Muse

I think what they were doing was good. To me, you rehearse, you rehearse, you get it perfect. You know exactly what you're doing, and then you forget about it. Let me pinpoint you. You said they learn it, they forget it, and that's okay. That's great. Well, they've forgotten it. But they never learned it. So when do they learn it? I'm just saying, when do we have a time? But what I'm saying is if they're going to forget it anyway, then what difference does it make? I mean, you see what I mean? It's like one of those, it's a zen thing. It's like, you know, you know, how many babies, you know, fit in the tire thing, that whole, the old joke, you know.

TBTL. The new phone book's here. The new phone book's here. I'm somebody now. Millions of people look at this book every day. This is the kind of spontaneous publicity, your name in print, that makes people.

Where are you guys? Have I lost you in the land of never-never?

I've only ever said I love you to two men my entire life. Stone Cold Steve Austin and a guy in a dark club who I mistook for Stone Cold Steve Austin.

I know these guys are annoying, but that's all I got. It's party time, chumps.

well hello everyone and welcome to a very special mid holidays edition of tbtl this is of course the podcast that just may be too beautiful to live i love these guys they make funny with their mouths my name is andrew walsh luke is out today enjoying a bit of a holiday respite he will be back tomorrow, by the way. And don't worry, we have a very, very fun show for you today with a very, very special guest. What? You think I'm dressed to talk? I'm dressed to party hardy like an MC Scat Cat. I am concerned that you think that just because Luke is out today, the show is going to be filled with my boring stories of garbage anxiety and the antics of a cat named bingo and dream talk I know you hate dream talk I did have a dream last night though really quickly let's get this out of the way because I think there might be some meaning here so last night I had a dream that I had to cross this really big river this is an absolute true story by the way I had this dream that I had to cross this really big river and I was intimidated by it but I was able to do it and I crossed the river successfully and it wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. But then I ran into somebody on the other side and they said, yes, but the problem is going back, going back. Everybody can cross the river this way. The hard part is going back the other way because there's only one specific way to go back and it's very difficult and very few people can do it. And I woke up and I thought about this. I'm like, this feels like there's meaning here, like there's something about my life. Maybe I've crossed a river. Maybe I've crossed something I can't go back to it. Or maybe it's about being bold and not being afraid to leave your home or your comfort zone and trusting that you will find your way back. And then I realized I was up until 2 in the morning last night playing Minecraft because I got lost in my damn Minecraft world, and this whole dream was just about Minecraft. I'm a 49-year-old man, and I had a dream about Minecraft. That's the saddest thing I've ever heard. We do have somebody here who is way more interesting than me. You probably know her as, she's an author. She's an author of Notoriously Bad Character, The True Story of Lou Graham, and the immigrants and sex workers who built Seattle. You might know her as your favorite half of the, let's say, moderately successful cleaning podcast called Spotless, but I know her mostly as a woman who simply cannot get enough Desmond Decker in her life.

Scott defines who I am as a person, and I will never turn my back on Scott.

Hannah Brooks Olson, that will always be the drop that introduces you on this show. How are you doing?

I love it. Okay, so I'm so impressed with your ability to completely reject what your listeners want and care about right at the top of your show. To just say, you know what? I know you all hate this, so here we go. It's so bold.

There is something freeing about me doing the show because the truth is, and I'm not saying this to get sympathy, but there is a huge, I would say more than half of our listeners, a huge contingent of our listeners, the moment they hear my voice before Luke's, they're like, this isn't the episode for me. They just shut the damn thing down and they're like, I don't know, maybe I'll listen to Scott Aukerman or I'll go listen to a leaf blower somewhere. So there's something freeing in that.

It's kind of like the people who are still here. Someday we'll get you on with Luke, and you'll actually reach a larger audience. But today, you're just with me, my friend.

I don't know that Luke and I could do it, though, because I think both of us would so not shut the hell up that it would be six hours long. Because Luke and I, when we've hung out in person, it's a lot. The bar gets loud.

Yeah. He really enjoys watching Mariners games with you and your partner, Keith.

Yes. And we also enjoy it. But it is, I felt the time, especially a couple of years ago when the Mariners were like right on the edge of maybe going to the playoffs. I just felt the bar was unprepared for like the level of volume and gesticulation that the two of us bring, you know, in a group.

Now, let me let me ask you about this, because I believe that particular time that I'm thinking of when you guys got together to watch the game, Keith was there as well. And I don't think of Keith as a very loud person, kind of quite the opposite. He's correct. He's not a man without opinions or ideas. He has a lot of those, but he's he's got a more quiet demeanor than you two. So what happens to him in these situations?

uh i feel that he gets turned up to like you know high for him which is like eight he doesn't quite go to 11 but it does tend to you know and then of course you know like nobody's sober by the end of a baseball game so there's also that not a mariners game certainly

that's interesting i thought honestly that it might go the other way that it would be if there's two loud people who are kind of dominating sometimes the less loud person will shrink

even further back that is no he can uh he can get he can he can rise to the occasion I would say

speaking of before the show you were telling me that you were visiting your parents over the holiday weekend and that you're on a completely different sleep schedule now and that Keith was

having some trouble maybe hanging with the rents well yeah um my parents so my whole life my dad worked nights uh and my mom just loves to be my mom has she does not respect the morning as a concept like she chooses she goes full like lucille bluth like i don't understand the question and i won't respond to it regarding anything prior to like noon this is why people hate hospitals yeah where's there's no bar right exactly uh she does not like or respect the concept of the morning and except in the way of staying up until four o'clock in the morning um so when we are staying at their house yeah we're like up just shooting the shit unsurprisingly the two people who made me also love to just sit up and chat uh so we just like catch up on our cheese may uh while you know my dad and i are like knocking back buffalo trace and uh you know it can be it it's keith and i've been together now for almost 13 years and um when's your anniversary It is in April. So we're, I guess, like 12 and a half.

You're kind of knocking on the door. No, I wasn't testing you. I was just...

Like how I had to remember. Well, and it's our... As we've been living in sin all these years, we are unmarried. It's our anniversary of our first date.

Yeah, me and Veve, similar situation. And ours is in January. It's on my mind because I kind of don't know to get Genevieve yet. And it's a big one. It's 25. It's our 25th. Yeah. That is big.

What is the 25th anniversary? I don't know.

I keep meaning to Google it.

I always forget those. I just assume every one of them is paper because one of them is paper and I think that's so ridiculous.

I'll look it up. Anyway, this isn't about me yet. I'll talk about my anniversary plans in a moment. So anyway, you guys have been together for about 13 years. Yeah.

And really one of the first things that we identified was just that we come from different stock.

Which is good if you're in a romantic relationship.

it's better to come from different families yeah ideally yes ideally ideally your family tree is not a wreath um and but what that means is that i do there's just a lot of days where he's a little slower the next morning and i'm just like be bopping and scatting because i i don't know it takes it takes kind of a lot for me to be hung over even at my like a sudden age of 38 um so And my dad is the same. So he and I are just like, you know, drinking the sweet and creamy, having eggnog and whiskey. And it was just a little rough for Keith. But he's good now.

