Muse

Mark auditioned for improv classes and was turned away from the theater for life. Just to take a class. Yeah, they said, no, no. I'll never forget that. Yeah, we don't want your money. I initiated a scene they said was too violent. Mark, for me, I just need to know how you can go into an improv class just to apply for an improv class and get denied. What happened? I brought my nun checks.

Leave those at home.

I didn't know you weren't allowed to have props or weapons. The whole idea of improv is you're making it up with nothing.

I have a mug.

Watch, she's incredible at prop work, all right? Okay, now show me. You're flying an airplane. Help! Okay, now you're driving a car. Okay, same kind of thing. A bus. Oh, I can't do that! A bus. I can't do that!

TVTL! It is simply two guys who just wanted to dig a cave.

And what was the purpose?

Yeah, what did they want to do with that?

They just wanted to dig a cave to hang out. Love it or hate it, it appears to be another irreversible step along mankind's journey toward God only knows what.

I dove deep into your podcast because it's what you do when you're hungover.

You're here to make friends. Making friends is the name of this show.

You are a really good actor. Thank you, thank you. Well, you know, it's just living truthfully in imaginary circumstances and whatever, enough about me. What's on your schedule?

well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a monday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live ready to laugh and drop please socks come off my name is luke burbank i'm your host you paint your bald spot one bald spot coming to you from the madrona hill studio first high above the mighty columbia bring it back home baby bring it back home first time in a long time getting to be here at the home studio and it feels great Despite the fact that we are, just kidding, absolutely pummeled by the wind and the rain. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. The wind did help me solve a mystery that had gone on while I was away from home that I thought somebody might be messing with me. I thought something might be up here at the Madrona Hill studio involving a pizza oven that was moved. Anyway, maybe we'll get into it here on episode 4,614 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. The Golden Globe-nominated podcast list is out. It's six podcasts. Yeah, everyone's got a podcast. TBTL is noticeably absent from the list. But there are some other podcasts that are also noticeably absent, which I guess I'm kind of stoked about. I'm kind of glad that they did what they did with this list. Also, we may be inching ever closer to the end of movies being theatrically released.

Somehow, hot break feels good in a place like this.

That's if Netflix has its way in acquiring Warner Brothers. So we will delve into that, I'm sure, as well. And we're going to say hello to this guy. Longest running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is coming off a wild weekend of holiday partying.

Did you get drunk and urinate on people?

I can't comment to that. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I'm going to do something really cruel to you because I know you have a bit of a time crunch today. We can't go for two and a half hours. However, I'm going to ask you one question that is going to lead us on a two and a half hour journey. I heard that Howard Stern drop in the beginning of the show there, and it made me realize I've had a question I need to ask you or Phyllis.

Everyone's got a podcast.

who is is it memet or memet memet oh memet sure memet uh one of the producers i turned on the the radio the other day and the howard stern show was on and they were piling on this poor son of a gun so probably about his dancing nope just about his writing i'd never heard professional people talk about like it was basically two producers yelling at each other uh each accusing the other one of not being funny and like and trying to like turn to howard stern as if he were their parent saying like well you don't run those clips do you those aren't good clips if they were good howard would run them wouldn't you howard it was it was a it was a strange vibe and i got the

impression that nobody likes this memet guy should we consider bringing some of that dynamism to tbtl some of that just the combustion becomes an explosion some of that mixing it up stuff um memet is a polarizing he's a polarizing figure on the show he's kind of a heel um on purpose i think He realizes that, for instance, they have a holiday party every year, and his big thing is he thinks he's a really good dancer, so he likes to get out there and dance, and he thinks that everybody else who doesn't dance is being stiff and shy and unfun.

He likes to kind of lock on to something and then basically get into on-air disagreements with the other producers, and that's how he sort of gets airtime. Something that I think I learned from our friend P. Fletch about The Howard Stern Show is that I find Howard Stern himself to be a, I wouldn't say deeply uninteresting person, but not like his takes on music and life and psychiatry and, I don't know, family relations. It's pretty unsophisticated

Really? You must not have heard the conversation I heard where he weighed in on AI And art and music Oh, I see The insights that he had If I could sum it up, it would be He doesn't think it's very good

Well now be careful because that's also our take

But there was something so Deeply uninteresting about him going on And somehow working into The conversation how he was playing guitar For his colleagues, or I guess his employees

before the show. He sort of pulls a Conan O'Brien now. Do you know famously that Conan used to for the rehearsal of his TV shows, so you know, the read-through, the kind of, before the show happens, he would famously always be out there with a guitar. He always had a guitar around his neck, and he'd just be kind of noodling on it. Oh, I didn't know that. No. And that's now Stern's move, I think, in the pre-show meetings and stuff. He's always got this guitar with him. But this is the thing. What he is a master of is stirring the pot amongst his employees and who knew i mean who knew that that could power one of the more successful media careers of of the modern age but really his savant ability is just to like figure out the pain point between memet and um you know gary del abicio or something like he can just get the staff or he can ronnie the limo driver moved to las vegas five years ago and and Howard Stern has never forgiven him, and he knows how to really wind Ronnie up on this matter.

Wait, is that true? Again, I've been just listening to bits and pieces, like literally like five, ten minute chunks.

For the listeners, we're 15 minutes into the two and a half hours that I'm going to do on various Howard Stern show staffers.

Because there was a whole conversation I just heard recently Welcome to Monday. about whether or not Howard Stern really is, like, holding a grudge against Ronnie for moving to Vegas. Oh, really, that came up? Yeah, seriously, does it come up all the time? because Howard just kept saying, I'm not mad at you. I'm happy that you left and had a good life. I don't know why you think that I care about this.

Well, that's interesting. Now, that's a sort of a plot twist for Howard because for the first four years or five years of Ronnie being out there, he would constantly tell him that it's too hot in Las Vegas. Then they would just play. Anytime there was like a news report about record heats in Vegas, they would play it. And the whole premise was Ronnie, the limber driver, has made a terrible mistake moving to Las Vegas. and um and and that was the narrative and now maybe he's now maybe he's changing it to there was a whole other thing like that it's so the show is so machiavellian you'd think i wouldn't like it because i don't generally like backstabbery like i'm not into those reality shows where you know i'm more into the one that we play the drop from you're here to make friends making friends is the entire point of the show i like that yeah but for some reason i let it go with the stern show one of the things they do is they have producers that are assigned to other to specific people on the show to just interview them on a semi-regular basis to just get material to then make that person miserable with so there's a guy named chris wilding and he's one like on his sort of deliverables is interviewing ronnie the limo driver occasionally and just to kind of see how he's doing but also to get material on him that must have been the tape i heard that they used to set up this conversation probably was i by the way i'm like a month behind on that show so but like so at one point it was like um ronnie the limo driver it was very important to him in this one conversation uh to clarify that he doesn't work he's never worked for howard stern he's never been an employee of howard stern or of the howard's he's been a contractor he had a business because he literally started off as a guy who was hired to drive howard stern to work every day in a limousine and over the course of many years uh they kind of became friends and howard again this is something howard has a pretty good sense for is like characters so then he became quote-unquote head of security for the show which should just be he'd sort of stand in the hall and make sure like that's you know nothing funny and then no funny business occurred and then they started bringing him on the air and and he's a character on the show but so somehow it was and and i could understand this by the way this is me listening to this while i'm moving piles of rocks around my yard and litigating along with me like I'm I'm I'm trying to quantum leap into Ronnie the limo driver to help him find the words to explain to Howard Stern why it is important to him that he has autonomy as a person in the world and why he is proud of the fact that he had a business and the business contracted first with then with the Howard Stern show, like then with Sirius Satellite Radio. But it was seen in the context of the show as disrespectful to Howard Stern. Because it was, to say I don't work for Howard Stern is to not properly bend the knee. And so then everyone's going after Ronnie the Limbo Driver on this particular point. So this goes pre-Vegas. No, no, no. This was like four months ago, six months ago. Oh, okay. So it's just, but my point in all of this,

with all of this incredibly esoteric stuff, it like literally three listeners including phyllis and maybe you to a degree and a couple of other people who email me about this like no one cares about any of this but it's interesting that that's the savant that's that's that's the superpower of howard stern and being entertaining is not it's not being fart man it's not it's not throwing uh you know um lunch meat at the butts of strippers it's none of that it's that he just understands how to get the producers mad at each other and then let them go and that is what i find very very entertaining about the program because i did we might need to do more of that here because god we need something

well it's interesting because oh my gosh this reminds me of something else i want to talk to you about i heard what i was about to say was i heard um howard stern talking to sarah jessica parker on the show the other day it was the same exact day that we were talking about her because she we played a clip from square pegs listener uh i want to say sonia but that's wrong we had it we had the name of the show we were we were doing that was honestly surprising that we could pull

square pegs uh when we needed it and then we decided to try to do it i have the postcard

around here somewhere i know it's not sonia uh anyway um but somebody had written in about square pegs i didn't know about it it was a early tv show project as most people know i guess of sarah jessica parker anyway thought it was a great coincidence that i got in the car and he was talking to her howard stern was interviewing her now i know that you've often and you know i'm somebody who for the past uh several decades will spend five minutes a year listening to howard stern or something but i'm deeply curious about it i really am but you've always said that the interviews are not why you're there the interviews and i found this one really difficult these two personalities interesting yeah and you know i don't want to people love sarah jessica parker so i don't want to take i'm on that personal shots but there is just something so phony baloney to me about both sides of this conversation that maybe is and i'm just you know i don't she's probably not a phony person there's just something about the way they were talking in this way like they were saying she just says things like they're super deep and they're not super deep But I felt like I got more of Howard Stern's real personality out of that interview, and I didn't care for it as much, as opposed to what you're saying, which is kind of like, hey, I'm going to make these two chess pieces fight on my chessboard.

