Muse

Can I start you gentlemen with something to drink? Oh, here we go. I'm good with just water. You sure? The bar is everything. Oh, no, no, thanks. I don't drink. Do you mind if we drink? No, no, no, of course not. I almost started to see it right. Oh, my God. I crammed my pants.

I'm like, oh, no. Yeah, what am I going to do here?

I have a double bourbon in the burners. I have a giant glass boot filled with beer. I'm sorry. We don't have that. Well, then your bar doesn't have everything. TBTL.

Daddy's here, and Daddy is going to take care of you. Please don't refer to yourself as our Daddy. I am your big Daddy, and I am going to kiss the boo-boo. Are you all afraid? No. Daddy's here for you, my widow angels.

I don't know what you did or didn't do, but I do know that I can't know what you know or you don't know. You know?

I know.

Okay. I know what you're feeling, and it's fear, but not fear of failure, fear of opportunity.

This is the real thing. This is the necessary art of our time. This needs respect. I see you exhaling, sir. We're going to be with you in just a moment. You've got to be patient, okay? We're very, very sorry. our apology. We apologize to you. You will not have to wait that much longer at all.

Well, all right. Hello. Good morning and welcome to a Tuesday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. It's an audiophiles nightmare. My name's Luke Burbank. I am your host. I might have tacos when I go home. I'm not quite sure yet. Coming to you once again from Miami Beach, Florida. I feel warm and I'm levitating. Beautiful Miami Beach, where I guess it was unusually warm the first couple of days that we were here. It was in the 80s. I thought that was just the default setting. But then the temperature dropped by 20 degrees today, and yet it's still beautiful. It is still absolutely lovely, even at 62 degrees. It is great. We will take it. We're enjoying being down here. Although I am watching the wind right now just absolutely pummel, pummel the hotel next to ours, the swimming pool area and just it blew it blew three of the seat cushions off of their uh off of the like chaise lounges they're on and very soon into the swimming pool so i don't know maybe things are a little more raucous here than i was expecting i'll tell you something else uh about miami beach everything is open late and i love it i like to party do you like to party now was i going to any of these establishments any of these restaurants and bars it's really the restaurants I mean, bars are open like everywhere. But like, was I eating at any of these restaurants last night at 11 p.m.? No. Did I like that they're here open with people sitting around tables enjoying themselves? Yes, very much so. It's fun to be in a place where there seems to be a lot of lively energy. This show, I'm telling you, this episode is going to have a ton of lively energy because I am on my second coffee of the day. This one is an iced coffee. It's really good. And it's really putting some pep in my step. Here as we arrive at episode 4,650 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. I'm all hyped up. I'm putting out a very energetic front because I'm being strong. I'm projecting a strong presence because inside I'm sad because I might need to leave TikTok.

People of TikTok.

Another one bites the dust. TikTok has now fallen into the hands of Larry Ellison, of Oracle fame, and of Donald Trump friendship. There are rumors going around that people cannot send direct messages to each other with the word Epstein in them. I am a little dubious of that whole thing, but another social media platform that I like and spend way too much time on is now, I don't know. It's very possibly a place I don't need to be spending my time and energy and my attention. What do they say? If it's free, if the product is free, you are the product. It's my relationship with TikTok. Anyway, we'll get into that. Also, I think I may have come up with an extremely elegant solution for my quandary about how and where to watch the Seattle Seahawks in the upcoming Super Bowl. Come on, brain. Think of things. Come on, brain. Be so smart. uh so we'll talk about that as well with this guy longest running cobro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships he is andrew and boom goes the dynamite walsh and he's joining me right now good morning my friend good morning luke i have a

big important announcements almost almost like a psa to make here at the beginning of the show but before we do that i need you to know something only because you talked so much well that that sounds pejorative only because you mentioned a couple of times how much energy you're coming into the show with today i need you to know that like i forced myself to go to bed around four in the morning last night around 3 45 i want to say i don't know what happened to me I was working on various digital projects involving computers, not my fingers, and I just thought some people might need to know that, which kind of digital projects I was working on, so that's the thing for me. So anyway, I am coming in with the opposite energy of you, unfortunately. I worry about dragging.

You know what I think, Andrew? Oh, this is an interesting one. And I was very likely getting up when you were going to sleep because of the time difference. Because I got up at about, I woke up at about 7 this morning here.

We should have had a meeting.

We could have. Loop in, John. Yes.

We literally could have. Because around, so I didn't stay up until 4. But I remember looking at the clock here in my studio. And it was like 3.40. And I was like, call it. Just call it, Walsh. Go to bed. And I was kind of having, I mean, everything's fine. But I was just having one of those nights earlier, like my early evening. I think I got into a bit of a head spin on some things, just, you know, maybe world stuff, but also just sort of like sometimes your head just gets the bad chemicals in them and you start spinning out on things or whatever. And so I think what happened is it took me a while to get over that. And then maybe that that even though I felt fine by the time I went to bed, maybe my body just wanted to stay up for a while feeling maybe not those feelings.

so anyway i i don't know exactly what yeah i feel like you need in my knowing of you i mean we call it andy times but i feel like you need that like period of time at the end of the night where there's nobody needs anything from you and nobody's self including and maybe maybe chiefly including yourself yes and like that's a really important part of your kind of wind down for the day and like i i don't have the exact same experience but i can absolutely picture that for you and how it's like okay mostly got the bad feelings away and now we need to do the next phase of this of this cleanse which is like three hours of digitizing vhs tapes which is exactly the

lead-in i needed to my big announcement i would like to say to our audience which i know is not just spread across this country but across the entire globe yeah i also know we have a lot of listeners here in seattle who grew up here in the seattle area and i want to say if you are somebody who would have been a youth let's say a child or maybe a pre-teen in 1994 and you attended a bitter lake community center easter egg hunt i have video that you might be interested in i found a tape i'm going to tell you about this tape i found and i'm going to tell you what i saw on the outside of it before I popped it in, and I have not finished going through it yet, but this is a cassette tape, a VHS cassette tape that I found in a garage sale around the Bitter Lake area. When you pull the cassette out of the sleeve...

You are podcasting to an audience of one. I wish I could show it to you. I haven't uploaded it yet. And that one is me, my friend. You know I was baptized in Bitter Lake. No! Yeah, because our church was called... We met at this facility that was up there called Burden Bearers, which I think was a Christian counseling center that our church would rent out on Sundays to have our services, and when I finally decided I was ready to be baptized, I was baptized in Bitter Lake, which probably might have been foreshadowing,

I don't know. See, that's really interesting, what you just said. This got into a little bit of me explaining a Catholic sacrament to you last week. You said when you were old enough to decide to be baptized or something, how old were you? I was probably maybe eight, seven or eight,

So the version of Christianity that I grew up in was you didn't have to be baptized to be saved, I guess, but in the way the Catholic Church, you know, they sprinkle the water on a baby, I think. I think that my church's philosophy was the baptism is only meaningful if the person being baptized has sort of free will to decide for themselves. And so I remember going to my parents and saying, I think I'm ready to be baptized. and and and then like uh and then that subsequent sunday uh us walking down from the burden bearers building which again i can i will never get over what a weird name that is it's interesting though

i mean it sounds very christian and also it does sort of sound like hey you come to us with problems

and we help you yeah bear this i mean it's quite literal walking down to bitter lake and this is something i'm sorry that i'm derailing the vhs talk but we will get back to it having this feeling that i think you could really identify with andrew which was like

not regretting the decision because I didn't want to be baptized, but regretting the decision of how many people were paying attention to me. Like the whole church then after the service is now walking down to the lake, the whole church being 30 people, Tony long, who was the pastor of the church, I think was got the, you know, assignment. And also I was like, is there going to place me under the water? How long are they going to hold me down there? Is it going to be hard to hold my breath? Is it going to be cold? Also, I just don't like being the focal point of this many adults. We're all going to go down now and baptize Luke, and I was just like, I don't want this kind of attention right now.

It's weird, though. It's almost like proto-CBS stories that you do. It's just like getting fully involved.

Now I'm voluntarily swimming in the San Francisco Bay shirtless.

Everybody's looking at me. I'm the only one that this is happening to. I'm going underwater, which is something that seems to happen a lot to you. Yes. And you have to kind of struggle with this amount of attention. It's very similar, by the way. I've embraced it now.

It's the only thing that gives me life. It's actually the energy that fuels me is attention now.

