Muse

You are a precious beast, going about the work that you have, chomping on little bugs in the grass. Look at you go, just one after the other, chomping, chomping, chomping. You are a happy little guy, and it makes me happy. And I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad I'm here. What a gift it is to be alive. If you weren't scared of me, I'd try to be your friend. But you probably are. But you go.

TBTL!

Excuse me, who even are you?

Type A, I'm not. Comfortable, caring, and serious about our relationship, I am.

We do not know each other. This is all happening so fast. Can I get pregnant from this? The backstory for that one I thought was like, you crazy frat brother.

I keep hearing you say when you do the snort laugh that you gotta stop doing the snort laugh and I don't want you to stop doing the snort laugh. I love the snort laugh. It's a laugh. I love all the laughs.

Mom, it's not real. It's a jib jab.

Let the filibustering begin.

well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a tuesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live you've been living in the monkey house my name is luke burbank i am your host please clap comedy from the madrona hill studio perched high above the

mighty columbia where we have another gorgeous gorgeous day oh ma pa it's just beautiful it's

It's going to be a perfect day for me to get out and wail away on the lawn again. I have a delivery coming tomorrow, and I have to have everything just so, just right, which we may get into a more involved explanation of here on episode 4765 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. We talked yesterday about the impending U.S. Men's National Team World Cup game and the fact that the President of the United States appeared to force FIFA to put one of our players back on the squad and that did happen and they did play Belgium. It was literally a major disaster. We'll unpack that a little bit. Also, I have recently come into some information involving a long-running TVTL audio drop and what the actual kind of context or meaning is. So explain that. So we will unpack that as well. And we will say hello to this young man. He has no explaining to do, okay?

I bought a balloon, and it doesn't mean I think I'm better than everybody else.

He's the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. We did it, man. We cracked the code. We learned how to bring in new listeners to TBTL. And that is one Facebook post at a time on the Valley City Community Center Facebook page, apparently.

Are there indications that our recent star turn on the Valley City Community Group's Facebook page has actually delivered us some new listeners? Absolutely.

Shout out to new listener Sandra Capretta, who heard about us on Facebook. Sandy K. Left us a C, I believe. Sandy C. Left us a nice message on our blog. I don't know if you know this, but TBTL, I mean, is it a blog? Do we have a blog? We have a website, and you can leave comments. We have a web blog. It's like an online diary, sort of, and we kind of update it every day with a new show. And you can leave comments underneath the shows that we post on our website. And got a very nice note from another fellow Buckeye graduate who also put her kids through the Buckeye Elementary School system. Excited to hear that TBTL is coming home to Valley City, Ohio, and it really warmed the cockles today.

I am so glad that I didn't see that before the show because I would have been nervous. Anytime we, I'm mostly joking, but kind of not. I think you and I both have the same sort of thought on this, Andrew, which is occasionally when TBTL gets mentioned somewhere, particularly if it's like in an online space where we think, ooh, that might send some people our way. Maybe a John Hodgman or somebody like that who's kind of in our world, but also more famous than us. A Sandra Capreda. Like a Sandy C. Then we kind of like the next day, we're like, we might have new listeners today so let's not play let's not play intro tape that's offensive

let's not our usual offensive intro tape that's why i went with the gentlest tape of a guy talking to an opossum today yeah like whenever we think even if it's 20 new people

probably when like when it was agreed that the parkside little league was going to allow us to

sponsor a team, later known as the TBTL Junior Sluggers, whatever the day was that it seemed there might be a chance that their parents would be listening. I'm a little, I'm just kind of minding my P's and Q's. I'm thinking about this from the perspective of, oh, wow, we have new listeners. We better actually really turn in a good show. And that almost always involves us turning in an even worse than normal show.

So now I regret bringing, so you didn't see the text message that John Sklaroff, business boy number one, sent us. It was a screen cap of this comment that our new listener left us on the web page. So you didn't see that. Now I worry that I've gotten into your head. I had another thing I could talk about with you.

No, it's actually fine because I didn't see that. I was doing the little treadmill thing and then running around getting some stuff done. So I hadn't checked in on my text.

No, that's fine. That's fine.

But now I'm past it. The hard part for me is opening the show and the initial conversation if I'm laboring under the weight of expectations from, like, the Sandy Seas of the world. Sure, yeah. But I didn't know about Sandy Sea when I started talking to you, and so now I'm fine with it. Now you're in the pool. You're in the water. I'm in the flow state.

Yeah, exactly. It's like getting in—I don't know if you're like me. I don't like cold water at all. Let me put it this way. I have a pretty low tolerance for chilly water. And so even on vacation or something, if you're getting in a pool and the pool is cold, or the ocean especially, it takes me a long time to acclimate. I just walk. It's like, okay, the water is just covering the bottom of my feet. Okay, now my lower ankle. I just inch my way into the water. And then once I'm out there, I'm like, what was so hard about this? I'm completely acclimated, but it takes me a long time. You remind me of a guy who would just jump right in, though.

Only because I want to try to get to that, oh, this is fine part as quickly as possible. But I don't like it I will say this I'm better going into the ocean when it's cold Than going into a lake when it's cold If I'm jumping off of a dock Because I know this is totally counterintuitive And Sandy C, I'm sorry if we're losing you here I'm sorry if we're sliding back into Some extremely boring esoteric territory But if I'm standing on a dock And the plan is to jump off of the dock Into the lake water And I know the lake is going to be pretty cold That's really hard for me Because I'm fine right now and i know it's going to be really bracing when i jump in and that moment of of change from i'm fine now to oh this is going to be cold is i don't want to do it i can walk into the ocean and first it's just my feet oh that's a little brisk but all right and then i walk a little further there's something about the slow integration that is a little less traumatic to me and then i get to a point where it's maybe at my knees or something let's be honest andrew when it gets to let's just call it your midpoint sure as a feller sure i'm just like okay well now i gotta just do this so Oh, I do just dive in.

Let's not prolong this, yeah.

But I'm less, I guess what I mean is I'm less intimidated by walking into the ocean if it's a little bit on the cold side than I am about jumping off the end of a dock into a lake.

Yeah, it's all like that for me. I mean, what helps is if it's obviously scorching outside and then there's like you need that water pretty badly. But I'm thinking about me walking. I am so glad I've never seen footage of me walking into the ocean because, first of all, there's another factor, which is my glasses are off. Now, my glasses are never off. The only time my glasses are off are when I'm sleeping or when I'm like trying to read the back of a jar these days and I just have to hold the jar up to my face and take off my progressive lenses for some reason. But so I'm at the beach. I'm in I'm I'm dressed less than I am at almost any other stage of my life by just wearing a pair of, you know, trunks. So I'm not feeling super secure there. I can't see anything. I see I see blobs. I see blurs. It kind of helps. I've told you this before because I am maybe a little bit insecure in a beach swimwear situation. It's good that I can't see anybody or anything because then it sort of feels like nobody can see me. But then I slowly, just slowly, as slow as you could possibly imagine, just inch my way into the water, probably like a zombie. I'm trying to think what I probably look like because my arms are out a little bit.

A time-lapse video of this where we watch the sun rise, move into the apotheosis, and then set, and you're about waist deep.

I'm just getting comfortable by the time the sun is setting. That's exactly right.

Did I use apotheosis right there? I just meant the high point. Apotheosis means the elevation of a person, principle, or thing to divine status. Apotheosis. So that's not how I meant apotheosis.

It is about rising, but you meant the pinnacle.

