#4586 It's The Donkey For Me!

Summary

TBTL #4586 - “It's The Donkey For Me!”

October 29, 2025

Hosts: Luke Burbank & Andrew Walsh
Podcast Theme: Two longtime friends goofing their way through daily life, pop culture, personal foibles, and the wonderful weirdness of the world.

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Overview

This episode delivers classic TBTL banter, drifting from absurd debates about what counts as a mall, through a surprisingly detailed exploration of cell phone advertising “clapbacks,” to a digression on Mike Rowe’s ambiguous media presence and politics, and an examination of the utility and existential threat of AI—specifically ChatGPT. Throw in a discussion of ancient McDonald's burgers and the introduction of a new “Badlands” theme song (featuring a braying donkey), and this is quintessential TBTL: warm, weird, occasionally thoughtful, always very, very silly.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Makes a Mall, a Mall? (00:00–02:00)

• Luke and Andrew debate if the place they're in is a mall or not.
  • “They've changed a lot in the last few years…They’re just naturalistic now.” —Luke
• Andrew insists: "I haven't been to a mall since I was like 14."
• Digression leads to broader life complaints: "When I hear an undeserved compliment, it makes my ears want to throw up." (Andrew, 01:29)

2. Oldest McDonald's Hamburger: Soggy Science or Urban Legend? (02:41–03:09 / 57:08–64:20)

• Luke introduces the concept: Are there really McDonald's burgers that are nearly 30 years old and still intact?
• Details:
  • One burger is in Australia, another in Texas.
  • Neither has decomposed after decades, despite being unrefrigerated ("just shrunk in size a little bit").
  • Memorable quote: “The burger and I are almost the exact same age; it’s arguably in much better condition.” —Senior Burger's caretaker, as quoted by Luke (59:01)
• McDonald’s clapback: Their official statement is simultaneously panicked and clinical: “In the right environment, our burgers, like most other foods, could decompose…” (62:20)
  • Both hosts mock this: “Could. That is so parsed. Like you’re not even saying, ‘Hey, our food rots like normal.’” —Luke (63:35)

3. The Saga of Cell Phone Ad Campaigns (“Clapbacks,” Visual Concepts, and General Confusion) (04:41–13:01)

• Listener Larry Asher writes in to clarify: Billy Bob Thornton’s T-Mobile and Luke Wilson’s AT&T ads are direct parodies of each other.
  • Andrew: “Are they trying to pass this off to the high-minded folks…as a parody…while also targeting the original ad’s audience?” (07:32)
  • Luke: “It’s all a visual muddle—no one really knows or cares which company is doing what.”
  • Digression: The challenge of ad campaigns that blur brands together, with examples from insurance mascots.

4. Mike Rowe: Ad Voice, TV Host, or Political Figure? (13:01–23:17)

• Andrew notices Mike Rowe is now everywhere in radio ads, especially for conservative-coded products. He wonders about Rowe's political drift and if he hosts any Seattle radio shows.
  • Luke provides background: “He’s a folksy, affable kind of guy… but he might have drifted right… it wouldn’t shock me if he’s done a stint on Fox News.” (14:00)
  • Both look up Rowe’s career: primarily blue-collar reality TV, but with a recent voice cameo in a “Libertas Institute” libertarian cartoon.
  • Analysis of his publicly neutral, but subtly conservative, self-presentation.
  • Andrew, after reading Rowe’s long non-political defense: “People who say that for a while then just totally show themselves and jump off the cliff of insane conservatism…” (23:11)

5. The Power (and Powerlessness) of AI – Particularly ChatGPT (25:44–43:27)

• Luke praises the new ChatGPT TV ads for their compelling synth-heavy aesthetic and aspirational vibe (“This is another sign of the coming AI apocalypse, but I like the commercial” —28:00).
• Andrew’s counterpoint: The ads are beautiful, but ChatGPT’s advice is useless (“You just don’t need ChatGPT to tell you to bring snacks on a road trip.” —29:40)
• They try using ChatGPT for podcast content; it can’t even suggest a basic “dad joke bombs with family” commercial trope.
  • Andrew’s frustrated prompt: “You don’t offer anything better than a basic Google search. What's all the fuss about AI?” (34:23)
  • AI’s own meta-answer: “The real advantage…is synthesizing…context into something a search engine doesn’t know how to articulate.” (34:25)
• On practical AI uses: Luke's daughter used it to prep for job interviews. Andrew grudgingly admits it helped his family write a proper obituary.
  • “I guess I don’t like writing obituaries—and there is a boilerplate you can follow…” —Andrew (39:36)
  • Luke: “It's like an AI-generated photo—if you look close, there's half a shark in the background.” (43:27)

6. The Great Snack Debate and Regional Trivia (44:00–55:10)

• Donor thank you segment wanders into regional snack food history.
  • Frito-Lay in Plano, TX, original Fritos nostalgia (“You open up a new bag of Fritos and take a sniff—it smells like the ocean.” —Andrew, 48:42)
  • “It smells like unwashed feet.” —Luke’s retort (48:58)
• Semi-factual meandering about US presidents, Van Buren, Civil War timelines.
• Listener donors thanked with elaborate, affectionate riffing.

7. Big Tech Layoffs & The Amazon Paradox (50:21–54:01)

• Recent Amazon and Microsoft layoffs.
  • “The jobs are terrible, the portions are too small.” —Luke paraphrasing a classic joke (52:53)
• On automation eliminating bad jobs but badly impacting communities—even if it only saves “30 cents per delivery.”

8. The TBTL “Badlands” Theme: It’s the Donkey for Me! (76:07–79:58)

• Luke and Andrew introduce their new “Badlands” segment marker music, featuring a warbling donkey—a deep-cut reference to past TBTL bits, El Ropo, and MIDI versions of Ennio Morricone’s “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.”
• “I’ll never get over that donkey. It’s the donkey for me.”—Luke (79:46)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Luke (on historical phone call): “The very first call was basically as pointless as almost every other. It was basically, ‘Watson, you up?’” (05:49)
• On Mike Rowe’s conservative dog-whistles: “It just sounds like a buzzer is going to go off if you don’t mention ‘but her emails’ at least once every conversation.” —Luke (16:30)
• On old McDonald's burgers: “Even though the burger and I are almost the exact same age, it’s arguably in much better condition.” (59:01)
• On ChatGPT’s practical limits: “You don’t offer anything better than a basic Google search. What’s all the fuss about AI?” —Andrew (34:23)
• On Fritos: “It smells like unwashed feet.” —Luke
  “No, it smells like the ocean!” —Andrew
• On corporate layoffs: “The soup is terrible and the portions are too small… these jobs are not great, but they’re the only job that can be had.” —Luke (52:53)
• On the TBTL Badlands theme: “It’s the donkey for me!” —Luke (78:25, 79:46)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Mall debate: 00:00–02:00
• Oldest McDonald's burger intro: 02:41–03:09
• Cellular ad campaign “clapback” discussion: 04:41–13:01
• Mike Rowe analysis: 13:01–23:17
• AI in daily life, ChatGPT, writing obituaries: 25:44–43:27
• Donor thanks and snack food digression: 44:00–50:01
• Big Tech layoffs & Amazon jobs: 50:21–54:01
• McDonald's burger feature segment: 57:08–64:20
• Badlands/Donkey theme intro: 76:07–79:58

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Closing Vibe

As always, TBTL swings from trivial to thoughtful in absurd loops. This episode embodies why so many “10s” (listeners) love the show: Where else can a conversation about a 30-year-old hamburger, low-key cell phone ad feuds, AI hallucinations, and Frito nostalgia naturally lead to a braying donkey and a new benchmark for podcast inside jokes?

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“That’s the fun part of doing the show—it can be 45 minutes of just cell phone commercials and Mike Rowe discourse and ChatGPT. And…the amazing thing is, we have folks who are donating money to keep this going…!”
—Luke (44:22)

Transcript

[Andrew Walsh]

Hey, can I ask you something? Yeah. Do you like malls?

[Luke Burbank]

What?

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

You like malls?

[Steve the Sniffer]

Like shopping malls?

[Luke Burbank]

Seth.

[Andrew Walsh]

See, cause my dad right here, he's actually in charge of a brand new.

[Luke Burbank]

Shopping mall that's gonna be opening here in town. Oh, wait, that's really cool. Yeah.

[Andrew Walsh]

You know, I don't think I've been.

[Luke Burbank]

To a mall though, since I was like 14. Yeah, you probably have. You probably just didn't realize it. They've changed a lot in the last few years.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, no, I don't think I've been.

[Luke Burbank]

To one in a really long time. They're just naturalistic now and less intrusive than what you used to think of when you thought of a mall. So you might have been in a mall? Well, I think I would have known if I was in a mall. I'm saying you wouldn't know you were in a mall. I bet you were in a mall. No, yeah. I'm just saying I haven't been to one. Probably have been recently. Death Nelly, she's been in a mall. I mean, this is kind of a mall. This is a restaurant. I know, but it's also kind of a mall. How? Because it is.

[Andrew Walsh]

Because there's shops around and the way.

[Luke Burbank]

The parking lot wraps around. Okay, fine.

[Andrew Walsh]

Thank you. Cool. The.

[Luke Burbank]

Was that. What a weird person. Please try to let it go.

[Andrew Walsh]

This isn't a mall, is it?

[Steve the Sniffer]

Kinda.

[Luke Burbank]

I mean, not really. I mean, it's not like a mall at all. What the was I supposed to say?

[Andrew Walsh]

Tbtl Excited to be here.

[Luke Burbank]

Equally excited for you guys to truly.

[Andrew Walsh]

Take in how physically imposing I am.

[Luke Burbank]

So whenever you guys are ready to start, let's do it.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm sorry, but when I hear an undeserved compliment, it makes my ears want to throw up.

[Luke Burbank]

Your ears are always throwing up about something.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hello, friendos. This is Sophia reporting live from the mobile gas station on 108. Just here to tell you I had.

[Luke Burbank]

A Maria Menouno sighting on my gas.

[Andrew Walsh]

Pump and she was telling me all about intermittent fasting.

[Luke Burbank]

Over and out.

[Andrew Walsh]

I don't know, man. This is the craziest interview I've ever done in my life. That's why they call me multidimensional.

