Muse

Well, tell me how you both got started in acting as art. I started doing stand-up, Jerry Seltzer's Laugh Emporium. I was at Chortles, the Comedy Place, and no one really got it.

I got it. I thought it was hysterical.

What did she do? What did she do?

She has a one-woman show. Tell her the title.

No penis intended. No penis intended. Oh, I actually did here, yes. And what was that about? One critic described it as a humorless romp into Ms. Webb's dysfunctional psyche. It's a humorless critic. That doesn't make sense. No. TBTL!

Hi, Luke and Andrew. It's Irene, and I have a funny joke for you. Okay, what is the radish's favorite food? Beats me.

Ah! This gazpacho soup just burned my lips. The gazpacho? Yeah, it's been sitting out. It warmed up. It warmed up so much that it burned your lips. Let me explain something to you. If you're expecting something ice cold and you bring it up to your lips and it's room temp, it's going to feel like your mouth's on fire. It's going to feel like your body's on fire. Is there, what I'm discussing here, some kind of medication that you maybe need a lot of and have taken none of, or maybe too much of today?

Yala Pano.

I don't even know what that means.

No one knows what it means, but it's provocative.

Well, all right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. A good podcast helps you connect the dots. My name's Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

He is using every kind of anti-aging technique possible.

I should be using every kind of anti-coughing technique possible because I have a weird summer cold today. So apologies for the voice. By the way, coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where we are looking at a warm, warm Monday. It might touch 90. It's going to be very hot. It's going to be very uncomfortable for everybody. Involved. As we hit episode 4,753 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

Speaking of things that are hot, I remembered my spicy Subway takes. Be careful, though. It's spicy. Remember we were talking about that show Subway Takes the other day, and Andrew asked me what my subway take would be and I couldn't remember even though I had one and then I made a joke about tearing the bread out well I remember my spicy takes I'll share them with you today and I'll share them with two standard poodles who are here in the studio with me

I'll say what's up dog

Gigi and DJ are both here this week helping me out with the show by helping me out I mean well one DJ is getting a lot of pets right now i don't know if uh andrew can see this on the line but uh and uh and also barking at the mailman when he comes by so that's their version of helping we'll see what andrew's version is he's the longest running cobro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships he's

making 1.2 million or something a year by you know doing this complete horse shit he's joining

me right now good morning my friend i know i say this to you every day to pump you up before the show luke but um it's almost hurting me to listen to you talk today uh it's it's better than it was

i had to record a cbs thing a live wire thing already this morning and it was actually this

is improved dude well i don't mean to say that as an insult i mean i sort of did as a joking insult i mean it more empathetically though it is you sound how do you feel what's going on

it's the middle of summer i know i don't think this is the time of year for this no um becca and i were down in salem yesterday and having a lovely afternoon of doing like a unbelievably complicated pet swap so see if if i can make this semi simple well it involves frogs and scorpions well actually yes essentially becca texted me and said we have a real chicken fox uh you know bag of grain situation which i believe is essentially the same you know logic puzzle and so the issue is uh becca is going to dog sit a little a little dog named toby for her friends cara and jim later in the week but toby does not do great around other animals so the cats needed to go

somewhere oh my god i see where this is going so we took the cats to salem where they're hanging

out with jeff and darcy but the thing is the dogs that live down with jeff and darcy dj and gigi they needed to go somewhere because jeff and darcy jeff is along with his day job he's also like a dj for events and they have an out of town djing gig this week and so someone needed to take the dogs so the cats went to salem the dogs came up here and toby will be arriving at becca's house midweek and so that was the shuffle and

And what it means is that I am hanging out with these two beauties. I feel a little bad, like I was a little mis... Oh, the thing I was going to mention is on the drive home from Salem yesterday, I just started feeling... I just started coughing. I thought maybe I had a little dust in my throat. But then, no, I realized while I was trying to sleep last night, have you ever had that thing where you have to keep swallowing? You cannot stop from swallowing at night. You just want to tell your mouth and your throat, it's not it's some saliva or whatever it's it's probably not even saliva it's probably some swelling that's creating a sensation that your brain is unable to override or overrule i was just lying there going stop swallowing but it couldn't that's a bad feeling and it you know

just to because i think i understand this but just if anybody has any questions about it it sounds like you could skip a step here by just having the cats come to you But you're not well-equipped to watch two cats. You're better equipped to watch two dogs. That's why the shuffle—

No, because the dogs still need to go somewhere. The dogs can't stay in Salem.

Right, but I thought the dogs were displacing— I thought the cats were displacing the dogs that are with you or something.

The dogs have to leave Salem because the people who take care of them are leaving Salem this week.

Oh, I see. Oh, I gotcha. I was clearly not listening closely.

Yes. Well, it's complicated. I've got it all written down somewhere. I can send you a diagram of it. But all of that is to say that I've got these dogs with me and it's been under 24 hours. In fact, it's been well under 24 hours. We got home at about 9 o'clock last night and I'm already just having an absolute good old-fashioned whale of a time with these dogs. I love them so much and it is so fun to have them here. It is so kind of just, I said this last time Gigi was here, it is just so soul-enriching for me to, you know, And also just to have something to kind of take care of is nice for me a little bit. So, like, we got out for an early morning walk today and got to go investigate the neighborhood and do some sniffing. Also, the dogs sniffed things, so that was fun for them.

You showed them all your favorite sniffing spots?

I did. I did. And they seemed to approve. I got a couple of those long, like, tethers. So I can tether them. They can hang out in the yard on their own tethers and just kind of like they were doing that earlier. Or I was on the treadmill Except I'm on the treadmill Up here in the Madrona Hill studio And I have a big window And I kind of look over to the side And there's just like two black standard poodles That are just mean mugging me from the patio

Just standing there next to you Mean mugging you

Well they're just standing next to each other Out on the patio Like the twins Just looking up at me Like can we go inside there and hang out with you So they're very attached to me It was actually incredibly kind of touching and sweet last night So I'm letting them kind of they're you know they're hypoallergenic they're very like chill dogs like they don't they don't get on things they don't shed they're very very well housebroken so like it's pretty low impact actually um so i was just like i like open the door to the upstairs i had the whole living room just like wherever you guys want to sleep tonight but i also left my bedroom door open because i thought i don't know i just want them to know that i'm not trying to like cut them out of my maybe they're nervous maybe you know dj's never stayed the night here so at about i want to say maybe I don't know 11 30 or something there was like a I think someone lit off a fire crack like a firework of some kind because you know it's June why wouldn't you you can't start on the fireworks too early I guess so somebody lit off some kind of firework boom and next thing you know I hear the click click click of DJ's little talons as she like walks in comes over to my side of the bed and just puts her little head on me oh she was she was scared by the fireworks so she just kind of like laid down on the floor next to where I was and slept for a few hours till she got her confidence back and then she went out and chilled with uh with gg but uh no it's uh it's they're going to be with me all week actually i think they're going home on like saturday night so it's going to be a lot of really what's going on here andrew is i couldn't let you steal the spotlight you thought oh i'm gonna go get lucy and now i'm gonna be the center of attention and i'm gonna put lucy in the newsletter each week and like and that you know and that's just what Some people want. Well, wait till they see some pictures of Gigi and DJ, okay? I could not let this go unaddressed. And so you get one dog, Andrew. I'm coming back with two dogs.

I'm online right now. I'm on dogstore.com, and I'm looking to take – Oh, look, they have a bulk deal here. While we're talking about dog stuff, that feeling of a dog that comes to you because they trust you and they're feeling a little stressed out. obviously it's not good that the dog felt a little stressed out there that's a bummer but i'm glad to know that it didn't like totally kind of go to ground or you know you hear some dogs get so anxious about that that they go running into a bathtub or something like that and it sounds like she was feeling he he or she she she was feeling a little bit of anxiety dj and gg and so um so she came over to you gender yeah um uh sorry i'm thinking about a a funny text message i got regarding that today that i will not share because it was somebody very angry at me um but uh but anyway um i like that idea of the dog coming over in and and and looking to you for security of some sort and i will say this is something i was trying to explain to john um before a meeting the other day that it's just going to sound like the most basic thing i I mean, it's so basic. I don't even know if dog owners are going to understand what I'm talking about here. But as somebody who has never had a dog before but has watched other people with their dogs to varying degrees of envy at times, and honestly fascination at times, sometime in the past, like, I'm going to say, I don't know, several weeks, I've gotten to a place with Lucy that is such a small thing that means so, so much to me. And it is simply eye contact. It is like when we were out in the world, like when she was a puppy, everything was new. And I'm not saying we never had eye contact, but that I'm talking about the very specific kind of eye contact when you are out on a walk with a dog or maybe even just in the yard or whatever. And she kind of just looks looks over her shoulder at you a little bit like, are we doing this or where are we going next? Or is this OK? Or are you following me? And it's like this little bit of communication. And I swear to God, I would be at, you know, behind the wheel of my car at a stoplight and just watching a person with their dog cross the street in front of me. And then, of course, I rev the engine to kind of freak him out a little bit. But no, but then. That's how you broke your car. Yeah. I'm dealing. I told Luke, I won't talk about it on the show. I won't bore you all. But I've had a lot of things go sideways on me this weekend. But I unloaded on Luke before the show. But anyway, that little look, I was envious of that. The bond between a human and a dog that is expressed in a quick glance over the dog's shoulder, it just means the damn world to me. And she's very much like that with us now. And to me, it's like we are truly a family.

