Muse

Come with me to try the Yuzu Pepperoni Cup Ranch Vodka Pasta at Sausage Hole Collective. This charming windowless food shack is a gem in the crown of Los Vagangeles, North Ohio. Tonight, we're here to try their Dubai Chocolate Cream Cheese Everything Bagel Cinnamon Bun. And you can't leave without going to Breakup Bang's Burger House right next door and trying their Karna Burger with extra vore sauce. These two local favorites hit the spot every time. TBTL i'm cool i get jokes listen please please please if anybody doesn't know the difference between a valance and a jabot i really need you to leave i get it i know who you are it's been explained to

me i'm into it i think let's talk all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a thursday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live here we go not gonna mess this up not gonna mess this up here we go ready hi my name is luke burbank i am your host yeah oh yeah buddy coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where it's not raining that's a positive uh because if it was raining it would be snowing because it's very cold here very very cold but i got out here early this morning in the madrona hill studio i fired up all of the heaters. And so we're actually at a nice temperature here as we arrive at episode 4,647 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. I saw an article in the Washington Post. Why is aspirational clutter the hardest to part with? Why is the junk that is aspirational in our life? If you touch my junk, I'm going to have you arrested. Why is that the stuff that's very hard to Marie Kondo out of your life. We'll go through that. Also, time permitting, we'll talk about the latest yoga trend that is sweeping Portland. It's snake yoga. My motto is to catch a snake become a snake. Think like a snake and be a snake. And by sweeping Portland I mean one place is doing it in Portland. And it got it in the newspaper. Also, it's a Thursday aka Blur's Day. Do the Blur's Day messages. Oh, and of course, we will welcome this feller to the show. He's the longest running co-bro of the program, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. It took me, I don't know, however many episodes doing this show together up until I think yesterday to realize I'm very jealous of this guy's ability to have a beard.

It took seven months to grow and needs half an hour's grooming every morning.

But it looks amazing. He's Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke. I told you before the show that I had an email that caught my attention this week, and I'm going to share it with you here at the top of the show. By the way, you know those Blur's Days you referenced that are coming up later in the show? Blur's Day. Blur's Day. Wow. Have we ever had one? I don't think so. Not that I can remember. Have we ever had zero? Probably not on purpose.

We've probably forgotten to do it. I don't know. Does that indicate a tremendous lack of coitus nine months previous to this week or a tremendous fall off in our listenership?

And do they have to be separate?

A little of column A, a little of column B.

Because remember, I'm just remembering this now.

Our listeners that we don't have weren't having sex, or at least their parents weren't having sex.

Do you remember, I'm just remembering this now, we sort of got into this at the beginning of last week, so we are noticing a trend. It was fallow last week as well, and so I was doing the math looking back nine months and trying to say there's a certain type of person who has a child or type of people who have children who will grow up to listen to TBTL, and those types of people, the parents of eventual tens. They are not horny in May. In May. Was that the month? I forget. I don't know. I mean, that seems wrong. Seems like a very horny month. Seems like one of the horniest months. I couldn't agree with you more on that. I'm sorry that we can't debate that. Spring is springing. Right?

There's fresh flowers are blooming.

Bunnies are hopping around, if you know what I mean.

Our listeners are more like a kind of indoor kids. Maybe they like to get to it in November or something.

By the way, I've been seeing a lot of bunnies throughout the winter.

I always think of springtime as a time for bunnies. Have you been seeing that?

You know what I'm seeing a bunch of right now, and it's driving me crazy, is I've got a mole going to town on my yard right now.

Want to add a few comments regarding your mole situation?

Like, I've got, just right out my window here, five mole hills, Andrew, and I will make a mountain out of them. What? I don't know. For some reason, that also doesn't seem like winter behavior. Now, of course, if I was a mole, I would want, I guess I'd want to be underground where maybe it's a little warmer right now. I don't really understand what their whole, like, deal is. But moles, digging up mole hills in my yard seems like a spring and maybe summer activity. This feels like a weird time for it.

It does. The weather has been somewhat spring-like for the past five days, but it sounds like this has gone, you know, gone on before that,

which does remind me. No, it just cropped up. It just literally, like, one day ago when I got home. Oh, well, okay then. I saw these. They're brand new. Or as my mom would say, I saw these, And these are fresh mole hills in my yard.

Wanted to add a few comments regarding your mole situation.

We need to talk about what's going on in my basement, by the way. I think we have another critter again. Bingo's been hunting. I don't have time to get into it right now, but I think we're also very close to just tearing that entire part of the basement apart probably in the next week or two. By the way, there will be some construction noise in the podcast. Again, for folks who missed that from your end of things, I think I will be living through a construction zone for a month or so.

I am so flipping excited about this.

Yeah, we don't even, well, okay. I don't have time to get into that now. We'll talk about that maybe tomorrow or next week.

Put a pin in that. But, man, if we could turn this into a home renovation podcast, I mean, I tried to for the last three-plus years, but if we could, I would be, I am so much more engaged in this conversation than I was five seconds ago.

Well, we're going to sidestep that. Disengaging. Disengaging. You can just gloss over now. You can, do you want to, you know what? I told you you could bring one toy to the podcast. Did you bring your TikTok? Did you bring your TikTok?

I brought my, can I be on my iPad for 30 minutes?

You can play on your iPad while I. 30 minutes. That's it. That's the limit. Reminisce here. Maybe I'm actually, no joke, maybe I'm making a mistake by pushing this so hard. But I guess to complete my thought, I got this note from our friend Max, who joins us on the show quite a bit during live. Is this Max the actor? Exactly. He acts to the max.

Actor, illustrator, bon vivant. That's right.

He is listening back through the TBTL archives. We have several listeners who are doing this, and I think he went back. I think he started listening around 2013 or something, maybe 2012, but he went back to the beginning and is now, he says he's about a year past from when he first started listening, so he's caught up on everything he hadn't heard before. Now he's re-listening, and he's in this part of the journey. I want to set this up a little bit. When I think about what you and I do here, we joke about it being somewhat disposable media, but we're also somewhat serious about that. We were talking about TV shows the other day and whether it's super sad that Netflix tells creators, don't be too memorable. Don't be too good because people just want to watch or listen while they're doing other things. And in a certain way, while television is a different creature, that is the kind of radio that I sort of enjoy, you know, the stuff that you don't have to hang on every single word. If I'm thinking about podcasts, it's hard for me to follow the more in-depth reporting in podcasts sometimes, investigative stuff.

I do a ton of 15-second backing on my phone, just like hitting back, back, back. If it's something that I – because my mind will wander, and then I'll realize, like, oh, wait, I lost the thread here.

Right.

That's why there's no thread on TBTL.

That's right. There's no thread at all. Nothing to lose. And as a listener, I'm like, well, is there a thread, though? That's the question. As a listener, I'm like, yeah, that's why when I was in my Dan Lebitard show phase, that's what I loved about it. You could literally walk in and out of the room. You don't have to catch everything. It's like a lot of just chitter chatter. You don't even know how much you were listening or caring about any of it. And then some of it will stand out, and you'll remember it. And I enjoy that. And when I think of TBTL, I think about that as what we're doing. Like, I will ask me two hours after we're done recording today what we talked about today, and I will not have much of a memory of it. Maybe that just speaks to my bad brain. But obviously there is a narrative arc. You have been doing this show since 2009, 8, sorry. And obviously it's always had a component that focuses on your life and personal experiences. Then I joined, I think, in 2012 or something. so you and I have been doing this together for a long time too and of course there's a narrative arc and yes sometimes it's kind of like oh what's this juggalo headline in 2012 or something like that but other times you know it does get a little bit more real and that gets to this

email that i got from max he says i'm uh going through the archive still in my archival time stream you are about to head down to los angeles to live with a mysterious french girl her dog and her pool which is accurate although taking out of context i believe a part-time model right

i feel like you yes she was a model and actor french model is a very it's a very intriguing kind of person it was not like that you'd try any funny business but that's just a vivid

