The Morning Stream - TMS 2325: Dude, Where's my license?

Episode Date: July 28, 2022

Often there's nudity. Come to TMS Vegas, they might have frogs. Pounding Mozzarella for One. I don't like Lawn Enveeeeee. Half the debauchery is gone. Somewhere down the lazy river. Cirque du So butts. You get a Verbena and you get a Verbena and you get a Verbena. My lawn is a forever stamp. They call him Tomato Stew Jamie. Do you have green down there? What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas... due to poor Wifi. Everything's A Hammer with Amy. Handy Woo with Wendi and more on this episode of The Morning Stream. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Coming up on TMS, often there's nudity. Come to TMS Vegas. They might have frogs. Pounding mozzarella for one. I don't like lawn and v. Half the debauchery is gone. Somewhere down the lazy river. Cirque de so butts.

You get a verbena, and you get a verbena, and you get a verbena. My lawn is a forever stamp. They call him tomato stew jamie. Do you have green down there? What happens in Vegas, stays in. in Vegas due to poor Wi-Fi. Everything's a hammer with Amy. Handy Woo with Wendy and more on this episode of The Morning Stream.

That old ever-popular theme of rock and roll music, is it damaging the brains of the young people of America? Hey there, get your fingers off the film. That's better. The morning stream. Now gluten-free. Good morning and welcome to a gluten-free episode of the morning stream. For Thursday, July 28, 2022, I'm Scott Johnson, and Brian Nibit is joining us from beautiful downtown, Las Vegas, Nevada. Nope.

Not really downtown. Not downtown. Yeah. I mean, that whole place is. That whole place is like a downtown. Technically. That's true. The city is paradise.

That's right. You're in Paradise, Nevada. I'm in Paradise, Nevada. Clark County. On Las Vegas Boulevard. Yeah. It's Clark County. Enjoy your time there.

Actually, you're only there for another, what? You fly home tomorrow or tonight, or I can't remember. I fly home tonight. I'm here for another, let's see, about another 11 hours. Nice. My flight takes off a little after 7, about 715. And so almost exactly 11 hours. And I plan to get so much done in that time, Scott.

I was going to ask what kind of debauchery lies before you for the next 11 hours. Well, Chris Brown already took off. That's half the debauchery right there. That's half the debauchery, yes, exactly. No, my debauchery for the rest of this is probably going to the pool for a little bit after the show today. Yep. thing out there before you can cook an egg on the

sidewalk meeting Mitsula for lunch I don't know where we're going to go but he knows all the good places if he's picking yeah you're in good hands if he's picking where you're going to be fun I mean last time we went to that amazing noodle shop and you know what if he said let's go there again

I'd say okay that that was damn good yeah and then and then I don't know what else I've already went to the Marvel gift store because yeah I have to. What'd you get? Did you get anything cool?

To see what's new. Yeah, I'll show you. All right. I got an eye of Agamato keychain. Whoa. That's cool. You see that? Oh, yeah.

Is there, is inside of that a green stone or anything? Yeah, it's extra. The green stone is extra. You can't, you can't get that. But it's really cool. Like, it's in, like, got a hole in it and stuff. So I could probably pry it apart and put some sort of little LED or something in there. But I'm sure I would screw it up if I tried to do that.

That's awesome. Are you going to wear it? Are you going to just keep it somewhere? I'm going to put my key on it because I have one key that I use all the time, which is my car key, and I'll put it on this. Nice. Nice. Yeah. And then effectively doubling the amount of stuff I have to put in my pocket to drive somewhere.

That's true. Is it plastic or metal? It seems like it's made okay. No, it's metal. Oh, I kind of want it. Yeah Well, ASMR right there Yeah, yeah

Wait, is that the mic you're on? Tap that mic again I don't think I heard it Yeah, I don't hear it Yeah, you do Well, maybe you don't, but I still don't hear it It's weird, it might be cutting it out

Really? Yeah Oh, it's definitely cutting it out Because that was loud in my ears Oh I can get in here Oh, there you go Yeah, that's definitely you

Yeah, that's definitely me That's definitely the mic, yeah That's cool Well, you'll have to let us know how it went So far, how those things? Like, I'm sure there's stories. What's going on in Vegas? Good, yeah.

So yesterday, also went to the pool yesterday. I lasted there for probably an hour, 90 minutes maybe, because it was already up to 99 degrees. That's the highest I saw it crest on my watch. And came there, you know, basically got to the hotel from the airport. I paid for early check-in, so I didn't have to wait too long and my room was ready. came up, dropped everything off, changed into the swimming gear, and then headed down there. But by this time, it's already like 10, 30, you know, 11 o'clock. I'm thinking, well, all right, all of the cabana chairs or the beach chairs are going to be taken,

or the only ones that are going to be available are ones that are like nowhere near the lazy river, far away from the pool, just crap chairs left over. I go over to what I'd like to call is my favorite area. Like it's a curve on the lazy river where not a lot of people go. It's not in the super, you know, the Dupro area where everybody's like, you know, this with their sunglasses and they're like, you know, slicked back hair and stuff, Dupro Island. It's in this kind of tucked away corner that you kind of have to wind around to get to

and even go through a whole cut in the rock surface, the rock surface to get to. And as I'm coming around the corner, as I'm coming through the rock, there's a couple who are leaving, and I see them like taking all their towels and tossing them onto the ends of their beach chairs. I'm like, are you guys leaving?

They're like, yeah, here you go. They're yours, if you don't mind all of our wet towels on there. And I'm like, you know, I look, I look 10 feet beyond where they're going to be walking, and there's a dump your towels here, a bin, right? It's on the way out from where they're going to be walking. I'm like, no, it's fine, whatever. So I pick them all up, and I just kind of toss them to the side.

So they had two chairs. Of course, I only need one. So I plop my towel down on there. I've got a little locking thing, this little dude ad right here that I love. This thing is awesome. It's a little miniature safe. But what's cool is you can pop this cord out. Let's see if it'll work.

