#4750 A Watched Otter Pop Never Freezes

Summary

TBTL #4750: "A Watched Otter Pop Never Freezes"

Date: June 16, 2026
Hosts: Luke Burbank & Andrew Walsh

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Luke and Andrew dive deep into the nostalgic world of childhood snacks, questionable corporate swag, and memorable moments from their earliest (and latest) days in public radio. Expect a wide-ranging, nostalgic and meandering journey that covers everything from the ethics of snack bar honor systems to their awkward relationship with their former radio employers. The classic TBTL blend of personal storytelling, gentle ribbing, and tangential comedy is at the fore—centered around whatever pops into their heads, with a focus this time on cookies, Popsicles, and banking fiascos.

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Key Topics & Discussions

1. Fig Newtons: Delight or Downer?

Timestamps: 03:07–06:39

• Andrew reveals his love for Fig Newtons and wonders if they’re a nostalgic delicacy or an outmoded snack.
  • “I feel like they were in my life a lot more as a child. Maybe that’s true for everybody.” (03:31, Andrew)
• Luke admits to viewing them as a “downgrade” compared to Oreos and Chips Ahoy, but notes he might appreciate blueberry Newtons as an adult.
• Reddit wisdom: Nutri-Grain bars are “basically long Fig Newtons.” (07:01)

Notable Quote:

“Let me put it this way. I don’t think Fig Newton’s like, taste bad to me. It’s just when they are compared to the other cookies... Fig Newton’s just felt to me like a real downgrade.” (05:29, Luke)

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2. Cookie Nostalgia and Supermarket Temptations

Timestamps: 06:39–19:44

• The hosts riff on the honor system of Avanti Market kiosks (snack stations at old workplaces and car dealerships), and the urge to take free snacks—especially cheese sticks.
• Andrew describes his late-night craving for “duplex cream” sandwich cookies, resisting tempting sweets at home but losing willpower during nostalgic grilling nights.
  • “You don’t let a J Dog loose in the sars... we walked out with so much meat.” (15:02, Andrew)
• Luke’s nostalgia: Grandma’s iced molasses cookies from Chubby and Tubby, linked to childhood outings, despite them not being “the best.”
• Conversation turns to the role of milk as a cookie companion, with Luke only drinking milk with sweet, doughy treats.

Notable Quote:

“For me, the true enjoyment of eating cookies of any kind is then consuming the milk afterwards... I will never pour myself a glass of milk at any time other than if I am having cookies or a donut or cake.” (20:19, Luke)

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3. Childhood Frozen Treats: DIY Popsicles, Otter Pops, and the Agony of Waiting

Timestamps: 24:29–26:27

• The hosts reminisce about homemade popsicles—orange juice, grape juice, or Kool-Aid poured into molds, embraced for their thriftiness in retrospect.
• Otter Pops: Luke recalls impatiently checking the freezer every few minutes post-purchase; “a watched Otter Pop never freezes.” (26:24, Luke)

Memorable Moment:

“You know, a watched Otter Pop never freezes.” (26:24, Luke)

• Bonus Tangent: Luke once tried to quench summer thirst with a cold Miller Lite as a kid—only to be disgusted by the taste, which delayed any real drinking until adulthood.

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4. The Bible, Bitter Wine, and Growing Up Confused

Timestamps: 28:28–33:07

• Andrew unspools childhood confusion about alcohol, shaped by Bible stories—learning that Jesus was offered “gall” (bitter wine) on the cross, and that running out of the “best wine” at a wedding meant switching to the cheapest stuff once guests were drunk.
• Luke hilariously recaps Google/AI’s play-by-play of Jesus’s two wine tastings on the day of his crucifixion, including the “painkiller wine” and the “military grade sour wine.”
• They riff on the logic, or lack thereof, in these epic stories.

Notable Quote:

“You’re saying no, thank you to the painkiller wine before the thing. And then you’re saying, thank you to the horrible military grade wine so you can stay conscious longer to experience this horribleness longer. No, that’s not how you do it, my guy.” (32:40, Luke)

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5. Public Radio & Former Employer Musings

Timestamps: 33:23–45:13

• Luke previews his upcoming trip to NYC to interview food writer Francis Lam (formerly of TBTL’s “Let’s Be Frank: TBTL Salutes the Great American Hot Dog,” 2017).
• They debate their reputation at APM (American Public Media), their former employer:
  • Ponder whether they’re “persona non grata,” but recall overall positive parting experiences, mostly thanks to the TBTL fanbase (“The Tens”).
  • Reflect on all the bosses they worked under at APM and the power of their audience-supported model in keeping them independent.
  • Luke: “That is the only reason that they tolerated us even a little bit back there.” (39:10)

Memorable Quote:

“We came to them with already a group of fans and also supporters... The only reason that they tolerated us even a little bit back there.” (39:10, Luke)

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6. Public Radio Gossip: Marketplace, Relatability, and Found Money

Timestamps: 46:12–52:03

• Reminiscing about Marketplace hosts (Kai Ryssdal, David Brancaccio, etc.), the evolution of public radio, and one particular moment when “relatability” was up for debate.
• Luke recounts visiting Marketplace’s LA studios, expecting to pick up his freelance check in person—only to have it mailed, leading to bounced checks and, decades later, an unexpected “found money” windfall.

Notable Story:

“I think it took me like, 20 years to collect on that money that I thought I was going to get handed to me that day at Marketplace.” (51:55, Luke)

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7. Modern Customer Service & Accidental Windfalls

Timestamps: 54:23–62:01

• Andrew tells a story about MetLife erroneously sending him text and email alerts for a life insurance payout—making him briefly suspect a paperwork windfall, like in Monopoly.
• He navigates the treacheries of automated customer service, eventually confirming there’s no windfall coming and reflecting on whether he missed out by “telling on himself.”

Notable Quote:

“The bot is never in a charitable mood. The bot is in the mood that has been programmed to be in, which is to say, you overdrafted your account and the charge is $30.” (54:23, Luke)

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Memorable Laugh Lines & Recurring Bit References

• Multiple callbacks to “cookie region of France,” “duplex cream,” and “insomnia cookies.”
• Classic TBTL inside-joke: “Let them touch those things!” returns, referencing an old Celine Dion clip.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Fig Newton Game: 03:07–06:39
• Cookie & Avanti Market Nostalgia: 06:39–19:44
• Homemade Popsicles & Otter Pops: 24:29–26:27
• Beer As Thirst Quencher: 26:27–28:28
• Wine in the Bible: 28:28–33:07
• NYC/Francis Lam/APM Reminiscence: 33:23–45:13
• Marketplace & Found Money: 46:12–52:03
• Erroneous Checks & Customer Service: 54:23–62:01

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Tone & Takeaways

The episode blends affectionate childhood nostalgia with the grown-up observation that life's seemingly minor injustices—whether snack or banking-related—often become the stories we tell most lovingly. Luke and Andrew’s meandering, self-deprecating warmth, scattered with dry cultural references, makes this a quintessential TBTL hour.

“You know, a watched Otter Pop never freezes.” (26:24, Luke)

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For Those Who Haven’t Listened

If you want to revisit school lunchrooms, snack aisles, or the bureaucracy of public radio with two very funny, very human guides, this episode delivers comfort and laughs in equal measure—like the last duplex cream cookie in the pack (with a tall glass of milk).
No mountain too tall—power out!

Transcript

[Luke Burbank]

Do you believe in UFOs?

[Caller/Guest]

Oh. Oh, yeah. Yes, sir. Definitely. They're out there, man. I seen them. I've been out there. Aurora, Texas, they got them little graves and stuff. Yeah, I've been out there and. I don't know. I'm planning a trip. I'm planning a trip. We're going out to, like, Arizona or something and figure something out. The Air Force One, where they found all that stuff. I got pictures of. Roar. I've seen grave sites. They're out there, man. And I'm flying in the plane. I'm always hallucinating, but who really knows what I'm looking at? You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay, well.

[Andrew Walsh]

But there's no proof of this.

[Luke Burbank]

Just people's accounts.

[Caller/Guest]

You're right. There's no proof. But, I mean, there's no proof of Jesus or, you know, people go in the restroom until they tell you about it. You know what I mean? I mean, that's just kind of the way I see things.

[Luke Burbank]

All right, so you believe it, then?

[Caller/Guest]

Oh, definitely. Definitely.

[Luke Burbank]

Do you think there's, like, little green men out there?

[Caller/Guest]

No. Little green men, sir.

