#4337 "I Believe I Proved That With Centaur Mountain"

Summary

Podcast Summary: TBTL Episode #4337 "I Believe I Proved That With Centaur Mountain"

Release Date: November 14, 2024

Hosts: Luke Burbank and Andrew Walsh

---

1. Opening Health Banter (00:00 - 02:36)

The episode begins with Luke and Andrew engaging in a humorous exchange of standard medical questions, highlighting their playful dynamic. Andrew expresses discomfort with the relevance of certain questions, leading to a lighthearted debate about privacy and personal space.

Notable Quote:

• Andrew Walsh (00:22): "It's kind of private how often I go to the bathroom. Yeah, but I'm not some strand. We're not on a bus. I'm a doctor. I'm normal."

---

2. Infowars Acquisition by The Onion (02:36 - 03:34)

Luke introduces a significant news topic: The Onion's unexpected acquisition of Infowars.com and its studios. He expresses skepticism about the motives behind the acquisition and hints at potential interviews or discussions with key figures involved.

Notable Quote:

• Luke Burbank (02:36): "We’re going to talk to this guy. Longest running cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships."

---

3. Graphic Design Endeavors: "Beaker's Honey" Logo (03:34 - 13:15)

Andrew shares his journey into learning Adobe Illustrator to create a logo for a fictional company, "Beaker's Honey," as part of an assignment from a tutorial he undertook. The discussion delves into his creative process, choosing a centaur as the branding animal, and the challenges of transitioning from Photoshop to Illustrator.

Notable Quotes:

• Andrew Walsh (07:08): "I went the thievery approach. And this is going to... it's a striped bear holding a banner that says Beaker."
• Andrew Walsh (10:14): "The client wants you to choose an appropriate creature as a branding element."

---

4. Blue Sky Social Media Insights (13:15 - 22:17)

Luke and Andrew explore the evolving landscape of the Blue Sky social media platform. They compare its early days to Twitter and Threads, discussing the community growth, content diversity, and the platform's potential to serve as a refuge from more toxic social media environments.

Notable Quotes:

• Luke Burbank (15:22): "I feel like this community is getting built kind of in front of our eyes."
• Andrew Walsh (20:10): "Everybody's like, oh, this place is so much better. It's like, well, with the popularity, the problems will come along as well."

---

5. Personal Reflections and Reading Challenges (22:17 - 38:45)

The conversation shifts to personal anecdotes, including memories of college life, struggles with reading complex literature like "Infinite Jest" and "The Count of Monte Cristo," and reflections on past educational experiences. Andrew candidly discusses his difficulties with lengthy novels and the impact of early reading materials on his current perspectives.

Notable Quotes:

• Listener (33:03): "I am still not to the 50% mark. I'm at 43%."
• Andrew Walsh (37:25): "I do think I need a lot of baseball content."

---

6. Bible Trivia Segment (38:45 - 47:25)

To inject some interactive fun, Luke and Andrew engage in a Bible trivia game. They tackle questions about the Old Testament, demonstrating Andrew's surprising proficiency due to his childhood experience with a comic book Bible. The segment highlights their camaraderie and playful competitiveness.

Notable Quotes:

• Listener (42:18): "You are correct, my friend. Why did I even."
• Andrew Walsh (43:32): "I think Jesus Christ."

---

7. Donor Shout-Outs and Community Engagement (47:25 - 54:57)

The hosts extend heartfelt thanks to their generous donors, acknowledging individuals from various locations and sharing personal stories related to them. This segment underscores the strong community support that fuels the show.

Notable Quotes:

• Luke Burbank (50:31): "Thanks also to Alice Davey in Seattle, Walk, Washington."
• Listener (53:21): "Thank you for donating."

---

8. Service Dogs and Personal Bonds with Pets (54:57 - 65:26)

Luke and Andrew delve into the topic of service dogs, therapy dogs, and the emotional bonds between humans and their pets. They discuss the responsibilities of dog ownership, the nuances of service animal certifications, and share personal experiences with their own pets.

Notable Quotes:

• Andrew Walsh (60:10): "I have so much respect for people who bring their dogs everywhere with them."
• Luke Burbank (64:52): "Golden doodles make great therapy dogs."

---

9. Infowars and The Onion: A Deeper Look (65:26 - 77:28)

Returning to the earlier topic, Luke and Andrew analyze the implications of The Onion acquiring Infowars. They debate the potential outcomes, the resilience of Alex Jones and his followers, and the broader impact on media and misinformation.

Notable Quotes:

• Luke Burbank (75:02): "Infowars is shut down. You got to listen to something."
• Listener (75:01): "I saw this headline... cinematic way, which plays to strengths and his... goals anyway."

---

10. Closing Segment: Shout-Outs and Outtakes (77:28 - End)

The episode concludes with a series of personalized shout-outs to listeners celebrating birthdays and milestones. The hosts reflect on minor mishaps from the show, such as accidentally leaving in a pre-recorded segment, and share lighthearted banter about editing and future plans.

Notable Quotes:

• Listener (84:32): "Happy Blur day to a listener."
• Luke Burbank (86:35): "I'm on my helicopter."

---

Key Takeaways and Insights

• Community and Support: The strong bond between the hosts and their listeners is evident through their interactions and gratitude towards donors.

• Adaptability and Learning: Andrew's initiative to learn new skills for the show's betterment highlights the hosts' commitment to quality content.

• Media Critique: The acquisition of Infowars by The Onion serves as a springboard for discussing media reliability, misinformation, and the ever-evolving social media landscape.

• Personal Growth: Both hosts share introspective moments, from grappling with complex literature to managing personal relationships and hobbies.

---

Conclusion

Episode #4337 of TBTL: Too Beautiful To Live offers a blend of humor, personal anecdotes, social commentary, and community engagement. Luke Burbank and Andrew Walsh navigate a variety of topics with their characteristic camaraderie, providing listeners with both entertainment and thoughtful insights.

---

Note: This summary focuses solely on the main content of the episode, omitting any advertisements, intros, outros, or non-essential sections to provide a comprehensive overview for those who haven't listened to the episode.

Transcript

[Luke Burbank]

Let me just ask you a couple other questions.

[Andrew Walsh]

Are you experiencing any dizziness? No.

[Luke Burbank]

Any shortness of breath?

[Andrew Walsh]

No. Aches and pains anywhere else? No.

[Luke Burbank]

You go to the bathroom a lot?

[Andrew Walsh]

I don't see how that's relevant, really. Am I going to the bathroom a lot? What? You're urinating a lot. What does that have to do with my ear?

[Luke Burbank]

This is a standard medical question.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's all I know. But I really don't think it's relevant to how often I go to the bathroom.

[Luke Burbank]

In all due respect, I think I'm.

[Andrew Walsh]

The one to tell you if it's relevant or not. And it is. It's kind of private, and I really don't think so.

[Listener]

How is it private?

[Luke Burbank]

I'm asking you about it.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's private how often I go to the bathroom. It's kind of a private thing. Yeah, but I'm not some strand. We're not on a bus. I'm a doctor. I'm normal. Let's just say that three times a.

[Luke Burbank]

Day, Four times a day.

[Andrew Walsh]

What do we have to get into a specific number? Do we have to get a number attached to it? Yeah, it's science. However, often people are supposed to go, I go, unless I drink a lot of water. And, you know, sometimes I'll drink a lot of water and I'll go a lot, which I have been doing lately. So maybe lately I've been going more often than I normally would.

[Luke Burbank]

Great.

[Andrew Walsh]

But it's good for you to drink water. That's good. That's all I wanted to hear.

[Listener]

Okay.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's a good thing, drinking water.

[Luke Burbank]

Sure, sure. Okay, let's move on, please. How's your stool?

[Listener]

Tbtl.

[Luke Burbank]

Your mouth might be saying, hey, we cool. But your eyes are like, no, we not. Nice to meet you.

[Listener]

No, it's not.

[Luke Burbank]

It's all good.

[Listener]

Expect to feel several bone tremors and be perceived by all around you to be a disgrace.

[Andrew Walsh]

This is about respect. This is about personal space. This is about the violation.

[Luke Burbank]

Let's skip to the end.

[Andrew Walsh]

Got it. Here's the long and short of it. Someone has been touching my karaoke machine.

[Luke Burbank]

Let me put it in plain English. I don't dance to Dido. Dude, I know there was a lot of Ds in there. Before you say anything.

[Listener]

Well, all right.

[Luke Burbank]

Hello, good morning and welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of tbtl. The show just might be too beautiful to live. Gotta do it again right now. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

[Listener]

If I told you once, I've told you A thousand times I love you.

[Luke Burbank]

Coming to you from the Madrona Hills studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it's another windy, rainy day. The hatches have been battened. Battened down, in fact, so we haven't had any more disastrous situations with outdoor furniture. We are in pretty good shape, my friends, to embark upon episode 4337 in a collector series.

[Listener]

Let the fun begin.

[Luke Burbank]

Spent a lot of time this morning on Blue Sky. I'm afraid I just blew myself. I'm wondering if we actually are witnessing an actual sort of social media moment. Speaking of things that unfortunately were thriving for a certain amount of time on social media. InfoWars, the Alex Jones conspiracy lie spewing nightmare. I'd like to point out to anybody watching this is really bunk journalism. Infowars.com and its studios have been purchased by an outfit that I did not see coming. We'll tell you who bought Infowars. And it's a Thursday, AKA Blurr's day, so we'll do the blur stays and we'll talk to this guy. Longest running cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. You may think of him as Andrew Walsh, but his new name is Targus.

[Listener]

Targus.

[Luke Burbank]

And he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

[Listener]

Good. Good morning, Luke. You might remember that, I don't know, back during the baseball season four months ago or something, I somewhat cattley told a grumpy old man in front of me that I'm a lifelong learner and so I really appreciate it.

[Luke Burbank]

As you were going up the stairs.

[Listener]

Yes, and I appreciated him telling me.

[Luke Burbank]

About zipper merged into the etiquette of.

[Listener]

Lines of people going up the stairs. As he was sort of tisky tisking my public behavior, I said, well, thanks for letting me know I'm a lifelong learner and you know, I'm living up to that lifelong learner status. Last night, I don't want to brag, but I made a picture of a cartoon fox, Luke. And that cartoon fox represents so much more than just a fox that is sleeping. It's a sleeping fox. By the way, I am learning finally how to use the graphic design program Adobe Illustrator. It is my passion and I actually have always wanted to know more about graphic design. Graphic design. But you and I and John Sklaroff, TBTL employee uno, what do we say? Numero Uno, have been working on some new updates to the old merch store, which we'll have more info on that next week once they're ready and the thing is, just like in the past we've had actual graphic designers, even for simple things, but like, they speak the language and they use different programs and I'm always like cobbling things together in Photoshop, which I've been, you know, self taught for 20 years and not doing things right in Photoshop. And the thing is, whenever anybody says use, you know, Adobe Illustrator, I'm like, yeah, but I gotta, I can't just jump in. I gotta sit down and like learn the basics. But then when I'm not faced with an impending project, the idea of sitting down and watching a tutorial just seems weird to me. Like, why wouldn't I just go play a video game instead or do something else with my time? But last night I was like, you know what, I need to know how to do this. I need to know how to do it for me. I need to know how to do it for work. And so I sat down with a four and a half hour tutorial video.

