#4772 Is Hot Dog A Soup?

Summary

TBTL Episode #4772: Is Hot Dog A Soup?

Date: July 16, 2026
Hosts: Luke Burbank and Andrew Walsh
Special Guest Appearance: John Sklaroff, Corinne (Caller/Listener)

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Episode Overview

This lively TBTL episode, broadcast from the Liverpool Township Community Center in Valley City, Ohio, expresses the offbeat camaraderie and quirky humor that defines the show. Luke and Andrew are in the midst of TBTL-a-Thon 17, where they celebrate the podcast’s community, reminisce about childhood campaign posters and organizing batteries, debate the legitimacy of “pshaw” and other words in Wordle, and ponder what truly counts as “soup.” The show blends local Valley City shoutouts, deeply detailed personal anecdotes, multi-directional tangents, and an honest dialogue with their listeners about supporting the show and communal spirit.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Returning to Cleveland, Local Color, and TBTL-a-Thon Week

• Luke and Andrew banter about Cleveland’s virtues (home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Superman’s birthplace, etc.), simultaneously spoofing travel guide tropes and recalling Luke's personal journey back (00:04-00:46).
• The episode is recorded in Valley City, Ohio, amid smoky skies caused by Canadian wildfires.
• TBTL-a-Thon week means frequent listener call-ins, celebration of the show’s supporters, and reflections on the show’s existence and future (03:35–04:47).

2. Gandalf’s Restaurant and Local Gossip

• Running joke: A Valley City restaurant named “Gandalf’s” uses a dog as a mascot, which Andrew suspects is not thematically appropriate. Luke delivers a deadpan audio gag using the “You shall not pass!” Gandalf clip (05:28–06:53).
• Local listeners note Andrew may have gone “too hard” on Gandalf's; word has spread in the town about the show’s gentle ribbing (07:19–08:13).
• The crew discusses creative sub-themes for call-ins: “Restaurants you might not be allowed in," and stories about “memorable Daves” (05:28–05:32).

3. Childhood Campaigns & Family Quirks

• Andrew revisits a fifth-grade campaign poster for vice president, discovering his father added “the best man didn’t win” on the back (09:23–12:59).
• Bob Walsh, Andrew’s dad, is praised for his extreme organizational habits—specifically, color-coded batteries in his “Battery Daddy” storage system, complete with warranty dates (13:07–14:34).
• The hosts reflect on how Andrew’s sense of calm and order stems from his dad, especially in areas like email inbox management (16:59–17:44).

Notable Quote:

“At the end of my life, when I’m sitting on my yacht, am I gonna be thinking about how much money I have? No, I’m going to be thinking about how many friends

Transcript

[Luke Burbank]

What I'm saying is, you gotta go for it, Aaron.

[Andrew Walsh]

You gotta take a risk. Yeah, no, you're right.

[Corinne]

You have to.

[Luke Burbank]

It's like when I decided to go back to Cleveland, I wasn't totally sure they was gonna welcome me back, man, but they did. They welcomed me back with open arms and an open heart. Yeah, they did.

[Andrew Walsh]

Again, I feel like that applies more to you. Like, I don't even live in Cleveland, but again, I appreciate the thought.

[Luke Burbank]

Cleveland, Ohio? You talking about the home of the Rock and Roll hall of Fame? Or maybe we go down to Canton to the Pro Football hall of Fame, you know.

[Andrew Walsh]

You know Superman was created in Cleveland. Yeah, no, I know Superman was created in Cleveland.

[John Sklaroff]

You've told me that a number of times.

[Luke Burbank]

You ever seen Kyle Hogan Sunset?

[Andrew Walsh]

No.

[Luke Burbank]

Do you know Cleveland's great for the whole family?

[John Sklaroff]

Yes.

[Corinne]

Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes, I do.

[Andrew Walsh]

You tell me that all the time. You randomly just text me that.

[Luke Burbank]

And what's wrong with that? It's weird.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's weird.

[Luke Burbank]

I got free texting. Tbtl. Yes, money has been a little bit tight lately, but at the end of my life, when I'm sitting on my yacht, am I gonna be thinking about

[Andrew Walsh]

how much money I have?

[Luke Burbank]

No, I'm going to be thinking about how many friends I have and my children and my comedy albums.

[Andrew Walsh]

I mean, I have a yacht, so I obviously did pretty well, money wise.

[Corinne]

Are you all right?

[Andrew Walsh]

No, no.

[Luke Burbank]

I'm confused. Nothing makes sense to me anymore.

[John Sklaroff]

This face is not my face.

[Andrew Walsh]

This is ludicrous.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay, I think you've said target. Is this corre. Great, I've made the change. Your wife's new legal name is Targets. Targus, is this okay? Are you taking my duplication investigation seriously?

[Andrew Walsh]

Are you disrespecting my duplication investigation? My God, man, how much more can we take? I can only imagine what the audience is thinking.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, hell.

[Caller/Guest]

All right.

[Luke Burbank]

Hello, good morning and welcome everyone to a Thursday edition of tbtl, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. It's an audiophiles nightmare. My name's Luke Burbank. I am your host. We all like to flee to the Cleave and Club up down at the Flats and have lunch with Little Richard. But we fight those urges because we have responsibilities. That's right. Coming to you from the great Buckeye state of Ohio, Valley City in the greater Liverpool Township area, to be specific, where we are dealing with some smoke, some clouds, some particulates, some dark skies.

[Corinne]

Don't stay in my house if you're dark sided.

[Luke Burbank]

The kind of whole, I don't know, sort of northeastern portion of the United States is dealing with some smoke coming down from up in Canada. And yeah, we are, we're indoors, though, thankfully. We have a couple of AC machines. They're blowing out the, I would say air quality is great here inside the Liverpool Township Community center, formerly the Liverpool Elementary School, which is where Andrew went to school, which is why part of why we're here this week for TBTL, a THON 17 jumping for joy. By the way, got eyes on the Daves, our frogs. They're great. Dave, Dave, Dave. They are in there. They've moved around, I think, just the right amount. They're changing places on the different rocks. They're chilling. They're looking into the camera. The Dave cam is [e-mail], i think it went down a little bit last night, but it's back up and running. There is a certain amount of condensation, so it's actually easier to see us. So if you want to go over to tbtl.net, i don't know who I'm talking to right now because you're either hearing this as a podcast and we're not broadcasting on tbtl.net, or you're already watching us there even as we speak. Hello, welcome to the program. It's episode 4772 in a collector series.

[John Sklaroff]

Let the fun begin.

[Luke Burbank]

Because this is the TB chlothon week, we are going to be taking your phone calls. Ahoy.

[Caller/Guest]

Hoi.

[Luke Burbank]

206414tbtl 206414tbtl I meant to think of a theme this morning for the calls. Yesterday was run ins with small animals. I haven't thought about what the theme is today, but I will think about it. And yeah, if you've got a thought on the theme, give us a call. 206-414-8285 Also, it's a Thursday, aka blursday, so we will still do the blurs days. We're still here doing the yeoman's work of tbtl. Even during the thon, we'll celebrate the blurs days of the folks to whom that applies this week. And I really want to try to, if I can get the guys here to agree that we will stop at some point in the next three and a half days at what I think is one of the most intriguing restaurants I've seen in a long, long time. It's three blocks from our Airbnb. You have no idea how my body processes soup. So we will talk about that and we'll say hi to this guy. Longest running cobra of the show. Oh, my God. He admitted. Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

[Andrew Walsh]

Good morning, Luke. Would it be returning to the well, too much to go back to sort of the Loveline. Was it Loveline's vibe we had?

[Luke Burbank]

Loveline.

[Andrew Walsh]

Loveline vibe we had. What about, like, what about the one who got away? Remember we had that wonderful caller a couple of. A couple of days ago, Dana in

[Luke Burbank]

Kentucky was talking about Pizza Hut.

[Andrew Walsh]

Had the date with the Pizza Hut guy and kind of didn't work out. What about the one who got away? Is that too. Is that too grim? What about the one who stayed.

[Luke Burbank]

It feels like one in the afternoon. Doesn't feel like one who got away.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay.

[Luke Burbank]

Timing to me, I don't know, it feels like. That feels like when we do TBTL after hours, but I don't have a better idea.

[Andrew Walsh]

I got a better idea. Okay, I want everybody to call in and tell us about a Dave in your life.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes.

[Andrew Walsh]

A Dave that you've met.

[Luke Burbank]

Memorable Dave.

[Caller/Guest]

Dave.

[Andrew Walsh]

Dave.

[Luke Burbank]

How about this? Restaurants you might not be allowed in. I'm thinking of this because we're going to Gandalf's later. Yeah, we are. And it's unclear if Andrew will be allowed in there after the public. I would say the barrage of public criticism he's leveled at that place. You shall not.

[Andrew Walsh]

Whoa.

[Luke Burbank]

That's the sound effect for Gandalf. So you see what's going on there. You shall not.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay, so the second half is Gandalf. I don't know.

[Luke Burbank]

The first half is Gandalf.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay. Oh, God, I need to rewatch those movies.

[Luke Burbank]

That was. Most of my morning was crafting that audio in secret. That's because on Monday, we were talking about this local joint here in Valley City, which we've learned, by the way, your stepmom's grandson Luke works at on the occasion. It's called Gandalf's. It looks wonderful. Andrew did point out that he saw a little bit of. He thought that there was a lack of alignment maybe between the name Gandalf's and the fact that its mascot is a dog. That's why I came up with this bit of audio art. And I do think that's art, and

[Andrew Walsh]

that is a reminder of why you should donate to tbtl. Like, yes, there are other podcasts out there, but do they have that level of.

[Luke Burbank]

It's called Gandalf. But then it has a dog on the side, which I think kind of

[Andrew Walsh]

every time Luke plays that, it costs us $5,000.

[Luke Burbank]

Peter Jackson is incredibly litigious. But. So we are gonna. We're gonna go over. We're gonna have lunch there later on today. What I thought was interesting, Andrew, was of course, after day one where you just mentioned, oh, it's called Gandalf, but the sign has a dog on it. That's a little curious to me. Our friend Brian here, who's been helping us out with all kinds of stuff, came in. He heard the show. He said, I liked it, but I felt like you went a little hard after Gandalf.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I felt bad.

[Luke Burbank]

You apologized the following day. And then today, when was it, our friend Rod.

[Andrew Walsh]

Somebody else came in here.

[Luke Burbank]

We're talking to Rod, local historian and longtime, I think, coordinator of the Valley City Frog.

[Andrew Walsh]

Rod Knight.

[Luke Burbank]

Rod Knight.

[Andrew Walsh]

He.

[Luke Burbank]

I believe I was chatting with him about some stuff. He was on his way off to his next thing, and then he remembered, oh, I want to get the information on how people can listen to tbtl. So he came back in. I wrote down some info for him, and as he came back in, he said. What did he say exactly? He goes, I hear you're going to Gandalf's. It is really good.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, I didn't hear him say that.

[Luke Burbank]

He brought up Gandalf's in a way that indicated to me that word has spread in the town that we are the show that is going a little too hard on Gandalf. He did not.

[Andrew Walsh]

He.

[Luke Burbank]

First of all, he knew we were going to Gandalfs and he was standing up for their good reputation.

[Andrew Walsh]

You are making me nervous about setting foot in Gandalf.

[Luke Burbank]

I am telling you, may not.

[Caller/Guest]

Woof.

[Andrew Walsh]

You have a. I see you stole one of the helmets from the Buckeye.