[Andrew Walsh]

Tbtm. Okay, T bone.

[Luke Burbank]

Time for some serious crunching.

[Andrew Walsh]

You have a very gentle face and a very erotic physique.

[Luke Burbank]

I love the way they look. They're very affectionate, and they're smaller than horses. He runs around the house all day, naked, chasing himself, playing tag. It's awful. He screams at the cat because she didn't vote. Every time he farts, he calls the fire department. That was great. That was good.

[Andrew Walsh]

You went for it. I appreciate that.

[Luke Burbank]

I'm gonna suggest that have a little constructive talking time.

[Andrew Walsh]

I got the time if you got the diapers.

[Caller/Guest]

All right.

[Luke Burbank]

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

[Andrew Walsh]

Somehow Hotbreak feels good in a place like this.

[Luke Burbank]

My name's Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hey, Lloyd.

[Luke Burbank]

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia.

[Caller/Guest]

Hey, cheer up.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's Taco Tuesday.

[Luke Burbank]

Another warm day here in the Pacific Northwest. Not as warm as Monday was, but it is just the ideal temperature to bring you episode 4750 in a collector's series, Let the fun begin. When we get done recording today's episode, I am going to be jumping on an airplane. I'm gonna be heading to New York City to hang out with some of our old American public media colleagues.

[Andrew Walsh]

We're getting medium play on three independent radio stations in Central United States.

[Luke Burbank]

Be interesting to see how all that goes. Also, there is a big scandal rocking the collectible Lego community.

[Andrew Walsh]

I go by the Block King online. I sell illegal Lego builds on the Dark Web.

[Luke Burbank]

If the words bricks and minifigs mean anything to you, you may be interested in this top story. And if good conversation means anything to you, you're gonna love me welcoming this dude to the show. He's the longest running cobra of the program. May be best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's here to do what he does best.

[Andrew Walsh]

Bumping them gums, telling them lies.

[Luke Burbank]

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

[Andrew Walsh]

You know, you mentioned minifigs, or maybe the little piece of tape from the Lego story mentioned minifigs. I'll be honest with you, I have no idea what that means. I'm looking forward to finding out, but

[Luke Burbank]

it's happening on your phone right now.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, it got me thinking about cookies. I just texted you a photo that I took this weekend of what is my favorite kind of thing of cookies. Well, sure, because I was thinking Fig Newtons, and I like a Fig Newton.

[Luke Burbank]

They're not cookies. Fruit and cake. Did you not watch the ads in the 80s?

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm pretty sure the ads explicitly said these are cookies, damn it. No, they have to. They have to be grown in the cookie region of France, I believe, in order to be actually called a cookie. But I do think of. I do think of a Fig Newton every now and then. I feel like they were in my life a lot more as a child. Maybe that's true for everybody and I.

[Luke Burbank]

Once you're an adult, you can make your own decisions. You get good cookies.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, I mean, do you. Do you have any place in your nostalgic heart for a Fig Newton? Nothing. What about the other flavors they released? They had like blueberry Newtons and raspberry.

[Luke Burbank]

I think I would like those better. But I, you know, nothing. I was so turned off by the whole, you know, Fig Newton experience as a kid.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, this is. That.

[Luke Burbank]

I didn't pursue it any further. And then when I became an adult, I made an important decision in my life, which was no Fig Newtons.

[Andrew Walsh]

I honestly did not know that people looked at Fig Newtons that way. I mean, saying it out loud.

[Luke Burbank]

It might only be me, by the way. It might only be me because I

[Andrew Walsh]

could see it being one of those things that is like, we talk about Turkish Delight. Is it Turkish Delight? Yeah. And like, other things that were like candy back in the Oldie days when people had giant wheels on the front of their bicycles and be like, well, that was the best they could do. And I can sort of see a Fig Newton fitting into that. Like, I don't know if. I don't know culturally how we look at Fig Newtons. I honestly only have sort of played pleasant memories of. Because I feel like. I mean, listen, if they sat in the cupboard too long and they got a little dry and crackly, that's.

[Luke Burbank]

How would you even know?

[Andrew Walsh]

What. How would you really. How would you. How could you tell if a Fig

[Luke Burbank]

Newton had gone through?

[Andrew Walsh]

You can tell that I'm a little bit flummoxed here. I didn't expect.

[Luke Burbank]

You didn't expect me to have this hot subway.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm wondering if. Well, I get a scoop out the insides of the Fig Newtons. I'm trying to figure out if I'm misremembering them and were they a little bit dry, Because I feel like you could get a really nice, moist figure, Fig Newton right out of the package out of the grocery store, and it felt like it would sink your teeth into it. I feel like I have a nice. I call cakes memory of that.

[Luke Burbank]

But anyway, I bet you I'm. I bet you I'm very much the minority opinion on this. I think. I mean, there's a reason they've been in business for so long. It's. Let me put it this way. I don't think it's a bad taste. I don't think Fig Newton's like, taste bad to me. It's just when they are compared to the other cookies that were, you know, in the conversation when I was a kid. Your Oreos, your chips Ahoys, things like that, like Fig Newton's just felt to me like a real downgrade from things like Oreos and Chips Ahoy.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

But I don't think a Fig Newton standing alone, you know, if I was super hungry, maybe if I had a nice tall, cold glass of milk, maybe I could enjoy a Fig Newton. I do actually think I would like the blueberry ones very much because you know what the blueberry one effectively is? It's like a proto sort of blueberry king nutrition bar.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, actually, very much so. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Basically make those now that are like, you know, supposed to be, I guess, relatively good for you. And it's got whatever the coating is, but the middle of it is essentially a Fig Newton type of deal. And I eat those from time to time. So I think that. I think just as a kid, if I was like we're going to have cookies. And then I realized it was Fig Newton's. I was pretty let down, but as an adult, I might actually have a different opinion.

[Andrew Walsh]

You know what? And by the way, I think this speaks to the unhealthiness of a bar like this that is sold as something that is like a legit breakfast food as opposed to actually talking about a Fig Newton being edible. But I look, I wanted to see what the popular opinion on Fig Newtons were and I didn't know what to do. So I just went to Reddit and typed in Fig Newton's and one of the.

[Luke Burbank]

By the way, your cookie photo has not come through.

[Andrew Walsh]

Did you. Oh, wait, let me see. I was texting it, but let me see if I actually hit go on that. I did not. I never finished the task. I don't think here. So here it comes. Coming through. Because we're not. It's not a photo of Fig Newtons, by the way. It's a photo of a different kind of cookie I want to talk about. But one of the first comments on Reddit when you type in Fig Newtons is Fig Newtons are basically. Or Nutri Grain bars are basically long Fig Newtons and that's right. Nutrigrain. Those are the bars that you see them in. Like if you're just like going into like your. What was that? The name of the little market we had downstairs at the radio station we. That we worked at. It's just like a little snack counter. Like they'll have Nutri Grain bars at a place like that, right?

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, Avanti.

[Andrew Walsh]

Avanti Market. Or like the bottom shelf of your local am, PM or something. You're gonna see some Nutrigrain bars, which you can probably.

[Luke Burbank]

Has anyone ever been like, oh, good, it's a Nutri Grain bar.

[Andrew Walsh]

I mean, no, but I have. It'll do in a pinch. Exactly. I've definitely pounded my fair share of these guys, but they are like long Fig Newtons essentially. And I'm almost wondering if maybe those are softer than a Fig Newton.

[Luke Burbank]

You know, they have Avanti Market. The only other place I've seen it is at Ron Tonkin Mazda where I take my car.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

And the exact same temptation comes over me, which when we worked at Cairo and we had the Avanti Market downstairs, it's like a way less high tech Amazon kind of thing, except I guess it is actually not very much like that because those certain Amazon stores, you just walk in and walk out and charges you somehow crazily. This really they were hoping it wouldn't become that. They had some security cameras set up. And then they sold for our protection.

[Andrew Walsh]

They send.

[Luke Burbank]

There was for our protection. And they sold beef jerky and long Fig Newtons. And it was like. And string cheese. And, you know, it's sort of. It's. It's the honor system in that there's nobody there. There's nobody at the counter. But also, you figure at some point they're going to watch the footage if they're getting a lot of, you know, shrinkage. If they're. If they're. If they. Gosh, we just can't seem to stock enough cheese sticks, and yet we're making no money on them. What's going on is me at my desk with 30.

[Andrew Walsh]

Meanwhile, Luke Burbank hasn't pooped in two weeks. What is happening to our cheese supply?

