#4647 Reminisce Me With That

Summary

TBTL Episode #4647: Reminisce Me With That

Date: January 22, 2026
Hosts: Luke Burbank & Andrew Walsh

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Episode Overview

On this Thursday edition, Luke and Andrew reflect on the enduring appeal and accidental archiving of TBTL, prompted by a listener's deep-dive into the show's history and discovery of a "missing episode." Their discussion meanders through nostalgic introspection, podcasting philosophy, lost audio lore, and a surprisingly deep exploration of regional fast food rivalries. The episode is, at its core, a meditation on what it means to do a daily, personal audio diary—with all the mundane, messy, and authentic moments that come along with it.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Kicking Off: Food Comedy & Weather Updates

• Andrew opens with a parody of foodie influencer culture, inventing elaborate dishes (“yuzu pepperoni cup ranch vodka pasta at sausage hole collective,” [00:00]), riffing on the proliferation of quirky food spots.
• Luke welcomes listeners, noting the freezing weather and triumphant pre-heating of the Madrona Hill studio, setting a cozy, conversational tone ([01:31]).
• Casual banter about yard moles, bunnies, and backyard critter problems segues into home improvement talk and the ongoing renovations in Andrew’s basement ([05:03]-[06:33]).

2. The “Missing Episode” Mystery

• Andrew introduces an email from Max, a longtime listener and occasional live-show guest, who’s been relistening to the TBTL archives and discovered a gap: episode 1475 is missing ([07:06]-[11:34]).
• The missing episode is shrouded in lore: the episode just after it references “making up for Wednesday’s depression fest,” sparking curiosity about what exactly went missing.

3. Podcast Philosophy: Disposable Media or Living Diary?

• Andrew and Luke reflect on how TBTL functions more as a “five-day-a-week audio diary” than a hyper-focused, standalone content machine:

  “Obviously, it’s always had a component that focuses on your life and personal experiences... And of course there’s a narrative arc.” – Andrew Walsh ([08:47]) “There’s no thread on TBTL.” – Luke Burbank ([08:47])

• The hosts admit to not remembering what they talked about even hours after recording but acknowledge that the show’s longevity and candor are what draw listeners back in.

4. Revisiting the Lost Tape: Anxiety, Change, and Realness

• Andrew locates a backup file and plays a “cringey” snippet. He’s self-conscious about how anxious he sounds as he was in the midst of a life transition—moving to LA, splitting households, feeling uncertainty.

  “I'm having trouble even remembering... I keep picturing myself leaving my Wallingford apartment here, but that's not the case.” – Andrew ([21:36]) “What I was hearing was a person who was just, like, without a filter, just reporting how they were feeling... I was sort of intrigued.” – Luke ([23:56])

• The archival audio comes to represent the core value of the show: documentation of authentic, sometimes awkward, but memorable moments between two friends navigating life’s changes.

5. Behind the Scenes: Workplace Politics & Podcast Survival

• Andrew shares a previously untold story about his tumultuous transition to KCRW and an awkward confrontation with host Madeleine Brand over whether he could continue TBTL while producing her show ([27:17]-[35:54]).

  “It was just a reminder that what we’re doing here sort of is more than just Juggalo talk…” – Andrew ([34:33])

• Luke credits Andrew’s stubbornness for the show’s survival, recognizing the risk Andrew took to keep doing both:

  “Had you done that in those days, this thing would have just stopped existing. Because... I was not capable on any level of, like, continuing this thing solo.” – Luke ([36:05])

6. Conspiracies Large & Small: Drawn Conclusions from Coincidence

• The missing episode prompts a riff on conspiracy theories—sometimes, missing files are just accidental, not a cover-up for on-air drama:

  “Conspiracy theories make dumb people feel smart.” – Luke ([37:19])

7. Regional Restaurant Lore: Taco Time NW vs. Taco Time International

• An unexpectedly deep dive into the history and geopolitics of the Taco Time chains in the Pacific Northwest, sparked by a donor’s location in Tumwater, WA ([44:11]-[54:56]).
• The hosts lay out the difference between “the bloodline of Taco Time” and interloper chains, weaving local nostalgia into brand loyalty debates, and expand on other split Seattle food institutions like Paseo, Un Bien, and Ezell’s.

8. Roller Coaster Terrors & Anxiety

• Riffing on roller coaster safety, Andrew’s irrational fear of having to descend on foot after a ride gets stuck is palpable and relatable:

  “My biggest... I'm getting upset thinking I'm seriously having a physiological reaction to this conversation right now.” – Andrew ([69:19])

• Luke, in contrast, gets existential about the imaginary dangers of fair rides ([65:14]).

9. Listener Appreciation & Blursday Messages

• The pair transition into the week’s donor thank-yous and Blursday (birthday) messages, which are sparser than usual ([41:33], [73:49]).
• Luke gives a special birthday shoutout to Becca:

  “Happy birthday from me and my enlarged prostate.” – Luke ([80:29])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On TBTL’s Essence:
  “The main thing this show has going for it, if anything, is that it happens five days a week and our lives continue to sort of occur... we talk about how we're feeling on that day, or what happened the night before…” – Luke Burbank ([25:40])

• On Workplace Tensions:
  “What you say reflects upon me... that was in the backdrop of all of this. I'm now having my first real misgivings...” – Andrew Walsh ([33:02])

• On Nostalgia & Cringe:
  “If I could show you, like if you could see close up the hairs on my arm... are standing up at the very thought of listening to our own voices from... 10+ years ago.” – Luke Burbank ([18:05])

• On Being Real:
  “I'm just curious… because I don't remember what was the opening tape, and is it something we'd still play today?” – Andrew Walsh ([18:35])

• On Split Local Chains:
  “Do you feel like this region that we live in is especially prone to restaurateurs... like Taco Time, Paseo, or Ezell's?” – Andrew Walsh ([54:56])

• On Roller Coaster Dread:
  “The idea of... having to unbuckle my seatbelt, move that thing up and of my own... of the roller coaster car, do we... call it so high up? Higher than some airplanes fly, Luke. That's scientific.” – Andrew Walsh ([69:42])

• On Blursday Drought:
  “Does that indicate a tremendous lack of coitus nine months previous to this week or a tremendous fall off in our listenership?” – Luke Burbank ([03:44])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:00-01:30] – Food parody intro & studio updates
• [06:06-07:18] – Listener Max’s email about the missing episode
• [08:36-10:15] – TBTL’s narrative “arc” and disposable media talk
• [18:05-23:56] – Playing/reflecting on “lost tape” of Andrew’s anxious episode
• [27:17-36:05] – Workplace drama: Madeleine Brand vs. TBTL
• [44:11-54:56] – Taco Time NW vs. Taco Time International deep dive
• [65:00-71:51] – Roller coaster phobias and horror stories
• [73:49-80:29] – Blursday messages, Wordle strategies, and extended tangents

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Additional Notes

• Ad segments, intros, and outros are intentionally omitted from this summary; all focus is on the main episode content.
• Throughout, Luke and Andrew’s signature blend of tangential but affectionate banter remains front and center, with nostalgia and friendship as unifying themes.

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Power Out!

Transcript

[Andrew Walsh]

Come with me to try the yuzu pepperoni cup ranch vodka pasta at sausage hole collective. This charming windowless food shack is a gem in the crown of las veg Angeles, north Ohio. Tonight, we're here to try their Dubai chocolate cream cheese everything bagel cinnamon bun. And you can't leave without going to breakup bang's burger house right next door. And trying their karna burger with extra vore sauce. These two local favorites hit the spot every time. Tbtl. I don't have a soul, but I.

[Luke Burbank]

Guess that's an intergalactic space greeting that.

[Andrew Walsh]

Means, hello, space brothers.

[Luke Burbank]

Do not put that on the imaginary radio show. I don't know if it's video games or what, but it's so unfair to after something like this to blame people in the backseat or say they deserve it.

[Andrew Walsh]

I don't know who that is, and I don't care to find out. Oh, I get it. You're joking. I'm cool. I get jokes. Listen, please, please, please, if anybody doesn't know the difference between a valance and a jabot, I really need you to leave. Shh. I get it. I know who you are. It's been explained to me. I'm into it.

[Luke Burbank]

Let's talk. All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of tbtl, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

[Andrew Walsh]

Here we go. Not gonna mess this up. Not gonna mess this up.

[Luke Burbank]

Here we go. Ready? Hi, My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, buddy.

[Luke Burbank]

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it's not raining. That's a positive, because if it was raining, it would be snowing, because it's very cold here. Very, very cold. But I got out here early this morning in the Madrona Hill studio. I fired up all of the heaters, and so we're actually at a nice temperature here. As we arrive at episode 4000, 647 in a collector series, let the fun begin. I saw an article in the Washington Post. Why is aspirational clutter the hardest to part with? Why is the junk that is aspirational in our life? If you touch my junk, I'm gonna have you arrested. Why is that the stuff that's very hard to Marie Kondo out of your life? We'll go through that. Also, time permitting, we'll talk about the latest yoga trend that is sweeping Portland. It's snake yoga.

[Andrew Walsh]

My motto is, to catch a snake, become a snake. Think like a snake and be a snake.

[Luke Burbank]

And by sweeping Portland, I mean one place is doing it in Portland and it got it in the newspaper. Also, it's a Thursday, AKA blursday. So do the blursday messages. Oh, and of course we will welcome this feller to the show. He's the longest running cobra of the program, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. It took me, I don't know, however many episodes doing this show together up until I think yesterday to realize I'm very jealous of this guy's ability to have a beard.

[Andrew Walsh]

It took seven months to grow and.

[Luke Burbank]

Needs half an hour's grooming every morning. But it looks amazing. He's Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

[Andrew Walsh]

Good morning, Luke. I told you before the show that I had an email that caught my attention this week and I'm going to share it with you here at the top of the show. By the way, you know those blurs days you reference that are coming up later in the show? Blurs day blurs. Wow. Have we ever had one? I don't think so. Not that I can remember.

[Luke Burbank]

We have we ever had zero?

[Andrew Walsh]

Probably not on purpose. Does that indicate to do it? I don't know.

[Luke Burbank]

Does that indicate a tremendous lack of coitus nine months previous to this week or a tremendous fall off in our listenership?

