#4643 Subterfuge In Space

Summary

TBTL #4643: “Subterfuge In Space” – Summary
Released: January 16, 2026
Hosts: Luke Burbank & Andrew Walsh

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Episode Overview

In this Friday episode, Luke and Andrew traverse their usual terrain of delightful digressions — from their deep-dive on the covert return of astronauts from space, to the perennial Pacific Northwest debates about truck parking and regional manners, to intensely granular discussions about fonts, cats’ hygiene, and the emotional impact of car cleanliness. Laced with characteristic TBTL banter, the episode delivers both laughs and genuine insights into the oddities of everyday life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Space Capsule Subterfuge

• [02:14 - 04:23, 40:04 - 43:44]
  • The guys discuss the news story about astronauts returning early to Earth due to illness onboard the International Space Station.
  • NASA’s lengths to hide the identity and ailment of the sick astronaut surprises both hosts.
  • NASA’s practice: All four astronauts went to the hospital so media couldn’t single out the ill one; no details about the sickness have been released.
  • Both hosts express suspicion and curiosity, with Andrew referencing Octavia Butler’s sci-fi about space diseases and the “red flag” raised by this degree of secrecy.
    • Quote:
      "The fact that they sent all four of these aliens to the hospital to cover this up is a red flag." — Andrew [41:20]

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2. Baseball Season Anticipation (and Potential Strike)

• [02:52 - 06:52]
  • Andrew confesses his annual off-season relapse into obsessively listening to baseball podcasts, particularly about the Seattle Mariners and the Kansas City Royals.
  • Discussion touches on looming labor issues:
    • The 2026–27 MLB seasons might face strikes/shortened seasons, affecting team management and player contracts.
    • Both hosts recall past pro sports strikes, with Luke reminiscing about "replacement Seahawks" in the NFL.
    • Quote:
      "We...look like we’re going to have a pretty good team, the Seattle Mariners–and of course it would be a season where we don’t even get to play the whole season." — Luke [04:23]

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3. Mariners "Donovan" Memes and Text Chain Humor

• [06:53 - 10:47]
  • Andrew expounds on his joy in crafting Donovan-themed memes when Mariners players share the singer's name, and his hope for new entrant Brendan Donovan.
  • A gentle ribbing occurs over how niche the Donovan singer references are.
    • Quote:
      “It’s funny, the amount you think about Donovan the singer versus the amount that I think about Donovan the singer…there’s a fairly wide gap.” — Luke [08:53]

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4. Theme Song Origins & Podcast Copyright Perils

• [10:47 - 12:28]
  • The hosts recount the TBTL theme ("Catch My Disease" by Ben Lee) and marvel at their continued legal luck in using it. Fun trivia: Ben Lee is married to actress Ione Skye (daughter of singer Donovan).
    • Quote:
      “Everybody just be cool, okay? Everybody be cool. And also stop emailing me about backing your truck up.” — Luke [12:28]

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5. Truck Parking, Regional Stereotypes, and Listener Blowback

• [12:28 - 20:26]

  • Luke updates Andrew on the storm he stirred up about people backing large trucks into parking spaces, especially in "suburb-adjacent" areas.

  • Andrew recounts his confrontation with an SUV driver over misusing compact parking spots.

  • Discussion expands to regional differences in manners, including unsolicited observations from both hosts.

    • Quote:
      “It just seems the people around here don’t think about it as much...what do they say about cats? ‘If it fits, I sit.’” — Andrew [20:12]

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6. Regional Differences in Public Behavior and Driving

• [20:12 - 22:38]
  • Andrew asserts that Pacific Northwesterners are less spatially aware than people elsewhere, referencing firsthand observations from Ohio and Massachusetts.
  • Observations on aggressive driving in different cities: Massachusetts (“massholes”), Los Angeles, Vegas, Phoenix, and more.
  • Luke notes how every region thinks its drivers are the worst (unless it’s you).
    • Quote:
      “If you’re doing standup…just talk about, ‘Get a load of these Chicago drivers’—everyone will laugh knowingly.” — Luke [20:26]

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7. Travel Logistics: Trains, Ubers, and Airport Parking Hacks

• [24:16 - 28:51]
  • The duo exchanges travel hacks, from Andrew and Genevieve's recent airport parking epiphany to their general preferences for driving versus ride-shares and the misery of public transit after a long trip.
    • Quote:
      “You gotta schedule in an extra hour of travel…that’s pretty significant. And I don’t mind it as much on the way out of town, but, God, it’s a real bummer on the way back.” — Andrew [25:05]

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8. Clean Cars, Emotional Well-being, and Tools of the Trade

• [28:58 - 33:41]
  • They wax poetic about the transformative power of a clean car and share details about their beloved Bissell upholstery cleaners.
  • Andrew laments a mysterious seat stain and the obstacles of cleaning cars during a Pacific NW winter.
    • Quote:
      “My emotional well-being is directly related to how messy my car is.” — Luke [29:12]

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9. Listener Donations & Arm Wrestling Anecdotes

• [34:37 - 39:12]
  • The show takes a break to thank TBTL’s donors, with classic TBTL tangents, including:
    • Luke’s immersive journalism: entering (and instantly losing) the Washington State Arm Wrestling Championship.
    • Andrew quips about participants' "Larry the Cable Guy energy."
    • Over-the-Top and custody-by-arm-wrestling jokes.

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10. Listener Emails & Voicemails: Regional Hostility, Cat Hygiene, Applesauce & Fonts

• [44:11 - 56:11]
  • Inconsiderate People [45:28]: Jeffrey, a listener who moved from Cleveland to Eugene, finds Northwesterners markedly less considerate in public spaces.
    • Quote:
      “People here tend to just act as if they are the only ones using a shared resource… I bristle at it pretty much every time.” — Jeffrey [46:23]
  • Cat Stove [46:41]: Biagio shares humorous woes about cats lounging under the wood stove and the unique horror of cat “butt maintenance.”
    • Quote:
      “It’s as fantastic as you think it would be.” — Biagio [48:26]
  • Font & Applesauce Nerd-out [51:31]: Jeffrey discusses the technical history of serif fonts (good for print), sans-serif (good for screen), the origins of red applesauce (Red Hots candies), and Courier’s fixed-width properties.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Odors cannot travel through the vacuum of space, so we will get into that.” — Luke [02:12]
• “If we land Brendan Donovan, it means we have a new lease on life when it comes to Donovan related humor on the text chain.” — Andrew [07:32]
• “We would not be here without folks like Jody Patterson of beautiful Bothell, Washington.” — Luke [34:55] (exemplar of their self-referential donor banter)
• “Why do they say ‘compact’ on this? I can park my Toyota 4Runner here just fine in the compact. But I didn’t even realise how rude I was being.” — Luke [17:34]
• “If your body is a playground, play.” — Andrew [50:51] (on cat grooming rituals)
• “I wish I knew more about design. That’s what I should be doing… Should I just sign up for a class at the community college around the corner?” — Andrew [56:07]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:00 – 01:14: Cold open, joke about teeth and favorite color.
• 01:40 – 04:23: Opening chat; intro to the “subterfuge in space” story.
• 04:23 – 10:47: Baseball strike predictions; Mariners and Donovan memes.
• 12:28 – 20:26: Truck parking and "suburb-adjacent" stereotypes.
• 20:26 – 22:38: Regional behavior and driving styles.
• 24:16 – 28:51: Airport transit and parking hacks.
• 28:58 – 33:41: Car cleaning talk, Bissell endorsement.
• 34:37 – 39:12: Donor thank-yous and arm wrestling journalism tale.
• 40:04 – 43:44: NASA’s secrecy on astronaut illness.
• 44:11 – 56:11: Listener feedback (regional habits, cat woes, fonts, applesauce).