But it sounded vaguely astronomical to me. It sounded like an astronomy term. Because it sounds like Greek and like something that would have to do with the planets. But that's not what that means. It just means it's the high point of something. Or not the high point. It means it's kind of the most of something. I guess you could maybe try to make the argument that that sort of works. But it really didn't. Can I tell you something?

about no don't just take your time slow it down can I tell you something about I just learned this yesterday why pirates at least the theory as to why pirates this is not a joke or even a dad joke why pirates would wear patches over their eye would wear a patch over their eye it wasn't about a missing eyeball or occasionally it was but it was not always about a missing eyeball because it's like think about it did every pirate have a missing eyeball wait a second I have a can I guess

the theory or am i stealing it because i don't know i don't want to steal your thunder here no no is it because you know i had to wear an eye patch as a very little kid before i started wearing glasses and it was because yes it's so they'll be bullied in grade school that's why

they wore them it was so eventually so someday they would return to valley city ohio marty domico would trap me in the back of a yellow bus on the way back from a field trip i hope not i'm scared oh my god what if marty he's just putting one fist into his palm i've been i've been waiting

to re-establish my masculinity and this might be the perfect week for it um okay so i did have for a patch and it's because i have literally a lazy eye like a weak eye right and i wore the patch over the strong eye to make my weaker eye work harder and actually strengthen itself and so i'm wondering pirates had to look through those telescope thingies a lot were they training one of

their eyes to be stronger you're in the neighborhood the theory goes that um sometimes they would have to run down below decks like say there was a you know some kind of skirmish going on or what have you they had to go down below decks to get maybe the rifles or the something or other the weapons and below deck on these ships was pretty pretty dark it was pretty pitch black and so and they'd been above deck where maybe it was bright daylight and so the patch would be would be tricking one of their eyes into thinking it was dark so that when they went below deck that eye did not need to adjust to the light level of below deck it could just be ready to go so you flip it open you flip the patch up or you move the patch over to the other eye and the eye that has been hell yeah incubating in darkness is ready to go it's like yeah this is normal this is what we're used

to Genevieve was talking about the masthead of the Washington Post have they just changed it to democracy dies yet this is a conversation that we were having yesterday it's a hard turn genevieve was um sorry i was thinking about the darkness and that got me oh i was thinking about mastheads that's probably also a sailing term isn't it maybe no you're right i'm sorry that does seem like a very hard turn in the conversation but i was thinking about how things can die in darkness if you don't have a patch over your eye it also the reason that conversation started by the way was because genevieve is now i guess working somewhat with the team that this is i hope i'm okay to say this it's a little bit of inside baseball genevieve is working with a team on campus that releases a daily news publication it's just like an internal comms thing you know it's for all oh it's internal to the youtube it's not it's not external yes internal and it's like a news they call it a newsletter or something like that i think but i believe it's just called you dub today or something like that and i immediately was like can we work on this title like is it too early for you to come in and start like making changes like let's let's punch this up a little bit i just sort of feel like and again all respect to whoever came up with this especially if it's somebody who's genevieve's boss but you dub today just it just lays there it just it's like you just didn't and i'm gonna say it it's like you just didn't care you just didn't care can we give it a slightly zingier name now genevieve said do you have any suggestions and i um you dub tomorrow i said yes no then i was coming up with like all the double news you can double use or something like that to try to work a w university of washington in there and then that's where we came up the news adversity of washington the news adversity of washington that's better but the double news double use thing genevieve thought was maybe more of a or i thought was more of a masthead than an actual name of the of the newspaper but they're still going with democracy dies in darkness that is still up there but it's sarcastic now though

right it's winking well can i i'm actually going to get semi-serious on this for one moment and we're going to take it to the unfun place and say well first i'm going to say with uw news today here's what i think about about clever or interesting or groundbreaking names in the and this isn't even the bummer part i'm not i'm gonna get to the bummer part in a minute as far as trying to name things like that you know you and i have both worked on a couple of different projects that were like you know didn't have a name when we started them like you know that show that i did in new york did not have a name it ended up being the bryant park project tbtl didn't have a name before we started doing it and for my early you know for my first 20 years of doing this kind of stuff.

i would be so obsessed with and i was like i really wanted the name of whatever the thing was to just be punchy and cool and like really tell people this is a cool thing and i think i've actually come around to like what's really going to matter is the actual quality of the thing uh that is being made which doesn't mean like i guess i'm more afraid now of giving something a cool name that doesn't hold up also this is not something that i think you or I ever need to worry about because I think we're done founding anything ever going forward. I think this is the last startup that I'm doing. Maybe you're planning on more in the future. I saw you nodding or bobbing your head. I just think if I'm in a room and we're trying to name something and I'm 50 years old, I actually think I would be more inclined right now to go with something that's the equivalent of like a black t-shirt and jeans than, you know, Jenko jeans and a, you know, like a, what, some kind of a T-shirt that has a fire on it that is like, was in style in 1987, is now very back in style for my daughter's generation, but then will go out of style. I think I'm kind of coming back to the middle on this stuff.

But I would, but I mean, again, now I'm sorry that I'm really hyper-targeting this particular publication, which is unfair and also potentially dangerous for Genevieve's career opportunities, But, like, I don't think that U-Dub Today is a black T-shirt and jeans. I don't know exactly what it is. But I would say, like, because a black T-shirt and jeans has a timeless quality to it. Maybe the U-Dub Gazette would be that. Oh, I see. There's just something about today that just seems so – it just doesn't even sound like a name to me. It sounds like a non-entity. You know what I mean? I think that is a little bit of an insult to black T-shirts.

Gazette is a more interesting word that kind of means not the exact same thing, but that you're doing the same thing. You're being very, you know, you're being traditional. You're being relatively down the middle, but you're using a more interesting word to do it with Gazette. I totally agree with you on that.

Yeah, or even if it was. Wait, has anybody taken the name The Washington Post?

Well, that brings me to my more unfun point. more as a person as a person who works for CBS television and every time I have a piece that goes up or like I reposted something or whatever they shared something with me on my Instagram and and I I shared it on mine was this little silly commentary I did this week about how I'm bad at barbecuing there are always people in the comments of my little silly like post that says I'm bad at barbecuing and it's embarrassing for me when people are standing around watching me barbecue people go into my comment section and say CBS is MAGA now I would never watch this and obviously that's sort of personally a little bit of a bummer for me because i'm not maga and because nothing about my silly barbecue commentary is maga or was vetted by maga people and what i know about the show that i work on cbs sunday morning is i work with all the same people i worked with two years ago and everyone is busting their butts and doing the best stories that they can do and the idea that people dismiss all of the work of everyone on the network because Larry Ellison's kid got a bunch of money for being an Epo baby and bought the thing like there are so many people at the Washington Post who are working so hard and doing their very best journalism and it really sucks for them that Jeff Bezos bought the paper and fired their friends but the idea of like roasting the entire paper and everyone who works there because uh there was a hostile takeover the top I as a person who's experiencing that in my own way in my little job place it kind of sucks man i'm sure it does yeah i don't like that doesn't change how i feel about

you're allowed to feel however i feel and i i would take issue with the fact that like me making a joke about the masthead is attacking everybody who works at the washington post

because that's not what the washington post well i mean did you guys well listen i i'm not telling you how to feel about or how to live your life but for instance everyone dropping their subscription to the washington post was i totally understand that people don't want to support jeff bezos but again i and i think you actually brought this up and you were right about this the real move is to drop amazon which you've also done that's the harder move than dropping the washington post i guess i've just been walking around with this feeling for a while of like people going like just lumping in every single thing that happens at cbs um and i am such a to say that i am a small small part of that place would be that would be not even describing it accurately i am so microscopically small at that place and yet and i also don't identify my person my identity of myself is not like cbs guy and yet when i hear people go oh it's just a bunch of maga bullshit now i'm just like oh man it's really not it's really like in fact it's a bunch of us that are just trying to put out good stories and people have said it And again, you can hear, Andrew, that this is completely coming from a personal place for me. But like people will be like, why haven't you quit? And I'm like, well, I don't know, because I feel like is it is it a worse outcome if I quit or a better outcome? And I genuinely don't know the answer to that. I guess if I felt like it was so inappropriate what's happened, that me being a part of it was sort of endorsing it. Maybe that is an argument for quitting. I kind of think of it as like if I can get a good story on there or kind of a mildly entertaining piece or whatever onto the network then that's kind of a W I really don't actually know what the right exactly right response is but it's just I've never been part I've never been a very small flea on a larger animal that is so derided now by the people that I generally kind of like you know I'm trying to impress yeah I mean