[Luke Burbank]

All right. Hello, good morning and welcome, everyone. Wednesday edition of tbtl, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Isn't that for techno geeks with spreadsheet? My name's Luke Burbank. I'm your host. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia. There's no Whining in football. But every August, football comes to wine country. Looking out on the beautiful Columbia. The cows are in the river. It's placid. The trees across the river over there in Oregon are changing color. And it's just. It's actually a very, very beautiful Wednesday.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, Ma Pa.

[Luke Burbank]

It's just beautiful. The perfect weather pattern to bring you episode 4586 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. There are two McDonald's hamburgers that are vying, I guess, sort of for the title of oldest McDonald's hamburger still in existence. Yukon hamburgers, steamed hams.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's a regional dialect.

[Luke Burbank]

One of them is in Texas and one of them is in Australia. What I thought was interesting was the response from the McDonald's corporation to the fact that these burgers are almost 30 years old. Also thinking about folks that are in the path of this latest hurricane. It's Hurricane Melissa. And it had me wondering why. Why are we doing this with the human names? Oh, hey, y' all said my name. Is there a better option? I don't know. I was on the Noah website today looking at it, trying to fix. Trying to solve this problem for everyone. So I feel like every year someone gets their name ruined because of all of this. We will get into that. Oh, and we'll definitely get into the life of this young man. He's the longest running cobra of the show. Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's both a colleague and I think a. A close, dear personal friend.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm his best friend, also co boss.

[Luke Burbank]

He's Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

[Andrew Walsh]

Good morning, Luke. I received an interesting email this morning from our friend Larry, Larry Asher over at the school.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, yes. Full of visual concepts.

[Andrew Walsh]

Concepts. I said designs. I meant concepts. I wanted to give you a chance to sort of get in there and correct me.

[Luke Burbank]

You know that I needed that w today.

[Andrew Walsh]

Now, here's what I am. Here's what I'm interested in. This was just sent to me, which makes me think that you were saying something to me yesterday that I was totally missing the point of during our very important conversation about mobile carrier ads. Is that what you call it? Cell phone? What do you call T Mobile and att? I don't even know, man.

[Luke Burbank]

Andrew, they're the ones who invented the.

[Andrew Walsh]

Phone, which is not. I tried Googling that during our conversation. I don't know.

[Luke Burbank]

And I guess because the bell.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. And then AT and T, you know.

[Luke Burbank]

Ma bell and all that. Whole thing.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

But old enough to remember those words.

[Andrew Walsh]

But then what. @&t took over the Bells and now they're saying that they invent. Anyway, let's put.

[Luke Burbank]

I also find it. Yes. I find it to be a very tenuous connection between. They're the ones who invented phones and they. Their understanding of cellular technology. Cellular tower technology. Right. Is amazing because that a thousand years ago, a guy said, watson, get in here. Is that what he said? Is that what Alex said something?

[Andrew Walsh]

The first phone call. Phone call, Watson, bring the toilet paper. I think that was. I might be forgetting that first phone was a bathroom phone. A lot of people don't know this.

[Luke Burbank]

Anyway, I. Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.

[Andrew Walsh]

Is the first phone call of all time. That is actually it. Are you looking up? I want to see you.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant Thomas Watson. I love that. The very first call was basically like as pointless as almost every other folks.

[Andrew Walsh]

It was basically. Watson, you up?

[Luke Burbank]

Precisely like, hey, what are you doing? Hey, Watson, what's. Hey, what's. What's good? Like, it wasn't. I've. I've. I've invented something that will change life as we know it on this planet. Was. It was not one of these one small step for a man, but one large giant leap for mankind. Nothing kind of particularly lyrical about it or important. It was just like, hey, man. Hey, what's going on, man?

[Andrew Walsh]

What's good going on? So here's my. Here's my question to you because I'm not sure if you were. You and I were on the same page or is one of those things where you were telling me this and I kind of missed the point. We started talking about the Billy Bob Thornton ads, which you don't like. And he says, open up a can of whoop up. I don't like those ads either. And then we're talking about the Luke Wilson ad yesterday. That is very much like in the same vein as that he's walking around dusty old roads and talking about his cellular service. And we got this. Not from Larry. And again, it's just sent to me. So I think I was the one missing this point. Andrew, if you go back and look carefully, you don't have to look that carefully. You just have to look. But thank you for being kind to me, Larry. If you go back and look carefully, you'll see the Billy Bob Thornton ads are for T Mobile and Luke Wilson's are AT&T ADS. So they are a clapback. They're intentionally kind of a look and around the same, but they are not. Did you know that we were talking about two different. So one is almost a parody. If you look at it as a parody. I wonder if that hits different.

[Luke Burbank]

That's really interesting. First of all, Larry, thank you for the contribution. And I apologize to everyone else who was throwing their phones out the window who knew that this was two different campaigns.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, you know why Larry understood that? Because it's a visual concept. And you and I were not. We are not schooled in visual concepts.

[Luke Burbank]

No, we're not. We sure are not. That is remarkable. I mean, here's the thing. It's like that is actually very funny. It's very subtle, I guess. But it raises the question if one is so subtle with one's clapback commercial. I guess my question is, are they. They're doing a sort of a parody. But are they also just actually trying to get the same group of eyeballs to watch them? In other words, are they trying to pass this off to the high minded folks like you and me, as in the Larry Ashers of the world, as a parody, as a clapback. But they're also low key, just hoping that it sort of works on the people that the Billy Bob Thornton commercial is supposed to work. It's like us making a commercial for our truck that's supposed to be a clapback at Ford, but all it shows is our Chevy truck just tooling around in the dirt and going Chevy trucks. And it's like, okay, it is a parody. But also you're using the same visual concepts here.

[Andrew Walsh]

And I guess I did point out that visual, that visual concept, if you will, of him holding a newspaper that says T mobile Most challenged for deceptive ads. I even made a joke about how, at least in this fake universe, the Chronicle, the made up newspaper, the Chronicle is offering actual headlines that make sense without being clickbait.

[Luke Burbank]

You won't believe the cellular company that's linked to the most deceptive ads. Click here.

[Andrew Walsh]

Right? So, you know, there it was right in front of me, a shot, a very large, not subtle shot in the ad that says that calls out T mobile Challenge for deceptive ads. It's very clearly a slapback, as Larry says. But here's my problem. And this is not me trying to up my own shame. There's just not. There's not enough. There's enough cat litter in the world for me to cover up my own shame. Trust me, I've tried. But there is a phenomenon that is definitely true with me and I think other people too, which is we can't really tell. We're not paying that much attention to specific services. Certain things you're locked in on, I do think that like maybe they've gotten a little bit more form, factory and generic. But like I do feel like Apple and Pixel or Samsung or whatever. Like I feel like they're, they're really, you know, the difference between them. I don't know if that's the best example, but there are certain products that they really have. We know the difference between Oreos and Hydrox and if we saw a commercial for Hydrox we'd know the difference.

[Luke Burbank]

Hydrox based technology, we call it Oreo.

[Andrew Walsh]

You hurt Hydroxy, I'm going to open up a can of Hydrox. But anyway, there's something about, there's something about cell services that is just, they all blend together. And I really think, and I've said this, I think it's a mistake when you let the other company sort of set the stage for you. When you're trying to respond to somebody else's ad, it just blurs it all together even more. And you're letting them sort of like again, sort of dictate the terms of your, of your ad battle, like do your own thing to stand out and develop a brand. I think that must, they must know on purpose. Let's muddy the waters on these things, right?

[Luke Burbank]

Because first of all I didn't know which guy was obviously, I didn't know which guy was pitching which service. I guess I thought it was all AT and T because Luke Wilson said they invented the phone or something. Obviously the part where he's holding up the, the newspaper, that was totally lost on me like that this was drawing a separation between the two companies. And like, yeah, I mean that's, I think you're right. I think because they have to know at, AT and T, whoever the, the ad wizards are, they have to know that the, I hope anyway, they know that the average person has no idea what's going on with this nor do they care. No one is out there being like, like, can you imagine? I just call you out of the blue and I'm like, listen, it's, it's, it's kind of serious. I just saw a survey that T Mobile was found to be the most deceptive in their advertising. Can you get home right now? I mean, where are you at and can you be home soon? Can we do an emergency broadcast of the show? Like nobody cares about this stuff. And I would have to imagine that these agencies understand that and yet they're doing this. And maybe you're right. Maybe it's like they're like they're just hoping to force, multiply. They're hoping that both of these commercials become part of one mega commercial in the minds of people.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. There must be something about not almost not wanting to stand out sort of, because I feel like back in the day, you had. Now I'll probably get these confused, but T Mobile was very specific. Like, were the young woman in the pink dress that stands in the very minimalist, you know, in front of the.

[Luke Burbank]

Minimal, and then later on gets on.

[Andrew Walsh]

A motorcycle, and then later on gets. That's my whole issue with that, is that commercial campaign was built on minimalism and then ended up so Maxim. Such a maximalist tone. It was ridiculous. But at least at one point they said, when you look at our ads, you'll think of this. I actually think.

[Luke Burbank]

Verizon, can you hear me now, Guy?

[Andrew Walsh]

I think, exactly. And I actually think. And I'm trying to think of this as a good example or a bad example, but insurance companies, we know. I think for the most part, the progressive ones versus the Geico ones, you know, like, the Gecko is not progressive. Everybody knows the Gecko is not progressive. Everybody knows the Caveman is not progressive. Everybody knows Flo and the gang are progressive. And I think most people know that Dr. Rick is progressive. Although I'm pretty dialed into those.

[Luke Burbank]

That's on the line for me.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's on the line a little bit. But I do think that the ads. Now I'm gonna switch gears here somewhat significantly, but this reminds me of a conversation I've been meaning to have with you or somebody with roots in Seattle radio.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay, Cal, how about the guy you're paid to talk to for one hour a day?

[Andrew Walsh]

That's what I was thinking about asking our Katie or Camaro Kevin this question, but it occurred to me, I don't get paid to have conversations with them. Right. The donors don't give me. The donors do not support those conversations. They support these conversations. So I will ask you, what the hell's going on with Mike Rowe? Is he. I didn't know who he was until I had to look him up. Recently, I'm hearing all these radio advertisements that are read by a man named Mike Rowe. And he has this tone of voice, like he is a host on the station I'm listening to, but he's definitely not a host on the sports station I'm listening to. I finally looked him up, and I guess people know him from Dirty Jobs. Dirty Jobs. A Reality became.