I mean, I don't have any right to even have that relationship with these dogs because, you know, DJ in particular really doesn't know me. And I don't know if Gigi remembers my particular smell or this house or whatever. but like they're just their wiring is just that they're very keyed into whatever i'm doing almost to like it's an adorable but already troubling degree i was trying to do some writing last night on my computer and gg first of all both of the dogs were just like on my lap and then i'm typing and gg's putting her nose under my hand while it's typing so now i'm typing i start from like typing normally to i'm now like i'm having to go like do the most awkward typing mechanism uh mechanics to try to get around this like it wasn't enough to just be on my lap it wasn't enough to be on part of my hand it had to be under my hand that was typing on the computer those hands are for petting not typing luke i well that's what i've learned so uh yeah they're very like they're very sweet and they they seem to be very um you know comfortable with me and also like looking to me for because again i got these tethers because i wanted them i thought maybe it'd be more fun for them to be out in the yard. They can lounge, they can go to the bathroom at their leisure or whatever. But I think honestly, they just want to be where I am more so than having the enjoyment. And the other big question out here, which I'm sure this will unfold over the week, this is actually a really fun piece of property for dogs to roam around on if dogs will come back when called. And one of these dogs, DJ is really good about this. And one of these dogs, Gigi, is notoriously bad. And so I, I think, I mean, I'm going to probably just keep them on these tethers just out of caution because if Gigi decides to, you know, run off, I mean, I literally might never catch her because physically it's not possible. And she's a little bit of a, a little bit of a scatterbrain. She's a bit of a scamp, but, but, but cause I would, I mean, the ideal would be if I could just like let them kind of, that's what they do. They live on this incredible property in Salem, Oregon, down in wine country. And it's like acres and acres and acres. And they just literally spend all day just kind of walking around wherever they feel like which is just like the absolute

life for a dog so wait i don't know is i feel like football coming to wine country does that happen every season to every season football there's no but there is no whining in

football if that's how i remember you know what let me check okay let me check my notes on that the last thing is i feel a little bad because i think i misled some people on instagram and now they're going to be disappointed because I put a little Instagram post up about these dogs and I said, I took some pictures of them yesterday and I said something like, it's crazy to think that today started with no dogs here, with zero dogs here and now there's almost two it's almost double that and the people responding to the post were really divided into two camps. The people who clearly think that I have now somehow adopted two pool.

poodles two adult poodles two adult poodles and they're just going to live here which would make absolutely zero sense for my lifestyle so it's those people they're like you better talk about this on tbtl holy i think our friend stacy up in bellingham said talk about a forward promotion so that was one camp and then the other camp was people correcting me on the fact that uh two dogs is not almost double zero well that's when i can i do the voice

that's the joke even I got that one

thank you Rainier Rainier Wolf Castle that was the joke but there's some people that want to make sure that I understand that two is not almost double of zero but anyway I feel that if you tuned in today to TBTL because you thought that I permanently adopted these two dogs, no it is just a temporary assignment, we're just doing this for a week but I'm sure that I will spare no detail about how it's going with them. It also may have kind of slightly put me into a bit of a moment of peek with one of my neighbors this morning. I'm out walking them, and they're building, there's sort of like my street, and then there's sort of a canyon, or like, I don't know what you call it. I guess a canyon. How big does something, a ravine. You know what? It's not a canyon, it's a ravine. Does that make sense? That makes total sense, yes. Okay, so So there's a ravine that separates my little neighborhood, which is my house and my neighbor, Bob, he of the starter fluid, and then a ravine and then these other homes that are being built out there, which are very beautiful new homes. And I'm always curious about the project. One of them is done. The people live there. The other one is still in mid-construction. So I like to walk over there. So I took the dogs probably up, over, and down there. It's probably three-quarters of a mile.

And they're both on a leash, right? because you couldn't let Gigi off-leash in a situation.

No, no, no, no, that would be... DJ, I could probably get away with, but Gigi, absolutely no way. So they're both on the leash, and it's...

Separate leashes, or is it like one leash that's connected? Separate leashes. Okay, yeah, I'm not joking. Is that difficult?

It has its moments. It's actually generally fine. They're pretty well-behaved. They do strain a little bit. When I'm holding... You know what strangely works, seems to work the best, is if I hold both leashes in one hand, I don't know what that does psychologically, but they seem to kind of just stick together. When I'm holding a leash in either hand So a leash in my right hand A leash in my left hand John Woo style They start straining And then I've never seen those like Pictures of like Poseidon Like riding

Yes I have Aquatic life Absolutely yeah

That's what it felt like Going up my street today

Yeah with a dog in each hand Yeah yeah

And I was like So we go up over and down Because I just want to go look at And it's a dead end And where I'm going with this Is like I feel like people Are really sensitive about people walking on roads sometimes like that are a dead end like their people are up to no good or something you know I mean you've talked about versions of this how you're not a huge fan of the kind of ring cam culture and like the paranoia I would say

the paranoia that is being sort of like swirled up I would say

yeah and this could be 100% just in my own head but this is like maybe 745 8 in the morning we go we walk up we walk to the end my road and then we cut over on the other road and then we're going to go down this dead end road that eventuates at these new homes that are being built. As you go down this road, at the end of the road, there's an older home, a home that's been there a long time that's very well maintained and manicured, little gardens and everything. And we get down. All I want to do is stare at this new house that I can only kind of see from my place. I just want to look at it for a minute. I'm not going to try to go into the house or even go onto the property. And I'm just at the end of a dead end road i'm not in any i'm not on any private property i've not like you know entered someone's yard or any like anything like that i am standing at the end of a paved road with these two dogs and the woman who lives in the older home that's been there a while is out and doing some gardening and she's got two little like jack russell terriers and then they're like barking away

and i'm just kind of like are they restrained do you know i'm just curious they're in a fenced

off yard so they're not like there's not any there's no issue with the dogs like you know interacting it's just they're barking a little bit which isn't really bothering me i just and i i've got these two dogs that are i'm just gonna be honest with you they're pretty cute and like i wave i give this woman who i've never spoken to a big wave and she just shoots me the biggest daggers and i was like i couldn't tell if she was mad that like she's unmoving and i'm like waving like hey there how's it going and she just like stares at me and says absolutely nothing and i couldn't tell but she was annoyed that i activated her dogs which to me it's i feel a reasonable thing for people to walk down public roads with their own very quiet leashed dogs if that activates your dogs that might be a you problem or that she's just like

like, who is this person coming down to the, that was more, because she's got, like, signs, you know, no turnaround, and it's one of those deals. Yeah, I'm sure, that's what it is, yeah. She's at the very end of the dead-end road, and she's got a number of signs that are, like, they all indicate past trauma around, what, people driving down to the end of this dead-end road and then doing a three-point turn and leaving or whatever. She doesn't like that. Doesn't like people being down on the road, and it's just, like, I don't understand that. It's not your road. Well, right, and also, i don't understand not liking seeing people in the world for instance my neighbor gay she has a pomeranian she walks the pomeranian down to the end of the street to exact to my yard exactly what i was doing over there except she actually maybe sometimes comes into my yard which i do not care about and i love it i love it for gay i love it for the pomeranian i just when i got actually when i got home with the dogs last night there was just two people i don't even know they're just out on a walk. It's a beautiful evening. They're just enjoying themselves. They're walking down the road towards my house. Then they're going to get to the end of the paved road and turn around and walk back. I don't, I feel like something has happened in American culture and maybe it's, I'm looking at too much Tik TOK and I've somehow fell into the algorithm of like people getting into these disputes with their neighbors, but they're always about insane things like someone walking down a road that someone doesn't want them walking down or a car parked somewhere that's maybe moderately not where it's allowed to be or to me the one that i will never understand a fence that is four inches over the property line as if you need those four inches like a i don't know what the property line of this house is but if you told me that bob or brian my two neighbors had somehow encroached up to i'd give them 10 feet each like the idea that people are like going to court or the hoa or or having knock down drag out life ruining altercations with the people they live next to because a fence went up six inches into their yard is just i do not understand that kind of wiring i know somebody who's going through this

