other day. I had to say, I'm not somebody. Chad Powers. Yes. And I'm not somebody who follows it closely or even probably watches most of the content. But man, when they do things, they tend to do them right, don't they? This is such a good idea. It looks like they both put on clerk's outfits, and they're helping out around the grocery store while he interviews him. This is good stuff.

Yeah. So they're just producing that. I wonder if that—I guess that's just for them, because they're on that channel. The Manning brothers are on that channel where they watch Monday Night Football and talk about it, but it's not the main feed. Maybe it was for that, I guess, because they're not—

No, I think this is just a 10-minute short that they did. Oh, I mean, maybe they inserted it in there. It doesn't seem like something else.

Because I'm just wondering what the monetized element of it is. You know what I mean? Like, I wonder why it was created.

Yeah, I mean, I just think that they have their, you know, it's like podcasts, you know, on YouTube. I just think that they just are. Oh, and guess what they're showing at the end? Him taking a roll of paper towels. Yeah, both of them throwing paper towels.

I swear that was part of the story. There's something about him throwing paper towels that's in the origin myth, which, again, is one of those things. If you think about it, it's like Kurt Warner still had a football at home. It's like the story of a kid in Africa who has to make their own basketball because they don't have access to one, and then they become a great player. It's like Kurt Warner still had footballs when he was working at Hy-Vee.

But I could totally see anybody, even if you don't go on to be a Hall of Fame quarterback, if you're of a certain age, maybe, no, you don't have to be of a certain age. i would say even as a grown-ass adult if you're in a store around rolls of paper towels a lot at some point you're going to pick up a roll of paper towels and throw it like a football you have do you know that i think of you every time i use a paper towel andrew uh because of my weird thing about tearing them in half or something not even that because you have said

on the show a few times just casually how you grew up in a household where you used a lot of paper towels yeah a lot towel yeah do we go with do we call it paper I don't know.

towels or paper towel papers towel obviously yes um but uh and and i now i didn't grow up in a household like that because my parents were cheap um but now i do live in a household like that because i am profligate and so i do use a fair amount of paper towels for things because i i don't want to always use a towel like an actual towel and then have to wash it so and because i didn't grow up using paper towels it feels fancy it feels it feels both kind of fancy and wasteful to me um but it's also very effective there's just a lot of stuff that i i want to clean up and i don't want to again have to then wash a towel afterwards so it's a very you know it's a very a practical thing but every time i rip like three sheets of the paper towel off of there to go get something i think of you saying i grew up in a household where we used paper towels for everything and i i sort of low-key judge myself based on your judgment sort of of yourself

but it doesn't stop me yeah and and i kind of slipped like i'm not somebody especially when it comes to cleaning habits i'm not somebody who's always looking to do the most environmentally friendly thing and i'm not saying that i'm somebody who's like just taking aerosol cans and spraying them into the air just because i like the way it's one in each hand just spinning in a circle around in my mr trying to lay it down yes exactly but um you know i try to be somewhat thoughtful but i'm not somebody who takes it certainly to any kind of extreme and honestly it wasn't even until later in life that i started thinking about these things more and of course talking about cleaning with hannah on the spotless podcast but like now i'm just you know i don't think a big decision was made in my life i think over time i've just bought more and more kitchen towels and because like our little laundry area is right off the kitchen i am just much more in the habit of like kind of you take a clean towel out you use it as a to dry dishes for a while and you try to keep it separate from the counters or whatever but eventually it's out long enough and it kind of becomes just the counter towel it just sort of eventually evolves in the day or two that it's in the kitchen right and then by the end maybe you're done cooking something and you're using that towel and you're wiping up the counter i'll still usually by the very end of cleanup at the end of a night of cooking i'll still probably use one paper towel and zap the counter with some counter spray. But I just use towels so much more now, and I just have so many, and I'm just kind of constantly washing them and using them and washing them and using them and washing them. Having said that, my folks have not evolved much. I was just home. You were just in Ohio. Yeah, and I was staying with my parents. And I don't even say this judgmentally. I really don't, although I guess the listeners can feel free to. Although, keep those opinions to yourself. I will not be receiving emails where you complain about my parents habits but in my you're not accepting those emails i'm not accepting those emails uh you keep my parents habits out of your mouth i uh but i use my uh father's bathroom downstairs like they set up a little room for me in my dad's office i sleep down there and then he's got his own bathroom that i use and it's nice like his whole basement was like an unfinished basement when they moved in and i i really envious of the fact that they just basically designed an entire basement down there and put in all the walls i mean the stuff that you're doing as well i've just never done that before just been like okay this is an empty space what are my needs and let me build for that and then you know they did this 15 years ago or more maybe uh but it's just i don't know i give them a lot of credit for having the wherewithal to do that and to come up with it and how there are so many things in this house that i live in that could use some pretty major upgrades but i just look at them and say well someday and then i never do it so all of that is to say it's kind of cool my dad's got a bathroom that was designed by him for him and um part of that is he's got a little he's got like a paper towel dispenser down there that sits on his sink counter and it's like the kind it's almost like a tissue box it's like a plastic thing i i can't i

think it's i think the brand might be torque does that ring a bell have you ever seen those in a bathroom like t-o-r-r-k it doesn't matter but it sits on the counter and you pull paper towels up out of it and like i just can't get i think he just uses that to like you know dry his hands wipe down the sink and that's the main thing and i just can't get into that like i always find like

a oh yeah this is this is uh this is a nice uh are you looking at the tabletop ones looking at a torque express tabletop towel dispenser okay yeah that's probably it i don't have eyes on it

right now but uh yeah it kind of you know kind of pulls out like a like a kleenex box out the top

or whatever and it's nice and he's got a roll for people trying to picture this yeah and so it

really works for him but like i just can't get in the habit of using a paper towel every time to dry my hands now you know so i always have like some sort of a you know whatever a hand towel in there that i'm using but also one day i went into his little cupboard in the bathroom and i took i saw that he had a little stack of paper cups that i needed you know you can totally picture a little bathroom size paper cup not the kind that's coated in wax just paper