You had to use smelling salts to get him out of bed. The reason it came up before the show is because I'm like, Luke and I were on tape on Thursday and Friday. And I had nothing. Literally, you and I often will record our Spotless podcast on Saturdays. But we didn't have to do that this Saturday. Like I had, I did nothing at all on Saturday and I have just. been staying up so late one of the nights it might have been thursday or thursday was christmas i don't know one of these nights i remember looking at the clock sitting behind my computer just doing absolute bullshit like nothing but looking at the clock and seeing that it was after four in the morning and having to force myself to go to bed i didn't even want to go to bed at four in the morning and now i'm doing this with you today and it's like we're recording this at noon like it's not early but i i woke up like hello genevieve i had to wake up before 10 o'clock i feel like

it's you know yeah it's a type i also i don't know man i just feel like i my i've never had a normal circadian rhythm in my life uh i have work nights i used to work very early in the morning in radio and like when once you've worked every hour of the day at some point in your life i just I feel like for me it takes – I don't have to adjust to a sleep schedule. I'm just like, well, I don't want to have to sleep or not. So that's a little different. And to your point, I did use smelling salts on Keith, except his version of smelling salts is sour watermelon Sour Patch Kids, like watermelon Sour Patches.

Oh, really? Even in the morning that'll get a kid out of bed, huh?

It is – yeah, it really is sort of the jump start. Sometimes you just have to wave it about, He lost the scent of sour watermelon candies under his nose, and he's wide awake.

Just like in Sense and Sensibility, or was it Pride and Prejudice? Nobody will ever know. We can't know. I've alluded to this several times. Hannah and I host Spotless together, a podcast about cleaning, which actually ties into a game we want to play today, kind of a game, which I'll get to in a moment. But I had a very embarrassing moment a couple of shows ago where I was going on and on about a scene where somebody gets her dress famously dirty as she crosses a muddy field, and I kept on referring to the book as Sense and Sensibility. And we were probably five, ten minutes into the conversation before I realized I was talking about Pride and Prejudice. I've only read Pride and Prejudice. I've never read Sense and Sensibility. But I could just feel like when you are that far into a conversation and you suddenly realize you've been saying the absolute wrong thing, And it's something that is beloved to so many people, you know, people who know this, it's like they know it. It's not it's easy to keep those two things separated. Right. You had my back, by the way. You kept saying, listen, they're both alliterative titles written by the same person in the same era. Like this isn't OK. But it was like Wile E. Coyote looking down and realizing that he has been running over air the whole time. And I didn't know what to do with myself. And the listeners have been relatively gracious about it, I will say.

i just love that you will never recover from this and it i mean here's the thing i should have been more helpful i majored in literature but as i told you when we were doing it i was like yeah not that that was not the literature for me uh that that whole era like i said like you know uh like bronte sisters sort of thing it's just not for me um although i do yes so not only do we host a podcast about cleaning together it is truly the grand pod of tbtl because we did come up with it because of me being on TBTL and talking about cleaning. It was inspired by our TBTL time.

I should have looked this up. I won't do it now because it will distract me too much, but it is true. You joined me on TBTL years ago.

Yeah, and we just talked about cleaning. I'm guessing in person.

I think I was living in Wallingford, and you swung by. We only knew each other, I think, mostly as internet friends. I think we had maybe met in passing at the radio station that we both had worked at years and years ago. And I was just like, hey, you want to join the show? You seem like a fun person. And then somebody, and this is the part that I wish I knew, a listener wrote in about some cleaning question, just generally how do I feel about a certain way of cleaning something. I don't remember what it was. Then we're like getting ready to wrap up the show, and then you and I get this cleaning question, and then we just start talking and talking and talking, like you and Luke at a bar watching a baseball game. And then we're like, you know what? I think we both like talking about cleaning a lot. Maybe we should start a podcast. And we did. Yeah. And it's called Spotless. What number are we up to? I'm trying to look this up on the fly here.

186, I think. Wow. We're close to 200. We're nearing 200.

Or I think maybe, let's see here. Stink for Yourself was episode number 184. So our next, and I think maybe that's, yeah, I think maybe, is that one behind, I think, where we are? It doesn't matter.

No, because we're up to 185 now. We are, okay. We had Supes I Did It Again was the most recent.

That was our last one. That's great. What else did we have here? Air It Out, but like an air to the fortune. Let's see here. Plaguing for Keeps was a show we did recently.

So anyway, check out Spotless Pod if you're interested in that. By the way, the 25th anniversary material, for lack of a better word, is silver. Oh, okay. That's easy. So I guess I should get Genevieve a sword?

I was thinking, do you know of a silver fox you could lend to her? I was wondering if she's got any, you know.

She would like that more than a sword, or at least the kind of sword I was thinking of. But anyway, more on that off air, possibly, as I navigate this new phase of my relationship. I want to tell people what you and I are doing today. And we're going to try to keep this somewhat short, if possible. Although you and I also have a tendency to, I feel like every time we dial up to do spotless, we say we can keep this one short if we want to. And then I'm on 17 tangents within five minutes. Somebody on Blue Sky recently said that the perfect length of a podcast is either 45 minutes or infinity and nothing in between. How do you feel about that?

I would believe it. I'm a person who enjoys a long podcast because I have a lot of time when podcasting makes sense in my life. I spend a lot of time waiting for my dog to take a dump. and so and just like I putter a lot I so I like a longer podcast but Keith my partner he loves like a short podcast because he is his backlog of podcasts is wild and so he loves like a 20 minute pod so you can just scooch through them I cannot stand that because I am gonna have to be like you know finagling with it and starting a new episode yeah I don't want I don't exactly my

that's my whole thing or that's why i don't like being out of like i have probably i'm probably subscribed to i don't know what 70 podcasts on my machine on my machine on my phone on my phone machine and i i care i care deeply about three of them and none of them are mine by the way which is really that's what the three i care the most deeply about which wait what are your three well I don't even know if that's accurate anymore well it's definitely like two Scott Aukerman ones which I know you're not on board with as much as I am I like uh Comedy Bang Bang I'm always refreshing on Sunday that's like the one I'm refreshing on Sunday is like when is this thing gonna drop and then Scott Hasn't Seen is a kind of a sister podcast to that okay and you know what two I guess I mean and it's just Scott Aukerman I mean yeah I mean honestly like because I was obsessed with the Dan Lebitard show for so long and it was all I listened to and they release just so so so much content um but then I just I had I developed and the listeners of the show know this about me I developed such a relationship with that show that I realized I was listening to it long after I was enjoying it I don't know if you have that experience but like yeah you're so addicted to it and you have such a parasocial relationship with it that you can't stop listening to it but you're angry at it a lot a lot more than you should be and so at a certain point and then people my favorite people on the show just kept leaving and leaving and they were replaced with people who i did not care for so eventually they made it easier for me to leave um but those are the biggies what are your you're

kind of are you still a crime girly i am but i am a discerning crime girly i do not enjoy so I my crime pods need to have original reporting they need to have original interviews with sources really they need to not be copaganda and they need to uh ideally focus on like cases that are not sort of the same six you know like I don't need another I've read every book about the green river killer I was reading no I was reading and rule when I was 10 years old I've And my my true crime girly claim to fame is that my friends and I, when we were sophomores in high school, started the forensic sciences club at our high school, literally just so that we could get like credit or whatever for reading and rule and watching cold case files.

That's ahead of the curve, by the way.

I know. And there's a photo of us in the yearbook. We had our 20 year high school anniversary, high school reunion, and we were looking through our yearbooks and we were like, oh, my God, there we are. We borrowed some crime tape from my dad, and, like, the photo of us is all of us together wrapped in crime tape. It's really something.

Oh, you said crime tape. For some reason, I thought, like, some sort of – your dad was a cop, by the way. Yes. Listeners may not know that. So I see the yellow cop tape. Yes.

Yes, like, caution, do not cross.

I was featuring audio tape for some reason, but I guess that speaks more of my upbringing.