right now in a much smaller plot of land right so that's one thing that might be a little bit of you know what makes me so chill about this but also it would be my guess although i'm not being fed all of these things you're being fed and again i i think that's a pretty specific you're probably you know on tiktok as you said probably maybe seeing a disproportionate number of these things but i i legitimately cannot say much about my friend's situation but i will say it's it's here more in the city reasons well just for their privacy and everything and it's kind of an ongoing thing but i know that they mentioned recently something about like yeah and their fences over the thing is. And I realize what's going on is it's not about where that fence is. They used to have a good relationship with this neighbor and that was never a thing. But other things started happening that they're in the middle of that didn't have to do with where that fence was and the property line, but other things, bigger things, things that have now continued to escalate that have led to fences being built on both sides and various things being built on both sides and like kind of an almost antagonistic reaction from the neighbors over some stuff. And so I've heard them mention, oh, by the way, their fence is over the property line. But it didn't start there, you know, and my guess is that's true for most of these.

And I know who you're talking about. And I, of course, side with them because they're our friend and also they're rational. And you're absolutely here's the thing. It actually makes more sense to me for that friend of ours to know the exact property line because of all of the run up to this, as you said to me so that i get people being nitpicky once they've already been sort of triggered by other stuff i feel like there are people that like you know and maybe it's always just a bigger story but just like i i've never and i you know i've lived in city lots and things like that uh you know i've just the only thing that the only way that my neighbor has ever really just fully torqued me off was when we lived in mount baker and i had the neighbor with the gigantic holly tree the guy in that absolute shit band sweet water oh that's right who would he would only pay to have this is his tree this is a gigantic holly tree that is in his yard this is his living thing that is has nothing to do with me but it's so huge that it's grown all the way out over like the top of the steps where you would get to you know go up to our house and it's holly by the way which is not unless you're talking christmas stuff it's not like the world's

most pleasant it's got kind of pokey parts on it luke i pulled some holly out of my yard no fun right and well what was fun was getting rid of it yes i cut it down to the quick i hate holly i hate holly in fact i was thinking about our friend who's having the let's call it a property dispute if that's not too strong of a word i was he and i were bonding over our hate

of holly a couple of years ago too it seems like so like how can you say anything about what you got a problem with reindeers you got a problem with santa claus you're gonna go after a mistletoe i don't give a shit man holly is the worst you you get anywhere near it and it starts poking you

holly has been getting away with absolute murder for decades ever since it got folded into christmas times yep and so this guy this guy like they would pay for they would pay to have their tree trimmed But only on the side of the tree That was on their property So it made, I know I've told this story a million times It made the most insane topiary event You could ever imagine happen Which is, I mean, and this was This is the largest holly tree I've ever seen in my life This is not a bush, this is like Enormous, and then one side of it Is like beautifully manicured And trimmed, and then one side of it Is just crazy and ragged everywhere And I'm like, just for you This being your tree, why wouldn't you want it to look Normal? It looks like it had schizophrenia yeah right just the craziest uh those are the same people symbol of something

i don't know exactly what uh being a cheap ass cole i mean that was the thing those people those guys they just absolutely sucked like i wonder if people are starting to figure out who these people

are yeah like i um i have absolutely as you can tell i have no regerts about about naming and shaming these people because they're just they're just like they're just lame neighbors the other thing speaking of fences I told you was you know they they had a fence that was completely dissolving like it was rotting away and I was looking at it from my yard all the time and I was like that's very unsightly what I'll do is I'll just go out and pay on my own dime to just build a fence in our yard and then I will look at that and it will be beautiful and by the way I never even asked I never even checked where their fence was vis-a-vis the property line like i did not care i just wanted to have a nice newer fence that i could look at instead of this rotting one they had they had uh you know let go uh to seed and of course they hear that i'm going to do this and they're like hey why don't we go in on the fence we'll go in on a new fence and i was like okay so we each kick in i don't know whatever some i i mean i trusted them we let's say i kicked in 500 bucks or a thousand bucks or whatever they just have some handyman come out and just and you you were coming by the house in those days so you've probably seen this handiwork i think they just they they fixed up their side of the fence the side that faced their yard so that it looked a little nicer and then the part that was in my yard they had some handyman come out who was the same guy who had fixed their fence and just nail on these random unrelated boards down at the ground level which is where the fence was rotting the bottom of the fence had become rotten from contact with the grass and this had nothing this was not the kind of fencing that was in the fence it was not even going in the same direction as the slats of the fence they took the money they fixed their side of the fence and then just had a rando come over to my yard and just nail like little abner style nail a bunch of shit boards onto my side of the thing and that was the solution to the problem so you mean like like the low rises and the wire

when they're bored i'm trying to they're bored i just feel like one thing you see a lot is i think there are bodies in those buildings but you see i'm forgetting the character's name but the really young kids are often like hammering boards over the doors just to finally like kind of

chris snoop yeah right yeah i i uh yeah it was so that's why you do that to me you you get you get a whack-ass hall a whack-ass holly tree going and you also completely bamboozle me on a fence and uh i'm getting i'm naming you on this podcast that's i don't care i do not care andrew we was

hoping for some razzle-dazzle. Razzle-dazzle. That's right, man. Razzle-dazzle. On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go.

Everybody razzle-dazzle.

Takes a drag off of his cigarette.

Now, that's a song I haven't heard in a while. Well, except for when I accidentally play it under the Blurs days, as I did. Okay, other than that, puts out, stamps out cigarette. No, that's right. Walks away. We have more Blurs days to share with you today.

That's what I was trying to say. We thought we were all through the dazzling donor messages, but in fact, there are a few more that were still making their way to us. And we are just so darn appreciative of the financial support that the show receives that we, of course, will read those messages. And we've got one from our friend Nicole Partridge out there in Bothell for a lifetime, Washington. Nice.

Thank you, Nicole. Home of the Savage Moose. Indeed. Oh, by the way, you want an update on the Savage Moose? I really do. The city of Kent, so you know that we are friends with listener Nigel, who is the mayor of Kenmore.

Not Farage, I want to be careful, so people know. Not the British lawmaker who's a terrible person. This is Nigel Herbig, I think. I was talking about Farage. Oh, you are friends with Nigel.

But you know what? Let's table that conversation and let's go back to...

Did you get Starmer drummed out of office today?

I am. Look how international you bring in the Starmer news. This is great. I am looking for the actual text message. But yes, Nigel, who I think is technically the mayor of Kenmore, right? He's a council member and also the mayor. Is he currently?

That's what I was wondering about.

I believe so, yeah. I believe the re-election is behind us and went his way. And it says here, funny thing, this is a text message we got just on Saturday, funny thing, the city of Kenmore now owns the building of the Savage Moose. The bar is still privately owned and run. We bought it because we will be doing some fish culvert work on a stream that runs underneath the property, and it was easier to purchase the property rather than the slice we'll need further on. Anyway, it's not going to affect the Savage Moose, but technically owned by the city of Kenmore.

So in other words, the bar will still operate, but the city of Kenmore has bought it so that they can do what they need to do for, you know, habitat restoration.

Yeah, that's what it says here. And I assume that, I mean, the fact that Nigel texted this to the public line, I would assume that this is public information. Anything I should mention here, anything that you send to the TBTL channels, whether it's email, voicemail, text message or whatever, unless you explicitly say that it's not public, I'm going to assume it's public. We will put you on blast. Yeah, I think Nigel would have said specifically if that was not for public consumption.

Nicole says, I started listening to TBTL back in 2008 when I first started working from home after my son was born. Ooh, that's, them's the early days. Yeah. That's the absolute, I mean, that is the beginning of this whole thing. Let's see. This era was a blur of baby monitors, muted conference calls, and trying to remember what day it is. The show's perfect mix of chaos, humor, humility, and comforting friendships got me through it all with a smile and probably a decent amount of sanity intact. That's so interesting, Nicole. I'm so happy for you that it was helpful. It seems so chaotic. Like back in those days, like you got a baby, you're trying to juggle a career, you're sleep deprived. And then it's like me and Sean making margaritas on the roof on a Friday. It just feels like the opposite of a calming thing. The show's relatively calming now because you and I have low T. But back in those days, it was a lot going on. Fast forward, and TBTL has evolved from survival tactic to daily ritual. I genuinely look forward to pressing play on the show, and it helps anchor my day. This fall, I'll be leaning on it again because the same baby is heading off to the Bay City. As a proud freshman at Western Washington University, TBTL is old enough to go to college. I know, Nicole, but we flunked the SAT.