And I took it out and I took my little, I took a pill that morning and then I took the little cup and I didn't even think about what I was doing. I just set it on the counter. Like, you know, my folks keep everything very, very, very clean and neat. And so, you know, when I'm in there, I'm conscientious of that too. And I'm a generally neat person. so I take the little cup and I set it on the counter next to my, is it Dopp Kit? Is that what you call it? Dopp Kit, Dopp Kit and I think I used it maybe two days in a row and then on day three my dad had taken a blue pen and written in his just perfect handwriting on the tiny paper cup you know you can use a new one every day or something like that and he's big on leaving notes which is apparently also where I got that habit

I was going to say that is such an insight that feels like something you would do just in a funny way just being kind of like like that is such an insight into your personality to me in a good way but just like because like you'll just do funny little things or like the kind of jokes that you like to play or the way that you sort of just the way you are in the world that to me makes so much sense that

that was his response yeah you know the the notes around the house I found very interesting and then also my dad described this one thing he does that I didn't know he he he did it and it blew my mind how close it is to something that I do around my house which is um he I think it's once a week or maybe once a month a family member comes over and uh does a little kind of house cleaning for them a little bit of housekeeping a little bit of house cleaning and he pays them I I'm a I assume with a check that he puts in an envelope. And I happened to see the envelope sitting there. I didn't know what it was at the time. I thought it was a birthday card or something because her name was written in these kind of big block letters somewhat artfully, almost mimicking kind of classic-looking graffiti or something like that. And then there was like a sticker on it or something. And later on, I don't know why it came up, but my dad told me, oh, yeah, I do this thing when I'm leaving every week or every month when I give them the check. I put it in an envelope, and I always design their name differently. He said, I've already got the next. He's like, I got next week's done. I turned one of the letters in her name into a turkey or something for Thanksgiving. And every time, he tries to think of some creative way to write their name on the envelope. This is almost literally what I do or at least used to do with the note that I leave on the coffee maker every morning for Genevieve. I have a little sticky note. and sometimes I don't make the coffee and so it can kind of get confusing so I always put a note on there if the coffee is ready sometimes I just take the note and I just write ready and I put it on there sometimes, but it used to be much more elaborate, I would draw a coffee cup and then maybe the steam coming off of the coffee cup would spell the words ready like a ghost in a cartoon or something I at one point got so elaborate that I was finding coffee related memes online and printing them out in my printer and like just trying to think how can I make Genevieve smile every morning when she goes to take her first cup of coffee? And then finding out that my dad...

That's a man who hasn't been divorced twice.

Yes. Well, you know, I don't know that she does smile every morning. That was just my attempt at it. But, you know, who am I truly doing this for? But hearing my dad say, oh, yeah, every time I make one of these envelopes, I try to think of some creative way to do it. I'm like, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. I love it. I didn't even know that you do that. This is definitely, I believe, nature, not nurture in this case.

Right. Did he, well, do you remember as a kid him sort of drawing, you know, doodling and drawing things? So that was, so maybe it was kind of a 50-50, but certainly in your adult life you weren't ever thinking, I'm being Bob Walsh right now.

Yeah, I guess maybe that's what I mean. You're right. Maybe there's some nature in there, or some nurture in there too, because yeah, well, my dad has more of an artistic flair than me. Like he can draw things pretty well. He even took drawing classes at one point, and so I've always envied that about him. and he's funny so he'll he can draw pretty goofy things pretty well um so i don't really have that i can't draw i can draw i can barely draw a mug of coffee right it's like three circles and a couple of lines but um so so i kind of don't have that i i think i've told you before on the show this note that he left at my lunch bag that i just thought was so funny i mean i remember it you know 30 some years later he had packed my lunch in a brown paper bag one day when i was in high school and apparently as a treat just took some M&Ms and put them in like a little mini Ziploc bag and then he wrote in his again just meticulous little handwriting and it's not even really handwriting it's like printing right he just wrote only one of these M&Ms fell on the floor don't eat that one don't eat that one it was such a good joke and I again that was a note that was left in my lunch bag years and years ago and I still remember it so yeah he's always been doing that kind of thing. But hearing him describe that envelope and being like, oh, yeah, so this is this is what I do to the coffee maker.

I come by it honestly. The only thing, it's so sad in comparison to those things you've described, because I'm a very non-artistic person. I can't draw anything except for Far Gild.

And even that's what the other got problems. Remember our big Far Gild error, where our show pick for weeks was some drawing

that you would draw with a fake Garfield. But the only thing that I have that's kind of a visual, Kind of signature if you will And I didn't even realize that I was Doing it until Addie Pointed it out maybe in her teenage years or her Twenties is anytime I give anyone A card You know I always Do this little line under their name And then two Little lines through it so like This is I'm just writing on this piece of paper Imagine Imagine this is a card that I'm giving

To Addie It's a little bit hard to see oh okay yeah Okay, so you got a – it's a curvy line underneath it with a couple of short lines.

With two little slashes through it. I don't even know – I don't know where that came from, but I have been doing it for, you know, 30 years of her life or whatever. And she said at some point, like, oh, yeah, you always know – we always know it's a card from you because you have that thing under it.

Oh, yeah. It does remind me of something. And I didn't even realize I was doing it consciously. I feel like seeing that doesn't necessarily seem like a style that I would associate with you, although I don't really associate. I know. It's not. Yeah, but you saw that as a young person. Like your mom put that on a card or something. You saw it, and you're like, well, that's how you write cards. Yeah, yeah. Did your mom not write cards?

