Muse

I'm just going to come out and say it. I'm ready to take on the Catalina Wine Mixer. Oh, oh, slow down there, speed racer. I know what it entails, and I'm ready to nail it. I want it, okay? I want the Catalina Wine Mixer.

Yo, yo. Hey, D-Man. Tell him what's up. I sure did. Hey. Hey, your brother wants a shot at the Catalina Wine Mixer.

I'm ready. I'm walking tall. You think you're ready to run with the bulls? I've been earning and burning, snapping necks and cashing checks.

Screw it. Let's let him do it.

Pow!

Okay. I get it. Look, Brennan, here's the thing. It's the Catalina f***ing wine mixer, okay? Pow! Are you saying pow? What are you saying? Pow!

TBTL! Did you ever think that maybe there's more to life than being really, really, really, really, really, really ridiculously good-looking? I am a male model, not a male prostitute. Girls don't even wear that pants that tight. I bet your sister can't even fit them pants.

Oh, you know what you are? You're one of those little, uh, fancy lads, aren't you? Boy, you're cute. Gosh, what a sweet little outfit. Is it your little spring outfit? You couldn't be cuter. You're so adorable. Oh, my. You know, you remind me of my niece Sally. Lovely girl. She's a dietician.

I'm not modeling anymore for the two of you. Well, I guess I just have my first taste of the filthy side of this business.

well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a monday edition of tbtl this right here this is the show that just might be too beautiful to live it's an audiophiles nightmare my name is luke burbank i am your host coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where just last week i was battling frostbite in here with my special Homer Simpson, Mr. Plow hat. That's how cold it was here at the Madrona Hill studio. And now it's actually balmy. We are having an unusually warm Monday.

I feel warm and I'm levitating.

So the weather seems to be doing fine. I think it's what we can all agree on. As is the state of the world. All right, not really, but we're going to try to create a little, I don't know, hour plus of fun distraction for you here as we arrive at episode 4,639 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

Speaking of fun distractions, the Golden Globes happened last night. And I believe Nikki Glaser said it best when she said, Welcome to the Golden Globes. Definitely the most important thing that's happening in the world right now. But they have a podcasting category now. You probably heard about that on this show. We are living in the midst of a podcast boom. And, well, we didn't win. TBTL did not win the Golden Globe for podcasting. I think part of the issue was that we were not nominated. I think that that played a role in us not winning. But Amy Poehler won, and that's nice. We love Amy Poehler. We are big fans. So that was a good outcome, I think, to the whole thing. We'll play you some of the notable parts of the monologue from Nikki Glaser and also some of the acceptance speeches. This is normally the part of the intro where I would introduce the longest-running co-bro of the show, Andrew Walsh, who may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships. However, he is right now in Las Vegas, Nevada and has been sending me. I've been getting updates from him, none of them about gambling. He sent me a picture of, like, I think the entryway to the the Las Vegas Raiders football stadium and a few other things. I'm still trying to get a sense of how his gambling experience is going in Las Vegas. And also, I'm very excited on Wednesday when he's back to hear about how the comedy show that they, I believe, attended last night was. Because I just feel like there's going to be a lot to report from the BBC comedy show in Las Vegas, Nevada, featuring the world's least specific banner artwork. It is clearly an AI comedian. They will not tell you who any of the comedians are. Anyway, we'll get a report on that coming up in a couple of days. In the meantime, we've got a dear friend of the show. In fact, I would say a colleague, in fact, one of the co-founders of this whole project. He is our friend, TBTL employee numero uno, John Sklaroff.

Hey, Hermano.

Who is joining me right now. Good morning, sir.

Hey, Luke. How's it going?

It is going great. It's so nice to see your shiny face. I'm glad you're doing okay. I don't know if folks know, but you and your wife live in the Twin Cities. Yes. You live in St. Paul, where there has been a lot going on the last few days. How was the weekend? How are you doing? What is the vibe there?

yeah i it's uh there's a lot to unpack there yeah yeah excuse me um i i think uh i was talking to some family like in new york and it really is hard to explain to anyone that's not here um i know we're talking about like wanting to keep the show light and like a distraction but like if we're gonna kind of yeah let's go for a little bit about it's like it's it's our the twin cities have been elevated.

there's no other word for it like um i live in a very um predominantly white neighborhood right and so like there's not a whole lot of ice activity around me but it is also happening around me

you did leave a show meeting last week because you heard that there were there was like word that ice was at the like an elementary school around the way from your house did you grab your

orange whistle and go i i literally have an orange whistle it's downstairs i can't show it to you but um i'll trust you yeah we we we jumped in the car and drove up the road and um kind of like got out and walked around and then we heard that they um have been there maybe like a half hour earlier and there thankfully was no incidents or activity um this morning you know though i will say like uh a lot of what people are doing right now is how can i help right what can i do and um i was talking to a friend over the weekend we were messaging and and he's got a kid who goes to a spanish immersion school and um there's a few of them of this particular school in the in the in st paul and not his uh but another one was like looking for volunteers to like just be a presence be outside like during pickup and drop off um less for the kids but more for like faculty and staff that work at these places yeah and so this morning um like 7 15 i was stand in you know with a few other folks out there you were out there yeah and i'm planning to do it at least the rest of this week you know we'll see i mean everything it's all everything is day to day right yeah um but me and a couple of the parents of kids that go there a grandfather one of the kids came up from one of the suburbs um it's like this is what people are doing like it just feels so surreal but it's like also it's like in like in like it's also are we uh just there to record and report are we there to intervene it's like a lot of well on the calculation obviously i mean

i would imagine that now because of what what happened there last week in that murder it's like now the calculation is like will i get shot if i am trying to you know use my vehicle as a way of of in some way slowing down what ICE is doing, et cetera. Like it's one thing to kind of – it's one thing to consider this stuff when you don't feel maybe as like a white person or whatever person who's not – your paperwork is not in question or whatever. Like it's one thing to think about this kind of in the abstract and what would you do. It's another thing to think about it when you start to consider the very real possibility that the U.S. government could use violence against you and then lie about it yeah and then a significant part of the u.s population would believe that lie i mean it's an incredibly like i'm out here and you know i'm in red state america i don't actually even know what the latest is as far as washington goes but like that's not a calculation that i'm

currently having to make so um you know it's yeah thank you and it's like for me it's like um like i said like i i i want to do something to help and like this is gonna sound like so hyperbolic and absurd to say but it's like the thing people often say it's like what would you have done during 1930s germany and like that's that's why i feel like me and my neighbors and and and i will say talk about positivity and like trying to find good like for people not in the twin cities why there's there's a couple things i really want to convey folks one it is scary and and there are horrible incidents being reported every day people just being snatched up and it's like it's horrible we're being invaded by the federal government it really is that but the communities like the cities as a whole yeah um the neighborhood at the neighborhood level like people are coming together yeah and like really trying to do everything they can to protect vulnerable people um and so like that's really you know in a really scary time that's really beautiful and i would just say like if anyone listening is like i think i think it's safe to assume that anyone listening to tbtl in 2026 probably is like our shared values you know

i think we've chased off the non-believers you know we get the occasional random email from subpo but i think we've we've mostly bored slash annoyed people that don't have our our political

persuasion it's good thing andrew's not here because he staunchly opposes our viewpoints

but that's well exactly that's why i only feel i only feel safe talking about this with you