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Final Notes

The episode is classic TBTL: rambling but relatable, packed with specificity (how else would you get an in-depth discussion on Red Hots in applesauce and font kerning?) and fueled by that particular chemistry only lifelong friends can exude. At its heart, it’s a mini time-capsule of the obsessions and irritations of 2026, lovingly filtered through the TBTL lens.

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Power Out.

Transcript

[Pat]

My name is Pat, I'm from Michigan, and I have 32 teeth. Cool. Okay, just a reminder, everyone. The check in question is, what's your favorite color? I'll go next. I'm Baird, I have 32 teeth and my favorite color is blue. So, okay, and the middle question is, where are you from? None of the questions are, how many teeth do you have? That was what I was picking for my fun fact. I can see how that was confusing. There's also no fun fact. What about favorite color? Can we say our favorite color? Yeah, that's what we're doing. Yeah, do say your favorite color. What if in order to honestly answer that question, we do need to answer the teeth question? This isn't a test. Just like, introduce yourself. Okay, I have 31 teeth. I think the question was, how many teeth would you like?

[Andrew Walsh]

Tbtm. Guess what day it is. Guess what day it is. Friday, Friday. Gotta get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend.

[Luke Burbank]

Here's a 1 0.

[Andrew Walsh]

Swung on. There it goes. Deep left center. That ball is high. It is far. It is gone, but caught.

[Pat]

It's embarrassing and it's gross, but at.

[Andrew Walsh]

Least it's kind of funny. You know, a lot of people may not know this, but I happen to be quite famous. I've only ever said I love you to two men my entire life. Stone Cold Steve Austin and a guy in a dark club who I mistook for Stone Cold Steve Austin. Let's see again. All I know is this violates every.

[Luke Burbank]

Canon of respectable broadcasting. Well, all right. Hello, good morning and welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of tbtl, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. The word that comes to mind is ludicrous. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm a professional. Look it up in the book.

[Luke Burbank]

Coming to you once again from Chicago, Illinois, and the shores of beautiful but frigid Lake Michigan, where we have arrived, friends, at episode 4643 in a collector series.

[Andrew Walsh]

Let the fun begin.

[Luke Burbank]

Much to talk about on this Friday, including the hasty return to Earth of some astronauts that were up at the space station, I believe, and who had to come back early because one of them was not feeling great. And NASA is being. They're going to great lengths to make sure that we can't figure out which astronaut was having tummy trouble. Odors cannot travel through the vacuum of space, so we will get into that. Plus, we'll talk about big weekend plans with this guy. The longest running cobra of the show may be best Known for his depictions of the tall ships you face.

[Andrew Walsh]

Who are you facing?

[Luke Burbank]

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

[Andrew Walsh]

Good morning, Luke. It happened to me last night. This is, I think probably good news for you, bad news for the listeners or some section of the listeners. But market, it was January 15th yesterday, last night when I started to get back into baseball podcasts. Of course, when the season ended and the post season ended in October, I just sort of moved on from baseball for a while, but I don't know what happened. I think a couple of days ago I saw some sort of a post on social media about how the Kansas City Royals are bringing in their fences this year. Something that the Seattle Mariners did about, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago. And I was reading about what that could mean for the players on the Royals. Not even the main team I root for. Keep in mind a team in a different part of the country. And I'm reading about like, oh, well, what will this mean for the various hitters in the, on, on the Royals? And then I don't know, something just broke and then I started listening to a Royals podcast and then I started catching up on the last few days of Mariners related podcasts. And now here we are in mid January and I'm jonesing, I'm itching for baseball. We, the problem is everybody's already talking about the 2020 season. Like it's, it's definitely going to be shortened if it happens at all because everybody's already preparing for a labor strike. Did you know that this is the.

[Luke Burbank]

First time I'm not listening to baseball podcasts in the dead of winter? So I didn't know that. So that would be just our luck, wouldn't it, that we on paper look like we're going to have a pretty good team, the Seattle Mariners. And of course it would be a season where we don't even get to play the whole season.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes. Now this is 2027 we're talking about. So everybody feels like, okay, so, so 2026.

[Luke Burbank]

2026, yeah.

[Andrew Walsh]

But like people are talking along the lines of like contract agreements, like is this going to change how the Mariners are going to approach off seasons and two year contracts if it's kind of a given that the second year is not going to be a full season of baseball? And like on two different podcasts, like covering different teams, this was at least part of the conversation, a consideration. And it's, it's amazing to be, you know, listening to these, you know shows in literally mid January of 2026 and already like prognosticating what might happen in a two seasons from now, given that there's probably going to be some sort of a shortened season.

[Luke Burbank]

I'm trying to remember when was the last time there was a strike that was.

[Andrew Walsh]

I feel like it was before I was very into baseball and I've been watched, you know, I've been watching the Mariners for 15 years or something now. Right.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I forget there was one a while ago when I was a kid. I remember the NFL went on strike and I remember watching the replacement Seahawks.

[Andrew Walsh]

The replacement Seahawks? Oh, I didn't know they did that. They kept the game going. With scabs.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes. They played NFL football with guys that nobody recognized.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's interesting. How did that go?

[Luke Burbank]

Well, I was a kid, so I didn't really know any better. So I was like, yeah, they're wearing Seahawks uniforms, they're running around. I'm in for it.

[Andrew Walsh]

Sure. Okay.

[Luke Burbank]

But. But yeah, like nowadays, I don't think I'd be that interested in watching a bunch of guys who couldn't make the Seahawks but, you know, were willing to cross the picket lines.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, right. Right. Yeah. I don't know how. How I'd handle that. Now. The reason I bring this up is actually, though not related to anything I said. I got a little bit sidetracked there. What I wanted to tell you. And this is related to something that's going to be very important to you, I think. And literally none of the listeners but you and I are on a sports text chain with our friends called the Fun loving Criminals. You know that most of our listeners know that by this point last year for part of the season, we had a player named, I want to say Donovan Mitchell, not Donovan Mitchell. Who was our Donovan last year?

[Luke Burbank]

Donovan Solano.

[Andrew Walsh]

Donovan Solano. My apologies. I was blanking on that. And because of that and because of my love, or at least former love of the musician Donovan, it led to a lot of good Donovan related spoofs, wordplay and images, memes created by yours truly. That's me. And the problem was Donovan was not a very good baseball player in that particular moment. And so we shipped him off somewhere and I don't know where he is now. But now the big talk in Mariners Nation is if we land another star player, Brendan Donovan from the St. Louis Cardinals. And I had to take. I didn't put this on the main chain last night because I figured you guys are not. You have no idea what's going on. You're not thinking about baseball. You're thinking about football right now. But I did reach out to our friend Ders and said, you know, that if we land Brendan Donovan, it means we are. We have a new lease on life when it comes to Donovan related humor on the text chain. That's not nothing. That is. That is a. That is a. That is a little ray of sunshine for me on a gloomy January day.

[Luke Burbank]

Now here's my question. Did you save all of your Donovan related memes that you made, and do you have a special file for them? And what is the folder called?

[Andrew Walsh]

You gotta have memes ready. You gotta hit them with the memes. No, unfortunately, the.

[Luke Burbank]

Every meme known to me, the only.