I was going to say, maybe TBTL should go to college.

Old enough, but not admitted to college.

Yeah, you've heard some of my contributions lately. I think maybe some secondary education would be, wait, secondary education. Is that high school or is that college? Secondary education.

I don't actually know. That's a good question. I mean, I heard the term. I guess I think of secondary education as, well, I think of it as sometimes when you're in a professional development. Like, my sister, who's a teacher and principal and administrator, is always doing more development. Is that the same as secondary education?

Secondary is, I think, like high school. So you have primary education, which is preschool. Secondary, which is next. And then higher education would be college.

And then tertiary, which is the class that I'm teaching on YouTube.

Yeah. You know what I like to say, Luke? Everything they don't teach you at college. I like to say I went to the School of Hard Knocks. It's one of our favorite things to say around here.

It's really interesting because, you know, my parents didn't go to college. I don't really, my generation of kids in our family were kind of the first college goers. And I have a very, very, what I would say is I do not think that college is an indication of intelligence in any way, shape or form. I know so many people that are very smart and didn't go to college. And I know some people that went to college, that ain't the brightest. I don't have any personal ego tied up in whether or not I went to college. Part of it's because I just went to a state school and it was cheap and it was down the street from my, you know, where my parents lived. And then when I got out of college, I had the kind of jobs where literally no one's ever asked me if I was a college graduate. I don't, Genevieve will be sad to hear this, I don't donate to the University of Washington. I don't like, it's not part of my identity at all. But having said all of that, see, sometimes I say that being said and then sometimes I say having said all of that. That's the variety that people come to the show for. Uh, that all having been said, I do get sometimes some energy. Actually, I know somebody who was on the dating apps for a while and, um, and she had, I think two kind of. two rules or two things that she was kind of looking for she wanted to be going on a date with someone who was a college graduate and who was not MAGA those were the things that were you know just like that she felt like that she'd have more in common with someone like that and she said the amount of just like unhinged messages from non-college graduate men that she received that were just furious about that as opposed to just being like well this is not the person for me let me swipe the other direction it was like no let me let you know how and I guess all that is to say When I see when someone like back on Facebook, when it was like, what's your university or something? It was like school of hard knocks. I was like, that's not a person who I'm probably going to have a lot in common. Not because they didn't go to college, but because they seem to be carrying around a lot of energy around that fact.

I think that used to be something on like, I think we would see that more often because there is some sort of social media site that in your bio, there's like a slot for education. Well, Facebook started, you know, as a college thing. Yeah. So maybe that was it. And so people would be like, School of Hard Knocks, which I actually think we missed an opportunity to put School of Soft Knocks on our profile.

TBTL-a-thon, 18, School of Soft Knocks.

That's definitely the school I went to.

The knocks don't get softer than here at old TBTLU. So Nicole is sending this baby off to college, which is just incredible that this thing has been going on the whole time that this person has been growing up. Uh, Nicole says all my thanks to Luke, Andrew, and John for the courage to ask the tens to support TBTL independence and all of the hard work you put into the show. Here is to 4,000 more. Thanks. Well, Nicole, thank you. Thanks for hanging with us for 17 years. Um, and really good luck to your kiddo. Um, you know, uh, Addy went to Western. I obviously lived in Bellingham. I'm a big, big fan of that place. And I'm hoping that your kid's going to have a great experience. Yeah.

I just worry that the partying that goes down at that wonderful antique mall, I just wonder, like, is that a distraction for students in that part? Because I think, I'm not kidding, I haven't been to Bellingham since you lived there, but I think about that antique mall a lot. That was a happy place for me the few times I visited.

They're partying, but they're just, the good news is you can only turn a Victrola up so loud. Yes. They're getting drunk. But it's in the era of 1905. So it's Victrola. They're drinking sarsaparillas. Out of flutes for some reason. And it's keeping it pretty tame, actually. So anyway, Nicole, thanks again. We appreciate you. Maestro.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattle, dattle.

It's Joseph McIntyre in Atlanta, Georgia, our second dazzling donor who's been donating a dazzling amount of dough. And now we thank them. Joseph says I'd like to take advantage of the offer Of donor message clemency To offer my criminally Late submission Joseph I believe What we offered was Well first of all clemency is just a That's a standing offer but what we really offered was You don't have to do it We offered you not having To feel bad about any timing On this because the very fact that you're donating to the show Is absolutely Critical that's the thing that you're doing

for us i'm doing a little the air sign of the cross like the priest does at the end of confession you are yes you are absolved of all sins i saw the u.s uh world cup team coach who have you noticed

this have you seen i don't know if he's going to hear this but i have a buddy named seth who i went to high school with and uh he's out in the midwest now but he tunes in occasionally and he and i were texting about the world cup the other day and i had just been having this thought which was the coach of the U.S. team for the World Cup is a dead ringer for the actor Russell Crowe. He has the same hair. He doesn't wear coach outfits. He wears like a collared shirt that you might go on a brisk hike wearing. He doesn't wear like a three-piece suit or like athletic. Those are the things that these coaches wear, right? They either wear like a suit or they're dressed like they could go play. In soccer? I didn't know they wore suits in soccer. Yeah, some of them do, particularly a lot of the European countries. This guy looks exactly like Russell Crowe, And I was just thinking that. And then Seth goes, why is Russell Crowe coaching the team? And then, like, three days later, I see some meme going around that's like, 50% of Americans think Russell Crowe is coaching the U.S. men's team. He's such a dead ringer. Anyway, I saw that guy cross himself right before the game started. He didn't know he was on TV. He was just, you know, they're just showing it. There's the U.S. coach, whatever his name is. And he's just doing this. He's just, like, crossing himself. And it just, like, it was very humanizing. I mean, that's not a worldview that speaks to me in any way that I think is material. but I just thought like this guy is so wants this to go so well that he is willing to ask Jesus Christ to help him with

is he Argentinian by the way I am he's from somewhere else okay I don't follow this at all I have no idea what he looks like I haven't watched well imagine Russell Crowe. Now I know what he looks like. Yeah, but I heard a little clip of him on the radio today, and I noticed they didn't accent. So I was like, oh, the American coach is, or the Team USA coach, or whatever you call it, is not born and raised in the U.S., I take it.

Yes, his name is, oh, the AI overview. The U.S. men's national team is coached by Maurizio Pochettino, while Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe does not coach the team. He's become a viral sensation during the 2026 World Cup. due to his striking resemblance to Russell Crowe.

Well, there you go.

Yeah, and then it goes on to explain the doppelganger phenomenon. None of this is relevant to Joseph McIntyre's message, and I apologize for that. He says, thanks to John, Andrew, and Luke for another wonderful year of entertainment and comfort. I listen on my bike commute, and the length of the route I choose depends entirely on how long this show is.

Wow, interesting.

This is really... Joseph, I feel so seen by this. i'm for whatever reason i've been for the last year or two i've been in a really big listening to talk content while i go on my runs mode i i you know if i'm training for something really long maybe i get more into music certainly if i'm running a half marathon i'd be listening to music but i use talk well not talk radio but like podcast you know chris's show and pod save and ezra and things like that i use those shows as a decision help me make the decision of where i'm gonna run how far i'm gonna run if i got a full hour like david sedaris was interviewed by john levitt uh for the the pod save america universe it wasn't actually pod save it was just a conversation with the two of them it was like an hour or something i was like i could climb a mountain in that hour i could do anything that is going to give me so much power because i'm going to be so distracted because i love david sedaris so much in those conversations so i get it joseph this kind of plotting things based on your listening and how that might uh you know impact your, um, I don't know, energy levels. Uh, uh, Joseph says, uh, middle age has significantly slowed my metabolism. Every badlands is a kindness to me. I'm overjoyed to donate and I'm lucky to be able to, I was listening to y'all talk about nationalism on the show the other day and thinking about imagined communities, which was a formative book for me as a much younger person. There's a section where Anderson says the common experience of reading the morning paper allows you to imagine other people doing the same without you knowing them. And that's how I feel about TBTL, a community where even though life's vagaries have kept me from actually knowing other 10s, I can picture all of the 10s smiling along with me. We just need an army and a currency. Huh. That got nationalistic very quick at the end.

