Muse

Sir, I need you to know where I can get some business hammocks.

Hammocks? My goodness, what an idea. Why didn't I think of that? Hammocks! Homer, there's four places. There's the Hammock Hut, that's on 3rd. There's Hammocks or Us, that's on 3rd too. You got Put Your Butt There, that's on 3rd. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Matter of fact, they're all in the same complex. It's the Hammock Complex down on 3rd.

Oh, the Hammock District! TBTL!

Are you on the internet? Isn't that for techno geeks with spreadsheets?

You know, what happened next was, you know, they'd open their mouth, they'd speak, they'd get laughed at, they'd get called Polacks.

I'm not very good with chit chat. I like a structured communication. I like a hard out, you know, chit, chat, chit, chat, chit, chit, where are we going with that?

That was great. That was good. You went for it. I appreciate that.

If they do good, put it on YouTube. If they do bad, cancel it.

All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Another day, another victory for the OG, taking down the sweats, the impostors among us.

My name's Luke Burbank. I am your host. You paint your bald spot? One bald spot. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above. the mighty columbia where it's what it's raining today on the didn't know you like to get wet though on june 27th in the year of our lord of 2026 yeah it was like uh it's raining all weekend i mean what the heck what in the what the helly what the actual uh you know uh who is inside because it's raining outside are the dogs yes they are still here gigi and dj uh they're inside helping supervise the podcast today actually dj is staring out the window of the sliding glass door so unbelievably bored while gg is just staring right at me uh i don't know waiting for me to do something interesting here on episode 4759 in a collector series let the fun begin i can't promise that i can tell you that over the weekend we had an event that was too interesting for my liking gg the dog got onto the roof of the house you gotta be kidding me and um it was uh slightly terrifying we'll get into it also time permitting we'll talk about a new feature that the criterion collection has put out it is an entire short film made up of people waiting while the audio engineer is getting room tone so who needs a movie it's sort of an anti-movie movie and I was watching a lot of it this morning on the internet, so we may talk about that. We'll definitely say hello to this guy, longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships, something you might not know about the beginnings of our friendship.

We met on a BFF app.

He's Andrew Walsh. He is joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. Thank you for the pre-show therapy. I needed it. Listeners don't know that. I came in real hot, and we spent about, like, literally a half hour. Luke just administered talk therapy to me as I'm dealing with some stressors in my life. And some shock therapy. That was an accident, though. I just reached over and tried to demute myself while I was coughing. And something went right through. Yeah, but I do appreciate that. I feel a lot better. I came into the studio today feeling real jangly, but I'm a little bit calmer now. Thank you.

Well, good. I'm glad that we were able to process a little bit of that. Sometimes just talking about stuff is halfway towards feeling a little bit less stressed about it. And also, I think it was smart because a couple of the topics were things that you did not want to discuss on the show. Right. But if we don't pre-discuss them, if we don't get them out of your system or my system, they will somehow have a way of bubbling up and coming onto the show almost as if they have a sort of a free will of their own.

It is so, so true. You and I are very similar in that way. I think it speaks to the type of show this is, right? And it's like, how many times will I be? It's like, you're like, okay, let's wrap this show up. We've been going for about an hour and 15 minutes. And then I'm like, by the way, something happened to me at the grocery store. And it's like, okay, dial up the theme music again, because now we're getting into the real thing that was on my mind the whole time. And I'm not trying to be withholding to the listeners here. Just a couple of things going on. Nothing health-related. Had, you know, just some stuff going on this weekend that we were talking about. But I do appreciate that. I will say this. Everything that I did encounter this weekend never involved a dog on a roof. Now, a lot of the stuff I dealt with this weekend involved dogs. I had a lot of fun with dogs this weekend. No roof dogs, though. But no roof dogs. Please tell me a jet pack. Did you see the photo that I sent you? No, I've been waiting. Was a jet pack?

involved um only because gg does not it's all right deed uh have an faa clearance to operate the jetpack anymore this was good old-fashioned this was just a good old-fashioned uh caper i'm

looking now i don't like that at all i don't like that at all that is a big poodle standing right on the edge of a roof it gets worse were the blue angels flying overhead no i could have used their

help though could have had some can you throw can someone throw down a line for this dog so um becca's brother scott came over on saturday and brought uh their dog lulu because his wife is uh was out of town she was on this fun trip to italy so he was kind of bacheloring it up and had the dog and was helping out with a charity event uh in vancouver washington not too far from where i live and so uh so the plan was for him to come out and uh and hang out and he did we had a really fun time but like i didn't realize this but these dogs are very energetically kind of sensitive not so much dj dj is just kind of unfazed dj is just kind of happy go lucky and uh you know comes when you call her if you're like hey okay we're going over here now she just says sure if you say we're we're gonna chill we're gonna chill out right now we're gonna watch like four and a half hours of documentary movie about a guy named dean potter like i did last night accidentally she's like cool that's what we're doing um gigi is different gigi is very can be very skittish can be very easily kind of like if she if she gets out and gets loose and you're trying to like walk towards her with a leash she's going to always back up a little bit and make sure that she's keeping some space between you and her so you can't grab her she will never come to you If you're like, hey, come over here because she's not she's not food motivated. She doesn't it's she's just kind of she's kind of on her own wavelength. She may be on some sort of a spectrum for dogs, it would appear. But anyway, so I think when Scott and Lulu came over, it energetically shifted everything in the house, which I know sounds kind of insane. But I think it's kind of true because for the whole week, it was me and these two dogs. And we really had kind of a system going like the chi was balanced. the flow everything was harmonic in the house and then we have these two new people in there and actually Scott said to me later on he was like every time I see Gigi it takes her a couple of hours to kind of just adjust to me being in the room just the him the human not the human and his dog maybe a little bit Lulu but I mean Scott was saying literally like Gigi's always just a little bit kind of like her energy is a little hesitant or whatever

so who is that who's talking to you right now I see somebody's nosing

This is DJ's favorite I don't know if you can kind of see This is DJ's deal She likes to come over and put her head On my lap when I'm doing this show It's very sweet

Does she have a little bit of a gray muzzle?

These dogs are not young By the way, actually I don't know the exact ages I know that Gigi is older than She might appear Because she's very I don't know

I extended the screen I'm watching you on Now I see them both. Gigi's just standing behind you, just starkly. Okay, yeah. That's typical.

She's a real middle distance starer. Okay, all right. Into the middle distance. And then you got Gigi just getting head scratches. This has been the scene for the last week or whatever. So here's what I wasn't expecting. Because we've been on a real, you know, we've really got our whole thing dialed in here. So I'm sorry this is so complicated, but this doesn't involve how she got on the roof. So Scott's coming over. He's going to stay the night. So I'm going upstairs and I'm kind of making sure that I'm changing the sheets and I'm getting the room kind of set up. And there's the room down at the end of the hall where Scott's going to spend the night.

I apologize. You really got to pet DJ.

There is no end to this. We could do this for the next 24 straight hours.

I watched you take your hand off of her head and she just got closer to you. I am advocating for DJ right now.

What's really funny about these dogs is, and it just has something to do with their, do you remember that meme that was like a dog with some crazy fur that was like looking out a window with its eyes almost closed a little bit, and it was like, my husband, when will he return from sea?

Yes, of course, yes, yes, yes.

It looked like a kind of like a Gloucester widow wishing for her husband who was never going to come home to come back from his watery grave. these dogs unintentionally do that face all the time and it's it's never not funny to me if you look at my phone right now it is hundreds if not thousands of pictures of their faces when they're doing that when you're giving them like a head scratch and they're just doing a full like their eyes are kind of closed they look either really stoned or really like when my husband when will he return from sea list okay i'm getting i'm getting the upstairs set up there's this other bedroom upstairs which is where when walt is over here helping out that's where he typically sleeps and that room uh has a couple of uh windows um and they don't have window screens on them and because it's the upstairs of this house is the ceilings are pretty low it was you know built in the 1930s that it also means that the windows to are are kind of low to the ground there may be two three feet off the ground instead of like a typical window when you walked into a house so anyway i open those windows just to kind of air out the upstairs and kind of make it a little bit nice and more inviting or whatever. This isn't even the room that Scott is going to be sleeping in. It's just, I just want, I don't know. I just wanted to get maximum airflow and, and, and make things kind of nice up there. So they get over, we're hanging out. Now, Gigi goes upstairs all the time when it's me and DJ and Gigi. Sometimes she likes to just go up there and I don't know, hang out. Maybe she's just kind of overstimulated or something. What I did not expect was as we're sitting there, Scott and I are sitting there in the living room, we're chatting. Uh, two of the dogs are downstairs we hear somebody walking right above our heads and scott goes is there a dog on the roof and i was like no no that's the upstairs of the house and he goes i'm pretty sure that's the roof he was right you would think i would understand the basic architecture of this home having lived here now for a while and having torn it completely apart with my father and rebuilt it and yet i hadn't occurred to me it's because it was such an insane concept that the dog could be on the roof that my brain couldn't even couldn't even consider the possibility so I am like well let me see and I go outside and that's when I snap that picture that I sent you Andrew because yes in fact Gigi had gone upstairs she had gone into the bedroom that the door happened to be open she had gone out the window and onto the roof