And keep your weed in there. You put your weed in here. You could put your weed in here. You pop this cord out and then connect it. And then it'll attach to a beach chair and lock. Oh, cool. I put my phone, my AirPods, and that sort of thing. So that if I want to get in the pool and lazy river and stuff,

then I can do so and not have to worry about somebody effing with my stuff. That's good. After your story about your green machine, I was concerned about other stuff. So this is good. And that's probably where it all comes from. It's my fear of having somebody effing with my shit because of the green machine. And I also bring down my ID because you need, you know, even if you are doing room charges, you need to prove you are who you are and they can't charge to your room without seeing some ID,

which is good. Sure. So I lock that all up, put my shield hat on, glass, sunglasses, relax. And a lady comes up and says, is this other chair taken? And I'm like, no, no, take it. It's all yours. And she's a mom. She's got her three young daughters there, and they're carrying their inner tubes, and

they're so excited to be at the pool. I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, take it, take it, it's all yours. So she starts, they start setting that up as their little home base. And she kind of hangs out there while the kids go on the lazy river. And we chat a little bit about, you know, she's just not getting any time to herself to enjoy herself because the kids, as soon as she's kind of in the lazy river relaxing, the kids want to go out and do something else. And then they're going to come back to do the Leaser River.

They have no, you know, it's all ADHD. So we're chatting and I'm like, yeah, no problem. And I said, I'm going to be right back. I'm going to go get a drink. So I go and I get one of those big fluffy frozen slushies with rum in it. Not the boot or the leg or whatever. It's just a cup. No, no.

It's just a plastic cup. Yeah, for $7 more, I could get a souvenir cup. And refills cost just buy another cup because there are no refills. basically nice nice it's like come on man if you're going to do the souvenir cup at least

do a refill for three quarters of the price or something yeah they just give you a discount I mean that's that that seems smart yeah but then again whatever they're already screwing you with resort fees and a thousand other things why not exactly exactly

so show you get my ID get my drink go back over to my area they're all gone there you know there I think they're all in the wave pool and stuff or the laser river. So I go and I put my stuff back in the safe. And then I sit back down. I'm like, okay, I think I'm getting sufficiently hot enough.

It's kind of getting unpleasant. Yeah. And so she comes back and I say, look, as soon as I finish my drink, I'm probably just going to head out. So if you come back and you don't see my t-shirt hanging on the top of this chair, it's all yours. I'm going to leave my towel so nobody else takes it. but um if that's okay and she's oh god yeah that'd be great yeah thanks so

it's nice it is so they take off again i start you know continue drinking and finish my drink and say all right yeah i'm going to take off so i take one of their inner tubes hang it on my chair take both of my wet gross towels that i've been laying on and toss them in the in the bin go over to the front area and get two fresh towels and lay them on the front of the chair for her and then unhook the lockbox grab my phone out of there because everything's via phone by the way like elevator to get it to your floor

you have to you have to RFID oh it's all phones now interesting yeah yeah no card you can still you can still get a card if you want a card but if you want to do all if you want to do a touchless thing I didn't I haven't talked to a single bell desk or well that's not true and I guess you'll explain why but I didn't I

didn't have to check in with a person. I checked in online. They told me when my room was ready. They forwarded the key to my phone. I went up the elevator, got to my room and never checked in. Never went to a person. That's really cool. I like that. Which is kind of cool. Yeah. So I'm going to grab all my stuff and then head out. Get back up to the room, shower, change. And I'm kind of getting recombulated, open up the safe to grab my AirPods and my driver's license out of there. And there's no airport. pods, but where the hell is my driver's license? No, no.

And by the way, by the way, prior to this, my phone was doing the, it's too hot for me to operate right now, wait until I'm cooler and then try and use me. Oh, no. It's like a little picture of a thermostat. So I'm like, well, this kind of sucks. Do I have to go to the front, just to go up the elevator, just to get to my floor, do I have to go to the front desk and get a key? Climate change takes another victim, Brian's phone.

Yes, exactly. Damn. So I get to, did they open up the safe? Where's my driver's license? Crap. So I check my swimsuit pockets. Did I put it in there after I got the drink?

No. Did I put it in the bag that I took down there? Oh, there's a front pocket in the bag. Did I put it in there? Did I put it in there? Because my phone was in there for a while. Sure. No.

And I do remember, at times, because of the heat, my ID sticking to the case of my phone, the plastic case of my phone. Sure. Is it stuck there? Is it somewhere else? I'm like, oh, crap, okay. It is not in the room.

My mind's like, all right, do I need to go to Clark County, city and county building and somehow get a temporary ID until I can have a new one made in Colorado? Am I stuck driving back with Chris Brown at this point? No! Like, am I not going to get my return flight and the points that I scheduled this whole damn trip to do? Oh, my God.

So I called down the front desk. I say, hey, do you have a lost and found? They're like, oh, you have to fill out this form, and then you can call and follow up on the form. I'm like, really? So I go to this website, the MGM lost and found. I guess people lose crap so much here that they just need to do this electronically. Sure. So I start filling out the form on my phone.

It's like, this sucks, completely sucks. I'm going to retrace my steps from the elevator. all the way back to the pool where I was sitting and see if I can find it along the way. Oh, I did get a hold of a person that called Lost and Found. They said nobody's turned it in. So I was like, okay, great. I'm going to retrace the steps. Sure, sure.

So I start making my way through the MGM Grand. I stop at the bathroom that I went to on the way back from the pool, nothing by the urinal, gross. And then I start making, you know, continuing down to the pool. And I get to the pool area, show them my ID or my phone thing to say it, show them. prove that I'm a guest here. And I said, you know what? Do you guys have a lust and found here? And she says, oh, yeah, it's right over there. So I go over there. I say, lost my driver's license here at the, I may be here at the pool. Did anyone turn it in? She asks my state. I tell her my state, she says, oh, what's your name? I said, Brian Edith. She's like, yes, we have it right here.