I mean, what I really—the thing about the interviews, and again, I've said this many times, so I'll try to keep this brief, but he does tend to get— there are interesting things that are revealed in these interviews, But I would say it is in spite of Howard Stern not because of him because the reason it happens is because everyone who goes on that show is They understand the assignment. No one's going to agree to be on that show unless they are ready to Really really drop their guard and really really drop their sort of cultivated, you know image In the press like so everyone shows up really ready to talk It's a little like what happens on fresh air as well And I'd say that with absolute peace and love to the fine folks at fresh air but um so with stern it's like a thing that bugs me about the interviews is that and maybe i do this i probably do do this when i'm doing interviews for livewire or even sunday morning i guess but like howard stern is really has a really difficult time stepping out of his own experience of how he experiences the world and so all of his questions come from this point of like aren't you really jealous of everyone else who has success um aren't don't don't you really resent your parents that they didn't do more to help uh promote your success or encourage you and because that's his experience and uh oftentimes the people are going well that isn't really how it felt to me yeah that isn't that is it's like if you count the number of times somebody in the interview says oh well not so much that but this it's like these are not going well and like he's released an entire book of his interviews that are like you know it's like supposed to be this master class in interviewing. And I honestly think it's, it's, it's, it's not great. It's not, it's, it's really, it's, it's, uh, I think there are much better interviewers out there, um, uh, that, that we should be, that we should be learning from. But, um, but yeah, uh, here I am still paying for my serious satellite and meaning to get back up on that show. It's funny because we have, of course, many tens of listeners who fall behind on this program and they declare bankruptcy and the like, and, uh, I'm far behind on my Howard Stern listening. Luckily they take like a three-month break at the well they had like a two-month break at the winter time it seems and a three-month break in the summer So I'll get back in the swing of it and I'll get all caught up on what's going on with Mamet and the crew soon enough.

Yeah, I do enjoy the holiday party talk. It seems like over the years, again, and the times that I happen to dip in, I have before heard the sort of they do a good lead up to their holiday party. They get all these narratives going. Right. And then, like, see how they will play out. And they're already like, well, so and so drink too much or remember. It might have even been Mamet. It was somebody who, I guess, always harasses Ronnie, the limo driver at parties, and gets his goat, and then he gets him all spun up. Oh, that's Mike Perlman. Oh, okay, somebody else. So, actually, I enjoy that stuff. I want to switch gears here, though, while we're talking about satellite radio promos. Have you heard, I mean, I've been Googling around here looking to see if I can find the exact version I heard on the radio yesterday, and I can't find it. So, I'm just praying that you have heard this, maybe in listening to NFL games.

If you want baseball, the doggies got you covered.

Yeah, I've been listening to Mad Dog Sports, by the way. Not always him hosting, but I've been listening to the Mad Dog Sports channel sometimes when I'm just, like, scratching around. As a friend of ours once said, like, scratching around in an ashtray looking for butts to smoke on satellite radio. I'll end up on that. But have you heard the promo for Rob Lowe's show called Literally?

Mm-hmm.

I have. You've heard the promo? It is such – it's a 30-second promo where he describes every celebrity's podcast from the past 10 years where he says absolutely nothing. All he says is, I'm famous. I'm going to have famous people on here. But he's trying to – whoever wrote it –

Are you telling me the man who famously wore a hat to a football game that just said NFL on it might have a fairly bland podcast?

I immediately thought of that. I mean talk about branding now. Like when I think of Rob Lowe, I think of him wearing that hat and also how it symbolizes him. And he just comes out, and I think I found a second ago, yeah, like, this is some of the copy. I can't find the actual, like, 30-second poem, but it's like, this is literally a podcast. And, of course, literally was sort of his catchphrase, but specifically from a sitcom. He didn't even write literally. It's not like he was famous for going around saying literally. Mike Schur wrote that for a character that he played on a sitcom. Yeah, that was a Parks and Rec bit. Yes, exactly. But now he's associated with, so what is Rob Lowe? And I'm sure this is how it works. It's like Sirius comes up to some celebrity and says, we would like you to do this. We have a bunch of money in the celebs. Like, I don't really have a lot to offer in that space. I got other things going on. They're like, no, no, but here. And then they slide a piece of paper across the virtual table and it's got a number on it. It's like, okay, I guess I could get it. I guess I could get it. I know your story.

It's the only reference more obscure than me talking about Mike Perlman on the Stern Show.

But it is just like, okay, yeah, I guess I'll get my friends on and we'll just talk. Can I give you evidence of that? You can't write a promo for that. And the promo was literally, it's me. And we talk to my friends, you know, and my famous friends, and we get serious and completely random. And I'm just like, oh, no, really? Literally. So we go from the serious literally to the completely random. I'm just like, but you never, there's no clips in it. There's nothing compelling other than, well, Rob Lowe's a guy I don't have a bad feeling about. And he does have famous friends.

It was literally a major disaster.

He has famous friends, I guess. But like how many just like.

It's know how you live in Jay Piven.

That popped into my head this weekend too. I don't know why. Somebody said live and I was like, wonder how Jay Piven's living. But anyway, it's just like, it's so, it is exactly like that. Just like the podcast that is, I'm famous, I have famous friends and that's it. That's the end of the pitch.

I was reminded, I guess, of the reach of the Sirius Satellite podcast world and the fact that it appears to still be a real going concern, which, by the way, this actually, you know what, this makes the Howard Stern sort of reference actually kind of relevant to the show and to, I guess, the Golden Globes podcasting category, etc. So, Andrew, you actually did not sidetrack to the beginning of the show. You offered us a really interesting way into this conversation, so I thank you for that.

I actually was really interested in that, though, because I've been catching bits and pieces of that show, and I actually think oftentimes I'd rather you explain it to me than listen to the actual content.

Well, okay, so a couple things. I think that Sirius might be the largest podcast company in America now, right? Because they have bought up all of these, you know, Call Her Daddy and these, you know, all of these really kind of expensive Conan, all of Conan's stuff is on there too. i don't know if they have exclusive rights to all of this but they have really really put a ton of money into podcasting into buying up all of the big podcasts um and i guess they're sort of competing with spotify for that maybe or something but i don't know if that actually moves their financial needle i tend to think that it's maybe the sports and then howard stern you know i'm just here talking but i don't think he's particularly interesting and i don't like his in the interviews and yet the portions aren't big enough um it's like i don't know what's going to happen to that network when he retires yeah like i don't know where the subscribe i mean it's the reason that i subscribe to that channel i don't listen to i don't fish around for any other cigarette butts on that network except for uh sports content um you know because they have the play-by-play of the mariner all the football games and baseball games and things that you want to hear they've got them on there and that is valuable to me i guess but um i wonder when howard stern leaves if that's going to take a lot of subscribers with it. And I wonder if it's sort of like the tide is going to go out financially and we're going to see the barnacles on the pilings of the pier, such as paying hundreds of millions of dollars to the Call Her Daddy team. I mean, that show is pretty popular all on its own, but I wonder if Sirius Satellite's piece of that pie and of, I think they probably, do they have smart lists, you know?

Oh, I don't know. I didn't even know that Call Her Daddy was integrated into that as much either. I believe it is,

But again, I'm not sure. And I hear promos for Conan. It's funny.

Conan, yeah, I hear it heavily.