while he's getting drunk in vegas right but so like i i know folks listening are are very likely to believe and and and be empathetic towards what's been going on here but i would just say like and this is something i'm trying to do too like if you have friends or family that just don't believe it or they think what's happening here is justified um just like have a conversation like hey my friend john lives in st paul and it's not you know it's not it's not a violent place like this is totally unwarranted and yes and so like that's the other thing i just want folks to like that's a

conversation i want people to be having across america is like the it's what's happening here

doesn't need to be happening no and that's i mean you know with the whole portland thing and like the ice facility and like you know becca lives one block from that facility so we we walk by that place like every day right if we're walking the dog or just out like it's and the way i mean this goes for los angeles this goes for chicago this goes for every place where they've put people and tried to describe those places as these kind of war-torn Antifa hellscapes. I mean, it is so... And again, we're preaching to the choir here based on somebody downloading this show. You've probably already shown yourself to be a bleeding-heart liberal. But it is a very surreal feeling. That was my first experience with it around the ICE stuff in Portland, particularly the ICE facility where the protest has been going on. It was a very surreal thing to have almost daily contact with a place And see it for one thing Which was just a bunch of peaceful protesters And people just hanging out And honestly sometimes just people looking for something to do Like the protesters But nothing violent, nothing scary, nothing dangerous And then hearing Portland writ large Described as some sort of hellscape By the President of America And by Kristi Noem and folks like that And to just be standing I'm listening to OPB as I'm walking down the street I'm on the street they're talking about I'm hearing the President describe it a certain way And with my own eyes, I can see that it's not the case. And that's like, like, again, this is probably the privilege of being like a white, straight male, but it's like, I have most of my life when I've heard the people in charge saying things, I've generally thought, well, that's probably what's going on, at least within reason, because I have mostly been, yeah, I just have mostly not, it's, it's new to me to have things that are so manifestly untrue being said and to be able to observe how untrue they are. I'm sure there's a lot of other people who've experienced this before of like institutions and authority figures and law enforcement and everyone saying stuff that they know not to be true. This is kind of my first dance with it on like a really, really like sort of literal level down there in the South Waterfront of Portland. And yeah, it's really it really messes with your head.

Yeah. And not and again, not to be too bleak or people come to this show for escape and some joy. Like, I saw a skeet, right, or a brewski the other day. Yes, sure. That was something like years of white America allowing, sanctioning violence, state violence against black and brown people allowed one of their own to be killed. And now they're waking up kind of thing. Well, yeah. And I think, and it's like, but I mean, I say that because what you just said, me too. Like, I'm a 40-year-old white guy, and like, I know these horrible things. And not to say like you're obviously kind of like you're condoning any of that violence against minorities. But like it's just like this moment for I think for so many people where it's like I know this thing in the I think you said in the abstract has been happening and it's horrible and we don't condone it. But it's like now it's in this whole new context and and and then.

Well, and I think because it's you can see you can see yourself more easily in the particular roles that are being played right now. Like, in other words, I'm not a person whose documentation is in question. So I it's I have empathy and I think it's absolutely ridiculous that we're disappearing people off of the streets, often U.S. citizens, people with no due process. But that's I can't picture myself in that exact moment because that isn't something that would happen to me for now. Right. But I can absolutely.

Once this podcast gets released later today.

But I can listen. Nikki Glaser already already gave CBS both barrels last night. She got rave reviews. So there's maybe a little cover for us CBS employees. But I can very much picture myself sitting in my car, and if I went down to the Home Depot down in Longview, Washington, where I make many a trip, and I saw ICE trying to round somebody up, I would absolutely try to intervene, and I would absolutely try to use my vehicle to impede that, or I would try to honk my horn. And I would try to do more or less what I think this woman was doing in Minnesota. And so, yeah, I do think that this, I think, is hitting different for some people and maybe, you know, particularly for like white America, white liberal America, because it is very easy to imagine yourself being the person sitting in that car and trying to do what you could to make it a little bit harder for these ICE agents to do their thing. You know, whereas when it's black Americans, you know, marching in Selma, you know, and being treated the way they were, that's like a harder thing for me to put myself in the exact mindset of doing that because it's just not my lived experience. So I do think there's something that's going on with this that is, and it would be great if we could have all been experiencing maximum empathy all the time for everyone leading up to this. But there is something about seeing someone in a scenario that is very identifiable and relatable to you, I think, that caused it to hit different.

yeah it's um uh not to keep it going this i mean we don't have to keep this conversation going too you know but like uh again talking to my family uh my wife talking to her family who live uh in more rural parts of minnesota and it's like we've been to protests and and now there's not a zero non-zero chance that something tragic could happen to us because you know i mean and so yeah sure and i'm not trying to center myself in the murder of renee good and and and and and there i think certainly a lot of folks are more at risk right but um the thing i'll say though is is is i i feel

like the you kind of alluded to this earlier but i think something that it's it's it's impossible to know when exactly it happens but i do think that there there are tipping points and there are moments where like there's basically a lot of unintended consequences and it's like i i do Again, I don't want to be Pollyanna-ish or sort of in any way elide what is going on because it's just truly – it's horrific and it's not something that I ever expected to see in my lifetime in this country. But it's – like there are tipping points. There are points where the overreach is so extreme and what's going on is so obviously wrong that it does bring people together. And what I've seen here in Portland, you know, this whole weekend we had protests in Portland about, well, we also had a shooting in Portland that was ICE-related, once again, where the argument was the vehicle was being used as a weapon, which I think we all saw the Rene Good footage. And I think you can now, when you see vehicle used as weapon in the police report, I think you can just do the math for yourself. It's an incredibly broad category, and it basically just means if they were in a vehicle, then you can do whatever you want because you can claim they were trying to hurt you. But like, you know, I feel like there is something going on, too, with the with the protests that are coming out and with people showing up for their for the people in their community who may be, you know, undocumented or may have perfectly good documentation, but are still being disappeared again without due process. Like, I just keep thinking that there's going to be a moment and maybe masked agents on the streets of, you know, masked federal agents on the streets of American cities pulling people, you know, out of their jobs and out of their homes and things. I keep I keep thinking maybe this is going to be the tipping point and I do feel like something is crystallizing you again this is unrelated but you have like you know you start to see more defections from Republicans that are that are you know voting you know in the House and in the Senate actually for certain things that Donald Trump doesn't want them to do like I don't know I just keep thinking that we may be hitting a point we may be hitting the worst of this and that we may be able to actually see some progress somewhere and I I just think most Americans when they look at this they see that this was wrong now maybe they don't admit it because maybe their priors are that you know we just have to support back the blue at all times but like i don't know i just think that i think something it feels to me like something is shifting fundamentally at least i hope it is because this just cannot go on i mean this is just like you said this is this is states in america that donald trump doesn't like being occupied by federal forces i mean this is the most treaded upon you can be where are the where are the gads and flags where are the don't tread on me people it is this could not be more more tready than what is going on you're stockpiling

weapons for to fight a tyrannical government yes guess what guys it's happening it is it is i mean

we are being tread upon the treading the treading is currently underway and and we should don't that we should don't tread on me right anyway well i'm glad that you and jess are okay and um and you know i'm thinking of you and a lot of our listeners too because i feel like you know we are a we're a seattle-based a project still all these years later although we kind of outvote andrew now so really we're like two-thirds i don't know what my constituency is southern washington and you're but you've got the twin cities covered so but i'm also gonna claim new york too just fair that was where that was the the the cradle for you that was where the john sklaroff was formulated right um but like uh you know we're still sort of mostly seattle-based i guess that being said without a doubt i think the place where we have the second most number of listeners and where we just feel very spiritually connected is the twin cities and and the state of minnesota the great