[Luke Burbank]

He sort of had a phenomenon. He was a phenomenon of a kind of. Yeah, the show was. He'd go out and basically ride along and do these jobs, you know, sewer clean out and garbage man and just jobs I don't even think garbage man would rate, honestly.

[Andrew Walsh]

It'd have to.

[Luke Burbank]

They'd always have to find a job that was really, really got you real dirty and you were dealing with some stuff that was really kind of, you know, stuff that most people wouldn't want to deal with. And he'd go out and he would do the job with them and he's a sort of a folksy, affable kind of guy. And the show was a big hit and. But I think, my guess is that it was also a real big hit amongst folks maybe that. That are doing a lot of blue collar work. As they say, dirty hands, clean money. And so I think he. I don't know this for a fact, basically, other than what you've kind of said to me, which is you're getting like. Is there. There may have been a right word drift, like he might have become kind of. I think he's. I don't. Listen, I don't, I don't. I don't want to besmirch the guy because I haven't gotten eyes on it. But let me put it this way. I would be really. I would not be shocked to hear that over time he's gone from being kind of a folksy kind of. I get out there and see what blue collar America is doing to like, I start doing ads for things that are kind of blue collar coded to I show up at the inauguration to. I'm kind of. I'm. I'm getting a guest stint on Fox News. I don't know if any of this is true. I'm saying I wouldn't be shocked to hear this was the progression for Mike Rose.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, let me tell you why I bring it up because I started hearing him doing ads and he's got a great radio voice. First of all, he sounds like he was made for radio. I didn't know he had a TV background until I looked him up. All I know is these ads and the first ones I heard were for pure talk, which is like a cell carrier, which is why it's related to the last one. But the very first one, I heard it not long after the election or maybe after Inaugur. And it was definitely one of those that's kind of like, I don't know what AT&T and Verizon stand for, but at PureTalk they stand for like veterans benefits. And like, we help. If you're a veteran, we're going to give you a deal. And like, you know, the value. And so it was very coded as like kind of what I would say, sort of, you know, veterans rights should not be necessarily political. But it's definitely, you know, sort of dog whistling, I think to a more conservative audience certainly. And then, and then he does these other ads too. He's like, they're actually not bad. They're really gripping. There's no music and it's just his voice. And he says, I was talking to my mom the other day and she saw the bill that she was getting from AT&T. Maybe it was Verizon, I don't really know. And I said to her, mom, it.

[Luke Burbank]

Had a guy on a dirt road. Yeah, the bill came from a guy walking on a dirt road.

[Andrew Walsh]

Mom, go Google how much they're spending on advertising. And then she came back and she says, mike, Mikey, you're not going to believe it. He's like, I know, like I got to say from a radio standpoint, like these ads are effective. I don't like this whole idea of just like pure talk stands for conservative values.

[Luke Burbank]

Pure talk is the weird, isn't it weird for a cell phone company? Like it just sounds like a, a buzzer is going to go off if you don't mention but her emails at least once every conversation.

[Andrew Walsh]

Right?

[Luke Burbank]

And if you'll give you 50% off if you, if you promise to call her lion, Hillary at least once per phone conversation.

[Andrew Walsh]

If you even accidentally combine the word she persisted, the call will go dead. No, but here's the thing though, and I'm sorry, I can't remember the other ad, but after hearing these for a while and I look him up, I'm like, oh, it must just be a national radio ad campaign. But I swear I heard him doing a local ad for a different product as well. It might not have been local, but I'm just trying to figure out if Mike Rowe, a guy who I just learned about, is now just suddenly getting into the radio advertising. But it seems more to me like he might have a show somewhere. Does he have a show on Seattle radio? This is what I should have been googling. Instead of wasting the listeners money on this conversation, I think we should ask.

[Luke Burbank]

Kamaro Kev because Kamaro Kev is in Seattle radio and a sector of Seattle radio that would know about this potentially. Like if Mike Rowe had a show and presuming it Skewed, at least somewhat conservative. Our buddy Kamaro Kev would be aware of that. Now I'm looking at. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't again mischaracterizing Mike Rowe and his politics. And I went to his. I'm on his Wikipedia page and I'm on his television kind of credits. And I will be honest with you. It's very like. It's pretty much down the middle. It's a lot of like, dirty jobs, the occasional ghost hunters narration. Deadliest catch narrator. He's still the deadliest catch narrator. Things that are just pretty much those kinds of quasi Bering Sea gold where he is the host, I guess, of the show Bearing Seagull, by the way. I didn't realize he was the host of that show. I've watched it in years when it's not hosted by him. It is weirdly watchable. Bearing. It is just people trying to vacuum up gold off the bottom of a river or lake in Alaska. And they got these big. It's just like all of those reality shows, though. Like, it's. It's all dramatic music and like pushing the reveal back until the end of the show. So it's all. So it's kind of a bunch of rough and tumble people, and they're out in the Bering Sea or the general area of the Bering Sea, and they've all got to try to get some gold. And this isn't like, you know, they're not mining, they're not blowing up, you know, a cave and going in. This is like they're vacuuming up the sea floor and. Or the riverbed of all of this silt and debris. And then they're filtering out the gold. But the reason it's so satisfying is because at the end of each episode, you. They take all of those flakes, Andrew, and they put them into a bowl and they weigh them. And the show tells you what the market value of how much those flakes weigh are. And it is so satisfying.

[Andrew Walsh]

It is satisfying. It's not one of those things where it's like you've. You've collected it all, but then at the end of the day, it doesn't look like as much as that doesn't. That'd be such a bad premise for a show. Like, look, you spent an hour doing this and look how unsatisfying the results are.

[Luke Burbank]

It's the opposite. Well, it is kind of like that because let me tell you, it ain't much gold. Like, it's always a very underwhelming amount of gold. But that's why they got to tell you, guess what? Even though this doesn't look like much, this is $40,000 worth of gold. You know, and so it's. They. They have to kind of tell you as the viewer that this matters because when you're looking at it, just the volume of it isn't particularly. It doesn't knock your socks off. But anyway. And then you keep going down and you finally get to. And again, it seems like I'm trying very hard to. To sort of paint Mike Rowe into a box. But I did notice that he was in something in 2024. It's called Tuttle Twins. I guess that was a TV show of some kind he played himself. And then I looked over and I saw the organization that put it together is the Libertas Institute. And when I see those letters in an institute, I already know what we're dealing with.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes, probably.

[Luke Burbank]

Libertas is never the name of the institute that's trying to get more SNAP benefits to single mothers.

[Andrew Walsh]

Right. Right by. So I was honestly not even looking up his politics. I was trying to figure out if he had a Seattle radio show and Googling. One of the first things I ended up on was a post by him on the platform known as X, which apparently has no character limit anymore. Did you know you can write full essays?

[Luke Burbank]

I've been on X.

[Andrew Walsh]

At least Mike Rowe can write full essays. And this starts off. This is something that he wrote in February of this year. And it starts off with a quote from somebody named Carol Blevins. Do we know Carol Blevins? Is that just a reader he's responding to the quote? Is CPAC really? Mike, since you're now officially out of the closet, are you still going to insist that you're not a Republican stooge? I'm guessing you will. Go ahead, prove me wrong, Carol Blevins. And then he writes what must be a thousand word response to. I mean, it's a super long essay that he's written here on.

[Luke Burbank]

From inside a garbage can. Inside a garbage can where I'm currently filming.

[Andrew Walsh]

He says, I hate emails. That was my imitation of Oscar the Grouch, combining Oscar the Grouch and Dirty Jobs. Thanks. I mean, you knew.

[Luke Burbank]

Does he literally start it by saying I hate emails?

[Andrew Walsh]

No, he just writes, hi, Carol, the only way I can prove you wrong is by ignoring you. Which is tempting since there's no hope. Anyway, he writes this whole long thing about, I think, I think him just being a guy who believes we should be able to have conversations. And he, let's see here. His experience with President Obama. And he also hopes that Trump has every success in the same way he wished Obama had every success, blah, blah, blah. But he did apparently accept an invitation to speak at CPAC and feels though that he did that as somebody who is not political. So take that.

[Luke Burbank]

By the way, this TV project he was in called the Tuttle Twins. It's a libertarian children's book series published by the Libertas Institute. Written by Libertas president Conor Boyak. The series was made into a television show that raised $4.6 million in crowdsourced funding. I'm guessing that that was the part that Mike Rowe was in. My sense of this guy is that he's probably leans more conservative than we do. He doesn't seem to me like he's like, you know, he's not Stephen Miller or something. As far as I can tell, his politics are probably to the right of mine. Doesn't seem like a terrible dude. And probably it's important to him that he is seen as, as, as, as not super political. It sounds like that's something that he's trying to, you know, and that there's a lot of speculation around what his politics are. And he's, you know, he, I think he would like to be thought of as a down the middle kind of guy who just. What's Andy Rooney say? I like to think of myself as an average American.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

I think that he probably wants to think of himself that way. He's probably a little bit to the right of us, but I don't know, smoking gun on this list.

[Andrew Walsh]

I mean, although I doubt he, that's. That's the one thing though. People who say, hey, listen. And you know, locally, that's. That was Brandy Cruz's line. I feel like the people who say that for a while then just totally show themselves and jump off the cliff of just insane conservatism. Like, I doubt he speaks at many left leaning things, but then defends his CPAC thing as being like, I just think everybody should have a voice.

[Luke Burbank]

I would, I would agree with you. But I guess what I would say is if he was gonna go, if he was gonna go full maga, if he was gonna pull the mask off, I feel like he would have done it.

[Andrew Walsh]

February of 2025 would have been a fine time to do that.

[Luke Burbank]

It's a great, fabulous time to do it. And so the fact that he's still trying to at least keep the mask on makes me Again, I don't literally, like, haven't. I haven't thought about this guy since the last time he came up on our show.

[Andrew Walsh]

Did he come up on the show before?

[Luke Burbank]

I think, like, I don't know, it feels. It could have been the radio or 10 minutes ago.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

No, I feel like we. I. I feel like there was some other time when in passing, I don't think we even got into his politics. It was just like a Mike road dirty jobs reference or something. But I'll tell you, I gotta get on that discovery narration gig. That's where the real money is. I'm looking at this guy. He is printing money being the narrator on all of these, like, Bering Sea Gold and Ice Road Truckers at all these different shows. I mean, he's probably can just knock out four seasons of that in an afternoon.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Right in his home studio. That's. That's. I gotta get 100 a week, 500 a week. That's rich.