Somebody turned it in. Oh. My guess is that the lady with the three kids found it. Like, You probably fell out while I was, you know, getting all my stuff together to get out of there. She found it. And because I was nice and gave her the chair and chatted with her, you know, she probably took it herself up to Lost and Founds. Somebody else might have done it. I could be reading too much into a book. That is some instant karma, dude. That's what that is.

That's exactly what I'm thinking it is. It's instant karma of like, oh, he gave me fresh towels. He did this. I'm totally going to take this up myself and make sure that Lost and Found gets it. because she could have easily just left it on the chair. That's what somebody would do, be like, oh, ID, they're probably sitting here. I'll just leave it on the chair. Yeah, that's what I would have thought of.

But since you kind of told her what you were doing, she probably keyed in on that. And also, I could see somebody in Vegas going, was this all a ruse to get me to, like, go find him and return his card? And now I have to, like, hang out in his room. And then before you're not, you know, like, I could see somebody being fearful of that. But I'm glad that didn't go down that way. And I'm really happy that you got your thing back. Because what you described was making me stressful right now. Like, yeah, yeah.

That's how I felt for about 30 minutes. That feeling your feeling was about 30 minutes of like, crap. Like so much stuff that you do here in Vegas requires your ID, let alone checking in for your flight going through TSA. Man. And it would just keep piling into my head like, oh, right, that. Oh, shoot, I need idea for that. Oh, no.

what about that? Like, I would be, I'd be losing my freaking mind. Yeah, exactly. But, uh, no, all worked out. And that, that seat I had was fantastic. Basically, it was right in the area I like, I could slide off the front of my chair into the lazy river if I wanted to. I didn't do it because I'd hit people. The thing was that, you know, you'd get these clusters of people in the lazy river, like, um, bottleneck clogs of people. And they were moving slower than their lazy. River. They were lazier than the lazy river, these clugs of people, because they're all jammed in together and it's like, like a shuffling zombies, that sort of thing. So you'd find these nice little

pockets where there's nobody and I could pop in there and not have to deal with all, you know, hit splashing or clusters. So you were like, it's like crazy traffic and you're shooting the gap trying to find a little hole in there. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Wow. I don't know if I could I don't, just the idea of being cluster effed in a big pile of tubes who can't move very fast. That sounds terrible. Yeah, no, I don't, I do not, do not want, sir, do not want. No. Wow.

Let's see what else. So, went to this place last night called Super Freakow. And anybody who's been following me on Twitter, seeing my post last night knows about like this weird, like, here's the, here's the story of the restaurant. So it's a, it's one of these Spiegel World joints. Spiegel World is the company that puts on absinth. They have another show at the Cosmopolitan called Opium. They have a third show at Planet Hollywood, I think, called Electric Cowboy.

And it's more like a country version of their stuff. But their deal is that they are a raunchier circta solace. Okay. There's, you know, often there's nudity. There's many, many exposed butt cheeks in their shows. There's subtle, duttle, duttable entendres, but there's also, like, very blatant, crass humor and that sort of thing. Sure.

But the show, but both of the shows, opium and absent, those are the two I've seen, fan-freaking-tastic. And I would say, if you're coming to Vegas, do one of those way before you do any of the Cirque shows. The Cirque shows are great, but the Spiegel rule shows are something above and beyond. Interesting. Now, opium at the cosmopolitan up there by the Wicked Spoon buffet

and then there's this little restaurant bar space right next to it and it used to be a place called Rose Rabbit Line, really expensive place, unaffiliated with Spiegel World but had like magicians and entertainers and stuff in there while you're eating your food or while you're drinking. That got closed down and then the Spiegel World guy said, well, we'll take that space and put a really cool bar in there and between acts the opium performers can come over to the bar and restaurant and do stuff there

and then they'll go back over and do their next act over at opium which is like oh wow you think these people would want to like oh i just did all these crazy acrobatics now i want to sit down for another half an hour before i have to go out there again no they're like they come on over and that's exactly what this place is incredibly the best tequila-based cocktail i've ever had it had and orange and bitters, and it was savory and sweet at the same time. It was hands down the best tequila cocktail I've ever had. Wow. Wow.

We've had a few of those, so you'd know. I've had quite a few. And then I had like a whiskey. I really did kind of like, I went down the menu with all of the bartender's recommendations. He and I were chatting the whole time. And all right, what do I want to try now? He's like, do the, this whiskey drink. It's like you smell the smoke, but then you taste it, and there's no smoke taste to it.

It's all in the, before you take a drink. I'm like, oh, this sounds great. And it was fantastic. Like, everything he had me try was incredible. Nice. Do you remember his name? What was his name? What was his name?

What was that guy's name? His name was Ricky. See, this is good. That was a test to see how truly friendly Brian was being, and he truly was. He got the guy's name. Or how truly drunk I was, yeah. No, but he was super nice. So, um, uh, so, you know, I'm sitting there drinking and, and then I have some, uh, anzino peccata.

And then they make their own d'Ocella there. They do tableside mozzarella. You know, places do tableside guacamole. Mm, yeah. A boards and hand make and stretch mozzarella. Oh. Before your ice cream of table. Oh.

And then. So wait. You just eat the mozzarella straight or is it like breaded or you just eat it? It's just mozzarella. What I had was their homemade mozzarella breaded, but it wasn't like sticks. It was like a, you know, it was like a almost like a triangle, like a potato pancake kind of thing. Oh, okay. But the table side people, it's a pound of mozzarella that you end up with.

So it's not something that the typical does on their own. and it's 80 bucks to have this service and this food and to have it made and they get the mozzarella. So I was not up for spending 80 bucks on a pound of mozzarella for one. I don't want a shit for a week. Yeah, please, give me that. So meanwhile, there's, you know, these jugglers and acrobats and a guy on a unicycle doing one of these, those, you know, those two sticks that look like they have this standalone, a disconnected yo-yo thing spinning around.