state of minnesota so i i do also want to say like i was one last thing on this like like like i said there is some hope about like what the community how the community is responding and seeing people step up for each other um whether it's it's monitoring or trying to intervene with ice or run mutual aid you know delivering food to vulnerable people's homes all these kinds of things um there is people are also trying to find joy and happiness because it's like we have to right no matter how terrible wherever you are like you have to hang on to something so like we're also trying like live our lives in ways that are like you know not so we're not always

and despair and wallowing so like yeah for the holidays my in-laws got uh me tickets to the timberwolves so last night jess and i went to a timberwolves game in the backdrop of all of this

so it's like you know by the way shout out to the timberwolves for a moment of silence for

renee good by the way did you see you saw the video i i i read about it i didn't watch the video what happened so they did a moment of silence which i yeah respect to them for doing

it and then i mean it's the bare minimum but at least they did it right yes but after like five

seconds of silence somebody yelled get get the hell out ice and then someone else yelled out f ice and the crowd erupted in like love it like we're again it's like our community like everyone is just like there is this unifying thing of like this is not right we don't want them here

yeah yeah so that was so yeah well did the wolves win last night oh in dramatic fashion like they

they were down 16 nothing to start they clawed back it was an ugly game and then 16 nothing that's how they started the game yeah yeah and who are they playing uh the spurs so we got to see victor

when benyama the alien is he as impressive irl as he looks on tv this is for people to know he's

like seven four seven he came in the league at seven three and he was still growing he's like

seven six now he amazing but he has handles like he can dribble it's like unfair yeah yeah not to

get too much into the sports talk but like if you're not a basketball fan this man for a person his size there have been guys his size in the league before but he moves they were more of the george murazon model you mean the co-star of my giant with that's billy crystal that's exactly who i'm talking about uh they're like they're more statuesque this guy moves like he's six foot three and can shoot like from anywhere on the court like it's it's his nickname is the alien like he's unreal it's on it's unreal to watch him uh play ball yeah but the wolves did manage to actually they managed to come back in spite of a great performance by wemby and some awful shooting by the wolves the wolves were able to come back in the last few minutes and pull it off which was

so would you say that's your because you're a knicks guy yes but would you say that like you're if the knicks aren't playing the wolves you're rooting for the timber absolutely that's like

sports in general for me like new york first but then always root for the miss you know i'll root for the twins as long as they're not playing the anchors you know that kind of thing um the only exception to that is the pwhl the women's hockey league uh because that is a league that i started a few years ago since i've been living here and so i got on early with the frost the women's uh hockey team so i moved to them first but otherwise new york first yeah um i have a question are you

a like a fix it guy like do you fix things around your house oh do you know how to do any of that stuff because i had a triumph last week that andrew wouldn't let me talk about um which i want to talk about here because uh it was a big it felt like a big step forward for me yeah no i i would

i would love to hear about that i am uh the joke in my house is my dad sold costume jewelry and jess's dad was in construction so like we'll go to home depot and they look at me and i'm like you're talking the wrong person i don't know the words you're saying so please share some uh some

well considering how many years i was working on this house with my dad although really what i would do is like the labor part i would just haul stuff around or like you know swing a hammer or a sledgehammer at something and make it like turn it from a standing wall into like a pile of debris and then take the debris outside that was really my contribution yeah I retained very little um sort of I don't know knowledge or skill around like home repair stuff but you know what actually happened was at Christmas time I was very inspired by my daughter because she has I mean this must either skip a generation or she must get it from her mom's side or something because like she is totally and completely fearless about like fixing shit in her life she replaced not only her spark plugs which okay that's a pretty straightforward job like the spark plug coils in her car basically her car was like her car was not running very well she took it to the place and they were like you're gonna need your spark plug like it's it's i don't even know exactly what it is but it's it's something that is more fundamental to the car than just the spark plug it's like the thing the spark plug sits on or something and um and they were like it's gonna be like i don't know a thousand dollars to replace it or whatever and she was like well i don't have that so she just went on youtube and she bought the parts from wherever amazon or something got the parts studied on youtube and full-on in her driveway in la which is by the way the most la move ever is to be repairing your car like probably she doesn't even actually have she has only street parking The most LA move of all time is working on your car on the street. She's got the hood up. She pulled it all apart. She changed the spark plug coils and totally fixed her car. Good for her. That's awesome. I know. It's incredible. It's like I have this natural, I have this innate fear of taking on projects like that that I don't know how to do. And then I've been lucky enough in my life over the last 15, 20 years where I've sort of had the resources to mostly subcontract stuff out. Like I just I don't want to, I don't, I don't, I don't want to like have to learn how to do it. I don't trust myself to do it correctly. And so I'll figure out who I have to pay to fix this for me. But that's just caused me to just really lose any kind of faith in myself that I could do some stuff until last week when it was really cold here and both of the mini splits that I have are both broken right now. So really like the main way of heating my house is this pellet stove that I have and i'll be gosh darned if the thing didn't um stop working and i yeah i was like you gotta be kidding me i have like there's literally like i'm gonna have to live in the madrona hill studio now with just one heater i have in here going because otherwise it was gonna be like literally too cold in my house and so i was like i don't even know who i call about this by the way the pellet stove wasn't very expensive by that i mean it was like a thousand dollars which is a lot of money but also it's probably a thousand dollars for someone to fix it you know what i mean like right that's right and the other the other real thing is there's only one place that works on this kind

of stuff in my town and the guy's kind of a grump like i went down there one time to ask about some unrelated stuff it's like a con this is the weirdest convergence of business models but now that i've mentioned it you'll start to see this everywhere it's called like hot tub fireplace you know what i mean like there is a whole business model which is like here's what we got for you we got hot tubs and we got fireplaces i mean it makes sense because it's both like uh

they war that warms things it's like heating coils i don't know if these are they seem like

natural enemies though because you got the water and the fire yeah but it is a thing where it's like hot tub and uh you know spa and fireplace like we do gas fireplaces and we'll also put a hot tub in for you and i went down there one time i was it was actually but you know what it was before i bought this pellet stove and i wanted to find out what my like gas fireplace options might be it was so weird because i just walked into the joint and maybe it was just the the guy that was working there although he seemed like he might be the owner or the boss he seemed so and this is a retail location like they have signs they want you to go in there and ask them about their products and he seemed really annoyed that i was in there so i got a bad vibe and then i was like last week when this thing broke and I was like who would I call I was like I could call that place but like but that guy's grumpy I don't like that guy and he's gonna come out here and he's gonna look at it and he's gonna go okay it's eight hundred dollars to fix it and it's like well that's almost the price of the unit right like I could just buy another one and just put that in and maybe have fixed the problem so I am but I didn't want a I was very cold and be I don't know I was just feeling kind of like well let's see about this so I got on I looked up the you know the make and model of this thing and i got on youtube and sure enough there was a guy who um had the same problem with his uh exact model of this same pellet stove and uh it was this thing called like the heating it's not called the heating tube there's another name for it but basically like the way a pellet stove works is it's it's like if they take a bunch of sawdust and they compress that sawdust into little pellets and that's what burns you put them in this it's a very simple design actually which is another thing that now that i'm a fix-it guy because to spoil the story i fixed the stove i was very proud of myself i'm proud of you too but like this is something i'm learning as a fix-it guy the the more simple the machinery is the better off you are just generally with anything like you just want the fewest like like places that the thing can break you know what i mean like you just don't want you just want it to be a very simple and these pellet stoves are an incredibly simple design they are a catcher they're like a thing that you pour the pellets in they are an auger so at the bottom of where this this thing that you pour all the pellets in is just like a rotating kind of screw like thing that's just letting a few pellets at a time into this little like um kind of burn box this little metal box where the pellets fall and when they fall down in there they are heated up by this insane tube that is like it's 16 on amazon i know because i just bought one and it's like i don't even understand how this works but this it's like an electric it's like you you plug it's like plugged in on one side it's electrical but this long tube gets so hot so fast i learned that when i burned the shit out of my hand

like upon trying to like i plugged it in to see if it was working the new one and then i touched it and then i like complete like my finger still hurts from so that was lesson learned don't if you're changing those things out don't touch them but but i watched this video and this guy like just step by step you take the whole thing apart and you pop this thing out and whatever and um anyway so i did that and uh i ordered the new tube they overnighted it which also is so crazy It's like, I know, I think rightfully so, we talk, well, Andrew talks more shit about Amazon.