They play those during the baseball games. And what they've clearly done is they've said, this is a pod. This is a promo that's going to play during baseball. And so and Conan is slightly trying to baseball it up. It's pretty rough.

It's a bunch of puns. Yeah. Yeah.

He doesn't really he doesn't really care. Someone told him that this needs to be sort of relevant to baseball. It's funny.

I heard that promo yesterday, too. And I had the same as I thought I was like, oh, somebody handed him a piece of copy. and he's like, I'll do my best with this. Like, I had this whole scenario. I didn't even realize this, but that exact promo you're talking about, I had a flash of an understanding of what was going on in the studio, and I have no basis for this at all. And I didn't even really think it through.

I love that our minds went to the exact same place.

But I was like, oh, you know what? There's no way Conan wrote this. It's a pretty clunky copy. It's just like it's that lazy form of humor that I employ a lot. Actually, I don't employ this kind of humor, where it's just like a bunch of baseball terms worked into a promo for a comedy show in a way that was kind of supposed to be clunky, and that's where the humor is, but I was just like, this isn't Conan. I immediately pictured somebody handing this to Conan, and Conan saying, I'm not going to make a big deal of this. I'll just read it the best I can and get through this. That's what that promo sounds like to me.

Well, speaking of Conan, this is where I saw how seriously, serious Satellite is literally taking their podcasting. On Thursday night when I was in Phoenix and we were doing Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, special guest was Andy Richter who, by the way, just lovely. Absolutely sweetheart of a person.

Second time you've been on with him, right? Because years ago you were going to try to make a play at getting him on TBTL and we could have co-host talk. Do you remember

that? Yes, but I believe that was when

he was on LiveWire. Oh, he was on LiveWire? Okay, I didn't realize that. Gotcha.

Which, he did remember me, which warmed my heart. I was a little shocked. I mean, I was fully ready to reintroduce myself because Like, the guy does a lot of stuff. I would not have been offended if he didn't remember one time when he went to Portland to be on my radio show.

So you met him in person. For some reason, I pictured him on the phone. Okay, he was there.

Yeah, I met him in person in Portland, and we had Ken Jennings on that episode as well, and they became really good friends and started going to Mariner games together.

Oh, sorry. I meant to say, did you meet him when he was the Not My Job guy this weekend?

I did, yes. You did? Okay.

Okay, because I pictured that being on the phone, and I was like, well, that would have been weird because you only get to talk to the phone guests when you're on stage. So it would have been amazing if you'd been like, hey, Peter, I know him. Hold on, I need to. I know him. I need to go down. Elf voice.

Richter, I know him. I know him.

Hi, do you remember me? Okay, I was like, I know you didn't do that on stage, so he must have been in person. That's great.

He flew to Phoenix for this, which, again, this is all kind of getting to how, I guess, Sirius, I keep saying that, but I mean how Sirius is putting money and effort behind their podcast because there was, so we were all meeting in the hotel lobby. We were chatting. He was lovely. We walked over to the venue together, and there was a young-ish, I mean, everyone seems young to me now, but there was a woman in maybe her mid-20s who was there meeting Andy Richter, but she wasn't from our show. And I was a little confused and I introduced myself and she was from Sirius Satellite Radio because Andy Richter has a Sirius Satellite Radio show called Three Questions with Andy Richter, which I actually think is part of Team Coco, but because it's been acquired by Sirius. Yeah. And and I said to this person, oh, are you based here in Phoenix? And she said, no, I'm I'm based in New York. And what Sirius did was fly this person from New York City to Phoenix, put that person up to just be there with Andy Richter because he's an asset. He's he's he's he's you know, he's part of the Sirius satellite universe and heaven forbid. And I'm sounding negative. I don't mean to be. But it's just like this is the world of entertainment that I always find. So kind of like curious isn't the right word, but it's just like there are still for whatever you've heard about the decline of.

Thank you.

media there are still a lot of decisions that are made where someone is dispatched somewhere for no discernible reason other than like oh this is somebody in our network and we need to

anytime we have a chance to like press flesh as we used to say before the pandemic like just like represent and make sure that we're like kind of keeping eyes on everybody and that we have

human connections somewhere i guess so and it's like and i say this again with all due respect to andy richter like and i love i really do like andy and we had a lovely time talking and he was great on on the show but like i didn't realize that andy rick three questions with andy richter is a big enough priority to fly someone from new york to just be in the in the theater while he's doing his thing out there which this person would have absolutely zero impact on and andy ricky has

two shows right because i didn't know he was still doing three questions but the one that they seem to be pushing a lot now is that call-in show that he does which i was really bummed to hear that it's not a live call-in show it's like a car talk style you call you leave a message i'm looking to see to make sure they're not the same thing yeah the andy richter call-in show is another serious uh thing as well and it looks like three weirdly for whatever it's worth and i'm not even i'm not debating you on this but uh it does say like the three questions podcast that's the one that we promoted on wait wait okay that comes under t that for some reason that's labeled as a team coco thing and then the andy richter call-in show is labeled as a serious xm which is really

Okay, so the plot thickens, because what they had Peter say was, Andy Richter is the host of three questions with Andy Richter. So I don't know how that decision was made, as opposed to, you'd think when they're, if Sirius flew a Sirius person out there, you'd think they'd want to, like, get the Sirius show, you know, get the promotion on Wait, Wait. But anyway, all that is to say, we're living in a fractured media landscape, Andrew, and we've got to start cozying up to Sirius pretty soon. You want small talk? The Burby's got you covered.

Well, I do want to say you're the promo. I want to go back to the broader conversation about Sirius and like, you know, the amount of money, you know, that flows in and out of an organization like that. Just to underscore what you were just saying about like, oh, yeah, we fly one person out so they can watch him on a different different networks podcast, you know, whatever. But, yeah, that's not even a it's not even it's not even a rounding error. It's just like, yeah, of course, we'll fly this person out. But the thing about the serious thing that's linked to Howard Stern and, like, what do the finances look like in a post-Stern world, that's literally a conversation I remember having or at least, like, listening to maybe as a national conversation way back when I was in New Hampshire. For some reason, I just kind of remember this moment of, like, I don't remember the details, but I think Howard has often, when his contract is about to re-up or expire or something, there's always a little bit of saber rattling that seems to have been going on for a long, long time. When I was in New Hampshire, we're talking about the years between like 2000 and 2009, so somewhere in there. So my point of all of this is if we do see, because eventually Howard Stern is going to have to stop doing the Howard Stern show, right? My guess is they'll try to keep those channels going with a lot of archive stuff. I was listening to a Tom Petty show, again, on satellite radio on the Tom Petty channel that was recorded in 2015 because I looked it up later. It's 2014 or something. So clearly Sirius will kind of keep that content going and try to monetize it as much as possible. But my broader point is if they do, if Howard, when Howard retires, if Sirius basically has to roll up the carpets or implodes in some sort of way, it's amazing that they have seen this coming for decades now. Like for decades, this company has had something circled. It's like we know we're getting to this date. We have to figure out our financial future post-Stern.

Well, I think that's what they're trying to do with all of the podcast acquisition. I think that they are trying to spread—and maybe it's working. I mean, I don't understand anything about the numbers. Maybe all of these shows that they're getting are—people are tuning into Sirius now to get those programs. So, yeah, I definitely think they're trying to get in front of it. But I just wonder, I mean, this is like the Howard Stern show has obsessive listeners like myself and like P. Fletch in the way, in a much, much smaller way, the way TVTL does. And that's very hard to replicate, I think. Like, and it's one of these weird, again, it sounds like I'm trying to compare what we do to what they do or something. But you and I have been in a lot of meetings At mostly one company where we used to work But other places where people are trying to figure out How do we get people to care about what we're making As much as the TBTL listeners care about TBTL And, you know, we have a kind of a little Sort of stock list of things that we try to do But it is, in a certain way, just a little bit of dumb luck And, you know, kind of a bit of randomness kind of like what i like to listen i tune in for the uh randomness on the rob lowe show but it's very hard to random it's really hard i was trying to do something with why so serious for a show title but literally random is pretty good I didn't follow that before. Can I just – this, I think, goes along with what you're saying, but this is where I get confused about things. You mentioned that Call Her Daddy is something that has been integrated into the Sirius verse as well. But while you were just talking, I'm like, yeah, but can I – if I want to listen to Call Her Daddy, do I have to go through Sirius? And no, I just called it up on Spotify right here. I can listen to Wednesday's show. She went 57 minutes. Ooh, the time before that, she went an hour and a half. All right, Alex.

