#4738 The Rule Of Trees

Summary

TBTL Episode #4738: The Rule Of Trees

Date: May 29, 2026
Hosts: Luke Burbank & Andrew Walsh

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Episode Overview

This Friday episode of TBTL features the classic blend of humor, insightful asides, and oddly moving moments that longtime listeners expect. Luke and Andrew kick things off by sharing updates from listeners, exploring the perils of “peeling off” hotel window tint, discussing remarkable coincidences with the film Dazed and Confused, critiquing celebrity interviewers, and reliving the heyday (and recent struggles) of late-night TV. A surprisingly deep segment on trees, gratitude, and poetry brings a heartfelt close, with the episode’s signature mix of light banter and genuine emotion.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Listener Voicemail: “The Great Tint Incident”

Timestamps: 04:27 – 09:57

• Listener Emily from Kirkland leaves a series of entertaining voicemails about staying in a fancy Hawaiian resort, thinking she’s hit the “motherload” by removing the plastic from her hotel window—only to later realize it was sun-protective tint.

• Both Luke and Andrew riff on the anxiety of unintentionally vandalizing hotel property and devise schemes to dispose of the “evidence.”

  • Quote:

    “Are we just going to try to hide this? Are we gonna try to get the plastic out of the room in our suitcases and throw it away in a dumpster somewhere on the other side of the island?”
    — Andrew Walsh [09:44]

• Luke shares his own method of “hiding the evidence” when raiding minibars:

  • Quote:

    “I never throw out the packaging for whatever I’ve consumed from the mini bar in the room… I’m gonna throw it away in a garbage can in the elevator bank or something.”
    — Luke Burbank [10:36]

2. Serendipity and Dazed and Confused

Timestamps: 12:03 – 17:26

• Andrew marvels at the coincidence that on the 50th anniversary of the events depicted in Dazed and Confused (last day of school, May 28, 1976), they used a still from the movie as the episode’s photo.

  • Quote:

    “We did a mini accidental tribute to Dazed and Confused on the 50th anniversary of the day that picture was being bullied by those kids with paddles.”
    — Andrew Walsh [14:26]

• Both recall the breakout careers from the film and Luke recounts hearing about Matthew McConaughey’s spontaneous “vibe” during his audition.

• Classic TBTL swerve into reminiscing about beloved, generational coming-of-age movies.

3. Celebrity Interviewers & Media Critique

Timestamps: 17:26 – 23:04

• Luke launches into a passionate critique of Howard Stern’s celebrity interviews, preferring Stern’s interactions with the “wack pack” over his “narcissistic” approach to famous guests.

  • Quote:

    “He is great at interviewing people who are not celebrities. He is terrible at interviewing celebrities, in my opinion, and it makes me crazy… 80% of his questions to the celebrity are, ‘Weren’t you mad at your parents?’”
    — Luke Burbank [18:16]

• Andrew muses about the pros and cons of various interview environments, and they both agree that Howard’s “long-form” format still yields better interviews than most late-night shows.

• Brief but sharp analysis of how interviewers can project their own issues onto guests.

4. Late Night TV in Flux

Timestamps: 23:04 – 29:16

• Luke and Andrew cover recent upheavals in late-night television, with the end of Colbert’s tenure and Byron Allen’s Comics Unleashed replacing it, resulting in a drastic ratings drop.

  • Quote:

    “I think it was a 95% drop-off from Colbert Thursday night to Comics Unleashed on Friday night, the new show that’s replacing it.”
    — Luke Burbank [22:36]

• They also reminisce about Conan O’Brien’s tumultuous late-night run, the economics of moving shows from five to four nights, and the quirks of YouTube TV ads featuring Byron Allen.

5. Adam Carolla, Jimmy Kimmel, and Shifting Politics

Timestamps: 29:16 – 34:42

• Discussion of Adam Carolla’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Jimmy Kimmel’s teary but hilarious roast, and the drift in Carolla’s politics.

  • Quote:

    “The irony is Adam has been shitting on California for years… His kids are in their 30s now.”
    — Jimmy Kimmel, as recounted by Luke [34:32]

• Both hosts reflect on Loveline’s enduring appeal compared to Carolla’s later “man show” persona.

6. Donor Shout-Outs, Physical Media, and Seattle Movie Culture

Timestamps: 35:08 – 41:11

• Luke and Andrew thank dazzling donors Amy and Brett, segueing into the importance of supporting independent cinemas (like Seattle’s Grand Illusion Cinema and Scarecrow Video) and extolling the joys of physical media.
• Scarecrow Video’s resilience as a nonprofit and its role in Seattle’s cultural life get a loving tribute.

7. “Trees: They’re All Around Us, But Who Gives a S---?”

Timestamps: 51:01 – 53:50

• In response to a donor message, Andrew explains the origin of the beloved drop from an Onion TV spoof.

  • Quote (Drop):

    “Trees. They’re all around us, but who gives a shit?”
    — Onion TV Clip [51:18]

• Pivot to unexpectedly moving content, as Andrew shares a poetic meditation on trees from The Slowdown podcast:

  • Quote:

    “Wise old mother trees feed their saplings with liquid sugar and warn the neighbors when danger approaches… It’s all happening in the ultra slow motion that is tree time.”
    — Poetry excerpt read by The Slowdown [54:41]

• Luke reads Mary Oliver’s “When I Am Among the Trees,” leading to a brief but emotional moment for both hosts as they reflect on gratitude and the power of poetry.

8. Philosophy, Nationalism, and Practicing Gratitude

Timestamps: 47:24 – 50:23

• Luke and Andrew discuss the idea (from their donor) that “we don’t need a them to be a strong us,” tying it to nationalism and citizenship:

  • Quote:

    “Nationalism when it’s positive is pretty cool, because what it says is, I care about everybody in this country, even though I will never meet 99% of them.”
    — Luke Burbank [46:49]

• Andrew questions why boundaries should matter, leading to a thoughtful exchange about empathy, in-groups, and the practicalities of modern society.

9. Embarrassing Wedding Poetry & Big Weekend Plans

Timestamps: 57:20 – 63:48

• Andrew tells a cringeworthy (but endearing) story about nervously reading a poem at friends’ wedding—only for the marriage to dissolve within a year.
• Luke shares plans for a working weekend at CrimeCon in Las Vegas and a trip to Houston for a TV piece on Viet-Cajun cooking, debating whether he’ll have to break his “no eating animals” streak for research.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On hiding hotel mishaps:

  "That tint might get thrown out at a different hotel."
  — Luke Burbank [11:39]

• On generational connection to Dazed and Confused:

  “It did take place in my birth year, but then also came out when I was a teenager, the first proper time to enjoy this movie.”
  — Andrew Walsh [13:32]

• On disliking celebrity interviews:

  “He is incapable of understanding that anyone else has different experiences than he does.”
  — Luke Burbank [18:16]

• On empathy and in-groups:

  “Why would I care about somebody in South Carolina suffering more than somebody in Nepal?”
  — Andrew Walsh [47:24]

• On poetry and gratitude:

  “I’m so distant from the hope of myself in which I have goodness and discernment and never hurry through the world and walk slowly and bow often. …The light flows from their branches and they call again: it’s simple, they say, you too have come into the world to do this — to go easy, to be filled with light and to shine.”
  — Luke Burbank, reading Mary Oliver [56:16-57:10]

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Segment Timestamps

• Listener Tint Story: 04:27 – 09:57
• Dazed & Confused 50th Anniversary: 12:03 – 17:26
• Howard Stern Interview Critique: 17:26 – 23:04
• Late-Night TV Turmoil: 23:04 – 29:16
• Carolla & Political Drift: 29:16 – 34:42
• Seattle Movie/Physical Media: 35:08 – 41:11
• Nationalism & Gratitude: 47:24 – 50:23
• Tree Drops & Poetry: 51:01 – 57:20
• Andrew’s Wedding Poem Story: 57:20 – 61:41
• Weekend Plans (CrimeCon & Viet-Cajun): 62:00 – 63:48

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Tone & Takeaways

TBTL blends its affectionate irreverence with genuine feeling—mocking hotel hijinks and ‘trees who gives a s---’ Onion drops, then landing unexpectedly moving with poetry and stories about gratitude, loss, and friendship. Longtime listeners will find plenty of in-jokes, but the episode’s highlights—quirky listener tales, cultural oddities, and bittersweet personal reflection—are welcoming even to newcomers. It’s talk radio at its most human: silly, sprawling, and quietly profound.