I know there's a name for that, but it's like they got the two sticks with a string between them and then a spinning top that is kind of hourglass shape that goes around and up and down on the strings. That's cool. And they're doing all this stuff while it's going on. Then between that, like between those shows, there's this DJ. She's up there. She's playing lots of funk on vinyl.

She played some Tina Marie song that's like, okay, I've got to listen to more Tina Marie, more than just the one song we all remember from the 80s, which I think was crush on you. Yeah. I'm going to crush on you. Exactly. Yeah. So it's like, all right, this other Tina Marie stuff is pretty damn good. And so, again, we're chatting with Ricky about the tequila drink he brought me.

And he's like, yeah, the flavor evolves as you're drinking. I said, yeah, and I don't have to chew on in some electric buzzer or electric button plant to have that happen because I'm referring to the verbena, which they also sell at the Cosmopolin, but just on the one-half floor of the chandelier bar, first and a half. Floor one and a half. Floor one and a half, okay. Floor one and a half. And I took a bunch of tadpullers there for TMS, Vegas, and we had a ton of verbenas. I bought a round of verbenas for everybody. Nice. And he says, yeah, that drink, when, when, so it's been there since the Cosmopolitan opened. And, we've spent we've sold 17 million dollars in just verbenas alone in the in the uh the years that

the cosmopolitan's been open that's so much money it is isn't it like 17 million dollars and just that one drink so it's like holy crap that also tells me they're keeping meticulous the meticulous numbers about the stuff they they sell and do sure yeah yeah i'm sure they are yeah 17 million dollars worth of verbenas and you and you were like you're like a whale you're like one of those whale buyers where you come in and buy everybody one, you know? I did. I counted for at least $100 of verbenas in March for the TMS Vegas. Wow.

All right. That's awesome. Yeah. Anything else of, uh, go ahead. I was just going to say anything else of note that you wanted to mention. That's about it. I mean, Super Freakow, I think, is going to be one of these regular places that I try and go. If not every time, then then at least every time.

every other time to grab dinner because it's it's the food was incredible the atmosphere the vibe is completely my kind of quirky funky funky music kind of entertainment chill it was it was chill and quirky without trying to be without them like you know taking on an affectation of being chill and quirky it sounds like the place made for Brian Abbott is what it sounds like to me it does it does it does I'd like to actually move there. Yeah. And when Brian says that, he doesn't just mean Vegas.

He means move into... No, move into that bar, into that bar restaurant. And I should have checked to see how the Wi-Fi is there. That's awesome. So far, so good. The next 11 hours, who knows what will happen? But you guys will hear about it on Monday's TMS. Yeah.

And I thought about this, that this kind of like, because I wasn't planning on going there. I just happen to wander up there and check this place. Hey, you know what the heck? Do you want to come in? I'm like, yeah, why not? Have you been here before? No, let me in.

And you go into like a separate little room, this cool little lit up room that looks like the first room you go into in the haunted mansion ride, this little enclosed room, but it doesn't strike out or anything. But I was thinking about this. And people who are FilmSack patrons will get to hear, me talk about a thing that, that, you know, a style of movie that I like. I'm not going to, I'm not going to spoil it for him, but a style of movie or a genre of

movie that I like. And I think I tend to subconsciously try to do that thing that I talked about in FilmSack in that, in that episode of Film Sack. Interesting. Well, that goes up this next week. Yeah. That goes up in a couple of days. You guys will hear, if you're a Film Sack patron, you'll hear all about it.

Well, that's awesome, dude. Glad you're having a good time and also keeping your Southwest Airlines thing afloat. That's what matters most. That's in making sure, like, I'm not taking my license out of my sight for the next 11 hours. Just wear it around your neck or something. Who knows what will happen to it. All right. We're going to get a little read on, okay, because you're going to go on a flight coming home.

You may as well read something. You might as well read something. Yeah. Can't always listen. That's true. That's true. Who can? Nobody is the answer. So here's this. Red Fraggle joins us. Amy Robinson, welcome all the way from her beautiful estate in Georgia. No, my estate. I have a lawn the size of a postage stamp. Nice. Nice. No, you're lucky. Look, at our age, lawns suck. I don't want to deal with them very much. So my nice little side lawn is. is all I need. It's all good. Nothing else. Oh, I'm 100% on board with your whole thing about

like, if, if I didn't have an HOA and I was allowed to just replace my entire lawn with Clover, I would do it. Yeah. I mean, they won't let us do it where they can see it. And I would if I thought I could get away with it. But if we do it outside and front where it's visible, no clover allowed. But in the back and the side over there where it's all fenced in, they don't care about that. And it is like a jungle. It's so amazing in there. I freaking love it. And you can still mow it, but it'll only water that thing once a week.

Like, it's, we should all be doing clover, man. If you're listening to me going, what? I'm serious. Go look it up, read about it, see some video. You'll have your mind's blown. It's amazing, that stuff. Yeah, yeah. My cousin is really super into that, like, you know, not having lawns and having actual

useful crops. Mm-hmm. You guys have talked about this before, right? like the the origin of why we have lawns yeah it was a like it's like this classist you know like you know way to my grass is greener yeah yeah exactly yeah it's like oh look I have so much money I can just waste all of this land yeah no totally and now and now it's just this weird expected stupid thing and HOA's you know certainly push it forward but even with places with that HOA's people are always trying to

want up each other's lawns and, you know, Hank Hill used to do this on King of the Hill. He was always like saying how his lawn was better than everybody else says, we need to stop lawn envy, I'm telling you, and we'll save the planet. I hate it. And I bet my neighbors that actually give a crap about their lawn probably hate me because, like, I just, you know, we mow as infrequently as we can get away with. And, like, we don't do anything with our yard at all. it's just, you know, a little patch of grass and that's, you know, and we have like a rosebush

out front and we, we trim it way down every spring, but like, that's it. What's weird to me is that the clover thing gets smashed by HOAs, but it looks better than grass. It actually looks so cool and you can keep it really tight and nice and neat and all of that and use like one fifth of the water or less, and it's great for pollination. It's great for other bugs that need, you know, habitat that isn't grass. Plus, grass right now in the middle of a drought and restricted water use anyway, all looks like brown garbage.

