#4635 A Two-Man Pluribus

Summary

TBTL Episode #4635: “A Two-Man Pluribus”

Date: January 6, 2026
Hosts: Luke Burbank & Andrew Walsh

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Episode Overview

This hilariously meandering episode of TBTL features Luke and Andrew diving deep into their personal food aversions and ongoing quests to evolve their palates, a surreal and slightly alarming online firearm purchase, and an extended digression into fruit prep, storage, and snack strategy. As always, the conversation rolls between self-deprecating humor, lighthearted banter, and the kind of hyper-focused overthinking only these two can deliver—punctuated with pop culture asides, gentle ribbing, and affectionate tangents.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Banana Dream & Trying New Things

[03:07 – 06:37]

• Andrew’s Banana Dream: Andrew recounts a dream where he, despite hating bananas, was served a pristine one in a fancy restaurant (with podcast-favorite Nora McInerny making a dream cameo). The dream leads to a conversation about Andrew’s aversion (“bananas really ick me out”) and the possible symbolism of trying new things in the New Year.
• Luke’s Mushrooms Parallel: Inspired by Andrew’s story, Luke talks about challenging his own life-long mushroom aversion, especially as a largely meatless eater. He’s begun embracing dishes with mushrooms rather than requesting them to be “held”—a slow acclimatization process.
  • Quote: “I’ve just always been like, nah, miss me with those mushrooms… But Becca was saying, you might want to really re-examine that.” (Luke, 08:11)

Memorable Banter:

“Let’s try to be adults about this.” – Andrew [03:43]
“Tell me about your phallic dream.” – Luke [03:48]

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2. Texture Terrors: Bananas, Avocados & Food Preparation

[06:40 – 24:59]

• Andrew’s Food Texture Issues: Bananas and avocados are discussed through the lens of food texture (“that kind of creamy thing… that’s what you’re put off by” – Luke, 20:05). Andrew explains he can handle avocado in specific “individualized and crispy” summer salads, but not as guacamole.
• Avocado Cutting Techniques: The duo enthusiastically swap avocado preparation methods, nerding out in detail about gridding, inverting, and pitting avocados—Luke’s “ultimate cool guy move” is the knife-thwack pit removal.
• Fruit and Salad Season Yearning: Luke becomes wistful thinking ahead to summer, corn salad, and baseball. (“…at some point, we’ll be eating corn salad and watching baseball.” – Luke, 23:42)

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3. Fruit Storage, Preferences, and Systems

[24:59 – 36:34]

• Grapefruit vs. Small Oranges: Andrew professes love for grapefruit, while Luke admits he’d never buy one but doesn’t mind when it appears at a buffet. Andrew’s accidental palate “reset” story (grapefruit followed by a “cutie” made the orange taste divine) illustrates the impact of food sequencing.
• The Great Fridge Debate: Andrew advocates for refrigerating all fruit for max enjoyment. Luke admits he only has a veggie and a cheese/meat drawer but is inspired to up his fruit refrigeration by Andrew’s testimony and a recent blueberry TikTok container purchase.
  • Quote: “Warm fruit has no place in my life.” – Andrew [31:15]
• Blueberry Washing & Storage: A practical deep dive into fruit prep via TikTok—Luke’s new berry-washing, strain-and-store containers, and the surprisingly dirty rinse water.

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4. TikTok Purchases Gone Awry: The Accidental Gun Story

[36:43 – 72:34]

• Impulse Buy: Luke regales Andrew with the saga of accidentally purchasing what he thought was a $25 BB gun via TikTok (“I may have accidentally purchased a firearm on the Internet…” – Luke, 01:21).
• Realization & Panic: Follow-up TikTok ads hint it’s actually a single-shot, foldable .22 caliber pistol (similar to the “LifeCard”), leading Luke to stress over whether he just illegally bought a firearm.
  • Quote: “It’s an assassination weapon that can hold a single bullet.” (quoting wild TikTok ad, Luke & Andrew, ~61:12)
• Research & Relief: Andrew investigates, finding forums and official warnings; the consensus is Luke probably bought a cheap, non-functional knockoff intended as a novelty or BB shooter, not a real firearm.
  • Quote: “...there is this place called Trailblazer Firearms that makes something like this... And now somebody has basically taken that and made a very cheap version of it that probably shoots BBs or pellets in some way…” – Andrew [67:38]

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5. Advertising Gimmicks: Bananas as Weapons

[73:47 – 77:09]

• “Banana” Self-Defense Ad: Andrew describes a dystopian, AI-generated commercial using bananas as stand-ins for non-lethal self-defense weapons, lampooning fear-mongering tactics, and the absurdity of the imagery.
  • Quote: “...imagine this banana was capable of incapacitating an attacker from over 60 ft...” (AI ad, 74:12)
• Discussion on Attention-Grabbing Advertising: Luke and Andrew debate the effectiveness of the ad (and a similar ice-cream-cone themed Google Pixel ad), how surprise visual metaphors hook audiences, and their conflicted feelings about fear-based marketing.

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6. Ken Burns, Historical Documentaries, and TV Recommendations

[38:12 – 44:04]

• Ken Burns’ American Revolution: Luke plans to rewatch Ken Burns’ historical doc and extols the value of “an inch deep, mile-wide” education.
• Death by Lightning: Luke recommends the dramatized series on President Garfield’s assassination, sparking mutual confusion over which actors were involved and a tangent on famous orange cartoon cats (Heathcliff & Garfield).
  • Quote: “I’ve seen the best beards of my time, driven insane.” – Luke, absurdist aside [41:12]

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7. Listener Engagement & Donor Thanks

[36:45 – 47:47, 44:11 – 44:18]

• Routine TBTL donor shout-outs laced with typical banter. Notable mini-tangent: Andrew thanks a listener for sending him a bag of Bit-O-Honey candy, which spirals into wordplay about Beto O’Rourke (“Bit-O O’Rourke”).
• “Thank you, baby…” – signature jingle [36:43]

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8. Authenticity, Reading Goals & Digital Attention

[47:47 – 49:01]

• Luke’s Resolution: Announcing a mission to read a physical book or magazine for an hour each day to combat the TikTok doom-scroll. Andrew confesses to reading on his phone due to poor lighting/eyesight.
  • Quote: “...eventually you need everything to be so flavor blasted just for it to taste like anything. And I just need to...” – Luke [49:01]

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9. Listener Voicemail: The Real Macbeth "Curse"

[83:16 – 86:29]

• Avalon’s Insight: Listener Avalon explains the “Scottish Play” superstition: it wasn’t mystical but pragmatic. Macbeth was so popular that struggling theaters could be upended by itinerant Macbeth troupes, so saying its name was “bad luck” because it threatened job security, not because of an actual curse.
  • Quote: “...saying Macbeth meant the show was really bad and they were going to replace it with Macbeth, and over time it became known as the Scottish play instead...” – Avalon [85:11]

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “Let’s try to be adults about this.” – Andrew [03:43]
• “I just want you to be normal. And clearly you’re not.” – Luke [01:23]
• “I’ve just always been like, nah, miss me with those mushrooms.” – Luke [08:11]
• “Warm fruit has no place in my life.” – Andrew [31:15]
• “It tasted like a covenant with God.” – Andrew on post-grapefruit orange [28:41]
• “I may have accidentally purchased a firearm on the Internet the other day...” – Luke [01:21]
• “It’s an assassination weapon that can hold a single bullet.” – TikTok ad quote (via Luke & Andrew) [61:12]
• “I’m not hoping for a functioning illegal firearm.” – Luke [88:20]
• “...saying Macbeth meant the show was really bad and they were going to replace it with Macbeth... It became known as the Scottish play instead of Macbeth.” – Avalon, voicemail [85:11]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:00 – 06:37: Bananas in Andrew’s dream & food aversions
• 06:40 – 24:59: Fruit, avocados, and summer salad technique
• 24:59 – 36:34: Grapefruit, orange epiphany & fridge vs. room temp fruit
• 36:43 – 72:34: The TikTok "BB gun" that maybe isn’t; research and speculation
• 73:47 – 77:09: Ridiculous “banana weapon” commercial and critique
• 38:12 – 44:04: Ken Burns, Death By Lightning, and cartoon cat theory
• 83:16 – 86:29: Avalon’s voicemail on the Macbeth “curse”

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Tone and Style

• Playful, self-aware, and gently neurotic; hosts riff on their anxieties, likes and dislikes, and mundane details with warmth and humor.
• Frequent asides, digressions, and inside jokes; affectionate self-mockery is the order of the day.
• Genuine curiosity and willingness to challenge personal quirks—whether food or tech habits.
• Occasional philosophical musing on advertising, history, and the overload/boredom cycle of digital life.

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Summary for New Listeners

This episode is a quintessential TBTL rollercoaster—starting with banana dreams and ending with an accidental firearm purchase, weaving through fruit salads, tech woes, and listener wisdom. It’s a showcase for the hosts’ unique blend of vulnerability, irreverence, and relentless curiosity about the smallest details of everyday life. If you love comedy, friendship, and absurd overthinking, this TBTL is for you.

Transcript

[Andrew Walsh]

Hey, how come you never play your guitar anymore? I'll tell you the truth, Dad. I wasn't good at it right away, so I quit. I hope you're not mad, so come here. Of course I'm not mad. If something's hard to do, then it's not worth doing. You just stick that guitar in the closet next to your shortwave radio, your karate outfit, and your unicycle, and we'll go inside and watch tv. What's on? It doesn't matter. TBTL.

[Luke Burbank]

Hey, TV child, look into my eyes here. By intervention, I want your attention. Jokes. Do some.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay, what makes you laugh?

[Luke Burbank]

Comedy, obviously. And sometimes tragedy. Light tragedy. Erectile dysfunction, non fatal hunting accidents, waving at someone you think you know, but it turns out to be a stranger, that sort of thing.

[Andrew Walsh]

Sure, it's done in the name of comedy, but is debasing ourselves really that hilarious? I don't know, man.

[Caller/Avalon]

Don't you kind of feel like a sellout?

[Luke Burbank]

Can you really call it a sellout when they give you a free Tesla.

[Andrew Walsh]

For doing the show? And boom goes the dynamite?

[Luke Burbank]

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

[Andrew Walsh]

Two bros, bro.

[Luke Burbank]

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. I just want you to be normal. And clearly you're not. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it is an absolutely disgusting day, weather wise. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. Sideways wind. Sideways rain. I mean, I guess wind is always sideways. If you got wind that's coming straight down or straight up, you got a problem. I should probably put the cinder block on the hot tub cover. But we know what an aesthetic guy I am and that I don't like the look of that. So we're just going to all cross our fingers together here on episode 4635 in a collector series, Let the fun begin. I may have. And this. This is serious now. I'm not just sometimes I. I'll maybe employ a little bit of creative exaggeration just to build the drama on the show, you know, just to kind of keep things interesting. I am not being hyperbolic or exaggerating when I say I may have accidentally purchased a firearm on the Internet the other day. Oh, my God.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's so crazy. Why?

[Luke Burbank]

I will unpack that a little bit. Also, speaking of the Internet, I used the Internet I used to YouTube last night to figure out how to fix something in my house that I really needed to fix because, you know, it's cold here in January in Southern Washington.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm learning.

[Luke Burbank]

I'm kind of proud of myself. Although I did injure myself also in the process of making this repair. So we'll get into all of that and we'll talk to this guy. Longest running cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships.

[Andrew Walsh]

He's not Spider Pig anymore.

