#4759 Gigi Louise!

Summary

TBTL #4759: "Gigi Louise!"

Date: June 29, 2026
Hosts: Luke Burbank & Andrew Walsh
Theme: The episode captures Luke’s harrowing—and ultimately humorous—adventure after Gigi, a quirky, skittish dog in his care, escapes onto his roof, as well as musings on pet anxieties, Wordle minutiae, evolving media, and the joy of low-stakes friendship.

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Episode Overview

On this mostly canine-centric episode, Luke and Andrew recount a wild incident involving Gigi, the dog Luke is watching, who somehow ends up on the roof and then jumps off it (escaping unharmed). Their conversation explores the anxious joys and pitfalls of pet-sitting, dog psychology, and pet safety, with plenty of the duo’s classic banter. Side roads take them to Wordle “hard mode” discourse, the merits of McSweeney’s vs The Onion, debate team absurdities, and strong recommendations for other gripping audio storytelling.

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Main Story: Gigi the Dog on the Roof

The Setup & Energy Shift

• 00:00–08:50
  Luke describes the cozy, dog-filled house and introduces the new chaotic element: Scott (Becca’s brother) and his dog Lulu visiting, which throws off the doggy equilibrium.
• Gigi is particularly sensitive to new energy:
  • "Gigi is very... can be very skittish. If she gets out and you’re trying to, like, walk towards her with a leash... she’s gonna always back up a little bit and make sure that she’s keeping some space between you and her so you can’t grab her, she will never come to you." (06:23 – Luke)
• Andrew notes how DJ is mellow and affectionate, while Gigi is aloof, waiting for something “interesting” to happen.

The (Literal) Escape

• 08:53–13:54
  Luke airs out the house, leaving windows open (without screens) on the low-ceilinged 1930s second floor—unaware of what’s about to unfold.
• As Scott and Luke talk downstairs, they hear footsteps above. Scott asks: "Is there a dog on the roof?" (11:00 – Andrew).
• Luke investigates and finds Gigi, a full-grown poodle, standing on the edge of the roof.
  • Memorable quote:
    "You would think I’d understand the basic architecture of this home… yet it hadn’t occurred to me. It was such an insane concept that the dog could be on the roof." (11:20 – Luke)

The Failed Retrieval ("The Dog Who Lived on the Roof")

• 13:55–14:52, 15:02–16:09
  Luke attempts to lure Gigi in, but she keeps her distance, repeating her usual avoidant behavior—now dangerously atop the house.
• "She will do this for literally four hours." (15:14 – Luke)
• He decides: "At some point, she’s going to get bored and… climb through the window and come back into the house." (14:50 – Luke)
• Andrew jokes, "Jordan Peele would write this character into a book. She’s standing right behind you... just staring at you." (15:44 – Andrew)

The Leap

• 20:21–21:40
  Events take a sudden turn:
  • "I just see this look on [Scott’s] face. As Gigi has decided to jump from the roof... which is about eight feet. Thankfully it's not 30 feet." (20:44 – Luke)
  • "Dog jumped off the roof." (21:36 – Luke)
  • Andrew: "Geez. Louise. Gigi. Louise." (21:38–41)

The Aftermath

• 23:05–24:50
  Miraculously, Gigi seems uninjured, prancing in the yard as usual.
  • Luke offers her a ride: "For all her craziness, Gigi loves riding in the car," which corrals her safely.
• Both hosts process the relief and review the “lessons learned”—no more open upstairs windows.

Gigi’s Nonchalance and Dogs’ Instincts

• 30:11–31:41
  After closing the windows, she immediately tries to repeat her escape, bashing into the glass.
  • Andrew: "That actually makes me feel a little bit better because it implies... that she kind of enjoyed these things, that she enjoyed it, that it was a game..." (31:41 – Andrew)
  • Luke: "Clearly this wasn’t that traumatizing, because she... wants to do it again!" (31:54 – Luke)
• They reflect on pet instincts, anxiety around escapes, and the unpredictable intelligence (or lack thereof) of animals.
  • "[Dogs] have kind of a sense of self-preservation..." (17:24 – Luke)
  • Andrew draws comparisons to cats’ and dogs’ dangers and survival tactics.

Conclusion & Owner Reactions

• 44:14–44:52
  Luke admits to not telling Gigi’s owners about the incident—until (possibly) now on-air:
  • “I think this might be how Jeff and Darcy are finding out...” (44:14 – Luke)
  • Andrew worries: “But will you lose your Gigi privileges?” (44:34 – Andrew)

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Other Key Discussion Points

Pet Ownership Anxiety

34:44–37:12

• Paranoia about pets getting out—especially cats with coyotes nearby.
• Andrew shares a tragic coyote incident: "A dog that I love... is no longer with us because of a coyote incident this weekend." (34:50 – Andrew)

Wordle “Hard Mode” is Actually Easier?

45:21–53:12

• Luke and Andrew dissect a NYT article claiming hard mode makes Wordle easier for enthusiasts.
• They break down hard mode’s constraints (using letters where shown) and whether it’s a true challenge or actually a “bumper bowling” crutch for focused thinking.
• Memorable revelation: you can even “escape” hard mode mid-game ("Roughly 0.2% of hard mode users toggle it off” – 53:10).

Notable quotes:

• "It’s almost like bowling with the gutters filled in with the bumpers." (51:07 – Andrew)

Language & Debate: When Rules Overtake Purpose

55:01–58:38

• Luke describes how high-level Scrabble and debate competitions have become less about creative skills and more about arcane mastery of rules or rapid-fire argumentation.
• They play a clip of debate at “top speed,” almost indecipherable (“Dartmouth Forensic Union debates at top speed” – 57:17).
• Andrew: "A Frost/Nixon situation. That’s really... a bummer." (58:16)

Recommendation Corner

62:27–79:27

• Praise for Wild Card with Rachel Martin (friendly, smart interview format—63:15–65:33).
• Serial’s latest season: The Last 12 Weeks—focuses on death row and evidence-uncertainty, with a less overtly sympathetic subject. Raises issues around narrative vs. objectivity in true crime (65:42–72:38).
• The Butterfly Effect & Last Days of August (Jon Ronson podcast series) are enthusiastically endorsed for their empathetic, layered approach to adult subject matter:
  • "It's not a prurient podcast... it's really interesting studies of human behavior..." (78:35–79:27 – Luke)

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Other Memorable Moments & Quotes

• Andrew on paranoia about escaped pets:
  "The amount of time and space of my brain that is spent thinking and talking about the digestive system of my dog is incredible. I don't even know who I am anymore." (80:40 – Andrew)
• Gigi stands motionless, staring at Luke:
  Andrew: “She’s standing right behind you... like one of the twins in The Shining.” (23:23)
• On McSweeney’s versus The Onion:
  • Luke: "The Onion is just uncomplicated for me... but with McSweeney’s I kind of didn’t get some of it." (60:26)

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Listener Email & Voicemail Highlights

79:36–88:48

• David (“from the basement”) notices a classic TBTL coincidence: the same SNL “technical times” intro used exactly four years apart and mentions the recurring appearance of Stephen Tobolowski reference. (81:23–82:53)
• Dog and pet stories continue, plus a tongue-in-cheek Keith Urban/Outback joke.

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Notable Timestamps

• 00:55 — TBTL Monday episode introduced (“Let the Fun Begin”)
• 02:24 — Gigi’s roof incident teased
• 11:30 — Discovery: “Is there a dog on the roof?”
• 21:06 — Gigi jumps off the roof
• 23:05 — The car trick: Luke retrieves Gigi
• 30:11 — Gigi attempts escape again
• 44:14 — Owners possibly hear story for first time via TBTL
• 53:21 — Wordle “ovate” discussion
• 57:15 — Speed debate sample played
• 62:27 — McSweeney’s vs The Onion banter
• 65:42 — Serial Season “The Last 12 Weeks” discussion begins
• 74:58 — Jon Ronson podcast recommendations
• 79:36 — Emails/voicemails open

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Episode Tone

Warm, self-deprecating, and story-driven, full of digressions, spontaneous giggles, and anxious dog parent energy. Andrew and Luke’s neighborly rapport and wry awareness of their own habits keeps even the most mundane dog tale charismatic.

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Summary Table of Major Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | Main Topic/Quote | |-----------|-----------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00–02:24 | Cold open/house setup | Hammocks, rain, dog vibes | | 02:24–24:50 | Main story: Gigi on the roof | Roof escape, rescue, energetic shift, humor and anxiety | | 30:11–31:41 | Gigi tries to escape again | "She probably doesn’t understand...bonking onto window glass" | | 34:44–37:12 | Pet escape paranoia | Coyotes, tragic story about friend's dog | | 45:21–53:12 | Wordle “hard mode” | Game mechanics, "is it really harder?" | | 55:01–58:38 | Debate/Scrabble rules creep | Dartmouth speed debate audio | | 62:27–64:45 | McSweeney’s / Wild Card | Parody writing, Rachel Martin's new show | | 65:42–72:38 | Serial: The Last 12 Weeks | True crime, objectivity and bias in narrative | | 74:58–79:27 | Jon Ronson podcast recommendations | "The Butterfly Effect," "Last Days of August" | | 79:36–88:48 | Voicemails + Email, Drops & Coincidences | SNL intro, Stephen Tobolowski, Keith Outback joke |

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In Conclusion

This TBTL installment is a classic display of the show’s strengths: taking a “small drama” (a standard poodle’s impulsive leap from a roof) and spinning it into relatable, comic, and slightly existential conversation. Luke and Andrew’s willingness to interrogate their own anxieties—and celebrate their oddball routines—makes for comfort-listening with laughs, especially for pet lovers and TBTL regulars.

Notable Power Out:
"I have high hopes for this." (89:04 – Luke, of Levi’s outro music)—true for both dogs making it safely back inside and for any episode of TBTL.

Transcript

[Andrew]

Sir, I need to know where I can get some business. Hammocks.

[Luke Burbank]

Hammocks.

[Andrew]

My goodness, what an idea. Why didn't I think of that? Hammocks.

[Luke Burbank]

Homer, there's four places. There's the Hammock Hut, that's on Third. There's Hammocks R Us. That's on Third, too.

[David]

You got.

[Luke Burbank]

Put your butt there. That's on Third.

[David]

Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

Swing low, sweet chariot. Matter of fact, they're all in the same complex. It's the Hammock complex down on third.

[Andrew]

Oh, the hammock district. TBTs. Are you on the Internet?

[Luke Burbank]

Isn't that for techno geeks with spreadsheets?

[Andrew]

You know, what happened next was, you know, they'd open their mouth, they'd speak,

[Luke Burbank]

they'd get laughed at, they'd get called Polox. I'm not very good with chit chat. I like a structured communication, like a hard out. You know, chit chat. Chit chat,

[Andrew]

chit. Where are we going right now?

[Luke Burbank]

That was great.

[David]

That was good. You went for it. I appreciate that, Mike.

[Andrew]

If they do good, put it on YouTube. If they do bad, cancel it.

[Luke Burbank]

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

[Andrew]

Another day, another victory for the OG Taking down the sweats, the imposters among us.

[Luke Burbank]

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

[David]

You paint your bald spot?

[Andrew]

What bald spot?

[Luke Burbank]

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it's.

[Andrew]

What?

[Luke Burbank]

It's raining today on the. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. On June 27th in the year of our Lord 2026. Yeah, it was like. It's raining all weekend. I mean, what the heck? What in the. What the heli. What the actual. You know who is inside because it's raining outside are the dogs. Yes, they are still here. Gigi and dj. They're inside helping supervise the podcast today, actually. DJ is staring out the window of the sliding glass door, so unbelievably bored. While Gigi is just staring right at me. I don't know, waiting for me to do something interesting. Here on episode 4759 in a collector series, Let the Fun Begin. I can't promise that I can tell you that over the weekend, we had an event that was too interesting for my liking. Gigi the dog got onto the roof of the house.