than I do I should be talking more shit right like like we all understand that Amazon in Jeff Bezos are essentially very bad for the world but there's a convenience factor that is like very hard for me to like break my addiction to and um and so I don't understand how it is that Amazon knew to have one of these heating coils for a castle serenity pellet stove also weird name for the stove like um like how did they know to have one of those at a warehouse very close to where i live right like that the that's just so crazy that i was able to because i ordered it on like a monday night and like by a tuesday by tuesday it was here but the next day do you think

maybe this is like conspiracy stuff like you were googling around like this machine like cost of it to repair like place it you were looking so you order what you said what what day did you order this monday night monday but like you had already been doing the research of like how you get this thing fixed so were you like googling it and then by googling it there was something in this is so

crazy so we think that amazon this is your i want to make sure i understand you're working yeah amazon figured out that i was googling it and then they said all right send one over send one over to longview so that it's on standby i mean honestly that would be kind of amazing if they could do that i mean i i mean i look i wouldn't rule it out i wouldn't rule anything

out with these bastards but i can i also just uh say something in your defense real quick not not that you need me to white knighting you but um i i think we've talked about this before even like i used to live in rural new york and it's like you live in these places where there's not a lot of retail uh because of the way the economy and capitalism right in america like small businesses and and unique businesses are driven out by walmart and amazon stuff so it's like they they intentionally make it very hard to live in these places um they've hollowed out like the

small town main street and now unfortunately what that means is it is usually easier for me to just go online and in fact you know this is what's so messed up now my version of shopping local is to order on the home depot.com as opposed to amazon right which is still a giant company but it's like at least i'm ordering it to like at least i'm ordering it to the like the local home depot and then going and picking it up or the local lows or even like target or whatever because like i presume

60 years ago kelso washington had or longview had like a place or two that you could go and like have these things because like everyone had to eat their homes so they would have a place to go like get sifted their home so like i like andrew also crap on amazon because i now live in a metro area where i can find pretty much anything i need anytime and i'm not like trying to be mean to andrew but like it is one of those things that having lived in a very rural place for almost a decade i understand it's like you're often having to like justify these right it's like basically

yeah they've hollowed out they've hollowed out all of the local retail options and now they're the only option and i can feel bad about them being the only option but also there's not much of an alternative sometimes and when your house is freezing cold and you need a heat pipe yeah for serenity castle stove well all that is to say it showed up i replaced the part and the stove is the pellet stove is back to working like a charm and now every time I walk by it I am filled with a sense of pride that it did not work and then I took it apart and then I replaced the part and now it's working again and it's actually kind of inspired me I mean this is an incredibly low bar for fixing things like I took one part out that was very easy to get to and then just replaced it but it does have me thinking that I'm really really really in 2026 I'm going to try to see if there's more stuff that I can do for myself. Because my default, like I said, is always just to figure out who can fix this for me and then just pay someone. And I could use my own daughter as inspiration. If she's changing her GD spark plug coils on the streets of Los Angeles, war-torn Los Angeles, I think I could fix more stuff in my house here.

When you say war-torn, you're talking about Shohei Ohtani's war, right?

Yes, exactly, which is unreal. it rivals Aaron Judge yeah exactly oh this is the part where I always remember I don't have the right music so here we go I've got let's play this whatever we do this show without Andrew I am reminded that I don't have the thank you baby music and I tell myself oh I should get that from Andrew for next time and then i never do so we're just doers getting more done today when we're thanking the donors

but relevant to the conversation we've already been having so that's right this is the inside

of my brain when i'm fixing pellet stoves at my house so butch dude so butch Let's thank some donors. Of course, I don't have to tell John Sklaroff this. This is 100% what you're listening to right now, 100% listener-supported podcasting. We could not do this without the donations from folks like Alan Mullenix, who's in Battle Creek, Michigan, the road to Wellville, huh?

What's the road to Wellville? You know about that? I'm familiar.

I believe. See, this is what happened. Oh, no. I'm so sorry. No, no, no, no. I yelled it out, and now I've got to own it. So I believe the Kellogg brothers were, you know, who make the cereal. Sure, sure. Were kind of nuts. Like they had a lot of kind of like crank theories about health. Well, actually, I guess what it was was a book written by T.C. Boyle. It's a satirical novel called The Road to Wellville, but it was also made into a movie which was starring Anthony Hopkins. He plays Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, highlighting the real life, the real life rivalry between Dr. Kellogg and his brother W.K. Kellogg, who was the creator of Kellogg's cereal, a conflict that drove W.K. to add sugar to cereal and start his own company, leading to a famous feud over health, hygiene and business. So the Kellogg brothers were at odds about what should be in cereal. They're from Battle Creek, Michigan. That's where this is all stemming from. That's because Alan is in Battle Creek. And I remember being a kid and, like, reading the cereal box because we didn't have phones and you had to look at something. And I remember seeing Battle Creek, Michigan on the Kellogg's boxes and always thinking, that sounds like an interesting place, Battle Creek, Michigan.

Oh, it definitely sounds cool.

Yes. Thanks also to Jeremiah Zimmerman, who's in Nashville, Tennessee, another cool place. Yep. Very cool. Thank you very much, Jeremiah. thanks to uh genie mcmacken pittsfield massachusetts i know the uh the guy ross reynolds who i used to work for at kuow he was from pittsfield massachusetts oh yeah i would uh

i had a buddy that lived there it's right on the border of new york and massachusetts over by albany as you were discussing the other day on the show not albany albany all of us all all of us benign new york um but it's right over kind of there in the near the capital region of new york

and it's a very lovely that's just yeah it sounds like it's the kind of place that in the fall the

colors would change and it would be incredibly bucolic i think you'd be hard listen this is hard for me to say as a new yorker i think you'd be hard pressed to find a place in all of new england that's not beautiful during the fall right um but yeah but pittsfield that that's definitely like a very on the list yeah and i think it's like if it's not in it's near like the berkshire mountain region oh sure so like i could be wrong about that but like yeah just beautiful

country out that way well thank you very much aaron for oh excuse me this is our next person on the list which is aaron silvers who's in indianapolis indiana another lovely place i do think that um i know you're not a big football guy anymore john or maybe you never were but like i think that the most interesting character in the nfl is carly um i don't know i don't know

if her last name is still ursay or if she is a different gordon ursay okay gordon ursay right

