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TBTL: Too Beautiful To Live
#4405 Melon Parties And The Infinite Sadness
01:24:58
Luke got quite the scare during yesterday’s TBTL recording, but he learned a valuable lesson. Meanwhile, Andrew’s sense of smell is going haywire. And they finally talk a little (or maybe a lot) about season 2 of Severance.
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- [00:01]
A
Excuse me. Can I talk to you for a second?
- [00:02]
B
How can I help you?
- [00:03]
A
My date's eating all the fully loaded nachos. All the ones with the meat, cheese, and everything. The ones that are fully loaded. She's hogging them. So I'm mostly getting just, like, just chips. Like, mostly just chips. Like, nothing on them but, like, a little bit of cheese and maybe one little nugget of meat. Okay. Can you say something to her? Say what? Maybe go up the table and just say, like, hey, stop that. Or like, hey, that's not allowed. You want me to go over and say, stop eating the meat on the chips? Just say the restaurant has rule. It's not you. It's the rule the restaurant has that if you get an item to share, you can't. One person can't just eat all the fully loaded ones. Like, don't look around, find the one with most meat and always eat that one. Can't you just ask her to share with you? You just say the restaurant has a rule.
- [00:53]
B
TBTL in the next hour, we will.
- [01:00]
A
Present information that's both shocking and enlightening. You know, everything is not an anecdote.
- [01:04]
B
You have to discriminate.
- [01:06]
A
You choose things that are that are funny or mildly amusing or interesting. You're a miracle.
- [01:13]
B
Your stories have none of that.
- [01:15]
A
I'm a Grammy, Emmy, Tony and Webby award winning and nominated songwriter, artist, designer, director, editor, animator, producer. Collect. That was great. That was good. You went for it. I appreciate that. You embarrassed me in front of Derek Jeter. You embarrassed yourself in front of Derek Jeter.
- [01:41]
B
And I also think it wouldn't hurt you to talk to a therapist about your bathroom issues, because there's clearly something going on there.
- [01:47]
A
All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TVTL show that just might be too beautiful to live.
- [01:54]
B
Be careful, though, it's spicy.
- [01:57]
A
My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host and I'm gonna get all anecdotal on you. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia. I'm an activist and house party enthusiast. It's a gray Tuesday here in the Pacific Northwest, but it's actually, for once, it's kind of toasty and warm here in the studio. Take it to coming out here early and just turning on all these heaters and just so that it's, you know, properly podcast here and bring you episode 4405 in a collector's series, let the fun begin. It's funny that my dad's Here working this week on the house, and he's, you know, carrying heavy things and doing stuff. And I'll come, I'll go down into the house and the heat will all be off because he's doing real stuff and I'm freezing. I'm like, can we please turn the heat on? I've. I don't know if you know, I'm a podcaster. I don't do anything that generates enough body heat for us to turn the heat off. Good sir. Speaking of podcasting, I learned what not to do while podcasting. I learned this yesterday about, I don't know, four minutes into the show. I've made a huge mistake. We'll talk about that. And we're going to talk to this guy. Longest running cobra of the show. Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships, Soulful rocker from New Hampshire, and a guy who honestly is not taking any more crap this morning. I don't want any more bull anytime during the day from anyone. That includes me. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.
- [03:32]
B
Good morning, Luke. Have I told you that coffee smells like cabbage to me? Now?
- [03:39]
A
Now.
- [03:40]
B
Yeah, this is a. This is a development that has been sort of. I'm.
- [03:44]
A
Is this a side effect of your meds?
- [03:46]
B
That's what I'm trying to figure out. And I think this hopefully will maybe lead into something that you want to talk about in a moment, too, because I heard you mention it in your intro, but I've spent the. The introduction of today's show reading a thread on Reddit that says sense of smell. Methotrexate, double question mark. And I'm on this drug called methotrexate for my rheumatoid arthritis. And I think people use this drug for other things, too. I think, I think it's also used in conjunction with other drugs, like recreationally. Yeah. With dealing with cancer and stuff. I think, I think it's a pretty. I think it's a pretty powerful drug. I don't, you know, I'm not a pharmacist, but it's weird. Amateur pharmacist, the way I. Yeah, I mean, I've. I've dabbed.
- [04:29]
A
I called you Dr. Feelgood.
- [04:31]
B
I mean, there was that. There was that. That experience I had with the motion sickness medication that I'm blanking on the name of right now.
- [04:42]
A
What is the Dramamine?
- [04:44]
B
My Dramamine story from the.
- [04:45]
A
Yes, I remember that, but forget it. As much as I've been trying to.
- [04:49]
B
You know, I Heard from a listener who struggled with some pretty. After me telling that story about how badly that drug messed me up when I sort of in college purposely overdosed on it to have sort of a trippy experience with some friends and miss.
- [05:03]
A
Your chance, by the way, to spend some quality time with a co ed.
- [05:06]
B
Because my, my brain was so messed up, I literally didn't know what she had handed me. And somebody said, you know, I struggled with addiction and some really, really powerful, scary, dangerous drugs. And the one that I kept returning to was Dramamine because it was accessible and told in this email. Told some very personal stories about. Scary stories about friends finding him. Just like wandering around and like it really messes up your. Your brain grapes. I'm glad I only did it once, I guess. But anyway, let's go back to modern pharmacy and the. And my legal course of prescription medicines these days. Anyway, methotrexate. Taking it because it's prescribed. It's a weird thing. I take it one day a week, but I take eight pills. I take four in the morning and four at night one day a week.
- [05:53]
A
It's a very strange thing.
- [05:54]
B
It is very strange.
- [05:55]
A
One a day, right?
- [05:57]
B
Isn't it strange how these chemicals work? Anyway, all I know is recently, and I've been taking this since the fall, I think, or let's see here. No, it's winter now, so I was maybe taking this since early fall or something. Yeah. Like I just started noticing that things smelled weird. I have this plug in air freshener. Like a real basic plug in air freshener. Like Febreze or Glade. Glade here, maybe. Glade. If you smelled it, you would have delved it. Now if you smelled it, you would have recognized it as like, oh, this is the lobby of a hotel or you know what I mean. One of it's a very genericy kind of.
- [06:32]
A
Can I ask without it sounding overly judgmental, did you purchase this, like, I'm curious about the journey where you went into a store, maybe a grocery store and went down that aisle that's got all the like non grocery items. And you said you went with an Airwick. You went with a Glade. I feel like those are the kind of smells that our generation has turned its back on. Yeah, they're definitely snarl.
- [06:55]
B
They're definitely very basic. They're basic beef smells.
- [06:58]
A
We're burning candles here. Now we're smudging. What's that? Santa Paula or whatever that kind of little piece of wood is that everybody likes to burn now.
- [07:07]
B
Yeah. No, this is not hipster in any way, but it is. You know, we have a litter box in the basement, and I keep it very clean, but I always have this sneaky feeling, like if I'm gone on vacation for a while, you know, more than, like, a few days or something, you come back, and then you're like. You're smelling your house. You're like, you know, do I smell something earthy in here? Does it. Does it. You know what I mean? Like, does it smell like we have pets? I don't like to smell like you have pets. When you walk into a house, should.
- [07:35]
A
Be seen, but not smell.
- [07:36]
B
That's right. And so I. So I bought one of these things, and I plugged it in. It's a. It's a little bit strong when you first plug it in. But I plugged it in in my bathroom downstairs, which is kind of near where we keep the cat litter box. And, like, for my downstairs bathroom, smell like, it's a clean smell. It smells like linen or something like that, you know, like, it's fine. Like, again, I'm not. I didn't do it to win any kind of cool guy awards, but.
- [07:58]
A
Well, good, because you're not.
- [07:59]
B
Yeah. And so I. But the thing about it is, it's very distinct smell, you know, like, it's. But like I said, let's just say it's like that fresh laundry smell or whatever they describe it as. But it now smells like nothing like that. It smells a little bit like burning, or not even burning, but almost a sulfury kind of smell. And then I noticed.
- [08:19]
A
Have you gotten Genevieve in there to get nostrils on this?
- [08:22]
B
Well, I've told her about it. I don't know about that specific thing, but I started noticing sometimes if coffee is brewing upstairs. And what is one of the best smells in the world? Right. A new pot of coffee brewing. It'll smell, like, weird, like. Like I said, like cabbage or something, which is a real bummer.
- [08:38]
A
What a major bummer.
- [08:39]
B
Yeah, it's a pretty big bummer.
- [08:41]
A
I will sometimes get up because I have to use the restroom, and it's really early. I. You know, I make the coffee the night before. I don't know if you're familiar with tomorrow's coffee, Andrew. It's a whole lifestyle.
- [08:52]
B
Yeah.
- [08:52]
A
I will get up in the morning, and I will go switch on the coffee maker, and I will get back in bed because I know that the smell of coffee will. 30 to 40 minutes from then will help give me the. In the words of a prayer, home companion, the courage to get up and do what needs to be done. So the fact that you're not getting to enjoy that is a major bummer.
- [09:17]
B
Yeah, I do the same thing. Or I will sometimes even program it to start about a half hour before I'm supposed to wake up so that I wake up and you smell the cough and you're like, ooh, that's. That's a reason to live, what I'm looking for these days.
- [09:29]
A
So now it's like you're in a dacha somewhere just with boiling cabbage, boiling away.
- [09:34]
B
It's very strange. And it's not always like that. So let me put it this way. If I were to take like a bag of coffee beans. Berries, coffee beans, Broadcast coffee.
- [09:46]
A
Broadcast coffee and I coffee sponsor of.
- [09:48]
B
Tbt and I bury like my nose in it, which is something I like to do.
- [09:51]
A
Not actually burying your nose and Barry's coffee.
- [09:54]
B
Well, don't. My nose doesn't touch the beans. And I'm concerned you're going to come over and never have coffee again.
- [09:58]
A
No, no.
- [09:59]
B
This tastes like nostril.
- [10:01]
A
But I'm also on a drug that makes coffee smell like your nostrils.