You said you were around eight years old, and so that kind of scans. Remember, I don't know why this came up, but growing up, I grew up in the Catholic church, and very much so as an altar boy and everything. And remember I was telling you that what they call confirmation, the sacrament of confirmation. It came up because I think you were saying that I was throwing my weight around by signing my emails ALW, which has really gotten in my head, by the way. What are you talking about?

Listen, I wasn't saying you were throwing your weight around. I was just saying it's a choice, and I think it's very nice. I wish I would have thought of it. I think it's dignified without being stuffy, but I do think it's a choice.

It's dignified. You'd be, like we were talking, you'd be the LBC. Oh, no, no, no, you'd be the LCB. LCB. If it was the LBC, you'd have to do it.

I think ALW is a nice set of initials, too. I don't think LCB. LCB is confusing. It's like, is it LCD sound system? Yeah. Is it Long Beach? I think ALW is actually a nice – you've got a nice little distribution of letters there. Again, I'm not trying to roast you. I just was trying to say it strikes me as a choice.

Yeah. The funny thing is it was only a choice because I used to do ALW all the time and then I shortened it to A at one point. And then it came up on the show maybe a year ago, and I was like, you know what? I'm going to go back to ALW. So it was sort of a choice.

For the record, I want you to know.

It happened naturally at first, but one thing that I did used to get a lot of was PR people, when they would write back to me, I would say, hey, we're trying to book this person who maybe you represent. I'm writing to a media person. I'd be like, thanks, and then I signed an ALW. It would almost always come back, thanks for your interest, Al. Everybody thought my name was Al because they were just looking at it quickly.

It would be great if they thought your name was ALW.

Yeah, ALW. But anyway, yeah, so I chose my confirmation name when it was time for me to get confirmed. But it was a little bit more like, listen, when you're in fourth grade, that's your time for your confirmation, sort of. But it's based on the same principle that you are of age now to make this decision to confirm your baptism. And I'm guessing, this is where I don't do math good, eight years old. That's probably around fourth grade. Am I way off base on that?

I'm like the second worst person at this but I'm going to say

maybe third grade? Yeah, maybe I don't know where I'm getting that from Well, it makes sense because if you enter kindergarten and you're five and maybe you leave kindergarten at six. Anyway, somewhere around that age makes sense. Okay, putting baptism and confirmation and the way I choose to sign my emails aside for a moment. This video cassette that I pulled out, thank you that I pulled out of the sleeve yesterday has, so the spine of the cassette tape itself has a label on it, but it does not say anything. It just says TDK STD, which that's a choice to name your cassette, a TDK STD. I guess it stands for standard. My brain goes elsewhere. Standard TDK. Yeah. Anyway, and then on the actual cassette, on like the kind of the center sticker, somebody wrote Bubbles Easter. and I don't know exactly what that means but then when you look at the and this is a move that I don't as a VHS connoisseur going way back this is a move that I don't like too much they took another sticker one of those spine stickers and they stuck it to the back of the actual box does that make sense can you picture like the box that slips over it and on that it says I don't think you're supposed to put the stickers on the box by the way put the stickers on the cassette and then write it but this one says on the box, Bitter Lake Community Center, BASK, B-A-S-K, Obstacle Course, January 10th and 11th, 1994. But here's the deal. I think BASK, this is my theory, I think BASK is short for basketball. I think they set up an obstacle course maybe on a basketball court, and I have not gotten to that part.

of the tape yet i had to stop the tape yesterday and go to bed like i told you but what i did see in the first part of the tape i'm going to see how long this is was a homemade video not the worst camera work i've ever seen by the way the woman running the camera we never see her but people are greeting her a lot her name is either terry or dairy it sounds like dairy with a d but terry makes more sense basically as far as names I know um and it the whole time it has the that VHS camcorder date and time stamp on it and it says uh 9 40 a.m april 2nd 1994 and it's inside of a gymnasium area and the woman who's holding the camera keeps talking to kids and she's saying you know how many how much candy are you going to get today clearly these kids are going to leave this gymnasium go outside and hunt for Easter eggs. How many eggs are you going to find? One. Just one? I thought that was all you were allowed to. Well, the prize eggs, yeah, but there's lots of candy eggs. Yeah, I'm going to get tons. How many? Tons. Show me. How full will your bag be? That's pretty full. Pretty full. Pretty full. These kids, Luke, are beyond adorable. and they're also when you see some of the older kids who are getting to be maybe you know in that 10 to maybe even 13 age range that would be the the oldest kids i see in here they're starting to they're looking very 94 they're looking very 1994 you're seeing some seattle supersonic t-shirts in the crowd it is just such such a trip and what i love is i don't know if this is going to work everybody is filing out so it's at the end of like the everybody gathered inside the gymnasium to hear instructions about how the easter egg hunt is going to go we never see the hunt itself but what we see here is all of these kids and their families leaving the auditorium to go outside where the hunt will take place the easter egg hunt but they're all talking to the woman behind the camera because she's posted up right by the door so you just have this like this river of people going by, and it is the sweetest thing as they all just... By the way, do you know who the Cobras are? Somebody's wearing what looks like a local sporting team jacket, a soccer ball that says Cobras. They sound tough though. I wouldn't mess with that. Yeah. And they're

all like... I don't think Handy Andy would have done well against the Cobras.

It was the Supersonics color too. Very sweet. I don't know if this audio will pay off, but it gets really sweet. You can see the personalities of all the kids as they go by. Some stop and like try to duck under the camera others stop to say hello to the woman behind the camera they're so excited to see her they don't even care about the camera other people are showboating a little bit i gotta get you i gotta get your eyes on this though i gotta somehow upload it to youtube or something at some point i figure there's no issue with publishing videos of children if those

children are middle-aged adults now right i think that's a good i think that that's yeah that's that's a good idea like that's a good way to think about it because yeah were they still children i think that wouldn't be okay but the fact that they're grown up now i think it's fair game yeah

it's really adorable i was thinking of you i think you need to i have a feeling again remind me what year exactly so this is april 2nd 1994 so you're gonna be a little bit old yeah i'm gonna be that's

i'm graduating high school actually i yes i'm graduating high school in in a couple of months So these would be a little bit younger than me, these kids. But I mean, yeah, I'm dying to see this video because it will really take me back. Even if I didn't know these specific kids, I was essentially one of those kids at some point at Bitter Lake. Although I was not a kid who did Easter egg hunts because my parents thought that it was satanic.

Well, I have seen some of those scary photos of Easter bunnies, and maybe that's where they're getting it from.

Yeah, they were way ahead of the Donnie Darko curve, my parents. No, it had something to do with the original myth of the Easter egg, or I don't know. I mean, it was like, again, my mom and dad are, I love them so much, and they were just doing their best, and my mom might even hear this. Although my mom, my mom has been sending me some real premium texts lately, Andrew. She sent me one. Let me see if I can find this for you. She sent me one last week on Friday. I feel like I was maybe driving to the airport or was coming back from the airport or something was going on. And she said Oh yeah it was Friday She goes hey Luke I listened to TBTL Today in hopes of some Seahawks convo But I didn't get any What's up dog And then she said correction Dog spelled D-A-W-G That was the crossover show It was the day that we had the text me back crossover show Hey Luke I listened to TBTL Today

in hopes of some Seahawks convo, but didn't get any. What's up, dog?

We just got a what's up, dog, from your mom. I've never felt so small in my life.

And then I said, I think we talked about it at the end of Wednesday's show, so if you want to skip to the 50-minute mark, you'll find a bunch of Seahawks talk, no response.

Wow.

And then the latest that came down, which I've now posted on social media, because I feel like my private conversations with my mom are fair game. yesterday my mom said she sent a message hey Luke I'm so excited for many reasons but one being I can wear the NFL official Metcalfe jersey because the front is the number 14 I just have to put on a light jacket covering the back that way I'm sporting Sam Darnold sweet nice I saw that text

didn't she also say oh and as a reminder this is a jersey you and Becca got me a few years ago yes

Yeah, yeah, yeah. She was giving me a little props on the gift. But all I was going to say is like, I know my parents were just absolutely doing their best and everything. But it's just, imagine being like, hey, kids, just so you know, let's take two things off the list. Christmas and Easter. Yeah, other than that, enjoy your childhood. Oh, and Halloween. Let's take three things off the list. Halloween, Christmas, and Easter. The most number one fun and, in the case of Easter and Halloween, candy opportunities of childhood. We're going to go ahead and just leave those off the list because Jim Durkin of Gospel Outreach Christian Fellowship doesn't like it.