By the way, I want to be clear. I don't have any. When I say call her daddy or I use it as kind of a reference point. I'm not anti that show or Alex Cooper. I'm not super familiar, but whatever I've seen of Alex Cooper seems like a pretty talented broadcaster with a lot, a lot of fans. It's not. I don't think that these shows are, you know, are like smart lists is I don't think that they're BS. But yeah, to your point.

Just like, how are they monetizing that? You know, they enter some agreement, they pay her more money, but then it's kind of like, well, I don't need Sirius to get that, so why is that a draw?

Well, I think what, again, I'm just speculating here, I think what their approach is, or what they're trying to do, is basically fill their channels, their live channels, with content that people want. They've got, like, Andy Cohen has a whole network, and he does a live morning show over on his thing. they're trying and this is actually where we should be rooting for them i think andrew with our listening habits or what we like to listen to they're trying to kind of make radio channels that people tune into through their sirius satellite radio the way we used to just use our car radio for i you know what i mean so when i say they're a podcaster i think what i mean is because tom papa has a show he does with fortune femster i think that's a morning show that's like i think it's on five days a week like they basically are trying to create or trying to kind of recreate that experience of like you get up you turn on your radio you you listen to the channel you like and then you're done you know you're you're done with stern and you switch over to mad dog sports and get your fill of that and you bop around the serious universe in a in a radio listening kind of way i think versus strictly a podcasting kind of way which is i mean you know

i asked that question but then i guess maybe i am sort of the the person who does that i i'm still on satellite because they gave me a free trial and then i got you know like a deal i think i paid like six dollars a month it's very very affordable and so i was like okay we'll keep it rolling for that amount remember i actually had to get into like kind of a bidding thing with a bot online i was like i'm not gonna pay that i'm not gonna pay that and they're like what about this i'm like all right i'll take that literally negotiated with a bot on it uh and so i do like it and so i'm familiar with some of the like fortune theme stores all over the place i think she doesn't have her own channel but like i'm pretty sure that she um has several shows i hear her talking to her mom a lot which is just like radio gold again isn't she on that handsome podcast with

Tigg. With Tigg and a third person, I think. Other actress, or the person who I don't, I never remember their name, but I guess they were just in a show that Becca was telling me they were really good in it.

Yeah, and again, I haven't listened to that particular show. I do what you're talking about, sort of like, and that's why I'll hear a bit I do what you tell me. Call him Daddy. I, uh... Yeah, rough stuff. We're not going to be using that as a show title. But anyway, so I kind of like that, and I love the idea of shows like even the music stuff i listen on to on there i i definitely prefer even if they'll play something that maybe is not totally in line with what i'm in the mood for i would rather put on a music station on serious radio that is along the lines of the mood i want to listen to than putting on an algorithm i can't even i can't remember the last time i've just put on like a spotify algorithm like just make me a radio station and because that feels more and more soulless to me and i do think that maybe me listening to a little bit more of kexp and satellite radio has been like oh yeah i just like it when there's somebody behind the wheel yeah but i i and this is probably something specific to me like very specific to me and i think to you to a degree um is i re i cherish the idea of it truly being live and that's the one thing that satellite radio kind of bums me out about is it's sort of presented like it's live radio but then you'll hear oh this was obviously pre-recorded or even the fact that like i really when i heard andy richter had a call-in show because i heard him promoting it years ago on another podcast i was like oh my god live radio and then he's like no it's not live you know we get calls and then we go into the studio and for some reason like that the the balloon deflates so much for me when i hear that it's like oh you can just punch this in whenever but if they're actually like you said like waking up and doing a morning show that is referencing whatever and again not that it has to be a news show but referencing whatever is on the mind of the zeitgeist here on you know particularly like monday the 8th like we are by talking about howard stern's um uh

holiday whether it was a mistake for ronnie the limo driver to move to vegas five years ago exactly

and that's something that we own that content like that's people are turning to us for our perspective into that world clearly but you know what i mean like but this

Listeners do know, and that is why when you and I do have to, like, take a break or go on tape for a little bit, listeners, like, I think some of the shows we do when we pre-tape them are actually better in some ways. But I think with our listeners, sometimes a switch goes off. They're like, well, if this isn't about, like, Andrew's coffee this morning, I'm not interested.

Totally. That's, I mean, I think that's one of the, one of the things about the show that people like is that is a running kind of just sort of, um, update on our life and what happened over the weekend. And, you know, the fact that I'm staring out the window now because that vanity is finally being delivered today. The one that Diamond Dave's delivery service tried to bring out here. And then I had to work between 12 different entities and bills of lading to get it back out here. but now here it is and if unless they make me sign some kind of a thing or run my credit card i think i managed to get it sent back out here for free andrew i don't think there was any extra cost which is i'm kind of excited about anyway stuff like that is for whatever reason what the listeners are interested into interested in and when we yeah when we step out of the time stream the regular life time stream i think that it is for some listeners a little bit less compelling and i i get that because of what you're saying like in fact like i was you know not to not to air his dirty laundry but um when i was talking to tom papa at wait wait a while ago backstage about his show he was like yeah we're able to pre-tape a lot of them and i was like oh okay well so it is sort of a morning show but kind of on tape morning show to your so to your point yeah it's not there's something that i i also find very um the daily does a pretty good job of it for me the from the new york times even though i know they also record it often the day before or the the night before it's close enough for me that it feels it has that feeling of of immediacy yeah that that i'm kind of looking for yeah uh in stuff you know but it's it's got to be like last night is probably the latest or or yesterday afternoon is the latest you can be recording something and putting it down this morning for me and having it kind of feel uh i guess relevant in my mind

yeah which is why i still have that levitard shaped hole in my heart you know like i'm just not into that show anymore and i was i was listening to it long after i had interest in it i think and so sometimes i think about it i'm kind of like oh i'm kind of glad i'm not like i wasn't hate listening that's the wrong word but i was listening and getting pretty annoyed by that show and so i'm glad that i kind of broke my dependence on it but i still have not found that kind of thing like it's funny that i would say that kind of thing which is a levitard show thing but um i don't have that sort of immediacy like even if i'm listening to yesterday's show i know that they were recording it hot off the news you know or if something does happen big in the sports world on Sunday I know their Monday show will first of all purposely annoy the audience by not talking about the biggest story in sports until like the final hour or something like that but it was it was just this immediacy and this ability to just like sort of you know like kind of feel like oh yeah this is this is happening now and there is something about satellite radio where I just feel like they're there it's just like a million they're calling them radio shows but a lot of them just feel like a million podcasts from sometime in the past 20 years that you can catch here and there, but there's no, like, sort of, I don't know, urgency to it.

I was laughing a little earlier in the conversation because I had this thought. You were talking about Tom Petty and how they were playing some kind of, you know, when he had a channel there or something probably, and I just had this moment of thinking, like, it's sort of, it would be funny if Sirius had a lot invested in us not knowing when people died because they want the channel to still feel relevant yeah they're just like they're doing some incredibly complicated complex things to not us not let us know that like you know andy cohen isn't with us anymore because they've got 10 000 hours of andy cohen content that they want to keep passing off because i mean somebody you know yeah like when you when you say tom petty i'm like well we immediately know that that is a taped interview like we know beyond a shadow of a out that that is not new content because the man is not on this planet anymore um and that's bad for serious satellite in my mind maybe some people like that maybe they think it's like oh a trip into the archives for me it's almost always less compelling when i uh when something is you know

from a long time ago like that yeah and his show's a music show so like i never thought i would especially after he died i remember this i think i had a little sample of satellite radio one of those free trials before he died and i really liked that station because i would hear him and again I knew he wasn't live but once he died I really didn't want to hear his voice not his songs but I didn't want to hear him you know it's really sad doing a radio hosting thing and but I again I've just been in the car maybe more than usual lately and I'm just flipping through looking for something to keep my brain from spinning out of control I guess and so I land on um uh on uh you you know, Tom Petty playing some music or whatever. And I. did like the beginning of the show he like he announced he this the show began with him playing some song it was like my Tallahassee Lassie was the name of the song by some other you know musician you can take the boy out of Florida yeah exactly there's like my Tallahassee Lassie down in FLA and it's not his song but anyway that's how this the the music break began or that's how his show began and then he comes in and he back announces it but he gets the the name of the musician right but the song wrong and then he apologized oh sorry it's a little bit dark in here oh okay they just turned on the lights and like it gave me immediately like then that's they didn't go back they didn't re-record it it was like the very first thing he said after playing the opening track was he misannounced what it was but then he explains it's because we're all just in here chilling in the dark and it immediately gave me that sense of space and like I knew that this was obviously from a long time ago but I did love that vibe it's just hard I just wish that I getting that vibe fresh you know what i mean like that comes along with the baggage of knowing that

he's been gone for a while yeah um uh well since we're talking about podcasts we'll just run through this real quick we had talked about the fact that the golden globes has added a podcasting category this year so you can win a golden globe for podcasting and there were some what we learned was like anyone can apply for a golden globe for almost anything so we could have if we wanted to put in the time and money. We could have actually applied for TBTL getting a Golden Globe. Of course, we didn't. What I thought was interesting was they whittled it down to six podcasts, and the podcasts that they nominated were Smart Lists, the one with Will Arnett and Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes. Amy Poehler's podcast Good Hang was nominated. Call Her Daddy was also nominated. armchair expert with Dax Shepard the Mel Robbins podcast which is kind of like a personal growth podcast and then Up First from NPR that's the list of the six podcasts what was notably not on there is the Joe Rogan show or like the Ben Shapiro show or Candace Owens or any of these sort of right wing podcasts that are inarguably very popular it's kind of an FU now if I remember right the Golden Globes is the Hollywood Foreign Press Association right?

