Muse

Hey, now don't you tell me you don't remember me, because I sure as heck fire remember you. Not a chance. Ned! Ryerson! Needle nose, Ned, Ned the head. Come on, buddy, Case Western High. Ned Ryerson, I did the whistling belly button trick at the high school talent show. Bing! Ned Ryerson, got the shingles real bad senior year, almost didn't graduate. Bing! Again! Ned Ryerson, I dated your sister Mary Pat a couple times till you told me not to anymore. Well?

Ned Ryerson? Bang! TBTL!

Do you believe I got Happy New Year'd today? It's February. I once got Happy New Year'd in March. This is disgusting.

It's pathetic. First day seemed like a week. And the second day seemed like five days And the third day seemed like a week again

The comedy factor speaks for itself It's just painfully obvious It's an unfulfilled prophecy It just has to be played out

Watch out for that first step, it's a doozy

Well, alright, hello, good morning And welcome everyone to a Monday edition of TBTL the show that just might be too beautiful to live is it too early good fish sandwich my name is luke burbank i'm your host who the hell is that coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia it's one of those uh golly did we ever have a a nice weekend particularly saturday around here it was like spring-like and now we are sliding into that kind of it's not raining but it's very cloudy and everything just see i can i feel like i can actively watch moss growing on various surfaces in my yard here at the madrona hill studio um but um but we're ready on this monday morning and feeling good by the way let's see this is cup of coffee number three uh so i'm i'm feeling supercharged as we arrive at episode 4,654 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Maybe I'm feeling good because I've found a new soothing sound that I've been listening to for, I'm going to say, 10 to 11 hours per day. I'm hooked. On my telephone. It's a real thing. I'm going to really play you this sound later and see what you all think of it, or at least see what Andrew thinks of it, because I don't know if this is normal behavior or not. Also, I recently watched Secret Mall Apartment. So who needs a movie? It's a documentary on Netflix about some art types in Rhode Island who built a secret apartment inside the Providence Mall and what the implications are for public space and art and things like that. So we'll get into that. also there's a um there was an update i think a new functionality as part of the ios iphone update that is created quite a stir within the hawk squad family text chain that i'm part of you're tearing me apart lisa take you on that journey as well and we'll say hello to this guy longest running cobro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ship i just want you to be normal and clearly you're not he is andrew walsh and he's joining me right now good morning

my friend good morning luke i was thinking this morning an absolutely absurd thought that i want to know if you will give me any validation on and it's totally fine if you don't okay actually speaks well of you if you don't i think but first of all happy groundhog day thanks for reminding

me that today is groundhog day i'm not happy though that apparently punk satani phil saw his shadow oh i didn't even read the news more weeks of winter which this is just quickly if i can this is the journey that i go on with that it's like first of all i never know what the quote-unquote rules are yeah if if he sees the shadow is it good if he doesn't see the shadow is it good and then i get mad when the reports are not the outcome that i want which is i want winter to be over sooner rather than later and then i remind myself it's in the words of jenny mccarthy it's bullshit none of it's a jib jab none of it's real we don't know if the groundhog saw his shadow the guy pulled like holds the groundhog up to his ear and tries to divine if the groundhog is telling the human in the stovepipe hat if he saw his shadow or not none of it's real why do i care why does it make me mad why does it ruin my monday morning if they've declared that the groundhog

saw his shadow i am so confused as to why you chose a famous anti-vaxxer as somebody who's calling this bullshit is that why did you choose

It's just a drop that we used to play on the show all the time. Oh, is that Jenny McCarthy? Yeah, this isn't.

Look it. It's plain and simple. It's bullshit.

Oh, see, I didn't know that drop. Because I was in my head going to make some joke about, well, I'm not sure how scientific the groundhog shadow thing is. But given what we take for science in the new world order, I was like, well, maybe the groundhog. James Jr. honestly only eats groundhog.

That's his current recommendation for the new food pyramid. The top of the pyramid is groundhog.

And I believe they replaced everybody at NOAA with groundhogs. Yes. I'm pretty sure is what has happened. So that's why I was. And then to be. I was just sort of thinking that in the back of my head, trying to formulate some sort of humorous observation. And then you bring up Jenny McCarthy. And I'm like, I don't. I'm lost. Are you double whammying me here with conspiracy theories?

But I mean, that's by the way, that speaks to such a such a more innocent time in our society. That was Jenny McCarthy, I believe, maybe on the Larry King show or something. And she was being anti-vax because she was one of the early famous people to be out there leading this this scientifically unsupported idea that vaccines cause autism. But it was such a fringe theory and it was coming from the person who had once co-hosted Singled Out. Yeah, right. That it was humorous for her to be getting worked up about it, as opposed to, oh, this might become national policy. You know what I mean? It's not the—we probably wouldn't— I mean, I still play that drop because, as was proved by your reaction, I think most people don't even know the context. No, I don't even know if I've heard that in a while. It's just a way that I can say something is BS if I need to. But it's just like, that was a funny thing because it was so fringe and not so far from ever being what the real sort of law of the land might become, you know, back in the day. It's not funny anymore because it's unfortunately now a mainstream theory amongst the right.

That's right, as are groundhog scientists. So back to my thought, which is really, my hot take, it's not hot. Okay, let's do some level setting here. This is like going to be the coldest take possible, so cold that I think you're going to run away from it and go inside and throw yourself under a blanket. But I was thinking that Groundhog Day is the leap day of normal years. And I don't know exactly what that means, and I'm sober. But I think it all started because this morning I got a text from you that said, don't forget today is Groundhog Day if you want to use that Groundhog Day tape. And I thought, oh, yeah, that's a great idea. I haven't heard Kenneth jumping around the 30 Rock office wishing everybody a leap day. A leap day William. A Leap Day William, and maybe it's just because I think of these two holidays primarily, if not exclusively, through which drops we play that day, because aside from that, I don't think about them at all.

You're not preparing a special Groundhog Day meal with Genevieve, or Leap Day meal with Genevieve. Exactly. There's no tradition around it other than, oh, do we have an intro package for that?

And instead, what I thought about doing today, as I was in the shower, I was going to play Leap Day William and see if you stopped me. to see if you could if I could just you're pretty I decided that you would pick up on it you're you're a sharp kid but I did wonder like could somebody's brain just because we just it's so easy to conflate those two I just thought there was a chance I could slip a little Leap Day Williams past you today without you realizing that's not Groundhog Day and that's what got me on that weird stoner

theory did you think that there was any chance that I would note that it's not Groundhog Day but that I would then get to the same meta joke you were making.

I kind of wondered.

Because that would be, that's four-dimensional chess.

But what I decided to do instead was what I just did, which is I played the regular tape, and then I brought up this theory with you. And I'm not convinced that you still have any idea what I'm talking about as far as me thinking that these two are somehow spiritual holidays.

I would totally agree with you that they're connected in a way because they're both, first of all, I don't understand either of them on a fundamental level. Like, you know what I mean? Like seriously, I, I, I forget every year what I'm rooting for from the groundhog. Yeah. And the extra day. And, and I also don't know, I, I really don't fully understand leap day. It's once every four years, right? There's an extra day. So every, so three, three out of four years, three out of four years, it's just a non-event. It's like, we don't speak of it because it didn't happen. And then once every four years it comes around and we're like, oh, we got an extra day. And what month is it in?

That's in February, usually. It would be February 29th. Now, while we're on the topic of calendars, did you happen to peep? This is not a test. This is not a quiz. It's fine. But I just want to know if you know what I'm about to go off on, because I got real obsessed with something. My ergonomic stool. You did not see the newsletter this week, I take it. I am obsessed. I saw the headline. Okay, that's fine. That's fine, honestly. I'm actually glad that you didn't take a moment to appreciate the hard work. No, open up a calendar. Open up a calendar in front of you. I got one right in front of me. Look at the month of February and tell me why it isn't the most beautiful thing you ever don't see. Oh, I know what you like. Look at this. Look at this.

Sunday is the first, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and then you get March 1st is another Sunday.

So usually I like it when Monday is the first because it kind of makes the work week even. But shout out to listener Kennedy who sent this in. It is the perfect month. Even though it is more proper, Sunday is the first, there are no extra squares on the calendar. It's just four straight seven-day weeks. Like, it starts on a Sunday. It ends on a Saturday. There's no extra squares. You don't have that, like, I don't know, it's March 1st, and so Wednesday, so we have three squares in front of it. It is a perfect, absolutely perfect, beautiful grid.

Yes. I'm looking at it right now, and I did, by the way, identify what you were talking about. So there's a wonderful, beautiful—I don't know if—it's not symmetry, because it's not, like, the same on both sides. but it's something oh what was oh phooey i'm sorry why did i start that sentence oh when i couldn't quite finish it it was this idea of a player a a baseball player a eugenio suarez who may go back to the reds this the reds and that would be a palindrome career oh i don't know about the palindrome career so so it would mean that their career arc goes the same forwards and backwards like it started with the reds it went to the whomevers it came to the marriage it went to whomevers it ends at the reds so his career might be a palindrome i don't know if there are

other teams in here but it might have been reds mariners arizona mariners reds i don't know if

there's whatever it is if he ends up at the reds and that's his last stop his career will have been

a perfect palindrome i thought you would have liked that i well i do like it i don't like not knowing what we're going to do at third base but that is probably not the conversation we're not

going to be doing andrew is watching a absolute ib statistical train wreck at the plate for almost all at-bats except for the occasional hero grand slam right that much i can i mean i love the vibes we love the vibes and we love the guy i really do like that guy i mean and when he finally hit that grand slam in the playoffs like the palpable relief and when he talked about like he was in the postgame presser it's just like i don't think i could like a human being more than gino suarez

but boy was it tough to watch him but his first stint with us was way better than anybody expected and he did a really good job but he was only with us for like two months tops i think and yeah it

was pretty rough but he dropped off so hard from arizona that was the tough he was like he was on a streak where i think he had maybe the most home runs of anybody in baseball or like a three season arc or something like we were getting like honestly i thought he was a bigger get than nailer

by the way welcome to hot stove league right right no a lot of people when we got nailer i remember a friend was like you need more than nailer you need to get a eugenio and i was like yeah but nailer is also i was more excited about uh nailer for some reason and he has proved to be a fan favorite although we'll see what his performance is like uh next season as well It's going to be tough. It's going to be tough to live up to his hype at this point.