- [10:05]
B
Yeah, that's interesting. Wait, you're not supposed to snort the beans. Supposed to grind it, then snort it anyway. Like, if I do that, it'll smell like coffee beans. It'll smell nice. It's not like, it's not like everything is destroyed, but it is especially I think, when things are cooking maybe a little bit. And I wonder if that has to do with, you know, this plug in thing being a plug in thing. I. I don't know, but.
- [10:23]
A
Oh, because heat is being applied to it.
- [10:25]
B
But I'm seeing some of it. I'm not seeing anything official saying. Oh yeah, this is one of the official side effects. I saw one thing that was like kind of quasi intelligent saying that some people report in an increased sense of smell with methotrexate. And so the first post I saw was like, I typed in something like methotrexate sense of smell. And it's kind of like, do I have bad body odor from methotrexate? And there was like an article saying what happens is sometimes you have a more strong sense of smell and therefore it changes your perception of the world and yourself. And so you might think that you have a body odor. Thank goodness. That does not seem to be the situation with me. Somehow taking seven showers a day has eliminated any issues with not only any.
- [11:08]
A
Body odor, but also your biome.
- [11:10]
B
Yes, exactly.
- [11:10]
A
Many healthy things that do live on the surface of Your skin are all gone now.
- [11:16]
B
I mean, these are the cleanest skin flakes you'll ever see. As I just crammed dirty. As I just turned into one of those Marvel characters at the middle of Endgame or whatever I'm talking about.
- [11:27]
A
I mean, that's. But hey, but in all seriousness, like, smell is so vital how we navigate our world. Obviously. It's, you know, it's a way that we. We taste things. It's a way that we sort of are attracted to people or maybe, you know, repulsed from people. I worry about this a little bit. Although she seems to be putting up a pretty good front, if not. But Becca is a, like a super smeller. Has an incredibly keen sense of smell. I think it's part of why she's really, really good at. At cooking and also at, like, tasting things. Like, if we have a glass of wine, she's like, knows exactly the. All the different elements because she has a really, really keen sense of smell. But that's a lot of pressure, and I didn't really fully grasp it until pretty long into the relationship. And it's like, I try to, you know, I try to handle my business, but it's like she is constantly going like, oh, huh, I wonder what that smell is. And then it takes me, you know, another 30 seconds before I get whatever it is that she's noticing. Anyway, all that is to say, I hope that this is something that will correct itself at some point, because that's actually a pretty bad side effect.
- [12:35]
B
It's not great. But honestly, like, I sort of thinking about this today. And of course I brought it up because I was thinking about it is like, as I was, Genevieve was taking off some nail polish today, this morning, and I kind of passed her desk, and it was such a strong smell, but it didn't smell like nail polish remover at all. And I said, now what is that smell I smell? She's like, well, I'm removing, removing my nail polish. I'm like, oh, my God. That doesn't sound. That doesn't smell anything like nail polish to me. She's like, well, it is this like a scented one. She's like, it doesn't really smell like nail polish to me either. Like, well, okay, now back to zero on these theories. So. But it. But it was very strong and not in a bad way. And I almost wonder if it's just like a more acute sense of smell that is also thus changing the way things smell to me. Like, there's no way to compare smells to another person.
- [13:21]
A
Like, well, here's what you have to do. Obviously, you have to smell some cabbage.
- [13:25]
B
Well, I have to maybe start drinking cabbage water in the morning.
- [13:29]
A
If you smell a cabbage and it smells like coffee, I think we've started to really kind of narrow this down.
- [13:34]
B
Yeah, Maybe everything just went topsy turtle cabbage switcheroo, sir. But I will say, you said it sounds like a terrible side effect, but I think about, like. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't seem like the worst side effect in the world. Like, it's not great, but I sort of think about. And not to be corny here, but lately I've just been feeling really good. And I was ment to Chris Hayes when he was. We were talking with him at town hall. He asked me how I was feeling, and I was like, good. You know, I was thinking I had. We'd given him a little. One of those little TBTL sound machines, right? I had one or two kicking in this closet, but it was in this box in the bottom of this. Really hard to get into closet. I'm just saying this so that Chris knows how hard I worked for it, but I was like, you'll never hear this.
- [14:17]
A
He's up promoting his number one bestseller book.
- [14:19]
B
That's right. So anyway, so I'm like pulling these boxes out of this really hard to get to place. And, like. And some of them are really heavy because it's. One of them is one of these box my museum of archaic technology or whatever. So it's got like, you and Fred.
- [14:31]
A
Armisen just like, oh, and I'm pulling.
- [14:32]
B
This thing out, but, like, you know, it's heavy but completely doable. And I had a moment of just like, I literally, literally would not have been able to do this this summer, you know, and so because of that, I'm like, well, coffee smells like cabbage. You know, like, I'm 48. I've avoided some pretty major health stuff in my life. I've been really, really lucky. Had my first health scare this summer. It was not great, but we got it under control, you know, so sense of smell. Live with this. I think I was kind of putting in perspective. But it is a weird thing that I thought you would find interesting because again, we talk. We didn't. We do a whole show or a series of shows about people's favorite smells. Like, smell is really important.
- [15:11]
A
It's huge. I mean, let me reframe it. It's not. I'm not. I guess I hear what you're saying, and I'm not trying to Say it's the worst side effect you could be experiencing. But what I think is it's less trivial than it might sound at first. If you said, my sense of smell has kind of changed from being on this medicine that's greatly helped me with my mobility, it would be like, well, that's. That's great. That's a great trade off. But it. But also, if you start to really think about it, like, how important smell is. Like, what if suddenly you know, not to get weirdly personal into your relationship, but, like, just imagine your sense of smell change and you suddenly don't really, like, enjoy the biome of the person you're with.
- [15:46]
B
Cats I'm with, like.
- [15:47]
A
Or the cats you're with. Maybe more critically, I don't know what your love life is like. I don't know what goes on, but you know what I mean? Like, or a food that you really, really love, suddenly the taste of it changes for you. So you're right, it's not the worst. And it sounds like you'll definitely take it on balance, but I do think it's kind of a sneaky. A sneaky side effect in that it might have more impact than. Than you might think. Speaking of, you were. Looks like.
- [16:11]
B
One last thing I was going to say. I'm not trying to extend this out, but only because I can hear people maybe, like, theorizing on this. I will mention I had Covid for the first time at the end of September because I was just looking at my calendar.
- [16:22]
A
You made it that far?
- [16:23]
B
What's that?
- [16:24]
A
I don't know how you made it that far.
- [16:26]
B
Into life. Yeah, into life, into.
- [16:28]
A
Into these. These times.
- [16:30]
B
This is this. These American lives.
- [16:33]
A
I.
- [16:33]
B
Anyway, I'm sorry. Sorry to extend this out further, but I just wanted to say that, like, you know, that is something that we've heard a lot about, right? Like, Covid affected smell and taste. Now the thing is, I did. It hasn't affected taste at all, which I'm glad of. And that was terrible taste. I still have. I still love the Doors.
- [16:49]
A
Still keep making me listen to money. Dangles. Hey, you know, I was not a.
- [16:55]
B
Fair joke after the Doors.
- [16:57]
A
I was grasping for something. I've been. I've been enjoying the heck out of your jazz recommendations. Really and truly, Charles Mingus out of this.
- [17:05]
B
But anyway, so I don't know, that's another thing to maybe consider because that, that. So we were in Philadelphia the very last weekend of September going into October, but it sort of seems like this didn't really start hitting me until January. So I feel like that's probably not related, but maybe that makes more sense than a side effect of this drug. But anyway, what were you doing?
- [17:25]
A
Well, I started the show by saying I learned yesterday something that is, in all these years of broadcasting, I should already have known this, but I, for some reason yesterday failed to realize that getting a ping on my phone from my healthcare provider, Kaiser Permanente, when they said, oh, you've got a new test result is not that just like three minutes into our recording session is not when I should just click on that? I mean, people. Actually, I was gonna say people might be surprised to learn this, but they've listened to the show. They would be unsurprised to learn that even while you and I are talking, and I think we're very engaged in the conversation, there are times where maybe we dash off an email here or there or, you know, hex an empire or whatever, whatever needs to be done. I really do try to not allow myself to get super distracted because I feel like, you know, this is our job and I want to try to do a good job. But. But every once in a while, I can only speak for myself. I'm guilty of. Of getting a note from someone or something, maybe, you know, Becca checking in or Livewire, and I feel like, well, I'll just. While Andrew's talking, I'm both listening, and I'm also going to hit a little like, yeah, that works for me, or whatever.
- [18:33]
B
Can I. Before I even find out what you're going to say, can I just say there was a moment of yesterday's show that I actually thought about later, that I did something to you that was truly unintentional. But I noticed it, and it was. My grandfather used to do this thing where he would be telling a story, and then he would just throw in some ridiculous line or something like that to check to see if you're listening. And yesterday we were. I was telling such a long, boring story about troubleshooting a new laptop computer. And at one point, I. I asked you a question in the middle of it, like a rhetorical question, like, what does it always ask us, Luke, when we're. When we're logging onto Riverside or something? And I could see for a split second that. And I did not do it on purpose. I'm bad with eye contact, so I'm often not looking directly at the came of the screen. And I saw you sort of like, what was the question? And then you pulled it out. I could be wrong about it, but it was like One of those moments where I was like, oh, shit. I think I just caught him unawares. And I seriously was not trying to catch you.
- [19:29]
A
That's so unawares, it's funny. Okay, this is now, like, in typical TBT style, this is now multiple layers of different conversations that were both on air and off air. But before we started recording today's show, I said to you, oh, I want to talk to you about. Basically, like, I went on a journey yesterday. And you said to me, yeah, I noticed you were somewhere else a little bit, but I just figured it was maybe jet lag or the travel or something. And it's so interesting. It's interesting to me how tuned into each other's vibrations we probably are just by virtue of doing this so many hours a week. But, yeah, so basically what happened was yesterday I get this little ping on my phone from Kaiser. As everyone knows, I had that colonoscopy two weeks ago now, which has been both fascinating to the listeners and also generated a lot of ire people. I think that there are a couple people who think that. Well, it's weird. It seems to have generated a strong response, a strong response from a couple of people who I don't really think were actually listening to what we were saying, or I was saying. I will admit to one thing, and this is to the side of the point of what happened yesterday. I guess there's some people out there who wanted to point out that if you do the kind of less invasive test, which is to say you submit a stool sample and you have a polyp in your colon, that will actually. The stool sample should theoretically note that, because that's the whole design. I don't want to get too graphic, but basically there are things. There are things or indications that they should pick up with the test. Whereas I was saying, well, thank goodness I got this very involved procedure which had all this deprivation going into it, because they found this little polyp that they didn't seem too worried about. And thank God they found it because they wouldn't have otherwise. So I want to correct the record. I guess they maybe would have found it had I done the less invasive test.