[Andrew]

You gotta be kidding me.

[Luke Burbank]

And it was slightly terrifying. We'll get into it also, time permitting, we'll talk about a New feature that the Criterion Collection has put out. It is an entire short film made up of people waiting while the audio engineer is getting room tone. So who needs a movie? It's sort of an anti movie movie and I was watching a lot of it this morning on the Internet. So we may talk about that. We'll definitely say hello to this guy. Longest running cobra of the show. Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Something you might not know about the beginnings of our friendship.

[Andrew]

We met on a BFF app.

[Luke Burbank]

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

[Andrew]

Good morning, Luke. Thank you for the pre show therapy. I needed it. Listeners don't know that I came in real hot and we spent about like literally a half hour. Luke just administered talk therapy to me as I'm dealing with some stress therapy and some shock therapy. That was an accident though. I just reached over and tried to mute myself while I was coughing and I just went right through. Yeah. But I do appreciate that. I feel a lot better. I came in, I came into the studio today feeling real, real jangly. But I'm a little bit calmer now. Thank you.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, good. I'm glad that we were able to process a little bit of that. Or sometimes just talking about stuff is, you know, is halfway towards feeling a little bit less stressed about it. And also I think it was smart because a couple of the topics were things that you did not want to discuss on the show.

[Andrew]

Right.

[Luke Burbank]

But if we don't pre discuss them, if we don't get them out of your system or my system, they will somehow have a way exactly of bubbling up and coming onto the show almost as if they have a sort of a free will of their own.

[Andrew]

So, so true. You and I are very similar in that way. I think it speaks to the type of show this is. Right. And it's like, how many times will I be. It's like, you're like, okay, let's wrap this show up. We've been going for about an hour and 15 minutes. And then I'm like, by the way, something happened to me at the grocery store.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And it's like, okay, dial up the theme music again. Because now we're getting into the real thing that was on my mind the whole time. And I'm not trying to be withholding to the listeners here. Just a couple of things going on. Nothing health related. Had, you know, just some stuff going on this weekend that we were talking about. But do appreciate that I will say this. Everything that I did Encounter this weekend never involved a dog on a roof. Now, a lot of the stuff I dealt with this weekend involved dogs. I had a lot of fun with dogs this weekend. No roof dogs, but no roof dogs.

[Luke Burbank]

Please tell me the photo that I sent you.

[Andrew]

No, I've been waiting. Was a jetpack involved?

[Luke Burbank]

Only because Gigi does not. It's all right, Deej. Have FAA clearance to operate the jetpack anymore? This was good old fashioned. This was just a good old fashioned caper.

[Andrew]

I'm looking now. I don't like that at all. I don't like that at all. That is a big poodle standing right on the edge of a roof.

[Luke Burbank]

It gets worse.

[Andrew]

Were the Blue Angels flying overhead? No.

[Luke Burbank]

I could have used their help, though. Could have had some. Can you throw. Can someone throw down a line for this dog? So Becca's brother Scott came over on Saturday and brought their dog Lulu, because his wife was out of town. She was on this fun trip to Italy. So he was kind of bacheloring it up and had the dog and was helping out with a charity event in Vancouver, Washington, not too far from where I live. And so the plan was for him to come out and hang out. And he did, and we had a really fun time. But, like, I didn't realize this, but these dogs are very energetically, kind of sensitive. Not so much. DJ DJ Is just kind of unfazed. DJ Is just kind of happy. Go Lucky. And, you know, comes when you call her if you're like, hey, okay, we're going over here now. She just says, sure. If you say, we're. We're going to chill. We're going to chill out right now. We're going to watch, like four and a half hours of documentary movie about a guy named Dean Potter. Like I did last night accidentally. She's like, cool. That's what we're doing. Gigi is different. Gigi is very. Can be very skittish. Can be very easily. Kind of like if she. If she gets out and gets loose and you're trying to, like, walk towards her with a leash, she's gonna always back up a little bit and make sure that she's keeping some space between you and her so you can't grab her, she will never come to you. If you're like, hey, sheesh, come over here. Because she's not. She's not food motivated. She doesn't. She's just kind of. She's kind of on her own wavelength. She may be on some sort of a spectrum for dogs, it would appear. But anyway, So I think when Scott and Lulu came over, it energetically shifted everything in the house, which I know sounds kind of insane, but I think it's kind of true because for the whole week it was me and these two dogs, and we really had kind of a system going. Like, the chi was balanced, the flow. Everything was harmonic in the house. And then we have these two new people in there. And actually, Scott said to me later on, he was like, every time I see Gigi, it takes her a couple of hours to kind of just adjust to me being in the room or whatever.

[Andrew]

Just him, the human, not the human and his dog.

[Luke Burbank]

Maybe a little bit Lulu. But, I mean, Scott was saying literally, like, literally, Gigi's always just a little bit. Kind of like her energy is a little hesitant or whatever.

[Andrew]

So who is that who's talking to you right now? I see somebody who's nosy. That's DJ. Hi, DJ.

[Luke Burbank]

This is DJ's favorite. I don't know if you can kind of see the DJ. This is. This is DJ's deal. She likes to come over and put her head on my lap when I'm, like, doing this show. It's very sweet.

[Andrew]

Does she have a little bit of a gray muzzle? Is she. Oh, she does.

[Luke Burbank]

These dogs are not young, by the way. Actually, I don't know the exact ages. I know that Gigi is older than she might appear because she's very. She's still. I don't know. She just.

[Andrew]

For whatever her age is. I extended the screen. I'm watching you on now. I see them both. Gigi's just standing behind you, just starting. Okay. Yeah, that's typical.

[Luke Burbank]

She's real, kind of. She's a real middle distance into the middle distance.

[Andrew]

And then, you guys, this is kind of.

[Luke Burbank]

This has been the scene for the last week or whatever, but so here's what I wasn't expecting because we've been on a real. You know, we've really got our whole thing dialed in here. So I. I'm sorry this is so complicated, but this is involved how she got on the roof. So Scott's coming over. He's gonna stay the night. So I'm going upstairs, and I'm kind of making sure that I'm changing the sheets and I'm getting the room kind of set up, and there's the room down at the end of the hall where. Where Scott's going to. Going to spend the night. But then there's some really.

[Andrew]

I apologize. You really got to. You got a pet dj, there's no,

[Luke Burbank]

there is no end to this. We could do this.

[Andrew]

For the next 24 straight hours, I watched you take your hand off of her head, and she just got closer to you. Like, you got. I am advocating for DJ Right now.

[Luke Burbank]

What's really funny about these dogs is. And it just has something to do with their. Do you remember that meme that was like a dog with some crazy fur that was like looking out a window with its eyes sl. Light almost closed a little bit, and it was like, my husband, when will he return from sea?

[Andrew]

Of course. Yes, yes, yes.

[Luke Burbank]

It looked like a. Kind of like a. A Gloucester widow wishing for her husband, who was never going to come home to come back from. From his watery grave. These dogs unintentionally do that face all the time, and it's. It's never not funny to me. If you look at my phone right now, it is hundreds, if not thousands of pictures of their faces when they're doing that. When you're giving them, like, a head scratch and they're just doing a full. Like, their eyes are kind of closed. They look either really stoned or really like, when my husband. When will he return from sea bliss.

[Andrew]

Okay, fine.

[Luke Burbank]

I'm getting the upstairs set up. There's this other bedroom upstairs, which is where when Walt is over here helping out, that's where he typically sleeps. And that room has a couple of windows, and they don't have window screens on them. And because the upstairs of this house is the ceilings are pretty low. It was, you know, built in the 1930s. It also means that the windows are kind of low to the ground. There may be 2, 3ft off the ground instead of like a typical window when you walked into a house. So anyway, I opened those windows just to kind of air out the upstairs and kind of make it a little bit nice and more inviting or whatever. This isn't even the room that Scott is going to be sleeping in. It's just. I just want. I don't know, I just wanted to get maximum airflow and make things kind of nice up there. So they get over. We're hanging out now. Gigi goes upstairs all the time. When it's me and DJ and Gigi, sometimes she likes just go up there and, I don't know, hang out. Maybe she's just kind of overstimulated or something. What I did not expect was, as we're sitting there, Scott and I are sitting there in the living room. We're chatting. Two of the dogs are downstairs. We hear somebody walking right above our heads. And Scott goes, is there a dog on the roof? And I was like, no, no, that's the upstairs of the house. And he goes, I'm pretty sure that's the roof. He was right. You would think I would understand the basic architecture of this home, having lived here now for a while and having torn it completely apart with my father and rebuilt it, and yet it hadn't occurred to me. It's because it was such an insane concept that the dog could be on the roof that my brain couldn't even consider the possibility. So I am like, well, let me see. And I go outside, and that's when I snap that picture that I sent you, Andrew, because.

[Andrew]

Terrifying.

[Luke Burbank]

Because. Yes. In fact, Gigi had. Had gone upstairs. She had gone into the bedroom that the door happened to be open. She had gone out the window and onto the roof.

[Andrew]

So the window kind of. Yeah, so you have one part of the roof is very peaked. But then what do you call this style of kind of roof where the. The room sort of.

[Luke Burbank]

What's a dormer?

[Andrew]

Technological. Okay. Yeah. And you have windows there with no screens, I take it.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, because the screens were. These windows are actually gonna get replaced. And so the screens were really cruddy. Like, these are the windows that were in this house when I bought it. It's one of the few things that I haven't replaced yet. And so the screens were just kind of gross and unsightly. And also, generally speaking, these rooms aren't even in use most of the time. So for probably aesthetics, I took the screen off or something. It also just never occurred to me that the dog could. Like that, you know, that any animal would think to do this. Like, it was so. So then I'm kind of like, Scott is like a little bit. He's kind of nervous about this. He's like, okay, I want to, like, you know, he's. I can tell that he's a little bit. Like, this could go south. And I'm.

[Andrew]

Especially if he is somebody who the dog is skittish around, like, that's kind of smart, right?

[Luke Burbank]

I don't think I was giving that enough sort of credit, if you will. But I kind of thought it was funny because I thought, well. Well, it was because I just figured she'd just go back through the window eventually. Like, I figured she had some self preserv. In fact, this is a video that I made. It's very short, but this is me filming Gigi on the roof. And you can hear in my voice that I kind of think it's Kind of a little bit. What are you doing? Have you lost your damn mind? So I'm just kind of like, at that point, I just think this is. This is funny and silly that she has done this. Then the problem is I go upstairs to the bedroom to try to get her out, and. And I, you know, reach out the window, and she does exactly what she typically does. If you're on terra firma, like I was telling you, like, if you're trying to get her with a leash or something, and. And she. You. You start to walk towards her, she just kind of backs up. And she's so much faster than I am, even at her advanced age that, like, she could always keep a buffer. Like, I'm never going to be able to catch her. Like, you know, she's doing that on the roof now. This is more audio. This is me now. I'm leaning out of the window of the bedroom, trying to get her to come over to me. I don't want to get out on the roof, A, because it might not be safe for me, and B, because I don't want to spook her. So I now have both bedroom windows open wide. And I'm trying to just kind of entice her to come hang out with me.

[Andrew]

And,

[Luke Burbank]

well, Gigi has officially figured out a way to stay at arm's length. I'm mostly making these videos to send to Becca, obviously, because, again, I'm still in this mode where I think this is just kind of like a funny, weird story. Sounds like the name of an Oliver Sacks book. The dog who lived on the roof. The man who mistook his poodle for a sentient being. So Scott's like, what are we gonna do? And I'm like, well, what we're gonna do is we're just gonna leave both of the windows open so that she can get back in. We're gonna come downstairs and we're just gonna go about the rest of our afternoon. And at some point, she's going to get bored and she's gonna come back and she's gonna climb through the window and come back into the house.