So what are we doing? Yeah. We don't have that problem. You need too much money on it. That's right. That's right. And we actually found three four leaf clover's the other day with Van. He was digging through there and we found four leafers.

Look at all the good luck he's going to have for the week, you know? That's fun. I remember doing that one of a kid. I know. It's so many leaves. I used to do that when I was a kid. I would sit there for just a ridiculous amount of time looking for four-leaf clovers. Yeah.

Well, when we were kids, it was thought to be impossible. I think it's probably more common than we were led to believe. But, yeah, get some clover, everybody, put it in your yard and make a damn difference. Okay. Hey, it's good to have you here. Stick your tongue out at the HOA. That's right. If we all do it, they can't find us all, man.

That's right. And then after you've expended all that energy, lay down with a nice. book. Oh, look at the transition. Yeah. Oh, oh, look at that. A little time. Nice segue. Speaking of segways. Yeah. So, yeah. All right. So I believe you have a clip.

I do have a clip. Would you like me to play this clip first and then we'll talk about what's on it? Go ahead and play that clip. Here's the clip. In one of the first years of the Maker Faire, a young man came up and said kind of sadly, I don't make a code. I've heard the sentiment a lot. I don't make I fill in the blank. Code, cook, craft, I'm not sure why all my examples start would see. The list of exceptions people invent to place themselves on the outside of the club of makers is long and, to me, totally infuriating. Because the people who do that to themselves, or more likely the people who tell them that,

are flat wrong. Coding is making, I said enthusiastically to that young man. Whenever we're driven to reach out and create something from nothing, whether it's something physical like a chair or more temporal and ethereal like a poem, we're contributing something of ourselves to the world. We're taking our experience and filtering it through our words

and our hands or our voices or our bodies and we're putting something in the culture that didn't exist before. In fact, we're not putting what we make into the culture, what we make is the culture. Oh, wow. So Adam Savage, yeah? I can

I recognize the voice. Adam Savage indeed. Okay. I knew I recognize that voice. So is this is everything's a hammer book? Is that the? This is everything's a hammer. Yes.

And which is cool because I was, I was listening to it because I just, I love Adam Savage. I subscribe to tested. I, you know, watch all of, not all of his videos, but usually whenever he does something,

I'm like, oh, really excited about it. Or if it's just Sunday, and I'm sitting on my couch making stuff or whatever and I just need something on in the background. I'll turn on Adam Savage's YouTube channel and just let it play. And so, yeah, this is, everything's a hammer.

The cool thing is there's a reference to our good friend Bill Duran in the book. So that's fun. Really? Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah. He checked by Adam Savage in his book. Yeah.

He tells a little anecdote about about Bill and yeah it's it's it's a great book it's it's one part maker manifesto so there's a lot of really great advice about being a maker and just making things and how to attack projects things like that like the power of lists the power of checkboxes you know proper planning things like that and then there there's an entire chapter about different glues like glues that he loves, you know, and talking about like how super glue works versus, you know, contact cement and epoxy, stuff like that. But then there's, it's also kind of a memoir because he tells all these great stories about

how he got on this track and how, how it came to be that he went to work for ILM and, you know, all his foibles along the way. There is a really, really heartbreaking story in there. I don't want to spoil it for anybody because it's a great book and you should absolutely read it. But there's a heartbreaking story in there where he absolutely like, you know, messed a bunch of stuff up. And the person that hired him originally was not very forgiving about it. And so it's just like, like I was, I'm sitting here and I'm working, you know, and I'm listening to it. And I'm going, all of a sudden he says the thing.

I went, oh, like out loud. I just went, um. And Chuck actually came in from the office across the hall. It was like, what? And I rewounded. I was like, listen to this. And he goes, oh, my gosh. So, yeah.

So those are nice tease for a lot of non-specific unspoilory spoilers. Does he get it into how Jamie Heineman's mustache is hiding a darker truth? No? Okay, maybe not. He talks a lot about working for Jamie. Yeah, a couple of tools in there, a welder of some sort, sure. He does. He talks a lot about working for Jamie and how much he learned from Jamie.

And at one point, they were working on some commercially. He learned about it was the chapter on deadlines and how actually you grow to love deadlines. because if you have no deadline, you won't ever do it. You won't ever do the thing. Interesting. So, you know, you have to have a deadline, and the deadline has to be something meaningful to you. So, in other words, for Adam's case, he had this passion, has this passion for cosplay. And, you know, he absolutely wanted this one specific costume to wear to San Diego Comic-Con.

And so he gave himself that as a deadline. And, you know, he could have easily made it arbitrarily something else. But because the deadline was meaningful to the project, then that made it that much more motivating. And so there you go. But yeah, he's talked a lot about Jamie and how he says, Jamie gets angry, but he doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't yell or. thought that he just turns a really bright shade of tomato red. I've heard this before.

In the early seasons of that show of MythBusters, very early seasons, they would actually, in the final edits, would include some of their fighting, like some of their infighting. And Adam would be very, yeah,

Adam was very like sort of visibly angry and sort of, you know, in both movement and sort of whatever, like you could tell he was mad. Jamie would sit there and just look like he was stewing, like just in a pot, immovable, but just like ready to explode. I don't know if he ever did, but that's always been fascinating to me because those guys are both kind of brilliant at what they do, but they're very different from each other. Yeah. I think that's what made the show interesting in a lot of ways, but they they quit.