[Luke Burbank]

He's Harry Plopper, also known as Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

[Andrew Walsh]

Good morning, Luke. If I tell you that I had a dream involving a banana last night and I want to talk to you about it, will you promise me you won't accuse this dream of being Freudian in some way? Could this be like a banana really was a banana in my dream? Or will you not even entertain that and therefore I should just skip the topic?

[Luke Burbank]

What did the. Was the banana talking to a. Like a peach or some kind of a. What was Georgia o' Keeffe always painting? Let's try, you know, like that sort of flower or like a. Back away, banana breath. What the hell?

[Andrew Walsh]

Did you just eat a banana? Let's try to be adults. Let's try to be adults about this.

[Luke Burbank]

Luke, tell me about your phallic dream.

[Andrew Walsh]

So I'm making love to this banana, right. And it is hot. It is steamy. Picturing it right now, you know that I don't. And actually, I want to talk to you about several fruit related topics before we get into your new career as a arms dealer, apparently. Or maybe an arms acquirer.

[Luke Burbank]

War dog.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, but you know I don't like bananas. Right.

[Luke Burbank]

Do you know that it's a textural thing or a flavor?

[Andrew Walsh]

I think it's most of a vague memory and it's probably. Maybe it just got in my head at some point because I feel like when I was a very little kid, it was common for me to. I don't know why I said four like that, to cut up bananas and put them in my cereal.

[Luke Burbank]

This was a memory of late.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, you uncovered that. That buried memory when we're talking about fruit and cereal a few weeks ago. And so I know there was a time I ate bananas. And I think bananas are incredibly healthy food. Right. And so there's a reason why we might encourage kids to eat them. But at some point I was just like, I am done with this. And like, it's. It ranks pretty high up there for something that comes from the ground, you know, like for something that is like Literally, a whole food man. That. That. That is just a totally natural, you know, non animal thing. You would think that, well, I can handle it, but, like, bananas really ick me out. But last night, in my dream, I was at a restaurant. I think I had been dining with Nora McInerney, by the way. She made an appearance in the dream, but then I was sitting at the table by myself and somebody, like, maybe with the check or with a dessert situation. It was like a fancy restaurant, and they brought me just a banana, but it was a brand new, very fresh banana. And in the dream, I was like, I don't like bananas, but look at this thing. Like, I'm in a fancy restaurant. This is the best banana.

[Luke Burbank]

Nora forced you to eat it. She was like, I'm picking you up from the airport with a banana.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right, Nora. Well, never mind.

[Luke Burbank]

I.

[Andrew Walsh]

But anyway, in the dream, Nora's not there anymore, but I just remember thinking, like, if you're ever gonna eat a banana, this would be the banana to try. Like, it's a fresh one. It's like it's not. And even in the dream, I'm thinking it's not. Like, this is one of those brown bananas somebody's been carrying around in their purse for three days. And then at the dmv, which isn't something that happened to me, but it feels like something that could happen to me. This is like. This is the pristine version of a banana. And in the banana, I peel it. I peel it, and it looks very fresh. There are no spots or anything. And I believe I took the tiniest little bite of it. And I don't remember really what happens next, whether I loved it or hated it. I think it was basically fine and I woke up. But I'm wondering, as we do continue to explore the new year here on January 6, is there meaning in this? Is this about me?

[Luke Burbank]

Yes, there is.

[Andrew Walsh]

Trying new things. New phallic things.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes, there. It's absolutely what that means. Eggplants also count.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

I also sexualized emojis.

[Andrew Walsh]

What I dreamt about the night before, as a matter of fact.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, okay, so I don't. Look, I don't want to loop you into my shenanigans, but something that I have been trying to do a little bit more of late, and you reminded me now, or I'm thinking about this in the Conte of 2026, is I'm trying to eat mushrooms a little bit more because I've never really liked mushrooms. I certainly am not like a guy who likes a Big portobello mushroom type of thing. Or even those, what do you call those just kind of stand. The standard mushroom that we grew up with that was in a lot of salads and stuff. Just kind of a large mushrooms table mushroom.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm just joking because you told me about table syrup. I know you're talking about that. I think they're just like white mushrooms probably. Right. If you buy them at the store.

[Luke Burbank]

Cause like if you grew up in the 80s, as we did in a, in an. As I did in a not particularly adventurous food culture, there were no like chanterelles, There were no like lobster, whatever. You know what I mean? Like all this exotic mushrooms that we're foraging now and that we're putting in things that was not part of the experience. Mushrooms were just like that one dusty ass white mushroom that I did not like the taste of as a kid. That was the kind of default setting on mushrooms.

[Andrew Walsh]

And you're talking about having them specifically kind of raw on a salad. Not saucy, sauteed up with butter or whatever.

[Luke Burbank]

I. Even when they were sauteed up with butter or in something that was cooked. I'm talking about them in any form or fashion.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay. Gotcha.

[Luke Burbank]

Cooked or raw. I never liked the, the taste of them. And then it was just one of those things. And you can identify with this, Andrew, which is like, I didn't like it in childhood and I just kind of carried that into adulthood with me. And then particularly when I started becoming a person who mostly doesn't eat meat.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Very often the substitute for that is like a portobello steak or something. That seemed real mushroomy to me. And so I just was continuing. I've continued on. I'm 49, staring down the barrel of 50 here. And I've just always been like, now miss me with those mushrooms. And Becca was saying, you know, you might want to really like re examine that because there's a lot of different mushrooms other than a portobello. And like that. Whatever that white mushroom is that we were talking about. And a lot of them are much more subtle in their flavor. They take on the flavor of whatever they're being cooked in. Like. And if I just started, I thought if I just start trying them in small amounts and not just always saying hold the mushrooms. If I order something that has mushrooms in it, I might be able to over time kind of acclimate to that, you know. And so I've been doing that and it's kind of working.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's so weird. I had a dream about Maybe that's what's going on. Maybe the more interesting part of this story is you and I have achieved some sort of a two man pluribus where you're actually trying to eat mushrooms. And I'm having a dream about it.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, I was just gonna say I'll try to eat mushrooms and you try to eat bananas.

[Andrew Walsh]

No.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay.

[Andrew Walsh]

I just, I don't think that I'm ready. I think the banana can maybe be symbolic and maybe I can try new things, but not a literal banana. I'm not gonna go that far. Obviously.

[Luke Burbank]

The difference also is that there aren't. Like, for me, not eating mushrooms is actually like a sort of a. You know, it's a sort of structural problem in my, in a lot of my dining experience. Because if I'm looking at the menu at the restaurant or I'm going somewhere. In fact, we went. Becca and I went to a kind of a birthday get together in Portland during the holidays. And the, it was a lovely, lovely evening. But the, the people who were hosting were kind enough to have like a meat course and then a vegetarian course. And then of course the vegetarian course is like portobello mushroom. I mean, I'm sure if you liked these, if you liked portobello mushrooms, this was, these were the greatest portobello stuffed portobello mushroom cap you've ever seen. Like these folks are real gourmands. But I just like get in there and I look over and I'm like, so like, if I could kind of just. And again, what I've been doing is like, if I order Thai food, I'm not holding the mushrooms because a lot of times those will be. I don't know what exactly those mushrooms are called, but I. They're pretty, they're pretty subtle and pretty mild. And I'm just trying to kind of like not constantly avoid mushrooms and then start eating them and have it not be such a. It actually reminds me. Well, this is a weird comparison, but like, I was listening to our buddy Chris Hayes's podcast this morning. Why is this happening? Really good episode about self driving cars and like just where the technology is at and what's really going on with it. And one of the things that the guy he was interviewing was saying was that the experience that most people have is the first time they're in a self driving car. It's like a mind blowing experience. You're videotaping it on your phone, you're like calling your friends, which is exactly what I did. I made a whole, I think like, hey, Dummies video in a Waymo in San Francisco. But when I was in LA for Christmas with Addie, I exclusively took Waymos because by the way, they were cheaper than Lyfts and ubers, which is 100% like Zuckerberg just subsidizing it. Like there's no way that that thing is cheaper to operate currently than like an Uber.

[Andrew Walsh]

But is Waymo Zuckerberg? I don't think I realized that.

[Luke Burbank]

Thought it would. I think it might be Google. Well, no Google. Okay, it's probably not Zuckerberg.

[Caller/Avalon]

It's.

[Luke Burbank]

It's Sergey and Larry. But I told you that when I was in Miami and I went to that unexpectedly fancy dinner, friggin Sergey Brin was sitting next to me.

[Andrew Walsh]

No, I don't think you told me that.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, when I was in Miami. Well, because somebody said that's Sergey Brin. And I looked over and it was the guy with the co. You know.

[Andrew Walsh]

What he looks like? Like I have no idea. I mean, I'm going to take a stab in the dark here and guess that he's white.

[Luke Burbank]

He is white. Then did the name Sergey Brin tip you off?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes, but he's one of the most famous tech bros. But no, I don't know that. But I would have. No, that's just. I'm face blind anyway. But there's also people just like I have no idea what Sergey Brin looks like.

[Luke Burbank]

He's sort of in the, you know, he's in that echelon of those. Of those sorts of guys. I mean that's why I would also recognize. Well like I said, I would recognize Larry Ellison. Well, I got a lot of reasons to recognize Larry Ellison, chiefly his kid bought the TV network I worked for. But all that is to say I had that experience that they were talking about on Chris's show today about like by the. I mean the, the first Waymo that I took in LA this Christmas and I took a lot of them, I could not have been less sort of. I couldn't have been taking note of the fact that it was a robot less. Yeah, I just got in and I was just on my phone or I was listening to my music and just kind of. By the way, that's something that's also pretty cool with these things is that, you know, you can stream your music through them and so, you know, you walk up to the thing and it's got this spinning kind of. I don't know if it's led, but it's got a spinning display that'll Say lb, because that's, I guess, how I'm logged into Waymo, because sometimes there'll be a few of them, so it'll be spinning a bit. That's the one for me. Your phone just says unlock. You hit unlock on the thing. It unlocks the doors of the car. You get in, it says, happy Holidays, Luke. And you sit in. You want to know what I was the most blown away by? And this is actually the simplest part of this technology. Forget like, autonomous driving and like all of the things the car has to figure out. You know, what blew my mind? Heated on, like, what's. Well, kinda a version of that. I got like, on one of the trips, I noticed that it was like a little warmer in the car than I needed it to be. So I got on the app, I turned the temperature down to 65 degrees. And then the next day when I got in a waymo, it was 65 degrees.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, that is interesting.

[Luke Burbank]

Nose. My temperature. And then I changed it because I was a little cold. I made it like 68 degrees. And then 24 hours later, I get in a different way, 68 degrees. Like something about that, like, basically like my. The profile of what I want that cocoon to feel like and the fact that it just like chirped right into my Spotify. I mean, again, this. I don't want to say dystopian, but there's a certain kind of Blade Runnerification. I mean, the most Blade Runner it got is like Christmas Eve, Addy and I, we went and got dinner at the Dresden Room in Los Feliz, which was really fun. We went back to her. Her house for a bit. And then I jump in the. In the Waymo and I'm heading back to my hotel and it's like. I think it's Blue Christmas by Elvis is playing on the stereo in the driverless car speeding through LA at about 11:50pm on Christmas Eve. And if it did, if that didn't feel like Johnny Cab, I don't know what.

[Andrew Walsh]

No kidding. By the way, Leni wasn't playing at the Dresden, was she? Because you saw her in LA too, and that's one of her, I think, favorite venues to play in as prom.

[Luke Burbank]

I love that place. Yeah, no, they didn't have any live music on Christmas Eve at the old as.