i think you're right yeah um and she is now i mean sort of i guess you could say i mean she and her i believe siblings are the owners of the indianapolis colts because their dad jim ursay passed away she is so great did you see the post game the postseason press conference she gave at

the end of their season i didn't but i have her story and like the the conversation around is something i've been following in like the sports media world because it is fascinating and really cool to see but no what was what was the end of season she just will because the colts had a

really they came out to such a heart a hot start and they were like nobody expected much from them and then all of a sudden they were really good and it was like is daniel jones an elite quarterback and then he got hurt and then they kind of came back down to earth and then they ended up not making the playoffs but like she just said everything as an owner that you as a fan would liked him to say she was basically just going like we're so bummed about this like this is terrible I hate this and like of course she also kind of became famous this season for like standing on the sideline during every game and listening on the headset to everything that was going on with the coaches just so she could kind of like have a greater understanding of like just what are the decision what's the decision making process and everything and she just like she just seems so cool to me like I really am rooting for the Indianapolis Colts and specifically for the carly gordon ursay ownership project i'd so much rather her than your jerry joneses and your mark davis right mark mark haircut davis yeah mark bull cut i think you you and uh andrew talked

about this on the show right like i in like pro sports so many team ownerships are like run by just like terrible people the worst people but like it does seem like the ursays and like jim say we know i know he like had some like addiction issues and sure

really struggled and stuff but like it seemed like what i've learned in the year since again i think this you guys kind of touched on this like he actually was like a pretty decent guy and it seems like his daughter's running an organization are decent people too i mean decent

in the sense of like not terrible yeah we don't know their politics but yeah but but definitely like yeah and and actually like she said something i believe in the press conference about her dad too like there seems to be a lot of really genuine love in the ursay family which you know it's easy too because her dad was kind of a kind of a quirky guy who like had this music that he would like wanted to play for people and he'd like basically pay a bunch of money to get like actual rock musicians to play with him but then he would make everyone come to the show he'd like buy out all the tickets in the venue like he's a weird dude and had a lot of issues with addiction but when you hear her talking about him you can tell that like they really loved each other you know and so that's kind of that's also sort of a charming thing just put me and aaron silvers down as big fans of the indianapolis cults and also the city of indianapolis and i'd also just like to say

real quick last thing on that like that's like benevolent benevolent billionaire if like you're a billionaire you just want to use your money to like pay slash from guns and roses to do a set with you totally like spend your money on that like don't spend it buying elections or whatever

like you know just like just unless you're george soros and then well you got your check this week right the soros yes i mean if you whatever you want to do george to tip the scales because we know you've got generally good politics we'll take it but yeah no yeah that's like normal billionaire guy stuff is like overpay to have joe walsh from the eagles come hang out with you which

was a thing literally that i think was joe walsh of course it was not not for ursa not for ursa

but for um it was uh oh my goodness uh who's the uh not not bill gates who's the other microsoft

guy oh um the the owner of balmer steve balmer not balmer the third guy the uh the uh the guy

who owned he owned the i can't this is this is what happens at 49 start to lose your nouns person places and things it was uh you know the paul allen paul allen yeah paul allen loved he loved rock and roll music and he always and he could he played guitar and he always you know he made all this money with microsoft but what he really wanted to be was a rock musician and so he used to do these events that i used to emcee sometimes that would just bring out like you know that's how i've those events are how i've met ringo star joe walsh from the eagles and also uh jimmy page from led zeppelin among many others that's pretty i mean it's pretty those are all you know pretty i guess pretty legendary dudes yeah but it was this whole involved rigmarole so that paul allen could hang out with his guitar heroes you know let them spend their money on that yeah exactly no not that's that's right right i'll take it you know r.i.p paul allen i mean i think generally speaking he was just kind of a big nerd who wanted to jam out on the guitar which i find to be generally speaking harmless in society right better than a lot of these other guys are doing these days uh we've also got martha zumak who's supporting the show from oxford in great britain i was in oxford this summer martha at the botanical garden and you didn't even let me know you were there i would becca and i would have come by and said hi oxford is a very very cool city actually yeah of course you've got oxford university there famously but then yeah they've got this amazing botanical garden uh we um we did some punting there which is punting in england is i feel like it's doing a lot of work as a word because it means to gamble and bet but it also means to um go around on the river on a boat oh and like a rowboat or yeah basically like a little rowboat that's also called punting okay and i knew about it because when we were um who was like trying to think who like the most famous who were some really famous scholars that were associated with oxford when we went we were in the gift shop at the oxford botanical garden and the woman at the gift shop kept telling us about some famous scholar at oxford who loved taking women punting on these little these little waterways in oxford and i didn't it sounds and i thought she i thought she meant gambling i didn't know what she was talking about until i finally figured out oh she means going on these little boats going around on the on the waterways of oxford which we did uh martha thank you so much really appreciate your support and then of course where would we be without bill witeria how would you say that last name white witeria uh w-o-i-t-r-y-a this is why

you get paid the big bucks boy bill witeria witeria bill if you have a pronouncer please send me an email and I'll include it for next year.

We won't even charge you more next year. We'll charge you the same amount, but we will try to pronounce your name properly. Bill, thank you. Bill's in Seattle, Washington. Hey, thank you to all of our donors for making TBTL possible today. This thing would not be occurring five days a week, 52 weeks out of the year, if not for your support. So, thanks again.

hello and welcome to top story uh so the golden globes were last night and i the reason that i was mildly interested in it was because there is now a podcasting category which amy poehler won for she gave a pretty funny speech well the first half of her speech i was a little and listen i've briefly met amy poehler i interviewed her for a tv story she was absolutely lovely and um just like so smart uh so present just great i mean to be honest with you something that i loved about amy poehler was when we were standing around in her office in between shooting some stuff i looked at she had one of those day like a big calendar on her like desk you know the kind of you just write stuff in and i noticed that like she had written down start keto on like a certain day on her calendar which is the most relatable thing i'd ever seen because if you were to look at my calendars they all say start keto uh-huh at some point start this you know start this workout plan start this this fad diet whatever start p90x exactly 100 like the only thing that could have been more relatable is if she had written down by hand start p90x i just loved that i was just like even amy poehler's doing stuff like this trying to you know whatever change something about her reality but um but uh so i i do i do love her uh and i have loved her comedy for years i will say The first part of her speech Which I actually cut out Because I thought it was boring But now I kind of wish I would have left it in It's kind of the thing, John That like Andrew and I Talk about a lot on the show That's kind of what seems like It's a little bit wrong With podcasting Which is now every podcast Is treated like a movie So Amy Poehler gets up there And she wins for Good Hang as her podcast It's a great show, by the way But the first 30 people She thanks are just like The executives They're the executives. They're like they're like the people who, you know, granted, there are some executives that do some important work, but it's just like it's just thanking a bunch of people who none of whom we've ever heard of and who all, again, want like there was a brief moment of time where when that we were when you and I and Andrew were at APM and they were trying to sort of run it more like a studio. yeah and all of a sudden they were they they were smart enough to know that we were going to revolt if they tried to make us like end every show by thanking like 10 apm executives but they were trying they were kind of like gently going well if you want you could include these in the credits and we were like hell to the no right like we're not gonna like thank a bunch of random people in in minnesota and like new york that we've never met who just happened to have tbtl as one of their

kpis like happen to have a job title that makes people think about the end of podcasts right and