[Andrew Walsh]

Now, the one thing is I. You might have a little bit of competition because you're dealing with somebody who's done a lot of voiceover work himself. Oh, dinner and flowers. Hi, Goldfish darling. I love that it's blown out too. Not only the worst acting in the world, but like my. It is the worst acting in the world. I was deeply embarrassed. I came running in from the outside to record the. That I did not an actor. And I'm blowing out the mic now. I don't give my. I don't blame myself for that. I was not the one running the board. But it really adds in case it didn't stand out enough as, like, pretty rough stuff. That distortion on my voice. Not helping is not helping.

[Luke Burbank]

Can we talk about a commercial? Sorry. I don't know. I'm sorry that we're cannibalizing after these messages. The fine, fine podcast that you co host with Helly Rich.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. Yesterday was a very fun show, by the way. If you wanna check it out, it's in your feed.

[Luke Burbank]

What did y' all talk about?

[Andrew Walsh]

I decided for Halloween I would put together a list of my biggest, deepest personal fears and then find commercials that would illustrate those fears. And I tried to get Genevieve to guess what fears she thought would be on my list.

[Luke Burbank]

That's a great idea for the show. I have been seeing when we were talking about how these commercials all blend together and they don't have a tone. I have to give some credit to these ChatGPT commercials. Have you seen these?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. We might be on different sides of this Although I haven't seen every commercial in the campaign.

[Luke Burbank]

I think the thing that I find compelling about them is, first of all, the music definitely sounds like some time cop 1983 shit that I listen to. It's like very Blade Runner.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, the commercial, the aesthetic is definitely aimed at your aesthetic. I think I can say that.

[Luke Burbank]

I think that's just what. That's what in all the noise and all of the. Luke Wilson's checking the scoreboard on their property that's going on during like these baseball games and stuff and the football games. It's kind of unusual for there to be something that's just. It's just this propulsive kind of song and then like a bunch of kind of like, I guess, you know, data or instructions or I guess to do lists. This one is this guy who I guess the idea is he wants to learn how to do a pull up. And so it's just him out, you know, at this kind of sort of park that has, you know, Chin up bars. And it's just. I will admit that the whole vibe of this is very much the vibe of things I like. I like the way it's shot. I really like the music. He's looking up at the Chin up bar. He's doing these chin ups successfully as the camera just kind of pushes in and then pulls out on him. And then it's just. I guess it's him talking to ChatGPT about how he wants to feel stronger. And then Chat GPT is kind of telling him what to do. And it's sort of working. And I want to. By the way, I want to be very clear, Andrew, this commercial is another sign of the coming AI apocalypse. I mean, we will all die by their hand before the year is out. Like, this is very ominous, the whole thing, but from a. It kind of works for me as a commercial. And then there's another one where there's like a couple and they're like eating ice cream cones or something. Kind of the same vibe.

[Andrew Walsh]

This is. This is where I need to be honest. I think you're right. These are good commercials. And one thing that I did. No, no, I'm not saying that I'm trying to just find my words, but, like, because I usually on after these messages argue vociferously and I find myself usually on kind of what you're saying, which is like, these are good commercials. I'm not endorsing the product or service. Sometimes I feel like I've gotten into these conversations with Genevieve, you know, about maybe something that is kind of inherently like kind of religious or something like that airs during the Super Bowl. And I'd say, well, that is a really good commercial. She's like, yeah, but it's insidious. And I'd be like, yeah, but I'm not talking about the thing that they're advertising. I'm talking about are they doing a good job of using advertising to get their message across. And I feel like I've gotten stuck in that before. And in that way, of course, you're absolutely right. The thing that irritates me about these commercials are not the commercials. The commercials are absolutely good. You're in. You're totally right. I never stopped to consider that because they piss me off so much because of what they're advertising. And the one that again, is also very beautiful and speaks to exactly what you and I like to see in here. I'm avoiding the word aesthetics since I keep on messing it up. It's just a really hard word to say when you grew up with a lisp. But lisp is also a hard word to say when you ironically. But it's a really cool looking commercial where there's kind of a, a young man and a young woman in a car and their brother and sister. And it's kind of like, hey, we're gonna go on a road trip together. And let's like use ChatGPT to tell you how to have a successful road trip. And then it's like packing and tips. Here. Here are the tips that ChatGPT offers on the screen afterwards. Car snacks, sandwiches, Georgia apples and water gear, sneakers or hiking boots and a light rain jacket. Detours leave room for ice cream parlors, murals, and thrift stores. It doesn't even say where they are. Shared playlists, your favorite tunes, and a disposable film camera to capture every memory. Which, first of all, that's leaning into again. The, the. The disposable. Yeah, the disposable film camera, which is now like becoming like kind of more a little bit retro again. But it's like you just don't need chat GPT to tell you to bring snacks and put together and to listen to music. And like, you're right though. The commercial is beautiful and it's really well done and it's speaking to the right audience. I just get pissed off at like, yeah, really? Thanks, chatgpt. I didn't know I should take snacks and put music on the radio.

[Luke Burbank]

No, you're totally right. It is the actual product that is being pushed. Bodes very, very, very Poorly and very ominously. Can something bode ominously chatgpt? Can something bode ominously? Well, it's funny because I put in, I wanted to find this commercial, the ChatGPT commercial, and I wrote into the Internet while we were talking. ChatGPT commercial, couple in car. And what do you think happened, Andrew? I got an AI overview of the ChatGPT commercial. Notice road trip. The plot. A young man uses ChatGPT to plan a road trip through the Blue Ridge Mountains for himself and his sister. As they drive, the sister presses him for details on their destination, but he teases her by refusing to say where they're. Where they are going. Now, my question is, did. Did the AI, like, did it already know this? Like, did the AI overview already know it because it also wrote the commercial, right? Am I asking the same question, writing.

[Andrew Walsh]

Another one as we speak?

[Luke Burbank]

Like, am I asking the same person who wrote the commercial to tell me about the commercial? Like, is this all coming from the same place?

[Andrew Walsh]

But, well, it's weird how this is all coming together. Actually, it didn't even occur to me that, like, I have chatgpt, like, some sort of free version of the software on my computer because you and I, I think we're messing around with it or I needed it for something and I. Oh, that's right. I tried using it after my fantasy baseball draft, I think a long time ago. Anyway, I happen this is a total coincidence, but I happened to try it yesterday, Luke, because I told you I was put together this show for after these messages, and I was, like, trying to think of my funny, like, kind of quirkier fears. And one of my fears, spoiler, if you plan on listening to the show, was going to be when Genevieve doesn't laugh at my jokes. That's one of my big fears in life. And I'm like, okay, I can easily find a commercial that has a couple, probably a husband and a wife, where the husband is telling dad jokes in the kitchen and either his wife or kids are not laughing at him, right? It's like. And I know there's the cringe one that's out now for, like, Hyundai or something. I can't remember. There's somebody Internet. There's dad speaking Internet slang, and it's cringey to the kids. But that's not what I was. I wanted, like, somebody who was trying to be funny in a domestic situation, and his family is not laughing at his jokes. And so that's my biggest fear, right? People not laughing at my jokes. So I spent. So I Thought this will be the easiest one to grab because it's such a trope. The dumb dad or the dumb husband. True. And I spent so much time, I probably spent an hour looking for that specific thing. You can find instances of husbands being dumb, of course, but not this specific thing like trying to be funny and nobody's laughing on a car, even in a road trip or something. And so I spent an hour searching for this using all the different Google terms and whatever. And then I'm like, you know what? Maybe this is where everybody else says, turn to AI. So I opened up ChatGPT. And this is where also so clearly my attitude, I take this stuff way too personally to really use ChatGPT, because I typed into ChatGPT, can you name some TV commercials where a wife won't laugh at her husband's jokes? And ChatGPT took about, I don't know, 10 sec, 5 seconds and said, sorry, I couldn't find a commercial list of TV commercials. I'm sorry, I couldn't find a confirmed list of TV commercials that specifically feature a scene where a wife won't laugh at her husband's jokes matching your description. If you like, I could dig deeper, including international ads, to locate some possibilities. And so I think that I then just. I followed up with, can you find a commercial where kids won't laugh at their dad's jokes? And then ChatGPT basically tells me the same thing and gives me some, like, very unuseful links that I'd already landed on a million times in my search. And so this is where I come in and I say, I've spent the past hour doing all the same Google searches you just did. You don't offer anything better than a basic Google search. What's all the fuss about AI?

[Luke Burbank]

What did it say?

[Andrew Walsh]

That's a totally fair reaction. And honestly, you're right to expect more. If all I do is mirror what you find on Google, then I'm not adding much value. The real advantage of AI when it's doing its job well isn't just finding information, it's synthesizing it. And I'm making you say that on a podcast because I know you have a lisp connecting cultural patterns, memory, tone and context into something that a search engine doesn't know how to articulate. And then it goes on from there. And then. And then I just wrote, in a very dirty, dirzy way, I wrote, you can't help. And then I just, like, closed it before it could respond. And now I see it did.

[Luke Burbank]

End of an era.

[Andrew Walsh]

It says, that's fair. Andrew, it sounds like you're feeling pretty done with this search. And honestly, I get it. And then I wrote, end of an era. Legion of boom is over. Anyway, so, anyway, yeah, I even tried and I understand, like, it's right. You know, I am smart enough to know that AI is supposed to be more than just a Google search. But so far, even in the commercials that are highlighting its usefulness and even pulls on all of the right strings for you and I as far as getting our attention and bringing us in, it doesn't really do anything other than say, you should put together a road trip mix. I think at the end of that commercial, it does say something like, would you like me to help you put together a mix? And maybe, maybe AI can help with that. But frankly, that's my whole thing with AI. You already had that with things like Spotify or Tidal or whatever you choose to use, but it was AI working in the background. And I just think that, like, AI is a tool that works in the background of a million things that we use, and it does a good job there. But now there's just this emphasis on making sure that AI is front and center in this way that does not match reality at all. And I'm just still frustrated and confused, as you could hear in my conversation with Robot.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, yeah, it's still, it's still pretty bad at a lot of things for, you know, all of the hype. Now, here's something I might have mentioned on the show, but my daughter had a job interview and we were talking about it and, and we were talking about some of the questions that the, you know, the people interviewing her might ask. And she said, oh, yeah, well, I had, you know, chatgpt just like, basically generate all the questions that they might ask. And I just practiced answering those questions and I thought that's a good use.