so the window kind of yeah so you have one part of the roof is very peaked but then what do you call this style of kind of roof where the the room sort of it's a dormer technically okay yeah and so you have windows there with no screens i take out yeah because um the screens were these windows

are actually going to get replaced and so the screens were really cruddy like these are the windows that were in this house when i bought it's one of the few things that i haven't replaced yet and so the screens were just kind of gross and unsightly and also generally speaking these rooms aren't even in use most of the time so for probably aesthetics i took the screen off or something it also just never occurred to me that the dog could like that you know that any animal would think to do this like it was so so then i i'm kind of like scott is like a little bit he's kind of nervous about this he's like okay i want to like you know he's i can tell that he's a little bit like this could go south and i'm especially if he is somebody who the dog is skittish around like that's kind of smart right i i don't think i was giving that enough sort of um credit if you will but i kind of thought it was funny because i thought well well it was because i just figured she'd just go back through the window eventually like i figured she had some self-preservation in fact this is a video that i made it's very short but this is me filming on the roof and you can hear in my voice that i kind of think it's kind of a little bit what are you doing have you lost your damn mind so i'm just kind of like at that point i just think this is this is funny and silly that she has done this then the problem is i go upstairs to the bedroom to try to get her out and i you know reach out the window and she does exactly what she typically does if you're on terra firma like i was telling you like if you're trying to get her with a leash or something and and she you you start to walk towards her she just kind of backs up and she's so much faster than i am even at her advanced age that like she could always keep a buffer like i'm never going to be able to catch her like you know she's doing that on the roof now this is more audio this is me now i'm leaning out of the window of the bedroom trying to get her to come over to me i don't want to get out on the roof a because it might not be safe for me and b because i don't want to spook her so i now have both bedroom windows open wide and i'm trying to just kind of entice her to come hang out with me and uh well gg has officially figured out a way to stay at arm's length i'm mostly making these videos to send to becca obviously because again i'm still in this mode where i think this is this is just kind of like a funny weird story It sounds like the name of an Oliver Sacks book. The dog who lived on the roof. The man who mistook his poodle for a sentient being. So Scott's like, what are we going to do? And I'm like, well, what we're going to do is we're just going to leave both of the windows open so that she can get back in. We're going to come downstairs and we're just going to go about the rest of our afternoon. And at some point she's going to get bored and she's going to come back and she's going to climb through the window and come back into the house.

And you specifically said before she's not food motivated So it's not even like, oh, I'll leave a thing

treats here at the window i there is nothing that i could think of i mean look andrew if you switch back to the camera look where she's standing she's like just a little bit of it she will do

this okay well she will do i got it no i got it i see you she will do this for literally four hours she's standing i'm gonna say about four feet behind you just standing stark still and staring at you now one thing that is it i don't want to get you off track too much but like before this particular dog sitting situation with you you have been with g with gg i don't know if i'm getting those g's right with gg before without a second dog in the picture and i've never heard about aside from that time that you and becca were walking gg on the beach and she kind of got out and oh yeah some woman's yard aside from that i'd never heard any kind of misgivings you had about her other than being like kind of sweet is she was she like this even when she was sort of solo with you like always a little bit out of reach like she is staring at you in a way that like jordan peele would write this character into a book right she's standing right behind you and just staring

at you and has been for five or ten minutes now she's in the sunken place yes um the usual progression of things when it's just me and her is for the first day or something she's kind of like a little bit just just trying to take it all in and like you know kind of maybe standing a little bit far away but then if i was like sitting on the you know if i was sitting on the couch watching tv she might come over and like rest her head on me or whatever it's kind of hard to predict what she will do but um but i thought also having dj here was a good thing because dj is so normal and well adjusted i kind of thought well if gigi gets loose having dj here as a kind of an emotional support dog for her could be good because gigi might want to come back and hang out with the two of us like she might want to be around the family unit that being me and dj so i thought there was a better chance of getting if she got loose or something a better chance of getting her back knowing that dj who she loves is here and that has been generally the case which is to say they both have seemed pretty kind of chill and well adjusted and again we've got all of our systems we take our little walks i've got them on these tethers you know we've got a whole schedule going here now and it's all been kind of working i just think something energetically shifted to where she was like just a little bit kind of, I don't know, freaked out for some reason and decided to go upstairs and to go into the bedroom and to go out the window and then to stand on the roof. Well, so Scott and I are sitting down in the living room again and we're just kind of like chilling. And I'm like, the thing is I go, I think that dogs have kind of a, a sense of self-preservation that like they would understand that like if there's if you're trying to get off this roof and there's a window that you can go back through if there's something that you can go back through that you that you have just used or jumping off the roof your brain is going to tell you that the jumping off the roof is dangerous like and i wonder about this a lot with bubbles the cat who i have limited visitation rights with because becca has a balcony and we always want to leave the door open because it's nice and ventilated and all that but we're worried about bubbles going out there and climbing because i'm like it's like on a very high floor of this high rise and worried about bubbles going out there and falling off the balcony and it raises this question or it's kind of like do you think a cat that's never you know a cat that's never been 15 stories above the pavement do they understand instinctively that that's uh that that way lies death that or danger see i'm or that danger i don't know the answer

we're too afraid to risk it basically right of course now here's the deal um i don't know dogs that well or dog behavior so you know just take everything i say with a grain of salt or the acknowledgement that i don't know what i'm talking about and i understand that but for me i sort of understand where you're coming from with this like i am more worried about cats like i'm more worried about cats getting into situations that they can't get out of because now i do think cats have a sort of a good would it be a homing mechanism like i do think that cats can like kind of map the area And if they leave the house and get a little bit lost or you feel like they're lost in the neighborhood, I feel like they know where home is. And I feel like probably I don't know if we feel the same way about dogs, but I feel like a cat, though, can get up a tree and not get back down. Classic fireman stuff right there. Right. As my grandma one time said, oh, yeah, she was trying to my grandma one time in her life tried to lie to us. and she said oh yeah got up in the tree and the and the fire truck came and it was ringing its bell and me and my sister like it's 1994 they don't have bells anymore anyway so like cats four dalmatians right so driving the fire truck but my point is like cats classically get into situations they can't get themselves out of like i think they can find their way home but they can also go

They keep climbing up things, whereas dogs don't naturally do that, and so I would be more worried about a cat at the edge of a roof looking down and being like, I think I can do this, whereas I would expect a dog to be like, well, I do not have a jumping instinct like this, like a cat might, so I will find my way back in.

I again I just was I was just a foolishly it would turn out I was just foolishly confident that self-preservation uh would would kick in and that she would eventually get bored and just come you know come back through the window and come downstairs or whatever and uh boy was I wrong because I was sort of in the chair looking one direction Scott's looking past me and I just see this look on his face oh no as Gigi has decided to jump from the roof we think to the deck which is now listen that's like I want to say that's like eight feet it's not thankfully it's not 30 feet it's not uh you know she was like you know she decided to jump I again it's unclear if she jumped onto the deck or if she jumped over the deck onto the grass it's also unclear which would have been a better thing for her to do because on the one hand it's further down to the grass

but it's softer so scott you're seeing his eyes get wide because he just saw he just saw the shape

of a standard poodle go past the window no yes absolutely i did not i've been on the edge of my

seat but i did not think that the dog actually i did not think this is how the story ended the dog

jumped off the roof geez louise gg louise gg louise the proper exclamation there she jumped off the roof again i think she landed on the deck because i have this weird sense memory of like hearing a thump on the deck but also that could just be something crazy my brain did because i actually wasn't watching it happen what i know is i jumped out of my chair i ran outside she by that time was up she had gotten into the yard that's why it's unclear to me if she jumped on the deck and ran around or if she jumped into the yard but like first thing that happened that was a great relief was i saw that she was running with her normal gait yes she was not limping yeah yeah she was not like you know what i mean she just looked like she looked absolutely unfazed she was just prancing along in the yard per her regular ass behavior so that was like the first thing that happened that i was like okay okay thank goodness that that's one thing but now she's just loose and i'm thinking she's probably kind of shaken up from just the whole thing so she's now out in the yard loose having jumped off the roof so i run i do the only thing i know how I do which is I run and I open the back of my car because Gigi for all of her craziness loves riding in the car which is strange she's a very skittish dog at times you'd think that would be like I don't know claustrophobic for her whatever no she loves it I open the back door of my car the back hatch and sure enough boom she jumps right in and then I close the back hatch as quickly as possible so we've got her contained she's off the roof she appears to be moving normally and she is contained um but uh she by the way she is still standing stark still behind

you staring directly at the back of your head and into the camera just standing not sitting i want to let everybody know like one of the twins in the shining she maintains her distance just standing

behind you she she doesn't now if i stood up and if i grabbed her leash she'd start twirling she'd be so excited when she saw that like over going outside so she does she does demonstrate excitement and emotion if that makes any sense in fact her favorite thing to do is like spin in circles so like in the morning when i get up they're both sleeping in the living room and i i open the door of my bedroom i walk out in the living room and they're both like tails wagging gg is doing circles i get the leashes they're very excited so she does have just demonstrate some sort of whatever but uh so yeah so anyway that's sort of i mean there's not a huge power out other than we you know kind of checked her over scott went out and actually hung out in the car with her for a while to just like kind of like meld their energies a little bit and kind of give her you know a check of like her joints and stuff to just make sure that she didn't seem you know like she'd kind of sprained or broken anything which she didn't eventually i went back out there and she was just kind of sitting but she was really pushed up against what she was in the back seat of the car and she's kind of pushed up against the far window and i just got in there and hung out with her for a while and gave her some pets and and then got her on the leash and then got her out and then got her inside, and she seems to be totally fine. We've been on now multiple walks since then. She's just back to her weird, shining self.

