Muse

They said this was a magician's bar. Mr. Gray, what you do is not magic. I understand. It's natural for a dying leaf to be frightened by the autumn wind. It's not about pulling a rabbit out of your hat anymore. It's about pulling your heart out of your chest. What the hell is that supposed to mean? you mean? It means I take people's nightmares and turn them into dream realities. TBTL!

Alright. I have no date. A two-liter bottle of Shasta and my all-Rush mixtape.

Let's rock. After everything that's happened recently, I want to make sure that what you're about to do isn't not well thought out. When you die,

you'll go to heaven, you'll say hello to God, and when When God says hello to you, this is what you'll smell on his breath.

You took too long. Now your candy's gone. That's what happened.

What have you got to say for yourselves? It's hammer time? I don't know. How'd that sound from your end?

Sounded great out here. You want another?

No, if that works for you, we're fine.

All good on my end.

All right, that's a take. All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Holy catfish!

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host, Mr. Unlimited, coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia where good news, it's not torrentially raining. Bad news, it's freaking freezing. In a case gone cold, could a podcast bring the heat? I am wearing one of those hats that has like ear flaps on it. It says, Wilco Snow and Ice division or something. It looks like the hat that Homer is wearing when he's Mr. Plow. And while it is very stylish, it is also, it means that there's an extra layer of fabric between the headphones that I'm wearing and my ears where I hear things. So I don't know if I'll be able to hear anything this episode, but I will hopefully stave off Frostbite here at episode 4 637 in a collector series let the fun begin hey one of my many the systems and approaches most of which are unsuccessful one of them was successful this morning it's working it's working which is pretty exciting also i watched a movie last night i saw a comedian on uh tick tock who said you can tell when your friends are doing dry january because they send you text messages like I watched seven movies last night. Maybe that's me, because I've been powering through the films. I watched one last night that I wasn't sure if I was going to like or not. It involved me having a conversation, a running conversation in my mind, with my friend Andrew Walsh throughout the entire film. And at the end, I did, in fact, enjoy the film-watching experience. Also, it's a Thursday, a.k.a. Blur's Day. We're doing some Blur's Day messages. Hey, speaking of my good friend Andrew Walsh, you know him, he's the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. In short, things are going extremely well for him. Guess what? He's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning. Thanks for the reminder of the Blursdays. I actually cooked up the Blursdays last night, Luke. Usually we're freshly cooking the Blursdays. You made tomorrow's blurs. Yeah, that's right, because, you know, we haven't done a Blursday in, like, a couple of weeks because of the odd holiday schedule, so we had them kind of building up. Oh, boy, so we're going to have probably a pretty long list today. Yeah, not too, I was going to say not too bad, but what are we doing here? But what are we doing here? Not too torturous. It's not, I mean, it's not ear bleeding bad. No, it's, yeah, it's a handful. It's a healthy handful of joy that we'll be spreading here near the end of the show. Yes.

Do you want to hear about my system that worked out this morning, my friend? Yeah. What happened? Well, this morning at about, I don't know, maybe 6.30 or something, I was making some coffee. I was padding around the house. I was turning on various heaters in the home environment to try to get the temperature. What do you and Veeves do overnight in your house? Because you have forced air, right? So you have that kind of, you have vents, right? And a big, so do you, you probably set it at a, at a temperature and it just maintains that throughout the night. So the furnace kind of kicks on and off and it keeps everything relatively stable.

Yeah. And I also have a combined with a thermostat that I can sort of, you know, very, I know most thermostats do this anyway but with the modern technology and the app and everything we have it set to a certain schedule so that at a certain time of night it'll kick down what i've learned though i don't want to even i'm not going to tell you what levels we keep them at

Because I will say when the machine kicks it down to a lower heating level at night when we're not awake, I'm learning that that's still higher than some people keep their thermostat during waking hours, if that makes sense. I am somebody who needs things to be warm, so I'm ashamed at how hot I keep my house.

Oh, listen, there's no shame in the game. I thought you were going in the other direction, that you guys keep it like an icebox or something. You keep it the way that my parents tend to at their house. But, no, I would love to have that luxury, Andrew, of keeping the house too warm. I'm still trying to dial this whole thing in, as I've talked endlessly on the show about. I had these mini splits put in, which are supposed to be the wave of the future. And I guess most of the year, this big one that I've had has been fine for the last, I don't know, year or two that it's been installed. but it seems to have just stopped working meaning like the one that's upstairs that i had installed at great cost has never worked that's the one that the people came out to try to fix the rude guy yeah the rude dudes from uh the like local hvac place felton's that one never worked that one has never worked and probably will never work i don't know what's going on with that then the other one though the mr cool it was called that one is uh that one has worked great and it's uh And I've been very happy with it. And then just the other day, it was very cold, and I had been running it for a while. And I was running it at like 80, or yeah, probably 80, which seems excessive, except for the fact that you've got to run it at 80 to kind of like get the ambient temperature up to even in the 70s. And I walked over and put my hand up against it. It was just blowing cold air. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. So that one's also not working right now. So I've got this whole series of like these infrared heaters that are attached to the various walls. Those are just kind of heating up objects in space. And then I've got a space heater, like, you know, I forget who makes it. DeLonghi, I believe, is the maker of the space heater that I've got out going in the middle of the night. Because what I don't want to have is I don't want to walk out in the morning to make my coffee and have it be, like, frigid in there. I don't know why that's just because, I mean, that's the case in many American homes. What's that? Hold on, let me fix my flaps.

No, I was mumbling there. Flaps up. Come again? Like I said, that's awful. Like, yeah, that feeling of getting up. I mean, that's one of the reasons why I like to have this system where I can, you know, tell my thermostat to kick back on about maybe a half hour, an hour before I wake up, because it is as just a very, very soft man, as an incredibly soft man who does not enjoy any of the any of the things that go along with, like, say, camping or whatever, even close to roughing it would be. I cannot get out of bed if it's super cold and the floor is cold and you've got to go into a cold room. You don't need an additional disincentive. No, no, you need the environment to be as welcoming as possible when you wake up.

Right, and so I've been running this heater overnight exclusively so that when I get out of bed and I step on the floor, it's not freezing and I can kind of get around and do my thing. So that was what was going on at about 6.30 this morning when I hear a cacophony, and the cacophony is the garbage truck. And that is the moment, Andrew, that I realized it is Thursday morning. It is garbage morning. I had completely spaced out last night.

Wait, wait, you're not just leaving the bins? We had like an hour-long conversation. I am, Andrew.

Oh, I killed your story. This is my point. This is my point. I stepped all over it. Sorry about that. No, that's exactly what, like, I went from, oh my God, wait, it's Thursday, and then, wait, actually, the can is already out there being emptied by the garbage guy. So the system, if you missed, what was it, maybe Tuesday's show, Monday's show, I'm trying this experiment where I'm just leaving my garbage bin up out at this kind of, like, area where the garbage cans tend to go and where there are some mailboxes. And I have to stress again, it's not somebody's like, it's not in front of somebody's house. It's, it's not in an area where somebody is maintaining it. I'm not, I'm hopefully not making it more unsightly in the neighborhood, but the idea is it would be the same number of steps and the one as where I have it previously, which is this kind of mid range area in my driveway. And the upside would be, I don't have to worry about remembering it. So I don't know if, because it was already up there, my brain just deleted, you know, my memory said, we don't need to worry about that right now. We're watching begonia. we're struggling with the reality that is begonia that's not a movie that's going to warm you up that's not a movie that will help you remember to take the garbage out

or care about taking the garbage out or anything exactly hi for one welcome the sweet release

of the end of the movie begonia without giving too much away but anyway Anyway, yeah, so I totally forgot that it was Wednesday night last night and then totally forgot that it was Thursday morning this morning until I heard that garbage truck and I immediately freaked out. And then I was immediately mildly chuffed that my system, at least for week one, functioned as intended and that the garbage can was out there and the guy dumped it in the thing and everything in the world is right here on this Thursday morning.

That's great. I'm going to admit something to you. So I just did a little math on something that has nothing to do with what you're talking about. And I apologize. I was listening. I was engaged. If you'll recall, I was so engaged I even stepped on the whole point of your story. So don't accuse me of being checked out. But I just saw an email that I had sent to myself at – what time did I send this? I sent this to myself at 1.18 a.m. this morning. Okay. The subject line was, look up the latitudes of where I've lived. i think i was relatively sober when i sent this by the way i'd be shocked to hear but the reason i sent it well what were you going to say about by the way sorry well not that because you know

we this came up the other day latitudes and and you were oh yeah you were trying to remember and i said the way i was always taught it was lat is fat latitudes run essentially like east west they run around the earth and longitudes are long they run like north and south and then i feel like our friend uh lynn i couldn't tell if i was being this is what this is what you heard my brain doing i couldn't tell if i was wrong about that and i was being corrected on uh blue sky or if i was being

agreed with on blue sky and now i can't find the i know that the the post you're talking about i'm gonna be i'm gonna be violently honest with both you and lynn here when i brought up attitudes i think i was just trying to make an attitudes and latitudes joke and so then when you started explaining it i totally zoned out because i didn't care and then when lynn came back with even more details about what latitude and longitude mean i didn't even really read it because i was like that was not the conversation i was having in that moment i was just trying to make a very quick little uh little jape before moving on but the re but that is not why i emailed this to myself this is totally unrelated to that so i am i'm reading um inherent vice as i told you and you know there's a whole bunch of weird hippie characters and non-hippie characters and it's a very like counter-culture versus culture in the late 1960s era. And anyway, so none of that really matters, but there was a line that struck me. This is somebody who is talking, and what I did was I copied and pasted this line from the book, and I put it in an email to me. I believe this is a young woman talking who says, well, actually, that's where I live now anyway, me and my boyfriend he's a professor at UNLV and he says when Americans move any distance they stick to lines of latitude so it was fate for me I was always supposed to head due west and as I was falling asleep I was like do we always stay in our latitudes and attitudes um and and I was like you know what and this is probably the last thought I had before falling asleep last night I'm like well if you think about where not if you just leave la out of it but you think about me growing up in cleveland in the cleveland area then moving east out to concord new hampshire and then eventually moving west out to seattle that is i'm like what are the latitudes there they're going to be pretty close i looked it up just now while you were telling your story that i was completely engaged in i would like to remind everybody yeah there's no way that that could be a distraction I was listening. I told you, I cut off your story with information.

