Garage Logic: MISCHKE – Two Calls

Date: November 29, 2025
Podcast: Garage Logic by Gamut Podcast Network
Host: Tommy Mischke ("Mischke")

Episode Overview

In this thoughtful yet humorous episode of Garage Logic, host Mischke embarks on a show structured around two phone calls with listeners. Blending genuine curiosity, satire, and philosophical musings, Mischke explores everything from mundane office life and music production to deep existential questions about the afterlife, spirituality, and the enduring power of love.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Life at Target & Office Transformation

• Setting: Mischke’s first call reaches a listener, Dan, who happens to be at Target, shopping for a new office.
• Work-Life Balance: Discussion centers on the challenges of working from home with children, prompting the move to a separate office.
  • [04:10] Mischke quips: "Target is going to make your office look like everybody else's office. I'd start at a thrift store, maybe go to Facebook Marketplace."
• Observational Humor: Mischke finds comedy in the notion of chasing women at Target just to ask if they’re moms, poking fun at social expectations.
• Musings on Modern Work: Mischke reflects on whether Target employees are living their "best life" and contrasts today’s affirmational culture with medieval peasantry.
  • [08:20]: "When you think about going back to the days of the peasantry in medieval times...are you living your best life? I'm Oprah Winfrey. Hi."

2. Music, Dreams, & Success Stories

• Listener Dan’s Background: Dan shares his 25-year career in music production—from ad agencies to TV background tracks—largely self-driven and home-based.
• Anna Marie Mitchell/Anna Graves Story:
  • Mischke recounts interviewing a young singer, Anna Marie Mitchell, who later, after years of perseverance, evolved into “Anna Graves” and is now opening for Stevie Nicks.
  • [16:00] M: "See, it takes time. You start working and you learn the ropes and you have varying levels of success...can you stay in the game."
• Songwriting Philosophy:
  • Mischke describes writing a song for his wife and the metaphysical musings that inspired it—pondering what happens to our purest thoughts.
  • On songwriting: "Maybe the really beautiful thoughts we have go somewhere special...Maybe they're such wonderful thoughts, they end up in heaven." [18:50]

3. Stage Fright & Creative Process

• Behind the Show’s Music: Mischke shares that his opening theme is a family collaboration, involving his stepsons and local musician Chris Castino.
• Stage Fright Admission:
  • Despite a long career, Mischke admits that his stage fright has only worsened with age, prompting the idea of holding a “concert” on his podcast—where an unseen audience feels less threatening.
  • [29:20] "I have stage fright when I play—pretty serious, and it’s been getting worse as the years go by, it doesn’t get better."

4. Mischke’s Career Journey & Listener Reconnection

• Second Caller (Mark):
  • Mark, a longtime but recently-returned listener, asks about Mischke’s career path since his abrupt 2008 firing from KSTP.
• Radio & Podcasting Timeline:
  • Mischke details the trajectory from being fired, through City Pages podcasting (before podcasts were mainstream), comic dealings with bill collectors, and eventually returning to radio at WCCO, before finally moving into fully independent podcasting at Hubbard Broadcasting.
  • [39:50] "I did a daily podcast for City Pages before anybody really knew what the devil a podcast was. Two hours every single day...Did I have any callers? No. People listen after the fact now."

5. Satirical Phone Calls to Bill Collectors

• Podcasting Antics:
  • Mischke provides comedic relief by roleplaying farcical conversations with bill collectors, pretending to pay debts with various animals instead of money. This segment showcases Mischke’s wit and improvisational flair.
  • [49:40] "I have three chickens, Rhode Island Red, Silver Laced Wyandotte, and Black Australorp. Those are three hardy breeds, and you could have all three of those. I'm sorry, madam, we'll not take chickens."

6. Listener Curiosity Turns Existential: The Afterlife

• Mark’s Question: Seizing his rare opportunity, Mark asks Mischke: “Do you think there is an afterlife?” [1:15:30]
• Mischke’s Response:
  • He’s profoundly influenced by the consistency and detail of near-death experiences.
  • [1:16:00] "My sense is it's pretty wild in a wonderful way. And I'm hoping that that is true. By the time we're on our 20,000th report from these folks who have these near death experiences...we should start believing them the same way Thomas Jefferson believed Lewis and Clark."
• Critique of Religious Dogma: Mischke notes how many near-death accounts diverge from fire-and-brimstone descriptions, feeling instead “so classically the work of a little person, not the work of a God.”
• Desmond Tutu’s Wisdom: Mischke cites Tutu: "I think my God is bigger than any one religion can contain."

7. Montage: Near-Death Experiences & the Meaning of Love

Mischke curates a sequence of NDE testimonials:

• Common Themes: A peaceful, loving transition; encounters with departed loved ones; a sensation of returning home; judgment is replaced by infinite acceptance and love.
  • [1:21:30]: "I was aware that there was a light, and I began to move towards that light...It was love that brought me into existence. It was love that had guided me through every instant of my life."
  • [1:23:15]: "Our purpose is to love. It’s that simple. Hard to pull off cleanly, but you are here to love."

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Work/Life Frustrations:
  • "I've been working at home for 22 years and it's getting a little hard keeping things together as far as being there all the time." (Dan, [06:45])
• Music & Perseverance:
  • "Most of the people that I came up with...kind of get pushed out into driving grain cart, which is fine. Gotta make money. But she stuck with it." (Mischke, [16:20])
• Stage Fright:
  • "It gets worse to the point where my hands and my voice just shut down. They start to do whatever they want to do, and they don't let me in on what that is." (Mischke, [29:52])
• On Radio's Lonely Leap to Podcast Land:
  • "I had a phone installed in my studio, thinking maybe somehow someone will be listening live. Nope. Everybody waited until after the show to listen. Never received a single call except from bill collectors." (Mischke, [43:20])
• On Near-Death Epiphanies:
  • "I knew that she had always been with me. We had never been apart." (NDE account, [1:19:40])
  • "It's like coming home in a way I had never experienced in life. Coming home to myself..." (NDE montage, [1:26:15])
• On Purpose:
  • "Our purpose is to love. It's that simple. Hard to pull off cleanly. But you are here to love." (NDE account, [1:28:30])

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Target/Office & Work-Life Commentary: 00:30 – 12:00
• Music Production & Anna Graves Story: 12:00 – 24:00
• Songwriting Origins – "Thoughts of You": 18:30 – 24:00
• Discussion of Stage Fright/Podcasting Concert: 28:00 – 31:30
• Second Call – Mark, Career Retrospective: 36:00 – 45:00
• Bill Collector Comedy Skits: 45:00 – 58:00
• Existential Q&A on Afterlife: 1:15:00 – 1:19:00
• Near-Death Experience Montage: 1:19:00 – End

Tone & Style

The episode radiates Mischke’s unique blend of wry humor, Midwestern warmth, philosophical musing, and understated empathy. Listeners are treated to both comic relief and authentic reflections on life, death, and the human experience, woven seamlessly through ordinary and extraordinary stories alike.

Takeaway

MISCHKE: Two Calls exemplifies the heart of Garage Logic: a space where humor and common sense meet deep curiosity and wonder. Through two conversations and a stream of reflection—from Target aisles to the edge of eternity—the episode quietly suggests our real task is simple but profound: to stay in the game, seek connection, and above all, learn to love.