I have a couple of questions for you. One, at any point, or maybe even in hindsight, would it have made sense for Scott maybe to just...

like kind of make himself scarce for a little bit like if if the energy got off in the house because instead of the three of you you and the two dogs but scott and another dog maybe that's what sort of i mean it was the opportunity of the open window but also you said the energy was off maybe if scott and his dog had just gone for a walk or whatever and it's just like you and dj puttering around the house for maybe a half hour maybe gg would have come in or i think i said that wrong you and dj hanging out of the house maybe gg would have come in you mean you mean from the car no i mean from the roof i'm wondering if she took the jump off the roof because she just was

a little bit on edge i'm just wondering that would have felt like yeah i guess that would have been a potentially an option i also it's like lulu was downstairs that's the other dog scott was downstairs i guess maybe if they left and then i went up and told gg they were gone like

she doesn't hear their voices because you know they can pick up on that but on the other hand It must have been very helpful to you to have another human being there in case something did go sideways. I understand why you wouldn't want to do that, but that was just something I was thinking.

Also, I would have felt kind of rude. I also don't think I believed the energy thing until I saw a dog flying off of the roof. In other words, that would have felt like a little much for me to say, hey, can you guys just be gone for a little while or something? But maybe that would have worked. I don't really know. it also it didn't take her very long to go from being on the roof to jumping i want to say it was

like under five minutes oh i thought you guys came downstairs we're hanging out for i picture like

20 minutes a half hour she's wandering around the roof it was really it was it was actually quite fast which was also kind of weird to me i just figured again i've been around enough animals doing weird stuff that my experience is usually if you like when um bubbles got inside the floor of this house yeah and was like not coming out like got in the basement got into a weird little niche like a little a little you know hole in the in the underside of the floor so the basement ceiling and then but was inaccessible from anywhere else i don't know someone had probably cut this little hole for like plumbing purposes back in the day and in that case i'm what i had to do was just wait well first of all i had to cut open a wall and then just wait for like seven hours until she got bored and walked out you know so my my point was i thought that this was going to resolve itself i did not think it was going to be resolved from her jumping off the roof and i

didn't and i didn't realize in the telling that that happened in such quick succession now my so that sort of changes the color of this next question i want to ask which i think is the most interesting one so far is you were playing audio for us of videos that you took and you said you were sending them to becca just for people who i don't know if you mentioned this at the beginning of this particular story, this is not Becca's dog. This is Becca's parent's dog, right? Yeah, and you're watching and is DJ, and DJ

is Jeff and Darcy's dog. Okay, right. So everybody in this family basically pretty much has a standard poodle. It is the official dog of, they've had many, too, in the family and so they had one named Zach who was named for Balzac, the French writer. They've had Gigi, they've had Zach, they've had Jack, they've had DJ. Oh, I see.

There's a rhyming thing going on. So, okay, so you're recording these videos. Are you sending them to Becca in real time? Or are you saving them and thinking, I will send these if this ends in a humorous way?

No, because at no time until she jumped off the roof did I understand the severity of the situation.

I just didn't think— Did Becca understand the severity? What is her reaction when you're sending these things?

She's kind of just like, you've got to be kidding. Actually, I believe maybe I called her after Gigi had jumped off the roof and was okay. I think I might have started by saying something like, I'm going to start by telling you the dog is fine, but this is what just happened. So maybe that was how the information was. But I was sending her the videos as I was making it.

So when she gets this phone call, she already knows that you have a dog on the roof situation. I think she hadn't looked at the video yet. I think she had been doing something. Oh, okay, gotcha.

So I think it was kind of like an information dump.

I see. So it wasn't because I would be so she probably didn't fully understand what was going on until the situation was already over because I was sort of curious. It's like she's kind of like, OK, this isn't funny. Or if she had your same attitude, because it sounds like she's pretty chill. Like you were describing the the walk you guys went on and you said it was, you know, like she was you said it was Becca's idea to have Gigi go off leash that one time. Because I was kind of like wondering if you had like, if that was like, if that was a real Burbankian idea that went south.

Well, that was something that I was, when we let her off at the beach and then she got into someone's yard and then we couldn't catch her for a while. I think we mutually thought that, well, let's just test it out.

Yeah, you had, because I asked you at the time, I was like, were you sort of like, was Becca sort of, you know, tense about it? Because I just pictured you. needling her into doing it. You said, no, it was her idea. I think it was probably her idea.

Yeah, yeah. She's also capable of having bad ideas. It doesn't have to all be the result of my needling.

I don't know her that well, but I do know you.

Yes, I know. And yes, most bad ideas that I'm involved in start with me. But yeah, so all of that is to say, we've now learned. oh the last thing too that's kind of nuts is so we get her back in the house and now of course i've gone upstairs i've closed all of the windows and um we're just in the house and then what does she do we take the leash off her she immediately goes back upstairs and i'm like i'm having like an ocd kind of intrusive thought i'm like saying to scott i'm like i know that i just closed all the windows like five minutes ago but i can't allow myself to fully believe it unless i go Look at them again I have to look at them I go upstairs, I look at them, they're closed I come back downstairs We're sitting there, five minutes later Maybe not even five minutes later, we hear a clank And we're like, what the hell Is going on And we go upstairs And Gigi is now just standing on the bed She is standing on the bed

Like she is now, she still hasn't moved I want the listeners to know

But she's in that exact kind of posture But she's just standing on the bed and what we deduced was the noise we heard was her trying to go back out the window except it was closed it was her head bonking onto the window glass because she probably doesn't understand the difference between open and closed and she was trying to go right back out there. That is interesting

that actually makes me feel a little bit better because it implies to me that she enjoyed it, that it was a

game she was playing that she wasn't traumatized that's how i chose to interpret the behavior as well is that in fact i said something like that to scott i was like well clearly this wasn't that traumatizing because she is it's like she's going on a water slide or something like we let me go do that again as opposed to like jumps as opposed to like you know that was you know near death for me which which it it kind of was like i mean scott pointed out that you know there's a railing around the deck so if she jumped down and it's a metal railing i mean it's you know it's protective for people to not fall off the deck and if she would have if she would have gotten caught on that somehow instead of just landing flush on the deck there's like a lot of ways a lot of ways it could have been it could have been even more even more upsetting so yeah lesson learned yeah no more open windows now what is funny is the screen doors because like here on the madrona hill studio on the warmer days i've had the um there's a you know i have the door open and but then there's a screen door and i've got some screen doors in the house and stuff that appears to be a barrier that they do not that certainly gg in no way is trying to violate like she could just push right through a screen door if she wanted of course yeah yeah she somehow doesn't like she senses that that is a barrier she senses that that's like in other words if there would have been screens on the windows i don't think she would have even tried to push to them she's very non-destructive yeah

yeah but i know that feeling though of you know everything is fine but you have to check it again And I'm that way more with Bingo. You'd think I'd be that way more with Lucy because not only is she newer to me, but the idea of having a dog in the house is newer to me. But cats, like I say, they get squirrely. Ironically, cats get squirrely and squirrels get catty, famously. But, you know, Bingo loves to find a little hole to hide himself in for a while. Like he's a very social cat, but also he's a cat. So every now and then he likes to go chill out. Maybe it'll be in the dark recess of my closet in the basement. mentor but he's got his spaces right like there's a handful of them and we know where they all are and every now and then you sort of like you'll be especially if i'm home alone it'll just suddenly hit me especially if i'm home alone and maybe smoking a little weed and playing some darts and you get that little paranoia you're like i i haven't seen bingo in a while where is he then you check all of the spaces and you're like he's not in any of the spaces and then you have this moment is like is and he's never gotten out like so far knock on all the wood around you listeners find wood knock on it like he is so far has never gotten out but I also take that as kind of a reality of cat ownership that cats get out sometimes and um and I and he just wouldn't you know old old Mr. Theo he was a big-ass cat with an attitude and if he got out I always kind of would yeah he could probably handle himself at least in the neighborhoods we used to live in but of course now we have coyotes around here in fact i'm going to say what i said before the show i don't know if it's too traumatic for folks to hear but i won't trigger trigger if a dog jumping

off a roof was sketchy for you to hear what you're about to hear is much and i won't go into too much

detail but i will just say that one of the things that i was pretty upset about this morning is i found out that a dog that i love that it belongs to a friend of mine who i volunteer with is is no longer with us.