I understand that it would be a very personal thing for you and I think we all have to make decisions about what we associate with and what we don't associate with and maybe maybe something would happen at the network that you would say okay this is a line too far I don't want my name associated with that I know that there that would be the case for me at various lines as well but everybody's going to find it but I also just think that like but nobody and I know you're I don't think you're saying this although you're sort of implying this based on the fact that this conversation came up with just a tiny little snarky joke that I repeated that I made in the car with Genevieve about a masthead that does seem ironic now is that it is just and you know this I mean you know more about this than I do but like for those of us who don't have any like particular interest or you know like involvement with these organizations what we see is an incredibly unbearably scary time for democracy and what is happening to journalism underneath this administration and how it all plays together and and you know that i'm not trying to preach to you again you can say this both more knowledgeably and articulately and so therefore to be like oh nobody should i don't know if you're saying nobody should do that or you're just saying it hurts your feelings when people do but if the thing is nobody should do that i would disagree i think we're allowed to kind of say you know make jokes about the fact that like this is a bad situation that

goes beyond just a new ownership group oh yeah everyone's allowed to say whatever they want i'm not telling anyone what they can say i guess what i'm i guess what i'm kind of wondering about is like is the what are we rooting for here at this point like where we're at now and i agree with everything you said like it's an extremely upsetting and chilling moment in this country where it does feel like major media organizations are bending the knee or are being just absorbed by people who are in league with uh you know the president and other uh you know bad actors i agree with all of that stuff i guess my question is what are we now hoping happens to the washington post or cbs new ownership new ownership i mean that would yeah i i mean i and the cleveland

browns i'll throw them in there too i don't know if you consider them a journalistic and by the

way i've said some pretty harsh things about the cleveland browns so i need to be i need to be

accountable for that i mean i said that well obviously sort of jokingly to make you laugh but also is there not a comparison there like aren't you a little bit clenched because you're a big Seahawks fan and you're like well who who who's going to come in and buy this is it going to make it harder to root for this thing you know now obviously sports is not important and I and I feel very strongly about obviously the importance of the of the fourth estate or whatever you want to call it but like there is an analogy there there really is no you're absolutely right but

and I but I guess I would continue the analogy to be you're Miles Garrett and Miles Garrett I mean I know he's not a Cleveland Brown anymore but all accounts are that Miles Garrett is not only one of the most talented physical athletes uh in you know a long long time but is also a very interesting person off the field and is really you know lives a life of the inquiry of the mind i just saw he was at some like he attended some workshop about how to do some kind of a thing and this wasn't like a this wasn't like a charity organization this was like he wanted to learn about some i don't know pretty obscure topic and he was just miles garrett was just there at this weekend thing learning about it so you're miles garrett and you are a cleveland brown and you're busting your butt every day and you have shit ownership and they give deshaun watson too much money and then everyone's like the browns are trash and i guess i would say maybe and i and i should have done this too maybe we separate out separate out the haslam's the deshauns and the miles garrett's and in this analogy andrew i'm the miles garrett of cbs i see what i'm going okay i'm a generational talent at CBS Sunday morning no but what I mean is when I when when we when we kind of say oh it sucks what's happening or even or we or we are like saying this thing sucks now and I'll just I'll just confine it to CBS because that's the thing that I have I guess the most experience with when people are like yeah CBS just totally sucks now and it's just like a MAGA thing I I always wish people would say like the ownership of CBS sucks and they're just like a MAGA people not because i'm not that and i work there and you know again people can say whatever they want but but my experience of it and you can tell that I'm fully shadow boxing with some of the comments that were in my Instagram page this weekend where people are just so like, I would never watch it again. It's just a bunch of trash. And I'm like, Oh, I'm kind of over there on the trash heap, moving stuff around, trying to, trying to organize my, my part of the trash heap into something that's maybe a little less trashy. So I guess what I would say,

I mean, from a, I mean, this shifts the conversation, but just out of curiosity is are people, people aren't writing this on your personal page when you're reposting these, These are just like on some sort of platform, like on Instagram or social media or something. CBS official account is posting.

No, it's on my Instagram feed.

Really, your personal Instagram feed. People are coming in there and on your personal Instagram feed and saying these nasty things. That does surprise me.

Not nasty things. Just kind of like.

I would say unnecessary. Like I wouldn't I wouldn't personally do that.

Like that. So. So when I let me see, I'm trying to find this. So, you know what? Maybe this is maybe this is the CBS. You're right.

So I'm a little... That would be pretty surprising, because that would be like people that you know or listeners of this show coming in and being like, this is trash.

It has happened from people that I know. So what happens is CBS Sunday Morning puts out something, their official, I guess, Instagram, and then they're asking me to collaborate, right? So then I hit some button and it publishes it on my page. And so then the comments under my... Let me just see if I can find this. So then there will be comments under my sort of repost of it or whatever, and they will be people that I recognize, people that are in my, let me see, I'll find one, let's see, and it's a bunch of people that I know and they're being like, oh, this was fun or whatever, and then there'll just always be some, and it's so minor, some little turd in the punch bowl that's just kind of like, I can't watch this anymore, or this is too, you know, whatever. it's no one's being like over the top they're just expressing their opinion but you know me i'm such a sensitive little baby and also it's just i guess it's also whenever i'm not whenever oftentimes when i'm talking to people who are following this story that is the story of like the takeover of cbs and the kind of trumpification of things and barry weiss and all that stuff it's just like it's it's it's odd to me how how um how strongly uh people feel about this and also kind of how much they assume one thing about what what it feels like to be over there working versus kind of most of my experience with it which is I'm still doing my meaningless commentaries and little tv stories about this and that so um anyway all that is to say uh they're still going

with Democracy Dies in Darkness for now and they're still going with UW today which by the way is a great publication I don't even know if it's something today University of Washington today It's a great publication. I don't know if it's public-facing. I know it's an internal.

But I can't get my hands on it?

I don't know. Try Googling it. Maybe I'll end up bringing more Caprettas to that. More Capretta eyes to that as well. Is it called UW News?

No.

No. You know, there are two different ones. There's one that's daily and there's one that's weekly. The UW News one might be weekly. I'm not exactly sure. Okay.

So they still have the daily UW, which is the daily. That's the student. That's the student newspaper. That would make sense.

So they've got the daily. Okay. That makes sense. And, you know, that might be the daily, I feel like, is your black jeans or your black T-shirt and jeans. Don't you think that the daily is student newspaper, daily? Sure. Absolutely.