- [21:22]
B
Can I just jump on there one second? Because you and I kind of. We were learning about this at the same time. You've had yours. I haven't, but, like, it was presented to us by both of our doctors as like, well, the gold standard. What my doctor called exactly the gold standard is you go in, you get the colonoscopy, and that way, if we do find anything we can take it out. If you do the at home test and you submit a sample, then if it does flag anything, then you're gonna have to get the colonoscopy anyway. So you and I were like, oh, I think we're doing the right thing by choosing the actual full on colonoscopy. The first time this person who wrote in was like, well, that sort of dismisses the idea of all the pressure that is on the healthcare system right now. And if there are ways we can like have people take these tests at home, it actually will kind of like, like encourage more people to do the at home test first as opposed to jumping right to the colonoscopy would actually be better for the system overall. I thought it was an interesting email. That was a, that was from a listener who works in the healthcare industry, seems to know what they're talking about and I'm sorry, I don't have their name in front of me. It was an interesting perspective that I had not considered so forever it's worth.
- [22:22]
A
So colonoscopy talk has been tearing this podcast apart.
- [22:27]
B
Yeah.
- [22:28]
A
And anyway, so, so as I just mentioned, and as you figured out if you listened two weeks ago or whatever, they took out this little thing they found in there. The doctor seemed extremely unworried when he came and talked to me afterwards and everything seemed to be in great shape. And then yesterday I get this update and I press on the button and then suddenly I'm at some kind of like PDF, Right. Which is the patho. Maybe it's the pathologist. It's whoever looks, you know, this gets sent off. So it's whoever looks at the thing. And it's very medical the way it's written out. And what I notice is that it, it doesn't say anything definitively on there, like good news or bad news. Right. It's very technical terms around what the nature of this little thing was upon analysis. And then it says something in there. I'm kind of trying to half remember this now, but it said something like, like results omitted or something. It had something in there. It was like, it's this kind of thing doesn't explain what this kind of thing means. And then it's like results omitted or something. Something that made me think, I wonder why would you omit that? Like, why would you not put whatever in there? Like that's, that's a little, that's a little odd. And so this is where, Andrew, I did the stupidest thing that you can do, which is while talking to you, I then highlighted the word that was a description of this particular little thing they took out of my body and plugged it into the Internet and did not love what the Internet was saying. And you know, and then I'm like, on Wikipedia, and I'm being a little vague here intentionally because I don't want to. I'm for the record, by the way, things are fine, it turns out, but in the moment I'm like, huh, it's a weird word I've never seen before. And then you plug it into the Internet and then you get to Wikipedia and then it's like linking to something else. And suddenly you're jumping around these pages and you're just kind of like. As I'm talking to you about, about resetting the time on the computer, I'm also thinking, am I entering a completely new phase of my life health wise? And the, the good news is that when I got done with the show, I was like, okay, well, well, first of all, I was like, what do I, like, how do I, what do I do about this exactly? Do I just, like, immediately call Kaiser and like, get somebody on the phone, you know, the doctor or the. Whoever the person who looked at the sample was or whatever? Or do I give it a day? Or do I just go down to the Eagles in Rainier, Oregon and just start getting drunk? Like, what's the, what's the recommended response to information that seems a little ominous, but chugging seems. But do I stop butt chugging? Do I do more butt chugging?
- [25:13]
B
Exactly. It's a fine line.
- [25:15]
A
I was just kind of. I literally was like, I wonder, you know, and I'm, of course, I'm spinning this up in my mind into a sort of a bigger deal than it turned out to be, thankfully. But I'm just like, okay, I guess what I really need to do is just give them a call and get to the. So to speak, get to the bottom of this. But I really did kind of have this moment of thinking, like, is this something that I don't even really want to get into today? Like, is there going to be anything different tomorrow? And do I want to have an additional day where I'm just like. Like the before and after of what I think might be a kind of a serious situation? And right as I'm about to call them, I get a new email from them that is now not written in medicalese?
- [25:53]
B
Yeah.
- [25:54]
A
And it just basically says, look, this thing that we. First of all. And this to their credit, they're like, right there at the top of the like the top of the little diagnosis, the little description of what they're like, you don't have any cancer. This thing we took out is totally benign. Like, that's all the good news. The bad news is it's the kind of thing that is, you know, also associated with cancer, like, down the line. So our recommendation is that you get another one of these things in three years. That was the extent of it. So the good news is everything was fine. Everything was benign. I wish they would have led with that email. If they would have just sent me an email in the first place, I would have been fine. But in the. Again, in the Googling and then the Wikipedia and the jumping around and seeing words that were, again, a little. A little unnerving. It was. I guess my point in all that is to say, apologies if I was a little off yesterday. I have learned my lesson, and that is don't open. Don't open medical updates while you're also trying to co host a podcast.
- [26:52]
B
Let me ask you a question here, and what does Riverside always ask us when we log in? Luke? Oh, no, he's totally. Dear. The headlights. I scared him again. You know what? That sounds like a little bit to me. And I wonder if they're just using different language. Do you remember when I had those issues with some local thinking of you?
- [27:16]
A
Literally, this is the layers of it. Andrew, I'm talking to you on the show yesterday, and I'm thinking about my potential health scare. And I'm thinking about your potential health scare with the stuff that you had going on that was, if I can say this and correct me if I'm wrong, I believe was described as potentially precancerous.
- [27:36]
B
They called it pre. Cancerous. They found some. Something on my tongue. They were concerned about it. They. I had this pretty awful, like, kind of, I guess, surgery. It wasn't probably awful compared to what other people have done. I'm a. I would like. Great.
- [27:48]
A
I would like you to give yourself a little grace. Getting into your mouth and cutting out.
- [27:52]
B
Unpleasant. Yeah. And the first time, I don't think I had him knock me all the way out because it's not that kind of a procedure. This next time, I was just like, I brought my own mallet. I'm like, you bang me on the head with this until I am unconscious.
- [28:03]
A
But you brought in a coconut tree. Three coconuts that were just ready to fall at any moment.
- [28:09]
B
Stood up. They were so ripe and ready. No, but the first time they. So they took it out and then they're like, they Send it to the lab, and it comes back. They're like, we don't like this. It's not cancer, but it does have these mutated cells that are like. So we would describe as precancerous. And. And also we didn't get clean edges, so we want to go back in and get the rest of it. And, you know, and I was a smoker at that time, and that's literally when I stopped smoking. Like, boom. Just like that, I quit smoking. And so that was really, really scary.
- [28:37]
A
It was just a scare I needed.
- [28:39]
B
See, that's weird. Then I started butt chugging.
- [28:42]
A
Yeah.
- [28:42]
B
Because it's always like, one or the other.
- [28:43]
A
That's why conservation of butt chugging, usually.
- [28:46]
B
When you go to a lot.
- [28:47]
A
First, I want to state that neither I nor any member of my fraternity, PI Kappa Alpha, have ever been involved in butt chucking or the use of alcohol enemas.
- [28:58]
B
A lot of people. I know it's kind of cliche at this point, but if you go to sort of a support group for quitting smoking, everybody's butt chugging.
- [29:05]
A
Yeah.
- [29:05]
B
Because, like, it's just kind of like.
- [29:06]
A
That'S how you know where the meeting is. It's just usually like a church, and there's just people standing around outside the basement door butt chugging.
- [29:12]
B
You know, that must be different. Back in the day, it was like, very classic, like an AA meeting. It was like almost a cliche that everybody there is smoking, because a lot of people were probably smoking and drinking during that era anyway. And then when you quit drinking, you really leaned into the smoking. I knew some. I remember who went through that, but I guess that is. That can't be the case anymore. If you think about the buildings where these meetings are held, people aren't smoking in the basements of churches or what have you.
- [29:37]
A
Definitely not indoors. But I remember being a kid and on Aurora, not super far from where you all live now, a little more towards, like, where that Jack in the box is on 85th. There must have been. There must have been an AA meeting that met, you know, in one of those buildings. And I, as a kid, you know, because we'd be driving up and down Aurora all the time, you just always see a bunch of people standing around outside on Aurora smoking and just with those white Styrofoam cups of probably just brutally bad black coffee.
- [30:07]
B
Yes, yes. With. With powder creamer in it.
- [30:11]
A
And like, you wonder why people relapse. Like, this is the substitute. But I would see them, and I didn't. Of course I didn't know what, like, recovery was or any of that stuff, but I. I remember just.
- [30:19]
B
You're just riding by, trying to watch the lonely guy down the.
- [30:22]
A
Yeah, seriously. I was like, what's. What is going on here? And why are there always people standing around outside doing this weird stuff? But anyway. It is strange, though, Andrew, that I was literally thinking about you and your journey with that as I was on my own brief journey with this, which, again, would have probably been much less of a deal in my mind if I wasn't also trying to co host this show, which, again, I know to the listeners, it seems like, really, how much brain power does this take? But it was like. What I really felt like was. And maybe this is where I was wrong, because you noted. You noted. I was obviously. I really thought I am the master of compartmentalizing. I was like. I was like, I am so good at compartmentalizing that, even as my life was. And I'm not trying to be glib. And I want to be clear. Kind of like you were talking about, Andrew, with the both of us having been really privileged in our lives that our health has been relatively okay. I want to be clear. There are people all the time getting extremely dire diagnoses, and I just had had basically a misreading of a medical chart that had me kind of stressed. I would be. I would be really acknowledging that. That there are, you know, really bad things happening to people all the time, and I don't want to try to lump myself in with them. But. But, yeah, the main. I thought that I was, like, really good at playing it off. I was like, I'm doing this, but I guess I wasn't doing it as effectively as I thought I would.