It was magical. I mean, he's going to come back to earth, and that's fine. I mean, I just think we're going to be such a better team going into this season than we were last year. And I'll absolutely take Naylor over not having him. But I think it'll be—I don't know if he's going to steal 120 bases this season. I just feel like Major League Baseball may have figured out how to solve the Josh Naylor problem. Like, he was a really, really special run involving him, but I'm expecting him to play a little bit more like a normal first-base person of his, let's just say, particular assets and liabilities.

Yeah, it's interesting that you think we're going to go into this season as a better team because we don't have anything at second or third base right now. I mean, we have some young people, like Cole Young, that we're thinking about. But anyway, listen, I don't want to get into the X's and O's of the season, but I do want to say this because I didn't quite realize this. I knew that we were getting to that part of the year where people were like, hey, pitchers and catchers are reporting for spring training or whatever, and I know that there's going to be just like whatever they do before they start playing the actual scrimmages against other teams, warm-em-ups, I suppose. Yes. I knew that we're kind of in that era.

A lot of fungal bats being broken out, a lot of pepper being played.

It wasn't until this Saturday when I was talking to my... buddy hannah brooks olsen and she's like you know we're like two weeks away from the first spring training game she said it's going to be inter squad stuff she said when you consider the no i think actual spring training game on the calendar and um because it's like mid-february and she said you know with the super bowl like we're going to be going like a week and a half or something like that i don't mean to misquote her we were just off air but i something like a week and a half for two weeks between the last Seattle football game and the first Seattle spring training game. Like, we are very lucky. I mean, I cannot believe that we are knocking on the door of actual spring training games.

February 20th, San Diego Padres at Seattle Mariners Peoria Sports Complex. They call that a Vetter Cup preview. The 20th. I was texting with a friend of ours. I'll just say who it was. our friend stew was at the uh there was an impromptu concert in the twin cities that was bruce springsteen and tom morello from rage and some other artists who were there to support all of the folks in minnesota it was an anti-ice concert and and stew's been kind of going through it as have as have everyone in the twin cities but especially our pal stew so i was texting with him and he said yeah it's been kind of a shit week but i did just i think pee next to eddie Vedder at this concert I said of the Vedder cup and he said the very same oh wow wow why and then later on it turned out to just be a normal dude who looked like Eddie I was gonna say because

that's I told you the story about how I was pretty sure I I bumped into the guy from counting crows like I believe this my entire life if you bumped into well he had I mean he looked like him he smelled like what I expect him to smell like he was dressed like him he and it was at it was at lalapalooza this goes way back to oh yeah right no that's that's that actually could have been but now that i mean but i've been to other festivals as an adult since then and even being there with you doing tbtl stuff and having like backstage you know access or side stage or whatever the artist area is i'm just like i don't know would he really have been just knocking around

with the common folks in 1994 absolutely because maybe my guess would be that whoever it was you were watching at the time, or if you were, wait, he was standing next to you, or are you in the restroom at this point?

No, neither. I believe I bumped into him as we passed each other.

I would absolutely imagine that he would like to go stand in a crowd to watch a band that he's a fan of, as opposed to the side stage experience. Yeah, I could see that. That seems, I think he was a man of the people, and is, and remains so. I'm a Duritz fan. And I am I'm really glad for him that he has shifted hairstyles because I think his his more recent look is really working a lot better for him. And if anything, it makes me mourn for all the years that he didn't have his current hairstyle because I don't think that the locks were really I don't think they were selling.

They were working for him. But I believe what he's doing now is wearing a really tight beanie over his head and then putting like a fancy pimp hat over top of that.

right no what he's doing now is one of those golf caps that has like a guy fieri hair coming out of the top of it you buy it with the hair green yeah no it's it's it's it's absolutely bleached bleached blonde it sticks straight up and boy it is it is a real it's a it's a comedic delight when you get particularly if you get a guy who's like kind of bald on top really bald on top but he puts on the the golf visor with the with the hair included yeah and uh and hits the links yeah Actually, I'm not going to get into my favorite prank of late because I know you're not a prank guy.

Wait, your favorite prank is something other people are doing or something you're doing?

It's kind of fun. No, I'm not doing it, but it is kind of funny to me, which is golfers on the course getting a pretend snake and then some fishing line, and then they'll clip it to their buddy's pants, and then they'll go like, A, there's a snake over there, and then the person turns and sees this very unconvincing, if you know about the prank, rubber snake. But what happens is the person goes, whoa. And then the more they move, the more the snake moves with them. And, man, you see some guys go right down into, like, literal ponds trying to get away from the snake. And I could totally, I don't know.

I am so scared of snakes.

What I see these videos, all I can think of is like, I've tried to imagine how I would behave in this scenario because I think I'm, I'm not like, I don't think I'm phobic about snakes, but I'm certainly not a fan. Like I would not, I'd not like seeing a big snake unexpectedly next to me on the green, but it's almost like I'm trying to retrain my brain right now. that if I'm golfing with some buddies, which, by the way, would never happen. I don't even have any buddies who golf. But if I was, and somebody said, oh, hey, look out for that snake, I'm trying to program my... brain to remember in that moment that it's a prank because i think i would totally scream start running from the snake think the snake was chasing me and then eventually tumble down a hill into a retention pond which is what happens commonly with this prank what i like about the prank is it seems like it's punching laterally you know what i mean like it's another golf bro he's getting kind of pranked by his golf bro buddies you know what i mean so it seems like It seems like it's in an acceptable range of pranking to me.

Here's where you're not taking this seriously enough. They are undoing years, decades, millennia of evolution. Because what you're trying to do already, and you're not even on the links, you're already trying to retrain your brain to not be scared of snakes. The reason we're scared of snakes is what they call an evolutionary imperative. And you're already like, all right, next time I see a snake, I'm not going to be afraid of it. I'm going to run towards the snake.

I'm the result of hundreds of generations of people who are afraid of snakes. It's the only reason I'm here.

What are we doing?

No, you're absolutely right. This is a very dangerous precedent to set. I need that fear. That is going to keep me alive. That's going to keep Addy alive.

That's right.

My fear of snakes. Wait, she's already in the world. Actually, that one's fine. Yeah, okay. Well, along with trying to retrain my brain around snakes, I have been, I don't know if you would call this retraining, Andrew, but I have been basking in a sonic experience for this about the last two weeks that is frankly threatening to get slightly out of control. And what it is, is I have on my phone one of these, I have an app that is like a white noise app. And really what it is, its main functionality that I've known about because I've never paid for it. I've never, like, it's $20 a year, but I've been just using the free version. It's called Bedtime Fan. I'll show you. I'm holding it up to the screen, or you can kind of see it. It just looks like a big fan, and then you've got low, medium, and high fan sound. And that's all that I've been using for years and years. This has been a thing that, like, if I'm in a hotel room or even if I'm at my house, I'll just play that fan to sleep, that noise of that fan. and um but also sometimes it would it wouldn't ever play a commercial like an audio commercial during the fan but every time i would try to shut the app down it would try to make me watch a commercial or i wasn't getting like the i wasn't getting the premium experience and then one day i was like you know what this might be i use this thing seven like i use it like seven nights a week all year long maybe i should spend 20 bucks and just have the full functionality And when I did that, it unlocked this whole other, like, series of sounds.

Oh, wonderful.

Like, how many? Well, it's actually, let's see. It's not, well, there's a library. The ones that they, the featured ones are, one's called Soothe, one's called Deep Sleep, one's called Ultra Relax, and one's called Healing Calm. And then there's, like, a, you can hit library and go into more of them.

You can't mix them, can you? The way I had that one where I could add a little bit more rain on a tin roof and then add a little bit more ocean, but then back off the cows.

I don't think, you can mix them with the fan. And you can't mix them with each other, although we did have that. That was the Calm app, right, I think, that we did ads for maybe?

I had a different one that was just like it had dozens and dozens of different styles, but you could compose your own sonic landscape with these little sliders. I was obsessed with it, but I have no idea what it was.

I've done that, too, and that's very, very, like, also very soothing. Yeah. But I just clicked. Speaking of soothe, I just clicked kind of, like, at random on this soothe. And when I tell you, Andrew, that I have been sleeping with this every night, and now this is where it gets weird also walking around with it in my ears like for some time like if i'm in the airport or just like kind of doing things it's it's very clearly something that is quieting something inside my brain it's um like when i tell you i have been getting the best sleep of my life listening to this and that again like sometimes i'll have so i i bought these i also bought these um sleeping earbuds because like when becca and i were in miami or if i'm over at her house or she's at my house. I have to be hearing either my fan noise or this, right? But she does not like that sound. Like she wants total silence. And so what I've been doing for a long time now is using my traditional like AirPods, but there's two problems with that. One is, uh, they kind of hurt my ears after a while. They're, they're, you know, they're not really designed for you to be lying on like crushing on into your ear. if you're side sleeping yeah and also they die they're not they don't last for seven to eight hours or whatever and so i find myself constantly futzing with them which is like sometimes i'll sleep with one in my top ear and then when i'm when i start thinking i want to roll over so let's just say that my i'm on my right side so my left ear is the top ear that one will have an air pod in it and then when i want to roll over to my left side i'll literally have to switch air pods so that now the top side has a different air pod in it and while which has been charging if this makes any sense and now is sending that sound in my ear but like the complexity of this move at three in the morning it's like it does not lead to restful sleep so i finally broke down and i bought these they're called oslo and they are first of all they last for 10 hours on a charge and they're teeny tiny they fit like they're like designed to be inside of like they don't stick out from your ear at all and i got these things going now and i got this crazy soothe sound and i'm like sleeping sometimes i'm just here by myself and i'm sleeping with the sleep headphones in or whatever you call them with this thing going and i am like out man i'm like it's like i'm sleeping so hard like but also i worry i feel

like you want to talk about evolution and fear of snakes i feel like it's taking an increase it's an increasing amount of technological intervention for me to have a satisfying night's sleep. This feels like the opposite of like Thoreau or Walden. Who did Walden pond? Is that Thoreau? Thoreau. Yeah. Thoreau. I feel like, I feel like the most healthy way for me to be is to just lie in a quiet room when it's time to sleep and my mind calms itself and I go to sleep and that's the most restful sleep. But for me, it's like, no, I need this app now that I'm paying $20 a year for. I need these expensive in-ear headphones. It's like I'm adding so much technology to try to solve for the fact that my brain is an unquiet place.