[Luke Burbank]

That's the first way, you know, I mean, honestly, check everything. Check the bathroom stats. But. But every time I would go in there, like, I. I think I generally paid. I think I paid like, most of the time, but I felt like a sucker. And here it is. It's like, you know, almost 20 years later, and I'm getting my car worked on and I'm going to, you know, grab a little snack or something, and I'm in that Avanti market, and all of those feelings come flooding back because I'm like, your move, Ron Tonkin. What if I take this string cheese? First of all, I pay a lot of money. I paid you a lot of money for this car. I pay a lot of money when I bring it in. I don't think you want to alienate me as a customer. I think you're going to take the L on the string cheese. And then I paid for it because I didn't want it to be awkward.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, because that's what you really want to avoid, right? Any kind of weird confrontation about. Not even confrontation. Well, yeah. I mean, somebody would confront you and say, sir, you got to pay for that cheese that's hanging out of your mouth. But you are right. I feel like if you're going to a. I don't know, maybe I have too high of expectations if you're going to a dealership where you bought a new car and you're getting it service and you're paying for that service. Like they should just have, like, free snacks.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, when I, you know, had an Audi, they did have that. They had free coffee. Actually, they might have free coffee at old Ron.

[Andrew Walsh]

They got. Damn, they better.

[Luke Burbank]

But the whole thing with that Audi because it was, you know, considered, I guess, sort of a luxury car, or at least they wanted it to feel luxurious. They had free coffee, they had free snacks. They also sold a lot of Audi clothing. And I was like, you know, I know we have some big Audi fans in the audience, so I want to be careful here. But, like, it just never occurred to me to both buy a vehicle from there and buy a windbreaker from the dealership. That seems like if they want to give me a windbreaker, I would take it. But that's a level of fealty to my vehicle that I'll just never have for any of them.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I can't imagine. I mean, unless you had like, you know, if you're a real car enthusiast and you're driving some sort of classic ride or some sort of super high end like roadster or something, I could see that. But yeah, I'm not going out of my way to wear a VW fleece pullover.

[Luke Burbank]

But you would wear a Ford fleece because you been a longtime supporter of Henry Ford and his world.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'd wear a Shawmut pullover.

[Luke Burbank]

Honestly, I am the poor old Shawmut.

[Andrew Walsh]

This is so not worth it. But I gotta ask, because it's on my mind. I can't let it go. One of the little details that I like in DTF St. Louis is the pullover that Linda Cardellini's character wears. And it's the place she works, but it's a name brand. But it's just like there's something. I noticed it before a character commented on it and a character does comment on it. And I. Does she work for Purina? It's just some sort of a corporate pullover fleece that is just like, so. And it's not even. It's not. It's just like the most basic thing you can wear. And I don't even mean that in the insulting way of basic. It's like such a not. But it's just like these things we get from work. I actually have a very comfortable hoodie right now that I've been wearing that Genevieve gave me. And it says University of Washington Department of Communications or something. And like very small little script. And it's just like. It just feels like. Got this at work kind of. It's a really comfy hoodie, by the way, and I really do like it. But there's just something so puttering about the house wearing your Purina fleece pullover. Did you get my photo of cookies? I did.

[Luke Burbank]

I just want to mention on the subject of corporate garb. And I think we can talk about duplex cream. I love their movies. The Duplex Brothers.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. I mean, they split. They're doing their own things now. They're not as good.

[Luke Burbank]

Those are the Safdie brothers. Those are the Fig Newton brothers. Thinking of the long. The long Fig Newton brothers, I. Every once in a while I'll get some sort of like corporate swag. Clothing that just happens to fit or I feel it is flattering. And that happened in the most unusual of circumstances, which for a number of years, my favorite sweater to wear. And it was kind of one of those ones that had like a sort of a collar, but it went up and had a zipper. So the zipper did not go all the way down. I don't know what you would call that kind of sweater. But it was a pullover.

[Andrew Walsh]

Isn't it? You call it like not a quarter zip.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, maybe a quarter zip.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay.

[Luke Burbank]

And it said very sort of subtly and discreetly, OBA for Oregon Bankers Association. It was in the gift basket they gave me when I got to my fancy hotel to give them a speech on being unreasonable in unreasonable times. And I promise you, Andrew, if the plan had been to give me the gift bag after the speech, I would not have received it.

[Andrew Walsh]

I thought you were going to say, if the plan had been to withhold compensation except for the gift bag, I still would have given the speech. Cause you loved the pullover so much.

[Luke Burbank]

I, as much as they hated my speech, is how much I loved that pullover. It was navy blue again. It just fit sort of. Right. And I wore that for years as it was kind of a go to. And yet every time I put it on, I was reminded of my massive humiliation in front of the Oregon Bankers Association.

[Andrew Walsh]

How prominent is the OBA on it?

[Luke Burbank]

Very subtle.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's part of why.

[Luke Burbank]

So it was like the pullover was blue and then it was like embroidered in blue.

[Andrew Walsh]

So. Okay. That's really good then. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

I mean, they're a bunch of classy bankers.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Now they should have been more unreasonable with this. With the sweater. They should have made it more unreasonable and then kept it in line with my speech.

[Andrew Walsh]

But yeah, anyway.

[Luke Burbank]

Flex creams. You sent me these?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I bought them this weekend. I love these. Are my really suspicious. Really? What sounds suspicious?

[Luke Burbank]

Well, when I say, when I accuse you of buying cookies, that's like you can already tell where I stand on them. I've got a lot of really strong and unfounded opinions on cookies today, Andrew. Well, I guess I just Never occurred to me to buy these.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, it's good. I mean, this is the thing. Last week on the show, you sort of, sort of said you don't really have a good hot take for the subway takes if you're ever invited on that podcast. And here we are, like, by me bringing up various things I like, you're having strong reactions, and this is how you reach hot takes. I don't buy sweets usually to bring home into the house, not because I'm a puritan about these things, but because I don't trust my. Myself. If I'm in the grocery store, I'm actually, I have some willpower in that moment. When I don't have willpower is about midnight, and then I open the cupboard and I see, oh, there's a sweet treat in here. And I have no, no control over myself. So I tried to maintain that willpower in the grocery store by not bringing that stuff home. And. And so I'm never buying. Like, I don't even know what would be a good cookie to bring home. Like maybe a thing of Oreos or soft batch. Is that still a thing? I just don't buy. I don't walk down that aisle all that often. Except I was telling you the other day that when I'm in sars, we call this the twisted tea dilemma. That's what sociologists call it. I didn't come up with that, obviously, but there's something about kind of going into sars. My local grocery store, but my local grocery store that also has a lot of fun things like a 24 ounce can of Twisted tea that you can drink on your way home if you want to. I get a little. I don't know. I went to the store, a buddy was over, we were grilling, and then I actually forgot to buy these cookies that night. But the next day I was grilling again with Genevieve because we had. Me and Hauser bought so much meat on Friday night. You have no idea. Me and J Dog in the sars. You don't let a J Dog loose in the sars. We just, we walked out with so much meat, and then he was supposed to take some of it home with him to grill on his own, but he forgot it. He left his meat behind, which is exactly what George W. Bush didn't want. So I ended up with all this extra meat. So I grilled it again the next day, and I was like, miami Meat Tent, I'm going to correct the thing that I did wrong. The one misstep I had on Friday. Friday Night was I didn't get those little two tone sandwich cookies that are like, I think they give them out for free or something like that. I mean, they're probably the most economical cookie in the aisle, but something that

[Luke Burbank]

the EMT gives you if you're having

[Andrew Walsh]

low blood sugar or if they're worried you're going to bite your tongue. Yes,

[Luke Burbank]

you need to wedge this.

[Andrew Walsh]

But I don't know why they hit so hard, especially on that kind of a night. Like you're grilling stuff up, you know, like. I don't know. And then like when all is said and done, you crack open these types of cookies and I just know that there are better. It's 2006. I'm sure they have cookies that are actually warm when you open the package somehow, like gooey. All these things.

[Luke Burbank]

Insomnia cookies. You could call, they'll like bring you cookies at midnight. Insomnia cookies.

[Andrew Walsh]

What if you drank that sleepy time tea while eating insomnia cookies? Would they cancel each other out?

[Luke Burbank]

I think they would.

[Andrew Walsh]

You just be like normal.

[Luke Burbank]

Do the cookies cause insomnia or are they just four people who are insomniac?