that's ultimately who it is oh wait no not anymore they sold it right oh oh oh they sold

it to penske yeah they sold it to the oil company yeah yeah yeah right the the the uh but anyway well the guy who was yeah yeah right yeah jay penske the son of the uh the the penske dude but anyway um it's interesting that um i mean it's it's a i don't know how much he cares and certainly it doesn't really matter much in the scheme of things but it's like it's a pretty big middle finger to joe rogan right like they i was reading this variety article oh by the way at the end of the variety article about the nominees uh for the golden globe in podcasting it says disclosure the golden globe awards dick clark productions and luminate are owned by penske media corp corp parent company a variety so we've vertically integrated everything in the world now andrew and it's great i'm reading about this in variety who's also owned by the people that own the golden globes but um it's it's a pretty big f you to joe rogan to not put him in considering he has the number one podcast uh joe rogan who's the joe rogan experience podcast consistently ranks as the most popular podcast in the world uh was eligible for a globes nomination but missed the cut it's been the number one podcast on spotify for five straight years it also topped apple podcasts and youtube podcasts for 2025 i mean that is behemoth i mean that is so to not put that guy on the list is a pretty conscious decision wouldn't you say it is i am wondering and this is

i think you're gonna laugh at me even raising this but this is as you were describing the golden globes i was like oh yeah this is like any public radio awards you know competition that you and I have been a part of or tangential to which is like yeah I guess like anybody can submit a application and and money and then to like is there a chance that they didn't submit like do we know for sure that the Joe Rogan voluntarily I mean I guess with it I guess yeah I don't know there's really the the the continued last one it's the last couple ones that are just it's the snickering at the end exactly at first i was like okay yeah okay all right and then that last person who couldn't one person really has it now i know it's really stupid an operation that big like why wouldn't they have one person like write the check and send in the application to the golden globes but i was just curious like do we know for sure that some of these podcasts also didn't want to be part of this golden globes thing and we can't rule that out we can't rule that out honestly

and i mean it's one of those things where there's that podcast again like you know hate it or love it. It is so unbelievably successful financially and from a listener standpoint. By the way, I had a whole Joe Rogan conversation in my Lyft, leaving Arizona at about 5 in the morning on Friday. And it was kind of, it was, I don't know if I would say it was.

I had heard a promise on the air that somebody was getting a ride from Nora McInerney.

Promises made, promises not kept. Yes. I actually, I intentionally did not give her any more information after we were off the show. about my whereabouts in the morning because I did not want her to because she had to sort of prove the point, come get me. But I get in the car, and it's a really nice guy who is grabbing my stuff and putting it in. He's wearing a Dallas Stars hockey jersey, which was interesting. I learned later it's because he's originally from Dallas. He's a really friendly fella. And by the way, I get in the car. He's playing KJZZ, the station, and we're talking a little bit. And he goes, wait, are you Luke Burbank? And I go, yeah. And I was like, wow, that doesn't happen very often. So he was a big public radio listener, but he had worked in Hollywood as he'd worked in catering in Hollywood. And for many years, the show that he had catered on was Fear Factor with Joe Rogan. And it's pretty funny because, you know, I talked to Joe Rogan when I did those interviews around Dana White, the UFC guy. I also ended up talking to Joe Rogan a bit. and um i have to say in the 20 minutes i was chatting with him he was a nice guy like you know what i mean like he wasn't he seemed present he didn't seem he didn't sound like that last person snickering at you andrew in the laugh track we just played like he and anyway i don't know what that means i'm just throwing that out there and when this guy says yeah i worked on fear factor i'm starting to go into some kind of a like i guess you would say vaguely anti joe rogan stance kind of like because this guy listens to public radio right so i kind of think we're on the same team and i'm about to say kind of like yeah can you believe that you know that lunkhead is setting you know vaccine policy in this country by you know by sort of proxy and i start to kind of i'm about to kind of like just do a sort of a anti joe rogan sort of comment and he goes that guy was the nicest dude i've ever worked with he was like everybody loved him he was like he knew everybody's name he was super friendly he was like he would just talk to people he was never in a bad mood they want he had to do so much stuff on he was the host and there was just so many things that he had to do and it was all revolving around him and he was just never he was just he was just

never rude to anyone it doesn't surprise me at all i mean i think that's one of the reasons that he is yeah i mean i guess there are trying to think are there personalities especially like kind of radio or TV personalities. Well, see, I'm confused. Television and radio are so different.

Are you thinking of the television show NewsRadio? Because that adds another layer of confusion.

Right, right, exactly. It certainly does. The crossover of my two loves, television and radio. And Rogan. And Phil Hartman. But I would hear, when I was living in L.A., I remember flipping through the channels. I loved flipping through the channels in L.A. You don't need satellite radio in L.A. Like, the radio dial is just filled with stuff. Oh, kukui! And it's not, like, it's not all pre-programmed, like, you know, just, like, kind of music playlists. You can find interesting stuff. I loved that.

Heidi Frosty and Frank.

And one time I just landed on Joe Rogan, and he was hosting, I think he was fill-in hosting somebody's show just in L.A. It wasn't necessarily about sports. It wasn't about, it wasn't the Joe Rogan experience. It was just him hosting. Probably on KFI or something. And this would have been 10 years ago. I lived there in 2014, 2015-ish. and so anyway and i was just like oh man he's he just is so he's got magnetism like obviously this is before everybody knew joe rogan and the joe rogan experience it's just like oh yeah he and he was more associated with mma at this point and that and it's like yeah of course he's so successful he's like a he's a he's somebody that you want to be around now you do hear about people like whether you want to choose ellen or i don't want to just pick on ellen but other people who run shows and you hear that oh they're not super nice steve harvey is steve harvey is the other thinking about as well um and i actually kind of generally like both of those guys's tv presence sort of so um i don't anyway and so i guess you do have the people who are difficult to work with and but people still do love them but there is something about the joe rogan i am so unsurprised to hear that he is not like steven merritt or is it steven merritt yeah like of you know like of magnetic fields I might be messing up his name or whatever just like people who in my life or my line of work would be like okay Stephen Merritt's coming in like everybody be prepared to be like generally insulted by withholding you know or whatever you know like the reputations that some of these artists have when they come in and they just like grunt at you or whatever their reputation is and by the way the second time I met Stephen Merritt he was such a sweetie pie too by the way probably adjusted

his Prozac maybe and also

he had had he had had of food poisoning the night before something and he had come in and instead of making him more crabby i think it humbled him he was so sweet to us but anyway um yeah i i'm kind of unsurprised to hear that people like rogan i mean honestly and not to make it totally political but i remember being a booker my very very first job in public radio like one of my favorite people to call were honestly like heritage foundation and a lot of conservative things because they were so nice

The Cato Institute person on the horn. Yes, right.

Those folks were just like, oh, yeah, we would love to talk.

Stephen Moore from the Club for Growth.

I don't think I ever dealt with the Club for Growth, but Cato certainly and Heritage and it's kind of like, yeah, it's like you're very good at being likable and wanting me to work with you.