I'm trying to figure out. I never read Walden, but I read a play that was about Walden, and I was trying to see if I could find that. I feel like that was kind of well-known, right?

I definitely didn't read Walden, but I remember that play, I feel like being kind of well-received at around the time maybe when you and I would have become sort of aware of plays?

Yeah, it's driving me a little bit bananas because you know what I had was, I had somehow, and I didn't steal it on purpose, but I had one of those library books, Luke, which I don't even know if library books still look like this, but it's one of those that was like part of a, maybe there was a bunch of them or something, and they all just had this simple red binding. Like the library got it, and then it put that really rough red binding on it with a very simple little nameplate on the front of it, and it just made the books kind of indestructible. And every now and then, some of those books just got into the general water supply, and then you have one at home. And around here somewhere, I have one of those books. Again, now even just thinking about the binding on that makes me feel nostalgic for a different era. But anyway, I'm sorry to go off. I know the feeling that you're talking about. I don't have the ability to listen to sound at night, but if I have those tiny, as we've talked about on the show.

You mean you don't technologically have it, But if you had them, you would?

I'm sure I would because I used to like to put it on, you know, just open air, put my phone on the end table or something. The problem is now earbuds jack up my ears. I've told you about it, and I don't want to go into detail, but I can't really put things in my ears because I'll really pay. People who are lactose intolerant, I don't understand what it's like when they're like, well, I kind of want to – I want ice cream now, so I'm going to eat it, but then I'm going to pay for it later. And I've never, like, experienced that kind of thing. But that is how I had been the past year or two with earbuds. Like, I just don't feel like taking my big headphones to the ballpark. I can just wear my earbuds for just the bus trip down. And then, like, for weeks and weeks later, my ears are all jacked up.

But if you wear your big over-the-ear ones, you're fine.

It's the inside the ear canal. Exactly. It's a problem. So now you understand why I can't even wear regular earbuds to bed. And I'm certainly not going to wear those big over-the-ear ones because I'm a side sleeper like you. So anyway, so I appreciate this. I think that I would slip into this as well. But it did remind me of one thing that I sort of noticed or maybe have slightly been noticing. You mentioned that you listen to the sound when you're just bopping around the house or maybe even the airport or what have you. Yeah.

On the airplane is a big one for me.

And one thing for me is I so I have over the ear headphones. I like their pair of JBLs and they have pretty good noise canceling. I know that you always say the noise canceling doesn't do much. But the technology has come a long way from those first noise-canceling headphones, and it's only getting better. And, of course, these are over-the-ear headphones, so it really helps in noise-canceling. And they can also go into opposite mode where you turn on, it's called like spatial mode. something it's like kind of a safety mode so you can hear what's in front of you and behind you while you're listening to music you can hear better right they can turn into a hearing aid of sorts exactly it's almost like they have little microphones in there but if you turn on that function and don't turn any and any music it just sort of amplifies the sound around you well i don't usually turn that function on but i usually have the the you know sound suppression on or whatever sound canceling if you will and I have found more and more often I put these on I power them on and then I go out of the house and then I'm walking to the like the barber on Friday or you know I'm taking my walk to the grocery store or whatever and I get to the place and I realize I never put on any music I just like wearing these things and having noise canceling on which is weird because I don't if I'm going for a walk through the neighborhood I don't want noise canceling I want to hear the dogs barking and the wind blowing and what have you but i'm not even thinking about it and then i'm getting someplace i'm just like oh i guess i just sort of wear these they keep my ears warm and they cancel some noise around me and i just end up in my own little world and i'm not

even listening to anything yeah i was just doing that with my where was i i was somewhere in public but i had the airpods in with the intention of listening to something but then ever i never got around to choosing the thing to listen to including my soothe sound it wasn't even my soothe sound it was just nothing in my ears I was just wearing them just walking around for like a significant amount of time in the world and just didn't it was like I was too lazy to pick something to listen to and I was too lazy to take them out of my ears and also I don't know on a certain level it's a and this is probably kind of anti-social but it's like it is to quote the far side it's it's nature's way of saying do not touch yeah it's kind of like hey everybody just kind of i mean less so than your big over the ear ones which is a hundred percent of a way to like just let folks know hey i'm i'm listening to something right now but in its own small way it's still just kind of saying like i'm in my own world um and uh and and i'd like to just mostly

stay in that world right now yeah you know that reminds me i was gonna sorry that something happened to me in the grocery store on friday that i guess i would like your take on although maybe it's a little bit sensitive but you mentioning that having my over-the-ear headphones on is a sign to the world that like i can't hear you and i will say there are times where i find myself walking and i don't have anything any sound going through my ears but somebody might be trying to get my attention but i don't care to stop and i just think like oh good i can keep walking you know maybe somebody wants a dollar at the side of the road or something like that and i just keep walking which really makes me sound miserly but that's what made me think about this interaction i had at the grocery store on friday which i thought was kind of interesting i was doing my

own thing at the grocery store oh my god you were doing your own research at the grocery what led

into this was you know how i have a phlebotomist that i don't like and i try to avoid him at all cost i saw my bad phlebotomist in the grocery store almost bumped carts with him i don't think Sars? No, at the small I always say small, but it's at the QFC on Holman Road. The Holman Road QFC

formerly Arts Family Center. And they do

have sort of smaller aisles in there and some of the aisles have these big pillars in the middle of them so it's kind of, I like that grocery store, but it's a little bit, it can be a little bit cramped in the aisles sometimes, and he did not look at me and if he had, I don't think he would have recognized me. He also hasn't served me in a while because I go in there now, and the woman Yes, if I'm holding a baseball, the woman Natalie recognizes me because i squeeze a baseball so that she can take my blood she's like i got you she is she is amazing by the way um she always looks out for me i feel like she's my own little like prince nightingale yeah i was gonna say um uh yeah uh what do you call an angel that looks over you uh guardian guardian angel but any who's where's the other guy was a hell's angel he was a He wasn't even an angel. He was a sunny barger. He was at... He was at... What the hell was the... What? Monterey. He was at Monterey. I got the joke out, everybody.

Yeah, give me shelter. Give me shelter. Give him shelter. That's right.

Give me shelter from my own attempts and cultural references from the hippie generation. That's my fault.

I was trying to flex on remembering a famous Hell's Angel, Sonny Barger, which I only knew about from the Hunter S. Thompson book.

Wait, no, Alt-Mont. Is it Alt-Mont? Alt-Mont. Alt-Mont is what I meant. I still F'd it up, not Monterey. I think the movie was

Gimme Shelter, right, because the Rolling Stones were playing.

I don't know about the movie. I just know about the event where they hired the Hell's Angels as security and the Rolling Stones played or whatever. Oh, my God. What a tortured riff. That was on me. Nobody would leave that in their show and we're leaving it in.

Nobody.

Please do. Andrew?

We are currently experimenting with ways to grow the audience, and that could be it.

That could be our innovation. I'm screaming Monterey over here as if anybody has any idea what I'm talking about. Okay. Anyway, so here's my screen.

So he's in the QFC.

Yeah, now keep in mind, this isn't even my story, by the way. No, but I'm fascinated. I'm walking down this kind of narrow aisle, and all of a sudden I see my phlebotomist, the one that I don't like. He's not even my phlebotomist. He's the phlebotomist that I avoid at LabCorp. And so I'm kind of shook. I'm like, oh, my gosh. It's like seeing your teacher in the store. something so you know me like I talk about this a lot I'm very I'm very conscientious about like my place for my body and my cart in a grocery store like I don't want to be in somebody's way so I kind of move over to sort of the end cap of an aisle so I'm kind of in the main area but I'm tucked all the way as close to the aisle as I can be and I pull out my phone because I'm about to text Hannah Brooks Olson because she knows about my phlebotomy about the phlebotomy yeah

By the way, I like to picture him standing in front of, like, the section which has all the canned peaches, and he keeps pulling different cans of peaches off, but they're all wrong, but he's blaming the peaches. It's somehow their fault that he cannot secure the proper can of peaches, but it's definitely their fault.

Yes, exactly. So, no, he's just, we pass each other, and I'm near the end, so I kind of hook a left, and I park my cart right in front of, I want to say, like, the tortillas or something like that. or the pita bread or something, and the end cap there. And then I pull out my phone, and I start texting Hannah. And somebody behind me in a very, a woman's voice, kind of a very small sort of meek voice with a bit of an accent, although I don't know what kind of accent, says, oh, excuse me, excuse me. And I'm like, oh, shoot. And so now I just, in an instant, I'm telling you a story that all of this is taking place in about 30 seconds, by the way. In an instant, I feel terrible, because I've been caught standing in somebody's way blocking them from the pita bread while i'm on my phone which is like that's a bad look so i'm like oh my gosh i'm so sorry so i push my card up a little ways and then i go to text hand again she's like no no excuse me excuse me and i realize oh she wants to talk to me and it's it's a woman um who's like kind of you know i would just say like a uh finely dressed woman not like she doesn't look like she's like living on the streets but she also doesn't look like a rich person she just looks like a person and she's got her little daughter there and she just like gestures down to her grocery card and says like can you help me buy this stuff oh and and i was kind of like and i could i'm also like luke i had just seen my phlebotomist in the grocery store like i'm already shook i'm trying to text this i thought i was in somebody's way so i'm shook about that and now i realize oh wait i'm talking to this person and honestly like if somebody is struggling if i can buy them groceries i feel like that's a very direct action you can take you know what i mean like i'm like okay i'd be open to helping somebody buy groceries for sure but i'm also like in the moment i'm kind of like well i gotta i gotta get a hold of hannah she's got to know about the phlebotomist situation yes uh and also i don't know what that's going to run and then also what is i'm nearing the end of my grocery shopping so what are we going to go up together and at first i'm picturing like yeah i guess follow me up to the store but all of these thoughts are just passing me really passing through my head very quickly so i just look down and i'm sure i always look grumpy when i'm surprised so i'm sure i looked really grumpy and i looked down at her cart which is a moderate i don't know it had some i don't know it looked like maybe some deli meats in there something else um and i'm like oh wait you need help buying this she's like yeah i'm like uh all of this she's like yeah this i'm just like uh then i just gave her 20 bucks i was like i i don't know what to do with this situation right now i don't mind helping somebody buy groceries and but then also in the back of your head is kind of like I also is this I don't like to go through my world thinking like oh somebody's

trying to scam me I feel like an absolute scam you know this is a known thing see and then I

thought though oh is there somebody else is she working on behalf of somebody else who's scamming folks and then I was like you know what I just don't want to I just I just dismissed it I'm like I'd rather be I'd rather have a little itch in the back of my head being like I don't know somebody scammed me out of $20 and it wasn't for groceries versus I turned my back on somebody who might have needed help for groceries. I was like, it is what it is. I'm not going to beat myself up over it.