[Andrew Walsh]

And do they have to be separate.

[Luke Burbank]

Column A little of column B.

[Andrew Walsh]

You guys remember I now I'm just.

[Luke Burbank]

Remembering our listeners that we don't have weren't having sex or at least their parents weren't having sex.

[Andrew Walsh]

Do you remember? I'm just remembering this now. We sort of got into this at the beginning of last week. So we are noticing a trend. It was fallow last week as well. And so I was doing the math, looking back nine months and trying to say there's a certain type of person who has a child or type of people who have children who will grow up to listen to TBTL and those types of people, the parents of eventual.

[Luke Burbank]

They are not horny in May.

[Andrew Walsh]

In May, which is.

[Luke Burbank]

Was that the month?

[Andrew Walsh]

I forget. I don't know.

[Luke Burbank]

I mean that seems very horny month.

[Andrew Walsh]

Seems like one of the horniest months. I couldn't agree with you more on that. I'm sorry.

[Luke Burbank]

That debate bringing.

[Andrew Walsh]

Right.

[Luke Burbank]

There's fresh, fresh flowers are blooming, bunnies.

[Andrew Walsh]

Are hopping around, if you know what I mean.

[Luke Burbank]

Our listeners are more like a kind of indoor kids. Maybe they like to maybe like to get to it in like November or something.

[Andrew Walsh]

By the way, I've Been seeing a lot of bunnies throughout the winter. I always think of springtime as a time for bunnies. Have you been.

[Luke Burbank]

You know, what I'm seeing a bunch of right now, and it's driving me crazy, is I've got a mole going to town on my yard right now. Wanted to add a few comments regarding your mole situation. Like, I've got just right out my window here, five mole hills. Andrew, and I will make a mountain out of them.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, it's.

[Luke Burbank]

I don't know. For some reason, that also doesn't seem like winter behavior now. Of course, if I was a mole, I would want. I guess I'd want to be underground where maybe it's a little warmer right now. I don't really understand what their whole, like, deal is, but moles digging up mole hills in my yard seems like a spring and maybe summer activity. This feels like a weird time for it.

[Andrew Walsh]

It does. The weather has been somewhat spring, like, for the past five days, but it sounds like this has gone, you know, gone on before that, which does remind me.

[Luke Burbank]

It just cropped up. It just literally.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, really?

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, one day ago when I got home. Oh, well, okay, then I saw these. They're brand new. Or as my mom would say, I saw these, and they are. These are fresh mole. Molehills in my yard.

[Andrew Walsh]

Wanted to add a few comments regarding your mole situation. We need to talk about what's going on in my basement. By the way, I think we have another critter again. Bingo's been hunting. I don't have time to get into it right now, but I think we're also very close to just tearing that entire part of the basement apart probably in the next week or two. By the way, there will be some construction noise in the podcast again, for folks who missed that from your end of things. I think I will be living through a construction zone for a month or so.

[Luke Burbank]

So fun. Flipping excited about this.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, we don't even. Well, okay, I don't have time to get into that now. We'll talk about that maybe tomorrow.

[Luke Burbank]

Put a pin in that. But, man, there's. I. If we could turn this into a home renovation podcast. I mean, I tried to for the last three plus years, but if we could, I would be. I. I am. I'm so much more engaged in this conversation than I was five seconds ago.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, we're gonna side. We're gonna put. We're gonna sidestep that.

[Luke Burbank]

Disengaging.

[Andrew Walsh]

Disengaging. You can just gloss over now. You can. Do you want to you to want. You know what? I told you you could bring one toy to the podcast. Did you bring your TikTok? Did you bring your Tiki Tok?

[Luke Burbank]

I brought my. Can I be on my iPad for 30 minutes?

[Andrew Walsh]

You can play on your iPad while I.

[Luke Burbank]

30 minutes. That's it. That's the limit.

[Andrew Walsh]

Reminisce here. Maybe I'm actually no joke, maybe I'm making a mistake by pushing this so hard. But I guess to complete my thought, I got this note from our friend Max who joins us on the show quite a bit during live shows.

[Luke Burbank]

Max, the actor?

[Andrew Walsh]

Exactly. He acts.

[Luke Burbank]

He acts to the Max, actor, illustrator, bon vivant.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right. He is listening back through the TBTL archives. We have several listeners who are doing this and I think he went back. I think he started listening around 2013 or something, maybe 2012. But he went back to the beginning and is now he says he's about a year past from when he first started listening. So he's caught up on everything he hadn't heard before. Now he's re listening and he's in this part of the journey. And when I think I want to set this up a little bit, when I think about what you and I do here, we joke about it being somewhat disposable media, but we're also somewhat serious about that. We were talking about TV shows the other day and whether it's super sad that Netflix tells creators, don't be too memorable, don't be too good. Because people just want to watch or listen while they're doing other things. And in a certain way, while television is a different creature, that is the kind of radio that I sort of enjoy, you know, the stuff that you don't have to hang on every single word. If I'm thinking about podcasts, it's hard for me to follow the more in depth reporting in podcasts sometimes and stuff.

[Luke Burbank]

I do of 15 second backing on my phone, just like hitting back, back, back if it's something that I. Because my mind will wander and then I'll realize like, oh, wait, I lost the thread here.

[Andrew Walsh]

Right?

[Luke Burbank]

And that's why there's no thread on tbtl.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right. There's no thread at all. And as a listener I'm like, well, is there a thread though? That's the question. As a listener, I'm like, yeah, that's why. When I was in my Dan LeBatard show phase, that's what I loved about it. You could literally walk in and out of the room. You don't have to catch everything. It's like a lot of just chitter chatter. You don't even know how much you're listening or caring about any of it. And then some of it will stand out and you'll remember it. And I enjoy that. And when I think of tbtl, I think about that as what we're doing. I will ask me two hours after we're done recording today what we talked about today, and I will not have much of a memory of it. Maybe that just speaks to my bad brain. But obviously there is a narrative arc. You've been doing this show since 2009. 8. Sorry. And obviously it's always had a component that focuses on your life and personal experiences. Then I joined, I think in 2012 or something. So you and I have been doing this together for a long time too. And of course there's a narrative arc. And yes, sometimes it's kind of like, oh, well, watch this Juggalo headline in 2012 or something like that. But other times, you know, it does get a little bit more real. And that gets to this email that I got from Max. He says, I'm going through the archive still in my archival time stream. You are about to head down to Los Angeles to live with a mysterious French girl, her dog and her pool, which is accurate, although taken out of.

[Luke Burbank]

A part time model. Right. I feel like you.

[Andrew Walsh]

She was a model and actor.

[Luke Burbank]

French model is a very. It's a very intriguing kind of person to live with. Not like that. You try any funny business. But that's just a vivid character in my mind.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, I tried funny business. I had a rubber chicken. I had a whoopee cushion. I had one of those bike horns. And actually she was French, so it translated really well. We got along really, really well, actually. Loved it.

[Luke Burbank]

She loved it. You are like a Jerry Lewis type.

[Andrew Walsh]

She said you.

[Luke Burbank]

I'm very, very sassy.

[Andrew Walsh]

I won't do the accent. But she said you studied under the master. Anyway. He says, however, there appears to be an episode missing in the stream. I just started listening to episode number 1476. We were mere babes. Luke 1476. And there's a reference to a very morose show. Bean hated it. Chris Hayes loved it. But it's missing. It's episode 1475 when I hated it. When I was scrolling through, I assumed it was just a numbering blip. But no, it's a gap in time. So if there's any way to track that down, I'd be very curious to hear it. So I went into the, like, online archives that we have, like, kind of publicly available from our website. And I'm trying to get back to it now.

[Luke Burbank]

I have a theory, by the way.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay. And I'll let you say your theory, but let me just say this before I give you more details about this. I don't have it in front of me right now, but the episode after this, the one that lets Max know that there's something missing, is titled something like very happy show. And the description is something along the lines of after yesterday's controversial show where we bummed everybody out or something, we decided we're gonna put together the happiest TV tale in history today. Or something along the lines of that. And I thought that that was sort of telling as well. And he's right, though. There was no episode. Here it is episode 1476. It's called Happy show. Luke and Andrew attempt to host the happiest show ever to make up for Wednesday's depression fest. But there's no Wednesday show. It was missing online. Now, what's your theory?

[Luke Burbank]

Well, I remember it was long ago, but I remember there were a couple of shows where we legit got into it. And I think. I mean, it's so rare for us. I think what I remember was that there was a period of time where in my mind, it was like, this show's just gotta be so real, man.

[Andrew Walsh]

And.

[Luke Burbank]

And if that means Andrew and I are arguing, and that's just. We've always joked about hot talk. I don't think I was ever trying to create hot talk on the show, but I do remember having a moment of time where I thought you and I legitimately being kind of annoyed at each other or arguing with a sort of certain real intensity on the show is just super compelling. And that's just like, hey, if that happens, that happens. And then I remember. I don't know if somebody actually said this or this was maybe you paraphrasing or me paraphrasing. Somebody was like, I don't like it when mommy and daddy fight. Like, so I just remember there being a brief moment where I was just like, you know, hey, man, if we disagree on something, then we disagree, and we're going to have it out. And then like, that happening a very, very minuscule amount of times. Maybe once, maybe twice. And then hearing people go, like, I don't like that. Like, that's not why I tune into this show. That makes me feel uncomfortable. So I'm wondering if that's what was happening. Although it doesn't Sound like the way we're describing it is that we were just. You and I were sad as opposed to you and I were fighting.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. I don't think you're right about that in this case. And by the way, my experience, that's.

[Luke Burbank]

Exactly what you all say.

[Andrew Walsh]

I remember that happening about twice on the show. I think it happened after this. I think I was in LA both times. And I. And honestly, in my expectation, because, let's see, at least the ones where I posted it. And I feel like that I was in la and I feel like those times that I remember, I remember posting those. Not because I thought, like, TBTL has to be real, but because I thought I was in the right and I thought you were in the wrong. And I was like, would you in LA for those? Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

So were you posting from la? Well, it was after we got hired.

[Andrew Walsh]

But you're on apm. But anything pre APM you would have been posting.