Well, I think that's why the Rogan stuff is so complicated, because he does seem like he's a good hang, and he doesn't, you know, I don't think that he realizes, and I'm sure plenty of people have told him this and i'm sure he's had to consider it at some point but i don't think he realizes the real impact that he has because the show was so popular and so i don't think he has any kind of malicious motives i think he really does think hey i'm just having a casual conversation i'm just asking questions but i think because his platform is so huge when he has people on and he just kind of is aw shucksing because that's really what his vibe is it's like he brings people on oftentimes they're they're they're experts or quasi experts in various fields and then he just asks them any question that comes into his head and he's not fact checking behind them he's just kind of like wow well that's crazy whoa i didn't know that and that's not a bad way to be but the problem is it's the show is so popular that it then informs the actual opinions of a lot of people and what people think is the reality of the world and it's like if you're gonna have some you know an anti-vax person on or you're gonna have cash patel on as i guess i found out that cash patel was on there because i was reading a new yorker profile of cash patel and they were talking about his time on the joe rogan show and it's like joe rogan was just like is it is it just crazy being the head of the fbi and cash patel was like it's wild this is the discourse that we're looking for but it's like you know again i but that's why it's complicated because unlike somebody like ben shapiro or tucker carlson who is they're getting up in the morning trying to push a specific agenda about the world that's what they're trying to do on their podcast and candace owens to what i think is a really really kind of scary degree because her whole thing is the like anti-semitism that she's pushing i mean anti-semitism is let's just get into a light topic here on a monday anti-semitism is the craziest it's the craziest sort of thing in our world because it's both not happening as much on college campuses as the right would like to tell you and it's also happening to a deep degree on like the candace owen show where she's saying that charlie kirk was killed by the massat because he was going to turn on israel and here's where it gets weird that's getting into left-wing spaces because there's this sort of like if you're somebody who thinks that what israel is doing in gaza is a war crime you will then soon the algorithm will start giving you Candace Owens because she thinks the Massat killed Charlie Kirk but her general framework is extremely paranoid right wing so you have these people there are people in my own life who I'm trying to deprogram around Candace Owens because they got to her by way of like they were looking at Chris Hayes videos on YouTube where he's saying what's happening in Gaza is is is is is a crime and has to be stopped. And then the algorithm says, well, you know what else you might like?

Candace Owens. It's very,

very messed up. Yeah, yeah, and that is scary. To go back a moment to what you were saying about

Joe. To before I tried to solve the issues of Palestine? Really? Do you think you and the listeners would all like to go back in time on

this one? I want to talk about reproductive rights for a little bit here. No, I just going back to the Rogan approach, like and even like that cash patel example you give it's like that that if i talk about it not in a in in the context of having to accept the fact that cash patel is the head of the fbi and just like all of the craziness that goes along with that and whatever role podcasting has to do with the fact that this administration isn't in power i mean that just trying to isolate that for a second when you just talk about hey the head of the fbi went on a show and a guy who's a generally affable guy says hey isn't it crazy and you have the head of the fbi saying yeah this pretty crazy job that i have here you're kind of like oh yeah this is like that is that was stern's thing right like getting people and you understand why that would be interesting right like so much more interesting than going on a fox news show or whatever to get the point across or preach to the choir or whatever it is or to do it.

interview like he's smoking a cigar literally in the new yorker profile it's like patel is like

taking fat rips off a cigar yeah yeah you mean with rogan right with rogan yeah yeah of course yeah i mean it's just so and so like i can't explain how i both hate that but also like well it's also like it makes it makes a certain amount of sense if you start like kind of isolating all the different awfulnesses you know but it does sort of make sense why people are drawn to that

kind of programming yeah it's it's very uh it's very casual and there's not a lot of pretense around it and again it's it's generally the kind of stuff that i like it's just in this one particular case it's it is so it is so powerful as a as a sort of a messaging thing and as far as again it it it helps a lot of people develop what their view of the world is or what their view of the vaccine is or what their view of crypto is or what their view of a whole host of things are And if you're able to actually impact the opinions of millions and millions of people, I guess it's my opinion that you have a certain amount of responsibility. Maybe that's not fair because we'll never, that's never something we're going to have to worry about on TBTL. Like that, you know, like we're never going to have such an impact on the culture that we have to really ask ourselves, is this, you know, is this responsible? Are we being responsible with what we're putting out in the world? But I do kind of think that when you get to that level that Rogan's at, I wish that he, again, as I think of probably a pretty good-natured dude in the world, I do wish he understood that when he's just asking questions and platforming people, it really impacts the real world to a degree, and with that comes some responsibility.

Yeah, it's like the guy at the job site or the guy at the end of the bar who is kind of interesting but has some kind of wacky theories but is mostly interesting and mostly harmless. You can talk to that guy for a while and that's fine. But when that guy is one of the most powerful voices literally in the country, then you're like, okay, we got to treat this differently. We're not just having beers with this guy who's a little bit kooky and read some, you know, you know, I don't want to be elitist about it, but like, you know, maybe didn't go to college, but just read certain books and therefore talks like an expert on certain things. And it's like, well, did you know? It's just like, well, that that's fine. But it's when when the smartest guy on the job site is who's got some wacky theories is the person with the biggest megaphone or one of the biggest megaphones in the country. I'm I'm with you on maybe we need to be a little bit careful with what we say in the microphones.

All right. Let's thank some of our donors. These wonderful, generous people are keeping us in business. We will never reach the top of the pops on the podcast charts and get that sweet, sweet. I don't even know. Who's even advertising on podcasts anymore, Andrew?

That's a good question because a lot of the podcasts—

We'll never get that SimpliSafe money.

I guess I listen to Pablo's feed has ads. A lot of the podcasts I listen to, I'm in like an ad-free tier or whatever. I say a lot of them. It's mostly like just Comedy Bang Bang related stuff these days. But I guess I hear Pablo—a lot of SimpliSafe. Did you just say that? I just did. You just said that, yeah. There's a lot of security stuff and other things that you would say and then I'd repeat. Sorry.

So we don't have that. We have donations from our listeners. This is 100% listener-supported podcasting, and it's thanks to folks like Josh Thompson, who's in Amherst, Massachusetts. Thank you, Josh. Thanks also to Alexander Strawn. Alex is in Seattle, Washington. Alex has been listening to this show and participating, Andrew, in TBTLE things for, I'm saying 16, 17 years, since the jump, practically. So, Alex, I hope you're doing well out there, and I really appreciate you. I'd love to see your name on this list. That's kind of amazing. I'd also love to see Sarah Beth Rebholz of Middleton, Wisconsin, on the list. I feel so deeply connected to Wisconsin since our time in friendship, Andrew.

I know. I was thinking about that yesterday because there was – well, why would I take it here? There was a big Green Bay versus Chicago football game yesterday that I was following.

I was texting with our friend, television's Chris James. Were you?

I almost jumped on our little text chain when I heard the end of that game. I was like, everybody just needs some space right now after that ending of that game. And I was thinking about Wisconsin and how there's a disconnect between how much I love Wisconsin and how much I don't root for that particular football team. No offense. Thank you.

Yeah, that was a tough one. I was watching it, Andrew, in the Xfinity store where I was trapped for many hours yesterday. Well, maybe more on that coming up. Also, thanks to Steve Corley, who's over there in Bellevue, Washington. Nice. Thank you. Oh, May.

I'll see you in May. That's when they're saying at the very latest, they're predicting or they're scheduling, they're saying that the light rail will connect the east and the west by May.

East, meet West, and we'll build a golden bridge. That's a line that Al Pacino delivers in Scent of a Woman. I believe he's talking about the two women he's in bed with.

Oh, jeez.

Hoo-yah! Hoo-ha! Hoo-ah! That movie, boy, that movie was a real moment in the culture. I never saw it. I did. I saw it in a theater. Thanks also to Lisa Perry, who's in Oxford, Massachusetts. Look at this. We got Amherst. We got Oxford. Wow, yeah, a lot of Massachusetts. I mean, two Massachusetts is a lot for us. And then one, Port Orchard, Washington, which is where Stephen Gardner is.

Which is like Massachusetts, only the M is upside down. Washington and Massachusetts, very, very similar.

That's what they always say. That's what they said on Ask Chiefs. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you to all of our donors for making TBTL possible today. We really couldn't do this without you.

Hello, and welcome to Top Story.