It's a $20 tax on being out in the world and the various random things that might happen. But what is the actual scam that you... Well, I was just reading... So actually, yesterday, Becca and I were driving around Portland and we had noticed that there's been a pretty large influx of folks that are at the freeway off-ramps and it's almost always a mother and one to two children and they've got a sign and it's it it's it's something that we weren't seeing a lot of in the area kind of where she lives and now you're seeing it more and it feels like it's not a coincidence and then i was doing a little like in other words it's it it's very likely the result of sort of like a group of folks who will kind of kind of move into an area and then disperse themselves to various points and and

do some panhandling and do some other things to, to, to sort of like, you know, generate money. And there was a Seattle times story about this not that long ago, our children being used for panhandling. And again, I know the top is a topic is extremely fraught, but I think that it's not a random coincidence that in a certain area, you will start to see a significant number of particularly kind of young women with their children who are doing some form of panhandling. I think it's part of a coordinated effort, and I don't think it's George Soros.

But let me ask this, and this is a real question, kind of puts you on the spot, but I should do some more reading about this, because I will say, I can't stress enough, it's kind of like, I don't like going through the world. I feel like I kind of grew up in this, oh, every panhandler is a scam or something. You know what I mean? Like, oh, you got scammed. First of all, I don't like the feeling of getting scammed, and I think that may be, like, I feel like as a kid who was very shy and often maybe taken advantage of by his peers like i'd never like the feeling of one pulling something off or pulling something over on me sort of and so and i think that when this was happening i'm like oh this feels scammy to me like it felt scammy in the moment but also i'm but my thought was kind of like but what what is the difference between a scam and somebody yes applying good techniques for asking for money when they need it so in other words i would only consider it a scam if this money is going to somebody who doesn't actually need money you know what i mean like where is this a coordinated effort where the money is going up to some rich kingpin or some sort of like drug related thing or is there human trafficking involved are there things like that i should know about or was it just people who are like i just sort of think like if you're spending your time going through a grocery store asking people for money that's not raising that much money at the end of the day you must need it

right like what i agree with you it comes down to the nature yes i don't think again uh i don't think that that there is a in other words i think that that 20 dollars in one way or another ultimately would go to house and or feed this this woman her family etc my guess would be that the likelihood is that this woman and her family live in a uh like a rented home or apartment somewhere with some other folks who are part of the same project this is sometimes also associated with this i gotta i gotta give them credit a genius scam where people will stand in a parking lot playing like the most incredible electrified violin you've ever seen yes we have but it's not plugged into anything um and then now the move is people will come up and like like unplug the violin and the music keeps going like this and so yeah i don't think it's like um i don't think the money is going to drugs or whatever i don't think that the money is i don't know enough about the system of where the money goes. But I do think, I think basically what it is, is a group of folks, and I'll be very delicate with how I'm talking about this, because there's an underlying point to this that I don't really want to weigh in on or get into. But it is, I think, a group of folks who this is the way in this particular kind of a group of people that typically folks raise money. And it's through some panhandling, it's through some stuff like what's going on there, But it is literally to pay the bills or to get food or shelter. So it's not like it's – again, it raises the question of like, is it a scam when really the money – I don't know if the money is going to buy those groceries. It's going to buy groceries probably. It's going into some fund.

Because I did see her when I was at self-checkout. Then I looked over and I saw her again and her cart had a lot more stuff in it. And again, I was kind of like, I don't know. And I guess I only feel – like again, some listeners are probably listening and just thinking like what an absolute rube. No, I don't think that's the most rube thing you could have done. But it's just kind of like, I just, at the end of the day, whenever I have any interaction like that, it always leaves me a little bit unsettled, sort of. Any interaction that I guess I would describe as, I don't fully understand what just happened. But all I thought about later was, oh yeah, that thing. But I'm like, well, rather err on the side of caution for that. Because right now I'm in a position that I can give a woman $20 and think c'est la vie you know like I could have spent that $20 on pull tabs you know yes and I didn't and so and again I'm not trying to make it sound like I'm daddy warbucks over here and I'm just like throwing money around but also I spend a lot of money on a lot of dumb stuff that is incredibly fleeting so if I can give it to somebody who can it helps in some way and you know again the only thing that would bother me would be if this woman and her child were somehow victims who were being sent out to collect money. That would be a problem for me.

I don't get the sense that that's how this particular system works. My guess would be that that money is going to go back into some sort of general account, either within her immediate family structure and cultural structure or a slightly larger one, but it is ultimately going to pay for things, for living expenses and things like that. So, like, I don't think—I haven't read anything about it being a— kind of a human trafficking sort of a deal. And also, um, uh, yeah, I feel like, I feel like, um, what I wanted to say was like, I definitely do not buy into the idea that people who are generally speaking, asking for money are scammers. You know what I mean? Like it's a real specific, it's down to the way the signs are filled out, Andrew, like literally the sign, the particular kind of sign that a person who's part of this movement will be holding at the off ramp of the freeway is it's like specifically written it's a whole thing that you can kind of track most you see somebody and they're standing there on the side of the free you know on the off ramp or on ramp or whatever and they're holding a sign or as it's called flying a flag 99 of those people are just trying to get yeah a little food or a little something or just a couple bucks in their pocket for whatever it is they're using it for like yeah i definitely do not subscribe to the idea that there is some kind of vast conspiracy of panhandler you know like that the people most of the people that i see in the world who appear to be suffering i think are really suffering and um and so i'm not trying to sound like i think that there's this vast conspiracy i think there's one this one arm of it that is much more targeted and much more kind of like systematic and i'm guessing that that's the arm of it that you were interacting with it felt like i gotta say like in that moment

i was like this isn't i just had a feeling it wasn't really like well the fact that you saw her later with more groceries in the car right but that could just kind of might indicate something yeah but also like what does that mean but is it still going towards groceries like for me it would be like she asked for help buying groceries i'm like okay i can assess the situation here's some money for groceries like again i guess i'm repeating myself here but if it was kind of like oh and there's somebody outside in a limousine and they're just gonna send her back and forth and she keeps bringing money out and then they're going to i i don't know like yeah i don't think it's that you certainly don't get into the policing of like because i'm actually trying to look for that seattle times article you're talking about and i can't find it but i'm finding articles or like letters to um you know advice columnists like how can i say no to a panhandler and explain it to my child and just like basically the tone of a lot of these things i'm just kind of like i'd rather be a bit of a rube than be one of these people who like sort of feel like look at these poor people taking advantage of us again like i don't know what's going on with these folks i don't care if that's going to go oh did that go towards some sort of in-app purchase for a game for the child and look what they're doing they're taking our money for groceries and and they're buying more virtual coins with it in a game called royal kingdom um which is just have you been seeing all the ads for royal kingdom lately it doesn't matter point is i i don't know what that money went to but um i don't think that anybody's getting rich off of me no i don't i don't think

that it's i think it's somewhere between like it's somewhere between the most legit thing i've ever seen and also like some kind of a heinous scam that is you know causing people to have you know limousines and drive off to big mansions you know in the hills i think it's somewhere in between i think it's i think it's a way of of getting money that that this particular group of folks at least that you ran into i'm looking at these are older stories but like from the bay area from a few years ago for some bart panhandlers begging is their job if you've commuted in the bay area rapid transit you've likely seen them women with babies begging for money the women are often seen swaying precariously on the rolling bart train baby strapped to their chest approaching riders with a cardboard sign such as no job for kids please help for food etc etc like i think it's pretty it's sort of noticeable in a particular community when there's more folks kind of following this kind of script or whatever if you will and then there was before and then my sense is that at some point that kind of moves on to somewhere else who knows but yeah i i'm with you that at the end of the day if if the big knock on me was i was slightly a softer touch than i could have been i can live with that over i went through the world thinking everyone was out to get me and i was going to make sure to hold on to mine and make sure nobody got over me that's i think

that's a much worse way to go through life this is such an unbelievably like maybe liberal cuck way to look at things but like if not me who but like even like you just wait are you on the epstein you just said like for like panhandling is the job or you didn't say that i think you're quoting the newspaper or something but point is like and when i think about that but i'm also like yeah but it's probably because you can't get a better job it's like it's still not a good job like you know that's what that's what i'm always thinking i'm just like yeah but it's like this you're not pulling one over on me because look at this guy cushy life standing along the freeway in the winter in Seattle with just buckets of rain falling on him and a soggy cardboard sign it's like oh look at this scammer it's like well that's not a good job like this is what spurred the entire

conversation yesterday with Becca and I which was we were getting off the freeway we're going on our way to go take a walk in the Mount Tabor area of Portland and as we were exiting there was a woman and her two children uh with the particular kind of sign that i sort of recognized from other similar scenarios and we we went and we we had our whole walk it was a beautiful sunday finished got back in the car drove back and got on the freeway where we got off the freeway the same woman was there with her kids and i thought you know i was saying to becca i wonder i wonder what this woman's actually able to bring in standing here for for these hours because it seems like a really hard way to generate whatever amount of money she's generating. And, like, if I were her and I could snap my fingers, I think I'd rather be going to a job on Monday morning that earned enough money to put a roof over our heads and feed us and spend this Sunday walking around Mount Tabor Park with my kids because it's a lovely Sunday. Like, so, yeah, I'm with you. Like, the idea that, like, getting over by panhandling, it's like, well, I'll tell you what, that sounds like a worse job to me. Yeah. Then most of the normal jobs that are out there. And so I'm with you that it's like it's maybe it's a quote unquote scam. But it is I would imagine that the the time investment in it and the way that you're interrupts what are the fun parts of life, a.k.a. a Sunday afternoon in the park, seems to me like not worth the trade.

How much should I have given my phlebotomist?