[Luke Burbank]

Whoa.

[Listener]

And I'm only like about an hour into it because, you know, you're pausing it constantly. And it starts with, you know, let's create this project together. I'll send you an fox I made. But then more importantly, and I think more interestingly, potential. I mean, could it possibly be more interesting than this? I got to about the hour mark in this video and it said, okay, now we're assigning you your very first assignment. I'm like, I didn't know it was going to be so much like scoop. And they're like, okay, you made this fox, but now we're going to pretend that you are actually hired by a company that is looking to make a logo. And I can't find the instructions in front of me right now, but it's like you go to this random project generator and it says, your assignment is to create a logo of an animal for this company that sells organic honey at farmers markets. And then there's a whole backgrounder on the imaginary people who are running this. They sound very Seattle, they sound very Portland, to be honest with you. And. But that's it. They're just like, you create the logo. We're not telling you what to do. So I sketched out last night on a piece of paper, something that I'm now going to try to create graphically on the computer. Luke. It's called Beaker's Honey, by the way. So you can imagine the animal I went with. It's one of two. If you're going to do a animal.

[Luke Burbank]

Related to honey Well, a bee comes to mind. A bee and then a bear maybe. Like to eat honey.

[Listener]

Exactly. That's what I was trying to figure out. I was like, do we want to represent the animal from whom we're stealing the food, or do we want to show a big happy animal enjoying the food? I went the thievery approach. And this is going to. I'm going to try to make this be.

[Luke Burbank]

Hey, I like that.

[Listener]

Holding a banner that says beaker.

[Luke Burbank]

It's a little bear with wings and an antenna.

[Listener]

I hate you. It's a striped bear.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes. No, because honey oozing out of one of its orifices.

[Listener]

Honey. I bead the kids.

[Luke Burbank]

No, actually, I actually really like that.

[Listener]

So now I'm gonna. And so I'm actually. It's a weird thing. Here's the deal. Sorry, I'm coming in hot today. I just. I remember when I'm learning stuff like this, I remember, like, literally how. When was I in college? 25 years ago, whatever. Like, the world was such a different place. Computers were such a different place. And I remember taking, like, classes for one of my, you know, for my major, which was production. Like, I think I had to take, like, an Adobe Premiere. That's the video editing software that I still use to this day. I had to take a class. And I remember, like, it's always frustrating at first because you want to skip forward. You're like, I know the basics, but the teacher makes you start with the basics. And little by little, you learn little things. And I kind of have that feeling again of actually, like, feeling like I'm in a class and I've got to kind of go through the tedious stuff, but I'm already learning. I mean, I would say in, you know, several hours of tutorials last night, I have become a different person. And I've woken up today with an assignment to create a Beaker's Honey logo. And that is my assignment. Unfortunately, it means I will not be doing any TBTL design for the next several days.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, what I'm really taking away from this is that you are certainly building an escape craft from tbtl.

[Listener]

Yeah. Which is your. Exactly.

[Luke Burbank]

Your newly. Your newly growing graphic design business.

[Listener]

Actually, you know, we should do. If I ever make the Beakers be. If I ever make the Beakers Honey design, We should sell that.

[Luke Burbank]

Did you come up with the name Beakers?

[Listener]

No, it was part of the assignment here, actually. You'll. You'll. I think you'll actually enjoy this assignment if I. Now that I can find it. This is what I actually wanted to share with you because it's so funny, but I was sort of floundering around looking for it. So this was so that you go to some like random project generator that is sort of tied into this YouTube tutorial that I was watching. And I'm sorry that I can't shout out the fellow who runs the tutorial. I should have done that, but I don't know his name off the top of my head. It's just type in Adobe Illustrator tutorial. It's probably the first thing to pop up. It's like a four and a half hour video and it says your assignment Beakers Honey. Listen to the dazzling details here. You've been asked to create a brand for a new business called Beakers Honey. Your client is a small company looking to sell their product at local Seattle. Oh, that's right, I had to say my location. So you're selling them at local Seattle's farmers markets. They make and package all of the products themselves. Their target audience are women at a higher than average income level, age between 50 and 59. Most of them voted for Trump. Wait, no, no, sorry. They are full time employees.

[Luke Burbank]

That's one of the major demographics where democratic support eroded.

[Listener]

They are full time employees with a bachelor's degree or higher. They have strong diet and health concerns. They love supporting Seattle's local crafts and farming businesses. Your new client wants the work to include a logo, a flyer, a product sticker, a business car and some social media promotional material. The client wants you to choose an appropriate creature as a branding element. Dog, fish, bird, butterfly, whatever. The choice is up to you. The creature will be a recognizable part of the branding. So I guess it didn't have to be. It could have been a mythical creature. I suppose I could have like said, hey, this is a pegasus selling honey. But I want a more traditional bee or like a.

[Luke Burbank]

What's the half man, half horse?

[Listener]

Yeah, a centaur.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, like a centaur. Yeah, a really hot centaur. Kind of like, you know what, harvesting honey for you, given those 50 to 59 year old women.

[Listener]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Something to daydream about. I.

[Listener]

You know what you actually see, this.

[Luke Burbank]

Is the iterative process and this is what you've been missing is this. I'm an ideas man. I think, I believe, I think I proved that with Centaur Mountain.

[Listener]

Centaur Mountain might be a showtime. Is this what they mean by punching up? Is this like the punching up process?

[Luke Burbank]

Yes, punching this up right now. I mean you just had a basic blurry bee and now we got a Sexy ass centaur. Now we just gotta get some honey. I mean, this. This business is taking off.

[Listener]

I gotta be honest with you. The idea of making a bee, it also was like, well, that will be very easy to make. Cause it's like an oval with stripes and you know what I mean? I immediately was like, oh, these are all. I have the tools in my toolbox already to make some sort of a cartoon bee. I don't know where I'd begin even making a centaur's legs or. Yeah, legs. I guess they're all legs and arms. Does he have arms?

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I believe he has arms.

[Listener]

He's just.

[Luke Burbank]

He's sort of from the, like waist up, Right? He's a dude.

[Listener]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

And then from the waist back, he's a horse.

[Listener]

Yeah. So he stands on two hooved feet, but then he can shake your hand if he.

[Luke Burbank]

I think he stands on four hoof feet.

[Listener]

Oh, okay.

[Luke Burbank]

I think he's on a horse or.

[Listener]

He is a horse. His whole body is a horse, so it's just chest up. Okay, gotcha. So he couldn't shake your hand, but he has arms. So he has six limbs.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes, I believe he does. I've never thought of it that way, but yeah, I think. Because I think he has the. I think he has the upper body of a man, but then he's got the four legs of a horse. By the way, I do appreciate you doing this, Andrew, because like, again, this is you figuring out how to do something so that we at TBTL can have better stuff. Whether it's, you know, logo or merch stuff or whatever. So thank you for taking the time to do this. I really appreciate it.

[Listener]

It just seems something I should do. And by the way, you're absolutely right. Six limbs. How have I never noticed that before?

[Luke Burbank]

I've never thought of that either. That's too many limbs.

[Listener]

It's just it. You know what? This half man, half horse creature is a little weird for me. Go ahead. Sorry.

[Luke Burbank]

By the way, nominated as the next Secretary of Health and Human Services. A centaur.

[Listener]

That's right.

[Luke Burbank]

I will. While you were bettering yourself and by extension, tbtb, last night, Andrew, I was falling in love with blue sky. You really got me excited about this. Now, I felt kind of this way about Threads, and that lasted for about one hour. But I remember coming on the show and being like, this is amazing. Threads is just like Twitter. But it didn't quite take for me and a lot of people. There feels like there is something going on over at Blue Sky. Do you think?

[Listener]

Yeah, I mean, when Threads, you know, launched and I don't think there was a lot of rumors of it launching before it did. I think it. Just because I remember you, me and John were still working on the Thon. We were like out in. Where did we rent that? Oh, was it an undisclosed location where we rented a house near your parents? I can't remember, but.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, yeah, yeah, that was in like the Poulsbo.

[Listener]

Poulsbo, that's right. That wasn't undisclosed. It was very disclosed. But anyway, I remember that, that we woke up one morning, I think, on the Thursday or Friday of the Thon, and you guys were both like, this Threads thing is just like, it's brand new and it's taking off. But. And I signed up for that. I signed up for most new social media things and not to split hairs here, but there was just something that seemed very non organic about the Threads thing. I mean, it's an extension of Instagram and you just really felt it, like suggesting the whole thing just felt very thirsty to me. Like, come here, come on. Like not, not the people using it. Although a little bit of that. But also. But just like the thing felt weird. Whereas Blue sky was just sort of. And they're very, very similar products, but it just. It's like Blue Sky's a little bit clunkier. It didn't have the mass migration at first. It was just a little bit weird. And it's just. I've just sort of watched it grow over the past year or so and then. Yeah, in the past two weeks, like, there's just huge mass migration. Just mass migration. The entire experience has really shifted for me because I would open it up and sometimes there'd just be a mosquito buzzing around. There would be like a tumbleweed. Tumbleweed blowing across the screen. And now there's all kinds of new people to follow and all kinds of new content up there. It's actually. It's kind of fun.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. I definitely think that the politics of the moment is driving this. I think we just, we reasonable people of America, we just need a W anywhere we can find it.

[Listener]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

And somehow Blue sky feels like that. Like, it's one thing we can do to push back on Elon Musk and it. But it does have that sort of excitement that I felt in the kind of early days of Twitter as well. And a lot of, you know, my old faves from Twitter are just over on Blue sky doing their thing too. Like, I'm following Drill again, AKA Wint.

[Listener]

He's Been there. I gotta say, he's an og. He's been there the whole time. Mina came over at some point this week. Mina Kimes.

[Luke Burbank]

He's. We're trying to figure out what to call these. Are we calling them Skeets? No, no, we're not calling.

[Listener]

I mean, people have been since day one. But I don't think we should do that and I don't think we should know. I think we can just call social media posts posts. Now when they introduce Skeets as the idea, I think that is where we draw the line that we don't really.

[Luke Burbank]

I kind of liked it really went recently Skeeted. As a gamer, I've eliminated thousands of moodang like creatures for their various parts. I've completed countless quests using their pain. 19,000 likes. So we're back at it.