Yeah, I was running some errands in town yesterday, and I've been meaning to see about getting a new cell phone. But when I changed carriers, I changed over to Xfinity for my cell service. Yeah, by the way, it's great. It's $40 a month For my cell phone And it still was when I went in I was kind of shocked So I get my internet from them And I get my cell phone They're separate bills Comcast slash Xfinity Is just one of the absolute worst companies In the world to deal with When there's a problem But what I'll say about the cell phone deal Is they got these Xfinity stores And you just go in there And they're really nice And they really know their stuff so it kind of it blunts the issue of not being able to get a human being ever on the phone when you're having a problem but when i signed up for this like i don't know a year or so ago um i uh i had just missed some promotion and so there was no i just thought and i think i said this back at the time i assumed that all of that like right now we're offering four hundred dollars off if you was just kind of all bullshit and and like but this but it ends on tuesday like i just thought, yeah, this is always, they're always, what they're trying to do is get you into a contract. And so they're going to kind of give you the phone, so to speak, or they're going to give you a deal on the phone so that you're trapped with their service for a predictable amount of time. And there's no such thing as a time when they're not doing a deal. Well, I somehow found myself in a period of time where they weren't doing a deal, shockingly. And the woman I was talking to said, you know, just, you got to just kind of check back in occasionally and see what's going on and so yesterday was a sunday afternoon i was running some errands and i was literally driving by the xfinity store down in town and i was like you know what i'm gonna go in there and i did and they were in fact running a deal what i wanted to do mostly andrew was get on an iphone that uses usbc because everything else in my life is now on usbc there's only one thing really that's using a different plugin and it's the my silly cell phone and if i could get that on board with the usbc then i'm streamlined the process that i never have to be fumbling for a specific cable that's all i ever need for the rest of my life or until they switch over to a new system and uh so i went in and sure enough they were running a some kind of a promotion although i did i didn't want to be like the woman who helped me was super nice and really good at her job even though she'd only worked there for a month and a half i learned but it's funny they have definitely coached these people to never use the word contract it's very clear that contract tests very poorly with groups nobody wants to hear about a contract no one likes being under contract so they are not putting you on a contract if you get this iphone 16 which is what i have

in fact that's what they say that it didn't even occur to me but you saying that makes me realize how many times i've just heard a you know a cell service commercial in the background they're like

no contracts never or whatever they love and she was like she was like so i'm getting this iphone which the retail price allegedly of this phone i got a 16 it retails for 729 dollars but i'm gonna get 400 off um by signing up for the payment plan so i got to pay off the other three $329 over the next 32 months. And I said, can I just pay it off now? And they said, nope. Not if you want the deal. And I said, interesting. I go, is there interest on this?

I was going to say, interesting.

Interesting. I go, is there interest? And she goes, nope. And by the way, I backed this up. I did this on my own calculator. There's no interest, Andrew. Oh, okay.

So my interesting joke didn't work.

Well, no, but I was the same thing. I was like, I don't, why, I was like, why do they want me, why do they want me to take 32 months to pay them their 329 other dollars. And then I realized, I said, well, what happens if I pay it off early? And she goes, well, then you don't get the $400 off. Then they come for you on the $400. And I realized, oh, okay, I get it. It's a contract. It's a contract. I have to, I have to use this service for 32 months while I'm paying off the phone or I owe them the $400 back. So in other words, I have to use their service for a determined amount of time, or there's a financial penalty. What we have described here, my friend, is a contract That we're not calling a contract Oh, no, no, no, you're just paying off the phone

You're not under contract

You're paying off the phone

We have to use that Portlandia sketch From a cell phone company Tomorrow maybe we can use the old Kumail Nanjiani It's literally that

And by the way, I wasn't even mad Because I don't think it's a bad deal And again, the woman that I was working with Was really awesome Again, she was fairly new i didn't want to be one of those people that was trying to like prove a point of like you know it is a contract you're calling it something else but i was just observing it and again she was good natured about it what happened though was and why i was able to spend so much quality time in this xfinity store was because in order to transfer my old phone to my new phone i had to turn off some kind of a find my iphone setting and because i wasn't at my house i couldn't turn it off without a one hour theft delay so basically what the deal is is like if you're this this is built into the iphone so that if someone were someone were to like steal my phone i left my phone on the table at a restaurant and then someone snatches it and they want to turn off the find my iphone they don't want me to be able to see where the iphone is going it won't let you do that it's a waiting period of one hour on the iphone they would also have

to have your password to get into it of course but i guess if a family member or somebody stole your phone and then they know how to use it they could go yeah or face if they stole my face which a lot of people oh is that how you is that how you is that how you log into your phone you just

look at it well here's what i do i look at it and then sometimes if i'm wearing my glasses or i have a hat yeah or maybe i'm just having a particularly bad day it doesn't recognize my face and then i

got to go passcode on it but yeah i use a thumb usually it just reads my thumbprint so i had to

sit there which again absolutely not this person's fault but it's like I just had to sit there in the Xfinity store for an additional hour waiting for this thing to like let me in because it would have taken me 45 minutes to drive home undo it and then drive back she said if I would have been at my house it would have been faster because I'm on my wifi and it like recognizes it but

you would think at the store they could override that I'm kind of surprised about that

that's a really good point they should have a master key for that yeah But they didn't. So I got to spend a long time there watching. I mean, thank God they had that game on.

How's the lighting?

Oh, very soft. Mood lighting, Andrew. I mean, almost sensual.

Yeah. Were you just under it? Because I do think that they're trying to make some of those stores and those experiences a little bit better. I think the Apple store, of course, kind of led the charge on that, although that is still a very brightly lit kind of environment. But, you know, you even have those. I mean, I don't even know if I want to open up this bag of worms. You keep yours in a bag, huh? Yeah, yes. I mean, cans, who can afford a can?

I mean, it is, but by the way, it raises the question, who was canning their worms?

Well, I think maybe from fishing. Do you put your worms in a can when you're fishing?

I always thought they, yeah, I guess maybe if it's like live bait, they were in a cooler or something. Yeah, like a coffee can maybe. I'm trying to think of a can of when I've seen a canned worm situation.

Yeah. But, you know, like even the, the, the bank, not Bank of America. I'm the one once upon a farm. What's the God? Yeah. Capital One. Capital One. Yeah. And Capital One has a bunch of campaigns. You got, you got once upon a farm. Yeah. You've got tall guy. And then you get the tall guy with the really thick neck who they're really trying to make a thing. Right. Really? Yeah. And Samuel L. Jackson is the other one.

I randomly saw Capital One guy. This is kind of dark, but like he was on Dateline NBC because he happened to randomly be friends with someone who was killed in a mysterious fashion. And it was very unsettling watching Keith Morrison or whoever it was. They're talking about this guy in San Diego who passes.

away or this person and then they're just talking to some of this person's friends and loved ones and one of them is the Capital One guy not mentioned has nothing to do with his gig he's just there talking about his friend who was killed mysteriously weird right the only reason I brought

that up by the way was because a big part of the campaign now is like oh he's been sleeping at the Capital One like lounges and they were they've been trying to make these Capital One lounges a thing since before the pandemic I think because I remember they're like oh it's a bank but you can just come in and maybe they're called cafes and get a cup of coffee or whatever and they were they were actually trying to stem the tide of almost like online banking going against the going against the stream and saying instead we're going to create these banks that are also cafes and people will want to come in here and spend time and then while they're here they'll get a low interest loan or whatever i don't know exactly what the whole plan was then the pandemic hits which just like really would you would think shake this even further to its core i i think i'm right about this timeline i could be wrong um but now they're back at it and and like really pushing it by having this whole campaign of the thick neck guy now sleep their t whatever his name is uh he's capital one capital one guy he like sleeps here now and like whatever there's even one word samuel jackson is is his neck really that thick in the original commercials i used to see that's how i knew him when he was a new guy he i could only look at his big veiny neck like i couldn't

see anything else it was don't use the word big followed by vanian it is what it is he was so

never gonna get that golden globe well you gotta apply but now that you say that i'm seeing it

but you'll never unsee it i just see him as guy whose friend died mysteriously but i was hoping

that i was hoping that maybe while you spent this time in this xfinity store maybe they had gotten the memo of making these places less like just fluorescent and two plungers it was pretty bright