that's kind of like where a lot of these big podcasts are now they're almost treated which is so weird because this the show good hang that amy poehler does it's a great show because amy poehler is great and because she's got a really good rolodex like it really really helps when you are famous and funny and all your friends are famous and funny like well of course that's going to be a good show and i'm not saying that to denigrate the program but i promise you good hang would be just fine without the 25 executives at spotify and elsewhere that amy polar named before you know before getting into the meat of her acceptance speech i also think the existence

of tbtl like really undercuts those kinds of um accolades and and you know glad handing because it's like i haven't listened to amy's show polar show but like i kind of it's like it's like she sits down with a famous friend and talks it's like this show if it was if this show was good right so it's like not so it's it's we're so good at promoting this show yeah i know right but so it's like but i say that to be like it's not like um this american life that's highly produced or or or in the dark one of our you know our shows that we used to work with apm that's like yes there's tons of people behind the scenes and tons of resources and tons of moving parts to make this thing happen it's amy poehler and her famous friends sitting there and a producer capturing it and like that's it and like and and and like thank the producer thank the booking person i guess even though the booking person like to your point is probably just amy polar saying like hey adam scott come be on my show yeah but like her first guest was tina fey right

who doesn't want to listen to amy polar and tina fey talking about literally anything right that's

just a slam dunk and what spotify executive is like oh man can i swing this tina fey it's like amy polar be like i'll call tina and we'll do it kind of thing right yeah she thanked she thanked

bill simmons uh specifically because because it's a it's the show is from the ringer which is bill simmons this is a ringer thing so bill simmons you know who has been around forever now but like i remember he started out writing this blog in the early days of blogging called page two on espn and i loved it because it was the first time i'd seen somebody really cross pollinating between pop culture and sports he is just always talking about you know he was talking

Thank you.

about his love of sports but often in the context of like his love of movies or music or whatever and that was the kind of that was how I sort of saw my world and so anyway I was a Bill Simmons fan yeah he started this thing the ringer but like she said something like I want to thank Bill Simmons for getting the show initially I was like getting the show yeah the show is have Amy Poehler talk to her famous friends and we all delight a lot they do they do one thing that I think is is really genius but then again this this just speaks to the reach of the show so they start each episode so let's say she's going to interview um you know um you know let's just go with the tina fay example again what she'll do is they start the show actually by interviewing some friends of the person okay and those people guess what john they're famous they're also they're like John Hamm. Hey, John Hamm, what should we ask Tina Fey? Right. And then, or like, was it Paul Rudd? So basically, you do a mini interview with someone famous about what they like about the person you're about to do the full interview with. And then also some questions that they want to ask the person. So that's actually a clever conceit. But again, it all hinges on that you have access to all of these great and entertaining people. And that you are yourself great and entertaining. So, like, again, it's a really good show. I'm not trying to denigrate it at all, but I'm with you. I think that Amy Poehler and two producers and a Riverside account could do this show.

Right. I also just think, talking about, like, the movification, is that the cinematicification? Yeah, studio-ification. Studio-ification of podcasts like this. And this is going to sound like, I don't want to sound like Bitter Grapes because, like, we're a podcast where, like, you obviously—

Because we didn't win a Golden Globe?

next year is our year uh-huh next year is our year but like like obviously you do have some level of fame you're on cbs and like you and you are on public radio stations like people know who luke burbank is uh people know who who andrew is but like we're not like this level you guys are not this level of fame no that it's like that the that we've all seen podcasts become in the last five six years really like since covid i think where they're like oh this we can't green light tv shows or movies right now let's just put send a camera a camera and a microphone to this famous person's house and they're going to talk to their famous friends but like at some point it's like the snaking the tail because it's like the amy polar show smart list and all these like revealed show revealed uh like lauded veered revered thank you that's the word like revered shows where it's like yeah it's interesting because like they're famous people and they've done interesting things but like at some point it's like just the same people talking to the same people about the same things over and over again it's like how much of this is like unique or interesting or relatable

for people well it's it's funny you mentioned that because that's actually like a joke that amy poehler made in her acceptance speech which i thought was pretty good take a listen to this

and um i just want to say that i know i am new to this game um i have great respect for this form i have um great respect for all the people that i am nominated with i'm big fans of all of you except for NPR just a bunch of celebs phoning it in so try harder um but um this is an attempt to try to make a very rough and unkind world filled with a little bit more love and laughter and laughing with people not at them and uh we just have such a good time making it and thank you so much for letting us make more Archie and Abel I love you mom and dad you can watch the Patriots

now thank you good night um yeah so there you go she was I think uh I I guess Amy I'm not gonna say criticism as if anyone's lining up to criticize her show but I think she's aware that like yeah there is there are a lot of shows now where it's just famous people talking to their famous friends I do think that there are definitely like levels to who's good at it yeah and who's less good and she's very good at another thing that's kind of interesting was she was i guess technically she beat her ex-husband will arnett because his show smart was also was nominated yeah um so i don't

think that's ever happened before either probably i don't want to sound like i'm just backtracking what i said before but like i like i appreciate that that i know where her speech was like i'm glad she kind of made a joke of it and point out like just trying to bring joy like i understand that like amy poehler is very lovable like if you want to listen to amy poehler's podcast god bless year i just like think like in general this concept of just like we gotta keep giving famous people a microphone to talk to other famous people it's like that isn't that what the

tonight show exists for like well well it's actually funny you say that because i do think that it's i think in a way as we see like late night television kind of becoming a shell of what it was i feel like in a way it's been replaced by not replaced but like you know the idea of like people that you like sitting around and chatting, I don't think that we no longer have an appetite.

for that but I think the way that we a lot of us consume the media now is like I'm more likely to see I'm more likely to catch a clip of Good Hang with Amy Poehler where she's talking to Maya Rudolph on TikTok than I am to turn on The Tonight Show and watch Jimmy Fallon do something or watch Stephen Colbert do something you know in real time or even even Kimmel who I really like like And so I guess you could make the argument that maybe in certain ways, this is the new Tonight Show, is people sitting around with their famous friends chatting. But again, I agree that some people are better at it than others, and Amy Poehler seems to be really good at it. Now, Rose Byrne won for, speaking of late night hosts, she was the star of this movie called If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You, which had Conan O'Brien in it. as an actor, which I actually, I really, I would like to watch that movie. I have not gotten around to it yet. I think my next project is, um, sorry, baby, the, uh, uh, Eva Victoria or Victor, maybe movie that I've been hearing a lot about that actually got shouted out last night by, um, I think Julia Roberts actually was shouting it out. But, um, but anyway, uh, Rose Byrne won for this, uh, if I had legs, I'd kick you this movie. And she gave a very charming acceptance speech, although one that I found the end to be slightly cryptic.

Thank you for believing in me and giving me this opportunity. We shot this movie in 25 days for like $8.50. Thank you so much. This is like a tiny film, so this is a huge thing to be up here. And my brother's my date. Thanks, George. And, um...