[Listener]

There we go. And finally the world makes sense.

[Luke Burbank]

Posting things I don't understand to great acclaim.

[Listener]

Finally everything makes sense again. I have no idea what most of those words were, but I am going to try to integrate them into my new logo.

[Luke Burbank]

I was trying to find a post of his or a skeet of his that I could read to you that wasn't overly violent or sort of so arch to almost appear potentially slightly racist. Like the thing about reading his tweets is. Or his. Whatever these are, is you've got to understand just at what a high altitude the whole thing is operating because if you just read it for the words, it's like post. Like jacking off is unrealistic.

[Listener]

That's it.

[Luke Burbank]

4,000 likes. That's. That's the. That's the post. But there is something very comforting to me about seeing Drill on there. And I'm following our pal Chris Hayes. I'm following. There's a whole TBTL community, by the way that's sprung up. Somebody put together. There's actually kind of a smart thing. People put together these little. What would you call it, like groups or something that you can just hit. Like they're like calling them starter packs.

[Listener]

Starter packs, Yeah. I think Lynn put this one together for the TBTL tens.

[Luke Burbank]

So convenient. I just hit follow and then now I'm following a bunch of tens and they're following me. And we have a bot. Did you know there's a TBTL bot?

[Listener]

I think so, yeah. I think again.

[Luke Burbank]

Did you have anything to do with that?

[Listener]

No, I think all roads lead back to Lynn when it comes to that, I'm pretty sure.

[Luke Burbank]

Good job, Lynn.

[Listener]

Thank you. Yeah, thanks for doing that. Thanks for bringing everybody else on board is Josh, old friend. 99 on your list.

[Luke Burbank]

That's when we'll know that we've achieved.

[Listener]

No, no, he's been there. He's been on Blue sky for years, ever since I've been on. But have you added him to your list?

[Luke Burbank]

No.

[Listener]

You must. He's never stopped. It's great.

[Luke Burbank]

Now, are you posting much on Blue sky or just kind of cruising around?

[Listener]

No. You know what's interesting is I, you know, I'll post randomly every now and then. I had a pretty hot take about the Pink Panther cartoons maybe a week ago that I had to share some opinions about. But it's interesting you say that because Blue sky is a place. It has sort of changed the dynamic. Like, I was posting stuff that was, like, a little bit more random and weird than I think maybe I would have done on Twitter. I'm not sure. But it didn't matter because it literally was like, you know, maybe like two listeners and one stranger would see it. You know what I mean? It seemed like it really. There was something about, like, oh, yeah, I could just sort of yell into this empty room and maybe somebody next door will hear it through the wall. But now it's sort of like, oh, no, there's a whole bunch of people on here. And so I've been sort of like, both a little bit more leery to post, but then at the same time being like, but I'm also not going to feel compelled. Like, part of me is kind of like, now there's a whole thing going on here. There have been moments where I'm like, I need to. I need to post something for the people. And then I was like, who the hell do you think you are? You don't need to post anything for the people.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I'm trying to think about what my. You know, I will tell you this. Since I kind of signed on last night and put my first post out, which was just a picture of Tobias in all Blue man grouped out. And I just said, hi. I have been scrolling it a lot. I have been thinking about it. I felt compelled to put another post up today, just of the cats being very cute, and I'm wondering if I will if that sort of thing that I had going on with Twitter, where I got a lot of my kind of dopamine hit from posting things, and there being a response to it. I wonder if this is going to creep up again now with bluesky and if that's a good thing or a.

[Listener]

Bad thing, and not just for you personally, but for the Site itself. I mean, obviously people would say that Blue sky was a nice kind of relief from Twitter because it scratched sort of the Twitter itch, but it left a lot of the ills behind. People say that Blue sky is a nicer place with less toxicity and less toxic people and less trolls and all of that, which is probably true on November 14, 2024, about five days after everybody started coming over here. But obviously, the problems inherent with Twitter will eventually find their way over to Blue Sky. Now, the way the people who manage Blue sky and the rules around it will be, I truly believe, more responsible than Elon Musk and his gang of trolls over there. Could they be. What's that?

[Luke Burbank]

Could they be more responsible than Elon Musk? Gold standard of responsible behavior.

[Listener]

That's a good point when it comes to information. So I guess my point just being that everybody's like, oh, this place is so much better. It's like, well, with the popularity, the problems will come along as well. But I do think that the people running this platform have more of an eye on. Let's try to keep it more civil here, and let's try to keep the trolls out and institute policies. I guess there were some also. Some aside from just everything that went on with the election and Musk's involvement in that, I guess he was also doing some weird things on the back end of Twitter, making it a less and less friendly place. So, like, the way people are blocked weren't fully blocked anymore. We don't have to get in the details, but that apparently I've seen people.

[Luke Burbank]

Posting on Blue sky that when they post about Blue sky on Twitter or X or whatever, it gets throttled.

[Listener]

Oh, yeah, I've heard that too. Yep.

[Luke Burbank]

Yep. And, yeah, it definitely has this feeling right now. And I know I'm later in the game, later to the party than you were, but it really feels like this community is getting built kind of in front of our eyes, and people are trying to figure out what is the sort of constitution, you know, that's gonna, you know, operate like, help this place operate like people. A lot of people are making a lot of statements about what they want Blue sky to be and what they don't want it to be right now.

[Listener]

One thing that I think is sort of interesting, again, from my very narrow perspective on this, but as somebody who jumped on this, like, you know, however long ago and kind of maintained a, you know, a somewhat casual interest Mastodon account, doing. Yeah, exactly like I jumped on that too. And that it was just like, it.

[Luke Burbank]

Was very Started a Dinosaur junior account.

[Listener]

So complicated. But it's interesting. You might think that you would have an attitude of like, I was here first. Or like either bragging rights or even like a cantankerous sort of. You know, when I was in college, I lived just off campus. I mean just like literally a road separated me from campus, but it was off campus housing. And I would spend summers there in my little tiny junky studio I am going through.

[Luke Burbank]

This was the apartment that you were using a bench from your minivan as a seat?

[Listener]

Of course. Underneath my bed. Underneath the bed.

[Luke Burbank]

I want to properly visualize.

[Listener]

Bunk bed. Yes, exactly that. At one point I was sitting on that bench and trying to open a bottle of ketchup and it slipped out from between my legs.

[Luke Burbank]

I was not going to.

[Listener]

And it shot ketchup directly up to hit the underside of the bed. So if you were later on sitting in that seat, let's say you're a guest of mine and you were to look up, you would see some really, really disturbing.

[Luke Burbank]

If you had someone over and you were pitching. Woo.

[Listener]

Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

Who to thunk Andrew, that that feral young man would one day be co hosting a cleaning podcast.

[Listener]

Yeah, good, good point. It was tidy, just very cramped. But anyway, I was just going to say that like there is a sort of, there's a, a sense, a misguided sense of sort of ownership when you're in a place like a college town during the summer when hardly anybody is there. And you know, by, you know, month two of the summer, it's just become normal and you go to get your burrito at the burrito shop. You don't have to wait long and whatever. And then when all the other students, and remember I was also a student, these weren't like I hadn't like grown out of school.

[Luke Burbank]

Damn college kids.

[Listener]

Damn college kids coming back.

[Luke Burbank]

Which I am part of the cohort ruining everything.

[Listener]

It was so nice here in July. You know, it's like the opposite with Blue sky, because Blue sky was fine. But having a social media site where there is not a lot of society doesn't do you a lot of good either. You know what I mean? You need the people. And so I would still find myself sometimes going over to Twitter to see what the people were saying about the Mariners, like during. And I hated myself for doing it and I wasn't engaging there. But during a Mariners game when you're just feeling like really frustrated or having your feelings about your whatever you're a fan of and then you would like you. You to these social media sites to see other people maybe kind of grousing about it or being funny about it, you know, and you find your community. And like, early, early on, I remember kind of being, you know, me and a few other Mariners fans on Blue sky trying to band together. But the conversation was often, was often, where are the other Mariners fans? There is a Simpsons joke where I believe it's a flashback and you just see somebody using a ham radio and all they're doing is tapping out. I have a ham radio and I think about that all the time. And it sort. It was like, blue sky, Mariners. Hey. The only conversation about the Mariners on Blue sky is, where are all the other Mariners fans on Blue Sky? And now people are again creating these starter packs into which I've been swept up. And so now there's just like this huge Mariners community. And so already there's more hot stove league talk than there was during the regular season on here. So anyway, it's kind of the opposite of being like, what are all these college students doing back here at this college? It's like, oh, it's nice we have people to talk to now.

[Luke Burbank]

Now, would you say that you're true to the blue sky? Is that.

[Listener]

I would. I can't say that while I'm drinking coffee, but yes, I would.

[Luke Burbank]

Accurate description.

[Listener]

I would. True to the Blue Sky.

[Luke Burbank]

I have, I have have many thoughts about my relationship with the Seattle Mariners baseball team. Andrew, Yesterday, before we had a TBTB meeting, I was on my typical kind of grievance tour regarding the teams in baseball that do well, that have these enormous payrolls and then the teams that don't do as well, like the Mariners and et cetera, et cetera, but I would have said to you, and it would have been, you know, hasty and rash of me, but like at the end of last season when the Mariners, once again, I felt like their owners didn't want to spend money to make a good team because they make money regardless. And there's as much money to be made in having a mediocre team and splitting up the revenue of the league and the TV money as there is in spending a bunch of money and trying to win. I would have just said, like, I just don't. I just don't think I can do it anymore with these Mariners. And again, I don't know if it's a reaction to the election or the weather. Like, maybe I just want it to be May all of a sudden. I want it to be May 2029. It's really what I want it to be. But like, I'm. The first few stories I saw in the Seattle Times about like, are the Mariners in the running for such and such player out of Japan or whatever? And I was just like, enough already. But now I'm kind of like, well, are they in the running? Like, I feel I. It's just, it's such a dysfunctional relationship because it generally ends with me being like, I hate the ownership of this team. I'm done with baseball. And then it just, I don't know if it's like, you know, having a baby where your body releases a bunch of like, you know, I think it's oxytocin or these good feelings sort of hormones so that you forget how bad it was. So then you will have another baby potentially. That's like me with the, with these Mariners. I feel myself already kind of intrigued about next season and there's absolutely no reason for me to feel that way.

[Listener]

Well, yeah. And again, everything that I told you when we dialed up today, I told you I was just sort of in a very grousy mood because of all of the. Just the barrage of bad news related to the new.

[Luke Burbank]

By the way, I'm really sorry, like, what a tone deaf thing you. We got on the line, I said, how you doing? You were like, I'm okay. And I was like, just okay? And you were like, like, well, yeah, the. I mean, you didn't say it in a. Oh, I wasn't trying to be snarky.