[Andrew]

And you said. You specifically said before she's not food motivated. So it's not even like, oh, I'll leave a thing of treats here at the window.

[Luke Burbank]

There is nothing that I could think of. I mean, look, Andrew, if you switch back to the camera, look where she's standing.

[Andrew]

She's like, mm, just a little bit.

[Luke Burbank]

She will do this. Okay, well, she will do.

[Andrew]

I got it. No, I got it. I See you.

[Luke Burbank]

She will do this for literally four hours.

[Andrew]

She's standing, I'm gonna say about four feet behind you, just standing stark still and staring at you. Now, one thing that is, I don't want to get you off track too much, but, like, before this particular dog sitting situation with you, you have been with G, With Gigi. I don't know if I'm hitting those G's right. With Gigi before, without a second dog in the picture. And I've never hear, aside from that time that you and Becca were walking Gigi on the beach and she kind of got out and got into some woman's yard. Aside from that, I'd never heard any kind of misgivings you had about her other than being kind of sweet. Was she like this even when she was sort of solo with you? Like, always a little bit out of reach? Like, she is staring at you in a way that, like, Jordan Peele would write this character into a book. Right. She's standing right behind you and just staring at you, and has been for 5 or 10 minutes now.

[Luke Burbank]

Now she's in the Sunken Place.

[Andrew]

Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

The usual progression of things when it's just me and her is for the first day or something, she's kind of like a little bit just. Just trying to take it all in and like, you know, kind of maybe standing a little bit far away. But then if I was like, sitting on the. You know, if I was sitting on the couch watching tv, she might come over and like, rest her head on me or whatever. It's kind of hard to predict what she will do. But. But I thought also having DJ here was a good thing because DJ is so normal and well adjusted. I kind of thought, well, if Gigi gets loose, having DJ here as a kind of an emotional support dog for her could be good because Gigi might want to come back and hang out with the two of us. Like, she might want to be around the family unit, that being me and dj. So I thought there was a better chance of getting. If she got loose or something, a better chance of getting her back knowing that dj, who she loves, is here. And that has been generally the case, which is to say they both have seemed pretty kind of chill and well adjusted. And again, we've got all of our systems. We take our little walks. I've got them on these tethers. You know, we've got a whole schedule going here now, and it's all been kind of working. I just think something energetically shifted to where she was like, just a Little bit. Kind of, I don't know, freaked out for some reason and decided to go upstairs and to go into the bedroom and to go out the window and then to stand on the roof. Well, so Scott and I are sitting down in the living room again, and we're just kind of like chilling. And I'm like, the thing is, I go. I think that dogs have kind of a sense of self preservation that, like, they would understand that, like, if you're trying to get off this roof and there's a window that you can go back through, if there's something that you can go back through that you. That you have just used or jumping off the roof, your brain is going to tell you that the jumping off the roof is dangerous. Like, and I wonder about this a lot with Bubbles, the cat who I have limited visitation rights with, because Becca has a balcony. And we always want to leave the door open because it's nice and ventilated and all that. But we're worried about bubbles going out there and climbing because it's like on a very high floor of this high rise and worried about bubbles going out there and falling off the balcony. And it raises this question, or it's kind of like, do you think a cat that's never, you know, a cat that's never been 15 stories above the pavement, do they understand instinctively that that's. That that way lies death.

[Andrew]

That that or dangerous. I'm dangerous.

[Luke Burbank]

I don't know the answer. We're too afraid to risk it, basically.

[Andrew]

Right. Of course. Now, here's the deal. I don't know dogs that well or dog behavior. So, you know, just take everything I say with a grain of salt or the acknowledgment that I don't know what I'm talking about. And I understand that. But for me, I sort of understand where you're coming from with this. Like, I am more worried about cats. Like, I'm more worried about cats getting into situations that they can't get out of. Because now I do think cats have a sort of a good. Would it be a homing mechanism? Like, I do think that cats can, like, kind of map the area and they. If they leave the house and get a little bit lost or you feel like they're lost in the neighborhood, I feel like they know where home is. And I feel like probably. I don't know if we feel the same way about dogs, but I feel like a cat, though, can get up a tree and not get back down. Classic fireman stuff right there. Right? As my Grandma one time said, oh, yeah. She was trying to. My grandma one time in her life tried to lie to us, and she said, oh, yeah, got up in the tree and the. And the fire truck came and it was ringing its bell, and me and my sister, like, it's 1994. They don't have bells anymore. Anyway, so, like, cats, four Dalmatians, right? So driving the firefight. But my point, like, cats classically get into situations they can't get themselves out of. Like, I think they can find their way home, but they can also go. They keep climbing up things, whereas dogs don't naturally do that. And so I would be more worried about a cat, like, at the edge of a roof looking down and being like, I think I can do this. Whereas I would expect a dog to be like, well, I am. I do not have a jumping instinct like this. Like, a cat might. So I will find my way back in again.

[Luke Burbank]

I just was. I was just foolishly. It would turn out. I was just foolishly confident that self preservation would kick in and that she would eventually get bored and just come back through the window and come downstairs or whatever. And, boy, was I wrong, because I was sort of in the chair looking one direction. Scott's looking past me, and I just see this look on his face.

[Andrew]

Oh, no.

[Luke Burbank]

As Gigi has decided to jump from the roof, we think, to the deck, which is. Now, listen, that's like. I want to say that's like eight feet. It's not. Thankfully, it's not 30ft. It's not. You know, she. You know, she decided to jump.

[Andrew]

I.

[Luke Burbank]

Again, it's unclear if she jumped onto the deck or if she jumped over the deck onto the grass. It's also unclear which would have been a better thing for her to do, because on the one hand, it's further down to the grass, but it's softer.

[Andrew]

So, Scott, you're seeing his eyes get wide because he just saw a dog

[Luke Burbank]

shape, standard poodle go past the window.

[Andrew]

No.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes, absolutely.

[Andrew]

I did not. I've been on the edge of my seat, but I did not think that the dog actually. I did not think. This is how the story ended.

[Luke Burbank]

Dog jumped off the roof.

[Andrew]

Geez. Louise.

[Luke Burbank]

Gigi.

[Andrew]

Louise. Gigi, Louise.

[Luke Burbank]

The proper access exclamation there. She jumped off the roof again. I think she landed on the deck because I have this weird sense memory of, like, hearing a thump on the deck. But also that could just be something crazy. My brain did, because I actually wasn't watching it happen. What I know is I jumped out of my chair. I ran outside. She, by that time was up. She had gotten into the yard. That's why it's unclear to me if she jumped on the deck and then ran around or if she jumped into the yard. But, like, first thing that happened that was a great relief was I saw that she was running with her normal gait. Yes. She was not limping.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

She was not like, you know what I mean? She just looked like. She looked absolutely unfazed. She was just prancing along in the yard per her regular ass behavior. So that was, like, the first thing that happened. I was like, okay, okay, thank goodness. That, that's one thing. But now she's just loose. And I'm thinking she's probably kind of shaken up from just the whole thing. So she's now out in the yard, loose, having jumped off the roof. So I run. I do the only thing I know how to do, which is I run and I open the back of my car. Because Gigi, for all of her craziness, loves riding in the car, which is strange. She's a very skittish dog at times. You'd think that would be, like, I don't know, claustrophobic for her.

[David]

Whatever.

[Luke Burbank]

No, she loves it. I open the back door of my car, the back hatch, and sure enough, she jumps right in. And then I close the back hatch as quickly as possible. So we've got her contained. She's off the roof. She appears to be moving normally, and she is contained.

[Andrew]

And by the way, she is still standing, stark still behind you, staring directly at the back of your head and into the camera. Just standing, not sitting. I want to let everybody know, like one of the twins in the Shining. She maintains her distance just standing behind you. She.

[Luke Burbank]

She doesn't. Now, if I stood up and if I grabbed her leash, she'd start twirling. She'd be so excited when she saw that, like, oh, we're going outside. So she does, she does demonstrate excitement and emotion, if that makes any sense. In fact, her favorite thing to do is, like, spin in circles. So, like, in the morning when I get up, they're both sleeping in the living room, and I, I, I open the door of my bedroom, I walk out of the living room, and they're both, like, tails wagging. Gigi is doing circles. I get the leashes. They're very excited. So she does have just demonstrate some sort of whatever. But so, yeah, so anyway, that's sort of. I mean, there's not a huge power out other than we, you Know, kind of checked her over. Scott went out and actually hung out in the car with her for a while to just, like, kind of, like, meld their energies a little bit and kind of give her, you know, a check of, like, her joints and stuff to just make sure that she didn't seem, you know, like she'd kind of sprained or broken anything, which she didn't. Eventually, I went back out there, and she was just kind of sitting, but she was really pushed up against what? She was in the back seat of the car, and she was kind of pushed up against the far window. And I just got in there and hung out with her for a while and gave her some pets and then got her on the leash and then got her out and then got her inside, and she seems to be totally fine. We've been on now multiple walks since then. She's just back to her weird, shining self.

[Andrew]

But I have a couple of questions for you. 1. At any point, or maybe even in hindsight, would it have made sense for Scott maybe to just, like, kind of make himself scarce for a little bit? Like, if. If the energy got off in the house? Because instead of the three of you, you and the two dogs, but Scott and another dog, maybe that's what sort of. I mean, it was the opportunity of the open window. But also, you said the energy was off. Maybe if Scott and his dog had just gone for a walk or whatever, and it's just like you and DJ Puttering around the house for maybe a half hour, maybe Gigi would have come in. I think I said that wrong. You and DJ Hanging out of the house. Maybe Gigi would have come in.

[Luke Burbank]

You mean. You mean from the car?

[Andrew]

No, I mean from the roof. I'm wondering if she took the jump off the roof because she just was a little bit on edge.

[Luke Burbank]

That would have felt like. Yeah, I guess that would have been a potentially an option. I also. It's like Lulu was downstairs. That's the other dog. Scott was downstairs. I guess maybe if they left, and then I went up and told Gigi they were gone.

[Andrew]

Like, she doesn't hear their voices because, you know, they pick up on that. But on the other hand, it must have been very. It must have been very helpful to you to have another human being there in case something did go sideways. I understand why you wouldn't want to do that, but that was just something.

[Luke Burbank]

I would have felt kind of rude. I also don't think I believed the energy thing until I saw. Until I saw a dog flying off of the roof. Like, you know what I mean? Like, in other words, I just kind of. I certainly. That would have felt, like, a little much for me to say, hey, can you guys just be gone for a little while or something? But maybe that would have worked. I don't really know. It also, it didn't take her very long to go from being on the roof to jumping. I want to say it was like, under five minutes.

[Andrew]

Oh, I thought you guys came downstairs and were hanging out for. I pictured, like, 20 minutes, a half hour. She's wandering around the roof.

[Luke Burbank]

It was really. It was actually quite, quite fast, which was also kind of weird to me. I just figured, again, I've been around enough animals doing weird stuff that my experience is usually, if you, like, when bubbles got inside the floor of this house and was, like, not coming out, like, got in the basement, got into a weird little niche, like a little. A little, you know, hole in the. In the underside of the floor, so the basement ceiling.

[Andrew]

And then.

[Luke Burbank]

But was inaccessible from anywhere else. I don't know. Someone had probably cut this little hole for, like, plumbing purposes back in the day. And in that case, what I had to do was just wait. Well, first of all, I had to cut open a wall and then just wait for, like, seven hours until she got bored and walked out, you know? So my point was, I thought that this was gonna resolve itself. I did not think it was gonna be resolved from her jumping off the roof.