[Andrew Walsh]

Meme that I actually remember making actually had Donovan Solano's face on it. It was. It was a remastering of the famous photo from the Donovan record. A gift from a flower to a garden. Only I replaced Donovan Letch's face with Donovan Solano's face. I remember this. Yeah. Some of my best work, honestly, it's. It was pretty smooth that I don't feel like that particular image would shift over to the Brendan Donovan era. And God, let us hope we actually have a Brendan Donovan era. But I feel like I can create something new for y'. All.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. I don't think I even. It's funny, the amount that you think about Donovan the singer versus the amount that I think about Donovan the singer on a. On a regular basis is. It's a. There's a fairly wide gap.

[Andrew Walsh]

Sure.

[Luke Burbank]

In. In how much. So when you put that Donovan Solano meme out with the COVID of that Donovan record, I had no earthly idea what you were referring to.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Until you explained it to me. Because you were sort of like, assuming that everybody knows what the COVID of. What is it from the Earth to a flower is.

[Andrew Walsh]

Or you're just playing dumb now. It's obviously called a gift from a flower to a garden.

[Luke Burbank]

You know, I think that you're assuming that everyone just knows what that album looks like, just, you know, sort of immediately. And that is not the case. So what you. What you need to do if we do get Brendan Donovan and you're going to send more Donovan memes, I need you to give me, like, a heads up, like, incoming. This is going to be related to the fact that this guy has the same name as the singer, Donovan.

[Andrew Walsh]

I remember your actual reaction to that when I sent it to the text chain was, this is the best thing ever. We have to talk about this. On the show so that it can be a show pick on Monday. I remember that. So don't pretend like you aren't following along with my. Just fire Donovan tweets. What?

[Luke Burbank]

I'm.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm a little bit distracted here because I'm gonna set. You told me I have to give you a heads up when I'm gonna send you a another Donovan picture.

[Luke Burbank]

If it's a joke that's premised on me knowing about Donovan, give me a heads up so I can do a little research before it arrives in my inbox and then I'll be able to enjoy it fully.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay, well, I'm just sending you just in case we do end up signing Don Brendan Donovan. In this case, I'm right now sending you a fantastic photo of the singer Donovan that you can use and memeify later on this year. It's Donovan holding a tiny little disco ball in both of his hands, which are like outstretched in front of him. And he's cupping it like it's a delicate, delicate jewel or the soul of Marcellus Wallace or something.

[Luke Burbank]

You know, I can really see Ione sky in him.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. I can't picture her face. And you know me, I'm bad with faces, but let me look her up.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, that's his daughter.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

And she played on Arrested Development. She plays. I think it's like Ann Veal's parents. She's Anvil's mom. Maybe her.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes, exactly. You gotta lock that down. Yeah, I do. Yeah. Now that you say that, I'm not great with face stuff, but, yeah, I can see a little bit of family resistance there.

[Luke Burbank]

This is a fun fact. A fun TBTL related fact. I believe Ione sky is married to the singer Ben Lee.

[Andrew Walsh]

Exactly.

[Luke Burbank]

Ben Lee, who performs the song Catch My Disease, which is the theme song of TBTL all these years later.

[Andrew Walsh]

That is absolutely correct. And I believe they are still married.

[Luke Burbank]

How is it that that's not the fact that we're using that song? How is that not getting us pulled down in Romania? But if I play two seconds of Beyonce, we get pulled down.

[Andrew Walsh]

I think, honestly, I do think it's because it's not that much in the clear because we really don't play that song in a way that I think the Internet, spiders and robots can detect because we use it as background music and we. You know what I mean? It's only kind of in the clear for a couple of seconds with that drumbeat or whatever.

[Luke Burbank]

Do also sort of have Ben Lee's tacit permission. He's been on the program. He's well aware of the fact that we're using his song as our theme song.

[Andrew Walsh]

He is. Or he was at some point. I don't know that that wouldn't do us a lot of good if a label came after us because, you know, who knows? You know, I don't know that he's the one who do pulls out permissions on all of that stuff. I'm looking to see if they're still married. I think they are still. Yeah, they are.

[Luke Burbank]

Nobody. Yeah, nobody tell the record label that we're using Catch. They've been using Pitch my disease for 17 to 18 years.

[Andrew Walsh]

Nobody tell anybody anything.

[Luke Burbank]

Everybody just be cool, okay? Everybody be cool. And also stop emailing me about backing your truck up. And I mean, boy did I touch a nerve with that one, Andrew. And when you were away, that was when I really laid into it because I did have one listener that emailed in to support me. And so I read that email and boy did I rile up the backwards Parkers, the back in Parker people.

[Andrew Walsh]

I have been seeing some of that and it's kind of funny because you raised that briefly on the show last week with me and you wanted no part and I. And I remember saying like, just like I'm like, I don't want to argue with you about this, but just a reminder to the listeners that not everything Luke says am I tacitly co signing. That is not an opinion that I co signed. But I also didn't argue the other point. I just didn't care enough to. But it's definitely not a feeling that I have. Generally speaking, I don't think about it. But one thing that surprised me in checking my email the past couple of days now you had both the Cobra Sklarov, what do you could TBTL employee numero uno.

[Luke Burbank]

Numero uno. And my brother.

[Andrew Walsh]

And your brother. Now it sounds like you and I could be wrong about this, but based on feedback that I'm seeing and seeing from afar, by the way, which is so wonderful, none of them are addressed to me. But it does seem like all three of you might have been on the same page with this because it seems like everybody's taking heat except for me.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, no, they were generally agreeing with what happens when you're gone is I become officially the big dog of the show. So if I have on John or David, they tend to agree with me, support my. My various beliefs and points. And so they were again. And I was framing it in opposition to you because honestly, like you're afraid to take a principled stand on things like this, but they were basically agreeing with me and then we were actually talking about. And this probably also got the listeners mad. I feel like there is a certain like area that's adjacent to like a suburb. So like an area that's adjacent to a city where you start to get a proliferance of really large trucks that aren't being used necessarily for like truck jobs. They're being used to take people to volleyball practice. And it's not usually in the, like the downtown core of a city because it's hard to park a big truck there. It's kind of a hassle. And it's not out in the rurals, like where I live, where there are a lot of big trucks and they're mostly being used to do big truck things. There's this kind of area where there's enough room to spread out. You've got, you know, three car garage. You've got room to have a big old truck. But you probably still work at Microsoft or something. You've still got like a city job. And so you just drive this big truck to and from your city job or whatever. So we were, I was getting into all kinds of speculation, all kinds of unhinged speculation about neighborhoods and, and, and, and who drives. So yeah, there was a lot going on show while you were gone that did tick the listeners off and you missed all of those strays, I'm happy to report.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, I will say this. My hands are not clean when it comes to making assumptions about the oversized trucks and SUVs parked in small city lots. Because that is something that does hit close to home for me because I drive, you know, a small little Volkswagen Golf. And it drives me. Even aside the fact that people who drive SUVs will just park right in a space that is clearly reserved for a compact car. Like I've been, that's been irritating me for years and years. I don't know if you recall, I actually almost got into it. Like, almost like, I don't know physically is the right word, but like certainly face to face with a guy in Los Angeles outside the ikea. I can't remember where Burbank is it. It was probably Burbank now that you said that. I don't know if I would have been able to pull that, but that's probably the IKEA we would have gone to. And we were parked in a parking garage garage and we were in a compact car spot and we came back out to our car, a big SUV was parked next to us. I consider all SUVs to be big, so I don't know, just an SUV was parked next to us in another compact spot. And this was especially rare for me at the time. I think I got a little bit more lippy as years went on. But I. As Vivs and I were unloading our. Loading our goods into our car, the people who were driving the SUV approached their car. They were done shopping too. And I said, huh? An SUV is a compact car, huh? The guy's like, what'd you say? What'd you say to me? What'd you say to me? And I don't. I. I certainly did not. I might have said it again or something. But then we drove away. I didn't really. I'm sure I.