I'm currently trying to get into premium class on an Alaska Airlines flight.

Yeah, don't even, don't, let's not, yeah, let's not start this war of attrition.

It helps me. It's like your hex empire, okay? It's my hex empire. Yeah. Going around and trying to get a better seat on an Alaska Airlines flight is how my brain relaxes and is most receptive to your story.

A hex empire upon both of our houses. so anyway but it's but this weird line from this hippie chick from this book that i was reading last night cleveland 41 degree uh 41.5 degrees north concord 43.2 degrees north seattle washington 47.6 degrees north very similar latitudes like well and also i would say left to right left to

right, not up and down. I think that's an interesting theory. Um, and I also think that when you, and, and, you know, uh, with all due respect and peace and love to, uh, our, our fine folks in Southern California, but like arguably California didn't suit you or Southern California didn't really feel like it suited you at least based on, you know, stuff that was going on in your job life, et cetera. So like when you got out of your latitude lane, didn't go great for you and now you're back in your latitude lane and you're loving it i still

blame my co-workers more than the latitude but right that's why i was tempering it but i'm just

saying it doesn't it because it what it she's saying people tend to stay in their latitudes it's like yeah and if they get out of their latitude maybe they're not as yeah maybe their attitude changes james buffett was right about so much and it's and it's funny that you know this

is a very la book i'm reading a very southern california la area book right um but yeah that The one thing that I do, it is true that climate wise, I'm more suited to Seattle than L.A. And so that's a big thing. But I do feel a little bit bad about my first, I would say, year and a half, two years in L.A. and not having I had such a bad time there, but it really was not Los Angeles's fault. It was very specific things related to my particular job and even specific things within that job. And so it just sort of, you know, it was a very, very it was a tough period for me. but I don't like to lay that at the feet of L.A. because I will say I continue to live there maybe. I can't remember when I quit my full-time job and then made TBTL my full-time job. I still lived in L.A. doing that sort of schedule for at least half a year, if not a year. I'm not sure. And I will say, like, things felt so different. I remember, like, I had, because I had the time to walk to the grocery store in my neighborhood and walk back because I wasn't stuck on the 10 the whole time. You know what I mean? And, like, every tiny little scrap of my free time wasn't already accounted for. And so it was like, oh, okay, I could walk up. And then that's when I would start walking to that gym that wasn't too far from my house. And suddenly, like, the unwalkable city, I'm realizing, is walkable. I have a grocery store. I have a gym. And so it really was like once life allowed me to, I actually did enjoy that city. I don't say – in fact, when we left, Vives and I thought, yeah, we'll probably come back here. This is probably where we'll end up. We don't feel that way anymore.

Well, your latitude theory is blowing up then.

It is. That is the one outlier. But there's an outlier in all of these things. But I will say it is kind of interesting that, for the most part, where I've spent most of my life has been kind of along that same latitude. Or maybe it's longitude.

It's not longitude, Andrew. That's the important thing that I want to focus on. Yeah, you know, I never thought of myself as—this is kind of related, but sort of not. It's I never thought of myself as a West Coast person until I moved to New York because I'd grown up on the West Coast and then I'd lived in L.A. And that was my whole experience. But I didn't. That was not in any way how I identified in terms of, I don't know, my just way of being in the world. And then I got to New York and I thought, God, I miss the West Coast. God, I miss like the vibe, the, you know, again, nothing wrong with New Yorkers. it's just an intense place to be. And, and there's, it's an, it's an intense experience. And I just remember like after living there for a while and then like going home for Thanksgiving or something, or just going back to the West coast and just being like, oh, this is where I feel comfortable. Just like walking down the street, something, what is, uh, again, this is not really related, but what does Hunter S Thompson say? Something about the desert. My blood has always been too thick for the desert or something in fear and loathing. Like, I don't know. My blood has always been too too thin for the east coast or too thick or too something because i just remember coming back to the west coast and just feeling like spiritually like okay now i'm back where this is where i'm supposed to be even though it's like what does that even mean right

yeah in fact the more i mean again this is a throwaway line from an unreliable character in a book you know i'm not supposed to be putting any truth behind it it was just when i read it it sort of put a light bulb light bulb above my head like oh yeah but the thing is if i actually think about that i think people at least here in the united states are way more likely to be moving up and down the coasts or up and down the region that they're in probably then back and forth the way i did because really like not to get too much into it but i would say that i do have more the spirit of well maybe you'd say a midwesterner i guess that that's it but there's some east coast in there too or at least eastern there is something you know like i complain about the the absolute lack of you know people's kind of physical awareness around them here and i've after i mentioned on the show recently i got tons of emails from people who were saying yep i've lived elsewhere there is something about people they're just in their own little head out here in seattle yeah just like in seattle people are especially non-aware of that where they are in space it was after i talked about going to like a costco in a different part of the country and And it was just like, oh, no, people do know how to navigate these things. It's just kind of – and now I see it everywhere, and it's driving me even more crazy. I'll just leave my grocery cart like right here, right in the middle of everything while I go wander over and stare at the coffee for a while. I spend a lot of time in grocery stores.

Let me ask you about that, yeah, because you are the resident grocery store expert on this program.

This is my move. First of all, why are 80% of the grocery carts not the small one?

Oh, well, actually, I think I have an answer for that, and it's a bummer.

Okay, because now you and I, we don't have children. I know that's part of it. We're not shopping for a large family. Okay, I get it. But, like, when I go, first of all, the Trader Joe's that I go to down in the Salmon Creek area, it's called, down kind of near Vancouver. Washington. They do not have, and you know, many a joke has been made about the footprint of a Trader Joe's and that the parking is tough and that the store itself is, you know, much smaller than kind of what we're used to in like a typical grocery store. I know that's sort of part of their business model and whatever. I like Trader Joe's. Why in the world is every cart at the Trader Joe's not a mini cart? And then why in the world is that the Safeway that I go to, they have like three mini carts and people are fighting over them. Like people in the movie Road Warrior You're fighting over the last little can of petrol. Like, get more of those carts.

I could not agree with you more. I have one answer that I hope is not true, or at least is not as true as I've come to believe in my head.

Does it have to do with unhoused?

I think so. I just know I was in one grocery store one time. I was like, why can't I? I think I finally said out loud, like, why can't I find one of the shorter double stack grocery carts? They're obviously superior. They're superior for everybody's experience as far as, like, not getting in the way. And one of the employees said, we can't keep them. Like, they just hit the streets so quickly. People just take them. Don't they have them? Is there some kind of weird radio-activated break on them or something? But that's the thing. And that's the thing where it's kind of like, I don't want to, I'm just like straight up blaming, like, poor people here. As you often do on this show. Well, I do. I mean, we need somebody to blame Luke, and they've had it too good for too long. But so, yeah, I don't know. But I just know in that one particular case, that one grocery store I was at in the city, they were like, yeah, we can't hang on to those things. And so you end up with the big ones. I hope that that's maybe an exaggerated explanation or at least it takes up too much room in my head. And it's not it doesn't because, yeah, I mean, listen, these stores have ways of locking things down, obviously. Right. Like you said, they have the magic breaks that somehow work with the with the invisible fence around their parking lot or however those things work. I'm not a scientist, but, yeah, I just feel like if they really wanted to provide us with better grocery carts, they would find a way. It's just not in their interest.

Or build it into the, which they'll never do, like, just understand that my experience will be so elevated if I can consistently get my hands on one of those. Let's just say three more a month go missing. Just build that into the cost of doing business. understand that like i'm going to enjoy like if legitimately if there was a grocery store in my area that i knew always had a healthy supply of those smaller grocery carts and then one that didn't i would tend to go to the one with the with the healthier supply of those small grocery

carts i really like i don't i don't blame you at all and i don't go into trader joe's but i know one of the reasons i don't go into trader joe's is because the few times i've been in i feel very constrained in there and it's very tight and it's a very uncomfortable experience for me and if they're not giving you little carts what are you doing you would not enjoy the trader joe's in

salmon creek on the sunday before real life starts again which is to say i think sunday the 4th of january which is when i was in there i was coming back from becca's and that's of course how you know that you do live kind of in the middle of nowhere is when you start to plan out trips like oh i'm gonna be in the big city i better go to some of the big city things i don't have access too so i made a stop at the trader joe's but it was basically like it was the sunday before everyone went back to school before a lot of people started back up at work and it was i mean it was ridiculous but again and i'm in the trader joe's with a full sized shopping cart and it was just like it was i wonder also this can't be the case i wonder if there is a certain consumer behavior related to how much capacity you have in your cart. I wonder if you're pushing a big cart around, if you're more likely to buy more stuff because you're filling the cart, whereas if it's smaller and it fills up faster. I wonder if there's a psychology to this that they're also trying to kind of, you know, utilize to their advantage as the store. Are you talking about social engineering?

I was looking for the drop. How can you avoid it? I was looking for it, but I think you might only have that audio drop so i'm the only one allowed to have it i had to do my patented imitation

social engineering what is it exactly man how does it work um but so what i was constantly

doing in the trader joe's because it wasn't it was just a mess was i kept trying to find places

to stash my cart that were not in everyone's way, but that were not, like, I couldn't, it was impossible to navigate with the cart through the store. So it was this whole, like, series of, like, strategic strikes where it was, like, find a place next to, what are people not buying? I don't know. Dates, those kind of suck. Let me put this next to this big display of dates. By the way, I'm going to make a date dessert this week, a date-based, I don't like dates. generally speaking but i'm going to try one that becca recommended to me and i'm going to videotape it for the hey dummies video okay great and so i'm going to try to if if anybody

has extra dates that they were about to throw away but you could use them you would just say save the dates save the social engineering this is the beginning of a social engineering attack

but because as a non-date appreciator so i was asking becca i've had a real sweet tooth lately and i was like hey do you have any ideas on like sweet treats that i can make that are maybe a little less bad for me than just absolutely punishing a sleeve of oreos and she goes yeah actually there's this thing that you can make where it involves dates and peanut butter and some you melt some chocolate and you kind of make a little supposed to taste exactly like a snickers bar you put um you put uh crushed up peanuts around it as well i do love me a snickers bar so i'm gonna give that a try i'm gonna i'm gonna film it and then uh we'll all get the results when the newsletter comes out this weekend i guess but um i would be i would try to find something that i thought was going to be not a popular part of the store based on my own tendencies and tastes then park the cart there and then go out and then get a few things and then come back to the cart is that i mean that's not rude behavior to you're talking about people abandoning their carts if