[Luke Burbank]

Buckeye football program.

[Andrew Walsh]

Do you think if I wore that into Gandalf's, it would sort of obscure my identity a bit?

[Luke Burbank]

You wear it backwards.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes, it really.

[Luke Burbank]

I'll tell you what's not going to work, my friend. You're not going to be able to put up any of your campaign posters until this has been cleared up. Even though we learned last night on the Zoom that in I can tell you exactly when it was. November of 1987 in fifth grade, because. Oh, Andrew, I've actually got some intel.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay, so let's explain this post.

[Luke Burbank]

Unpack this.

[Andrew Walsh]

So yesterday evening, as many listeners know, and many listeners joined us for this, we had a TBTL Zoom party. We Gathered here, me, Luke and John and we gathered with the tens of listeners via Zoom. It was kind of like a show and tell. And we were all bringing things from our childhood or from our past that we wanted to show off. And John, you brought a book and Luke, you brought a mouse pad.

[Luke Burbank]

Kids and fantasy.

[Andrew Walsh]

Something that kind of reminded you of your first, first class experience on an airplane. And then I was going to bring this object from my parents house and my dad said, I have a better idea. What about this campaign poster that you made in 1987? Which I had no recollection of except I think he might have told me about it maybe earlier this year or two years ago. And I was like, oh, I have no recollection of running for vice president in 1987. I'm guessing I was in about sixth grade then, but apparently made this campaign poster and people who are viewing us now live on YouTube can see it. I've taped it to the front of the desk there in front of us. And it's got a little photo of me, it's got my class picture. I'm wearing a little sweater vest thing. I look very respectful, adorable. I look respectable. I look like somebody who you'd want. I have no memory of this but again clearly I'm the kind of guy who runs for vice president, not president really kind of keeping myself in check there. It was fun though. It was fun to show it off. The poster lists my credentials, including lifelong residency of Valley City.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, because of the orientation I can't actually read the sort of your list of credentials but they were, they were incredible in that they. But they really represented somebody who's in fifth grade who their main sort of bona fides are. Has lived in Valley City their whole life.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh yeah, you said fifth.

[Luke Burbank]

It says fifth and I'm saying attends school regularly. Sure, yeah, I believe you know, will work for you. Bathes on the regular.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, too much.

[Luke Burbank]

You had a bunch of like your credentials listed there. And when I asked you last night on the Zoom was well, did you win? And you said gosh, I don't even remember because I don't even remember running for this. Well, Andrew, I'm now because of my position looking. November 1987, 5th grade. Underneath it says the best man didn't win. Exclamation point.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's my dad's handwriting. So he sort of slugged that, which

[Luke Burbank]

means you did win, but he was voting for the other kid. Just the saddest part of this whole story.

[Andrew Walsh]

It would be weird because I mean Clearly. I mean, this poster has my dad's

[Luke Burbank]

work, you know, his fingerprints all over it.

[Andrew Walsh]

All over it. Literally and figuratively. He clearly made this. He has. He was the talented artist. I was more. I was focused on the issues.

[Luke Burbank]

You were in fifth grade.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, yeah. And I was focused on the issues, you know, and so, like you, this is why you hire.

[Luke Burbank]

Getting candidates out that aren't lifelong residents of Valley City. That was one of the things that you. That you stood for as.

[Andrew Walsh]

As vice president of the school or whatever it is. My job is not to be making posters. My job is to be leading. Delegating, legislating. Yeah. And so that's why I thought it was okay that my dad, as my campaign manager, made this poster for me. Clearly. I mean, you could see the parts that I helped on, because it's not quite as good, but. Yeah, it would be interesting if my dad actually did vote for the other kid. I wonder who won. I wonder who the president was. I wonder what the responsibilities were.

[Luke Burbank]

Vice president.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, I wonder who the running mate or who, like, you know, won the spot.

[Luke Burbank]

It's so. It's interesting that you don't remember more of this. Although I was thinking to myself, I also ran for vice president. This is not a bit.

[Andrew Walsh]

Really.

[Luke Burbank]

This is not a bit. I think it was.

[Andrew Walsh]

Can I have anything?

[Luke Burbank]

I think it was class vice president. I do not think I won, but I also don't remember. And that might have been in, like, eighth or ninth grade. I don't remember anything about the election. So I guess that's not that crazy that you don't remember who you were running against or, like, you know, who was up for the presidency or whatever. But, yes, it does appear, based on the back of this poster board, if we believe that Bob Walsh wanted you to win, that you did not, in fact, win, because he wrote. And it's an interesting detail, and it really speaks to the Battery daddy situation in your dad's basement.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, my dad. My daddy has a battery daddy.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes.

[Andrew Walsh]

And his. His battery daddy has a battery daddy.

[Luke Burbank]

You know, Andrew, of course, loves his battery organization device. It's a little kind of. It's a case called the Battery Daddy. And it keeps all of your batteries of different sizes organized. Well, when we were visiting your folks the other day, you showed me down in your dad's extremely organized kind of workspace in the basement. It's the nicest basement I've ever been in in my life. Without a doubt.

[Andrew Walsh]

Incredibly organized.

[Luke Burbank]

It also goes and goes. There are so many rooms. It's like. And they're all well appointed. So in his workshop there's the battery, his battery, daddy. But what he has taken it to another level is that he has noted when the warranty is up on certain batteries. So I believe it was some nine volts that he got in 2021. And they're on a five year warranty, which means, Bob, if you're watching those things are due. So he's not only organizing, I mean every battery is in exactly its place, but he's noting when those batteries, you know, sort of when you put them in the battery daddy. And when they're out of warranty, et cetera.

[Andrew Walsh]

And he also has a green piece of tape on the front. So that's written on a blue piece of tape. 9 v, 5 year guarantee starting in 2021.

[Luke Burbank]

That's a pretty good memory for old LB.

[Andrew Walsh]

Then there's a green piece of tape that says use first. And I asked him about that and apparently he has taken this green tape and tagged some of these batteries that were slightly used and then placed back in battery.

[Luke Burbank]

So those are the first ones you want to use.

[Andrew Walsh]

So he wants to find the ones with the green tags on them and use those first. I mean this is taking battery data to a whole new level.

[Luke Burbank]

But here's, but here's my point. This is a person who keeps meticulous notes of things. And a meticulous note that he kept on the back of your campaign poster when it was taken down, brought home and put somewhere was the best man did not win.

[Andrew Walsh]

The best man did not win. Honestly, I blame my platform of less recess.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah.

[Andrew Walsh]

More math.

[John Sklaroff]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Never forgetting when there was a pop quiz again. That's my commitment to you. I will remind the teacher that we were supposed to have a quiz today, even if it seems they've completely forgotten.

[Andrew Walsh]

Exactly.

[Luke Burbank]

That's the Andrew Welsh promise.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's the end. I will fight against you. I will fight for them.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes, John.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes.

[John Sklaroff]

I, I just.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hello, John.

[John Sklaroff]

Hello, guys. Good morning.

[Luke Burbank]

Hey, guess who it is. It's John Sklaroff. Voice is like a combination of Fergie and Jesus. He's a TBTL employee, numero uno. And he's been here the whole time. Sorry.

[John Sklaroff]

No, I've been enjoying the banter, but I just want to comment too on Bob Walsh's basement. So I was a little starstruck, obviously by meeting Bob Walsh. But there's the thing, like if you go. People are a fan of radio, if you like, see the radio station where the broadcast happens from it's like a cool thing to witness. I got to see the computer that Bob Walsh blast emails away from.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, yeah. Any blasts away emails.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah.

[John Sklaroff]

And I'll be honest, I was actually sitting here doing some email blasting myself and I just felt like I was touching a piece of history by being there. And I thought that I just wanted to share.

[Andrew Walsh]

Living history.

[John Sklaroff]

It's a living history.

[Luke Burbank]

It's a living document like the Constitution.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's very relatable. Yeah. For people who don't know what we're blabbing about. Like, I will mention that sometimes I'll call my dad and if it's a little bit late at night, you know, keep in mind I'm on West coast time. It's. It's later here in Cleveland. And so sometimes I'll call him and I'll be like, oh, did I wake you? It might be 10 o' clock at night. He'll say, no, no, I was just down here blasting away emails. And it's a very evocative but I think relatable way that we go through or a way of describing the way we go through our email. Right. Because how much of the email that we get in our inbox do we actually need? Very little. You start by blasting away the big stuff. Yeah. Like me.

[Luke Burbank]

That's why there's 20,008 unopened. Just throw that into the unblasted emails.

[Andrew Walsh]

Throw that into the frog pond. Just give that to the Dave's right over there. Let the frogs deal with those emails. So, yeah, the blasting away, I think that's kind of. You start with all the obvious stuff, you blast it away, then you start chipping away at your email, start paying attention to the stuff that needs a little bit of your attention, et cetera.

[Luke Burbank]

This is not a particularly insightful thing for me to say, but why start now? So much about you, Andrew, makes sense. Having gotten to meet your dad and I'd met your dad previously, but very briefly. Getting to really spend some time with your dad and kind of see his life and how he lives his life. There's so much about you that makes a ton of sense. And the idea that I think you feel a great sense of relief in organizing things and getting your inbox. Maybe not to zero, but pretty close in handling loose ends, having loose ends no longer loose. Those are when. When it's the end of the day and your emails have been dealt with and things are tied up and everything. I think it probably creates a sense of accomplishment and calm and relief for you. And I would Guess Bob as well.

[John Sklaroff]

Special shout out to Bob and Joyce because it's been the thon is great, it's fun, but we're running from this thing. We're doing this and we're back and forth and we had a few hours to have some pizza and hang out and it was honestly a highlight of the week just to like to meet

[Luke Burbank]

the man and enjoy and thank goodness they sent us home with pizza. Yeah, the other square, which was amazing because we ate that last night. Yeah, that was really like three growing boys.

[Andrew Walsh]

We have a good show title. Suggestions from a listener and I can't see who it is, but what if we rename the podcast Call Her Battery Daddy? Ah, not bad.

[Luke Burbank]

And the SEO might actually, we might catch a little bit of the Call Her Daddy people. How long into our show would somebody get before they realized it wasn't Call Her Daddy?

[Andrew Walsh]

I don't know. Probably not too far.

[Luke Burbank]

How much do they talk about wordle on Call Her Daddy? Because that's something I know you want to discuss. Andrew, today the words mean nothing. You said something very honestly shocking to me this morning. You said you might be done with wordle for a while.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm shocked myself. I might be. I'm not even joking. I might be at my limit with Wordle. It ticked me off. He's about at his limit now. Listen, when we're on a week long project like this, this is the time when I might accidentally, you know, kind of blow my streak.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah.

[Andrew Walsh]

Because I'm busy. So if people don't play wordle, you gotta play every single day. And every day that you win, you get an. You tag another day onto your streak. Right. And like I've had days or I've had streaks that have gone into like the 80s, you know, and I know some of our listeners have them that went well into the well, well, well into the triple digits. And it's kind of a bummer when you just sort of forget to do wordle as opposed to wordle beating you. But that it was kind, it was kind of a combination of that yesterday. So I am back down to zero. I have not done wordle today because I'm still mad at wordle. So I started wordle in the morning as I usually do, but it seemed kind of complicated. If anybody's playing the archives and you're worried about spoilers or whatever, this is your spoiler alert on this. Because I'm just telling, I'm telling it all. And so yesterday I think that I knew that there was an A in There and I think an S and an H. And so I was struggling with those. I never had them in their right places. I remember my fourth guess. You have six guesses to figure out what this word is going to be. My fourth guess, I started it with a P and I can't remember what my guess was, but it was wrong. But then now I've got a P in the right place. I've got an A somewhere, an S somewhere, an H somewhere, and I cannot figure out what it is. And then at one point, and again, because we're in a different time zone, all the people I play Wordle with, it's still like 9 o' clock at night. They have a few hours to figure it out. I open up my phone at like 12:15 or something like that. I'm like, ah, I forgot to finish my wordle word. I saw that some people in my group had completed it, apparently with no problem. I hadn't seen a bunch of people busting out, but I'm like, well, what was the word? Anyway, I totally forgot because it's at

[Luke Burbank]

that point too late for you to finish.