because of a coyote incident this weekend, and that's as detailed as I'll go into it, but it's clearly very, very upsetting. And as somebody who is just so deeply in love with my pets and care for my pets so much, and Luke, on certain nights, you go outside my house. We live near the cemetery where the coyotes live and have been breeding forever. Luke, one time I thought neighbors were having a party. I thought they were all doing something crazy. I thought they were all high on whippets or something until I realized, no, no, no, that's all the coyotes in the cemetery having a party like there are so many coyotes where i live and the thought of bingo getting outside for even a small period of time is i i don't even know what the i don't have a good word for how that makes my blood go icy is that where the protective the

protective layer of broken down uh rvs actually comes in handy yeah right well actually those Those are the castle walls that will keep the coyotes back at Evergreen Wash Shelly, not in your actual yard.

Yeah, or hopefully maybe the Hedges, too. By the way, Crazy Weekend never pulled out the pole saw. No. Hedges still going crazy back there.

The whole thing you were excited about.

I'm wondering if I'm even going to get to that before the thon. But anyway, I can easily convince myself that him getting outside the house is like a death sentence. And so if I have a moment where I can't have eyes on bingo, then I'll put eyes on bingo. But then it's like, I don't know, every now and then, like, what was the word? Is it house burping? I like to sort of house burp sometimes where you put all the windows open. But everything has screens and stuff. But sometimes I will be like, well, bingo's not here. I'm just going to open this door for a little bit, let some air in. And then you're like, wait a second, though. Did he get behind me? Did I, you know, the paranoia can just rack up. And, like, I just have to, like, go around and put eyes on him to make sure he's still in the house. And, again, he has not been, he's bolted a couple of times. He really likes being outside. You have to keep an eye on him, otherwise he will try to jump out the door when you're coming and going, which we do all the time now that we have a dog. But luckily, we haven't had any real scares. But man, even when they're just kind of like in your own head, those feelings, like you have to go, let me go look at that window again. Let me touch that window. Let me touch that thing.

Yes. I always wonder, like, if Bubbles ever ends up living out here full time again, how that will work. also if bubbles gets out because she's extremely athletic cat like she's you know she's a bangle she's like can jump really high i assume run fast by cat standards and is very twitchy is very like head on a swivel and i just feel like but she's also she seems incredibly dumb and i just wonder if like one of two things will happen she would either immediately be snatched up by a coyote or a much bigger feral cat or you know she would either not be not be around much longer or two or three years later i would just be down walking around in the woods and i would just see like her being carried aloft by all the other cats right like she would be like marlin brando in she would she would basically be colonel kurtz from apocalypse now she would just be she would have become she would have become the leader of and the feared you know boss of all of the wood the woodland creatures around here right she'd just be like bald in a cave pouring water over her back it's only one of two things so that's the only two options she's either gone in a moment or she's now officially running this part of yeah southern washington because you said there are feral cats around you too that you oh my gosh one of them were in your house when you came home one They're in the yard right now. I saw an orange one this morning when I was putting the girls out on the tether. I think they missed it. But, like, I didn't know. I didn't really, wasn't doing a calculation until I started walking these two dogs in the neighborhood. And there are, like, there's probably, like, 15 feral cats. It's because gay feeds them, which I don't know. I don't have a big problem with. They're not harming me. But I didn't notice them until I had two dogs that were very interested in them and that they're very kind of, like, afraid of. So then I was like, oh, my God.

The cats are afraid of the dogs.

The cats are afraid of the dogs. and so they'll be laying somewhere I didn't even realize they were and all of a sudden they're just like basically you're activating them as I'm walking up the road with these two dogs everywhere I look there's like a cat that I didn't see was there that's like skittering off and then the dog is like

and do the dogs sort of have that instinct to kind of jump and pull off the leash they do that Lucy is a little it really depends with Lucy I can't kind of tell like her when she sees another dog usually she's just if she doesn't know that dog she's usually just sort of curious she just sort of stops and like will stare at the dog but not like strain the leash or whatever if she knows that dog and has met that dog and played with that dog before she just goes berserk and that's something that i'm having a lot of trouble like kind of like calming her down because then when she gets like that then she's and it's all friendly she's just like wants to say hello to her friend, but she loses all. control. And that's how she jumps. She starts jumping up on people. That's how she ended up scraping my neighbor's, you know, arm and causing a boo-boo. I'm calling it a boo-boo for legal reasons now. Yeah, exactly. They can't sue you if it's a boo-boo. Right, exactly. So anyway, we took Lucy to our friends, had a little barbecue, a little birthday barbecue over at the Rodin's this weekend. We mentioned my buddy Rodin on the show quite a bit. Oh, by the way, for his birthday, I got him a bag full of materials to clean and maintain a chainsaw, by the way, because I told you on the show last week that I was bummed that I had returned his chainsaw and I did not realize that I had returned it in kind of a poor condition that I didn't realize and that had led him to have a new rule of not loaning out tools. So anyway, I got him like some simple greed and some machine lubricant and stuff. But anyway, we had a really good time. But we let Lucy off the leash. She just went absolutely crazy running around like we had no control over at all. And like everybody else was more chill. They're like, she's a puppy. She's doing puppy things, sort of. People were very kind. But also our friend was there with her dog who was like a really good dog. Poppy. Poppy, and she can behave. But Poppy really has no interest in playing with Lucy. But Lucy doesn't understand that.

Because when we were watching the football game at the Eagles, one of the Seahawks games, Poppy was being very chill in a stroller, but because Poppy had been dosed with something.

Yeah, no, but Poppy's good. Like, Poppy was just, no, I don't think she was, I don't think so. She was just, like, chilling. But, like, Lucy has so much puppy energy, and now she's, like, at least three times the size of Poppy, I think. And so she's, like, she just, like, Lucy was just kind of being a terror. And, again, everybody else was very chill about it. some of the younger people there they're like um some of my friend's daughters were kind of a little bit put off by like just the energy they couldn't kind of be around her a little bit which has really sucked for me because i don't want to be the guy who's like bringing a shitty dog to a

situation what about all your click training are you guys selling away how does that work like click and then they don't i mean listen but she gets into the zonkers mode and like there's

just like she's like and i think believe it or not i think she didn't have enough sleep like sometimes something happens where the dog does not get enough sleep and then she's just like it turns into a kind of energy an uncontrollable energy and you know if i had her on the leash she was just like trying to tear away from it in a way that again none of it is aggression she's never like snapped or done anything out of aggression it's all playful but she's a big ass dog now she's 35 pounds and growing jeez louise yeah i know well don't let her near the

roof gg louise what i looked what i learned this weekend was they do not all dogs have some kind of self-preservation instinct that tells them to use the window instead of the roof you know i realized she defenestrated herself in the most classic sense oh yeah out the window yeah yeah as she went out the window it's rare that you can use defenestration although do you have to be

thrown for it to be defenestration like it yeah i don't think you can't self-defenestrate you'll go blind. Stop defenestrating yourself. She's still behind you, by the way, just staring. Oh, yeah. If you just give her a, and kind of put

your hand out, will she come? Hey, Gigi, come here.

Come here. See? Nothing.

Come here, buddy. Hey, come here. Look.

Oh, look, she's coming. Oh, there she is. She just wanted to be invited. She was a vampire. She just wanted to be invited. Now the dogs are kind of nuzzling. Aw. That's all she needed.

I'm telling you that this is why I was supposed to give them back yesterday, but I didn't, because I was like, well, I'm going to hang on until wednesday because despite all of the all of the escapades and other things and uh you know the the morning and afternoon walks and the whatever else goes into this you know taking care of these guys i really like having them around well i love that she she i

mean so yeah she was standing a kind of a aloof or alerted like on a high alert behind you but all she needed was to be asked to come over and now she's getting pets and both dogs are there Now, oh, I was going to ask you, so does Becca's parents, does Gigi's owners slash parents or whatever you call them, do they know this whole story? Do they want to know this whole story?

I think this might be how Jeff and Darcy are finding out. Do you think they listen to this show? I know that Jeff is a pretty regular listener. So this is, sorry guys, this is probably how they're learning about this, unless somebody else told them, because I did not tell them at the time. Not because I was worried about it, because, again, after it was all over, Gigi was fine. Will you lose your Gigi privileges? Well, I don't think so. Again, I don't know where this ranks in terms of, like, bad babysitting skills. Yeah, right. You know, how high it is on the list. I mean, she also could have gotten away and literally never come back. That would have been probably worse, I think.