[Andrew Walsh]

Somebody one time described a booth to me. This was in Ohio. Not specifically about the Dresden Room, but I think a booth you could plan a murder in. That's my favorite kind of booth you can sit in, right? Don't they have some of those nice round, like big. It's like big old school steakhouse booths on the one side of the.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I think they might have remodeled the dining area. The funny thing I was saying to Addie was because she made the reservation. I don't know if I'd ever been in the restaurant side of the Dresden Room because I was always like. I lived in LA and an era and also in a kind of. This is embarrassing to admit, but like, the Dresden Room plays a big role in the movie Swingers.

[Andrew Walsh]

They really love that.

[Luke Burbank]

And so of course that went into my brain as like a cool thing. And so when I first moved to la, me and the Mummy and other people, we were constantly going to the Dresden Room. But the bar side, the side you're talking about, that has like this kind of great seating. And there was this married duo, Marty and Elaine.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

That played there for years that were kind of, you know, kind of a. Would you. How would you describe the music of Marty and Elaine? A little bit.

[Andrew Walsh]

They were like a two kind of.

[Luke Burbank]

Lounge singer, but, you know.

[Andrew Walsh]

But no, but I was. I mean, I've been on both sides. But the booths I was talking about were on the dining room side, which was really old school, if I remember that. I. I would be shocked if they got rid of them. But some of those, like almost full circle red leather booths with. Yeah, they're white now with a. Oh, maybe they always were. Maybe I'm misremembering that. But.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay, well then they're the same ones.

[Andrew Walsh]

But like kind of white tablecloth, classic. Kind of like la kind of old school. I just.

[Luke Burbank]

It was awesome.

[Andrew Walsh]

I love both sides of that, but just.

[Luke Burbank]

There's something about. And by the way, it's Christmas Eve, so there's nobody on the streets of Los Angeles. It's just totally like. It's me and the Waymo and a song from 75 years ago.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, right.

[Luke Burbank]

And the empty streets of 2025, Los Angeles, as we just kind of sort of speed through the night and all that is to say, Andrew, in the way that I became quickly, it no longer felt like a huge experience to be in a driverless car. I want to get to that same place with mushrooms.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, sure. Or I mean, when you were telling the driverless car thing, I was thinking about the first time I was on an airplane that I remember. I think I flew when I was a tiny tot, but when I was like a 20, you know, like, I think my first real flight as a, you know, a conscious person or Whatever was in my very early twenties. And I just. I mean, I. I was out of my mind. I was out of my mind. The fact that I was that.

[Luke Burbank]

Going to, like, a job interview and.

[Andrew Walsh]

Interlock, that was going out to. Out to visit my friend Paul in Boston, where I would eventually. Where on that same trip I would meet Genevieve, in fact, so about 25 years ago, almost exactly. But anyway. Yeah, but I just remember being. I remember being so nervous. I was, like, picking at something on my face. And then as we took off, I realized I was bleeding from my face.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, my God.

[Andrew Walsh]

I was like. I had all this nervous energy about it. And of course, it's not like that. When you just get on a flight down, you're just, like, grumpy because the seat in front of you're just, like, hoping the whole time that the guy with the backwards ball cap in front of you isn't going to put a seat back on your knees. You know, it's just like, it's. I could not be less. Less of an exciting moment. So anyway, sorry to cut you off. And you just want to normalize mushrooms. And I want to. I want. Even though I like mushrooms, and I like. I'll saute up mushrooms or mushrooms and onions or something from time to time, and I don't. I like them raw. I totally understand that. You know what I mean? That's how I would never be like, oh, my God, how could you not like mushrooms? I mean, they're weird, man. Like, even if you don't like the flavor, like, the texture, the texture raw is completely different than the texture when it's cooked. And they're both pretty weird.

[Luke Burbank]

Now, this raises the question. When you were talking about bananas earlier, I was wondering, how do you mess with avocado then? Because I think the texture of avocado is. I mean, I like avocado fine. I like guacamole. Guacamole, as George Takei would say. Takei would say. I was listening to a lot of the Howard Stern show last night as I was working on my pellet stove, and it's like, you want to talk about sometimes. You know, our show, obviously, is a weird kind of digression upon a digression upon a digression. But, like, when you hear Steve Nowicki doing his George Takei impression saying guacamole to Howard Stern, you've really entered, like, a pretty big digression that I was extremely there for, by the way.

[Andrew Walsh]

But to answer your question about guacamole, are they weird? Yeah, kind of like, I don't. I don't mess with them too much. I make a summer salad that. That calls for them, but just kind of diced up so it's not too. It doesn't. It doesn't kind of. They don't break down too much in the salad and give it too much of a creamy effect.

[Luke Burbank]

So that's the basic thing you're trying to avoid is creaminess. Whether it's in cottage cheese or. Or bananas. That kind of creamy thing is what you're. That's what you're put off by.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. And then. Well, I probably added too much detail there in this particular salad. I just like everything to be very individualized and crispy and whatever. And so I don't want it to get too. But you know, an avocado will break down a little bit to give it a little bit of a different texture. But for the most part, you ask how I mess with them. I really don. I don't avoid them. But if it's a chips and guac or chips and salsa, I'm chips and salsa. Like, 100% of the time, I don't.

[Luke Burbank]

What about that corn salad you make?

[Andrew Walsh]

That's the one I'm talking about. Yeah. So that, that's why I kind of. I realize I'm rat holing on it. But, like, what I like to do with that salad is I like to cut everything. So that's a corn and bean salad, but it also has some vegetables, you know, tomatoes or whatever, and avocado. And I try to cut it. So it's all very similar sizes. You know what I mean? So I get really kind of into that. And so with the avocado, I do that thing where you. You cut the avocado in half. It is a very fun thing to prepare, isn't it? Avocado, you cut it in half. And then I cut it within its shell. I cut like a grid. I cut a grid inside the shell.

[Luke Burbank]

And still, it still has the, like, outer kind of rough skin on it.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. I'm calling it a shell, but like a skin. So if you imagine I'm holding it in, right, and it's facing you like a Georgia o'. Keeffe. And. And then I'm still like avocado drink. Yes. And then I take a little paring knife, right? And I go zing, zing, zing, zing. And I make a bunch of lines up and down and then make a bunch of lines across it, and then I flip it inside. I use my thumbs and I Push the skin inside out and then all of those things fall out. Now they're kind of.

[Luke Burbank]

Did you like invent this technique or did somebody teach you this at some point?

[Andrew Walsh]

Literally no idea.

[Luke Burbank]

I just thought, cuz I've never heard of this, it actually makes some sense.

[Andrew Walsh]

Although somebody must have told me to do it this way because I wouldn't have invented this.

[Luke Burbank]

Because you could be playing a dangerous game, which is sometimes if the avocado is not totally ripe, it may not detach from the skin as easily as. As. As you would hope, you know. So like when you do that, you got to hope that it's. That the avocado is going to play along with what you've already in, what you've already committed to.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I have. No, I'm. Somebody or something told me to do that at one point for. I don't know if it was for this recipe or something else. And of course, when you push it out now you kind of. Depending on where the avocado chunk was, you could have a kind of a long. Almost like a longish french fry of it or something. So you might want to kind of dice it again into little bits. But what about.

[Luke Burbank]

What about the ult? This is the. To me, the ultimate cool guy move when you're dealing with an avocado. And I would cut. I would cut them maybe differently. Not that I think this is the. The great technique, but what I had, what I saw the first time, what I saw, as my mom might say, was, you know, you sort of bisect, you cut the avocado in half and then you kind of twist it, you open it up. So now you're holding one side of the avocado that does not have any pit in it and then the other side has a pit that's protruding. And then you see the cool guy move of where you just like thwonk the knife, the corner of the knife into the pit and then you pull it out.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, the corner of the knife. I just do the flat sharp end. I just like throw it in there.

[Luke Burbank]

Like somehow I guess I never thought that would like.

[Andrew Walsh]

And then I grabbed it enough.

[Luke Burbank]

I've always been like. I've always tried to use the little L corner of the knife because somehow in my mind that seemed more. You're getting more surface area.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, no, I wonder if that makes more sense because my thing is I love doing that. It's so satisfying when that knife goes into the pit and then I twist the knife so it kind of like you use the torque right I love all of that. I love all of that. That's some of my favorite vegetable interplay right there.

[Luke Burbank]

What this is making me think of when we're talking about your famous corn salad is that the summer is. Yeah, it will happen, Andrew. It will. It doesn't feel like it today, but at some point, we'll be eating corn salad and watching baseball.

[Andrew Walsh]

But my thing is then when you have the avocado pit on the, you know, like, kind of on the sharp edge of a very, very sharp knife.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah.

[Andrew Walsh]

Then I'm always kind of like, now what have you done to yourself, Walsh? You got to be very careful getting.

[Luke Burbank]

It off the knife, slippery off of this sharp implement.

[Andrew Walsh]

Right. Like, sometimes I'll. What I'll do is I have that compost little tin on my counter. So sometimes I try to use the corner of the tin to knock it off. What are you doing? Just, like, being very careful and grabbing it.

[Luke Burbank]

I'm grabbing it carefully. But I'm also wondering, is this the time where I put this avocado pit in some kind of a glass, like a sixth grader with toothpicks, and grow a new avocado? I don't know if that's how that works, but I feel like avocados are not cheap. And I'm holding the building blocks of a new avocado. The building block, I should say, of a new avocado. Why are we not all. And again, probably has to do with, like, temperature and, you know, what region you're in. But, like, I don't think I'm really in the avocado belt of America, but I do feel like, am I holding another free avocado here that I'm just throwing out?

[Andrew Walsh]

That's a really good point. I get that way with garlic sometimes. Sometimes I threw some old garlic into just, like, a flower pot that happened to be empty but was still, like, above my sink or whatever, and sure as heck, it started growing. And I was very excited about that, but then I kind of didn't have the follow through to actually get it to the next level of growth. One more question, actually, you had some things in your intro that I'm actually very interested in hearing about, so I don't know why I would bring this up now. But I wanted to ask you if you like grapefruit, because it never occurred to me that people wouldn't like grapefruit. But then I saw some anti grapefruit sentiment online the other day, and somebody. And I'll never forget this, I think somebody said, because I really like grapefruit. But somebody said eating a grapefruit is like eating an orange that's combined with a car tire. And I was like, oh, I guess I do understand that it's kind of hard to get all the. Get a clean, clean piece of the fruit without like rind sticking to it. I mean, I really love it. But I guess I understand why people wouldn't.

[Luke Burbank]

It would never occur to me in a million years to buy a grapefruit.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, I bought one yesterday.

[Luke Burbank]

But if I was at a, like a breakfast buffet type of situation or whatever, and there was some, like, sliced up, you know, whatever you do sliced is kind of the wrong way to describe it, it would seem, because you are doing a bit of like, what, an extraction process excision of the grapefruit of the, of the. The meat of the grapefruit. Anyway, if there was grapefruit that someone had prepared, I would throw a piece on my plate. It's always more tart than I expect it to be. And so that, for me is the problem with grapefruit as part of the breakfast experience or any other experience if I'm eating it with other things, is it's a real pucker factor, right? So, like, I have a bite of this grapefruit and now it's like, now my whole. My. My mouth is going on. My taste buds are going on a. We veered off the road pretty. In a pretty extreme fashion of whatever else I was eating. I do like grapefruit juice. And if it's ever like a. Let's say if I was in Vegas, like, you are soon to be my friend. I cannot wait for this.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right. I'll be there on Monday.