[Luke Burbank]

Right, Right.

[Andrew Walsh]

And so anyway, I'm going to give you some more context for this as well. And then I think, do you know.

[Luke Burbank]

The answer to this?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. Ye. Yeah. Okay. So I go to our official webpage and kind of like when you. Our archives on our website can only go back so many years, but if you want to see the whole thing, you click on a button on our website that says show entire archive and it takes you to the Libsyn site and it just goes back to day one. And if I go back a couple of shows before this missing show, here are some descriptions from November 18th. Andrew calls in while packing up his apartment and trying to decide which CDs, if any, he should bring to LA. Andrew details his plans for not crying during his final radio broadcast. That was the day before that. So I'm wrapping things up in Seattle, getting ready to move down to LA to take that job at KCRW. On episode 1474, the one, the last one before the missing episode, it says, Luke comes to the defense of a controversial Toys R Us ad. Plus info on how you can watch TBTL live at Uber headquarters on Thursday. So if you'll recall, one of the last things I did in Seattle, and it was hard for me to say goodbye to the city and my radio show and everything was. We did a Uber Gen, then known as Uber Jen, you know, invited us to do a live show up in that. In that room. Yeah. And then we all got together at the Nightlight. Rest in peace.

[Luke Burbank]

I believe Drew Barth did stand up comedy.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes. Good. Remember? So all of this is starting to Come into relief for me a little bit, right? I'm like, yes, I'm packing up whatever, but what is this missing show? And I go to this hard drive that I have that has all of the episodes and I can't remember exactly the provenance of this hard drive. But basically we have all of our archives online. But I also have a hard drive that I think I populated during one of our big transitions between networks or something. And so I was like, well, is this show actually going to be on the archive or not? Or is it truly lost to history? And it was on the archive. Something was a little bit funky with it though. Like there's this. It's hard to describe. There's like metadata on all the files. When you open it up in a folder, it kind of says like author is Luke Burbank. And it sort of has the date and stuff. And this one had like none of that information. And it's only 40 minutes long. Now. I don't think that's because I don't think that the lacking metadata has anything to do with the content. I don't think we were trying to bury this episode or anything. I think something got glitchy in the system at some point. Maybe it was transferring everything out of Cairo to apm. Maybe it was something that happened. Apm. You know, I have no idea why this happened, but I found the file. I have not uploaded it yet, but I will do that hopefully later today if listeners are interested in hearing this. But I'm going to play a little bit of it for you now and I'm playing it for you, letting you know I am not proud of what we're about to hear. This is me, I think, kind of at my worst. I don't know, sometimes maybe I lack energy and I don't like to hear that. But what I really don't like is when I come in so hot and full of anxiety and I am machine gunning my anxiety at you. I am just doing that verbal rat a tat tat. No, it's not sad so much. But then you, I think then say you're feeling some anxiety too, but I'm going to fast forward through your intro a little. Well, actually, let's hear what the intro tape was a little bit here. And this is more about me than you. And I'm saying that to protect you, not to. But it's.

[Luke Burbank]

You can see via the video link, Andrew, that like the very idea. If I could show you, like if you could see close up the hairs on my arm Are standing up at the very thought of listening to our own voices from. What is it, 10 years ago? 10 plus years ago.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, I'm happy to.

[Luke Burbank]

No, no, no.

[Andrew Walsh]

Again, like, we don't. Because this is mostly. I was gonna play mostly just tape of me and how awful I think I sound, but also how real the moment is to a degree, and maybe that's what I'm getting at here.

[Luke Burbank]

Sure.

[Andrew Walsh]

And this is also a very specific time. Like, you and I, right now, we're talking on a random Thursday in the middle of January while we have some things going on in our lives. And I know you're really excited about that remodel, basement remodel conversation coming up, but, you know, I'm not picking up my life, quitting a job. I love hoping that I made the right decision to move to a different city when I love the one I met, you know? I mean, this really was pretty big moment in my life, and it was sort of like going back and looking at, you know, like, photos or something and being like, wow. Yeah, this was a big time. And we have it all recorded, and it's kind of an interesting experience. So I'm just curious here, because I don't remember what was the opening tape, and is it something we'd still play today? Tell me, tell me, tell me. Oh, yeah, it certainly is.

[Luke Burbank]

Great intro.

[Andrew Walsh]

Don't. I don't dance to Dido, dude. Right. So let's say that maybe with the intro and then your. Your opening, I'm gonna skip ahead maybe about three minutes into the show and everything. Okay, so you already hear me rat a tat tatting. I'm gonna back this up a little bit. Great. Okay. Oh, geez Louise. So you would think that I could have.

[Luke Burbank]

Saddest thing I've ever heard.

[Andrew Walsh]

A little bit better. Let me pick it up here. Nothing changed between yesterday and today, but I. I need you to know, were.

[Luke Burbank]

You less anxious yesterday?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I mean, I go through. I go through. Through. I ended the day a lot of alcohol every night.

[Luke Burbank]

Trying to not feel your feelings.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm trying to think. So it was. What's today? Wednesday.

[Luke Burbank]

Today is Wednesday.

[Andrew Walsh]

So far, I'm doing great. Okay. I knew that today was Wednesday, so Monday would have been the first day that I woke up, you know, like the first day after closing down the old night show. As a matter of fact, as Ron Upshaw post on my Facebook page, today is the third day of the rest of my life, as he put it. So Monday was a day where I don't know exactly what that means. But it's kind of a good joke.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, it's a pretty good joke. It's one of my favorite Bright Eyes songs.

[Andrew Walsh]

I. I knew, you know, I got a lot of things done on Monday. Just, like, taking tons of stuff to the Goodwill, just really, you know, packing, making stuff done. Had a lot of great meetings with some folks over at the new job. Making stuff done. And then. And then Monday night, you know, Genevieve came home, and she was. She was working all day, of course, and comes home, and the house is kind of in disarray, half packed, half not stuff. And, you know, I could just tell that she was very anxious. I could imagine how that would feel. Like, you know, if. If the shoe were on the other foot or whatever. It's just kind of like, oh, you come. You leave the house at the beginning of the day, and it's exactly like the house you've been living in for five years. And then you come home and, you know, from a hard day at work, and it just. Everything is kind of upended. Like, that's a. And so I could just tell that she was. I guess this is a reminder to me, and I'll remind you, Luke, that Genevieve did not move down to LA with me right away, which is why I was renting that Airbnb.

[Luke Burbank]

And it's you and the French model lady.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, exactly.

[Luke Burbank]

Ooh la.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, la la. And so, you know, I don't. I'm having trouble even. Remember, I keep on picturing myself leaving my Wallingford apartment here, but that's not the case. Wallingford came years later when you returned to Seattle. And, like, it's really hard for me to even.

[Luke Burbank]

Capitol Hill, right?

[Andrew Walsh]

This is me leaving Capitol Hill. So now I'm trying to remember. So I'm packed. I've packed up a whole bunch of stuff. I can't remember what Genevieve's deal was. She did. She. She might have rented a smaller place. Place here in Seattle, or she just lived among boxes. I think that was the case. I think we just wanted to pack up the house as much as possible while both of us were still here in Seattle, so that I wasn't leaving her to do all the packing. But either way, that must be what I'm referring to is, like, Genevieve comes home, she's just living her life, but she comes home to a house that's all packed up. I was feeling really good Monday night, and I was just saying, you know, don't be anxious. Like, this is great. Like, we're so close to Doing what?

[Luke Burbank]

Doing we've been.

[Andrew Walsh]

Been wanting to do for a long time and everything. And then so it's one of those things where I feel like when you're in a relationship, any kind of relationship, you if one person maybe is overreacting a little bit, the other person will be the stabilizer, you know. So I was feeling great Monday, like got a bunch of shit done, et cetera. And then yesterday I just woke up really, really anxious, really anxious about things. As the day went on, I had a few more work meetings. The more I talk about work usually the better I feel about it. Later I got some more stuff done yesterday. I was feeling good. This morning though, man, it's. What time is it? It's 1213. I can't shake. I can't shake the inks. Anxiousness. Can't shake it. Just feel well said all around. Also, the fact that I called 12:15 morning really says a lot about me.

[Luke Burbank]

I've done that this week.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's true.

[Luke Burbank]

But I think, I believe I Start to consider 3pm to be in the morning.

[Andrew Walsh]

So I play that for you. And maybe I shared all of my thoughts about it before playing it. And so I don't have a power out, but I was just really. It was such a weird thing for me this morning to hunt down an old episode of TBTL that could have been anything. It could have been you. And I just seriously like talking about some dumb story where somebody was mysteriously pooping at a high school racetrack or something. You know, I knew it wasn't that because Max said that this was a controversial show that for some reason Bean hated and Chris Hayes loved. But just to go back and hear just such a. I'm embarrassed about how I sound there. I don't sound like a good host. I'm not saying words sometimes and I'm certainly not saying the right words other times, but it was a very interesting moment just to hear tbtl truly as an audio diary almost.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. And I mean, first of all, I did not think you sounded overly like rat a tat or, you know, like, if you hadn't described it that way before we listened, I wouldn't have even really picked up kind of like that you were, you know, motor mouthing or something, you. And also, honestly, as I listened back to it, I was sort of intrigued. I was, I was, I was, I was interested in like what you were going to say next. Because what I was hearing was a person who was just like with. Without a filter, just reporting how they were feeling and the fact that you were talking about how you went to bed feeling kind of okay, but then just woke up feeling pretty not okay. I totally agree with you that it is, it is interesting to listen back to something like this and realize that we have been, you and I have been basically just recording a five day a week audio diary for approaching 20 years. And also I think that's what people find intriguing about it. It's why sometimes when we go into a kind of a different recording mode where the shows are a little more standalone, some people find that to be a little bit less compelling. I mean, the main thing this show has going for it, if anything, is that it happens five days a week and our lives continue to sort of like occur during those, during the hours between the show taping and then we get together and then we talk about how we're feeling on that day, or what happened the night before, or this morning, or when I realized today that I did not in fact take my garbage up the hill and it was not picked up.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, we gotta talk about that.