Yeah, yeah. Like, I can't find the dog anymore. That would have been a worse outcome. Now, I do notice also that DJ is vague. behind you. Is that going to be a problem for DJs?

In dog years, she's old enough, and I can't stop her. That's the problem.

And she is a DJ, and it's kind of like a nightclub lifestyle.

Yes, right. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. All right, let's see here. Oh, let's talk Wordle for a moment, which really is more your bailiwick. Bailiwick. Did I use that term properly? I think so. Bailiwick. That just kind of means like area of expertise or whatever. Did you happen to see this New York Times thing that I sent you last week about this? Apparently, this is an article from Tony Monkiewicz, Eve Washington, and Tom Jarrett Kanin. It took three New York Times reporters, Andrew, to write this article. About the New York Times. Wordle's hard mode is actually easier.

Oh, you know why it's got a three-person byline? Because these are the data people, right? This is like a data project of theirs. Oh, the upshot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, again, there's some stuff about this that I don't really understand as a non-Wordle player. I mean, I've played it a few times. But reading from the piece, Wordle is a simple game in many respects. The vast majority of users play using the default settings, where you can guess any letter on any turn. But a smaller slice of players, you may be one, choose to play in hard mode, which adds a major constraint. Any revealed hints must be used in subsequent guesses. If letters turn yellow and green, you're forced to use them in your next guess. So you might think that hard mode is harder. It says so in the name. But as Wordle turns five, an analysis of 730 million games from the last... How many of those were you? 700 million of those? uh 730 million games from last year says the opposite players in hard mode solve in fewer turns on average so they're saying that even if they're saying that the playing the hard mode actually the people doing that tend to solve faster than the people using standard mode then they go into like a bunch of different theories and explanations i still thought my sense was and they kind of address this i think in an unsatisfactory way for me i just think that the people playing in hard mode are just more elite wordle players. No, no.

No, it's not that. In fact, we talked about it. You've got to adjust your camera a little bit. I'm seeing like half your face. Thank you. From all of our

dog talk. I was trying to put, I had the DJ cam going. Oh, I see.

You're keeping that trained on her. No, that was very sweet, but also it was like, it was like I was seeing like just the comedy half of the, wait. Is the comedy or the comedy? Is the comedy tragedy mask one mask where it's distorted in the middle of those two masks i forget everything i said i'll cut it out i'll beep it you're thinking more two-faced from that yes i was thinking more about two-faced from batman exactly um so i believe i explained the heart and eckhart fans sorry i start talking about that character or you don't you think it's interesting that so too oh okay this is i already know that we're gonna make sklar off mad because i'm gonna say something really stupid in here but about the marvel universe well this is dc okay that's one point for me um but aaron eckhart plays two-face right in one of the rebooted batman movies but um two-face is actually who was he before he was two-face harvey dent harvey dent exactly and harvey dent was played originally billy billy d williams billy d williams yeah wouldn't have One of your favorite quotes from the original movie. Exactly. Wouldn't it have been cool to see, Billy, thank you for filling in all the gaps of this sentence that I started, that I really, I was like, Gigi out on the roof there.

Let me open a window and let you climb back into this conversation. Right.

Exactly. So, first of all, I guess it would have been cool to see Billy Dee Williams actually play Two-Face. But, I mean, I understand a lot of time had passed there. Yeah. But I'm also looking to see if I can find, here it is.

Because something happens because basically...

I'm hearing a few words, but those words will count, and so will my actions. I like to see that I also compressed the shit out of it, too. That's great. Good job, Andrew, from 2012.

There's something about certain people in certain movies, the lines that really tickle you. It tickles me because it's like the dupin. It's kind of like LL Cool J in toys or whatever. I love the things that, for whatever reason, you get kind of mildly obsessed with.

Remember you and I, didn't you and I, like, when we worked at Cairo, we really were not on the same page with the baseball tape from news radio that I used all the time. But I now use it because I've been too lazy. In the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd. Baseball's back, Bill Hartman. Baseball's back. I'm too lazy to go find more baseball tape. Wow, Dee. Oh, my God, I thought you were playing a drop. That's DJ.

Hey, DJ, DJ, come here, buddy. It's all right.

She sees my neighbor.

walking around and she's uh she's activated okay i'm gonna i'm gonna push on through if you don't mind and because i have some stuff on wordle i want to say this makes sense i think that you and i talked about this because i think i explained hard mode to you on the show i don't know sometime earlier this year and it does give you those restraints and i know that this can get a little bit tedious but if people will follow along with me if you're unfamiliar with the game you know you start you have six chances just to guess what five letter word is there and it's totally blank. You have no clue. So your first clue is just, I don't know, start with any five letter word. And then you can sort of see, okay, some of these letters are in the word and they're in the right place. Some of these letters are in the word, but you didn't place them in the right place. And some of them aren't in the word at all. And then you have to start puzzling out from there through the process of elimination. You enter another word, et cetera, et cetera. And on hard mode, it kind of prevents you from recreating some of the same mistakes, but not all of them. It's not even as strict, I think, as it should be.

Do you play in hard mode? I do, yes. Because Becca doesn't, and she's another Wordle devotee, and she, for some reason, doesn't play hard mode.

And I think it might be because of this, because in a certain way, hard mode, I think, is actually a bit of a crutch. It's a little bit like, and again, I play in hard mode, but I think it's a misnomer to call it hard mode. It's almost like bowling with the gutters filled in, with the bumpers or whatever. because what it does is it says let's say that you put in a word and you got a an e and it's in the right place okay it's green you're like okay well i know there's an e that's green right there and then you get an s and it's yellow and you're like okay i know there's an s somewhere in this word but i didn't put it in the right place and then the next word you put in is apple and there's no s in apple for those who don't know the the machine will be like no and yes i consider it a machine the machine will be like no you didn't use an s apple doesn't have an s in it like you know you can't do that this is hard mode buddy but in a certain way is that harder or is that the machine reminding you of a little misstep that you just took you know for me if i do something like that it's probably because i'm starting to get a little frantic and i didn't even notice that I made a mistake other people who are advocates of the easy mode are like no it's kind of nice because I can just I'm going crazy I can't think of a word with an s in it let me just eliminate some more letters and then I'll get it the next time or something like sometimes you actually want to put in a word that you know won't be the answer just to eliminate things and that's what hard mode supposedly takes away from you but it still allows certain things you can still put the wrong letter in the same place twice like if you have a yellow e in the third position you can put the yellow e in the third position again and it doesn't block you from doing that so it seems a little bit it seems a little bit inconsistent with that ruling but again it doesn't allow you to make a mistake i've always felt like the word hard is a bit of a misnomer

in there right they also said players who choose hard mode have an escape hatch you're allowed to start in hard mode and switch to standard mode during i didn't know that you sense a trap oh Oh, that's interesting. They found that roughly 0.2% of those in hard mode toggle it off mid-game during a recent 30-day period.

Okay, I have another question for you, and this isn't from the article. It's just Wordle-related, and it's something I've been meaning to ask you for a while, but sometimes people play these games a little bit on a delay. You can go back and play the archive. So this is more than a, I think it's about a week or more now, but for the second time in my Wordle life, i couldn't complete a wordle at least successfully because i didn't actually know the word and i want to know if you know this word okay so this is from a couple of weeks or a week ago or something like that and i didn't get it i totally busted out but it wasn't because oh i had too many options and i chose the wrong ones i just didn't know that ovate is a word oh no i would never

what does it mean is that is that is that the verb of basically to be giving an ovation that's what

genevieve thought it meant because she's like you know this word it's just a weird when i was like trying to struggle when i was trying to figure it out i said do i hate it when they make me ovate

to get them to come back out and play their last song just play yeah your best song at the end of

the set don't make me ovate yeah that's what genevieve was like you know this word it's just a different form of it but no that's not it means egg-shaped i think i think i think the sister word would be like that i'll bet you it's like ovulation right it's like oh ovate is probably like egg you know and so but no i've never heard the word ovate before and so i i don't know in a certain way now this has happened to me twice where i can't remember what the other one was but i was like i literally i couldn't have gotten this except for just mashing together a bunch of letters and now that it's happened twice it's changed the way i play wordle because now sometimes i get frustrated and i just start putting in things that maybe could be words that i don't know i wonder about that if you know i know that they officially are allowed to recycle words now because they were running out um if but i wonder if it'll eventually become we're talking about this the other day um with somebody about how like if you like high level scrabble you know like the highest levels of competitive scrabble are actually kind of very unfun to watch people play because you're not playing xylophone on triple word score you're playing a bunch of weird three-letter words that you just you've basically memorized the dictionary yes and the same thing with um and again peace and love to people that are into this but like basically what is considered speech and debate now at the highest levels like in college and stuff like it's called forensics and it's like it's not people having a debate that's interesting hey or deej it's all right buddy they're they're not having a debate that's like a great oration where people are like thinking of like a really airtight way to describe something or like it's not like um you know lincoln the lincoln douglas debates or whatever it's like the the sport if you will the competition has evolved into this thing where you just you just say a bunch of things really really like the micro machine guy i haven't experienced have you ever

heard this no i've i know what you're talking about with scrabble and like you know spelling bees have sort of always been like that too it's kind of like well do you know the tricks of of it or whatever um maybe that doesn't apply to spelling bees but so but i did i've never heard this in a debate which is such a different thing because it's so objective right well here i'm going to just play you something i'm sorry i meant i'm going to play you something i'm just playing

this on you know unpreviewed off of facebook so we'll see how this goes but this is listed as dartmouth forensic union debates at top speed so let's just see if this is actually Hold on, guys. Let's get the volume going here. Okay, here we go. No, why would this be muted? Why would this not play for me? Is it a meta thing?