No, she does. She does. She writes cards. What you heard there, Andrew, in the span, I don't know how long they think that the Big Bang took as far as the initial event. It probably was like a one millionth of a second, but so much happened. So much just happened in that half of a second that you heard me. Here was the journey. I was going to say something like, it probably wasn't my mom because my mom's not really a drawer. but then i also realized my mom has really re-engaged with the content here on tbtl and is hearing everything when i was on the phone with my parents this came up yesterday on the show with jeff hiller i apologize everyone to everyone but andrew this is all new to andrew people but um i don't know if you remember on the show a week or two ago i was we were talking about um having the house cleaned sometimes and how like sometimes i won't do it if my parents are coming over because i know things will just kind of get a little sort of uh you know out of whack again just because of having house guests and everything and i said something about my parents it seems like they move every single thing in my house by one inch oh i do remember you talking about that yeah and then you even said i think mom more than dad i think my mom more than my dad but you know both of them a little bit and so i'm on the phone with them on like saturday and they're like on speakerphone they're driving so i'm talking to both of them my mom says something like they were they were coming over that week last weekend and my mom's been like yeah we'll try not to move everything by one inch i was like oh my this is a very limiting yeah this is very limiting for me on the show knowing that my mom is listening and by the way like an hour into the show i think or maybe a half hour pretty far into it like you know that's gonna be uh that's that's it's gonna really so what you heard me there doing was running all these scenarios and trying to not say a thing that would in some because i love my parents so much i love my mom so much but i also love to give my mom grief and i never know until i hear weeks later from my mom if the grief i was giving her on the show is the kind of stuff that she's like thinks is funny or if it kind of hurt her feelings a little bit right and did you think that that hurt her no i don't think the one inch thing really hurt her feelings it did hurt her feelings on the monday show so uh another one that I'm guessing you missed, but it was John and I, and it took four tries for me to get the show going because I kept messing things up. And I was messing up my audio and things like that. So finally, we're actually going, we're rolling, it's happening, we're into the show. I'm doing my little rap at the top, and my parents just bust into the Madrona Hill studio. I caught wind of this. To say goodbye to me, even though I'd already said goodbye to them. And it was really the frustration that I'd already messed up the top of the show three previous times, but I just basically yelled at them. I was like, Mom, I'm trying to do the show! I think that might have

gotten posted maybe to social media

because I heard that. People have been sending people, more than one person pulled that as a drop. More than one person learned how to pull a drop and then did so and sent it to me. I think I've got like four or five in my inbox of people who pulled that as a drop and sent it to me.

Shades of John Clayton?

That's a third reference The references that John and I were discussing Were in the movie Old School Will Ferrell's character yells mom The meatloaf and then I was bringing up Rupert Pupkin from King of Comedy So Robert De Niro when he's in His kind of basement studio His character you know is obsessed with being on

talk shows and he's built like a fake talk show set in his basement and he's doing this talk show and then his mom is yelling down the stairs to him and he's yelling back at his mother. And you're right. That's a third reference. Yeah, actually I have to

Hey mom! The meatloaf! We want it now! The meatloaf! Did you already play that yesterday or Monday? I played it on Monday's show. Okay, well there you go again. You missed a lot the last two days buddy. I didn't know you had that drop.

Oh, the sweet sounds of the donor music. How we've missed it around here.

I'm worried about something, Luke. What are you worried about? Because this is the part of the show, of course, where we thank all the people who have donated to TBTL during the last TBTL-a-thon and throughout the years to keep this show going. And what did I do on my first day back after a small break? I played a different podcast. A few small breaks. I played a different podcast called After These Messages. Yes, you did. That is a wonderful parody podcast where you can hear fake commercials. And what if some of these donors decide to give this money to the other Jason Newman instead?

To try to get that thing back up and running.

To get it back up and running. and to also maybe support, you know, in arrears, the donations that they didn't give back in 2015. Well, it depends on how interested they are in dog circumcision comedy. Right. And do we have numbers on that, the overlap of our audience being interested in that particular topic? Can we ask John to look at that and maybe do a cross-reference with Slim Goodbody as well and just see what we come up with?

Yeah, let's put that on the agenda for our next TBTV session. Sounds good. We are thanking donors, and we are thanking the last couple of days I've been playing the Home Depot music because I didn't have this song, but now we do. And we've also got Molly Huff's name on the list in Wheaton, Illinois. Thank you, Molly. Appreciate you, Molly. Also, Megan Moore, who's in Lake Forest Park, Washington, the photography district.

Oh, that's right. That's where I got my camera, which I did take with me over the weekend. Took some photos. Did you take any pictures? I did, nothing super remarkable, but we did see a dumpster full of old pumpkins, like old jack-o'-lanterns, because my dad takes his recycling, my dad is very, I mean, you want to talk about apples, trees, etc., falling, my dad is obsessed, we don't have time, and again, I'm not even saying that judgmental, I mean, it's just like what basically happens is he collects recycling in his garage and he even laughed at himself. He separates out the cans and the cardboard in two little in different boxes. I accidentally put the cardboard in the wrong box. I saw within a half hour he had moved it. And then I said, did you move the cardboard? I put that in there so carefully. I thought I was like abiding by like the rules. He's like, he's like, I did. I took it out. I put it in the other box. And, you know, it doesn't matter when I take it to the place where we drop it off. It all goes into the same dumpster anyway And he's laughing at himself He's like I don't know why I do it I just do it I separate it and then it all goes into the same place

Because I was going to say good for him Because that's probably making life a lot easier On the folks at the recycling center Because they don't have to then Separate everything out But no in fact it all goes into the same thing

But it's like It's like this big police station Parking lot in the suburbs In the west side suburbs and so there's like some recycling station there and I guess maybe because of the holiday, the recent Halloween holiday they put a special huge dumpster I guess normal sized dumpster but you know that's pretty big just to collect all of the remnants of people's jack-o'-lanterns so I thought that was kind of an interesting photo dumpster just overflowing with jack-o'-lanterns with their grimaces you know still plastered on their faces as they sink into themselves Did you have to like tell your dad hey hold

on i gotta go take a picture of this no my dad told me to get out of the car and take a picture of a true story uh we also want to say thanks to another megan this is megan coughlin in seattle washington i wonder if megan moore and megan coughlin know each other maybe i like that there's

a little bit of difference because they are both you know kind of in the general seattle area they knew one of them had to put an h in their name and one of them didn't to keep them apart just to

Keep it easy for everyone to follow. Thanks also to Byron Orm in Shelton, Washington. And you have some roots in Shelton, right? I sure do. I sure do. My sister Hannah and her fam are down there in the greater Shelton area. Byron, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Jenny Brown is in Somerville. Wait. Somerville, Massachusetts. Oh, Somerville. It's one of those ones. I've got to say Somerville. Well, that's not a real pronunciation thing. You're saying it right to say Somerville. That's just kind of how people who live there, some of the folks who live there, kind of describe it.