Yes. And then we did things like we learned how to do fingerprinting and stuff like that. Wow. Yeah. so I but my I think the ones I get most well so my favorite podcast right now and the one that I get the most delighted when there's new episode is if

books could kill oh um with michael hobbs uh and peter whose last name i always forget so i'm completely unfamiliar i believe okay so the whole prime i'm just gonna explain a different podcast on this podcast uh so the entire premise of if books could kill is that um it's like airport the worst like airport pop culture-y type books think the like malcolm gladwellization of uh and so they go into they like read them and like one of them reads the book and does research and then tells the other one about it um peter is from the 5-4 podcast uh which is about the supreme court he was an attorney um and then michael hobbs formerly of you're wrong about um and many like a million years ago i did a kow segment with michael hobbs which is how i figured out who he was okay um we did a thing about like millennials because we were both writing about that at the time um but i am so desperately in love with peter the co-host um and keith is well aware of this fact uh and they are just so like incisive but funny and and i love like there's a lot of these sort of again pop it's like the like let them and um like what are some of the other books that they

did it's a lot of those books that freakonomics is on the list i'm looking at this yes and it's

the kind of books that especially in like 2016 2017 you know when i was working at a think tank and doing a lot of work in like econ you know really pseudo intellectual men with pictures of themselves holding up a fish in their tinder bio like those kinds of guys are like i love this book it really changed my life and you're like this book is dog shit and the author is a charlatan and so like that's the premise of the podcast and i just there the amount of like schadenfreight i get from hearing these two men absolutely like ripped to shreds mostly like bloviating white men who happen to have books is i just love it so i highly recommend gladwell is very represented

on this list I would say Walter Isaacson Thomas Frank a lot of a lot of names that you would recognize as do they ever read one of these books and say you know what this one wasn't so bad I'm guessing that Tim Ferriss wasn't one of those but uh every now and then do they read one and say you

know what they do and there's somewhere and they are very fair you know they are very like they're willing to say like this is good this is not but the main thing about it is a lot of those books are based on junk science or they come in with a premise that the author has predetermined and then the entire book is about building that case not about like interrogating the premise and sometimes it's a shit premise yeah and so like but that's my that's your number so that's your number one i love it so much it is my number one it is also so it's funded through a patreon account and it is one of one of the most well-funded Patreons like that there is so they don't have ads and they like have a lot of financial backing from their listeners which is really fun

that is fun

yeah it's great

and it reminds me it reminds me of another podcast that doesn't have ads

which one would that be?

well it's a little podcast called TBTL I don't know if you know this but we are 100% funded by our listeners

I love that

I didn't plan on doing this here, Hannah, but you led me right into it. This is where we thank the folks who make this show possible and ad-free, just like that other podcast Hannah was mentioning. But we're not going to mention any other podcasts during this segment. We're just going to thank these listeners. This is how it works. Once a year, we have a TBTL fundraiser called the TBTL-a-thon, and folks step up and say, you know what, we're going to support this show. Yes, we could listen to it for free. I used to listen to it for free, but now it is time to support the podcasting that I tolerate. And you know who did that? Jessica Fluge in Bethesda, Maryland. It is ironic that I stumbled on Bethesda because I was more concerned about Jessica's last name. It's spelled F-L-U-G-G-E. So I wrote to Jessica when I was looking ahead at this sheet. I don't do this on regular days, regular work weeks. But when I saw that the show that Luke was going to be gone for, that I was going to be hosting, we had a Floogie. I was like, I better write to Jessica, make sure I have the pronouncer on her name correct. And you know what? She wrote back to me, and I did have it correct. It was what I thought. It was Floogie. And yet Bethesda eluded you. But here's the deal. Now, I don't want to throw any listeners under the... the bus because we love all of our listeners especially the listeners who donate to make this possible but i want you to know that i also sent an email to a listener named kent i'm gonna say his last name based on what we know about floogie i'm going to say soggy s-o-g-g-e now i think it's interesting that we have an f-u i'm sorry an f-l-u-g-g-e and an s-o-g-g-e in the same thank you list. I think that right there is worth noting. I also think it's worth noting that Kent did not respond to my email.

Come on, Kent.

Kent completely blew me off. So I don't know exactly how to say his last name, but I definitely want to thank him. He is in Sammamish, Washington. Kent Soge, I'm going to say. And if I got that wrong, we're going to get it right next year. Thank you so much, Kent. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you to Kevin Barry in Issaquah, Washington. Clocked any time over in Issaquah, Hannah?

Not a ton, although I will say you really have to be somewhat local to get Issaquah on the first hit. Hey, good call.

Thank you for giving me that put up.

That is one that is, I don't know if you've experienced, I mean, you definitely have because anybody who lives in Washington or Oregon has had this issue of the city names that people from the rest of the world. The number of times where in pop culture someone says Spokane, Washington, and I'm like, come on, dog, you've never heard that word before, but Issaquah can be a tough one, so nice work.

Thank you. Hannah, there is one that I think of all the time because, as I mentioned before, you and I both have experience working at KUOW Public Radio, probably both doing similar jobs there at kind of different times, although I think we overlapped a little bit. but we didn't really work together but you know the big job there as a talk show producer is you get on the phone and you pre-interview people to see if they'd be good on the radio or if you know they're going to be on your radio show you need to get a bunch of information from them to sort of help form form and sort of sculpt the interview um and i was interviewing a farmer this was not on the air it was just a phone conversation between me and this guy who was probably going to be on our radio show and he was a farmer in what i kept referring to as the willamette valley and whenever i see the word willamette now i cringe and i just don't that was in 2009 probably maybe 2010 so 15 years ago if i haven't shaken that in 15 years i don't think i'm ever

shaking that much like uh much like not remembering sense and sensibility versus prejudice it is one that's hard to recover from but willamette is a really really tricky one for a lot of people um and the way you remember it is it's the willamette damn it oh that's good to know they should have a fair do the willamette damn it do and i learned that from my uh my high school english teacher um who moved from new york and then lived in eugene and uh and that was her

sort of um way of remembering do you think you remembered you remembered it even better because it was a little bit salty to hear a teacher say that as a kid i mean she was quite salty so that

it was it was to be expected from her um she yes uh but it also is i don't i mean not a lot of things rhyme with willamette so you know um but yes and i i firmly believe too that if someone is anytime i hear someone being critical of like oregon or oregon politics and then they mispronounce something like willamette i'm like cool i disregard your opinion entirely

although you and like you you have a lot of reasons to disagree with people's opinions i

feel like you don't you don't need i don't need an extra one but it's a pretty good it's a pretty good heuristic. It's like a pretty good way to know when you're just like, yeah, nope. And like Oregon and Washington have a lot of, they do have a lot of tough ones, you know. Yeah, exactly. Puyallup obviously is challenging. Here in Portland we have Cooch Street, which looks like Couch. Oh yeah, Luke hasn't

mentioned that before. Definitely Cooch, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Squim, Squim. Yep. You can't swim to Squim. It looks like Sequim or something like that, but it's Squim.

Yeah, and there's, I mean a lot of it is because they're like indigenous words, so a lot of them to you know if you are not if you don't grow up and i guess the same is true with like the east coast because you know narragansett is the thing um and so it's a lot of like indigenous words that you just sort of learn as you're growing up um but i the other day i was just like telling keith a story about something and i mentioned the sayus law river in in oregon and he was like oh my god i'm so glad you finally said it out loud he was like i have seen that word so many times really

I don't think I've ever heard of it. I don't know if I've seen it or heard of it.

It's a river that runs through on the coast.

I hear that it's one of those rivers where it's easy to cross. Going one way, but it's almost impossible to cross coming back. There's meaning in that.

All I can think with this dream that you have about not being able to cross back is the world's saddest children's book, which is The Bridge to Terabithia. I don't know if you read that one.

I don't know if I read it. I definitely know the name of it.