Okay, I'm going to ask for something here. I don't ask a lot on this show, I don't think. I mean, I ask for a raise. Almost every other day I ask John for a raise. And John and I consistently outvote you. It just really seems like this sort of three-person system is not working out. I need somebody on my side. It's working as designed. I don't like checks, and I hate balances. Well, I've got a job for you, sir. So I've never done this before, but I was telling you about this video cassette tape, and what you heard was the part that I had digitized already, and that is just the Easter egg part, but it has nothing to do with the scavenger hunt or, I'm sorry, obstacle course. And what I wanted to do, just to give us a sense of live radio here, is something I've never done before, which is literally, I've got this VCR patched through my board. I've never done it live before. But I think if I just put this tape, I don't know if I can hear that going in there, if I can put my cassette tape in there.

I used to have, not to keep you sort of, I don't know, gilding this lily, But I used to have basketball games in the Bitter Lake Community Center. When I played for the Green Lake Community Center team, we would go play other community center teams, including the Bitter Lake Community Center. So it's very likely that if this obstacle course is in the gym at the Bitter Lake Community Center, that was also a place where I spent much time in my childhood.

Yeah, I'm going to digitize this at some point this week, or it's digitized now, at least that first part is. I'm going to try to upload it to YouTube so that I can share it with you because I really want you to put eyes on it. I think you'll be pretty excited. Yes, I really want me to put eyes on it. Even just to see the vibe, but also the chance that you will recognize, the good chance that you'll recognize the interiors of this place, and then the off chance that you might even recognize somebody, a room mother or something along those lines.

Even, by the way, the woman, the person who is talking to the kids about the Easter egg hunt, it's possible that's somebody I know. That could be somebody's mom from Little League or, you know, could be somebody that's more close to my age.

That's what I'm thinking. Or she's probably not your age. She's probably older. But I just I can see. Could be Kathy Winekoop. Her name sounds like Terry or Derry. So I don't think it's Kathy. But the love that the kids have in their eyes when they see her with the camera. And then some really awkward moments where she's trying to get, like, people maybe more her age, like other moms or maybe some teens or something to talk to her. And they're just like, they just do not want to be on camera at all. And it's just so sweet. And it's so 90s. But this next thing I'm going to play for you now, I believe we're outdoors. There was a big pause in the tape. I think this is a different day. I think what we saw or were listening to a moment ago was from Easter of 1994. So that would be, you know, the spring. I think we're going back in time to January here, if I'm to believe the writing on this. And again, this will be, I will be so disappointed if I'm missing something here in my technological setup. and you don't hear this, but we're hitting play. Everybody wants a turn. Okay, we're outside. Kids are playing with some sort of big stick that looks like it might be a balloon gun or something. I'm not sure. Now, this says May. So this is, I don't know if this is the obstacle course, but this says May. There you go. He's making

Huge bubbles with some sort of... Good job, Chris. Oh, tree. I think you're done now.

Okay, so we're just seeing now a line of kids. This kid wearing a mariner's cap right now. And this device they have is like a stick with a big ribbon or like rope off of it. And the bubbles are coming from the rope. Which is the bubble thing, right? This kid has on a backwards mariner's cap and has wired glasses on. He's probably about...

And you need more juice now, Jess.

Seven.

Okay, Kevin. Kevin, yours got open somehow. Your bubble popped. Okay. Put one hand on the slider. Slide it back slow. If you need to move it around so the wind can catch it. There you go. Here comes the wind. Open it up. There you go.

Oh, he got a big bubble. Good job. She's so great. She's awesome.

You can do a couple sometimes. Didn't work.

This is the era of Mariner's Cap with the big S logo, by the way. Oh, sure. That's back. Oh, they have a whole picnic table. You just covered with...

Bambi shirts. they have a whole table filled with supplies and soap and everything there

this looks like green lake park honestly i think i mean i whatever maybe all park oh i think we see the the camera person we got a terry sighting i think i think she said it on a tripod she set it down and now she's in front this is the first yeah that's her

What are we getting? What's what's Derry look like? What's Terry look like?

So she is I'm going to put her in here. I'll get a little bit of background audio. I'm going to say she's in her 30s or maybe very early 40s. She's also got a backwards cap on and sunglasses because it's a bright day. And I think I see the community center in the background. She was trying to help the kids with their bubble machine. But then she came back behind the camera again and she's gone now.

Is she wearing any, like, 90s-era Seattle sports, anything? Like, what's her outfit?

No, let me go back to her. She was only on there for a second. She was a white woman. She was wearing, like, kind of an oversized button-down shirt, a very comfy 90s. She's wearing kind of a big button-down shirt with big polka dots on it, but it's a button-down and baggy jeans. I apologize. Her hat is not on backwards. Her hat is on forwards, but it is a baseball cap. Okay. That's what we got. That's what we got.

I feel like people, don't you feel like when you watch an old tape like this or listen, it feels like people spoke differently? Mm-hmm. Yes. And I don't know if that's true or not, but I mean, you know, it really feels like it applies to like if you watch some kind of, you know, sort of accidental recording from like, say, the 1950s, 60s, 70s. It's just like the sort of scansion of how we put sentences together, the words that we use. it just feels like every 10 years there's a way of talking and then we move on to a new way of talking and it's like i feel like that way that she's talking to those kids i just don't think if you had let's say she's a teacher or a mom or whatever i don't know if we had a grown-up in 2026 of the same age as terry slash dairy was talking to kids about doing the bubble loop thing or whatever if that adult would sound the same way you know what i mean i know exactly what you

mean because you could sort of dismiss that and say well it's just because you're also hearing kind of the sound of the VCR and the way camcorders would record a voice closer back then, you still sort of get that effect if you're recording something with your phone and the camera person starts talking. But you could sort of dismiss it as just like, well, the technology sort of taints your ear in that way. The medium is impacting the message. But here's where I get your back on this. I remember being in Los Angeles. The context of me hearing this doesn't matter, but I just got to put myself there. Otherwise, I'm going to fall asleep i told you i was up very late last night i remember very specifically driving los angeles it was early in the morning and i was driving to work and they it was an anniversary of watergate i don't know which anniversary it was or how it would make sense and they were playing long clips i'm pretty sure this was morning edition but maybe i was listening to some other thing they were playing very very long clips of a radio call-in show from that era so i'm not hearing clips of you know the the news makers of the time i'm hearing a host talk to callers calling in average joe calling into a radio station and i swear to god these callers every single one of them sounded like they had just put on a suit and tie before calling in like there was a form to the way they spoke there was a quality of their voice like you watch an old movie and you're like oh everybody has that sort of mid-atlantic accent or whatever like a movie from the 30s or 40s but that's acting and again you can sort of dismiss it as maybe the the taste of the time but when you just hear normal people calling in to sort of dissect their feelings or give their opinions about this huge political scandal and the way they talk it is different and you and I can

really speak from experience on this as talk show producers who have screened many a phone call and as guys who've tried to go out on the street and get what we call vox pops which is kind of average person on the street comments like it can be tough to find somebody who is able to sort of put their thoughts together that way you know what my version of what you're describing is is that i listen to a lot of this um this thing called dreamland radio um uh on my sonos in my house and it's like it's all the old art bell shows it's like thousands of hours of coast to coast but just only ones that were hosted by art bell and the callers now granted maybe that selects for a certain kind of a person who is doing a lot of their own research around like aliens and you know remote viewing and whatever but like it's wild to listen to a caller from 1985 and just how eloquent they sound to me and maybe i mean a little bit of is and i don't want to buy into this idea that we're all sort of slouching towards you know whatever maybe there is just more do you think it's just that there's more casualness in our language now which again i don't think is a bad thing but for people people can talk however they want but do you think that's what sounds different is that in 2026 we just are not as concerned about i don't know elocution or

vocabulary or like what is what what do you think is shifting i do think it's partially that but i and I'll bring back technology again in the way that I do think it affects people, is I think it's our comfort level with technology as it progresses. Oh, right. I think the idea of calling into a radio show was a very big deal. Like put on a suit jacket. Yes, you're very much. Calling into a radio show. Yeah, as opposed to now, like everything is content. You know, people are, children, generations now of people who've grown up to be young adults have just been constantly making things and publishing them potentially globally their whole lives. People are constantly rolling. People are constantly talking on speaker phones or with FaceTime out and about. Our level of comfort with all this stuff also means that we're, I think, a lot more casual about it.