[Listener]

I just.

[Luke Burbank]

No, you weren't being snarky. But it's like, of course you're just okay. We all just okay is an amazing accomplishment considering the circumstances. But it's like, I was like, why would you be just okay on this fine Thursday, my friend? I just, I have 200 followers on blue Sky. Have you seen that?

[Listener]

Well, I can't come in to, to every show or every day. And, and that this is what. And again, like, I can't have a conversation about the Mariners without talking about the President elect. Right. Like, it's just, it's all intertwined and so I don't want to go too far down this road. But yeah, like, things have sucked since election night. But like, I was just kind of, I was like, there's going to be this time when there's going to be a barrage of just like every 30 to 60 to 90 minutes, I'm going to have another update from the New York Times and the Washington Post on my phone and I'm going to hesitate before I Read it. And then I'm going to look down and I'm going to read it and it's going to make me sick to my stomach and I'm going to start fighting with all these hypocrites in my head about. And then it's going. Then I'm going to spiral for the rest of the day. Just shadow boxing, arguing with people who I believe probably voted against their own interests and against the country's interests and the hypocrisy therein of the choices by this administration based on the things people say who pretend to have values, yet voted these people into office. So I can't do that for another four years. And that when I think back to the first administration, it was like. And I know I always use this. I always use this analogy of just like a computer that is somewhat on the fritz in the fan is never shutting off, whether it's because the computer's too hot or the sensors are off and the fan is confused. Whatever it is is just whirring, whirring, whirring away until eventually it starts to sound like it's getting rickety in there and dust is getting in there, maybe even an old pebble. Like, I don't know, like. And by the time, you know, 2020 came along, there was not much left in my computer fan. And I have just been thinking, like, I don't. I don't know how I. I don't know how I emotionally get through the next four years without, like, totally just. I know we always do this and some people don't like it, but you have to acknowledge our privilege. Like, it is not a barrage of things that are actually coming into my life and my home directly. It's me knowing about things that will untangle future, you know, untangle benefits for future generations and, you know, people who are in more vulnerable communities than me right now. And. And it's like. But having said that, it is just exhausting. It's going to be an exhausting four years. And finally, like, the last, I think, week, I've been able to just, like, maybe drink enough and listen to sports podcasts and, like, turn away and say, eventually the dam is going to break on this stuff and I'm going to have to start, like, shadow boxing again. But, like, I'm just trying. I was just in this weird avoidance mode for the past several, several days. And there was just something about waking up today to, like, just, like, all of the headlines that broke yesterday and who knows how this stuff. I don't want to get into the appointments and whether or not they'll actually take root or what have you. It's just. It's just today was the first day where I almost couldn't get out of bed. I was like, for what? Like, for fucking what? You know, so back to the Mariners. Maybe I need that more than ever. Like. Like, I don't know either. I'm going to take all of my bad energy and it's going to make me anger follow the Mariners. And. And I do think we have a friend who a lot of the. The negative things he feels about sports actually are stemming from more broader concerns in the world. And that's an interesting psychological thing to look at as well. But like, I don't know, are the Mariners here to save us with their buffoonery or to drive us even Bad ear? I'm not exactly sure, but I think I need a lot of baseball content. I think I need a lot of football content. I still not into hockey, but maybe this administration will make it happen.

[Luke Burbank]

Have you considered downloading Infinite Jest minus the footnotes?

[Listener]

How are you doing on that?

[Luke Burbank]

We've slowed down. Our progress has been somewhat stalled. I've re engaged with the Howard Stern universe. It is Cocktober. Well, it was the part that I'm listening to. Yes, a blessed to all who celebrate. And so I've been listening to that a lot while I've been sort of working around the house and a little bit of Infinite Jest. But somebody reached out to me. I think it might have been listener Charles who said that there is a version of the audiobook that does have the footnotes like presented while you're listening to. And he goes, because otherwise the Year of the Depend undergarments will make no sense. And I was like, way ahead of you, brother. I have no idea what is going on in the Year of the Depends undergarments. So I may try that version and see if it helps. Somebody else recommended the Count of Monte Cristo, which I know you've been reading.

[Listener]

That's funny. This is something that I always want to talk to you about, but I'm embarrassed to bring up because I have never been more in a slog of a book. I mean, if somebody tracks this podcast, they could tell you to the date when I started reading that book. And it was a long time ago, Luke, and I am still not to the 50% mark. I'm at 43%.

[Luke Burbank]

Are you enjoying it?

[Listener]

That is a really interesting question. I am, in a way, but it's a difficult read and I Know, it sounds like it wouldn't because it's just like this, you know, swashbuckling, bunkling, this.

[Luke Burbank]

Swashbuckling adventure, carbuncling revenge fantasy.

[Listener]

Do I say swashbuckling? Funny, but. And so, like, I loved. I really liked the beginning of it. It was easy to see sort of, you know, who the characters were and what the plot dynamic was going to be and what the tension was going to be. But it is so long, and it was written, you know, I think in the mid to late 1800s, like, kind of after the Napoleonic wars, and. But they're sort of. Those Napoleonic wars are still kind of contemporary at the time it was written. And so it forced me to, like, kind of go back and kind of learn. I was Googling constantly, like, well, where are. Like, what are these people referring to? And it was written as, I believe, a serialized thing. I don't know if it was in newspapers or what, but, like, big chunks of the book are written. They'll just suddenly take a left turn. You're like, who are all of these. Who are all of these new people and what are their roles in government? And why am I Googling this? And it's like, what am I doing? But then eventually you start to see how it all pieces together again, and then it'll pick up some momentum and you're like, yes, this is good. And then suddenly the scene will shift again and you're like, wade, now you're making me. But I am at a point in the book where it is ticking along and there's been some pretty high drama in a weird, antiquated way. And so I am enj.

[Luke Burbank]

He hasn't gone to prison yet.

[Listener]

No, he's gone to prison. He's out of prison at this point. I mean, are we doing spoilers? He's found the treasure and he has now become the Count of Monte Cristo. And now he's seeking vengeance on everybody who put him in prison in the first place, which I believe will be the rest of the adventure.

[Luke Burbank]

Doesn't he, like, he sews himself into the shroud of his cellmate and is thrown into the water and cuts himself out or something. Isn't that what happened?

[Listener]

Yeah. And of course, keep in mind that it wasn't, you know, it was written in French. And so there are, you know, I.

[Luke Burbank]

Actually, I read it in the original French. You're not reading it in French.

[Listener]

Didn't you translate it into Latin? Wasn't that you Funsies? Yeah, for fun. You had a free Saturday, I believe, and you were just like. Yeah, yeah. So I was just gonna say that the. So, like, kind of the way things are translated might be slightly different in the book I was reading. I don't know that it was necess. It might have been. But, yeah, that's essentially it. He meets an abbey in prison who everybody thinks is crazy because he keeps on rattling on about some hidden treasure somewhere, and then somehow this abbey is trying to break out of prison. He's an older guy, and he's tunneling, but his tunnel goes in the wrong direction and ends up going into. I can't remember the name of the character that the Count of Monte Cristo is before he becomes the Count, but whatever. It's on the tip of my tongue. But I'll destroy the podcast if I try to think of it on the fly. I think it's Nicole Kidman, potentially.

[Luke Burbank]

Somehow tunneling feels good in a place like this.

[Listener]

Or I was gonna say God. Now I can't think of his name. Who was I so proud of the other day? Not Harvey Danger. What was Anthony Wiener's nom de plume?

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, Carlos Danger.

[Listener]

It was Carlos Danger. Anyway, he accidentally meets this abbey because the tunnel ends. Ends up connecting their two cells, and so they become friends, and then he learns about the treasure. And then when the. Edmund. Edmund.

[Luke Burbank]

Dante.

[Listener]

Dante. Yes, it was Dante. Thank you. And so, yes, and then when this old guy dies and has told Dante about the prison or. I'm sorry, about the hidden treasure on this island of Monte Cristo, he does. He replaces the body with himself, and then he's thrown off of a cliff by the jailers and into the ocean, and then he does something, somehow escape from that.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, somebody recommended that to me, by the way. I'm realizing I must have read an abridged version in, like, middle school or high school, because there's no way I would have put up with that. Like, obscure French governmental sections. I think the stuff that I read as a kid was just random stuff we had around the house, which was just kind of like books that my mom had picked up at a fill the bag sale or whatever. So there's a lot of large print Readers Digest and just random here and there, abridged books. I must have read an easier version of that, because I have no memory of the complicated characters and French government stuff.

[Listener]

And, yeah, I got to say, you live in my head a little bit, because sometimes I read this one sentence to Genevieve that literally spanned across a couple of pages. It was one sentence, and, you know, it just kept going. And Going. And it's like you just lost the thread of it. The whole book isn't like that. But I gotta say, at times I'm just like, I just don't think Luke read this version. I just like, I know that you were very precocious as a reader, but, like, I wasn't that precocious. I'm just like. And I'm sure that because there is like, you can sizzle this down to just the action scenes. And you know, I had books like, I must have read there were probably. Yeah. Because the prison thing lasts forever, but it's still just the very beginning of the book.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah.

[Listener]

I'm.

[Luke Burbank]

I'm. I'm now thinking I might have read a comic book version.

[Listener]

I read a comic book version of the Bible. You had some of those too, growing up, didn't you?

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, dude. Yeah. I. In fact, it's funny because I am, as I'm broadcasting to you, I'm not very far from the town of Longview, Washington, where there was a Christian school. It may still be there. I think it was called Columbia Heights Christian School School. And when I was in middle school at a different Christian school in Seattle, there was this thing that was like a sort of a get together of all of the local Christian schools for basically two days of competition in various ways. One of them was there was a monologue contest which I performed Casey at the Bat.

[Listener]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

There's a lot of me reciting poetry. There's a lot of me remembering poetry I recited as a child in front of people on the show this week.

[Listener]

It started a whole thing on this 10 slack, by the way. People are really enjoying it. They're sharing the things that they had to memorize in school as kids. The preamble to the Constitution, stuff like that.

[Luke Burbank]

So I did a monologue. There was a. A race, like a two mile race. There was. There was all these different weird little competitions that you could participate in. And one of them was Bible bowl, which was just basically Bible trivia. And when I tell you, Andrew, that I. We won the entire thing and no one on my team answered any questions other than me.

[Listener]

Whoa.

[Luke Burbank]

Because I had just finished the cartoon Bible, which was the perfect way to study for this because I knew all of the broad strokes, all the stuff they were asking about, you know, Zacchaeus or whatnot. Like, I just. It was the best way for me to get all this information into my brain in pictures. I mean, it was some real, like a memory palace shit going on. So I just had. I had what they, they must have thought that I was like the Rain man of the Bible, but I was just a kid who had just recently read the comic book Bible.