Yes. And I've got a soft spot for that, of course, because I did work there when I was a student. I worked there with our buddy Danny O'Neill. It was all MAGA shit then. It was. Lyndon LaRouche had done it. Had taken it over. I think the Lyndon LaRouche people were the craziest, like, on campus. They were on campus, yes. Did you have those at Kent State?

Yes, we did. Have they fallen off? I haven't heard that name in so long. They might have just fallen. I would guess. I mean, that's getting pretty long in the tooth, but that's right. What was, I mean, not to bite anybody's rhyme, but what was the deal?

It was about, like, China. I think a big thing was, like, I feel like the pamphlets had a lot to do with, like, the great Chinese takeover or something. Was a big thing of Lyndon LaRouche To our Five to eight younger listeners Who don't know, Lyndon LaRouche was this Some guy who had A bunch of theories about I don't know, global economics And sort of politics And had created this whole worldview That I don't know how he'd gotten A certain number of people to stand on college campuses With like a table, like a card table And a bunch of Lyndon LaRouche Paperwork, but they were really It was a big thing in the 80s and 90s

if I remember well I'll give you a Wikipedia gets right to it nice and early I really appreciate you know how sometimes Wikipedia it's like it's such a long article that you're just like where's the where's the nut of this well I feel like they do a good job of um leading with this correctly he was and he has passed away now he was an American political activist who founded the LaRouche movement and its main organization the National Caucus of Labor Committees okay sounds Sounds good.

He was a prominent conspiracy theorist and perennial presidential candidate. He began in the far left of politics in the 1940s and later supported the civil rights movement. However, this is a big however, in the 1970s, he moved to the far right. His movement is sometimes described as or likened to a cult convicted of fraud. He served five years in prison from 1989 to 1994.

What is with that? We're not going to have the answer here. But what is with that drift that I feel like happens a lot, which is somebody starts out in the far left and then they get to the far right? Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's just a strange progression.

I know. I have visions of one of my first boss in the newsroom, Vince Duffy, explaining to me kind of the we think of the political spectrum as a line. But he was showing me how it's more of a circle or whatever and how that can happen. And I was trying to evoke that the other day, possibly while high, while trying to explain to Genevieve what happened to John Maus. And maybe you can explain this.

Oh, yeah, your football song guy.

The weird musician who I – and you said that when I – so I got obsessed with this one song called – it might just be called Football. I don't even know how to describe John Maus' music. It's like electronic kind of outsider-y kind of sound. and I remember what five or more years ago I heard one song about him I was like oh this is weird and I really like it I was playing it a lot I played it for you on tbtl I believe you said Adelaide was familiar with John Mouse it was potentially into it so it seemed like sort of trendy hipster stuff but then after the January 5th stuff there was this I'm talking about something else yeah

you're talking about when they when they pulled down the Lyndon LaRouche table I'm so glad you

interrupted me because i was not going to be coherent for the next like several sentences i was like that's not right what i just said is not right do i go back anyway yeah after that like apparently him and some other musicians and cohorts like three people were like ariel pink yes right and they were and they were in like they rented a hotel room in dc and were somehow it was assumed connected to the january 6th protest or at least were super curious about it but it's like you don't think of them as maga people so i started saying well is it one of those things where they're so far left that they went far right, and then I think Genevieve just

changed the subject. Well, here you go. In 2017, Mauss placed himself left of left of left of left on a political spectrum. He stated that it comes down to, if you don't have a sort of indignation when you see atrocities committed, you're not communing with the same humanity that I am. In January 2021, Mauss, along with Ariel Pink, attended the pro-Donald Trump protest that led the storming of the U.S. Capitol. By the way, you might have been, were they doing some stuff on January 5th? I'm not even being sarcastic. Maybe that was the buildup, I don't know. Responding to controversy regarding his presence at the event, Mauss tweeted a quote from Mit Brenender Sorg. I don't know what that is, but I can't, oh that's an encyclical from Pope Pius XI, distributed privately among clergy that condemned aspects of Nazism. Does not mention National Socialism, Hitler or Nazi party itself, but obliquely references them. On December, Pink later appeared, that's Ariel Pink, on an alt-right podcast, Wrong Opinion, discussing with host Josh so-and-so that he was working closely with Miles on music and merchandise, saying John is 1,001% on Team Trump.

Oh, geez. Well, there you go. Well, then that doesn't, yeah. See, I don't understand what any of that means.

But it is, I think you're right that, like, there is for some people, yeah, more of a circle like you're it would seem to me like one is the furthest that can be from the other but maybe if you're i don't know if you're crazy if if you're crazy or if you're inclined i was gonna say inclined towards very extreme opinions you can trade out one very extreme opinion for another more easily than you know it would feel like such a crazy thing for for you or i to go from kind of where we're at to like hard hard alt-right that would just that would feel so far from you maybe if you're just used to being out there on you know outside of way outside of the norm anyway that it's just kind of like trade one for the other i don't know you're just fighting

all the time you know going back to the internet comments that you're talking about which by the way to go back to that for a second too is i see those kind of people who are just leaving what did you say your commentary was on it was on something innocuous it was on i'm a bad at barbecuing okay yeah so here's the thing about barbecuing and people are like oh it's just you You know, I mean, some of those people might not be people. Some of those people might be bots. I'm not exactly sure how Instagram is with that stuff these days. But I just see that stuff all the time. And it's like, to a certain degree, I do understand that people are panicking. You know, some people are just absolutely panicking and they don't know what to do with their emotions. And so they feel like they need to post somewhere. Obviously, it seems absolutely ludicrous to me to post that under a specific story.

about barbecue that doesn't have anything to do with that stuff that's i but i see that behavior all the time on blue sky and stuff and in fact what will happen is we're just kind of talking about this yesterday you get a new follower uh fall january 5th you get a new follower on blue sky and you're like oh who is this what is their thing all about and half the time now i can't tell if it's just somebody who is like really worked up and you know basically agrees with my worldview on things but like their whole timeline is just like post after post after post of just like you know anger and you know retweeting this article and the anger there and I'm not saying that we don't need to have conversations about these things but at a certain point like what are you achieving by doing that other than I feel like potentially working yourself up more and more and again I am not advocating here for sticking your head in the sand or not engaging in conversation about these things but i also just am kind of like but what but what life is that for it for it all to be like kind of exposed right there online maybe is part of the is part of the thing it's kind of like maybe i'm not seeing the rest of these folks deeper lives and they just get online every now and then on their phone and they spout something off and then they continue you know watching their kids baseball game or whatever and it's not big of a deal but all we see is like somebody whose entire presence to us is nothing but futile anger and freak outedness online and you're just like wow there's got to be there's got to be something more even if not productive

less unproductive to yourself i do think you're right though that it's coming from a place generally speaking of of fear for the world and for america and so i have to that's a good thing for me to remember if somebody posts something that seems a little harsh it's like they're saying i don't want to watch c i don't watch cbs anymore because not because they dislike me but because they're they just feel like that's all they can do to try to push back on this thing that feels kind of terrifying which is the end of like a you know a sort of um non-government controlled media that's really what they're trying to do and say they're they're not trying to say they don't like me or they think that i'm you know bad for working for cbs i think what they're trying to say is like this really freaks me out and i don't really know what to do other than to say i'm not going to

participate in it or something so well speaking of populism which is sort of dancing around some of the things we're talking about here tell me about the soccer match yesterday and your feelings today because i i was not following the soccer match i did log on a few times while i was doing yard work just to see what the score was because i know that there was like a lot of excitement a lot of intrigue a lot of drama about last night's you know u.s uh was it belgium belgium it was belgium okay game and of course you were setting it up yesterday about your own conflicted emotions