you're being conscientious about it like i will do that sometimes but i'm like very conscientious like i'm parking this way in the corner over here and then every now and then if i do come back to it and somebody's like kind of leaning around it to look at the jellies and jams i'll i always say oh man i'm sorry and they're like don't worry about it but like i just see i mean literally this happened at a crowded grocery store right before i think it was maybe the day before christmas or the day before christmas eve or something like the very very busy time for a grocery store it was so packed in the small qfc i go to in holman which is already has kind of narrow aisles and stuff anyway and some really unfortunate like uh load-bearing beams in the middle of some aisles which is like an interesting but you know they it's a city grocery store they're making do with the space they have i i don't i don't give them any grief for that but i do give people i mean it was a very very sweet looking woman who just took her grocery cart and like there's this area and again there's not it's not a roomy grocery store this is not like a suburban grocery store where you're just like double wide aisles right she takes her grocery cart and in the area where it's the ends of the aisles up to the up to the cash registers and there's no room for anybody to make any lines anyway so it's already a mishigash people are trying to walk by and shop other people are trying to stand there and wait for their turn to you know check out at the cat at the cash register and it's just this woman just takes her cart and just drop i didn't see her do it at first i saw her retrieve it later she just leaves her fully loaded cart it was a mini one for whatever it's worth but right in the middle of all of this chaos she just had a thought she's like oh i'm gonna go get the fig newtons which is you got me thinking about fig newtons now with all the date talk didn't occur to me there's a difference between a fig and a date but there must be there is figs i'm okay ish with dates

never been for me never really dates to me feel like and i say this you know with all but do all due respect to what baklava and things like that dates feel like a thing we used to put in to sweeten things when we didn't have as good of sweet stuff is that is that what's

in baklava is that i think it's dates okay and honey right baklava dates and honey again great in the 1600s yeah and great and really upgraded it's a great good cereal combo right date what you eat in dates and honey anyway uh here's a move that this one was just going about our business and i did think of our conversation i was just like yeah it's just like people are just but here's a move that i see all the time in the grocery store and this i will just use as a psa if anybody i think most people who do this probably just hear me right now and just think i'm annoying anyway and probably want to double down on being annoying in grocery stores the way when somebody tells us not to talk about sports all i want to do is talk about sports but um there's a move people do in the grocery store which is so maddening which is especially in these you know narrow aisle stores they have their cart and then let's say you're walking and what you want to look at is on the right side of the aisle so you're walking down the aisle and then you get to the jelly and jam section we're staying there, we're parking there folks and so the jelly and jams are over on your right, you need to look at them for a little bit you take

your cart and you park it to the left and then you stand next to the cart looking at the right so between your cart and your body you have essentially just taken up the entire aisle how about you stay in line with your cart and let people pass i can't tell you how many times i've just stood there and like i don't want to have to say excuse me because you have to really watch your tone when you're just talking to a stranger who's in your way but like you know i i'm fine saying oh excuse me can i get by here or whatever but like for the most part i'll just kind of wait and see like will they recognize that i'm here and they just don't see other people they don't see people i was leaving a restaurant the other day and i was by myself because this is my personality and people don't like to be around it and so i'm leaving i was sitting at the counter and then i put on my jack and i'm ready to leave but then i see there's a family or like a group of about four or five people who are about to leave before me so i remember i even specifically i didn't want to have a weird interaction with them at the door so i'm like i'm gonna let these people pass so i slowly put on my jacket you ever do that you do some busy work to like kind of let them pass first but then this group of people this is you know it's a seattle day so it's a little bit drizzly outside or something they're clearly not all going back to the same car so they're saying pleasantries and goodbyes and catching up and you know how that is after a meal this is like late afternoon maybe early evening or whatever so but they're having their little chit chat not like even on the sidewalk but just like in the little area that is like kind of somewhat covered you know like in the area that's sort of the sidewalk but sort of the doorway and I just and I let them go first but then they just stop and they congregate there and then I open the door and I'm just waiting for somebody to acknowledge the fact that you're just standing in the doorway you're just having a conference in the doorway of a public place And I was just kind of standing there for I don't know a while until finally one person Kind of took another person and said Oh he's trying to get through there And I wasn't pushing and I wasn't rolling my eyes I wasn't copping any kind of attitude I was just like amazed at people's

Just head in the cloudsiness I have a move When I reach a level of frustration With something like that where I basically start channeling Dan Levy From Schitt's Creek Where I basically go hi hi yes hi and you can tell by the like not like hey there or can i get by hi there's other people

in the world yeah we need to get by for the record and i and here's the deal the listeners here who i care way more about than the strangers i see in in a grocery store except for in the occasion where those two overlap which it does happen from time to time i uh i am letting the listeners hear the ugliest side of my internal dialogue here where I honestly in the world I don't really think I cop that tone I I really don't I'm usually more of a oh can I get by here okay excuse me but then

in my head I've been with you in public what are we very much more your mood there have been times

there was a time where I was leaving I was um I was at some sort of airport situation I was running late I think I was running to grab a Uber maybe after my flight had landed it doesn't really matter but like for me you this is a very east coast west coast thing and maybe because i started taking light rail and public transpo in boston where you would just never do the shit people do here which is just like stand side by side on the escalator like that is punishable by death on the east coast and here and so i do remember one time not in the in the not too distant past where there was some fella just standing on the escalator and i'm in a bit of a hurry not a huge hurry but he's just he's standing on one side and his his suitcase stands on the left side next to him just taking up the whole thing you're just like and so i i was behind him just like hey can i get through here and he he kind of looks like surprised like somebody would talk to him and so he moves his suitcase and as i passed i said that's how it's done and i did say that that was one time where i was like that's how it's done because i feel like in this way i need to spread the message like you need to just like i know you love your friend but you don't have to stand abreast on the

escalator let people buy i will say by the way uh baklava does not have dates in it oh okay i was trying to remember where the everybody just ever i i feel like i've had you know meals from various kind of middle eastern restaurants where i feel like dates are like a big part of the maybe just in the bible maybe i'm just thinking of what they talk about in the bible but i always feel like as a kid because i grew up in a weird evangelical church situation where we were trying to reenact parts of the Old Testament, I feel like people were trying to get us to eat dates and honey a lot, like it was a thing, and I was like, I don't think that's a thing.

I just had, you know, remember, who's our boy that we always mention? The most, the oft-mentioned author who looms so large on this show who wrote My Year of Living Biblically? Oh, A.J. Jacobs? Yeah, great poll. Did he eat biblically? It just occurred to me that would be a whole project.

In Living Biblically, I think he must have eaten biblically. Yeah, I guess so.

Like, if you just did a whole diet for a year where you only ate stuff that is in the Bible. In fact, I'm kind of surprised that that isn't part of the new Maha rules. Oh, I bet you there's a corner of the internet.

Let's see, what's Liver King up to? He's probably just on the Mesopotamia diet at this point. Let's see, so I wanted to clarify about baklava, but I also wanted to say, you remind me, I have a buddy, my friend, his name is Cotter, a.k.a. the Colonel.

Oh, yeah, South of Cheese, right?

is other than you he is probably in fact maybe more so than you he's like one of the most deeply thoughtful people i know just incredibly um careful about other people's experiences in the world just a really really really thoughtful person and i remember him saying something like again he's he's slow to anger and he when he's out in public he's doing everything he can to make sure that he's not blocking other people or inconveniencing other folks just a really good dude and i remember once the most mad i ever saw him got was him describing someone standing in the airport looking at their flight information but standing in the middle of the walkway yeah and he was like this is a guy i'd literally never seen him angry in his life and it's like he he was ready to homicide someone over the fact that they were standing in the walkway while looking and this is before we all had our flight info on our phones right and he was like i just effing cannot stand that. And what I realized was there's a definitely a, an equation of the more care that you take in the world of not blocking people and knowing about where you are in space. The, and this is just makes sense. The more it upsets you when other people are not doing it, because I'm somewhere in the middle. I'm not as careful as I should be about where I am in space. And therefore I'm also not as mad about it or not. It doesn't, it doesn't bother me as much it probably bothers you because you must be thinking gosh I'm putting a lot of effort into not being this person in the world and now someone's being that person I also do think

and to bring it back to this there's no way to really prove this I'm not trying to create regional rivalries but I do think that it's also because you grew up in this culture and it just doesn't stand out to you as much and maybe yeah I'm not even you know maybe maybe it's fine I mean it's so funny that like I never really thought much when I moved out here about like west coast like hey man let's all just lay back and smoke our indica or whatever i mean that's kind of your vibe that's always been your vibe you know me in the couch baby but generally speaking like i don't think in that way but then i was as i sort as this came up on the show a few weeks ago and then i've been sort of ruminating on especially after hearing from people are like oh yeah i grew up in the south and it's just like it's so everybody's sort of a little flighty around here um and i'm like wait now that's hold on someone said they grew up in the south yeah yeah yeah somebody said they grew up in the south but here people are just like they're the spatial awareness they did not use the word flighty and i don't even remember who this was but i remember somebody said i grew up in the south and yeah when i moved up here it's amazing how people because i just don't think of

the south as the model i don't this is not a political statement i think of the south as being you want to talk about people people visiting people just hey we're just fellowship in here like i feel like there would have been 70 more people in that in that doorway of that restaurant just kind of like visiting because that seems to me to be so southern like no one's in a hurry

Well, people are in a hurry. People are laid back. But I think it's very specific, the physical awareness that I do. And so I'm sort of what's happened in this conversation is I'm starting to like kind of conflate stereotypes. And I apologize for that because I should if I'm trying to actually make a point, I shouldn't just let it be so slippery, slidey. They didn't say flighty. And now I'm comparing it also to this laid back lifestyle. And you're right. Things are laid back in the South and I can't speak to it. But I do know we have a listener who grew up there who said that, yeah, living in the Pacific Northwest is interesting how people just don't have spatial awareness of just, like, where they are, the space that they're taking up and potentially being in other people's – oh, I wanted to ask about Cotter, though. So what is – because I think I mentioned South of Cheese. Is he your South of – Uh-huh, he's South of Cheese. Okay, so does that mean that he grew up West Coast, too?

He grew up in Arizona.

Okay, interesting.