character in my mind oh i tried funny business i had a rubber chicken i had a whoopee cushion i had one of those bike horns and actually she was french so it translated really well we got

along really really well actually loved it you are like a jerry lewis type i'm very very sassy

i won't do the accent but she said you studied under the masters anyway um he says however there appears to be an episode missing in the stream i just started listening to episode number 1476 we were mere babes luke 1476 and there's a reference to a very morose show bean hated it chris hayes loved it but it's missing it's episode 1475 when i hated it when i was scrolling through I assumed it was just a numbering blip, but no, it's a gap in time. So if there's any way to track that down, I'd be very curious to hear it. So I went into the online archives that we have, kind of publicly available from our website, and I'm trying to get back to it now. I have a theory, by the way. Okay, and I'll let you say your theory, but let me just say this before I give you more details about this. I don't have it in front of me right now, But the episode after this, the one that lets Max know that there's something missing, is titled something like, Very Happy Show. And the description is something along the lines of, after yesterday's controversial show where we bummed everybody out or something, we decided we're going to put together the happiest TBTL in history today or something along the lines of that. And I thought that that was sort of telling as well. And he's right, though. There was no episode. Here it is. Episode 1476, it's called Happy Show. Luke and Andrew attempt to host the happiest show ever to make up for Wednesday's Depression Fest. But there's no Wednesday show. It was missing online. Now, what's your theory?

Well, I remember, it was long ago, but I remember there were a couple of shows where we legit got into it. And I think, I mean, it's so rare for us. I think what I remember was that there was a period of time where, in my mind, it was like, this show's just got to be so real, man. And, like, if that means Andrew and I are arguing and, like, that's just, like, you know, we've always joked about hot talk. I don't think I was ever trying to create hot talk on the show. But I do remember having a moment of time where I thought you and I legitimately being kind of annoyed at each other or arguing with a sort of certain real intensity on the show is just super compelling. and that's just like, hey, if that happens, that happens. And then I remember, I don't know if somebody actually said this or this was maybe you paraphrasing or me paraphrasing. Somebody was like, I don't like it when mommy and daddy fight. So I just remember there being a brief moment where I was just like, hey, man, if we disagree on something, then we disagree and we're going to have it out. And then that happening a very, very minuscule amount of times, maybe once, maybe twice, and then hearing people go like, I don't like that. That's not why I tuned into this show. that makes me feel uncomfortable um so i'm wondering if that's what was happening although it doesn't sound like the way we're describing it is that we were just you and i were sad as

opposed to you and i were fighting yeah i don't think you're right about that in this case and

by the way my experience that's exactly what you always say i uh i remember that happening about

twice on the show i think it happened after this i think i was in la both times and i and honestly And my expectation, because let's see, at least the ones where I posted it, and I feel like I was in L.A., and I feel like those times that I remember, I remember posting those, not because I thought, like, TBTL has to be real, but because I thought I was in the right. And I thought you were in the wrong, and I was like, well, all right, you want to do that?

Would you have been in L.A. for those? Yeah, so I was in L.A. Were you posting from L.A.? Well, it was after we got hired, but you were still in L.A. Once we were on 8 p.m., yeah.

But anything pre-8 p.m., you would have been posting. Right, right. Got you. And so, anyway, I'm going to give you some more context for this as well.

Do you know the answer to this? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, okay, so I go to our official webpage, and it kind of like when you – our archives on our website can only go back, you know, so many years. But if you want to see the whole thing, you click on a button on our website that says, like, show entire archive, and it takes you to the LibsIn site, and it just goes back to day one. And if I go back a couple of shows before this missing show. Here are some descriptions from November 18th. Andrew calls in while packing up his apartment and trying to decide which CDs, if any, he should bring to L.A. Andrew details his plans for not crying during his final radio broadcast. That was the day before that. So I'm wrapping things up in Seattle, getting ready to move down to L.A. to take that job at KCRW. on episode 1474 the one the last one before the missing episode it says luke comes to the defense of a controversial toys r us ad plus info on how you can watch tbtl live at uber headquarters on thursday so if you'll recall one of the last things i did in seattle and it was hard for me to say goodbye to the city and my radio show and everything um was we did a uber gen then known as uber jen you know invited us to do a live show up in that in that room and tower tower yeah and then we all got together at the nightlight rest i believe drew barth did stand-up comedy yes good remembering so all of this is starting to come into relief for me a little bit right i'm like yes i'm packing up whatever but what is this missing show and i go to this hard drive that i have that has all of the episodes and i can't remember exactly the provenance of this hard drive But basically, we have all of our archives online, but I also have a hard drive that I think I populated during one of our big transitions between networks or something. And so I was like, well, is this show actually going to be on the archive or not, or is it truly lost to history? And it was on the archive. Something was a little bit funky with it, though. It's hard to describe. There's metadata on all the files. When you open it up in a folder, it kind of says, like, author is Luke Burbank, and it sort of has the date and stuff. And this one had, like, none of that information, and it's only 40 minutes long. Now, I don't think that's because – I don't think that the lacking metadata has anything to do with the content. I don't think we were trying to bury this episode or anything. I think something got glitchy in the system at some point. Maybe it was transferring everything out of Cairo to APM. Maybe it was something that happened APM. You know, I have no idea why this happened, but I found the file. I have not uploaded it yet, but I will do that hopefully later today if listeners are interested in hearing this. But I'm going to play a little bit of it for you now. And I'm playing it for you letting you know I am not proud of what we're about to hear. This is me, I think, kind of at my worst. I don't know.

Sometimes maybe I lack energy and I don't like to hear that. but what i really don't like is when i come in so hot and full of anxiety and i am machine gunning my anxiety at you i am just doing that verbal rat-a-tat-tat no it's not sad so much but then you i think then say you're feeling some anxiety too but i'm going to fast forward through your intro a little well actually let's hear what the intro tape was a little bit here And this is more about me than you And I'm saying that to protect you You can see

Via the video link Andrew If I could show you If you could see close up The hairs on my arm are standing up At the very thought Of listening to our own voices From what is it 10 years ago 10 plus years ago

Well I'm happy to Because this is mostly I was going to play mostly just tape of me and how awful I think I sound, but also how real the moment is to a degree, and maybe that's what I'm getting at here. And this is also a very specific time. Like, you and I right now, we're talking on a random Thursday in the middle of January. Well, we have some things going on in our lives, and I know you're really excited about that remodel, basement remodel conversation coming up, but, you know, I'm not picking up my life, quitting a job I love, hoping that I made the right decision to move to a different city when I love the one I met. You know what I mean? This really was a pretty big moment in my life, and it was sort of like going back and looking at photos or something and being like, wow, yeah, this was a big time, and we have it all recorded, and it's kind of an interesting experience. So I'm just curious here because I don't remember. What was the opening tape, and is it something we'd still play today? Tell me, tell me, tell me. Oh, yeah, it most certainly is. Great intro. I don't dance to Dido, dude, right? So let's say that maybe with the intro and then your opening, I'm going to skip ahead maybe about three minutes into the show. I'm in everything. Okay, so you already hear me rat-a-tat-tatting. I'm going to back this up a little bit. Great. Okay. Tell me. Oh, geez, Louise. So you would think that I could have cut this tape a little bit better. Let me pick it up here. nothing changed between yesterday and today but I need you to know

were you less anxious yesterday

yeah I mean I go through I go through um I ended the day a lot of alcohol every night trying to not feel your feelings