[Luke Burbank]

Even the very banal, like, I mean, and you moving to la, that's not a banal topic. But like, the main thing that I think that people find interesting about the show is that it really is.

[Andrew Walsh]

A.

[Luke Burbank]

Long running project where two guys are just talking to each other about whatever it is that happened to them and how they feel about it. And then the next day there's a new set of things that happened and we have a new set of feelings about those things. All of it sort of backdropped against some very old tape from Arrested Development.

[Andrew Walsh]

Right.

[Luke Burbank]

Some tape that barely ever gets updated.

[Andrew Walsh]

It wasn't that old then. I mean, it's old now.

[Luke Burbank]

I mean, think about like, like it's crazy that the, the thing that I'm struck by whenever we listen to old episodes of TBTL is that it's almost all the same drop tape.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, yeah, I know. Unfortunately, that's why that's on me.

[Luke Burbank]

That's my responsibility more.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, you're talking about the drops you drop in.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, the drops that I use are. So I've just been going, you know, they've been treading the same path.

[Andrew Walsh]

But Tommy, Tommy, all that glitz, the.

[Luke Burbank]

Gold that glitters or whatever. He says it's the music of Rush, right?

[Andrew Walsh]

No, Dido. Right.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, he starts out talking about Rush and he says, I know it's not one of your Dido CDs.

[Andrew Walsh]

So he's quoting Rush. I know it's not, because that's a.

[Luke Burbank]

Very Saxendale kind of move.

[Andrew Walsh]

Right.

[Luke Burbank]

But anyway, all that to say, Andrew, I didn't think that you sounded like crazy on that episode, but I also understand how. Why you feel the way you feel listening back. But I also understand why that is why that kind of just energy is the thing that people, I guess, tune into the show for, whether it's coming from you or me, and whether it's a day that we're high energy or maybe lower energy. The fact that, like, this is a just a. This is kind of a running audio diary of our lives is, I think, kind of what the, what the interesting part of the show is.

[Andrew Walsh]

You know, what it also reminded me of. And this is a bit of a sidetrack here, but I was listening to this tape earlier today, and then as I put it around this morning, it reminded me of what else was going on in this moment. Something that I don't. I could be wrong about this. I don't think I've ever told this on the show before. And I'm old enough now and enough time has passed that I just don't care. But this would have been a few days after Madeleine Brand tried to find, force me off of tbtl. Do you remember that?

[Luke Burbank]

I now I had memory hold that, or I maybe had blacked it out because that was such a traumatic memory. But. Right.

[Andrew Walsh]

Like, so the. I mentioned that it was the. I like that Friday before this episode. And I think I said that was a Wednesday. I was doing my last show on Cairo with very mixed emotions. Like, did I do the right thing of taking this job to start the show with Madeline down at kcrw and, and, you know, I was in a generally a good place and I had made plans to continue to do TBTL out of the studios of KCRW because that was going to be my ISDN connection. That was a big consideration for me and you in the future of the show as I decided to take this job, you know, how will I do tbtl? Because this is before we had all of the Internet technology that we have now where we can dial up so seamlessly. It was. It's just amazing that this wasn't that long ago, but it was such a different scenario. We're trying to figure out, do I get an ISDN line at home? Can I just use a radio station's ISDN line? Everything was ISDN then. And I had, you know, talked to my boss. Madeline and I kind of had the same boss. We answered to the same person, the program director. And he said, yeah, you can use our studios after hours. You have to give priority to anybody who's doing KCRW work course, blah, blah. And then I get a phone call from Madeline. She's going to host the show that we're launching together and I'm the head producer on it that Friday. Now, keep in mind, I'm getting ready to say goodbye to the two listeners of the Andrew Walsh Show. And I get you're right, there is only one by this point.

[Luke Burbank]

And there was one set of footprints.

[Andrew Walsh]

And it was the guy who was waiting for coast to coast.

[Luke Burbank]

That was when Nick Jarran carried you.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right. And so I'm in a weird headspace anyway. And I get this call from her just saying, what is this I hear you plan on doing TBTL while you're producing my show. And I don't know how she suddenly became aware of it at this late stage, but she apparently had concerns about me continuing to moonlight on tbtl. And she said something like, well, everything you say represents the show represents me. I think she even said represents me or reflects back onto me or something. And I was just like, well, this is something that I had arranged. I have, you know, I've always been upfront about this. I wouldn't have. And I said I wouldn't have accepted the job if you were to tell me that I couldn't do TBT all at the same time. And then she got, she's like, well, we have to meet with the boss. And then again, now we're clock is ticking. We're hours away from me going live on the radio and I have to have an emergency meeting with my new boss who I don't know if I've even met in person. I have not. Well, yeah, I met in person once during an in person interview. And the host of the new show who's actively trying to get me to quit my passion project and side gig.

[Luke Burbank]

By the way, can I interject one little piece of context here, which is that part of, I think, how you were on their radar. And I mean, you got the job because you would never admit to this in public, but you are an extremely talented radio producer. Like, you're just really, really good at it. And so, I mean, that's why you got that job. But a thing that I think was intriguing about you was that you were associated with what at the time was being misunderstood as a very popular podcast, tbtl.

[Andrew Walsh]

And you, and you and Madeline were friends and she really thought the world of you. And I think she thought I was. I remember her one time saying, this is Andrew. He's just like, Luke. And I remember saying, you have no idea who I am, do you?

[Luke Burbank]

But like, the part of the thing was. Because that was at the time where it was like, we gotta make. And by the way, I guess this is, in a way still the case, but it's like all of the terrestrial radio shows are trying to figure out how to be successful digital products. And this, like the. To the t. The fact that you were part of TBTL was seen as a really big. I would imagine. And again, I don't want to say it overshadowed your. Your radio chops because you were a senior producer in New Hampshire, you produced a bunch of stuff in Seattle. Like, you really know your shit when it comes to radio producing, but it wasn't. Not part of your appeal. And then, so for it to be like, this guy's like, he's like part of a. He's part of a cool happening podcast. And then to be like, and now that's why you have to stop being part of it. There's to me, some kind of weird irony in that.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes. And also, I mean, it def. You and Madeline were friends. You guys had worked together, you know, professionally for a long time. She thinks the world of you. And so I don't think I even get very far in the process if she doesn't already know me through you. I think I had been maybe. I think I dropped her an email because of you being a mutual contact of ours long before this job opened up. And I just said, hey, I'm interested in LA if anything ever opens up. So, I mean, I would totally credit your relationship as the reason I'm even on their radar, which is totally fine. I mean, that's sort of how things sometimes work. You know, it's. I'm a Nepo baby, baby. But. But anyway, yeah, so that's. That's networking or whatever. But I was.

[Luke Burbank]

I remember the idea that then it was like, but. But now you're not going to do the thing that was one of the big things that made you appealing about this job.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. And. And also just the fact that it was kind of, well, what you say reflects upon me now in this way that was like, so, I guess, just insulting to me. But also, like, that was in the backdrop of all of this. I'm now having my first real misgivings, you know, after that conversation about, like, what have I gotten into? And like, in the fact that I have to now. So I ended up being on this meeting with her and Our mutual boss. And he kind of said, well, he was a bit mealy mouthed about it, but basically I was able to just say, I said several times, I would not have taken this job if you guys had concerns about this. And so whatever, I just continued. I just did. I just continued doing it right. And it eventually blew over. But I don't know, I was just sort of thinking about that this morning because it was something that I'm not going to say I totally forgot about, but I don't think about all that often. And hearing me talk, you know, on this tape we just played and knowing that that's also in the background. But I'm not even saying that, you know, what I, I was uncomfortable saying at the time. I'm mostly comfortable saying it now, although I do know I'm throwing people under the bus. But it is what it is. It's a true story. And I'm just like, I don't know, I'm just sort of reliving this anxiety. And also I think I'm just a bit of in a reflective mode lately anyway. There's a lot of change in my life last year and it's kind of like, wow, just sort of taking stock a little bit. It was very interesting to hear this. Not because I think it's good and not because I am not embarrassed about how I sound. But it was just a reminder that what we're doing here sort of is more than just Juggalo talk, which we haven't talked about Juggalos in years. I don't know shit about Juggalos, but you know what I mean, Just to use that as a stand in.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, and the other thing, though, and I think this is why you brought. This is why you asked Max to email you so you would have a pretext for bringing this up, which is like, thank God you stood your ground.

[Andrew Walsh]

By the way.

[Luke Burbank]

No one's ever heard me say those words in that order. Thank God you adhered to the Castle doctrine. Thank God you stuck to your guns. Wait, why are all of these bad things thank. I'm just like, because if I'm in your shoes and it's like I've gotten hired to be the senior producer for this like, hot shit new big show in Los Angeles. And like the one thing that they want me to stop doing is stop doing this podcast with my buddy, which honestly is like a side gig but is not paying your bills at that time. And it's just kind of like this thing you presumably enjoy doing. But, like, I would have if it were me, I would have been like, okay, if I have to choose between KCRW and tbtl, I'm choosing KCRW every time. And, like, the fact that you didn't do that is so awesome, because we would not be here today, you and I. And I know that even when you. Eventually we're working that job. And it was so it was taxing on you, and the hours were early and long, and it was a lot of pressure. And then at the end of each one of those weekdays, it'd be time for you to start looking around and trying to sneak into a studio.

[Andrew Walsh]

That was the only part. Yeah. And then run down the hall and flip like, an IS. Remember, we had to set up ISDNs every single day.

[Luke Burbank]

Get that telos running.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, my God. And, like, who's.

[Luke Burbank]

No, I. I mean, really, the. Like, the. The fact that you. And there was a lot of those moments, too, where I think it was, like, it would have. There was a. There were many, many times where it would have made probably more sense for you to kind of walk away from this thing. And had you done that in those days, this thing would have just stopped existing. Because, like, I mean, I was. I was not capable on any level of, like, continuing this thing solo. So I'm really, really glad that you kind of. That you did not just fold immediately. Like, what? Because, again, if I'm on the phone with my new boss in LA and my new, essentially supervisor, the host of the show, and that person is saying, well, you can't do this podcast with your buddy because that's gonna mess up what we're trying to do down here. I would have been like, absolutely, we'll be deleting all of the files by the end of business today. And you didn't do that. And I am very, very glad that you didn't.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, I deleted one file, and it's the one that Max was looking for.