I could work on that. Wait, we have the coins. We have the TBTL coins that we gave out several years ago.

Yeah, we'll start there. That's really interesting um way to i'm not familiar with that book but that's an interesting way to describe this shared experience i've had like five percent of that on the other day i guess it was yesterday morning when i showed up at becca's house so i get the new york times but they won't deliver it here and bizarrely it is equally if not more affordable for me to take home delivery of the new york times or the full physical newspaper to get the digital stuff i'm sure that's going to end at some point and then i'm going to be paying like a billion dollars a month I should actually check on that Well now I'm screwed though because What I did was started sending the paper to Becca's house Because she lives in Portland And they do deliver the New York Times there They were mailing it to me So like on Wednesday I would get the physical copy Of the Times

Yeah like Hemingway in Italy or whatever Reading the week old US newspapers And loving it by the way I think about that a lot

Time shifting he was the originator But so I said well this is kind of By Wednesday I've you know sort of moved on And so I love, we've talked about this endlessly I love the experience of reading the New York Times On the Sunday that it arrives It's just, anyway, so now I'm having it sent to Becca's house And she loves it, because she's like Reads, like literally reads through the Book reviews and stuff, does all the Puzzles and the stuff, and reads the book She's a completist with it, so It's better it's going there The problem is now, once they jack the rates up On me, am I going to turn the spigot of her Getting the New York Times off? I don't know, but I was walking To her place, and I walked by A different apartment building, because she lives in this area of the South Waterfront of Portland that has a bunch of these big kind of high rise apartment buildings and there was someone else who had the New York Times delivered sitting outside the apartment building waiting for them to get it on Sunday morning and I knew that wasn't the one that was going to Becca but I literally just thought like I connect with that person like I just thought like whatever's going on with that person I'm gonna I like them like I felt connected to whoever in this gigantic apartment building that wasn't even Becca's building had gotten the New York times delivered to them and maybe that's like snooty of me maybe it's because i didn't go to the school of hard knocks but like i felt this i don't know if that would be technically fall under the

sort of title of Imagined Communities, but I just kind of was like, hey, whatever's going on in that person's life, the fact that they're paying for this newspaper, they're having it physically delivered, they're going to be sitting around reading it later today, presumably. I was like, I'm into that person's program.

I have been getting a glimpse of the Sunday Seattle Times in an interesting way. When I'm volunteering on Sundays and handing out food in the Roosevelt neighborhood, there's a woman who will often bring a hot dish right and she she brings it in this sort of flat you know it's in a it's in a tray it's an aluminum disposable tray whatever kind of casserole or whatever she made that day but then to keep it warm during transport she puts it in this flat amazon box and i i'm being specific about this because she was dropping off the boxes and we would just throw it away at the end and she said this is my last amazon box and it's the perfect delivery vehicle for this could you guys start saving the box and get it back to me i'm like absolutely or she or she'll just take it back with her but so this this casserole dish aluminum pan or whatever is in this box but then wrapped in newspaper or sort of like cushioned by some newspaper around it and i it's now i realized the other day that it's actually the day of newspaper and sometimes it's the sports section so i actually get to like i'll look at it i'll be like oh like this so there's something so satisfying about like grabbing a newspaper and being like what first of all what's the date on this and then realizing it's today's date and then seeing like Munoz celebrating on the mound or something like that you're like oh wow the newspaper it's like piggyback system effective and that's like the Truman but Dewey beats Truman right yeah right it's like a misprint yeah right so anyway I I you know we have a subscription to the Seattle Times but we do not have a subscription to the physical newspaper, and honestly, I know I wouldn't use it. My eyes are getting to the point where it's easier for me to read things digitally anyway, where I can just sort of adjust the printer if I need to or something like that. That makes it sound worse than it is. I'm just so used to it that if I'm holding a newspaper, I've got to kind of hold it a very certain way, so I'm looking at the bottom of my lenses and the lighting has to be nice or whatever. And so I don't think I would want to get the physical newspaper anymore, but I still love the idea of it. I love touching it.

Well, that's the thing I, um, you know, when I'm at Becca's and if it's a Sunday or even a couple of days after what I find myself doing is picking up the paper and reading it in a way that I would maybe not think to go to newyorktimes.com or the New York times app and scroll around. And I find myself reading articles that I might not click on if it was just the digital version. And yes, 99% of my New York times consumption is via the website. Um, but it is, you know, I do miss having that physical thing around because i think it just i think i was more apt to read more of the paper when i was getting it physically even though it's more efficient and faster for me just to jump around the website there's just something different about for me about you know and i was also like what do you think two three more years of them even printing newspaper like now let me put this in perspective i don't know how many people live in these two apartment buildings the one next to becca's and hers but it's in the thousands and thousands these are like really large skyscraper buildings. Two New York Times being delivered to both one at the other building and one to Becca. So that's how that's working out for the paper, the newsprint version of the New York Times. Well the problem

for me online has also become that they're not, especially for the top news of the day, they're not articles. I know I've said this before and I know it just sounds like, I just sound old and it's not interesting. Maybe I should just let that, maybe I should just let this conversation move on. But like, if I click right now on the top headline u.s eases sanctions on iranian oil if i click on this it's probably not just going to be an article that was written it's going to be kind of twitterfied right it's going to be like the updates at the top and then you and then a bunch of bullet points and then you can click more for this or and then it's like 57 minutes ago this reporter posted this too small graph update in this and it's like sometimes you just want to be hemingway and just read the article as it was published, even if it's a little bit old, and then give us updates at the top or the bottom or whatever. I do love the New York Times, and I know it has its critics on both sides, but I am not critical of the Times, but I am critical of the way that I can't just read a straight article anymore.

Yeah, whenever I see that, unless it's a topic that I feel like I'm either following really carefully or way up to speed on, when I see that little live, live red thing, I'm always like, miss me with that because it is just going to be a series of, it's basically tweets from the reporters. It'll be like, you know, Sam Bankman-free trial live. And then it's just like, he just ate a Pop-Tart. Okay. You know, I just want, maybe I'll just...

back up on the story and figure out why they're mad at him.

That's where I used to really go to Vox, but I haven't been to Vox in a while. I know that they've had their fair share of major cutbacks and stuff, so I don't know if that's as good of a resource as it had been in the past, but I know even our friends who are doing the audio stuff over there, that's one of my favorite things about Vox, is if I need read up into something, you know what I mean? That's a great place to go.

Is that a paywall type of deal, though, I'm guessing? It didn't used to be. I feel like what I read at Vox, I'm always very um I always like their reporting and their writing a lot like I think they have really good people over there I don't think it's the Atlantic is the one that I can't I love the Atlantic but it's just like it's just outside of my like it's just it's it's on the bubble and it fell off for me because I'm already paying so much for the New York Times and the Seattle Times and the Daily Columbian and the Daily News and the Oregonian

and the New Yorker I know you get We get the Atlantic now, but I think we get the Atlantic because for some reason Genevieve either let her New Yorker subscription lapse. I think it was too much. I think it was one of those things where the New Yorker was arriving too often and Genevieve wasn't reading it. And she said, well, and she does like the Atlantic Monthly. She interned there for a while way back in the day. And so she's got a connection to it. And so I think that she at one point made the decision, well, I think it was because she wasn't keeping up with the New Yorkers that she went to the Atlantic.

Yeah, I got You know, the New Yorker is Condé Nast And I just got some little Somehow, for whatever reason It gets paid through PayPal for me Like, at some point when I was trying to Set up my account God only knows What does the drop say? The last thing, God only knows Our journey to God only knows where Yeah, the journey to God only knows where Led me to somehow have a PayPal be my thing with Condé Nast, which to be honest with you is kind of a good idea because PayPal is keeping assiduous notes on everything. If I'm paying for something on my normal checking account, it is lost in the sauce. Love it or hate it,

it appears to be another irreversible step along mankind's journey toward God only knows what.

That's my dude. That's my boy, Ted Koppel. Ted, yeah. So I got signed up on PayPal, which again is kind of like actually a good thing because, well, what it was was i was like you paid conde nests it does it yearly and it was a shocking i mean it's a couple like a few hundred bucks and then i went back to paypal to see how much i've paid conde nests for the new yorker over the last like five ten years thousands yeah in the into a thousand of dollars yeah yeah because you think it's a couple hundred bucks a year and i'm doing this for five years that's a thousand right there like and i love the new yorker and i can i I read it on my phone a lot. I read the physical copies pretty often, and then I also listen to a lot of the content. So I'm getting my money's worth, but there was something breathtaking about that number. If you said to me, would you like to spend $1,200 on the last six years of The New Yorker or something? I'd be like, no, I wouldn't. But I guess I have.