[Andrew Walsh]

It restarts at midnight. It restarts at midnight. So I've totally. I've wasted the day. I'd gotten to my fourth guess and then I forgot about it. I moved on to something else. We had our event last night on Zoom, and then all of a sudden, you know, after midnight, I'm like, ah, God dang it. My streak is back down to zero because I forgot to finish it. What the heck fire was it? Anyway, I look it up and I want to know what you feel about this word as a legitimate word and any guesses based on what I told you where the stars with a P, there's an S and H and an A in there somewhere.

[Luke Burbank]

Is it pshaw?

[Andrew Walsh]

I hate you. It's. Yes, it was pshaw.

[John Sklaroff]

That's not a word.

[Luke Burbank]

Pshaw. It is a word and I think I just used it correctly. I would have never guessed that, though, if you didn't give me all of those letters, because I first of all would have assumed that there's an apostrophe in there. I don't know why. I don't know who.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I mean, I think. I mean, I guess it is. I don't think.

[Luke Burbank]

I think of it as P apostrophe, like S H A W Shaw.

[John Sklaroff]

But is it. Is it just a sound effect? Is it like if you were going like, that's what.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's kind of what I think. Origin for me. Yeah. If you would have.

[Luke Burbank]

Let me ask you this, if you, if you would have said to me forget the wordle conversation, if you said, is pasha a real word or just kind of like an I don't know, thing, I would say it's not even a real word. It's a thing that characters say in a, in a, you know, sort of a shah. Yeah, like, but not a real word. Only because you gave me P s. I don't know if you give me the H, but the.

[Andrew Walsh]

And also as I was sort of saying it in that it's sort of like I was sort of grouping them verbally in a way that you don't sort of see it in that. I mean, again, hey, listen, other people, not everybody busted out yesterday. I'm the only person I know who didn't complete it and actually got a zero for the day. So, you know, it was solvable.

[Luke Burbank]

It is a weird looking word too. So that's. So I reached out to Becca who is a pretty daily wordle player and she said, I asked her if she had any thoughts on yesterday's wordle. She said I don't have any interesting thoughts except it was so dumb. The only reason I even remotely know that word is because my sister uses it. Her sister is very smart. Pshaw tune. And then she said I messed up a couple of times. And she started with zebra. Went to Sandy, she starts with zebra.

[Andrew Walsh]

You're starting with a Z. You are crazy for that one, Becca.

[John Sklaroff]

That's bad.

[Luke Burbank]

You're crazy for this one. What?

[Andrew Walsh]

You are living on the edge.

[Luke Burbank]

I mean, talk about. Yeah, it goes zebra to Sandy, to Shaq, to Hultz, Kill and Hill Shaw.

[Andrew Walsh]

See now this, for people who don't play, starting with zebra is interesting because like very few words are gonna have a Z in there like that. That is, that is a wordle of a very confident woman right there. Because like how often is a word gonna start with Z? If you wanna start with I texted,

[Luke Burbank]

do you always start with zebra? So we're getting amazing.

[Andrew Walsh]

Look at her. Now I know why you love her so much.

[Luke Burbank]

When I'm seeing the word pshaw written out, it does not look like an English word. It's pshaw. In a million years I would never have gotten that through wordle. I got it because you kind of walked me right up to it with your description.

[Andrew Walsh]

Do you know what the word was the day before?

[Luke Burbank]

No, but I'm getting, by the way, an update from Becca. She says no, I've literally never started with the same word that's you want to talk about raw dogging life.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, no kidding.

[John Sklaroff]

I just. I'm so hung up on this. I want somebody to use Pasha in a sentence because to me, it really is. But that's.

[Luke Burbank]

It means don't worry about it. It means.

[Caller/Guest]

Ah.

[Luke Burbank]

It means. Oh, that's not something to be concerned about. So if I said to you, if you were like, andrew left his bathroom window open by one inch, is the raccoon going to climb in through that window and ravage the house? I would say, oh, pshaw.

[John Sklaroff]

And just for the record, for people listening at home, the window was fully closed, so we were safe from the raccoon. But I hear what you're saying. I just. I never heard that before.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. Then I got trolled in the chain. So after I looked it up last night, I wrote to the wordle gang. I said, I just looked it up. It might be time for me to take a break from wordle. And then somebody gave, like, the double exclamation point emoji or whatever. Then the conversation moved on to some sort of neighborhood news and whatever goings on that's too complicated to get into here because I didn't fully understand it. But then somebody, you know what gonna name her. My friend Anita, who got it in four yesterday, was responding to this other story on the text chain, and somebody said something was weird, and she wrote, pshaw, Nothing weird about that. To which I said in my head, I think I might need to take a break from Anita for a while because I don't need that kind of. I don't need that kind of trolling. You know what I mean?

[Luke Burbank]

People usually. This is the AI overview. People typically use it when they want to downplay a suggestion, express impatience, or scoff at an absurd claim.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

For example, a person might say, pshaw, that's absolute nonsense. Or, oh, pshaw, don't worry about the small stuff.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's like something that, like, Daisy would say in the great Gatsby. Right.

[Luke Burbank]

Sure. Or I was, and I don't. That might actually be more, like, accurate in terms of history. I was thinking of it as, like, the importance of being earnest. Like, like, sort of, you know, that era of writing, But I don't know when it came into. When it came into fashion.

[John Sklaroff]

I just got a breaking news text message. My mom, who's watching along, shout, karen, what up, Karen? She said, when somebody gives me an incredible compliment, I often say, oh, Pasha.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, you know what, Karen? I can say something. Tbtl. Breaking news. I think we gotta work on that, Karen, and I'm with. This is something you and I can commit to. When someone pays us a compliment, I think the nice thing to do is to say, oh, thank you so much. Not to say, and this is something I've historically always done, why the compliment is undeserved, why they don't really mean that. Why if they really knew me, they wouldn't. Because, I mean, I think Becca actually, she of the wordle mastery. She of the jumping out of the wordle plane without a parachute lifestyle. She says, like, look, if I. If somebody made me a really nice meal or somebody made something for me, a gift, somebody gave me a gift and I said, oh, this sucks. I don't deserve this. Oh, this is wrong for me. That would be rude. You would never do that. If somebody gave you something, you'd say, oh, my gosh, thank you so much. If someone's giving you something in the form of a compliment, if they're saying, hey, I really liked how you did that, or that was cool. To say, oh, no, or that sucked, or whatever is kind of depriving them of the experience of giving you that gift. I'm really trying to remember that because I get complimented up to once a year and I don't want to the next time it happens, you know, kind of dismiss it. I'm trying to be a little. Now here's the thing.

[John Sklaroff]

Give yourself permission to be kinder to yourself. Mom.

[Luke Burbank]

That's right. Give yourself permission. And also, tezza, don't.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's the phrase we were discussing.

[Luke Burbank]

That's a callback to what was happening in the car during Fire Plug Watch. During. But here's the thing, though. It is nice to accept the compliment. Let's not go too far with the accepting the compliment. That's the thing. It's a fine line.

[Andrew Walsh]

Don't say and.

[Caller/Guest]

Or.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I've always thought that.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, you know what I mean?

[Luke Burbank]

It's a fine line between. You are clinically insane for suggesting that nice thing about me. That's too much on one side, but also saying, I've kind of thought that about myself too far on the other side. It's a very narrow band of acceptable compliment acceptance, in my opinion.

[Andrew Walsh]

So I want to say this is a much more interesting conversation, a richer conversation. I'm happy to come back to the conversation about how to accept compliment. That was all I had on that. But I mean, it is an important thing, and it's something that I am remarkably bad at. It's listed on my campaign poster. We'll get better at that. But just to come back to Peshaw, something just struck me as you guys were talking about it and as you mentioned, how your mom uses it. Here's my argument against that being an actual word is we cannot think of any other context, any other sentence in which it's used other than followed by the word o. And that's why I think that it is more of a sound that has now been sort of.

[Luke Burbank]

How do you mean? Followed by the word o or I'm

[Andrew Walsh]

sorry, preceded by the word. Okay, like, oh, pshaw. Okay, we. That's one usage. Use it in a sentence. Opashaw. Use it in another sentence. No, I couldn't.

[John Sklaroff]

I agree. I don't think it's a word. And I Google, I was on Dictionary.com and they referred to it as an interjection. It's not now.

[Luke Burbank]

It's not a verb.

[John Sklaroff]

It's not an adjective.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's a word.

[John Sklaroff]

No, I don't know.

[Andrew Walsh]

And I say that to you all the time. When you compliment me, I go, the

[Luke Burbank]

irony is what we're saying about the New York Times puzzle people. So, you know, selecting this for the world today, we are essentially saying pshaw to that.

[Andrew Walsh]

I am saying pshaw to that exclamation

[Luke Burbank]

of irritation, disbelief, disgust, or mild contempt.

[Andrew Walsh]

And here's the deal with me and wordle going forward. I don't know how long this will last. I might have made threats like this before, but I. I have been playing both wordle and I've been secretly playing Connections for the past year. But I had given up on Connections a long time ago because I did not feel like the. And I do think it's a single person still who writes that it does not seem like she is working in good faith, that she is engaging in good faith with this puzzle. Like, I just feel like, oh, too many times. This is very subjective and subjectively wrong how you've grouped these words together. If you're familiar with that game. And I gotta say, since wordle in the past, I'm gonna say six months or so since they announced that, like, hey, we're kind of running out of five letter words, we're gonna start introducing words that we've already used before. We're gonna start repeating words. I think wordle is in a place where they're really struggling to find words that are actual wor. Challenging. And it doesn't feel like good. Yesterday's puzzle did not feel like it was in good faith to me, and I'm not. And maybe that's Just sour grapes. But it just doesn't feel like it. It feels like they're trying to trick you, but they're walking this line. And if it's not bringing me joy and if it's making me angry, then I need to step away and I need to do something else. I'm going to start playing more retro bowl. The words mean nothing.

[Luke Burbank]

You know what it's going in the direction of, and this just came up on the show recently is it feels to me like, and again, I don't, I don't want to yuck any yums or steal anyone's joy. If you are an enjoyer of very, very competitive Scrabble or, you know, very competitive speech and debate forensics. But like in the way that the really highest levels of Scrabble are not mostly words that you even recognize as words.

[Andrew Walsh]

Somebody in the comment section is literally saying, I don't under listening to Andrew. A big part of my education work. Andrew simply doesn't understand what words are. That is, that is a, that is a comment from one of our listeners.

[John Sklaroff]

But she followed up by saying she agrees that Bashaw is silly.

[Andrew Walsh]

That is, that is my takeaway from that sentence.

[Luke Burbank]

Somebody just poked a bear.

[Andrew Walsh]

I have several thousand episodes.

[Luke Burbank]

Somebody just choked a bear.