[Andrew]

And I didn't realize in the telling that that happened in such quick succession. Now, my. So that sort of changes the color of this next question I wanna ask, which I think is the most interesting one so far, is you were playing audio for us of videos that you took and you said you were sending them to Becca just for people who. I don't know if you mentioned this at the beginning of this particular story. This is not Becca'. Becca's parents.

[David]

Mom's.

[Andrew]

Right. Yeah. And you're watching and is dj, And

[Luke Burbank]

DJ is Jeff and Darcy. So everybody in this family basically, pretty much has a standard poodle. It is the official dog of. They've had many, too, in the family. And so they had one named Zach who was named for Balzac, the French writer. They've had Gigi, they've had Zach, they've had Jack, they've had dj.

[Andrew]

Oh, I see there's a rhyming thing going on. So, okay, so you're recording these videos. Are you sending them. Them to Becca in real time, or are you send. Are you saving them and thinking I will send these if this ends in a humorous no, because at no time

[Luke Burbank]

until she jumped off the roof did I understand the severity of the situation. I just didn't think.

[Andrew]

Did Becca understand the severity? What is her reaction when you're sending these things?

[Luke Burbank]

She's kind of just like, you got to be kidding. Actually, I. I believe maybe I called her after Gigi had jumped off the roof and was. Okay. I think I might have started by saying, like, something like, I'm gonna start by telling you the dog is fine, but this is what just happened. So maybe that was how the information was, But I was sending her the videos as I was.

[Andrew]

So she. When she gets this phone call, she already knows that you have a dog on the roof.

[Luke Burbank]

I think she hadn't looked at the video yet.

[Andrew]

I think she had been doing something.

[Luke Burbank]

So I think it was kind of like a. Kind of an information dump.

[Andrew]

I see. So it wasn't. Because I would be. So she probably didn't fully understand what was going on until the situation was already. Because I was sort of curious. Like, she's kind of like, okay, this isn't funny. Or if she had your same attitude, because it sounds like she's pretty chill. Like, you were describing the. The walk you guys went on, and you said it was, you know, like, she. It was. You said it was Becca's idea to have Gigi go off leash that one time. Because I was kind of, like, wondering if you had, like, if that was, like, if that was a real Burbankian idea that went south.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, that was something that I was. When we let her off at the beach, and then she got into someone's yard, and then we couldn't catch her for a while, I think we mutually thought that. Well, let's just test it out.

[Andrew]

Yeah, you had. Because I asked you at the time. I was like. Were you sort of like. Was Becca sort of, you know, tense about it? Because I just pictured you needling her into doing it. You said, no, it was her idea. I think it was probably her idea.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. Yeah. She's also capable of having bad ideas, Andrew. It doesn't have to all be the result of my needlings.

[Andrew]

I don't know her that well, but I do know you.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes, I know. And, yes, most bad ideas that I'm involved in start with me. But. Yeah. So all of that is to say we've now learned. Oh, the last thing, too. That's kind of nuts. Is so we get her back in the house. And now, of course, I've gone Upstairs, I've closed all of the windows, and we're just in the house. And then what does she do? We take the leash off her. She immediately goes back upstairs. And I'm like. I'm having, like, an OCD kind of intrusive thought. I'm, like, saying to Scott, I'm like, I know that I just closed all the windows, like, five minutes ago, but I can't allow myself to fully believe it unless I go look at them again. Like, I have to, like, look at them. I go upstairs, I look at them. They're closed. I come back downstairs. We're sitting there. Five minutes later, maybe not even five minutes later, we hear a clank, and we're like, what the hell is going on? And we go upstairs, and Gigi is now just standing on the bed. She is standing on the. On the bed in that.

[Andrew]

Like, she is now. She still hasn't moved, I want the listeners to know.

[Luke Burbank]

But she's, like, in that exact kind of posture, but she's just standing on the bed. And I think.

[Andrew]

And we.

[Luke Burbank]

What we deduced was the noise we heard was her trying to go back out the window, except it was closed. It was her head bonking onto the window glass, because she probably doesn't understand the difference between open and closed. And she was trying to go right back out there.

[Andrew]

That is interesting. That actually makes me feel a little bit better because it implies to me

[Luke Burbank]

that she kind of enjoyed these things,

[Andrew]

that she enjoyed it, that it was a game she was playing, that she wasn't traumatized.

[Luke Burbank]

That's how I chose to interpret the behavior as well. Is that. In fact, I said something like that to Scott. I was like, well, clearly this wasn't that traumatizing, because she is. It's like she's going on a water slide or something. Like, whee, Let me go do that.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

As opposed to, like, you know, that was, you know, near death for me, which. Which it. It kind of was. Like, I mean, Scott pointed out that, you know, there's a railing around the deck. So if she jumped down and it's a metal railing. I mean, it's. You know, it's protective for people to not fall off the deck. And if she would have. If she would have gotten caught on that somehow instead of just landing flush on the deck, there's, like, a lot of ways. A lot of ways it could have been. It could have been even more. Even more upsetting. So lesson learned.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

No more open windows. Now, what is funny is the screen doors, because, like, here in The Madrona Hill studio. On the warmer days, I've had the. There's a, you know, have the door open and. But then there's a screen door and I've got some screen doors in the house and stuff that appears to be a barrier that they do not that certainly Gigi in no way is trying to violate. Like she could just push right through a screen door if she wanted to.

[Andrew]

Of course. Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

She somehow doesn't. Like, she senses that that is a barrier. She senses that that's like. In other words, if there would have been screens on the windows, I don't think she would have even tried to push to them. She's very non destructive.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah. But I know that feeling, though, of, you know, everything is fine, but you have to check it again. I'm that way more with Bingo. You'd think I'd be that way more with Lucy because not only is she newer to me, but the idea of having a dog in the house is newer to me. But cats, like I say, they get squirrely. Ironically, cats get squirrely and squirrels get catty, famously. But Bingo loves to find a little hole to hide himself in for a while. He's a very social cat, but also he's a cat. So every now and then he likes to go chill out. Maybe it'll be in the dark recess of my closet in the basement. But he's got his spaces, right? There's a handful of them and we know where they all are. And every now and then you sort of like, you'll be. Especially if I'm home alone. It'll just suddenly hit me. Especially if I'm home alone and maybe smoking a little weed and playing some darts. And you get that little paranoia. You're like, I haven't seen Bingo in a while. Where is he? Then you check all of the spaces and you're like, he's not in any of the spaces. And then you have this moment and he's never gotten out so far. Knock on all the wood around you, listeners. Find wood. Knock on it. He so far, has never gotten out. But I also take that as kind of a reality of cat ownership, that cats get out sometime and he just would, you know, old Mr. Theo, he was a big ass cat with an attitude. And if he got out, I always kind of would. Yeah, he could probably handle himself, at least in the neighborhoods we used to live in. But of course, now we have coyotes around here. In fact, I'm gonna say what I said before the show. I don't know if it's too traumatic for folks to hear, but I won't

[Luke Burbank]

go Trigger if a dog jumping off a roof was sketchy for you to hear. What you're about to hear is.

[Andrew]

And I won't go into too much detail, but I will just say that one of the things that I was pretty upset about this morning is I found out that a dog that I love, that belongs to a friend of mine who I volunteer with, is no longer with us because of. Because of a coyote incident this weekend. And it was. That's as detailed as I'll go into it, but it's clearly very, very upsetting. And as somebody who is just, you know, so deeply in love with my pets and care for my pets so much and. Luke, on certain nights, you go outside my house. We live near the cemetery where the coyotes live and have been breeding forever. Luke, one time I thought neighbors were having a party. I thought they were all doing something crazy. I thought they were all high on whippets or something. Until I realized, no, no, no, that's all the coyotes in the cemetery having a party. Like, there are so many coyotes where I live. And the thought of Bingo getting outside for even a small period of time is. I don't even know what the. I don't have a good word for how that makes my blood go icy.

[Luke Burbank]

Is that where the protective. The protective layer of broken down RVs actually comes in handy? Yeah.

[Andrew]

Right.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, actually, those are the castle walls that will keep the coyotes back at Evergreen, Wash. Shelley. In your actual yard.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Or hopefully the. Maybe. Maybe the hedges too. By the way, crazy weekend. Never pulled out the pole, saw no hedges.

[Luke Burbank]

Still going Crazy thing you were excited about.

[Andrew]

I'm wondering if I'm even going to get to that before the fawn. But anyway, but so anyway, it just. I can easily convince myself that getting outside the house is like a death sentence. And so if I have a moment where I can't have eyes on Bingo, then I'll put eyes on Bingo. But then it's like, I don't know, every now and then, like, I. What was the word? Is it house burping? I like to sort of house burp sometimes where you put all the windows open, but everything has screens and stuff. But sometimes I will be like, well, Bingo's not here. I'm just gonna open this door for a little bit, let some air in. And then you're like, wait a second though. Did he get behind me? Did I? And you know, the paranoia can just rack up and like, I just have to like, go around and put eyes on him to make sure he's still in the house. And again, he has not been. He's bo bolted a couple of times. He really likes being outside. You have to keep an eye on him. Otherwise he will try to jump out the door when you're coming and going, which we do all the time now that we have a dog. But luckily we haven't had any real scares. But, man, even when they're just kind of like in your own head, those feelings, like, you have to go, let me go look at that window again. Let me touch that window. Let me touch that thing.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes. I always wonder, like, if Bubbles ever ends up living out here full time again, how that will work and also if Bubbles gets out. Because she's an extremely athletic cat. Like, she's, you know, she's a Bengal. She's like, can jump really high, I assume run fast by cat standards and is very twitchy. Is very, like, head on a swivel. And I just feel like. But she's also. She seems incredibly dumb. And I just wonder if, like, one of two things will happen. She would either immediately be snatched up by a coyote or a. A much bigger feral cat, or, you know, she would either not be. Not be around much longer, or two or three years later, I would just be down walking around in the woods, and I would just see, like, her being carried aloft by all the other cats. Like, she would be like Marlon Brando in. She would basically be Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now. She would just be. She would have become. She would have become the leader of. And the feared, you know, boss of all of the wood, the woodland creatures around here.

[David]

Right.

[Luke Burbank]

She'd just be, like, bald in a cave, pouring water over her back, saying, it's only one of two things. So that's the only two options. She's either gone in a moment, or she's now officially running this part of Southern Washington.

[Andrew]

Because you said there are feral cats around you, too, that you.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, my God.

[Andrew]

One of them. When I had house when you came home one time.

[Luke Burbank]

They're in the yard right now. I saw an orange one this morning when I was putting the girls out on the tether. I think they. They missed it. But, like, I didn't know. I didn't really. Wasn't doing a calculation. So I started walking these two dogs in the neighborhood, and they're like, there's probably like 15 feral cats. It's because Gay feeds them, which I don't know. I don't have a big Problem with. They're not harming me. But I didn't notice them until I had two dogs that were very interested in them and that they're very kind of, like, afraid of something. I was like, oh, my God, the

[Andrew]

cats are afraid of the dogs, and

[Luke Burbank]

cats are afraid of the dogs. And so they just like. Like they'll be, like, laying somewhere. I didn't even realize they were. And all of a sudden they're just like, you know, basically, you're activating them from. As I'm walking up the road with these two dogs.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Everywhere I look, there's, like, a cat that I didn't see was there. That's, like, skittering off.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

And then the dog is like, oh, there's. You know.

[Andrew]

And do the dogs sort of have that instinct to, like, kind of then kind of jump and pull up the leash? Training.

[Luke Burbank]

They're doing some straining.