Transcript

[Luke Burbank]

What happened?

[Listener/Caller]

Oh, well, it's really quite funny. I was, I was in bed sleeping at 2 o' clock this morning. My wife comes in and says someone ran into the shop. And I said, oh, what? So I jumped out of bed and all I had was me undies on. And I've walked out the front and I've seen the car smashed and I've seen the bloke walking back to the car and so I've walked outside and I said, oh, what are you doing, mate? Like, you can't be leaving the scene. And he goes, don't be a hero, mate. And I said, I'm not trying to be a hero, but the police are coming. And he just decided he'd scoot up the road and I just said, nah, it's not going on like that, mate. So I jumped in my car and I started chasing him up the road and then he went down a side street and then the police were coming and I flashed them and sent them off in direction of him. But mate, all I had was me jocks on. I was chasing him up the street and I'm just like, mate, do you

[Emily from Kirkland]

feel like a hero?

[Listener/Caller]

Oh, not really. It's. It's just something you got to do for the community, mate. It's like you look after your mates and your mates will always look after you.

[Luke Burbank]

TBTM. Guess what day it is.

[Andrew Walsh]

Guess what day it is. It's Friday, Friday.

[Listener/Caller]

Gotta get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend.

[Luke Burbank]

In this business of show, you have to have the heart of an angel

[Andrew Walsh]

and the hide of an elephant. You are in business with a couple glue sniffing squish heads. Why don't I tell you all about it over a hot steaming mug of beer and a cup of cold corn? I'm such a sucker for content.

[Luke Burbank]

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

[Andrew Walsh]

It is political correctness run amok.

[Luke Burbank]

My name's Luke Burbank.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm your host, Scatman's World.

[Luke Burbank]

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it is kind of a cloudy, foggy cloud.

[Andrew Walsh]

Fog, day, cloud, fog.

[Luke Burbank]

But that's not gonna stop us from bringing you episode 4738 in a collector

[Andrew Walsh]

series, Let the Fun begin.

[Luke Burbank]

We've been talking about baseball a lot on the show and youth baseball. And now a youth umpire in Idaho has gone, as they say, viral for his very calm handling of a kind of out of hand Coach.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's the voice of the youth, youth of America.

[Luke Burbank]

And I was literally thinking about this videotape when I was at the Sluggers game on Wednesday because there was a couple of times where I maybe didn't agree with a pitch or something and I was tempted to say something out loud, but I, I did not want to end up in my own sort of video of this kind of stuff. Anyway, we'll talk about that. We'll also say hello to the longest running cobra of the show. Oh my God. He admitted, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. We'll talk about big weekend plans. I know his already. They involve him hitting the club. He's Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hey, good morning, Luke. You know that I'm excited to play something for you because I was telling you this before the show. I was doing some last minute voicemail checkings, got a big backlog still of TBTL listener voicemails that we're going through. And I found one from about a month ago from a listener who left me a voicemail that I thought, oh, this is, this is a good one. I want to maybe even start the show with this because I like the fact that it's got an audio element. It's almost not performative, but it's, it's almost like a documentary in some ways. And I was all ready to play it for you. And then I was going to close out of the Google voice screen and I noticed, wait, this person left a follow up message as well. And I'm really glad I noticed the follow up message before I played the first one for you. Would you allow me to break format here and take a listen to Friday?

[Luke Burbank]

We can do whatever we want.

[Andrew Walsh]

Now I should say one other thing about this. A little production note here from your boy, Andrew. This is Emily and Kirkland leaving this voicemail. This was actually two that I had to sort of combine together. So you don't hear her say her name, but she called back. So she actually left a total of three voicemails. And this, this, what you're about to hear is a combination of the first two. It's just, it's really wonderful.

[Emily from Kirkland]

My God, Luke and Andrew. I just hit the mother load. I am staying at a super fancy resort in Lihue. Not sure if that's the right pronunciation, Kauai for a work conference. And I'm on some very high floor, gigantic sliding glass doors, looking out onto this crazy huge pool and the ocean. And I thought there Was a crack in the door. I looked more closely. Unpeeled plastic, both sides of the sliding glass panel window thingies. Oh, I'm gonna have a great time. For a second I thought it was gonna be a dead end, but I finally got a grip on the corner of this thing and I just wanted you guys to. You're on speakerphone. Let's see how this goes. Oh, baby.

[Luke Burbank]

I hope that was supposed to come off, by the way.

[Emily from Kirkland]

Oh, also, I had a few small beers. More plastic. It didn't come off nicely in one piece, but. Oh, boy, this is a big one. Have a great day, boys. Bye.

[Andrew Walsh]

So. That's great.

[Luke Burbank]

First of all, I thought hitting the motherload was just the part about.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, me too.

[Luke Burbank]

Your work paying for a really nice room in a fancy resort in Hawaii that fell before you enough of a voicemail.

[Andrew Walsh]

And I. And I. I want to play the second voicemail here before you weigh in too much, because this is a shorty. This is a short little follow up that seems critical to the story.

[Emily from Kirkland]

I think that was tint. You guys gotta delete those last two messages.

[Luke Burbank]

I had a feeling it was the.

[Andrew Walsh]

It was the tint. It was the tint for the sun.

[Luke Burbank]

That's why it was hard to get off.

[Andrew Walsh]

I shouldn't have said her name. I shouldn't have said her name. Should I beep it out? I don't think the cops are coming, actually.

[Luke Burbank]

Also beep out my name at the time.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's gonna beep out all of our names. I don't even. I feel the stank of this on Luke. My heart stopped when I said, wait, there's another voicemail from this person. I had you take your headphones off. I'm like, I don't know what this follow up is. Take off your headphones. I want to see. Oh, I think maybe I had a feeling because I saw the Google preview of the transcript or whatever and listening to the message. Listen to the first message again with the information I had in my head. After the second one, actually, my heart started racing listening to that being ripped off. The first time I heard it, I was just delighted. I'm like, oh, my God, what great audio. What great production. This person should be, you know, an associate producer on our show, maybe gets that credit today.

[Luke Burbank]

I hear she's looking for a job.

[Andrew Walsh]

Not just a job, but also maybe a place to hide, if I understand correctly. Now keep in mind that this is

[Luke Burbank]

a good place if you want to hide from the public. This podcast, very, very effective place.

[Andrew Walsh]

True words never spoken. Now I am looking to see. And this is sort of on the fly. That was a month ago. Are there any voice messages from this area code that came in the following weeks? I'm not seeing anything. There's one from the correctional institute. I don't know. Yeah, let's see here. We have a call from paradise. Yeah, I don't see any more. So I think our girl might be in lockup or something. I don't know.

[Luke Burbank]

I had a really bad feeling about that upon first listening, because I was thinking, like, okay, first of all, you know, whoever installed those sliding glass doors, you know, like, the. The technicians, whoever that was, if there was some sort of film on there that was going to in any way dull the experience, my guess would be that as a matter of course, they just pull that off. Like, I've never seen for all of the plastic that I've removed from microwave doors and appliances and things like that, I've never seen, like, a full. Full sliding glass door covered in it. So that was already a little bit of an alarm bell. And. And then, yeah, the. I'm kind of surprised that she could even get the corner of the tint to come up.

[Andrew Walsh]

Sounds like she had to work on it a little bit.

[Luke Burbank]

I am.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm, like, kind of literally kind of upset. Not at our listener, of course, but, like, I actually feel. I need. I need closure on the story. Friendo, you gotta get back to us. Because I, right now, am living in a space. Now, I understand this happened a month ago, but I am right now in the present, living in a space where we, together, you and me and Luke are sitting around in this resort room surrounded by this tint that we just peeled off of the window and are now just realizing. A few small beers in. That we just vandalized the shit out of this room.

[Luke Burbank]

I've had a few.

[Andrew Walsh]

A few what?

[Luke Burbank]

A few small beers.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, what are we gonna do? Are we just going to try to hide this? Are we gonna try to get the plastic out of the room in our suitcases and throw it away in a dumpster somewhere on the other side of the island? What are we doing? What's our plan?

[Luke Burbank]

Listen, the ultimate Burbank move here would be to do something, to have a few small beers to peel the tint off, to, then notice that, like, there's too much sunlight coming in the room, then call the front desk and try to get a room change because these windows are not tinted enough.