[Andrew Walsh]

Involving words. Thank you.

[Luke Burbank]

I feel like what's happening with Wordle as you described Andrew, is they've run out of the sort of. They're not going to use what, how long is it? Six letters, Five letters.

[Andrew Walsh]

Five letters.

[Luke Burbank]

They're not going to use, I mean, maybe six.

[Andrew Walsh]

I don't know the difference between five and six.

[Luke Burbank]

They're not going to use grapes. They're not going to use, you know, they're not going to use super obvious easy words. And so they're always going to try to use something that's a little confusing, a little bit interesting. But now they're out of that bandwidth of words. And they did say we can start reusing them, but they don't want to like start using them, you know, a lot early on. So now they're down to pshaw and words like that, which are, I'm with you. It's sort of like when you watch really high level Scrabble and most of the words that are being played are words that are not particularly familiar. Their utility is that they're three letters or four letters. They are technically a word, but not a word that we use a lot. And they do, you know, they get the triple word score or whatever where some of these games eventually they just evolve into this Thing that's just kind of not really how the game feels like it was intended in the first place.

[Andrew Walsh]

Let me ask you a question, and I'm doing this in good faith because I'm actually going to make an argument against myself for a second if I just want to truly explore this pshaw thing. Let me ask you this good news

[Luke Burbank]

is I'm getting a call from one of the Daves.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, good.

[Luke Burbank]

Clearly dialed into the broadcast schedule.

[Andrew Walsh]

This is Dave. Is it one of our frog Daves? Because this involves frogs. Because this could. If you say what I'm about to say is a word, then that belies everything I've said so far. Do you think ribbit is a word?

[Luke Burbank]

I did have to Google it last night.

[Andrew Walsh]

Ribbit.

[Luke Burbank]

Ribbit. Because the frogs, the Daves, had actually written the email that was going out to people, but I wanted to spell check them. And the very fact that I had to spell check ribbit to see even how it was spelled tells me it's not a word.

[Andrew Walsh]

Do you think a meow is a word?

[Luke Burbank]

M O. I mean, yes, I understand that they are words that have a defined spelling and people write them down, but I think of them as, like, whether it's onomatopoeia or an interjection or salutation, they don't feel like words to me. They feel like sounds that people and animals make.

[Andrew Walsh]

Because that's where I'm trying to figure out, like. Cause if I. And I don't know how I answer that question, but if I feel like ribbit is a word, and I'm not saying it is, but it might be, and if I believe that ribbit is a word, then I. I don't. Then I have to accept.

[John Sklaroff]

I'll say this so characteristically. I don't know if that's the right way of framing this. If somebody would say, what sound does a frog make? You go, Ribbit. If what sound does a cat make? You say? Meow. Like, those are universally.

[Luke Burbank]

What does the fox say?

[John Sklaroff]

Like, these are universally accepted. Like sound, you know, woof or a

[Andrew Walsh]

dog or a bark.

[John Sklaroff]

Right. Like, these are things that we all kind of agree. Like that is associated with that animal. So therefore it is. There is some culturally defined meaning to that word. If you say, what sound does a human make? The literal last. Some thing anyone would say would go pasha.

[Andrew Walsh]

Like, it's a good point.

[John Sklaroff]

It's not so directly associated.

[Luke Burbank]

And you do have to write down the words. I mean, you don't have to, but there are times when you might write down Ribbit or meow. Like if you're writing a story and the cat says meow, maybe a kid's story. Those. But I'm with you, John. That. Pshaw.

[Andrew Walsh]

I guess if you were like, I could hear my mom. Because you could see somebody in like the Great Gatsby like I said, or some short story or something. Be like, oh, you know, I. Hey, thank you so much for this tea. It must have made. Took you forever to make this tea. Oh, Shaw, I could see that written.

[Luke Burbank]

I just. But I actually think that your. Your larger point, Andrew. It stands for me, which is regardless of if pasha is technically a word, which it is, it's that they're getting into. I mean, look at. I asked Becca, what do you think? She goes, oh, the word was so dumb. If the general consensus of players is. And I guess maybe not everybody on your text chain had this thought. But if most of the people playing go. Ah, that's kind of a dumb word. That just means you missed the mark that day as the puzzle master.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's my thing. It's not just about what is a word and what isn't a word, but what is a word in the context of this particular game. And that just doesn't feel like. That doesn't feel like. Like I said in good faith to

[Luke Burbank]

me now I worry about the social implications for you of. Of stopping playing wordle because then I guess you will then also remove yourself. You will self deport from the wordle friend group because you don't have a lot to offer there. And is that a social connection? I worry about you losing social connections because it will be Lucy and you and the dart bot.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

And occasionally bingo.

[Andrew Walsh]

I mean the wordle chat group has really evolved into just being a neighborhood.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, it's like Hawk squad.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. I mean honestly, that's. The percentage of wordle talk on this chain has diminished incredibly.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, that answers my question that I'm not. I wondered if that was. I think we're something that was fun for you, but that only revolved around wordle talk. But it did not. So that's good. Hey, you know what? Let's take a quick moment to thank you for being a 10. Thank folks for being the tens. We had such a fun time last night zooming with folks, thanks to everybody who participated in that. And I think I can I say this now, Andrew, that your dad and stepmom were actually here. They were observing.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I don't know if we said that explicitly because they're a little shy. They're yeah, like me, they're a little bit shy. So my parents were here during the Zoom event last night in the room

[Luke Burbank]

with us, and they. It was so fun to kind of watch them, watch everything and see their reactions and things. And then we were all done. They just said what a nice group of people. They were really. They were really impressed. I felt, it's like, weird. I felt proud that Andrew's parents liked our listeners. Yeah, it was a strange thing to say.

[Andrew Walsh]

It was kind of nice because, you know, we're here in this room and we've been keeping it mostly just the three of us in here because of just various things. And, you know, I've had some people in my family and friends ask if they can kind of come by and watch us do this show, and that felt like it might make me a little distracted or a little bit, like, because I am shy and awkward and, like, doing this with you guys. It feels like sort of a safe space.

[Luke Burbank]

Even though he's never recovered from losing

[Andrew Walsh]

the election in 1987, supposedly, allegedly. So anyway, but I realized as we were hanging out with my parents yesterday, I'm like, oh, this would be a good opportunity for them to come be in this room with us. Not for like a TBTL show, but it's just a hangout anyway. And they were like, well, we don't want to be on mic or camera, but yeah, let's just see. And I realized it was actually perfect because it really showed my parents, the TBTL community, not us just like talking out, you know, one way communication here, but that they could see and hear the people that make this community special. Because what's special about this is not the podcast at this point. No, you know what I mean?

[Luke Burbank]

Never has been, never will be. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, it was just great to see everybody and great to have Andrew's parents see that these are the wonderful people who participate in the world of tbtl. And it's also been really super heartwarming this week to see folks who have been continuing their donations or maybe donating for the first time. We've had some folks upping donations. We've also had some folks who've checked in to say, this is just not maybe a year where I can donate the way that I have in the past, or maybe even at all, which we absolutely, completely understand. And you want you to know that everybody is welcome to be part of this show, whatever their financial relationship is with tbtl. But, you know, John and I were kind of talking and going through the numbers and we Were sort of going, where are we at the goal? Are we behind? Are we ahead in. And things were maybe moving a little more slowly in the early part of the week than the particular goals we'd set out. But it feels like we're starting to actually really make up some ground and kind of catch up. And it's just like every year, I mean, every year when we go into this, I kind of think, is this going to work again? Are people still interested in this, in what we're doing? And I find it so heartening that the answer appears to be yes. So thank you, everybody who's been donating so far.

[Andrew Walsh]

Somebody said, I want the delicacy sticker. Delica is not a word, which is, I will co sign that. But actually it's not a sticker either. It's an actual magnet, isn't it? We're giving a magnet so you can. You can use it as a sticker as long as what you want to stick it on is metal.

[Luke Burbank]

People are very excited about the magnet.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's pretty cool.

[Luke Burbank]

I know. I'm pleasantly surprised. I mean, that's something we want to make sure everybody who donated any level can grab this TBT magnet. But I think it's actually got people pretty. I think the magnets got everybody kind of worked up.

[John Sklaroff]

Chris came early.

[Andrew Walsh]

Absolutely.

[Luke Burbank]

What would you say, John?

[Andrew Walsh]

All the gifts are really fun this year?

[John Sklaroff]

No, I was gonna say the magnets really cool. I was gonna say talking about what we were talking about this week of kind of the trending and tracking of the donations coming in, we've talked about a couple times on air. We know the economy is not the strongest right now. We know gas is expensive. We know groceries are expensive for us too. And so we know. We've mentioned on there how, like, there have been some folks who explicitly said, like, I can't give for this reason or that, you know, I got laid off or whatever it is. And we've had several people email and be like, hey, I want to donate a little more. And that's something we've said is if you can give, you're stepping in place of somebody who can't. But just, I don't know, I guess just kind of even talk about what your parents are talking about. Andrew. It's like, it's the fact that multiple people are like, yeah, let me. Like, yes, explicitly, I want to step up. It's just such an awesome. I don't know, it's such a hard. In a very difficult time in the world. I love it.

[Luke Burbank]

People really, really want to make sure that if somebody else isn't in a position and we've had people like naming specific other people they're friends with, who they know, maybe going through something and they're like, hey, so and so who I know is, you know, like, you know, maybe not working as much or etc. I would like to, I'm donating for myself, but I like to donate on their behalf and stuff. I mean, it just like is an incredibly loving and caring and supportive community. The other thing too, that I hadn't thought of, John, until you and I were talking the other day is, you know, we have people that have been doing recurring donations and that's incredible. And that's really the, that's a big part of kind of our monthlies. The money that comes in, the money that's used to pay for various things related to the show, that's used to pay our salaries and things. And then there's the money that sort of comes in. People will donate maybe on a once a year basis during the thon. They'll say, well, here's the money for the whole year. And it had not even occurred to me until you and I were chatting yesterday that the thank you gifts actually cost us money and that the mailing of them actually costs us money. And when you cited what the general cost of that is, I was like, oh yeah, well, we would probably hope to raise more or at least as much money as that. So that, that's all covered. By the way, I do believe we are going to get there this year, but I hadn't thought about the fact that, you know, these thank you gifts to generate them does cost us money. To mail them out to all of you does cost us money. And we're so happy to do it and we're so glad to do it, but the fact that we were able to do this and send things out and hopefully not have that actually end up where the sending out of the things and the making of the things exceeds the amount of the money that comes in during the thon. I would say that's a low bar and we've traditionally cleared it out. I think we're going to clear it again this year. But thank you everyone for helping us clear that.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, and speaking of the sending of things out, and again, I know that the vast majority of people who donate to TBTL are doing it because they want to keep this podcast strong and or at least make it strong at some point, but keep us going into the future. And we really do Appreciate that. I don't think you're doing it for the thank you gifts. I could be wrong about that. But I do want to say because I don't want to kind of bury the lead here. We don't talk about it during other times of the year and I don't want people to miss out. The T shirt is really badass.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes.

[Andrew Walsh]

I really. I wish you miss one on now after bad.

[Luke Burbank]

If he dropped out, he didn't say it's really bad. He said it's really badass.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. Oh, yes. Did I? Yeah. I might have swapped.

[Luke Burbank]

No, you got it.