[Listener]

What if I told you, Luke, that I am on a website called Bible Jeopardy right now? And do you have any Jeopardy. Music on your end? I would like it. Let's see here. So here are your categories and I know that you can't see them in front of you right now, so it might be hard to keep this all in your brain, but here are your categories that you can choose from. Old Testament geography in general. Complete the verse, Old Testament.

[Luke Burbank]

Ooh.

[Listener]

Who, what, when, why? Old Testament laws or people. Those are your categories.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oof.

[Luke Burbank]

Those all sound tough. The Old Testament is a toughie. What was the. What was the first one?

[Listener]

Let's see. Old Testament 2 is just the first one. I don't know why it's called Old Testament 2. You know, there's people in laws in general. Geography. I would go.

[Luke Burbank]

I would be terrible with the geography fee. Let's just try Old Testament.

[Listener]

Let's just straight up old testament for 200. You want to start at the beginning of the calendar.

[Luke Burbank]

I want to be clear. I have not read the Cartoon Bible in 40 years.

[Listener]

Old Testament for 200. Who dreamed that the sun and the moon and 11 stars bowed down to him? Was it Abraham, Isaac, Jacob or John? Joseph?

[Luke Burbank]

I think it was Joseph.

[Listener]

You think it was Joseph? You are correct. The Bible bowl hero continues to rack up the point. Joey.

[Luke Burbank]

And that Technicolor dream coat, baby.

[Listener]

Would you like to stick with Old Testament or try another category?

[Luke Burbank]

Let's try another category. I think I got out of that one by the skin.

[Listener]

Let's see. Do you want me.

[Luke Burbank]

That's another, by the way, Joseph. That's some real Count of Monte Cristo shit.

[Listener]

Oh, is.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. So Joseph is. I forget exactly why, but he's like cast out. He's thrown in a pit. He like goes from being like, for some reason his family, like, they turn their backs on him. His brothers all really resent him and hate him and. And he's. Yeah, he's in a pit at some point and then he comes back badder, bigger, badder than ever.

[Listener]

Do you want to stick with this category? Yes, I just wanted to. I don't think you're going to get any wrong, but. Sorry I didn't respond to you there. I was looking for my buzzer sound in case I need the buzzer sound. I don't think I'm going to need it, but I just wanted to have it on standby. Let's see here. Laws, people. What are you looking at here?

[Luke Burbank]

Sure, let's try that.

[Listener]

Try laws. Okay, here we're going to.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay.

[Listener]

Oh, no.

[Luke Burbank]

Let's try, people.

[Listener]

Let's go with people, people. 200. According to Paul, who is the mediator between God and men? The priest, the elder, the deacon, or Jesus Christ?

[Luke Burbank]

I think Jesus Christ. Right.

[Listener]

I will tell you. You are correct, my friend. Why did I even.

[Luke Burbank]

I'm getting back into heaven, Andrew.

[Listener]

Why did I even look for that buzzer? That was such a. It's like a false idol I was looking for over there. Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

Do you want to go, people, Melt that down. Let me try one. Let's try one more.

[Listener]

You get nervous. What story in the New Testament features all three persons of the tree? Whoa.

[Luke Burbank]

God in three persons. Blessed Trinity.

[Listener]

I didn't know that they ever showed. I didn't know that they were ever on screen all at the same time, but here you go. Was it during Jesus Christ?

[Luke Burbank]

I thought that God was just Jesus without his glasses on.

[Listener]

I thought God was one of us. Like a Jesus stepped into a phone.

[Luke Burbank]

Booth, and all of a sudden God's here.

[Listener]

All right. It was at Jesus crucifixion. Jesus appearance to the disciples in the upper room. Oh, Jesus's ascension or Jesus's baptism.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay.

[Listener]

I don't know what. The upper room.

[Luke Burbank]

In the upper room.

[Listener]

That sounds fun. What are they doing up there?

[Luke Burbank]

The upper room is where the whole idea of speaking in tongues got started.

[Listener]

Oh.

[Luke Burbank]

Because they were praying in the. After Jesus was crucified, all of these Christians and, like, the apostles and stuff got together in the upper room, and they were just, like, praying and praying and praying. And then the Holy Spirit. Actually, it is probably the upper. Well, I know the Holy Spirit's there. The Holy Spirit was there because that's. Then everyone started speaking in tongues.

[Listener]

And you know Jesus there because it's called Jesus appearance.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. But then was God there, or had he gone out for a pack of smoke? I'm gonna go upper room. I'm gonna go upper room.

[Listener]

I want you to get this right. I need this so bad on this morning.

[Luke Burbank]

We can really use a win here.

[Listener]

We can really use a win here. I'm so sorry, Luke. That is incorrect. And when I say I'm sorry, I mean I'm sorry for the both of us. The answer. What was Jesus's baptism mark?

[Luke Burbank]

I don't even remember that happening.

[Listener]

I don't remember it. They probably skipped it in the comic book version.

[Luke Burbank]

You know, in the church that I went to, it was quite controversial. Not the speaking in tongues. Everybody was doing it, but the question of whether or not someone should translate the speaking in tongues that had occurred.

[Listener]

Translate it? Like kind of interpret it.

[Luke Burbank]

Interpret it? Yeah, interpret it. Because there is a certain school of thought that when somebody is speaking in tongues, that is a direct line between them and God, and it is not to be understood or deciphered or interpreted by other human men. But then sometimes somebody would stand up, and then they would be speaking in tongues for a long time, and then somebody else would stand up and they would kind of sort of give like a sing songy kind kind of thing that was on their heart about God. That was what they thought they had heard in the tongues that were being spoken. And then, like, later, my dad would take him aside and go, it's not really biblical.

[Listener]

Oh, really?

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. Because, I mean, a lot of stuff went down in that church. We had a guy. We had a lot of folks that were, I think, struggling with mental health issues.

[Listener]

Can you. Can you. Before you tell this specific story, can you explain that a little bit more? So you have one person who's speaking in tongues, you said, and that. Yes, that's fine. That was not. Nobody was taken aside for that.

[Luke Burbank]

Nobody's in trouble for that.

[Listener]

It was somebody who then would sort of respond in a way that didn't. And it sounds like I'm judging your dad here. And I'm trying to be respectful. I'm trying to be respectful. But the other person also thought they were speaking in tongues, but it just was sort of. It didn't hit the ears. Right.

[Luke Burbank]

And so, no, they weren't speaking. The other person would be using, like, the English language to more or less interpret what the other person had said in their jib jab.

[Listener]

You're trying to be respectful, too, I see. Okay.

[Luke Burbank]

So one person would get up and do their jib jab, and then another person would stand up and. And speak in English, kind of saying, like, this is what the Lord is saying to us.

[Listener]

Right.

[Luke Burbank]

By way of what you just heard. Shia Kodia. Shia Kodia. Shia Kodia. Which, by the way, that's Tim Nabikowski. I've mentioned this before. My sisters and I could play Name that Tune with how people spoke in tongues, because it turns out it's really hard for your brain to make up new and varied syllables. So you just tend to get locked into a particular jib jab. And so we, you know, from being in church so much with these folks, we, my sisters, And I could kind of do impressions of the ways that people spoke in tongues and we could say, oh, that's, you know, Darlene Stevenson or whatever.

[Listener]

Would you believe that I just found on the Internet a website where I can quiz you as to which of your fellow congressional. What do you call people? Who are your fellow churchgoers?

[Luke Burbank]

Congregants.

[Listener]

Congregants. I'm going to play a sound for you here and you tell me which one of your neighbors was making this sound, okay? No, I actually don't have that. This is just a Star Trek language website. I'm on type in.

[Luke Burbank]

Shidia, Kodia. Shidia, Kodia.

[Listener]

Now, was that. Are you using that as an example? Because that's specifically what one person in your specific church would always kind of fall back on.

[Luke Burbank]

That would be their fallback. And everybody had their kind of particular little thing that they would fall back to. Because, again, I mean, look, I don't know where our listeners fall on the sort of. We certainly have plenty of people who identify as Christian and are people of faith. I don't know where they come down on, like, speaking in tongues, but, I mean, allegedly you have no control over what's going on, but realistically, you still kind of got to make up the. Make up the sounds. And it's very hard to, like, just make up, like, a totally new and varied and vibrant and ever changing pattern of sounds. You just end up going, shidia, Kodia, Shidia, Kodia. Shidia, Kodia.

[Listener]

Well, I mean, you might remember an era of TBTL when we were very into the art of scatting. And, like, I think there's a pretty good example. You know, like, you and I would sometimes we would, like, goof around and we would start to scatter something, and you very quickly realize how hard it is to scat, like, on the fly. Unless you're like, scatman's World.

[Luke Burbank]

Would you just say. Would you say that Jesus was just the original Scatman?

[Listener]

I would.

[Luke Burbank]

I.

[Listener]

Well, I am. I have a new assignment for my Adobe Illustrator class.

[Luke Burbank]

A teacher I am calling out from Scatland, calling out around the world, Scatman's World. All right, let's thank some donors. These wonderful, generous folks are keeping TBTL rolling with their. I can't stress. It's enough completely voluntary financial support. This is. This is just because these folks are good people and they like the show and they want the show to keep existing and they are donating and they are named Kristen Corley of Wilmington, North Carolina.

[Listener]

Thank you, Kristen.

[Luke Burbank]

Appreciate you Michael J. Smith in University Place, Washington.

[Listener]

This is interesting. Oh, no, no. We've talked about this before. Because I. For a second, I always think University Place. I think that's somewhere here in Seattle near the university. But no, University Place is in a.

[Luke Burbank]

Different part of Seattle, near Tacoma. And I think it is. I think I might have been wrong about this last time. I think it's near the University of Puget Sound.

[Listener]

Yes, yes, I believe you are correct on that. I'll double check.

[Luke Burbank]

Beautiful spot.

[Listener]

Yeah, yeah, beautiful.

[Luke Burbank]

And also the place. If I remember right, I think it was the University Place Marching band that won our TBTL marching band contest that we did.

[Listener]

Oh, cool.

[Luke Burbank]

Way back, many, many years ago.

[Listener]

That's cool.

[Luke Burbank]

Which actually went surprisingly well considering we had no listeners. But I guess we just had a lot of band leaders.

[Listener]

Maybe you got all your listeners.

[Luke Burbank]

That was our demo or something, because we put it out there. We're like, have your high school marching band rerecord Catch My Disease. And I feel like we got like 10. We got like 10 recordings of high school bands playing Catch my Disease. It was very gratifying. Thanks also to Alice Davey in Seattle, Walk, Washington.