It involves a little river, and there's a little bridge, and the kids go across it, and it's like their little fantasy world is on the other side, and then it takes a terrible turn.

Really? Is it sadder than Where the Red Fern Grows? Because that killed me as a kid. And I read it several times, I think.

It's only sadder if you're more sad about a child dying in a book than a dog dying in a book, I guess. That's what I would say. So you're Miley's making it.

Yes, spoiler alert to a degree, I guess. It's a pretty old book. I remember having a paperback set of, I think, five books, and they all came in a little box together, and they were the Newbery Award-winning books. Oh, yeah. And one of them, I wish I could remember. I think there were five of them in there, and I can't remember the other four, but I know that's where I had Where the Red Fern Grows. Is it Grow or Grow? I can't remember. But that book was so, so sad, but I also was really drawn to it. I don't know if that says something about me.

I mean, when you're a kid, too, I feel like there's something about reading a book as a child and having an emotional reaction to it where it just becomes like a part of you. There is something unique about being a child, reading a book, having a big emotional reaction and feeling like you want to read it again. I definitely read a lot of very sad, weird books to myself when I was a kid. And I just loved them.

Now I'm going through. I'm finding other. There's a whole bunch of these collections throughout the 80s. And I'm looking for the one that I had.

Guarantee you it came from the Scholastic Book Fair.

Here it is. Yes, most likely. I think I found the one. I think this is it. Let me see if I can get into this on eBay. And will I end up buying it? We will see. Come on, computer. Don't fail me now. The Witch of Blackbird Pond, One-Eyed Cat. I know, see, I had, this is the one I had, but I don't remember any of these other books. Island of the Blue Dolphins.

Oh, sure.

Oh, Dear Mr. Henshaw, it looks like. That was Beverly Cleary. Beverly Cleary. I wrote, and Sign of the Beaver. Weirdly, you know what? Where the Red Fern Grows is not actually in this set. This is the set I had. I must have just had that as a Lucy, as they say. as a loose book but island of the blue dolphins the witch of blackbird pond one-eyed cat i feel like that one was sad too or maybe it's just a sad title gee andrew why do you think a book called one-eyed cat that has a gray cover and a forlorn looking kid with his shoulder slumped over as a

sad book i'm looking at some newberry winners and a lot of them are sad we have number the stars we have the whipping boy like there are some of these are very sad you know what's really sad is that i

am only halfway through thanking the donors for today's show and i totally lost the thread on this and we got okay keep it going wait should i start the music again let's maybe yes we need to get the energy back up here there it is there it is come on thank you thank you so much for not just your donation but your patience elizabeth maxwell in houston texas we couldn't do this without you appreciate it houston is relatively easy to say so i appreciate that as is sean Miller here in Seattle Washington Seattle I'm familiar with it I'm here see you around town Sean and finally oh this is our friend Gretchen Van Miller in Lakewood Washington Gretchen came all the way up from Lakewood to Seattle a couple of months ago to meet me in a parking lot under a bridge so that I could give her a big box of leftover beads and string. Beads.

Beads.

And string. Good pickup on that, by the way.

Is Gretchen a cat? Why did she want a big box of string?

Because Gretchen is the only thing better than a cat, which is a teacher. And we had this huge party here in Seattle, me and Luke and John. and tens of listeners it was a friendship making a friendship bracelet making party and we had to make like so many of the i don't remember how many hundreds or thousands of bracelets we had to make as thank you gifts for the tb telephone and And then afterwards, we had this big box of extra supplies. We didn't want to run out, so we bought some extras. And so we're like, this must be valuable to somebody. You can make hundreds of bracelets with all these leftovers. But I was having trouble kind of figuring out exactly how to get them into the right person's hands. And Gretchen reached out to me and said, hey, listen, we could use those in the classroom if you don't mind giving them to me. And I said, mind? I would love that. Gretchen about two weeks ago or three weeks ago sent me the most beautiful photos of her students showing off the bracelets that they made with the extra TBTL beads and materials. And I sent that to John and Luke, and we were just so psyched to see that they went to a good home. So thank you so much to Gretchen, Sean, Elizabeth, Kent, Kevin, and Jessica for making TBTL possible. Thank you, baby. All right, Hannah. Well, actually, I guess this is where Luke would usually hit the top story sounder. Do I even have that? I was so unprepared for today's show. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. All right. Here's what you and I are going to do today. How far into the show are we, by the way? Let's see here. We're already, okay, 36 minutes. That's manageable. All right, we're trying to hit that perfect 45-minute mark or infinity to make this the perfect podcast length. One thing we've been doing on the show, and I told you this lately, like in the past week, has been going over listeners' top five lists. And they're sort of creative top five lists. One that stood out to me from last week was top five underrated smells. I liked that one a lot. Because I love underrated lists because it's not like, oh, the best smell in the world is coffee in the morning or what have you, which is, that's a great smell. But like, what is an underrated smell? And I remember our listener said printer paper is an underrated smell. That is a good one.

Especially when it's just come out of the printer and it's like warm.

Yep, yep. You didn't have, I'm trying to remember what they were called when I was a kid. Like I am, you and I are about 10 years difference in age. You're younger than me. And there are certain things that I think I was just on the very tail end of, and one of them was pre-copy machines in schools. I'm blanking on the name of it, and I know a lot of our listeners know what it is. But they were like, they were a way of making many copies of something, but the ink was blue and purple. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Yes.

And they had a very specific smell to them. Oh, I wish I hadn't started this sentence.

It's not a mimeograph, is it? Yes, I think it's mimeograph.

I was so close in my head. I had all of those syllables sort of jostling around, but I couldn't put them in the right order. Yeah, I think they were mimeographs. So you had a little bit of that too in school?

Yes, I had them more. My aunt used to work in the DA's office, and she, just like as a whatever, you know, secretary or whatever, and she would bring home extra mimeographs.

Is that your dad's sister?

My mom's brother's wife.

Okay, sorry. I'm just wondering if your dad was a police officer and his sister maybe worked for the DA. I thought there was a connection.

He became a police officer because my aunt, because my mom's brother's wife, was working in the DA's office. My family was very poor. My mom had just had her third child. And my aunt went to my dad and was like, you have to get a real job with benefits because he was working in the woods at the time. He was a logger. And she was like, you have to get a real job with benefits because you have all these children. Applied to work at the courthouse. And so he thought he was going to apply to like be a janitor or something at the courthouse, just like some good union job. And then the sheriff's office called and was like, hi, we actually need cops. And you're like a 26 year old guy. And do you want to do it? And he was like, I don't know, I guess like it's not what he ever wanted to do. And then that's how he became a police officer.

That's not how I pick. I always picture somebody knowing what they want their career to be. And then, well, going to police academy and having a bunch of hijinks.

Well, he did go to Police Academy. I was a kid when he went. I remember going. And he was young and already had so many children that everywhere we went, like, I remember going to his Police Academy graduation. My mom is hauling all these kids around. And one of his friends would sing the Brady Bunch theme song everywhere we went. Oh, because of all the kids? Oh, wow. I mean, there was only three of us, but three is a lot of kids when you're 27 or however old he was at that point. But, yeah, so I remember going to his Police Academy. I remember him being gone to do that. but uh no that was not ever what he wanted to do he was the mechanic first um but uh but yes so we had my aunt used to bring home mimeograph paper like spare mimeograph paper for us to to like draw on um so i remember like doodling as a kid on on mimeograph paper i'm looking i'm scrolling

through photos of mimeograph paper here like homework assignment Thank you. And also, what is the paper that was, it was like green and white and had the little frilly edges and it was like printer paper.

It wasn't printer paper. What was that? It wasn't the stuff that would be fed through a dot matrix. Dot matrix. Dot matrix paper. That was the other thing she would bring.