[Andrew Walsh]

Complain. That is actually a power move. You can complain that somebody has removed the tint from the windows.

[Luke Burbank]

Somebody you're not doing pulled the tint off before I got here

[Andrew Walsh]

and stole the robe. What are you doing with the tint, though? Before you make this complaint, you got to get out of the room.

[Luke Burbank]

You're not throwing it in the garbage can of the room?

[Andrew Walsh]

No, you gotta get it out of there. You gotta.

[Luke Burbank]

You know that if I do consume something from the mini bar, whether it's alcohol, which is pretty rare because I always think it's gonna be so expensive, but I have been known to, like, just get a hankering for some peanut M&M's or whatever it is. I never throw out the packaging for whatever I've consumed from the mini bar in the room. Because my hope is maybe they won't notice that I ate it. I'm not gonna lie to them. I'm not gonna say someone else ate it. But I am going to, like. I'm gonna try to increase the chances that maybe their accounting system is not as detail oriented as it could be. Like, I feel like if. Let's just say, like, I kill a couple of bags of sea salt potato chips and a thing of peanut butter, M&MS. And a diet Coke, as they call it, a fridge cigarette, a Diet Coke. I'm not throwing all of that stuff in the garbage can next to the mini bar. I am not leaving the evidence that close to where the crime happened. I'm gonna. I'm gonna throw it away in a garbage can in the elevator bank or something. So that'd be my first advice to this listener who's already done whatever it is she did or didn't do. But if it was me, that tint is maybe not even in the hotel at that point. That tint might get thrown out at a different hotel.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, absolutely. Or you know what you could do, Luke? Another option would be instead of trying to secret out the Eminem rapper, come with like a hundred empty M and M wrappers and just flood the zone.

[Luke Burbank]

Exactly.

[Andrew Walsh]

Throw them all away. Throw them all away in your room. And they'll just be like, where did this guy get. Create a whole different problem. Where did he get all these M&Ms? Now, moving on from that story, very briefly here, I want to tell you about a coincidence. This is originally what I wanted to mention at the top of today's show. We don't have to spend tons of time on this. It's just a little bit of trivia that blew me away. Especially you, who I just can't believe you don't believe in a God Yesterday on the show, we were talking about your wonderful experience watching the final game of the TBTL Junior Sluggers post season on Wednesday. And you were talking about how our pitcher, one of our pitchers on Wednesday, kind of reminded you of the kid from Dazed and Confused. Sort of tall with shoulder length straight hair, I believe.

[Luke Burbank]

Tall, rangy kid with long hair coming out from the baseball cap.

[Andrew Walsh]

And so I didn't remember that at the top of the or I do remember that when you mentioned it, I thought that there were some football field scenes in that movie. I'd forgotten about the baseball scene at the very beginning. And so I was delighted to be reminded of it. And in fact, it was such a beautiful shot as I watched it during the show that I used it as a photo for our show pick yesterday. It's that kid standing on the mound with his long hair. Not the Junior Slugger, the shot from Daisy. So not. Not Crosby. So anyway, the reason I bring it up is later in the day I saw somebody posting something about the anniversary of Dazed and Confused. Not the anniversary. Pardon me, I'm really Porky pigging it today in more ways than one. Not the anniversary of when the movie came out, but the anniversary of the year that the movie takes place, which of course was 1976. It's the 50th anniversary. That's. I'm turning 50. You just turned 50. And I remember feeling a connection to this movie because it did take place in my birth year, but then also came out when I was a teenager time. The first proper time to enjoy this movie. What I did not realize until listener Dana in Lexington, Kentucky pointed this out to me is dazing. Confused is one of those movies that begins with a title card that says a very specific day. Last day of school, May 28, 1976. Yesterday was May 28, 2026. We used a photo and did a mini accidental tribute to Daisy confused on the 50th anniversary of the day that that picture was being bullied by those kids with paddles.

[Luke Burbank]

All I can say is, wow, right?

[Andrew Walsh]

Did you know where I was going with that? Had you picked up on that later in the day? Yeah. Isn't that cool?

[Luke Burbank]

That is really crazy. Again, that does not. I know that's not the point of this conversation. It does not push me in the direction of thinking that there is a. A specific, you know, person in the sky who's ruling everything or whatever. But that is a weird coincidence of all of the days. Of all of the days that we could be talking about taste and confused. A movie that I. I saw in the theater when I was a kid. I. I think I enjoyed it. I did not enjoy it as much as a lot of people of my generation, which is. Sounds like, you know, I'm trying to be negative, and I'm not. It just like, I thought it was good, but I had a lot of friends who were, like, obsessed. I know we've talked about it in these terms before. You remember Ben Affleck is in that, too. A young.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. He's one of the kids in the scene. He's one of the bullies. Exactly. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

And Parker Posey, right?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yep. Parker Posey's in it. She says, wipe that. I think she. It almost feels like. It feels like a malpropism that they left in. She says she plays a bully as well. And she says something like, wipe that head off your face, you b. Or something along the lines of that. It always stuck in my head because it's both a cool line, but also, I swear she says it wrong. I could be. I could be misremembering that, though.

[Luke Burbank]

I wonder if. If that was one of those things where, you know, that happened unintentionally and they liked it and they left it in kind of.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. And of course, Matthew McConaughey is in it.

[Luke Burbank]

Who are the other boy, that really was. That really launched some careers, huh? Because that was famously. I think that was McConaughey's first role. Right. And in fact.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, really? Even I didn't know that.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. I don't even. I remember hearing a story about his audition for that. I don't think he had ever acted in anything before that.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh. Because I was even going to ask you. I'm like, oh, do we know for sure that that launched his career? Oh, Mila Jovovich was in it, too. I forgot about that. But that's right. They have that. Just that Texas connection, huh? Yeah. Right.

[Luke Burbank]

And that's like Richard Linkletter, right?

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, yeah, Sorry. We didn't even say link letters, name. But yeah, I was thinking about him and how, like. Yeah, he's a Texas guy through and through.

[Luke Burbank]

Dazed and Confused. What was Matthew McConaughey's first major movie? He achieved his breakthrough. This is not AI, by the way. It's Wikipedia. It's that old. It's that old, reliable, standby Wikipedia, which, as we human being commented upon, used to feel, like, sort of unverified and now is literally the written word of God compared to what the AI Is trying to do. He achieved his breakthrough with a Supporting performance in the coming of age comedy. Dazed and Confused. Yeah, I feel like I remember me trying to repeat it from memory is going to be pretty underwhelming for everyone. But I remember hearing him tell a story of getting that gig because, again, I don't think he was really an actor at the time. He's just vibing. I mean, really, it was. I mean, it was essentially like a sort of foreshadowing of what the dude's entire freaking existence would be, which was just one long vibe.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, maybe that's why he ended up in the movie. Right? Because maybe that was his existence before he was existing on camera.

[Listener/Caller]

Right.

[Luke Burbank]

I think. I mean, I literally think that was part of it. You know, what the story was. It was talking about him in the car, about to shoot the scene, and he had never shot a scene before. And it's, of course, a big Hollywood setup, even though Linklater is probably working on a somewhat indie budget still in those days, you know, you got these big, big old cameras and lights and probably feels like a lot of pressure, and I forget what exactly it was, but he told a very interesting story about just being in that car and maybe how he delivered the line, just thinking, oh, I think I know who this guy is. Like, I think he invented that sort of, all right, all right, all right. You know, kind of Wooderton vibe again, which is strikingly similar to his actual vibe. But anyway.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, no, that's interesting. I bet you heard that on Stern.

[Luke Burbank]

I. Probably not, because as I love to tell you, as I'll tell anyone who will listen, and as I sometimes turn down the radio in my own car to just say aloud to no one, howard Stern's an awful interviewer.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, you. That's right. You don't like the celebrity interviews. Although it is. I mean, he does sometimes.