[Andrew Walsh]

You got it. But anyway, yeah, it's a really, really cool shirt. And of course these baseball cards that we had specially made and designed that are featuring, featuring me, Luke and John and friends of TBTL that you can collect. You can, you can get a pack of these cards and open it up and not exactly know which 10 are inside. We made 30 of cards. It's a very, very exciting year for what we're giving away, if that is what tickles your fancy.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, absolutely. We worked very hard and by we, I mean Andrew and John have worked very hard on all of these thank you gifts. And I think people are going to be really stoked to get them. So anyway, tbtl.net, if you are watching this, you've already been there. But if you've been watching this and you've been sort of considering, you've been wondering if this is the year for you to jump in and donate some dough, this would be a great time to do that. And if you're hearing this on the podcast, that's a question too. If somebody's hearing this, John, in like it's two weeks from now.

[John Sklaroff]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

I assume that the link is no longer active, but I mean, they can get in touch with you but work something out. John's never going to turn down a little TBTL support if you get in

[John Sklaroff]

touch with him technically. Larry, let's get a real, real exciting talk here. The way it works is so obviously we're doing the thon this week. The we keep the like donation page as is during the thaw with all thank you gifts up for about another week or so. But like this, tomorrow is the last day of the thon. But if you were to donate, say no next Tuesday, we'll still send you the thing.

[Andrew Walsh]

We'll keep the lights on for you.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, but then, yeah, so famously one of our catchphrases.

[Andrew Walsh]

You coined that, didn't you?

[Luke Burbank]

But if you're listening My almost dad did.

[John Sklaroff]

If you're. If you're six months behind, you can always donate. You won't be getting the thank you gifts because at that point we have to. We have to place the order for the inventory. So it just becomes something we can't do year round, obviously, but we'll always take your donations. If you don't care about the thank you gift.

[Luke Burbank]

Gift, yeah, absolutely. Point being if, if you're thinking about doing it, this is a great week to do it. So you can get the thank you stuff so you can keep supporting award winning radio art like this.

[Andrew Walsh]

I didn't know that I already won an award.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes. In my own mind.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, that's amazing.

[Luke Burbank]

That's absolutely right.

[Andrew Walsh]

I don't even remember filling out the application. Hello and welcome to Top Story.

[Luke Burbank]

Before we get into top Story, should we take a phone call? Andrew, somebody who's been here for a while. I mean, I don't think we've settled on a theme yet. What are we asking of this person? Where do we.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, yeah. What did. What? You had an idea at the beginning.

[Luke Burbank]

Are they quitting Wordle?

[Andrew Walsh]

Are they. Are you.

[Luke Burbank]

Are you quitting wordle is the theme.

[Andrew Walsh]

Who are the Daves? You know, you know, Dave's.

[Luke Burbank]

You know, you know. And. Are you quitting wordle? And is. Is ribbit a word?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

Hi.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hi.

[Luke Burbank]

You're on tbtl.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hello there.

[Luke Burbank]

It's you. We hear ya. Who is this?

[Corinne]

This is. Hey, this is Corinne and I was going to call about a day by now, but now I. I'm calling to apologize to Andrew.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh.

[Corinne]

Because I just insulted him on the live.

[Caller/Guest]

Oh.

[Andrew Walsh]

Are you the person who said. I don't know.

[Luke Burbank]

He's the one who said he doesn't know how words work.

[Andrew Walsh]

Corinne, I'm sorry to be. I'm sorry to be bossy here, but would you mind switching over to put that phone right up to your ear? Are you on a speaker or a bluetooth device of some sort?

[Luke Burbank]

She's in a hot air balloon.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay.

[Luke Burbank]

Corinne.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, I didn't know that was Corinne. Take your time. Take your time.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, we've got the frog jump isn't until Sunday. We've got all the time in the world. Corrine, can we hear you now?

[Caller/Guest]

Is this better night?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, sorry to do that. I don't like to do that, but that sounds very good. How you doing? I didn't realize that was you, Corrine. I went hard after you. I apologize.

[Luke Burbank]

That's all about Corinne. You just heard the rare. It's Like Haley's comet, The rare angry Andrew.

[Corinne]

Oh, listen, if you knew. You talk about somebody living rent free in your head. If you knew Andrew, how. How often I think. I'm not kidding. Andrew hates me. Or I just made Andrew so mad.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, wait, that's already something that you thought.

[Luke Burbank]

That's not in the words of Ralph Wiggum. That's unpossible.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's unpossible, Crane. I'm sorry. I didn't see who wrote that. I didn't know it was you. I thought it was. I thought it was some jerk like Max in Seattle.

[Luke Burbank]

Just kidding. Don't do that to me.

[Corinne]

I was kind of being a jerk. I was being blunt. And I. Listen, I just tend to see the whole issue from a linguistic perspective, but I said it in a really blind and unkind way.

[Andrew Walsh]

Do you play Wordle? And if so, what is your streak? It must be, like, in the thousands.

[Corinne]

Well, listen, I'm not a subscriber, so my streak is only as old as my phone.

[Luke Burbank]

Do you want to borrow my login? I'm paying through the nose for this thing, too.

[Andrew Walsh]

Whoa, whoa.

[Luke Burbank]

250 days. Somebody does understand how words.

[Corinne]

More than that, I haven't. Yeah, I mean, this is.

[Luke Burbank]

Did you get pshaw, like, two or

[Corinne]

three skills in life?

[Luke Burbank]

No, no, you've got. Corinne, you've got a ton of skills.

[Corinne]

I think I got it in three or maybe four.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, look at that. You're like a real Anita.

[Corinne]

I love so. And believe me, I just. Sometimes it's just the luck of the drive. I got today in two, and it

[Luke Burbank]

was just total corrine. Can I ask, do you have a starting word that you always start with, or do you like Becca, just absolutely swing for the fences with a new word each day.

[Corinne]

I absolutely start with the same word every day because I could never forgive myself.

[Andrew Walsh]

Can you?

[Corinne]

If I. Yeah, right.

[Luke Burbank]

Because if it happened to be that word, yesterday's word. You know what? You're exactly like me and my roulette numbers. 7, 14, 23, 35. Because if I were to not play those numbers and they hit, I would be devastated. So I must always play those numbers.

[Andrew Walsh]

So, Corinne, whatever works. Can you tell us what your word is? Are there people listening who, like, play with you? And that would give up too much info.

[Corinne]

Oh, there are people. There are tens. There are probably people on the live chat now that know what my opening word is, and it's actually a word that's already been used.

[Luke Burbank]

It's Peshaw, isn't it?

[Corinne]

But. And by the way, I should say a caveat to my streak is that I do quite regularly consult the list of boards that have been used already. Some people consider that a cheat.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, at this point, does it even

[Caller/Guest]

matter

[Andrew Walsh]

what Now I said at this point, does it even matter now that they said they're reusing words?

[Corinne]

But I still. If there is a word that I've thought of that's not on the list, I'm more likely to guess that. Or if it's a word that was used a long time ago.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. And so what are you using? I think we talked over you before. There's a little delay on the line. What word are you using now?

[Corinne]

Oh, stair.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, okay.

[John Sklaroff]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

Common letters.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay.

[Corinne]

E at the end.

[Luke Burbank]

S, T, A, R, E. Not S, T, S, A, I, R, S, T, A.

[Corinne]

No. Yeah. S, T, A, R, E. Sorry.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay, that makes sense.

[Corinne]

I'm hitting those common letters.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

And, yeah, I used a different one, but I think E at the end of the word is probably the safest bet.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. Yeah. E's are more common than I's. Do you want to know what word I was using before I gave up on wordle this morning? No one believes a word out of your mouth. Why do you keep talking? I used to use the word arise. I like that because it had an A and I and an E in there, and the R and the S seem pretty useful. But then arise hit like, what, eight months ago or something like that. So that I got my. What you were talking about my. My once in a lifetime. Get it in one. But I didn't want to use that word anymore, and I didn't want to use anything that had been used. So I'm. I was. I almost used the present tense, but I got to remember that I've broken up with wordle, but I was using a very strange word. But it has a lot of good letters. Aired, as in we aired our radio show last year. A, I, R, E, D. I don't think they'll ever use that, though.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, they used pashaw.

[Corinne]

Yeah, that's true.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay.

[John Sklaroff]

Corrine.

[Luke Burbank]

Corrine.

[Corinne]

I do sometimes use pe. Go ahead.

[Luke Burbank]

I was gonna say. What else did you. I know that now, by the way. Way to go. Way to squash the beef with Andrew. I feel like the. The beef is very squashed. You guys are solid.

[Andrew Walsh]

I feel terrible that I was. You said that you already thought that. When would you have. Well, let's not revisit it. I can't remember ever a time that you've ever been Anything but absolutely sweet. So please do not ever let me live in your head.

[Corinne]

Oh, it's. I know it's irrational, but I do. You know I called that voicemail and you also know I call, you know, all the other voicemails alive too.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, yeah.

[Corinne]

But I don't remember you ever rolling his eyes because there's another long message.

[Andrew Walsh]

No, not at all. It's always. That's what I mean. Like if you ever. Yeah. Did anything that you lived in your head, like, oh, I wonder how that came off. I promise you it didn't come off wrong. Or I certainly don't remember. Remember I have a goldfish brain. I don't remember these things. So don't you?

[Corinne]

Well, that's good to know.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Corinne, what else were you, other than apologizing? What were you going to call in for?

[Corinne]

Oh, I do have a day by now. I know.

[Andrew Walsh]

Perfect.

[Corinne]

Thought I might share about love that this is actually from close to 40 years ago.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh,

[Luke Burbank]

was it a romantic day?

[Corinne]

My age.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay, that sounds like. It definitely was not.

[Corinne]

I went to. Sorry I keep stepping on you. I. I went to grad school with a Dave who was so Dave. My best friend. And I named a verb after him. So my. Yeah. A verb.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, like a V E R B to Dave verb.

[Corinne]

To Dave became an intransitive verb. This was just between my friend Kathy and me, but it meant to toot your own horn in front of the professors and other grad students and most specifically to take every possible opportunity to mention one's semester abroad in England

[Caller/Guest]

if

[Corinne]

you could possibly shoehorn it. So like, if my friend Kathy and I were alone and one of us would brag a little on ourselves, the other one would say, oh my gosh, stop dating. And also our favorite thing to do to make each other laugh would be to just randomly say something like, you know, in England they're known as Loris. They're Lori, not trucks.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes. Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, my gosh. Did Dave ever get wind of any of this?

[Corinne]

No. And I mean, he wouldn't have had this self awareness to, you know, suspect it. He thought everybody else was as impressed with him as he was. Did you ever have a clue?

[Luke Burbank]

It sounds like going back, this was a bit. This is sort of pre Facebook, but did you ever keep tabs on him? Do you ever hear what happened to old Dave?

[Corinne]

No, and I don't keep tabs on hardly anybody, but I could tell. I don't remember much at all about grad school. Seriously. This was like almost 40 years ago, but I could draw you a picture of his face. I remember the tone of his voice. He was. He was quite a Dave.

[Andrew Walsh]

Now, you don't think that he moved to Valley City, Ohio, at some point, do you? Because I don't think it's just littered with Daves. That's probably not one of ours.

[Corinne]

I'd like to think that he's living in England now and that, you know, maybe they're.