I noticed like after season three or so, they quit showing those conflicts. For good or for real, they decided it wasn't good for the show, but, you know, I don't know what their relationships like now. The one thing I wanted to ask you was the deadline thing. Did he get into it all how, why that's so, I agree with that sentiment like a lot. But usually it's when someone else imposes the deadline that I perform the best. If it's self-imposed, I struggle. You know what I mean? Like if I say to myself, I will be done with this by Friday.

I don't, I don't, I'm not very good at being committed to what I tell myself to do. Does that make sense? Because I justify it away and go, oh, it's freaking hot out and the air conditioner's being weird. You know what? I don't have to finish it. Like, I do that all the time. And I hate that. Does he talk about that at all?

I think, I would think that that was kind of, that's kind of tied into the deadline being meaningful to the project. Right. So in his case, he tied it to Comic-Con, right? Comic-Con is when it is. So that is sort of a deadline that's made up by somebody else. If you think about it that way I mean he was imposing that on himself Right like nobody was going to

Nobody was going to come for him If he didn't show up with this costume It was a thing he wanted to do for himself However he could not push off the deadline And still meet his goal If that made sense So yeah I think that is kind of tied into that And I'm the same way

Because I am every year I don't I've never been to Comic Con I go to DragonCon every year. And this is, every year I go and I get just so inspired and I walk around and I feel woefully underdressed around all these people that have these amazing looking costumes, right? And I'm like, oh, next year, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do, I'm going to dress as this. And it's going to be awesome. I'm going to make this huge thing.

And it's going to be amazing. And then, you know, you come home from DragonCon, you're exhausted. Right. So you're like, okay, I just need to rest. And then I'll get started. And then, well, then it's Halloween. Okay, so I've got to do Halloween stuff now, so wait until after that. Well, then it's Thanksgiving and Christmas.

So, oh, I got to wait. After the new year, I'll start on that then. And then, you know, New Year's stuff happens. Next thing you know, it's June. And, you know, DragonCon is always in September. It's Labor Day weekend every year. So next thing you know, it's June. And I look and I go, well, it's too late for me to start anything now.

Yeah. I guess I'll just go back to looking for my nerdy t-shirts that you can't see anyway because the freaking lanyard covers it up. That drives me crazy. Like, I take such pains to pick out the cutest, you know, nerdy t-shirt I can find for the con every year. And then I get there and I realize, nobody can see my cute t-shirt. It's covered up by a big huge lanyard every year. Right. Going to swing it around like a cape.

You got to wear it on the back. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's certain areas where they won't let you in. unless it's got to be front and you've got to turn it around to the front so they can see the little hologram on it and that's mostly for you to go where the famous people are. Yeah, for sure.

Do you, I don't know. I feel like all creatives have a problem with this to some degree. Like, it's just a matter of did you find a way to create the motivation to make sure you get it right every time? Like one of the things I really admire about Brian here is that he's, I think he's better than me at that kind of thing like oh he committed to a thing and a time so he'll do it and even if it's a thing and a time for himself he tends to do it better than i do if i do it i'm like i always even when i make the commitment i'm like i'm going to do this by friday but then i kind of know on the

back of my head yeah but you have room to wiggle if you need you know what i mean like it's a bit to me it's a bad habit that i get into and i know not everyone everyone's got their thing but that is something I noticed Yeah I noticed I noticed Brian better out of me Are we good at doing

Yeah It's for me No not as I'm not as good as Doing it Yeah Correct Yeah So like the frogs I did

For TMS Vegas Right Like that was That was a A self-imposed thing Nobody would have been the wiser Right Because it was

I didn't tell anybody I was doing it It was a self-imposed Deadline But it was when it was and I really wanted to do it and and then you know I start I just started making the frogs right and then then all of a sudden the Avengers frogs became a thing and I was like oh I you know because because the one frog looked like the Hulk it was like do I do I have to make all of the

Avengers into frogs I think maybe I do you know and so then that became a thing and so I was just I was just constantly, man. Every time I was not working my day job, I was making some frogs, man, all the time. I had a crochet hook in my head all the time making these frogs. And it was so fun. And I succeeded. I made my goal. I was like, yay.

I, you know, I did it. But it's, as Brian said, it was because it was for somebody else, really. Like, I had a list of folks in mind that I wanted to have each one of the Avenger frogs. And then I made a bunch extra to just hand out to people. So, yeah. So come to Vegas next year, maybe you'll get a frog. Maybe you'll get a frog. Maybe you'll get a frog.

Maybe you will. I mean, you heard her hair. She kind of committed on the air. I think it's happening. The frogs will probably look different next year, though, because, you know, the frog pants frog looks different now. Yeah. So I got a plus Pepsi made them all gay or something, right? Didn't I hear that from somebody?

Some frogs. What am I thinking? It was an Alex Jones thing where he said Oh, right. Something in the... All the frogs are K now. Yeah, I thought it was a Pepsi thing.

I don't know why I have that in my head. Anyway, probably not. Well, this sounds great. I actually meant to read this book. Have had it on my list for a long time. So people check it out. Everything's a hammer by Adam Savage, available wherever you get your books,

audiobooks also. And it seems like a good read. Yeah. And this is definitely one that I would very much recommend getting on audiobook because Adam's storytelling and his passion for making and his enthusiasm is infectious. Like, I'm sitting here listening to this book and I'm going, I need to go make a thing. I mean, you know, like, I'm suddenly inspired.

I'm suddenly like, okay, I need to make a list of all the things I need to do to do this project. and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, you know, everything he talked about, except maybe the glue. Like, the glue is very, it's very informative, but I'm not, like, super inspired by glue. Right. That is something Bill would like, though. Bill would be way into the glue bit. He loves glue.

Yeah. Yeah. But the best part, I love the clip that we played, because honestly, like, when I first heard that bit where he talked about people saying, Oh, I don't make, I just do such and such. That just made me tear up because I've often, like, how many times have we felt that way, you know, as, like you say, as creatives, like, how often do you feel like, oh, well, my stuff is, it's not really, I don't really do, I don't really do a thing, you know, I just draw comics or I don't really do a thing, I just make podcasts, or I don't really, you know, I just mess around with yarn. I don't, you know, and I love that Adam said that, especially because I am also a coder. And so the fact that he said, coding is making, you know, that just, I think it's one of the, one of the, one of the, uh, to my little heart.