People are always giving it that old Hawk Tua.

Oh, geez.

all right let's thank some donors these generous folks are sending in a donation each month or maybe they put in a yearly donation at the last thon um and uh and that's what allows this thing to occur five days a week 52 weeks a year this is a 100 listener supported podcasting we would not be doing this if not for the donations from folks like meredith gibbons who's in farnborough united kingdom andrew you said earlier in the show that that this program spans not just the united states but the world and this i don't think you could have more clear evidence than meredith checking in from farnborough wonder if meredith knows anybody

in that gymnasium in Bitter Lake in 1994. I feel like Meredith, especially if Meredith grew up in the U.K., probably not our best candidate to help me suss out the origins of that tape.

Although, you never know, people move around. Meredith may have grown up in North Seattle and then at some point decided to apprentice as a chimney sweep.

That's right. That is the number one export, as everybody knows.

Uh-huh. Moved to England to study with the best, started a very successful chimney sweep company, and is redounding some of the financial benefit of that chimney sweep business to TBTL, and we appreciate it.

The two jobs that you can get in the London area, if I understand it correctly.

Meredith, whatever he's about to say, please don't stop donating.

You can be a chimney sweep or you can be a reporter in a long jacket, like a trench coat, standing in the fog, Kermit the Frog style, giving the news. Those are the two jobs you can do in London, I think. Now, I don't know if Farnborough is close to London or not. I should look that up.

I'm wondering if I used redound correctly. Because I'm saying that Meredith's chimney sweep money has redounded. uh contribute greatly to a person's credit or honor that's the formal okay um so i guess you could say i think that was a i think that was a kind of a a little bit of a misuse of the oh dude oh i thought you were i thought you were taking a little bit of a victory lap how did you use no i don't think so because think of what i was trying to say was basically it's been redirected in a way or it's been you know the chimney sweep money has been some of it anyway has been directed towards tbtl that's all i had to say but i wanted to try to be fancy and say redound well it does redound

our efforts it does redound so if it means to contribute greatly to something yeah it does redound to tbtl also i think you could use it in the archaic are you looking at the definition now

do you like the archaic i am i've got the formal and the archaic look at the archaic look at the

example of the archaic i'll let you read it i really like it may his sin redound upon his head

That's great. We got to start saying that. And that's why I wasn't allowed to celebrate Easter.

That's right. To come back upon, to rebound on. May his sin be down upon his head.

I got got in the car last night, Andrew, speaking of... I'm losing my touch on recognizing Christian music, pop Christian music. For a long time, in five seconds of any song, I could tell you, oh, this is popular Christian music. Because it all had a sound, a particular sound to it. just an energy that I was very, very dialed into. And last night, Becca and I got into the ride share to go get some dinner here in Miami. And a song was playing. And I said to her, is this Taylor Swift? She goes, I think this is worship music. Oh. And then the song ended, and then the person came on, and they were reading a Bible verse. And then the Christian music DJ said, I really love this next song you're going to hear. And it just reminds me, this guy has a real writing style. His writing style reminds me of Johnny Cash. It's incredible. And then she plays a worship song, which is just a guy doing a Johnny Cash impression with his singing. Like, no wonder it reminds you of Johnny Cash. He's just singing exactly like Johnny Cash, except the songs, the lyrics are about God. And then we heard another song.

Which is not something that Johnny Cash was a stranger to either, by the way.

True, true. And then it was like the next song. It sounds like I'm trying to roast contemporary Christian music. I guess I am a little bit. But it's an interesting ecosystem kind of creatively because it seems that the key to it is never to innovate like you're never going to hear a style of music on the christian music station that you haven't heard other places the the move seems to be to find a pre-existing popular genre and then write your song in that genre with lyrics about your christian faith you know so then you hear the like the lumineers-esque the kind of hey ho yes you know hey ho here we go jesus or whatever yes yes and then like you can just listen to it's like oh no here's the reggae like the vaguely reggae here's you know what i mean it's just like each genre pretty much is gets represented but then we just have we've switched up the lyrics popping bibles on the ice get seriously i mean i'm not far off not far off but i was again i just felt like wow there was a time when i would not have confused taylor swift with the but again the song we were listening to christian music song in the style of taylor swift you know what i mean

i know i thought i'd get a little bit more love for my far east movement reference by the way

i'm sorry i think i was talking over you or maybe my echo cancellation let's let's back that up

no no no never mind i was just singing instead of popping bible instead of popping bottles on the ice getting slizzard i said popping bibles on the ice getting slizzard do you remember that song we were obsessed with it or at least i was i don't know who we were me me i don't know who we are i don't know do you have any idea what song no i don't feel like i know that song all right well i'm not a good singer which doesn't help um far east movement like a g6 was the song oh

okay i do like a g6 popping bottles on the ice okay i don't think i ever actually other than the Like a G6 part I don't think I ever considered What the like other lyrics to that song were

Luke would you like to get Band in Romania with me here For a minute as we play Would you make me the happiest co-bro what was the year of this song i was andrew i want to give you credit for that was a really

good joke that you made and the way that you read i'm not kidding i'm not patronizing i'm not kidding the way you re-engineered the lyrics on the fly that way was very good my friend and i'm sorry i didn't give you enough props i didn't realize what you were doing in that moment and it deserves respect it deserves a quiet night

I have no idea why Far East Movement has been on my brain lately. I have been spending a lot of money on jukeboxes in various juke joints around this city.

I woke up a couple of weeks ago with way more, like, I don't know if it was Touch Tunes or the other one, than I remembered buying.

You had more in your account, you mean?

It was kind of one of those things where I was like, oh, I guess I did put $40 on my, you know, my, And what's the other one that's not Touch Tunes? Oh, AMI music? Yeah, I was like, oh, great. Now I've got $27 of AMI credits.

Oh, transfer that to me. I think that Touch Tunes has started to protect me from myself. Twice in the past few weeks, I have tried to buy, when you go to play a song and you're out of credits, it'll say you're out of credits. Do you want to spend like $5, $15, or $30 on credits? And you save more money, you know, based on the more you buy, of course. And I use them so much, I've been like, I'll just buy the $30 package. But both times, it's like, here's your receipt for $15. We're not selling you $30. Nobody has ever hit the $30 one before, Andrew. That's just a test. We're going to give you $15 worth of music, and then you should leave. Go home and hug your girlfriend.

Did I tell you about the—I couldn't tell you what city in America this was at, Certainly not which specific bar But I was somewhere in the last six months And I was talking to I was having some dinner or something Talking to the bartender They had touch tunes And the bartender mentioned That there was a Semi-regular patron of this bar Who had spent something like $60,000 on touch tunes

Oh yeah in Wisconsin

That was Wisconsin And so he had that person He had concierge service of Yes

touch tunes could always skip to the top of every song everywhere he had precedence somehow because yeah you can always do that you can pay a little bit more for like a fast pass to like get ahead a little bit but like apparently he had spent so much money and this was at the it's five o'clock somewhere lounge right and he apparently had spent so much money that when he goes to play a song it just mutes every other jukebox in the tri-state area and his song plays or something i love

everybody in the words of um oh gosh now of course i can't remember her specific name there was a great song called everybody's got their something um and uh everybody's got their something man and like it's like for me it's like my alaska airlines titanium membership for this guy it was just and the other thing if i remember it was he wasn't a five night a week or a seven night a week guy at the bar that was the other thing that jumped out at me they were like he's usually hear thursdays which i guess his touch tunes account is it would it would just it wouldn't matter which bar he was in like yeah yeah i was imagining i was thinking like how could he do that in one bar but i guess any here's i'm going to make an educated guess if you've racked up that much money in touch tunes you know your way around a cocktail or a beer uh-huh and you're likely if you're that guy you're probably spending some time at different watering holes throughout the week racking up your touch tunes numbers and um anyway uh but yeah that was that my mind was absolutely blown by that yeah that you could spend that much on that so i would say if you start to rival that guy you might want to you know pump the brakes not to tell you how to live your life and he only plays bad to the bone who who who is the i always think that the person singing like a g6 is kesha

the name of the group is and i've already closed the tab the name of the group is far east movement And that's all I know by them. I don't think it's a Kesha project, but it was the era. I think I just looked it up before. It said 2010. And that would have been the era that a Kesha tune would have caught my ear as well.