[Andrew Walsh]

That's what I wasn't sure.

[Luke Burbank]

Great question.

[Andrew Walsh]

Anyway. Anyway, there's just something about. I go into stars. I'm like, this is what I need. I need these kinds of cookies. They remind me of like the cookies that you would get after a pizza party for something in grade school, right. There's going to be some kind of dessert and it's going to be these. And that must be the connection for me, right? Nostalgia again. Yeah. The.

[Luke Burbank]

The cookies that I have the most nostalgia for probably would be grandma's cookies, which I don't know if those made their ways to the Midwest or if that was more of a kind of regional thing. But these iced molasses, Grandma's cookies, and the way they came was it was two kind of giant cookies in the package and that's what you would buy. It was probably like a dollar or something. And they sold those at like Chubby and Tubby. So sometimes if I'd go up there with my dad, get something Chubby and Tubby on Aurora at 80th and Aurora, that maybe he'd let me grab a grandma's cookie. And they also had chocolate chip. They had a bunch of different flavors, but I was really into the iced molasses ones.

[Andrew Walsh]

Interesting. I'm looking at these now. I don't. I don't know if it was just my own personal experience or if it wasn't so much a Midwest thing. But this doesn't look familiar to me. I think I've been in like stores nowadays where I see that little Grandma's Cookies logo. I'm assuming it's the same one that's sort of a, kind of a genericy sounding brand. But I'm looking at them. They look okay. But are you also putting this in the category of definitely not the best cookie you can get in 2026, but you'd be drawn to it because of your memories.

[Luke Burbank]

Exactly.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

And by the way, they're. They're showing up on a forgotten foods.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's what I'm looking at. Yeah. On Reddit subreddit.

[Luke Burbank]

So I'm guessing that they are no longer a thing. But yeah, they are not by any stretch the best cookies. You can have the freshest cookies, but they are the cookies that remind me the most of being 12 years old.

[Caller/Guest]

Sure.

[Luke Burbank]

And so they will always have a special. Special. Now here's my question to you. Do you have milk with the cookies?

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm not a big milk drinker. No, I'm not either.

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Outside of cookies. That's the thing. Well, here's the real deal with me. Let's get real, Andrew.

[Andrew Walsh]

Finally.

[Luke Burbank]

This is what happens when two podcasters stop messing around and get real. For me, the true enjoyment of eating cookies of any kind is then consuming the milk afterwards. I like that if I eat a cookie, it makes me a little bit thirsty and then the milk is very refreshing. It's almost just like I'm just making myself thirsty with something sweet so that I can then enjoy the milk more. And I do not drink milk recreationally. I will never pour myself a glass of milk at any time other than if I am having cookies or a donut or cake or just some kind of a sweet doughy or whatever you'd call that treat. And in that case, it is fundamental. I won't even have like I will pass on cookies if I don't have any milk to have them with.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's literally like that commercial that got milk commercial from the 90s veeves. And I played it on after these messages recently where a guy is a real. He's like a real go go businessman walking down the street talking to himself. Oh, he's fire. He's gleefully firing someone on his giant cell phone or whatever. Then he gets hit by a bus. Things were darker in the 90s and looks like he goes to heaven and everything is like cloudy and heavenly and you got the harp music and he's like, oh, and he looks. He even looks surprised that he ended up in heaven. And then he walks over to this table and there's just the most. Well, it's a giant, gooey looking chocolate chip cookie. It just looks like the best cookie you can imagine. And so he walks over the table and takes a big bite of it. And this businessman is in heaven. And then he walks over to this giant, heavenly refrigerator and opens it up, and there's just carton upon carton upon carton of milk. But as he pulls one to drink directly from the carton, he realizes it's empty. And then he starts going through all of them, and all of the cartons of milk are empty. And then at the very end, it says, Got Milk? And there are little flames around the Got Milk logo because he's not. I think I said milk, not milk.

[Luke Burbank]

He's in the bad place.

[Andrew Walsh]

He's actually in the bad place, not the good place, because the cookies made him think he was in a good place, but without milk, he's in the bad place. Which is right to your point.

[Luke Burbank]

I really actually like that they went for that with that commercial. I feel like, dark in a way.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Darker than we. You'd see an ad be in these days.

[Caller/Guest]

Right? Don't you think?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. I mean, he dies. The main character in the commercial dies

[Luke Burbank]

immediately and goes to hell.

[Andrew Walsh]

And goes to hell. Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

It reminds me of my. Probably my favorite joke, which I've told on the show a million times. I'll try to do the fast version, but it's the guy guy dies. He goes to hell because he was firing people gleefully. And head demon takes him to the first room where he's going to spend eternity. And it's people standing on their head on a gymnasium floor. And he says, I don't want to stay here. So Adele takes him to the next room. People standing on their head on a brick floor says, no, thanks. And then room three is people standing around ankle deep in human waste drinking coffee. And he takes that room, and then about five minutes later, he's standing around having his coffee, and the demon comes in and says, coffee breaks over back on your heads.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

And that's a solid joke.

[Andrew Walsh]

It is a good joke.

[Luke Burbank]

I think it's funnier every time I tell it on the show.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, that's the only reason I'm not giving you an audible laugh here is because I have heard it several times. Hey, let's go back to hell. Let's go back to this subreddit that you just stumbled upon called Forgotten Foods. Just so you know, this is a subreddit. That is my jam. I actually do subscribe to this one and I usually open Reddit every morning and do a quick scroll through it. So I'm always being confronted by forgotten foods. And this is like, you know, again, as a nostalgia demon, like this really speaks to me. And if you go to the main Forgotten Foods page right now, you'll see the Latest post from 6Five Alive. Five Alive. I don't even know how much Five Alive I drank but that makes me thirsty. Just looking at it. That makes me feel like a kid again. And wasn't the second or the second. Oh, then third one down is. Well, these happen to be Flintstone branded push ups but generally those sherbet push ups and the little like not spherical but what would you call those sorry, cylindrical tube. Yes. Cylinders that you push up with the plastic. Those were a huge, huge part of my growing up. What about you?

[Luke Burbank]

Can we.

[Andrew Walsh]

We did.

[Luke Burbank]

You'll be unsurprised to hear we didn't really have those around. I would have been psyched about those. We had popsicles. I mean the irony is there was a lot of stuff I ate as a kid because my parents were. My mom was a very frugal shopper that I hated at the time that actually I would now prefer again in adulthood. For instance, we did not have push up pops. I mean I knew about them and I certainly had them on occasion. But we, my mom would just pour orange juice into the like popsicle, you know, little plastic popsicle thing and put the little plastic, you know, stick handle thing in and freeze it. And that would be the popsicles we would have. We would have frozen orange juice.

[Andrew Walsh]

I forgot about that.

[Luke Burbank]

Maybe frozen grape juice. Sometimes that actually sounds kind of good to me now. Like I actually would enjoy that. But at the time I was like, we have the most bunk popsicles in this house.

[Andrew Walsh]

I. We did have those and my mom had the Tupperware version. They were like little red sticks that had almost like cups kind of on the end of them so that it didn't drip all over you. But I think she made them out of Kool Aid, I believe. I don't think that would be delicious.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, then we would, when I started to have a little bit of money from doing my paper route and then also collecting for my paper route at times when I wasn't even supposed to be collecting and I had a little money, Peter Williams and I would go buy the big thing of Otter Pops.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, okay. In the plastic? Yeah, yeah, like.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, the. Yeah, in the plastic. Plastic, you know, like whatever you'd call that tube sort of thing.

[Andrew Walsh]

Sure.

[Luke Burbank]

But then this would be like on a summer day and that would be unfrozen for some reason. We probably could have gone to the freezer section, but we. I remember us having a box and that for some reason we bought. They weren't frozen and then we put them in the freezer. And when I tell you time is relative, the number of times we opened that freezer door to see if they had frozen.

[Andrew Walsh]

And each time you're, you're, you're slowing it down a little bit more every time, but you can't stop it. I would still do it today.

[Luke Burbank]

Like, you know, a watched otter Pop never freezes.

[Caller/Guest]

That's right.

[Luke Burbank]

It's just so torturous. It was the worst. I remember a different time. It was so hot in the summer there and there was no. Didn't have any good, you know, purple drink or Sunny D or. There wasn't anything that was like, you know, soda that just seemed like refreshing Kool Aid. So we decided to drink a Miller Light.

[Andrew Walsh]

You just. And to what degree did you understand what you were doing here?