So she is married to an actor named Bobby Cannavale. Oh, yeah. You know him from various things. he was like i think boardwalk empire yeah he was really big and i think he was in was he in the

sopranos for a bit i think uh if he was i don't recall but then he was also the star you would

see in the sopranos totally right and then he was in that show the watcher i think it was called or something we're like but he and his family yeah they buy a they buy a house up in like somewhere in the northeast but then it's like they're getting crazy like letters from someone who's like watching them from within the house or whatever anyway so that's her husband but like uh he's not there i mean literally her brother was her date and it you know slightly raising the question wow you know your your wife your was was up for this huge award a golden globe you're not there i wonder where bobby cannavale would be well this is what she said you know my

mom and dad who bought paramount plus so they could watch the golden globes from sydney

by the way when she said thanks to my parents who bought paramount plus i was like we we got

sold again or is rose burn and ellison what's going on right or is she like you know what i

mean like i was like i was like i for a moment i thought she was making a joke about like the fact that every two days it seems like this network is uh you know that is getting sold or acquired or whatever she just meant you know subscribed for whatever ten dollars a month i so something

i know about rose burn did she say sydney is she australian she is i had i had the only thing i can like i know i've seen her things there are most uh she's in bridesmaids bridesmaids exactly good bridesmaids right that's where i know her from the most and i had no idea she was not american so like hearing that's kind of like hearing that's always a little that messes with you right

When you have no conception of this person's actual nation of origin or accent of origin, and then all of a sudden they just bust out with another way of speaking than you expect. Okay, so here she is explaining, I guess, where her husband actually was for this big moment in her life.

I want to thank my husband, Bobby Cannavale, who couldn't be here because we're getting a bearded dragon and he went to a reptile expo in New Jersey. So thank you. Thank you, baby.

i mean what the actual we're getting a bearded dragon so he's at an expo in new jersey he's at a reptile expo in new jersey because we're getting a bearded dragon this raises so many questions like i mean there's like that's first of all that's just hilarious could that possibly be true you know i'm googling right now reptile expo new jersey that's actually you know what good um good reporting instincts that's exactly that's exactly what we should be doing is finding out first of all is there a reptile there's well first of all there's probably

always a reptile expo in new jersey somewhere from january 9th to january 11th 2026 at the

new jersey convention exposition center oh my god in edison new jersey is yeah repticon oh my god but that's where he was. How do you, I mean, listen, I mean, let me put it this way. If I was nominated for a Golden Globe, if Becca was nominated for a Golden Globe, well let me put it this way if i was nominated for a golden globe and was going to go and becca said i can't go i've got to go to i've got to go check on the bearded dragon that we're going to be buying at repticon i would say well could we go to like could we get a different bearded dragon could could we and vice versa like i don't think i'd be able to get away with not going to the golden globes with my partner yeah because of acquiring a reptile that like did rose burn definitely not think she was going to win does she not care she doesn't seem in any way perturbed

by it i just curious about that conversation she takes her her bearded dragons her reptiles very seriously lizards very seriously because isn't that like they're very prominent down under are

they i don't know you know aren't they well we've learned there's certain my whole we've learned that you know you got to be careful what dogs you bring into australia we learned that with the whole johnny depp amber herd situation but like she seems totally unperturbed by the fact that like she's at the Golden Globes with her brother while her husband is sourcing bearded dragons in

New Jersey like well I in Bobby Carnevale's defense I have to believe that Repticon was on the calendar before the Globe nominations came out and so like he was like oh babe I got my yeah

I got my I can't get my I can't get my hotel fee back from the Hyatt right Edison we already got

repticon on the calendar congrats on the nomination but like you're gonna have to take your brother

because i got i got repticon this year just think about like listen we're gonna get i'm gonna tick off some listeners now who are um you know into the world of herpetology sure but like i'm sure that bearded dragons have very unique personalities and like they're not interchangeable but i do feel like you could have just gotten like did you have to get a bearded dragon from this repticon could you have not gone to a different reptile convention somewhere in america let's say next weekend and gotten a different bearded dragon like there's a lot i don't know about this world obviously yeah but it just seems to be like again this is i'm showing my bias i'm showing my assumption that lizards don't have as fully expressed personalities as say dogs. That's my bias because I have never owned a lizard. I'm sure that we have listeners who are going to say no, no, no, you don't understand. They're more interesting than dogs for whatever reason and maybe that's possible. It just seems like of all the animals, it's like my husband couldn't be here because we're getting a pet clam next week and he's at a clam convention.

Luke, I'd just like to say, though, because now I'm deep on the Repticon website, which I'm sure this is great earned media, I'm sure, because other people like us are like, what is this about? So, like, you know, they're getting all these hits on web traffic. Repticon tickets are non-refundable. Ah, OK. And I don't know if Rose Byrne and Bobby Convale can eat the cost, but a single day ticket.

Well, she mentioned that the movie that she was in was made for like eight dollars and 50 cents. So she clearly did not get overpaid for if I had legs, I would kick you.

A single day ticket to Repticon for two day or a single day, two day. I guess you buy them each day for per day. Fifteen dollars. So I don't know if Bobby Cannavale can.

That's actually cheaper than I was expecting because I was looking at going to Sasquatch Fest in Longview, Washington, which was scheduled and then unscheduled because the city of Longview did not approve the funding for it. But then I guess they're just going to make it up through ticket sales. although this year it's a combination of of um sasquatch and aliens so it's like sasquatch slash aliens festival but those tickets are like 30 40 bucks you do get like a free beer with it or something you get like a ticket for a free beer garden beer or something but like i was like kind of thinking that might be kind of fun to go to just for the sheer madness of the whole thing also i continue with my project of wanting to prove to andrew that sasquatch is now conservative coded right um because that whole conversation because it it really i'm and i see it more and more out here like it's definitely sasquatch has become the mythical creature of the maga movement not quite maga it's not hard maga it's like it's more like i'm trying to think i'm trying to describe the politics of sasquatch out here it's show title try to describe the politics of sasquatch it's definitely not like it's not the guy who has like just eight million trump weird like trump flags at his house but it's the guy who like is pretty suspicious of the government probably has leanings towards being more conservative than i would be but also is kind of like more like one of those you know like those vietnam vets who came home but then they kind of got into drugs like they're basically just suspicious of of every like they're suspicious of everything. They're much more sort of like guys who would be listening to Coast to Coast AM and calling in. That's the vibe of of the conservative-leaning Sasquatch crowd.

Libertarians who are actually libertarian, like, man, you state to yourself, I'm going to keep to myself, we're not going to mix. It's like actual, like, leave me alone, I'll leave you alone kind of libertarian.

Those are more the guys. They're probably not fans of what is going on with ICE right now. Actually, we were talking about Don't Tread On Me. They are actually those guys. They're more in the mold of, like, they see themselves in the movie Rambo they are John Rambo they are like they essentially want nothing to do with the government they think that they at this point are maybe more Sasquatch than man like they would also just like to be covered in hair wandering in the woods being generally left alone in fact this is I'm developing a political theory on the spot which is that's why they like Sasquatch because it's the ultimate to go back to the don't tread on me it's the ultimate don't tread on me it's like yeah i just want to be allowed to live in these woods with

nobody talking to me much like the noble sasquatch didn't um vigo mortensen did a movie where he raised his kids he and his wife were raising their kids to be like but but liberal a very progressive um yes i watched that movie wasn't like captain fantastic or something i think

it's exactly what it was really which is a weird name for a really good movie where they're like like they're living in the woods and he's training them on how to like yeah live off the land and like do like weaponry and right like they're also like courses they're also highly educated and

like incredible thinkers and like they're teaching them like they're homeschooling them like right