She would take home old, like, I don't know what, extra reams of dot matrix paper. And I remember sitting, watching TV, like watching Reading Rainbow and pulling the little perforations off. And it was so satisfying.

Yeah, well, it could be satisfying, but if you got a sticky one, one that didn't want to separate right, then it was the opposite of satisfying.

Then it was infuriating.

That is the perfect segue into what I want to do with you today, which is go over some more lists. Now, as I mentioned before, you and I host a cleaning podcast called Spotless, which is mostly this. You and I talking about whatever pops into our head, and we try to keep it a little bit cleaning-related as much as possible. People give us tips for cleaning, life hacks for cleaning things. People ask for advice sometimes. We love it when people call in with like cleaning horror stories. They find themselves in just the worst mess possible. And so because you and I, that's kind of our background together as podcasters and friends, I thought we could put together a list that relates to cleaning in some way. And so what I thought we could do is top five. And we each put together a list here of top five most satisfying things to clean. Now, we did not talk too much about sort of how we define that. And for me, it was kind of like a combination of low effort with high payout, sort of. High, sort of like satisfying emotional and mental payout. Something that did not take a lot of effort, but my gosh, it feels so good to have it done. And so I've got my top five here. I'm going to start with number five and go down to number one. But I think we should probably ping pong back and forth. Like maybe you give me your number five and then I'll give you my number five. And then I'll let you know if anything is on your list before I get to it on my list. I'll let you know if it's also on my list. I feel like we need some music for this. I wasn't sure what to do and I'm realizing now we should use the spotless music. That we use in our show since we're already since we already have it here. So here it is. Top five most satisfying things to clean. What is your number five, Hannah?

OK, my number five is when you have white sheets and you get a stain on them and you can use bleach and you can watch the stain disappear.

Whoa, I've never done this.

Oh, I had white sheets when I lived. Well, I had other colored of sheets, but then when I lived in a studio, I got some white sheets because I realized they would just be easier to clean, like to keep clean because I just bleached the shit out of them. And so I had at one point a stain. Well, I spilled red wine on my bed and I had some bleach in a spray bottle. And so I spritzed the bleach onto it and like I watched the red wine.

You just keep it on the bed while you sprayed it or you took the sheet off.

But I could do that sometimes. And I would have, I had also like a little Tide to go bleachy pen that I would use sometimes too to keep my sheets white. And it was great.

This underscores something. The fact that, and I don't know if we've ever talked about this because I'm just realizing it now. I think I'm scared of bleach. Like I don't use bleach that much in my life. The only time I use bleach is in the cleaning products I use to clean my bathroom. I grew up with that really hardcore. it was the brand was tylex at the time now i think it's just like lysol bleachy cleaner it's probably what they call it but like i just like when i go to clean uh a shower i just kind of start by spraying that all over the shower and just letting it work its magic especially if you have any kind of little bits of like um you know the not mold but like mildew if mildew is starting to rear its gross little head or something like that those bleach things will just take it right out but I have to be very careful what I'm wearing if I'm doing this job because I will look down at my cleaning clothes and I will see oh there are bleach spots all over them I don't know if I've ever used bleach in like a load of laundry or anything because I'm so scared of it it well so

you do have to um I will bleach I bleach a few things I don't have really white sheets anymore but I did um and I liked it because it was just easy I knew I could always you can get almost any stain out of a white especially cotton if you just use bleach like it just does it so I really appreciated that but then now I mostly use it for my shower curtain because I have like a cloth what a white cloth shower curtain so I bleach that every couple of months

But then after I run that load, I'm always so afraid that the next load, there's going to somehow be somebody swept over. So I always, after that, will do like rags or something I don't care about. So it's like, it is sort of a domino effect of laundry where you don't want to put your favorite clothes in, in the immediate next load, you know? Yes. That's really smart. i remember when i had communal laundry i did i would check sometimes like i would whiff the the washer to see if it had a bleachy smell because i was always worried that like somebody else's bleach load was gonna do mine but there's also i mean so bleach will bleach things but also you know peroxide products in your skincare will bleach stuff and sometimes cleaning products you don't realize have some sort of a bleaching agent so yeah bleach stains are a very real thing in your um other garments but for for your whites like it really is the best way to get things clean

that does remind me before i start my top five list can i start with one of the most surprisingly unsatisfying cleaning processes because it's something i just did last night

i wrote down some unsatisfying did you okay here let me give you one and then you can

ping pong back with some of yours but people talk about i don't know why i don't know why i started this people are often talking about descaling their coffee people are saying why did i start my sentence that way i have no idea but um i know you're supposed to descale your coffee maker that's not something i ever grew up doing or thinking about but you know we got a not a not a fancy coffee maker but we got our first new coffee maker maybe 10 years ago or something it's a smeg brand little cutesy countertop uh coffee maker and it came with instructions and it maybe even came with some descaling solution that you can use and basically you're running a clear pot of coffee through there with this descaling solution except for mine there must be something different because you don't just run a regular cycle you have to hold two buttons down at the same time it's like the old like kind of nuclear code thing where you have to have two keys to unlock something you have to hold two buttons in. I don't know why or what that does. It's severance. You're having to hold down the thing. Yeah, exactly. And so anyway, I did that last night. I don't have the official descaler cleaner anymore. But as you know, Hannah, from our conversations on the other show, I bought a bag of citric acid a while ago for some sort of experiment or something. And they only sold it in a five pound bag or something. So I have this huge bag of citric acid and anything that takes citric acid you only usually need like one tablespoon at a time or something so anyway after months and months if not over a year of using this coffee maker a lot by the way at least one pot a day plus on the weekends for my volunteer thing i make like like five pots every sunday i had not descaled this thing in forever and i'm like i don't really know what I don't really know why I need to do this or what happens if I don't descale it but they say to do it so last night happened to be on my mind I descale it and because I'm used to cleaning things that have some sort of satisfying result at the end I wanted I wanted something after the clear water went through my coffee maker I wanted to see it I wanted to see I wanted the color of the water to be off i wanted some sort of indication that it worked and instead i just got another clean pot of now hot clear water and i was like well and then i did have to like kind of flush it again like you just said with bleach i had to run another one without the citric acid with just plain water but it was so like i'm glad i did it i guess but my coffee tastes exactly the same today and i saw nothing in that water that indicated like boy really took you a long time to finally do this task i wanted something that showed me how bad it had gotten oh my god that's

so frustrating so one of the things that i wrote down that was a very unsatisfying clean is really similar um which is when you clean so when i clean my air fryer i always want it to look really clean after i'm done it's just not going to happen there is no there's so many little bits and crevices and the little fryer shelf is never going to be clean again. And I will scrub it and I'm like, I'm going to clean this stuff. And it's never. It is never going to be factory reset. And that is the worst feeling. And I know what you mean when you're expecting something. This is why the hot water extractor, the little green, the whatever your hot water extractor is. The little vacuum. The little vacuum that forces hot water out and then sucks it back up. That is why that is such a satisfying tool. It is. Because you see, like, you see the grime in the water. I know I didn't put it on mine either. I'm just realizing. That's a good one. But, like, that's one of the reasons that's so satisfying is not. Not because you see, you know, like in the commercial, like a really bright, clean streak left behind, but because in the water you can see what got pulled out. Yes, you're absolutely right about that. That is a critical piece of whether or not a cleaning task is satisfying, is if you see the results either on the thing or in the byproduct. Yes. Right? And so, like, in your case with the coffee, it's the byproduct. With the air fryer, it's that I can't see the results as I'm doing it. Yeah. And also in the byproduct.