[Luke Burbank]

You know, I could see him moving over there, so that he is a novelty. You know what I mean? Kind of like. Although I don't know if the American. The novelty of being an American really works the way that the novelty of being somebody from somewhere else works in America. There's a lot of folks here who have an accent or have a different lived experience, and it's kind of cool. It's kind of exciting. I don't. Certainly not currently. I don't know. I don't know if everyone's jumping for joy when we show up somewhere else and try to, I don't know, tell them how it is back where we're from. Now I'm also hearing that you guys made a verb out of Dave's name. It caused me to feel a little insecurity because, you know, burbanking is definitely also a verb, and it's never. That went so well. You really burbanked it. It's more like you tried to make this joke into something even though nobody liked it. You know, like, this is like. That would be Burbanking, right? Yeah. So I feel like I'm. Unfortunately, I'm more Dave than Corinne. I'm a person who's. Who's done so much annoying stuff that people have made it a verb.

[Corinne]

But listen, Luke, you know, pulling a Corinne is sticking your foot in your mouth and saying something that was inadvertently rude, so.

[Andrew Walsh]

No, no, no. I mean, the weird thing about this Corinne is I famously have very thick skin. This was just like a once in a lifetime where I had a little bit of a thin skin moment. You happened to catch me in the act, that's all.

[Corinne]

Yeah, Andrew, listen. But I. I can't believe I'm doing this because I'm gonna have to play it for my. My husband. But I live with an Andrew. Okay? And in fact, he is. I've told him this. He's more Andrew than you are. Yeah, yeah. And so I. I get that. And yeah, now you're. You're wonderful.

[Luke Burbank]

We think you're wonderful. Corinne. You're the best. We really appreciate you.

[Corinne]

All right, well, John and Luke, you're okay, too?

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, that's okay.

[John Sklaroff]

Yeah, that's. I'll take that.

[Luke Burbank]

We're just. We're just a couple of snacks over here. It's fine. That's. We're just here. We're just here to look pretty. Corinne, thank you so much for, again, being such a great friend of the show and for all you've done for us over the years. And we appreciate you and yeah, I promise you beef squashed with Andrew.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, absolutely. And I know I can count on your vote in 87.

[Luke Burbank]

That's right. That's right. Andrew for vice president. Love you too, Corinne.

[Andrew Walsh]

Bye, Corinne.

[Luke Burbank]

Bye. Bye. I just want to quickly work this in. Are you guys. Because I did have the. We had the perfect drop to set this up, which is. You have no idea how my body processes soup. I know we're going to Gandalf's today, but sometime in the next couple of days, I would love it if you all would accompany me to a restaurant in our neighborhood called Supermarket.

[Andrew Walsh]

Absolutely.

[Luke Burbank]

Which is something that I've been calling for for years in various cities in America. And it's harder to find than you would think. Forget the Seinfeld bit about the Soup Nazi or whatever. New York's a big city. I'm sure there are soup only restaurants, but I've never lived in a town that had a place that just said, we're just gonna make soup. And there is a place called Supermarket that's S o U P E R Supermarket around the corner from us that just does soups. And I am absolutely fascinated with this place. I'm so. This is like my dream restaurant.

[Andrew Walsh]

You know, I love soup. I mean, this sounds fantastic to me. Now I will say we're kind of here at the wrong time of the year. Now. I am, I am one of those people, though, who loves to have a big bowl of pho even on a hot day. And I know that that's a thing. I think it can.

[Caller/Guest]

Can.

[Andrew Walsh]

It can actually have a cooling effect on you, too. I haven't been sort of wandering around these smoky streets, nor have I Ohio City thinking like, oh, I would really love some clam chowder right now. But I mean, I definitely got to check this place out. My only concern, and I'm guessing you've done some recon and you can set me at ease here. But my only concern would be if it's one of those places where it's like, do you remember one of our bosses at American Public Media took us someplace where it's like, you stood in a line. You had to choose all the different elements of your super bowl, and it was like, a whole thing. Like, I just want to order a soup off of a menu. I'll have the.

[Luke Burbank]

What she's having.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'll have what she's had. I'll have the. The pea soup or the whatever. Like, I don't want to have to, like, build my own bowl.

[Luke Burbank]

It doesn't seem like a chipotle style. Fast, casual. You're building your. Looks like they make the soup in advance. It's got the ingredients. You eat the soup. I noticed. I didn't realize, Andrew, that that was. And again, I don't want to assume too much, but that whole, like, kind of going up and having to specify this but not that, but this is something that is kind of like, not your favorite experience, would you say? Because we were getting sandwiches the other day and we were at a counter like that, and part of it was we were kind of late, so they were closing down. But I think you ended up kind of foregoing that because. Was that just because we were late or because that. That way of interacting, of having to tell them a bunch of things is kind of like not your favorite.

[Andrew Walsh]

It kind of depends on the situation. Like, I love Chipotle, you know, like, I go there all the time, but I also always order the same thing. I'm not necessarily against that, but in this particular case, when you tell me there's a soup restaurant, I'm like, oh, that sounds good. I'll look at a menu and order some soup. I just. It would just be a different thing if it's kind of like that other one just had the one I'm talking about that I think our boss and maybe Nate or somebody took us to. It just seemed like there was too. It was too involved. It was like, more of an experience. And sometimes you just want to eat. Like, that's the experience.

[Luke Burbank]

They let you go down a water slide into the soup, which can be fun on a cold day.

[John Sklaroff]

Speaking of the menu, I was looking at the menu. You. I see you got pulled up. Luke, I do have a question, because there's several soups. There's a gazpacho. Hopefully it doesn't burn your mouth.

[Luke Burbank]

No. Well, it depends on if you're expecting it to be cold in its room temperature.

[Andrew Walsh]

Let me explain something.

[John Sklaroff]

I do have a body's on fire. And this is like, yes, I do have a serious question that this gets back to. What are words? Debate. Chili's on there. I Don't think of chili as soup. It's like more of a stew.

[Andrew Walsh]

They also have salads on there.

[Luke Burbank]

The reason that I think it's okay to put this in, the reason it's okay, I think to put it is because it is mostly liquid and it goes in a bowl. So I'm not saying it's a soup, but I'm saying it's like if I see this place and imagine it cold, I know we're here the wrong time of year. A frigid January day in Ohio City in that neighborhood of Cleveland, and you go in there and it's just all these different soups and they're simmering and there's a chili in there. I'm not mad at that.

[John Sklaroff]

But like, what if it was a stew?

[Luke Burbank]

Fine.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, that's fine.

[Luke Burbank]

Liquid in a bowl. Liquid in a bowl.

[John Sklaroff]

I'm not mad about being there. I guess I'm just concerned about, like, why are we defining a soup?

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, I have a question for you. Maybe this is a good call in question for the listeners as well. Is hot dog a soup?

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. Is bowling a hot dog?

[Andrew Walsh]

A bowl of hot dogs.

[Luke Burbank]

We've got, we've got the vegan gumbo soup. We've got the jambalaya soup. We've got the chicken paprikash.

[Andrew Walsh]

Ooh, the jambalaya sounds very. So hungry.

[Luke Burbank]

You want to know something strange about my, about my lapsed, my slightly lapsed vegetarianism, which is to say I definitely, in the last couple of years, I went from having meat, maybe at Thanksgiving, maybe a steak here, like maybe twice a year to like probably maybe four times a year now, which is roughly doubling of that. I am for some reason, if it's a soup, if it's like a chicken noodle soup, like, I'll get the, you know, the Lipton packets. That's technically, there's chicken in there. It's like freeze dried and weird and you almost kind of don't want to eat it. But I will use those. Which is not vegetarian. That's just. And if there was a soup that was somehow had a little bit of, I probably wouldn't go for like ham, split pea and ham. But if there was a chicken noodle soup, and again, I'm the guy saying like a chicken stared into my soul on the freeway, I probably wouldn't order, you know, chicken tenders or something. Typically, somehow if it's in a soup kind of. I know this is illogical, but it kind of feels a little like for me a less of a violation of my rules.

[Andrew Walsh]

I don't think this is what you're getting at here, but there is something about making, like, chicken stock or turkey stock, which is something that is obviously close to my heart. I like doing that. Pardon me. I will save chicken bones and carcasses and what have you. And I'm probably gonna have to stop and cough here in a moment, but there is something nice knowing that. Boy, you are really doing your best to use every part of the chicken. Not to be cliche about it, but, like, you're literally. Because we know that, like, you know, the organs can be used for certain things. You're. You're eating the. You're eating the meat, but then when you actually are taking the bones or even just the carcass or whatever, and you're like, we are going to boil this or simmer this for so long that we're taking the essence out of it, like, you can truly make an argument for, like, a soup, a chicken soup, being like, well, at least it's like, it's, you know, relatively responsible.

[John Sklaroff]

And I'd also say, like, I can only speak for myself as a carnivore or like an omnivore. Like, I. Luke, the way you. You approach your food consumption, there is a. You have a stronger morality. I don't know if that's the right attempt, but the fact that you, like, will seriously sit there and consider and think about these things, whereas I'll just. And I'll, you know, don't tell. Don't tell Wes or ever. And I don't think it's, like, I'm not judging myself for this, but, like, I'll. I'll just grab a burger and not think about it, you know, And I. And I. I do think you just. The fact that you're having these thoughts and considering it, that is like. That is a thoughtful thing that most people, myself included, just don't have that thought. So I think that if you're trying to feel better about it, you know, thanks, John.

[Luke Burbank]

I've always thought that about myself.

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah,

[John Sklaroff]

mom, that's how you do it.

[Luke Burbank]

And I can. What I can tell you is I have. I can't think of a time in the last three to four years that I have eaten more poorly than this week. Did you see my candy stash? Our main. We have this big grocery store around the corner. Actually, Andrew went there this morning and got some real food. But, like.

[John Sklaroff]

And we are out of coffee.

[Luke Burbank]

We've mostly been. I feel like I've mostly been existing on food from this one gas station.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes.

[Caller/Guest]

That we started.

[Luke Burbank]

It's a marathon we started going to. And like last night on the way home from the Zoom, I said, can we please stop at our gas station? I bought like two king size Reese's Peanut Butter cup packets. Two packets of donuts. Donuts. Like little, you know, a couple of other things. Just like.

[Andrew Walsh]

You didn't eat any of it though, have you?

[Luke Burbank]

I ate most of it.

[Andrew Walsh]

Really.

[Luke Burbank]

I ate a pack of donuts this morning. I ate three of the Reese's Peanut butter cups last night. I mean, just. And. But that leaves me still an entire unopened king size and one more cup. Like I have been eating these lifesaver gummy things every morning. Like I have been eating like absolute garbage food this whole week and I am loving it.

[John Sklaroff]

I had about half a bag of that big bag of Swedish fish that I bought last time.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, I ate some of your Swedish fish morning too.

[Corinne]

Sorry.

[John Sklaroff]

No, no, no, please do. I had like half that bag and it's like the big bag.

[Luke Burbank]

So I mean.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, we had a lot of. We had a lot of salad at my parents house yesterday that was delicious. And they promised us that they washed the lettuce three times. Right.

[Luke Burbank]

I told you guys this at the Airbnb. I had. And I'll spare the details, I had a brief moment this morning where I really thought that the. What's it called? Cyclocyclo spiralysis.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, close.