Well, OK, let's get back to that.

for a moment what if he was running it what if i saw her in the parking lot later like handing a wad of that would check out bottom is that would check out so you just like fully ducked him and your guys's paths never crossed no it was one of those so i always describe the um this specific part of this grocery store has these aisles just typical grocery aisles but like i say a little bit narrower and for some reason they have these load-bearing beams right in the middle of this one aisle that's where you get the ketchup i think and so it's always awkward you can just barely pass a grocery cart on one side of it and maybe a grocery cart and a half on the other and so i come and it's always a little bit awkward so i'm i'm kind of leaving the the alley or the i'm sorry the aisle and he's coming into the aisle so he squeezes on one side of the pillar i squeeze on the other side of the pillar and we pass each other but he never looked at me and like i said And even if he had, I don't think he would have recognized me. He cuts a very specific figure. He's a very short guy. He was still wearing his black scrubs. Do I remember a ponytail involved in that? No, male pattern baldness.

Maybe I just added that, too.

A grumpy face, a very grumpy face.

Well, that's also one of those things where it's like, to think about how much larger he looms in your mind than you do in his is kind of wild, too, right? It's like, he's just, he's just, you know, he's just at work probably with untreated depression, just like doing his thing most days and has no idea that how unpleasant you found the experience of working with him was to the point where you've now created a whole nonverbal communication pattern with, he like some with the other people that work there and he's just going through his life, you know, buying his groceries or whatever. There's no idea that like, that, like the, yeah, he, he looms so large in your mind.

I have decided that the next time I am accidentally called, because if Natalie isn't working the front desk, I've decided that the next time, because I get my blood drawn so much now.

You're just drawing your own blood in the parking lot.

Yes, exactly. I'm just going to go in with a bag of blood.

You're just coming in with a Ziploc of your own blood.

Do you remember that TikTok meme? Because I know a lot of people were, I don't know how I happened to catch this TikToker one. I thought I was watching the original, but it turns out I was watching somebody lip syncing to the original audio, as is often the case. But just like a woman like slamming into her car and like outside of a blood bank somewhere just saying, they keep on saying you need blood. I offer blood and they don't want it. She holds up a big bag of blood. Oh, God. I did not. I'm unfamiliar with that meme. Yes.

Thank you, baby. Hey, let's thank some donors. These are folks who are sending in a donation to TBTL, either on the monthly basis or maybe at Thon time. That is really the financial sort of basis of this show. If not for our donors, there would be no TBTL. This is 100% listener supported. And it's thanks to folks like Jesse LePage in Cincinnati, Ohio. It's our pal Jesse.

Hey, enjoy Eugenio Suarez.

I was going to say, incoming. You've got good vibes incoming. And by the way, may, and Jesse, I offer this. I mean, yes, it helps that you're a donor and a longtime friend of the show. Yes. But I would say this even if you weren't. May you get the best version of Eugenio Suarez from the plate. May you get the Eugenio Suarez who does not frequently fall behind in the count O2. Like, I hope you get the Diamondbacks version of him. And also, congratulations.

Congratulations on Cintas. I just realized last year that Cintas is from Cincinnati.

That's where the sin is.

I think so because I was thinking about the Reds and I was watching a Mariners game, but they were in Cincinnati and there were like advertisements up in the bleachers, like not the digital ones, but actual real. It's funny that now we have to say, I was watching a baseball game, but I saw real ads, not the ones that are superimposed on the field, but I saw a bunch of Cintas ads. What's the toss for? Pardon me? What's the toss? I don't know. Oh, the Cintas? Cintas Wiki. I'm wikiing this. I don't know if I double-checked this, but I've got to be right. I've got to be right. That's my new catchphrase.

It says, okay, let's see. The early company years, it began as the Acme Industry Laundry Company. And then, let's see, it is based in Ohio, by the way. Let's see. I'm trying to get to the- Okay, it's in Mason, Ohio, but I think Mason is right outside. Probably a suburb of Cincinnati, maybe. Yeah, I think so. Let me double check here. I'm trying to get to the toss of it all, because the sin makes perfect sense. We used to get, when I worked at a plumbing company in high school, Cintoss, did your dad avail, did Walsh Manufacturing use Cintoss?

Oh, yeah, I still have my Cintoss uniform shirt, one of them that says Andy on it.

We've talked about that. I paid for a Cintoss uniform that said, Luke, out of my own pocket when I worked at the plumbing place. because that was right at that moment where that look was really in style

I would wear my work shirt sometimes out because it was my work shirt okay yeah so it's just northeast of Cincinnati but like you say

probably they were totally like I remember at this you know at this plumbing company they'd come around because all the real plumbers just had their like grubby Cintas you know uniform that they'd like wear while they were crawling around in muck Andy Dufresne style crawling through a mile of shit and then they just like throw them in some kind of a thing and then put on their clean one and then the new one would come back cleaned and i was like hey what's the um what's the policy on the shop guy which was my job getting one and they're like why would you need one and i was like i don't know what could i pay for it and they're like i guess yeah but you did not take advantage

of the uh the the laundry service though right you were watching no because i didn't do enough

of the actual real grunt work you know i was sitting in a basement cleaning you want to talk about a scam i was sitting in a basement cleaning plumbing fittings that were harvested off of job sites and that should have just gone into the recycler or the trash but were being used on new plumbing projects yeah it was a real new wine in old wine skins type of situation i mean some of

those are reusable like that was part of my job these ones be like the guys would come back from jobs at the some job site where they're building something and i sometimes my job mostly with bolts and fasteners and stuff and then I would have to like put them in order and organize them on this wall of bolts which as you would guess really spoke to me but also sometimes I'd have to go back into the pipe room and do the same thing you got you know a three quarter inch elbow or whatever and you gotta kind of like get that back in a little p-trap but I don't feel but these were you know things for the machines that this company was building and so they were screwing themselves if they were using bad parts

I guess totally this would be like a bunch of like copper elbow pieces that had been cut off

and now we're going to just

be like, we would clean them and throw them in a pile and then it'd be like, well we can torch, we can basically weld this back onto a new job site kind of a deal or whatever and it was very Sisyphean because the pile, we would sit there all day listening to David Bowie, Changes Bowie, and make the pile of the ones we had to clean out, we would make that pile smaller because we would clean these things and then move them into these different kind of containers and then we'd go home and then the plumbers would come home from whatever the job or come back to the shop and then we'd come in the next morning and the pile would be the same size oh yeah just like you get the pile kind of smaller and then you come back

and then the pile has grown again that's right you worked for sisyphean plumbing i did yeah we

sure did uh thanks also to denise stock who's an export pennsylvania oh nice export we got a call

the other day from somebody from media and didn't say media pennsylvania and it was just like hi This is Jane from Media. It wasn't Jane. I'm blanking on your name. Sorry. And it took me a while to figure out what media meant. And export is sort of the same way, right? You kind of got to say the name of the state when you say it.

Well, except I feel like you've got three names in Pennsylvania. I'm sorry. I just talked about this, so I won't belabor this. But you've got three places in Pennsylvania that I feel pretty confident if you just say the first name. If you just say the first, I know we're talking PA. Media would be one. Export. and, of course, the third in the holy trinity is intercourse. Oh, sure. Intercourse, media, and export. I'm, I'm...

I'm pretty much, I know what you're talking about upon first reference, as it were.

Now, are those all PA, or those are just all cities that you know where they are? I think those are all PA. Okay, because I was going to throw in industry as well, but that's California.

Industry, sure. Well, yeah, yeah, city of industry. Yeah. Which is a crazy name, too. Thank you, Denise. Thanks to Joey Kaposchia of Kilauea, Hawaii. All right. Must be nice there. Our friend broadcast, Barry, spends a significant amount of time over that way. And this time of year, I have to say, it drives a wedge in our friendship when I see what his life and Sam's life looks like compared to my life.

Yeah, but you know, they're working there. I know.

Listen, it's all like, it's just, you know, it's their right to spend significant time in a warmer climate. But it's also, this is how the First Amendment works, Andrew. It's Barry's right to post that stuff on Instagram, and it's my right to resent him.

So I was a little, should we talk about Barry here for a second? Or should we just move on?

Oh, what's going on? Do we have Breaking Berry news?

Well, I was just a little confused about your text message with him this weekend, but it was also a private text message, so I'm trying to take me back. So you were saying on the show a while back, a cultural phenomenon that I was unfamiliar with, about Sasquatch being sort of co-opted by the right, sort of. You said you would see kind of big trucks or sort of MAGA-coded things, but then you would see a Sasquatch given a peace symbol or a rock and roll symbol or something on the back of this truck.

carrying a u.s flag it's like it's basically like in the way think about the movie rambo okay i am i was and and that's like it's basically like a kind of a person who's been who's been mistreated by his government and now is just like is just a sort of the ultimate libertarian just wants to be left alone is generally peaceful but will push back if provoked and they've overlaid the sort of John Rambo character onto Sasquatch. Like Sasquatch, you know, is, and that to me, it's not exactly MAGA, but it's anti-government. It's kind of right, it's right wing coded to me.

I mean, Rambo was literally just walking through a town when they decided that he was some sort of, some sort of, yeah, like, not hippie scum, but sort of wanderer scum. And so you understand why he'd be, why he'd be suspicious of the government. So I almost like don't think of Rambo. I would think of like, I guess my problem with Rambo, like First Blood is sort of like, I feel like there's a really big difference between the character of John Rambo in First Blood and then what the culture took away from Rambo, you know, and what ends up becoming to what Rambo ends up becoming in that series is much more sort of like what you described.

Are you saying it doesn't get more nuanced as the various sequels and threequels roll in?

Where they eventually send him back to NAMM? No, to NAMM. Oh, NAMM, he goes back to NAMM. Oh, I forgot. I was confusing it with Rocky, by the way. Okay, yeah. So anyway, not to nitpick on that. But anyway, so Barry sends us a photo this weekend, and it is what you're describing. like sasquatch it's like an image on the back of somebody's spare tire on like the back of a jeep or something he's like this is our this is the lift that came to pick us up when we called a car and it's like you know a silhouette of a sasquatch giving a rock and roll symbol holding a big american flag or whatever but barry said he asked the lift driver about you know whatever small talk and it sounds like this person was not in like that maga coded thing right he sort of sounded more like a hippie lifestyle thing so and you said oh see this is what i'm talking about and i was like oh is this what you're talking about or is it just like is this sasquatch imagery a big tent

i would say it's probably it's probably a larger tent than i'm than i had perceived it to be or given it credit for i think also this has to do with attitudes and latitudes two of the things that we talk about the most on this show now, Andrew. I think meeting this guy in Hawaii, because I believe he was their Uber driver in Hawaii, I could see this. So this guy, and just to be specific about what Barry said, he said he was the nicest dude, laid off from his job during the pandemic, grew a beard, describes himself as a hippie, bought a sailboat that he's fixing up and also lives on. I could see that guy who's, let's just, I'm going to guess maybe sort of apolitical, just kind of wants to live on his boat and grow his beard and whatever, I could see this Sasquatch thing appealing to him. I think where I live, there's fewer of that dude. So the guys around where I live that embrace it are more like, I see them driving not so much Jeeps, but like big lifted trucks. Yes, right. And so I think I'm seeing the more, I'm seeing the more kind of like, at least in my perception, kind of right-wing leaning or MAGA leaning version of the guy who thinks this Sasquatch is cool. And there's probably, like, guys in Hawaii that Barry's seeing who that's not their interpretation of him. They think the Sasquatch is cool, but not for the same reasons as the guys who live down the street from me.