I'm trying to think. So it was, what's today? Wednesday? Today is Wednesday. So far I'm doing great. Yeah. Okay. I knew that today was Wednesday. Yeah. So Monday would have been the first day that I woke up, you know, like the first day after closing down the old night show. As a matter of fact, as Ron Upshaw posted on my Facebook page, today is the third day of the rest of my life, as he put it. So Monday was a day where I- I don't know exactly what that means, but it's kind of a good joke. Yeah, it was a pretty good joke. Woke up feeling good. That's one of my favorite Bright Eyes songs. I knew, you know, I knew things could get done. I got a lot of things done on Monday, just like taking tons of stuff to the Goodwill, just really, you know, packing, making stuff done. Had a lot of great meetings with some folks over at the new job. Making stuff done. And then Monday night, you know, Genevieve came home and she was working all day, of course, and comes home and the house is kind of in disarray, half packed, half not and stuff. And, you know, I could just tell that she was very anxious. I could imagine how that would feel like, you know, if the shoe were on the other foot or whatever. It's just kind of like, oh, you come, you leave the house at the beginning of the day And it's exactly like the house you've been living in for five years. And then you come home and, you know, from a hard day at work and it's just everything is kind of upended. Like, yeah. And so I could just tell that you. I guess this is a reminder to me and I'll remind you, Luke, that Genevieve did not move down to L.A. with me right away, which is why I was renting that Airbnb. Hence you and the French model lady. Yeah, exactly. Oh, la, la. Oh, la, la. And so, you know, I don't, I'm having trouble even remembering, I keep on picturing myself leaving my Wallingford apartment here, but that's not the case. Wallingford came years later when we moved back. When you returned to Seattle. And, like, it's really hard for me to even, as I listen to myself, this is me leaving Capitol Hill, so now I'm trying to remember. So I'm packed, I've packed up a whole bunch of stuff. I can't remember what Genevieve's deal was. She might have rented a smaller place here in Seattle, or she just lived amongst boxes. I think that was the case. I think we just wanted to pack up the house as much as possible while both of us were still here in Seattle so that I wasn't leaving her to do all the packing. But either way, that must be what I'm referring to is like Genevieve comes home. She's just living her life, but she comes home to a house that's all packed up. I was feeling really good Monday night and I was just saying, you know, don't be anxious. Like, this is this is great. Like, we're so close to doing what we've been wanting to do for a long time and everything. And then, so it's one of those things where I feel like when you're in a relationship, any kind of relationship, if one person maybe is overreacting a little bit, the other person will be the stabilizer, you know? And so I was feeling great Monday, like, got a bunch of shit done, et cetera. And then yesterday, I just woke up really, really anxious, really anxious about things. As the day went on, I had a few more work meetings. The more I talk about work, usually the better I feel about it later. I got some more stuff done yesterday. I was feeling good. This morning, though, man, what time is it? It's 12, 13. I can't shake the anxiousness. Can't shake it. Just feel it. Well said all around. Also, the fact that I called 12, 15 morning really says a lot about me. Well, I've done that this week. Yeah, that's true.

I believe I start to consider 2.30 p.m. to be the morning.

So I play that for you, and maybe I shared all of my thoughts about it before playing it, and so I don't have a power out. But I was just really it was such a weird thing for me this morning to hunt down an old episode of TBTL that could have been anything. It could have been you and I just seriously like talking about some dumb story where somebody was mysteriously pooping at a high school racetrack or something. You know, I knew it wasn't that because Max said that this was a controversial show that for some reason being hated and and Chris Hayes loved. and uh but just to go back and hear just such a i'm embarrassed about how i sound there i don't sound like a good host i'm not saying words sometimes and i'm certainly not saying the right words other times but it was a very interesting moment just to hear tbtl truly as

an audio diary almost yeah and i mean first of all i did not think you sounded overly like rat-a-tat or you know like if you hadn't described it that way before we listened i wouldn't have even really picked up kind of like uh that you were you know motor mouthing or something you and also honestly as i listened back to it i was sort of intrigued i was i was i was i was interested in like what you were going to say next because i what i what i was hearing was a person who was just like with without a filter just reporting how they were feeling and the fact that you were talking about how you went to bed feeling kind of okay, but then just woke up feeling pretty not okay. I totally agree with you that it is, it is interesting to listen back to something like this and realize that we have been, you and I have been basically just recording a five day a week audio diary for approaching 20 years. Um, and also I think that's what people find intriguing about it. It's why sometimes when we go into a kind of a different recording mode where the shows are a little more standalone, some people find that to be a little bit less compassion.

I mean, the main thing this show has going for it, if anything, is that it happens five days a week and our lives continue to sort of like occur during those during the hours between the show taping. And then we get together and then we talk about how we're feeling on that day or what happened the night before or this morning or when I realized today that I did not, in fact, take my garbage up the hill and it was not picked up.

Yeah, we can talk about that.

Even the very banal, like, I mean, and you moving to LA, that's not a banal topic, but like the, the main thing that, that, that I think that people find interesting about the show is that it really is a, it's a, like a, it's a long running project where two guys are just talking to each other about whatever it is that happened to them and how they feel about it. And then the next day, there's a new set of things that happened, and we have a new set of feelings about those things. All of it sort of backdroped against some very old tape from Arrested Development. Right. Some tape that barely ever gets updated. It wasn't that old then. It's old now. I mean, think about, like, it's crazy. The thing that I'm struck by whenever we listen to old episodes of TBTL is that it's almost all the same drop tape.

Yeah, yeah, unfortunately. That's why— That's on me.

That's my responsibility.

Oh, you're talking about the drops you drop in.

Yeah, the drops that I use are so, I've just been going, you know, I've been treading the same path. Tommy, Tommy, Tommy. All the gold that glitters or whatever he says. It's the music of Rush, right? No, Dido, right? Well, he starts out talking about Rush, and he says, I know it's not one of your Dido CDs. Oh, I see.

He's quoting Rush because that's a very Saxondale kind of move.

Yes, right. Um, but anyway, all that to say, Andrew, um, uh, I didn't think that you sounded like crazy on that episode, but I also understand how, why you feel the way you feel listening back. But I also understand why that is, why that kind of just energy is the thing that people, I guess, tune into the show for, whether it's coming from you or me and whether it's a day that we're high energy or maybe lower energy. the fact that like this is a just a this is kind of a running audio diary of our lives is I think kind of what the what the interesting part of the show is you know it also reminded me of and this

is a bit of a sidetrack here but I was listening to this tape earlier today and then as I puttered around this morning it reminded me of what else was going on in this moment something that I don't I could be wrong about this I don't think I've ever told this on the show before and I'm old enough now and enough time has passed that i just don't care but this would have been a few days after madeline brand tried to force me off of tbtl do you remember that i now i had memory hold that

or i maybe i blacked it out because that was such a traumatic memory but right like so the i mentioned

that it was the i like that friday before this episode and i think i said that was a wednesday I was doing my last show on Cairo with very mixed emotions like did I do the right thing of taking this job to start the show with Madeline down at KCRW and I you know I was in a generally a good place and I had made plans to continue to do TBTL out of the studios of KCRW because that was going to be my ISDN connection that was a big consideration for me and you in the future of the show as I decided to take this job you know how will i do tbtl because this is before we had all of the internet technology that we have now where we can dial up so seamlessly it was it's just amazing that this wasn't that long ago but it was such a different scenario we're trying to figure out do i get an isdn line at home can i just use a radio station's isdn line everything was isdn then and i hadn't you know talked to my boss madeline and i kind of had the same boss we answered to the same person the program director and he said yeah you can use our studios after hours you have to give priority to anybody who's doing kcrw work of course blah blah and then i get a phone call from madeline she's going to host the show that we're launching together and i'm the head producer on it that friday now keep in mind i'm getting ready to say goodbye to the two listeners of the andrew waltz show and i get you're right there is only one by this point um and there was one set of

and it was the guy who was waiting for that was when nick jarren carried you that's right

and and so i'm in a weird headspace anyway and i get this call from her just saying what is this i hear you plan on doing tbtl while you're producing my show and i don't know how she suddenly became aware of it at this late stage but she apparently had concerns about me you know continuing to moonlight on tbtl and she said something like well everything Everything you say represents the show, represents me. I think. she even said represents me or reflects back onto me or something and I was just like well this is something that I had arranged I have you know I've always been upfront about this I wouldn't have and I said I wouldn't have accepted the job if you were to tell me that I couldn't do TVTL at the same time and then she got she's like well we have to meet with the boss and then again now we're clock is ticking we're hours away from me going live on the radio and I have to have an emergency meeting with my new boss who I don't know if I've even met in person I have not well Yeah, I met in person once during an in-person interview and the host of the new show who's actively trying to get me to quit my passion project and side gig, by the way.