And it's just never going to get totally clean. Never. going to naturally have a patina for the rest of its days yes now I wish I had thought of the Bissell vacuum cleaning experience for my number five but I didn't so with this one we can dismiss pretty quickly because it's not that interesting my other I do think four through one on my list are going to get more interesting I promise stick with me number five is basic as hell I just put a mirror bathroom mirror is very easy to clean and it's very satisfying you even just have people brushing their teeth just little splatters here and there it can build up and you kind of don't realize how bad it's gotten and you're like wait a second and then all you have to do is like spray with a little Windex or I use some like kind of you know let's some uh window cleaning concentrate in a little spray bottle and it takes you 30 seconds and it's a world of difference and as

I experimented with for uh Spotless because I read somewhere that you could use just like dish soap oh yeah soap and I wasn't sure if it was going to work it totally works in a spray bottle you water

in a spray bottle and did it also have a defogging quality or am i just it really did i felt like it

kept no i felt like it kept my mirror cleaner longer i really really did appreciate i thought it was going to be kind of streaky or too sudsy but it actually really it was very satisfying so if for some reason you're cleaning a mirror or windows and you don't have a window cleaner instead of using a multi-purpose because that can be kind of streaky that can be streaky yeah don't use whatever your dish soap is just a little bit water it down and it works great that's assuming you have a extra spray bottle laying around sure which i assume everyone has yes many extra spray bottles because you can't throw those away you never know when you're going to need one what is number four on your list of most satisfying things to clean my filthy car um when i get a really good clean on my car it feels so good to get in it yes after i have cleaned the cup holders i've vacuumed the seats i've used folex on any stains and like i'm such a little rodent in my vehicle i am eating sunflower seeds and i got the dog in the backseat half the time it's funny you should

say that because you've literally had many issues with rodents in your vehicle as well i know and

it's definitely a it's a it's an own goal it's definitely it just occurred to me maybe they think you're their queen i i might be the rat queen in my car uh and it's funny though because they never actually get in my car they always just hang out in the hood um but i when i have really spent the time to clean my car and you know i've used armor on the dashboard and i've wiped down the inside which is the worst between the inside of your windshield but then when you're driving and you're just like oh yes yeah i love it what about you what's your number that's really interesting

I do want to say, I wanted to put that on the list, but the thing for me is, like, you're absolutely right, and you're speaking to me because I'm dealing with something called winter car syndrome right now, and my car, it has some sort of seal leak, if that makes sense, like, our car is accumulating water, and it's not water that we're tracking into it, and so, like, the car seat right now, the driver's seat has a big, like, water stain across it, and it's just so, and the floor mats and everything are just, like, really, really scuzzy and I'm just I can't wait for like a somewhat nicer day to go out there and really clean it and I will but I didn't put that on my list because you're right there is nothing more satisfying than getting in your car after a big clean like that however the cleaning is one of my least favorite cleaning projects like you mentioned trying to like reach and I you know I have much longer arms than you but like even trying to clean the windshield on the inside and that weird corners and like you're trying to get around and you're trying to detail it and like you just can never quite just like get in there do you ever use that uh pink goop stuff have we

talked about this to like get the crumbs out of the cup holders no i did the thing i saw i don't know a tiktok or whatever about how to make a goop of your own using glue and contact solution and it worked a treat it was great but honestly i think if your kid just has some old silly putty it would do the same thing it's really just something sticky so you can get it in there and then peel it back. I was like, that's really what it's for. I've said this on Spotless before, but Keith's trick for doing the inside of the windshield is he uses the Swiffer, like mop. Oh, yeah. The flat-headed, or the sweeper, not like the, you know, obviously the jet one, but like the really basic Swiffer sort of rotating the flat guy with Windex and a rag, and then he just kind of gets in. there and wipes the windshield like that and it's really effective um because there's a swivel joint on the end of it yes and it's flat so it can actually wipe um and you know you can change out the rag if you need to that's also a very effective way to clean a shower which is one of my most needed cleaning tasks i hate cleaning the shower using the swiffer like wipey boy is a really

good way to get that done quicker interestingly and i don't want to this shows up on your list i don't want to blow that up but that would like the first things i thought of were car and bathroom as far as experiences of just like once it's clean feeling very satisfied but both of them are like not my favorite things to clean like again like I was trying to think of like easy things like it's like you do very little but you get a lot out of it and so number four on my list now Hannah I'm serious I don't want to fight about this okay because I know that I know that this is not on your list because this is one of your least favorite things in the world yes but for me and this just happened to me like literally over the weekend I was like oh I gotta add this to the list it i was taking a shower and i noticed oh the water isn't draining all that great and so i pulled my the the shower drain trap out now i have one that is called like a shower shroom or something it actually kind of rests down into the drain and it collects all the hair into the detritus and everything that slowly builds up when you take a shower and i realized oh that thing needs cleaning so i pull it out after my shower and it is just covered it is gunky it is you hate this i know it always makes you gag i hate it so much i will do my best not to describe it too much but it was as nasty as nasty could be but all i did was i grabbed a paper towel and i wiped it off took a little bit of elbow grease put it back right into the drain and then everything drained very nicely and it took me 30 seconds and makes a world of difference for my next shower yeah it and

And it is very satisfying once it's done. When you are done, it is really great to have it done. But the act of cleaning out the shower drain is one of my reasons.

It's nasty. It reminds you that you're human. It reminds you of the stuff you're sloughing off just on the rig. Yes. And then once it starts collecting.

It's so unpleasant.

All right. Well, let's maybe hopefully get into some more pleasant talk here. What do you have for number three on your list?

So number three, this is kind of specific, but I was thinking that the other day, is a child's very nasty face. Like when a child has been like eating and they're very messy and you get in there with just like like a baby wipe, like whatever, you know, and you just like wipe their sticky little face off. And then you get to see their cute little face afterwards and it's clean and it doesn't stay clean for very long at all. And part of it is getting a child to sit still long enough to do it. But like once you get in there and do it, it just you feel really like you've done something.

That's interesting. That surprises me because I have never had that experience. I don't have kids in my life, but I feel like it would be like I would feel like I could never get it clean enough, sort of. I feel like with a kid, you kind of got to like you got to get to a point where you're like, well, it's good enough, right? Because they're just going to eat another giant lollipop or whatever kids do.

Yeah, exactly. Right. Just an enormous bulb of cotton candy. Yeah, right. Yeah, a big flat swirly lollipop. So, yeah, but it's one of those – it is one of those things, though, where, like, if a kid has a sticky face and you've just been looking at it and you're like, oh, my God, and then you finally get in there, it just feels really great.

I believe that. So that was your number three. My number three, and I don't – oh, yeah, no, this could affect you, too. You wear glasses sometimes, right? Eye glasses? Yes. Eye glasses is number three to me. Similar kind of thing where – it's the drain, I should say, where you kind of don't – I clean my glasses a lot, by the way. But I think whether you do it all the time like me or every six months like Genevieve, it's one of those things where you kind of don't realize, especially if you wear them all the time like I do, you don't realize that they're starting to get dirty until you're looking at something and the light catches it in this weird way. And you're like, what's going on? And then you take your glasses off your face and you're like, these things are filthy. What am I doing? And you just grab your little rag. Like, ideally, what I have is I used to use my shirt all the time or tissues or whatever. But now I do try to keep a lot of these little microfiber cloths around. And ideally, some sort of a spray. That's my favorite. Like, if you have a mild kind of window spray, window cleaner, glass cleaner kind of thing. Or they sell some that is made specifically for glasses. Sometimes I use the stuff that they sell to clean, like vinyl records or something like that. But just like that, I like spraying it. I can also do it under the sink with warm water and soap. But I like a spray. What about you?