I liked that era. Well, because it's like there's that B.O.B. song, you know, airplanes in the night sky were shooting stars. And I think that's like Hayley Williams from Paramore. There was this I feel like there was this period of time where you would like write a super catchy song. and then you would have some kind of known entity come in and sing part of the track so I think when I heard that Far East movement song I always figured that that was like Kesha or someone kind of famous but maybe that's just a member of the Far East movement

I'm looking this up because now I'm looking at the album cover again and it seems to show fellas and I can't so I am wondering maybe that is let's look this up I'm going to look this up while you think the donors and see if that is a guest

vocal appearance thank you for uh we're multitasking here or we're dividing and conquering i think and that's how brandon lucian likes it brandon's in tumwater washington hey brandon thank you last week we thanked somebody in tumwater and it started a 40 minute conversation on taco time where i was loud wrong we will get to that in the emails andrew if not today then very soon i've been humbled and corrected on that um and i don't blame brandon even though he's also in tumwater which again was where all my trouble started thanks brandon thanks to bill sonnenberg who's in boise idaho get listen bill i don't know what you're doing on this tuesday but get over to black moon pizza or does he gotta does this berry have a sandwich place over there too now i think it's the pizza shop i know he's at the pizza shop there but then he's got this other joint maybe that's in seattle i don't know i follow him on instagram i follow this barry's got the black moon pizza in boise and then he's got this sandwich shop then i don't know where it is but it's like really causing me to struggle with my decision to not eat meat because they post pictures of sandwiches from this place and i mean i am like i'm at a i'm a cartoon like i don't know i'm a cartoon animal now floating on a smell directly towards our friend broadcast berries sandwich shop but anyway uh thank you so much to bill for checking in from idaho thanks to megan kelso hey seattle washington our friend fine artist both of the uh of the public art variety which we learned megan recently did or maybe it's not that recent anymore down by the seattle center also incredible illustrator animator cartoonist published author uh and tbtl donor and maybe most importantly andrew tbtl donor mo i mean that that's exactly first line

of her bio i think in most public places is exactly that's how she identifies who will make the pancakes megan who will make the pancakes that's her book brandon uh you know who will make

the pancakes around here andrew the publix grocery store where we were doing some shopping the other day and i every time i'm in a publix i feel the the spirit of jamis winston because that was the grocery store chain where somebody gave him the free crab legs okay and then he got in trouble for quote-unquote stealing the free crab legs although i actually don't think he was trying to steal them i think somebody this was down in when he played for florida state i think somebody was psyched that jamis winston quarterback for the florida state seminal was in their publix and then tried to give him some stuff for free and then when he got busted for it then they acted like they didn't give it to him for free and everything about jamis winston i mean i know he had an incident where somebody uh you know there was an allegation that he was inappropriate towards i think a lyft driver an uber driver i don't know what went on with that and also in college around

this time there were some serious allegations like school basically did not investigate until

after oh geez all right well then i guess it's that that's my problem with him is that's how

That was my first time of hearing of him was that like, oh, now the school is finally all these allegations or a or all this information about an allegation kind of came out after the Heisman thing.

And it sort of had allegations of one of the situations where the community was doing other way, doing everything that they could to keep his Heisman candidacy viable. Maybe that was my understanding of I'm going back a long time here. and you know you're probably you're probably accurate about that and there's probably a lot of reasons to like i mean this is what's so kind of complicated and weird about life which i feel like is a topic that i've been bringing up too much on this show lately but it's like there's that stuff there are those allegations and that's all again that's that's something that should be taken seriously and is troubling there's this other side where james winston is just a straight up weirdo fun in the most fun way that does not in my mind uh invalidate any of anybody else's experience with him but it's like it's it's been a while and what i think when i think of james winston i think of the story of him allegedly shoplifting crab legs from a publix so anytime i go into a publix i'm like but here's what i was going to say you know what they have at this publix here in miami beach pre-made pancakes french pancakes no less i don't know what that means but just like like an impulse buy it's like right by the register and imagine like um a plastic you know like imagine a thing that you might get sort of a dozen donuts in or not a dozen imagine a thing you might get six donuts in six like old-fashioned glazed donuts okay instead it's got pre-made pan it's a little bigger it's got pre-made pancakes in it

and then um it doesn't sound bad but so i'm not a huge pancake person like i like them but usually i'm getting them i'm like at ihop or denny's or something that kind of comes with eggs and sausage or whatever and so i'll get it in that case so but a pancake the thing about pancake is i usually think of it as it has to be sort of served like right away right hot starts turning so when you buy it this way are you just eating it like pretty woman just sort of with your hands out of the box are you taking them home and preparing them in some way i feel like i would take them home and

like microwave them or something but i mean i'm not a you know since my uh daughter you know

aged out of, like, Saturday morning pancake sessions. I have not made a lot of pancakes in my life. But I just had never seen pre-made pancakes, like a full-on pre-made pancake. And I thought, for people that eat a lot of them and they want to have a pancake on the go, I don't know, maybe this is the kind of thing that you could microwave it, throw some butter on it. It might be tolerable. I don't know. Ask Brandon Volbright of Bashan, Washington. Maybe Brandon knows. Two Brandons. That's right. Same spelling, too. Got Brandon Lucian and Brandon Volbright.

Well, they spell their, just to be very clear, they spell their last names slightly differently, but their first names are exactly the same.

Very slightly. Lucian and Volbright. A couple of, a few small differences. That's when I, when we were watching, when we were watching the previous Seahawks game at the Eagles together, I think when I knew I'd had plenty of alcohol was when every good play I celebrated by dancing like Benizio del Toro at the end of one battle after another. Oh, yeah, your little jacket out. I would hold my little jacket out, and I would do my few small beers dance. I think that should have been an indication of something to me, and it wasn't. Also, we want to thank Wayne Kirkendall, who's out there in Mill Creek, Washington. Nice. Thank you, Kirk. That's where they mill the stuff, and they use the creek to power it.

I was looking away, and I said, thank you, Kirk, but I meant Thank you, Wayne Kirkendall. I bet you that people call—I bet you that there are people in Wayne's life who—his nickname is Kirk. Yeah, but he's not giving them money. I feel like I have a responsibility to call him. He might pay people for that. That is true. No, that is true. Maybe— He might pay extra for that. You just call me Kirk.

Wayne. Thank you to all of our donors. Man, we could not do this without you. hello and welcome to top story well andrew tick tock has been officially signed over to an ownership group uh with primarily this i think company called silver lake which i'm assuming is a private equity firm of some kind or some kind of investment grouping and then also uh larry ellison the guy who founded oracle and who is pretty close with trump and and whose son is now the owner of the TV network that I work for, CBS Skydance. And I got off of Twitter when I felt like it was becoming a kind of a toxic place that was owned by a very toxic person, Elon Musk. And then I think I probably moved my energy over to looking at TikTok kind of endlessly. and now i'm really wondering if am i being i don't post anything on tiktok i'm not really helping well that's not true i'm certainly not helping generate content over there so i'm not i'm not building much for them but i'm also giving them a lot of my attention as i said at the top of the show when something's i didn't make this up but you know the saying is when something's free you are the product i am giving tiktok tremendous hours of my attention which i guess they can then monetize and i'm i'm sort of i'm struggling with it because i do really enjoy unwinding by scrolling tiktok but i also really don't enjoy helping line the pockets of of of these folks and also participating in something that may i don't know have some amount of censorship now now that there's this other kind of weird story circulating that gavin newsom is apparently looking into now which is that there are people who are like tiktok you know people who have accounts on tiktok who are saying that when they've been sending like direct messages within tiktok to other people if the name epstein is in the direct message it it i don't know the message doesn't go through or something there's some weird erasure of this which to be honest with you if if i'm the you know the first of all it seems early for the larry ellison regime to have already figured out how to rip that out of people's dms yeah right like it's been one day and also it seems to me like if you were going to try to stifle the epstein stuff i wouldn't do it in the dms i would do it in the on the main page right so i to me that doesn't that that exact thing doesn't seem like a huge sign of anything maybe just a weird glitch or something but the idea that like they're they're you know basically i wouldn't trust these guys to not get in there and start moderating content in such a way that it helps their worldview if they think they're they are

now the owners of this thing i don't know it's a bummer for me because it's like i really like looking at tiktok but i'm it's going to be now it's going to be complicated because i'm in a way

i'm helping the maga movement yeah and it was always complicated though or at least it has been for the past several years when it got politicized before this i mean in the year