But he also grew up in like a very, like, how do I put it? Like his, particularly his mom and his, he was, his mom remarried and his stepfather, Steve, he was really close with as well, as he was close with his father. I don't know why I need to specify these things, but the home that he grew up in. You're not on trial here. You love them both. The home that he grew up in, it was, I think mostly because of his mom, it was a very like, I don't know how to put it. They were really raised right They were really raised with a lot of manners Manners is a big thing in the family And thinking about other people and just the way you are in the world It almost felt, I guess what I'm trying to say is It almost felt like an east coast Like a northeast kind of Like a northeast family That were some of the founding Members of the Greenwich, Connecticut community or something So that was where so even though we grew up in Arizona, I feel like there was this sense of just like politeness and also just knowing like what kind of fork you use at a certain time and stuff. It felt, it didn't feel very Arizona, very Arizona to me. It felt very like almost from the Northeast or something, but not again, not in like a stuffy. These are all extremely lovely people, but just this level of thoughtfulness in the world and just really kind of making sure that you're not ruining anyone else's day due to your thoughtlessness It was a very big principle handed down. And, like, again, you guys have met my mom. That's not the culture I grew up in in any way, shape, or form. And I think you're probably right, Andrew. I primarily grew up in the Pacific Northwest, so there's probably a lot of stuff about this area that seems pretty normal to me just because it's what I grew up in.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm not – and by the way, I'm not – I would never argue that people should be more like me, like generally speaking. Like that's a – I wouldn't put that curse on my worst enemy. But so I'm not saying you have to be uptight all the time or angry or and I don't want to paint myself as like seriously, like going through life. You know, that Genevieve's thing is she diagnoses literally everybody except for herself, me and maybe one other person with anhedonia, like the inability to be happy. At least that's how she always defines it. I don't know if you're looks like maybe you're Googling it as I speak. But no, I'm just thinking the problem is like this person just doesn't know how to be happy. And there are plenty of people in my life who I do – even people that I love who do kind of have a toxicity around them all the time. And some people like just their love language even with – in a couple, like they – it might be a couple that's in a very successful relationship or a long-time relationship. But the way of talking is just sort of kind of negative all the time or like, oh, I got to complain about the breadsticks or whatever. I really don't want to be that person or let people think that I'm going around the world just being like, ah, these people are a bunch of idiots. I really try not to, and I don't think I am that person, but obviously we all have our days.

Sure. Yeah, no, that's a really tough energy to be around and one that I have always assiduously avoided. What you saw on this computer connection that we're on was when you said anhedonia. I was calling back in my mind to the only other time I've heard that term, and it was our buddy Dave Ross talking about being an anhedonist. He said he thought he was an anhedonist. Oh, like he doesn't mean pleasure. And his version of that was just the way he defined it. And by the way, Genevieve's definition that you described is absolutely right. anhedonia is the inability to feel pleasure or interest in activities you once enjoyed the way that dave ross described it to us maybe you might have been producing at that time was because we were talking about vices and about things that like you know that was a very vice filled you want to talk about inherent vice that was a vice filled period of my life and for some reason on the show we were talking about stuff and he was trying to come up maybe it was what we were giving up for lent or something and he said like well i'm just an and i'm an and hedonist i just don't but what he was trying to say was like i don't do anything i don't i don't take joy from doing anything that i shouldn't or whatever and the only thing he could come up with with giving up for lent was bubble gum he said sometimes i grab a he goes i have one of those things of gum in my car one of those like double bubble like a bucket of it yeah and he was like and sometimes i'll just like i'll just try or reach and i'll just grab like a bunch of pieces of gum and chew it oh more than one piece at the time sexy sexy Flanders oh my god oh oh Nettie

so I'm trying to look that up I'm trying to figure out is that a is that a Rossism because it's basically we know what hedonism is and so that makes sense the opposite of hedonism would be you know not not enjoying the pleasures of the world it's specifically like worldly

pleasures and stuff yeah so that's exactly I think he was just basically saying like I'm not a person who drinks or gambles or carouses or does any of these kind of hedonistic things. And so it's hard for me to give up something for Lent because I have nothing. Well, I do have sometimes I grab three pieces of double bubble gum. And this is like, I was probably still drunk from the casino. You know what I mean? In the moment of that conversation. But he's trying to commit to only pulling one piece of bubble gum out of the thing.

The fumes coming off of you.

Seriously, like nobody light a match in this studio at Cairo.

Somebody's like, put that lighter down.

Yeah, seriously.

Thank you, baby.

As the listeners have probably figured out, Andrew, we don't work at Cairo Radio anymore. Mm-mm. Thank you. When we worked there, we would get a paycheck from the Mormon church. That's right. people's minds are blown when i describe that detail of of my time you you talk to people about that ever like oh you know

who owns that the mormon church yeah yeah i haven't had that conversation in a while you're just reminding me of a different embarrassing conversation i had recently i was over at kow where our pal bill radke works and we were chatting in in the green room slash break room over there and he was talking to me about the coffee he had some coffee decision to make he's like which is going to be worse if i reheat my good coffee from home or drink the fresh lesser coffee here at work or whatever so we're talking about it and then he starts saying he's like oh yeah Luke used to always describe the coffee as just being really terrible at Cairo or I can't remember maybe he was reminiscing about a certain way you described it I don't recall I don't remember anecdotes about you it didn't involve me but then I said to him oh yeah and I start telling him about how bad the coffee is at Cairo and what it's like to work at Cairo and then I'm like oh we work there together I literally forgot that Bill worked at Cairo with us Andrew he was reminiscing with me not about Cairo about Cairo and I was like Bill I'm so sorry I forgot that we were colleagues

you know what until you just said that to me I had also memory hold that entire phase of life of our life of job life of him working there oh my god this is not interesting to any of the listeners but it is to me because you and I both fully you know why because this is the show where I talk about people that are maybe not known quantities to the listeners way too much, be it my friend Cotter, be it his stepdad, Steve.

I was going to say, how does Radke like Steve? Does he love him and Cotter's real dad?

He's more of Cotter's real dad, who he called Pops, was an interesting guy because he was, first of all, he was Wilbur the Wildcat. When he went to the University of Arizona, he was the mascot. Wow. I think because he fit in the mascot outfit. I think the previous mascot had been a not particularly tall individual. And his dad was His dad is or was Like a real free spirit And then his mom ended up Getting remarried to a guy, Steve Who was a real, a much more Kind of like A very solid and dependable guy So he had a very interesting Upbringing because he was close with all of his parents But they were all kind of spread out Across the ways of being in the world I think Radke would be more of a Steve If you're scoring at home But I just so don't associate Radke with Cairo because it's like I think of him as being he was my absolute and total radio hero when I started at KUOW because I was the intern so I'm like maybe 18 or 19 and there's this guy Bill Radke who's hosting Morning Edition at the station he also had won the Seattle International stand-up comedy competition at that point like which is another thing I was of course very interested in so and and also was my friend and like kind of took me under his wing and hung out with me and it was like just you know everything to me at that time I mean he officiated my first wedding um and then he moves off to LA he works for marketplace does all this stuff and then at some point comes back to Seattle and again is working at Cairo but then goes back to KUOW where he once again works and has worked for years the Cairo part is like totally lost in my memory because I just associate him so strongly with KUOW and public radio yeah and and you didn't

even probably work with him directly unless one of you did like a crossover on the other person's show but i mean the the the overlap really was minimal and when he was working there i was a part-timer there so there i was just like filling in as a producer sometimes on his super early morning show but he's just culturally kow i mean that's that's what we're getting in here exactly do you blame him by the way for your first marriage not working out i'm he's not blameless

he's not blameless he was part of it no there's a lot of blame to go around i'll take some of it, but some of it also lies with Radke, and that's undeniable. The point is, we don't work at Cairo anymore. We don't get paychecks from the Mormon Church. We now get paychecks from ADP by way of the Too Beautiful to Biz boys network that I don't fully understand, but what I know is every two weeks we do get paid, and it's thanks to the donors. This, what you're listening to is 100% listener-supported podcasting five days a week from folks like Katie Marie Harnish in Seattle, Washington. Hey! Thank you, Katie Marie. Thank you, Katie. Appreciate you. Thank you, Katie. Also, thanks to Heather Schwampy Wilson in Carmichael, California.

Thank you! Appreciate you, Heather. Heather. Heather gave a pronouncer on her name and said it was unfortunate. I don't think it's unfortunate. No, it's okay.

Yeah, it says, swampy, unfortunate, phonetic, spelling, ha-ha. I love it. Now, is it possible? That's not the name. Her name isn't Heather Schwampy Wilson, swampy, unfortunate, phonetic, spelling, ha-ha of Carmichael, California.

I think that's actually right. I think you finally nailed it. Okay.

Gotcha. Thanks also to Brian Maddox in Albany, Oregon. Whoa. The pause there was because I was once, I feel like I might have been corrected by Ralph Nader about how you say Albany, New York.

Oh, Albany versus Albany. Albany versus Albany. Yeah, and I'm going to be an Albany. You're going to catch me Albany-ing all the time, I think, unfortunately.

Yes, Albany, Oregon. One time I was doing a radio story about Ralph Nader, and we were in a car. We sat in the back of a car from New York City all the way up to Albany, New York. And I interviewed him, and we hung out. And at some point, I think I said something about, yeah, we're going to Albany. And I believe he said, it's Albany. Oh, wow. Which is on brand for him. He was like an Australian. He's both warm and direct. Yes. Hold the warm.

Yes. He was, am I allowed to tell this story on the air? Yeah. Does it involve me? It doesn't involve you. Well, then I'll allow it. I think, so you know our friend Rachel Bell has a podcast called Your Last Meal, where she interviews people about what their last meal would be. It's just an excuse to, you know, it's just a loose framework to talk about food.