Can I interject one little piece of context here, which is that part of, I think, how you were on their radar and and I mean, you got the job because you're you are a you would never admit to this in public, but you are an extremely talented radio producer. Like, you're just really, really good at it. And so, I mean, that's why you got that job. But a thing that I think was intriguing about you was that you were associated with what at the time was being misunderstood as a very popular podcast, TBTL.

And you and Madeline were friends, and she really thought the world of you. And I think she thought I was – I remember her one time saying, this is Andrew. He's just like Luke. And I remember saying, you have no idea who I am, do you?

but like the part of the thing was because that was at the time where it was like we got to make and by the way i guess this is in a way still the case but it's like all of the terrestrial radio shows are trying to figure out how to be successful digital products and this like the to the t the fact that you were part of tbtl was seen as a really big i would imagine and again i don't want to say it overshadowed your your radio chops because you were a senior producer in near hampshire you produced a bunch of stuff in seattle like you really know your shit when it comes to radio producing but it wasn't not part of your appeal no and then so for it to be like this this guy's he's like he's like part of a he's part of a cool happening podcast and then to be like and now that's why you have to stop being part of it

there's to me some kind of weird irony in that yes and also i mean it definitely you and madeline were friends you guys had worked together you know professionally for a long time she thinks the world of you and so i don't think i even get very far in the process if she doesn't already know me through you i think i had been maybe i think i dropped her an email because of you being a mutual contact of ours long before this job opened up and i just said hey i'm interested in la if anything ever opens up so i mean i would totally credit your relationship as the reason i'm even on their radar which is totally fine i mean that's sort of how things sometimes work you know it's i'm a nepo baby baby um but uh but anyway yeah so that's that's networking or

whatever but i i was i remember the idea that then it was like but but now you're not going to do the thing that was one of the big things that made you appealing about this job yeah and

and also just the fact that it was kind of like oh well what you say reflects upon me now in this way that was like so i guess just insulting to me but also like that was in the backdrop of all of this i'm now having my first real misgivings you know after that conversation about like what have i gotten into and like in the fact that i have to now and so i ended up being on this meeting with her and our mutual boss and he kind of said well he was he was a bit mealy-mouthed about it and but basically i was able to just say i said several times i would not have taken this job if you guys had concerns about this and so whatever i just continued i just did i just continued doing it right and it eventually blew over but um i don't know i was just sort of thinking about that this morning because it was something that i'm not going to say i totally forgot about but i don't think about all that often and hearing me talk you know on this tape we just played and knowing that that's also in the background but i'm not even saying that you know what i mean because i was uncomfortable saying at the time i'm you know mostly comfortable saying it now although i do know i'm throwing people under the bus but it but it is what it is it's a true story and i'm just like i don't know i'm just sort of reliving this anxiety and also i think i'm just a bit of in a reflective mode lately anyway there's a lot of change in my life last year and it's kind of like wow just sort of taking stock a little bit it was very interesting to hear this not because i think it's good and not because i am not embarrassed about how i sound But it was just a reminder that what we're doing here sort of is more than just juggalo talk, which we haven't talked about juggalos in years. I don't know shit about juggalos, but you know what I mean, just to use that as a stand in.

Well, and the other thing, though, and I think this is why you brought this is why you asked Max to email you so you would have a pretext for bringing this up, which is like, thank God you stood your ground. By the way, no one's ever heard me say those words in that order. Thank God you adhered to the castle doctrine. No, thank God you stuck to your guns. Wait, why are all of these bad things? Thank I'm just like, because if I'm in your shoes. And it's like, I've gotten hired to be the senior producer for this like hot shit new big show in Los Angeles. And like the one thing that they want me to stop doing is stop doing this podcast with my buddy, which honestly is like a side gig, but is not paying your bills at that time. And it's just kind of like this thing you presumably enjoy doing. But like I would have if it were me, I would have been like, OK, if I have to choose between KCRW and TBTL, I'm choosing KCRW every time. And like the fact that you didn't do that is so awesome because we would not be here today, you and I. And I know that even when you eventually were working that job and it was so it was taxing on you and the hours were early and long and it was a lot of pressure. And then at the end of each one of those weekdays, it'd be time for you to start looking around and trying to sneak into a studio. That was the only part.

Yeah. And then run down the hall and flip like an ISD. Remember, we had to set up ISDNs every single day.

Get that Telos running. Oh, my God.

And like, who's using it?

No, I, I mean, really the, like the, the fact that you, and there was a lot of those moments too, where I think it was like, it would have, there was a, there were many, many times where it would have made probably more sense for you to kind of walk away from this thing. And had you done that in those days, this thing would have just stopped existing. Cause like, I mean, I was, I was not capable on any level of like continuing this thing solo. Um, so I'm really, really glad that you kind of, that you did not just fold immediately. Like what, cause again, if I'm on the phone with my new boss in LA and my new essentially supervisor, the host of the show, and that person is saying, well, you can't do this podcast with your buddy because that's going to mess up what we're trying to do down here. i would have been like absolutely uh we'll be deleting all of the files by the end of business today and you didn't do that and i am very very glad that you didn't well i deleted one file and it's the one apparently which the irony i guess is it irony or coincidence that the next day the show description makes it sound like the show that was missing was some whole thing you know i mean like the next day could have been anything else and it would have caused less suspicion on max's part yeah right yeah what i mean and that also if we can take a moment to this is why conspiracy theories are very compelling but they usually don't mean shit because and i'm talking about max now conspiracy theories make dumb people feel smart max i still love you and i think you do great work and we're probably going to need more this is a perfect example of like a conspiracy theory that like there's like well what what were they why would they say we're doing a happy show because yesterday's show was a sad show like why would you ever do that and it's like i don't know that's just what we said and then randomly the like the upload didn't happen on that previous show like there's a lot of smoke there and there's actually it turns out no fire on the previous you know nothing crazy happened on the show that was missing it was just missing and by coincidence the description of the following show made it seem like there was some reason that show had

been deleted yeah if this were in more like kind of um just banal time right and you and i were just doing mostly top stories and headlines and maybe i have some garbage anxiety or i get you know what whatever like some smaller narrative max would have just assumed as he did at first that it was just a numbering issue not a missing file but it happened to be a missing file where you can see from the from the descriptions of the shows in front of it and then behind it which it like you just said references it so heavily that like this was a show that people hated

like you're like well how does this go missing it's like the it's the missing it's like nixon and the what was the missing the halderman tapes when he had 16 minutes or something i accidentally

hit the delete button for big uh chunks of this you seem to be i i won't play it for you because i i know that you don't love that feeling either and i i didn't want to try to drag you down with me in playing this but i think then you go on to talk about some anxiety that you were just having where you just suddenly you just looked around and you just felt like everything was really untidy and messy in your work area.

Were we in my house? Well, that's the thing. It sounds kind of just a little bit echoey. Right, but I mean, we're probably at my house at that point.

I think so because you say something like, and again, this is a period where I kind of forget. This is when I was, this was a really, this was kind of a cool schedule for me at the time. I would wake up in, I think, late morning, go to the gym at the bottom of the hill of capitol hill then after the gym go right to your place record an episode of tbtl in your house and then leave your house and go do the night show at cairo and then right get home around 10 30 at night and then do it all over again and but it was it didn't feel like over work because it was just me talking to you or me talking to nick jar and on the radio you know what i mean it was Thank you.

In a way, TBTL could kind of be like a sort of a version of show prep for you, at least working out some thoughts and stuff.

Exactly. But when I listen to this tape now, it's so hard for me to picture me and you in that same room when I'm doing this rat-a-tat-tatting. I keep picturing myself somewhere by myself talking to you down some sort of audio line. But no, we were in your home because I said something like, oh, it's pretty neat in here or something. And you're like, I know, but I just can't, you know. And you were just like, you were just having some sort of anxiety thing as well that wasn't related to any big changes in your life. But that's what was going on at the time. And so, yeah, and I guess some folks just did not like us getting too real. Yeah, because how do we know that Bean didn't like it? He must have sent in an email that we read on the show or something, like you guys got to pull the nose up on this or something.