[Luke Burbank]

I cannot wait to hear about it. I'm so excited. But if I were in Vegas and I were gonna have a little morning, like a champagne type of cocktail or even like a vodka cocktail, I would go with a Greyhound, potentially.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, that's one.

[Luke Burbank]

Or I would go with a champagne and grapefruit juice. So I'm a. I'm not anti grapefruit, but like, I. I've never bought a grapefruit in the store other than maybe some specific thing that was happening in like, cooking. Like, it would never occur to me to have a grapefruit around for, for just. For just eating, for just snacking.

[Andrew Walsh]

I am going to. I literally have a stopwatch here. I'm going to do this under 30 seconds because it's the world's most boring story. And then we're going to either thank the donors or you're going to talk about something more interesting that you promoted at the beginning of the show. But I am going to. I think I can do this in probably 20 seconds, but I'm going to put a limit at 30. You don't hear it. We're up to one second already yesterday, late last night, before going to bed, I wanted a little snack. I had half of a grapefruit leftover in the fruit drawer. And so I took that out and I ate it, but it wasn't quite enough for me. So then I went back to the fruit drawer and I grabbed a little orange, one of those little mini oranges, I can't remember what you call them, and I ate that thing. Yeah, it was like a cutie or satsuma. It was so unbelievably good because my mouth was prepared for all the. So I'm already over 30 seconds. All right, I'm done.

[Luke Burbank]

And I've got follow ups. So we're got a lot of thoughts.

[Andrew Walsh]

That was 34 seconds. I wasted the first few.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, that's an interesting idea. So in other words, you had. The grapefruit was so tart.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

That by comparison, the little mandarin orange or whatever it was, was like a. Like a sugar bounty.

[Andrew Walsh]

It tasted. Tasted like a covenant with God. It was so good. It was like, you know how, like when you grow up.

[Luke Burbank]

I grew up with a covenant with God, which is how I got a child at 17, by the way.

[Andrew Walsh]

I phrased that the wrong way, but I mean that like, you know how when they would describe like the Garden of Eden before original sin, everything was so good. Our human minds in the modern world couldn't even imagine what it would be like to be in the Garden of Eden or to eat the fruits of the trees. That is what that little tsatsuma tastes like. Yesterday after. And I loved the grapefruit, but I didn't realize that I was playing games with my taste buds.

[Luke Burbank]

So one follow up is I didn't realize you have a fruit drawer in your refrigerator. I have two drawers in my refrigerator and one of them is for veggies and the other is for cheese because I eat a lot of cheese. So one's the. And if my dad's over and he's got like turkey lunch meat or something, there's like the meat and cheese drawer and then there's the vegetable drawer. There is no fruit drawer. Part of it is because I guess I don't eat nearly as much fruit as you. But also I'm not sure, like, if I am Keeping the fruit in the fridge or out of the fridge. So you're a fruit in the fridge. Is that, does that preserve it longer? And I, by the way, I have one more thing I want to say on this topic after you answer that question.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, unfortunately, I mean, I'm not even going to set a clock for this because if we're going to do this, we're going to do this. You know that I am somebody who does not like to get into, like, you're doing it wrong, you're eating it wrong when it comes to food or whatnot. Everybody should just eat it the way they want to eat. And if somebody says they don't like a food, I'm certainly not somebody who's going to say, oh, you're wrong, like mushrooms are great or whatever, because I have all of my weird food stuff too. But do you remember when we had our friend Cassie on the show and I think this, I think we had this conversation on the air. She was talking about how she doesn't like fruit. Like, generally speaking, she's not a fruit person. Until she tried a grape that you guys both bonded over. That's why.

[Luke Burbank]

Cotton candy grape.

[Andrew Walsh]

Cotton candy grape from Trader Joe's or something. Maybe it was started off on her.

[Luke Burbank]

Instagram, bought some of those.

[Andrew Walsh]

But she was just like, you know, I'm not a fruit girl, but like, I do love these grapes or whatever. And like, I don't want to tell somebody like, oh, if you don't like fruit, you're doing it wrong. You should try it this way. But I think about that all the time because I think people who think they don't like fruit need to put that fruit in the refrigerator. I do not like warm fruit. Like the idea of having a bowl of oranges and apples on the table, like that does nothing for me. I love an ice cold apple out of the, out of the fruit drawer. I love an ice cold orange out of the fruit drawer. Like, to me, that is the beauty of these fruits. Warm fruit has no place in my life.

[Luke Burbank]

It doesn't. Because there's a lot of debate around tomatoes. And if putting tomatoes in the refrigerator, which does preserve them. I saw Kenji Lopez Alt talking about this recently. Like, you put a tomato in the refrigerator, it will preserve the tomato for longer. But there is a school of thought that it also kind of damp it tamps down the flavor a little bit.

[Andrew Walsh]

I believe that. I believe that.

[Luke Burbank]

And the thing Beck always tells me is like, like, you just keep whatever it is you're buying. That's A perishable fruit or vegetable, you just treat it in the home environment the way that it was treated at the grocery store. That's what she tells me. So if it was in some kind of cooling case, that's what you put it in. If it wasn't, you don't. But what I've noticed is stuff keeps a lot longer if I put it in the refrigerator because sometimes it takes me a while to get through stuff. I'm a big refrigerator putter inner. Now the other thing that I just ordered, and this could lead us into a whole other conversation about other things I've been purchasing on TikTok is I bought these little like, like sort of Tupperware containers. I think it's a set of five or six of them of varying sizes. What they have in each one is a little metal basket that's inside the Tupperware container. And the entire point is when you get your vet, your fruits home, I should say. So I just was at Trader Joe's recently and I bought some of those grapes you were talking about, and I bought some blueberries. And what you do is you just dump those. You take them right out of the plastic container they've been in. You put them right into one of these little Tupperware things that has a strainer in it. You put it in your. In your sink, you fill it up with water, you let it just soak for a little while and clean off the fruit. And then you pull that strainer out, you dump the dirty water out, which by the way, shockingly dirty, like the blueberries, because sometimes, let's be honest, I don't. I know you. We should all be washing our fruits and veggies. Sometimes I'm hungry, sometimes I'm lazy. And so anyway, I did that with this. I got these in the mail, these little things, and I immediately put these blueberries into one of them and I filled it up with water. I just let it kind of set there for a little while. Then I came and I pulled it out just like I'd seen on Tick Tock. And then I looked at the water and I was shocked at how murky that water was, Dumped it out and then put the strainer with the blueberries back in the thing, put the lid on it and put it into my refrigerator. So my point is, I think I'm going to become a refrigerated fruit man like you've been recommending.

[Andrew Walsh]

Is the strainer there just for the cleaning purposes or also is there some sort of advantage to having the Fruit, like kind of not sitting on a. Just like the bottom of a Tupperware.

[Luke Burbank]

I think it's probably just there. I think it's promoted as just being something that's a little bit easier to kind of clean them. And I will say I'm interested. It did. It did feel to me like an easier process than. I don't know, I guess I could have put.

[Andrew Walsh]

I could.

[Luke Burbank]

I could have just. I mean, there's a bunch of things you could do because, you know, like the blueberries, they come in that plastic container, whatever you call that, that disposable.

[Andrew Walsh]

Kind of thing in the bottom of it. I don't like that. I don't like that diaper I got bad. So it's like, what do you like diaper? And I don't like.

[Luke Burbank]

What do you do when you. You get the blueberries home? What are you doing with them? Are you putting them into a different container and washing them? Are you washing them in that weird diaperized container and leaving them in there?

[Andrew Walsh]

Like, what's your process for blueberries? I'm probably soaking them in that container because it's already kind of like colander esque, like you said. Right. It's got a bunch of slits in it. So I will probably soak them. I will like, you know, like get them, you know, with cold water, really rinse them off in that and then maybe let them dry in that. Or I think I may be likely to then take my colander. I got a couple colanders always kicking around. I'll probably dump them into a colander and shake them up a little bit and set them on a towel for a little bit, then transfer them into some sort of old soup container or a Tupperware of some sort or something and seal them up and put it in the fridge. That's what I'm doing with my berries, honestly, with those. I'm probably then mixing them up into some pineapple and stuff. But that is definitely a lot of fruit talk. But yeah, I definitely, as far as preserving it, putting in the refrigerator to preserve it, like, to be honest, I go through fruit so quickly. It's not about extending the life of it. It's just that I don't want to bite into a warm apple or a warm orange. Like, it just doesn't hold any appeal to me.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, I need to get. Because, you know, 2025 was the year of me eating more fruit. And it really did happen. And it really was. I found it to be an enjoyable experience. And now 2026 is a year of me dialing in my fruit game. So by the time this summer hits, which I really think of as fruit season, and I'm going to have a whole, you know, me and my systems usually, which involves Internet purchases, I'm going to just have a whole, like. It's going to be like a cross section of a city. When you open my refrigerator, it's going to be all these different layers, levels. It's going to be like a Wes Andrew. It'll be like the Life Aquatic with Steve Zissu in there with my different fruits that are chilling in their different containers that I've bought from China.

[Andrew Walsh]

You're going to make a fruit salad that has mushrooms and fruit in it. You're like, look, I'm. I'm better now.

[Luke Burbank]

That's gonna be my new diet. It's gonna be all mushroom and fruit diet. All right, let's do this. Let's thank some donors and then we'll. If you don't mind, we'll stay on the topic of my Internet purchasing, because this is a real thing, Andrew, that I'm, I am, I'm. I don't know what's going on with this. I don't know what is going to go on with this, but I need to tell you about it coming up here.

[Caller/Avalon]

Thank you, baby.

[Luke Burbank]

All right, speaking of those donors, let's get to thanking them. They are keeping TBTL on the air five days a week. This is 100% listener supported podcasting and it's thanks to folks like John Smith of Tacoma, Washington.

[Andrew Walsh]

We have got to get pronouncers on these names. Are you sure you got that one?

[Luke Burbank]

I would not put it past me to somehow fumble the bag even on John Smith, but I hopefully got that one right.

[Andrew Walsh]

Thank you, John. Appreciate it.

[Luke Burbank]

Thanks, John. Thanks to Eliza Kurtz, who's in Wilmington, Delaware.

[Andrew Walsh]

Eliza, thank you.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, Wilmington, Delaware. That's gotta have some sort of American revolutionary connotation, right? Don't you think? There must have been some. Well, I guess George Washington was crossing the Delaware river right, in that famous painting. But what if he was going to Wilmington?

[Andrew Walsh]

Was there. Was there a Battle of Wilmington?

[Luke Burbank]

Seems like there must have been. It just sounds very. Sounds very kind of fundamental to the formation of this country.

[Andrew Walsh]

The Battle of Wilmington. This is. Well, this is Civil War, though. And is it the wrong Wilmington? Yeah, this is going to be Wilmington, North Carolina. So there is a Battle of Wilmington, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Eliza. I do not believe she is a veteran of that war.

[Luke Burbank]

Do we know Where Eliza was during the Battle of Wilmington. Can she account for her whereabouts?

[Andrew Walsh]

What I like is that you're asking the right questions. Thank you.

[Luke Burbank]

Michael Muhling is in Mount Lake Terrace, Washington, home of zero Civil War or American Revolution battles. You know, that's something that I'm. I was thinking about diving back into this week because it's just, as I mentioned at the top of the show, and this is not shocking. It is just the weather is. Is rough right now. It's getting dark. It's still very dark, very early. It's just kind of. It's like stay indoors kind of season weather. Think about jumping back into that Ken Burns.