[Luke Burbank]

The irony, I guess. Is it irony or coincidence that the next day, the show description makes it sound like the show that was missing was some whole thing? You know what I mean? Like, the next day could have been anything else, and it would have caused less suspicion on Max's part.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, right. Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

You know what I mean? And that also, if we can take a moment, this is why conspiracy theories are very compelling, but they usually don't mean shit because. And I'm talking about Max now. Conspiracy theories make dumb people feel smart.

[Andrew Walsh]

Max, I still love you, and I think you do great work, and we're probably going to need more.

[Luke Burbank]

This is a perfect example of, like, a conspiracy theory that, like, it was like, well, what. What were they? Why would they say we're doing a happy show? Because yesterday's show was a sad show. Like, why would you ever do that? And it's like, I don't know. That's just what we said. And then randomly, the. Like, the upload didn't happen on that previous show. Like, there's a lot of smoke there, and there's actually, it turns out, no fire on the previous. You know, nothing crazy happened on the show that was missing. It was just missing. And by coincidence, the description of the following show made it seem like there was some reason that show had been deleted.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, if this were in more like, kind of just banal time and you and I were just doing mostly top stories and headlines, and maybe I have some garbage anxiety or I get. You know what? Whatever. Like, some smaller narrative. Max would have just assumed, as he did at first, that it was just a numbering issue, not a missing file. But it happened to be a missing file where you can see from the. From the descriptions of the shows in front of it and then behind it, which, like, you just said, references it so heavily that, like, this was a show that people hated it. Like, you're like, wow, it's like the.

[Luke Burbank]

It's the missing. It's like Nixon and the. What was the missing. The Halderman tapes.

[Andrew Walsh]

I accidentally hit the delete button for big chunks of this. You seem to be. I won't play it for you because I know that you don't love that feeling either, and I didn't want to try to drag you down with me in playing this, but I think then you go on to talk about some anxiety that you're just having where you just suddenly, you just looked around and you just felt like everything was really untidy and messy in your work.

[Luke Burbank]

Were we in my house? Were we.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, that's the thing.

[Luke Burbank]

It sounds kind of just a little echoey with. Right. But I mean, were we at my. We're probably at my house at that.

[Andrew Walsh]

I think so. Because you say something like. And again, it's. This is such a period where I kind of forget. This is when I was. This is a really. This is kind of a cool schedule for me at the time. I would wake up in, I think, late morning, go to the gym at the bottom of the hill of Capitol Hill. Then after the gym, go right to your place, record an episode of TBTL in your house, and then leave your house and go do the night show at Cairo and then get home around 10:30 at night and then do it all over again. But it was. It didn't feel like overwork because it was just me talking to you or me talking to Nick Jarin on the radio. You know what I mean? It was right.

[Luke Burbank]

In a way. TBT kind of be like a sort of a version of show prep for you at least, working out thoughts and stuff.

[Andrew Walsh]

Exactly. And. But when I listen to this tape now, it's so hard for me to picture me and you in that same room when I'm doing this rat a tat tatting. I keep picturing myself somewhere by myself talking to you down some sort of audio line. But no, we were in your home because I said something like, oh, it's pretty neat in here or something. You're like, I know, but I just can't. And you were just like. You were just having some sort of anxiety thing as well that wasn't related to any big changes in your life. But that's what was going on at the time. So.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah.

[Andrew Walsh]

And I guess some folks just did not like us getting too real.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. Because how do we know that Bean didn't like it?

[Andrew Walsh]

He must have sent in an email that we read on the show or something. Like, you guys gotta pull the nose up on this or something. I have no idea. I have no idea. I'm speculating.

[Luke Burbank]

Cause I feel like that's the other thing. I felt like Bean was the one who gave us the feedback to Don't Fight on the air. He might have been the one that said, we don't like it when Mommy.

[Andrew Walsh]

I don't know.

[Luke Burbank]

Again, as we've learned over the course of the show, but more acutely of late, my memory is just absolute Swiss cheese. I'm remembering things about Ralph Nader that never happened. I mean, I am now living that T shirt that I made up called Quit Remembering that. Like, I have officially quit remembering that, whether I want to or not.

[Andrew Walsh]

Thank you, baby.

[Luke Burbank]

All right, let's thank some donors. The names that I'm about to read. Representation. A sort of. Let's see, six members of a larger movement. And that is the group of people who would like this thing to continue for whatever reason. Even a show where we spend most of the show replaying an older show that we did and then wondering what it all means. These folks like that. They really, really like it. And they're donating their money so that this can exist. Because without folks like Jack Taylor of Marysville, Washington, we wouldn't exist. And Jack Taylor has done so much for the show beyond just supporting us financially. Jack has made all kinds of amazing art. The Johnny and Bobo dolls are based on original art concepts, I believe by our friend. Jack is a very talented.

[Andrew Walsh]

I don't think that's true.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, that's not where those came from.

[Andrew Walsh]

No. I think he made art based on the Bob.

[Luke Burbank]

He made art based on Johnny and Bobo.

[Andrew Walsh]

I think I could be wrong. Jack, get at us if I'm wrong about that.

[Luke Burbank]

We've established my memory is flawless.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, it's not like mine is, like, superb either. But I thought that the dolls were based on the cartoon, the animation that Eric drew for us. Remember Oops. The Dirty Monster?

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, yes, Yes.

[Andrew Walsh]

I think the dolls were based on that. And then I think maybe that inspired other things. But Jack made these amazing big creations, these cartoon creations of you and me.

[Luke Burbank]

And these small ones that were like hand puppets, kind of like puppets that were on sticks. Anyway, Jack is amazing. And Jack than for supporting the show for all these years. Nice to see your name on here. Thanks also to Jay and Steven Barezhnoy of Portland, Oregon.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hey, friendos. Good to see you, Jay.

[Luke Burbank]

We go way, way back with with Jay and then I guess to some degree, Steven, who's now probably forced into conscription.

[Andrew Walsh]

I was gonna say thank you listening to the show. Yeah, no, Jay is doing her duty in bringing more people into the culture. So, Stephen, welcome and thanks for hanging with us. It's been a few years now.

[Luke Burbank]

And thanks also to Michael Havens of Tumwater, Washington.

[Andrew Walsh]

Tumwater. There's some of my favorite repeaters are from Tumwater.

[Luke Burbank]

I. There's a Tumwater is my go to Taco time stop spot when I'm driving from Seattle down here to where I live, which is exactly what happened last weekend after we watched the Seahawks game together. I spend the whole first part of the drive Seattle through Tacoma and all those areas just thinking Tumwater, Tumwater, Tumwater.

[Andrew Walsh]

I get to Tumwater, I get to.

[Luke Burbank]

Tumwater, and it's time to go to that Taco time, which I love. They're great over there.

[Andrew Walsh]

And this is a serious question. I know we've talked about this incessantly on the show over the years, but there are two taco times. One is considered sort of real by.

[Luke Burbank]

Pacific in each person. There are two taco times.

[Andrew Walsh]

The one that is the quote unquote, real taco time that people who grew up here are obsessed with. That is the one that is officially Called Northwest. Or is it Taco Time Northwest? Or is Taco Time Northwest the interloper?

[Luke Burbank]

No, Taco Time Northwest is the standard bear.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's the real deal.

[Luke Burbank]

That's the true heir, okay, to the Taco Time fortune, okay, which is, by the way, a mountain cave filled with. They used to call them Mexi Fries and now I think they call them Tater Tots or Tater Fries or something. You have Taco Time International, which is the one that. You've got those in Portland. You've got those spread out kind of through the West. Taco Time International has a different logo. They have mostly different menu items. It's not a bad place. Like, in a pinch, I'm sure a Taco Time International will do. But it is not part of the, part of the true bloodline of the Taco Time world. And that's all of the ones like, so the up in Kelso, Washington, which is just a bit north of me, that is the southern border of legit Taco Times. And it was part of why I decided to move out here and buy this house, because it was. I'm within door dashing of a true Taco Time.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm looking at the Taco Time International logo now and I see that it is very different. And so I don't think I've ever seen what I'm going to refer to here as a fake Taco Time. I don't know if that's true.

[Luke Burbank]

You wouldn't have. You would have had to be like, in Portland or like Eugene, Oregon, or. Once I drove, I mean, I don't think I drove exclusively for this reason, but it was a factor. There was for a time, because I went on the Taco Time website and I think I'm. This is before I knew there was a distinction. I was living in Los Angeles, a place, Andrew, where it is famously difficult to get good Mexican food. And I was like, really, really homesick for the specific taste of like a Taco Time soft taco and the, the, the tater tots and the ranch dressing, which isn't really ranch dressing, all of this stuff. And I was on the website, like, where's the closest Taco Time to me? And there was one listed at being at a gas station, I believe in Barstow, California. And again, I don't think I drove. I wouldn't have driven to Barstow for this, but I might have, like made a specific plan. Like maybe I'm going to Vegas or going somewhere that way. It's pretty far from la and I'M going to make sure to stop at this Taco time at this gas station. Because I was like, that's amazing. And then I got there and it was a Taco Time International. They didn't have any of the stuff that I was jonesing for of a very specific flavor profile.

[Andrew Walsh]

I like the idea of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Only instead of a trunk full of drugs, you just have a trunk full of Tater Tots and whatever else is on the menu there.

[Luke Burbank]

There's nothing more vicious than a man who is deep in the throes of a number three meal. Soft taco binge. By the way, I've had Hunter S. Thompson on the brain because I was reading an article in the Times today about reopening the investigation into his passage.

[Andrew Walsh]

I have that flagged. I saw that headline and I'm interested in it and yeah, I want to, I want to read that as well. I have not dug.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, because of course he, he. He's been gone for a long time. He took his own life. Or at least that was the assumption. The main. Without giving. I mean, can you give away real life events? Is that. Can you spoil non fiction events the same way you could spoil like a fictional book or movie?