The greatest modern versions of making. It really is. Like in a, in a, it's a very modern thing in a lot of ways, but it's the most some, in some ways, the most creative, um, frontier we have left. I always say this about gaming. Like, people, People think of games as, oh, it's either a waste of time or it's fun or it's whatever, but they don't think of it in the broader term, which is this is like the one place we're actually creating new space and places and things. And it's one of the most creative and collaborative art forms there is. And it is an art form as far as I'm concerned. And so when people bring up coding as if it's not in that realm, I think they're dead wrong. You know, I think it absolutely is. Well, this is awesome. more great things from Amy

if you just follow her on social media just find her as red fraggle everywhere and she'll be back next week with more. Hey, you could see me fall asleep on TikTok this week. Oh, fun. That was my contribution to TikTok yesterday was me falling asleep at my desk. I want to see that.

Is that the whole, that's your narcolepsy thing or whatever it's called? Yeah, I got to watch that. I haven't seen it yet. TikTok is not great about reminding me that my friends did something. So I've got to go search for it, but I'll find it.

yeah it's there there you go it's uh amy have a fantastic week and you too and weekend i hope it's a party time for you and you're in yours all of it all of it hopefully it's good yeah yeah tell chuck to bring uh the the party favors all right bye all right she's out uh all right brian uh oh look at the time we're gonna weirdly lag you there for a little bit when amy was on but let's see if they get back to normal yeah you're a little bit better now you were kind of lagging out um a couple a couple times you would start talking and hang and then you'd come back. Yeah, I was noticing that I was talking over her, Amy, a lot. So hopefully that doesn't happen with Wendy, but if it does, then I'll, I'll mute until

I've got some pithy thing to say. Keep the pith ready at the. Although that won't affect the bandwidth. It's just, yeah. That's true. But keep your Pith cocked and loaded, if you know what I mean. I will keep my Pith cocked and loaded. That's right.

Pithcock. All right. Hey, we're going to do, we're going to do a soft. song break here that Brian will now explain and then we'll come back with Wendy on the other side. Hey Brian what song are we playing at the middle of the show? Yeah. I'm doing you a band called Space

Moth. It's all one word. Space Moth. S-P-A-C-E-M-O-T-H in case you can't understand what I'm saying. They have a brand new album. That's their debut album. It's called No Future. This is some some synthi-fizzy indie pop

kind of like Sterilab the rentals stripped down almost deadpan delivery by whose name

is Merriam Cudis I hope you all halfway through the song I'm like okay now I'm starting to like this I get this

but at the beginning I'm like is this weird is this weird for TMS but give it fans give us the song is called waves come crashing

the brand new album, No Path, No Future, from Space Mon. that we are destined to and they say that all good things must fade play my guitar write you a goodbye song Oh

When the waves come crashing I will beg for the sea to take me first In a tree In a tree It was just you and It was just you and me Nothing could ever tear our love apart

But these fears They have taken our years A broken image printed by mine Oh When the waves come crashing I will beg for the sea to take me first Oh When the waves come crashing

I will beg for the sea to take me first When the wind The world is I'm watching Wind the waves come crashing I will be there for the sea to take me first. Oh, with no waste of crashing, I will bear for the sea to take me first.

Billy Eilish always looks like you just told her that you have a podcast. The federal government is all over my breakfast. The morning stream. It's like this show that you're listening to right now, but better. All right, we're back. Hey, who is that artist in song again? Sure, that is the song crashing, and it's from the debut album,

No Past, No Future. He came back very Robody, but I think you're better now. My robot? Yeah, and your video's pausing like crazy. Like you're freezing. And it's great because we're getting faces that are hilarious faces. Anyway, you know how that goes. When you're getting frozen and you're like,

middle of a word you're like well I totally yes it seems like that's a good one because I had that open because I had to look up the the artist maybe that'll help things too because I had to open that person yeah it's already better actually

that's funny um all right let's get uh let's get my sister in here pretty sure she's at the ready talked to her last night uh here we go no before you pull her in oh is it too late No, you're good.

Okay, I was going to say, let's relaunch. Sure, or let me quit and read. I'm going to do that. Okay, do that. All right, we're calling Wendy. We're going to see how this goes, hopefully well. Here we go. Oh, whoops.

I had a night attack to this. Why? Hold on. The hell was I thinking there. All right. Check this out, you guys. Man, Wendy picked that phone up fast. Hi, Wendy.

What are you doing? Hi. You thought you had to stall. I did. Usually you do. I usually do have to stall. I didn't have to today. That was, you almost picked up before I called.

Sounds weird. Anyway, look at you at the righty. I was thinking about you this week because we had a family hangout. And we had to, me and Ken had to play a psychologist for the aging, the aging matriarch and patriarch of the family. And they basically are squabbling like two 22 year old, got. married too early couple. And it's really annoying.

And so we did our best to remember a bunch of windyisms and, you know, kind of ideas that you've tried to help us teach us. And actually, you know what was great? I didn't tell you this on off air, but I'll tell you now. Ken started to use specifically the principles you talked about last week, which were the stuff about not being, or maybe it was a couple of weeks. not being confrontive with people that you're disagreeing with or having a problem with, but instead trying to just get them to explain where they're coming from.

Yeah. And in some ways, you know, we talked about Jordan Kepler and how he's really good at that and that sort of thing. So whether it's political squabbles or whatever else it may be, he was really good at doing that. Like he was bringing that up and I was looking at him like, well, done, Ken. I don't know if you heard the episode or not, but it was like you would have been impressed. And then later, at one point, John looks at me and goes, you know what Wendy said and I went oh boy what do Wendy say and he says well Wendy said I should let her do what she wants to do and I said yeah yeah we're all saying that that's exactly what we're saying you need to let her have some autonomy and make some choices for herself at 84 and you don't get to control everything she does and he just looked at me like we were crazy he just couldn't couldn't get his head around that anyway but you were there in spirit in a weird way so thanks for hanging out and your spiritual form. All right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Also, happy to have not been there.