[Luke Burbank]

Were you in the car already? In. You were in your car?

[Andrew Walsh]

I don't think so. I think I said it when we. I was standing at the trunk and I'm trying to even remember what car I would have been driving at the time. It's all a little bit fuzzy. This was like, in LA, so, like 10 years ago or so. So, yeah, that is something that drives me crazy. But even leaving aside the whole compact car thing, there are just like, when I go, like the qfc, the grocery store that I go to, it's in the city and the parking spaces are more narrow than they might be elsewhere. And then somebody comes in with their giant truck and doesn't even try to stay in one spot or stay between the ones.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, there's that move too, which is the. Like, I'm gonna actually intentionally take up two spaces, which just seems quite rude to me.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Do you know that I didn't realize until way too late into my adulthood that when it said compact on a parking spot, that was to basically indicate to you only park here if your car is relatively small? Like, I did not understand that. That's what that was trying to establish. And I really just thought. I mean, this is so thoughtless of me, but I just thought, well, if my car can fit within the, you know, within the lines, then it's fine. Except if it's right at its limit. Yeah, it's right at the line. Then you're still screwing people over because other people can't open their doors, etc. I just thought, well, I remember thinking, well, why do they say compact on this? I can park my Toyota 4Runner here just fine in the compact. But I didn't even. I didn't even realize how rude I was being.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, I do Think that that is one of the things. And I'm trying to be a little bit more chill because I feel like I was. We have a voicemail here that is. I haven't even previewed it yet, but it's somebody reacting to what I was saying about people kind of in the area that we live now, the Pacific Northwest. I sort of notice a lack of physical awareness and people to be sort of just like kind of in their own little worlds and not really noticing if they're blocking a sidewalk or an escalator or whatever. And you and I talked about that and I tried to be respectful, but clearly it's a frustration of mine. And I have a voicemail here from somebody and it just says inconsiderate people or something. And I don't know if that is. I feel like I have not taken enough slings and arrows. Believe it or not, Luke, going back to like, you taking slings and arrows. Sometimes when I say something that I'm embarrassed about or I can see the argument against me, I kind of brace for a bunch of emails and people saying, well, you didn't think about it this way. And then when they don't come, I'm sort of left with this sort of, I don't know, like phantom complaints against myself.

[Luke Burbank]

In the immortal words of Bruce Springsteen, you're down like a dog that's been beat too much and you spend half your life just to cover it up.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's exactly what I was going to say as somebody who.

[Luke Burbank]

Born in the usa. Born in the usa yeah.

[Andrew Walsh]

Thank you for powering out of that there. So anyway, yeah, I don't want to go on another rant today about how people don't care or whatever, but it is interesting to know that some people might just like. And maybe that kind of ties into it a little bit of that. That regional theory have. A little bit that people are just like, I don't know, I fit here. I don't think people are going around, especially in this part of the country, trying to be rude. I just think it's the. And you know, it kind of goes to the driving slow and the passing lanes and stuff too. It's just like. I just think that people around here just don't think about it as much or. And so maybe people were just seeing Compaq like you and are like, innocently just like, oh, well, if. If I fit. What do they say about cats? If it fits, I sit.

[Luke Burbank]

Uh huh. Well, that's the thing. I would not necessarily even totally believe you on this Thing about like people in the Northwest not knowing where they are in space. Except your argument is that when you went back to Ohio and you went to a Costco, right? Or something like that.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

It was literally, you noted people were behaving differently. You had a sort of a side by side comparison. Because otherwise I might dismiss what you're saying as this kind of general thing that everyone has when they're anywhere, which is everyone is bad drivers here except for me. Like, if you're doing standup comedy and you want to immediately connect with the locals and you're in some town, just talk about like, get a load of these Chicago drivers, you know, because everyone will laugh knowingly. Like, I feel like everyone thinks that the place they live in has the worst drivers, except they're a good driver. And. And I could see that also being the sense of like people standing, you know, and blocking things. Except again, you're saying that you actually noticed a tangible, a measurable difference when you were in Ohio, certainly there.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. And, and, but it wasn't like something I grew up thinking about. It was like kind of living here for a time and getting kind of increasingly frustrated with people both in driving and on sidewalks. And just like I said all the things I listed before. And the thing is, I don't know if I fully agree. So when I lived in New England and Massachusetts would come up a lot. The thing about drivers in Massachusetts, people would talk about it, but it had nothing to do with what we're talking about here in the Pacific Northwest. It was very different. The thing about drivers in Massachusetts is they're very aggressive and you would never putter around in the left hand lane because you would get honked at. And we would call them mass holes, like, because like. So like, I do feel like different regions, you might talk about the style of driving and complain about it, but they do seem different if you're talking about them at all. I don't really remember Ohio it being a huge point of conversation, but. And then in la, it's a totally different thing. Right. It's like traffic. And actually when I was in Vegas, I kind of noticed that people are drive a little bit more wild in Vegas. Have you noticed that?

[Luke Burbank]

You mean like when you guys were taking a, like a cab or something or an Uber from another.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, both in cars we were in and behavior that I happened to notice, although I wasn't driving, so. But I just happened to notice I was like. The first car we got in was like really zipping around and like kind of like, you know, cut, you know, kind of cutting in and out of traffic. But it sort of seemed like that was kind of culture. Like nobody seemed like upset by that. It was more of an aggressive driving style. But I, I was there for two days. I don't claim to be an expert.

[Luke Burbank]

What always throws me off about Vegas is of course the fact that everything is out of proportion. So you look at a casino and it looks like it's one block away and it's actually 33 miles.

[Andrew Walsh]

Right. And no easy way to get there because it's not like really walkable in the traditional sense of, of basic sidewalks.

[Luke Burbank]

So then you like go get a cab and just like walking down to where the cabs are is its whole own journey. And then you get there and then you're trying to go to the next door casino and for some reason the cab goes out on a freeway and goes like to Summerlin or something and then comes back and drops you off at the casino that's next door to the one you were just standing at.

[Andrew Walsh]

Right.

[Luke Burbank]

It's a very non intuitive place.

[Andrew Walsh]

Exactly right, right. And it reminded me a little bit, I mean, very different because it's, that's a place that is dealing with huge groups of tourists and everything. And there are ways to get around, obviously, and they want foot traffic in certain areas. But it's like when I would visit Arizona to see my mom, but I would, you know, like maybe I was just. I don't think I usually rented cars when I would do that trip I did sometimes, but I prefer just to take Ubers and Lyfts, honestly, in a place like Phoenix, like Ubers and Lyfts are so affordable. I think you save money and it's so much easier for me not to deal with a rental car, I think. I don't know. You and Genevieve are both people who I think like to have a car when you arrive at a place. I don't know if I'm describing you inaccurately there, but I think you like renting cars. Whereas if everything were equal for me, I'd almost always rather have somebody drive me around if it's going to come out. Would you say, are you in the same boat or not?