[Andrew Walsh]

It's interesting we get into that conversation with some of the documentaries about real life events but when they're sort of spread out in a storytelling way. But I am not worried about that in this case. It's a newspaper article.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. I mean it sure seems like probably he, he took his own life, which was the initial report and something he had talked about a lot. He was obviously a gun nut and he was in pretty poor health. There was a lot that was going on in his life that made the circum. He also wrote a note at the end which was very much in his voice about the fact that he was going to do that. But the fight is between his son and. And his widow. He had only been married for a few years to somebody who had previously been his assistant. And they kind of have different ideas, the two of them about the sort of legacy of Hunter S. Thompson and it's. And she is the one that is now kind of wants to get more explanation about the, about the last moments of Hunter S. Thompson's life. There isn't a lot of. There isn't a lot of factual stuff in the article that kind of like raises for me huge questions. Like I finished the article kind of thinking what I started the article thinking, which is like this probably went down again. I'm Already, as I've already established this episode, I'm deeply non conspiratorial. Maybe to a fault, like, maybe to a lack of imagination, like to the point where I'm just generally buying what, you know, what the, you know, what the sort of main narrative is. Not, not these days, not when it comes to like ICE or law enforcement. But generally speaking, you know, if there's, if there's a write up in the New York Times of years ago that says Hunter S. Thompson has passed away. He took his own life. The medical examiner ruled it a suicide. I'm just like, well, that's probably what happened. And that would have her having now read this new article. I still think that's what happened.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, speaking of conspiracy theories, and I'm sorry to belabor this, but I was sitting here thinking, what was Taco Time International doing? Like, were they purposely trying to, like, confuse the marketplace? Because I'm assuming that Taco Time Northwest existed first. And if Taco Time International pop ups or not pop ups, but restaurants are only in the same area that there are Taco Times. Like, I didn't have either one of these. It'd be one thing if I grew up in Ohio and we had Taco Time International. Right. But it sounds like they're going after the same exact turf.

[Luke Burbank]

Andrew, do I have to explain Taco Time lore to you? It's rivaled only by the Cimarillion. Yeah, I realized as I started to say that. I don't know how to say that thing. Is it called the Cimarillum or the Cirillo?

[Andrew Walsh]

I was going, I know what you're talking about. It's one of those Lord of the Rings.

[Luke Burbank]

The Lord of the Rings. I was trying to make a Lord of the Rings joke.

[Andrew Walsh]

The.

[Luke Burbank]

And thankfully, I would imagine that Janice Bowers of Tucson, Arizona, where they famously also don't have a lot of good Mexican food, probably knows all of this lore. But Janice, just stick with us if you will. It was one company. Taco Time was one company. And then there was like, you know, the couple of the owners. There was a. I don't know if it was acrimonious or not, but there was a, there was a split. And, and, and so, you know, there was basically like, everyone was calling it Taco Time, but this fine distinction was if it was the company that was then technically known as Taco Time Northwest or Taco Time International, they both were, I think, probably free to run their chain of restaurants the way they wanted to. And just the, you know, it was sort of like VHS versus Beta. You know, Taco Time Northwest just won out. Like, they just probably had a slightly better system, so that that became the dominant style here in the Northwest. But there are still a few examples of Beta out there and I see.

[Andrew Walsh]

So I'm on the website. I was just. While. While we were talking earlier, I was just like, well, what's going on with Taco Time International? I saw that it's owned by Kahala Brands, which has a very Hawaiian, well, name and imagery around it. But I'm looking at their website now, and they have nothing to do with Hawaii. It was just inspired by trips to Hawaii.

[Luke Burbank]

It's actually based on. I'm guessing that the owners of Taco Time International have a lovely home on the island.

[Andrew Walsh]

And they. The Kahala Brands owns. And get ready for this, a whole bunch of brands now. Cold Stone Creamery. Oh, Blimpy Taco Time. Samari Sam's, which I have not heard of. Wetzel's Pretzels, which I have heard they own. Wetzels. Maui wow. Not Maui Wowie, which I believe is a strain.

[Luke Burbank]

When I was a kid, we could only afford Maui Wow Wow.

[Andrew Walsh]

Pinkberry. Pinkberry. Pinkberry Planet Smoothie. Baja Fresh, which I kind of like on a road trip, I do like.

[Luke Burbank]

I mess with. I mess with a Baja Fresh.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's been a long time for me. Great steak. And Surf City Squeeze, which was apparently the original thing. Somebody opened up. And I think it's notable that they never say where Surf City Squeeze was originally based, but it says our history. It all began in 1981 when Kahala Brand's founder and entrepreneur established a smoothie and juice bar concept known today, known today as Surf City Squeeze. They don't say where that was or who the founder was. Then there's a timeline and it goes. It kind of explains how they start acquiring all these brands. And then it says in 2003, let's see, they purchased the Samurai Sam's Teriyaki Grill. And then it says they purchased Taco Time. It purchases the Taco Time chain out of the Northwest part of the US which offers a variety of freshly prepared. Blah, blah, blah. So I guess the people who split off then were acquired by this fake Hawaiian Kahala brands.

[Luke Burbank]

That's my read on the situation because I'm on Andrew, I'm on the Taco Time Northwest website and their origin story, to which I would say.

[Andrew Walsh]

Are we gonna get in one of those fights that you were talking about before? Well, I am on the tag of.

[Luke Burbank]

The Northwest and they're saying that they opened their first restaurant in 1962 in White Center.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay.

[Luke Burbank]

And a lot can happen. This is what they say. 60 years and counting. A lot can happen in six decades. Discover a few of our most iconic moments, and then they kind of just go through their. Kind of Their origin story. And I won't bore everybody with it, but basically, I think you've described it exactly right. Which is the. The. I would say the. The breakaway company, the Taco Time International, was likely then acquired by this shockingly large, like, restaurant interest that has all. A number of those restaurants you mentioned, like Wetzel's Pretzels and Pinkberry. Those are really pretty big.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Like, food concerns. So I have a sense that probably what they're called, Kahala or something that, like, whatever the parent company of that they probably saw there are. Who knows? I'm guessing here, but, like, there's eight or 10 of these taco Time internationals, and we're gonna go ahead and buy those up and run those is probably what sort of happened there.

[Andrew Walsh]

Do you feel like. And I know we haven't gotten to literally anything on the show. Sheen, it's totally my fault. But do you feel like this region that we live in is especially prone to restaurant tours? I'm sorry, restaurateurs. I always say that wrong.

[Luke Burbank]

There's no n. And I know it's like, why would they. Why would the word restaurateur not have n in it? I mean, that's. You want to talk about a missing episode?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. Get on that Max story.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, Max. That's your next project.

[Andrew Walsh]

I don't know. Why am I yelling at Max?

[Luke Burbank]

I don't know. One of our. But one of our best friends and most ardent listeners has now become a conspiracy theorist who needs to solve the mystery of restaurateur.

[Andrew Walsh]

But I feel like there. I can list here a few that jump to mind immediately of, like, kind of famous or, like, kind of locally famous or locally appreciated chains that have a split. I guess Taco Time would be the biggest example as far as Footprint. But I think of, like, I don't know if you recall Paseo, which was like, this beloved sandwich place in Fremont, but I guess the existing Paseo isn't as good as it used to be, because the real heart and soul of Paseo left, like, whoever those chefs are or whatever, sandwich artists left to create their own thing.

[Luke Burbank]

The new one that's up on, like, whatever that is 15th or something of it now.

[Andrew Walsh]

But you had Paseo, I think Tan Brothers, which Is a pho place around here. I think that was a split off. Azell's chicken is a really big one. Talk about beloved. Beloved, you know, microchip. They went, they started heaven sent. And I feel like, is there something about this area or am I. When I was younger, I just didn't follow this shit.

[Luke Burbank]

Maybe a little of both. I see. I can't speak to what the scene was in in Ohio because I wasn't there. So I only know about the Northwest. But yeah, definitely it's a place where people really love the kind of localism of things like that. More so like Dick's Drive in, for instance. Like, here's what I can compare it to, like Portland and someone's going to email in and they're going to correct me on this. But like, because I've only known about Portland from the time that I've lived in the area, but I don't have a sense of those same kind of stories in Portland. Like, oh, you haven't been to such and such. Like the story with Portland's food to me seems to be, oh, we have these, you know, James Beard award nominee restaurants and this is the place where you can get the best this. And they're starting this place up like. Like Portland really identifies as a real food town. But what I don't hear about as much as like, oh, this is a local burger joint that's unique to Portland that's similar to say, Dick's Drive in. And there's all this local energy around it. Like everybody goes there after the baseball game, after, you know, whatever. And so I don't. Maybe you're right. Seattle might have some. I mean, part of it might be Seattle's blue collar roots. You know, the Seattle that I grew up in was like a very, you know, it was a lot of fishing and timber and Boeing and it just had this kind of, I mean, I think again get very scared when I try to do things from memory. But I do think there was even maybe a sign in the 70s that said like, well, the last person leaving Seattle turned the light out.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's very famous. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

And kind of like it just had this sort of scrappy, again, blue collar kind of. I wouldn't say run down, but it just had this energy around it that it was like, like the people that did live there just liked the things that were there in a way. Like it was, you know, and taco time was. Was one of those things. Chubby and tubby. Getting your Christmas tree at Chubby and Tubby like There's a lot of lore around Seattle from the 70s and 80s that I think was. I don't know if that was unique to Seattle, but I don't feel like I hear people in Portland. This makes it sound like I'm saying people that live in Portland don't love Portland. But there I. There might be something to what you're wondering about. There might be something about Seattle that we build up these local sort of small time institutions, whether it's Izell's Fried Chicken or Taco Time or Paseo. And then they become so popular locally that like the center can't hold. And then you have a split off.

[Andrew Walsh]

What if Chubby and Tubby split? What if you end up with Chubby's on one side of town, Tubbies on the other side. Un bien, by the way. Un bien was the rest of the.

[Luke Burbank]

Starts with a C, like I said.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, did you, did you say that? I probably talked right over it. That was the like the When Paseo kind of split. And I don't know the details of it and I probably already misdescribed it, but I believe you have Paseo still in Fremont and then some Unbiens around town too.

[Luke Burbank]

I will tell you, Andrew, if you want my hottest food take, it's that I was never that into Paseo.