- [31:42]
B
Well, I. Yeah, I wouldn't say you were off. There were a moment at the beginning where I just thought you were multitasking. Like, I just thought that then. Well, you got back from England. Like, you're probably just catching up on emails or something. I just thought I happen. Catch you in a moment of reading something. But, yeah, and I. I don't know why I'm thinking about this again, but, like, just talking about this, this journey of, like, Googling something, it's like, so dangerous. I was telling you I was looking at this and again, it was a Reddit thread. Like, I hear it. Okay. Like, I understand it's a Reddit thread, but immediately, one of the things that somebody's responding to about a sense of smell is you definitely should get an MRI to rule out brain tumors. And it's Just, it's amazing how fast the Internet goes to brain tumor. It's just like zero to brain tumor in 0.1 second. That and Nazi. Of course, in this day and age, maybe, maybe it's, maybe it's not so far fetched. But back in the day we used to go and rest your tumor. It was never, it was never long in a comment thread even, even before we had some Nazis in positions of power in this country that it was just like so quickly a conversation devolved to people accusing each other of being Nazis and same with brain tumors, I would say.
- [32:48]
A
Yeah, I feel like again, I feel really lucky that but because the privilege of having good health. I am also not a person who's, you know, doing Google MD as people might call it a lot. But you know, it's a known thing like don't, don't Google your symptoms because like you said, it will immediately end up in some very, very dire sort of place. Speaking of Nazis, I don't like working.
- [33:12]
B
I hate what comes next.
- [33:14]
A
Well, I mean, yeah, you know what? Actually, as I start to say this, it probably will. Well, it's not getting lighter when that's the transition. My dad and I are now watching this show called Rogue Heroes. Can I just do an anti ad for Britbox, by the way? And can I do an anti ad for all streamers for a moment like get it together streaming services, please. So my dad and I started watching this show called Rogue Heroes. The first season, I don't know, six months ago or a year ago ago. And it's basically, I think it's based on a book, but it's the kind of, I think it's semi true but also kind of fictionalized now story of this particular group of like British soldiers. They were called the SAS and this was in World War II. And they started out like in North Africa and they were like basically kind of not officially on the record anywhere for the British army. But they were out just doing these crazy kind of guerrilla missions and stuff. And they were. There were, as you might imagine, Andrew, a band of misfits that nobody thought, you know, could ever accomplish anything. And yet in their own kind of broken way they get it done.
- [34:22]
B
Would you almost describe them as inglorious.
- [34:25]
A
Bastards some things or ingenious bastards, I believe was what my mom thought it was once during charades. I've told you that one of the great stories from our family is we were doing charades and it was too easy. This is like family charades. And so Addie decided to mix it up by throwing in some truly hard to act out movies.
- [34:44]
B
Ingenious or inglorious. That is impossible.
- [34:48]
A
And I think it will. Addie wrote in Inglourious Bastards. My mom read it as ingenious bastards. Just imagine, my mother, I do believe she had stopped drinking at this point, which I don't know if that was helping or hurting, but she was trying to act out Ingenious Bastards and probably.
- [35:03]
B
And was familiar with the idea of it being a film even.
- [35:05]
A
Oh, no. Oh, God, no, no, no, no, no. She knew it was a film because it was listed probably as a film, you know, like on the little slip of paper.
- [35:14]
B
But she can't do a Christoph Waltz or something like that. She has no context for anything.
- [35:19]
A
No idea that Eli. The noted director. Eli Roth playing the bear.
- [35:23]
B
Yeah, right.
- [35:25]
A
In the movie. But anyway, so this. This show is called Rogue Heroes, and we watched the first season through mgm. I had to, like, the MGM streaming network or whatever. And so I subscribed to it at the time, you know, whatever. It's five bucks a month. But the show is pretty fun. It's, you know, know, it's a little predictable, but. But enjoyable. And because I don't know if my mom's going to hear this or not, but it's probably better than what we were watching on Sunday night with me and my mom, which was. And my dad, which was. We had gone on Britbox to try to stream some kind of a show, and we start watching, and I go, when is this even from? And they're like, I don't know, 2000? And I go, how did you find out about this? Mom? She goes, oh, I checked the DVD out from the library. I'm like, oh, this is like. This is. The content that we're. That we're watching is based on a DVD that was available at the Kitsap Public Library. And anyway, so that was some BBC show that we watched on Sunday night. I was kind of minimally interested in Rogue Heroes. Much better. But this is the thing. So last night, my dad's like, hey, there's a new season of Rogue Heroes out. Which he had, thankfully, it turns out, pirated per his usual activities. But I was like, I'm paying for MGM still or whatever, and I have this nice fancy TV set up. And like, let's just. Let's try to enjoy this, you know, as Mother Nature intended by, like, the streaming services, I'm paying for watching it on this tv, not hooking up the laptop, which is mirrored to the tv, which the sound sometimes doesn't want to sync. And you've got to have the laptop open. The laptop can't be asleep. Sleep. But you got to turn the laptop away from us so that it's not, like, kind of distracting. I mean, you know this. You know this game, Andrew, better than anyone. And so all this is to say, like, I'm. I have this MGM thing somehow. It's not it. They're in season two. My dad has the whole second season, like, illegally pirated to his laptop. I can't even get the second season on this stupid streaming service I'm paying for. They're telling me it's on Amazon. I go on Amazon. Amazon. I swear to God. Like, Amazon doesn't have it. But then I start searching around in the apps, and apparently Sling TV is trying to do. You know, Sling TV is trying to be a streamer.
- [37:44]
B
Now everybody's making their own content. Is that what you mean, that they're making?
- [37:47]
A
No, but they're not making this. This is made by. This was made by, like, whoever the production company is that MGM hired. I'm just saying. Can you remember Sling tv?
- [37:57]
B
Yeah. I mean, I don't think that Sling TV went away. They had those really good ads. Nick Offerman and America's favorite couple. I'm blanking on his wife's name.
- [38:06]
A
Megan Mulally.
- [38:07]
B
Megan Mulally. And so I feel like they've been sort of relevant in the conversation for a while. I've never messed around with it, but Sling TV was sort of. It's. Isn't Sling TV like a Fubo? If Sling TV is like an alternative to your Fubo, basically, right?
- [38:19]
A
Well, yes, exactly. But it was back in the day. You would get. You would. You would, I guess, rent, maybe, because I had it. You would rent this very sizable box at your house that you would hook up to your television that would allow you, if you were somewhere else, to hack into the mainframe of your television via Sling TV and watch what was on your television. This is now easy and normal, and you don't need a box for this, as far as I understand it. But back in those days, that was Sling TV's. It was. To me, it was a. It was a hardware company. Company. It's like we. What we made. What we have made is this box that. That, like, allows you to warg into your television when you're not at home at your tv. That was the whole sales pitch around Sling tv. So it's so weird to me to think of them as now being in the content game because they weren't in the content, they were in the looking at your content that you were getting from someone else game.
- [39:14]
B
Luke, can I tell you a memory that I just unlocked, which was a time in the 1980s 90s where we suddenly had the ability to check our phone messages from anywhere. You would call your own phone number, get the answering machine, mash down the six button or something like that. And then it would be like, suddenly you've unlocked the ability to play a tape from across the country and you can actually listen to the messages that.
- [39:44]
A
Were physically recorded physically on the small little tape. Right.
- [39:48]
B
Magnetic tape that was in your.
- [39:49]
A
Yes.
- [39:50]
B
Foyer in Valley City, Ohio. And like, then it was like, oh, no, I don't know. We've just come a long way, baby. Sorry.
- [39:56]
A
Right. And then it was voicemail.
- [39:58]
B
But then it was.
- [40:00]
A
Then it was like, I've got voicemail that I can also check from anywhere. Yeah. Voicemail by calling my voice. But that seemed like, well, it's not going to get fancier than this. Yeah, that's it. Like, we've now we've.
- [40:10]
B
We've.
- [40:10]
A
We've achieved the singularity as it relates to voice messages. I have a voicemail box somewhere. It's not a physical. I remember. You know, I'm sure you remember this, too. You would come home from, like, a long family trip and you would walk in to your house and you would go walk over to that answering machine and you would hit play on it and there would be so many messages.
- [40:31]
B
Or even at the end of the day, though, I mean, that was. Sometimes I think about how as technology changes, we take away more and more narrative devices for, like, storytellers and, like, movies and tv. Because that was a thing. I'm even trying to think, like, I'm thinking of Batman Returns. I feel like that was like Catwoman comes home and checks her answering machine. I don't know why that's the one that sticks in my head. But, like, that was such a way of advancing a story. Was like seeing this person check their voicemail when they get home. And then you're learning something about the character. Like, you can't really do that anymore. But that was a. That was something that kind of gives me a warm, cozy feeling like coming home and then checking the message is, it's been a long time.
- [41:11]
A
Anyway, speaking of, speaking of narrative device, I was trying to explain to my dad expositional devices last night, like, they decided to give one of these characters on rogue heroes a cute dog that he can then explain everything that we, the viewers need to understand about the mission.
- [41:28]
B
Yeah. At least they tried to. What I really hate in those. I hate exposition so, so much. It's like one of my least favorite things. It's just like, I'm such a show don't tell type of person and I hate it when you have a bunch of experts and I don't watch a lot of procedurals or something. I assume this happens on those shows a lot. You have a bunch of experts and let's just say, you know, crime solving and they're explaining to each other processes. There's like, how did you get out of the academy? Like, you guys, you're all just speaking shop. It would be like, me, like, suddenly there's a camera on me and I'm explaining to you how to dial up Riverside or something like that.
- [42:04]
A
Set up Riverside or how to set up.
- [42:06]
B
Are you wearing headphones? Anyway. Anyway, all of that is the ice.
- [42:10]
A
Tea of this podcast.