[Luke Burbank]

I love him interviewing Underdog lady or Wendy the Slow Adult or any other person in what's called the whack Pack. He is great at interviewing people who are not celebrities. He is terrible at interviewing celebrities, in my opinion, and it makes me crazy. I'll be literally driving down the road listening to him interview someone famous, and I'll have to pause the tape to, again, just for my own sense of, I don't know, not going crazy out loud. Say what I'm saying to you right now, which is that he is a very bad interviewer because he is incapable of thinking, of understanding that anyone else has different experiences than he does. So 80% of his questions to the celebrity are, weren't you mad at your parents that they didn't, like, spend more money on acting lessons for you, and then the person's often going to. Well, it wasn't really like that. Or didn't you feel so jealous when. When your, you know, friends started to get famous and get booked in movies and you hadn't been booked? No, I was really happy for them, like, because those would be his feelings. And so he's asking these questions that are just about how he would have felt, and that's not usually how the other people feel. It just seems like such a simple one. It's just like he asked these very long questions, which is kind of a, you know, sort of interviewing 101. And, by the way, a rule that I tend to violate too much as well. But it's like, try to ask a question. Try not to ask three questions in the question you're asking. You know, just going on and on, just little things. And the reason it makes me crazy is because everybody who's on the show, like, who works on the show and everybody who comes on the show is always just, like, bowing down to him as, like, literally the greatest interviewer of all time. The reason he gets good interviews, a good outcome, is because everyone who comes on the show is ready to play ball. Like, nobody goes on the Howard Stern show thinking, well, this is going to be a straightforward regular interview. They're like, if you agree to go on that show, you are agreeing to really, really bare your soul, really be. Go with the flow, like. And so people come on in the exact right frame of mind, and then a good interview ends up happening. But I say in spite of Howard Stern, not because of him.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, let me ask you this.

[Luke Burbank]

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[Andrew Walsh]

Don't you get jealous when Howard Stern gets all the praise for interviewing these famous people?

[Luke Burbank]

You know, not so much that, but, I mean, the irony is, I think I probably am.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's funny, I knew that that wasn't your favorite part of the show, but I still thought that you would rather listen to McConaughey. And I guess I think I'm just wrong about this. I misremember. But I. I thought your attitude was, I'd rather listen to McConaughey probably talk to Stern than.

[Luke Burbank]

No, you're right.

[Andrew Walsh]

You're Allen or something. I mean, that's a. Yes. Extreme.

[Luke Burbank]

That. That rant from me was both incoherent and also misleading.

[Andrew Walsh]

No, it wasn't incoherent.

[Luke Burbank]

I know two of my favorite. Two my favorite ways to be. No, you're you're absolutely right. Like I would still rather hear these celebrities on Stern rather than somewhere else. A. It's a really long form interview. They can be there for hours. They really do tend to say interesting stuff. Again, I think just because of the overall environment and the expectation. So it's, yeah, it's much better than seeing them on a late night show or seeing them on Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen. By the way, did you see the. Now it's a little unfair because the Colbert finale had a massive tune in factor, right? But the drop off to the next night of Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen was, I think it was, I want to say it was a 95 drop off from Colbert Thursday night to Comics Unleashed on Friday night, the new show that is, that's replacing it. And by the way, I saw, I was, I was watching our pal Chris Hayes last night on television and, and then during Chris's show I saw an ad for comics Unleashed on CBS. Now I don't know if that was something Mississippi now sold or I watch Chris's show. I watch Ms. Now by way of YouTube TV and I, I pay like 100 bucks a month or something for YouTube TV. That's how I get my television programs except the baseball games. And so I don't know who, who Byron Allen was paying for that ad time, but it was funny to see an ad for. And it was like the clip they were using was just so bad. Just a comedian just clearly doing a very mediocre bit from their standup act. And then Byron Allen just like looking absolutely like cracked up by the entire experience, which is again, that's been that show for however many years it's been going on. It's so thoroughly unimaginative.

[Andrew Walsh]

You know, I told you that I watched the Colbert on the cable access show that he hosted literally the day after his CBS show was canceled. Only in Monroe was the name of the program that he was hosting. And I told you how I enjoyed it more than anything you would see on a late night, you know, major network late show because of just how weird it was. And also that there's a little bit more edge to his. Just not much, but just a little bit more edge like at the end when they literally just show a burning dumpster at the end of the show. There's some symbology there, but I didn't mention to you and I don't know if you happen to pick up on this in other media streams, but he did call Byron Allen during the show on his, on his speakerphone yeah. Which I thought was a nice little touch. It was his way, I think, of just reinforcing that. There's no hard feelings there, that Byron Allen didn't fire him.

[Luke Burbank]

Byron Allen didn't get him fired, exactly.

[Andrew Walsh]

What I kind of liked about it was. And I just wondered how much because again, that show that he did on cable access had the feel of being incredibly intimate. And they were literally doing it on the set of this cable access show, as we talked about in great detail on Monday. But what struck me though also was when he calls him on his phone, it really does appear that it's just Colbert pulling out his own personal phone. Because he flips it open and he's got. His credit cards are facing the camera now. You only see the very, very tips of the colors of them, you know, And I was sort of thinking, like, did they. They must have taken some extra time to say, well, show us your camera case slash wallet, make sure we don't have to Greek anything, or whatever the phrase would be in that. In that case. But, like, I was just like. But it's all like. I love the way it really just looks like. Because at one point he goes to use his phone and he asks. I don't know if it's. It's, you know, Siri or whatever. He asks the computer something, and the computer says, you must unlock me first. He's like, oh, okay. And then he like, does it, like. It really did seem like they weren't giving him a prop phone for this.

[Luke Burbank]

Here's the real question. What got more views? Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen on Friday night or only in what was the

[Andrew Walsh]

Name of the Town Again, Only in Monroe. And it's hard to count that because there were just a million, like, bootleg streams on YouTube that CBS kept taking down, even though it had nothing to do with cbs.

[Luke Burbank]

I would. I would argue. Well, certainly if you factor in, you know, definitely if you factor in, like just, you know, clicks and I guess, views of parts of that, you know, only in Monroe. I mean, I'm sure it, well, outpaced.

[Andrew Walsh]

It must have the.

[Luke Burbank]

And I'm sure, I mean, the Byron Allen thing. And by the way, that's a good reminder that like, like, I need to make sure that I don't transfer my frustration about Colbert being done dirty into just like, you know, I don't know, hating on Byron Allen. Byron Allen is just like a inoffensive, very rich, pretty savvy media executive, you know, who paid CBS a bunch of money so that he can, you know, Rent the time in the late evening on cbs. He didn't do anything wrong. He didn't get Colbert fired. And I. But it's very easy for me to transfer my frustration around the Colbert thing into just like a white hot burning annoyance with Byron Allen. Yeah.

[Andrew Walsh]

Which is kind of fair though, because you're, you're mad at the whole situation and what it represents and what who appears to be sort of like kind of winning is too strong of a word. But who's. Who comes out on top after this. Just absolute. You know what they should do? They should get 60 minutes to do an investigative piece into what happened with Sharon Alfonso. Oh, I have some bad news for you, by the way.

[Luke Burbank]

85%. That was the ratings drop.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay.

[Luke Burbank]

Wow. Thursday to Friday. And I don't see it, I don't really, I don't know, I don't see it going up much. I mean, presumably, actually, if you think about it, that should have been the high point for Byron Allen's show, really. Because there might be people that didn't know Colbert wasn't on. Can you imagine being the person who watches Colbert sometimes but somehow didn't get the memo? And you turn it on Friday looking for it. It's not there.

[Andrew Walsh]

Must be filling in.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah.

[Listener/Caller]

Right.

[Luke Burbank]

So like presumably that Friday night is the high watermark for comics unleashed in the ratings department because you had a curiosity factor. You had maybe some people that just didn't realize there wasn't going to be a Colbert episode. Whatever it is, it's like that's the debut that's going to be what gets the attention. So it's probably only going to be worse from there.

[Andrew Walsh]

Can I ask you a question? This is a dumb question, I think, but Colbert definitely did a Friday show, right. These late shows don't go Monday through Thursday. That was just a Conan thing.

[Luke Burbank]

I think that was just. That's just a Fallon thing or a Fallon.

[Andrew Walsh]

I think Monday.

[Luke Burbank]

I think NBC only does Monday through. Only does Monday through Thursday. That was part of that round of like belt tightening with all of these shows. Like Seth Meyers, like Lost his band, maybe. Okay, so there was like no live band for Seth Meyers. And then Jimmy went to. Jimmy Fallon went to four nights. I think Kimmel seems to have. I think maybe he's always been four nights.

[Andrew Walsh]

I don't know, tb. Was it TBS that he was on? I think that was a four night deal too. I think maybe. Was it tbs?