[Luke Burbank]

We knew it was beer, but it was in the fridge. So his parents are not big drinkers as far as I understand at all. But they're the kind of people that would have like a six pack of bottles of Miller Lite in case I guess someone came over and wanted a beer. I never saw them consume alcohol that I can remember my whole life. But they had these Miller Lites around. And what it was was the most refrigerated beverage that we could locate. And also, you know what? I think it was too. I was probably old enough that I'd started watching like football games and things. And they make beer look so refreshing. Yeah. Which I guess now in adulthood, I can tell you a cold beer at the ball game is pretty refreshing. But like I still to this day don't generally if I'm trying to slake my thirst. Beer is not the thing for it. But you watch enough of those commercials and it just like the product shots of just like an ice cold beer cracking. Yeah, I think I just watched too many of those commercials and it was like, we're super duper thirsty. There's nothing cold and refreshing in the house. There is a Miller Lite. I remember opening it and taking a sip and just thinking it tasted like human urine. It was the worst thing I had ever tasted. And you know, that was actually probably kind of good for me because it really.

[Andrew Walsh]

You never drank again?

[Luke Burbank]

I never drank again. All these years later. It certainly. You know what it did, though? It, it at least gave my. It gave my liver like a good 15 year head start.

[Andrew Walsh]

Sure.

[Caller/Guest]

Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

I didn't, like, start drinking heavily at 14 or 15 like some people do, largely because of how much I just remembered how disgusting that one sip of Miller Lite was.

[Andrew Walsh]

I know that I've raised this on the show. I mean, not super recently, but relatively recently. When you hear where I'm going with this. This isn't the type of thing that a man should be continually bringing up on his podcast. But before I understood the concept of alcohol, I was just like kind of getting clues about it from various places, good and bad, I guess. And some of those were from the Bible, I think I mentioned to you recently. Like, I remember some, like, educator in the church telling us kids about the loaves and the fish fishes. And it was taught to us as the loaves and the finches, though, and it was a very different takeaway. Pretty high end loaves and the fish,

[Luke Burbank]

the loaves and the pheasant under glass.

[Andrew Walsh]

But anyway, I remember one thing I learned was they said like, oh, it was amazing because when Jesus turned the water into wine, it was actually even better wine than they started off with, which is not how you usually do it at a wedding. You always start with your best wine, which I don't even know why that had to be part of the story, but I guess they were just sort of like bragging about how good Jesus's wine is, which is, I guess, interesting. But also as a kid, you're like, oh, interesting, because this is where I learned, like later on in the night, the more drink you've had, the less you care about the quality of it. And so I was like, okay, that's an. As I put that in the little back of my brain.

[Luke Burbank]

And then start with your finest wine to end with your twistedest tea.

[Andrew Walsh]

Exactly.

[Luke Burbank]

And then remember when Jesus said, don't pour new twisted tea into old twisted tea skins.

[Andrew Walsh]

And then the other little piece of alcohol, wisdom or knowledge that I gained from the Bible, and this one gets a little dark, so buckle up for this. But Jesus, you know him, he is being crucified, which is pretty bad. But then they give him, like, there's all these. Aside from all the physical pain and torture and all that, there's also like various things that the soldiers do to basically mock him, right? And at some point, like, he's really thirsty up there. And instead of giving him water, they give him something that is described as gall or was described as gall. Does this ring a bell to you as somebody who is it does.

[Luke Burbank]

I always heard it as, like, wine or whatever. It was like a rag or a sponge. Do they have sponges?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes, that's right. And it was. I forgot the fact that it was sort of sponged into his mouth, which is kind of gross anyway. And I remember again, some sort of like, we called it CCD or whatever.

[Caller/Guest]

The.

[Andrew Walsh]

Whoever was educating us that gall was described as like a very excessively bitter wine, which I don't know what its purpose is for. When you're not torturing somebody, then, you know, honestly, the vegemite of wine. Right. But it was apparently like, like, you're thirsty, but like the last thing you want to drink when you' thirsty is, like, bitter wine. So I feel like that was a little piece of knowledge that went into my head also. Just kind of like, oh, this stuff doesn't quench your thirst. This isn't what you need, you know, when you're super, super thirsty or being crucified.

[Luke Burbank]

According to AI, which is where I turn for most of my Jesus information, there were two. There were two times that Jesus was drinking wine on this day. The first wine. Before the crucifixion, Jesus was offered wine mixed with gall. This mixture acted as a rudimentary painkiller or sedative. He tasted it, but he refused to drink it. Scholars note he wanted to endure his suffering with full consciousness to fulfill his mission.

[Andrew Walsh]

Gall was not a mocking part of the torture. It was actually to relieve some pain.

[Luke Burbank]

But then, according to AI, so who knows? But then the second wine, what you and I were just kind of talking about. Near his death, Jesus says, I am thirsty. The Roman soldiers offered him sour wine, or pascha, which was a common military drink on a sponge attached to a hyssop branch. A lot of detail. It's amazing that they knew it was a hyssop branch all these years later. Just no way that this book is a collection of stories that people have to remember. He drank this sour wine, which kept him conscious longer to prolong the crucifixion and fulfill scriptural prophecies. I don't want to. I don't want a Monday morning quarterback, Jesus, but you are doing this wrong, my guy.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, you're.

[Luke Burbank]

You're, You're. You're saying no, thank you to the painkiller wine before the thing. And then you're saying, thank you to the horrible military Grade wine so you can stay conscious longer to experience this horribleness longer. No, that's not how you do it, my guy.

[Andrew Walsh]

No. Well, that's what makes him Jesus.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. And that's what makes me just a humble podcaster who is currently on A lot of gall.

[Andrew Walsh]

I know this is really started with a conversation about Fig Newtons. It really ended with my curiosity about gall peakening.

[Luke Burbank]

You got a lot of gall, Andrew.

[Caller/Guest]

I wish.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hello and welcome to Top Story.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, I guess Top story for my life, Andrew, is I'm going to New York City, and it's. It's kind of interesting. I'm interviewing our old friend Francis Lam of he of Splendid Table fame and TBTL Salute to the American Hot Dog fame.

[Andrew Walsh]

What do we call that, by the way? Didn't it have a clever name?

[Luke Burbank]

What was that?

[Andrew Walsh]

I remember we won. I remember our Valentine show had a somewhat clever name, but I was always mad. I tried to change at the last minute because we later came up with Love Is on the Air. And I always wanted to have our show be called that, but they said at 8pm they're like, no, it's too late. But what do we call our hot dog show anyway?

[Luke Burbank]

We've already typed it into the Internet. There's no way we can change it.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes, it was the only time somebody at American Public Media said no to us for apparently no reason. Exactly.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, this is for a CBS Sunday Morning story about fusion cooking, that thing where I was in Houston eating this Viet Cajun cooking. And we wanted to talk to kind of a food expert about that larger phenomenon of food cultures that come from different places but then meet in America. And Francis Lamb seems like the perfect person to talk to about that. So we're going to New York City, but we were trying to find a place to actually do the interview, set up the lights and the cameras and stuff. And somehow it was decided to do it at the APM New York studios. And I thought, well, that seems like a fun idea, but. And you know, Francis obviously has an in there because he records Splendid Table there, I think, at times. But I was like, I had this moment of thinking, like, am I. Am I Persona non grata over there? Like, what is my grata? What is my Persona? What is our Persona?

[Andrew Walsh]

We left on good terms. I've just gotten more and more snarky as time.

[Luke Burbank]

Maybe that's what it is.

[Andrew Walsh]

I don't think anybody has any beef with us. I mean, some of the people we worked with were actually like, very kindly donating to us when we were independent. Yeah. So, like, I gotta say, like, I guess I should say this in all seriousness because I feel like in recent years, as we've gotten further and further, as our little boat has, has drifted further and further away from that giant ship, like, I've been more. Well, we'll say Frank. Since the name of our show was let's Be Frank, TBTL salutes the Great American Hot Dog. By the way, AI overview on that, you are likely referring to the beloved TBTL podcast hosted by Luke Burbank and Andrew Walsh. In one of their special episodes, let's Be Frank, the guys gather over a sizzling grill to celebrate and critically examine the great American hot dog in this classic audio documentary. It's a classic audio documentary. The hosts dive into the history, culture and significance and toppings of one of America's most beloved and occasionally ridiculed food.

[Luke Burbank]

Andrew, did you know that there were actually two hot dogs? There was a painkiller hot dog.