[Andrew]

They do that, huh? Lucy is a little. It really depends. With Lucy, I can't kind of tell when she sees another dog. Usually if she doesn't know that dog, she's usually just sort of curious. She just sort of stops and, like, will stare at the dog, but not, like, strain the leash or whatever. If she knows that dog and has met that dog and played with that dog before, she just goes berserk. And that's something that I'm having a lot of trouble, like, kind of, like calming her down, because then when she gets like that, then she's. And it's all friendly. She's just, like. Wants to say hello to her friend, but she loses all control. And that's how she jumps. She starts jumping up on people, people. That's how she ended up scraping my neighbor's arm and causing a boo boo. I'm calling it a boo boo for legal reasons now.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, exactly. They can't sue you if it's a boo boo.

[Andrew]

Right? Exactly. So, anyway, we took Lucy to our friends, had a little barbecue, a little birthday barbecue over at the Rodents this weekend. We mentioned my buddy Roden on the show quite a bit. Oh, by the way, for his birthday, I got him a bag full of materials to clean and maintain. A chainsaw, by the way, because that's. Told you on the show last week that I was bummed that I had returned his chainsaw. And I did not. I did not realize that I had returned it in kind of a poor condition that I didn't realize. And. And that had. That had led him to have a new rule of not loaning out tools. So anyway, I got him like some simple greed and some machine lubricant and stuff. But anyway, we had a really good time, but we let Lucy off the leash. She just went absolutely crazy running around like she had. We had no control over at all. And like a lot everybody else was more chill. They're like, she's a puppy. She's doing puppy things, sort of. People were very kind. But also our friend was there with her dog who was like a really good dog, Poppy. And she can behave, but Poppy really has no interest in playing with Lucy. But Lucy, now, had she drugged Poppy?

[Luke Burbank]

Because when we were watching the football game at the Eagles, one of the Seahawks game, Poppy was being very chill in a stroller. But because Poppy had been dosed with.

[Andrew]

Yeah, no, but Poppy's good. Like, Poppy was just. No, I don't think she was. I don't think so. She was just like chilling. But like, Lucy has so much puppy energy and now she's like at least three times the size of Poppy, I think. And so she's like, she just like, Lucy was just kind of being a terror. And again, everybody else was very chill about it. Some of the younger people there, they're like. Some of my friends, daughters were kind of a little bit put off by like just the energy. They couldn't kind of be around her a little bit, which has really sucked for me because I don't want to be the guy who's like bringing a shitty dog to a situation.

[Luke Burbank]

What about all your click training? Are you guys away? How does that work? Click and then they don't. I mean, listen.

[Andrew]

But she gets into the zonkers mode and like there's just like. She's like. And I think, believe it or not, I think she didn't have enough sleep. Like sometimes something happens where the dog does not get enough sleep and then she's just like, like it turns into a kind of energy, an uncontrollable energy. And you know, if I had her on the leash, she was just like trying to tear away from it in a way that again, none of it is aggression. She's never like snapped or done anything out of aggression. It's all playful. But she's a big ass dog now. She's 35 pounds and growing.

[Luke Burbank]

Louise.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I know.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, don't let her near the roof. What I looked, what I learned this weekend was they do not all dogs have some kind of self preservation instinct that tells them to use the window instead of the roof. You know, I realized she defenestrated herself in the most classic Sense.

[Andrew]

Oh, yeah. Out the window.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, yeah, as she went out the window. It's rare that you can use defenestration, although do you have to be thrown for it to be defenestrated?

[Andrew]

I feel like it. Yeah. I don't think. You can't self defenestrate. You'll go blind. She's.

[Luke Burbank]

Stop defenestrating yourself.

[Andrew]

She's still behind you, by the way, just staring. If you just give her like a. And like kind of put your hand down.

[Luke Burbank]

Hey, Gigi, come here.

[David]

Come here.

[Luke Burbank]

See?

[Andrew]

Nothing.

[Luke Burbank]

Come here, buddy.

[Andrew]

Hey, come here. Look, look. Oh, look, she's coming. Oh, there. She. She just wanted to be invited. She was a vampire. She just wanted to be invited. Now the dogs are kind of nuzzling a. That's all she needed.

[Luke Burbank]

I'm telling. I'm telling you that this is why I was supposed to give them back yesterday, but I didn't because I was like, well, I'm going to hang on until Wednesday because despite all of the. All of the escapades and other things and, you know, the morning and afternoon walks and the. Whatever else goes into this, you know, taking care of these guys, I really like having them around.

[Andrew]

Well, I love that she. I mean, so yeah, she was standing kind of aloof or alerted, like on a high alert behind you, but all she needed was to be asked to come over. And now she's getting pets and both dogs are there now. Oh, I was going to ask you. So does Becca's parents, Does Gigi's owners parents or whatever you call them, do they know this whole story? Do they want to know this whole story?

[Luke Burbank]

I think this might be how Jeff and Darcy are finding out.

[Andrew]

Do you think they listen to this show?

[Luke Burbank]

I know that Jeff is a pretty regular listener. So this is.

[Andrew]

Sorry, guys.

[Luke Burbank]

This is probably how they're learning about this. Unless somebody else told them. Because I did not tell them at the time. Not because I was worried about it, because again. And after it was all over, Gigi was fine.

[Andrew]

But will you lose your Gigi privileges?

[Luke Burbank]

Well, I don't think so. Again, I don't know where this ranks in terms of like bad babysitting skills.

[Andrew]

Yeah, right.

[Luke Burbank]

You know how high it. How high it is on the list. I mean, she also could have gotten, you know, away and literally never come back. That would have been probably worse.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah, I can't.

[Luke Burbank]

I can't find the dog anymore. That would be a worse outcome.

[Andrew]

Now I do notice also the DJ is vaping behind you. Is that going to be a problem

[Luke Burbank]

for DJs in dog years. She's old enough and I can't stop her.

[David]

That's the problem.

[Andrew]

And she is a DJ and it's kind of like a nightclub lifestyle.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes. Right.

[Andrew]

Hello and welcome to Top Story.

[Luke Burbank]

All right, let's see here. Oh, let's talk wordle for a moment. Which really is more your.

[Andrew]

I have a question, bailiwick.

[Luke Burbank]

Did I use that term properly or that word? Bailiwick, that just kind of means like area of expertise or whatever. Did you happen to see this New York Times thing that I sent you last week about this? Apparently this is an article from Tony Monkovich, Eve Washington and Tom Jarrett Canaan. It took three New York Times reporters, Andrew, to write this article.

[Andrew]

Article about the New York Times.

[Luke Burbank]

Wordle's hard mode is actually easier 700.

[Andrew]

Oh, you know why it's got a three person byline? Because these are. These are the data people, right? This is like a data project.

[Luke Burbank]

The upshot.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

And again, there's some stuff about this that I don't really understand as a non wordle player. I mean, I've played it a few times, but reading from the piece. Wordle is a simple game in many respects. The vast majority of users play using the default settings where you can guess any letter on any turn. But a smaller slice of players you may be one choose to play in hard mode, which adds a major constraint. Any revealed hints must be used in subsequent guesses. If letters turn yellow and green, you're forced to use them in your next guess. So you might think that hard mode is harder. It says so in the name. But as Wordle turns five, an analysis of 730 million games from the last. How many of Those were you? 730 million of those. 730 million games from last year says the opposite. Players in hard mode solve in fewer turns on average. So they're saying that even if they're saying that playing the hard mode actually the people doing that tend to solve faster than the people using standard mode. Then they go into like a bunch of different theories and explanations. I still thought my sense was. And they kind of addressed this, I think in an unsatisfactory way for me. I just think that the people playing in hard mode are just more elite wordle players.

[Andrew]

No, it's not that. In fact, we talked about. You got to adjust your camera a little bit. I'm seeing like half your face. Thank you. From all of our dogs.

[Luke Burbank]

I had the DJ cam.

[Andrew]

Oh, I see you're keeping that trained on Her. No, that was very sweet. But also, it was like I was seeing, like, just the comedy half of the. Wait is the comedy tragedy or the comedy is the comedy tragedy mask. One mask where it's distorted. All right, forget everything I said. I'll cut it out. I'll beep it.

[Luke Burbank]

You're thinking more Two Face from Batman.

[Andrew]

Yes, I was thinking more about Two Face from Batman. Exactly. So I believe I explained the heart fan.

[Luke Burbank]

Sorry I started talking about that character.

[Andrew]

Or don't you think it's interesting that so Two. Oh, okay. This is gonna make. I already know that we're gonna make Sklarov mad, because I'm gonna say something really stupid in here about the Marvel Universe. Well, this is dc. Okay, that's one point for me. But Aaron Eckhart plays Two Face, Right. In one of the rebooted Batman movies. But Two Face is actually. Who was he before he was Two Face?

[Luke Burbank]

Harvey Dent.

[Andrew]

Harvey Dent. Exactly. And Harvey Dent was played originally.

[Luke Burbank]

Billy. Billy D. Williams.

[Andrew]

Billy Dee Williams. Yeah. Wouldn't have been cool.

[Luke Burbank]

That's one of your favorite quotes from the original movie.

[Andrew]

Exactly. Wouldn't have been cool to see. Billy, thank you for filling in all the gaps of this sentence that I started that I really. I was like Gigi, out on the roof there.

[Luke Burbank]

Let me open a window and let you climb back into this conversation.

[Andrew]

Right, Exactly. So, first of all, I guess it would have been cool to see Billy Dee Williams actually play Two Face. But, I mean, I understand a lot of time had passed there. But I'm also looking to see if I can find. Here it is, because something happens.

[Luke Burbank]

Because basically, I mean, you're in a few woods, but those words will count and so will my actions.

[Andrew]

I like to see that. I also compressed the shit out of it, too. That's great. Good job, Andy.

[Luke Burbank]

There's something about certain people in certain movies. The lines that really tickle you. It tickles me because it's like the Dupin. It's kind of like LL Cool J and toys or whatever. Like, I love the things that, for whatever reason, you get kind of mildly obsessed with.

[Andrew]

Didn't you and I, like, when we worked at Cairo, we really were not on the same page with the baseball table from news radio that I used all the time, but I now use it in the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd, race.

[David]

Ball's back.

[Luke Burbank]

Phil Hart's back. I'm too lazy to go find more baseball tape.

[Andrew]

Wow, D. Oh, my God. I thought you were playing a drop. That's dj.

[Luke Burbank]

Hey, dj. Dj, come here, buddy.

[David]

It's all right.

[Luke Burbank]

She sees my neighbor walking around and she's. She's activated.

[Andrew]

Okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna push on through if you don't mind. And because I have some stuff on wordle I want to say. This makes sense. I think that you and I talked about this because I think I explained hard mode to you on the show, I don't know, sometime earlier this year. And it does give you those restraints. And I know that this can get a little bit tedious, but if people will follow along with me. If you're unfamiliar with the game, you know, you start, you have six chances just to guess what five letter word is there. And it's totally blank. You have no clue. So that your first clue is just, I don't know, start with any five letter word and then you can sort of see, okay, some of these letters are in the word and they're in the right place. Some of these letters are in the word, but you didn't place them in the right place. And some of them aren't in the word at all. And then you have to start puzzling it out from there. Through the process of elimination, you enter another word, et cetera, et cetera. And on hard mode, it kind of prevents you from recreating some of the same mistakes, but not all of them. It's not even as strict, I think, as it should be, because.

[Luke Burbank]

Do you play in hard mode?

[Andrew]

I do, yes, because Becca doesn't.

[Luke Burbank]

And she's another wordle, you know, devotee, and she's for some reason doesn't play hard mode.