I've been on the show. Yeah, sure. I stand by my answer Which was Din Tai Fung Soup dumplings

I'm still waiting for my invite No actually you know it's so funny We were having dinner the other night And she's like oh I never Because we were talking about her podcast And then she said you know I've never asked you What would your last meal be And I said it's so depressing to think about Like I know that you're not asking me literally You just want to know But I was like The question is what do you like the most

what do you want the last thing to pass through your lips before you say goodnight

maybe as a kid I read I just feel like maybe it was the green mile maybe it was something else but I get so sad when I think about any situation where you're actually literally facing the end and it's a very specific line in the sand and I get so wracked with emotion thinking about that that I lose all appetite and it's so funny and it's like huh why haven't you invited me on the show but that comes back to what we were talking about it was Nader we were talking about and I think she said that she invited him on the show and his people were like he can come on the show and he can talk about food but like he will not engage at all with his last meal stuff he is anti-death penalty and she kept saying like okay but it's not about the death penalty it's like nope you can have him on you can talk about food but do not ask him what his last meal will be she's like well it's kind of part of the show but we'll make it work kind of in the name yeah so he's a very like you said very direct and very um you know he stands he stands very strong for the things he believes in and i think you know

he would not have had the impact that he had in the culture if he would have been any different you know what i mean like he is a very he's incredibly like single-minded yes and like i don't think he he was never married he didn't have children he's famously against home ownership like he's just basically has only cared in his adult life about one thing which is to improve people's lives through holding corporations accountable and companies. And like, and I don't think he's, I don't think he's wrong about any of that, but like I've probably told this story before, before we left New York city to go to Albany, uh, I, there was a political event and he, he must've been running for president because we were in this church in Harlem and Hillary Clinton was there and Ralph Nader was there and Hillary Clinton got up and was addressing this largely black congregation in Harlem. And she was, you know, I guess if you were to be ungenerous, you could say sort of code switching in a way that was a little, I wouldn't even say it was cringe. What I was seeing was a person in Hillary Clinton who was reading the room. She was like, I'm picking up the energy in this room and I'm going to talk about politics and my campaign in a way that I think is going to be digestible to folks in this room and you can take that for whatever however you want and then ralph nader gets up and just immediately goes into a very specific conversation about like excise taxes or something you know like tariffs are now like all the rage to talk about but imagine you know 20 years ago like he just was the worst room reader i've ever seen in my life because he was like well why wouldn't i talk about the why wouldn't i talk about nafta or whatever it was that he sees as the primary threat to the kind of american standard of living or whatever like zero ability to read the room whether he's in a church in harlem or in the back of a car as i'm saying albany instead of all right right like just that was his whole vibe now back to the last meal thing really quickly um first of all i also am not like

excited about, about passing away. But I am on the other hand, really obsessed with what people order as their last meal, if they are, and by the way, I'm against the death penalty, but to the point where they're like, I've been on like spreadsheets that people have put up on the internet listing sort of what people have ordered for their last meal. And I find it to be not to, I don't want to be macabre or gruesome, but it's, I'm for some reason, I'm very interested in what people go with i i have i have the same sort of i guess question you have andrew which

is like i don't know how anyone would have an appetite i wonder how many people i i'd be more interested in knowing stats about how much of it is actually eaten i think it's like your last bit of freedom like you're allowed to choose sky you know and i don't think sky is the limit i think that's probably not true right but generally depends on the state okay in some states um you

can order anything you want but they have to be able to make it in the kitchen at the prison so you're getting like baby back ribs and pizza and all this stuff but you're not like they're not bringing in from Tony Roma's and uh Domino's uh there you know it's like what could they make in that that's so I think that's also a a layer to this but yeah I think you're right I think probably people do it as maybe their last sense of any agency in the world but I'd be really surprised if anyone's able to actually I it would it would probably uh ruin my appetite let's just

say your last agency what would what would be your last agency let's see my last act of agency or the last government agency i would eliminate the last government agency start with ice andrew

to be the first one that i would eliminate particularly today of all days hey also uh thanks to well look at this leslie davis is out there in coon rapids minnesota oh wow thinking about all of our friends in minnesota right now and uh and and our colleague john sklaroff who's who's out there as well. I hope everyone is doing okay and staying safe and just, you know, I don't know, trying to exist within this incredible moment of brutality that we're all in in this country, but that feels most acute right now in the state of Minnesota. So I'm thinking about our friends out there, including Leslie Davis. Thanks also to Christina Mayer in Wenatchee, Washington. Don't do it, Luke. Don't do it. Actually, you know what? It's not wenatchee it's cashmere so i was gonna say i started off today's show talking about how i don't feel like dates are as good as the modern candies that we've invented and it made me think when i saw wenatchee i started thinking of applets and cotlets oh okay all right but those aren't from wenatchee those i think are from cashmere and those are definitely a candy that i grew up with an alleged candy they were a thing that older people were trying to get us younger people believe were actually a yummy thing to eat, and they were, and they remain in my mind, some of the least tasty things you could

ever have. Now, that is something, I've never had it, but I love the Washington-ness of that.

It's so deeply Washington. It's so deeply Washington. I love that. And also deeply Washington is Christina, who's over there in Wenatchee, donating to the show and keeping us going. Thanks, Christina. And then thanks to Sally Rasmussen, who's in North Bend, Washington. Thank you, Sally. Damn fine cup of coffee. Cup of coffee? I always get that wrong. Is it cup of coffee or is it, it's not pie. He's eating pie. It's coffee. Yeah, the quote you're thinking of is coffee, yeah. Okay. Well, that's a damn fine donor, Sally Rasmussen. And thank you to all of our supporters for making TBTL possible. We could not do this without you. Hello and welcome to Top Story. By the way, I did watch Begonia last night. The argument, not the argument, the thing I was doing in my head, Andrew, vis-a-vis you, was trying to, I had the memory of you saying something to me about the movie, and then I was watching the whole movie and waiting for it to become the thing that you had said to me about the movie. Almost like when you're trying to not know the final score of a football game, but you got one accidental data point. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like you look down at your phone and someone was like holy smokes yeah and then you're like is that a good holy smokes is that a bad holy smokes yeah and you're watching the whole game waiting for the moment where someone said holy

smokes i was watching a game recently i must have just been a couple of minutes behind because of some streaming situation and the only i think it might have been one of those games where it's only you and ders commenting on the text thread but you don't see two ships passing in the night Yeah, well, he sees yours, you don't see his, so you both, you know, whatever. But I saw a notification, and I thought it was him saying, Woo, W-O-O-O-O-O, which is, because I just saw, like, the preview of it on my phone. I was like, well, something good is going to happen here. And I waited a while, and nothing really good happened. And also, it's kind of out of his character to celebrate.

prematurely i'm not saying he never does but he's really more one as we've spoken on the show to uh complain and and assume the worst in every sports situation and so i finally go back i'm like what was he wooing about so i actually opened the message and i saw that it was woof with an f on the end of it he was complaining he was woofing i thought it was the scripture scratch i thought it was a woo but it was a woof and so i was like but you're right like it changed how i watched the game for four or five minutes right waiting for the woo so when um when you and vives i think

saw begonia which is the yorgos lanthimos lanthimos uh film um we were talking about his films because there's a range of like kind of the weirdness factor of his movies and like i had said to you i think oh i really liked the favorite and you said well that's his most straightforward film that you had seen and you were like begonia is definitely not that or something like that And so I had on some level been kind of like thinking, well, maybe I'll miss this movie because I don't do super great with like weird movies. I tend to like movies that are pretty linear and and don't get, you know, kind of out there, I guess. But I, you know, I do I do really like I did really like the favorite. I like Emma Stone. I'm also a really big fan of the comedian Stavros Halkness, who is the cop in Begonia.

Oh, yeah. Right, right, right. Yes.

I just like Stavry. He's very funny. He's on the right side of politics. There's this moment of comedy right now, of bro comedy, where it's pretty toxic, and he's not part of that. I mean, he was on a show that I can't say the name of that back in the day probably was a little fast and loose with some of the language and things that they talked about. But overall and in his comedy and the way he talks about the world, he is a champion for LGBTQ folks and the poor. And basically, you know, that's kind of a rare in this moment of time of these of a lot of these podcasters who have very popular podcasts.

I looked up the podcast. Why can't you say it, Luke? Coward. But that's what I yelled, by the way, when they played the really short version of the Nicole Kidman. Look, I remembered her name. They played a very abbreviated version of it before I saw Burt Wonderstone last weekend. And I made Genevieve laugh. I didn't shout, but I said in a regular voice, play the whole thing, you cowards. I love it. Sorry, go ahead. I didn't know this about him, by the way. Somehow heartbreak feels good in a place like this. Yeah, they didn't play that. They just played a very abbreviated version. By the way, I want to say I did not realize that that was – I didn't make the connection. For a part of the movie, I was distracted because I thought that was Yorgos. I thought that – Oh, yeah, sure. They look kind of similar. Sort of – Yorgos, yeah. And Yorgos was in the – he made cameos in the last movie I saw that he made. And so I was all primed for it to be him. And because of the Greek names, I was like, oh, that's the director. And then Visa's like, that's not the director. And then anyway, and I didn't realize until just now that, oh, this is the comedian that you like and who I see from time to time when I'm scrolling on social media. But I did not know until this very moment that, oh, this is Stavros, that guy that you particularly enjoy.

And I kept seeing Stavros on different shows talking about being in Begonia and how basically like, you know, because he's he's Greek and Yorgos is Greek. And so he's like my favorite director who also happens to be a Greek guy Like if he calls me up and says like do you want to be in a movie I'm just like yes of course And so I had it in the back of my mind I should check out Begonia And then like last night I was just kind of like well I'm looking for something to watch And it was actually streaming on Peacock Which I have for free now because of my like Xfinity phone service For some reason they're giving me Peacock And so I was a little nervous because when I started it it made me watch like almost three minutes of commercials before the movie start. And it said, your movie will start after these ads. And I was like, Oh, is this going to be one of those things where like throughout the film, every time I'm getting into the movie, it just like starts giving me one of those really like stilted odd, like a, you know, digital commercials. It'll get punched into things. Sometimes it'll be the same commercial throughout the whole, I was like, but it didn't do that. It once, once the movie was going, it did not break in for commercial. Thankfully, It's also not the kind of movie that you want to have that happen with.

One thing a lot of our services have that I will just say, the one thing that makes it a little bit better, it's a small thing, but I like it when they put the tiny little countdown clock in the top left-hand corner. It at least gives you five seconds to brace for it.

Totally. So I'm watching the movie, and I keep, like, I'm enjoying the heck out of it. Like, I mean, Jesse Plemons is incredible in it. Emma Stone is amazing. The cinematography of it, like all of it. I'm just the other actor whose name I don't know, but who I was looking up, who is, in fact, somebody who's on the autism spectrum.

his first movie he's in and i thought he's really phenomenal i looked him up to be like we're not i

am samming here are we right yeah you know i didn't look that up but i i kind of had i guess

now that you mentioned that that it would be odd it would be pretty out of um you know what we do now to cast somebody in that role who who was an actor uh who was not on the autism spectrum like pretending to be i guess at this point um so anyway i thought i just was enjoying the movie And I kept being like, Andrew said that this one is weirder than, Andrew texted woo. Was it woo or woof? And I'm just watching and I'm like, well, but I'm liking this. But Andrew said this one is weirder than the favorite. But is it going to get too weird for me? I watched the whole movie going, is it going to get too weird for me? Is it going to get too weird for me? And no, it didn't. I thought it was phenomenal. I thought it might have been, it's definitely for me up there with one battle after another in terms of being the best movie that I've seen this year. I mean, I just thought it was unbelievable. I mean, the tension of the film is incredible. The writing, again, the acting. I mean, it's just an abs—you know, this is a movie you really don't want to spoil, but just the—I thought it was an incredibly well-done film, and I absolutely loved it.