[Luke Burbank]

It depends on where I'm at. So like, obviously like, like a New York City. I'm not going to rent a car and believe it or not, probably not in Los Angeles unless I'm going well outside the city or something because of just the parking and the hassle factor of it and all of that. But But I do like. I like having a car, like, being able to throw my luggage in there. Sometimes if I get home from a long trip, like a work trip where it's been two or three weeks and I haven't driven a car, it's very fun for me to get back in my car at the Portland airport and start driving home. I feel this sense of, like, agency that I've been feeling deprived of. I didn't even realize it because I've just been sitting in the back of Lyfts and Ubers and Waymos for the last couple of weeks. And now the fact that I am driving this vehicle and I can go anywhere I want with it, and I don't have to, you know, call someone to pick me up and drive me around. I actually enjoy that experience.

[Andrew Walsh]

You know, what we did. And I feel if anybody's keeping notes, I feel like I was starting to make a point before that I've abandoned. But don't worry, as probably just talking to hear myself talk, I don't think it's important. But I will say this. Genevieve had a little hack. I don't even think this is a hack. This is just taking advantage of the services around you. But we did something different in going to the airport this time, which is. So usually if we're going to the airport on a trip, especially if I'm traveling with Genevieve, we take the train down there, and it's a pretty long train ride from where we live. You gotta schedule in an extra hour of travel to get on the train, to take it all the way down to the airport than to board your flight and everything. That's pretty significant. And I don't mind it as much on the way out of town, but, God, it's a real bummer on the way back because you're like, you've already been traveling. Your flight lands, and you're like, now another hour on the train and then have to figure out how we get back from the train stop. Because it's not especially easy. It's like just over a mile walk, which is something you don't want to do with your luggage.

[Luke Burbank]

They call that the just over a one mile problem. The last just over a one mile problem.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right. But we were prepared to do that this time around. You know, it was just a quick vacation. And Genevieve also. Genevieve planned everything. We wouldn't have been going to Vegas if it weren't for all of her planning on this and her idea to do it. So, you know, if she wanted to take the train, that's cool with me. But I did say just double check because we're leaving on a Saturday. And sometimes weekends is when they do construction on the light rail lines. And when, since we don't have, like, you know, duplicate lines or anything, when they're doing construction, all the city does is sets up like an alternate bus route so they'll like stop service at like, let's say, Capitol Hill. And then the next three stops are closed. Now, if you're already on the train, they'll shuffle you over to a shuttle, which is basically a bus that is going to take you to the next operating train stop, basically, maybe skip. And so. So Genevieve looked it up and she's like, you're right, there's construction this weekend, which means we already had an hour long trip to the airport. But then we're gonna have to get off at some point, take the bus a couple of stops, get back on the train. But we also didn't really wanna take a car because. And again, I know this sounds cheap, but, like, it's really expensive to take an Uber or a Lyft to the airport from where we live.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, it's like 100 bucks.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's $100 pre tip. Yeah. And so Genevieve is like, we'll just take the train. I'm like, that's fine, Absolutely. Whatever you wanna do is. But then Genevieve's like, wait a second. I found a place where we can park. It's not the official parking spot of the airport, but like one of those places off campus. Off airport campus.

[Luke Burbank]

Somewhere in the greater SeaTac Des Moines area.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes, exactly. It was actually underneath Lovers, a store for lovers. But we found a place called. What was it? It was a funny name, Parkin Jet. And it was $50 for a. You know, however many nights. We had to park our car there two or three nights. And we. So we got in our own car, drove down to park and jet, and they jetted us to the airport pretty dang quickly. Like, we didn't. It was a very smooth experience. And so Instead of spending $200 on lifts or like two and a half hours round trip on trains, it was like a $50 solution that worked really well. And I know it's like such an obvious thing, but like, I just get stuck in my habits and think about, well, this is the way I go to the airport. And now this is sort of like opened up a whole new world to me.

[Luke Burbank]

I think that master park down there, they'll actually, like, if you, if you upgrade, they will Literally, like, wash your car and vacuum it out so you.

[Andrew Walsh]

Get your car back.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. Isn't that smart?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes. I wonder how much that goes for our car. Needs some cleaning, man. Some real detailing.

[Luke Burbank]

That's one of those things that, like, changes my overall experience of the world so dramatically, and yet I don't do it enough, which is to run my car through the car wash and then vacuum it out. Like my emotional well being is directly related to how messy my car is.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

And I just drive around most of the time feeling bad because it's like there's a bunch of, you know, just a bunch of crap in there.

[Andrew Walsh]

And this is. This is the. I've been talking a lot about this with Hannah on the Spotless podcast. This is the time of year. And, you know, I try not to complain about winters too much here because I don't mind them. But the one thing is, as somebody who doesn't have, like, a garage or a garage that I can pull my car into. In fact, I literally was telling Genevieve this on the drive home from that park and jet. I was just saying that, like, the one time that I'm sort of envious of more like kind of suburban living where you might have a house with like a two car garage and you only have one car or whatever, and you can pull in the middle of it and have a bunch of space around you. That's how I grew up with these big garages where it didn't matter if it was winter, you could still go in there and vacuum the car out and do all kinds of cleaning. But me, we get to this time of year and it's constantly wet. And I think our car has some sort of a seal problem. As in, we have a loose seal in the backseat that keeps barking at us.

[Luke Burbank]

Mother boy.

[Andrew Walsh]

For years and years, I've known that we have some sort of a seal problem in our car when condensation will build on the inside of the windows and everything, which is obviously not right. And somehow there's something that is getting onto the seat. And it's not wet when I sit down on the seat, but there's this big water stain that has been accumulating on our cloth driver's side seat. And every time I get in my car, Luke, I feel really bad. I feel bad about myself, I feel bad about everything you just said. And of course it's winter, so we've been tracking in leaves and dirt. And it's just the car about this time mid January is as messy as it ever gets. But I Don't want to go out there with all of my equipment, of my shop vac or even my portable vacuum and a bunch of bottles of cleaner and everything. This weather is terrible to do it and so I'm doing nothing about it. But you mentioned your mental health. That is no joke. When I get in my car right now, I get a bad feeling.

[Luke Burbank]

Do you have one of those steam cleaners?

[Andrew Walsh]

Not a steam cleaner, but like an extraction cleaner that sort of shoots the liquid out and then. And then sucks it back up. Like. Is that what you're talking about?

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I guess. Maybe not steam. I bought like a Bissell.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

I mean it's. Yeah. And that thing has changed my life. I'm like looking for things to clean in my house with that thing. It is so satisfying.

[Andrew Walsh]

Uh huh. Is that relatively new?

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I think. Well, in the last year or so. It's green. It has a little reservoir.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yep. Literally the one that put in the.

[Luke Burbank]

Little solution or something.

[Andrew Walsh]

Little handle. You can carry it.

[Luke Burbank]

It has absolutely changed my life for like upholstery and stuff. And like I had that in this. In the Madrona Hill studio. I had this. There was a giant coffee stain on the carpet for like where I dropped a full entire cup of coffee once. And that. We want to talk about a bad feeling.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

That just made me. Every time I would see it, I just felt like my life was not going well. And then I got that Bissell thing and I got down there and it's totally. I completely removed it. It was very, very satisfying.

[Andrew Walsh]

I love that. I'm kind of surprised we didn't talk about that. I have. I have one of those things too. I don't use it probably as much as I should. I was using it on the carpet, I gotta say. In fact, I wonder. That might have been a gift Genevieve got me one year. And I really liked it. But I didn't realize how much work it was gonna be to get down on my hands and knees and do a whole area rug with it. And so I love it for like you said, I can't wait for the weather to get nice. It does take a power cord, so I'll plug it into an outdoor socket or whatever and really kind of take care of the car. I cannot wait. But I don't want to do that. Like, like, like I was saying, like in this rainy weather or whatever. It just seems self defeating. But anyway, I love it for the car. It does a really good job. But I think we originally got it because maybe one of our Area rugs was getting kind of grimy and it did a nice job. But you have to get on your hands and knees for like a long time to do a whole rug, right? Like, it's like, I don't know.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah.