[Andrew Walsh]

Did you.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, then there was the sour military grade hot dog.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, then why did I only see one set of hot dog footprints in the sand?

[Luke Burbank]

I was explaining that. I was not explaining it. I was describing it to Becca the other day that, like I said, we used to do like little radio shows sometimes and we would send them out. I thought, I mean, it was a lot of work for you. But also it was like, that was kind of cool and ambitious what we did. And I was, I don't know if it was because I mentioned to her that I was going back to the APM studios or not, but I, I was sort of like, do you think, Andrew, I'm not proposing that we do this, but do you think if we called APM up right now, we said, can we make you, like, can we make you four radio shows a year or three radio shows a year that are kind of special occasion and you don't have to pay us anything. We'll just make them. It'll give you special content and it'll give us advertising. Do you think they would say yes?

[Andrew Walsh]

I think that maybe they would consider it. There is. This is what I want to address. A second ago I said, oh, apm. They never said no to us arbitrarily. But the thing is, like, they also said, first of all, like, God knows who our contacts there are anymore. You know what I mean? And whether or not that works in our favor or in our deficit, you know what I mean? Like, we could just be like, hey, we're two guys who have a podcast. We used to work there we could be pitching it to somebody who really doesn't know our steez at all, or we could be talking to somebody who's a former colleague and maybe we have an in. I'm not sure. I mean, things just. Even during our eight years there or seven or eight years there, the churn of our bosses was incredible. I mean, it was all. I mean, we must have had five different direct bosses over the course of those seven or eight years at the very least, right? Because I'm counting, like five in my head right now, so. But the thing is, they also said yes to us a lot. Like, I gotta say, there were a few things that we sort of learned or experienced near the end that did sort of like. Like, make us finally decide it's time to move on. And I think it's a. Looking at what they've done with their dwindling podcast division, I think that if we hadn't made that decision ourselves, it would have been made for us eventually anyway. That's not why we made the decision. But looking back, it was just like our timing was actually really good, I think. And they were really. They were relatively good to us when we left, pretty good to us when we left and did. And some of the people there really made sure that there was no interruption in our podcast.

[Luke Burbank]

Brandon was such good news.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, my God. Yeah, a lot of people there. So, anyway, I don't mean to make it sound like it's a totally toxic place or that our relationship with them are toxic at all. That's not true. They. They also said yes a lot. You know, there are not a lot of places that when you say, hey, listen, we're going to be. Your two hosts are going to hitchhike, you know, across the. From the Midwest to the South. And, you know, I mean. Yeah, one of the reasons they said yes to this was because our boss, that boss at the time was so unbelievably checked out that he didn't realize what we were doing until, like, the day before we left.

[Luke Burbank]

Not a huge value of human life put on you and me. And to some degree, the Steub. Oh, sure.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Right. They did not. They.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I don't think they were. They weren't. Like, they weren't staying up at night.

[Andrew Walsh]

You know, what if something happens to these guys? Yeah. What's our future?

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I think that. I think some of that. And what I was going to say, though, in all seriousness, is part of the reason that they said yes to us so much was because of the tens.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

And by that, I mean we came to them with already a group of fans and also supporters. We had done TBTL a thons, and we basically said, you can have this money that TBTL raises and we can have these jobs that will give us benefits and things like that. And they said, okay. And the reason that we were kind of, generally speaking, allowed to just. They left us alone because the tens of listeners continue to support the show. So I just want to say thank you very much. If you're hearing this and you've ever donated to TBTL or are considering it coming up in the thon, when we go to Valley City, Ohio, July 13th through 17th, that is the only reason that they tolerated us even a little bit back there.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, absolutely. By the way, I was going to say.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, everyone's been very nice. Oh, I'm sorry.

[Andrew Walsh]

I was going to say this all came up because of this hot dog special that we did that had Francis Lam on it. Now you're going to be talking with Frances Lam again. That's for cbs, right? Yeah. I was going to mention. I'm like, I don't know if that that radio show we did ever ended up being on the podcast stream, because I was going to say maybe we should air it at some point. But then I thought, come on, who are we? Do you think that we ever did anything that couldn't be also purposed into the. Into the podcast stream as well? It was apparently episode number 2676, which is almost exactly. Am I right? That that's almost exactly 2,000 episodes ago.

[Luke Burbank]

Much in the way that the hot dog manufacturers use.

[Andrew Walsh]

Every part of the pig anus we use.

[Luke Burbank]

We would never. And by. And that was actually a lot of production work for you. You did a really good job with that, man. But, yeah, there's no way we were gonna put all that work in and then also not use it as an episode of tbtl.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. Cause I was like, oh, maybe we could use that, like, if we ever needed a travel day or something like that. But it looks like that would be. And it does seem a little bit weird to re air a podcast. I can't remember what it is. There's some podcast in the Scott Aukerman universe that I've been listening to recently. And without really explicitly saying it, I realized, oh, these are just reruns because they keep on referencing the global pandemic that they're living through. And I'm like, that takes me out of this like it's a podcast. You. Why you don't need to re air a podcast. It exists in the feed.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, the people at APM have been so nice to me. It was actually very heartening because I've been working with Sally Swift, who is the founder of Splendid Table, along with Lynn Rosetto Casper, and she seemed very excited for me to be back there. And so it's. I am legit kind of excited to. I don't even know if I've ever been to the Marketplace studios in New York because I never worked for. Well, I guess I did work for Marketplace or I worked for apm, as did you, but we were never. We never went to the New York studios, did we?

[Andrew Walsh]

Nobody together had them. I went as I believe you did in your own time. I went to the Market Marketplace, L.A. studios when I first became an APM employee because that's where I had to do a lot of kind of hr, check in stuff and pick up some equipment and whatnot.

[Luke Burbank]

That's where Kai Rysdal told me he got the whole relatability thing.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, yeah, right. Because you were giving a little talk. Right. You were giving a talk to the Marketplace team.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. There was a woman who worked at Marketplace named Deb Clark, who was a big TBTL listener.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right.

[Luke Burbank]

And advocate for us and wanted me to try to explain to the Marketplace staff how they, too, could broadcast from a small room in their house to over a thousand people. And so I said I would do that. I sort of hate doing that kind of stuff just because I just don't know really what I have to offer. So I went in with my sort of stock speech, which is like, narrow casting and, you know, don't try to make it. Don't try to make it, you know, the most popular show. Try to make it a show that is very popular for the people for whom it works, just because that's the only thing I've ever been able to do that's worked. I've had no success in broad popularity. And so Kai, then they, like, turned it open to questions and no one had any questions. Everyone just wanted to go back to their lunch.

[Andrew Walsh]

Right, Exactly.

[Luke Burbank]

That's the thing. I like. I'm like, I feel bad that you all have. You're like, at work. This is like 40 minutes of time where maybe you're falling behind on stuff you should be doing or you're missing your lunch to sit here and listen to my, let's be honest, probably hungover ass try to tell you about the success of my podcast that you've never heard of, that your boss Deb likes. And they were like, any questions? And everyone was like, no, we want to get back to what we were doing. And then Kai Rysdal, to be nice, I think, asked a question, and then I was trying to explain being relatable or something, goes, oh, I get the

[Andrew Walsh]

whole relatability thing, which is. It's funny because it doesn't sound like a relatable thing to say, I guess.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, I think. Listen.

[Andrew Walsh]

I mean, listen. I think that he's good at that. I mean, he is relatable. I think that's the reason why he's so successful. But just saying, hey, listen, I get the whole relatability thing sounds like something that you would say if you weren't super relatable.

[Luke Burbank]

I think it's the opposite. I think Kai Rizdal is very successful and very good at his job because he is very unrelatable.

[Andrew Walsh]

Really.

[Luke Burbank]

He's so smart. He's so read in on stuff. He, you know, he's a former. He was an Air Force pilot who also speaks Mandarin. Like, these are things that I find unrelatable.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, because you were a Navy pilot who speaks Cantonese.

[Luke Burbank]

He probably was a Navy. I don't even know the difference, Andrew. But, like, I'm not trying to, like, disagree with you for the.

[Andrew Walsh]

No, no, I guess you're right. I just didn't want to.

[Luke Burbank]

I think he's.

[Andrew Walsh]

I didn't want to start a public radio war, to be honest with you. I was just trying to smooth things over.