I have no idea. I have no idea. I'm speculating. Because I feel like that's the other thing. I felt like Bean was the one who gave us the feedback to don't fight on the air. He might have been the one that said, we don't like it when mommy, I don't know. Again, we've, as we've learned over the course of the show, but more acutely of late, my memory is just absolute Swiss cheese. Like I, I'm remembering things about Ralph Nader that never happened. I mean, I'm, I am now living that t-shirt that I made up called quit remembering that. Like I have officially quit remembering that whether I want to or not. all right let's thank some donors the names i'm about to read represent uh a sort of let's see six members of a larger movement and that is the group of people who would like this thing to continue for whatever reason even a show where we spend most of the show replaying an older show that we did and then wondering what it all means these folks like that they really really like it and they're donating their money so that this can exist because without folks like jack taylor of marysville washington we wouldn't exist and jack taylor has done so much for the show beyond just supporting us financially jack has made all kinds of amazing art the johnny and bobo dolls are based on original art concepts i believe by our friend jack he's a very talented i don't think

that's true oh that's not where those came from no i think he made art he made art based on johnny and bobo i think i could be wrong jack get at us if i'm wrong about that we've established my memory is flawless. Well, it's not like mine is, like, superb either, but I thought that the dolls were based on the cartoon, the animation that Eric drew for us. Remember Oops! The Dirty Monster? Oh, yes, yes, yes. I think the dolls were based on that, and then I think maybe that inspired other things. But Jack made these amazing big creations, these cartoon creations of you

and me that you would haul around. And these small ones that were like hand puppets, kind of like puppets that were on sticks. Anyway, Jack is amazing, and Jack, thank you for supporting the show for all these years. Nice to see your name on here. Thanks also to Jay and Stephen Berejnoy of Portland, Oregon.

Hey, friendos. Good to see you,

Jay. We go way, way back with Jay, and then I guess to some degree, Stephen, who's now been probably forced into conscription of listening to the show.

Jay is doing her duty in bringing more people into the cult. So, Stephen, Welcome, and thanks for hanging with us. It's been a few years now.

And thanks also to Michael Havens of Tumwater, Washington. Tumwater. Some of my favorite repeaters are from Tumwater. Tumwater is my go-to taco time stop spot when I'm driving from Seattle down here to where I live, which is exactly what happened last weekend after we watched the Seahawks game together. I spend the whole first part of the drive, Seattle through Tacoma and all those areas, just thinking Tumwater, Tumwater, Tumwater. You get to Tumwater. I get to Tumwater, and it's time to go to that Taco Time, which I love. They're great over there.

This is a serious question. I know we've talked about this incessantly on the show over the years, but there are two Taco Times. One is considered sort of real by Pacific Northwest.

In each person, there are two Taco Times.

The one that is the quote-unquote real Taco Time that people who grew up here are obsessed with, that is the one that is officially called Northwest? Or is it Taco Time Northwest? Yes. Or is Taco Time Northwest the interloper?

No, Taco Time Northwest is the standard bearer. That's the real deal. That's the true heir to the Taco Time fortune. Okay, good to know. Which is, by the way, a mountain cave filled with, they used to call them Mexi fries, and now I think they call them tater tots or tater fries or something. You have Taco Time International. which is the one that you've got those in Portland. You've got those spread out kind of through the West. Taco Time International has a different logo. They have mostly different menu items. It's not a bad place. Like in a pinch, I'm sure a Taco Time International will do, but it is not part of the true bloodline of the Taco Time world. And that's all of the ones like, so up in Kelso, Washington, which is just a bit north of me, that is the southern border of legit taco times and it was part of why i decided to move out here and buy this house because it was i'm within door dashing of a true taco time i uh i'm looking at

the taco time international logo now and i see that it is very different and so i don't think i've ever seen what i'm going to refer to here as a fake taco time i don't know you wouldn't have

you would have had to be like in portland or like eugene oregon or once i drove i mean i don't think i drove exclusively for this reason but it was a factor there was for a time because i went on the taco time website and i think i'm this is before i knew there was a distinction i was living in los angeles a place andrew where it is famously difficult to get good mexican food and i was like really really homesick for the specific taste of like a taco time soft taco and the the uh the tater tots and the ranch dressing which isn't really ranch dressing all of this stuff and i was on the website like where's the closest taco time to me and there was one listed at being at a gas station i believe in barstow california and again i don't think i drew i wouldn't have driven to Barstow for this, but I might have made a specific plan, like maybe I'm going to Vegas or I'm going somewhere that way. It's pretty far from LA. And I'm going to make sure to stop at this taco time at this gas station because I was like, that's amazing. And then I got there and it was a taco time international. They didn't have any of the stuff that I was jonesing for of a

very specific flavor profile. I like the idea of fear and loathing in Las Vegas, only instead of a trunk full of drugs, you just have a trunk full of tater tots and whatever else is on the menu

there. There's nothing more vicious than a man who's deep in the throes of a number three meal soft taco binge. By the way, I've had Hunter S. Thompson on the brain because I was reading an article in the Times today about reopening the investigation into his passing. I have that

flagged. I saw that headline and I'm interested in it. And yeah, I want to read that as well. I have not dug into it yet.

Yeah, because, of course, he's been gone for a long time. He took his own life, or at least that was the assumption. The main, without giving, I mean, can you give away real-life events? Can you spoil non-fiction events the same way you could spoil, like, a fictional book or movie?

It's interesting. We get into that conversation with some of the documentaries about real-life events, but when they're sort of spread out in a storytelling way. But I am not worried about that in this case. It's a newspaper article.

um yeah i mean it sure seems like probably he uh he took his own life which was the initial report and something he had talked about a lot he was obviously a gun nut and he was in pretty poor health there was a lot that was going on in his life that made the circuit he also wrote a note at the end which was very much in his voice about the fact that he was going to do that but um the fight is between his um son and uh and his uh widow he had only been married for a few years to somebody who had previously been his assistant and um and they kind of have different ideas the two of them about the sort of legacy of hunter s thompson and it's and she is the one that is um now kind of wants to get more explanation about the about the last moments of hunter s thompson's life there isn't a lot of there isn't a lot of factual stuff in the in the article that kind of like raises for me huge questions like i i finished the article kind of thinking what i started the article thinking which is like this probably went down again i'm already as i've already established this episode i'm deeply non-conspiratorial maybe to a fault like maybe to a lack of imagination like to the point where i'm just generally buying what you know what the you know what the what the sort of main narrative is not not these days not when it comes to like ice or law enforcement but generally speaking you know if there's if there's a write-up in the new york times of years ago that says hunter s thompson has passed away he took his own life the medical examiner ruled it a suicide i'm just like well that's probably what happened and and that would have her having now read this new article i still think that's what happened

well speaking of conspiracy theories and i'm sorry to belabor this but i was sitting here thinking what was taco time international doing like were they purposely trying to like confuse the marketplace because i'm assuming

that Taco Time Northwest existed first. And if Taco Time International pop-ups, or not pop-ups, but restaurants are only in the same area that there are Taco Times. Like, I didn't have either one of these. It'd be one thing if I grew up in Ohio and we had Taco Time International, right? But it sounds like they're going after the same exact turf.

Andrew, do I have to explain Taco Time lore to you? It's rivaled only by the Cimaryllin. I realized as I started to say that, I don't know how to say that. Is it called the Cimmerillum or the Cimmerillium?

I know what you're talking about. It's one of those Lord of the Rings stories. It's the Lord of the Rings.