Is it a Facebook or Instagram?

It's Facebook, but it's showing me. Let me see.

What happens is when you hit, this happens to me all the time, when you hit play on it, it automatically mutes it again. You have to hit play and then try to unmute it as fast as possible.

Oh, I see. Okay, here we go. Isn't that crazy?

Okay.

The Dartmouth Forensic Union is...

I don't know why they decided to add that in, but you just heard a little clip. That's literally what college debate sounds like. And that's a winning one? Like, that's stupid. Yeah, because it's somehow, and we've probably got listeners that know a lot more about this than I do and maybe even participate, but you're trying to pile up as many arguments on your side of the debate as possible. So the faster that you can say the arguments, the more arguments you can get in in your limited amount of time, the more points you can score. So it's really a micro machines contest now, more so than trying to, like, you know, again, win the debate in what we would think of the more classic sense, which is like you make a more compelling argument than the other person does.

Yeah, right. A Frost-Nixon situation. That's really, I think, that's... It's a bummer, I think. That's a real bummer, yeah. Take anything away from the people who like that. That's not convincing anybody of anything.

No, it's evolved into something that actually does not serve the purpose of the original idea of having a speech and debate thing. It's like learning how to put arguments together. It's like learning how to appeal to the judges or the audience. It's learning how to structure what you're saying. And again, because of something, and I forget, there was a whole documentary about this that's actually really fascinating. there was some change in like the scoring rules 20 30 years ago and it just nobody realized what it was going what what it was going to eventually create they're like we need to speed up the game did you see the onion did you see the onion today on instagram it said uh fans now agree baseball is too fast i did i did see that yes that would be that would just really be the cherry on top once they get all of the um uh once they get all the you know pitch clock worked out and they get all the stuff they're getting the games like down to like under three hours consistently and now

people like actually we'd like this to go longer speaking of kind of parody accounts or parody publications you know what came sweetly back into my life over the weekend mcsweeney's somebody reposted something on blue sky and i was like oh it didn't occur to me that mcsweeney's is on blue sky and now i'm getting um nice little uh oh this one was this is pretty good clarence this posted today appropriately enough, although sorry to even bring up anything that gives people bad feelings, but Clarence Thomas offers an originalist reading of the TGI Fridays menu, and the pull quote here is the meaning here is abundantly clear, Thousand Island is not I repeat, not, offered as a salad dress

Wait, hang on. It's been brought to my attention that a wealthy Thousand Island dressing tycoon is currently cutting a novelty oversized check for me. That's one of the pull quotes from Clarence Thomas doing the originalist reading of the TGA Friday's menu. Anyway, McSweeney's, I missed you. Thank you for coming back into my arms.

I never like McSweeney's. I think the thing about McSweeney's for me was it was like one click too smart for me. I like that, though, right? Well, I think I like it more now than I used to. Like, in other words, I think I'm more comfortable watching or reading or engaging with things where I don't. It's not quite spoon-fed to me. Like, The Onion is, like, perfectly in my wheelhouse. It's like I understand the comedy. You know, it's very apparent what the comedy is. It's droll, but it's not, like, so droll. I remember, like, originally when I first saw McSweeney's. It was like Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just kind of, like, a lot of it was funny, but some of it was more just kind of, like, meditative or slightly surreal or, like, you know what I mean? So it wasn't worse. If I sit down with an issue of The Onion, I'm pretty much laughing at almost every headline because, again, that's just, like, it's uncomplicated for me the way the humor is being doled out. But then with McSweeney's, I kind of didn't get some of it.

And McSweeney's, even I know this sounds very superficial, but even the way it's presented, like it's presented with like a font and everything that almost seems more like it's more of a it's more of a take on Harper's or something like that, as opposed to kind of the more blunt, you know, straightforward approach of The Onion, which is just sort of like newspaper headlines. But I really like that. And here, I found one that seems right up your alley, Luke. And it was just from a couple of days ago. This is a McSweeney's article called Wirecutter Headlines During the Revolutionary War. You're a big wirecutter guy, I believe.

I am. I am the New York Times consumer review sort of element of the New York Times for people that don't know.

Here's the unfussy telescope we use to monitor Hessian mercenaries during the Battle of Trenton. That's pretty good. We love this wrought iron spit for cooking mutton over the heart. I won't read them all because me reading other people's jokes is not a recipe for success. Although it might be more of a recipe for success than me telling my own jokes, but I will leave it there. But yeah, check out McSweeney's. If you're like me and you kind of like fell out of that tendency, as you would say, it's there waiting for you.

yeah I've by the way I wonder too I mean this has got to be a coincidence but I've just noticed um Dave Eggers doing interviews for things I think he was just on the interview the the um no I'm sorry Wild Card which Rachel Martin hosts as part of NPR that is such a genius idea for a show and I'm such a fan of Rachel's and also like you know a friend of hers in real life but like she's so have you watched that show at all no I don't think I knew I don't know if I knew

that you and rachel were friends but um no i don't know about this but i'm a newscaster on

the bryant park project oh okay and a fellow northwesterner she grew up in idaho so we bonded

over that oh wait times and did she she's the one who had a beef with captain kirk kind of a public beef no that's andrea seabrook oh that's seabrook i'm sorry i'm getting my npr people confused sorry

about that but she so the show is called wild card and it's it's just perfectly designed for the internet age but also not in a way that feels i don't know gimmicky or something at least not to me so what it basically is is um she's got a series of cards that are you know have questions and have prompts and the person who's being interviewed gets to basically pick a card at random and then that kind of dictates where the interview is going okay but they also it's as much of a video project as it is um an audio project and they light it really well and she's in a very nice professional studio and the the guest uh is often somewhere else but they're also kind of well lit they're probably at npr west in la or something so it works really well as both television and and radio and rachel is just a masterful interviewer they very often get into it kind of intense topics and things about grief or stuff like that and she's just really good at holding space for people and and again i don't think it's meant to be manipulative but like there will be these moments where the guest is is talking about something and and it's either something that's really beautiful or something that's really heartbreaking and they'll just kind of like show that rachel is like tearing up and again not in a performative way but just in a really human way just in a kind of like she's just so emotionally available for the conversation um so it's just something that just like and then of course you'll you'll be unsurprised to hear that i watch it and i'm both impressed and i love it and i'm also like just like i'm five percent jealous i'm like this is such a good idea how did i we used to work together on the bryant park

project and now somehow you're stuck with me now i'm stuck with andrew did you see that did you see that she had amy grant on i'm going through the archive here and this wasn't too long ago this was just a month or two ago amy grant has learned not to get hung up on comparisons to her younger self there are so many like these are very clickable here.

had lena dunham on let's see what's lena dunham talking about uh on the frustration between her and adam driver on girls so i don't know how they get into that but like yeah i'm scrolling through this i want to click on all of these dave edgars was just a couple of weeks ago john cena's the

most recent yeah they're getting that's the other thing it's like what's happened with the show is that it's it's such a good idea for a show and it's so well executed by rachel and the producers that now it's becoming kind of an appointment stop for the biggest stars that are doing the rounds. I totally missed this.

God, I'm out of the loop. I'm literally signing up right now, and that's not like me. You know me. I kind of get into my little niches, and I don't get out of them. But yeah, this is incredible.