I'm looking for... There's something interesting about... Well, there's a lot of interesting things about Harper's Magazine, but I had a subscription. Oh, I love that one too. Yeah, and the thing is, The Harper's is something that I used to buy, you know, I mean, back in the when I was like, you know, kind of fresh news or something recently. I did. Yeah, that was like maybe that was actually like probably a year ago or something. But like back in the day when I was like, you know, young, fresh out of college, bopping around Boston a lot. I loved having a Harper's with me. And so I would buy it, you know, so Harper's index somewhat. Yeah, exactly. Love the index. Love whatever. Lewis Lapham's notes. And and so I would read that. I remember taking one to the beach one time and trying to read the most like just tedious article about economics and just be like, what am I doing here? But anyway, but anyway, I do love Harper's. And then there was some deal that came along. I think for some reason I was talking with Barbara Bo gave about something and she's like and she wanted me to read something in the archives. And I realized, oh, you can get a subscription to Harper's and have it come to your house for almost nothing. I mean, it was so unbelievably affordable, and it gave you access to their, what, 100-year archives or something like that? Like, they've digitized everything.

That's a great book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The 100 Years of Archive.

And I liked it, but it did start to pile up too much, and so I'm like, I'm going to cancel this or whatever. And boy, did they send me, like, I was getting, like, physical envelopes in the mail that would say, like, what have we done wrong or i guess this is it like they were just putting like the most like drastic kind of languagey guilt trippy stuff it says like you can get uh you can get it for basically if you buy it and get it delivered you can get it for about three dollars and 33 cents per issue and here's where i'm going with this i let that lapse and then you mentioned maybe a year ago or something as a bull dog news in the university district of seattle kind of cool old school coffee shop and magazine place and uh i am looking for it now but i think the cover price was 15 for a magazine and i'm not criticizing them like harper's is not you know getting money every which way you know what i mean like i will pay 15 for the occasional harper's because i want them to be around for another hundred years there's nothing like them and it's very special and if anything i feel bad for maybe letting my subscription lapse but it is incredible and it also just speaks to the you know the value of the dollar these days and everything but it is pretty incredible to just buy a magazine and not a super super glossy one not not like a quarterly that's super thick with like the spine on it or whatever but like a magazine for 15 that's pretty incredible there is an argument for

that that you will then treasure that harper's and you will actually read all of it because think about when we used to get when i used to ride my bike to silver platters to buy a cd with my 15 i think it probably came in at around the same amount too where i was living maybe my 15 or something that was paying for a cd and like to tell you that i treasured that thing that i read the liner notes that i learned every song yes you know i don't have that relationship with music anymore so i don't know i mean maybe that maybe if you would have bought that harper's that would have been the best harpers you've ever read because you would have read every i did buy it

i did i did buy it i don't know how much i um i don't know how much i dug through definitely like all of the short stuff at the beginning and like you say the index and stuff i can't remember what the the thing about it was this was like i know this was a long time ago actually because it was near the beginning of trump's second term and i remember the bottom headline i think sometimes they have like a headline at the top of them they'll have like kind of a big bottom headline or something on the cover of it and it was just something like why we must impeach trump now and it was i remember it was well sort of but it was like i found it to be depressing because it was at the beginning of the second term and it was kind of like there was so much else going on with the atrocities and everything that was that were being perpetrated by him and his administration early on and like i was like in the middle of doge stuff and like all of that and it was also so new for the second time sort of and it seemed like such a first term headline sort of i i know it sounds crazy but like i almost didn't i didn't like the idea of reading this on the bus or something like that which is weird like nobody's looking at the bottom headline of the magazine that i'm reading on the bus but there was just something that seems so feeble about it like we're talking about impeachment here like after already being impeached during the first administration and then like what's going on it was almost sort of like and also they have the house and senate so what are you yeah and i didn't even read it so i mean listen i know whoever wrote not just that article but that headline is like a thousand times smarter than me i probably should have just read it but at that moment i just remember being like we're just going for impeachment again here like he just got re-elected and we have elon musk in the white house grinning with blood on his teeth just like kind of like i just didn't feel like engaging with that we have taken

down in the obvious manner the only thing that will actually bring him low a reflecting pool paint job peeling up that's the only political gravity i think he's ever faced by the way the headline story of harper's magazine right now harper's.org if i can use a swear happy fucking birthday an exhausted america turns 250 i saw that you didn't you didn't miss any of that pitch harper's feel the same way we're doing you know we're doing a special uh like live wire uh fourth of july show which you know shows do because it's basically a chance for us to run some clips and stuff and take a week off but we've all been talking about how complicated it is to you know to do stuff around the topic of the 250 and also fourth of july and celebrating the founding of americorps or anything because of how so many people feel about the country but so yeah i'm

go with happy fucking birthday though yeah and is it a um it's kind of funny because i was thinking about i was sort of thinking about intro tape somebody sent me some funny uh intro tape that i think was used way back in the day uh that i was thinking about rolling out for the fourth of july kind of thematically um i think we have been for the past several years using joe dirt oh yeah all the options oh dude the names of those fireworks is never not funny to me um but is who screw do who screw don't who screw don't isn't july 4th potentially on a weekend this year yes it is it is on a it's on a saturday so we won't actually even be doing a show on july 4th

Well, I count July 3rd as the holiday, so I get to play my I'm Not Even Supposed to Be Here drop. Okay, sounds good. We're going camping. Oh, yeah? Becca and I are going camping down on the Oregon coast for the 4th of July weekend, which will be fun. And that's something I haven't done in a while. Oh, nice.

No joke. I think that, so Hannah and I, because of travel schedules and everything, we have to, like, kind of double up on some recordings for our spotless.

podcast and like we're trying to figure it out and i'm like well we got to do two shows on one of these days you know we when we sit down to record on a set we usually record on saturdays and we only do it once every two weeks so usually han and i will spend ease i mean easily 45 minutes if not an hour just chatting before the show you know what it's like to work with me oh yeah

no i didn't mean that as like that's your thing i just mean you and i you and i very often will And we're both contributing. Yeah, we are both contributing. A pre-show show that will go on for way longer than we intended.

And you and I talk every day. I know. Every day we do the show. And sometimes text each other. Exactly. And stuff. So Hannah and I, we haven't talked in two weeks. So then we'll want to catch up and we'll do this. I'll just be doing a mic check. But then the mic check is, did you see that game? And like, what is with this piggyback system? And then the next thing you know, you're talking about strodes. And you're talking about walkable. Like, whatever. like whatever we need to like kind of foam off sometimes as you say so the whole recording i mean honestly with spotless especially it's it we don't have you know we have whatever the opposite of huge is in numbers and so it truly if we're not enjoying doing it if it's not a reason for she and i to get together every couple of weeks virtually and just sort of have our friendship through this podcast there's not a huge there's certainly no financial incentive for us to do in In fact, we would save some money if we canceled it. So all of that is to say, I like doing that, but it's sometimes a time investment on a Saturday, which during the summer months starts to feel like, oh my gosh.

What do you mean when you got your Sunday pop-up?

Yeah, yeah. And you got pole saws on the way. Oh, the pole saw came. I got the pole saw is still in the box. This weekend was so busy, I have not had a chance to pull it out yet. But at some point, and this weekend, well, no, I guess it's not this weekend I'm doing spotless but the weekend after that is saturday the fourth we're going to be recording two spotless i think so that's like a huge chunk of the day and that is july 4th but i said to hannah i'm like i mean does it matter that it's a holiday and she's like it certainly does not to me because i don't know like what are we going to do go out with like flags and uh and sparklers it's tough like

i don't know it's tough but it's also i'm sorry i mean no no go ahead we'll say what you're gonna say well it's it's tough but it's also i mean i've been thinking about the american flag so much and you know I you see people that are flying it upside down in the distressed thing and and we've talked about this too it's like it's a real bummer to me that I feel like in a certain way actually in small ways I see people reclaiming the American flag a little bit and when I say people I mean people that are not MAGA people that are not just putting it out be like America love it or leave it like I feel like there's and I've talked to people about this where it's this feeling of like hey i'm also an american i also love what this country could be and like the idea that like the only people that get to fly the american flag or i don't know use it in imagery are people who you know think that you should never question anything about like if you question anything about america then then you're not a real american and you shouldn't fly the flag it's just like it's a bummer that that's been taken away in a way from a bunch of people who like the idea of again loving this country or at least loving what it could be it's a bummer that that's been totally taken away and I don't know if the answer for all of us is to just like sit on our hands I actually don't know what the answer is and you can also hear my voices reaching much like Andrew's patience with the United States it's reaching the end of the line I know a guy whose voice is at his limit

well here's my take on this here's the thing it's getting near the end of the show and this is way too heavy of a conversation to bring up here and I know that you do you have live wire And I am sincerely worried about your voice. But I will continue my thought here. And if we need to sort of end this conversation somewhat abruptly for time, I'm sure it'll come up again. But so my concerns with America and the America idea or not, not the American ideal, but the idea of what America is and certainly American exceptionalism, which we all just like grew up learning literally in school, this idea of American exceptionalism. Like my issues with America, when I examine them closely, go back to the founding of the country, to the slavery, to the to the atrocities that have just kind of kind of not gone unsaid, but been glossed over in many ways and are certainly like.