- [42:12]
B
Speaking of narrat devices. Go back to your story, though. So I'm curious where this is going. And I want you to know that Rogue Heroes has a 100% on the tone on the tomato meter on Rotten Tomatoes only.
- [42:23]
A
It's pretty good, honestly.
- [42:25]
B
But yeah, for what it is.
- [42:26]
A
How many popcorns does it get, by.
- [42:28]
B
The way, they measure the, I think audience response in popcorn. So it's 80.
- [42:32]
A
I am so close to calling my mother right now to see if she could remember this conversation that happened the other day at my house that I am. Can't quite pull together. But I told you how she's obsessed with Rotten Tomatoes. Yeah, like, that's what she. That's her. Her kind of. It's become her bible, if you will, for. And you and I were talking about something, and I believe you were saying it's not really for you.
- [42:55]
B
I forget. 21 grams.
- [42:56]
A
21 grams. That movie. And then my mom for some reason was like. Was like, I guess listen to that episode or something and then was saying how many. How. How many Rotten Tomatoes it had or how fresh it was on Rotten Tomatoes, even though she's never seen the movie. We were last. The other night she was talking about. She was relaying to me a text chain with her and her girlfriends in Philadelphia. She is still friends with a group of maybe like six or seven women who she went to like grade school and middle school and high school with. And she goes on vacation with these women sometimes. And it's actually very adorable, but, like, they have this kind of running text chain. And one of her friends had said something like, like we just watched some movie called like the Shack, which I was. And my mom was like, I know your dad and I watch. We don't like that movie. Or we didn't think that movie was very good. And I was like, I don't. I've never heard of this movie. I guess it's maybe sort of like Christian coded or something in some way. But she just was like obsessed with what? The Shacks. Rotten Tomato, this movie, the Shack. How many Rotten Tomatoes, I mean, Fresh Tomatoes had. I don't know. Obviously I don't look around tomatoes much, but I find the fact that this has become such an important bellwether for my mother in her life at age like 72 or 3 or whatever, a real plot twist. I did not see this being something like multiple times a week. My mother is going on Rotten Tomatoes to find out what something's freshness rating is.
- [44:20]
B
Now, I assume the Shack is spelled S H A Q. Is this.
- [44:25]
A
Yes, exactly.
- [44:28]
B
It sounds up your alley. I keep on trying to lead you back to this, but I'm not sure if maybe the story is over. But you were giving an anti ad for Britbox. And I roast their ass. Burn their ass. I want to hear this, you know.
- [44:40]
A
Because I listen to a lot of public radio. I hear a lot of ads for Britbox. They're a heavy, heavy supporter. I mean, on that level, I should. I should give them a break because any. Listen, any support that public radio can get right now is a good thing. But I hear a lot of Britbox ads and then. But I feel that it is deceptive because the ads for Britbox would lead one to believe that any content that is, you know, been played on the BBC or other kind of, you know, itv, things like that would be available. And it's very much not the case. It is a random smattering of the things that they have decided to put on there. And sometimes it'll just be like, you know, the Father Brown mysteries, but season four, episode five, like, explain the utility of that, please.
- [45:29]
B
Other streamers are doing that too. But there's something. And I'm not a Britbox person, but there's something especially galling about Britbox doing that. And I don't know why it's better.
- [45:37]
A
From the Brits is what I think. And their boxes.
- [45:39]
B
It's weird that, like. And it is frustrating, but it'll be like, okay, 30 Rock was on this platform and now it was on Hulu, now it's on Netflix or whatever that happens sometimes. Or Genevieve will like, have like to see because Genevieve watches more like kind of new television than I do. But it'll be like she's like, I don't know. They only have seasons three through five of this thing that I'm trying to catch up on. And I don't know. And that's always frustrating no matter what the streamer is. But there's something about Britbox that really makes it sound. And I don't know why, just good marketing on their part or assumptions on mine. But Britbox sounds like it should be more of a complete set. It's kind of like it's unlocking all of the content for people who have a very specific need. It's not like your MGM which has a whole bunch of maybe classic movies and some new programming or whatever. Or even Paramount and Nazi or whatever. Heroes. Yeah, and whatever. Like, okay, like I guess I don't expect as much but like Britbox should be a box full of everything that you need to complete your very specific, you know, desire in television, which is British shows.
- [46:45]
A
And I think also what plays a role in my conception of it is this idea that the BBC is publicly funded, which by the way, I'm probably, I'm probably loud wrong about the sort of funding mechanism. I think of, you know, the BBC as being this amazing organization. One of the many ways in which I see England as, or the UK as, as outclassing America, like a robust public media system, be it the BBC radio, be it the BBC television. So I think of all of it as being pbs. Right. That's how like that's where my mind categorizes it. And therefore if it is all just like if it's all just public television that's free for everyone in England and which again I don't think that this is actually the case. This is just how I think of it. Then it should all just be throw it all into the Brit box, please. And I would like to watch it as opposed to you know, getting again this. And this is really, this is ultimately what my gripe is all about is just we ended up having to watch like a very kind of like stepped on low res version of Rogue Heroes last night. Night with kind of a slightly laggy screen and funky audio because. Because I could not locate this thing anywhere streaming even though I'm many of the services I've already mentioned I'm still paying some kind of subscription for. And I, I don't know, it just feels like it's. It's somehow spiritually related to the fact that Internet search is Bad Now I feel like. I know those aren't related concepts, but they feel the same. The fact that Good Search, the era of Good Search is over. It also feels like the era of. Of easy TV watching is over. If we're talking about something that is not just the number one show on Netflix right now, we're talking about something that is either a little more obscure or had a longer run. Like, where would you even go? Can you get all of 30 Rock somewhere, theoretically?
- [48:31]
B
Now I believe all of 30 Rock is. Yeah. And 30 Rock's a weird example because I don't think it was ever segmented. Like, some of the seasons are here and some of the seasons are there. That's the thing that I specifically dislike. But I do know that. And I don't remember where it is right now, but I do believe that the entire catalog of 30 Rock has bounced between Hulu and Netflix, if not once more than once. So that is available. And I'm also looking. People are like, where is season two of Rogue Heroes streaming on MGM plus yet? Like, you're. You're right on this. It doesn't seem like there's any definitive answers. Can I just say one thing?
- [49:06]
A
Thank God I'm related to one of the great content thiefs of our time. He's the real Thomas Crown of getting British television in.
- [49:14]
B
Speaking of. Actually, I want to ask you something because I was. I. It's so rare that I am downloading illicit content these days because we pay for so many streamers. But I was watching some illicitly downloaded stuff last night that I want to ask you about. But I did want to just clean up one thing that I said before. It sounded like I was saying, you get Britbox. You have access to every single episode of every single British TV show ever made in the history of mankind. Obviously, I know that.
- [49:41]
A
That if I don't see a guy pumping up a bicycle tube that also makes a woman's breast gets larger, I don't know what I'm doing with my life.
- [49:52]
B
Where do they come up with this stuff? I don't know, but I was just gonna say, obviously, I don't expect that. That is ridiculous. But I'm talking specifically about the, like, the. The shifting sands of these streamers. And like. Like you were saying specifically, you're Luther.
- [50:08]
A
You're Poldark.
- [50:10]
B
Of course. Luther is one that I'm supposed to watch, people.
- [50:13]
A
I actually really want to get into Luther.
- [50:16]
B
Okay. But I did want to tell you some of the two of the streamers we do not pay for is are or is Disney plus an Apple TV plus and minus. And I did.
- [50:29]
A
I'm getting Apple Minus currently.
- [50:31]
B
I'm getting Apple Minus. It's called. It's called downloading it off off of a. A website that keeps on moving around. But anyway, pirate based. It actually is. There are others. Anyway, all of that is to say I finally spent this weekend rewatching all of season one of Severance because I'd watched season one, but I wanted to rewatch it. I wanted an onboarding for season two. And then last night, Genevieve got home from her travels. She watched the last. She recapped with me the last three episodes or rewatched the last three episodes. And then we began season two last night. But I've only. I'm only one episode into season two. Before we start analyzing, where are you on your journey?
- [51:13]
A
I am almost caught up. I think I might have missed the latest on Sunday night because I was busy watching the Inspector Lindley with my parents.
- [51:23]
B
Okay. I think there's five, 20 years ago.
- [51:25]
A
Starring a young Mr. Bates from Downton Abbey, but this time as a possible murderer, no spoilers. So all that is to say I'm. I'm like, maybe one episode.
- [51:34]
B
Yeah, I think there are five episodes so far in season two, and I believe it sounds like maybe you've watched four of them and I've watched one.
- [51:41]
A
I am so glad. Can I just tell you quickly?
- [51:43]
B
Yeah. Did you catch me?
- [51:45]
A
I had a long argument with you in my head the other night that I didn't bring you in on because there was no purpose. But now here we are, so let's do it. I was watching Severance and I wanted so badly to talk about it with you both on the show and off the show. I just wanted to be like, dude, what do you think about, you know, this, that, and the other. But then I was like. I was like, but if I. There's When I was thinking of basically saying to you, like, hey, man, would you mind getting on Severance? Because then we can talk about it. But then I was like, I know that one of the things you don't love is people telling you when and where to watch what. So then I was like, just leave. Just let him, you know what? Just let him come to it or let him arrive in his own time to Severance. And you were. That was exactly what was happening. And now we can talk at some point about Severance. I'm so stoked about this.
- [52:30]
B
Yeah, I just. I honestly just don't, you know, what's very Strange is, you think a show like that, it's classic couples stuff, right? Binge watching something together. You'd think, like, when Genevieve is home, that's when I would do that. When Genevieve's home. Like, we don't watch TV together that much.
- [52:45]
A
Well, you guys are severed, though.
- [52:46]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [52:47]
A
Your innies are watching it together, but you have absolutely no idea about it.
- [52:51]
B
You say that maybe we are watching it. We have gotten into, like, playing cards and watching just like, kind of crappy TV and that. I love. I love playing cards with Genevieve. It's such a great playing. Like, we just play gin rummy all the time. And it's just like such a good way of just being with somebody. Like, kind of chilling. You can talk.