Well, I'm sorry that I said anything that kind of got in your head. No, it was good. No, it worked. I think that just happens from time to time. It was good. That helped me. Enjoy it more. I mean, it is a weirder movie, and it's not as weird as the one before it that I saw, which was the series of three short movies. It was called Kinds of Kindness. Oh, right, right, right.

And that one also was Emma Stone?

Yes, and it's funny because it's Emma Stone, and I'm blanking on her name, but the woman who was in the movie where every— What was the TV show where everybody disappears? It's a one, they're almost like... The Leftovers? The Leftovers, yeah. Not everybody, but like a third of the population just disappears. I'm blanking on the name of the young woman in there. I didn't see The Leftovers. Anyway, the interesting thing about Kinds of Kindness is it's three distinct plots, just three different short stories, but it stars all the same. Margaret Qualley, is that what you're thinking of? Yes, yes, Qualley, yes. And I saw her in a trailer for a thing that's coming out now.

Andy McDowell from Groundhog Day's Daughter, by the way.

Oh, now that you say that, I think, yeah, I think Genevieve has told me that before. And she's showing up in a lot of things. I just saw her in a trailer for something. She's really, really good. Yeah, she's good. It's her, Emma Stone, is it Joaquin Phoenix? I can't remember who the male lead is. But anyway, they all appear in each little story, but they're completely unrelated, different stories and different characters. And I really, really like that one, but there's some really tough stuff in that. And one of them has some body horror stuff in it. And it's, you know, well, the thing that really stands out for me in his movies is the way he uses music, too. Right. It's just that like, it'll just be like very kind of like old school, but it'll be matched with like just an exterior of a suburban house. Yeah. But he's ratcheting up the pressure so much in the movie. And then it's like that's just over the top, just huge orchestral music just slamming down on your head. It is, I really like his vibe. I liked this movie. I mean, it made me really uncomfortable when it was trying to make me uncomfortable, especially in the, I would say, the first third of it, while the two of the main characters are starting to make their plans, let's put it that way. We're going to make this spoiler-free. That made you uncomfortable? The things that the one friend was doing to the other friend and convincing him to do. Yeah.

Well, I didn't find that settling, but I guess for me it was like the the the last third had a real almost like a horror vibe to it when there's when like you know there's the one of the characters is like discovering kind of a larger thing going on and i don't watch a lot of movies that are you know it felt it felt like a horror film to me in a way and i don't watch horror films but i was already so invested in the movie and i would you know that i was like oh wait am i watching a horror movie right now it is it is its own thing now here's

what i'm gonna say this is gonna sound so like i don't even not humble braggy braggy or what here was one thing that took me out of this movie a little bit is i predicted a couple of major major things including the ending before it happened because one thing so i i want to keep this spoiler free but i think i can say this in a coded way that you'll understand and i i will be very very careful here listeners but there's one really big thing that happens with a character uh in the basement and oh yeah i started to yeah because it was very much like a scene from uh another very different movie from the 1980s right um but i was just like oh this is uh the uh i i think we're we're gonna see happen here and but then the actual end which is a very let's just say surprising ending here's why And then.

This is, it's not even really so much of a prediction, but I was going to lean over to Genevieve and say, oh, I know what's going to, like, as a joke, I was going to say, oh, like, I can't explain it. I was actually planning a joke at the end of the movie or something where I was going to say to Vives, so wait, that didn't happen. Then it occurred to me, I was like, oh, this is Yorgos. He's just going to do the thing I was joking about. You know what I mean? So in other words, I had a joke set up about, wouldn't it be crazy if the movie ended this way and then the movie ended that way? because I was like oh don't make that joke it's not funny because it could be a spoiler because he probably he would do this and then he did do this so anyway I hope that that was confusing enough for people who haven't seen it but clear enough to you Luke. Is it weird

though? We're going to continue talking in very coded terms here which is boy is this let's get back to Radke talk. Actually another thing about Cotter's stuff that's Steve

Let's drill down. We haven't talked enough

about his mom. Like talking about us trying to talk about the movie Begonia without giving it away I can't even thank God we've already thanked the donors because I hear people it's like the showing of Marty Supreme you were at I hear people heading for the exits right now but they're still listening because there's 800 Blurs Day messages still so that people

are sticking around. You know people are hearing right now the sound of people canceling their donations. If you listen very closely you can hear it in me blabbering about this movie. There's a certain sort of hush

all over the world tonight um the end of the film i don't know how to i just really want to talk about this with you andrew like on a friendship level but i am worried about ruining the movie for people but like the very very end of the movie i'm talking the last oh you know two minutes three minutes it's it is a it's a version of events that i could see i mean it's the average person would see this as a pretty big negative okay is that suffice i don't know that that is

the takeaway because that's not how i felt i felt no i think you're i think you felt there was a supposed to i was i feeling the way i was supposed to feel at the end of the movie i mean literally the most beautiful part of the movie is the montage of still shots you know quasi still

shots at the end and i really i really thought for myself i started to have thoughts about where i would want to be in that ending scene yeah yeah you know like what activity would i like to be engaging in in the ending scene what you know like it just didn't seem real bad to me it seemed

very very peaceful and it also comes back to and again this gets a little bit into i'm walking the tightrope here but i put begonia into this bucket of movies and tv shows that i've been watching recently that seemed to be kind of circling around very similar themes and I would include Pluribus in that and I think I listed a bunch for you the other day. I'm blanking on some other ones, but it sort of felt like there was this like everything I was watching kind of was playing around with that sort of message.

It's almost like, Andrew, it feels like things are not going particularly great in this country and on this planet. Right, exactly.

Rock, get a wrong way to roll You can't just listen to your soul Just remember that life is number one You can be having so much fun Just remember that life is much fun You can be number one

The rumors are true, Luke. Got a healthy handful of joy to spread via the Blur's Days today. How do people send us Blur's Days? They email me, andrew at tbtl.net. They put Blur's Day in the subject line, and then they write a short little sentence or two, wishing themselves or something in their lives a happy birthday. That's what Andrea did. Andrea says, I would- So explain that. I'm going to say Andrea says or Andrea says, because it could be either, and I want to respect both. She says, I would love to wish my progeny, TBTL and otherwise, Herschel, a very wonderful 17th birthday. We've been sharing TBTL since you were just a kindergarten kid and now you're looking to one more year of public school then off to college. You've been my adventure partner through many ups and downs and I'm looking forward to seeing what adventures you make for yourself as you move into adult life. Happy Blurs Day, Herschel.

We've got now, Andrew, because I think we just turned either 17 or 18 yesterday. Yeah. And we've talked a lot about how, like, you know, people go through whole life experiences, marriages, divorces, births.

births deaths with this show kind of in the background but we've now got like a we've basically got a graduating class yeah you know what i mean like we've got some kids who were who would have been like born and now graduating high school all within the time span of tbtl

my math is so bad and i was doing this off air with you the other day because it's something about like well on the first birthday you've been around for one year and anyway it seems very obvious but i'm trying to think if the show started in 2008 and it's 2026 now and our anniversary was officially yesterday or the tbtl anniversary was yesterday that would make us 18 right that was our 18th anniversary or yeah i don't know i'm bad anyway i'm the only person worse at this than you here's the here's my question can we vote as a podcast now can i cast a vote in you know local state and national election we're moving to wisconsin okay we've got Gotta go somewhere where our vote counts. That's a really good point. Happy Blur's Day to us and happy Blur's Day to Herschel. Debra says, Eric is celebrating the big 4-0 on Saturday. He's listened for over 10 years and was at the show in Philly last year with me. I'd appreciate it if you could recognize the occasion. Debra, occasion recognized. Happy Blur's Day to Eric. Wow. Do-do-do-do. Danny says, happy first Blur's Day to my twin fives, Ashley and Cameron. It's been a wild year, boys, starting in the, how do you, did you just say NICU or NICU? NICU, I thought that it was, yeah, starting in the NICU and being passed around your whole wacky family at Easter to earning your SAG cards. What? Oh, this is our friend Danny, the actor, says here. His babies are already, he's already putting them in the family biz. Danny says, watch for a baby on an airplane in the new Meet the Parents film. Wow, Danny. You motherfucker. You got those kids working.

Actually, that's so smart, dude. Yeah, you got to make them earn their keeps. Get their early, early. Get their SAG cards. Also, those kids are going to be rich. Andrew, do you know what twins will go for on the open market in Hollywood? I'm going to just drown you out here with the music. That's like. So explain that. Don't. That is, that's, of course, because if you got twins, you can have, you can Olsen twin it. You can have two, you can have two young people portraying the same character. Therefore, neither of the young people have to work too long and too hard and violate too many, you know, Hollywood labor laws. That's a frigging goldmine, dude.

And if you don't have, if you don't have them working on the same project, they can split up even just as kid actors and just book more gigs. And again, book more gigs, pay for those cribs. That's what I say about children.

And grow up. We've got to do the show for at least 17 more years until these kids are able to be paying TBTL listeners.

That's a really good point. Donate now, and happy Blur's Day to Ashley and Cameron. Brad says, happy belated Blur's Day to Anders in Norfolk. From your brother-in-law, have a great year ahead. Happy Blur's Day, Anders. No, that's a Dur's I would never block on the text. Champ, block the der's. Mary, this is our pal Mary, by the way, the A1 Rants and Raves writer to the Seattle Times. Mary, an A1 volunteer with me over at the Ravenna Pop-Up Kitchen on Sundays. Mary says, happy Blurs Day to Kelly. Keep wandering the city, taking a million pictures of the unseen, fascinating parts of Seattle that no one else sees. You observe so many little things I've never noticed, even though I've walked past it many times. You have talent in all kinds of ways, and we love it, and we love you. Also, a mother-daughter TBTL tattoo is marginally on the table. We'll talk. Marginally? Let's get that upgraded to probably. Look at this. Mary and Kelly are going to be rolling into the next TBTL event with matching tattoos.