But do you think those are glossed over in the circles that we that we move in and the people that we read?

Or do you mean, but I'm talking about like what is here? Here's why I'm going with this. So so I have I even think long before the Trump administration, like I've had some concerns about this. I mean, I remember being a very young person, like in high school and having some real issues with this idea of even just having to pledge our allegiance. I agree. Like I remember. And this is long before I would have even considered myself liberal or progressive. If anything, I would have I would maybe even said the opposite. But I always remember just feeling like very weird about that. And you know that nationalism, you know, you mentioned at the end of the show yesterday that like, hey, sorry, Andrew, I'm rooting for the U.S. soccer team or whatever. I don't root for the U.S. soccer team. The only reason I didn't root for the U.S. baseball team was because I thought that that particular team was pretty toxic. But, you know, like I don't have any problem with people rooting for American teams. But it is an interesting sort of thing to think about the nationalism, but also the story that what I will say the legend of America that we are taught in public schools is like this sort of ideal. And here's where I'm going with this. When I am in a baseball game, especially these days, me and one of my friends that I often go to games with have a little system of just trying to make sure we're not in our seats for the national anthem because I really don't want to stand there and pretend like everything is OK and salute this country, especially in this way that feels like you'll be sort of like making a big deal of it if you don't stand for it, but then also resenting that. So we just have a system where we just kind of always make sure that we're out in the concourse somewhere shopping for some beers or hot dogs or hats or something like that so that we don't necessarily participate in that. Yeah, exactly. Spend money. But I'm also not trying to make a big deal of it. I'm not trying to like I'm not taking a knee or trying to engage with the people behind me about what the American ideal is. But I thought it was interesting that while I was doing this exact thing at the baseball game the other day, I happened to actually maybe it was before the anthem, but I'm walking around the park by myself. And twice I passed this guy who is a guy I'm going to put him around somewhere between my age and maybe 10 years older than me. White guy, just very like kind of Seattle coded. He's wearing a Mariners baseball cap, but it's the new steelhead logo. And for folks who don't know, this new steelhead unis are a throwback to the Negro. He's wearing a Tom Sharpling Best Show t-shirt. No, he's wearing a shirt that is actually kind of cool. It's kind of a retro half-sleeve kind of jersey kind of thing, like our TBTL Junior Slugger shirts that we were giving away a couple years ago. But it's like red and blue. And I can't tell if it's homemade or not, but in sort of a kind of a bubbly kind of retro-y font, it just simply says, almost like an iron-on, it simply says, America is an idea. and i'm looking at this guy and i'm just you know from everything else i'm seeing from him i'm just i'm pretty sure this guy is probably you know your typical liberal white seattleite guy right

and i'm guessing that i just had a feeling that maybe he made this shirt um or maybe he saw it and liked it but i was really curious and i because i passed him twice the second time i came so close i was on the escalator near him and i almost you've had trouble on those escalators Yes, and I did not even mean it. It didn't give me any bad feelings or anything. I was deeply curious what he thinks that idea is. And I've been thinking about it actually ever since then. And I was like, but wasn't the idea flawed from the beginning? The idea, number one, of exceptionalism and also isn't the idea, it seems like the driving idea of America isn't just American exceptionalism as a unit, but also the individual exceptionalism. This idea that like we're not all in it together. It's bootstrapping. It's Horatio Elschering. It's it's this idea of of just fierce independence and personal independence. And if that is the idea, I don't know that that is the best idea for a kind of a governing outlook of a group of people that I look at it. We should all be in it more together. Now, I was having this conversation with some friends. I tried to tell them the same story I just told you, probably about equally as articulately. And they said, no, I think of maybe the idea is this idea that anyone can come here and be treated equally. And I mean, if that's the idea and we're just not living up to it, that's at least a little bit more palatable to me. I mean, we're definitely not living up to it. And it's definitely a damn lie, especially when you look at what's going on right now in this country and people being losing their jobs simply in the military simply for being black or a woman like that. we are not dealing with a level playing field. But if that is the idea, if this fella said, well, the idea is that everybody can come here and everybody can have a fair shake and no matter what your background is and it's a melting pot, that's an idea I can get behind, but I don't think that we've ever lived up to it.

I think the t-shirt should say America is an ideas. Because that's the thing. Yes, if you have to pick one idea and you pick the one that involves might making right and a country that was founded on you know this by a bunch of people that didn't want to pay taxes or didn't want to you know be told what to do and the other like i understand what you're saying like that there are a lot of elements of the founding of america that are like basically stuff that if somebody was pushing that politics now, I wouldn't agree with it. And yet it's the founding of this country in certain ways, or at least the early times in this place. But I also think there's a lot of other ideas that America can be and is, you know, like you were like the idea that people could come here from anywhere, the idea that, that, you know, out of many one, you know, so I, to me, it's like, I, yes, there are some, there's some baggage with this country and there's some baggage with the founding of it. And, and, uh, and, and the idea of American exceptionalism all that stuff i feel like that's pretty well debunked amongst the people that we kind of run with you know but but that being said like i guess i just i want to i first of all i don't know what the alternative is you know what i mean like we just disband the country um you know like we take no joy in the community that is this place you know in certain ways i i guess i hope that that what we can do is embrace the ideas that are the good things about this place and there are some good things i think that's also a danger is to fall into a trap where there's literally not one good thing about america or this place and it's certainly not perfect and it feels like it's in its darkest moments of my lifetime but but uh but i also kind of feel like there are i mean otherwise to to for me anyway to just give into kind of complete depression around the topic isn't for me demotivating you know for myself like i gotta think about like there is some good stuff in this country and there are good people and if we can find each other and if we can put this thing on track towards what the dream of this place was at least for some people that feels like action to me so you know i just and also i'm probably just a little more a little more of a kind of a you know corn-fed old-fashioned kind of you know middle you know american kind of dude than you are at least i wasn't having those thoughts about the pledge of allegiance when you were i now totally have those thoughts like i find the pledge of allegiance completely weird and the fact that you make kids do that is insane to me i mean it's totally insane so i you know you tend to get to these ideas before i do i think sometimes but um yeah i don't

know um and you said you know what's the alternative being depressed all the time and like i don't

well no i didn't say the alternative is being depressed i meant getting rid of the country

is that the yeah but and i do and then i guess for me i don't think that i am depressed about certainly my life or the opportunities i've been given and and all of the things that go along with that that you and i try to acknowledge as much as possible but i also don't know that i gotta like what's the famous what's the famous drill tweet you most certainly don't have to give it to him like i don't know that i need to salute the american flag for that like i can also i can salute my leaders here in my local community for you know like you know there are various no I'm not saying that the flag ever. Yeah. So like the idea that the idea that, you know, like, I'm not saying that you have to go around the world is going just live your life being angry at all times. I'm not saying that. But also, like, how much do I have to give it up to the founding founding fathers? How much do I have to give it up to the flag? How much do I have to give it up to these songs that like sort of celebrate? I guess there's just always something about nationalism, generally speaking, that just always doesn't sit well with me. And, like, there's something about during the baseball game recently when the Mariners were playing the Nationals in D.C., there's this thing going on that I know that you're aware of, Luke, which is way past its prime about a month in. But they're calling it tarps off. And this is happening in stadiums all over the country now.

I meant to bring that up when it was first going around.

I'll summarize it quickly, and I know we've got to go. But basically, parks all across the country.

We're doing it at the frog jump, right?