Some of them in Somerville say Somerville.

Some of them. Some of them say Somerville. Exactly. But, yeah, I love Somerville. I get hungry just thinking about Somerville, of all the great places to eat there.

Really? Is it kind of known for its, like, cafes and restaurants and things?

I don't know if it's known for that. It's probably just like my, you know, I'm a young adult there, and so I sort of feel like a certain amount of freedom, and I'm exploring the world. And, of course, I live in New Hampshire at the time, but I'm visiting Genevieve in Somerville where she lived at the time. And, like, there was – oh, you know, I've talked about this bar that is famous for its burgers, and I'm blanking on the name of it now. With every passing year, I just forget more and more. But, yeah, I'm thinking about this burger joint. I'm thinking about this – is it Anna's Taqueria that's there where it gets these great burritos? Do you know my first experience with – oh, geez. What's wrong? Strong food? No, I use it literally every day. Sriracha. My first experience with sriracha was not putting it on Asian food, but actually putting it on these burritos that we would get in. I think it was called Anna's, but we'd bring them back to Genevieve's house, and they just had what they called the hot, I think they called it. And it was before sriracha was on basically every table in America, and I would put that on each bite of my burrito. So good.

do you know that those hot sauces are very associated with the kind of i guess you could say region or maybe ethnic background uh for me so like i would obviously if i was eating a burrito or something like that i would throw some tapatio on there i would throw some cholula on there it would feel somehow it would feel like a sin to put sriracha on it because that's not

burrito country i honestly don't as i was saying that i was wondering i don't know maybe people are kind of recoiling about that because that is a different kind of, you know, it's a chili, it's like a chili hot, which is a different kind of flavor that you don't associate with burritos. I don't know if I would still like it, but at the time I'd love it. I bet you it would be yummy.

I'm mostly marveling at how weirdly kind of brittle I am around what hot sauce goes on what food product. I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure it's probably very tasty, but that'd be like, oh, sriracha on a burrito. I'm all out of sorts.

Well, anyway, I'm just glad that, you know, when people think about the Boston area, they think of Mexican food. So I'm just really glad that I was able to, like, really shout out Somerville for Anna's career.

Shout out to Jenny Brown out there in Somerville. Shout out also to Christine and Matt Woodward in Renton, Washington. Hey, hey, go Seahawks. Down there. Wait, is that right? I was going to say, down there by the VMAC. Yeah. I mean, Andrew, I've got to tell you, I know that your relationship with pro football has become a little bit less intense, a little bit less kind of moment-to-moment, but this might be the year to re-engage with them, their Seahawks. Oh, I know. I was able to watch. I mean, it's wild.

I sort of like on mute while my dad was watching the time-shifted Browns game, which, boy, Browns-Jets raced to the bottom. My God. My God. Yeah, that's... I did feel bad about that one. Can I just say, like, being...

They should be allowed to cancel that game. Being, what's that? Just take it off. They should be allowed to cancel that game before it happens. Yeah, just like... For everybody involved.

Or just like it should cancel itself out like sine waves, right? Like, it's just like... Yes.

It's erasing itself as it's happening because the quality of play is so low.

And it really was. I hadn't watched a Browns game in so long. And again, and I'm not even saying this to be mean to the Browns or the Jets, But I think one of them went into the game with one win. The other team went in with two wins, maybe. And now I think I think maybe it's like now they both are two win teams. But like I was rooting for the Browns. I mean, generally speaking. And, you know, I miss rooting for the Browns. I will say that was one thing about being back in the Cleveland area. You know, I stopped I stopped watching and kind of caring about the Browns really out of, you know, moral moral. Yeah. And again, not I hopefully not in a judgy way. and I try not to judge the lifelong Browns fans who stuck with the team after the team ownership did some pretty, I think, rough stuff as far as personnel is concerned. But it was such a part of my life for so long. And also, I just sort of like the design. I like seeing Browns sweaters and sweatshirts. I was at the airport coming and going, and I stopped and I looked at all the Browns stuff. I wanted to buy Browns stuff, Luke. Does that make sense to you? Like, I saw it, and I'm drawn to it still, and it kind of bummed me out to think about kind of where I am with that team and kind of, you know, the whole thing in general.

Do you think when Deshaun Watson is—I'm shocked he's still on the team.

Well, I mean, he's being paid. I don't think he shows up anywhere, does he?

I guess he's pupped right now. He's on the physically unable to perform list, but he is listed as a Cleveland Brown still, which is just wild to me. I mean, because he had all that guaranteed money. But I guess my question is, if he if and when he finally is no longer part of the team, could you see a way back to caring about the.

Cleveland Browns for you you know I think it would just have to be like I think it'll just take a long time but I mean first of all and also this started with you sort of saying that like my relationship to football has changed a lot and honestly it gives me a lot more time to do other things in my life so it's like I'm not like excited to take up more I will say this though about the Seahawks and I don't even mind if I sort of come off as a little bit of a bandwagoner I haven't been living and dying by the outcomes of football games for a couple of seasons now And with the big question mark over the Seahawks of the season, it's like, oh, it could be interesting, could be a disaster. We'll see. But seeing them actually be a really good team and just absolutely dominate the last two games. This next game that they'll be playing this Sunday, it's the first time all season where I'm like, oh, man, this is a big one. Because this one will be a really big challenge for them, I think, right? Playing the Rams in an important game in the same division. And just this morning, I took out my phone. And I'm like, wait, when is that game on Sunday? Any chance I can see it? It's happening. And it turns out I cannot. I'm volunteering that day. And I was like, oh, man. And not even like I want to see this game because they're going to pummel their opponent. We had that the last two games. It's because this is a challenging game. And I want to be locked. This is the first game where I'm really like, shit, I wish I could really be locked into this game on Sunday.