Right, right. So anyway, it is a big, complicated tent. But all of it has to do with maybe seeing yourself as somebody who's not necessarily in the mainstream.

That's it. I think that's the through line, and you're right about that. Like, somebody who feels like maybe the mainstream is not really for them. And for whatever reason they feel that way, this appeals to them a little bit. But it is a big tent, just like TBTL. It's a tent that's got room for everybody, even people from Wellington, New Zealand, which is where Debra Quinn is checking in from today, one of our donors. Thank you, Debra. Thanks, Debra. Appreciate that from all the way over there. Hope things are treating you. It's New Zealand there. They're also in summertime. They're in the absolute thick of it right now, probably.

I'm looking up a weather right now.

I bet you it's toasty in New Zealand would be my guess.

It's fair. It's 62 degrees. But what time is it, though? Oh, it's 8 a.m. in the morning.

Well, okay, yeah. What's it going to do today? Let's see here.

It's going to go up to 68 by 3 p.m.

And that's Fahrenheit. That's not Celsius.

I am looking. Let me see. It does say Fahrenheit, it seems, too.

Wow. Okay. I guess New Zealand may not have the same climate as Australia.

It's 17 Celsius.

That would be amazing. Oh, God, broiling. Yeah, I guess because they're geographically somewhat close to each other, I would figure they have similar weather patterns, but they probably don't. I saw it was 113 Fahrenheit in Melbourne a week or two ago. And so I guess I assumed everything on that side of the world was roasting. I am sorry, Debra.

Actually, I'm just confused because now it's 53 degrees in Melbourne, too. So they might just be going through a bit of a cold spell. But it is, let's see here. Yeah, it looks like, yeah, no, Australia is warmer. It's going to get up to 86 tomorrow. But anyway, I just hope everybody's doing well. That's exactly what I'm hoping to, Debra.

Thank you. This is the part of the show where I speculate on New Zealand weather.

I just hope everybody's having a good time.

Actually, that kind of gets into, Andrew, after we get on with the donors, I'll just, we can talk about Secret Mall Apartment later. I'll throw down what's been going on in the family text chain. It actually involves New Zealand. So this is kind of foreshadowing. Thanks, Debra, for that. Thank you for that. convenient transition into the rest of the show. Thanks also to Mike Croshaw of Western Springs, Illinois.

Are you curious as to what the weather is like there?

Oh, I don't have to be curious. I know. It'd be cold. It'd be 27 degrees. Chilly out there in Western Springs. Hope you're staying warm, Mike. Thanks then also to Justice Grunow up there in Thunder Bay, Ontario, another place that I figure is probably on the colder side right now. Thunder Bay, Ontario. Oh, yeah, I'll bet you that'll give... What bay is that? Is that Lake Ontario, presumably? It's got to be a great lake, right? A great lake that goes up there?

12 degrees in Thunder Bay. That's Canadian, though. Is that the same as... Oh, is that what the C stands for?

Yeah, 12 degrees Canadian, exactly. F stands for Funadian. Yes, exactly. Maybe that's the show title. I don't know. Thank you, Justice. Thank you to all of our donors. We really could not do TBTL without you. Hello and welcome to Top Story. Actually, Andrew, I was going to explain in extremely complicated terms that would be no help to our listeners about the visuals of a text message chain. But you've actually been on one of these chains. I don't know if you could see it, though, because of the difference in your phone and my phone. Did you notice anything in the criminals during the NFC Championship game that negatively impacted your ability to participate in the text chain?

I did not personally, but I now know what you're talking about because I was with a couple of the fun-loving criminals in person to watch that last game, the championship game.

Including the criminal in question.

Exactly, including your brother, David from the basement, and Camaro Kev. And Camaro Kev was complaining about not being able to read the text messages on the chain anymore because of a background image that your brother David said, yeah, I did that. And I'm like, look at my phone. And mine just still looked exactly like it always did with just a plain background with bubbles on it.

That, I've never been more envious of you and your Samsung Galaxy, because, yeah, somehow in the latest iPhone update, it allowed you, and we were talking the other day about how you are officially the administrator of the TBTL email account. Like, if I need help from you, it goes through you. The buck stops with you. That's right. Somehow David is the administrator of both the criminals and Hawks. And how do I know this? It's because clearly on the morning he learned he could do this, which is make the entire background of my phone screen when I was on Hawk Squad or Criminals a random photo, which I understand in theory is fun. And in fact, he was doing a fun visual joke on the criminals. What it was, was that kind of a extreme closeup of John Ryan, our punter, throwing a touchdown in the NFC championship game off of a fake field goal where it worked. He got the ball to our of the guy whose name is now eluding me at the moment, Terry something or other. it was a successful throw but in the in the throwing of the ball john ryan looked about as uncomfortable as i've ever seen someone on a field throwing an nfl football his tongue his tongue came waggling out he's making the face i would make if they handed me a football and said try to throw a touchdown you know um so it's an incredible photo but what it meant was i could not for the life of me i'm already struggling with like eyesight i was at the warby parker at the mall yesterday andrew trying to see if i can get this figured out they weren't taking walk-ins for the optometry but anyway i can't see for shit anymore and uh that john ryan was killing me but i also thought i was funny but also i was trying to be go with the flow i didn't know if other people liked or didn't like it i didn't want to weigh in but then the same thing happened on hawk squad because david's also the admin on that and he made that into some photo of a shire in new zealand that he and my dad had been to and again i just like could not for the life of me read anything but again i didn't want to i didn't want to be like uh nitpicking and or if everybody else was enjoying it i didn't want to i didn't want to like ruin it for other people if they were liking looking at the shire but finally i'm just gonna be honest what happened becca and i we're in miami we went out for dinner i had a few small beers and i think i finally just hit my i was at my limit and so so basically this was the chain of events on the hawk squad um so uh so people were starting to comment on the background photo and saying like they thought it was cool or interesting or how did we do it oh so uh my sister hannah posted a picture of one of my nieces at a protest at one of the anti-ice protests. And this was my response.

But just shared a photo, though, right? Didn't change the background. Just shared a photo.

She didn't change the background. She shared a photo of our niece participating in an important social movement. And my response was, I said, love to see it. Unrelated. We have to change the background screen. I can't see these messages to save my life. And then, thankfully, it was changed. And then David said, I get it. You guys just all hate seeing the beautiful memories that our father and I shared together because David and my dad went to, uh, New Zealand together on a fun trip many years ago. And then my dad goes, Oh, that's where the picture came from. I thought my latest iOS update was messing with me because I saw Loader last week in the theater. My dad's theory was that he had been, he had attended Lord of the Rings in person and that had led his phone to change the photo behind Hawk Squad to something related to New Zealand.

Can I, now, I'm going to say something as if I'm right about it, but I'm learning about this on the fly, so I could be wrong. But when you said that David is the admin of both of these, I was like, well, that's a hell of a coincidence. Maybe it's just that David is the only person who looked up how to do this. So I just Googled, can anybody on a text chain in an iPhone change the background image? And everything seems to point to yes. The AI overview is telling me yes. And now I'm on the iPhone support guide adding messages, I'm sorry, adding backgrounds and messages on iPhones. It says other people in the conversation can see the background on their devices and can change the background for the group. How about, I mean, I know you like interactive radio and maybe this is just boring people to tears. What if I walk you through changing that to something else right now on the fly?

On Hawk Squad or on the criminals? Whatever you want. Listen, I don't want to be no but, but I hate these background things.

So you want to revert to a plane? I can get you through there.

It is in plane. We're in plane mode now.

Oh, he took it off.

Listen, David is a mensch. He was having fun. He immediately, despite his pretend protestations, he returned it to normal, whatever, white background mode or whatever you would call it. What about criminals? Is that still? Criminals is back to normal, too. The balance of the universe has been restored, and I don't—

Wouldn't it be funny, though, if you, the person who complained it, suddenly just popped up on everybody's phone with a close-up of your face?

It would be funny, except nobody except David will even know about this conversation, and he won't know about it for possibly days. Yes. It would just be me jumping into the— let me consider it but the rest of this this is when it started to just go from like kind of a funny whatever oddity to a truly andrew i would call it outsider art okay so my my dad said my dad thought that that the background had changed because he attended a re-screening of lord of the rings which would be like insane if his phone was listening to that degree my mom or excuse me my sister liz ever the supportive one said i'm very impressed with your tech skills dave me ever the reproachful one said david lost his damn mind is what happened absolute power corrupts absolutely because i thought david was the admin yeah at the time i didn't realize that anybody could do this and then david then changed the background photo to a photo of his daughter gemma and he said take that luke are you having a hard time reading that now i love that from him i was wondering when

I had a feeling Gemma was going to enter this chat.

So now we're looking at Gemma's adorable face. But by the way, it continues to confound me when it comes to the reading because the problem is it's too much other stuff going on that's competing with the text. No matter what the photo is, unless it's a photo of like a white dinner plate or something, it's always going to have too much going on. So then I said to David, but I'm skipping ahead some messages, I said, since apparently we're just posting our children now, post this one, David, I dare you. Then I included a picture of Addie from when she was a little kid, which, to his credit, David did post. Okay, so now we're, again, it didn't fix the visuals, but now the background photo is Adelaide. then my mom just posts a random picture of my dad kind of confusedly not smiling but holding his mouth open and she says your dad has a sweet smile back thanks to our local dentist worth it and what it took me like the better part of the afternoon to figure out was this was the evidence that my dad has just had like some dental work done where he's had basically permanent implants replacing what used to be his kind of like partial he used to have to kind of put some part of his teeth in and out and i always knew like like when remember when we we hung out with um chris hayes at town hall yeah and we went and we got dinner later you and genevieve and i but um my parents came backstage before the show i know my dad was like showing up and showing out when he had his full complement of teeth in because he wouldn't do it like if we're just here working on the house he's like whatever yeah and he doesn't have he's he's fortunate in that the teeth that that that he sort of was using like a denture bridge with were not like his front teeth they were kind of side teeth those are now legit he's got those all filled in nice so then somebody then decides to make the entire background the new entire background is now a photograph that is a picture of Addy with this photo of my dad showing off his dentures over Addy's body. That's now the new background picture. We're looking into an infinity mirror.