[Andrew Walsh]

Which one?

[Luke Burbank]

Revolutionary War doc. Oh, I started watching it at my folks house on like Thanksgiving night or something and. Or maybe the night before Thanksgiving.

[Andrew Walsh]

And is that his latest. That's his latest thing, yes, it's his.

[Luke Burbank]

Latest and I think it's the. I think it's the American Revolution because he's done the Civil War.

[Andrew Walsh]

That was one of his big. His two most famous ones, I would say, were probably Civil War and baseball. Right. And this would have been in the late 90s, early 2000s, maybe.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. I think this one is American Revolution. And I mean, what. I mean, this is probably part of the aging process or whatever, and it's not a particularly novel thing to say, but, man, I do like those shows. Like, there's. I mean, there's just such an incredibly vast amount of stuff that I just don't know about the history of our country. And I'm never going to be a historian and I'm never going to be a deep diver on these things. But as somebody who likes to know about one inch of information about a broad range of things, the Ken Burns stuff is kind of perfect because, you know, there's just like, I understand generally speaking, that we fought the British, you know, to like establish this place as an independent nation. But like, that's about the depth of my knowledge.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, there was some tea involved.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes. And I'll spill it and I don't care who hears. I did watch also Death by Lightning during my little break, which is really good. Would recommend that it is the story of. It's the story of James Garfield being shot and the man who shot him. And Garfield is played by Michael Shannon. And the man who shot him is played by one of the main dudes from Succession. I didn't watch Succession, like the main son, the oldest son on Succession. Did you watch Succession?

[Andrew Walsh]

I did, but you're talking about the character actor. I Mean the guy who's like, it's. I'm sorry, not character actor. He's the Methodist.

[Luke Burbank]

British in real life.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, I think we're maybe talking about somebody else. It's death by lightning. I'll look here, but I'm.

[Luke Burbank]

Death by lightning. Yeah, death by lightning. So I have. Speaking of how much I don't know about American history, I don't think I realized that like Garfield was shot and.

[Andrew Walsh]

He'S not one of Matthew McFadden. He plays one. He plays like an in law. He plays a son in law.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, okay. Sorry about that. I clearly did not. You're clearly not a bowler or whatever he says. Yeah, so that guy Matthew McFadden is great in it, as is, of course, Michael Shannon, as is Nick Offerman is really good in it. So it's, it's like.

[Andrew Walsh]

And I'm not our best beards.

[Luke Burbank]

I've seen the best beards of my time driven insane. And it's not a spoiler to say that like Garfield was shot, although kind of for me it was because I don't think I would have known that if you, if you, you know, if you woke me up out of a dead sleep three weeks ago and said, like, name US Presidents who were shot in office, Garfield wouldn't have been at the top of the list. But it's a crazy story because at least as the way it's told in this show, death by lightning, which by the way, the reason for that name is because somebody's asking, I think Garfield about if he's worried about being assassinated in office and he says that's like worrying about death by lightning. You just can't go around being afraid of it all the time. And the story of this, the Matthew McFadden character is like, he's just this guy who was likely mentally ill, but just kind of like always getting into trouble and kind of just like always had these big ideas that he couldn't quite deliver on and he had like stolen money from his family, had this long suffering sister. He was sort of in and out of jail and institutions, but also kind of fancied himself a political. He basically what happens is he gets it in his head the Matthew McFadden character that he's helped get, get James Garfield elected because he was allowed to like make a kind of a small speech at a very small political event somewhere that Garfield wasn't even at. But it goes into his kind of, you know, his brain chemistry and, and eventually because he's feeling slighted by the Garfield presidency and he's not getting his time, his face time with this president that he feels he's elected. He ends up, like, killing him. But also, Garfield didn't die right away. Like, he gets shot. But then he's alive for like another month and there's this, like, terrible doctor that, like, is just doing these procedures on him that are probably hastening his death versus helping. Anyway, it's a really well done. It's like, I think three parter. But Death by Lightning would recommend. Okay, on the subject of Mount Lake Terrace, I would recommend the TV show Death by Lightning.

[Andrew Walsh]

I am just now, like, in this moment, starting to work on some sort of a theory. And I don't even know what the theory is, but I need your help kind of completing it or at least creating the boundaries around it. So I did not know that there's this new movie, miniseries or whatever about a guy named Garfield. I was at the theater the other day and I saw a trailer for a new adaptation, a new adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Do you know the main character in Wuthering Heights?

[Luke Burbank]

Heathcliff.

[Andrew Walsh]

Heathcliff. Is there something going on with the orange cats? Is this like, some. Are they warming us up for a.

[Luke Burbank]

Great cartoon cats of my. You.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right. Something is going on.

[Luke Burbank]

If you bring in Riff Raff and.

[Andrew Walsh]

Mungo.

[Luke Burbank]

We got a situation here.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, man.

[Luke Burbank]

Anyway, I like your theory. I'm here for you. Also, Sarah Newlon of Bothell, Washington is here for it.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hey, thank you, Sarah. Appreciate that.

[Luke Burbank]

Thanks, Sarah. Thanks to Myra Lovell of Portland, Oregon.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hey, nice.

[Luke Burbank]

That's just down the. Just down Interstate 5 from me. And if the wind does what it's trying to do, my hot tub cover may be down by your house.

[Andrew Walsh]

Keep an eye on. Oh, Myra. Myra is the one who's keeping an eye out.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes. If you see a hot tub cover, many people sent me links to Amazon straps that you can buy, and I saw those and then I then got distracted. But I need to do that because otherwise I need to just keep doing this cinder block thing, which really does bother me.

[Andrew Walsh]

While we are thanking donors here, I would like to thank the anonymous listener who sent me a bag of Bitta Honey candy. I got. Yeah, there was a package directly from Amazon in our P.O. box yesterday. And I was like, what is this? It was kind of heavy and it was shaky. And so I opened it up right away and it was a whole bag of Bito. Honey, am I hitting the O. Weir?

[Luke Burbank]

Yes, I think you're saying it right. I think you're saying it exactly right. Bito honey.

[Andrew Walsh]

Bitto honey and Bito o'.

[Luke Burbank]

Rourke. One day we'll turn Texas Andrew. One day his Bito o' Rourke a show title.

[Andrew Walsh]

Thank you for the secretary of Transportation candies. Was that. Was he. That's what he held for a while there, right? Wasn't he?

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, no, that's Buttigieg Buddha judge. Why do I give Beto was the. Beto was the guy who almost won a senate seat out of Texas. That's against Ted Cruz and is. Is sort of, you know, still kind of knocks around as an idea of a Democrat that might be able to win in Texas.

[Andrew Walsh]

Right. I don't. I think that's because the name's both game with B. I'm getting hot. My face is flushing. Let's just move on after that blunder.

[Luke Burbank]

You know who is not judging us on that? Elizabeth Siddle who's in Washington D.C. although who knows being in D.C. elizabeth could be a D.C. power player.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes. She might.

[Luke Burbank]

She might know Buttigieg.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. Maybe she's gone from judging us the least to judging us the most. I don't know. But critically, Elizabeth is donating to the show and helping us do this. So thank you, Elizabeth. Thank you to all of our donors for making TBTL possible. We absolutely could not do this without you.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hello and welcome to Top Story.

[Luke Burbank]

So the other day, Andrew, I was on TikTok as I am wont to do, although I'm really going to try to work on that like this week and also this year I'm committing myself to a project of reading a physical book or magazine for one hour a day, which is time that right now I just spend oftentimes just mindlessly looking at my screen. Like far too much of my time off in the holidays. I mean I had a really great time. I got to spend some time obviously with my daughter, got to spend some time with Becca, start to see family and friends. It was a really like a really nice time off for me and I got to really connect with a lot of people. I also connected way too much with staring at my phone because I felt like, well, I'm on vacation and this is fun for me and I like to just like, you know, this is how I relax now. But I feel my brain atrophying, you know, and my attention span, I should say, really atrophying. And so one of the things I'm really going to try to do, I think you're so much better about this than I am because you like, you know, you read Books and I would get the sense. Well, I don't know what your general thing is. My sense is you do it sometimes to fall asleep. Maybe I do read.

[Andrew Walsh]

I always fall asleep with my phone in my hand and reading a book. Right. Book up. Yeah. Because I think if I were scrolling a social media site, I don't think that would. I just don't think it would put me to sleep. But I really do enjoy reading books. I mean, I read them on my phone. It's weird.

[Luke Burbank]

I consider that reading. I don't think there's anything wrong with it being on the phone for me.

[Andrew Walsh]

Like I miss a physical and I almost went and got a physical copy of the book I'm reading right now. But the thing is my eyesight is so bad and also if I'm going to bed, I don't want to have a light on in the room while Genevieve's trying to sleep. And then if I'm going out to read somewhere, honestly, if it's a somewhat ill lit restaurant or something that I'm holding the book up to my face, I kind of need it on my phone now.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I mean we could. I got a tight two hours on places I can't see in anymore, my friend. It's just absolutely wild to me. Much low light impacts my ability to read like anything. But I definitely consider like when I say reading a physical book, maybe because I like the kind of romance of that, but also maybe reading on my phone. Although I don't trust myself to be reading on my phone and then not switch over to something that's a little bit more kind of like instant gratification maybe.

[Andrew Walsh]

Especially if you're getting notifications.

[Luke Burbank]

Totally. So I'm going to really try and my house is full of books that I have intended to read and magazines. I mean certainly I have the work side of it. Like I. I'm always going to be probably working on a book or two for LiveWire, but I just want to really commit myself to spending an hour a day just sitting and reading. And it doesn't have to be anything heavy, but just to try to see if I can kind of re. Like rewire my brain a little bit back to where that's enough for it because it's just like just eating junk food all the time. Eventually you need everything to be so flavor blasted just for it to taste like anything. And I just need to. But anyway, all that is to say I wasn't doing that during the break. I was on the Internet a lot on my phone and a Lot of it was TikTok. And I saw this, this ad popped up and it was for this little like BB gun that was like the size of. Imagine it's like the size of a credit card in terms of its, you know, it's a rectangle, but it unfolds and turns into kind of like the shape of like a number seven. It's thicker than a credit card, right? So it's like in its. It's a rectangle that if you looked at it straight on, it looks like a credit card sized thing. But if you turned it on its edge, you'd be like, oh no, it's a lot thicker than that. But you unlock it and you open it up and it kind of turns into a little like a number seven. And the bottom part is a handle and it has a little trigger on it and you pull back this thing and it's a little gun. It's a little BB gun. And I saw this guy, you know, doing some ad where he's, he's out in his yard and he's got some kind of a little like target setup that's like a tin plate or something. And he's opened up this little BB gun and he's pulled back the thing and he kind of shoots it at the tin plate and goes plink. And I thought, oh, that's kind of a clever design. And I, my first thought was, I bet you my nephews would get a kick out of this if they came over. Like, like it's this kind of little small thing, but it turns into like a little BB gun. And I even was like looking, I was scrolling down through the website, like whatever it is inside TikTok of this thing they're trying to sell me. And it was like, comes with two plastic balls or something. Because in the ba. In the, in the hand, like the, the handle of this little BB gun, there's a little container supposedly for your ammo. And it said it even comes with a couple of like plastic balls or something. And I was like, okay. And then it was, I was like, well, how much does this cost? Because this is kind of a clever little device. I don't know how much BB guns cost anymore, but it was $25, okay? Super cheap, right? And it was like made in the USA so and so, you know, like I didn't love the fact that I think it was, you know, like Liberty, you know, Liberty Times or something. It was like, that's weird, I don't like that stuff. But it's 25, it looks kind of fun again. I just thought, like, oh, when Jack and Abe or little Luke are over and we went out in the yard and maybe shot this at some, like, shot this at some tin cans or something, it could be kind of fun. And it's $25, so I hit buy. And then I'm like. As I continue scrolling. And by the way, it's so frictionless with the TikTok shop. You know, they've got my information in there, they've got my address. It's like, it's one of those things where it just takes. And I will tell you this, everything I've ever bought in the TikTok shop has shown up, first of all, very quickly. Weirdly enough. Like, it all comes from China, but there must be warehouses in the United States because like I was telling you about those, those Tupperwares with the. That I'm putting the fruit in. I probably put that order in five days ago and they're already at my house. One of them with blueberries in it. So this is all some, as my dad would say, Chinese bullshit. But it's also somehow already over here, which is kind of weird. And they have. I will give them credit that they. The TikTok shop itself has a very good system for keeping you posted at all times about what's going on with the thing you just bought.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Like, they've clearly identified that something that stresses people out about buying weird crap on the Internet is the feeling of like, is it going to show up or not? Or, you know, is, did I just, like, throw my money away? And so, like, right after you buy something, you get this update in your email and then they're kind of like, like they're. They're keeping you posted on the fact that it's in transit and that it's been delivered. Like, it's a very kind of, like, I guess you might say, high touch kind of thing where they're just really. Again, they're really. So. So for instance, yeah, I'm just looking. I'm scrolling back through some of my purchase history. And so this was, I guess, technically the company that I bought this from is called Madavin. It says that we're getting your order ready to be shipped 25.99. And then their shipping is 599, 31.98. Okay, so because I ordered. Because what happens on Tick Tock and the rest of the Internet is we all know this now. If you make the mistake of buying something or putting something in a cart, you will now just get a billion ads for the same thing. Yeah.