[Listener]

Thank you, Alice.

[Luke Burbank]

Now, it's a different spelling for Alice.

[Listener]

It is. Yeah. You know, I used to volunteer with a woman who lives in Seattle, Washington, whose name was Alice Davies. But I think Alice was spelled differently. For a split second, I thought, could this be my friend Alice Davey changing her name just a little bit to donate to tbtl, but not feeling embarrassed when she sees me in person. But no, I think this might be a different Alice Davey. I mean, both names are different. Different now that I. Well, yeah, that's it.

[Luke Burbank]

I'd say both names being different leads us down a different road of inquiry. Thanks also to Laurel Humphrey, who's in Bury in Washington. I feel like we've been getting a lot of bury in action lately, and we have.

[Listener]

Now I know somebody in Burian whose name is Kate Rosenthal. Do you think that this could be Kate Roven Rosenthal this ill under the name Laurel?

[Luke Burbank]

Yes. That one is a slam dunk.

[Listener]

Slam dunk. No, thank you.

[Luke Burbank]

Laurel, look who it is. It's Casey Anderson from Boise, Idaho.

[Listener]

Casey.

[Luke Burbank]

Casey of the shelf. The bench.

[Listener]

The bench. The mench on the bench. The men.

[Luke Burbank]

The men on the bench.

[Listener]

That's right.

[Luke Burbank]

We love. We love these folks. When we. When we road tripped through Idaho, we stayed with them. Thanks, Casey. Really nice to see your name on the list. Was Casey the one with the. With the adorable bulldog?

[Listener]

Yes. This whole thing has been very Awkward for me, because I want to shout out that bulldog so well. And Casey will write in and give us updates on the bulldog. And I fell in love with that dog, and I still love that dog. But I'm blanking on the dog's name right now, and it is absolutely killing me. It's not Edna. Although now I want a dog named Edna. I'm not going to lie to you. That's such a good name. Casey, I am so sorry. I'm forgetting. It's not Donna. I'm forgetting getting the dog's name. And I feel terrible about that. I'm sorry. But thank you for donating.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, thanks, Casey. And then thanks to Lynn Schneider, who's in Olympia, Washington, again, just up the Interstate 5 from me. Lynn, I'll say hi to you next time I'm swinging through that Arby's in Lacey.

[Listener]

Nice.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay, that was one of my. I've told this story a million times, but when I had what was a truly miserable job for me, which was producing conservative talk radio in the afternoon, we used to do the show live from Olympia during the legislative session. What a different time for content. Like. Like, this was afternoon drive. And we're just, like, talking about, like, House bill, whatever. Whatever that, you know, may or may not even actually get through the, like, Washington state legislature, like, incredibly boring stuff. But when the week was over, I would. Because we would stay at this really ratty motel in Olympia. And anyway, I jump in my car, be driving up to go get my kid. I'd be playing the Bends by Radiohead on my CD player, and I would swing through that Arby's in Lacey and get a Big Montana and just sit in traffic for the next two hours. Going home, but feeling just absolutely great. So happy to be done with that place.

[Listener]

Great and gassy. And by the way, Mars Marge the Bulldog. I gotta get that.

[Luke Burbank]

Hey, you know, Edna was not. I knew it was kind of a woman's name. Maybe a woman of a certain ages kind of name.

[Listener]

Yes, a kind of a classic. Kind of a classic name from a certain era. Marge, I'm so embarrassed that I forgot that, but I'm also glad that I eventually landed there.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, thank you to all of our donors for making TBTL happen today. We just could not do this without you.

[Listener]

Hello and welcome to Top Story.

[Luke Burbank]

It's actually very fitting we were talking about Marge the Bulldog, because the top story that I almost got to yesterday involves a bulldog named Baby Dog who belongs to an incoming Republican senator from West Virginia named Jim Just. And he has been taking this bulldog around with him everywhere. It's like his best little pal, by the way. Also, I don't know much about Jim justice, but I'm seeing West Virginia. I'm seeing an R after his name. I'm not feeling, I'm slouching. I'm not handling this well. Like, I don't know much about the guy. I do love this dog, though. I do love this baby dog, which he apparently would bring on all of his campaign stops and everywhere. He showed up at the Senate recently and was told, you can't bring the dog onto the floor of the Senate and unless it's a full on service dog.

[Listener]

Does this dog have its own little chair? Did I see that photo somewhere or was it just sitting in a human chair?

[Luke Burbank]

It's a human chair, but I think, but I think it's fairly typical for them to set up a human chair for baby dog to just sit in at like the debate or something, which kind of, no offense, it seems like a home field advantage if you're allowed to bring an adorable bulldog with you to any debate.

[Listener]

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

[Luke Burbank]

But what it had me thinking was actually I'm thinking about somebody named Kirk Herb street this week because Kirk Herbstreet is a college football analyst, actually. Also, I think he does the Thursday night games on Amazon now. So he, he's not. He used to be for a long time, I think mostly college football, but. But he's now kind of branching out. He had this dog named Ben who was just an absolute sweetheart. And he brought this dog Ben everywhere with him. And in fact, the teams would make press passes for the dog. And he just was inseparable with this, with this dog. He just absolutely loved this dog so much. And Ben passed away sadly. And it was, it was surprisingly emotional for like the world of college football watchers. Like, it was. Yeah, it was like last weekend was sort of like flag at half staff for Kirk Herbstreet's dog, Ben.

[Listener]

Oh, man.

[Luke Burbank]

Don't you look at pictures of him? What a good boy.

[Listener]

What do you think of the name Baby Dog? I also, you know, the name is. What is it? Justice? What is the.

[Luke Burbank]

Jim Justice.

[Listener]

You know, Jim justice has a dog. What is that dog's name? I'm not going with baby dog.

[Luke Burbank]

You know, I actually like that. Yeah, that's like, like a little, a little off brand his name, you know, it's not like he's got a German shepherd named Tonka, you know.

[Listener]

Exactly.

[Luke Burbank]

Some shit.

[Listener]

Thank you for. Yeah, that's what I was Talking about or. Or something even. Maybe even more explicitly about freedom or violence. Exactly.

[Luke Burbank]

The dog's name is just an eagle shrieking, come here. But in. In watching the. All of the folks that were kind of honoring the memory of Kirk Herbstreet's dog, I actually wasn't. I don't watch a ton of college football. I wasn't up on the fact that he would bring this dog everywhere. But then when the dog passed away, I was seeing all of this, you know, content of, like, how close he had been with this dog and how everybody loved the dog and these really cute pictures of him just like standing at midfield during warmups and the dog is just splayed out on its back and he's just like rubbing the dog's belly. Like they're in their yard, but they're at like the 50 yard line of a Michigan, Ohio State game or something. And I just loved that everybody was chill about it. And it made me for a moment think, I don't know, could I become a brings his dog everywhere with him guy? Because I can't be a dog guy right now because I travel too much. But if I was a brings his dog with him everywhere guy, maybe that could work out. I don't know. I really. I told you we've been kind of intermittently watching Becca's mom's dog, Gigi, and like, it's so fun. Like, I just really like, you know, usually it's like if you live in an apartment, you got a dog and the act of walking the dog is kind of a pain. It's kind of like, ugh, I did it last time. Can you do it? Or whatever. I just. This built in thing of first of all, just having a little buddy and then how excited Gigi gets when I grab the leash. And then we go walking around the neighborhood and, you know, it's nighttime and everyone's apartments are lit up and there's good smells of people making dinner and stuff, and it's just. And everyone else is out with their dogs doing the same thing. I really like being, you know, a person who has a dog in their life, but it does not work with my schedule unless I become a Jim justice type or a Kirk Herb street guy, a brings dog everywhere dude.

[Listener]

How about this? How about we get you an ant farm that you take everywhere first. See how you did it.

[Luke Burbank]

I put it in the overhead of the plane and it shatters and they have to divert the flight because there's thousands of ants crawling into the circuit.

[Listener]

As you know, I've never really had a dog as a kid. There were a couple of dogs that kind of came into our lives.

[Luke Burbank]

You would be a very, very good dog. Yeah.

[Listener]

And one of the reasons, I mean, it's kind of funny, it's like one of the reasons I don't have a dog is because I would worry about not being a good enough dog.

[Luke Burbank]

Meanwhile, I've had six dogs.

[Listener]

None of them speak to me, but I wanted to. I don't know. I don't know if I can kind of translate this or why I'm even bringing it up now, but you sort of talk about these moments where it's dog is just like, you know, totally like in the. I have so much respect for people who bring their dogs everywhere with them. And the dogs by nature usually are so well behaved because they don't have the separation anxiety. Because clearly if you're somebody who's doing this in a lot of cases, I'm not saying every case, I'm sure that people are probably thinking of some pain in the ass dog that their cousin has or something, but I just think that in so many cases, the people who have their dogs with them at almost all times have really, really good dogs because those dogs are looked after in a proper way. And they don't like, they're used to being around. They're used to being around people. And it's just, it's. And I, and I have so much respect for that. And I always, you know, think, like, if I had a dog, I don't know that I would be as kind of disciplined as a dog owner should be to like, kind of care for it in the proper way. Who knows? But there is something that I was trying to put my emotions into words the other day because a listener of ours, Taylor, her, it wasn't her cat, but I believe it was somebody in her family's cat, like maybe her parents or somebody. And she was close to this cat and loved this cat and this cat loved her. And the cat passed away recently. And I was just like texting back and forth on Instagram with her, just saying, like, there's something that is so hard to put into words, but the feeling that I get when an animal puts their trust in me, like, I don't have any dogs right now, but like sometimes, like I spend an inordinate amount of time, like, worrying, if not worrying, but either, like sometimes worrying, but often maybe appreciating the fact that I have this little bingo cat who actually does trust me. Like, I worry about him getting outside because he'll just roll off a tree limb and expect me to catch him even if I'm not there. You know what I mean? And like, there's something.

[Luke Burbank]

Congrats, you've fully bubble wrapped this pet, right?

[Listener]

No, I've never.

[Luke Burbank]

No survival skills.

[Listener]

He never had any survival skills. We got to keep him inside. But like, I also, and I told Taylor this too, like, but I'm also like the wrong person to ask about stuff like this because I fall in love if a dog accidentally stands on my foot for like five seconds. I'm like, this dog trusts me enough to stand on my foot. We are fully, fully bonded now. And then somebody has to say, sir, please leave the pet store. This is not how this works.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, I said yesterday on the show that this could get potentially controversial because there is the whole subject of like service dogs versus therapy dogs versus just a regular dog that you throw some vest on that you got it off of Amazon. And you know, there are people who need service dogs. You know, there are people who have physical limitations the dogs can really help with. There's people that have emotional issues that the dogs allegedly help with. Some of that gets a little harder to pin down, in my opinion. I think, you know, I, I think that there's a certain segment of the population who just likes having their dog with them. And by the way, if your dog is chill, I love you having your dog with you. I don't have a problem with it. But like, the line between. Because I was thinking, could I make the argument that I actually need to start bringing a dog around with me for therapeutic reasons? And the truthful answer is no, I can't make that argument. But also, I would be probably less sad if I had a dog with me.