I was trying to make a Lord of the Rings joke. And thankfully, I would imagine that Janice Bowers of Tucson, Arizona, where they famously also don't have a lot of good Mexican food, probably knows all of this lore, but Janice, just stick with us, if you will. It was one company. Taco Time was one company, and then there was, like, you know, a couple of the owners. there was a I don't know if it was acrimonious or not but there was a there was a split and and and so you know there was basically like everyone was calling it taco time but this fine distinction was if it was the company that was then technically known as taco time northwest or taco time international they both were I think probably free to run their chain of restaurants the way they wanted to and just the you know it was sort of like vhs versus beta you know taco time northwest just won out like they just probably had a slightly better system so that that became the dominant style here in the northwest but there are still a few examples of beta out there

and i see so i'm on the website i was just while while we were talking earlier i was just like well what's going on with taco time international i saw that it's owned by kahala brands which has a very um hawaiian kind of name and imagery around it but i'm looking at their website now and they have nothing to do with hawaii it was just inspired by trips to hawaii it's actually

yeah i'm guessing that the owners of taco time international have a lovely home on the island

and they um the kahala brands owns and get ready for this a whole bunch of brands now cold stone Creamery, Blimpy, Taco Time, Samari Sam's, which I have not heard of, Wetzel's Pretzels, which I have heard of. They own Wetzel's? Maui Wow, not Maui Wowie, which I believe is a strain. When I was a kid, we could only afford Maui Wow. Wow. Pinkberry? Pinkberry? Pinkberry. Planet Smoothie, Baja Fresh, which I kind of like on a road trip, by the way. I do like it. I mess with a Baja Fresh. It's been a long time for me. Great Steak and Surf City Squeeze, which was apparently the original thing. Somebody opened up, and I think it's notable that they never say where Surf City Squeeze was originally based, but it says, Our History, it all began in 1981 when Kahala Brand's founder, an entrepreneur, established a smoothie and juice bar concept known today as Surf City Squeeze. They don't say where that was or who the founder was. Then there's a timeline and it goes, it kind of explains how they start acquiring all these brands. And then it says in 2003, let's see, they purchased the Samurai Sam's Teriyaki Grill. And then it says they purchased Taco Time. It purchases the Taco Time chain out of the Northwest part of the US, which offers a variety of freshly prepared blah, blah, blah. So I guess the people who split off then were acquired by this fake Hawaiian Kahala brands.

That's my read on the situation because, Andrew, I'm on the Taco Time Northwest website and their origin story, to which I would say,

Are we going to get in one of those fights that you were talking about before? Well, I am on the Taco Time Northwest.

west um and they're saying that they opened their first restaurant in 1962 in white center okay um and a lot can happen this is what they say 60 years and counting a lot can happen in six decades discover a few of our most iconic moments and then they kind of just go through uh their kind of their origin story and i won't bore everybody with it but basically i think you've described it exactly right which is uh the the i would say the the breakaway company the Taco Time International was likely then acquired by this shockingly large restaurant interest that has a number of those restaurants that you mentioned, like Wetzel's Pretzels and Pinkberry. Those are really pretty big food concerns. So I have a sense that probably what they're called Kahala or something, that whatever the parent company of that, they probably saw, who knows, I'm guessing here, but there's eight or ten of these Taco Time Internationals, and we're going to go ahead and buy those up and run those is probably what sort of happened there.

Do you feel like, and I know we haven't had to do literally anything on the show. It's totally my fault. But do you feel like this region that we live in is especially prone to restauranteurs? I'm sorry, restaurateurs. I always say that wrong. There's no N. I know.

And it's like, why would the word restaurateur not have N in it? I mean, you want to talk about a missing episode? Yeah, get on that, Max. What's the story? Yeah, Max. That's your next project.

I don't know.

Why am I yelling at Max? I don't know. So one of our best friends and most ardent listeners has now become a conspiracy theorist who needs to solve the mystery of restaurateur.

But I feel like I can list here a few that jump to mind immediately of like kind of famous or like kind of locally famous or locally appreciated chains that have a split. I guess Taco Time would be the biggest example as far as footprint. But I think of like, I don't know if you recall Paseo, which was like this beloved sandwich place in Fremont. But I guess the existing Paseo isn't as good as it used to be because the real heart and soul of Paseo left, like whoever those chefs are, whatever sandwich artists left to create their own thing.

The new one that's up on like whatever that is, 15th or something.

I'm blanking on the name of it now. But you had Paseo, I think Tan Brothers, which is a pho place around here. I think that was a split-off. Zell's Chicken is a really big one. Talk about beloved microchains. They started HeavenScent. And I feel like, is there something about this area? Or am I, when I was younger, I just didn't follow this shit?

Maybe a little of both. See, I can't speak to what the scene was in Ohio because I wasn't there. So I only know about the Northwest. but yeah definitely it's a place where people really love the kind of localism of things like that more so like dick's drive-in for instance like here's what i can compare it to like portland and someone's going to email in and they're going to correct me on this but like because i've only known about portland from the time that i've lived in the area but i don't have a sense of those same kind of stories in portland like oh you haven't been to such and such like the story with portland's food to me seems to be oh we have these uh you know james beard award uh nominee restaurants and this is the place where you can get the best this and they're starting this place up like portland really identifies as a real food town but what i don't hear about as much as like oh this is a local burger joint that's unique to portland that's similar to say dick's drive-in and there's all this local energy around it like everybody goes there after the baseball game after you know whatever and so i don't maybe you're right maybe seattle might have some i mean part of it might be seattle's blue collar roots you know the seattle that i grew up in was like a very you know it was a lot of fishing and timber and bowing and it just had this kind of i mean i think again get very scared when i try to do things from memory but i do think there was even maybe a sign in the 70s that said like well the last person leaving seattle turned the light out that's very famous yeah and kind of like it just had this sort of scrappy again blue collar kind of i wouldn't say run down but it just had this energy around it that it was like the people that did live there just liked the things that were there in a way like it was you know and taco time was was one of those things chubby and tubby getting your christmas tree at chubby and tubby like there's a lot of lore around seattle from the 70s and 80s that i think was i don't know if that was unique to seattle but i don't feel like i hear people in portland this makes it sound like i'm saying people that live in portland don't love portland but there i there might be something to what you're wondering about there might be something about seattle that we build up these local sort of small time institutions whether it's isell's fried chicken or taco time or or paseo and then they become so popular locally that like the

center can't hold and then you have a split off what if chubby and tubby split what if you end up with chubbies on one side of town tubbies on the other side town unbien by the way unbien was the restaurant see like i said oh did you did you say that i probably talked right over it that was the like the when paseo kind of split and i don't know the details of it and i probably already misdescribed it but i believe you have paseo still in fremont and then some unbiens around town too

I will tell you, Andrew, if you want, my hottest food take, it's that I was never that into Paseo.

I went to Paseo with Genevieve maybe about a year ago. Sandwiches are hard to eat. Yes. Did you say there are to eat or hard to eat? Hard to eat. Yes, that was my experience. Now, again, this is post-split, so I don't know if Paseo, as it currently stands in Fremont, is a shadow of its former self. Maybe some people would make that argument. Maybe others wouldn't. But I remember being very excited about getting the sandwich. I don't usually go for really big, messy sandwiches. You and I both have a weird thing about not wanting stuff on our face, like messy.

food i power through for some foods that you are not interested in like ribs or whatever but um i remember getting this sandwich and i was like okay it's gonna be a messy sandwich but the flavor didn't pay off i've never had a sandwich that was so messy with such little payoff from flavor it just didn't it didn't it didn't have the flavor i was expecting i was

very surprised yeah this was years ago when i went to paseo down and like you said in fremont but it was like the sandwich i got was some sort of pork type of deal and it was like it was just difficult to eat because it was large it was pretty messy and also i couldn't like bite through the pork and the bread because the pork was like maybe a little i don't know if it was gristly or just like it seemed to me like questionable sandwich design but of course i couldn't say that, because there's a line down the block, and everyone's, you know, freaking out about this place, but it was not for me. That being said, I was kind of weirdly tempted before I got to the Tumwater Taco Time, which, by the way, is where this all started. Oh, yes. I did drive by, I saw a sign on I-5 for Dick's, you know, there's one that's way south now by the airport, which, by Oh, I didn't know that. That's very nouveau to me. That's a recent addition, I think, in Des Moines or something. But I saw the sign on I-5, and I was like, man, when's the last time? When is the last time that I went to old Dick's Drive-In, and if I'm going to do one of my quarterly interactions with red meat, should this be one of those times? I didn't. I went to the Taco Time in Tumwater. Thank you, by the way, to Michael for spurring on that amazing 30 minutes of conversation.