[Andrew Walsh]

Even though you already bought it.

[Luke Burbank]

Exactly. Which is one of the things that's pointed out is like, not the greatest system of, like, here's what we've got. They bought a thing. Now let's just keep showing them that thing. It's like, well, I already have that thing. So literally the second that I hit buy on this $25 BB gun. Now the. As I'm scroll, continuing to scroll through TikTok, every single ad is for this BB gun. But here's the thing. It's not all the same ad. It's not the same guy. It's like different people talking about this thing, and it's different colors of this little BB gun and there's. You know what I mean? And what these are. I. I get the sense that there's something where, like on TikTok, anyone who wants to can just make an ad for a product. Like, I guess you buy the product maybe, and then you. You make your own ad for it. And what you're hoping is that your ad is compelling because every time somebody buys it, if they click on your link, you get a little small percentage of the sale or something. Like, you know, there's a lot of this that goes on online now. I don't know if it's called affiliate marketing or whatever, but, like. So what I'm getting now is just like, literally 10 to 20 alternative ads for this. Clearly this same little BB gun that I've bought. But I'm still unclear on, like, what the propulsion is.

[Andrew Walsh]

Do you still have the name of it in front of you? Because I'm Googling around and I cannot. I'm trying to spell Madhavan and I am not.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, that's not gonna be any help. Cause that's like a. Let's see. I'm trying to find.

[Andrew Walsh]

While you look for that. I wanna say while you're. While you were pulling this thing out that's about the size of a credit card, I was picturing, like, a slightly bigger version of the cassette tapes that we would put in Sound Blaster, the Transformer that was a boombox, but he had. His chest was like a cassette player holder.

[Luke Burbank]

Dude. And then there were different freaking.

[Andrew Walsh]

I had the Eagle one, the one that was a cassette tape that turned into some sort of a robot bird.

[Luke Burbank]

I did not have any of those, but I thought those were within the entire Transformers universe. The coolest Transformers were the tapes that went in Sound Wave.

[Andrew Walsh]

Sound Wave, yeah. Yep.

[Luke Burbank]

I loved those things. Okay. I'm getting a little closer. I'm finding the original. Let's see. Buy again. I don't want to buy it. Please don't try to sell it to me again.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh yeah, you're really gonna, you're never gonna see the end of these ads now.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I'm trying to get. What I'm gonna do, Andrew, is I'm going to take a picture of it and just send it to you.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay.

[Luke Burbank]

This is not going to really help because this is the little, the little BB gun or whatever it is in its, in its box that it comes in and it's so it's not actually in the form but this will just give you a sense.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay.

[Luke Burbank]

Of, of kind of like, you know what I mean? This is it folded up and in like a little shipping package. Okay. So here's the thing. As I continue to see these ads, what I can't figure out is like how does this BB gun work? Because one thing is as you know BB guns are either you crank, you pump them up a bunch so that you build up some pressure. Usually yeah, like an airso gun. Or some of them might even have like a little canister that you can put in there that's replaceable, that's going to like charge the thing up something.

[Andrew Walsh]

CO2 canister.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, CO2 canister. Something needs to propel the BB and I'm like, what I can't figure out about the design of this little BB gun is like how the BB is propelled. Like, like, like. Because I'm keep looking at the design and as I keep getting more ads for it, I keep looking through various different people trying to sell me again the same little $25 BB gun. And finally I see a guy and he's showing this thing off and he's going like here's where the bullets go. And he pops open, I guess you would call it the barrel, the top part of the number seven. And he pulls out a full on.22 caliber bullet, puts it in the barrel, clicks this little foldable gun back together, pulls back a little again. I don't know gun terminology. I've never owned a gun. I've never tried to own a real gun. He pulls back a little thing and he fully shoots a.22 bullet at something in his yard. Not a BB, a 22 caliber thing. And the sound that the gun makes is a gun ass sound.

[Andrew Walsh]

And it's definitely this one. It's definitely this guy, definitely this one.

[Luke Burbank]

And, and by the way, when you.

[Andrew Walsh]

Five dollars a twenty.

[Luke Burbank]

Well that's okay. So this is what I'm. This. Okay, it. This was the whole journey. Me thinking I was buying a BB gun and being like, that's really. $25 is really cheap.

[Andrew Walsh]

I love how absolutely useless the screen cap you sent me was. There's no, like, name on it or anything. Like, you sent me an image of it, but, like, it says 25.99. But, like, what is it listed as? What does the. The listing say? How is it.

[Luke Burbank]

Let me tell you what my. What it says. This is in Shopify. It says it's. You know what it's called?

[Andrew Walsh]

Black. Okay. Black.

[Luke Burbank]

The name of the product.

[Andrew Walsh]

It literally just says if I type in black gun. And first of all, I also love the fact that I'm now typing in all kinds of guns into my browser. You just sent me an email with the subject line gun.

[Luke Burbank]

I'm pushing my E word.

[Andrew Walsh]

We're really going to be on some watch list.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, okay. I think I actually just.

[Andrew Walsh]

We're going to be recruited not on watch lists.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay, let's see. I don't know. I'm trying to. I might be able to find it later. I know, I'm sorry. That was not helpful. But that's like as close as I can get to whatever the original. If you were. If we were scrolling my stupid TikTok feed, we'd be seeing nothing but ads for this thing. But. So here's the deal. All of a sudden I'm like, well, that wouldn't. Part of this makes sense now because there's no way to pump this thing up. There's no way to shoot the bb. There's no place for a canister to go. But a bullet has its own propulsion device in it.

[Caller/Avalon]

It.

[Luke Burbank]

That's part of how a bullet works. And if you have a. Basically, what do you call the. Not the trigger, but is it the hammer? What do you call the part that comes down and basically like, activates the back of. We probably have at least a few people out there who know from firearms and are like, oh, my God, this is. This is humiliating for them. But like, you know, the thing that gets cocked back and then what that does is that. That makes contact that strikes the back of the bullet, which creates an explosion which propels the bullet. Right.

[Andrew Walsh]

So, yeah, the bullet has its. Yeah, the bullet is.

[Luke Burbank]

Is propelling itself.

[Andrew Walsh]

Bullet has a propellant in it. A BB gunner pellet gun. The gun has the propellant, which is.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, the BB is not itself like a projector.

[Andrew Walsh]

And by the way, I found the video of this thing that you're talking about. I'm gonna actually play this for real. And this is not saying you have this.

[Luke Burbank]

And I don't know if this is the specific.

[Andrew Walsh]

This, I guess, called life card. The life.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes.

[Andrew Walsh]

Lifeguard folds. It looks exactly like what you described.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay, this is exactly.

[Andrew Walsh]

This is the life card.

[Luke Burbank]

It's an assassination weapon that can hold a single bullet.

[Caller/Avalon]

It.

[Luke Burbank]

And have a silencer attached. It looks. Let me tell you this, but when.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

I promise you that wasn't the ad that I watched.

[Andrew Walsh]

No, but is this the one that you saw later, though, that scared you?

[Luke Burbank]

No, I've never heard the word assassination.

[Andrew Walsh]

Weapon, but I see it folds like a little seven. And then he's putting what looks like a bullet in there. Like you said, it looks like a.22 caliber, although I certainly don't know these things either. And they're out in a field somewhere and they are shooting cans. This is the life car.

[Luke Burbank]

It's an assassination weapon that can hold a single bullet. It looks like a card, but when opened, it transforms into a gun.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay, this is interesting. It looks like. This is weird. So there's a whole bunch of attachments for it, including this one guy has a silencer on it. Other people have other, like, almost like sights that they've added to it. So it's like this tiny little thing that you can continue to build out. I do wonder if you're in some sort of part of the Internet where they're getting around laws by selling one thing that is legal to sell online with like this without a background check. But then you continue to build up around it, and the next thing you know, you have a very dangerous weapon on your hands. I have no idea.

[Luke Burbank]

Washington's gun.

[Andrew Walsh]

Just stay away from James Garfield.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, this. I did help him get elected, though. So I think I have a. A certain amount of action.

[Andrew Walsh]

I am super curious as to what the hell you bought, because this would not be legal to sell something that takes bullets like this for $26 on TikTok. Like, that's just not.

[Luke Burbank]

That's okay. So that's the other big part of it. So. So again, just to reiterate, the first ad that I saw, I think they must have had a silencer on it because it sounded like a BB gun when the guy fired it. And certainly nobody called it an assassin weapon that holds one bullet. I would have been like, miss me with that?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, of course.

[Luke Burbank]

Like, literally and figuratively. Also, miss me with that. If you're bringing. If you're an assassin's Bullet. So, so again, I think the first one that I saw, the ad that I saw, I think the guy must have had a silencer on there. I didn't realize this. So that it made it sound when he was firing this thing like a BB gun. Right? It didn't sound like it didn't have, have the explosive sound of firing a bullet. And then as I continue to see more ads for it and continue to try to figure out what did I just buy, like, how does this thing work? Then it became at some point like I became aware that this is possibly something that fires a.22 caliber bullets one at a time. Like, so, you know, it's like a, you know, you keep a couple in the handle or you could. And then you can put them in the barrel. But then I was like, okay, is it legal that I just bought that? Like, am I allowed to buy that on the Internet? And it turns out in Washington state, yes. Like, I was like, do I have to register If I have a.22 caliber gun, do I have to register it in the state of Washington? The answer is no, Andrew. You don't have to register any guns in the state of Washington. If you. Now, if you buy a gun from like a, you know, a gun store or a wholesaler or whatever, they're supposed to have paperwork around it.

[Andrew Walsh]

But like, as far as federal registry. Right. Am I this much of an idiot?