Yeah, I think, again, I'm a big fan. Speaking of, if I'm just doing recommendations, I have completed listening to the new serial season, uh the most recent one which is called the last 12 weeks and what it is i mean everybody knows serial of course it started out with the story of adnan syed and haymin lee haymin lee being a victim of murder and the question as to if her boyfriend or ex-boyfriend adnan syed had done it or not he was in jail for the crime and um you know they've gone through a whole bunch of different topics and stories and things and this latest one is almost it sort of it sort of harkens back i I guess, to the first season in that it's investigating the case of a guy who's on death row in Texas for some crimes that he claims he did not commit. And he's very close to being executed. And he's had his execution stayed a few times, but now it's down to just like some real Hail Marys for his legal team. And so the serial reporters are kind of going out with his legal team as they are trying to just like beat the bushes and find anything they can with other eyewitness testimony or people who say he couldn't have been there for this reason or whatever um you know so it's a it's just a kind of a it's a there's a of course there's a real sort of Damocles hanging over the whole thing which is they're counting down to like when this guy is going to be potentially executed so there's a lot of kind of intensity in the show but what I thought was interesting was it's different than a lot of these ones in that you can kind of tell that the reporters are a little bit suspicious of if the person like whereas the whole thing with Serial and by the way I've seen a lot of weird all these years later I've seen a lot of weird kind of quasi think pieces on like if that first season of Serial that so many people became obsessed with if the producers of Serial actually kind of sort of like were too in the bag for Adnan being innocent in a way like in other words that whole thing if it was it really I think most people got done listening to that series and felt very much like, oh, we have an innocent person who's incarcerated right now. I think that was the big takeaway. And there's a lot of, not a lot, but there's a handful of people now that are listening back to it going, well, there's a lot of kind of like, feels like the thumb being on the scale. There's a lot of stuff that wasn't included in Serial because it did not kind of help that narrative. In other words, stuff that would have made it look maybe more guilty that Adnan Syed was part of the crime. He's free right now, by the way, if I understand right.

But awaiting another trial?

trial something it's like perpetually in yeah it's perpetually like could be refiled um isn't being but might be but but like all that isn't that can i just jump in there and say i mean

that's always the risk with these things in general right because that's what makes them interesting is it has a point of view wasn't it what weren't there um similar concerns with making a murderer like the thing is like both of these things both of these as well as a lot of them Well, often the important thing is it is exposing the incompetence of the investigators, which is a very important thing to look at, whether, you know, no matter what the actual truth of the particular crime is. Like often it really does expose a very bad system, whether it's just a local system or if it's more of a macro look at our law enforcement systems. but aside from that like you always have people say yeah but you as the documentary filmmakers you wanted this story to have an arc like a narrative arc and like pushing for this and so therefore you are you have a thesis that you're sort of like trying to argue not unlike those people talking a mile a minute a minute at Dartmouth yes but I think that what people are

and you know it's like there's just no winning I guess like this but like I think I think the pushback on some of these shows which again I've consumed all of them whether it was the first season of cereal or making a murderer which was the steven avery case in wisconsin is they're presented as if they are a down the middle documentary where the producers are not thinking about the narrative or not thinking about the point of view like there are certain things that when they're presented you know that like let's just say that the um innocence the innocence project right which is an organization that that's stated goal is to try to find exculpatory information for people who are on death row and get them freed if the innocence project writes up a report about

someone you know that their whole point is trying to get the person you know who's and maybe they're not always on death row but basically the wrongly convicted person out the thing about these some of these sort of quasi documentary things is that they're presented as if the people making them do not have a point of view and are not trying to advocate and yet they of course do because we all do and to make the story better it's more interesting if you proceed from the from the perspective that this guy Stephen Avery is in jail and shouldn't be in jail and just for the record

I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just saying that's always been the problem with these things. I mean, just with even for, you know, before the before the whole, you know, boon or before podcasting even existed and certainly before true crime was kind of a genre, just like generally speaking, great documentary films, you know, whether it's the fog of war or whatever, like it always has it always has a point of view.

Yeah, it's important. It's impossible to make something and not have it have a point of view or at least reflect what you end up thinking. And that's why you as the reporters and the producers, that's why I found this kind of interesting, because I was sort of expecting it to be along the lines of like, this guy's in jail, and he probably shouldn't be. And here's all of the exculpatory evidence. And, you know, and honestly, the more they get into the crimes, they end up interviewing the guy himself. And you're just like, this guy kind of sucks. like you know it's unclear it's unclear if you know if if if he if he committed the crimes that he's um you know accused of that have him on death row but there are other crimes that he pled guilty to previous to that that are like really messed up and then like when when the reporter gets there like one hour with the guy he's kind of an asshole like he's kind of he's because the reporter wants to understand what the what the guy in prison what his explanation of the previous crimes were because those previous crimes sort of indicate a kind of a person who might be capable of the other crimes and he doesn't want to talk about them and he's one of those guys who's got like it's kind of like everyone's out to get him and he's just like well that isn't really what happened or that's not what that you know it's like instead of owning it instead of being like I pled guilty to these crimes because I made some incredibly terrible mistakes when I was 25 years old or whatever he's kind of trying to sort of dismiss them and stuff so it was a unique experience because usually you go into one of these things and again the whole idea particularly if it's created by like public radio and this is like the marshall project in combination with serial productions in the new york times so you're kind of going into it expecting it to just be this like kind of slightly left-wing do-gooder we're going to get this guy out and i give them credit for definitely presenting all of this guy's warts as well there is a podcast that that sort of

reminds me of i didn't talk about it on this show but um you know john ronson right he's i do um How would you describe it? He makes a lot of audio documentaries. He's huge on the BBC. Yeah, big on This American Life. But then became very big on This American Life. And you and I watched, do you remember, sitting in your, not Bellingham, what was it before Bellingham? Mount Baker, maybe? No, it was- Port Townsend? I think it was your Port Townsend house. Remember I spent a week with you when we launched TBTL on American Public Media, and I spent a week with you?

We took a bunch of press photos that you hated? Yeah.

Or was that a different trip? No, that was the same trip.

Although the irony is one of them did kind of birth, like, us in the boat. Yeah, that's a good one.

Yeah, no, that was a good one. Yeah, yeah. And anyway, he's done radio documentaries on the BBC for a really long time. And, oh, the reason I brought up that trip was he also was the one who reported a story. And I think he ended up writing the screenplay for that movie about the band with the lead singer who would never take off his mask.

yes and then they made that into a like a not a they made it into like a biopic or like yeah

and i watched that together and i remember thinking i really liked it yes and i it was called frank is the name of that yes i think it was based on a true story story but it was a screenplay was by him and i think it was based oh it had michael fassbender in it too that's right because you have the most handsome man in the world is buried beneath a paper mache mask the whole time i remember that stands out because it was one of those movies that i watched i was living in la at the time and i remember watching it in los angeles and kind of like with all the i think i learned about it because it was a segment that i produced and i was learning we interviewed john ronson about it and i was in love with it and then i watched it and really liked it and then it was one of those movies i watched a second time with a friend you were the friend and the whole time i'm like oh shit i talked this up way too much this is a little bit weird at times but anyway i don't know how i think i liked it though did you okay because i remember just being like uh i don't know if this is landing the way i i wanted no no i think i i might i have a positive memory of that movie so all of that is to say john ronson had a podcast that was kind of famous actually a buddy of ours i think was an executive producer on it on audible back in the day it was about the porn industry the modern porn industry i listened to that it was amazing It's called the...

butterfly effect yes exactly and then really really interesting and i remember listening to that when it was relatively new i remember kind of where i was in my life i was living in walling for it or whatever but i did not realize this there was a follow-up that came out i'm gonna say within a year or two that was a very specific story and it's called the last days of august and that name i listened to that too did you listen to it if you listen to that podcast just First of all, it's a brilliant name, but it carries so much sadness because of his reporting, which was, I think, very fair, but also kind of exposing what's going on in the modern world vis-a-vis porn. And it's a fact on certain people and what goes on in the industry or whatever, but he developed a reputation. People could trust him. People in the industry could trust him to talk about things. um and something happened where a porn actor took her own life and the story about it in the industry and to the people who followed these things was that it was because she had kind of taken a stand about not wanting to be in a in a movie or in a scene with somebody because he also had sex with men and she didn't feel safe or whatever and that was seen as a very anti kind of progressive view and she spoke out about it and then a lot of people kind of slapped back at her and said she was homophobic or whatever and then she ends up taking her own life around this time frame and so it became this narrative kind of in the industry that she was basically cyber bullied into the end of her life and john ronson gets the story and people are talking to him about it and he was almost kind of like he was the only person who could really dig into this story and as you would guess with anything like this it's so much more complicated than that like so much more complicated and you learn more about august the reason the you know the the actor's name was august and seeing you know it was i it was one of the best podcasts like one of those kind of um kind of short what would you say like a podcast that's one season that's one story you know whatever the word for that is i don't listen to a lot of those this was this lived in my head like i it was he's such a good writer he's such a good reporter the way he tells stories with kindness but also unflinchingly is amazing and uh i just really recommend it but the reason i thought of that was you sort of said that this podcast you're listening to they enter they sit down and you're expecting this guy to be sort of sympathetic but you're like oh yeah you're not great like that's how i felt immediately when you meet august's widower in this i'm like oh i don't like this guy i don't like the way he's talking i don't like the assumptions he's making and it turns out there's a reason for that he's not a super sympathetic guy but at times you know what

he is because you know what people contain multitudes and that's what you really see over and over so if you are uh interested in anything i said that one is called the last days of august and again it's several years old now i would start though if people again i don't

know why why in the world i think it's a great idea for us to be recommending other audio products for the listeners as if there's not already too much tbtl every week tumgis of tbtl but i would start with definitely the butterfly effect um and then and then do the last days of august but the other thing i would just say about it is even though the topic is uh you know adult entertainment or whatever these are not it's not a prurient no like like podcast it's not it's it's not even about that it's not it's not meant to be sort of titillating or like it's it's and again this is the sort of like the incredible ability of john ronson and the producers of these kinds of things where it's the backdrop is this kind of world of of this sort of adult material but but really what it is is a story about human beings and also about the internet and i mean particularly the butterfly effect yeah and so yeah if you're it's this is not something i mean now do you want to

listen to it in the car with your kids no but because it's going to address adult stuff clearly

but it's not like it's not some just because some people might just hear like it's about you know the porn industry and just think oh it's going to just be like a bunch of uh you know gratuitous sexual conversations it's like absolutely not what these things are they're just like really interesting um kind of studies of human behavior and human dynamics here i go once again with the

Email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. No, man, it's not from a female.