[Andrew Walsh]

I went to Paseo with Genevieve maybe about a year ago.

[Luke Burbank]

To eat?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes. Did you say there are to eat or hard? Yes, that was my experience. Now again, this is post split, so I don't know if Paseo as it currently stands in Fremont is a shadow of its former self. Maybe some people would make that argument, maybe others wouldn't. But I remember like being very excited about getting the sandwich. I don't usually go for really big messy sandwiches. You and I both have a weird thing about not wanting stuff on our face like messy food. I power through for some foods that you are not interested in, like ribs or whatever. But I remember getting this sandwich and I was like, okay, it's gonna be a messy sandwich. But the flavor didn't pay off. I've never had a sandwich that was so messy with such little payoff from flavor. It just didn't. It didn't have the flavor I was expecting. I was very surprised.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, this was years ago when I went to Paseo down in like you said in Fremont. But it was like the sandwich I got was some sort of pork type of deal. And it was like, it was just difficult to eat because it was large. It was pretty messy. And also I couldn't like, bite through the pork and the bread, because the pork was, like, maybe a little. I don't know if it was gristly or just like. It seemed to me like questionable sandwich design. But of course, I couldn't say that because there's a line down the block. Everyone's, you know, freaking out about this place. But it was. It was not. It was not for me. That being said, I was kind of weirdly tempted before I got to the Tumwater Taco Time, which, by the way, is where this all started. Oh, yes, I did drive by. I saw a sign on i5 for Dick's. You know, there's one that's way south now by the airport, which, by the way, that's very nouveau to me. Like, that's. That's a. Like, a recent addition, I think, in Des Moines or something. But I saw the sign on i5, and I was like, man, when's the last time. When is the last time that I went to old Dick's Drive in. And if I'm gonna do one of my quarterly. My quarterly interactions with red meat, should this be one of those times? I didn't. I went to the Taco Time in Tumwater. Thank you, by the way, to Michael for spurring on that amazing 30 minutes of conversation.

[Andrew Walsh]

We're still thinking donors.

[Luke Burbank]

Thanks also to Constance Buick of Albany, New York, Albany. Albany, New York.

[Andrew Walsh]

Albany.

[Luke Burbank]

Thanks, Constance. Appreciate you. Thanks to Glenn Rosen, who's in Newton, Massachusetts, like Isaac. Andrew.

[Andrew Walsh]

Heard that. You know, I thought. You know, sometimes people use the pronouncer space on the form to sort of make sure, like, if somebody. Yeah, like if somebody says my name is Bill, they'll give a pronouncer for a simple name to pronounce, like Bill or something. And I saw that it was Newton, Massachusetts. And Constance put. I'm sorry, Glenn put in the pronouncer. The town is pronounced Newton, like Sir Isaac. And I thought that was a joke, but you're right. Sometimes that's pronounced New Town. I think it's usually with a dub, an extra W in there if it's Newtown. But that actually was a very helpful tip and not a joke, and I kind of feel bad for talking smack about Glenn behind his back.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, now we're talking it in front of his back.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right.

[Luke Burbank]

So at least. At least there's full transparency here. Sunlight is the greatest disinfectant, Andrew.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right.

[Luke Burbank]

As I've always said, when I was sitting under that tree and that apple fell on me, do we think that an apple really fell on Sir Isaac Newton's head and that was how he got the idea for gravity.

[Andrew Walsh]

We're sure somebody didn't shoot it off his head with a bow and arrow.

[Luke Burbank]

That was William Tell.

[Andrew Walsh]

That was William.

[Luke Burbank]

I did see a crazy thing the other day online. A video of a pound of feathers and a pound of bowling ball dropping at the same time in a huge vacuum. And they fall at exactly the same rate.

[Andrew Walsh]

If you take away. So how are they contained? When you say a pound, were the feathers loose?

[Luke Burbank]

Well, it was a bowling ball, so it wasn't a pound. It was whatever the bowling ball weighed. And then they put these kind of like lead weights or something on the feathers so that the feathers and the bowling ball weighed the same amount. Right. And first they dropped them. This was actually. You know what it's in. It's in Ohio, I think it's outside of Cleveland, this particular place. And it's this. It's a NASA facility. Facility has this big silo. And what they're able to do is vacuum out all of the air so that there's absolutely no, like, air resistance. So first they. They have it like a normal. There's. It's a normal oxygenated environment. They drop the bowling ball and the feathers. And of course, the bowling ball hits first because the feathers are sort of flitting down. And the guy's like, yeah, but that's because of basically air resistance on the feathers. If you get rid of that, these are gonna fall at the same rate. And you're like, there's just no way. And then they extract all of the air out of this big vacuum tubed canister, and they drop the feathers and the bowling ball and they fall exactly at the same rate. And they hit the thing at the same moment. It was such a mind bleep.

[Andrew Walsh]

Wow. That's the Glenn Research center there in Cleveland. That's what it's called about that. Yeah, because John Glenn.

[Luke Burbank]

And we're thanking Glen Rosen of. And we're thanking Newton of Sir Isaac Newton, Massachusetts.

[Andrew Walsh]

Look at that. And Glenn spelled the same way for both.

[Luke Burbank]

John Glenn. That's the name for John Glenn.

[Andrew Walsh]

Let's see. NASA John Glenn Research center at Lewis Field. They also have a facility in Sandusky. You know, it's in Sandusky. It's America's roller coast. Cedar Point.

[Luke Burbank]

Cedar Point.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes, indeed.

[Luke Burbank]

I recently had a thought that I might be up for getting on a scary roller coaster again.

[Andrew Walsh]

Like I had.

[Luke Burbank]

I had just decided that was no longer for me.

[Andrew Walsh]

I Have. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

What I don't like, what I will never get back on, are one of those rides where, like, you know, the. The big. The. The swings where it's like the. You're on a. You're on a swing and a long, you know, chain kind of. You're sitting in a swing and it's spinning you around, and you're going around and around and around. I will never, ever, ever get on one of those again. Because what gives me the fear about rides is if this broke right now, I would die. Like, if this chain snapped, I would just get flung into, you know, right into the elephant ear stand, and I would be dead. With a roller coaster, I feel less like that. I feel like a lot of things could break on the roller coaster and you wouldn't die. What can't break is the part that attaches the wheels of the roller coaster to the track, but every. Almost everything else, and the track can't break, I guess, as you're trying to it. But, like, I think it's less dangerous or at least it feels less. What happened was I was watching, like, a video somebody was filming. This is like the largest. I think it's the new largest roller coaster in the world. It's somewhere in the Middle East, I think, unsurprisingly. And they were filming being on it, and I was watching it, and it was very pov, right? Like, it's. It was very much like you were on the roller coaster. And I was like, that looks kind of scary, but fun.

[Andrew Walsh]

So I need to be careful with my language here because I don't want to say something that is kind of triggering to people or be flippant about human life, my own included. But I'm actually getting very sweaty palms talking about this and thinking about this. So, as you know, I'm scared of heights. Growing up, I was scared of heights, and I didn't go on roller coasters. But then when I got into high school, and again, I lived by Cedar Point, which is one of those parks that's internationally known. It often has, like, the world's tallest or fastest roller coaster or ride. It's always in competition with these other parks, like you mentioned in Dubai or wherever else. And so it's like it's the real deal, you know. And in high school, I started going to Cedar Point with my friends, and then I started getting on roller coasters. I don't know if it was peer pressure or what. And then I started going on them and absolutely loving them for a short period of my life. Just loving roller coasters, but then got to an age where the fear of heights has snuck up on me again. I'm not in the habit of going to, to amusement parks and so I don't think I'll ever. Last time I went to Cedar Point, I went with my parents and Genevieve. And Genevieve was the only person who wrote a bunch. It was like having a kid. It was like me and my parents had this kid who was like running around. We were just waiting for her, eating ice cream cones while she would be like in an hour long line to go on some just absolutely insane mechanism. Right. And at Cedar Point there is still the swings that you describe. And I know kind of where they are kind of. I think they're tucked kind of behind Old Town. Town. Like Cedar Point is such a. Whatever. It's just such a memory for me and I have a nostalgic feel towards them. And also it's a really nice view and I'm still scared of heights. But you get up there and the thing about Cedar Point is it's right on the lake. So when you get on these rides and you go up, you have these incredible views of Lake Erie. Yeah. And the rest of the park and everything. And so it's really cool. But the thing is, I will go on that chair ride. And you are right. When I'm on it, I'm even thinking, if something blows here, I'm spinning. I'm looking at like where I'd spin out and where I would land or something. But I would rather take that risk, which I think is minimal, than being on one of the tallest roller coasters in the world. Having it break and then having to walk down the stairs.

[Luke Burbank]

I guess I didn't think about that part.

[Andrew Walsh]

My biggest. And people do that. People have to do that. I can't tell you how many times I've been at Cedar Point where a ride. Well, it's not like it happens all the time, but I know that I was in line for a ride one time when it stalled for a while and then it picked back up again. And I think that's right. I was with my buddy Joe and I said, and Joe's like, well, I'm staying in line. They're opening it back up. And I said, and for this I'm out. And I just left him in line and I went and again ate a hot dog or something. I don't know the idea of. Now for me, when I'm going up the roller coaster, you know, the first hill or whatever, and you see Those stairs that lead down.

[Luke Burbank]

I've never even closed that.

[Andrew Walsh]

Those stairs are there for a reason. And it's because sometimes people have to go down those stairs. And I know I couldn't do it. I know I'm getting upset thinking I'm seriously having a physiological reaction to this conversation right now. I think about those stairs and the fact that I could potentially have to unbuckle my seatbelt, move that thing up and of my own.

[Luke Burbank]

Of the roller coaster car, do we.

[Andrew Walsh]

Call it so high up? Higher than some airplanes fly, Luke. That's scientific. I will stand by that and walk 30,000 steps down. Like, I just. The idea of doing that, I am like, you know what? Put me in one of those swings and swing me out to Lake Erie and fire. Fire arrows at me as I go down.

[Luke Burbank]

You're like, just make it quick. Make it. You know, you'd rather it just be over than not over. But now involving you having to do something that's like. Like deeply terrifying. By the way, I'm looking at the emergency evacuation spiral stale stairs on the Val Raven roller coaster, which I think might be at Cedar Point. And they are in. They're enclosed, kind of.