[Luke Burbank]

Yes. What happened with that? So he got the Late show. I mean, he got the. He Got the slot from Jay Leno, and then Jay Leno took it back and then he went to tbs and he was doing a nightly show on TBS too, then. Did it go weekly at some point?

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, did it end up dropping to weekly? I don't know.

[Luke Burbank]

I feel like I lose track a little bit of like the sort of this sort of denouement of Conan's TV career.

[Andrew Walsh]

It originally aired Monday through Thursday at 11 on TBS, and it was just called Conan There. Oh, 11 seasons. I don't know if it ever dropped once longer than pbs. That's what it said.

[Luke Burbank]

That feels like, you know, the. The funny part is like, that feels like, oh, Conan on tbs, not wearing a suit, but wearing like a collared shirt and a tie and like a jacket. I was like, oh, that's like, that's really like new Conan. No, since then, he's launched an entirely different media empire that's probably been around

[Andrew Walsh]

for 15 years, right?

[Luke Burbank]

Team Coco.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Like, he's on career arc. Like number seven or eight doesn't appear to be slowing down. Did you see he gave the Harvard acceptance speech?

[Andrew Walsh]

No Harvard guy. The graduation.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, the graduation speech at Harvard.

[Andrew Walsh]

No, I did not see that, but that's great. That's always a good get, I would think.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. And he, I believe he said that he was joining the Trump administration's lawsuit against Harvard, but his was about, like, how uncomfortable the bed was in the dorm that he first bunked in. I also saw Jimmy Kimmel, so Adam Carolla one time. I don't know if I'd call him friend of the show, but certainly somebody who I really admired back in the day, I was such a fan of his work. And when we went to just being a podcast on the first day of tbtl, being a podcast only product, I believe Adam Crolla was our guest because I think I leaned on our friend Bean Baxter to give me his number or something. But anyway, he got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And of course, he and Jimmy Kimmel have been friends for years, but their politics have really, really diverged. And, you know, Kimmel's sort of the number one tormentor of the President. And Kroll has definitely become, you know, pretty right wing.

[Andrew Walsh]

Has he? I kind of didn't fully realize that I would listen to him, literally when I was in LA, which was 10 years ago now, I was listening to a lot of Kevin and Bean, and I was like, oh, yeah. The more I sort of kind of drift to the left or whatever, Carolla was less and less Palatable to me. And I was never a big, you know, that, that, that literal man show vibe. That, that idea of manliness or masculinity has never been my thing. But I remember cringing a little bit when I was in LA listening to that. And again, that was 10 years ago. But I thought that he was just sort of like always. Well, I just sort of tell it how it is. He's actually kind of more in line with. With ideas that you and I would detest.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. And it's one of those. Again, it's been a drift for him as well. I was never into the man show. I never understood the appeal of that. What I loved was loveliness.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

And first it was the TV show version on MTV that I would watch with him and Dr. Drew. And then I realized, oh, no, this is actually a radio show. And so I got really obsessed with the radio show because it was, you know, I thought it was great. Was call in radio for two hours late at night with an addiction medicine specialist and a wise cracking former roofer.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

It was very much for me and

[Andrew Walsh]

somebody and people calling in to tell like, kind of secrets and, you know, the titillation factor. You got to acknowledge that, like, yeah,

[Luke Burbank]

it was such a great radio show, I thought. But. But yeah, so it started with him just being kind of like, look, I just call it as I see it. And can everybody just stop with the fill in the blank? But then what tends to happen is as the sort of polite society or the kind of more left society starts to call you out online or whatever, you're gonna go towards the group of people that are more embracing you. And so that's the Greg Gutfelds of the world. The kind of Fox News, you know, having Corolla on Dennis Prager. He's really big with this guy, Dennis Prager, who's like a. I don't even know how I describe him as like a conservative talk radio host, but also kind of thinks of himself as being quite the scholar and has something called like Prager University. So they would go around doing these, like, these presentations that were supposed to be. I have a feeling they're like, you know, pitched as like, well, here's what the Constitution really says about this. Or they don't know, just like trying to somehow like formalize or make academic what is basically a political argument.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. And talk down to you. Who was the. Who was the king of that? They called him like the professor or something like that. Not.

[Luke Burbank]

You don't mean Tom Lycus. No, Limbaugh his nickname was the Professor.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, then, then maybe it wasn't the professor, but there was. Oh God, he was like the biggest name in right wing television in the Fox News era of more like 20 years ago now.

[Luke Burbank]

Bill O'Reilly.

[Andrew Walsh]

O'Reilly. He was always like that.

[Luke Burbank]

He was always writing these like history books like Killing Lincoln.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. And he had eight easy steps to kill your Lincoln. No, but he, and he had a section on his.

[Luke Burbank]

To get a loofah.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. And he had like, he, like, he would very be like, I am presenting this to you in this scholarly way. And he had a section on it or a segment on his TV show that was very much like the academic corner or something like that.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, well, anyway, Adam Carolla got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Jimmy Kimmel was the one who sort of like did the speech and which was great. I mean, because he said, look, we have been friends for years, our politics do not align at all. But I love Adam. I'm so happy, I'm so proud of him. And of course, because he's Jimmy Kimmel, he gets choked up talking about his buddy, but then he just proceeds to just roast. Adam Crowley goes, the irony is Adam has been shitting on California for years. He's been threatening to leave this state. Wait, he said he was waiting until his kids would graduate high school to leave the state of California. His kids are in their 30s now. He's just like, he's just, just absolutely roasting Corolla as he's getting his star on the Hollywood. He goes, you know, I'm just so proud of you for getting the star in front of this on Hollywood Boulevard, in front of this bombed out bank that hasn't been here for 12 years. Because I know this. Well, I stay in this part of LA a lot. It's like Hollywood is really the end of the rainbow. You know, it's like, it's pretty, the idea that like the, the Walk of Fame, your star could be next to a vape shop.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially now they're expanding further and further out and of course there is the consideration of, you know, your fame as to where your star ends up. Right.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. But I just like, I like, I mean, I, I guess I do like that they're still friends. I wish Adam Corolla's politics were a bit different. Obviously I like that they, that, that they're still friends through that. And I like also that Jimmy Kimmel's making fun of him. Yeah, we was hoping for some razzle dazzle Razzle dazzle. That's right, man. Razzle dazzle.

[Andrew Walsh]

On your mark.

[Luke Burbank]

On your mark.

[Andrew Walsh]

Get set, get set now. Ready, ready, go, everybody.

[Luke Burbank]

Razzle dazzle. All right, let's thank some dazzling donors until we get our stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

[Andrew Walsh]

You don't have one yet?

[Luke Burbank]

I etched my name over Lorna Luft. Felt like it was the easiest one to do.

[Andrew Walsh]

Who's Lorna Luft?

[Luke Burbank]

Some old 20s Hollywood star. I think that came to mind. I don't even know if she has a star on there. We don't have that sweet, sweet Hollywood Walk of Fame money. So we have to rely on donors. And thank goodness we've got them. We've got folks like Amy and Brett in Seattle, Washington. No last name.

[Andrew Walsh]

It was this on me.

[Luke Burbank]

I don't know.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's a good Amy.

[Luke Burbank]

Pronounced Amy and Brett. Yeah, she and him, respectively. We know a lot about their pronouns.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

And the pronunciation.

[Andrew Walsh]

But no, I don't know. Yeah, I think it's.

[Luke Burbank]

Maybe they're like, you know, Sonny and Cher. Maybe they're just first name people and I love that for them.

[Andrew Walsh]

I want to talk to you about some of your songs, like the one about Native Americans and the one about the Roma people. Doesn't Cher have, like, actually two songs that you're kind of like, ooh, those didn't.

[Luke Burbank]

You know. I'd never thought about that. Yeah, I think she has one that's like Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves and one called, like, Half Breed. I wonder what's wrong with Half Breed. Can't think of anything wrong with it.

[Andrew Walsh]

I like the way I was song

[Luke Burbank]

with a name like that.

[Andrew Walsh]

I was gently trying to reference it. I mean, but I do think that those are the songs. I think you're right. I had forgotten that. I didn't. Oh, my goodness gracious.