We're still thanking donors.

Thanks also to Constance Buke of Albany, New York. Albany. Albany, New York. Thanks, Constance. Appreciate you. Thanks to Glenn Rosen, who's in Newton, Massachusetts, like Isaac. Andrew, you heard that?

You know, I thought, you know, sometimes people use the pronouncer space on the form to sort of make a joke. Yeah, like if somebody says, my name is Bill, they'll give a pronouncer for a simple name to pronounce, like Bill or something. And I saw that it was Newton, Massachusetts, and Constance put, I'm sorry, Glenn put in the pronouncer, the town is pronounced Newton like Sir Isaac. And I thought that was a joke. But you're right, sometimes that's pronounced Newtown. I think it's usually with an extra W in there if it's Newtown. But that actually was a very helpful tip and not a joke. And I kind of feel bad for talking smack about Glenn behind his back.

Well, now we're talking it in front of his back. That's right. So at least there's full transparency here. Sunlight is the greatest disinfectant, Andrew. That's right. As I've always said, when I was sitting under that tree and that apple fell on me, do we think that an apple really fell on Sir Isaac Newton's head? And that was how he got the idea for gravity. We're sure somebody didn't shoot it off his head with a bow and arrow. That was William Tell.

That was William Tell.

I did see a crazy thing the other day online, a video of a pound of feathers and a pound of bowling ball dropping at the same time in a huge vacuum, and they fall at exactly the same rate.

So how were they contained? When you say a pound, were the feathers loose?

Well, it was a bowling ball, so it wasn't a pound. it was whatever the bowling ball weighed and then they put these kind of like lead weights or something on the feathers so that the feathers and the bowling ball weighed the same amount right and first they dropped them uh this was actually you know what it's in it's in ohio i think it's outside of cleveland this particular place and it's this it's a nasa facility has this big silo and what they're able to do is vacuum out all of the air so that there's absolutely no like air resistance so first they they have it like a normal there's it's a normal oxygenated environment they drop the bowling ball and the feathers and of course the bowling ball hits first because the feathers are sort of flitting down and um the guy's like yeah but that's because of basically air resistance on the feathers if you get rid of that these are going to fall at the same rate and you're like there's just no way and then they extract all of the air out of this big vacuum-tubed canister, and they drop the feathers and the bowling ball, and they fall exactly at the same rate, and they hit the thing at the same moment. It was such a mind bleep. Wow. That's the Glenn

Research Center there in Cleveland. That's what it's called? I forgot about that. Yeah, because it's John Glenn.

And we're thanking Glenn Rosen of

Sir Isaac Newton, Massachusetts. Look at that. And Glenn spelled the same way for both.

John Glenn. That's the name for

John Glenn. Yeah, let's see. NASA John Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field. They also have a facility in Sandusky. You know it's in Sandusky. It's America's roller coast.

cedar point yes indeed i recently had a thought that i might be up for getting on a scary roller

coaster again like i had i had just decided that was no longer for me i have yeah what i don't like what i will never get back on are one of those rides where like you know the um the big the swings where it's like the you're on a you're on a swing and and a long you know chain kind of you're sitting in a swing and it's spinning you around and you're going around and around and around i will never ever ever get on one of those again because what gives me the fear about rides is if this broke right now i would die like if this chain snapped i would just get flung into you know right into the um elephant ear uh stand and i would be dead with a roller coaster i feel less like that i feel like a lot of things could break on the roller coaster and you wouldn't die what can't break is the part that attaches the wheels of the roller coaster to the track but every almost everything and the track can't break i guess as you're trying to but like i think it's less dangerous or at least it feels less than what happened was i was watching like a video somebody was filming this is like the largest i think it's the new largest roller coaster in the world it's somewhere in the middle east i think unsurprisingly and they were filming being on it, and I was watching it, and it was very POV, right? Like, it was very much like you were on the roller coaster, and I was like, that looks kind of scary but fun.

So, I need to be careful with my language here, because I don't want to say something that is, like, kind of triggering to people, or be flippant about human life, my own included. But I'm actually getting very sweaty palms talking about this and thinking about this. So, as you know, I'm scared of heights. Growing up, I was scared of heights, and I didn't go on roller coasters. But then when I got into high school, and again, I lived by Cedar Point, which is one of those parks that's internationally known. It often has, like, the world's tallest or fastest roller coaster or ride. It's always in competition with these other parks, like you mentioned, in Dubai or wherever else. And so it's like, it's the real deal, you know. And in high school, I started going to Cedar Point with my friends, and then I started getting on roller coasters. I don't know if it was peer pressure or what. And then I started going on them and absolutely loving them for a short period of my life, just loving roller coasters. But then got to an age where the fear of heights has snuck up on me again. I'm not in the habit of going to amusement parks. And so I don't think I'll ever. Last time I went to Cedar Point, I went with my parents and Genevieve. And Genevieve was the only person who wrote a bunch. It was like having a kid. It was like me and my parents had this kid who was like running around. We were just waiting for her eating ice cream cones while she would be like in an hour long line to go on. Uh-huh. Just absolutely insane mechanism, right? Mm-hmm. and at Cedar Point there is still the swings that you describe and I know kind of where they are kind of I think they're tucked kind of behind old town like Cedar Point is such a whatever it's just such a memory for me and there I have a nostalgic feel towards them and also it's a really nice view and I'm still scared of heights but you get up there and the thing about Cedar Point is it's right on the lake so when you get on these rides and you go up you have these incredible views of lake erie yeah and the rest of the park and everything and so it's really cool but the thing is i will go on that chair ride and you are right when i'm on it i'm even thinking if something blows here i'm spinning i'm looking at like where i'd spin out and where i would land or something but i would rather take that risk which i think is minimal than being on one of the tallest roller coasters in the world having it break and then having to walk down the stairs i guess i didn't think about that part my biggest thing is and people do that people have to do that i can't tell you how many times i've been at cedar point where a ride well it's not like it happens all the time but i know that i was in line for a ride one time when it stalled for a while and then it picked back up again and i think that's right i was with my buddy joe and i said and joe's like well i'm staying in line they're opening it back up and i said and for this i'm out and i just left him in line and i went again ate a hot dog or something i don't know the idea of now for me when i'm going up the roller coaster uh you know the first hill or whatever and you see those stairs that lead down never even those stairs are there for a reason and it's because sometimes people have to go down those stairs and i know i couldn't do it i know i'm getting

upset thinking i'm seriously having a physiological reaction to this conversation right now So I think about those stairs and the fact that I could potentially have to unbuckle my seatbelt, move that thing up, and of my own.

Climb out of the roller coaster car, do we call it?

So high up, higher than some airplanes fly, Luke. That's scientific fact. I will stand by that. And walk 30,000 steps down. Like, I just, the idea of doing that, I am like, you know what? Put me in one of those swings.

swing me out to lake erie and fire fire arrows at me as i go down you're like just make it quick

make it you know you'd rather it just be over than not over but now involving you having to do something that's like deeply terrifying but i'm looking at the emergency evacuation spiral stale stairs on the val raven roller coaster which i think might be at cedar point and uh They are enclosed, kind of. See, that's not the ones.

I'm talking about around a regular roller coaster up the hill, and they're to either left or right. Like, if you're in the car, and they're just stairs. They're just stairs with a railing.