But it wasn't, I mean, honestly, it wasn't, it was not the worst experience. I really liked the people that worked there. Again, they're good at their jobs. Like it's a complicated ass thing. And what I really had, Andrew, was like a front row seat into the lives of about 30 to 40 strangers as they came through. It's a weirdly personal thing what's going on with your cell phone. First of all, a ton of people that go to the Xfinity store to pay their bill, which is, I think that gets into a certain kind of like a, you know, a kind of what would you call it? Like where you are in your financial life, whether you have, you know, like online banking, maybe whether you have access, you know, to online banking or it's a thing you use or like what your bank account kind of looks like. If you're coming in writing a check, how much money you have in your account, how behind you are on your payments, things like that. Like, it's a, you know, that's, it was definitely not exclusively, but it definitely seemed to sort of tilt towards folks that were somewhat economically marginalized. One guy came in, it was like a, it was almost like, you know, children's shoes for sale never used. this guy comes in just a guy maybe in his 20s and he just goes hey i need my dad's my dad's tv service is about to get turned off i need to pay it and i was just like wow his dad wasn't with him just comes in and he goes yeah he goes um he goes i think i have the address here he just got out of rehab and i was just like man i'm getting like a view i'm like what a good son like it's going on a sunday i'm only there because i'm trying to upgrade my personal life experience of my phone like you'd never catch me in there trying to fix waltz cable you know and this guy and it's like and then i'm thinking how many other things has this guy done for his dad and like he by the way he didn't he wasn't when he said that it wasn't like he was pissed or like uh or embarrassed or he was trying to argue with them literally it was just like his dad there was an issue that was going on for his dad and he was there to fix it and he was and he and he did and i was just like man what an act of love and you know then you'd have so many people wearing shirts indicating that they did not want the government to mess with them or and like i don't know how do i talk about this in a way i don't know there's no way for me to talk about this without getting into a whole territory that that i that will make people wish i was still talking about gaza but it's like i don't know there's just a certain kind of dude who's wearing like one guy was literally wearing a sweatshirt that had a skeleton that said if you want my gun come take it from my cold dead hands which is a hoodie just on the back of the hoodie and like he just looked so kind of beaten up by life and so like this other guy was just sitting there kind of staring into the middle

distance and he had a black t-shirt on he was a guy probably in his 60s or 70s again just kind of a sort of a very i guess you could say nondescript guy who i don't know what was going on in his life but he's just wearing like a black like 1776 t-shirt

shirt and it's just like man what is going on in your guys's lives like it based on and not that you know not that economics are everything but it doesn't look to me like maybe economically your life has gone particularly well for you it doesn't look like socially you don't seem super well adjusted or you're not outgoing you don't seem like you're like life does not appear to be clicking for you in a way that's notable and yet you're really keyed in on this like the government wants your guns or like this country was founded on whatever you think it was found. It's just like, do you think your life decisions have generally led you in the right direction, bro? Like, do you like I do? Is it possible that maybe all the other things about your life that could be more ideal? This also represents a way in which your your gut instinct has gone the wrong way.

Well, I'm sure they will rise up if we ever live in a world where the government is sending out masked thugs to assault people and drag them into vans without. Never a better time for that. Never a better time. These people are going to be outraged if that kind of stuff happens, because that's what they've been warning us about for all this time.

Yeah, you mean unmarked vehicles and questionable federal agents who may or may not even actually be working for the organization, they say, wearing masks, ripping Americans off the streets? Would that be a good time for the John Birch Society to do their thing?

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. Oh, man, it's not from a female.

All right, an email or a V-mail before we skedaddle?

Yeah, I need to go through the voicemail line. I realize I'm letting them kind of pile up the last week or two, so sorry if we haven't gotten to your voicemails yet. But I did get this one that I listened to off of my phone this morning. For some reason, Google Voice marked this as spam, and I am insulted on behalf of them, on behalf of our listener here. I'm marking this as not a spam voicemail. This is from a new listener, Luke.

Hey, guys. I'm a rookie. I just found you last year. Rookie. A rookie.

Although Google Voice doesn't have it as rookie. Is that why you were laughing? I was reading along. I just like rookie.

I like T.B.T.L. rookie as a terminology. It reminds me of radio rookies, which I don't know if they're doing that anymore. So I think we can maybe borrow that.

And, yes, I do like rookie. In fact, that's going to come up in this voicemail, the kind of the terminology of the 10s and who's allowed to use it. So let's go back to the beginning here.

Hey, guys. I'm a rookie. I just found you last year. Anyway, I'm very upset with this syrup talk. I'm a Vermonter. Well, I live in Arizona now, but Vermont for my birth. And goddamn, you guys don't like maple syrup?

I do, by the way. When I first heard this, I was like, what do you mean? We didn't say we don't like maple syrup. And then I was like, oh, wait. No, you did say you don't like maple syrup. You like the table syrup that you grew up with.

Without waylaying us, can I just explain? Waylay away?

I got nowhere to be.

It's only, I mean this mostly to our radio rookie. By the way, I think radio rookies still exist, so I can't use that.

Is that the NPR one or the KOW one?

That was the WNYC one.

WNYC one. Okay, gotcha.

Yeah, but with all – yes, truthfully, I don't love the taste of maple syrup, but it's only because I was deprived of it because of its high value as a kid. So in other words, I didn't grow up with it because it was so beloved and so treasured that they didn't just let us kids have it. So in a way, it's like, yeah, my lack of liking it is almost a compliment to the product because it was – and by the way, can I throw one other – Well, no, let's get back to the point. And I'm going to tell you, I got maple syrup news for you before this is over.

And I was going to say, my thing on that was I didn't realize until you pointed it out that there's a difference between just like generic, like table syrup, as we call it now, now meaning the last two weeks since I've learned the term, or table syrup or pancake syrup. I just always thought any syrup that isn't specifically a boysenberry or flavored, I thought it was all generally maple syrup. But you taught me that there is a difference there. So that's where I was on the whole thing.

Well, I live in Arizona now, but Vermont for my birth. And God damn, you guys don't like maple syrup? God damn. I know it's a little expensive, but it's so good. Anyway, that's it. Have a great day. I just found you guys. I'm coming up on my one-year anniversary. And I love you guys. that you've helped me through some hard times and I'm not going to use any of the terms everybody else says because um I don't think I'm allowed to yeah all right love you have a great day Bye-bye.

Okay, so a few things here. First of all, a one-year listener, that truly is a new listener in our terms. That is baby level.

We're kind of operating on the geologic scale here, Andrew.

Yes, we really are.

So anything in the last 10,000 years is relatively new.

I am charmed to death by this voicemail. Welcome to the fold. And I think this listener is allowed to use the terminology. It sounds like maybe they were trying not to use like power out or any of those types of what you do is so important maybe. And it reminded me when I was brand new on TBTL. Do you recall this? I'm sure you do. Jen left. And for the longest time when you brought me on, I did not want – we talked about it on the show. I did not want to say good luck to all at the end of the show. I did not feel right. I mean it took a long time. And I can't remember what eventually got me to start doing the sign-off with you. But you just did it yourself. because I was like, that's you and Jen. That's not me. I haven't earned it.

I love that call so much. I love that person's accent. I love that they said, God damn.

Yeah.

Please call again. We don't know their name, right? I don't think that person ever left their name. We're calling him Radio Rookie. But Radio Rookie, wherever you are, well, I guess we know, Arizona by way of Vermont.

Vermont, yep.

Please call us again, even if it's to say, God damn, I can't believe you don't like fill in the blank. that's a great call I love that call now here's what I would say though do you think Andrew somebody who doesn't like maple syrup would have won a national arts and entertainment journalism award last night in the category of soft news feature music culture arts under five minutes Luke Burbank quote a spirited take on maple syrup Do you think a guy who doesn't like maple syrup would have won that award last night in New York City at the National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards? Because I did.

You did a piece on syrup, and you won an award on that last night, but you were not in New York City last night.

I wasn't, and I also didn't know that they had submitted one of my stories, and I did not know that this was an award. I did not know the National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards was happening. and we got an email this morning of the different other people who won. Mo Rocca won in the obituary category. He pretty much runs that category.

You might say he wrote the book on it.

He sure did. He won for Gene Hackman Remembrance. Let's see. Also, in the personality profile category, first place went to our friend Jane Pauly and my old pal jay kernes of public radio fame and mike levine and ran morrison for connie chung um and then oh without annette philip patty martha teishner one in the personality profile category and then uh yeah soft news feature music culture and arts in under five minutes your man lb

checking in with a spirited take on maple syrup and joe rogan nowhere on the list thank you once

Once again, Joe Rogan snubbed by the broadcast establishment.

And he was in that category against you as well. Congratulations. You fell to the giant.

Finally. Nice guy, though, Andrew, I hear. Very nice guy. Good to everyone in the catering department. That's what I hear. At Fear Factor. They're rebooting that with Johnny Knoxville as the host, which I think is maybe the most perfect casting of all time.

I don't think I realized it went away. I just saw a promo with him because I'm pretty unfamiliar with both of those worlds. So I was like, oh, he hosts it now I don't think I realized it was a comeback

I do think that Johnny Knoxville is Like the perfect person To host that show Considering it's like doing things that are scary And might hurt you That's his whole deal Alright, that's going to do it for today's episode But we will be right back here with more Imaginary Radio for you tomorrow So please join us for that in the meantime Have a great Monday Try to stay dry, which is hard if you're here in the Northwest And please remember, no mountain too tall And good luck to all There it is.

Power out.