[Luke Burbank]

It's funny because somehow worse than I remember, I didn't. I don't remember. You know, I don't have strong feelings one way or the other on Cher, but I don't have her in my mind as like, oh, yeah, that. That artist who did all of that regrettable stuff. I don't think of her the way I think of like, Al Jolson or somebody who would say blackface, but that's pretty bad.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. I don't know why my brain just went there. I'm sorry. I think I was just trying to keep the hacky. The proverbial hack. I like the way we've been talking about the proverbial hacky sack on the show the conversational hacky sack for years. And now hacky sacking, as you pointed out, is back in the culture and we might be literally and figuratively hacky sacking soon.

[Luke Burbank]

Absolutely. Can't wait to do that for the thon this year. Speaking of the Thawne, that's how we get folks to do a dazzling donation of dough like Amy and Brett no last name are doing. They say, hey, gang, thank you for another year of excellent daily content for our ears. My wife and TBTL progenitor Amy and I, we're delighted that we could go dazzling again this year with our fives. Rockwell, he of the Murder She Wrote piano playing, and his brother Mack of all things D and D. These are our U district.

[Andrew Walsh]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Support your local movie enterprise for us in Seattle. We are members of SIF as well as the Grand Illusion Cinema who are moving and having pop ups until they find their new home. Grandillusioncinema.org Some of my very favorite movie going experiences in my life. Andrew at the Grand Illusion Cinema.

[Andrew Walsh]

I regret never going to their old space. I pass it all the time and always thought, when is the day you're gonna darken that door?

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, it was a very cool thing. But they're still, you know, they're still doing stuff, they're still doing pop ups. So if you like, you know, cinema, interesting cinema and interesting people, you know, playing interesting cinema for folks. Definitely. Check out grandillusioncinema.org do you love physical media like we do? Scarecrow Video is still out in these streets as a nonprofit with Ken Jennings on the board. You know, Ken Jennings and I went to Scarecrow to film some B roll for my TV story about him. I don't know if we used it or not, but I know I ended up buying like four or five DVDs.

[Andrew Walsh]

Did you?

[Luke Burbank]

Because, yeah, I can't. I mean, I can't be around cool DVDs like the original Odd Couple, which I believe was One of the DVDs I bought Jack Lemmon in Walter Mathau.

[Andrew Walsh]

And when you say bought, they were ones that they had rented out. So they were used and you were buying the used media or do they sell new media there?

[Luke Burbank]

They sell new as well. In fact, I. You know what? I should know this. If it's mostly rental or mostly new media these days, there I don't know. I bought some.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's a big rental place. Viv's. Viv's, well, up until recently was renting a lot of stuff from there. She would shoot because she was Watching that war movie podcast that Roderick and the boys.

[Luke Burbank]

Speaking of Ken Jennings. Well, he's not Ken Jennings isn't on

[Andrew Walsh]

that one, but yeah, he's on Roderick's other one. Or used to. Now it's just Roderick in a rotating group of people, including one of our listeners. Did we talk about that? Yeah. Remember we were talking about Paul Saul from Britain the other day? Yeah. We were like, is he still listening to the show? He wrote back to us and said, yeah, I'm still listening. And by the way, I was Roderick's co host on Omnibus recently.

[Luke Burbank]

On Omnibus.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Because remember, because Ken Jen isn't hosting Omnibus anymore.

[Luke Burbank]

I didn't realize that. I mean, he's got a pretty busy schedule with the jep, I guess.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. So for the past year or so, I remember somebody saying, hey, you guys should connect with Roderick or something and get on that show. Which I did full court press on. You know me well, Luke, I was like you. I Rodrick, I am your man. I want to be.

[Luke Burbank]

You said, I'll be your huckleberry.

[Andrew Walsh]

I said, I want to be more exposed. And so anyway, no, but I. So I did know that he was sort of like inviting people on to host, but I did not know one of our long, long time listeners was good for Paul.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, that's really awesome.

[Emily from Kirkland]

Awesome.

[Luke Burbank]

Back to Scarecrow. Scarecrow is out in these streets as a nonprofit slanging tapes and DVDs and Blu Rays and laserdiscs by mail as well. So you don't have to live in Seattle to get stuff from Scarecrow Video, which, by the way, we just assumed everyone knew what we were talking about. It's a very cool place in Seattle that has for rent and sale DVDs and things like that that has been around forever and ever and is almost always been like about to close.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

For the last 20 years and have always somehow been saved at the last minute because there's so much community love and appreciation. It's scarecrow.org if you'd like to check them out and you're not in the Seattle area. What to do is so important. Your U District Tens, Amy and Brett, Senior NETI Pot correspondent.

[Andrew Walsh]

Nice.

[Luke Burbank]

I got to get back into that. My allergies have been. Have been really flaring up in the last couple of weeks. And the sweet, sweet cleansing properties of a little saline water and a Neti pot. That's a great. Have you done that? Have we talked about that? No, I know we talked about Neti Pots, but you've never actually Done it.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, we talked about it a lot and I believe that's how Brett earned his stripes. Well, I guess. Did he earn it? His self appointed senior neti pot correspondent title? I'll accept it. Yeah, I totally accept it. I mean, if the check cashes, I'll accept anything. Luke. Absolutely. But that's not a gas or ass.

[Luke Burbank]

Nobody writes for free. That's what Andrew always says off air to me right before we start the show.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm not a bumper sticker kind of guy, but there would be something so hilarious if that was the one bumper sticker on my car. Because I do think it's so funny in like a kind of a dazed and Confused, like, just antiquated kind of way. There's also a bumper sticker on an old van kind of in my neighborhood that I pass all the time. That's on the way to sars. It's on the way to the Twisted Tea District. It says earth first. We'll destroy the other planets later. And I just think it's such a good bumper sticker because it really looks like it's from like 1983, as is the van, sort of. I don't know what we're talking. Oh. But anyway, yeah, no, neti pots doesn't appeal to me. The thought of like sort of waterboarding myself in that way does not sound.

[Luke Burbank]

It's so soothing once you get over the waterboarding factor. Yeah, it is like. It is just the best feeling to really fully clean everything out. Anyway, thank you Amy and Brett and the kids. We appreciate you. Maestro.

[Andrew Walsh]

On your mark.

[Luke Burbank]

On your mark.

[Andrew Walsh]

Get set now. Ready, Ready, go. Everybody ready? Can I tell you about another bumper sticker that lives very nearby that bumper sticker, which I guess is problematic because I took a photo of it and I put. Posted it to Instagram. I gotta say, it made me laugh, but I guess context is everything. It's on the back of like a really old, like I'm gonna say 1980s era red pickup truck that has seen better days. You know, it's not totally dilapidated, but it's just like a truck, like the kind of trucks I grew up with out in the country. And it's got a bumper sticker that says it's called tourist season, but we still can't shoot them or something like that. And I see that, and that to me is just. Maybe it's just my, my generation and where I grew up. But like, it didn't occur to me that that would be problematic until I took a photo of it and put it on Instagram. And at least several people were kind of like, that's not, you know, that they weren't criticizing me, but just being like, oh, that's not cool. Assuming that I was putting it up there in sort of a critical way when I just thought it was sort of funny.

[Luke Burbank]

I mean, I don't know. I. It just seems to me like we. We. Nobody's advocating for the hunting of tourists, obviously. I feel like that's. I. I feel like that's an okay joke. Like, we did that. That doesn't seem like a real threat.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm not putting it. I'm not putting it on my truck from the 80s, though.

[Luke Burbank]

You know who we're thanking right now? It's our friend Colleen Peterson in St. Paul, Minnesota.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, Colleen.

[Luke Burbank]

Another very recognizable name around the show and a friend of the show for years and years and years and years and years. Colleen says, how do you do, fellow tens? It's been a tough year with science and public health, gutted ice, losing one of our pups to cancer, and whatever has probably happened in the last few days. So Colleen, understanding that by the time this gets to us and gets read on the air, God knows what will have happened. Practicing gratitude has helped me through this darkest of timelines. So here goes. Number one, I'm grateful to marsupial Gurgle for enabling me to use Andrew's oh, shit, things are hard. Drop as an alarm sounds.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, geez, Colleen.

[Luke Burbank]

I guess whatever is working for you, but that would. That would just stress me out so much more and, you know, peace and love. Andrew. Anybody saying, oh, things are hard, but maybe it's one of those things that. Well, let's see. Colleen says it makes whatever I have to do feel a lot more manageable. I was going to say maybe it's one of the things that gets you out of bed because you've got to cross the room to your phone and get it to stop, and you're saying, things are hard.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm looking for this drop. I think you have it, right? I have it. But the weird thing is when I type in, oh, you'd be shocked at how many times I utter that word on the show. There's just drop after dropped. Oh, things are hard. You're like, whoa, whoa.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, I had to grab it quickly, so, yeah, 45 drops behind it.