[Andrew Walsh]

Of it, of AI because, you know.

[Luke Burbank]

You could say this is the kind of job, this is the job. You could just input. This is the job description. What are the. What kinds of questions might the people interviewing me ask me about this job or about this position? Like, that's a really good use of AI in my opinion. But again, the fact that it doesn't really, like you said, it's not tracking the commercials. It's apparently not linking up with what I spot or something. Like, it's not a comprehensive collection of, of what's happening. I'm actually almost a little bit surprised because it is all digital, like all those commercials that you want it to know about are ones and zeros. Right? They're. They're. They're binary. They're code somewhere.

[Andrew Walsh]

But the only way you can find them, though, is not through the ones and zeros. The way you would find them is through, you know. Ha. You know, either hashtags, keywords, or just the words that are in a description. You know, like you. I guess I'm telling somebody to say this is a commercial featuring a husband whose wife won't laugh at his joke.

[Luke Burbank]

Somebody needed to.

[Andrew Walsh]

To.

[Luke Burbank]

Somebody needed to flag it in that way or describe it in that way. I guess what I'm saying is like, they're. They're my. What's the word I'm looking for? Sort of like, I guess I wouldn't be shocked to find out that because it is all digital, that the AI already knows what's in every commercial that's ever been made.

[Andrew Walsh]

Right, Right.

[Luke Burbank]

Like, that would also not shock me.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I know. That's the thing. It's like, we talk about it like, it's all powerful, but then it doesn't really have the goods. It's just like a bunch of. I feel like there's like an analogy. Tip of my tongue. That was it. That was the analogy. That was the tip of my tongue. I don't know. It's just all.

[Luke Burbank]

You know what? You're right. This conversation is over. And I understand. And I understand that.

[Andrew Walsh]

I understand. I hear where you're coming from, Andrew. Yes. So anyway, I guess I've said my piece. I had. Oh, well, I was going to say if I. If I have to give AI its due, and I don't know why I have to. I did have a.

[Luke Burbank]

You absolutely do not, like, have to give it to them.

[Andrew Walsh]

When I was. I. I was somewhat tasked with. Well, let me start by saying this. One of the things people talk about using AI for is to help them write things. And I've always sort of rejected that because I like writing. I enjoy. You know, it's like, why would I. Why would I use AI to help me write the week weekly newsletter? It's like, if AI it's just like, it's. It's. By definition, it's got to come from us. Like, why would I want AI to do that? But then I was sort of tasked with writing my mom's obituary for, like, the newspaper, which, by the way, did I tell you, like, those things, like, when we tried to run it in a Cleveland newspaper, is something like 750 bucks or something with, like, you told me that off air And I'm shocked we found a. We didn't go with that particular market. But anyway, it doesn't really matter. But anyway, I told my. My sister and some family that I would do that. I kind of didn't want to, but somebody's like, oh, you're great at writing. I was like, okay, fine.

[Luke Burbank]

And then, what a great assignment.

[Andrew Walsh]

You know what I mean?

[Luke Burbank]

It's not emotionally fraught at all, but.

[Andrew Walsh]

I mean, it's always somebody who's affected, who's gonna write something like that unless you kind of write your own in advance or something. And for what it's worth, my mom took care of a lot of stuff in advance. She actually made it very easy on us, I would say. So this was not. I'm not setting this up to make it sound like it was a burden on me. Not a lot was asked of me, actually, during this entire process. So it seemed totally fair that I would take this on. I didn't realize how hard it was going to be for me. Not even like in the way that maybe you'd expect that it would just be that I would be so emotionally overwhelmed that the process would be painful. I just didn't know what to say. And I remember my sister said something like, well, I'm sure AI could help with that. And I just didn't really listen to that. And I wrote something that was very short, and I hope it was very short. It was a little bit distant. And I thought that maybe there was emotion in its subtlety, which is just not exactly what you do with an obit. And I really, looking back, I think I just didn't want to write it and I don't want to spend the time to really do the soul searching maybe that it would take. And so my sister said, let me take a hack at it or whatever. And I remembered she had mentioned like, oh, maybe this is something that AI can help with. I never confirmed with her that she turned to something like ChatGPT for help, but I assume she did. And when she came back with Luke was. I didn't realize how bad and kind of dumb my initial approach was until I saw what she was able to do and actually write a real proper obituary. And by the way, I want to say again, nobody said, andrew, your version is dumb. It was just. So I was like, oh, yeah, I phoned the hell out of that. Like, that was. And so. So somebody, when I say, I don't need writing tools, I like writing, but it's like, well, I guess I don't like Writing obituaries. And there is a form and a boilerplate that you can follow. And then, you know. And so using some of the assisted assisting tools on that actually does make sense to me. So I will give it that kind of credit.

[Luke Burbank]

My guess would also be that it. The ChatGPT knows that these things, like you said, are supposed to be written in a certain way. That's probably. Again, I want to be really careful with how I'm talking about this, but like a sort of an earnestness and a kind of a. Just an emotional factor to it that is how people tend to write obituaries and is probably the right way to do it. But also was for you as a person who likes interesting spare writing. Like, you were like, you wanted to be Murakami writing an obit.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's what I told my sister. I said, I'm gonna take.

[Luke Burbank]

And it needs you to be. I want this to be the Norwegian wood of obit. And like, kind of maybe what an obit needs to be is maybe a little more Danielle Steele.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, it's a little bit more for. It's not. Yeah, it's not for me. And also, it's not even like, I wrote something that I was like, super, super proud of. I just. I think seeing it come back fully fleshed out, I was like, oh, yeah, I really. It was more of me. Like, I guess I did kind of phone that in. I didn't want to think about it too much, so I sort of banged something out. But also, there were things where. And again, I'm not telling tales at a school. I really. My sister did my job for me basically by using this. But when she first sent it back, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's so much better. But then when I was actually sending it into the publishing vault or whatever, I took one more look at it and I realized, oh, there's like two sentences in here that weren't. That are clearly the AI just sort of like, threw in there. Like, her volunteering here showed a commitment to blank and blank. And I realized, like, oh, that's just generic. That's just AI kind of assuming that the Vol. And so I punched in something that was a little bit more real. So if that makes sense. Like, I think that AI kind of sees. Recognizes a pattern. And then we'll put words in there. That kind of makes sense if you don't look too closely. But maybe, you know, definitely another kind of sort of like Passover helps AI.

[Luke Burbank]

Photo or an AI visual rendering where it's mostly works but if you look in the background, there's like half. There's like half of a shark in there because it hallucinated a little bit.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. Can I ask you one question? And I again, asking you to weigh in on this stuff is dangerous game. So I'm not trying to put you on the spot, but do you think it was weird that my sister had an image of Kid Rock praying over my mom that we wanted to include in the obit?

[Luke Burbank]

I want to tell you, it was the number one obit in the Cleveland.

[Andrew Walsh]

Plain Dealer because of that, it didn't run.

[Luke Burbank]

Got to play to your audience.

[Andrew Walsh]

Don't try to dox this.

[Luke Burbank]

I want to say that I always try to do. Do I try to do less work each day than I did the day before? And I'm happy to say that when it comes time to write my mom's obit, I don't have to write it. It's right here. Print it. Cut it.

[Andrew Walsh]

Soup.

[Luke Burbank]

Especially on like a winter day. There ain't nothing like soup.

[Andrew Walsh]

There it is.

[Luke Burbank]

Put it on her tombstone. There ain't nothing like soup.

[Andrew Walsh]

And of course, that could be woman remembered for loving soup.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes. Local area woman, remember, for her appreciation of soup. Thank you, baby. All right, let's thank some donors. We were in a. A quick little break there, Andrew. Which the. Which flybys for the flies by for the listeners because we edit it down to basically a blip. But in the little time span you said, Wow, 45 minutes later. And it all started with talking about that commercial. And I thought that's the fun part of doing the show is that it can be 45 minutes of just cell phone commercials and Mike Rowe discourse and chatgpt. And. And the amazing thing is that we have folks who are donating money to keep this going to make those conversations happen. This is 100% listener supported podcasting that you are tuned into right now. And we want to thank Shay Daly in Van Buren, Arkansas.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hey, thank you, Shay.

[Luke Burbank]

Gotta be named for the president. Van Buren, right?

[Andrew Walsh]

I could be wrong here, but I had it backwards. Or I had the reverse of that. I had the president naming himself after the.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, you know what? That might be named after Martin Van Buren.

[Andrew Walsh]

Is that true? You actually looked it up at his.

[Luke Burbank]

I'm looking it up now on. On the line. So shoot.

[Andrew Walsh]

Do you remember when I used to re. I used to memorize and then I would always forget it, but I. I would keep a list of the presidents of the United States in order. And I'm not talking about the band. I'm talking about the actual list of presidents of the United States of America. And I would, like, memorize it. And I'm trying to remember where Van Buren fits in the grand scheme of things, because it seems, like, pretty late to be naming a town, right?

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. Right.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, before the Civil War, right? Is he like.

[Luke Burbank]

Like, I've got it in front of me, so I can tell you.

[Andrew Walsh]

40. Ooh.

[Luke Burbank]

Andrew Walsh.

[Andrew Walsh]

What am I. What is.

[Luke Burbank]

Was. He was in office as president from 1837 to 1841.

[Andrew Walsh]

Damn dog.

[Luke Burbank]

Dude, that's really impressive.

[Andrew Walsh]

I mean, all I thought was it's pre Civil War, but not that pre.

[Luke Burbank]

I don't know if I could have told you, like, when the Civil War was. So you're telling me. I'm not. I'm not trying to be funny here. So the Civil War happened. Happened after 1841. I'm not. This is not me trying to be funny.

[Andrew Walsh]

I think of the Civil war as the 1860s. But let me look, because now I'm gonna take.

[Luke Burbank]

That feels so late in the game. I thought it might have been in the 13.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 1800s.

[Luke Burbank]

I thought it might have been in 700 B.C.

[Andrew Walsh]

When was the War of the Roses?