Yeah, I would assume. Tarps very, very on. There will be like a couple of guys or a group of guys who will like go find some sort of empty section of the ballpark and like take off their shirts and start rooting really loudly and like whip their shirts over their head. And then slowly throughout the game, more and more people keep joining them and taking off their shirts. And then by the end of the game, you just have this this this whole section of people that are always the nosebleeds. Yeah, in the nosebleeds, usually like in the glare of the sun, whipping their shirts. But they will lead chants, and you can really hear them on the radio and TV broadcasts, even when the broadcasts sometimes clearly intentionally are not trying to give them more gas anymore. I feel like they were celebrated more at first, and I think everybody's over it a little bit. But you'll hear chants, and one of the cool things is because they're all in the same place and leading these chants, they can take over what the ballpark sounds like, essentially. So their chance win the day. And so when they were saying like F the Mets or something, like you could actually hear the swears on the broadcast.

They're a plurality. They're exactly the reason Donald Trump has power, not them specifically. But it's like there's not more of them than other people in the stadium, but they're the most number of people that are doing the same thing.

Yes, exactly. And so anyway, all that is to say, I heard this on.

Two different Nationals broadcasts, one when the Mariners were there, and then I don't know if the Royals or the Orioles or somebody was there after, and I happened to be listening to the game. But that crowd of shirtless men were chanting very loudly, USA, USA, you know, that chant. And I just realized, like, I get such a negative. I get, like, I almost have a fit. I almost have the reaction you have to a motorcycle racing by. Yes. The chanting of a bunch of mostly white men chanting USA, USA, hurts my nerves.

Yeah, I get it. Yeah, I mean, it's not my favorite thing either. Because, I mean, the other thing about that, though, too, is that there's an assumption behind what their intention is. And I think the assumption is correct. But, like, we don't know what that, technically speaking, we don't know what that person who's chanting USA with their shirt off, what part of the usa they're celebrating they're probably not celebrating the uh obergefell decision to uh you know codify gay marriage you know that's probably not what they're yelling usa usa over but we don't know the assumption and again i think we're probably right is they're just thinking like usa kicks ass yeah and that's such a kind of general dumb you know thing that it just kind of like it just it's it's not very nuanced and it's just a very flattened out view

of the world unfortunately yeah and also this is happening around world cup time so it could be world cup influenced honestly um you know when i was at the game on friday night the u.s team had

just beat australia oh yeah how was that going down there oh it was a lot of all that it was a lot of fun i wasn't crazy could you like could you get to the stadium and stuff i you know i i think

i said this to you on the show on friday or maybe i've just told people since i went to the game but like you know my reputation is not necessarily to have fun but i like being around other people who are having fun and or watching people have fun and while i'm not into the world cup stuff at all and also i'm not into crowds i loved getting off the bus in pioneer square which is maybe i don't know you walk like half a mile through pioneer square to get to the ballpark and the scene was bumping i mean one of the first things i saw when i got off the bus was just a group of i'm gonna say 10 people in their maybe in their 20s or something like that in this big circle like just trying to keep the soccer ball up in the air would they have cups in their hands like people are the entire area was just a big party but it wasn't a mess it wasn't it was just it was so cool to vibe off of other people's energy which is what i am as an m and then just roll into another ref schneider master oh my goodness gracious another another i mean that piggyback situation rough schneider oh absolute rough schneider but um anyway yeah rough schneider making copies i i really loved the energy of seattle on friday night it was really cool and you know it was a nice and

if we can if we i might have i think i might have mentioned this on friday or something too so or maybe thursday but again not that i feel like my job is to be the hopium dealer of the show at all times but uh these stories oh i i did mention this but like um the stories of these local communities that have really embraced the teams from other places is just so heartwarming to me i mentioned lawrence kansas and i believe the team was from algiers and then i saw this guy on tiktok some a guy from i'm not sure what part of europe but he was in the u.s for the game and he said he said basically we europeans he goes we kind of owe america a bit of an apology because we have just been roasting your asses and you guys have been so nice to us here yes i've been a lot of that there's a human element that is like it's really hard to be mean and rude to somebody for no reason like person to person you know and like i listen if i lived in europe and i saw what was going on here i would think what is wrong with those people um but it turns out you know 49 of us are not okay with it and and even of the 51 that were okay with some version of it they also might you know by i'll give you a weird example and then really we can wrap this up because becca and i were texting about this morning we went to a winery yesterday when we were doing the grand poodle switch because um because every every year poodles come to wine country and we were at this very beautiful um winery and they had this incredible view of the valley and with these beautiful adironic chairs and the group of people we were with which was um becca's brother and his wife and like her family and stuff they wanted to take a group photo And there was only one other group of people Out in this area The employees were totally slammed So I was like who can we get And there's a guy that's just wearing a t-shirt That says like If you don't stand for the cross It's literally like Basically your worst nightmare I mean and my worst nightmare Like whatever it was It was like I stand for the cross And I kneel for the flag or something like that And it was just like I stand for the flag and I kneel for the cross Oh my god I've been doing it wrong This explains a lot of

looks i've been getting you were doing that when the woman was mean mugging you with her i head stand for the flag anyway i backspin for the cross and i head spin for the crap so anyway i it just was one of those things where i was like you know like uh i i he just was the first guy and i didn't have time to process i mean if you would have given me 10 minutes i would have been like i'm not gonna pick the guy that has the kneel for the cross shirt like i'll get somebody else but that was the only table and i just like so sort of accidentally i just turned around and said like could you take a picture of us or actually i walked up to the table which is kind of awkward to do because you know before i've said anything they don't know am i panhandling am i telling them they're being too loud like i obviously don't work there there's this very pregnant pause between hey there me standing at your table you do not know me and what i'm about to get into and they all kind of look up and i said would you mind taking a picture of us and that kneel for the cross guy goes oh absolutely and he goes um he goes do you want um he goes do you want to do it on your phone or on my phone which he goes i'm just joking like he goes you know because the idea was like he would he would just have a picture of us on his phone and then he made like two or three other like actually pretty funny jokes was smiley was very nice we took it forever we had some older people in the group to take the picture wanted us to check on it you know and again it just was like Man, how are you this guy in this shirt? Because you're not the guy You are not the guy That I thought you were going to be based on the shirt You know, it's just like such a It's just weird when you And so this morning I forget why, oh she, I think Becca texted me the group photo And she said something like, I'm still thinking about the guy in the shirt Because we were both We didn't even have a conversation in the car The first this was brought up was this morning via text That we both had clocked this shirt And both probably had the whole journey that somebody like me or Becca or you or Genevieve maybe goes on with that kind of stuff. And then had a thoroughly pleasant time taking a picture with him. And I don't have like some large, that's not like we're more similar than we're different. Like I don't even have a power out to that. It's just weird when that kind of stuff happens.

Yeah, definitely. And I don't assume that, yeah, everybody who has a shirt or some sort of outward look that indicates that they have different political views than me are necessarily going to be rude to me or gruff or see me as the soft little school of soft knocks little wiener that I know I am because I do think that people are generally kind, you're right, when you're one-on-one with them. I'm thinking of several things I want to tell you about. First of all, I'll tell you what. Because we're getting near the end of the show, I'm going to take a couple of notes here. Number one, I want to tell you about my first trip to a dog park. I don't want to steal all of your dog stories for this week.

I get to tell two times as many dog stories

Just so you know And also one part of the dog park story Kind of ties into this When I was sort of observing one person Who seemed like they were different Than the rest of us And I've been thinking about him

What if we kicked off with that tomorrow?

Yeah and also I want to tell you And this is more fun I want to tell you about a moment that I had In the grocery store yesterday Where I came so close I mean to literally embodying a Dr. Rick Progressive commercial. I mean, in a way that I almost had to bite a leather belt and then how that ended up working out. If we can try to remember those, I will tell you about those tomorrow.

Absolutely, yeah, we'll put those at the top of the show tomorrow. If they could combine a grocery store and dog park, I think they'd really have almost everything you like in the world. A pole sauce store, a grocery store slash dog park. Oh my goodness.

All right, well, we should get out of here for now. I'm sorry, I promised you we were going to keep it quicker, and I think I'm the one who extended the show.

No, we had to give Joseph the proper ride home in Atlanta. That's right. You're welcome, Cardio. All right, thanks for listening, everybody. We'll be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio, hopefully with me a little more in my full voice. Yeah, I hope you feel better. I actually feel fine. My voice just kind of sounds cruddy, but I guess we'll all find out together tomorrow, so we'll see you then. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Jay, my new film is a mix of action and comedy. It's called McBain. Let's get silly. Did you ever notice how men always leave the toilet seat up? That's the joke. The film is just me in front of a brick wall for an hour and a half. It costs $80 million. dollars. How do you sleep at night? On top of a pile of money with many beautiful ladies.

Just ask him. Power out.