Do we know what the tattoo would be?

I think one of them would get half of my face, and the other one would get the other half of my face.

Well, about half of my face. They'd put them together, and it's a real...

Tell me you really play into this whole TPTL thing. A real situation. Happy Blurzy, Kelly. Teresa in Seattle says, I'm wishing myself a fabulous birthday. I'm so happy to be celebrating it with my imaginary friends, you and Luke. Here's to me having another wonderful year, We're selling lots of houses and traveling a lot. Happy birthday to me. Isn't I eat? Happy birthday. Sounds like Teresa said.

sitting on a lot of houses. These houses must go. I'll take one. Bet says, this is our friend Bet up in upstate New York, says, I am turning the big 40, woa. And this doesn't say woa. It doesn't say woa oof like Durs. This one is a good one. This is a good one. Woa, also happy 40th to our friend Bobby. Oh, that's our pal Bobby. Happy birthday, Bobby. Last year was a lot. My baby girl isn't much of a baby anymore. She's turning 16 soon. Wow. I want to thank you guys and all the 10s for being there for me over more than a decade. You are all the best for real. I have been to rehab more than once with you all by my side. I cannot express my gratitude for every single one of you. Well, thank you so much, Bet. Hope you're doing great out there. Happy Blur's Day. And I have not done my Wordle yet today, but I will do my Wordle and send it your way soon. You know, my problem with Wordle is I busted out a Wordle again just the other day, Luke. I've had like two or three busts and I saw you and Broadcast Berry were like texting about this at some time and then twice over the holidays I just plain old forgot to do it I almost did that three times and did I tell you that it was that day I got accidentally hand boned at the Eagles it was like literally 11.56 or something and I realized I never finished Wordle I'd been struggling with it earlier in the day and so everybody gathered around me like talk about a non-conducive way to do wordle i had so this was after the seahawks defeated the niners exactly and this is much later that evening and i realized i have four minutes to complete wordle and then a bunch of people who've already done it are around me because i'm there with half the world text chain anyway and then some people who don't even play wordle are behind me and like everybody's just like kind of gathering around can he do it i ended up pulling it off then only to fail again uh i think two days ago and here's what i think is going on since you asked and have so much interest in this topic is for the longest time I used a single word to start Wordle. I think you know this, right? I used the word arise. I liked it because it had an A, an I, and an E in it. And I never wavered from that word because I thought one of these days the word is going to be arise and I'm going to nail it on one and it's going to be exciting. And you know what? That happened. And it was exciting. But then after that, I was like, I'm loosey goosey now I'm not pick a new word guy I'm just every day I'll just try A different word I'll have maybe a handful of Starting words and like mix it up And I think it's harder to Do it it's probably more Fun but I do think harder to do it Because when I had Arise I just knew what it was like Kind of planning out football plays Luke If I can slightly make you interested in this At all like first 50 plays were scripted Exactly you're kind of like well I know that You just you start to feel you start to feel how the structure of the word is. And you're like, well, and so every day starting with a

different word, maybe one with a lot of U's and O's or, you know, O's and U's instead of A's and I's or whatever. Like, I think I need to choose a new starting word and lock in, but I don't know that I'll ever love a word the way I love to arise. So you absolutely need to lock in. Let me

just explain this from the perspective of roulette as a long time and very, very financially profitable roulette player i think that the whole deal with the game of roulette is to not drive yourself crazy and the easiest way to drive yourself crazy is if every time that that ball is being spun yeah you're guessing at different numbers because what will invariably happen is you will you'll move it off of a number that hits um and you'll be so mad at yourself you're like i was playing 12 for an hour and then i got a hunch and i moved it over to 16 and now it just came 12 Like, you have to lock in on what your system is, and then you have to just always do your system. And then sometimes your system will work, and sometimes it won't, because what's going to happen is if you're starting with a different word every day, one day it's going to be a word that you had used a month or two previously, and you're going to be, like, inconsolable.

I've seen that happen to some of the best wordlers of my generation, for real. Exactly. Ah, that's the word I sometimes start with.

So you've got to just, like, it can't be a rise anymore because that's burned. But you've got to pick a different word and you've got to just commit.

The thing that I liked about using different words every day was Genevieve is so, well, smart, I guess is the word, but strategic about this. Is once she knows what my starting word is, when you share the score you got, she can start reverse engineering it. So I was never able to post my score, just my score, which shows kind of the level of greens and yellows you got each line. If she knew my word was a rise, so if she saw that my second letter was green, she knows that the second letter of her word should be R. And she's already got a leg up on everybody. So I was always doing this thing where I.

I had to wait for Genevieve to post hers, and then I would...

We'll pick a new word and don't tell her. I can't.

We made a vow. Hey, I have some more Blur's Days to do here, but then when we're done with Blur's Days, because we're almost done with Blur's Days, I have a story. I'm going to make it very quick, but it's kind of gambling-related, card-related, casino-related, that I want to tell you a very short story at the end of Blur's Days. But first, we're going to say happy... Oh, my gosh, Luke, we're out of music already. Can you believe it?

That's called Party Horn Super Fail. I think it's actually too much of a fail, because I always have to explain. When I see Party Horn Super Fail, I think it's going to be kind of like a slight Party Horn that doesn't work. But this is too much of a fail, so that if I played this for you and I didn't explain it, you wouldn't even know that that was supposed to be. Like, I need to put in, let's see. Sounds like somebody farting and trying not to make any noise. This is, what we really need is what I have titled Party Horn Medium Fail, which is this one. There you go. People know what that is. We need a little, because when it's a super fail, we've completely lost the plot on what we're doing. You need the context for it.

You have to play more of it. But anyway, we do have the music back. That's good. I got a message here. I'm going to give that a Party Horn good. Nice. Still makes me sad. Ross sends a happy, albeit slightly belated, Blur's Day to his real-world cousin and TBTL daughter, Stephanie. Thank you for being a kind and supportive presence in my life, and I can't wait for another season of Finding Mountains to Climb Together with our chatty miniature hiking partner. I'm guessing that's a cat.

It must be. I just had a cat sound effect. I didn't have my dog. Here we go. There we go. Maybe it's a goat, Andrew.

Maybe it's a tiny, chatty, miniature goat. Finally, Ryan says, my birthday is January 6th, which no one used to have any association with other than the epiphany. Now, while my personal life has been okay, the world situation has taken a dark turn, so I'm just sending this to my favorite podcast to get some general positivity. Also, shout out to my five, Martin, who deigns to listen to TBTL with me while we're driving around. And Martin is the greatest eight-year-old ever.

Some pretty solid five names being raised during this. Martin was great. We had a Herschel and we had a Martin. I love Martin. I would definitely hire that law firm.

Yes. The law offices of Herschel and Martin. Herschel, Martin, and Blur's Day. So here's my very quick story, and I'm going to be especially, or I guess carefully withholding. I'm so here for it. I'm going to be a little bit withholding here about the details of this so that I can kind of reveal it at the end. hopefully this will work out if I tell it this way, but I know that you are somebody who is very familiar with the table games in a casino or a card room, and you know me that I am not somebody who's very familiar with that. I tried to learn blackjack on my computer a long time ago, and then I went to Goldie's with you, and when you turned your back, some guy hollered at me for playing the wrong hand that he felt messed him up, and then I've always been too scared to go back. I did have one successful time at the at the old blackjack table but anyway that was like over 10 years ago so I've never gone back but I'm going to Vegas with Vives and I know that it's going to be a little bit of a more chill scene there because you're going to have a whole bunch of dopes like me rolling in from various parts of the country learning how to play these games I'm not super worried about it but I did think oh I should download blackjack onto my phone or laptop again and just sort of play around while I'm watching Columbo or whatever just sort of get back into the mode and i remembered that our friend camaro kev who you've spent i don't know if you would argue with this description of his of his role at places like goldie's but he's like i don't really know how to play poker or poker type of games i'm uncomfortable with that stuff but there's one like really easy game that i play and uh you don't even you don't have to know anything about anything it's so simple and i remember him telling me about that and i thought i remembered the name of the game and so i downloaded that to my ipad over the holidays and so i was playing it a lot and it's very fun and just like it's literally like watching casablanca and watching it did you say casablanca or casablanca it sounded funny albany albany but for real is it did i say that funny casablanca i think it's i think they're interchangeable i was watching old films and i'm just playing on my and my i'm tapping and i'm learning this game i'm like okay not quite as easy as you made it sound but I mean easy enough and I'm playing and I'm getting better at it at least according to the computer you know I'm holding my own at this virtual table when I play these games by the way no real money involved you're not playing against real people you're just playing against a robot inside your iPad you know it's just it's very very simple stuff I see Camaro Kev maybe a week later and

And I'm like, hey, man, I've been practicing that game that you told me about. And I got it down now. I think I know how to play it. Like, we should go to Goldie's maybe before I go to Vegas and we can play it. And I told him the game I've been playing. He's like, that's not my game. That's Luke's game. The game I've been playing is Pi Gow. Dude, that's awesome. I learned Pi Gow on my iPad. But I thought I was learning the really simple game that Kevin. His Pi Card Flush game. Yeah, which is basically just like you match a suit, basically, right?

You want to get as many of the same suit as you can in your hand.

So that almost feels almost like goldfish or go fish or something like that. It's very visually easy, like do these shapes match sort of, right?

Yes, and you don't have – there's not any decision to be made other than what your initial bet is. On high card flush, you put the money up and then – and by the way, same for Pai Gao. But in High Card Flush, you basically put your bet down, and then they give you a bunch of cards. And then when you turn them over, you're just really hoping that they're all the same suit, and ideally they're going in order. So they're going like 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Because what you really want, what really pays in that game is like a straight flush. The same suit and going sequentially in order. But they have to be dealt that way. They have to be dealt that way.

You can't arrange it. Interesting.

Well, no, no, no. I mean, in your hand, you can.

Oh, you can. You are holding the cards. I thought it was one of those things where they laid it on the table, and it has to be dealt in order.

But it's pretty much just kind of like – now, see, with PyGao, see, you're playing a more complicated game. But PyGao is actually – is not a terrible table game for the player because you mostly tie.