[Andrew]

And I think it might be because of this, because in a certain way, hard mode, I think, is actually a bit of a crutch. It's a little bit like. And again, I play in hard mode, but I think it's a misnomer to call it hard mode. It's almost like bowling with the. With the gutters filled in with the bumpers or whatever. Because what it does is it says, let's say that you put in a word and you got an an E and it's in the right place and it's green. You're like, okay, well, I know there's an E that's green right there. And then you get an S and it's yellow and you're like, okay, I know there's an S somewhere in this word, but I didn't put it in the right place. And then the next word you put in is apple, and there's no S in Apple, for those who don't know, the machine will be like, no. Yes, I consider it a machine. The machine will be like, no, you didn't use an S. Apple doesn't have an S in it. Like, you know, you can't do that. This is hard mode, buddy. But in a certain way, is that harder or is that the machine reminding you of a little misstep that you just took? You know, for me, if I do something like that, it's probably because I'm starting to get a little frantic and I didn't even notice that I made a mistake. Other people who are advocates of the easy mode are like, no, it's kind of nice because I can just. I'm going crazy. I can't think of a word with an S in it. Let me just eliminate some more letters and then I'll get it the next. Next time or something. Like, sometimes you actually want to put in a word that you know won't be the answer just to eliminate things. And that's what hard mode supposedly takes away from you, but it still allows certain things. You can still put the wrong letter in the same place twice. Like if you have a yellow E in the third position, you can put the yellow E in the third position again and it doesn't block you from doing that. So it seems a little bit, it seems a little bit inconsistent with that ruling. But again, it doesn't allow you to make a mistake. I've always felt like the word hard is a bit of a misnomer in there.

[Luke Burbank]

Right. They also said players who choose hard mode have an escape hatch. You're allowed to start in hard mode and switch to standard mode during a game.

[Andrew]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Luke Burbank]

If you sense a trap.

[Andrew]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Luke Burbank]

They found that roughly 0.2% of those in hard mode toggle it off mid game during a recent 30 day period.

[Andrew]

Okay, I have another question for you. And this isn't from the article, it's just wordle related and it's something I've been meaning to ask you for a while, but sometimes people play these games a little bit on a delay. You can go back and play the archive. So this is more than a. I think it's about a week or more now, but for the second time in my wordle life, I couldn't complete a wordle at least successfully because I didn't actually know the word. And I want to know if you know this word. Okay, so this is from a couple of weeks or a week ago. Or something like that. And I didn't get it. I totally busted out. But it wasn't because, oh, I had too many options and I chose the wrong ones. I just didn't know that ovate is a word.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, no, I would never.

[Andrew]

What does it mean?

[Luke Burbank]

Is that the verb of basically to be giving an ovation?

[Andrew]

That's what Genevieve thought it meant because she's like, you know, this word. It's just a weird. When I was like trying to struggle, when I was trying to figure it out, I said, do I hate it

[Luke Burbank]

when they make me ovate? To get them to come back out and play their last song. Just play your best song at the end of the set. Don't make me ovate.

[Andrew]

Yeah, that's what genuinely is like, you know, this word, it's just a different form of it. But no, that's not. It means egg shaped. I think. I think the sister word. I'll bet you it's like ovulation, right? It's like, oh, ovate is probably egg, you know, and so. But no, I've never heard the word ovate before. And so I don't know. In a certain way now this has happened to me twice where I can't remember what the other one was, but I was like, I literally. I couldn't have gotten this except for just mashing together a bunch of letters. And now that it's happened twice, it's changed the way I play wordle because now sometimes I get frustrated and I just start putting in things that maybe could be words that I don't know.

[Luke Burbank]

I wonder about that if, you know, I know that they officially are allowed to recycle words now because they were running out, but I wonder if it'll eventually become. Talking about this the other day with somebody about how, like, if you like high level Scrabble, you know, like the highest levels of competitive Scrabble are actually kind of very unfun to watch people play because you're not playing xylophone on triple word score. You're playing a bunch of weird three letter words that you just. You've basically memorized the dictionary.

[Andrew]

Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

And the same thing with. And again, peace and love to people that are into this. But like, basically what is considered speech and debate now at the highest levels, like in college and stuff. Stuff like it's called forensics and it's like, it's not people having a debate. That's interesting. Hey, Gig. It's all right, buddy. They're not having a debate. That's like a great Oration where people are like thinking of like a really airtight way to describe something. Or like, it's not like, you know, Lincoln, the Lincoln Douglas debates or whatever. It's like the sport, if you will, the competition has evolved into this thing where you just say a bunch of things.

[Andrew]

Really, really.

[Luke Burbank]

Like the micro machine guy.

[Andrew]

I haven't experienced this. Have you ever heard this? No. I know what you're talking about with Scrabble and spelling bees have sort of always been like that too. It's kind of like, well, do you know the tricks of it? Or whatever. Maybe that doesn't apply to spelling bees. But I've never heard this in a debate, which is such a different thing because it's so objective.

[Luke Burbank]

Right. Well, here I'm going to just play.

[Andrew]

I'm sorry, I meant something.

[Luke Burbank]

I'm going to play you something. I'm just playing this unpreviewed off of Facebook. So we'll see how this goes. But this is listed as Dartmouth Forensic Union debates at top speed. So let's just see if this is actually. Hold on, guys. Let's get the volume going here. Okay, here we go. No, why would this be muted? Why would this not play for me?

[Andrew]

Is it a meta thing? Is it a Facebook or a.

[Luke Burbank]

It's Facebook, but it's showing me. Let me see.

[Andrew]

What happens is when you hit. This happens to me all the time. When you hit play on it, it automatically mutes it again. You have to play and then try to unmute it as fast as possible.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, I see. Okay, here we go.

[Andrew]

Isn't that crazy?

[Luke Burbank]

Mutual defense treaty to defense of the

[Andrew]

home islands connection was in trap and

[Luke Burbank]

Biden will expand US RPMDT and the SES rebels 1190s administration on the SCS

[Andrew]

expression efforts to include the extent that the Pacific and MDT under bomb Washington

[Luke Burbank]

position with that cannot guarantee the treaty cover that area. The Dartmouth Forensic Union. I don't know why they decided to add that in, but that's. You just heard a little clip. That's literally what college debate sounds like.

[Andrew]

And that's a winning one. Like that's stupid.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, because it's somehow. And we probably got listeners that know a lot more about this than I do and maybe even participate. But you're trying to pile up as many arguments on your side of the debate as possible. So the faster that you can say the arguments no, the more arguments you can get in in your limited amount of time, the more points you can score. So it's really a micro machines contest now. More so than Trying to, like, you know, again, win the debate in what we would think of the more classic sense, which is like, you make a more compelling argument than the other person does.

[Andrew]

Yeah, right. A Frost Nixon situation. That's. That's really. I think that's.

[Luke Burbank]

It's a bummer.

[Andrew]

I think that's a real bummer. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Take anything away from the people like that.

[Andrew]

Anybody of anything that's evolved.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, it's evolved into something that actually does not serve the purpose of the original idea of having a. A speech and debate thing. It's like learning how to put arguments together. It's like learning how to appeal to the judges or the audience. It's learning how to structure, you know, what you're saying.

[David]

And.

[Luke Burbank]

And again, because of something. And I forget there was a whole documentary about this. It's actually really fascinating. There was some change in, like, the scoring rules 20, 30 years ago, and it just. Nobody realized what it was going. What. What it was going to eventually create.

[Andrew]

They're like, we need to speed up the game.

[Luke Burbank]

Did you see the Onion?

[Andrew]

We did a picture.

[Luke Burbank]

Did you see the Onion? Today on Instagram, it says, said fans now agree baseball is too fast.

[Andrew]

I did see that. Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

That would be. That would just really be the cherry on top. Once they get all of the. Once they get all the, you know, pitch clock worked out and they get all the stuff, they're getting the games, like, down to like, under three hours consistently. And now people are like, actually, we'd like this to go longer.

[Andrew]

Speaking of kind of parody accounts or parody publications, you know what came sweetly back into my life over the weekend? McSweeney's. Somebody reposted something on Bluesky. And I was like, oh, it didn't occur to me that McSweeney's is on BlueSky. And now I'm getting nice little. Oh, this one was. This is pretty good, Clarence. This posted today, appropriately enough. Although, sorry to even bring up anything that gives people bad feelings, but Clarence Thomas offers an originalist reading of the TGI Friday's menu. And the pull quote here is. The meaning here is abundantly clear. Thousand island is not, I repeat, not offered as a salad dressing. Wait, hang on. It's been brought to my attention that a wealthy Thousand island dressing tycoon is currently cutting a novelty oversized check for me. That's one of the pull quotes from Clarence Thomas doing the originalness reading of the TGA Friday's menu. Anyway, McSweeney's, I missed you. Thank you for coming back into my arms.

[Luke Burbank]

I never like McSweeney's. I think the thing about McSweeney's for me was it was like one click too smart for me.

[Andrew]

I like that though. Right?

[Luke Burbank]

Well, I think I like it more now than I used to. Like, in other words, I think I'm more comfortable watching or reading or engaging with things where I don't. It's not quite spoon fed to me. Like, the Onion is like, perfectly in my wheelhouse. It's like, I understand the comedy. You know, it's very apparent what the comedy is. It's droll, but it's not, like, so droll. I remember, like, originally when I first saw McSweeney's because it was like Timothy McSweeney's Internet tendency or something like that. And just kind of like, a lot of it was funny, but some of it was more just kind of like meditative or slightly surreal or like, you know what I mean? So it wasn't worse. If I sit down with an issue of the Onion, I'm pretty much laughing at almost every headline because again, that's just like. It's just. It's uncomplicated for me, the way the humor is being doled out. But then with with McSweeney's, I kind of didn't get some of it.

[Andrew]

And McSweeney's even. I know this sounds very superficial, but even the way it's presented, like, it's presented with like a font and everything, that almost seems more like it's more of a take on Harpers or something like that, as opposed to kind of the more blunt, straightforward approach of the Onion, which is just sort of like newspaper headlines. But I really like that. And here I found one that seems right up your alley, Luke. And it was just from a couple of days ago. This is a McSweeney's article called Wirecutter Headlines during the Revolutionary War. You're a big wire cutter guy. I believe I am.

[Luke Burbank]

I have a New York Times consumer review sort of element of the New York Times.

[Andrew]

For people that don't know, here's the unfussy telescope we used to monitor Hessian mercenaries during the Battle of Trenton.

[Luke Burbank]

That's pretty good.

[Andrew]

We love this wrought iron spit for cooking mutton over the hearth. This is real. I won't read them all, because me reading other people's jokes is not a recipe for success. Although it might be more of a recipe for success than me telling my own jokes. But I will leave it there. But, yeah, check out McSweeney's if you're like me and you kind of like fell out of that tendency, as you would say, it's there waiting for you. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

By the way, I wonder, too. I mean, this has just got to be a coincidence, but I've just noticed Dave Eggers doing interviews for things. I think he was just on the interview. No, sorry. Wild Card, which Rachel Martin hosts as part of npr. That is such a genius idea for a show. And I'm such a fan of Rachel's and also like, you know, a friend of hers in real life. But like, she's. So have you watched that show at all?

[Andrew]

No, I don't think I knew or I don't know if I knew that you and Rachel were friends, but. No, I don't know about this, but

[Luke Burbank]

I'm newspaper on the Bryant park project.

[Andrew]

Oh, okay.

[Luke Burbank]

And a fellow Northwesterner, she grew up in Idaho, so we bonded over that a couple times.

[Andrew]

And did she. She's the one who had a beef with Captain Kirk. Kind of a public beef. No. Oh, that's Seabrook. I'm sorry, I'm getting my NPR people confused. Sorry about that.