I am having the same experience, which is like I've got it circled. and I'm like it's not quite you know Mariners in the ALCS but it's like oh man that Sunday I'm either going to feel really good or really bad yeah and previous to this it's been just kind of like you know we're going to go out there we'll hopefully win some games I'm not it's not the Legion of Boom era I didn't have Super Bowl sort of expectations it was just kind of like yeah we're playing football games and hopefully we win enough we go to the playoffs we're not going to win all of them now it's like oh we beat the Rams and we make a very strong case for being literally the best team in the nfc it is insane by the way how quickly the tiktok algorithm picked up andrew what i wanted to see which was people both some of them famous sports analysts a lot of them not just random dudes saying the seahawks are good it's almost all the content i get now it's just someone it's just a guy and there's like a green screen behind like you know he's at his house and behind him is just some kind of like clip of the Seahawks or whatever and he's just going like I think right now Mike McDonald might be coach of the year it's just like anything I don't even know how the algorithm understands that they're saying positive things about the Seahawks because they're just talking and they're not all like Seahawks partisans they're not like those little hyper localized sports podcasts that are just about the Seahawks you know what I mean they're like somebody from like a totally like a guy's got a Detroit jersey on or something you know what I mean he's like I just really think you I'm I'm the Seahawks are a problem you know Jackson Smith and Jigba is a problem like the algorithm knows that that's what I want to hear people say but they haven't they haven't like there's not a hashtag hashtag Seahawks good right so how is it how's the algorithm figure out that they're saying things about the Seahawks being good that I understand that they can figure out that I want to hear that the Seahawks are good because I'm a fan but how do they figure out that the people are saying is it that the all of the audio is being transcribed into text and it's analyzing positive comments about the seattle seahawks football team or collecting information about

well who are the people who watch this and just like it's just an absolute universe brain of information and lines connecting which losers or which users watch what content and yeah i mean just and to me it's like oh yeah it makes sense seahawks content you know algorithm understanding that i'm into this band or i'm into this sports team or i'm just even into this sport or whatever but it's specifically no i want to hear this opinion that's it it's down to the sport you

know what it doesn't give me when the seahawks lose it doesn't give me a bunch of people saying the seahawks are overrated right like i might get the occasional colin cowherd saying some shit but like it knows that i want it knows the opinion that i want to hear which is by the way i mean And this is exactly what's wrong with America because Facebook also knows the opinion you want to hear.

Exactly.

But it's like, you know, if you looked at it, if you if you looked at it just on the surface, you would say a football team is being discussed or a political issue is being discussed. But somehow it's figured out what the opinion of that football team or opinion of that political issue. And then it wants to deliver us that.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say, too. Good thing it's, you know, a good thing this isn't applied to other important things in life where we're just like just we only get what reinforces our beliefs. Hello and welcome to Top Story.

The airports, of course, are still, certain airports are pretty messed up because of the government shutdown, etc. What was your travel experience like, Andrew?

It was anxious-making because of all the uncertainty of going on with all the talk of restricting flights because that didn't start until literally the day after I flew to Cleveland. So there was no concern about me getting out, but there were concerns about me getting back.

It was a real hotel Cleve-a-fornia.

Well, that looks like we got a show title. good luck spelling that yeah i know do we use hashtags or do we use the dash marks um so uh the the i was really anxious about it this was not a trip that i could you know put off because we're having a mini service for my mom who passed away recently as well and so i was like well i just gotta hope for the best and sorry luke this isn't exactly your question but let me just tell you about my experience a little bit here it used to be really really difficult to fly from seattle to Cleveland, I think you even experienced this once when you were doing some stories on the east side of Cleveland and you used to have to, it was always an indirect flight or a non-direct flight and you would always get bounced somewhere pretty far away, you know what I mean? It wasn't like sometimes you'd stop in Chicago on the way to Cleveland, which makes sense, but often you'd have to go all the way to the east coast, like literally a Carolina, and then you know, maybe, I don't know where the big airports are there, and then fly back to Cleveland or down to Houston or Dallas and then up to Cleveland. It was really rough. And I think about a year or two ago, Alaska Airlines introduced a flight a day that is a direct flight from Seattle to Cleveland. And I don't fly enough to pay attention to this kind of thing, but it's sort of interesting. My dad mentioned to me before I headed out, he's like, hey, I looked at your itinerary. Isn't it interesting that both your flight coming and going has the same flight number? And I'm like, oh, yeah, maybe it's a coincidence. But then later on, I realized, oh, no, they have one flight to seattle and one flight to cleveland you know alaska airlines does and it's always flight 216 because that's the cleveland area code i figured out so it's very interesting to sort of uh like make that connection because i knew exactly what flights to watch while i was in cleveland and so every day i'd say what's going on with those 216 flights did it make it out from seattle to cleveland and did it make it back and i just would every day i'd wake up and watch that. And I ended up flying back a day early because I was supposed to get in super late last night. But one day I just got so anxious because the news just was unrelenting and like, okay, on Friday they cut back on some flights, but on Saturday they cut back on more and it's continuing to grow. And I just, my parents were leaving on a trip after I was leaving. So like, I was just like, I just don't want to be stuck in Cleveland. I was immediately thinking like well if everything really shuts down i was you know sort of thinking will i rent a car and just like tell you i'm gonna buy a microphone i had my laptop and maybe we could just do the show from me being on the road for the rest of the week i was making contingency plans but then i ended up um just kind of booking the 216 flight a day early and there were some delays but i don't think that they were out of the ordinary and i'll say that like very easy getting through the tsa lines um seattle airport is still under a lot of construction so it's still pretty chaotic there

but i don't think it had anything to do with workers or federal workers and the cleveland airport heading out on whatever night that was around eight o'clock at night it was dead it felt like being in a school when the school isn't in session and so i was just i just personally tried to be very nice to all the tsa people i didn't give any stamping or guff vibes you know when they made me like take out my the chapstick that I accidentally left in my pocket and they sort of acted like I could be potentially trying to blow up an airplane with a stick of chapstick I was just like thanks for being here I didn't give anybody any grief you know I even because I was

uh flying back from New York and it was it was getting to be that uh that people were starting to like wonder about when the airline when the airport situation was going to get really bad And I did realize that there were people probably, did we know, is the TSA getting paid or not?