[Listener]

And you could probably.

[Luke Burbank]

Where's the line?

[Listener]

I don't know much about this, but like, to me, I think there's a pretty. There's a pretty, I think, comparable analog between sort of like getting. And again, I am like you. I'm not saying that every dog that is an emotional service is some sort of fraud. I don't believe that. But it's a little bit like the medical marijuana laws of the 2010s or whatever before, like, recreational marijuana was all over the place. Like, I got a recreation or I got a. I'm sorry, I got a medical marijuana card when I was in LA because it wasn't recreationally legal there at the time. And like, I went in and I was like, I was really stressed. But like, did I need it medically Did I need a prescription and did it really matter? And did this doctor in the back of the shop, did she. It was so. I don't know if I've ever even told you that. I feel like I must have told you that story at some point. Like I'm. Because I'm so not good at like lying or even gilding the lily that much. I was just kind of like. And I. But I also was going through a tough time in la, but I remember just going like, I think I might be having panic attacks. And she's like, looked at like a character in a. In a sitcom. She looked over her glasses at me and said, you would know if you're having panic attacks. And I remember having this moment of being like, am I going to be the one guy in America who is denied a medical marijuana?

[Luke Burbank]

You can't get rubber stamped, like in.

[Listener]

The back of this. Just like, you know, shitty one story building. I can't even remember what it was. Not in a necessarily nice part of town. I'm just like, am I going to.

[Luke Burbank]

Be the one person who is just.

[Listener]

Going to be like, no, I guess she said I should just take some aspirin. Anyway. I'm sure that if. I'm sure that if you go to the right person, and I'm not accusing everybody of doing this, but I'm sure if you go to the right person and you explain your mental situation, almost anybody could probably get some sort of a service permit, I'm guessing, or therapy therapy, which is not service therapy.

[Luke Burbank]

That's right, because that was the thing. I started Googling around what dogs make the best service dogs. And it's like, labs are really good because they're just so friendly. And I think they're very food motivated. Like a dog that is very food motivated can be great because you can train them really well. You've got something that they want. German shepherds also apparently very good for that stuff. But then of course, because I'm me, I feel like if I. If and when I eventually do get another dog, which is probably still going to be way down the road, I would like to try to get a dog doesn't shed a ton. Because I absolutely adored Rudy. Everybody knows that Rudy was my little ride or die homie. But so much of my life in Bellingham was trying to mitigate Rudy's shedding. So I would. I wouldn't mind having less of that on. So then I'm like, I'm Googling, like, do goldendoodles make good therapy dogs? And it Turns out, Andrew, there are many goldendoodle breeders that would love to tell you that they make just fine therapy dogs.

[Listener]

I believe that though they are. They are notoriously like, really, like, I think. How do I say this? Easily trained. That doesn't sound fair. But like a very trainable dog. Don't they have a reputation for just being very good companions and very.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I think that the. I think the idea of those kind of doodles is, you know, poodles don't shed and poodles are very smart and generally speaking. And then you have those real friendliness of like a golden retriever or a lab, but you're getting a less sheddy version of them and maybe a little bit smarter version. But just the names of these breeders are crazy. There was one called Pride and Prejudoodles, which I don't even think work works conceptually. Pride and Prejudoodles?

[Listener]

Why?

[Luke Burbank]

I don't know. I do not know. But that jumped out at me. Pride and Prejudoodles.

[Listener]

Oh, my God.

[Luke Burbank]

But I am. The good news is I'm not going to do this. You know what? Honestly? Mostly. Well, two reasons. One, because I know the listeners will judge me so harsh if I go get a dog right now, which would be reasonable. Two, I think Becca would be mad at me because I think if I get a dog, if she or I get a dog, I think she probably would like it to be we get a dog kind of thing. Not I, you know, go continue my Kirk Herb street peripatetic ways with my. With my German shepherd named Cody or whatever. So I'm probably not going to get a dog in the short term. But I was heartened to know that if I do need to get a. A golden doodle of some kind, Pride and Prejudoodles has me covered. I saw something else, by the way, that made me think of you the other day, Andrew. It's another questionable hair salon pun. Becca and I were driving around, we went to the Costco over the weekend and we were out. I don't even know what part. Maybe we were in like Tigard or something on outskirts of Portland. Try this one out. Shears ahead. Shears ahead. One word ahead. One word.

[Listener]

I don't. Here's the deal. I can't feign ignorance here. I did see this in the show sheet, so, you know, I've been somewhat emotionally prepared for this to come up with a topic. But, like, it just. I've been chewing on it. Like it just doesn't. And this is exactly the perfect example of something that, like, is pun adjacent. And it's always haircutteries, whether they're salons or barbers, but usually more like main event. Main event.

[Luke Burbank]

Attraction.

[Listener]

Just like. Yeah, main is spelled like the. And that's. I guess. But it's also.

[Luke Burbank]

Do you have a mane? Are you a horse? Are you a centaur?

[Andrew Walsh]

No, do.

[Listener]

Wait, horses have mane? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

I always think of horses have mane, but centaurs don't, I think, because that part's human.

[Listener]

Lions have manes.

[Luke Burbank]

That's for so much centaur talk today.

[Listener]

More than usual, I would say.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah.

[Listener]

Six limbs is just so many limbs.

[Luke Burbank]

Shears Ahead, though, is like. I guess it's describing what happens when you go in your head. Is she. But that sounds very like what a, you know, guy in New Zealand is doing to a flock of sheep.

[Listener]

But it does.

[Luke Burbank]

Hearing them.

[Listener]

But it doesn't translate to anything else either, though. Like, if it was like, If Shears Ahead was like, an expression, and then you'd be like, oh, yeah, it's a little bit weird, but we can turn that into, like, a double meaning. But it doesn't have a double meaning. It has a single meaning, which is we're using shears to cut hair off of your head. But it sounds like you're playing off of some common idiom or expression, but you're not. Like, what would. Like, what would. What are they playing off of? It's confounding.

[Luke Burbank]

I am happy to announce it is in Tigard, Oregon. Andrew. I was. That's kind of a w. Yeah, that's. And I was looking for some reviews. Doesn't look like there are any Yelp reviews yet for Shears Ahead. There are some for other, like, laser hair removal and wellness places and other things. There are some reviews which I won't read because that's unrelated to this topic. But, yeah, Shears Ahead is in Tiger to Oregon, and it is. You're right. It's like. It's not. It's not something. It's not like saying what, Like, I don't know, up, up and away or.

[Listener]

Right, right, right. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

A thing that we're. That we all kind of have heard someone say, and now we've modified it to be about a haircut. It's. It's just kind of a. And again, why. Why it is that the hair salons are obsessed with these weird. There was another one. I got to keep writing these down because there was one that I saw a couple months ago that I literally. I got to Tell Andrew about this. And then I didn't write it down, and, of course, it whiffed right out of my brain.

[Listener]

Well, I will say that, like, if you had a golden doodle, like, breeding area and you wanted to call it Pup Pup in a way like, that would. See, that would make sense if you want to go up, up and away thing. And I was looking to see if they're. There are other goofy names of goldendoodle breeders, and I didn't see any, like, that are really out there. Some other things that sort of sound like, again, pun adjacent, but I'm not sure what they're going for. But there is one in Indiana, and maybe I'm being too dark here, but it's called Sunshine Acres, and that does not sound like a place that is the beginning of a dog's life. Right? No.

[Luke Burbank]

Sunshine Acres sounds like where you told your kids the dog has gone.

[Listener]

That's exactly what I was going to say. Right. Or older dogs that are just, like, ready to, like, sort of live out the rest of their days in retirement. They can go out to Sunshine Acres and, you know, they can be wheeled around in small little doggy chairs or whatever. But, like, it just does not sound like a place where you're raising pups.

[Luke Burbank]

We're hoping that Alex Jones ends up at Sunshine Acres. He, of course, the. The truly unhinged, and I would say dangerous provocateur from infowars and things like that. I will say that they have an Alex Jones impersonator on the Howard Stern Show. Andrew, that is. Is flawless. It's. And he can just riff for. I think it's this guy named Stephen Nowicki, actually, who's doing it. He can just riff as Alex Jones and the reptilian lizard people and, like, just talking all of the crazy, cockamamie shit that Alex Jones says. Like, he can just. He can just, like, right off the top of his head, just, like, bring it. It's pretty funny.

[Listener]

What's the. What's You. You attributed that to a comedian who I think you've mentioned twice today now, although one of them might have been off air. Who did you attribute that to?

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, he's a producer. I think it's a guy named Steve now who works on the Howard Stern show, who's a. Well, one of their producers. I don't know why it was important for me to say who I think does the Alex Jones impression. But anyway, obviously, Alex Jones lied about the Sandy Hook shooting, the horrible massacre there and said that didn't happen, and that the people that said, or the people who lost their children were hired actors or crisis actors or whatever. Just, just a bunch of super hurtful stuff. And these families were actually able to sue him. And he's on the hook for like, it's like $1.5 billion or something, which is a truly stunning number. And they finally managed to actually take away infowars from him. So he lost the website, he lost the studios. There was a, there was a, like an auction for it. And of all people, the Onion bought it, which is really interesting to me. Like, this was the quote from the CEO of the Onion. The Onion is proud to acquire infowars and we look forward to continuing its storied tradition of scaring the site's users with lies until they fork over their cold, hard cash, said Onion CEO Ben Collins in the statement. Like, I don't really understand what the Onion wants with Infowars.com but I'm glad they have it now. But, but what do you think of that?

[Listener]

I don't know if you and I were reading the same source material on this, but I saw this headline this morning and I was reading it a little bit and there were a couple of things that stood out to me. One, the cinematic nature. And I, by the way, I don't think I was reading this in like the post or something. I think this was a pretty straightforward article describing the situation. But it had one or two lines in there about like Alex Jones broadcasting from the studios today in this cinematic way, which of course plays to strengths and his, I guess, goals anyway. But like saying like, they're literally in the building right now and like, and just kind of like this idea that there's almost a physical takeover, which maybe, maybe I'm playing into his hands by, by retelling that part of it. But it certainly was sort of like a shocking, confusing thing to sort of. To imagine harkening back to like a, some sort of a wild and crazy pirate radio movie from the 90s or something like that.

[Luke Burbank]

Some real pump up the volume shit.