[Luke Burbank]

But she. So the show is called Wild Card, and it's. It's just perfectly designed for the Internet age, but also not in a way that feels, I don't know, gimmicky or something, at least not to me. So what it basically is, is she's got a series of cards that are, you know, have questions and have prompts, and the person who's being interviewed gets to basically pick a card at random, and then that kind of dictates where the interview is going. But they also, it's as much of a video project as it is an audio project, and they light it really well. And she's in a very nice professional studio and the guest is often somewhere else, but they're also kind of well lit. They're probably at NPR west in LA or something. So it works really well as both television and radio. And Rachel is just a masterful interviewer. They very often get into kind of intense topics and things about grief or stuff like that. And she was just really good at holding space for people. And again, I don't think it's meant to be manipulative, but there will be these moments where the guest is talking about something and it's either something that's really beautiful or something that's really heartbreaking. And they'll just kind of show that Rachel is tearing up. And again, not in a performative way, but just in a really human way. Just in a kind of like, she's just so emotionally available for the conversation. So it's just something that just. And then, of course, you'll be unsurprised to hear that. I watch it and I'm both impressed and I love it. And I'm also like. Just like, I'm 5% jealous. I'm like, this is such a good idea. How did I. We used to work together on the Bryant park project.

[Andrew]

And now somehow you're stuck with me.

[Luke Burbank]

Now I'm stuck with Andrew.

[Andrew]

Did you see that? Did you see that? She had Amy Grant on. I'm going through the archive here, and this wasn't too long ago. This was just a month or two ago. Amy Grant has learned not to get hung up on comparisons to her younger self. There are so many. Like, these are very clickable. She had Lena Dunham on. Let's see, what's Lena Dunham talking about? On the frustration between her and Adam Driver on Girls. So I don't know how they get into that, but, like, yeah, I'm scrolling through this. I want to click on all of these. Dave Edgar's was just a couple of weeks ago. John Cena's the most recent.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, they're getting. That's the other thing. It's like what's happened with the show is that it's such a good idea for a show and it's so well executed by Rachel and the producers that now it's becoming a kind of an appointment stop for, like, the biggest stars that are doing that are doing the rounds, I guess, really what it is.

[Andrew]

God, I'm out of the loop. I'm literally signing up right now. And that's not like me. You know me. I kind of get into my. My little niches and I don't get out of them. But, yeah, this is incredible.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I think they're. Again, I'm. I'm a big fan. Speaking of if I'm just doing recommendations, I have completed listening to the new cereal season in the most recent one, which is called the last 12 weeks and what it is, I mean, everybody knows Serial, of course, it started out with the story of Adnan Syed and Hae Min Lee, Hae Min Lee being a victim of murder and the question as to if her boyfriend or ex boyfriend, Adnan Syed had done it or not. He was in jail for the crime. And they've gone through a whole bunch of different topics and stories and things. And this latest one is almost. It sort of harkens back, I guess, to the first Season in that. That it's investigating the case of a guy who's on death row in Texas for some crimes that he claims he did not commit. And he is. He's had. He's very close to being executed and he's had his execution stayed a few times, but now it's down to just like some real Hail Marys for his legal team. And so the Serial reporters are kind of going out with his legal team as they are trying to just like beat the bushes and find any. Anything they can with other eyewitness testimony or people who say he couldn't have been there for this reason or whatever, you know. So it's a. It's just a kind of a. It's a. There's a. Of course, there's a real sort of Damocles hanging over the whole thing, which is. They're counting down to, like, when this guy is going to be potentially executed. So there's a lot of kind of intensity in the show. But what I thought was interesting was it's different than a lot of these ones in that you can kind of tell that the reporters are a little bit suspicious of if the person. Like, whereas the whole thing with Serial. And by the way, I've seen a lot of weird all these years later. I've seen a lot of weird kind of quasi think pieces on like, if that first season of Serial that so many people became obsessed with. If the producers of Serial actually kind of sort of like were too in the bag for Adnan being innocent in a way. Like, in other words, that whole thing, if it was it really. I think most people got done listening to that series and felt very much like, oh, we have an innocent person who's incarcerated right now. I think that was the big takeaway. And there's a lot of. There are not a lot, but there are a handful of people now that are listening back to it going well. There's a lot of kind of like feels like the thumb being on the scale. There's a lot of stuff that wasn't included in Serial because it did not kind of help that narrative. In other words, stuff that would have made it look maybe more guilty that this Adnan Syed was part of the crime. He's free right now, by the way, if I understand right. But awaiting another trial, something it's like perpetually in. Yeah, it's perpetually like could be refiled isn't being. But might be. But like all that isn't that.

[Andrew]

Isn't that. Can I just jump in there and say I mean, that's always the risk with these things in general. Right. Because that's what makes them interesting is it has a point of view. Wasn't it. Weren't there similar concerns with making a murderer? Like the thing is, both of these, as well as a lot of them will, often the important thing is it is exposing the incompetence of the investigators, which is a very important thing to look at. No matter what, what the actual truth of the particular crime is. Often it really does expose a very bad system, whether it's just a local system or if it's more of a macro look at our law enforcement systems. But aside from that, you always have people say, yeah, but as the documentary filmmakers, you wanted the story to have an arc, a narrative arc and pushing for this. And so therefore you have a thesis that you're sort of trying to argue. Not unlike those people talking a mile a minute at Dartmouth.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes, but I think that what people are. And you know, it's like there's just no winning, I guess, like this. But like, I think, I think the pushback on some of these shows, which again, I've consumed all of them, whether it was the first season of Serial or making a Murder, which was the Steven Avery case in Wisconsin, is they're presented as if they are a down the middle documentary where the producers are not thinking about the narrative or not thinking about the point of view. Like there are certain things that when they're presented, you know, that like let's just say that the Innocence. The Innocence Project. Right, which is an organization that, that's stated goal is to try to find exculpatory information for people who are on death row and get them freed. If the Innocence Project writes up a report about someone, you know, that their whole point is trying to get the person, you know, who's. And maybe they're not always on death row, but basically the wrongly convicted person out. The thing about these, some of these sort of quasi documentary things is that they're presented as if the people making them do not have a point of view and are not trying to advocate. And yet they of course do, because we, we all do. And to make the story better, it's more interesting if you proceed from the, from the perspective that this guy Steven Avery is in jail and, and shouldn't be in jail.

[Andrew]

And just for the record, I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just saying that's always been the problem with these things. I mean, just with. Even for, you know, before the whole boon, well, before Podcasting even existed, and certainly before true crime was kind of a genre. Just generally speaking, great documentary films, whether it's the fog of war or whatever, it always has a point of view.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, it's impossible to make something and not have it have a point of view or at least reflect what you end up thinking. And that's why you, as the reporters and the producers, that's why I found this kind of interesting, because I was sort of expecting it to be along the lines of, like, this guy's in jail and he probably shouldn't be, and here's all of the exculpatory evidence. And, you know, and honestly, the more they get into the crimes, they end up interviewing the guy himself. And you're just like, this guy kind of sucks. Like, you know, it's unclear. It's unclear if, you know, if he. If he committed the crimes that he's, you know, accused of that have him on death row. But there are other crimes that he pled guilty to previous to that that are, like, really messed up. And then like, when. When the reporter gets there, like one hour with the guy, he's kind of an asshole. Like, he's kind of. He's. Because the reporter wants to understand what the. What the guy in prison, what his explanation of the previous crimes were, because those previous crimes sort of indicate a kind of a person who might be capable of the other crimes, and he doesn't want to talk about them. And he's. He's one of those guys who's got like. It's kind of like everyone's out to get him and he's just like, well, that isn't really what happened, or that's not what. You know, it's like instead of owning it, instead of being like, I pled guilty to these crimes because I made some incredibly terrible mistakes when I was 25 years old or whatever, he's kind of trying to sort of dismiss them and stuff. So it was a unique experience because usually you go into one of these things and again, the whole idea, particularly if it's created by, like, public radio and this is like the Marshall Project in combination with Serial Productions in the New York Times. So you're kind of going into it expecting it to just be this, like, kind of slightly left wing do Gooder, we're gonna get this guy out. And I give them credit for definitely presenting all of this guy's warts as well.

[Andrew]

There is a podcast that that sort of reminds me of. I didn't talk about it on this show, but you Know Jon Ronson, Right. He's. How would you describe. He makes a lot of audio documentaries. He's huge on the. Big. On this American Life, but then became very big on this. You and I watched. Do you remember sitting in your. Not Bellingham. What was before Bellingham?

[Luke Burbank]

Mount Baker, maybe?

[Andrew]

No, it was Port Townsend. I think it was your Port Townsend house. Remember, I spent a week with you when we launched TBTL on American Public Media, and I spent a week of

[Luke Burbank]

press photos that you hated.

[Andrew]

Yeah, no, that was the same trip.

[Luke Burbank]

The irony is one of them did kind of birth like us in the boat.

[Andrew]

Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. No, that was a good one. Yeah. Yeah. And anyway, he's. He's done. He's done radio documentaries on the BBC for a really long time and. Oh, the reason I brought up that trip was he also was the one who reported a story, and I think he ended up writing the screenplay for that movie about the band with the lead singer who would never take off his mask.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes. And then they made that into a. Like a. Not a. They made it into like a biopic

[Andrew]

or like a. Yeah, you and I watched that together, and I remember thinking, I really liked it. Yes. And it was called Frank is the name of that.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes.

[Andrew]

I think it was based on a true story, but the screenplay was by him, and I think it was. Oh, it had Michael Fassbender in it, too. That's right. Because you have. The most handsome man in the world is buried beneath a papier mache mask the whole time. I remember that stands out because it was one of those movies that I watched. I was living in LA at the time, and I remember watching it in Los Angeles and kind of like, with all the. I think I learned about it because it was a segment that I produced and we interviewed Jon Ronson about it, and I was in love with it. And then I watched it and really liked it. And then it was one of those movies I watched a second time with a friend. You were the friend. And the whole time I'm like, oh, shit, I talked this up way too much. This is a little bit weird at times. But anyway, I don't know how I think I liked it. Did you? Okay. Because I remember just being like, I don't know if this is landing the way I wanted it.

[Luke Burbank]

No, no, no. I think I might. I have a positive memory of that movie.

[Andrew]

So all of that is to say John Ronson had a positive. That was kind of famous. Actually, a buddy of ours, I think, was an executive producer on it, on Audible back in the day. It was about the porn industry, the modern porn industry.

[Luke Burbank]

I listened to that, it was amazing. Called the Butterfly Effect.

[Andrew]

Yes, exactly.

[Luke Burbank]

And then really, really interesting.

[Andrew]

And I remember listening to that when it was relatively new. I remember kind of where I was in my life. I was living in Wallingford or whatever. But I did not realize this. There was a follow up that came out, I'm gonna say, within a year or two that was a very specific story. And it's called the Last Days of August. And that name.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, I listened to that too.