you'd want kids to be homeschooled exactly yeah like i'm all i'm down for that kind of homeschooling As opposed to the kind that I got, which was actually, you know what, the kind of homeschooling that I got was generally benign because there was no schooling going on. I was more unschooled than homeschooled, you know, like we didn't have any that we just didn't have any curriculum. We didn't really do anything. But that was basically fine. That was basically neutral as opposed to like getting, you know, like if my mom would have gotten it together to teach me my parents actual kind of like political and religious beliefs at that time, it would have been worse for me than just getting no schooling whatsoever. Right, right, right, right. So anyway, and then we don't have to play it now because we're kind of running out of time, but Nikki Glaser did do her normal monologue where she made her big joke was, it's actually funny because the joke that she made about CBS, well, she was like the award for best editing goes to CBS, which I thought was actually pretty mild. But then she said something about CBS because they're the number one network where you can now just see BS. and what struck me about that was that was a joke I had a teacher in 7th grade Mr. Warren made that joke when I went to Jesus Creek middle school and I remember him saying oh yeah they call it CBS because all you can see all you see is BS and I at the time did not know what BS meant I'd never heard BS I remember the other kids laughing like oh my gosh he's being edgy and I go I don't understand the joke and they're like bullshit it's like he's saying that what you see is bullshit so that joke people have been making that joke for years I guess it was notable because she's also saying

it on CBS television yeah so well I had not heard that joke before and I love a pun and so like that

was funny to me and I'm sorry it's weird though you know it's weird working to the degree that I work for CBS you know working on this TV show that's on CBS because it is definitely the case that I have I've in all my different job stuff I've never had more people reach out to me or even just mention in passing like oh dude what is going on at the place that you work at and what's strange about it is that like for me the actual experience of doing my job is is fairly unchanged if that makes any sense like like everyone's talking about the maga takeover of cbs and like in a way i guess you could say that is happening certainly there was that 60 minute story that got

pulled that's very concerning but like and the tony de cupel of it all tony de cupel stuff like

state media stuff yeah i mean you know there's there's a lot about it that's not great but then i guess i wonder like what is my what is my role in it like do i quit or do i just keep doing my stories which generally speaking are pretty non-political anyway they're about you know kind of meaningless silly stuff um like am i adding to the number am i adding to the sort of positive media that exists in the world by doing my little silly stories or my commentaries on sunday morning or like should i i mean you know i don't know it's it's just i have not had the experience i've always worked for these larger networks and entities that have a certain amount of a halo effect around them you know you're working for npr working in public radio um stuff like that i've always worked at the places where people at a party are like oh i work you know in public radio Oh.

oh you know and now it's like yeah now it's like well through no fault of my own you know what it feels like it feels like the employment equivalent of just being an american right now traveling abroad yeah like like you you go somewhere and they're like where are you from you're like american they're like oh and you're like yeah but not all of us right you're like we just lived there we had nothing to do with that in fact we don't like it and it's like that's kind of my feeling about like yeah i don't know i just worked there and like if i quit then i don't get to do as many tv stories and that also feels like a bad outcome to me you know like i don't know it's it's a strange experience because again on a day-to-day basis like the stuff that i'm doing on cbs sunday morning is is unaffected by all of this and i i do kind of feel like if i walk away from it then it's just then i'm just doing less stories and then you know to the degree that the stories i do are in any way enjoyable for people it just feels like well that's actually like worse you know so yeah i don't know it's a it's a it's an odd experience like in the way that we are all having a lot of weird ass experiences right now in this country that we did not expect without

like um asking you to share anything you know obviously you don't feel comfortable sharing whatever but like can i ask is that a conversation that like you and mo rocca or somebody like other correspondents like have you guys had any of those kind of conversations amongst yourselves or is it kind of like everyone's just kind of head down doing your in your own thing i haven't had those

conversations with any of the other correspondents i mean i have i think that i've talked to other producers when i've been on shoots and when you know we're all just kind of like you know a little bit apoplectic about things and it's a you know it's a again it's a weird feeling because this is all happening so far above us in terms of the the management structure of the place and again based on the show that i work on like if i was like a congressional correspondent for the evening news right this stuff would be hitting me constantly because every story that i do would be under scrutiny as it is i do stories about like people that are making dog leashes out of old inner inner tubes in portland which remains you're interviewing jim belushi about his weed exactly yeah so far off of the radar of of of you know david ellison and barry weiss that it's just kind of like on the so so the conversations that i have with the producers are are not like is it time for us to quit it's just kind of like mostly going huh i wonder where this all goes i wonder if there was a point at which and it also just feels like honestly based on what's going on in the media landscape as far as tv jobs we working on cbs sunday morning it's like literally like the last bastion of getting to do fun weird stories with an actual crew so like there's a sound person there's a camera person there's a producer there's like it's still a legitimate network television news shoot which can be about like somebody who's making whiskey out of tree sap in the finger lakes right and so that feels kind of like a lucky thing that that's still happening in the world and i get to work on the show that does that so like a big part of me that you know i don't want to walk away from that i because i i want to ride that thing until they stop letting me do stories it's kind of my general feeling on the matter you could also look at like

this and i don't i mean not uh obviously you'd like as you're expressing don't and i certainly don't know what the what the goals and aspirations of barry weiss and david ellison are like we have our ideas but like if if suddenly everyone at cbs sunday morning decide to walk off set be like no we can't be associated with this entity then boy they put in that time slot like more prop like direct propaganda like i mean who knows i don't know like yeah i doubt it would be something

better than whatever it is we're doing like it's exactly and that's always the question and then you could say well then you're just making an excuse but it's like yeah i don't know if yeah i don't think that i don't think it would be a different a 90 minutes of content that would be um better than what we're doing or like or like positive net i don't think it'd be a net positive the war the win over replacement win above replacement i don't think would be great and so i kind of feel like it is an act of i'm not saying protest but it's something to just keep trying to make fun quirky somewhat meaningless stories but that maybe a little bit um kind of do uh enrich the human experience by describing something that's happened with someone that is unexpected you know like i still feel like getting to make those stories and getting those

stories on television is better than not doing it yeah and it is it is like in a sense like tbtl it's like some kind of counter program to counter programming to like the terrible stuff happening and like obviously you don't want people to like be ill-informed or not pay attention or put their head in the sand but like we need these respites like we need these distractions if somebody's going to put on the tv while they're you know making their breakfast sunday morning or i don't know whatever they're doing while you know all the show is on or doing folding their laundry doing some chores like if it's a goofy story about you know wherever you or whatever your colleagues are doing like that in its way

Thank you.

is beneficial to that person instead of something that could be demonstrators yeah i feel like yeah it could be making excuses but i think there is a value there and the way that tbtl has a value for folks to like engage with something other than what they might otherwise engage with

exactly and also i think even more critically if i lose my tv job i will never make alaska airlines titanium status again because that that's the main that's the reason that i've been flying a hundred thousand miles a year is because of all my tv gigs and so i you know i'm gonna i think i'm gonna keep doing as long as they'll uh continue letting me do it you just

have to like uh before there's if there's any signs that's gonna go away they're gonna shudder it you just have to like pitch stories like across the world for like three months like i have this story in morocco i really want to do exactly i want to go interview rose burns family in australia

exactly i want to learn about if they're keeping up their paramount plus account or or if they've

inherited the bearded dragon yeah I want to get

I want to find out more about this bearded dragon starting with talking to Rose Burns's parents

right I have to go back and forth and I have to go to New Jersey a couple of times to go to Repticon exactly I need to follow

Repticon around the country like a deadhead and rack up all the miles that I can so anyway all right well listen it looks like it's about that time for us to wrap things up here on this Monday I want to say thanks a to you John thanks for hanging out today really appreciate it uh thanks to all of you for listening we are going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio so if you can please join us for that in the meantime everybody have a great monday take care of yourself stay safe wherever you are and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all nice Power out.