[Andrew Walsh]

45.

[Luke Burbank]

I told you about my carpeting problems, right? Which is that I had new carpet put in in the upstairs of my house and on the stairs. And it's white. I don't know what I was thinking. And it always looks dingy. And I kind of feel like it was irresponsible of them to sell me white carpet. I feel like they should have said, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, buddy, that's a terrible idea. And here's why. They just acted like this was totally a fine decision on my part. And every single time I walk up and down the stairs, I regret deeply the decision to buy white carpet.

[Andrew Walsh]

You think there should be a seven day waiting period of buying white carpet?

[Luke Burbank]

It's probably easier to buy a gun or wait. Actually, speaking of, I think that my. I think my Internet gun is on. It's on its way to my house.

[Andrew Walsh]

I've been meaning to ask. I can't believe how long of a delivery this has been.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, I mean, it is. I am buying a.22 caliber gun online.

[Andrew Walsh]

I mean, I guess so. I don't think it's. Maybe that should take a while.22 caliber. But I've been meaning to ask about that. Yeah, that's been in my head a little bit. I'm really interested in hearing. I think it's going to be kind of a janky pellet gun. And the people who sell the.22s are mad that they're being.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, that's what, that's what I'm expecting. That was 25. So, I mean, what could they possibly. What could they be sending me that. That cost them somehow less than 25 to manufacture? So.

[Biagio]

Thank you, baby.

[Luke Burbank]

All right, let's thank some donors. These are the wonderful, generous folks who are voluntarily donating to TBTL to make this a thing. That is our job and is John Sklaroff's job. And we really, really appreciate that. We would not be here without folks like Jody Patterson of beautiful Bothell, Washington.

[Andrew Walsh]

Jody, thank you.

[Luke Burbank]

Thank you. Joad's also thanks to. How would you go with this first name? Andrew?

[Andrew Walsh]

Let me look at the list here. Jean or no, maybe. George. Sorry, that's. That's. Are there. My eyesight is not great, I guess. George. Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

We're going to thank George Liebolt of Los Gatos, California.

[Andrew Walsh]

Nice.

[Luke Burbank]

Thank you.

[Andrew Walsh]

George.

[Luke Burbank]

George, I hope I'm saying your name correctly again. If you want to pay more next year, we will say it correctly. That's a service we provide here. It's a little extra. It's a little upcharge, but I think it's well worth it to get your name pronounced correctly.

[Andrew Walsh]

If you do want to email me andrewbtl.net if we got that wrong, I think we can put a note in for next year, assuming that you're going to continue this venture next year, which I really encourage you to do.

[Luke Burbank]

Absolutely. Thanks also to Denise Antonelli, who's in Parksburg, Pennsylvania.

[Andrew Walsh]

All right.

[Luke Burbank]

I don't know if I, if I know where Parksburg, Pennsylvania is.

[Andrew Walsh]

I feel like Denises are underrepresented in the TBTL donor list.

[Luke Burbank]

You feel like we don't have a lot of Denise.

[Andrew Walsh]

I don't think we have a lot of Denise's. Maybe we have the perfect number of Denise's.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, we have Denise Antonelli at least, and we're thankful for that. We're also thankful for, for Cheryl Gordon, who's in Los Angeles, California. Hey, we have a good amount of Cheryls. I feel like we have a. We have a healthy. We have the exact right amount of Cheryls in the listening audience.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

That we would hope for. We also have Evan Adams, who's in Shelton, Washington.

[Jeffrey]

All right.

[Andrew Walsh]

Thank you, Evan.

[Luke Burbank]

I wonder if Evan knows my sister Hannah, who lives with her family in Shelton, Washington. I wonder if they know each other.

[Andrew Walsh]

Is your sister on the arm wrestling circuit?

[Luke Burbank]

It. Not anymore. Not since the rotator cuff injury.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay, well, Evan, Evan is heavily into arm wrestling in that area, I think. I'm totally, I'm totally guessing here, but I think Evan is heavily, heavily into the arm wrestling circuit. But I don't know if they would have overlapped because I do think Evan's only been into it for a few years now.

[Luke Burbank]

I told you at the time that I entered the Washington State arm wrestling championship, didn't I?

[Andrew Walsh]

No.

[Luke Burbank]

This was my first foray into immersive journalism. I was basically like an intern at KUOW and something came across the fax machine, which was like, the Washington State arm Wrestling championship is going to be happening actually, by the way, in SeaTac, probably not far from where your car was parked.

[Andrew Walsh]

It was probably at like the parking.

[Luke Burbank]

Jets at a sports bar. And, and, and, and I, they basically, they said, if you want to come down and cover it. I said, well, can I enter it? And they said, yes. And so I did. And I recorded It. And it was. It was pretty funny, actually. I mean, just the speed at which I lost was breathtaking.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. I'm actually kind of surprised that they did let you in, because I would wonder if there is a safety concern for people who are just doing it as a lark.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I mean, it was. I think, if I remember right in the piece, I say something like, I'm trying to give a sense of just how absolutely spectacular my loss was. And it's like. I'm just like, listen to this. And it's just. It's just like a half a second just hear my arm going thwomp.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, my God.

[Luke Burbank]

Like, I could not even create any resistance.

[Andrew Walsh]

Did it hurt? And.

[Luke Burbank]

And no. But he was also in my weight class, which at the time I was probably like, I don't know, maybe 170 pounds. But this guy, 100 pounds of. It was just his arm. His actual body was 70 pounds, and then just had this massive 100 pounds of arm. So even though we were in the same weight division, we were not distributed the same way. And it was. Yeah, I mean, I got the desired outcome, which was I was gonna lose really bad. It was gonna be embarrassing, but I was gonna try to make a funny radio story about it.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, what was he like? Because I think we all assume a sort of like a very. A stereotype, right? Like big with a beard and tons of tattoos and probably like a flannel shirt with the arms ripped off.

[Luke Burbank]

I think it was some real Larry the Cable Guy energy.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. Was it like that?

[Luke Burbank]

I think that that was. I think the guy who beat me was. You pretty much described him. Yeah. I think that was pretty much his look, his vibe.

[Andrew Walsh]

Did he take off his hat, put it on backwards and say, it's like a switch?

[Luke Burbank]

That was when I knew I was in big trouble. That's when I knew I was in the movie over the Top.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right. And he's arm wrestling not just for his truck, but his child as well.

[Luke Burbank]

So.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Is he arm wrestling to get his kid back?

[Andrew Walsh]

I believe that is part of it. Custody.

[Luke Burbank]

Really weird custody situation in that state.

[Andrew Walsh]

And his means of making money to support said child.

[Luke Burbank]

We're making money here, thanks to folks like Don Taylor, who's in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

[Andrew Walsh]

Wellesley. Hey, that's where Genevieve went. Wellesley, Mass.

[Luke Burbank]

And that's the college in Wellesley. College is probably the main industry in Wellesley, Massachusetts. That the big thing going on there?

[Andrew Walsh]

I can't speak to that. But that would be my. I can't speak with any authority on that. I'll speak anyway. But that would be my assumption. That'd be my assumption.

[Luke Burbank]

Thank you so much. Thanks to all of our donors for keeping TBTL in business. This is 100% listener supported and we are grateful.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hello and welcome to Top Story.