[Luke Burbank]

What I, I did a cursory Googling of this and what it sounded like to me was, in the state of Washington, like, for instance, if this thing shows up and it's a gun, technically speaking, I don't have to register it in the state of Washington. I don't have to like call up the governor and say, you know, and by the way, I would be very surprised if there's very stringent federal gun legislation, considering how powerful the NRA has been as a lobbying organization. I mean, what are the federal gun laws of the moment? I'm not sure on that actually, because I feel like there are some places that it's pretty unregulated. So some states where it's pretty wild west, right?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I would, I would assume. And by the way, I'm doing a lot of Googling on this. I have a report for you, but it's, it's not going to clear everything up, but it's going to get us a little bit closer to what's going on. If you're interested.

[Luke Burbank]

The end of this, not the end of the story, but the place where we're at in the story is I can't. Even if I accidentally bought a. Something that could theoretically fire a.22 caliber bullet, well, first of all, I'm just gonna throw it out when it gets here. But also, there's no way that can be.25.

[Andrew Walsh]

No.

[Luke Burbank]

Like, I think I probably just got ripped off. Like, I'm very curious about what is going to arrive at my house because. Because while I'm a little unsettled that I may have purchased a firearm off the Internet, I also cannot believe in a universe. I refuse to believe in a universe where I can order a functioning firearm of any caliber for $25. Like, whatever is going to show up is going to be such. Again, to go back to old Walt B. It's going to be such Chinese bullshit that it actually is a calming effect for me. Like, it's actually calming me down because. Because whatever. Like, I had a moment of being like, holy, did I just violate the law here accidentally? Did I just do something illegal by buying a real firearm off the Internet without going through the proper channels or whatever. That was my. That was a real fear that I had. And then I was like, wait a minute, it can't be $25. Whatever they're going to send me is going to be so janky. It is going to be so non functional that I don't think I actually have to be that worried. I think, I think I want to get it in the mail so that I can open it and tell you about it and tell the audience about it and then probably throw it out immediately or keep it because I bet you anything it doesn't work.

[Andrew Walsh]

So this is interesting. And I could play some more audio of this. So one person is talking about. Exactly. It was a similar. A similar experience to yours. It says, I just saw an ad for a pocket guard, which is a foldable.22 caliber pistol, caliber pistol shaped like a credit card. It's being sold for 25.99. It sounds like a great deal. Clicking on the link takes you to a website called outpeed and there's a screen. I thought it was outspeed at first, but it does say outpeed. And so that's weird. And then a bunch of people are. And then they're saying, I think this is a scam. And then all these other people are saying, oh, you're saying that a $26.22 caliber pistol being sold from a place called Outpeed on TikTok is a scam. In other words, everybody's just sort of dunking on the original poster here. But now I'm on a website called. And by the way I do. I mean you want to talk about RIP my ads because RIP to like whatever was being targeted towards me. I'm no longer going to be advertised grapefruits from QFC as I scroll through TikTok clearly because I have. I'm going to get nothing but gun ads.

[Luke Burbank]

It's all about tactical, Andrew. It's just all about tactical gear, dude.

[Andrew Walsh]

But there is something. So I'm on a website called Trailblazer Firearms.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh good.

[Andrew Walsh]

And they have a special page set.

[Luke Burbank]

Of their politics are amazing Slash fake life card.

[Andrew Walsh]

Notice warning fake life card. We have been made aware of a copy of our life card that is not a real gun. It does not chamber a 22 WMR cartridge and does not have a serial number. It is prominently marked with a GG in place of our logo like the letter G twice. This is a fake, not made or sold by Trailblazer Firearms. Unfortunately, the copycats use our name and our trademarks along with our photos and videos. We understand that these have been selling for around $30 or $40 and they ship directly to the customer's house. All real firearm sales must be handled through federal firearms license to complete a transfer. We only ship our guns to another ffl so there are some laws around this. So it sounds like maybe the thing that this is my guess as I try to put this all together in real time here. My guess is that there is this place called Trailblaze Firearms that makes something like this that was the OG and it does fire real.22 caliber bullets. And now somebody has basically taken that and made a very cheap version of it that probably shoots BBs or pellets in some way. I'm guessing spring loaded. I'm guessing that maybe what you're getting is a really, really cheap like BB gun that maybe is a spring. Because that is another option for BB guns, like a spring loaded one. But I, but those tend to, I, I think not be. I didn't even know if they still made those. I feel like that's an antiquated and not very strong propulsed BB situation. Right. Could be wrong about that. So that's my guess is that we're now seeing these weird ads like that one I just called up that called it an assassination weapon. I think that they're like trying to. I mean in a certain way I think it's a good thing that you got scammed, but you didn't scam because you wanted a little toy. But I Think what they're trying to do is convince people that they're selling this actual secret.22 caliber. That's such a hard word for me to say gun. But they're mad that somebody's ripping them off and selling a BB version online. And you're like oh good, I got a BB version. That's what I wanted. That's what I'm hoping is the case here.

[Luke Burbank]

That's what I think is the most likely scenario because of the price point, right? Like because of the it being so incredibly cheap that I, I feel like it's going to look, look pretty similar. Now I'm at this website of this other like gun thing that you're talking about and like it looks, I think my feeling is, my guess is it's going to look very similar to that and it's going to be essentially non functional.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'll be interested if it has so cheap G logo that this place was claiming. I wonder if you got that exact one or I mean at this point it could just be a million different copycats of this or whatever. But again we're just hoping that you did get a copycat. That's all, that's all you want. Like you don't by the way, I'm with you. I got my bb. My mom was very anti gun but I think somehow I wore my parents out by the time I was 13 or maybe even 14. I finally got a BB gun and then I kind of a couple of BB guns and I loved them. And when I bought this house here in Seattle I was like, is there room in my life for a BB gun now? But I still don't have a place that I would feel comfortable taking something that looks like a real gun even into my backyard and even shooting cans with it. I just think that it would freak people out and you know, plenty of people walk by our little yard or whatever and I don't think it would actually be dangerous the way I would do it, but it could certainly look dangerous and it could also be dangerous I suppose. So I'm not doing it. But like I have been, I mean for decades now I've been thinking, God, could I ever get a BB gun again? They are fun.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes. And I, we had one, we had a like a classic like Daisy kind of BB gun or something that was like, like for some reason lived in my parents closet. Like and it was definitely like you're not allowed to like I was never allowed to go get the Daisy BB gun without my dad and like you know, run around with it or shoot, you know, it at cans in the backyard as a kid or anything was even as a BB gun. It was treated like a firearm, basically.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

But yeah, it was just a, A. It was a very weird experience because like, yeah, for me to have this kind of moment of possible realization that I have like. And by the way, I'm looking at the. Again at the website of the place that makes this thing. It's $350. The real thing. The real one is $350.

[Andrew Walsh]

So it looks like it gets shipped to some sort of like official dealer that according to that website, then it does get registered with the, with the government and then sold.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, as well it should.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

So. Yeah. So I. But like, it was a very strange thing for me to just be like. To like actually have a moment. I wouldn't call it a full panic because I thought, well, I can always just literally throw it out when it shows up and just like the problem is solved. But to just be like. Because I guess what it really goes to is my conception of myself. Like, I am so not a gun person. I so do not want to have guns in my home. I so do not think that they make. Make any part of our lives better. And I think that they're such an incredibly sort of pernicious force in our society. To. To feel like I just accidentally became a gun person was really weird for about an hour.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, no, I could imagine that. And also just thinking like. And like, what. What kind of a digital trail am I leaving here? Honestly? Just like, is it just weird? You know what I mean? Like, am I now officially on the list of somebody who bought this? Now I want to bring. Believe it or not. And I had a feeling this might happen when I looked at the show sheet and when I mentioned to you my dream last night. But I want to bring this back to bananas for a second, if you can believe it. I'm being serious here. Have you seen these commercials? That totally plays into the idea that the world is. I mean, it's everything that you and I hate. It plays in this idea that this world is a really scary place. You see this woman and she's like, just looks like a middle class woman in her 30s or something. And she's walking through the streets of what is clearly supposed to be like Portland or Seattle with rioters and homeless people. Just like it looks all. Yeah, we saw it on tv, I think during football games or something. There's like all this violence. And she's like, are you, you know, if you live in this world with all of these violent protests or whatever, you might feel unsafe, but I have my banana. I'm gonna play this for you. And she's walking around with a banana, like a perfect little banana that's peeled and I don't know if she's taken a bite out of it or not, but it's like kind of a perfect banana peeled halfway down. And she's carrying it as she walks through the streets. And I think various scen with riots.

[Luke Burbank]

And violent looting going on all over the country.

[Caller/Avalon]

I don't feel safe leaving the house without this banana. Normally I would be worried about this creepy guy, but I've got my banana with me.

[Luke Burbank]

That same car has been sitting outside.

[Caller/Avalon]

My house for a while now. Better keep this banana by the door. Sounds ridiculous right? Now imagine this banana was capable of incapacitating an attacker from over 60ft.

[Andrew Walsh]

Now I am going to stop the commercial there because I don't want them, I don't know if they're going to say the name of their brand and I don't want to. To help advertise even in the most anti ad vertisial way. I don't want to give their name out. But I think what it is is one of those ads that is selling and I haven't even looked this up yet, but I think that if you then go and you look up this brand, you see that they're actually selling some kind of a gun that they're probably not allowed to sell on television. And so they, they insert a banana instead and make all the talking points about a banana. But then you're like, what the hell is this banana commercial? Banana breath. And then you look it up and you see that it's like some sort of a weapon.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes, it looks like it is. Now I'm on the case. It's a less than lethal defense pistol is what they're looking for.

[Andrew Walsh]

It looks like a gun though, right?

[Luke Burbank]

I'm sure it looks exactly like a gun, but it's something that's maybe not quite as. Maybe, hopefully not quite as lethal, but is like. Also what's weird is I found the same ad you're talking about. It's. And you might have mentioned this too. It's so clearly AI.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, I did not mention that. But it does feel not. You think that's a real person?

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I'm. Well, on Reddit someone says this stupid ass AI banana and as I'm watching it, I think she's AI. I don't think that she's a real person. The. The alleged sort of.

[Andrew Walsh]

Are you watching it? I'm going to send you another one because for the same brand. And here's another commercial and I'd never seen this one before. And I'll play the audio here. I'm gonna just respond to your email that says gun Luke and send you a link to another commercial. And this is on that website I spot so truly did hair on TV. It's not like a YouTube thing. And this guy looks like he's standing in his kitchen. I'm just curious by the way if you think he's AI too because I didn't clock that on her, but I totally believe you.

[Luke Burbank]

This banana is a lethal launcher capable of shooting rock hard kinetic and tear gas mixed with pepper chemical irritants.

[Caller/Avalon]

The ammo can incapacitate an attacker from six.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay, so it's a whole bunch of people and they're all just holding bananas in various rooms of their house talking about what the banana can do. It's an interesting. I gotta say this is where we get into the conversation about what is good advertising and what isn't. Like this seems like. This seems so. I know I use this word a lot, but it's so pernicious. It feeds on the. You know, like by whipping up fear and then feeding on those fears to sell more weapons to Americans is everything I absolutely hate.

[Luke Burbank]

What if you feel differently about it? If you knew the company was based in Scottsdale, I'm shocked. Peace and love to our listeners in Scottsdale. But that's the most Scottsdale thing I've ever seen.