[Listener]

Sure, yeah, yeah, there was that going on. But also I did see, not to be a no fun Nick, but I did see something that, like there are some of his lawyers or something are going to be trying to stop the sale. I hope they're unsuccessful in doing that because it sounds like what he was trying to do was he was trying to get his wealthy, you know, followers to put together money to like win the bid themselves so that he. Because he's like, I'm going on, I'm going to, you know, they can, they can shut me down, but they can't make me shut up. I'll continue, continue to say ridiculously terrible things. And I would like to do it still under the banner of Infowars. And if somebody who is on my side, quote unquote, my side can buy this, then, you know, we can collaborate or whatever. So I just really hope that that doesn't happen. I hope that the Onion or I really just hope that the Onion is able to hang on to it.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, I bet they will. I mean, I think he's. I mean, I think most of what he's done legally is just to delay, delay the inevitable, which is that they need to take all this stuff away. And also, I don't, I'm glad that they're taking. I mean, I want them to take away any way that he could possibly get his again, very dangerous message out to people. But on the other hand, I do feel like it is kind of like he'll just start something called like information wars and then, yeah, right, do the same thing. And you know, I'm using, I don't know, maybe, maybe $1,000 worth of equipment right now to talk to you and could basically be doing that same Alex Jones style of show with this equipment probably. So like, I don't really know what stops him from just opening up a new shop.

[Listener]

Like, right.

[Luke Burbank]

I wonder how if there's people that go to his stupid Infowars who are when he moves somewhere else, if they won't figure out how to just go to the new place he's doing his new show from or his, his show from.

[Listener]

But obviously like you and I just do this and we have not like sort of expanded out into other areas of media very much. No offense to the hey Dummies videos or whatever, but like what we do is pret. Self contained. You could see somebody like him with so many different platforms and, and also, I mean just the glossiness of the studios or whatever I'm sure is a more professional sort of deal. Like I just sort of feel like as these things sort of get shut down or even people who are not necessarily scandalous. You and I have known people who have had like radio shows with them. They have to turn them into podcasts, whatever. It's just sort of like it's sort of death by a thousand cuts a little bit too. You know, he's just, even if he has some crazy people who are listening to him, he is certainly not going to return to that level of power and influence. That I think he wants had.

[Luke Burbank]

Right. I mean, I get like, again, I was saying how blue sky feels like maybe a small W in the world. This feels like another small W in the world. Yeah, like the shrinking of Alex Jones because he was trying to get Roger Stone to do something for him. Apparently he had Steve Bannon on his show. And like, I mean, I would. I would be unsurprised to hear that, like Trump tried to like swoop in and do some bullshit with this, which I guess he hasn't or point has them yet. Seriously, FCC or whatever. But like, just anytime. It just has felt. I'm just going back to treading the same territory that we've already done today and this whole week. But, like, just feels like the worst people are having the best week. And when one of the worst people has a bad week and they take away his stupid website, that feels like at least something good happened. At least something bad happened to a bad person, which is all you can hope for in this world. There's a right way to rock in a wrong way to roll.

[Listener]

You can't just listen to yourself.

[Luke Burbank]

Just remember that life is number one.

[Listener]

You can be having so much fun. Just remember that life is much fun.

[Luke Burbank]

You can be nothing but.

[Listener]

Scatman's world. Oh, man, I forgot to tell you, Luke, my worst nightmare happened yesterday. Well, not my worst TBTL nightmare, but adjacent to my worst nightmare. Do you remember what happened at the very end of the show? It. Okay, if you don't, this isn't the Bible trivia game, but do you remember what happened at the very, very, very end of the show yesterday when I tried to play some extra little tape? Yes. We had made a joke about the Miller Lite. It is both commercials. And so I played one on the fly as a little like kind of Easter egg audio bite at the end of the show, but it cut off early. And then I said to you, oh, shoot, I'll find a better one later, or whatever. Apparently I left that little bit of conversation in the show. I got a text message. Yes, Yesterday was a weird day anyway because there was some sort of issue going on with our podcast support company, Libsyn. And so our podcast went out late anyway, and then around, I don't know, 8:00, 9:00 at night, I got a text message from somebody who said, like, thanks so much for leaving that in the end of the show. That was so cool to hear you guys talking. And I was like, no. And like, I ran into my studio and I think a little Flame. A little fl. Flames and smoke shot up under my heels as I came in here. But the thing is, like, once somebody has already heard it, it means, especially for our listeners who I think like the show probably downloads automatically even before they listen to it on their phones. Like I think I did. I fixed it and I re uploaded the file. But I still think that it's too little, too late. Most people will hear that now. My worst nightmare would be, you know, a hot mic moment where I actually say something that I don't want. Broad like, you know, some of my just deep seated. Deep seated toxic opinions about people. But luckily it was pretty innocuous. But just that feeling, Luke. And I don't think. I think you were protected. I think you just laughed or chuckled or something.

[Luke Burbank]

I think I said something like, oh, I can't believe it. I was like, oh, it cuts off right before the thing we were specifically referencing. Yeah. Which was Luke Wilson saying like, thanks for the support or whatever.

[Listener]

And honestly, I think I said that you just sort of like chuckled. So like, like, you were. You were very well protected in this case. But my God, those moments of like me running from one room into the other just thinking, what did I leave on? Now, keep in mind, this person did not text me and say, are you sure you want to leave that in the show? That's pretty racy content. You know what I mean? I had a feeling it was innocuous enough, but I did not like that feeling. So we are going to edit carefully.

[Luke Burbank]

It's just so funny to me also that this show is so flipping casual already. You and I just talking to each other. Clearly no particular focus on being entertaining. And yet there is an even less entertaining level of conversation that we can have when we're not quote unquote on like, this is us being on.

[Listener]

What part of I drew a bee do you not find entertaining? You don't think that was my. You don't think that was my best entertainment material to start this show?

[Luke Burbank]

I thought it was good.

[Listener]

Oh, I'll send you a picture of that.

[Luke Burbank]

By the way, my dog's new name is.

[Listener]

Ooh. That was actually very realistic sounding. Was that. What is that? Is that a sound effect or is that.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, this is the preloaded. I did this last week on the birthdays. These are just like preloaded sound effects on the sound program that I use. That's a goat.

[Listener]

That's loud one.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, sorry.

[Listener]

Levels there. This is a still pretty loud. Let's turn.

[Luke Burbank]

All right, all right, calm down.

[Listener]

All right, let's do this fix it in post Michelle says Happy Bluray to my best friend Aaron. From tiger walls to starting parties, life is so much more fun with you in it. Hope this year is the best one yet. Happy Blur. That one is tough for me so I thought I was Michelle's best friend. Guess it's Aaron. Happy Birthday Aaron. Christian in Portland says RIP did a lip dip dip. Happy Blur day to a listener. Brian in Portland my TBTL Brian certainly do his in person delivery of the they is trying to say I was drunk drop got me to start listening to the show in the first place and although we don't see each we don't see each other much these days. It's always fun when we do. I recorded two of my own albums with Brian and he's a pleasure to work with. Musician 10 should jump on the chance to record with him also. Brian, let's get lunch.

[Luke Burbank]

Brian is the goat, if you will, of Portland music production, pedal steel, you name it. Brian's got you covered. He has done so much cool stuff for our show too.

[Listener]

To my dear cuz 10 miles Melissa, I hope your blur's day is the best. Blur's Day. We should get together soon to celebrate. I wonder if Luke and Andrew might have advice on a good place to go in Ballard. TTFN love cuz 10 Karen and Kenmore hey Karen, Happy Blur's Day. Melissa, what do you well, you've got.

[Luke Burbank]

Your place rough and tumble that you always seem to be going.

[Listener]

You know what? I would highly recommend that rough and tumble. Thank you Lou.

[Luke Burbank]

I don't. I'm you know I'm out of touch with. Oh you know what, that's not true. I love you. I love the place called Stone Burner. Oh yeah, in Ballard. That is. That's part of the Ballard Hotel. It is that. If that restaurant is still there. I really hope it is. That place is phenomenal.

[Listener]

This is not a place to begin, but if your night gets a little bit more grungy, you know what's open again. Post Pandemic is and I think been open for a little bit but the Ballard Smoke Shop is open again. It's under new ownership now so they don't have pull tabs anymore and there's a lot more. I think you used to have to get food on the diner side but now they have a lot. It looks like they maybe have, I don't know, updated the menu or something because a lot of people were like kind of sitting at the bar eating some really good looking burgers but that's a little bit more of a dive bar experience. But I do love the smoke house. And. I'm sorry, the smoke shop. And I'm glad that it's still there in Ballard. And finally, from our pale curry, Corinne to our pal, Lydia, her daughter Corinne says, happy birthday to my amazing firstborn, Lydia. Your dad and I were dumb kids who were basically just experimenting on you like Krieger. But somehow you turned out. But somehow. But somehow you turned out to be one of. In my head, I was trying so hard to think of a Krieger light. And everything that came into my head, I was like, nope, that is not appropriate for the middle of a buffer.

[Luke Burbank]

Absolutely not.

[Listener]

Oh, man. Somehow you turned out to be one of the most multitalented, brilliant, dynamic, hilarious and compassionate individuals on the planet. You're also very good at raising wonderful little humans of your own whom you experiment on. Nah, I added that part. You make life richer and more beautiful for everyone around you. And I'm proud to call my baby girl Happy birthday, Lydia. And thank you both for being such pails to the show.

[Luke Burbank]

Corinne bought a helicopter. See you later, dummies.

[Listener]

See you later.

[Luke Burbank]

I'm on my helicopter.

[Listener]

That's right. That's what we got. I don't feel like I turned in my best performance today. Luke, thank you for putting up with me.

[Luke Burbank]

I thought it was a great show, especially the stuff that we didn't mean to leave in.

[Listener]

Yes, exactly. Well, that'll highlight that. We'll put that on Instagram.

[Luke Burbank]

All right, that's going to do it for today's program. But guess what?

[Listener]

We are going to be right back.

[Luke Burbank]

Here tomorrow with more imaginary radio. So please come spend the time with us now that Infowars is shut down. You got to. You got to listen to something.

[Listener]

What if we caught a bunch of Infowars listeners? Wow, this is why we're bad at business. We didn't even think of that.

[Luke Burbank]

How are you? I did not even consider that we could be selling, like, colloidal silver and other questionable things and making some real dough.

[Listener]

Well, I told you we're working on the merch store, so we'll see.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, spoiler alert. It's a lot of supplements. All right, thanks for listening, folks. We'll see you tomorrow. Please remember, no mountain too tall.

[Listener]

And good luck to you all. Okay, Luke, we gotta remember to cut this part out, okay?

[Luke Burbank]

I'm just sitting here silently, not getting on the tape.

[Listener]

Power out.