know what here i guess here's my contribution to this conversation sorry to turn it over towards me it's funny because i don't use tiktok that much i don't use it that i i use it more now like a slightly more now because i have been off of instagram for about a year now since um since the last election and just sort of you know just seeing zuckerberg kind of cozy up to the maga movement and the trump administration more accurately um and so i guess i have been sort of my eyes have been drifting towards tiktok a little bit more but it would be kind of weird for me to be like oh i don't use i don't use instagram for moral purposes so i'm on tiktok which is just like seems you know pretty rotten to its core as well and and has been for a while so you know it's just it's so cliche to say it but like to be a response you just can't be a responsible consumer these days in this stage of capitalism and of our country although tiktok of course was not a part of our country until recently it was a it was you know run right it

wasn't like it was great when it was owned by the chinese yeah that's right that's yeah you know

that's kind of what i'm saying here and so let me just quickly tell you so we have a friend who actually listens to the show a good friend of ours who's been pushing me for a long time now ever ever ever more aggressively to get off of um spotify right because i use spotify oh i bet i

know i bet i know who you're talking about because i believe i saw this person today pulled what i'm going to always call a viking funeral and sort of posted their their departure from spotify right

i wouldn't guess so because he's been pushing me for a long time to get off of spot oh oh i don't know why i don't know why i'm not saying his name but we mentioned him on the show a lot and uh you know i'll just say it's rodent i don't i don't know why i'm protecting him i just didn't

feel like getting into it but our friend leanie also jumped off of spotify oh really posted a picture of her like was like bye bye spotify okay yeah i don't know why i was being weird about

that i just didn't feel like i needed to bring up the name and then suddenly i was being protective of his identity i think he'd be proud for folks to know but anyway so rodent has been pushing me more and more like i don't know maybe has it been a year now for a while he's been like listen spotify is not good for artists and also there is a lot of complaints at spotify if you're not paying for spotify and you're listening to the commercials that they automatically force feed you apparently they were running commercials for like maybe ice recruitment i want to say or something along the lines of that take people off.

I think that I was, I don't know if I heard those, but I heard about those things happening.

And that really upset people, obviously. And then in behind the scenes, like the guy who runs the company, at first I thought there were Palantir connections, but that's not true. But basically I think that the guy who basically owns it or the majority owner, right? Because I was reading about this this weekend because I want to make the decision. I want to take Rodin's comments seriously and I want to think about it, but I'm looking at the background of like-

That's the problem. People take rodents seriously, but not literally.

That's right. And I'm going to take them both now. But anyway, you know, there are ties of the major financier behind Spotify, to put it that way, I guess, also has ties to the military industrial complex, including like some sort of drone programs that are, you know, being used in the Middle East. It's like it gets into, you know, some shit. But I will say that I was doing reading about this recently because I think I've done this a few times because Rodin will be like, are you off Spotify yet? And then I go and I look at the alternatives and I know that he uses Tidal and a lot of people use Tidal. I don't know what Leany is pushing. There's a more expensive, more boutique service out there that is supposedly way more, I guess, conscientious. It's like its whole mission is to be a little bit more conscientious and to have like more lossless audio, but it's pretty expensive, and it doesn't seem like as seamless a transition. A lot of people are going to Tidal, but my thing about Tidal is I can't remember who owns it right now. It's one of the big tech people who maybe – is it the person who started Twitter maybe? Who started Twitter? Well, I know Jay-Z was very involved in the early days of Tidal. That's the problem. It's like Tidal, yeah, it was started by Jay-Z and a bunch of artists, but they don't own it anymore either. Like I think Jay-Z still owns part of it, but the major money behind it is just another tech company that started – I don't know if it was Twitter or what. It's not Teal.

Jack Dorsey, actually.

It's Dorsey. So who is Dorsey? Is that Twitter? No.

Tidal is a majority owned by Block, Inc., formerly Square, Inc., the financial technology company led by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Okay. They acquired 86% stake in the music streaming service in 2021 for $302 million while Jay-Z sold his majority stake. He remains a stakeholder and sits on the board.

So here's my point of all of this. I thought it was Twitter. I just couldn't remember Jack Dorsey's name, and then I was confusing him with Sergey Brin. But anyway, or Sergey Brin. But anyway, all of that is to say—

One of my favorite dining partners here in Miami.

I am looking at the background of Spotify and saying, okay, yeah, I don't like the fact that they— guy who owns Spotify also is part of the military industrial complex but also what's going on with title and it's like well title is owned by the Twitter guy mostly and it's like I don't I don't I don't think I have any receipts on Jack Dorsey or whatever but my point of it is like yeah but if I take my time to move over from Spotify to title which is just owned by Block which owned used to be Square which was started by Twitter like how long before we they make some business decision that i don't like and and i'm not trying to abdicate my responsibility of maybe possibly helping support a service that is tied to bad things in the world and i guess right now if title doesn't have those connections that's the better option but how long before i have to get off of that one as well it is kind of like i was looking for a more like specific real red line in the sand with the spotify thing i know it's not great but i also don't think that spotify is necessarily i'm sorry i don't think the title is necessarily super great for musicians either it kind of uses a similar payment system based on the tiers of popularity and so i was just reading about all this i'm just like i don't know am i just going to keep on i've i've i isolated myself so much like in social media by dumping so many of the social media platforms and i'm not saying that i'm done trying to be conscientious about this stuff but i'm not going to keep hop scotching around when all of this shit is owned by huge tech billionaires like i just don't think that there's a really great option other than i am trying more and more to like literally buy records

by bands and see those bands yeah yeah i think you're right i mean it's it is extremely hard if you're going to operate at all in the current state of the world that is to say you're not moving to a cabin somewhere you know with a composting toilet and no internet connection If you live in the developed world and you, you know, go most of the places that we go and want to listen to the things and watch the things that most of us want to listen and watch, it's so difficult to, you know, sort of figure out and make sure that every dollar that you spend is not going into the hands of someone who's done anything questionable. And I guess I don't mean that as a total opt out of kind of like responsibility as a consumer to be sort of aware, but like it's really, really hard right now. And I think the big thing is maybe us not and I don't think this is what Rodin is doing to you, although it does seem like a Rodin move. so i don't know no but i think the big thing is not is is us we the people who are trying to be somewhat thoughtful about stuff not going off on each other about whether or not we are you know we have the the purity of every single dollar that we spend i think we're better served focusing on the people that are really really bad out there and trying to uh get them out of power and and and mitigate the harm that they're doing as opposed to like going on and again none of this has nothing to do with what you've been talking about specifically but like i think part of what drives the behavior is some of it is just like a moral sense in ourself of like i don't want my money to go towards people who are bad and then some of it's like there will be a point at which it's like oh you didn't know that this this thing is actually backed by that thing and therefore you using this thing means i mean that's maybe what i'm really shadow boxing with here is me and amazon because and again that's to the side of the conversation of music but it it definitely gets to the question of convenience for me versus like i i really respect your and vives's decision to get off of amazon and i i'm getting closer and closer i think i could actually do that now i'm not in this phase of my life where i was needing to acquire so many things for my house that it was almost like it just every day i was there was some new thing that i realized oh i don't have this right now i'm not in that mode anymore i could probably get off of there and maybe it's something i should think about but like i don't know i guess this idea that to the degree that we're doing any of these things because we don't want to get hollered at by people who we're of the same political persuasion or of the same moral persuasion as i feel like we should we should try to go go easy on each other and we should try to go really hard on the actual bad people yeah and

i have sort of mixed emotions about that because in a certain way so okay from my perspective as somebody who has decided that i'm not going to use amazon anymore which has been kind of a pain And it's been kind of, I've been trying to relearn certain things. I have some, just like I had got a package of socks the other day that I had to figure out, like, cause I always buy the same package of socks off of Amazon. These Argyle, I found my brand. I literally had that thought. Yeah. And then, and so I had to like kind of search around, but then I can't remember where I bought it from, but I found another clothing company and I bought the same exact brand, the same exact box, and it just came from somewhere else. And now I have that receipt and I can go and buy it easily again next time. But I find myself kind of spiraling sometimes on like, well, I need this thing, but I don't know where to get this thing. And I don't use Amazon anymore. And then I just don't buy that thing. I'm not as much of a shopper as you are. I don't have the patience for it. And so I've actually found myself like sort of kind of spiraling on some.