[Luke Burbank]

When did Schubert dip come out? I just feel like it's. I mean, honestly. Cause I think of the late 18. I think of the mid-1800s.slash the late 1800s as being pretty close to the early 1900s, which is like, we have cars. We have Alexander Graham Bell blowing up Watson's phone. We have. This is. Modernity is now coming, and we're trying to own humans. Like, there's something about the Civil War being in the. In the. In the 18. In the mid-1800s. It just feels like that was too recent.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

For that kind of BS to be going on.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's a blink of an eye, man. Man.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. Anyway, thanks, Shay.

[Andrew Walsh]

Appreciate it. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry about that, Shay. I don't know if you want to give.

[Luke Burbank]

I'm the one that's, of course, event. Won't you take me to Ven Burintown?

[Andrew Walsh]

Thank you for the donation.

[Luke Burbank]

And then over there in Fort Worth, Texas, we've got our friend Ingrid Keller.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, was that named after Marvin? Fort Worth.

[Luke Burbank]

Yep, it was named after Marvin. Fort Worth, the famous. The heir to the Fort Worth potato chip.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right.

[Luke Burbank]

Actually, that's Plano, I think.

[Steve the Sniffer]

Right?

[Luke Burbank]

Isn't Plano, Texas? That's the Frito Lay hq. Every delicious and calorically questionable treat emanates from Plano, Texas.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay. Let's do this. You could rip into a bag of any Frito Lay product right now. What are you ripping into?

[Luke Burbank]

Well, okay, I just took a big swig of coffee, so that's kind of. Let's imagine. Can I fast forward like three hours? It's afternoon time.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes. Yeah, it's a little bit different.

[Luke Burbank]

I'm going for a. I'm going Fritos. I'm going good old fashioned Fritos.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's. You know what, man?

[Luke Burbank]

I love.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's what I love. Original Fritos. Have I asked you this before? You ever open up a bag of Fritos? I. I know. I've seen this to Marro Kevin. He thinks I'm just like off my damn rocker. But like, you open up a brand new bag of Fritos, you put your face in there, you take a big sniff of it. It smells like the ocean.

[Luke Burbank]

I think it smells like unwashed feet.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, God, I'm never eating corn.

[Luke Burbank]

I think unwashed feet feet. And that's corn snacks.

[Andrew Walsh]

No, no, what you do is you hold a conch shell up to your ear, Luke. You take a big whiff of.

[Luke Burbank]

You can almost hear the feet.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, God, I love that.

[Luke Burbank]

We go.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's like a Monty Python sketch of a bunch of bare feet running down a boulevard somewhere in London.

[Luke Burbank]

Now, I want to say, I know that Fort Worth, Texas is not actually snack capital usa, but we. I'm going to just go with me on this. We go from snack capital USA to I think, the salad bowl of America. What is sometimes called the salad bowl. And I'm talking about Visalia, California, where Bryce Yocum is. Wasn't it which great American macho, probably alcoholic writer was writing about that area? Was it Steinbeck?

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm guessing it would be Steinbeck if it's agricultural related, but I don't know for sure. It doesn't sound like Hemingway to me. That's for dang sure. But the Salinas Valley, Is that what you're talking about here?

[Luke Burbank]

Yes, that's what we're talking about.

[Andrew Walsh]

And that's where Visalia is.

[Luke Burbank]

Visalia is one of those places, I think, that grows a ton of the lettuce and other kind of a lot of the salad vegetables that we all know and love. Thanks, Bryce. Also thanks to Kara Greenwald, who's in Seattle, Washington.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hey, Seattle is the Technology Bowl. The Technology Bowl.

[Luke Burbank]

We call it the Tech Bowl. I think.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes. What did. Boy, I don't know if I want to bring this up, but was it Amazon Yesterday? That announced 30,000 job cuts. And was it Microsoft the day before or the week before that was 14 or something.

[Luke Burbank]

It's happening fast and furious. And so I'm sometimes losing the thread on who is doing what and how many people it is. I thought I saw a number of like 14,000 for one of those companies.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I thought like 14 is an initial number for Amazon and then it swelled. But then I thought Microsoft and it's like. And some. I know that a lot of folks who are in the AI side of things actually were affected. So like that's sort of a strange thing too, right? Everybody's saying that they're investing in AI. So I don't know how it, I don't know how AI plays into all of that, but it is scary when these companies can just like sort of take over an entire economy and then in a whim, affect that economy.

[Luke Burbank]

I mean, that's the worst case scenario. That's what everybody was saying about Amazon was. Yes, they're, you know, I'm getting my Nioxin special anti balding shampoo delivered, you know, within an hour of ordering it for no shipping. That's the plus side. The downside is eventually that will be the only place I can get my Nioxin shampoo and then they can jack the prices. They can fire whomever they want. They are. It's the only game in town. I mean, well, the Amazon robots thing, right? You saw that a few weeks ago, the announcement that they're looking to roboticize, you know, a pretty big percentage. And by the way, it's like you sort of end up. I don't, I don't want today's show to get too dark because people turn here, turn to our show for like a little bit of maybe sunshine in an otherwise kind of cloudy environment. Of course, that's what Erica. Brazier or brazier. It can't be brassiere. That's the one. I know it's not. Erica's in Lacey, Washington. Thank you, Erica. This is what Erica Market looks to the show for.

[Andrew Walsh]

Do not make a lacy brassiere joke here, Luke.

[Luke Burbank]

No, I wouldn't know.

[Andrew Walsh]

You're bringing ChatGPT.

[Luke Burbank]

Erase what Andrew just said.

[Andrew Walsh]

Chat GPT. Erase Andrew. But it's like we are working on that.

[Luke Burbank]

It's so weird because it's like, okay, on the one hand, we all know that these Amazon fulfillment jobs are very lousy for the people who have them. They're famously, you know, not given proper breaks. They're underpaid. There's just tons of stories. The anti Union, you know, it's just all this bad stuff stuff. And also we're upset when the jobs are going away. It's a real. The soup is terrible and the portions are too small.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Situation. Right. It's like these jobs are not great for people, but they are in a lot of places the only job that can be had. And now we hear that they're going to eventually roboticize them. And this number shocked me because it seems both very low and very high. I think Amazon said we think that this can reduce the average order cost by 30 cents, which is a weird number. Right. It is like it's, it's, it is a number that does not move my needle at all. But if you scale that, if you, if you look at that across the Amazon, like how many Amazon orders are happening every five seconds, that's a massive amount of money. And so Amazon's argument is, yeah, we're going to fire everybody from the crappy jobs they shouldn't have to have in the first place and replace them with robots. But it means, Luke, your anti balding shampoo might be $0.30 cheaper. I don't know, it's just like a weird amount of money for it to be cheaper for me. It doesn't seem worth it to all. And also if that's true, that's Amazon is, you know, again, we're trusting their numbers on this, but that's them reducing the overall cost by a billion dollars a day or something. 30 cents at a time, you know, across all of the different orders that are going out. I don't know. My head.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, my head kind of can't get around that either because. Well, just to state the obvious, 30 cents off of your.

[Luke Burbank]

How do you even know that bamboo.

[Andrew Walsh]

Toothbrushes is obviously a bigger percentage than the new luggage you might buy at Amazon or something.

[Luke Burbank]

Of course. And by the way, on the subject of which, and this is what Josh Doolan in Dayton, Ohio. Dayton tunes in for.

[Andrew Walsh]

You know, it takes place in Dayton, Ohio.

[Luke Burbank]

Hold on. It has to do with vulcanization.

[Andrew Walsh]

It has to do with the tape that we heard at the very beginning of the show that your brother sent in.

[Luke Burbank]

Sure does. Sure does. I really would like you to catch up on that show, Andrew, so we can talk about it off.

[Andrew Walsh]

I've now watched the first two episodes, so I'm one episode behind. Is that correct? It's 3.3 of post.

[Luke Burbank]

I really want you to watch.

[Andrew Walsh]

Really enjoying it. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes. Yeah, that's right. The Chair company takes place in Dayton, Canton. I think they're trying to build in Canton.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh shoot, you're right.

[Luke Burbank]

But they're in Dayton.

[Andrew Walsh]

Are they in Dayton?

[Luke Burbank]

I think that. I don't think. No, I think Canton.

[Andrew Walsh]

Are they not? I think maybe. Shoot, I think I confused those two. I think they are in.

[Luke Burbank]

I get the sense that they're. I have the feeling that they're not in for some reason. I don't think they're based there. But this.

[Andrew Walsh]

But the.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay, the new mall is going in. And by the way, forget what they called the mall in the show but it's so perfect. And I just heard a story about a town in Oregon that is Columbus.

[Andrew Walsh]

According to the Internet now.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, it's set in Columbus. Okay. And then they're putting in this mall which is called what like the Crossings at camp?

[Andrew Walsh]

I can't remember but is that just one of those?

[Luke Burbank]

Like I was listening to an OPB story yesterday about a town in Oregon and of course the name is now eluding me. It's sort of oh, Medford. And it was this whole story about how Medford, Oregon was trying to build a baseball stadium to entice the Single A team in Eugene, Oregon. Because the Eugene, Oregon folks had voted down the building of a new stadium for the Eugene Single A baseball team team. So that team is now in the wind. And this project started out as being we're going to build a baseball stadium in Medford Oregon. And now it's turned into we're going to build a big office complex and like hotel district and it and conference center and it may have a baseball stadium on it, it may not. But they had a guy who's like I guess on whatever the committee to build this thing and I forget what he called it but it was literally like we need to build the Shops at the Creek so that we can have like the name they had for this proposal in Medford Oregon was right out of. Yeah, like, like the chair company. Like the names that they give these kind of multi use sort of retail office living. You know they're always called the Shops at the Creek.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Something at the Something.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Anyway, whatever I was about to say that was going to take us into sad town, I forgot what it was. So we can go right into happy town now. We can thank our donors for supporting TBTL in this. In this turbulent world of 30 cents off on your Amazon order, we're somehow still here thanks to our donors. So thank you for allowing us to do TBTL for our job. Couldn't do it without you.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hello and welcome to Top story.

[Luke Burbank]

I'm gonna be honest with you, Andrew. I sent you this Top story before I fully dug into it. I saw the headline. I thought, this seems like a TBTL topic. And then I sent it to you. And then I read the story. And then I. I learned that there was a limited amount of. There, there.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay.

[Luke Burbank]

The headline really feels like a TBT story. The strange debate over the world's oldest McDonald's burgers.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I didn't read into this.

[Luke Burbank]

You didn't miss much.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay.