- [53:06]
A
I just made the sound Tim Robinson's character makes when he's being sent home from the dating show because of the zip line. But supposed to be nice.
- [53:15]
B
But anyway, when Genevieve's not here, you'd think, oh, then all the more, I'd just be playing video games and darts and not watching tv. But somehow Genevieve being gone, I was like, well, maybe now would be the time. Oh, did you get sent home? Maybe now would be.
- [53:28]
A
Something really bad is gonna happen.
- [53:30]
B
I was just thinking maybe now would be the time to kind of catch up on a bunch of these. I know Genevieve doesn't want to rewatch all of season one anyway. And that way I sort of, like, have the freedom to sort of like pause it whenever I want. Not that I can't with Genevieve there, but it's like there were moments where, like, I was folding clothes and like, sort of standing in front of the TV watching it by myself. Like, I guess my TV watching habits are just so weird. It's like, easier for me to watch it by myself, but I was happy to binge all of one. I don't know how I feel about season two yet. I've only watched. Watched the first episode and I watched it after binging three of the old episodes first. So you start to. That's where you start to enter the sort of bleary eyed phase of binge watching. And like, I don't know, like the vibe. I don't know. My initial reaction to episode one is, you better be going somewhere with this, counselor.
- [54:22]
A
This. I'll allow it. This is what I was going to say without. I'm not spoiling anything because I'll be honest with you, I have no idea what's going on. You know, I like, almost caught up and it's. I'm no more like aware of the so called plot than I was at episode one of, of season two, if that makes any sense. And I've. I'm having. Literally, that was the thing I wanted to say to you. I was like, I hope he watches so I can say to him, this better be going somewhere. Like it's.
- [54:46]
B
How are you feeling four episodes in? Are you feeling like it's coming together?
- [54:51]
A
Not yet, but I mean it's, it. Listen, this is the thing. It's intriguing rigging, but it's easy to throw a bunch of balls up into the air. Yes. The trick is to catch them as they're coming down. That's called juggling. And right now there's a lot of balls that have gone up in the air. There's a lot of weird shit happening. As I mentioned on the ascendant social media platform Blue sky, they have entered their spies like us phase. They're out in the snow at some point and they're all dressed up like Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd in that movie. But it's, it's. I'm totally intrigued by the whole thing, but it just. Ben Stiller. I'm giving you a lot of slack on this, my friend. Giving you a lot of rope. So I hope that you're able to. By the way, I have also been having a, like a, a one way conversation with Ben Stiller this whole time, which has also been basically me going like, I'm trusting you, Ben Stiller. Yeah, I'm trusting you. Because I do think he is a very talented. He's just amazing TV show creator, filmmaker, obviously he's a really good actor. But I mean, I think he's really good at thinking about entertainment. Right. And so I, I trust him implicitly that he knows that the pitfall of these kinds of things is always it's really easy to set up a bunch of mystery and it's really hard to like land that plane.
- [56:03]
B
Yeah.
- [56:03]
A
So I'm trusting him that he knows how to land this plane.
- [56:05]
B
He's such a meticulous director too. Or just like creator or whatever.
- [56:09]
A
Like the detail like Zoolander when they are fighting at the gas.
- [56:13]
B
Yeah. I'm actually not the biggest fan of Zoolander, but certainly, certainly Tropic Thunder. Like, well, however you feel about Tropic Thunder. Like when you. Genevieve had that on somewhat recently and I saw big chunks of it again. I've seen it a few times, I'm sure, but like it's such a big budget movie. Like it is the. It's making fun. It's a parody of big budget movies. But in order to do that, he made a big budget that is so amazingly done. And like you just read about him being so, so meticulous and you see that in, in this TV series. One thing that. Here's my overall kind of feeling about season one. I've been thinking about this. The pacing of the show and the complexity of the show speeds up so much in season one. Right. And I was really hoping that season two would be a reset. I was actually thinking this before I started season two. So if you look at season one and so far I think we've done a good job by the way of not spoiling anything. We're just talking about sort of the overarching like, kind of of like tone of the show. But like it begins so minimalist, right?
- [57:20]
A
Yes.
- [57:20]
B
A woman is on a table in a room. She doesn't know how she got there. This is the very first scene. This isn't a spoiler. She doesn't know how she got there. A voice starts speaking to her on a speaker. That's all we know. Then little by little and everything is in there in some sort of underground white. Just like, you know, like kind of immaculately clean. Cairo Warren. Yes.
- [57:44]
A
Where we would take all of our publicity.
- [57:46]
B
So but, but very clean and like just. And minimalist in the way it's directed and shot and everything. It's just very beautiful in this way. And then very slowly things are revealed. You're hooked immediately. And things are slowly revealed. Slowly revealed. Halfway through season one, this snowball is rolling down the hill and the plot is getting more and more complicated. And we're learning more, and we're learning more. And then even some of the design of the show gets more and more complicated. And I'm still confused as to what the hell happened with that waffle party SC in season one. Why suddenly like we went from this minimalist. Do you remember the waffle party?
- [58:23]
A
Yeah. Is that some kind of a, like a perk for them or something?
- [58:25]
B
It was a perk, but now I guess now I will give a spoiler alert on this if you haven't gotten that part and you don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe fast forward a little bit here. But he's dying to get this waffle party and he gets it. And it's a one man waffle party. But remember, he sits. Then after he eats the waffles, they're like. He sees a nose.
- [58:44]
A
Cherry character.
- [58:46]
B
Yeah, yeah. Jack Cherry. Yeah, the guy with the glasses and Then it. But then it says, put on this mask. And he puts on this crazy. This is season one. You must not remember this.
- [58:55]
A
I didn't go back and rewatch season one, so I think I had kind of. I have a vague memory of this. I sort of know what you're talking about.
- [58:59]
B
This always stuck in my head and I was glad to rewatch it because I remember always thinking like, this doesn't fit with the rest of the show. It's like this weird psychosexual scene where these characters are a little too wide.
- [59:09]
A
And a little too shut.
- [59:10]
B
Yeah. Do you remember it now that all these characters come out wearing different masks and they do this sexy dance for that.
- [59:15]
A
Like he's in that. Like he goes.
- [59:17]
B
The founder's house.
- [59:18]
A
Yeah, Keir's house. That's kind of Victorian or something, but.
- [59:21]
B
It'S like a fake. It's a recreation of Kier's house and he's sitting in Kir's bedroom while these weird ass creatures wearing. Or these people wearing masks of creatures are doing a sexy dance form. It does not fit at all with the rest of the series and it has. So anyway, I was hoping that season two would be a bit of a reset. I wanted things to slow the hell down for episode one of season two.
- [59:44]
A
And it's like, let's go back to the Mundanity. Let's call Mark, Mark, whatever his name's life is. Let's just see him like living his Audi life a little bit, kind of.
- [59:53]
B
Or whatever it is. Keep the mystery, keep the intrigue, but just slow it down. And I didn't get that. Instead it's way more complicated again and I'm just like, shit. I. The beauty of the show was its simplicity and its minimalism and I would like to see a little bit more of that.
- [60:09]
A
It is definitely racing along and getting more kind of. I don't want to say surreal, but just like a lot of weird stuff that I don't understand is happening. That again. I'm trusting the show creators to sort of tie these loose ends up and explain stuff. I will say I don't think this is spoiling anything, but, you know, what is his name? The guy who plays Cool Rick in Patriot Chernoff something The actor or the.
- [60:36]
B
Character, I'm not sure forget.
- [60:38]
A
Do you remember what the character's name is? He's just.
- [60:40]
B
He plays the brother in law of the main character.
- [60:43]
A
So good at playing just the most annoying D bag. He just. This doesn't give anything away. But in this most recent Episode I watched, he's make. Trying to make the case. He's, you know, he's just like a very selfishly motivated character who's just like, basically like if, if Donald Trump was, you know, ported into a guy who writes ponderous books.
- [61:04]
B
Basically.
- [61:04]
A
Basically that's like, he's just totally narcissistic and whatever, but he's trying to, like make the argument for some bullshit thing that he wants to do to his wife, who is, you know, Adam Scott's character's sister, I believe. And he's trying to. And he just says casually, it's a Trojan's Horse. And that line just, it was so perfect. It's like, of course this guy thinks it's called Trojan's Horse. I just loved it so much.
- [61:26]
B
A big, like, kind of device in the first season is them reading passages or you hear his voice narrating passages as people get to know his book. And they're so dumb. And they're written in that way of like. And I used to kind of complain about some people I followed on Instagram who sort of had this way of talking like they were super, super wise or above it all, but are just revealing. Like they're just how like both selfish and kind of dumb they sound. And there is one line near the beginning of the series and I thought of you and a mutual friend who will remain nameless, where this self absorbed character who wrote this book has written something like, your job needs you. You don't need your job. Some of the happiest times of my life was the one year that I took off work and relied on the charity of poor people. Somewhere, I can't remember, it wasn't quite that, but it was basically him saying, the happiest time of my life was when I quit every and relied on the kindness of strangers, many of whom who had less than me or whatever. And he's writing it as if he's some sort of a wizened prophet, but it just reveals him just to be the most selfish, self indulgent character who's relying on the promise of people who have less advantage than him.
- [62:44]
A
Yeah. So again, just to sort of wrap this up, I am totally enjoying the show and, you know, eagerly awaiting getting to see the next episode when my dad's finally. I don't think, I think it's too hard to try to start this with my dad. We're barely following rogue heroes as it is. But I tried to have my dad watch the John Oliver show last night and it was like between the British Accent and the pop culture jokes. I didn't realize how kind of I thought, you know, my dad and I are very politically similar, which is wild actually, to think at, you know, his age and my age and based on their life experience. But, like, he's more wound up about. About the politics of this moment than I am, maybe. Or like, it really upsets him. I mean, it upsets me as well. But I was like, oh, you know what you're gonna love, because Chris's show is off on Monday nights. So I was like, you know, we've got a Chris Hayes shaped hole in our heart for our viewing. I was like, oh, you know what he'll love is John Oliver.
- [63:40]
B
Yes.