of those things and feeling affecting my mood in weird ways um but okay so here's my point though i and i don't use amazon i got off of instagram neither one of those decisions are gonna make even the tiniest drop in the tiniest bucket of the business practices of those two companies like it doesn't matter to them that i opted out it's just not affecting anybody's bottom line and I will live the rest of my life not using those services and it does not hurt Zuckerberg and it does not hurt Bezos. I'm doing, I'm achieving literally nothing by doing those. But it's just something that even though it makes sometimes my day-to-day life maybe a little bit less rich because I'm not on Instagram or maybe a little bit more difficult because I'm not on Amazon. It's just like in the moment, I don't, I just don't want to think about Bezos. I don't want to think about Zuckerberg as I'm doing things. You know what I mean? I'm doing it because it just feels right to do, and so I'm doing it for that. Having said that, this is coming back to what you're talking about. I really never try to make anybody feel guilty or any kind of bad feelings because they are still on Instagram or they're still using Amazon. Like, that is not my role, and I am not trying to push anybody. Everybody can make their own decisions. Everybody, you know, in my circle reads the news. They know what's going on. Everybody's going to make their own decisions. But I do, while I want to be very careful not to seem judgmental of other people, I really appreciate Rodin egging me on this And like, I don't know that, because he, well, first of all, I mean, we're good friends and we can, we tease each other He likes to come in and be like, hey, you off Spotify yet? You know, it's loving, he's serious about it He does think that we should not support that company, and I know that artists and their welfare are important to him, but it's also we have that kind of relationship, and it doesn't feel naggy to me in a negative way. It's a good reminder, honestly, and I also think that you said you saw Leany post something, and I haven't seen that post. Maybe it was on Instagram, but that's going to live in your brain a little bit more now, too, and maybe the next time somebody else says, listen I've reached my breaking point with whatever platform it does start to build and then you do start to maybe see some change so while I want to be very careful just in my personal life of not seeming like a nag or better than anybody else like I don't watch tv because tv is no friend of mine like I'm not trying to take that attitude but I also don't mind friends just kind of saying just so you know like you might want to keep an eye on this because you might Reach a breaking point morally with this product or service as well.

Totally. I think giving a friend who you really know and have a good relationship with like a heads up on something, possibly in IRL, possibly at the Eagles or whatever, that feels just like, you know, that's what friends talk about, various things like that. People kind of people getting online and getting kind of, you know, sort of shirty about like, well, I can't believe that you're, I can't believe that you're still going, you know, to that place. Don't you know that, you know, this, that, or the other, I feel like that's energetically not, I don't know. It doesn't feel like it's really helping. And it feels like we just said, to me, it seems like there's too many, there's too many infights still going on amongst the people who generally agree that, you know, we should be living in a country where the billionaires have to share more of their money and where, where people are being lifted up instead of pushed down that's the general agreement of most of the people and then you get these sort of side conversations you know where people are giving each other grief about if they're doing it exactly right and that's just something that i'm hoping we'll see less of so that we can all as you like to say andrew get our oars going in the same direction and get get these motherfuckers well

that's where i i think tone has a lot to do with that i mean blue sky is you know really i when i joined blue sky i just thought saw it as an alternative to uh twitter and this was a long time ago when there was like you know not not the same amount of traffic there uh as there is now but blue sky really has become it's not just who i follow blue sky really has become sort of kind of woke twitter for lack of a better word is a bunch of progressives and you will see you know you'll see all kinds of conversations though and i think what we're getting at here is tone when it comes to these conversations as well like you're right i've been unfollowing people who i agree with on various things but i don't need you screaming at me i don't need you yelling at me you know whether it's about you know hey why are you still subscribed to x y or z it's kind of like okay yeah like if if somebody's tone is like that it's like you're not going to move me in fact you're going to maybe even make me a little bit more static right in wanting to kind of side with that but it doesn't mean your point is wrong it means how you're expressing it is wrong but then on the

other hand you also have you know a lot of people use social media because the world is burning around them and they need to scream yeah and screaming is kind of important too i think so i think what i've just decided to do is let people scream but don't join the screaming room you know what i mean like i don't want to tell somebody not to have emotional reactions on blue sky because i understand what we're living through is not normal and oversized reactions seem very normal yes well

said andrew oh thanks here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female

no man it's not from a female all right andrew just a a quick update clarification retraction apology and um decision to spend more time in quiet reflection with my family here before we get out of here uh the other day on the show uh taco time came up as it so often does and i uh was describing a world in which taco time was a a washington state a greater seattle area product that was then expanded and then divided and then i'll just say it bastardized and created one version of Taco Time that I love and I would die for and another version of Taco Time that I wouldn't look at it if it were on fire. That's maybe a little extreme, but I was trying to describe the difference between Taco Time Northwest and Taco Time International, and I got about 90% of it wrong. And even Becca, who went to the University of Oregon in Eugene, I was reading this email aloud to her when I got it this morning, and she was like, yeah, I told you that. I told you the first one was in Eugene. I was like, yeah, but I didn't believe you when you said that.

See, I get so confused with this topic. After it came up the last time on the show, and you're passionate about it. A lot of our listeners are passionate about it. I ate at Taco Time once about 10 years ago, and I thought it was fine. So a lot of the details sort of wash over me. Sure. And so because of that, I just don't follow the ins and outs. So I can never be the person to help fact check these things. And also, I can just never remember. I just know it's complicated, right? Because we also got some other people writing in saying, well, you kind of have the split wrong about who split from whom or how that would have worked. And I was kind of like, yeah, I don't know who to believe. And so I just let it go. When I get those emails, I just put them in the palm of my hand and I hold my hand up to my mouth. I go, and I just let them blow into the wind like seeds.

um i think the only place we can look is where a listener jared linked to which is taco time.com slash about slash history slash index dot html that sounds like a good place to start taco times own history history is written andrew by the casita burrito holder and uh so this is what taco you know this is taco time saying uh what the origin story is which i guess will choose to believe them here's here's where i where i got confused and i don't want to cloud this even more for you andrew but basically because i grew up mostly in seattle i grew up with that kind of a taco time which is called taco time northwest and because there are these few outliers those are primarily in oregon those are the ones that are called taco time international and those ones have a slightly different menu and a different vibe even though they're called taco time and i because i think of the ones from washington state as the quote-unquote real ones just because that's what i grew up with my i had assumed that what had happened was the the original dna of the thing had to be in the seattle area and then it grew up into a sort of a successful thing and then and then somebody else started franchising them and then eventually the the franchisor the person that was starting their own version of it they sort of like eventually split off from the company and made this kind of like you know bizarro jerry version of taco time and that's what was in oregon this was purely fueled by my own uh lived experience and my assumption that because i like the taco times in washington state that must be where it started those must be the original ones and in fact it seems to be quite the opposite thanks to listener jared who sent one of the most high-handed emails we've ever received and i mean honestly it I'll just read it to you, okay? And I'll let you decide. Hi, Luke and Andrew.

Good.

I was surprised to hear Oregon's cultural history being rewritten in a recent episode. It seems even established facts are up for debate in today's discourse. I suspect some Taco Time ethnocentricity is at play regarding the claim that the Washington locations were the origin or superior version. To set the record straight, Taco Time was founded in Eugene, Oregon.