[Luke Burbank]

Was coming for me. It was post jog, it was Andrew, you and I were talking and all of a sudden I had a sensation that told me I needed to head on up.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, I didn't realize I was. I was there for the beginning of that.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, I'm subtle about these things. I didn't let on, you know, always keep them guessing. I went upstairs to the bathroom that I'm mostly using. And while I was kind of working through that process, I started to feel like I was going to throw up. And it was really having one of those moments of kind of like, which end is this coming out of? I did not throw up our question, thankfully. But in that moment, which lasted for about four minutes, where it was kind of like I had the strong sensation of like I might vomit here. Which passed. I didn't vomit. Everything's fine. I've been feeling great since then. I was like, I can't believe that I got this thing on the worst week ever for me to get this thing. And I was mad at myself for eating unwashed veggies. But it passed and Everything was fine. Do you guys think you could spell vinaigrette?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I think it's vinegar. Than E, T, T, E on the end of it.

[Luke Burbank]

That's what I've been thinking, but that ain't it.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, is this like one of those restaurateur things?

[Luke Burbank]

It's very close to it. Because when I was looking at. By the way, today. Welcome to Word day on tbtl. This is where we spend the whole.

[John Sklaroff]

It's.

[Luke Burbank]

We have away with words, I think on this program. Good name. I'm at the supermarket. The supermarket's website. This super restaurant, which I'll mention. I believe they have five locations. So if you're looking for a concept for your new restaurant, consider all the soup. Although they do have sandwiches, which they list under not liquid, which is kind of. Which is actually kind of a funny name.

[John Sklaroff]

But the sandwich is only, like, grilled cheese to go with, like, a tomato soup.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, they're all adjacent.

[John Sklaroff]

Yeah. I really respect that.

[Luke Burbank]

But they. They make their own vinaigrette dressing, and they've got a whole tab for it. And I was like, someone's got to let them know they are misspelling vinaigrette. And then I looked it up, and that's how you spell it. It is not. It seems like it should be vinegar, but vinegar is spelled V, I, N, E, G, A, R. And vinaigrette is V, I, N, A, I.

[Andrew Walsh]

Why?

[Luke Burbank]

Ask Napoleon. Ask Corinne. Ask Napoleon. That's a weird. I did not understand. I did not see that coming. And why. It's French. As people probably already vinaigrette. Oh, well, come on. Don't ask that guy any questions. That guy's. That guy's gonna be absolutely no help

[John Sklaroff]

how he pronounces vinegar.

[Andrew Walsh]

That guy's from Ohio. He just went to French France once.

[Luke Burbank]

Exactly. He's daving so hard.

[Andrew Walsh]

Stop daving.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay. I wanted to just. So we're all on board with trying to get to supermarket at some point.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, maybe that could be a tomorrow thing.

[Luke Burbank]

Excellent. And then let's see. Do we want to do another call before the blues days or slide right into the.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, let's see here. We don't have any calls, so let's go ahead and do the blurs days. And if anybody does want to call during the blurs days, you can do that at 206-418-285. That's 206-414-TBTL. But before we do that, let's do this.

[Luke Burbank]

There's a right way to rock and wrong Way to roll. You can just listen to your song. Just remember that life is number one. You can be having so much fun.

[Andrew Walsh]

Just remember that life is much fun.

[Luke Burbank]

You can be nothing number one.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's the best part. Okay, listen, I have two people I want to start with and I don't know who to start with, but I'm going to start with this person. Somebody who's very near and dear to our heart. Somebody who we are celebrating our one year relationship with this week.

[Corinne]

Ooh.

[Andrew Walsh]

Happy goldenest blursiest blursday to our friend Harriet in Friendship, Wisconsin. She. We met her last year when we were doing the THON in Friendship, Wisconsin. She became a listener of tbtl. I don't think she has missed an episode.

[Luke Burbank]

Incredible year.

[Andrew Walsh]

Which is really incredible. And she's turning 79 today. Happy Thursday to Harry Blursday. You are the absolute best. Thanks for being our friend.

[Luke Burbank]

Harriet needs to write a book about staying active at all ages of life because remember when we were making our way back from. What was it called?

[John Sklaroff]

It's five o' Clock Somewhere.

[Luke Burbank]

Five O' Clock Somewhere, that bar that we came to adopt as our local watering hole in friendship. And it was the end of the night. This is after our little get together at the picnic shelter. And Harriet said, yeah, well, let's all walk back to my place. You guys can kind of walk me. It's a couple of blocks, I believe it was roughly 12 miles.

[Andrew Walsh]

It was 12 and a half.

[Luke Burbank]

And Harriet was leading the pack. Showed no signs of slowing down. And it just one of the most vibrant, you know, engaged with life people that we know. And what a cool thing that we got to emerge from our time in friendship as friends with Harriet. So happy birthday, buddy.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, go, go. Bend the elbow at five o' clock Somewhere. Put some.

[Luke Burbank]

I get the feeling Harriet was just humoring us. I think Harriet was nursing a glass of chardonnay, maybe throughout the course of the night.

[Andrew Walsh]

I think she can put it back.

[Luke Burbank]

I think Harriet's got healthier habits than we do.

[Andrew Walsh]

Happy blursday.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, happy blursday, buddy.

[Andrew Walsh]

The second person I want to wish Happy Blurs day to is our friend Max in Seattle. You caught a stray earlier. I was just teasing, but I knew you'd be coming up later in the show, Max. And Max and I have been sidebarring. That's kind of an industry term for when we're having a conversation that doesn't include you guys. Max may be making a special appearance in this week week's TBTL newsletter. You can sign up for that.

[Luke Burbank]

I thought he changed his flight because I was talking to Max at the baggage claim. Hopkins on. On Sunday.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, It'd been nice to see you here, but Max is a good friend. And Max in Seattle says if you could shout out my dad, ERNIE on his 76th birthday, that'd be pretty double cool.

[Luke Burbank]

Heck, yeah.

[Andrew Walsh]

He thought the idea of you returning here and doing a week of shows from your grade school was pretty hilarious. Happy birthday to. To Ernie, from our friend Max in Seattle. And thanks again, Max, for everything you do for tbtl. Look at this. Happy birthday to Julie in Lake Stevens from Howard in Albuquerque.

[Luke Burbank]

I think we saw Howard in Albuquerque on the Zoom last night. Unless we've got two Howards in Albuquerque.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay, well, that's a pretty.

[Luke Burbank]

That's a unique name. And that's a unique place.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, Howard is wishing Julian Lake Stevens a happy birthday.

[Luke Burbank]

Focus up.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes. Another trip around the sun, says Howard. Another year of fierce competition over the New York Times puzzle pages.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, my gosh, you guys. Have you not.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's all happening.

[John Sklaroff]

You don't believe in that.

[Luke Burbank]

Have you not gotten the memo? The words mean nothing.

[Andrew Walsh]

Fortunately, there's no record of our plans to engineer the downfall of the Connections puzzle editor, who obviously has a sadistic streak a mile wide.

[Luke Burbank]

This has been the perfect episode for Julie and Howard, I think.

[Andrew Walsh]

Are we sure that Howard just doesn't know what words mean? I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. We met at an.

[Luke Burbank]

It's not too late to up your donation, Corrine.

[Andrew Walsh]

We met at an Everett 10's meetup and have remained friends despite, or perhaps thanks to my relocation to the desert Southwest. Thanks for the bright spots on so many days. Well, thanks to both of you. And happy blurs day to Julie and great to hear hear from you, Howard. How about this? Another happy blursday. To Ken. Cheers. To another year of loving the Pacific Northwest. May your year be filled with Oregon coast videos and other tales that pique your interest. Ooh, how many letters is in peak? P, I, Q, U, E. That would be a great wordle word. That'd be a great wordle word.

[Luke Burbank]

Maybe I'll start playing wordle and I'll jump on the wordle chain.

[Andrew Walsh]

Use that every single time you can. You're invited. And thank you to TBTL for being a window into the Pacific Northwest. Love, Chris and Kathy. And that's to Ken.

[Luke Burbank]

Aw, sweet.

[Andrew Walsh]

Another long list today. A couple more to go, including this one from our friend Nikki and Wooster, who we met last night. That's Worcester Ohio. And I believe we'll be seeing Nikki at the Valley City Frog Jump Festival this Sunday. We haven't given out the timing on that. I think the festival starts at 10:30 in the morning. We don't know exactly when we'll be jumping our frogs.

[Luke Burbank]

I've got a little clarity on this.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. Okay, so give it out.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes. I think this is what it's looking like. So the frog jump festival, as Andrew mentioned, I think there's some sort of celebration. They've got a new giant frog they just put in this year that is enormous and is now in place. It was used a big crane. It's now going to be. It's in its permanent home. This giant fiberglass or whatever, it's made out of frog. There's gonna be like a dedication ceremony for that or something. And the kickoff of the whole thing at I think it may be 10 in the morning, 10:30 maybe. Then they start the flights, which is just the different rounds of frog jump. So it'll be different people. Some people bring their own frogs. Some people can borrow a frog or rent a frog. And then you put the frog in the middle of this kind of big parachute kind of a thing and then it hops and then you pick it up and then they take it back to the lake or you take it back to wherever it's from and they figure out who has the longest hop of any frog in that round. And then that person gets a little trophy. And then I don't know if everybody. If there's a hop off at the end or if it's just you won your flight. But here's the thing. It's gonna be going for a good portion of the day. I am thinking our frog thing is gonna be around 1pm That's. That's what. What I'm trying to negotiate with. And I don't even know if you're technically allowed to do this, but you know, we're pretty big wheel down at the cracker factory. So we're trying to get placed in around 1pm so if you are in the area and you're coming out, that's just when our. That's when Dave is going to hop. Whichever Dave seems most up to the task.

[Corinne]

Dave.

[Luke Burbank]

And then after that, you know, we're just going to be kind of hanging out. There's food, you know, for sale. There's all kinds of like little food trucks and things and fun stuff to do. Face painting. The. I think there's a little area which we haven't actually got Eyes on yet, but there might be a little area that's kind of set aside for the. For the tens to hang out and we'll just be. Just be hanging out and chilling until I think about 5 when the thing is over.

[Andrew Walsh]

I love that.

[Luke Burbank]

So it's loose. I know, but that's the plan for Sunday.

[Andrew Walsh]

Just come and go, come and go. We'll be here. I got some family and friends who we're gonna be visiting as well. And like you said, Luke, you'll be shooting some CBS stuff which will be fun to watch. So yeah, come on out to the Valley and you can just google very easily the Valley City Frog Jump Festival for more details on where to be. Is that me? That's. Oh, look what's happening. We're getting calls on the TBTL voicemail line. I'll go ahead and answer this and then we're gonna go ahead and put them on hold for a second here. We're doing this. This is how the blurs days work when we're live.

[Luke Burbank]

I wish could see this. Andrew is work, is working. He's working, working like multiple tabs.

[Andrew Walsh]

Look at this, look at this. I'm like an octopus.

[Luke Burbank]

It's in a flow state. The game is slowing down for him right now. He's got the blurs days on one page. He's got calls coming in.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hey, do you remember Nikki and Worcester, by the way? Forget now is this is okay? What is happening?

[Luke Burbank]

How one of the tabs. One of the tabs has an open. Has an open speaker on it.

[Andrew Walsh]

I thought I had this person muted. What's going on here? I'm not seeing any tabs that should be making any noise, but I'll close that.

[Caller/Guest]

There you go.

[Andrew Walsh]

I think we're okay. Nice.

[Luke Burbank]

All right, everybody. Hey Nikki.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hey, Nikki. Hey, Nikki in Worcester. She wanted to say something. Happy birthday to my dear friend and fellow 10 Caitlin in Eagle, Idaho. It's time for our yearly tradition where I get to blurs you back. Hope you had a fun filled birthday. Maybe next year will be a good time to get the dude, the Duke gang back together.