- [63:40]
A
It's so. It's like, it's about, you know, important topics, but it's delivered with this kind of, you know, acid tongue in a way, whatever. It was funny because I was like, oh, man, this is flying right over this dude's head. Because first of all, it's actually much more pop culture than. Than you'd realize. Like, considering my dad's like, not a big pop culture guy, like, I was. I really wanted my dad to enjoy the show. And I was noticing that he was just like, most of it was just too rapid fire. And John Oliver actually has a fairly thick accent, which I was realizing I almost had to be like, cut of, like, focusing to really keep up with it, you know. Again, I'm a big fan of John Oliver's and I'm a big fan of that show, but I thought of that as being like, easily digested sort of information slash satire that would be for anybody who agrees that Donald Trump is. Is awful. But I was like, oh, yeah, this is not a show that me and my dad probably will really share. I was surprised to find that out.
- [64:34]
B
That is the type of show that every time I watch it, I'm like, this man is literally a genius. It is such a genius show show. But I never go back to it because even though it is cut with comedy and his rapier wit, like, it's just. Usually the content is just depressing, I think. You know, I don't. I don't go through this thought process. Like, I'm going to turn this on, but then I'm not going to because I'm not emotionally ready for it. I'm just not drawn for it because I think on the rare occasion that I'm putting something on the television or on my phone, it's pure escapism. You know what I mean? It's Brooklyn 99 or, or 30 Rock or something like that.
- [65:10]
A
Well, this is again, why you need to get severed.
- [65:12]
B
Yes, exactly.
- [65:13]
A
You know, this is obvious, okay, and we really do need to move on. But this is, this is so obvious. This was a point that we all realized in episode or in season one, but I guess for some reason I was reminded of it. Again, it's insane to think. And so for the listeners who haven't watched the show, severed, very, very like 20 second description. The idea is you can elect to have a procedure done where your mind is essentially bifurcated or severed so that when you're at work in this building, you have no idea who you are in the outside world, and when you are in the outside world, you have no idea who you are at this work environment. They're called your Innie and your Audi. And it is such a. It's such a deal for your innie, because your Innie has no sense of ever not being at work, but also your Audi has no sense of ever having to be at work. And that is like, for some reason, I mean, again, I'm making the most obvious point that everyone knows about the show, but it's like, what a weird thing to think about. Like, would you take that deal? Like, because as far as your Audi, as far as the outside version of you, that person never has to go to work as far as they're aware of. They're just living their life now. Meanwhile, your poor Innie is friggin trapped down there. But like, I don't know why. That just for some reason hit me recently. I was like, would I take that deal? I mean, no, we have a fun job. I don't need to sever this. But if I had a different kind of job, would I take the deal so that my Audi never even thought it had to go to a job, basically?
- [66:37]
B
Well, that's where I want to get into some deeper questions I have about the show, but they would really send us into spoiler territory. So maybe you, me, and maybe. I'm actually thinking, folks, maybe somebody who could get on the show with us who want to talk about this stuff, like maybe we do a special bottle episode or something or. That'd be so fun. Theories. But I did want to say one thing that Genevieve pointed out to me that I don't know if I expl. Implicitly, I mean, I guess I implicitly sort of understood it, but when she said it in these words, I was like, oh yeah, the. The people who are. Or the versions of the people who are Innies who are going into work and the only experience they've ever known has been in this underground facility. They don't know who they are above. They don't have any context for anything. The only context they have, they start building the day they wake up down in this place. Right. And Genevieve says so. They're all children. Which is why all of the incentives tend to be childlike. Like, hey, we're gonna have. I mean, they're also just weird and surreal, but like.
- [67:35]
A
And they get weirder this season, by the way. Very weird watermelon related situation.
- [67:41]
B
Okay, I'm interested because there are melon parties do play a big role or like sort of a constant role in season one. But they have like melon parties. They have dance parties. But then like if you.
- [67:50]
A
You know melon parties and the Infinite Sadness. Right?
- [67:53]
B
Yeah. That's a show title. Yes. I had just written Inglourious Brit Boxes, but I think.
- [67:58]
A
Oh, that's also pretty good, honestly.
- [68:01]
B
What is it?
- [68:01]
A
But the idea that they're childlike me.
- [68:03]
B
To write this down and. Okay, that's enough. I'll get it from there. But I was just going to say that like, you know, they get finger. They get those little finger traps as a little like a toy that they get if they complete their work on time. Which I really want to dig in and talk to you about what My theory about the quote unquote work that they're doing down there. But. Oh, is there the answer? I was just going to say.
- [68:23]
A
Well, no, no, but it's. I. What I've realized this season is obviously when they're refining I think is the term for it, they're pulling these arbitrary groups of numbers down. That's gotta be the basis for the I think you should leave sketch where he's putting the eggs in the.
- [68:38]
B
Have you seen people remix it up where it's like a scene, only they're moving eggs around.
- [68:43]
A
It's really funny, but do you think that. I think you should leave? Writers had just gotten done watching Severance and were like a weird kind of exercise that nobody understands the point of. But it's totally like obsessive.
- [68:55]
B
I don't. I don't know. But I will say that every time when Genevieve and I were watching it last night, they're moving numbers. We just kept saying about 40 eggs.
- [69:05]
A
Never.
- [69:06]
B
Yeah, I've never gotten this far.
- [69:08]
A
Never gotten this far before.
- [69:09]
B
We should. A little bit of poor network anyway. Yeah. So, yeah, I have theories about that. We'll save that for another day. But yeah, it is Definitely it's got me. But I do hope, I hope it sort of returns to sort of its minimalistic roots because I feel like that, like, I think you said it really, really well about throwing balls in the air with the sort of style sensibility. Things get too complicated too. I've often gone back and I'm sure you've heard this a million times, Luke, but talked about the T mobile girl of the early 2000s. I think it was T Mobile. She just stood on a white background in a pink dress and made a pitch for one of the cell phone companies. And the whole thing was very simple images, blank white background and this woman would always come out wearing some sort of a very simple kind of pink dress. Oh yeah, that was it.
- [69:56]
A
But then as her name was Carly Fol, apparently.
- [69:59]
B
Was it T Mobile?
- [70:00]
A
It was T mobile. Andrew, look at me and get a melon party.
- [70:05]
B
As the commercials, as this campaign aged over the years, it got more and more sort of complicated. More people were on the screen. Then eventually the clear white background goes away. Then eventually she's riding a crotch rocket motorcycle through the streets of Beijing or something and you're just like, how did we get here? And it's like people love starting off minimalist but they cannot not stay minimalist. And that's a weird sort of trap people fall into that I don't quite understand.
- [70:33]
A
Yeah, you know, you, I hadn't thought about this way, but you're absolutely right. I wouldn't mind a little more in. I'm talking about season two of Severance. I wouldn't mind a little more like the reason I locked in on Trojan's Horse is because it is literally one of the few scenes where just like people are kind of like living their life in Audi world, just being people instead of like just a constant sense of bewilderment. I would describe this season as constantly bewildering. It's constantly like the characters, the innies being in some totally confusing environment that they don't know why they're there, what's going on, I don't know as the viewer. It is intriguing. So yeah, a little bit of just like normal life would go a long way. Just give me a little breather, give me a moment to catch up here.
- [71:18]
B
Yeah. And even if it's mysterious, like I say, like the very beginning, the very, very first moments of the show in the first episode is very confusing and mysterious, but it's not chaotic and it's not hyper paced and I just sort of feel like this is getting more chaotic. And the pacing is just sped up so much that they can't slow it down.
- [71:38]
A
We was hoping for some razzle dazzle. Razzle dazzle. That's right, man. Razzle dazzle. On your mark. On your mark. Get set, get set now. Ready, ready, go. Everybody rattle dazzle. Hey, let's thank some of our dazzling donors today. But first, let's also thank a daily donor that in all of our. And there's a lot of daily donors to keep track of in all of our systems and spreadshees. We happen to miss the wonderful Amber Dougherty of Baltimore, Maryland, a longtime friend of the show.
- [72:13]
B
Sorry.
- [72:14]
A
Absolutely.
- [72:14]
B
My voice went. It sounded like Patrick Mahomes there for one second kind of did actually stuck in my.
- [72:20]
A
I'm looking at this email from John Skaroff that is clarifying that we. We need to make sure to honor Amber dy. So I'm not looking at your face and you really went to a momes place. Sorry about that.
- [72:33]
B
My throat closed up a little bit. But I just want to say I recognize Amber as being a longtime donor.
- [72:37]
A
Absolutely. Thank you, Amber. We appreciate you. Thank you all. Also to dazzling donor, the one, the only, the legend, the Lin Fam.
- [72:48]
B
The Lin Fam.
- [72:49]
A
The. It's like the Ohio State University.
- [72:53]
B
Do we work for Lynn? Basically. We work for Lynn now. Right?
- [72:56]
A
Essentially.
- [72:57]
B
What's the order of the. What is it the structure? What is our company structure?
- [73:02]
A
Well, it goes. Lynn is essentially the Milchick of tbtl. We report to him. Occasionally he rewards us with a waffle party. Sometimes he seems nice, sometimes he seems stern. We're not quite sure. No, we are very sure.
- [73:16]
B
Yes.
- [73:16]
A
That Lynn has been an incredible supporter of the show in every possible way that you could financially, which is really appreciated. But also keep, you know, keeping that audio repository for so many years and pulling so many great job marsupial gurgle and just being. Just being totally and completely engaged listener to the show. Also, just on a personal level, Lynn's a friend of mine. Lynn does a lot of stuff with Livewire as well, my radio show. By the way, Lin would. This is part of Lynn's thank you message. You cannot use Lynn's Livewire. Lynn needs to have lots of people at Livewire with him. On Thursday night, we are going to be at the Alberta Rose Theater. It's going to be great. Aubrey Gordon from Maintenance Phase will be there. It's going to be Carrie Farrell, the hipster grifter. Were you aware of the hipster grifter phenomenon when that was going around in Like Gawker magazine and all that back in the day. Was that on your radar? No, but I bet you was on Veeves.
- [74:11]
B
You must have been explaining this on the podcast recently, because you. Somebody was just telling me about the hipster grifter. It must have been you talking about.