Yeah, you also push. Yeah, but that's where it gets into that side bet thing. And so on the computer, it's kind of like the side bet. You can win, like, literally 25 to 1 if you get, like, you know, I don't know what would be a royal flush or something like that. I don't know the chart. But that's where I was trying to learn, like, oh, what's the betting strategy here? Because you're probably going to push most of the time with the high hand and the low hand. Is that where the phrase don't give me the high hand comes from, by the way? You know, I don't think I'd ever heard that term until you started using it on the show. It's an old-timey word. I just heard it recently in an old movie, but they use it a lot in Miller's Crossing. Do you ever see the movie Miller's Crossing? You're giving me the high hand? Who's the short, chubby guy with the mustache and he's always at 11?

You know, I've never seen Miller's Crossing. I know it's Coen Brothers, and I know that it's a very, very well-respected film, but I have not seen it.

Let me just see if I can find this scene. The guy's screaming, you're giving me the high hand. Oh, this is going to be on yarn. It's not going to work. It never really works. Anyway, point is, I now have a very, I wouldn't say I'm good at it. Let's see if you give me any audio here. But at least I have a working understanding of how that game is played now. PyGal, your game.

pie gal is well i've got a lot of games andrew but um but pie gal uh you know our friend toon is loves pie gal and uh i think that that's a great game for you to be into because also nothing that you do will impact what's happening with the cards for anyone else so there's zero chance of you getting yelled at or hollered at in pie gal and honestly if you get on a hot streak i would say the strategy with pie gal is to come up with a an amount of side bet that you feel comfortable with knowing that you're likely i mean you're going to lose most of those side bets um but then every once in a while they'll sort of shape up and you'll win much more money on the side bet than you would just on the regular i think the way our friend tune plays is she doesn't mess with the side bets very much because again the side bets almost they're losing like 90 of the time she just is strategic about when she ups her main bet so if she feels like the you know She's in a like, so she's just because, again, the thing with Pai Gow is like usually the way you win in Pai Gow is your your high hand and your low hand are better than the high hand and low hand of the dealer. But what typically happens is the dealer will have a better high hand than you, but you'll have a better low hand or vice versa. It's you just end up having a tie most of the time. And so if you can kind of just guess right and start upping your bet at a time when you're starting to actually just get a number of good hands in a row, you can build up a pretty significant stack and the risk is somewhat low because there's even if your high hand isn't great your low hand could kind of save you or vice versa the one that you should really get into if you want to spend some quality time with some um older asian grandmothers as i love to is baccarat baccarat is a really interesting one that one is it's basically sort of like war the goal is to get to the number eight or nine and all you do is you just there's one one set of cards is for the banker and one set of cards is for the dealer or the player rather so banker and player and all you're doing is trying to guess which one of those sets of cards is going to get to the number nine first or closest to it and then there's these other things where like all face cards are actually uh zeros and stuff but once you learn the kind of like the math of it baccarat is the game that is actually if you play it right you can have you can keep your money for a long time because it just tends to be if you don't get caught up in the side bets which is again where you can make a lot of money but where you can also lose a lot of money baccarat is another fun one and the same thing with baccarat you're not impacting anyone else's hand ever so no one's going to get mad at you about how you're playing your background in fact blackjack is really the only game where what you're doing has an impact on what the other players are getting so well um

it well except i mean poker which is but i just mean as far as table games i guess yeah that's

table games most of them are like you get your cards and you do what you're going to do with your cards like if you play three card poker which is another game that i love terrible odds but like really fun there's another one called caribbean stud that you might like the fun thing about Caribbean, these are all games that you'll see in Vegas. Caribbean stud is, is fun because what happens is you put three bets out and then you get two cards and then you get to decide if you like your cards, you can leave your bets out, but you can actually pull two of your three bets back if you don't like your chances. And so what's really fun about a game like that is if your first two cards are like a, what's called a made hand. In other words, if you already have, if you've already got a winner in your hand, then you can just chill for the rest of the round and you know that you're going to make all this money. If your cards aren't good, you can pull back two-thirds of your bet. So you have this feeling. It's sort of an illusion, but you have this feeling of control about like, oh, I don't have to have all my money out there if I have lousy cards, but I can leave all my money out there if I've got good cards.

That must be what we're doing. Because Genevieve signed us up for something called the Caribbean Stud Comedy Hour, and I wasn't sure what that is. So that must be what we're doing, I'm guessing.

I want to say one last thing. I know you've already glazed over on this, but if you're doing blackjack, if you're playing blackjack in Vegas, if you were Genevieve, try to make sure that you found a table that pays three to two and not six to five. And what that means is all the tables in Vegas used to be three to two. And what that meant is if you bet $10 on a hand of blackjack and you get a blackjack, right? You get an ace and a 10 card in your hand. You win three to two. So your $10 bet, you get paid $15 on your $10 bet. That used to be standard in Vegas. It's now harder and harder to find. And they are trying to do these six to five tables, which means if you bet $10, you win $12.50, I think, instead of winning $15. And then the other thing, I don't think you'll play this, but the thing to really avoid if you decide to mess with roulette, do not play the triple zero roulette. triple zero roulette is just manifestly worse for the players because basically the deal with roulette is like you have 35 numbered spots on the board and then you have in the european style of roulette you have the numbers on the board and then you have a green spot and what that means is if you're betting black or red you get paid 50 you get you have a 50 50 chance of winning black or red except you actually don't because there's this one spot that's not black or red it's the green spot so if you put ten dollars on black and it hits you should by theory get 35 you should get 37 to 1 on that uh or sorry you should get um you should get basically uh you have you should have a 50 50 chance of winning but with these triple zero of roulette wheels what they basically have are now three spots these three green spots zero double zero and triple zero which you don't get paid for if you're betting on on black or red and also if you're betting on a number you're not getting paid for those point is if you see three zeros on a roulette wheel run just avoid it but the

just avoid it at all costs the attraction is people will want to bet those greens and then

the attraction is people just don't know it's just a straight up hustle it is is just legitimately there's no advantage to it because sorry i know i'm getting like so in the weeds here but what if you bet on one of those rare greens yes but here's the thing you don't win so imagine this there's 35 numbered spots. Is that what it is? Is it? I think there's, I think it goes up to 35, like one through 35 on a roulette board, right? Then let's say that there's a zero that is green, a double zero that is green, and now a triple zero that is green. That's 38 potential spots, right? So that's 38 slots on the roulette wheel that the ball could go in. Now let's say you put your money on the number seven and it hits the number seven you don't win 38 to 1 you win 35 to

1 in other words there's three spots they've made it harder without making it any they've made it

exactly they've made they've made there are more things that can go wrong for you and you do not win an amount that is commensurate to that when you win so yes you could bet on that third that triple zero you could put your money on that spot but the thing is there's 38 things that can happen but you don't get paid 38 to 1 you get paid 35 to 1 so and you're not just betting on the color

in that case in the way that you can well you could red or black but see that's another way

you get screwed because you could bet on red or black and on red or black green excuse me red or

green or no uh that's not a color oh that's what i that's what i was asking that's what i was misunderstanding. I thought you were saying there was a time where you could bet directly on the number or just say I'm betting black or I'm betting red, and I thought they were now introducing, or you can bet on green, but you only have a 3 out of 38 chance of getting that. Green is not a color you can

bet on, but what it means is if you're thinking about okay, so you're betting red or black, you put $10 on black. Normally if it comes around and it lands in black, they give you $10 more, so you're taking it because it's kind of seen as effectively a 50-50 bet yeah if 50 of the numbers are red and 50 of the numbers are black and you put your money on black and it comes in black you get that bet back you know but now there's this thing happening which is that green zero which is not red or black and it's somewhere the ball can go in the wheel and then at some point vegas was like well let's add another zero so that was like double zero that's again another slot that the ball can go in that is neither red nor black and now they're adding a third green a triple zero a third green slot that the ball can go in that you are not that is not red or black and you will not get paid on your red or your black bet yeah it's less and less you don't win more yeah you know so it's more risk and and no difference in the reward so anyway i don't think that you're gonna probably play roulette but if you see one

with with a triple zero get out of there yeah i'm not even sure how much i'll actually play i mean And it's like, I'm just, I'm just. Is it too late for me to come with you guys? You want to.

You're just walking through a casino. I'm just, you just see me sitting at a pie gout table with me and a bunch of Chinese grandmothers.

I'm wondering if I'm even going on this trip anymore, to be honest with you. It's maybe you and Veeves, but a happy anniversary. But I don't know. I'm just, we're not there for very long, for starters. And I know that we have some nice dinners planned. I know that we have that comedy show planned and we're kind of in and out. So, you know, I'm sure there will be a night. And I'm just looking forward to like kind of wandering around the casinos and just drinking it all in. You know, I mean, that's the one weird thing about me is, you know, I have some willpower issues, but luckily gambling is not a big one for me. I'm not totally adverse to it like maybe I used to be or whatever. As long as I'm adverse to not knowing, I don't want to look like a fool, but I don't care. I don't have to worry about if I put down 20 bucks here and I lose, maybe that's unrealistic, 50 bucks, 100 bucks, whatever it is. I don't worry that I'm going to be some guy who's going to be like, I've got to scratch that back. You know what I mean? It's just going to be like, well, I had a certain amount of money, I'm going to blow it, have some fun, have some gin and tonics or whatever and have a good time. I don't even know how much I'll actually be engaging with this stuff, especially the stuff that involves other human beings as opposed to a video poker or what have you.

I'm not sure where y'all are staying, but definitely, and I'm sure this is in the plans, but get down to what they call old Vegas too because first of all it's just kind of fun and weird and it also the if you were going to do a table game the limits are so much lower it's just you know it's a it's a more in my experience it's a fun quirky kind of side of vegas that is very much been pushed out up on the main strip now you know like all the i consider them the newer casinos even though they're all probably 20 years old themselves but the the fancy part of the strip it's just yeah it's just that it's so expensive the tables are so expensive and it's kind of become very i don't know sanitized in a way that like you go down to the older part of vegas and walk around you know on fremont street and kind of go in some of those darker danker casinos i think you'll you'll have a bunch of fun and your money will go further nice nice all right i'm looking forward to we'll have some

reports uh when i get back next week midweek next week yeah all right okay that's gonna do it for

today's episode of the program but we're gonna be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio a big friday show for you so please uh tune in for that if you can in the meantime everybody have a great thursdays take care of yourselves keep your flaps down and your head warm and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

my friend is a blackjack dealer and on his forearm he has a tattoo of an ace and a jack You see, I'm a blackjack player. On my forearm, I'm going to get a tattoo of a 10 and a 2. And then maybe later, a king. Power out.