So I actually have my eyeglasses as one of my unsatisfying cleaning tasks.

Really?

But it's because, again, I'm a rodent person. My eyeglasses are often scratched or there's something else the matter with them. Because I don't wear them. that i wear them like at night and sometimes but i am very sensitive to light um and so i really cannot not wear sunglasses like i really need to be wearing sunglasses when i'm outside a lot of the time um and so i just don't wear my eyeglasses that often because i want to wear my contacts but um so a lot of times i will think my glasses are yucky i will clean them and i will realize that there's a structural issue yeah they're just and and it's also one of those things that's a bummer doesn't seem to take every time i clean my glasses they just immediately are so i i find that unsatisfying yep but i was this is a tangent but it's not it's not it's related the other uh we never go on tangents on this show right i know uh so the other day when i was visiting when i was down in eugene i went and visited my grandmother and for a while my grandparents owned a bar in lewiston idaho uh in like the 90s um and my grandfather loved it was his dream but my grandmother was like whatever but she worked behind the bar and she was telling me a story that i'd never heard before about this guy who came in just like an older guy came in to get a beer and she was like your glasses are filthy give them to me and she's like everybody's nanny that's like her vibe um she's like a four foot nine my little mexican grandma and she's like give me your glasses they're filthy so he like hands them across the bar she goes she like washes them uses dish soap gets them really clean puts them back on and then a couple days later the guy comes back he sits down and immediately just takes them off and hands them to her and she was like oh i've started something and then he would come in and every time he came in she would clean his glasses oh that's really sweet and i thought that was so cute i'd never heard that story before So for her, apparently, that was a satisfying cleaning job.

Well, she also sort of, well, it had to be done the first time because it was driving her crazy.

Yes, like she was looking at the manager's like, I have to do this for you.

There's a whole conversation. There are things that are other people's, but it's so dirty that you can't help yourself. I did that.

Oh, my God.

Honestly, I went on a little bit of a, not a big one, but a little bit of a cleaning jag on Christmas Day because the kitchen floor really needed a mopping. I'd been keeping it semi-vacuumed, but once a kitchen floor starts to need a little bit of a mopping, it's a snowball rolling downhill. It just gets real bad real fast, and I had been putting it off. And so I had some extra time, so I cleaned that. And so I was already in a little cleaning mode, and Genevieve has her work desk kind of out in a main area of our basement that I walk by all the time, which is kind of a, you know, I definitely have the better deal here because I have a whole studio here that I can close the door on. Yeah, and she's kind of in a hallway. So I don't want to give her a hard time for that. But her desk was just getting more and more dirty. And I don't mean like papers and stuff stacking up, although I don't not mean that either. But I just mean like the desk that I was walking by all the time was getting like just more and more food crumbs and rings from glasses. And then dust was falling. And of course, we have a cat. And there's just like a lot. And so at one point, Genevieve was in the other room, and later on I told her, my Christmas gift to myself was I cleaned your desk. I don't even think she realized. That was the shocking thing to me because I was like, what would I do if I was hired to clean this home? How could I do this in a way that wouldn't be invasive to Genevieve's stuff, but also when you come to sit back down? Because I don't know if you've ever had a house cleaner or keeper. We hired somebody for a brief period of time in Los Angeles, and it was kind of nice. you'd sit back down at your desk and you could tell everything had been wiped and cleaned and everything and but all of your stuff was still there but maybe organized into nice little piles or something because they weren't going to just scatter it around again so I tried to like do that I tried to like recreate the experience that Genevieve had left as far as where all of her belongings were but just wanted everything to be clean and it was really dirty I took a vacuum behind there and I was sucking up hair balls and everything and so I just cleaned and I guess I'm just thinking about that because like your grandma saw somebody else's mess and couldn't live with that in her own life and that's basically where i was she used to do that she stayed with my family

for a little while and she would do that too she would just like start folding laundry like she is someone who will just start cleaning somebody else's mess that's 100 her vibe yeah and you

and i've talked about that you got to be careful too i was one time i was at a friend's party and they have an impeccable house they have a beautiful house they put so much work into it it's like a mid-century modern vibe and everything is so sweet but i'm a little bit taller than everybody in the house and they have this big um what do you call it like an uh a stove hood or an oven hood that drops down over their over their island in the kitchen if you can picture it and i'm just tall enough to see the top of it and so i was able to see all this like dust and you know it's grease and stuff and again they're very clean people they just didn't see it and it took i'm trying to think did they that wasn't one where i clean did they catch me cleaning that i can't remember what it was I remember being very very close to just taking a paper towel and cleaning it but I don't think i did i think i was able to keep my shit together because that's pretty rude i mean i mean

depending on the circumstances but at the same time as a person who is four foot 11 i cannot see the top of my fridge the top of the my fridge is none of my business it is uh it is a narnia to itself i probably need to get over there and clean that well i was with my nephew who is i he's 14 and he is i am not exaggerating six foot three at least the kid is so enormously tall And I was like, Dominic, I swear if you ever come over to my house, I was like, you're going to see things that I've never seen, like the top of my fridge. And I watched him realize for the first time that there are just things that like shorter people don't see. Yeah. Because I was like, Dom, if you come over, like I've never seen the top of my fridge. I don't know what it looks like. And you will come in and you will be like at eye level with it practically. And he was like, oh, yeah. And I was like, so if you come visit me in Portland, I might put you to work and make you dust the top of my fridge. But I'll buy you something in exchange because I'm a good auntie.

Don't you have a stick you use to get things off the top shelf?

I have a very long wood spoon. I have a wooden spoon that for some reason – I don't know why. I don't know where I got it. I don't know why I have it. I don't know why it's so long. But I have like a foot – maybe it's 15 inches long wooden spoon. And so that's what I use to bang things off the top. Knock things off.

All right. Let's see here. Where are we on our list? I just gave my number three. So I think we're ready for your number two, I believe, most satisfying cleaning thing.

Mine is when I put my dog's blankets in the washer and dryer, and then afterwards I get to clean out the lint trap, a very hairy dog blanket, and the lint trap afterwards. Hannah, lint trap is my number one.

Just lint trap writ large. In fact, it was hard for me not to just say filters, generally speaking. Like anything that filters, but especially a lint trap, like Genevieve actually kind of, we were talking about over dinner last night, she's like, well, lint trap would be high on my list. And I almost, well, you're supposed to clean it out after every use of the dryer. But the thing about that is it's less fun to do it that way. So maybe if you let it build up one or two, then you get that nice blanket kind of that you're peeling off.

this is why the dog the hairy dog blanket i assume with bingo as well is so good because everything that lint trap is pulling out which is also the reminder to make sure your lint trap beyond the trap itself is clean i just the other day took my little stick vacuum down into the actual like i took the trap and i did that it's a fire hazard you gotta keep that clean it really is and it's one of those things that i live in fear of that like somewhere there's a lint build up and I'm going to catch my health on fire so that is definitely yes lint trap so in fact one

of the first things that I learned on spotless and I don't I assume it might have just been your tip it might have been a listener's tip was when you have a really like a blanket that's covered in pet hair just throw it directly in the dryer don't even worry about washing it first just put it on like no heat or low heat in the dryer and let it tumble for 20 minutes and the act of that will just pull all of the hair off or a lot of the hair off and pull it into the lint trap now clean the lint trap immediately now throw it into the washing machine if you still want to wash it but at least get the hair off it by doing that non-wet process taking a really hairy blanket and throwing it in the washing machine first just kind of creates a mess of of hair yes yes uh if you ever just have

something that has dog hair on it like if you're whatever your leggings your sweatshirt just is covered in dog hair or cat hair if you yeah throw it into the dryer just let it knock around let the static kind of grab at it uh and you it is a really easy way to just get dog hair and ground

yourself before you then take it out because you're gonna get a little yeah i've also been uh re-watching better call saul did you watch that did you ground yourself ground yourself

Yes, and leave your phone out in the mailbox.