I mean, I guess the idea is they will be paid, they'll get back pay for the days they worked.

Okay, but so we know that they, because it was a little confusing to me. I know that the air traffic controllers were not getting paid, would eventually maybe get paid back. I don't know what budget TSA is on.

That's a good point, Luke. I'm sorry, I've been assuming that the TSA and air traffic controllers are in the same situation, but I actually can't confirm that I could be wrong.

But it did cause me to feel fondly towards the TSA people as I was walking through JFK on whatever day that was. And that's not, that's not, I'm not, I don't have animosity towards the TSA people, but I would just say I'm indifferent generally. And this was a time where I didn't quite go full.

thank you for your service, but the thought occurred to me, which on a normal day, it would never occur to me. But, like, anybody who was out there working and, you know, not getting paid, thank you for doing that so that the rest of us could continue to have something resembling a normal life. Yeah, and by the way,

I have confirmed that TSA agents continue working without pay as government shutdown drags on. That was just from six hours ago. You should have said, thank you for your service. I didn't say thank you for your service, but I did say to several of them, thank you for being here, and they were like, yep. I mean, some of them didn't really respond. Some of them said, oh, of course, and whatever. And I'll say they were super, super friendly in Cleveland as well, flying out. There were literally two people in front of me in the TSA line. And again, I'm not pre-check or anything like that. Two people in front of me. I've never just skipped through an airport so easily as my trip out. And there were some delays. I still didn't get home until about one in the morning the other day. So I was kind of glad not to have to work the next day but i was very happy to get out well some of us had to work yeah i know because you had to pick up my slack can we talk about that for a second because i did fly out that was a joke by the way no i know but i did i mean luke i really struggled with something when i when i rearranged my flight to fly out a night early i was going going to tell you immediately but then i was like but there's still uncertainty like if what if my new flight is canceled also there was a big supposedly a big snowstorm coming to cleveland which added another level of insecurity as far as the new flight out and i was and already i knew i wasn't even scheduled to land until i think 11 30 no no i was scheduled to land at 10 30 at night it ended up being 11 30 at night and so i was like well if i can work on tuesday i should let luke know but also i don't know exactly what the situation is going to be and i it was really one of those moments where i was like he's known for weeks that this is on the calendar he's got a plan it's easier to not give the opportunity to possibly do the show but maybe not do the show and just introduce a lot more you know uncertainty into your life so i hope that you respect my decision on that and that you don't feel like i said set you up to do extra no it actually you

know what it worked out it worked out just fine because um i was able to interview that guy jeff hiller over the weekend and so i was actually very excited to play that episode for folks because i we have a lot of somebody somewhere fans out there so no it was no it was no big deal at all and again we we are trying to run a quasi-professional operation where it should somehow exist that people can take days off yeah when needed you know so it's like no i i think that was totally the right call um but anyway to answer your question it was it was

scary to fly because i was concerned that things would be canceled but honestly all of my flights And the flight back – well, I'll say this, Luke. I will say this. I'm a popular boy on Reddit because there's a subreddit called expectation versus reality. And you can – it's often people will buy a cake and they'll say, look at what this cake was advertised as and then look at what they ended up giving me. And so sometimes it's bad, but sometimes it's good. Sometimes people are like, look at this. The expectation was this. And look what the reality was. It totally paid off. So it's a fun subreddit where people can weigh in. Well, I took a screen cap of that annoying-ass Alaska Airlines commercial. And I love Alaska, by the way. I'm brand loyal to them. I don't like to fly any other airlines. Having said that, all the airlines basically suck. And they had this commercial that they were airing, I want to say maybe last fall, where you can upgrade your seat for some extra leg room. And they show this guy who looks pretty tall because his head is pretty much above the seat rest. But they show him in slow motion, like crossing his legs in an airplane seat as if there's all this extra leg room. And I paid for that upgrade because I have not just long legs, but specifically, I guess, long femurs. There's something about my legs that are just like they don't fit in airplane seats all that well. I bought the extra leg room. The only advantage was the seat wasn't physically jamming into my knees. There was maybe an inch, maybe a half an inch between my knee and the back of the seat. And if the person in front of me had wanted to put their seat back, I would have been in a lot of trouble. Luckily, the flight was very empty, so I actually moved across the aisle and had a whole aisle to myself. The flight from Cleveland to Seattle was so empty. How empty was it? What's that? How empty was it? Everybody was treating the seats like they were park benches that they could sleep on. It was bananas, and I wonder if all of the fear of canceled flights got people just to cancel plans to travel. Or a lot of people aren't trying to get from Cleveland to Seattle, I guess.

Dulles Airport had an issue recently, which is, have you flown in or out of Dulles in D.C.? If so, it's been a really, really long time. There are two airports in D.C. There's Reagan National. which is right there in D.C. and the one that I always try to fly into if I can because it's very close to everything in Washington, D.C. Then there's Dulles, which is out in Virginia. I think it might be in Vienna, Virginia, technically. It's further away from everything. I think it's a bigger airport. They have had forever these things that are— they call them people movers. This gets back to that whole thing about how people mover seems to be a very general term, Andrew. It could be the standstill, or it could be the walkway that you get on that's moving. The moving sidewalk or a shuttle That could be a shuttle or these things Google Dulles people mover, Andrew They're these, like, basically These giant shuttle buses that have these crazy Like, venting off the top of them That is how you get from one terminal to another at Dulles Because they did not build underground walkways Or sky bridges or whatever So you'll just be walking and then you'll be trying to get to your gate And then you'll just have to get on this thing that you like walk into it's almost like something out of star wars or something and then you get on it and then it's drives you over to your place well they had an accident recently uh where some people were injured on this they sometimes break down they run late it's a it's seen as a kind of a um i mean some people love it because it's unique to dullest but a lot of people find it very annoying and in fact some new trump appointee who i think is going to be maybe in charge of dullest or whatever is talking about getting rid of it so i was reading this new york times article about getting rid of these people movers. And it linked in the article to this industrial film from 1962, Dulles International Airport, D.C.'s new airport. And they had linked to the part where the people movers are being described. Let me just play you the way that the people movers were described in 1962 as Dulles was rolling. Let me turn the volume down a little bit and then play it for you.