and was only franchised into Washington as Taco Time Northwest years later. Well, we'll come back to that in a moment, Jared. I am standing up for the true history of the Taco Time name. I've included Andrew on this email because he sat idly by, pleading ignorance to this podcast crime. Please read through this Ken Burns-esque journey into how Taco Time entered our hearts and mouths. And that's where Jared links to the Taco Time history. Best regards, listener Jared. Um, Jared is absolutely right. I have now read this history. It's did start in Eugene, Oregon, right next to the university of Oregon campus. This hurts me especially because as a Husky, I've got a, um, used to be able to say heated rivalry without it sounding gay, but now, um, no, I, you know, there's a heated rivalry with, uh, with, with the university of Washington, university of Oregon. So the fact that my beloved taco time is essentially a university of Oregon product, yeah hurts hurts bad but it is true actually started by nike i think that's right phil knight before he got into waffling the shoes um yeah the story is that there was this this guy who was a traveling salesman um and he had traveled through california and he was eating you know sort of mexican food or what was being described as mexican food back in the day and he really fell in love with it and he decided well i want to open a restaurant uh like a kind of a fast food type of restaurant that serves this stuff. And, uh, and so according to the lore of the taco time history, he, he, uh, mortgaged his house and he opened this restaurant, this little restaurant taco time right next to the university of Oregon campus. And, um, it was a big hit and it was such a hit that then some other folks said, Hey, can we start one of these? And I believe it was two years later that they opened one in Washington state. And that's why I say to Jared, when he says only franchised into Washington as a Taco Time Northwest years later. I mean, yes, two years is technically years later, but it's not like 30 years later. So I had the origin wrong, which was it was started in Eugene, and it sort of grew into this thing, and then the folks that wanted to franchise it in Washington, really it sounds like they kind of, they, what was it? That was a Tig Tau. that was taco timers going their own way okay they decided that the northwest you know the basically it was the offshoot that i have embraced as my in my culinary lifestyle and um so the taco time international i guess is essentially the og the og dna of the whole thing and i just guess i like version two but it is version two and i need to acknowledge that it's not version one that i like i like the i like the uh the new one the new plucky upstart taco time northwest versus the old

stodgy taco time international and there's a drive into deep left field by castellanos it's gonna be a home run gonna make it a 4-0 ball game my friend hey luke i was caught in a hot mic

incident earlier and that's not who i am that's not what i represent that's the p ask people who

know me not don't don't listen to the words i say when i think nobody's listening uh hey i have something important to say with my words luke and i feel bad it's actually also starting uh with an apology which is apologies to listener jamie i promised i would do this on yesterday's show but i forgot and so i'm doing it on tuesday's show listeners are you like me do you i'm doing this as a uh radio read luke but i'm improvising it so i don't know how well has this ever happened to you has this ever happened to you you want a valentine's day card and you go to your mailbox and there isn't one there well friends go to tbtl.net and sign up for the valentine's card exchange that's right our friend listener jamie in mississippi is arranging it once again this year and if you want to sign up or just update your information or opt in or opt out if you've already been doing this this is a way for you to send valentine's day cards and receive valentine's cards with other listeners and it's always a blast people get really no pressure but people end up getting really creative and creative making these cards and sending them and sharing photos of them and it's a really fun thing that you and I have nothing to do with it's purely run by listeners love and energy which I really appreciate absolutely and it harkens back to the

whole premise of the like valentines that you would do at school which were essentially non romantic valentines you know what i mean like you would give the idea was every student would give every other student a valentine's and it was just fun to get one and it was fun to feel kind of like appreciated and and let's be honest get some candy but like these are you know these are valentines between people who just appreciate each other and like that they like tbtl and want to kind of like just give everybody a fun valentine's day it does not want to make sure that people not a dating service it's not uh it's like it's like you know you're a sport valentine with a football player on the cover of it which was a good one that i used to give out back in the day

at daniel bagley i can smell it i can smell those little cards they smell a little bit like sugar so folks can chew chew choose yes to sign up at the tbtl website tbtl.net by the way that newsletter last week Luke it got into people's inboxes good I am slowly are you happy or sad about that no I'm happy but I it's gonna be a process and I don't know if I told you this on the air if I've told you this at all but I thought it was pretty funny the comparison that our colleague John made via text message to me because what I did was this last newsletter I sent out had literally not one image in it, not one photo, not one GIF. I even removed like the banner of you and I and the boat, the cartoon logo of us. I didn't put in any links. I didn't put in any video. It was just text. And I wanted to see if I sent that out, would I still be sent to people's spam folders or will it go? And I think this is a Gmail issue. So if you have no idea what I'm talking about, it's probably because you're not a Gmail user. But I sent this out on Friday and it landed it did not get caught up in the fishing nets of well i guess a fishing net is a wrong terminology to use there since they thought i was the fisher of men and lies but anyway uh it landed in the inbox so what i'm going to do is slowly build the newsletter back up week after week and see if i can keep it out of people's spam folders and john said it's kind of like when you have a dog or a kid with allergies and you kind of remove everything from the diet just slowly plain rice yes so plain rice was last friday and it seemed to have worked we were able to keep it down you're putting a pinch of salt in this week so yeah i don't know what we'll do this week maybe but i don't i don't think we're going to do hay dummies again this week we're going to hold off on hay dummies one more week so are you happy to hear that because it probably would have been your

turn i love doing hey dummies now that i have my snappy your little glasses filmy glasses yeah i like to make little little productions on but um but you know i i'm never mad at uh a lighter lift i mean you're the one that does so much work around the newsletter and uh and and people love reading it's really good too so you know all the work does pay off and i do hope we can get back to the point where uh it can be sent out with all of the fun bells and whistles and it can land in people's inboxes because i do think it's kind of a highlight of the of the end of the week for some people it's i know when i see it i'm like oh man about time to slide down that dinosaur andrew's got that newsletter out um and also it's very informative and helpful like if you miss something during the week if you're you can see the 10 of the week which is really fun we can always use more submissions for that i bet how do people do that they go to tbtl.net you're over there you're

at tbtl.net you're signing up for the valentine's card exchange of course but then you see up at the top right hand corner there's a little link and it says 10 of the week 10 of the week is what it says uh not 10 of the wink that's actually something i'm working on for my valentine's card you click on 10 of the week you can see an archive of all the past 10s of the weeks from the past couple of years and you can sign up to be one in a future email yeah so please do that and

participate and subscribe to the newsletter and um oh i need to update this page this whole thing This whole thing will continue to work seamlessly, as it has for going on 18 years, I think. I'm starting to round up, by the way.

I think we went past 18, didn't we, with the last anniversary, or is that wrong? Is that what we decided? In January.

What I'm doing now, Andrew, is I'm just telling people we've been doing it for almost 20 years. Yeah, that's what you should do. I feel like we're in the range now. I think that's reasonable. It's just easier to say. Also, I'm kind of trying to flex. Trying to be like, yeah, well, we've been doing it for almost 20 years now. It's a nice round number.

I was pre-irritated by Scott Aukerman yesterday because they released a really great episode of Comedy Bang Bang, and it was an even number show. It was number 950, which means he always kind of does this tradition of bringing back the three guests who are kind of always on, and they get into this epic – there's sort of this epic narrative arc that goes on when Andy Daly and Jason Manzoukas and Paula Tompkins are all on together. it's like kind of a story arc that's been going on you know all improvised that's been going on for years now but the reason I got irritated was I saw that 950 I'm like ah he's 50 episodes away about a year away from his 1000th episode and they're going to make all kinds of claims about their 1000th episode which are not true just based on our podcast existing like and they did so many things similar to what we did they claimed that they have done the longest podcast because they did a 10 hour marathon Or something for like some Benchmark you know episode Of theirs or like some

anniversary and i was like we did 24 hours and we did it in a moving van and we took phone calls shout out cory schreppel absolutely apparently he sent us a note the other day apparently it was what the eight year vaniversary of the vaniversary show yeah but anyway so i'm pretty annoyed by other people stealing our glory while we're hiding our light under a bushel over here

well that changes on friday when we have 8 000 new subscribers to the newsletter and we finally start to get some heat around this show that's right so that other podcasts are going to have to admit that they've been ripping us off for years for almost 20 years now is what i'm saying

what you need to know is that dev dev was the american singer whose vocals are featured on the song like a g6 my friend that's what we call the weave and you wove it beautifully that's what

we call the hugo weaving you brought it back to an open question about who and it's not kesha but who was singing in that song and then right at the end of the show boom nailed it thank you for that all right the kind words we are going to wrap things up here today but uh and sorry by the way uh we didn't there was another couple of emails that i really wanted to get to maybe on friday's show andrew i could share them i got a really inspirational email from a listener um that that warmed my heart made me feel good about tbtl and you and the audience and everybody So maybe on Friday we can get into that a little bit. I also want to talk about the sort of, I don't know, the iOS update that's tearing my family apart in the Hawk Squad and a few other things.

I want to hear about this. I was checking out at the grocery store the other day, and I used my phone, you know, to, like, beep out to pay or whatever. And the guy behind the counter was like, is that an iPhone? And I was like, no, no, no, it's just Android. Everything go okay? He's like, yeah, no, it's fine. It's just the update. The new iOS is just so terrible. I just wanted to talk to somebody about it. I was like, oh, okay. I don't know what's going on with that.

I've got the new iOS, as unfortunately do other people in my family, and it's turning into a whole situation. So maybe on Thursday we can talk about that. So, all right. Thank you for listening, everybody. We are going to be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. I'll be back at the Madrona Hill studio. So tune in for that. In the meantime, everybody have a good Tuesday. Stay safe. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all. Power out.