Okay, so my number one was Lint Trap. That was your number two. So I'm just going to give you my number two, and then you'll have the solo number one. My number two is email inbox.

I was wondering if one of them was going to be digital.

I love just like when your email is starting to build up. I actually don't. I use Gmail, so I don't know if I get those noises that you – I assume that you're somehow in the Apple family.

Well, more so, you get the sound when you empty your waste bin, right? Oh, yes. You know, that too? Yeah, you know that.

Maybe I do have, I think maybe I just have all sounds turned off my computer because of broadcast purposes. But just like kind of taking a moment, like when you open your email and it's just like there's just tons and tons of stuff in there and you're like, my life feels like a mess. This inbox represents my life. I just feel out of control right now. Let me.

just sit down let me just start with the easy thing sort by sender and just like delete every email that you got from sears which doesn't exist anymore i was just reading about sears

there's only three and yet somehow they're still sending you emails yes somehow they figured and

it's sears at hotmail.com is there and then they asked you for your social security number and

And you were like, why do you need that, Mr. Sears?

By the way, for people who think I took the holidays off for the TBTL newsletter, I spent a decent amount of time on Friday, the day after Christmas, doing a full TBTL newsletter, mostly wrote about how I was working on the day after Christmas, did a video, did a Hey Dummies video from the parking lot of the DMV, like had a whole newsletter, sent it out. and apparently one of the links that I included in it to like somebody's newsletter or whatever it was was flagged as dangerous by almost everybody. So not only did nobody see the TBTL newsletter that I sent out, but it wasn't just going to spam. It was going to spam. One friend showed me on her phone. It had a little icon of a phishing hook next to it. They said that I was phishing. I was unfamiliar with that icon. And I was just like, not only did I actually do this on a holiday, but nobody knows that I did it. It just went right to everybody's spam folder.

But did it save it? Can you find it? Like, can you resend it?

I mean, I could. Yeah, I guess if I cared, I guess I could, like, try to strip all the links out of it and resend it. But I don't think I don't want to I don't want to resent like it is what it is. It was just it was just an email. But it was just sort of a it was just like. It's infuriating, though. And it was just like, if no, I could have just skipped it. Nobody was probably even expecting it, you know, during the height of the holidays. But I was like, no, I just feel like I should do this. And so I did it, and then nobody knows. But now all the listeners who've made it this far into the show know. So, okay, so inbox, clean out inbox, although that could apply also just like sorting, like kind of cleaning off your computer desktop or whatever sort of digital cleanup. Oh, that's very satisfying to me. And not that onerous for me once you sit down. You have yourself a glass of wine or something. You just kind of start. As my dad. My dad, by the way, we talk about this on TBTL. I don't know if I've mentioned this to you. My dad does not go through email. If I call him and it's in the evening and I happen to catch him in his little study downstairs, I'll be like, hey, hey, dad, it's me, Andrew. Did I wake you up? No, no. I'm just sitting down here blasting through emails. he's blasting away emails i'm just blasting away some emails here he's always he's not checking email he's always blasting away emails and honestly that speaks to what i'm talking about about cleaning your inbox he's using like you know he's going out there with some dynamite and just like blasting away he's using a howitzer exactly that reminds me of something keith's

mother says and it gets me to my number one good so a a debbie caswell original uh is she will say that she's gonna go toot the vacuum around and makes me laugh and so we we say that in our house oh i'm just gonna go toot the vacuum around uh and then my number one is vacuuming up a crunchy mess when you have crunchy little bits or something is this pet related or is this like any like potato chips i dropped something i whatever and when you run the vacuum over and you hear it

go and you're like oh we're working what you mean yes a crunchy mess when you're vacuuming

or even if you didn't know there was if you're just vacuuming and you hear like yes and you're

like yeah we're doing something i know exactly so right now we have this wall-to-wall carpeting down in our basement we're going to be hopefully getting rid of that at some point we're talking actually somebody's going to be here in a little bit we're talking about maybe doing a bit of a remodel down here anyway but right now we have this wall-to-wall carpeting and there's an area where our cat's litter box is pushed back into this area that is not a common area which is so great it's back kind of by this hot water heater and it's got a little sliding closet door that we can just leave open a crack for bingo to come and go it's really the best situation we've had for a litter box like it's just completely out of sight out of mind but when bingo leaves or maybe when he's just kicking up there are little particles of what again a bob walshism my dad would call shit seeds which is just like little bits of like um the gravel the actual kitty litter or whatever gets kicked out and you don't see it on the carpet but then when i run the vacuum as my grandma would say and you're vacuuming vacuuming and then you get to that area right outside this closet you get that sound that you're talking about as all of this invisible sand is being vacuumed up into my Dyson, that's a good number one, man. That's a very good number one. Yeah, that's the good stuff. I love that.

That's when you really know you've been – and related, too, though, with your Dyson, if I've been vacuuming up, especially, like, the rug and, like, where Lola hangs out, and then it tells you your filter is full or the airway is blocked, and you have to get in there and, like, clear out the filter, that's also pretty satisfying.

Yes.

But really nothing is better than vacuuming and hearing something and being like, didn't even know I had a mess there, and I took care of it.

That's really good. You're absolutely right. That reminds me, I think I'll save this for Spotless, but for months now I've been meaning to tell you, you and I both have those cordless Dyson kind of stick vacuums with the various attachments. I discovered, one of mine was acting up, one of my attachments, and I thought it was broken, but it wasn't, Hannah. It was just clogged in a way that I didn't know it could get clogged. Not an airway, but the wheel. Sure. And I found a way to kind of quick release some things, And then I took out just this huge chunk of compacted dust that I didn't know was in there. I'll tell you about that on Spotless. How about that? Check out Spotless next week. Can you remind me to talk about that? Great forward promo. Can you put that on the show sheet?

I am putting it on my notes right now.

Thank you. I'll try to do a demonstration via video for you. I'll bring it in.

Yes.

All right. Half the show is already. So let's see. We do Spotless every other Monday. so we'll have a new one coming out this coming Monday, right?

Yeah, and if you're curious about what kind of stuff we do, you can find it on spotlesspod.com you can also find I have an Instagram and a TikTok that I make videos on sometimes that are cleaning related so if you're the kind of person who maybe you don't need a whole new podcast in your life but you do like to see memes about cleaning or videos of me trying out different cleaning things, you can find it at spotlesspod

and if you're somebody who thinks that cleaning isn't for you and it sounds tedious Maybe it is, but I don't think it is. It's a lot of me and Hannah talking about how my dad likes to blast away emails and stuff like that.

Or how my mom stays up all night.

That's right, until 4 in the morning.

We talk a lot about our pets, too. You're going to get a lot of pet talk.

Oh, that's right. You're going to get the occasional appearance from Lola the dog and Bingo the cat. So check it out if you're interested in that. Anything else you want people to know about, Hannah?

I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think so.

Sounds good. Well, then let's get out of here. Luke will be back for a new Tuesday edition of TBTL tomorrow. Hannah, thank you so much for doing this. Really do appreciate it. Giving up your Monday to be on the show. All right. Here's how it's going to work, Hannah. At the end of the show, I'm going to say no mountain too tall. And if you want to, you can say good luck to all. If you don't want to say that, it'll just be really weird, awkward silence for a long, long time. Okay? Well, I'm tempted. Yes, I'm ready. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening today. Really do appreciate it. We will talk to you tomorrow. And until then, please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all. Power out.