Oh, okay. They haven't photoshopped his head under her body or something like that.

No, they just screen capped this weird double-layered image of Addy in the background with now granddad showing off his dentures.

That's pretty funny.

That's been screen capped and made the background. Of the whole thing. I wrote, someday, years from now, scientists will study this photo. We just ended up with, like, 30 layers of photos that were being photographed or they're being screen capped and then made the background photo until eventually we just had to delete the entire Hawk Squad. And none of us have been on it since. We ruined it. We polluted it. Now it's a super fun site.

Just burn it down.

If you want to know where my sister Hannah fits into the discourse, Hannah, also ever the supportive one, chimes in and says, It's been a challenging and emotional several weeks for our country. This, quote, utter visual confusion brought a smile to my face. This and the Hawks going to the Super Bowl. XO, XO. Nice. So at least it all made Hannah's Sunday. So that's really what counts.

Now what you need is to change the background yourself so that it's a photo of Leap Day Williams. And see if anybody gets the joke. Swaddling Adelaide with your dad's new chompers over her face.

Yes. Yes. Apparently, the new chompers might lead to a reduction in cigar smoking.

Oh, because he doesn't want to ruin them.

He doesn't want to. What he said to me, he was because he was considering, you know, taking the leap day William on this, taking the leap and paying a lot of money for my mom and dad. Right. Yeah. To to permanently replace these teeth that had been that were pulled at one point and he was replacing with a with a partial bridge. And he said, if I go ahead and do that No more on the cigars, because I'm not going to spend all that money And then smoke the cigars So I am like pretty psyched about that. We'll find out whenever the next time my parents come down and stay with me. We'll see if he's sticking to that or not. Because he definitely loved his cigars. They were definitely his big reward he looked forward to. But this will be the test of if he was truly addicted to them or just they were optional.

I was going to say, I don't think nicotine's addictive. It's probably just a mind over matter thing. Well,

he also, I feel like the last couple times he was here, he also was smoking fewer cigars because he just didn't have as many or something like it was it's kind of i do think he my dad has as far as i can tell a highly non-addictive personality like when my when my mom got sober he just like just like no more beers for him ever and he didn't seem to miss it one bit um you know even though they had kind of become you know they had enjoyed their costco wine they would buy, and he'd have like a Henry Weinhart's when he was out there grilling and stuff, but it seemed like that was no trouble for him to walk away from, so I'm hoping that the cigars are the same thing, just for his long-term

health. Do you know that I've been having cigarette cravings more now than I can remember having, except for when I first quit smoking? Now, I don't know how long ago I quit smoking. I'm almost wondering if I could look it up on my calendar, because I quit smoking because I had, you know, they found some stuff on my tongue that was troubling and they had to have it removed and it wasn't cancer but it wasn't good and um yeah and so that scared the living hell out of me so i quit so if i went to my calendar i could probably maybe find that doctor's appointment that surgery date or dates because i think i had to go in a couple of times and it was very unpleasant as you recall um but that must have been at least eight years ago i think right like it's been a while if not a decade it's more than five years I feel like and you know for the most part it was hard to kick it but I smoked by this point you know somewhere probably on average around five cigarettes an evening or something you know maybe weekends hanging out with people I would smoke more than that maybe other nights I would smoke less than that but you know let's just say that I'm smoking a couple of packs of cigarettes a week or something like that and it sucks to quit but I did it pretty supposedly that's like

One of the hardest things to quit, people say.

Yeah, and I didn't really think about it too much. Now, I do have a little vape pen that has literally the lowest level of nicotine in it possible, and I hardly ever use it. I just sort of have it, and it's not like one of those things that you see everybody now with these big pink things that are gripped. I have an old-fashioned little one that I can refill. I don't even know. If I run out of the juice on this, I don't even know if they would make it anymore because it was so low level. you know but it's definitely that for me is definitely more of a of a mental thing i just like to have that thing in case suddenly i want to start smoking again or something but that's not usually the case but the point is i don't know if it's because i've been reading books where people smoke a lot like both of the the longest book i just finished and the one i'm reading now they're smoking all the time i've been watching a lot of black and white movies or at least i was over the holidays a lot of smoking in those and I don't know if that's it but I honestly and I didn't do this which is the only reason why I will tell you this is when Genevieve was out of town a couple of weeks ago I actually for a relatively brief but serious moment considered buying a pack of cigarettes taking five of them and putting them in my shirt pocket and giving the rest to somebody at the gas station and just saying this weekend I'm going to smoke these five cigarettes or less or something like that. And I'm glad I didn't do it. But I was like, well, I think I could probably navigate this without getting addicted again. And by the way, I told Genevieve this story. I mean, I would feel so weird doing it around Genevieve or even saying I'm going outside to smoke a cigarette. That's the only reason why her not being home would have been a part of it. I think if I had done it, I would have told her for whatever that's worth but I wouldn't do it if she were home and I think I was just having this weird I was going to call it a boys weekend I almost called it a little boys weekend let's not do that but I was having a mini boys weekend where I was the mini boy and I was just like oh maybe I'll just buy a cigarette and smoke it on that walking bridge over Aurora or whatever and I'm glad I didn't do it but it was the first time in a long time that I actually was like should I just do that Should I just go to the store and just buy cigarettes? I can do that.

I bet you part of it is because the pain and the fear of that event when you had to have those surgeries and when you were really nervous about what the diagnosis was going to be is further in the rear view. I bet you every year that goes by, I mean, you obviously remember sort of intellectually and consciously. consciously that it was really scary and also really a painful procedure and healing and all that. But don't you think maybe that's a little bit of it that it's just it was a while ago and you successfully did quit and you haven't had a recurrence of issues. And so maybe there's a little bit of a slight mental relaxation around it. And that's seemingly imperceptible.

What you're saying makes sense. And I don't want to dismiss it entirely. But I was I've been thinking about it and the funny thing is when i think about that surgery i still can really remember sort of exactly what it felt like when i was trying because it wasn't the surgery itself it was me doing the show with you afterwards and like not being able to talk because it was the side of my tongue where it hit my teeth and so i actually feel like i think what it was was a bit of the just the cravings coming back maybe because of the media that i have been like yeah absorbing i think also it was a bit of nihilism like i think that the state of the world has me all jingle jangled and it's kind of an effort right and i think it was sort of an effort thing but then i think in that moment i was just like what the like screw it just get some cigarettes but now in like a you know here on a monday morning i think about that i'm like yeah but you know what would make all of this worse having more of those surgeries or worse you know what i mean like the one that one of the things i'm very lucky for is that i'm able to navigate all this with a good doctor who's like kind of looking after me now and is taking care of some health issues that i've had and how lucky i am at knocking on the door of age 50 that i'm just now beginning in my life to have to actually even think about my health in even minor ways like i've been so lucky why in the world would i think well the world is burning why wouldn't i want somebody taking chunks of my tongue out of my face like are you kidding me like i don't want that so i i think that that was maybe part of it in the moment i so understand that impulse though

like this feeling of like nothing everything sucks nothing matters why not and then thinking but is this gonna like is this gonna be better with an insane hangover tomorrow right right is Or in your case, is it going to be better with, you know, like, yeah, somebody trying to take chunks out of my tongue? It's like, of course the answer is no, but I completely understand that impulse of just being like, you know, if not now, when? Like, again, you're right, it's nihilism in a way. And it's very tempting if your brain is wired the way my brain is of just being like, nothing matters, so why not? You know? And it's like, well, because it does matter. And also, if it's going to suck, it's going to suck worse.

Yes, exactly.

Speaking of smoking, I watched Fargo last night Just to try to remember if it's the perfect film The movie It is, yes, the film And first of all I want to just give you credit for the various Parts of the movie Fargo that you have Isolated for TBTL Audio I think your decision making was flawless

Why did you watch it and you're like, oh I recognize this I recognize this

I mean the movie is Literally everything anyone says Is a drop Yeah. But like the one that we pull the guy who's called the police because he was at the bar. Oh, yeah. You know what? Out at the lake. I think you suggested that or somebody else did. I can't take credit for that.

I promise you, just to deflect a little bit of the glory here that you are reigning upon me, I remember that was a specific intro that we used in Minnesota because we were working in Minnesota at the time, and that was a very Minnesota-y drop. And somebody suggested it. I think it was you, because I had not remembered that part of the movie, and I grabbed it, and I was like, it was perfect. So I can't take credit for that.

I think maybe it was Stu. Maybe, maybe Maybe it was Eric the Viking, I don't know Were we working with John yet? Somebody, I mean, because when I saw that scene I thought, oh man, Andrew pulled this And like, this is so great And I didn't remember that scene until I was re-watching it If that makes any sense But just, I mean, that movie is just It's incredible But you know what I realized, Andrew? You want to go, if we can sort of Start to get on the glide path towards the end of today's episode With the kind of Sort of where the episode started with me talking about my like weird sound that i now listen to to soothe myself like you know what i realized um fargo is uncut gems it's just the pressure is ratcheting up on on william h macy's character it's just everything that he's trying is going wrong more and more people are after him it's falling apart in every possible way in in much the way that it's falling apart for adam sandler's character and uncut gems and yet when i watch these movies it somehow calms me it's like taking adderall to calm down your system it's like you're taking something that's like speed or whatever it is chemically to

quiet your brain to calm your brain it seems like it's the opposite but i was just realizing like oh my god i love this movie so much talk about fargo now and like it's just it's just going

from bad to worse and he's getting more and more frantic in that way he's getting more frantic he's

trying more extreme measures it's he's getting thwarted at every turn the stakes are going up people are people are dying or i don't know if anyone's dying yet in in uncut gems but people or definitely his life isn't on the line. I just thought like, oh, there's some similarities in this movie that I didn't think about. And it made me think I didn't do it. I was like, I could do a double feature. When this is over, I could switch right on over to Uncut Gems.