[Andrew Walsh]

See, that's not the ones. The ones I'm talking about are on a regular roller coaster up the hill, and they're to the. Either left or right. Like, if you're in. You know, you're in the car and they're just stairs. They're just stairs with a railing. What do they do with stairs?

[Luke Burbank]

What if you're, like, in. What happens if you're, like, not at the tippy top? Let's say that you're like. You happen to be in a car that's part of the way down the hill, as it were. Would you have to climb out of the car? Is there a walkway that goes all along the thing or. You only have to do that if you're at the tippy top and it stops.

[Andrew Walsh]

I think it's. The stairs are only where you have a chain that is pulling you up. And so I only. I could be wrong about this, but I've only.

[Luke Burbank]

When I see the ones you're talking about, I'm looking at the ones I do. You know, I. I mean, I haven't been on as many roller coasters as you probably went on back in the day, but now I'm seeing exactly what you're talking about. It never even occurred to me to look over and look at those stairs. They're just going exactly down what you're going up.

[Andrew Walsh]

Because the rest of the roller coaster is gravity right now there are there. There mechanisms could go wrong in the cars. Like brakes could potentially freeze you somewhere else on the. On the track. And I don't know what you would do there. I don't think they have stairs on. I know they don't. Not on the twirly. You know, on the. On the, you know, loop de loops or whatever. You couldn't have stairs. But.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I'm just laughing because I'm looking at a Photo on the cleveland19.com Guests escorted off of Cedar Point roller coaster after train stops on hill. And I'm watching people that are living so incredibly inside your nightmare, Andrew, and they are, like, clinging to the handrail as they're going down this thing. So don't look at that. Don't look at that photo. You don't need more nightmare fuel.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I guess not. Although, like I said, I'm just not touching those things anymore. Big or tall? My roller coaster days are past. Big or tall?

[Luke Burbank]

That's where I get my pants.

[Andrew Walsh]

What am I?

[Luke Burbank]

There's a right way to rock and.

[Andrew Walsh]

A wrong way to roll. You can't just listen to your song. Just remember that life is number one. You can be having so much fun. Just remember that life is much fun. You can be nothing but. Well, Luke, thank you so much for putting together a show sheet today. Put all that work into a show so that I can come on here.

[Luke Burbank]

And just toiling, toiling over a hot laptop this morning, getting articles like aspirational clutter and snake yoga.

[Andrew Walsh]

I just did not let you have any control over the show today.

[Luke Burbank]

We started the show on the. The premise of, like, what's interesting about the show is not Juggalo talk as much as it is us talking about how we're afraid to go on roller coasters.

[Andrew Walsh]

You did have Juggalo talk on the show.

[Luke Burbank]

The history of Taco time Northwest.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right. And whatever happened to Hunter?

[Luke Burbank]

I'm probably going there for lunch today, by the way.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, got in there. Got in your head.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I'm on a mission.

[Andrew Walsh]

All right, so we do. I. I'm sort of stalling here because I'm just going to go back into my spam. I can't believe we only have. Have one.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, blur kind of have two.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, you want to add one. Do you want to do it now or do you want me to do the.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I want to say happy birthday to Becca, my beloved.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, that's right, that.

[Luke Burbank]

So today is her actual birthday.

[Andrew Walsh]

Nice. Well, Happy blurs day to Becca. How did she do on Wordle today? I don't think I've done it.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, I'll ask her. She had a very, very busy day, so I don't know.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, blurs day related or work related?

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, did work related. I was trying. We're trying to make some. Some birthday plans. And she was like, I would love to. But then she laid out her day for me and it was completely insane. It's like you agreed to all of these things on your birthday.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

How did you do on wordle? Andrew wants to know.

[Andrew Walsh]

By the way, there is a listener and I'm sorry that I forgot your name, but I've been thinking about you a lot lately. You wrote to me about Wordle about three weeks ago or two weeks ago, and I feel like I didn't. I feel like maybe my email. Well, it was maybe a little rude because I never heard back from you. And you wrote to me, I responded, and you suggested a different starting word for me to start using for my wordle every day because I was bemoaning the fact that I used the same word for years and years. The word arise was a good starting word for me. And a listener wrote in and said, well, how about this? I used to use arise or something similar to why don't you try using this one? And I said, well, that has a lot of the same letters. And I said, well, that would be good, except that one also has already hit on wordle and I don't want to use an opening word that hasn't that has already been used. That there's no chance that that could be the word. And I never heard back from you, so maybe that was a bit rude for me to say that you continue doing whatever works for you, but I have found a replacement starting word. I'm making this announcement right now. Nobody tell Genevieve though, because she doesn't know and I don't want her to know because then she can sort of gamify it and if I go first, she. We can figure out what's going on. But my new starting word of the past couple of days or week or so is aired. Sorry, I'll wait for it.

[Luke Burbank]

Wow, Aired. Like as in previously aired?

[Andrew Walsh]

Exactly.

[Luke Burbank]

Programming.

[Andrew Walsh]

Exactly. Oh, yeah, that aired yesterday because that's got your A, your I, your E. Those are the vowels I like to start with. And then if none of those vowels hit, I can do less. Like clout next, which gets your O and your U in there. And a T is important, so that's the thing, like, with my arise word, I had a game plan, sort of. I kind of knew how to read.

[Luke Burbank]

You're like an NFL coach. You had your first 10 moves already scripted.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes. Or a college coach. Right. So anyway, I'm going with aired. And so to the listener that I was just horribly rude to consider that one as well that might be in your same letter family. All right, we are obligated to listen to the entire Blurs Day song, and we only have one.

[Luke Burbank]

It would be amazing and very fitting if we ran out of time to do the one. We start talking about wordle and other things, and then all of a sudden, it's like, it's, oh, I'm sorry. I ran out of time for who? The one person.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right. All right, I'm gonna get to this. I'm sorry for. Well, two people. Happy birthday to Becca.

[Luke Burbank]

Thank you.

[Andrew Walsh]

And then Jessica says, happy Blursday to my awesome five, Ned. I love the name Ned, who just turned 15 years old. Here's to a sensitive, curious, empathetic kid who inspires his mom every day to do more and swear less. And as I've told him so explain that the insomnia caused by my pregnancy with Ned is actually the reason I started listening to podcasts in the middle of the night and found TBTL all those many years ago. Power out. So thanks to ned and wow, 15th Blursday.

[Luke Burbank]

Thank you for being extremely active in utero and making it so that your mom had to put something tremendously boring into her ears to fall asleep, and we were that tremendously boring thing.

[Andrew Walsh]

He's a kicker. We got a kicker.

[Luke Burbank]

All right.

[Andrew Walsh]

Happy Blurs Day to Ned, to Becca, and I hope Jessica sleeps easy also, I guess, you know what?

[Luke Burbank]

Like, belated blurs day. Wait, no, I already did that one. I was gonna say it was my niece Gemma's blurs day.

[Andrew Walsh]

I really feel like you need to pad this out, don't you?

[Luke Burbank]

I just have a big family, Andrew, and I hope you're like, somebody. Yeah, I mean, there probably is, you know, do you do this? I have all of my. Actually, you don't have Gemmas, but, like, I have every Buller's Day, every birthday. That is important to me, which would be anybody in my family, extended family, stuff like that. I've got it all in my calendar.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I got most of them on my calendar.

[Luke Burbank]

I have no ability to remember that kind of stuff, but it helps, you know, it helps to have it in there. It felt a little formal when I was doing It.

[Andrew Walsh]

But. Well, here's a true story about me and my Google Calendar is at some point and I'm talking years ago, like over a decade ago. I think Google Calendar just started like somehow scanning my emails or something or maybe my contact list and just started automatically putting certain friends birthdays and family members birthdays on my calendar. It auto populated it from things that knew. But this was a really long time ago. And here's the kicker, Luke. Just like Ned. Yeah. They were all off by one day and I don't know why. I have no idea. So I still see birthdays sometimes and think, wait a second, is today their birthday or is it actually tomorrow? And I've been kind of spending the last like, I don't know, five, 10 years trying to get things back in order.

[Luke Burbank]

That's almost worse. That's like worse than just not having them at all because you're constantly going to be questioning it.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. And what I need to do and I, because I just had a family member's birthday over the weekend and I had to confirm with another family member. I'm like, I do have that. Right. Right. I should put in the calendar. Confirmed. That's a very Andrew move to be like, yes, this has definitely been confirmed. But that all I see is like a lot.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. I, this morning I, I woke up very early to go use the restroom as is typically the case at this age. And that was when I sent Becca because it was technically her birthday. And that's when I sent her a happy birthday message and I sang her little happy birthday song. And then I went back to bed with this like strong smug sense of satisfaction, knowing I was the first person who had wished her happy birthday.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

You know, because she comes from a big family and they're all very loving and birthday wishy. And they also do the thing where they sing the song and they send you the singing of the song and everything. But I was like, nobody else was up at 4am doing this. And that was all thanks to my enlarged prostate.

[Andrew Walsh]

Happy birthday from me and my enlarged prostate.

[Luke Burbank]

That's right. Somebody make that card. All right, that's gonna do it. For today's episode of tbtl. This is fun. Tomorrow we will be joined by our dear friends Megan Hatcher Mays and Lindy west from the Text Me Back podcast. We have another tbtl, TMB or tmbtb. Tl. I forget which order that goes in crossover program.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes, that's right. TMBL of the Dog, as Lindy likes to call it. That's how we say it. Yes. It was very fun. We recorded it. We're very, very excited to post it tomorrow. So please tune in for that. A lot of laughs. I was telling you when I got to the show, I was just like.

[Luke Burbank]

A lot of hat content. Hats entertainment. Oh, that's runaway segment on the show.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right. Taking the world by storm.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, Please do tune in for that. In the meantime, everybody have a great Thursday. Take care of yourselves. Please stay safe. Again, thinking of our friends in Minnesota right now and all of the folks who are about to get get kind of borne down on by this really cold weather. Everybody stay warm, stay inside, and please remember, no mountain too tall.

[Andrew Walsh]

And good luck to all. Power out.