[Andrew Walsh]

I appreciate it.

[Luke Burbank]

Colleen says, like, this podcart and community reminds me that we're in this together and we can do hard things. Number two, I'm grateful to all Minnesotans showing as John Green Said we don't need a them to be a strong us. I see. We don't need a them to be a strong us. In other words, defining our in group by making someone else the out group is not necessary. I was actually listening to a really interesting interview that Ezra Klein did this week with the guy that wrote that book, Sapiens. And he's a kind of a. He's a. Well, he's a thinker on a lot of things. But he was talking about the idea of nationalism and how basically nationalism has been really kind of corrupted in this country and other places, because instead of the idea of nationalism being a good thing, he was saying, look, nationalism when it's positive is pretty cool because what it says is, I care about everybody in this country, even though I will never meet 99% of them. Most people talking Longview, 40,000 people, I will not meet most of them. Them. But I also would like my taxes to help people who are unhoused or who need medical care or whatever. Like, I have a sense of, like, being in it with people in this country because we're Americans, you know, we're all in this together, and that's the positive side. And you don't actually, by necessity, have to hate people who are outside the country to love people who are inside the country. And unfortunately, we have it totally inverted where it's about hating everyone else as the way of bonding with. With the people that you are sticking up for in your mind. And it doesn't have to be that way. Right.

[Andrew Walsh]

But I guess for me, I guess I never understood, though, the. But why would I care about somebody in, let's just say, South Carolina who's suffering more than I would care about somebody who's in Nepal suffering? You know what I mean? Why wouldn't I feel the same and want the best for them, no matter whether or not they were in my particular border or not?

[Luke Burbank]

I mean, I guess you're right. I guess that's a point. I mean, that raises the question, like, should we have a country then? You know?

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, I think there are practical reasons you're right. Like, you can't have. I mean, as much as, you know, all of our Facebook uncles want to warn us about it, we can't have one world tax. I assume that would be pretty hard to. That'd be pretty hard to manage.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. I mean, I guess that does operate from the premise that it's good to have a nation for some reason.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. No, I mean, there's a difference between having a nation and nationalism. I think, you know, I'm not arguing to eliminate all borders and have One World government. I believe that is Alaska's catchphrase, not mine. Right. Fly, Alaska. One World Government. New World order. What is their thing?

[Luke Burbank]

The One World Alliance.

[Andrew Walsh]

The One World Alliance. There, we got there. But I mean, there's practical reasons why you need local government, why you need state government, why you need regional and national government. But the idea of nationalism, the idea of feeling like I think of nationalism more as being. And again, whoever you're quoting obviously is more than a million times smarter than me. I'm just reacting to how I think about it to maybe get to find out why I'm wrong. But to me, nationalism has always been more associated with sort of the symbols of your particular country or nation. The flag, the eagle, these things that we rally around. That, to me don't mean as much.

[Luke Burbank]

Right. I think the word has been very corrupted, and in our lifetime, it's never been used in a way that wasn't sort of describing that behavior. I guess what I would say is it is harder for me. I'm not saying it should be, but it is harder for me to consider on a daily basis the needs of someone in Nepal versus the needs of someone even in South Carolina. And so to the degree that my behaviors. I mean, yes, if I was a better world citizen, I would think about it all equally. But I do think about the priority of an American who is suffering to some degree. Again, maybe not intentionally, but just reflexively so. I guess the argument could be if, realistically, people are not going to be able to hold the entire world in their heart, at least they could hold the people in the place they're from in their heart. In the interest of trying to help people who need help, maybe that could be an argument for it, that the global one is hard for people to maintain, but maybe the one that is based around a nation could be maintained. But again, the problem is it goes sideways pretty quickly when. When you're doing that. So

[Andrew Walsh]

the.

[Luke Burbank]

The thing that John Green says, that's in Colleen's message, we don't need a them to be a strong us as ISIS damage continue to reverberate, consider funding. Good [e-mail] number three. I am so grateful to my friend and newly minted 10, Renee Heck. Yeah, Renee, welcome. I assume Renee has started listening in the last, what, 15 years? Newly minted 10, right.

[Andrew Walsh]

Missed the radio.

[Luke Burbank]

Started listening in 1986. For all her kindness, especially the cross stitch she made on a lighter Note. Could you explain the origin of the drop? Trees? They're all around us.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

But who gives a bleep? Andrew.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, sorry, I did not read ahead in there, so I don't have in front of me, but I can play it. You got it right there. This is from. Should I play the beeped version? Have we already. We've already sworn once, right? On this show.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, I said ass.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay, well, let's just do the freeze. They're all around us, but who gives a shit? That is from. It makes me laugh so hard. I don't usually pull drops that have just a blatant curse word in it. But that's just from the Onion. It was from some sort of Onion TV feature or it might have been click Hole, but I'm pretty sure it was like Onion TV and it was some news report about trees. They're all around us. Trees.

[Luke Burbank]

They're all around us.

[Andrew Walsh]

But who gives a. It's also funny hearing the beep in it as well. I don't even know which is my favorite.

[Luke Burbank]

I'm pretty excited I've been telling you this off air, Andrew. I don't know if I've mentioned it on air yet, but speaking of the Onion, I. And I'm going to be doing a TV story about the Onions takeover of Infowars.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Which is, you know, I'm. And I'm going to be in a couple of weeks going down to interview Tim Heidecker about that and I guess maybe watch them do Office Hours Live. And I already feel myself, this is going to be weeks of content because I am not usually nervous about who I'm going to talk to or already like in my head about what my vibe is going to be. And I am deeply in my head about what my vibe is going to be because I'm just such an admirer of Tim Heidecker's comedy over the years.

[Andrew Walsh]

You're admirer, but he's also. I feel like you have some kind of confusion about what the real Heidecker is. It's been a conversation on the show for years and years with. And so I think that adds a layer to this that is especially interesting because I think you're a fan of his, but you're also in awe of him. And I think you're also just a little bit confused by where the real Heidecker begins and where some of these characters end.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. And he's been doing more interviews where he's, you know, he's just being himself. And I've been Watching them to try to get a sense of what his actual vibe is. You know what? Because again, he plays so many characters that are so in ways nuanced where you're kind of not sure, you know, how much is the joke, how much is just really him. Again, that show Office Hours Live, which I pretty much see a clip of that, you know, almost every day. I haven't. I don't watch the entire show, but I watch a lot of it, including clip form. But anyway, so yeah, the Onion, I'm going to be. And we're going to meet the guy who is the CEO of the Onion too, and stuff. So I'm kind of excited about that. But anyway, can I play Colleen?

[Andrew Walsh]

Can I play one more piece of tape? I think Colleen would like to hear this because it just sort of seems like this is going to be in the spirit of what some of the things she's hitting on here. In gratitude. I looked up trees in my audio file and I had three files. One that says trees bleeped, one that says trees unbleeped. And then a one minute file that I grabbed from the podcast the Slowdown. Do you remember the podcast the Slowdown?

[Luke Burbank]

Who can forget? It was all our advertising money.

[Andrew Walsh]

Did they do a lot of cross promotions for tbtl? I can't remember. I know we promoted them on American Public Media. Anyway, I can't remember what era this was and I don't think this was an actual poem on the Slowdown. The Slowdown was a short form podcast. I don't know if it's still around or not. Produced by American Public Media in partnership with some other groups and I think the Library association or not library, but Poetry Association. And anyway, I remember there was this One Minute Foundation. That's what it was. And there was something that somebody, I believe the host was talking about trees. This was like the introduction, I believe, to the poem they're about to read. And I believe that this was. This is from many years ago. And I just see it here and I'm curious and I think, I mean, this could be a total mistake, me playing this, but let's give it 60 seconds of our time.

[Narrator/Poetry Reader]

Some experts, like German forester Peter Vuhleben, believe that trees have intelligence, emotions and even ways of communicating that are more like ours than you might expect. Listen to this description of tree life from an article about Vuhleben's research that appeared last spring in Smithsonian Magazine. Wise old mother trees feed their saplings with liquid sugar and warn the neighbors when danger approaches. Reckless youngsters take foolhardy risks with leaf shedding, light chasing and excessive drinking and usually pay with their lives. Crown princes wait for the old monarchs to fall so they can take their place in the full glory of sunlight. It's all happening in the ultra slow motion that is tree time so that what we see is a freeze frame of the action.