[Luke Burbank]

I do like that this was written. It's written by Ariana Bindman, who's writing at the SF Gate. I always mix this up. I used to think it was the San Francisco Chronicle. I think it's its own thing now. People have corrected me when I've said this before. I like that Arianna Bindman is a news feature reporter who is writing. Anytime I just see like kind of funny, interesting journalism going on and someone is getting paid some amount of money to do it, it puts some wind in my sails. Cause I feel like this is the kind of stuff that gets eliminated first, you know what I mean? In the sort of media environment. So I like that this article happened. I will be honest with you. There's not, as I can tell, a huge debate. It's just kind of profiling. Two McDonald's hamburgers that are. Are getting to be about 30 years old. One of them is in Australia, where basically a guy had told a friend like 30 years ago that he would grab him a burger, and then he didn't do it that day because of some scheduling issue. And so he grabbed it the next day. But then the guy didn't need the burger anymore. And so he's just had the burger now for 30 years. And it's moved with him as he's moved different parts of Australia and maybe even New Zealand. And what's interesting is that the burger, it's not rotting. The only thing that's happened is it's shrunk in size a little bit.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's been refrigerated this whole time.

[Luke Burbank]

It was never refrigerated, Andrew. And that's a big part of this. It's no longer food. This is the pull quote from this section of the article. These guys last name is Dean and Nits. These two guys in Australia who've been kind of taking care of this burger for 30 years, to their fascination and amusement. And by the way, that burger's named Senior Burger, which I do think is kind of a good name to their fascination and amusement senior burger, delicately wrapped in waxy beige paper, still looks perfectly frozen in time. It was never refrigerated, and it spent the majority of its life cycle stuffed in cupboards, garbage bags and sheds. Despite its rough upbringing, it's still eerily intact and hasn't grown any mold or developed any foul odor. Dean says he wasn't kidding. Even though the burger, he says, and I are almost the exact same age, it's arguably in much better condition. That's a really good quote. So then we jump over to Texas. Thousands of miles away in Texas, in The Texas heat, 69 year old Malana Monroe is harboring an ancient relic. Well, ancient in fast food years at least. Nearly three decades ago, the grandmother and seminary worker bought a classic McDonald's burger for, in her words, a science experiment. But she also, quote, threw it in the trunk because the kids were mad at me and she didn't want them to smell it, she told me over zoom. Then like mo, then like most legends are born, she simply forgot about became lore in our family, said Kate Frugie, her daughter who grew up homeschooled. I don't know why that's relevant. As a kid, she would show it off until other local kids would ask to display it for their own science fair project. So it sounds like maybe the mom bought this knowing that it would not deteriorate, like bought it for a science project and then put it in the trunk of the car. And then over time, over the 30 years or so, it is again also just kind of been it's not deteriorating the way we would think of like a perishable food product. Let's see, a Monroe's life changed when her granddaughter Alison Sherburn finally saw the legendary family heirloom for herself. And she did what most high schoolers would probably do in 2020 she made a video for TikTok. At the time, she only had about six followers on the app and she didn't anticipate getting much of a response. But when she woke up the next morning, it had over 2 million hits, gaining the attention of several news outlets across the country. This is what I thought was the funny part, Andrew. The McDonald's then had to speaking of clap back, the McDonald's company responded formally to this video of the 30 year old burger and calling it, quote, the myth that McDonald's burgers do not decompose. For all the like discourse out there, for all the conversation around, I don't know, fast food nation, et cetera, this was the one that McDonald's had no like sense of humor about. You think that they'd have like a Gen Beta person, you know, manning their social media, like just brain rotting it up, just calling this story six, seven, Right.

[Andrew Walsh]

Or saying nothing.

[Luke Burbank]

Or saying nothing. But I mean, this feels like Ray Kroc Jr Jr is, who's by the way, probably 70, is in charge of their social medias. Like, we can't have people thinking that our food doesn't decompose. This is the response from McDonald's quote. In the right environment, our burgers, like most other foods, could decompose.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh my God.

[Luke Burbank]

Response.

[Andrew Walsh]

Step away from the keyboard. You don't need, don't.

[Luke Burbank]

Under the right circumstances, even our foods can decompose.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh no.

[Luke Burbank]

Isn't that the worst.

[Andrew Walsh]

That is really bad.

[Luke Burbank]

Like this is. I mean, you're right.

[Andrew Walsh]

Our food decomposes. What do you mean? I mean our food rots. I mean, we can, I can show you. I could give you a dump truck full of rotten food right now.

[Luke Burbank]

I've got it right now in my house. My house is covered in flies from all the rotting McDonald's that will make you puke. Like what a, what a what an, what a what an absolutely tone deaf response to this. Otherwise, I promise you, somebody having a McDonald's burger that isn't decomposing in no way impacts the number of people that are going to McDonald's on a given day. I promise you, they do not care. That is not moving anyone's needle about McDonald's food. The fact that you had to get on there and basically go in the right environment, our burgers, like most other foods, could decompose. Also, by the way, could. That is so parsed. Like you're not even saying, hey, our food rots like normal. They're going. Under the right circumstance, it's possible. Sure. That our food could rot.

[Andrew Walsh]

Right? Sure. If science has anything to do with it, we can find a way.

[Luke Burbank]

This is continuing from, by the way, it's not done yet. The McDonald's clapback. The burgers you are seeing are likely dried out and dehydrated and by no means are the same as the day they were purchased. Just it's just like, I mean, I've already said it, but like, what a, what a, what a, what a bad way. What a Gen X way to respond to a gen, I don't know, Z moment or something of like, hey, isn't it funny that this burger, we've had this burger in Texas for 30 years and it doesn't look very changed. Like fee, fee upon McDonald's in their social media feed for, for that response. But anyway, so I guess there was a little more in that article than I. That I thought.

[Andrew Walsh]

Here I go once again with the email. Every week I hope that it's from a female. Oh man. It's not from a female.

[Luke Burbank]

All right, Emails and females. I, I saw my inbox lit up with people talking about my hair dye.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, really?

[Luke Burbank]

There was a lot of hair, a lot of hair content in there.

[Andrew Walsh]

Good. Well, I have a voicemail here and it is, it has nothing to do with your hair, but this is one of the rare voicemails that I feel needs absolutely no introduction or setup.

[Steve the Sniffer]

Hey guys, Steve from Alexandria, Virginia here. And I just wanted to send you this little voice memo because apparently I am the sniffer. Well, a sniffer, I guess. I was just listening to the show. I'm a little bit behind. Sorry, but where Luke was recounting his H Vac repair woes, maybe. He keeps talking about it. I predict he does. But anyway, he was talking about this H vac repair thing and there was. They had to go back and get the sniffer. Well, that's kind of me, I guess. I mean, I'm not in the H vac business, but I am in the environmental non profit world. And refrigerant gases, those gases that are used by air conditioners and refrigerators to make things hot or cold, are also super greenhouse gases. And so when they leak into the atmosphere, that's really, really bad. And so the organization I worked for did a campaign where I spent several days going around to supermarkets all around my area with a device called the sniffer to look for leaking refrigerant gases and to document how supermarkets were not living up to their environmental commitments. So yes, apparently I am the sniffer. Power out, Steve.

[Luke Burbank]

Every they call me the sniffer. I've been sniffing low and high.

[Andrew Walsh]

Any email or message that I receive from Steve going forward, I want it to be signed Steve the sniffer. That is canon.

[Luke Burbank]

Now, Steve, we could have used you out here.

[Andrew Walsh]

Sniffin.

[Luke Burbank]

Did we, did we talk about a little update? Well, two updates on that story of my H Vac woes. One, it's working now, so all's well that ends well. Although I was out an additional, I don't know, thousand bucks or something to get the line charged up, but it, it all appears to be working now and then. Did we talk about this on the air or off the air about the micro tornado?

[Andrew Walsh]

No.

[Luke Burbank]

You know about this, right?

[Andrew Walsh]

No, not, not. Yes, yes, I know exactly what you're talking.

[Luke Burbank]

Did I mention this on the air or not? No.

[Andrew Walsh]

A lot of people were sending this in. I don't think we ever addressed it on the show. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Kind of didn't know how to feel about it. It. Because it, you know, it's like, I don't know, I don't want to be glib or anything and make content out of something that could have been dangerous for folks, but it is the craziest thing. So the first company that came out and, you know, I didn't find them to be particularly helpful. And then when I talked to the owner, he hung up on me in a huff. And then, of course, I wrote a bad Yelp review and then a bunch of people sort of like, sort of surfaced that review, etc. Well, like, I don't know, maybe a week after that whole kerfuffle, there was some sort of micro climate event down in the town of Longview, Washington, that took out like a couple of roofs and walls of two businesses. And it was like a tornado. That literally was for one block, like, yeah, super localized. One of the buildings, one of the roofs it took down was the H Vac company I was mad at.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

And being just, I mean, luckily, I don't. I know it wasn't, wasn't. It didn't. Nobody was hurt, thankfully, but. And it wasn't like the business was destroyed. I think they have a few different buildings and I think this was kind of more of like a shed warehouse thing. Like, again, I don't, I don't think it was like the literal top of their business ripped off and flew away. But still the idea that, like, after they did me kind of dirty and I was talking about them and then all of a sudden they're A micro tornado hits their business as reported in the local media. Like, that was crazy.

[Andrew Walsh]

Crazy. Let me ask you this. If I were to go through your Venmo history or PayPal or whatever, you.

[Luke Burbank]

Would never let Apple pay because it's.

[Andrew Walsh]

Private for a reason, would I see any payments to an Etsy Witch? Because this has strong Etsy Witch connotations to me.

[Luke Burbank]

All of my Etsy Witch money was going towards Cal Raleigh, hitting home runs.

[Andrew Walsh]

Now it's all going and keeping all.

[Luke Burbank]

The money that I was spending on that Etsy, which I was saying, this is Mariners Focus is not related to my private life, not related to H Vac issues, not related to Feltons. This is all going to the Mariners.

[Andrew Walsh]

Get them working on a contract with Josh Naylor. I'm hearing A lot of fretting. A lot of fretting.

[Luke Burbank]

No, just.

[Andrew Walsh]

We gotta do whatever we can to keep our. To keep our what?

[Luke Burbank]

Our.

[Andrew Walsh]

Our hero.