[Andrew Walsh]

But does it work as an advertisement? Absolutely. You see this thing and you're like, well, what the hell are they advertising? And next thing you know you're on their website.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, you know, a lesson like I would say a less sort of dangerous and horrific version of that in ads that I thought was really good. You might have talked about this on after these messages was the commercial where everyone's walking around with ice cream cones. And the ice cream cones are. I think they're probably supposed to be iPhones maybe or something.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes. I don't like that. I mean I like that ad.

[Luke Burbank]

You don't like that ad?

[Andrew Walsh]

I like that ad. If it were advertising ice cream. That ad makes me want ice cream cones so badly. Something that I never really crave. And the thing is, yeah, I think it's supposed to be like either a Samsung or some sort of anti iPhone commercial and it's like kind of making fun of people who have iPhones but they're replacing their iPhones with ice cream cones. I feel like the message is muddled. And also, people like ice cream replace the iPhone with something that, that I don't like. Why? It makes me want an iPhone and an ice cream cone.

[Luke Burbank]

I had a different reaction because one of the things they're having people do with the ice cream is like a bunch of stuff that ice cream cones, you don't want to do, like put it up against your face or like stare into it or like smash it into something or poke it or. I know what you mean. The ice cream does look pretty delicious in it. But it also, it makes. And I say this as an iPhone user, it makes all of the iPhones users really look like sheeple who are being really kind of dumb and think they're cool, but are actually just staring into an ice cream cone in some way. That was kind of my take on that.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's definitely what they're going for. But it doesn't work for me because I think they make the ice cream cone look so, so good. And I just don't think they sell the point enough. Like, do you remember this? So this is for Google Pixel, so obviously going after the iPhone here. But Samsung a long time ago now had an ad that really went after the sort of quote unquote sheepleness of iPhone users. And they did a. By making fun of people who wait in long, long lines for the new iPhone release or something. And they all seem grim and miserable, but they have to get their new iPhone or whatever. I don't really share those feelings. I don't care what kinds of phones people use. And so I don't buy into that whole narrative. But at least for me, from an advertising standpoint, that made sense to me. You seem like they drove home this idea that an iPhone just is a miserable existence because you're chained to that experience where whatever. This just. I don't know, man. And I'm rewatching it now. When they take the ice Chrome, like a woman takes an ice cream cone out of her. Out of her purse, but it's still in perfect shape. There's a woman using an ice cream cone as a phone while she's making a viral video. They're showing these sign makers throw up this big billboard that says the all new vanilla pro. And it looks like that's also part.

[Luke Burbank]

Of the joke, right? Is that you're being so vanilla by having an iPhone, which I think is kind of a pretty clever idea.

[Andrew Walsh]

So tasty though, like, I. I Don't know. I can't get over this. And I'm not saying I'm right about this. I'm just saying these are my feelings about it. Like, this ad totally doesn't make me feel negatively about the iPhone. It makes me kind of iPhone curious. And certainly ice cream curious. Maybe I'm just hungry, my dude. I don't know.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, because here's where I think. This is why I think the commercial works for me. Me, I hate being sticky. It's one of my. I mean, nobody loves it, but, like, I particularly hate it. I hate having food on my face. I hate having sticky food on. And so when I'm seeing someone, like, and I'm watching one of these versions too, of this commercial where somebody's there, people are trying to tap pay with their ice cream cone, and it's just like smashing it against the little tap pay thing. Or like, you know, somebody's like, again, trying to type into it, but their fingers just going right into it. It all I feel like is. All I can imagine is how sticky everyone's hands are, how melty the whole thing is. Like, it actually for me, because of how much I despise that feeling. It's creating for me a negative association with the iPhone.

[Andrew Walsh]

So you and I are exactly alike in that I hate stickiness. Like, and I'll put up with it because I like certain foods that you wouldn't put up with. Like, I will sit down for a full thing of, like, ribs or something, but hopefully I will make sure nobody in the room is looking at me and that I have, like, three paper.

[Luke Burbank]

Towels next to you.

[Andrew Walsh]

Exactly. So I really hate that feeling too. And as somebody with a beard, I don't eat ice cream cones hardly ever either, because then it's just really hard to get out. And so I'm totally with you on that. But I don't feel like this commercial leans into that enough because that's my problem with it. In almost every situation, the ice cream looks good. One exception. A man goes to pick up his keys and his wallet and his ice cream cone off a table, and when he picks it up, you see that it's left a little bit of stickiness behind. But in every other situation, even when they're going to pay for something at a POS Station, they. You see them smash the ice cream cone down, but they don't show them pulling the ice cream cone back and leaving. Gunk and stickiness. Yeah, people are holding up to their faces, but they're pristine.

[Luke Burbank]

You never. Yeah.

[Andrew Walsh]

If they were showing these people getting smeared by ice cream. I would be.

[Luke Burbank]

Or if they're melting and it's hitting your hand in that way, that. That would be. I think you're right. I do also love. They use. I think they use, like, the Nancy Sinatra version, like, song Sugar Town.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, yeah. Which I also love.

[Luke Burbank]

Freaking. I'm just such a fan of this song, Luke.

[Andrew Walsh]

I forgot about that. I'm glad you mentioned that. I love that song so much too.

[Luke Burbank]

But that also then only adds to the. Like makes you. Makes you more excited about what everyone's doing in the commercial.

[Andrew Walsh]

It really does. And again, as somebody who hates everything you just said about the experience of eating ice cream only, or an ice cream cone specifically only. More so because of this mustache situation I got going on. How did they make this commercial that is supposed to make me feel bad about another product, make me feel better about two products I'm not usually interested in? But again, I sound like I'm arguing with you, Luke. I just feel passionately about this. But I'm not saying that you're wrong. I'm just saying for me, it just. It just doesn't work. 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 rightly. Emails or vmails.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I got a voicemail for you here, Luke, from across the pond, as it were. Why were we talking about Macbeth before the holiday days?

[Luke Burbank]

I feel like maybe either. Maybe I was mentioning Hamnet.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, maybe. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

That movie that's getting a lot of Oscar love.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, is it. Is it about Shakespeare?

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, yeah, Hugely. I think I wouldn't be shocked to see it actually win the Oscar.

[Andrew Walsh]

Interesting. Yeah, I. I only saw the trailer. It didn't look like a movie for me necessarily. But anyway, we were talking about Macbeth and, like, how I think you made a reference like, oh, they call it the Scottish play because supposedly you said that.

[Luke Burbank]

Because I couldn't remember. I think you might have brought it up. Like, it's bad luck to say the name in the theater.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Like, so you say the. Whatever. The other thing instead of saying the name of it or something.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. And I feel like we both maybe fumbled our way through that, kind of not knowing what we were talking about, myself especially. And we got this voicemail from listener Avalon.

[Caller/Avalon]

Ahoy hoy, friendos. This is Avalon. You're Scott 10, but I'm not Scottish, as you can tell. I'm from San Diego. But I was just listening to the Latest episode of tvtl. And I had to chime in with the whole Scottish play. Don't say Macbeth in the theater. It's cursed. And I used to tour a one man performance of Macbeth called Is this a Dagger? Where a Scottish, a well known beloved Scottish actor played all the roles. Is very good. We've taken it all over the world. And he told me, because he's a huge history of Scotland guy, that the reason why they say it's cursed is not because it will actually bring you bad luck, but because at the time that Macbeth came out, it was so popular that there were groups of actors who traveled around the country, the country being the United Kingdom, and they could play, they could play all of the roles. So you have basically an on demand group of actors who could just bring you Macbeth. So if you owned a theater and you're doing a show and it's not going well, the producers would often be like, well, we could just get Macbeth in because those guys are always around. Or we can bring them in. They're not far away. And so they would say, don't say it. Because saying Macbeth meant the show was really bad and they were going to replace it with McDonald's and over time it became known as the Scottish play instead of Macbeth. And don't say it because it's a curse. But really it was a curse because it was so good that any new work was under threat of being replaced. I hope this made sense. Love you guys. What you do is so important. Bye.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hey, thanks, Avalon.

[Luke Burbank]

That's amazing.

[Andrew Walsh]

Right?

[Luke Burbank]

Totally fascinating. So in other words, it was like, it was sort of a job protection thing. It was like, if you were in a play, don't give the theater owner any ideas about firing all of you and bringing, just bringing old Macbeth back, which was always popular. It's called Is this a Dagger? That was the one man show that Avalon was touring with.

[Andrew Walsh]

Did Avalon say that? Because I started Googling right away trying to figure out who she was protecting there. And I was wondering if it was Alan Cumming because he did a one man show of Macbeth that apparently was wildly popular.

[Luke Burbank]

But I think she said that the name of the show was Is this a Dag?

[Caller/Avalon]

Oh.

[Luke Burbank]

Which has me thinking about my one man show. Is this a gun?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, right. I would make a show title, except I don't feel like that's.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, no, let's not.

[Andrew Walsh]

Good. SEO.

[Luke Burbank]

My one hour meditation on Did I buy a gun on the Internet accidentally.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, I will say that I hope I didn't step all over Your story there. I'm really fascinated to find out what ends up going on.

[Luke Burbank]

I kind of am too. Like, A, I should be more careful about the crap I buy on the Internet. I mean, that's an obvious one. 1. But B, I am genuinely very curious about what is going to get delivered to my house for, you know, 25.99. I. I hope at least it's something like. In other words, I hope it's not a total, like, you know, a total scam to where, like, literally they just never. And it would appear. I mean, I'm getting these updates from the TikTok shop. And again, the TikTok shop, historically has. I've never. Never bought something off of there that then hasn't arrived. So I do think that they have some kind of a. I don't know, quality control. Not quality control, but, like, there's some kind of a deal that I think if you're selling stuff through the TikTok shop, you have to probably actually mail it out because otherwise you'll get kicked off of there pretty quickly. But what it is that will arrive here is the real. Is the real question.

[Andrew Walsh]

My prediction is you're going to love it. My prediction is people who feel like it's a ripoff or a scam are looking for a more powerful gun. I think you're gonna get a probably somewhat chintzy toy. I mean, my one thing would be if it's really chintzy, maybe be careful around it especially.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. Like, if it's dangerous.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. If it, like, you know, if the BB kind of goes out.

[Luke Burbank]

If it's gonna hang fire on me.

[Andrew Walsh]

Exactly.

[Luke Burbank]

No, I think I'll. I'm. You know, again, we will see what actually shows up here. But. But I. My expectations are very low, which is actually a good thing. Like, I don't want. I'm not hoping for a functioning illegal firearm.

[Andrew Walsh]

No, no.

[Luke Burbank]

As I'm sure a lot of the people that buy it would be. Be.

[Andrew Walsh]

It would be amazing if I end up buying. If we just end up like, moving a bunch of units on this thing.

[Luke Burbank]

I hope not. I hope. I sure hope not. So. Okay, well, you know, we're already doing that thing. We're only two days into the week, Andrew, and we're doing that thing where it's like, I'm looking at the show sheet. We got to talk. Marty Supreme. At some point, I want to tell you about my newfound handy handyman status, where I tackled something last night at my home that I'm very proud of because it's the kind of thing that I normally just like freak out and call someone, you know, call the fix it guys to come out on. But I fixed it myself, so we're going to have plenty to talk about. Also, I've accidentally turned the Madrona Hill studio into a shoes off environment. Andrew, some real camel's nose under the tent going on here. So much to discuss as the week continue continues. But we will pick this conversation up tomorrow when we bring you more imaginary radio. In the meantime, thanks for listening. Have a great Tuesday everybody. And please remember, no Mountain Too Tall.

[Andrew Walsh]

And good luck to all. Power out.