about him well yeah because you know obviously um uh the the big story kind of going into the match yesterday was that donald trump had gotten the head of fifa to let this guy baligan this american player who's i forgot to mention this to you yesterday you probably heard this in the discourse do you know that this guy baligan would not be able to play for the u.s if not for birth right citizenship i had heard that i heard that since our conversation yesterday it's just the the funniest the funniest little ironic twist is that his parents his mother was pregnant with him and they were getting on an airplane to leave the u.s to go to another country i don't know which one exactly and the somebody at the airline was concerned that his mother was too pregnant to fly safely and so said we're going to have you stay here on u.s soil for now and she has the baby on u.s soil which therefore qualifies him as to be he is a american american citizen this of course the thing trump was trying to undo at the supreme court level recently but um so he had been um you know banned from the game uh because of a previous foul that he had committed which didn't seem actually to be worth him being uh kicked out of the next game but anyway trump calls fifa turns the screws on them and then they let him back into the match which pretty much ruined everything around the narrative of the World Cup in the United States. The narrative previously had been towns like Lawrence, Kansas are embracing the team from Algeria that's practicing there. Tourists are coming from other parts of the world and having a great time in America. It's like this soft diplomacy that's really good for us. It was like a great story. And then it switched right around to 800-pound gorilla United States uses its might to cheat at soccer that became the story all of a sudden it just was such a bummer because it was like even if we won the game or the match it was going to be tainted now even if we managed to get to the finals it was going to be tainted it was just like it just it just sucked and i said yesterday andrew that i hope the score would be five to nothing and baligan would be a non-factor and i was almost exactly right except i had the teams mixed up it was four to one and baligan was a a non-factor.

So I guess I was, I'm going to give myself a half right on that. I didn't even know it got up to four to one. I thought it was three to one. Oh no, it was, I think there was a, I think there was a late, was there a late goal scored? Let me see if I can find, yeah, it was four to one because they scored like in garbage time, basically when we had almost pulled our keeper and we're just like a minute or two left of stoppage time at the end of the game. They just scored another goal that was sort of meaningless, but it was just another, it was just another cherry of humiliation uh placed atop the cake of embarrassment that was uh last night and i i mean every everything on the internet what i what i was looking at afterwards was this is of course what happens when donald trump weighs in when he went to the knicks the third game for the knicks in new york city that was the only game they lost against san antonio and that again i don't really believe in magic or uh you know stuff like this or even really karma but i i had a feeling yesterday all day long i was like i don't think the us is going to win this i didn't have a strong enough feeling that i was going to bet on belgium because i don't know i guess that felt like a our friend john goodwin did do that and i did call him a benedict arnold in the texts uh between him and i mostly because i was jealous but like the smart money would have been on belgium yesterday because there's just something karmically so screwed up about the president of a country intervening to bend the rules to get their their player put back on the squad and you just know if there's even a even the tiniest bit of justice in this universe you knew the u.s was going to lose and boy did they and they looked so bad doing it like and they

were favored to a degree that you mentioned even if they had sat this guy who was red carded whose name i've already forgot um alligan alligan but you had said yesterday that you would have even been comfortable playing the team without him against Belgium I think listen I'm I'm not a big

soccer knower but what I was seeing other people saying online was the U.S. had a decent chance of beating Belgium even without this guy Baligan not that they were going to be heavy favorites I think the thought was the U.S. and Belgium were kind of Belgium used to be a really good team but they're kind of aging a bit and that because it was going to be played in Seattle so the U.S. was going to have this massive home field advantage just with the crowd you take a younger more kind of up-and-coming u.s team with a huge crowd behind it and you put them up against a belgium team that's a little bit older it's a slight advantage to the u.s i think that was kind of the theory um and that even minus balligan he might be if you were coin tossing you were going 55 for the u.s 45 for belgium it looked like a junior varsity team playing against a college team or something like a like or a professional team uh out there the u.s they couldn't they they could never like every time they would pass to a guy it would be like they would pass behind the guy or in front of him we lost almost every dribble ever so that's also a term in soccer you've got the ball you're bringing it up the field the guy on defense approaches you christian pulisic our star player just looked like absolute absolute dog s out there i mean he got hurt eventually but before he was hurt he just looked scared he lost almost every dribble that he had so every time he had the ball somebody from belgium just came and took it away from him it was he everybody just looked pathetic out there and it was like it was by far and away the worst match that we played the entire tournament and it just it felt like some kind yeah it felt it felt um magical in a way in the worst kind of way it felt like something in a movie where there is a curse that is put on your team and i think that curse was called donald trump you know i i was watching the score and

i'm not trying to be a hater here because i again haven't been following this as a sport at all and i have like not aggressively no opinions just passively no no real opinions about this i don't have a really a rooting interest after the news of trump getting involved i i i don't i still i I still don't even know that I had much of an opinion about it other than, like, the intrigue around it when we were talking about it yesterday. But I will say, and I apologize if this hurts any feelings, because I know a lot of people are real fans. Like, I'm seeing, by the way, speaking of, like, social media, I'm seeing all kinds of people, including yourself, not on social media, but knowing your feelings about this. But I'm seeing all kinds of people that I either know and or respect greatly who are, like, really into the fate of the U.S. men's soccer team, right? Like who are big fans and didn't want the Trump thing to kind of get in the way of that. And I completely understand that. And as a sports fan, I understand that as well. As a non-soccer fan with absolutely no Doug on this flight whatsoever, when I was out there raking leaves and I opened up my phone and I saw that they were losing it. I think the first I saw was three to one or something like that. I was like, I think I was kind of happy. I think I was kind of – I definitely – I'm unsure.

yeah because i was like you know what this means is that like we don't get trump to go out there tomorrow claiming this victory you know like just being like yeah what a messed up world that we

live in where that's i understand that logic it's just like man it's so but you know he would have

he would have been all over you know any any microphone he could have gotten or like whatever but i mean unfortunately we also i live in this bubble where people will like also post the angry making things both of import and non-import I would say uh you know so that I can just get angry at things that should be on truth social but are also being shared you know in my little bubble it's like if it's a bubble can we just keep it out like let's enjoy the bubbleness of our bubbles everybody but anyway point is like I just didn't need to see the gloating of this just you know evil oafish man and and that's kind of why I kind of transitioned into this by talking about populism too because i'm kind of curious again of all of the things that have been going on in the world since his second term started i would say getting involved in the world cup falls very near the bottom of important things but when you do think about just the the voting public and in and the people that we share a country with who put him in office twice i do start to wonder does like does this meaningless stank actually end up having some sort of meaning when i was on kow a while back usually when i'm on like a round table on the radio side of things over there it's usually people who vary in opinion just a little bit or we're all like generally reasonable people but one time i was on with two other guests and one of the guests is the only time i've ever been on where she the other guests i don't i'm not trying to be coy i literally don't remember her name but she was like she was kind of maga-y she ran for state house somewhere didn't win but like what it was it was not long after trump had taken off as a second time and she was saying things like elon musk is actually a democrat like she was saying those like kind of crazy things that don't really seem to be like worth your time to even like to argue on her level you know and one of the things she said was like you know everybody thinks that trump is is conservative he's not conservative he's just a populist and for some reason that is really stuck in my head it's like the populism that won the day over not necessarily the conservatism which i don't think i don't disagree with her on that to a degree i i think it's there's a reason it's stuck in my head right but if that's the case that's exactly what this soccer involvement was right it was it was him playing his populism card again like i'm gonna everybody in america everybody in america is rooting for the american team and so therefore why don't i put my fingers on the scale why don't i throw my weight around a little bit why don't i throw my fifa peace prize around a little bit call my buddy over there and graft it up and just like get our get our you know popular star player to play or whatever and uh and then it kind of backfires and then all of the booing as you mentioned before the knicks game and also the fact that they lost that like does this these two things sporting events so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things could they be