Or somebody do some sort of a crazy mashup of the two. I see what you're talking about, though, because I'm picturing it. It's been a long time since I've seen that movie, but I watched that movie a lot in the 90s and 2000s. And, like, I'm picturing Jerry Lundergaard in his office or his boss's office or whatever in the sales department of this auto dealership and him just getting more like, I know that, I know that, I know that, like, this sort of, like, self-righteousness.

GMAC is calling him over. They can't read the VIN numbers on the cars that he's clearly running some scam on.

And you're absolutely right about the energy there. It's just like he's just lying and his lies get more and more bald-faced and sort of, like, crazy. and he looks more and more crazy.

I gotta be the guy on this deal. I gotta be the guy on this. I'm talking to his father-in-law and the other guy about how he has to be the go-between for the money.

Oh my God. And then I love the role. You know, I always like to say this, that the ice scraper is like another character in the movie, but like that ice scraper that is both like, you see him in that scene where he's just like, he's at his limit and he's just like scraping. But then later on, is it that same ice scraper that marks where the money is along the side of the road? Yes. Yes, I love that.

That, like, stresses me out so much because I'm like, you've got to tie a ribbon.

Yeah, right.

Or I'm like, this ice caper is going to be a snow drift. You're never going to find that ice scraper. Yeah, I know. I literally wanted him to, like, go in the car and, like, rip part of your shirt apart. Like, you've got to get something on that barbed wire fence, dude. You're never going to find that ice scraper.

I know I've told you this before, but when I go to visit my dad, he still has a tchotchke from that movie. We got him. He loved that movie. And I believe we, his children, or one of us, got him that movie, not even on DVD, I'm pretty sure on VHS, when it was new on VHS, maybe around the holidays, and they sold it with a snow globe. Do you remember this? And my dad still has the snow globe, and it's the scene of the wood chipper. And it's got blood in it, right? Yes, when you shake the snow globe, it's white snow with red snow. Even the merch is perfect. The water is turning yellowish already. I mean, think about how old that is. When did that, you know, come out, or when did that hit VHS?

Yeah, what's the radioactive half-life of that red dye that was put in the snow globe? Just the way, and then I'll stop. The way that his wife, the way that she frantically chops vegetables. I can't remember this. So it's like, so the first time we see her, it's like her dad has come over for dinner, I think somewhat unexpectedly. So Jerry gets home, and she's just like, stress chopping vegetables in the kitchen, but maintaining that kind of Minnesota nice, but doing, you can just see on her face, like, and then cut to a different day when I think her son is home, and Jerry's not home, it's the daytime, and I think she's trying to give the son a pep talk about how he's not living up to his potential, and she's chopping a different kind of vegetable with the same, just unhinged energy. And you could tell, like, this is a person who's processing a lot through the way she chops food. It's just like, I don't know, just the touches on that film are just like, are just so, so phenomenal. So I would, you know, if you'd like to watch a very kind of dark, depressing film, if that's your thing, I will recommend the movie Fargo. It really absolutely holds up.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. Oh, man, it's not from a female.

i've got a message from a female my girlfriend actually and and this is where andrew listen i love and treasure becca but i don't know if she exactly knows how this show works because like when we were in i think when we were in miami she said you got to ask andrew if he does wordle on hard mode and i was like okay because she loves wordle i know you love wordle you're on a wordle group i would honestly like i would like to make an entree i would like to make a connection where maybe she can be in that group because she's got a lot of thoughts on wordle she's a dedicated player um but anyway she said you got to find out if andrew does wordle on hard mode i said okay but and then what if he does she goes i just want to know if he does it on hard mode i was like i don't i can't have a conversation with him you don't understand the question and

and you don't know how to respond to it.

Because I don't play Wordle on any mode, so I...

I guess what I'm doing is I'm asking you if you play it on hard mode. You're going to tell me, and then I'm going to report back to her, and then she's going to say whatever her thoughts are on it, and then I guess I'm going to repeat those thoughts to you at some point.

And I'm not seeing what the issue here is. That works for me.

I mean, I'm happy to be the go-between. Hey, you know what? I've got to be in charge of this deal, Andrew.

You've got to be in charge of this deal.

This has got to be my deal.

So she didn't explain to you what hard mode is. Can I explain to you what hard mode is?

Well, she tried to, and I could not grasp it. And she tried very hard to explain hard mode to me, and I couldn't wrap my mind around it. It seems to have to do with, like, if you guess wrong in hard mode, you get less information about what made your guess wrong or something.

Okay, just forget everything that you just said. Listen, I already forgot it. I need tabula rasa here, okay? I need a totally blank slate. Oh, easy. By the way, easy. Okay, great. I know, I've got a thought in my head. Okay, so when you're first looking down at a Wordle board, you see a bunch of squares, right? And you can start by just typing in any five-letter word, and then you're going to find out if you chose the right word or at least if you got any of the letters right. Yep. If you put in any letters and they're in the word, but you have them in the wrong place, they will appear as yellow. If you put them down and they're in the right place, that letter will appear green. So you know that there's an R in the middle of this word. And where it goes. And you know it's green, and so you know it goes there. And then if you have letters that are superfluous, then it is just grayed out, and you know don't use those letters anymore. Yep. In easy mode, you can just do that six times. Just put letters wherever you want and find out if you put them in the right place or if they're in the word or not. When you're playing in hard mode, if you have put an R down right in the middle and it's green and then you're floundering around and you just cannot figure out what this word is you can't think of any words where r would be in the middle but you just want to eliminate some other letters too so you just put down some random word that you know cannot really oh another word

i see so you use that r spot intentionally for a letter you know doesn't go there yeah you need

to take off the list you just put a k there because you know this isn't gonna be the word but you just want to eliminate some more letters because you're just going bananas.

You're basically intentionally walking. Right. You're making a strategic decision there, which you're going to put someone on base, but you're also going to get information.

So you're going to put a K there in the middle, but you're going to sort of eliminate some other things, and then you're going to maybe hopefully get it on the next turn. Yes. If you play in hard mode, it doesn't let you do that. The hard mode says, listen, I already told you, the R is green right in the middle of the word. Yeah. You know that now. You can't pretend you don't know that. And so it won't let you get down off that bounce bounce. Get out of that bounce bounce. You know this. You know this. Exactly. So did I explain? Does that make sense to you?

Yes. That was like a really, really clear explanation, and I know exactly what you're talking about. And I want to thank you for that because, yes, I totally get that now. It also speaks to how sort of, I guess you could say, unsophisticated my approach to Wordle has ever been. And, I mean, I've played it a handful of times. It never even occurred to me to do that move where once I knew where a letter was, I was just like, well, I will always play that letter there. It never even occurred to me to intentionally put a letter that I knew was wrong in order to get more information.

And to answer your question, yes, I play on hard mode because I actually think it's a bit of a misnomer. As you just said, I don't think it's harder. I think it disciplines you to make sure that you don't waste a turn. Like hard road has prevented me from – because sometimes you're spinning out of control and you're just like, this can't be a word or whatever. And then you just start putting down like fake words and sometimes like the fake words will take and you're like, shit, I just wasted a turn out of frustration. And sometimes you might put down a word where you just accidentally put the R back in a wrong place when you knew where it went, and it'll say, hey, you can't do that. And so for me, I think of it more as a protection plan, exactly, but it's called hard mode.

Well, also, one of the things that she does is she changes her starting word every single day, and I think that sounds like madness.

Now, this is a conversation. So I used the same word. I know we had this conversation recently. Forever and ever, the word was arise. I like the A, the I, and the E in there. And then it hit. It was the first word a couple of months ago. I'm sorry, I won on the first turn because it was the word a couple of months ago. and then after that I was sort of out in the wilderness I was like how fun is this I'm not stuck to this word anymore and so I was just using a different word every day or I had a handful of them that I liked and that was killing me I have busted out of Wordle like

four times. I've ruined my streak like four times over the past two months. Would you ever go back to Arise? Well, I don't like... This is where things get really interesting. Very interesting. Incredible. Almost too interesting. I don't like the idea of using a starting word that has already been a word. I like the thrill of thinking, hey, this could hit again.

You'll never come up with it on... It'll never be the first word again.

it'll never be the word again basically right the word sorry the word but i just saw a screen cap on reddit and now i'm looking to see if this is if i got fooled by the internet or if this is true wordle or the new york times apparently who of course makes the wordle game apparently announced that they're going to start reusing words because this has been a big conversation in our text chain it's like have i been have i been busting out a lot more because i am not relying on my starting word that i was very comfortable with is it because the words are getting harder like we feel like there's a lot more people who are failing at wordle these days at least in our friend group because the they're scraping the bottom of the barrel on some of these words and so they're less common and i saw something that claimed that wordle is going to start reusing starting word or start reusing words as answers because how many letters how many

letters is it five six five it's like there is a finite number of five letter english words right and and if you you know i don't think they're hitting i don't think they're at their limit but they may have burned through the ones that are like easier to get here i'm on um i'm on mashable

dot com which is a little blast from the past i don't spend a lot of time on mashable these days and the headline is major rule change coming to Wordle it takes effect on Monday oh and this was written yesterday so today wow we are on the news this should have been a top story this should have been top story uh Wordle is your favorite game just changes rules as of Monday previously played

words may be reused so there you go today is the day I'm texting all of this to Becca I'm trying to get her response i said andrew plays on hard mode but he thinks it's easier because you don't waste a guess and beg said i get that but if you're going for the least number of guesses it is harder yeah i said any responses i should relay to him he thinks that the wordle is getting harder because they're running out of words she said i'm not sure about that and then i said today is the first day they will start reusing words how many did he need today i have not done it today yet Has not done. Actually, you know what? I take it back. This is good podcasting. I love it. This is great podcasting.

This is great, and I am sharing with the Wordle Group this news.

Yeah, that's actually—it's wild that this extremely disjointed conversation did lead us to the information, to our listening audience, the legitimately important information that today of all days, February 2nd, in the year of our Lord, 2026, is the day— During the perfect February. That they're starting, during the perfect February, that they're starting to reuse words. That's big news.

That's huge news. And we got to it exactly how any professional broadcaster would.

Yes. God bless the broken road that led us to this thing and to the end of today's episode. All right. That's going to do it. But we are going to be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for all of you. So please do tune in for that. In the meantime, may all your wordles go well. Have a great Monday. Stay warm if you're somewhere cold. Stay safe if you're somewhere dangerous. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Power out.