What do they do if you're like in – what happens if you're like not at the tippy top? let's say that you're like you happen to be in a car that's part of the way down the the the hill as it were would you have to climb out of the the car are they like are there stair is there a walkway that goes all along the thing or you only have to do that if you're at the tippy top and it

stops i think it's the stairs are only where you have a chain that is pulling you up and so i only i could be wrong about this but i've only oh when i see the ones you're talking about i'm looking at

the ones i do you know i mean i haven't been on as many roller coasters as you probably went on back in the day but now i'm seeing exactly what you're talking about it never even occurred to me to look over and look at those stairs they're just going exactly down what you're going up

because the rest of the roller coaster is gravity right now there are there mechanisms could go wrong in the cars like brakes could potentially freeze you somewhere else on the on the track and i don't know what you would do there i don't think they have stairs on i know they don't not on the twirly, you know, on the, you know, loop-de-loops or whatever. You couldn't have stairs, but, yeah.

I'm just laughing because I'm looking at a photo on Cleveland19.com. Guests escorted off of Cedar Point roller coaster after train stops on hill. And I'm watching people that are living so incredibly inside your nightmare, Andrew, and they are, like, clinging to the handrail as they're going down this thing. So don't look at that. Don't look at that photo. You don't need more nightmare fuel.

Yeah, I guess not. Although, like I said, I'm just not touching those things anymore. Big or tall, my rollercoaster days are past. Big or tall?

That's where I get my pants.

What am I saying? Well, Luke, thank you so much for putting together a show sheet today. Put all that work into a show so that I can come on here and just...

I was toiling over a hot laptop this morning, getting articles like Aspirational Clutter snake yoga i just uh did not let you have any control over the show today we started the show on the premise of like what's interesting about the show is not juggalo talk as much as it is us talking about how we're afraid to go on roller coasters you did have juggalo talk on the show

the history of taco time northwest that's right and whatever happened to hunter i'm probably going there for lunch today by the way yeah got in there got in your head yep yeah i'm on a mission All right, so we do, I'm sort of stalling here, because I'm just going to go back into my spam folder one more time. We can really take our time, I guess. I can't believe we only have one. Well, we kind of have two. Oh, you want to add one? Do you want to do it now, or do you want me to do the next? Yeah, I want to say happy Blur's Day to Becca, my beloved girlfriend. Oh, that's right. Today is her actual birthday. Nice. Well, happy Blur's Day to Becca. How did she do on Wordle today? I don't think I've done it yet.

Oh, I'll ask her. She had a very, very busy day, so I don't know. Yeah. Blur's Day related or work related? How did work-related, we were trying to make some birthday plans, and she was like, I would love to. But then she laid out her day for me, and it was completely insane. It's like you agreed to all of these things on your birthday? Yeah. How did you do on Wordle, Andrew wants to know?

By the way, there is a listener, and I'm sorry that I forgot your name, but I've been thinking about you a lot lately. You wrote to me about Wordle about three weeks ago or two weeks ago. and I feel like I didn't, I feel like maybe my email was maybe a little rude because I never heard back from you. And you wrote to me, I responded, and you suggested a different starting word for me to start using for my Wordle every day because I was bemoaning the fact that I used the same word for years and years. The word arise was a good starting word for me. wrote in and said well how about this i used to use arise or something similar too why don't you try using this one and i said well that it has a lot of the same letters and i said well that would be good except that one also has already hit on wordle and i don't want to use an opening word that hasn't that has already been used that there's no chance that that could be the word and i never heard back from you so maybe that was a bit rude for me to say that you continue doing whatever works for you but i have found a replacement starting word i'm making this announcement right now nobody tell Genevieve though because she doesn't know and I don't want her to know because then she can sort of gamify it and if I go first she can figure out what's going on but the my new starting word of the past couple of days or week or so is aired sorry I'll wait for it wow aired like as in previously aired exactly programming exactly Oh, yeah, that aired yesterday because that's got your A, your I, your E. Those are the vowels I like to start with. And then if none of those vowels hit, I can do, like, clout next, which gets your O and your U in there, and a T is important. So that's the thing. Like, with my arise word, I had a game plan sort of. I kind of knew how to react.

You were like an NFL coach.

You had your first 10 moves already scripted. Yes, or a college coach, right? So anyway, I'm going with aired. And so to the listener that I was just horribly rude to, consider that one as well. That might be in your same letter, family. All right. We are obligated to listen to the entire Blur's Day song. We only have one Blur's Day today.

It would be amazing and very fitting if we ran out of time to do the one Blur's Day message. We start talking about Wordle and other things, and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, I'm sorry, we ran out of time for the one person. That's right.

All right, I'm going to get to this. I'm sorry for, well, two people. Happy Blur's Day to Becca. Yes. Thank you. And then Jessica says, happy Blur's Day to my awesome five, Ned. I love the name Ned, who just turned 15 years old. Here's to a sensitive, curious, empathetic kid who inspires his mom every day to do more and swear less. And as I've told him, the insomnia caused by my pregnancy with Ned is actually the reason. And I started listening to podcasts in the middle of the night and found TBTL all those many years ago. Power out. So thanks to Ned and happy 15th Blur's Day.

Thank you for being extremely active in utero and making it so that your mom had to put something tremendously boring into her ears to fall asleep. And we were that tremendously boring thing.

He's a kicker. We got a kicker. All right. Happy Blur's Day to Ned. to becca and i hope jessica sleeps easy also i guess you know what uh like belated blurs day

wait no i already did that one i was gonna say it was my niece a gemma's blurs day you just really feel like you need to pad this out don't you i just have a big family andrew and i hope you're like there must be somebody yeah i mean there probably is you know do you do this i have all of my actually i don't have gemmas but like i have every blurs day every birthday that is important to me, which would be anybody in my family, extended family, stuff like that. I've

got it all in my calendar. Yeah, I got most of them on my calendar too. I have no ability to

remember that kind of stuff, but it helps to have it in there. It felt a little formal when I was

doing it. Well, here's a true story about me and my Google Calendar is at some point, and I'm talking years ago, like over a decade ago, I think Google Calendar just started somehow scanning my emails or something or maybe my contact list and just started automatically putting certain friends birthdays and family members birthdays on my calendar it auto populated it from things it knew but this was a really long time ago and here's the kicker luke just like ned yeah it they were all off by one day whoa i don't know why i have no idea so i still see birthdays sometimes and think, wait a second, is today their birthday or is it actually tomorrow? And I've been kind of spending the last, I don't know, five, ten years trying to get things back in order. That's almost worse.

That's like worse than just not having them at all because you're constantly going to be questioning it.

Yeah, and what I need to do, because I just had a family member's birthday over the weekend and I had to confirm with another family member, I'm like, I do have that right, right? I should put in the calendar, confirmed. That's a very Andrew move, to be like, yes, this has definitely been confirmed. But that also seems like a lot.

Yeah, this morning, I woke up very early to go use the restroom, as is typically the case at this age. And that was when I sent Becca, because it was technically her birthday, and that's when I sent her.

a happy birthday message, and I sang her a little happy birthday song, and then I went back to bed with this, like, strong, smug sense of satisfaction, knowing I was the first person who had wished her happy birthday.

Uh-huh. Yeah.

You know, because she comes from a big family, and they're all very loving and birthday wishy, and they also do the thing where they sing the song, and they send you the singing of the song and everything, but I was like, nobody else was up at 4 a.m. doing this, and that was all thanks to my enlarged prostate.

Wow!

Happy birthday from me and my enlarged prostate. That's right. Somebody make that card.

All right. That's going to do it for today's episode of TBTL. This is fun. Tomorrow, we will be joined by our dear friends, Megan Hatcher-Mays and Lindy West from the Text Me Back podcast. We have another TBTL-TMB or TMB-TBTL. I forget which order that goes in. Crossover program.

Yes, that's right. TMBDL of the dog, as Lindy likes to call it. That's how we say it. Yes, it was very fun. We recorded it. we're very very excited to post it tomorrow so please tune in for that a lot of laughs i was telling you when i got a lot of laughs i was just like a lot of hat content hats entertainment

oh that's right away segment on the show that's right we're taking the world by storm yeah please do tune in for that in the meantime everybody have a great thursday take care of yourselves please stay safe again thinking of our friends in minnesota right now and all of the folks who are about to get kind of borne down on by this really cold weather everybody stay warm stay inside and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all power out