[Luke Burbank]

Did you see this very cool thing over like Los Angeles and I think parts of California. You could see this spaceship, this space capsule re entering the Earth's atmosphere.

[Andrew Walsh]

No, I didn't catch any of this.

[Luke Burbank]

It was really, really cool looking. Actually I was looking at some video of it. It was these astronauts that were coming back from, I think it's the International Space Station because somebody got sick and they had to come back a little bit early because they didn't have, I guess the. Well, they won't tell us what the person was sick with. Which I kind of feel like if you're an astronaut, astronaut, it's such an unusual thing. There's so few humans have ever gotten to be up there. I do think we should get to know what's going on with you. Like are you having tummy troubles? Like what's happening? Do you feel like these astronauts and cosmonauts, they deserve the same level of medical privacy up there that like a normal person would have?

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, no, because now I assume that they're covering up some sort of space disease that they're bringing back to Earth.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, I'm with you on that because so this thing splashes down, they will not say had these four. It had a cosmonaut, a couple of NASA astronauts and then somebody from the Japanese aerospace agency. And so this is four people that came back and they will not tell us who was the person who was sick or what they were sick with. And one of the things they did after this thing landed in the ocean off of San Diego was they took all four of them to the hospital so you wouldn't know which one who was sick sick. So they made three of them go.

[Andrew Walsh]

To the hospital even though they didn't.

[Luke Burbank]

Need to, so that it would be unclear who was the person who was not feeling well. And I thought that was a weird level of, of cloak and daggerness.

[Andrew Walsh]

It really, it really is. I'm, I'm blanking here. You know. Have you ever read any Octavia Butler?

[Luke Burbank]

No.

[Andrew Walsh]

Sci fi writer, right. From like the 50s and 60s and everybody, you know, I like to dip my toe into that stuff from time to time. Especially the kind of the, the classic well regarded stuff. But I had never read any activ. Octavia Butler and I did read one of her series Just, I don't know, maybe it was over the summer or something like a three or four book series. I'm blanking on the name of it now, but it's basically about a space disease that is brought back and really bad, really bad things happen. I will say that these alien, or I'm sorry, these alien. The fact that they. I'm already calling them aliens. The fact that they sent all four of these aliens to the hospital to cover this up is a red flag. No, I mean that is. They're really strange. It is really. Yeah. It's not like they're just casually not releasing information. They are creating. I can't say the words.

[Luke Burbank]

They're going to great length too. And then they also had a photo of all four of them individually as they were getting like pulled out of the capsule. And they're all smiling and they look normal. Like I was trying to read the faces to see if one of them was grimacing.

[Andrew Walsh]

One of them is just like a.

[Luke Burbank]

Little bit tighter, kind of pinching their butt cheeks a little bit. I was trying to get a, trying to get a vibe. They all looked totally fine. Which then raised the question, well, was a person even that sick? Like, why did you have to come back? They all looked fine. They were able to walk under their own strength. Nobody had anything, you know, protruding or hanging off of them. Like they all seemed basically fine. But yeah, I thought that was kind of odd, I feel like, because the human. How the human body responds to being in space is an interesting question and I feel like it should be. Basically. It's also our. Well, if it was the NASA astronaut, it's our tax dollars at work, don't we, the hard working American taxpayers get to know if one of our astronauts is having diarrhea?

[Andrew Walsh]

I think so. I think so. I think we should be able to get high tech photos of said sickness. Oh, that's rough. Clay's Ark was the name of the book. It was a trilogy called the Pattern Master, by the way. I don't know if there's any butler heads in the audience and you can tell me the next thing I should read by her, but let's see here. It deals with a colony of people who have been mutated by a disease brought by astronauts back to Earth from space.

[Luke Burbank]

And now, not to mention that so much of this space stuff is being run by basically like either Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. I can't see anything going wrong with that. No, they seem like such reliable dudes. I can't, I can't ever imagine something terrible happening due to their inattention and or greed.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, no, I'm with you on that. Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. Oh, man, it's not from a female.

[Luke Burbank]

All right, emails or V mails before we head on out on this Friday.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I have three audio messages here, Luke. I referred to these earlier on today's podcast and even last week, I think. So these were all sent in as voice memos to me. You can email me andrewvtail.net or you can call the voicemail line 206-414-8285. That's 2:06 BTL. These three voice memos, two of them come from a listener named Jeffrey and the other one comes from Biagio. And I'm going to tell you the subject lines and you tell me which one you want to listen to. Okay? Okay. One of them is labeled. And again, I haven't heard these, so it's just based on what I think they're about. Cat stove. And I think this is going to be related to the time that Bingo almost said his tail on fire during the a recording of tbtl. So I have one that says cat stove. I have one that says inconsiderate people. And I have one that says applesauce and font comments.

[Luke Burbank]

Let's start with inconsiderate people.

[Andrew Walsh]

Inconsiderate people. Okay. And we are going to listen to this from Jeffrey again. I always get very nervous when I don't vet these things. So Jeffrey, please, I hope, hope you aren't using super abusive language.

[Jeffrey]

Hey, Cobras listener Jeffrey and Eugene. I'm currently listening to you guys talk about the regional differences and how people are considerate of others. And I wanted to weigh in with my experience. I moved to Eugene from the Cleveland area about 30 years ago. Cleveland, another expat. I still struggle with how inconsiderate people are out here of others around them. I experienced this in grocery stores, walking around town, even on hiking trails. People here tend to just act as if they are the only ones using a shared resource. And I've tried to make peace with it. And I don't act out over it, but I bristle at it pretty much every time I experience it.

[Andrew Walsh]

I feel like we're piling on.

[Jeffrey]

That's my two cents.

[Andrew Walsh]

I feel bad now. I feel like we're piling on. I'm not going to raise this topic well.

[Luke Burbank]

It's obviously more. There's a lot of hostility coming out of the Cuyahoga Valley.

[Andrew Walsh]

Absolutely.

[Luke Burbank]

Directed at my people. The Pacific, Northwestern.

[Andrew Walsh]

Absolutely. I don't want to create a regional war. Can we listen to this cat stove story from Biagio? All right, let's take a listen to this.

[Biagio]

Hey, Luke and Andrew Biagio, Duluth, calling in from a catch up. I'm playing on episode 4601, I believe, if the number's accurate.

[Andrew Walsh]

So the cool thing is we are hearing from the astronauts. Biagio is one of the people who is insane.

[Luke Burbank]

He's the one that was sick.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes.

[Biagio]

And they're talking about caring for cats and how much they don't care how much we care about them. And fire. Well, I have two cats at the house and both are completely absent minded to the wood fireplace I have at the house. They constantly sit directly underneath it, which I worry about. But then I have to put my hand underneath to make sure that it's the proper temperature. And remember that heat goes up and actually it's relatively cold underneath the stove. And they're just getting a bit of radiant heat. Still terrifies me that I'm going to bake two cats underneath my stove. And then also wanted to put a note on taking care of cats when they really don't want you to take care of them. One of our cats gets into one of the plants and we try to be as best as we can to avoid anything toxic in the house. But every once in a while one of them has a bloody butt and I have to track down that cat and come after them with a wet wipe and make sure I apply ointment to their bottom. It's as fantastic as you think it would be. Power up.

[Andrew Walsh]

That is rough stuff.

[Luke Burbank]

You just got to get a situation going like Bubbles and Holly, which is that Bubbles is obsessed with tossing holly salad. So it's a closed circuit. Everybody's running a pretty tight ship around there.