[Luke Burbank]

He's so stellar. Like, he's so. I mean, I love Marketplace. I actually really love that show. It's one of my favorite things on public radio. And he's so good at that job, as are all the folks there. But I think of his. His real value as being like, he is so much smarter than me. He is so much more with it than me. That's what. That's what I like from him. I don't. I don't want a Marketplace host who sounds like me. I don't want a Marketplace host who's like, yeah, I get well cool. I pulled out of my cow she bed at the right time. Like, that's not the guy that I want to hear on Marketplace.

[Andrew Walsh]

But I think when he says relatability in that. In that manner, I do think that. I mean, I'm so old even to speak in public radio in this way, but I think Marketplace was sort of part of a new wave of public radio where people didn't sound removed, where people did have a little bit more personality. And while it's not a personality that I can relate to because he's quote, unquote smart and quote unquote understands basic facts, unlike me, I think that he considers his way of communicating to be a little bit maybe more laid back and relatable in a way that maybe, and I mean, I love. I'm trying to think of who to. Who to put on the other side of that, whether it be a Noah Adams or somebody. But Noah Adams was not exactly, was not exactly removed. I wouldn't say. I think that he felt very avuncular to me, but anyway. But I do think that there was a sort of a, hey, let's, let's just kick back and talk and use the word guys from time to time

[Luke Burbank]

and demystify finance a little.

[Andrew Walsh]

Sure. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

So I guess I'm back to agreeing with you on this one.

[Caller/Guest]

Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

I think we can agree that Kyrisdal gets the whole relatability thing. And who knows, maybe I'll even see him. Maybe I'll have a Brancaccio sighting, a DB a David Brancaccio sighting there and maybe I'll see a Sabri Ben ashore.

[Andrew Walsh]

Is that the new person? I just happened to listen to a Morning Edition interview with the new host of Marketplace Mornings. Did she. I think she just replaced maybe Brancaccio and they were. Is who's been holding down the morning slot of Marketplace for the past, past several years.

[Luke Burbank]

Was that it's been David.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I think that he just. I think he maybe just stepped down or something. I don't think.

[Luke Burbank]

Is it Kimberly Adams?

[Andrew Walsh]

It was definitely a woman. I was listening to it like kind of with half an ear while I was on a walk with Lucy the other day. And it was kind of interesting because Kimberly Adams and she was kind of saying what we're talking about here, she says, I want to demystify it even more. I want to make things even more relatable, honestly. That was what she was talking about on Morning Edition.

[Luke Burbank]

You know who the one time Marketplace Morning Report host was? Your friend and mine. William Radke.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right. That's right. Long before I knew him, I heard him doing the Morning Report. He was doing that out of Seattle or. No, no, he must have.

[Luke Burbank]

Was he. He went and worked for APM in la.

[Andrew Walsh]

In la, right. Of course. Yeah. That's where you'd want that. You'd want to be on there.

[Luke Burbank]

And Brancaccio had been the Marketplace host, the afternoon show host, and then he left to go work at pbs and to sort of of do other stuff and then eventually return to Marketplace. But by that time, the Kai Rysdal regime had been installed and he had solidified power. And so then Brancaccio went to mornings.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, I don't even know if this is accurate anymore, but I remember when all of this was actually happening and I was a much younger man in public radio myself and following these things with much greater interest than I do these days. And I remember thinking of Kai Ryssdal as cut from the same cloth as your Brancaccio. There was a very similar thing, David

[Luke Burbank]

Brown in there, too, by the way.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right.

[Luke Burbank]

There was a guy named David Brown who was from Texas.

[Andrew Walsh]

No, you weren't. You and David Brown.

[Luke Burbank]

No, I never knew him, but I really, I thought he was great. I really like. I think he does, like, the Texas Report now or something in Texas.

[Andrew Walsh]

But I felt like. I felt like Kai was almost doing a Brancaccio. But I could be wrong about that. I could be. That could just be, like, me either misremembering or misunderstanding their tone at the time. But they seemed very similar to me. And I was like, oh, wow, they just found another Brancaccio. But now Kai Rysdal has been doing it for. For, I mean, he's been doing it solidly for decades now, right?

[Luke Burbank]

Probably 15, 20 years or something.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I told you that, like, and I guess you're more familiar with these things, but, like, one of his little, like, tiki talks popped up in my feed the other day, and I don't think I'd seen one of those before. And I kind of got sucked in. For somebody who is not, like, you know, super. I'm not super into that Marketplace world. He. He did kind of suck me in immediately with whatever the topic was.

[Luke Burbank]

I know I've told this story many times, but probably the first real glitz, glamour, national radio program I ever got to observe in real life was Marketplace. And it was because, speaking of our friend and longtime ally Deb Clark, she was a producer at Marketplace when I was working at kuow. No, I mean, I was interning at kuow and I had done a piece for Marketplace and they were going to pay me, I want to say, like, $300 or something. And Deb had said, well, just come stop by the studios when you're in la. I was going to LA with my friend JJ Tebow, and she said, just come by the studios and you can get your check and you can watch us do the show. And so I did. This was back when Marketplace was on the sort of just off the campus of usc. It was in this crazy, like, brutalist, like, weird cement building behind all of this, like, concertina wire. It was a very odd place to do the show, but I remember just sitting in there and watching. I think it was David Brancaccio at this point, watching, like, you know, it was like, literally like it went live at three or whatever, whatever time they went live, and just like the producer, the director counting him down, and then like the on air light going on and the music, you know, that kind of iconic Marketplace music, and just David, you know, doing the script and tossing the pieces. I was absolutely starstruck. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. And as the story goes, and again, as I've told many times, the problem was I had no money at all to my name. All the money I had to my name was this $300 I was going to get from Marketplace. And I said to Kate as I was leaving, oh, can I go ahead and grab that check from you? Oh, yeah, so let me go get that from, you know, whatever you'd call it, finance or something. And then she just kind of came back, said, oh, yeah, they don't actually cut the checks here. They'll just mail it to you. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I'm a person. I'm not a person who came to California with no money and was going to use. And was gonna use this $300 to pay for everything for the next two weeks. I'm a grown adult with money in my bank account. That's why it's not an issue for them to mail me the check home to Seattle.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's why I'm definitely not gonna just float a bunch of checks to get

[Luke Burbank]

through this ton of bad checks. Just endless numbers of bad checks throughout the state of California. I actually think, believe it or not, that the first round of me sort of. Of finding out that there was some money to my name, unclaimed money, which might have even been our friend Phyllis Fletcher tipping me to that back in the day. Not the most recent round, which I also did, but a long time ago, I believe a significant amount of the money that I got was from that check. It was from USC. I had $300 from the university of Southern California, which would have been probably how the payroll of Marketplace worked in the day, because they were. Were associated with USC in some way, because there's no other reason that USC would owe me $300.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

So, like, I think. I think it took me, like, 20 years to collect on that money that I thought I was going to get handed to me that day at Marketplace.

[Andrew Walsh]

But now that I think about how many checks you bounced, it occurred to me that maybe. Were you nervous to even put your information in there? Like, you might have been the one person who was like, hey, let's see. Is there any found money for me? But you just put your information in there and just like, literally a cage just drops from the seat.

[Luke Burbank]

Admiral Ackbar turns around. It's a trap. Yeah. I'm the only person. I go to the website, and it's just a box with a stick holding it up and a string on the stick. And my found money. My found money is under the box. That would be. That would actually. Would be a pretty great, I don't know, sketch or something. I don't know if enough people know about the found money things. But, yeah, no, I. What I did do, though, was I got home and this was. You know, this was a formative thing. This is part of why I am the way that I am. I remember calling. I think it was probably called bank of America at that time. It was probably C. First bank and then absorbed by bank of America calling the customer service line. And this was back in the day where you just called and a human being answered. Now, granted, this person wasn't probably at a desk at a bank branch, but it was not like it is now, where they're doing everything they can to keep you from talking to a human. And this is why that trend is so troubling for me, because I called and I just got a very nice person on the phone, and I said, my bank account is in the negative because I wrote about 10 bad checks because I was in California and I had no money because I thought I was gonna have some money, and I didn't. Is there anything at all that you can do? And she said, let me see. And she said, yeah, I got rid of all the overdraft fees. Wow. Just knocked all the overdraft fees off just to be nice to me.

[Andrew Walsh]

Wow.

[Luke Burbank]

I mean, I still had to pay the principal, whatever I wrote the checks for, but. Cause more than whatever I was buying, it was the overdraft fees that I had.

[Andrew Walsh]

They were like 30 bucks. They were like 30 bucks a pop back in the day. And that was, you know, back precisely.