Dulles International is a radically new concept in airport terminals. The mobile lounge, a monster on wheels, the largest passenger-carrying vehicle on rubber tires, is an essential part of that new concept, applied only here today. But tomorrow, it might become an integral part of every modern jet-age airport.

Dulles International is a radically new concept uh listener it did not i believe i feel like i mean i've been to other airports that use like buses and stuff but this particular thing i've uh i've never seen it uh anywhere else in the world i think it was pretty specific to uh to dulles this is though i think great this is the beginning of this video andrew uh this movie if you will where they're just talking about like airports basically this is the this is the first audio there's a bunch of like film of things but there's There's just music and stuff. This is the first talking on this video from Dulles International Airport in 1962.

The story of an airport in the making is a long and painful one. This roaring, space-hungry necessity of our hurrying time is pitiless in its demands. Jeez. Everything else must fall before an airport can arise. 580 demolished buildings. 1,200 acres of uprooted woods. 11,500,000 yards of excavated earth dissolved into 31,000 feet of concrete runways.

It's like the world's shakiest airplane footage.

I'm watching along. I'm loving this. This is so up my alley.

They clearly did not have any kind of stabilizers for cameras at the time. It's so bad. But, I mean, how great is this, though? I love this. I feel like we spend a lot of time trying to either make fake versions of this or find a version of this for various topics. Because it's so, this idea of the kind of newsreel man talking in this certain way. And then I can never locate it. This is like the platonic ideal of this kind of thing.

It is. And what I love about it is these things are usually so rah-rah, and I assume that this is, generally speaking, rah-rah. But they still use the word pitiless. First of all, yes. And also just like really leading with all of the destruction and loss of land and resources and buildings that have to be sacrificed in order to create this pitiless, bottomless monster.

This maw of need. This will never be filled. I love it. I love it. Yeah, it's great. I feel like there's got to be some stuff we can grab for TBTL usage.

Absolutely. You can also, I was hoping that you could maybe use that drop to introduce me where he says, a monster on wheels. Yes. Look for it tomorrow.

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

By the way, Andrew, this is not an email or a female, but I wanted to just tell you that I got my hands on some quality blueberries here. Oh, nice. For a reasonable price. That's a Trader Joe's.

That's a big. Trader Joe's. $6. Nice. And that looks like it might be two pints, right? I think I saw $6 for one pint at my grocery store. I'm hearing from people there's so much blueberry talk on the various, you know, lines of communication, voicemails. People are shocked in other parts of the country that you would pay more than 99 cents for a pint of blueberries here. Whoa, really? Yeah. The best ones I found are $5.99 at QFC. Some people really dying by frozen blueberries. You know, maybe the frozen blueberries that I've experienced aren't as high quality. Oh, so they're saying that there are good quality frozen blueberries. I guess so. I do think that the ones I've seen, the act of freezing them, turned them into something else that I'm not particularly personally looking for. But, yeah, a lot of blueberry talk. A lot of people chiming in with the price of blueberries. Like, I got a voicemail from somebody or maybe a text message that said, I'm in the store right now, and they're only 99 cents. Get over here. I'm in Virginia, you know. But I did want to. I saw that you had this on your show sheet as well, Luke. I'm going to play a voicemail for you. But also, did you mention the past two days when I was out that Melly has the card exchange going again? I did.

Okay, great. But I also didn't have, because I'm me, I didn't have great deets on how and where people could actually access the information. I just said that it's live and that it's probably on the Stens page.

That's what I got for you, too. I wrote to Melly today to see if there's any more details about how people can get the link if they haven't already. I think if you've participated in the past, you probably already have an invitation in your inbox. If you haven't before, though, I'm sure this is posted on the Stens page and other social media places, but I'll give you a tiny URL address. It's tinyurl.com slash 202510cards. That's one word, 2025 T-E-N-C-A-R-D-S. That's the link to get you to the sign-up sheet. And I think you probably only have about a week, week and a half to get signed up. Oh, I love this too, by the way. Have you actually clicked on the link that Melly made? I think I clicked on it earlier.

Yes, it's a nice little design. It's very space age. So the whole theme is like, it's TBTL cards 2025. Hey there, space rangers. Let's blast off into another season of card sending. Yes. And then the different, like, mission status. I'm a new recruit. I'm a seasoned veteran. I'm an old pro with new coordinates. For returning crew members, how many groups do you want? I like the thematic nature Good job, Melly

Thanks for doing this again And you can ignore my email Because I think we got The information out there But she says she was In an atomic age mood When she made it But it's really cool So tinyurl.com Slash 202510cards If you want to participate in that And let me play for you This quick voicemail, Luke We have a listener named Evan Who has been going back Through the TBTL catalog And listening to old episodes And I think Evan's In maybe 2019 now and uh evan just so you know a lot of your voicemails are difficult to understand because you're on the go it sounds like we have bluetooth whatever this was a very whatever you did for this one my boy very good very clean audio this is from listener evan who was listening to us talking about found money i think you told some story i know i didn't you must have told the story about some casino situation where somebody um had an opportunity to walk away with a lot of money that maybe wasn't there oh my god that was so long ago yeah okay you remember i can tell you the story

yes i do i was uh carrie and i were at the i forget which casino it was down somewhere south of seattle and went in and played some slot machines and i think i won like maybe eight hundred dollars or something i had like it was a lot of money and it was in my wallet and for some absolutely asinine reason i placed my wallet on top of the slot machine and forgot about it why you would ever take your wallet out of your pocket and put it on a slot machine for even any amount of time is nuts but then we were driving home and decided bizarrely to go to the olive garden i must have been having a few a few small beers and so we go to the olive garden and i believe we have our entire meal and then i reach for my wallet and realize i don't have my wallet and I realized it's at the casino and so I call them and I say did anybody turn in a wall and they said somebody did turn in a wall I go can you tell me about the contents they go no we're not allowed to tell you that over the phone for some reason so we go all the way back and the thing about this casino was

It's, you know, the part of the casino I was in, it's definitely people that appear they could be struggling, you know, people in the casino. It was, it was just not like, it wasn't like I was in the high limit room at the Bellagio. And so I guess I thought there's a limited chance that the money is going to be in the wallet. And sure enough, I get the wallet back from security, it's got all the money in it. And I just was so, first of all, just grateful. And then also mad at myself that I made an assumption about the kind of people that would be in the casino and what they would do with the money. somebody turned my wallet with $800 in it back to the security. That's the story.