consequential i don't think so because the new york knicks playing in manhattan um in in new york city i don't think is a thing that a lot of maga people have an investment in and i think the the world cup is a thing that maga people don't have an investment in pablo torre called this a democrat trap yesterday before the game saying that this is the first time this is kind of what i said on tbtl it's the first time trump has used his terrible ways to do something that actually Democrats mostly care about. I would say the World Cup, the World Cup followers, the people very invested in it and traveling around and painting their faces or watching it on TV. It's mostly people that are center and left. We care about it more than I promise you if I was driving around Longview, Washington last night at 6 p.m. and I could peer into the windows of the homes. I don't think I'm seeing the World Cup on a lot of the TVs. Yeah. You know, you know what I

think i'm thinking of here though is and this gets into a bigger conversation and and again i'm not even arguing that i'm i'm right here it's just something that i i struggle with because of some of my personal relationships in my life and everything is like what is a maga person and if you voted for trump does that make you a maga person is that how we're using that term because that's not how i use that term i think of maga people as the very very far left the people who do want to like display like trump bumper stickers and a huge flag on the back of your truck while you're rolling coal or whatever but then i but i don't think there's enough of them to get him in office i think there's a lot more people in the middle who just think the left is pretty annoying and they don't like the the person at work who is making everybody use they them pronouns in addressing them and they for some reason applied that to the presidential election i feel like there's just like a lot of people who wouldn't describe themselves as maga but just as people and that's why i kind of come back to this idea of populism not the cult members i mean

the people who like also put him in office right that kind of middle that don't identify you're

right it's not their whole personality but they're and I think you said it right they find maybe they find it generally annoying that people want to use the pronouns they want to use but they're not flying a giant weird Donald Trump flag above their house that whatever that kind of group is and how does the Donald Trump messing up the sports maybe does that break through to them I think if he messed up football it would break through to those people more than messing up a basketball team that has you know of its 12 members 11 of them are black and they play in new york city and also soccer which is very or to some degree i still think kind of like um blue state coded but again that's i'm just pulling that directly out of my back side as far as a a theory of again i think if he ruined the super bowl i think that would be way worse for him i don't know how he would do that but then these sports but but maybe i do like that it embarrasses him i do like that here's and you've given me a little something this morning andrew i hadn't thought about his victory lap he would have been doing if the u.s men would have won so in a way it's like they lost but but it deprives him of that which i guess i'll take that as a silver lining um it's just uh yeah it's just it's just it's just such a it's almost well i don't we don't have to go back to this but like i kind of think that there is a little bit of a connection between what i was saying about these media outlets where it sucks that the people at the top uh you know kind of suck because like we're you when you heard that it was three to one and you were like kind of like well good this is an l for donald trump and also it's like his cheating didn't win or didn't work but then i where i go is like oh man that really sucks if i'm like a member of the u.s uh men's soccer team and I'm, you know, I'm working super hard and I'm, this has been my life's dream. And now somehow me winning us winning is actually going to be like in the wind, in the wind column for Donald Trump. Like, it's just sad that, that things have to get divided up this way to where we're, we're low key rooting against the U S men. And I did kind of think last night, I was like, this is a bummer we're losing, but also if we would have won, it would have also been a loss because, because we cheated our way here. You know, the fact that these are the calculations that we have to make is, like, just such a bummer. It did allow for me, Andrew, to write, I thought a pretty good Blue Sky post after the match last night, please arrest the Vandals who cut a 350-foot-long tear in the U.S. men's national team defense. I thought that was kind of a good...

Oh, the pool, the reflecting pool, yes.

See, because, like, they have these, like, imagined phantom Vandals that cut the pool up. Right, right. So maybe there's imagined phantom Vandals that cut up the U.S. men's team.

It does sound like – is there any kind of sports, I guess, Tuesday morning quarterbacking about what did happen? For why we lost? Yeah, just like why they look like a different team.

I think it was – I think the theory is that because they're a younger team and there was – I mean, there's always a lot of attention on these matches, but this was – you know, when you're playing in the earlier rounds of the World Cup, it's not elimination. you could lose the match and still advance because like maybe you scored more goals in a previous match or something this was knockout round this is you lose you go home this is they're playing in the United States you know it's not going to be in the U.S. next time that's another thing that's kind of a bummer is like is like this is the big chance for the home team to kind of like have this you know incredible dream run so they're playing at home they're in front of mostly their own fans it's I know I kept going back to this last night I don't know if they thought about this way but it's a monday night it's just they're the only sporting event on in the world pretty much well that's not true there's probably major league baseball happening but like yes there was because i was listening to the brewers cardinals game i love it do you think they're one do you think from behind what did you say the over under 200 people following that game versus following

i'll tell you what i started by listening to the uh dodgers padres game but i accidentally was listening to the the dodgers broadcast and the announcers were literally complaining that only five dodgers were going to the all-star game i was like get out of and they unironically like without any kind of like even joking about it they were just really mad that only five dodgers were named all-stars i was like get out of town with this and so i switched things back over to where i should have started with the midwest and i listened to the brewers broadcast and it was the

brewers who are they playing they're playing the cards the cardinals oh perfect those are the perfect i consider that the ultimate counter programming to the u.s men's national team with its dear leader donald trump is brewers cardinals that's as american as it gets and by

the way i did feel like how do i explain this i think you'll understand it if i can find the words which is not something i

have a proven track record of today but um so i had a lot of like i told you i trimmed the hedges way back and i have all this like all these like branches and leaves in the backyard that i'm sort of like kind of bagging up and was burning a bunch of branches yesterday it was a really nice night but i knew going outside that there's this huge event not only just this huge sporting event that's happening that the country is excited about but it's happening in seattle and there was so much buzz about seattle and in seattle yesterday and you know me it doesn't matter kind of what the sport is like i like that i like that buzz and i kind of want to be a part of it or at least like uh adjacent to it or observing it in some way and i had this weird feeling when i went out to do this work it's like it's just me these coors lights these leaves and my bluetooth radio right and i was like i wanted i wanted to follow the game and again not at this point with any even rooting interest other than i guess rooting for seattle and rooting for the experience and wanting to be plugged into it but the thing is i don't even watch soccer there is no way if i found a radio broadcast of soccer that i was going to be interested in it you know but there was a moment i was like i feel like it felt like a phantom limb to me sort of yeah like certainly if it was it was like a football game of two teams i don't care about i would have put on the football game because i can i can follow football on the radio dummy no good to listen to a radio broadcast of a sport i

don't even watch i was twisting myself in knots yesterday trying to think of ways before the match how can the u.s win this and yet also somehow change the narrative is it when i i knew it wasn't going to happen i was like does the coach not start balligan not play balligan at all does balligan score two own goals which is to say does he accidentally kick into our goal twice but then we score three goals on them so we win three to two but the everyone realizes that balligan actually was a drag on this like you know these insane scenarios where we somehow win but we're

not cheaters or they or they may or they they have a i don't know what the rules well it's fifa so you know you're not allowed to have any kind of freedom of speech but like if they had if they unfurled some sort of a a banner or something that that talked about human rights or something you know what i mean that counter-programmed the trump message yeah none of which happened but um

but but now the you know i guess the one thing is nobody cares about the fact that he cheated on our behalf because it absolutely did not work. So this will not go down as the World Cup where the U.S. got really far into it but shouldn't have. It just goes down as the World Cup where Donald Trump's attempts to cheat did not help and where, I don't know, Spain won the... I don't know who the favorites are, probably Spain or something, won the whole thing.