All right, emails or V-mails before we skedaddle?

Yeah, I was all proud. I caught up on our voicemail line. I think it was last week or the week before, but then I felt so good about it that I had been letting him build up again. So I got to check for newer messages. But this voice memo came in, I think, early last week from a man I like to call David from the basement.

Okay, that rings a bell.

Oh, okay, sorry. I thought maybe you were going to play the... Oh, you want the... I was laying... If anybody was wondering why I was talking weird, I just kind of assumed that we were having a brain meld there. But, of course, this is from your brother, David, who left us... Oh, there he is. Oh, he's emerging. Here he comes. Oh, look, he's been in there for a while. Oh, now he's just standing there like Gigi, staring at me.

We forgot to get him more water, too.

Oh.

That was... When's the last time we let him out for a bathroom break? Can you tell that I've got that always on my mind? It's like sometimes I'll just be doing something in another room and I'll be like, oh, wait, there's two dogs in the other room and we need to check on them and make sure they've had enough outside time.

I literally had a dream last night about Lucy pooping because we feel like she did not go to the bathroom enough yesterday. And you just get to a point where you're like, wait a second, she still hasn't gone after lunch or whatever. And you're just like, boy, how long is this going to go? And I went to bed thinking, I don't think she ever. Like the amount of time and space of my brain that is spent thinking and talking about the digestive system of my dog is incredible. I don't even know who I am anymore. Then I go to sleep and I dream about whether or not she has gone to the bathroom. And by the way, in the dream, she did go to the bathroom and it was quite a lot. Sorry, David. That's a terrible intro to this voice memo that you sent us.

Hey, Luke and Andrew. DFTB checking in here. I wanted to add to the running narrative of, like, strange coincidences on the show lately, as I'm sure a lot of listeners can relate to. I find myself needing some extra TVTL accompaniment on the weekends when I'm kind of, like, blown through all of my episodes from the week. So I find myself doing a lot of, like, time bandaging. Not sure how a lot of people go about choosing their episodes, but I like to, like, take a given year and then choose an episode that aligns with where we are in the current day. So, like, I've been listening to episodes from June of 2022, which is kind of fun. One thing that I noticed that was a bizarre coincidence that kind of stopped me in my tracks, On this Monday's episode in the current age, you guys opened the show with an SNL sketch with Will Ferrell. He's like a morning talk show host, and his teleprompter stops working. He has a total freakout. This is where that bit of audio where he talks about technical times comes from. you use that exact same intro tape on june 15th of 2022 that's four years apart

use the exact same intro tape on june 15th 2022 you know what i can um i keep a spreadsheet now so that i don't like reuse intro packages too close in proximity together and so let's see that would be called like morning show right and yes snl morning show technical times there it is june 15th 2022 i use that and then also in september of 2023 and also june 15th 2026 david you are absolutely you don't believe in a dog and you don't what was the um that was the sound

effect not dj thankfully we've calmed things down here what was the thing that happened recently This is generally a terrible setup.

Uh-oh, because now I'm blanking.

There was something that happened that we were absolutely shocked by the coincidence of. Somebody will email in and remind us. Yeah, I can't remember.

It wasn't the bingo card thing, right? The fact that we had a bingo card? No.

Oh, maybe.

I remember being like, oh, my God.

Well, the other thing, too, is I'm always shocked at how... And I don't know if this is, I can't tell if this is sort of a feature or a bug. But, like, I do think we've definitely, I've certainly slowed down on grabbing new drops. I mean, I do try to throw in new ones here and there. But, like, what I'm always surprised by is if you and I go back and needle drop a show from, like, almost like 15 years ago, it is shocking to me how many of the drops from that episode are fully in use right now. Like it's not like we have 10,000 drops that we're kind of spreading it amongst the 10,000. We've got about a hundred drops. And then of them, we've got about 40 that we're, that we've been using forever.

I'm trying to see that. Oh, I hear it. We have to go back to David's voicemail in a moment. Here are some of the most recent drops I pulled. This one I haven't even used yet. And it's actually you.

This person is just talking and talking and talking. And then you think they're done. And then they're talking and talking and talking. It makes me irrationally upset

I thought that would be a good drop To use in an intro

at some point. And then I saw you smile the other day when you heard this in a package. Let's see if I can get this going. But you've been up too lately.

I'm trying to be a better person. I still have a few evil tasks I got to do, though.

That's a big TikTok thing, right? Don't people use that?

Is that AI or something?

No, I don't. Not that I know of. I thought you recognized it. I think it's something that has been kind of floating around TikTok.

It sounds to me like one of those. Remember those weird AI babies that would be hooked up to an IV,

but they'd be singing like bless the lord of my soul they showed a video i went to you know original sound and it looked like it was a real kid saying it so um yeah anyway uh that's all i'll play of that let me go back to your brother here because i think he's got more coincidence i don't know if it's the one that you and i are trying to think of you did on june 15th of 2026

thought that was kind of crazy also another little tidbit on both episodes on this past monday's episode and back in 2022 you guys talked about steven tobloski in the first couple minutes so i found that kind of funny um anyways just a couple of little things love you guys what you do is so important ah here's a here's a little thing on monday luke you mentioned keith urban is from australia my question is he ever considered changing his name to keith outback all right uh well how's that for a power yeah maybe i should have killed that earlier that's

actually a much that's a much more interesting joke than the one that i've been making well

actually though or that i've been making right that was actually tim's joke that i saw i think that's the coincidence right actually he did get us there is that what we were blown away about that it wasn't a coincidence that this whole thing started because i didn't remember that i was quoting tim heidecker's joke about bad like purposefully bad joke about keith urban well but

but but are you saying that was he made the joke keith outback is that's new material that's new

material yeah but i'm just wondering now is that what was you asked me what like blew our minds recently about i don't know if it was no maybe it was something else i don't know maybe that

whole thing is just a big bundle of oh by the way i think i saw keith outback i saw some kind of like headline popping around that was him now i don't know if it was from a reputable source or not because it was on tiktok and it wasn't so it wasn't like the new york times or something but it was like a pull quote and it was something about like keith urban like quote like wishing nicole kidman the best or something and i was like buddy you could have had you could have had your new yacht rock album promoted on cbs sunday morning if you would have been willing to at least

say that much that right and again probably not even something that you were super thirsty to talk about but as soon as you start saying i won't talk about something it really kind of

kills the vibe and you know with all of the um with all of the attention around the journalism of cbs these days i'm glad that even on a such a kind of meaningless thing as far as a celebrity divorce goes we're still drawing the line at like you don't get to dictate to us the terms of the interview yes which is again it's like none of this is very important in the grand scheme of things but it it i was encouraged i'm encouraged by that from my bosses that they're they're holding

the line i'm trying to do something at the last minute here i was thinking about all the emails and voicemails that i have sort of seen and like mentally flagged and then i um and then i keep meaning to go back to um and one of these emails is from our friend levi who basically said i know you've been using music that is rights free at the end of the show how about i make some for you And I keep on meaning to go and listen to these things before playing them on the show. But I guess when I let something linger for that long, I end up just playing it on the show without testing it first. So how about we go...

That's a pretty good system. Yeah.

Levi says, let's see, I think he makes this music...

This is our friend Levi with Ball of Wax, right? And Jack Straw Studios and all that. Yeah, exactly. That's a good character reference. Levi's a musician, an audio engineer, a producer. I have high hopes for this.

Let's see. He's sending three songs. I'll just choose one here. And I guess he makes this music under the Nom de Plume Passenger Pigeon. It says, I make up music with my baritone guitar and looping machine. He says looper, but I said looping machine because I'm calling everything machines these days, apparently. So let's go out with this track of Levi's.

All right. That's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening. We're going to be right back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. So come on by for that. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Power out.