Yeah. When you hear Evan reference this, I don't know for sure that that's the story he's referencing. Oh, maybe there's a different story. Maybe it is. I'm not sure. We'll hear it here in a second. He just references it very quickly. But the point is we got obsessed or I got obsessed with kind of the idea of found money, and people were calling in with stories about finding money. Because it's always been a dream of mine to find a huge amount of money in a parking lot. But then some people say, yeah, but if that happens, you have to turn it in, which, I don't know, jury's still out on that. But anyway, here's what Evan has to say about it.

Hey, dummy. Listener Evan here. And I'm listening to, I believe, 3070. And your story of Jake in the casino and the $1,037 that you was forced to give back because someone else put it in caused Andrew to bring up what if he just found $1,000. It reminded me of the story of my buddy Toby. Back when we were students at Western Washington University, he found $980 in the bank. envelope in the computer lab with no markings on it whatsoever and no one in the lab and he sat on it for a little bit while he was doing his work and then turned it in to the campus police and they said, you know, we'll let you know and campus police sat on it for 30 days and they were like, oh shit we got to turn this into the Bellingham City Police they sat on it for 30 days in that entire 60 days no one claimed the cash Toby walks out, $980 richer.

Nice.

I always think about poor SOB who left that money.

Yeah.

Anyway, toodle pip, enjoy yourselves, and keep on keeping on. Toodle pip?

Toodle pip right back at you, Evan. Yeah. You know what I was thinking of as I heard this story, too? Times have changed. I think we've got to remember that we're also on camera all the time now, too. I was thinking about his friend Toby. I'm like, would I have done that? Would I have just pocketed that money? But in this day and age, if somebody loses that amount of money, and I'm assuming this is maybe before there were security cameras like all the hell over the place. Now, if somebody loses that amount of money and if they are going to assuming that it's like on the up and up and they can go through official channels to search it out, there's probably a camera in that lab now. Right. Yeah. So if you left, if you thought you left it there, you could see, oh, there's Toby pocketing my money. And then you could end up being, you know, persona non grata.

here would be my advice if you find anything of value and you it's hard to track down you know it's not just like a wallet with somebody's driver's license in it go to you know what wherever the closest sort of authority figure is like if you're in a store or maybe if you're at a park or something i don't know who you talk to at a park maybe the city but hang on to this is what you should use what you should say i found this item it has all of this you know money in it or i found this diamond ring or whatever this is my contact information and if anyone calls asking about it please give them my number and have them call me and then i will get them i'll put them back together with it uh because uh i just turning it over not that i'm not trusting the people that work at these places but once you don't have it anymore now you may end up you know not able to get it back i mean that's what happened in the positive sense that's what happened with me when i was a kid and i found that gold krugerrand i've told the story a billion times but i found this south african gold coin at a batting cage and i didn't even think of this i went in i i went in and told them i found this thing and thankfully the person at the batting cage said well you hang on to it and give us your number and then if someone calls about it we'll have them call you and thankfully that was their idea because then i brought it home no one ever asked about it i called them after a couple of months they said now nobody's asking about it you can just have it And I was able to sell it for $125 on Aurora, you know, right across from the Mandarin Gate, by the way. You know where there's that overpass? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that overpass. And there's that building there that, I don't, is it like have a sex shop in it now or something? Or did it? Whatever the building is on the other side of the overpass, you used to have a guy who would buy and sell gold was in there. That's where I sold my gold Krugerrand and got my money to get a bicycle.

Oh, really? Yeah, I will say this. I've heard it. I've heard this said, I wouldn't know personally, but I've heard it said that that walking bridge is like the best place to smoke weed in Seattle after you leave the old Mandarin Gate, maybe having a head a couple of years, and you stand, one could stand on that bridge.

and smoke a doobie and just watch the traffic go by underneath. I hear that's a fun thing to do.

One guy, one time.

One guy, one time. Yes, exactly. You can watch all the people doing their various occupations along Aurora.

Does that make its way down to that part of Aurora? Most certainly, yes. We are in the heart of things. Oh, okay. I thought maybe it was more up around the – well, the last time I passed through, I felt like it was more localized to the kind of Lowe's area, but maybe it moves about. In fact, certainly when I was growing up, the all of Aurora, I mean, I used to hear people Practitioning that job outside of my dad's sign shop

Nobody has ever, until this moment, maybe about two months ago or so, actually propositioned Me, the women who were working the street, but I was parking a lime bike literally under That bridge, or kind of like, you know, on the sidewalk right at the foot of that bridge on the west hand side and there were some women working and uh i was you know locking up the lime bike or whatever and one of them let's just say that the the topic of riding came up because i was riding a bike and i said not today stay safe out there kids and then yeah and that was it so

yeah they're there i think the only time i've ever had it wasn't in seattle it was in dc um i was walking along a street in dc at night that was a lot of people that were also working in that line of work and um and a couple of gals uh asked me uh you know if i was looking for a good time or whatever and i just started giggling uncontrollably i was so i didn't know what to say i'm sorry how old were you you was it i was probably 28 yeah i mean i was not a child but i was just like i didn't even know what to say i was it it was i was so kind of slightly uncomfortable but not in i didn't feel unsafe or anything i just i just remember just like it just made me i also was probably drunk but it just made me laugh yeah i don't know why i just started giggling uncontrollably at the i think i might have said there's two of them and i but i think i might have said something like

i'm not man enough for either one of them let alone both of you yeah exactly i do know that the person who was talking to me they were kind of joking around with me or whatever yeah it was

pretty funny yep yeah all right well uh that is going to do it for today's episode of tbtl but But we are going to be right back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. Please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday, everybody. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all. Power out.