It would have been amazing if Donald Trump had placed a phone call and accidentally Bob Balaban was in the game. That would have been amazing.

I'm saying they learn it, they learn it, and then they forget it. But when do they learn it? Oh, can I, let's see. Do we need, should we play the Top Story sound effect? Yeah, we need it. No, I need it. We need it.

We need Top Story. That was all just beginning of show chat. Okay. Here we go.

Hello, and welcome to Top Story. I started the show today by playing this little drop. you've been living in the monkey house which was not it's not just one of my favorite drops but it was was chosen specifically today because i learned the backstory on that drop andrew which i probably should have known because i believe that i pulled this that audio many many years ago while in a phase where i was watching a lot of um project runway which is the bravo show about folks doing fashion design and that's of course tim gunn who was i guess he was eventually i think that i can't i'm i've lost the plot a little bit but i think that um for a while um project runway moved to another network or something or somehow tim gunn in recent years i think was not invited back to be one of the judges on on project runway which i was shocked by because i thought of him as really the like emotional or i don't know the because the other judges would sort of come and go And I know Heidi Klum was there for a while, but then I think she maybe was working on like America's Got Talent or something.

But anyway, back in the host for whatever it's worth, I've never seen that show. So I associate him so strongly with that show that I thought he was a host of that show, not one of several judges.

Maybe he was maybe he was the host of it or one of the hosts. but he would his job would be to go around and kind of um sit down with the um with the designers while they were kind of in the midst of doing their projects and kind of like tell them like this is working this is not working you should try more of this um and he was just great because he was kind of in a way he was sort of stern but also loving and anyway he would say to sometimes he would say to a designer he would say this

you've been living in the monkey house and i guess i just thought what would you think living in the monkey house means you've been living in the monkey house that first of all i didn't know

that this was something that he said a lot i thought he just said it once and you grabbed the tape and i did maybe he did maybe he only said it once and it jumped out at me and again i have no i'm just to be very clear i'm not trying to change your opinion on any of these i just know nothing about that show other than he's like a he's a good looking guy right he was sort of a silver fox or was he a silver fox or did he just happen to have like sort of silver hair even though he was a younger guy but like a really sharp guy right yeah he's he's he's i think

he's probably well i'm sure he was younger than me when he started but i think of him as being kind of a an elder statesman of fashion and design yeah and and so that i know that about him and

when i hear you've been living in the monkey house that to me makes me think that you're a little crazy you're a little bit off you've been in a chaotic situation yep and your frame of preference for everything is a little bit off that is exactly what i've assumed it's just like

you're in you're kind of in the monkey house right now you've kind of lost your mind yeah and you're doing something that is actually crazy and you don't realize it well i randomly saw tim gunn on a on a some podcast talking about fashion the other day and he's goes back to using his monkey house thing but he explains what he's really saying about the monkey house it goes

back to my theory about the well not my theory my adage about the monkey house at the zoo when you first enter the monkey house at the zoo you shriek this place stinks and after about 20 minutes you think it's not so bad and after another 10 minutes you think what smell but anyone new walking into the monkey house shrieks this place stinks

so that's interesting the monkey house is you don't smell the monkey shit anymore because it's in the monkey house it's nose blindness as I believe Febreze entered into the vernacular, right? What intense topic do you think he was referring to in this interview that necessitated him explaining the monkey house nose blindness monkey shit thing?

This particular, like him, this modern clip, I have no idea. Of course it was leggings, Andrew.

You know this was the case with leggings. Someone put on a pair of leggings, walked by the mirror and said, I can't go out dressed like this. 20 minutes later they walk by and they think it's not so bad. It's so catty. And 10 minutes later they walk by the mirror and they say I look hot.

I love how catty this is. Maybe I should watch that show. This isn't even Project Runway. I know but I just this is the most exposure I've ever had. And I love him so much.

And then the host chimes in. The clip cuts off here but this is the host's response. The host of the podcast.

No, leggings really are a phenomenon. And I was asking one of my friends who's a stylist in the city.

It just stops there. But like, I love that they're just talking about the scourge of leggings. And this is what necessitates Tim Gunn breaking out his explainer on the monkey house.

Okay. Speaking of tape, I have some tape that I've been quasi obsessed with that once or twice I've thought to myself, should I play this on the show? And the answer has always been no. but I need to run this by you and we're kind of in the badlands right now and so if you'll allow this and I need to play this I'm looking for it okay I have found it now I have not double checked to make sure that this isn't some sort of AIBS or something like that AIBS is a new kind of irritable bowel syndrome situation artificial irritable bowel syndrome situation I think this is real but I need to give you some context for it So I will I will take his name out of this because I don't know if he wants me talking about his personal business on the show. But I have a close friend, somebody that you know as well, whose parent passed away recently and he was over here and we were cooking. We were grilling. It was just me and him. And my mom had passed away recently as well. And we were just sort of I guess the word would be kind of broing down about some stuff, you know, kind of talking about some heavy stuff and getting emotional at times. And one of the things, now this is going to become a whole thing that we're going to end up trying to litigate on the show, but we got into a quasi-debate, a very good-hearted, loving debate about what legacy means. Because I was telling my friend that I am not somebody who cares about legacy. Like, I don't, it doesn't matter to me that I am remembered when I am gone, that my name is remembered when I'm gone, that what am I leaving as a legacy? I just literally could not be less interested in that. but one of the things I was talking about a phenomenon of losing a parent is this idea that shared memories are just gone now especially for me because I don't have kids I don't have any siblings who have kids so when I'm going through my mom's stuff with my sister and I'm seeing I

I don't know, like I've used this, this example before with you, like some stool that apparently maybe my dad made that lived in our laundry room for years and years, never thought about that stool, saw it when I was a kid, disappeared at one point, then I saw it again when we were cleaning out my mom's stuff. I'm like, oh my God, I'm having such an amazing memory of this stool. And then you can like talk about like the memories that we had in that house together that seems so important. And it's interesting to me that when me and my sister have those conversations, there were really like memories of just four people, me, my two parents, and my sister, right? And as we pass on, those memories just evaporate. They're just gone. And I find that interesting. There are objects that I've taken from my mom's collection that I have now that mean a lot to me, that can make me emotional to look at them or think about them. but when i pass on like it means nothing to anybody else if i had kids then maybe i'd be like oh this was your grandmother's or something like that and then there would be like some significance to it but not as much as i had or that my mom had you know what i mean but because i don't have kids it's like it's literally the shared memories and the importance placed upon these memories and objects just simply disappears now as i'm explaining this to my friend he's saying yeah you mean legacy and i'm like saying no no no i don't care about legacy i don't care that i'm remembered it's just interesting to me that these memories disappear he's saying yeah like legacy like you want those memories to stay and it was just sort of a semantic thing yeah because

i think i think i think of legacy the way you think of it which is legacy to me means your how you remembered and your sort of reputation and and the memories of you outside of your immediate family like to me legacy i think of that as being almost something bigger than just like your like adelaide talking about me isn't i don't think of that as my legacy i would think you know somebody talking about which of course will not happen i i will not have much of a legacy either when i'm gone but i think of it as being something that's outside your family structure even though a lot of the terminology when you go to do like the obit online it's legacy.com yeah i think other people might think of legacy more the way this person did which is just like a stool within your family can be your legacy i think of legacy as being this bigger thing that's outside of that or bigger than all that yeah and like what are you doing