[Luke Burbank]

Sweet Koopa trooper. Yes, our sweet, grumpy Koopa troopa.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Wait there. You're hearing rumors that they're not.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, everybody in Seattle has been saying, you know, all the fan base has been saying, like, we got to keep Naylor. Everybody's keep Naylor. Right. One of his teammate said on national tv, we got to keep Naylor. But, you know, I just was hearing Shannon Dreher on the show, I got to say, the Brock and Salk show, morning sports show here. I used to be a huge fan, like, 15 years ago. Kind of got me into sports, no joke. And I'm not as big of a fan these days. I kind of don't love and I like him as a person, so I feel bad saying this publicly, but, like, I actually like the first hour where it's just like, Mike and the producers and callers. There's something a little bit more old school about that. And sometimes Brock talking about baseball isn't my favorite thing. But they actually had a pretty good bit going today where Shannon Dreher, who covers the Mariners, you know, deeply, and I think also. Does she work for the Mariners? Like, that's something that is always a little bit.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, I'm not sure. I don't.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, she did, because it's part of the contract with them carrying the games, I think. I don't know. But either way, she's a very straight shooter, straight talker, kind of no nonsense kind of reporter. And Brock was just sort of doing this thing where, like, it was sort of like Mike and Shannon were having a serious conversation about what it's gonna take to keep people like Polanco and Naylor. And every now and then, Brock would just sort of whine like a baby. And it was actually really funny. It's like, I don't want to be having this conversation. Just like, I don't care. Just make Josh Naylor stay. Like, that's all he wanted to hear was just like, make it. But it does sort of seem like, you know, there's gonna be a lot of competition for both of those guys, especially Naylor Polanc.

[Luke Burbank]

Isn't that the irony of all of this? Which is it feels like in years past. And by the way, if you thought. If you thought TBTL had achieved escape velocity from Mariners Talk. Welcome to the Hot Stove League.

[Andrew Walsh]

How we're into the one hour.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, we're in The Badlands.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay. Yeah. We also didn't we do like an hour 40 or something yesterday? I think we're okay.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, yeah, we're in the Badlands now. We need to make a Badlands theme. I need some kind of audio indicator now.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, it should just be. I mean, is the good, the bad and the ugly too on the nose?

[Luke Burbank]

No. Are we allowed to use. That is the question.

[Andrew Walsh]

No, we're not allowed to use anything.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay. But I mean.

[Andrew Walsh]

There you go.

[Luke Burbank]

The, the irony of all this is usually for the Mariners, it seems like we would either do nothing at the deadline or not enough, or we might pick somebody up and they just kind of would. They wouldn't. They wouldn't be great. And that's its own kind of sadness. And now we have this different kind of sadness, which is like Naylor over perform.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Of what we thought. And now can we hold on to him? You know what I mean? Like, that's just like. It's like there's no, there's no perfect world because either it works like the Naylor thing really worked and now he's going to be more valuable on the open market. And the same Polanco obviously wasn't a mid season pickup, but like Polanco absolutely exceeded my expectations and now he's going to command more money on the open market, you know.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. I can't remember a time that I was. Was fretting about keeping somebody now, you know, Seger, Kyle Seeger was a fan favorite here and he could really hold down third base. And I remember being a little bit worried he was going to flee. But I do think that every. There's a phenomenon around Kyle Seeger that like, nobody outside of Seattle understands the value of or why fans like Kyle Seeger so much. He was just like a local favorite, but I don't think he's got much respect on the national stage or how had he.

[Luke Burbank]

I think his brother Corey Sigris, probably a bigger name. Yeah, I think. Well, Kyle Segers has. Has a very successful career now as a Stewie from Family Guy impersonation. He is doing birthday parties, he's doing ribbon cuttings and it's going very well for him. So shout out to Kyle Seeger. You're right, though. It's like we rarely have a player who's good enough that, that we're sad that they're going to leave or we're worried about them leaving. And we're very much in that position with Nail and, and Polanco now. So I.

[Andrew Walsh]

It would be pictures Actually, the one thing I'll caveat that is, I guess in the last off season, there was talk of, like, will we be able to keep our pitching staff? Which we did.

[Luke Burbank]

Right.

[Andrew Walsh]

Like, if we, if we, if we open up a newspaper. If we were like Luke Wilson on a dusty road and picked up a newspaper and had a headline, a huge headline that said like, Brian Wu to Boston Dodgers or yeah, la. And you know, and go through our.

[Luke Burbank]

Lineup, Brian Wu to the Dodgers for, for some middle relief work, right?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

For a non leverage situation.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, exactly. He might not even have to play. We just want to sort of lock him up. We just want to have.

[Luke Burbank]

We just think he's pretty. We just wanted to keep him around.

[Andrew Walsh]

Like, is there any pitcher in the Mayor, like in the starting rotation that it wouldn't give you a bad feeling to hear we don't have to rank them, but like, almost any of those headlines would sting, right?

[Luke Burbank]

Absolutely. Because, I mean, that's what I'm. That's what I'm banking on in terms of, of the, you know, actually this window of time of the Mariners being pretty good is that I think our staff is going to remain pretty solid. And like, this was, this was the Mariner team that won, you know, 116 games. What I always thought about with them was it wasn't even that our number one. I think like, maybe Aaron Seeley was our like number one pitcher or something. It wasn't that our number one pitcher was so much better than everybody else's number one. It was at. Our number three starter was just better than the average number three starter. And our number four, like, that's how you win a lot of games in a season is like, it's not even the marquee matchups. It's that your third and fourth guy is just kind of better than most third and fourth guys. And you're just picking up a lot of series and stuff. That's what I feel like we're going to be next year. Is that kind of. Now, I hope that that means we'll also go far into the, into the postseason. But I saw something from Cal Raleigh today popped up on my like, Instagram or something, something. And I thought he had won the mvp. It was just kind of this like, basically a thank you from him saying, like, hey, thanks to everybody who rooted us on this year. We fell short. But. But that's not stopping us from, you know, in our determination to, like, we will. And he said very definitively, we will bring a World Series home to Seattle and I was like, yeah, man, from your lips to God's ears.

[Andrew Walsh]

Didn't he also, though, wasn't he did win some sort of players award?

[Luke Burbank]

Yes.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

He won something that they're thinking is like, like maybe an indication that, like, it's sort of like winning. It's like winning the Golden Globe. And does. What does that mean for your chances of winning the Oscar?

[Andrew Walsh]

Right. And which is something that we're deeply interested in because we're still going to find out if we win that Golden Globe. Yes, we're going to be the first.

[Luke Burbank]

We were the podcasting Golden Globe. It's a glide path to the podcasting Oscar.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right. And we'll be the first entity to win a Golden Globe without actually entering the competition or paying the entry fee. That's.

[Luke Burbank]

That's right. Look out. Theo Von.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right. Now, could this be.

[Luke Burbank]

We had a guy in our town, we called him Dumper.

[Andrew Walsh]

If we, if, if, if you're the one who's introducing the Badlands, we could use this.

[Luke Burbank]

Of course. The Badlands.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

I know. I'm wildly out of time with the music.

[Andrew Walsh]

That was the one that's the Badlands theme. That one said Luke Burbank. We have one that has my name in it. We have ones that is Steve's name in it.

[Luke Burbank]

So of course, I love, like, that's the beauty of doing 4,586 shows is that here I'm going, hey, we need something that's rights free that is reminiscent of the. Is that a Mark Morricone that.

[Andrew Walsh]

Who's the Italian? Yeah, yeah, it is. Ennio Morricone.

[Luke Burbank]

Ennio Morricone. I'm going, hey, Andrew, I wish we had something for the Badlands that we could play as a theme. And you were like, yeah, it could be like the Clint Eastwood thing. I've completely forgotten that. We have a whole, like a plethora of the. Of that exact tune related to El Ropo Slash. A bunch of other stuff from like, what, 10 years ago on the show.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, yeah. This was when I was living in la, right. So I was going to the Magic Castle where I met El Ropo and that was the song that automatically played on his website. He was a magician that I. That I became somewhat enamored with. He did a lot of rope tricks at the Magic Castle when I finally got to go. And then I came back on the show and was telling you about it, and we opened up his website and it auto populated with a MIDI recording of. Do you have that Original one. I used to have it.

[Luke Burbank]

Let me see here.

[Andrew Walsh]

And then listener Brian made a bunch of versions and that's what we just heard.

[Luke Burbank]

So here's what I've got. I've got something called El Ropo song full. I bet you this is from the website. Here we go.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes. I forgot about this song, by the way.

[Luke Burbank]

That's War. That's a play on the Cisco Kid from the band War that I've spent now considerable time with. I would have never known that before my dive into the land of war. Oh, now.

[Andrew Walsh]

El Ro. It's the donkey for me.

[Luke Burbank]

It's the donkey.

[Andrew Walsh]

Donkey.

[Luke Burbank]

Whatever that sounded. It's the donkey braying really brings it home. Okay, well, that's the new. I'm gonna actually drag this over into my. My regular page of audio and next time we get into the Badlands, I'm actually going to retitle this Badlands theme.

[Andrew Walsh]

Now, it's not going to start with War though, is it? Because that'll be.

[Luke Burbank]

We don't want that. We want to edit it. Okay, yeah, yeah, okay, hold on. I'm going to edit it on the fly. I'm going to take the listeners into my world. So let me just. Okay, so we're going to cut out the system.

[Andrew Walsh]

So we're going to use the El Ropo version, only using the L. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

So this is going to be the official Badland. If you're good with this, Andrew, I don't mean to unilaterally declare this, but if I ever say to you, boy, Andrew, by the by the numbers on my comarch timer, it looks like we're in the Badlands. The Badlands.

[Andrew Walsh]

Perfect.

[Luke Burbank]

I'll never get over that donkey Bad.

[Andrew Walsh]

I just found that and I wanted to play it.

[Luke Burbank]

That's nice. Yeah, tag it with that.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, don't worry about it.

[Luke Burbank]

Badlands theme it's here, Andrew. It's ready to go for next time.

[Andrew Walsh]

That we find ourselves here. I hope we did. I hope we did. Steve the Sniffer. Right, today, that's all that really matters more than then. Good.

[Luke Burbank]

I think. So thanks, Steve, for. For calling in. Thanks, everybody, for listening. That's going to bring us to the end of today's episode of tbtl. But we're going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you if you can. Please do join us for that. In the meantime, everybody, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves, be safe, and please remember, no mountain too tall.

[Andrew Walsh]

And good luck to.

[Luke Burbank]

Power out.