[Luke Burbank]

And so, like, you know, this person just took pity on me and just said, yeah, I can get rid of these overdraft fees for you. And like, that was so helpful. I mean, and financially huge for me at the time. But it also kind of. It imprinted on me that sometimes when you're in a pickle, even of your own making, if you just get the right person on the phone and they're just in a charitable mood, they might hook you up. And that's, you know, less and less the case because you can't talk. The bot is never in a charitable mood. The bot is in the mood that has been programmed to be in, which is to say, you know, you overdrafted your account and the charge is $30.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, my God. That reminds me of something I wanted to tell you. I know we're going a little bit long here. I don't know if we're going to get to top stories today. Luke, I gotta be honest with you, but I got a. Okay, so my mom passed away in September, I'm pretty sure. And it's June now, right? So. Yeah. So it hasn't been quite a year. And she had a small life insurance policy through her employer, and she hadn't worked for that employer for a long time. But then I was told, you know, you should. It was MetLife. And they're like, you should contact MetLife. No, no, MetLife contacted me. That's right. I got a thick pack saying that, like, a beneficiary has, or, you know, someone listed you as a beneficiary or something. And the first thing I did was because they wanted me to fill out some forms and include some bank information so that they could deposit some money in my account. Well, it seemed all very official, but I had two questions. Number one, how much money are we talking about here? And number two, this is real, right? I mean, it seemed all very real. It was a thick pack of paper sent in snail mail. But I was just like, I don't know. Before I.

[Luke Burbank]

Your mom spent a significant amount of time in Nigeria, right?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, she did. Oh, yeah. See, I didn't know. I didn't even know. I.

[Luke Burbank]

That's why that was true.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, exactly. It said something. Let's just say it was a princely no. But anyway, I was like, I better just call MetLife, see if they can give me any information on kind of what exactly this policy is or whatever. And then also just to triple check that, because I remember when we were buying this house that we got so many warnings of, like, there are people who can watch the systems and they realize that a house is in play, and they can get your information and you can accidentally wire your down payment. For a house to the wrong people. Like, I don't know if you ever got all those warnings and stuff, but they put the fear of absolute God into you.

[Luke Burbank]

It's almost like you can't do those transactions because they will never believe that you're the person who's allowed to do the transaction because they're so afraid of it being a scam.

[Andrew Walsh]

And they don't want you to believe anybody else. They're like, don't believe me? Do you believe me? And you're like, yeah, I believe you. And they slap you and they say, don't believe me. And you're just like, what? So anyway, don't even move into the house.

[Luke Burbank]

That's all the scammers get you. No transactions, no moving into the house.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right. Right. There's a little rope on the ground that is in a circle. And if you step into that, it's going to turn you upside down and shake all the money out of your pockets. Anyway, So I called MetLife and they said, okay, yes, first of all, I kind of apologize. I'm like, first of all, this is silly. I just want to make sure that this is a real thing. And I gave them the number, the policy number or whatever, like, okay, good. And they're like, no, that's a good thing. More people should do that to make sure that this is not some sort of a scam. And they told me what the payout is, for lack of a better word. And so it's like, okay. And we did. Like, I gave him my information and filled out the paperwork, and it was a digital transfer. And all of that happened, I'm going to guess, in maybe October. Right. And then. And you know, it was a modest sum, but I appreciated it. And then two days ago, I think it was Friday of last week, I was thinking about you because I was wondering if I played this wrong. I got a text message from MetLife saying, Your payment has been processed and is on the way and included my address of where it literally said something like, we were sending a check to this address. And I was like, okay. And then I didn't really think too much about it. I think I got it during the show, so I just didn't think about it. And then later on that same day, I got an email from them saying the same exact thing. And I do all the usual things. First of all, they texted me and emailed me, and both of them said, a check is on its way to your house and had the pertinent information. And I also Checked the email address that it came from. You know, you got to be careful about phishing scams. Neither one of these things asked anything of me. They didn't say, hey, now, give us your PIN number for an account or anything. You know, didn't ask anything. It was just like a confirming that something was heading my way. And I, when I got both of these things, I'm like, okay, I believe these are, these are really from MetLife. I double check the email addresses and everything, everything. But I was really curious and I was like, is MetLife making a problem here? Because as far as I know, nobody else in my life has died recently. And I don't think I should be getting any other money. And I certainly haven't filled out any other paperwork for it or anything like that. And I was like, is there a chance that MetLife is just going to have a. What do they call it in the game of Monopoly, a paperwork windfall? Is there something like a paperwork error in your favor or something like that? And it's got the little Monopoly man with his mustache. I was like, has this just happened? And I'm like, the smart move here is to just like not do anything and just watch my mailbox for a few days and just see if something shows up. But the curiosity got the better of me, so I call them up. And this is why I was thinking of it because you're talking about how you can't get somebody on the phone these days. I got like, AI just kept on asking, like, what is the account this is associated with? It would not let me talk to a person until I gave an account number. But I didn't have an account number because I was just calling to figure out, out what are these emails mean? Like, what is this related to? And I eventually did get through to a person and the person asked me all this, this is what kind of bugged me a little bit. She asked me all this information. It was kind of acting like she could not figure out what, what is going on. And then at the very end, she's like, yeah, I looked at your account there. There's nothing coming your way. We've been having an issue with these erroneous emails and texts going out today. And I was like, well then what was with your tone going up to this? Not that it was a bad tone at all. In fact, they're. Because they know they're dealing with some. With people who often have loss in their life or whatever. They're very good. She didn't have a bad tone, but I didn't hear anything leading up to this being like, oh, this might be another, like, thing. We're getting a bunch of these erroneous messages today, and people are calling about them. You just sort of think that you would, like, maybe go there first before you're putting all the information in. But I also think that, like, they got to be really careful when it comes to banking things stuff. But she essentially said, no, no, there's. There's nothing coming your way. That was a mistake. The system is just sending these out. Sorry about that. But there will always be a little bit of a question in my mind as to whether or not maybe money would have come my way if I hadn't called to tell on myself. You know what I'm saying there?

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, Yeah, I would have. No, I don't think. I mean, I think. I think actually you did yourself a favor because you ended the speculation.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

I don't think that there was any system whereby you were going to actually get the duplicate check mailed to you that was the same as the digital transfer, and then you tipped them off to it, and then they didn't send it to you. And even if that happened, then you'd have the whole issue of, like, you deposit the money. I mean, and then likely their audit would catch it. At some point, they would come back for it. You know, it's like, I think. I think you did the right thing. Even though I am a supreme sketchball and, you know, never miss a trick, I don't know if I would have called them, but then I would have just spent three weeks going, like, ooh, are they going to send me more money? But then what I would have done is they would have sent me the check. I would have deposited it and said, I'm not touching that money. And then I would have touched it. And then at some point, I would get an email from them going, oh, hey, sorry, we sent you money that we weren't supposed to. Can you give that back to us? And I would be like, like,

[Andrew Walsh]

let them touch those things.

[Luke Burbank]

They've never touched anything in their lives. Let them touch those things.

[Andrew Walsh]

We haven't heard that a long time. I'm putting you on the spot. Do you even have that in your collection anymore? They've never touched anything in their lives. Let them touch those things for once.

[Luke Burbank]

We need to bring that back into the rotation.

[Andrew Walsh]

We really do. What was she talking about?

[Luke Burbank]

Go off queen. I actually think it might be related to Hurricane Katrina.

[Caller/Guest]

Oh.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, okay. So maybe.

[Luke Burbank]

Because I know that, you know, with the story. Sort of French influence of New Orleans and everything, I think. I think that Celine Dion felt very connected to the folks down there and was advocating for them. Okay, so, you know, go, go off queen.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes, absolutely.

[Luke Burbank]

As you like to say.

[Andrew Walsh]

As I always. As I always say with a mouthful of duplex cream cookies.

[Luke Burbank]

Hey, speaking of which, I don't want to keep you from your duplex cream cookies, so why don't we go ahead and wrap ski up today, all right?

[Andrew Walsh]

I want to go back to some Surf Ninja three.

[Luke Burbank]

Absolutely. I missed it.

[Andrew Walsh]

House of Mango, My Surf Ninja three.

[Luke Burbank]

We love it. That's gonna do it for today's episode. But we will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio. I will be checking in from New York City. So I'm sure there will be all kinds of adventures to describe to you. So please join us for that. In the meantime, everybody, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves and please remember, no mountain too tall.

[Andrew Walsh]

And good luck to all. Power out.