[Andrew]

Did you listen to it? If you listen to that podcast just then, first of all, it's a brilliant name, but it carries so much sadness because of his reporting, which was, I think, very, very fair, but also kind of exposing what's going on in the modern world vis a vis porn and it's effect on certain people and what goes on in the industry or whatever. But he developed a reputation. People could trust him, people in the could trust him to talk about things. And something happened where a porn actor took her own life. And the story about it in the industry and to the people who followed these things was that it was because she had kind of taken a stand about not wanting to be in a movie or in a scene with somebody because he also had sex with men and she didn't feel safe or whatever. And that was seen as a very anti kind of progressive view. And she spoke out about it and then a lot of people kind of slapped back at her and said she was homophobic or whatever. And then she ends up taking her own life around this time frame. And so it became this narrative kind of in the industry that she was basically cyberbullied into the end of her life. And Jon Ronson gets this story and people are talking to him about it and he was almost kind of like he was the only person who could really dig into this story. And as you would guess with anything like this, it's so much more complicated than that. Like so much more complicated. And you learn more about August, the reason the, you know, the actor's name was August. And seeing, you know, it was I. It was one of the best podcasts, like one of those kind of, kind of short, what would you say, Like a podcast that's one season, that's one story, you know, whatever the word for that is. I don't listen to a lot of those. This lived in my head. He's such a good writer, he's such a good reporter. The Way he tells stories with kindness, but also unflinchingly is amazing, and I just really recommend it. But the reason I thought of that was you sort of said that this podcast you're listening to, they sit down and you're expecting this guy to be sort of sympathetic, but you're like, ugh, you're not great. That's how I felt immediately. When you meet August's widower in this, I'm like, ugh, I don't like this guy. I don't like the way he's talking. I don't like the assumptions he's making. And it turns out there's a reason for that. He's not a super sympathetic guy, but at times you know what he is because you know what, people contain multitudes and that's what you really see over and over. So if you are interested in anything, I said that one is called the Last Days of August, and again, it's several years old now.

[Luke Burbank]

I would start, though, if people. Again, I don't know why in the world. I think it's a great idea for us to be recommending other audio products for the listeners. As if there's not already too much TBTL every week. Tumgis of tbtl. But I would start with definitely the Butterfly Effect and then do the Last Days of August. But the other thing I would just say about it is, even though the topic is adult entertainment or whatever, it's not a prurient.

[Andrew]

No.

[Luke Burbank]

Like podcasts, it's not even about that. It's not meant to be sort of titillating or like. And again, this is the sort of, like the incredible ability of Jon Ronson and the producers of these kinds of things, where it's the backdrop is this kind of world of this sort of adult material. But really what it is is a story about human beings and also about the Internet and particularly the butterfly effect. And so, yeah, if you.

[David]

If you're.

[Luke Burbank]

It's. This is not something. I mean, now, do you want to listen to it in the car with your kids? No, but.

[Andrew]

No, because it's going to address adult stuff, clearly.

[Luke Burbank]

But it's not like, it's not some. Just because some people might just hear, like, it's about, you know, the porn industry and just think, oh, it's going to just be like a bunch of, you know, gratuitous sexual conversations. It's like, absolutely not what these things are. They're just like really interesting kind of studies of human behavior and human dynamics.

[Andrew]

Here I go once again with the email.

[David]

Every Week.

[Andrew]

I hope that it's from a female. Oh, man, it's not from a female.

[Luke Burbank]

All right. Emails or vmails before we skedaddle.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it's all proud. I caught up on our voicemail line. I think it was last week or the week before. But then I felt so good about it that I have been letting him build up again. So I gotta. I gotta check for newer messages, but this voice memo came in, I think early last week. Week from a man I like to call David from the basement.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay, that rings a bell.

[Andrew]

Oh, okay. Sorry, I thought. I thought maybe you were going to play the.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, you want.

[Andrew]

I was laying if anybody was wondering why I was talking weird. I just kind of assumed that we were having a brain meld there. But of course, this is from your brother David, who left us. Oh, there he is. Oh, he's emerging. Here he comes. Oh, look, he's been in there for a while. Oh, now he's just standing there like we forgot.

[Luke Burbank]

More water, too. That was. That's. When's the last time we let him

[Andrew]

out for a bathroom break?

[Luke Burbank]

Can you tell that I've got that always on my mind? Two dogs here. It's like. It's like sometimes I'll just be doing something in another room and I'll be like, oh, wait, there's two dogs in the other room and we need to check on them and make sure they've had, you know, enough outside time.

[Andrew]

I literally had a dream last night about Lucy pooping because she was. We feel like she did not go to the bathroom enough yesterday. And you just get to a point where you're like, wait a second, she still hasn't gone after lunch or whatever. And you're just like, boy, how long is this going to go? And I went to bed thinking. I don't think she ever. The amount of time and space of my brain that is spent thinking and talking about the digestive system of my dog is incredible. I don't even know who I am anymore. Then I go to sleep and I dream about whether or not it's. She has gone to the bathroom. And by the way, in the dream, she did go to the bathroom, and it was quite a lot. Sorry, David, that's a terrible intro to this voice memo that you sent us.

[David]

Hey, Luke and Andrew, DFTB checking in here. I wanted to add to the running narrative of, like, strange coincidences on the show lately, as I'm sure a lot of listeners can relate to. I find myself needing some extra TBTL accompaniment on the Weekends when I've kind of like blown through all of my episodes from the week. So I find myself doing a lot of, like, time banditting. Not sure how a lot of people go about choosing their episodes, but I like to, like, take a given year and then choose an episode that aligns with where we are in the current day. So, like, I've been listening to episodes from June of 2022, which is kind of fun. One thing that I noticed, that was a bizarre coincidence that kind of stopped me in my tracks on this Monday's episode. In the Current Age. You guys opened the show with an SNL sketch with Will Ferrell. He's like a morning talk show host and his teleprompter stops working. He has a total freak out. This is where that bit of audio where he talks about technical times comes from. You use that exact same intro tape on June 15th of 2022. That's four years apart. Use the exact same intro tape on June 15th, 2022.

[Andrew]

You know what? I can. I keep a spreadsheet now so that I don't, like, reuse intro packages too close and put proximity together. And so let's see, that would be called, like, Morning show, right? And yes, SNL Morning Show, Technical Times. There it is. June 15, 2022. I use that. And then also in September of 2023 and also June 15, 2026. David, you are absolutely.

[Luke Burbank]

You don't believe in the dog and

[Andrew]

you don't believe in a dog.

[Luke Burbank]

That was the sound effect.

[David]

Not.

[Luke Burbank]

Not dj. Thankfully, we've calmed things down here. What was the thing that happened recently? This is generally a terrible setup because there was something that happened that we were like, absolutely shocked by the coincidence of. Somebody will email in and remind us.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I can't. It wasn't the bingo card thing, right? The fact that we had a bingo card?

[Luke Burbank]

No.

[Andrew]

Oh.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh.

[Andrew]

Maybe I remember being like, oh, my God.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, the other thing too is, like, I'm always shocked at how. And I don't know if this is. I can't tell if this is sort of a feature or a bug. But, like, I do think we've definitely. I've certainly slowed down on grabbing new drops. I mean, I do try to throw in new ones here and there. But, like, what I'm always surprised by is if you and I go back and needle drop a show from like, almost like 15 years ago, it is shocking to me how many of the drops from that episode we're still using are fully in use right now. Like, it's not like we have 10,000 drops that we're kind of spreading it amongst the 10,000. We've got about a hundred drops and then of them we got about 40 that we've been using.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Forever.

[Andrew]

I'm trying to see that. Oh, here we have to go back to David's voicemail in a moment. Here are some of the most recent drops I pulled. This one I haven't even used yet. And it's actually you.

[Luke Burbank]

This person is just talking about talking and talking. Talking.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

And then you think they're done and then they're talking and talking and talking. It makes me irrationally upset.

[Andrew]

I thought that would be a good drop to use in an intro at some point. And then I saw you smile the other day when you heard this in a package. Let's see if I can get this going.

[Luke Burbank]

But you've been up too lately.

[Andrew]

I'm trying to be a better person. I still have a few evil tasks I gotta do, though. That's a big tick tock thing, right?

[Luke Burbank]

Don't people use that like a. Is that AI or something?

[Andrew]

No, I don't. Not that I know of. I thought you recognized. I think it's something that has been like kind of floating around. TikTok.

[Luke Burbank]

It sounds to me like one of those. Remember those weird AI babies that would be like hooked up to an iv, but they'd be singing like, bless the Lord, oh my soul.

[Andrew]

They showed a video I went to, you know, original sound and it looked like it was a real kid saying it. So. Yeah, anyway, that's all I'll play of that. Let me go back to your brother here because I think he's got more coincidence. I don't know if it's the one that you and I are trying to

[David]

think you did on June 15th of 2026. Thought that was kind of crazy. Also, another little tidbit on both episodes. On this past Monday's episode And back in 2022, you guys talked about Stephen Tobolowski in the first couple minutes, so I found that kind of funny. Anyways, just a couple of little things. Love you guys. What you do is so important. Here's a. Here's a little thing on Monday, Luke, you mentioned Keith Urban is from Australia. My question is he ever considered changing his name to Keith Outback? All right, well, how's that for a power out?

[Andrew]

Yeah, maybe I should have killed that earlier.

[Luke Burbank]

That's actually a much. That's a much more interesting joke than the one that I've been making.

[Andrew]

Well, actually, though. Or that I'VE been making. Right? That was actually Tim's joke that I saw. I think that's the coincidence, right? Actually, he did get us there. Is that what we were blown away about, that it wasn't a coincidence that, that this whole thing started because I didn't remember that I was quoting Tim Heidecker's joke about bad, like, purposefully bad joke about Keith Urban.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, but, but, but are you saying that he made the joke? Keith Outback is. That's new material.

[Andrew]

That's new material. Yeah. But I'm just wondering now, is that what was you asked me what, like, blew our minds recently about. I don't know if it was maybe something else.

[Luke Burbank]

I don't know. Maybe that whole thing is just a big bundle of. Oh, by the way, I think I saw Keith Outback. I saw some kind of, like, headline popping around that was him. Now, I don't know if it was from a reputable source or not because it was on TikTok and it wasn't. So it wasn't like the New York Times or something, but it was like a pull quote and it was something about, like, Keith Urban, like, quote, like wishing Nicole Kidman the best or something. And I was like, buddy, you could have had, you could have had your new yacht rock album promoted on CBS Sunday Morning if you would have been willing to at least, least say that much.

[Andrew]

Say that. Right. And again, probably not even something that you were super thirsty to talk about, but as soon as you start saying I won't talk about something, it really kind of kills the vibe.

[Luke Burbank]

And, you know, with all of the attention around the journalism of CBS these days, I'm glad that even on such a kind of meaningless thing, as far as, like, Celebrity Divorce goes, we're still drawing the line at, like, you don't get to dictate to us the terms of the interview.

[Andrew]

Yes, exactly.

[Luke Burbank]

Which is, again, it's like, none of this, this is very important in the grand scheme of things. But I'm encouraged by that from my bosses that they're holding the line.

[Andrew]

I'm trying to do something at the last minute here I was thinking about all the emails and voicemails that I have sort of seen and mentally flagged. And then I keep meaning to go back to. And one of these emails is from our friend Levi, who basically said, I know you've been using music that is rights free at the end of the show. How about I make some for you? And I keep on meaning to go and listen to these things before playing them on the show, but I guess when I let something linger for that long, I end up just playing it on the show without testing it first. So how about we go.

[Luke Burbank]

That's a pretty good system.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Levi says, let's see. I think he makes.

[Luke Burbank]

This is our friend Levi with Ball of Wax, right? And Jack Straw Studios and all that. That's a good character reference. Levi's a musician, an audio engineer, a producer. I'm. I have high hopes for this.

[Andrew]

Let's see, he sent in three songs. I'll just choose one here. And I guess he makes this music under the nom de plume. Passenger Pigeon. Says, I make up music with my baritone guitar and looping machine. He says, looper, But I said looping machine because I'm calling everything machines these days, apparently. So let's. Let's go out with this track of Levi's.

[Luke Burbank]

All right, that's gonna do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening. We're gonna be right back here tomorrow. Tomorrow with more imaginary radio, so come on by for that. In the meantime, have a great Monday, Take care of yourselves, and please remember,

[Andrew]

no mountain too tall, and good luck to all.

[David]

Power out.