[Andrew Walsh]

I still love that.

[Luke Burbank]

Did you pull that just so you would have it? Did we play it on this show?

[Andrew Walsh]

I don't know if I ever played that before. I think it just.

[Luke Burbank]

Beautiful.

[Andrew Walsh]

I think it just really spoke to me somehow, or didn't really speak to me. I think it just, like, made me think about. I think it just made me think in a way I'd never thought before.

[Luke Burbank]

Absolutely. If we're doing tree poetry, can I just read you one real quick?

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, yes. I'm so glad that you have something. Thank you. Because I felt embarrassed playing that. I thought you were going to be over there being like, what the hell are we doing?

[Luke Burbank]

No, you saw me leave the frame I was pulling. I have this poem by Mary Oliver pinned up in the studio. Okay.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

What you got? When I'm. When I Am among the Trees by Mary Oliver. When I am among the trees, especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beach, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me. And daily I am so distant, Distant from the hope of myself in which.

[Andrew Walsh]

As soon as you said you were going to read a poem, I was ready. I knew this was like, oh, buddy,

[Listener/Caller]

why am I doing?

[Andrew Walsh]

What are you doing?

[Luke Burbank]

I am so distant from the hope of myself in which I have goodness and discernment and never hurry through the world and walk slowly and bow often around me. The trees stir in their leaves and call out, stay a while. The light flows from their branches and they call again. It's simple, they say, and you too have come into the world. You two have come, come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light and to shine. Big weekend plans?

[Andrew Walsh]

Big weekend. The biggest one I've ever had.

[Luke Burbank]

In what universe did I think I was gonna get through that?

[Andrew Walsh]

And by the way, he. It's like a. It's not even really a printout. It's like. It looks like a photocopy of a book of poetry or something. It's so.

[Luke Burbank]

It's so, like, yellowed by time.

[Andrew Walsh]

I mean, do you know the irony of you saying big weekend? I was like. If he asks me this, I think the Only thing I'm gonna be. This is a true story. Starting the show today. I guess my only big weekend plans are trimming the hedges. I'm sorry, Trees. We just gave a tearful tribute to trees. And my big weekend plans are going to be taking a saw to them. But they need it to grow.

[Luke Burbank]

They need it. Exactly. That's good for them. I mean, the irony, too, is that this all started because we played the onion drop trees and it turns out, me a lot to too much.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, man. Well, thank you. Thank you, Colleen.

[Luke Burbank]

Sorry, everybody. That was more emotionally intense than we needed it to be. Again, I have only myself to blame. Like, I know how I am. I'm not gonna be able to read that poem and not get the way that I got. But I think we can.

[Andrew Walsh]

Remember I told you that. I think it was a little bit. Not a big deal, but it was a little deal on this show. I think that I was going to read a poem at my friend's wedding. Two friends of mine got married a couple of years ago, and it was right after Covid or is really at the tail end of COVID But it was enough that you could have a wedding, you know, a proper wedding. But I remember we were masked up Vermont or something. No, no, this was right here in Ballard. And it was a beautiful wedding. Yeah, I wouldn't argue that. Anyway, and I read this poem, and the poem was like, you know, it was about love, as you might expect at a wedding. And I practiced it, and it was a beautiful poem. I was wor. I was nervous just about getting up in front of people and reading this. And I think what happened was I was so nervous. I think I was worried about getting emotional reading it, if I recall. But what happened was I was also. It was a kind of an emotional poem, but also I was so nervous, and I was trying to read it in a calm voice, but it's. I was so herky. Jerky in my reading of it. And I think that everybody assembled at the small outdoor wedding thought I was getting very emotional about it, but I was actually just very nervous about it and was kind of speaking very slowly and deliberately but haltingly, I think. And it's not the best memory for me. It was one of those times where I got so nervous that I had a real bad stomachache afterwards. And I was trying to socialize.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, I remember that part of the story.

[Andrew Walsh]

And I remember, like, trying to socialize, but also not bring up the fact that I read this poem while I'm meeting new people and These people are all younger and way more beautiful than me and everything. And anyway, I have a fond memory that was one of the last weddings I went to. It was incredibly beautiful wedding. Incredibly beautiful. And I will tell you this. My friend's marriage did not last one year. And it was a real bummer because they'd been together almost their entire lives until they got married. And I don't think they would ever hear this, but it bums me out that I embarrassed myself for a marriage that didn't last an entire year. It is such.

[Luke Burbank]

I thought you were gonna say the reading of the poem or the less than stellar reading may have been what led the marriage to not work.

[Andrew Walsh]

It is such an incredibly selfish take by me. It is so unbelievably selfish. Cause I love both of these people very much and I loved their relationship together and I still care about both of them very, very much. But there is a little piece of me that when I think about me literally trembling, holding the sheet of paper in front of an assembled group of really cool, really beautiful people who most of whom I do not know, and feeling the way I felt during and after, and being like, you couldn't make it a year, like just one year for my efforts. Come on.

[Luke Burbank]

On. It's funny because sometimes people will be like, wow, I got them a really nice gift, you know? And when the marriage doesn't last, it's like, I wonder who got that food processor that I was. I was strong armed into buying. You don't care about that. You just. Why did I have to read a poem in public?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes. Yes, exactly. And I. Yeah. And. Well, I don't want to say too much about my friend's personal situation, but let's just say that I don't. I don't think the fault here was

[Luke Burbank]

saying that for my third marriage, you don't want. You're not up for reading a poem?

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, I'll read a poem. I'll read any limerick you give me.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, my. My weekend plans are. Well, first tonight I've got to do Livewire at the Reaser. And then I have to get up at like the crack of dawn tomorrow to fly to Las Vegas where I'll be doing interviews at this thing called CrimeCon, which is like a get together of true crime. I'm trying to not call them enthusiasts because maybe they're. They're interested in it. And I think part of the whole story is like, why would you be interested in it? And, you know, these kind of sad stories of things and the More people that I'm interviewing about it, the more they're like, well, that's actually not. I don't get excited about bad things happening to people. It's. I'm interested in it because I don't want it to happen to me or because I want to try to help solve some of these unsolved things or whatever. But I'm going to be in Las Vegas this weekend doing that. And then I'm going to Houston because I'm working on a TV story about Viet Cajun cooking, which is a kind of a fusion that started here in the States between Vietnamese food and Cajun cooking down in, like, Louisiana and Houston and places like that. So I'm going to be eating good in the neighborhood next week, although I think I'm going to have to very much relax my no eating animals status. I have a feeling that the food that's going to be put in front of me is going to. Well, it's a lot of actually seafood. It's a lot of shrimp and stuff. So maybe I'll be able to mostly stay off of the.

[Andrew Walsh]

The.

[Luke Burbank]

The red meats. But anyway.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hey, shrimp. Anyway, that feelings.

[Luke Burbank]

What's that?

[Andrew Walsh]

I said shrimp have feelings. They do, they do.

[Luke Burbank]

As my buddy Wes will never let me forget.

[Andrew Walsh]

It was just so funny when you said, Wes wrote to me the other day. Yeah. What do you want to say? That shrimp have feelings. I'm not laughing at him or you or the shrimp or anybody. It was just a. It was just a funny exchange that sort of lives in my head a little bit.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I know. Yeah. I was like, ah, dang it, Wes, let me. Me. Let me have the shrimp, please. But I don't know.

[Andrew Walsh]

All right, well, let's get out of here then.

[Luke Burbank]

All right, Elite, that's gonna do it for today's episode, and that's gonna bring us to the end of our broadcast week. Sorry, we didn't get to the. We didn't get to the. The youth of America umpires. Maybe we'll talk about that on Monday. And I know we've also got a. Some. A voicemail from listener Lisa about some legal trubs that we want to get to, too, on Monday, hopefully, as well. So thank you, everyone, for spending this time with us this week. We really appreciate it. We will be back here on Monday with more imaginary radio for all of you. I will be in, I think, Las Vegas still, so we'll be checking in from there. In the meantime, have a great Friday, everybody. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

[Andrew Walsh]

And good luck to all. Power out.