[Luke Burbank]

Miss you. Are these Duke people?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. Ooh la la.

[Luke Burbank]

Are these Dukeys? Blue Devils?

[Andrew Walsh]

Blue Devils indeed.

[Luke Burbank]

Boy, that's a heck of a school.

[Andrew Walsh]

It really is. Well, happy blursday, Caitlin. Is Duke still the like kind of top of the pops when it comes to basketball?

[Luke Burbank]

I think in college basketball it's still regularly up there. Although, you know, it's interesting with all the nil stuff and everything else. College sports in general have, have Changed, you know, in a pretty drastic way. But I think Duke is still putting together very, very good basketball teams, both the men's and women's teams.

[John Sklaroff]

Typically, I don't think they've won the championship if years, but, you know, they had a player go third overall in the draft this last year, Cooper Flag, the kid that went first last year. So they're definitely getting. Attracting a lot of the top talent, at least on the men's side, for sure.

[Andrew Walsh]

I thought Cooper Flag was a football player.

[Luke Burbank]

Cooper Flag is playing a lot better than I thought he was gonna play. I just thought. I just thought he was gonna be, I don't know, kind of a power sort of, you know, serviceable power forward. But, boy, he's sort of as advertised.

[John Sklaroff]

Yeah, he really is playing more point forward. Really has the ball. Okay, this is not the segment for it.

[Caller/Guest]

Sorry.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's okay. This is the padding it out here. We love this. This is. This is what the Blurses are all about. And I'm just having the thought, too.

[Luke Burbank]

I can tell you this. If Nikki and her friends are Duke Blue Devils, they love super serving. They love basketball talk.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's a good point.

[John Sklaroff]

That's a really good point.

[Andrew Walsh]

And if Nikki and Kaitlin both went to Duke, then they're Double Dukes.

[Luke Burbank]

Dukes. Double Dukes.

[Andrew Walsh]

All right, one more here. And this is from Kelly in Belltown who says happy birthday to my dad, Russ. I know Russ. Russ is a buddy. Russ, who truly does appreciate clouds and sunsets more than the rest. Here's to many more with friends and family. That's from our friend Kelly to our pal Russ, who showed up, by the way, for the book event on the east side back in Bellevue.

[Luke Burbank]

Cute.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, did I. Sorry, I had your volume down, Luke. Double Dukes. But don't ever touch my board again. Happy Blurs, everybody. Sorry about that. I don't know how you got down there.

[Luke Burbank]

You've got a lot going on, my friend, and you did it admirably. Happy Blurs day, everybody.

[Andrew Walsh]

Absolutely.

[Luke Burbank]

Thanks for sending in the messages and thanks for being born. Thanks for existing.

[Andrew Walsh]

Exactly. Should we take this caller?

[Luke Burbank]

Let's do it. Let's go ahead and take one call as we're heading out the door on this. This is the penultimate day of the thaw. I cannot believe it. Hello, welcome to tbtl.

[Caller/Guest]

Hello, this is Ken from Michigan. Ken.

[Luke Burbank]

Hey, Ken. We had another Ken getting a birthday shout out. And I'm going to be honest, Ken, I thought it was going to be you, maybe. We've got multiple Kens listening. Did you know this.

[Caller/Guest]

I did not. But my birthday was in June, so that was not me. Okay.

[Luke Burbank]

Are you okay with us having more than one listener named Ken?

[Caller/Guest]

Yes.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay.

[Caller/Guest]

You can have up to 10.

[Luke Burbank]

Up to 10. That's the. What do you think, Ken? I know you're a college basketball guy. How's Duke been doing lately?

[Caller/Guest]

Well, they did beat Michigan last year, but Michigan won the championship, so.

[Luke Burbank]

They sure did.

[Caller/Guest]

We had the better year.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, that's. That's the main way they measure it.

[Caller/Guest]

This is true.

[Luke Burbank]

How you been, man?

[Caller/Guest]

Pretty good. So I did just quit my job, like, last Monday.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, boy.

[Caller/Guest]

But I still plan on donating, maybe a less amount.

[Luke Burbank]

Please do. What? If at all, my friend. If at all. Like, don't. Don't you worry about. Don't you worry about your old TBTL buddies. Can I ask.

[Caller/Guest]

Ask.

[Luke Burbank]

Without getting too much into the, I don't know, details of the work thing, when you say quit on a Friday, was it one of those things where you, on that Friday said, I just can't take it anymore, or did you put in a notice?

[Caller/Guest]

I was actually on a Monday, but I. No, it was a disagreement, and I had been, like, sick of, like, there have been issues with work for a while.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, I'm sorry. Was that super stressful, or was it kind of, like, were you. Were you feeling stressed, or were you feeling kind of relieved when you, like, walked out of the building?

[Caller/Guest]

A little bit of both.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. I've. Like, I've said on the show before that there are jobs that I've taken just so I can quit them. Because if it's, you know, it depends on, of course, where you are in your life and your career and all that, but, like, you're talking about, like, when I was 20 and I quit Storables extra space. That was. That was a feeling of liberation I've never had before. It might be different if I was a little older.

[Andrew Walsh]

I believe you gave your boss a quarter.

[Luke Burbank]

I do. I do think I did that. On the way out, did you consider giving your boss a quarter, Ken, as you quit this job?

[Caller/Guest]

I. I did not. I have been working there for 21 years.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, my God.

[Caller/Guest]

My only job, so.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, well, that's a big life thing, Ken. I hope you're doing okay, man.

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah, it's. Yeah, I have some money saved, so I should be good for a while, but. Okay, well, you, like, obviously, I need a job eventually.

[Andrew Walsh]

Do you know how to run an audio board during a blurs day segment?

[Caller/Guest]

I do not.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay, sounds good. Because we Might have an opening.

[Luke Burbank]

I like that you're honest about your skills. You're not lying in this interview about what you can do Harden. Is there a kind of. Ken, is there an industry or anything that's interesting to you? Like this might be a chance after 21 years and kind of the main job you've had to pivot to go try something else? Is there anything that you find intriguing?

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah, well, I was working in a warehouse and like, I'm 65 and like, being on cement floors, like, like my legs were starting to feel it. So that was another reason I was looking to get out of the warehouse eventually anyways.

[Luke Burbank]

Maybe like work at a ball pit or something that's just kind of more cushioned. Something that's less.

[Caller/Guest]

Maybe something that involves a chair some of the time.

[Luke Burbank]

I would, as Mr. Burns said, chairs. The great leveler. I am so into sitting and I know that like, supposedly sitting is bad for us and maybe it actually is, et cetera, but it's. Even when I'm hanging out with Andrew and John on this trip, Ken, anytime we're talking to somebody, we're like, maybe in some part of this building or whatever, we're having a chat with someone. I'm not sure how long it's gonna go. I am eyeing what is the surface that I can be sitting on while this conversation is happening. So. So I really, really look forward to you having a job where there's more sitting involved.

[Caller/Guest]

Me, sir?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Anything else you wanted to talk about here on this Thursday, Ken?

[Andrew Walsh]

You know any Daves?

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah, actually, Dave Bledsoe from New York. I've been on Facebook, friends with him forever. Yeah, he's just very entertaining on Facebook. And I like, just. He's like post something like every few days and it's always entertaining me.

[Luke Burbank]

He's got a podcast that he does as well.

[Caller/Guest]

Right.

[Luke Burbank]

He's been doing for a long time

[Andrew Walsh]

called the Hell Podcast. I think it's very close. Oh, what the Hell? Podcast?

[John Sklaroff]

Yeah, I believe so.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, okay.

[Luke Burbank]

Ken, do you know what the name of Dave's podcast is?

[Caller/Guest]

I actually have not listened to that one.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay, well, Dave, we're going to have to get on that SEO, my friend. But yeah, we love Dave Bledsoe. He's a longtime friend of the program.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, yeah, I think it's called what the Hell Were youe Thinking? You were right, John. Yeah, so that's. If you wanna check that out. Shout out to Dave Bledsoe, one of the best Daves. And there are a lot of good

[Luke Burbank]

Daves and they're growing. I mean, we've added three Daves to the family just this week.

[Corinne]

Dave.

[Luke Burbank]

But they're in a terrarium right now.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right.

[Luke Burbank]

Speaking of which, one of the Daves, he's on. If you could see this. If you go to tbtl.net he is on the big rock and he is just absolutely laser focused on the camera.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

You guys see, he's posing. He is staring. If you go to the Dave cam, he's gonna stare right into your soul because he is really, really paying attention to the camera right now.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, nice.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, Ken, I really wish you the absolute best with your future. And, you know, I know that you're gonna. You're gonna. I was gonna say land on your feet, but we're kind of going for the opposite of that right now. I know you're gonna land on your rump sitting in a chair somewhere comfortably.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right.

[Luke Burbank]

When the time is right for you. But I know in the interim, you will have Michigan Sports to keep you occupied until you rejoin the workforce.

[Corinne]

And.

[John Sklaroff]

And Ken, please shoot me in.

[Caller/Guest]

I'll probably see you guys on Sunday.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, you're coming down?

[Luke Burbank]

Really? How far. How far are we from you? Give or take?

[Caller/Guest]

It's like two hours. I'd have to double.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay. All right, so that's going to a

[Caller/Guest]

birthday party on Saturday. So I still, like, have to see for sure, but I think I'll be able to make it.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay, awesome. Well, we reserve a chair for you.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, we hope to see you, but if. If it doesn't work out, Ken, no pressure. Okay, buddy? But maybe we'll see you on Sunday.

[Caller/Guest]

Okay, awesome.

[Andrew Walsh]

All right, man.

[Luke Burbank]

Good to talk to you.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, great to talk to you and good luck with everything, man. We'll talk to you soon.

[Luke Burbank]

All right, well, I think that's going to wrap things up on this Thursday again. I cannot believe that tomorrow will be the final show. I know from Valley City. Well, that's actually not true. It's the final THON show. But we are gonna be recording on Sunday a special episode of the program. This is actually very exciting. It's gonna be taking you all through our day of participating in the Valley City frog jump. And that is going to actually be the Monday episode of tbtl because we are gonna be on airplanes flying back to our various residences. And so that's how we're going to give you some entertainment on Monday. So there is going to be one more show after tomorrow from Valley City, Ohio, but it's going to be kind of a special. A special program. So anyway, hey, thank you everyone for listening today. Thanks for being part of tbtl. Thanks you. Thank you again to everybody who's been donating and commenting and jumping on the Facebook and the Stens page and all these different places and just making us feel loved. We really do appreciate it. You know, I think we've all been starting to get a little catch in our throat. I think the smoke.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes, absolutely.

[Luke Burbank]

I think the smoke is making its way into the Liverpool Township Community Center.

[John Sklaroff]

Anticipation of Gandalf's.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, I am so hungry. Yeah, I'm gonna order everything on the Gandalf's menu.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, Gandalf's. I thought you were gonna turn my computer.

[Andrew Walsh]

Another $5,000 right there every time you play it.

[Luke Burbank]

All right, thanks, everybody. We'll see you tomorrow. In the meantime, have day great a. Have a great Thursday. Stay out of the smoke and please remember, no mountain too tall.

[Andrew Walsh]

And good luck to all.

[Caller/Guest]

These.

[Andrew Walsh]

There are comfortable chairs.

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, yes.

[Andrew Walsh]

Sitting.

[Luke Burbank]

The great leveler. From the mightiest pharaoh to the lowliest peasant. Who doesn't enjoy a good sit?

[Corinne]

Power out.