- [74:17]
A
I think I was talking to Veeves. Maybe the other night when we were.
- [74:20]
B
All hanging out there, though. Yeah.
- [74:22]
A
You weren't there, Andrew, and your presence was.
- [74:24]
B
I did not react. Receive an invite.
- [74:26]
A
Point is, Lynn Pham has been very, very, very supportive of this show over the years and in every possible way that you can. And we appreciate you, Lyn. Thank you so much. You're the absolute best. And I know you have a complicated relationship with getting attention. Like most people, some amount of it is good, too much of it is not good. So hopefully this is the right amount of attention and the right amount of. Thanks, Lynn. We really do appreciate it.
- [74:49]
B
Apparently me staring at you through binoculars is too much attention, everybody. So sensitive.
- [74:54]
A
And that is for the Portland pd. I'm sorry, that is for the Beaverton PD to get to the bottom of. That's right, maestro. On your mark. On your mark. Look at me back in mid season form. I had a little trouble yesterday.
- [75:07]
B
The game slowed down.
- [75:09]
A
It is, yes. I'm like Luis Castillo. I'm ready to talk about the off season trade rumors.
- [75:15]
B
Oh, wait, is he spoken about that? Really?
- [75:17]
A
Apparently the Seattle Times was pinging me with that today. We gotta thank Pam Ketzner of Tacoma, Washington.
- [75:25]
B
Are you sure you're pronouncing that correctly?
- [75:27]
A
I'm trying. It rhymes with Sam or ham.
- [75:30]
B
That's what Pam's pronouncer is. Pam rhymes with Sam or ham. Thanks, Pam.
- [75:34]
A
Thank you, Pam. Pam's in Tacoma. Pam says, In February of 2020, I retired after a 40 year career in nursing. Then Covid shut down everywhere. I started listening to TBTL and have been doing so ever since. This is. It's funny because I, you know, Pam, again, we're talking now five years ago, and yet Pam does still feel like.
- [75:57]
B
A babe in the woods.
- [75:59]
A
A babe in the woods. A relatively new listener.
- [76:01]
B
Yes.
- [76:02]
A
And it was so. It was so fun when Pam got in on it, because Pam is very interactive. Pam is always reaching out with different things. And so, you know, particularly during the pandemic, I know Pam was talking a lot about what was going on in the medical field and stuff, having been in that, involved in that for 40 years. Pam says, My two chocolate labs and I started walking all over our neighborhood, taking photos and Having fun. What I also noted as I listened to the show, I could relate to almost everything that was being talked about. Okay. Not football. Well, good news, Pam. It's going to be a while till you have to suffer through that.
- [76:32]
B
How do you feel about severance?
- [76:36]
A
How do you feel about Patrick Mahomes impression? Unintentional. Patrick. In one week, my little town of Bennington, Vermont came up twice. I got my most laughs when Luke and Andrew asked if women have prostates.
- [76:48]
B
Oof.
- [76:49]
A
And people are mad at me about colon talk. And I was out here asking if women have prostates. Often as I'm running, I get to fix listening to the Cobros. I get my fix listening to the Cobros. Hi. To my friend Anna Drury, who's been listening since she was in her teens when the show was on the radio. Power out and peace. I love John, by the way. My husband loves his Yankees, too. Well, Pam, you can't win them all. But. But I'm glad. We're glad that you like John and glad that your husband. Are we glad that your husband likes the Yankees?
- [77:20]
B
You know what? I have. Yankees are like an afterthought to me now. As far as baseball teams, I hate. It's kind of.
- [77:27]
A
That's a good point. You know, there's one last night. John Oliver. I thought actually maybe the most trenchant part of the who presentation was, and again, this is going to politics. I apologize. But it was sort of a question of like, why is it that the Democrats don't seem to be pushing back in a more kind of united way against these ridiculous moves from the administration? And Hakeem Jeffries was holding a press conference. Did you see this press conference?
- [77:57]
B
I didn't. I saw a little clip of it.
- [77:59]
A
I think I hadn't seen it until last night to watch it. John Oliver. But Hakeem Jeffries is trying to make the point that he said, what makes Aaron Judge so great is that he doesn't swing at every pitch.
- [78:13]
B
No, I didn't see this.
- [78:14]
A
He. He was. And he was like. And. And he. He waits until he can hit a home run, and so he waits for his pitch. And that's what we're doing. We're not swinging to every pitch that. That Trump puts out there. We're waiting for our pitch. And then John Oliver, who, I'm going to be honest with you, I'm assuming a producer fed this to. To him, goes. I don't know if you want to pick the example of a guy who hit 197 in the playoffs and lost the World Series because of his bad defense.
- [78:37]
B
Yeah, that's right. He totally collapsed.
- [78:39]
A
He literally dropped that ball. That was like the. If I remember right, the Sorry, John Skar. If is listening. This is very painful for him.
- [78:46]
B
But, you know, Yankees fans are fine.
- [78:49]
A
Pam, your husband is fine. But anyway, I thought, oh, that's a good point. That's a good burger. And it's like, don't pick. Don't pick the person who, again, Aaron Judge is a very talented baseball player, but who his most recent kind of contribution was less than sterling.
- [79:04]
B
Yeah, right. I'm trying to think of a better. I'm trying to think of a better. We're like, the Democrats are like Tony Gwynn, Mike Trout limping around in the outfield. Just like they're better like three weeks into the.
- [79:16]
A
Actually, that's a perfect. Yeah, that's a perfect example. They, the Democrats could honestly be a first ballot hall of Fame, Fame political force, but instead they have never been able to stay healthy for more than 30 games at a stretch.
- [79:28]
B
Has there ever been a baseball player who's literally taking a pistol and shot themselves in the foot? Because that might be a really good.
- [79:35]
A
I bet you there has.
- [79:36]
B
That might be the best.
- [79:38]
A
Oh, yes. Old foot shooter Joe played, I believe, for the Akron Groomsman. Sure, that's right. Here I go once again with the email.
- [79:51]
B
Every week. I hope that it's from a female.
- [79:54]
A
Oh, man, it's not from a female. All right, emails or V mails on this Tuesday?
- [80:01]
B
Yeah, I have a voicemail here from a while back that I've been excited to share with you. I'm glad we have the chance to play this here. And it's about brain mapping. With all of our medical talk recently, I know that we had some conversation about brain mapping in which I invoked the old Far side cartoon that showed some surgeons operating on somebody's brain and saying, hey, poke here, look what it does. And the patient's leg is kicking up in the air. So they're like, this is a fun one. But I can't remember how we ended up on that topic.
- [80:30]
A
I don't remember exactly, other than I had mentioned that there is a certain kind of brain surgery where they keep you awake for the procedure because they need to make sure that they're not accidentally damaging a part of your brain that maybe controls language or other things. So they're constantly. They're basically quizzing you as you're sitting there. And again, this is kind of gruesome, but you're Sitting there, like, with your brain exposed. And they're making sure, they're checking with you over, I think, language and cogitation of this, that, and the other so that they don't hit that part of your brain.
- [81:07]
B
Well, that is something that Teresa's husband actually went through. And this is a very interesting story.
- [81:12]
C
Hi, Luke and Andrew. This is Teresa from Glenside, right outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I'm calling because yesterday you were talking about going into the brain to see which parts are used for which tasks. And my husband had brain surgery. He had a laser ablation because he has epilepsy. And thankfully it was very successful. And prior to it, to get him ready, they put him. Him into an MRI machine for many hours. And while he was in the MRI machine, they had him do math problems. He's a math teacher, so they had him do math props, solve math problems.
- [81:55]
B
So they could see which areas of.
- [81:57]
C
The brain were lighting up so they could track a path around those centers so that they would not incapacitate his ability to teach. And so that was one of the devices that they used to map out the path that the laser was going to take to remove the section in his brain that was causing the seizures. It was phenomenal surgery. The surgery itself was just a very small incision in his head, like the size of a pencil, and it solved the problem. So it's pretty cool technology. Power out.
- [82:34]
B
So I sort of misset that up a little bit. I said that Theresa's husband went through the process that you were talking about, which was actually very similar, though mapping with an MRI before brain surgery to. To like, sort of see what parts of the brain are lighting up. That's. That's super interesting. And also I am very glad to hear that, that that surgery went well, because I don't, you know, I don't. That's a given that it always does. I know some folks who've had it. And so that is a. That's really good news. That's amazing.
- [83:00]
A
Yeah. I wonder if they could give me a surgery that would allow me to do math.
- [83:04]
B
Right?
- [83:05]
A
They're like. They just start mapping my brain. There's like, there's nothing here. Here it's two cartoon birds hitting each other with mallets.
- [83:13]
B
How do you feel about going out to Pennsylvania and just like, sitting in some of Teresa's husband's classes? Maybe that's the. Maybe that's the path to learning.
- [83:21]
A
Maybe so I can study at his feet. Yeah, I'm with you, Andrew. That's really cool to hear that that had a good outcome. Happy for you, Theresa, and your husband.
- [83:30]
B
By the way, there is a line in. I believe it was. It was, as I was saying, binging severance yesterday. And I believe it was in season one where. Oh, yeah, it's one of the. It's one of the pro severance lawmakers, as it gets sort of a little bit political. It's a pro severance lawmaker at a. At a event that is supposed to raise funds and awareness. That would, again, be pro severance. And he says, before somebody takes the stage, let's change some mind lines.
- [84:00]
A
Oh, that's clever.
- [84:03]
B
And I just kept shouting that at the TV for the rest of the night because I was like, that is very clever. It's such a good line.
- [84:10]
A
All right, I could just. I could keep rehashing this. Like, everything you say about severance, I know, generates, like, five more thoughts in my head. But I won't do that right now. But we should. I like that idea of maybe when you are caught up, when we're both caught up, maybe we do a special one off or. Or something. But maybe we sever it from the real show people. People that don't care about severance don't have to listen to it, but. All right, that's gonna do it for today's program. Thank you, everyone. We will be right back here with more imaginary radio for you tomorrow, though. So please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday, take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall.
- [84:47]
B
And good luck to all. Power out.