to preserve your legacy is one word that is associated with it in fact i thought like a good example was so that was one weekend i don't know a month or two ago and then um later that week or something i got a flyer in the mail from uh my university from kent state that said like cement your legacy or something like that you know it's like give money and you know like that's what i think like if you were to establish a school of communications at you know at the u-dub and it was written about in in the u-dub today or whatever that would be your legacy the burbank school of communications that would be sort of a legacy thing so anyway i get this flyer that says something about like you know your legacy with kent state and so i take a photo of it and i send it to my buddy and he laughs about it he's like i'm still thinking about that conversation as i am too by the way i don't think that he the reason i'm thinking about it so much is because i don't think that either one of us is necessarily right or wrong but i think it's an interesting conversation what is legacy so then he sends me i told you this is about tape he sends me this tape which i believe to be real as i play this if it turns out that it's somehow fake i'd be a little bit surprised but also listeners can double check me i guess but it is mike tyson and there's some swears in here and as you know i'm not a big i'm not a fan of mike tyson at all i was not a fan of his maha commercial during the super bowl um but he is standing in front of a brick wall somewhere at some sort of event center you would guess and he is being interviewed by a young person and i'm gonna put the young person at maybe some maybe 15 years old maybe i remember this interview so you know about this is real this is you know about this yeah this is it's it's well i don't want to i played it i played it a hundred times because first of all i again do not align myself with mike tyson in any way but this is amazing what he says here i do agree with what he's saying but he's talking to a child who is like amazing she's got a big day she gets to interview this famous person, and she asks Mike Tyson about legacy. Now, I think I might have to hit play

and then unmute. Well, in your return to the ring for this fight, you are setting a monumental opportunity for kids my age to see the legend Mike Tyson in the ring for the first time. What type of legacy would you like to leave behind when it's all said and done? Well, I don't know. I don't

believe in the word legacy. I just think that's another word for ego. That's just some word everybody grabbed onto. I was used every five seconds. It means absolutely nothing to me. I'm just passing through. I'm going to die and it's going to be over. Who cares about legacy after

that. What a big ego. I'm a die. I want people to think that I'm this. I'm great. No, we're nothing. We're dead. We're dust. We're absolutely nothing. Our legacy is nothing.

Well, thank you so much for sharing that. That is something that I have not heard before, someone say that as an answer.

Can you really imagine somebody saying, I want my legacy to be this way when I, you're dead. You think somebody really wants to think about you? I want people to think about me when i'm gone who the f**k cares about me when i'm gone that's great so great and also the

reporter's response is like perfect well thank you for that nobody's ever put it to me like so professional i give that kid credit for the response he goes back for a double dip and drops an f-bomb in there who cares we're dust we're dead oh my god incredible the thing with tyson is

it's like he's a very complicated figure and his you know has done a lot of bad stuff in his life But it's also just like, you never know what the guy is going to say or do the next moment, which is why he continues to be a fascinating public figure, like just saying stuff like that.

My buddy who said this to me, I watched it like a bunch. I played it for Genevieve. And I was texting him. I'm just like, this is astounding. And he just wrote in quotes, hey, sweetie, how was your interview with Mike Tyson today? Just astounding. I didn't know that you knew about that. Thank you for also, like, verifying that that is a real thing. Because it's so incredible that I was like, please tell me this is not some sort of weird deepfake thing.

Yeah, I saw that some time ago. And, again, I thought it was just so funny because of how completely he's not reading the room. But also I love it because there's nothing less useful than, like, kid journalist. Yeah. No offense to this kid. It's not on them. but it's like there's this there's this kind of trope of like we're gonna you know kids rock and so we're gonna like pick two kid journalists and they're gonna get to ask a question of this famous person and the kid's gonna you know do their best kind of journalism impression and they're gonna ask a very very bland question and the interview subject is gonna give a very bland answer about believing in yourself yeah it's just like what are we what are we doing here how is this adding to anyone's life yeah um well i'll tell you what that response from mike tyson added to my life and but also i think we'll be part of his legacy yeah i think you're absolutely

right and kudos to the kid by the way like i do think it's a great experience for kids you know what i mean for the kids you know like i'm i'll i would be so you saw this a long time ago this kid could probably be in their 20s now i don't know about a long time ago i mean i think i saw it within the last year oh okay so who knows but you know maybe this kid will grow up to be like a great journalist so i don't think that the experience they've certainly jumped into the deep end of

the pool with that response so poised like more poised than i've ever been on this show i don't know how like yeah you you put up like an adult you know uh sports reporter and they're interviewing a mike tyson and he gives that response i don't know what they say yeah and i also like that kid saying that's interesting i've never heard that response before yeah wouldn't it be incredible if they had heard that response before it's like yeah you hear that all the time like i'm trying to get to the next level if the if the previous two people they'd asked the legacy question to it said whatever we're done we're dead we're over we're done the thing about the thing that's so refreshing about that from mike tyson is he is a person who could be you would you could understand him actually thinking about his legacy because he is so famous and he is in a sport like boxing where a lot of boxing is talking about the greats talking about muhammad ali it's talking about joe lewis it's talking about you know it's it's a sport that has got one foot in the past and one foot in the present so you could see how he might be in like where do i where do i rank among the all-timers what is my legacy going to be so him saying he the thing about mike tyson is you could also ask him this question on a different day and he could say my legacy is everything yeah that's what's crazy about yeah that's about mike tyson's responses is he could decide that like all that matters is his legacy and like all i care about is leaving a legacy that i can be proud of and that my children can be proud of he could also give you that answer yeah you know what i'm

realizing this might be the first part of one of those snickers hangry commercials this actually isn't mike tyson this is just like no this is this kid's dad and he hasn't had a snickers yet they should do that that's a free one that would be genius that would be a freebie so all right oh geez i guess that's still looping in the background i was gonna sneak up the music

Great news, by the way. On Amazon, you can get a Christian Pulisic U.S. men's national team T-shirt. It's marked down to $34.99 right now.

From $1,300.

Yeah, exactly. It was surge priced at $1,000 as of 4 p.m. yesterday. It's down to a mere $35 right now.

So, oh, can I ask you a real question about this? Because I heard on one of the sports stations today, somebody said, well, I'm done with soccer, or at least until the next World Cup. Are you, are you, has this.

taken all of the air out of it for you will you consider continue to follow the competition

i will watch it i'll have to pick and i haven't i'll have to figure out the new team that i like am i'm rooting for for whatever reasons that i come up with and then i'll get invested in that team winning yeah these these matches are so it's almost like particularly when you get into the round of 16 it's like each one is almost like a mini super bowl or something like they're such a big deal particularly in their home countries that like it's just kind of fun to watch them so i'll keep following this um uh yeah so and then you know next time around when this i would say every four years i think that'd be my guess um the next time around i'll probably i'm hoping knock wood i think we'll have a different administration we'll probably have a different team because again there's a lot of turnover i don't think we'll have the same coach this coach that we got his whole job was to try to get us past this round and even do it you mean when aoc is calling the head of fifa yes now the question is would you be okay with aoc using her power to um to put a trans athlete back back onto the team who'd been banned because it's in because it's in bahrain or some shit uh anyway uh yeah i'll be i'll be rooting for uh some team down the line i just haven't decided which team it is so uh all right that is going to do it for today's episode of tbtl but we're going to be right back here tomorrow again the countdown continues this is our last week before we are in valley city ohio for the tbtl-a-thon 17 jumping for joy um so anyway we'll have a wednesday show tomorrow hope you can join us for it in the meantime have a great tuesday take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

power out