[Andrew Walsh]

So we have friends who had a cat who was a long haired cat and we would sometimes cat sit this long haired cat and we never had to do what we heard they did sometimes, which was they had special cat wipes for this long haired cat who sometimes wouldn't clean or wasn't able to clean her hindquarters. She was not an old cat, by the way. In fact, she passed way, way, way too soon and too young. But I was astounded to hear that they essentially had to clean what are commonly referred to as dingleberries off of their cat's patootie. What is often referred to as a Patootie. And that scared me both. As a. As a cat sitter, I never engage with it. But then when we adopted Bingo, he looked like he was a short haired cat or a medium haired cat at best or at longest. And then he became a long haired cat. Now he weirdly goes back and forth during the summertime. He grew this huge long mane. I see photos of him from a mere couple of months ago and he looks different. He grew this huge mane during the summer, then lost it at the beginning of the winter. Which seems.

[Luke Burbank]

Isn't that the opposite of what's supposed to happen?

[Andrew Walsh]

Wouldn't you think?

[Pat]

Think.

[Andrew Walsh]

But I don't know. They say, you know, sometimes pet fur works in a. Or animal fur works in. In ways that you wouldn't expect. Like sometimes the fur keeps them cool. I don't know what's going on. We mentioned to the vet they didn't. Hadn't really heard of it either. But when Bingo started growing out his tail and it was this really long poofy tail, then we started to see some. You know, he kind of. His hair grew out elsewhere as well. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No long haired cats. No wiping cats butts. That is. I just. I'm not. Not. That's not how I want to spend the rest of my days. And I've only got a few days left, by the way. I probably should have mentioned that to you. But luckily Bingo is ridiculously fastidious, almost to a degree where I worry that he has some sort of. Some sort of a condition like he.

[Luke Burbank]

Or he's deriving some erotic pleasure from the entire operation.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, that doesn't bother me at all. Do it to it. My dad.

[Luke Burbank]

His anonym is not something that you're concerned about.

[Andrew Walsh]

Not have. You know, have. Have fun man. It's a. If your body is a playground play. But luckily he keeps himself so unbelievably clean, we have not had to buy any kind of special wipes for him because that was a real concern of mine.

[Luke Burbank]

Do you want to play that final vmail before we get out of here?

[Andrew Walsh]

Sure. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

On a roll now.

[Andrew Walsh]

Do you mind? This is going to be Jeffrey again. So this is the person who just declared war on the Pacific.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, this is.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, the.

[Luke Burbank]

Your. Your Cleveland brothers.

[Andrew Walsh]

And let's see, this one looks like it's 2 minutes and 22 seconds long. So buckle up for this one. This is applesauce and font comments. And I can pause wherever. I'll keep my hand on the pause Button if you want to break in here.

[Jeffrey]

Hey, guys. Listener Jeffrey in Eugene calling in with comments about episode 4616. Really enjoyed your talk about applesauce and fonts.

[Andrew Walsh]

Do you remember, was this one conversation or two? I assume that Jeffrey is going to fill in some blanks for us, but I don't really recall either one of these.

[Luke Burbank]

I think I was probably talking about applesauce because of my dad, and my dad brings over weird applesauce to my house and, like, strawberry applesauce or something. And then I think we were probably talking maybe about the font that the State Department.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Decided to stop using because it was allegedly a woke font.

[Andrew Walsh]

Calibri, I think exactly. Without. Without serifs, it's too woke for Rubio. Okay, here we go.

[Jeffrey]

First of all, I grew up in Ohio, and like Andrew, I had that red cinnamony applesauce. And the way my family made it is they would take. They would make applesauce and then melt those. We called them red hots. They were like little red cinnamon candies. And that's how the red got into the applesauce. I don't know if that's how Andrew's family made it, but I don't know. And then on font talks, I used to work in it, but I worked a lot with graphic designers, and I was taught that serif fonts worked really well when printed out on paper and sans serifs were good fonts to use on screen. And that may be why. Well, it may explain some of the accessibility issues and why they chose that font. Why they chose Calibri.

[Andrew Walsh]

Is that Jeffrey scratching himself?

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. Like there was a real audio shift there during that.

[Andrew Walsh]

Can you hear that?

[Luke Burbank]

We're calling that a voicemail, but it's.

[Andrew Walsh]

Like it's a voice memo that was emailed in.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah.

[Andrew Walsh]

But yeah, I'm going to go back a little bit here. We're going to listen to, like, Bingo. Jeff.

[Jeffrey]

Scratching why they chose that font, why they chose Calibri back in the Biden days. And it may also explain why Calibri doesn't look good on letterhead. And then my final font comment was about your. You guys talked about Courier a little bit. And one of the things that's unique about those two types of fonts is they're called fixed width fonts. So every font or every character in that typeface takes up the same amount of space as another character. So in more modern fonts, like an I would take up less space than, say, an M. But in a fixed width font, like Courier. They all take up the same amount of space which gives them that sort of typewriter look because that's the way typewriters worked.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes.

[Jeffrey]

Anyways, hopefully I'm not. Not going to get sharp shot by some graphic designers on this and my information is accurate, but I thought I'd share some of that and let you know. I enjoyed that chat.

[Andrew Walsh]

Thanks. That is interesting. And I'm looking at the Courier font now. I always describe it as like sort of that typewritery font, and I don't think I'm the only one to do that. I think that's kind of how it's described. But I'm looking at it and yeah, it is interesting. That is one of the things that gives it that typewritery look is that everything is like equidistant right now.

[Luke Burbank]

Is that a serif font? It has serif.

[Andrew Walsh]

I thought it was a sans serif, but I'm looking at it now. Yeah, it does have. It looks like the letter L has a line at the bottom of it. So I think that would be considered a serif. Right. So it is a. What's interesting is when you type Courier font into Google to learn about it, it changes the entire page to courier. Like all the results I'm reading now, it's a little trick that Google does. Yeah, but yeah, it is a slab serif. That's right. We learned about this. It's a slab serif font. So it does have a font, but it's just like a straight line.

[Luke Burbank]

Because how could you make. How could you have an l, a lowercase l take up the same width as a W?

[Andrew Walsh]

You just put a lot of space around the L. I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. So it's all like this kind of equidistant and it makes. It does look very antiquated.

[Luke Burbank]

Next up, we're talking Garamond.

[Andrew Walsh]

Next up, we're talking Garamond. I love. I love talking fonts. I wish I knew more about design. That's what I should be doing.

[Luke Burbank]

It's not too late. It's not too late. I'm sure there's one of those online master classes that you can do.

[Andrew Walsh]

You know, I started doing that specifically around a very specific piece of Adobe software that is for design called Illustrator. But I sometimes I wonder if I should just. Should I just sign up for like a class at the community college right around the corner from me, Genevieve. That's how she got really into sewing. You know, she's really into sewing now and she's good. And she's good.

[Luke Burbank]

She made my favorite shirt.

[Andrew Walsh]

She made my favorite shirt, too. Well, now it's my second favorite shirt because my dad gave me a shirt that I like a lot, too. But don't tell her that. But yeah, she made me a shirt that, like, fits me perfectly. And you would. You would think that it came from a store. A high end store at that.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, dude, worth checking out the adult education, the extension program at North Seattle College. I took a blues guitar class there.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, right.

[Luke Burbank]

In my. In my 20s.

[Andrew Walsh]

And look.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, you should check it out. All right, everybody. Well, that's gonna do it for today's show, in fact, our broadcast week. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. We are going to be back here on Monday with more imaginary radio for you all. So we will see you then. In the meantime, have a great weekend, everybody. Stay safe. Go Seahawks. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, and good luck to. Power out.