Yeah, I was going to say, you're probably just fine where you were. Wherever you were Sunday. Thank you guys for taking on that. Yeah. No problem. All right, Wendy's here. We're going to talk, we're going to talk some stuff in the psychology realm. Of course, Wendy's an actual therapist. Comes here on Thursdays and helps us with your problems. Oftentimes, it's an email, but today we're going for more of a subject. You, basically, you just sent me the obscure term strength. And then we're going to see what that means. So lay it on us. I'm ready. All right. So what I wanted to do is not let you come up with the story beforehand. Oh, well, good. I didn't do it. Yeah, good. See, my plan is working so far.

And you'll come up with it as I talk, but I didn't want any preconceived notions. Okay. All right. So Martin Seligman, does that name ring any bells to you two? Do you know that name, Brian? I don't know that name. Not to me, no. He's what I guess we would consider the father of the positive psychology movement. Okay. At least one of the main characters in the thing. And out of the University of Pennsylvania, and essentially, I mean, if you think of what therapy, psychology, you know, social work, all of the, all the ways we try to help other humans.

Humans are trying to help other humans with crazy life. often and the medical establishment definitely overall generally has been pretty pathologically focused right so what is wrong with you right why don't you feel this way you should feel this way you know just from the basic stuff all the way to pretty significant disorders and stuff right it is disordered base or problem base or pathological okay so that is pretty dominant has been for a long, long, long time, right? Because someone's not doing well, we want to help. So that really is the impetus for a lot of things. So, you know, he comes along and others have followed suit really trying to focus on our strengths as individuals and what is

going well and how do we use that in different ways. And so, you know, pretty groundbreaking at the time. Like, that's not how people thought or talked, right? Um, but, but has been really instrumental in improving outcomes for people with pathology situations, but also, you know, sort of just benefiting other people. So it's important, good stuff. I think it's kind of where I operate from naturally. Like, I really don't see someone as broken ever. I've never, ever, ever experienced or ever thought,

wow, the person's broken, which, I mean, it could be because I'm an internal optimist. But I just, I don't see it that way. I see it as something is malfunctioning. And it's for good reasons, usually, right? Something's going on. And so then it's, we're investigators and we're trying to figure it out. Anyway, okay. So all that said, the strengths perspective has been really helpful in different work

that I've done with different people. And I'm kind of on a kick recently. So I thought I'd share my kick with you guys. So I have a question. let's start with both of you naming okay you ready this is going to be a little revealing oh boy all right so sorry um i want both of you to name one of your weaknesses oh interesting how uh just for clarification something that we like a generalization about us do you want like a very specific like you know my left arm's weaker than my right like what are you looking for here like what do you

want. I don't whatever pops in your head. It can be specific or general, but just like, if you, if I sat you down and said, all right, so tell me, tell me how you screw things up. Tell me what you do wrong. Tell me why you're not feeling good. Like, I'm, you're not coming to me for help. You're just a person, and I'm asking you to share with me your quote unquote pathology.

Okay, here's mine. I, uh, I don't know how to say it's shorter, but I'll just say if I, I absorb negative, around me, whatever the source may be, let's say it's the news or, you know, I don't know, the death of somebody or whatever. I absorb that stuff and I end up kind of wrecking my day, if that makes sense. I don't see it from the outside and observe it and go, oh, okay, and then move on with my otherwise positive attitude. I internalize it.

That's the word I was looking for. I internalize negative actions, thinking, or. events and I make them I give them way too much space for rent for free in my head okay and would you like to change that I would love to change that okay so that is a great example of what you would consider a weakness

yeah that's what I mean by that okay great perfect all right Brian what you got yeah mine I think is a self discipline when it comes to sweet I think he said sweets sorry he's in Vegas

and his wifi. He's in Vegas and his Wi-Fi's a little weird. But I think he said sweets. Is that you said? Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We're losing. There's no sign language. He could just sign it. Well, he killed, he killed video. I typed it in chat. Oh, okay. So he's, I love it. This podcasting via text is amazing. All right. Hold on. Uh, says, Zoof, super laggy. Okay. Oh, self-discipline when it comes to patries oh past past past past pastries and sweets sweets he put patries

which I don't know what that is but pastries so pastries and sweets there you go there's one that's the weakness okay so Brian do you have anything

that is not everyone else's problem I'm just scroll a little deeper I see what he means. He's going to type out another one here. You know, good point. He says yes. I'll do it in his.

I can't do his voice. I don't know how to do a Brian voice. He says yes. And now he's typing. And he says, let's see. You can hear me now? I don't know. I'm like, let's see.

That's hilarious. Vegas, man. What happens in Vegas? Oh, it was so good for a long time. Yeah, I think everyone woke up is what happened. you know they all woke up and went i'm going to check the internet and download porn and now we're screwed uh okay so he tend to be very paranoid about my stuff getting stolen or vandalized oh that's interesting because we talked about this the last couple episodes um yeah

to give you give you the short of it so that we don't have the lag out and if i do this wrong brian you can correct me but um when he was a kid his green remember the green machine uh thing i'd loved mine um he his was not just stolen but also just wrecked and thrown in a dumpster and He found it later after it was stolen. And since then, he's been really, what he would term, and he wrote it here just now, cripplingly paranoid about getting his stuff stolen or vandalized. So that's a weakness.

That's a good one. Yeah. That's a great one. And I love, what I love about it is it explains what we often will pathologize, right? So Brian could walk around and just get more and more paranoid, And we could just start to see him as kind of greedy and psycho or something, right? Like, eh, when really, and obviously he's probably not going to do that. But that is the origin of some of these things comes from experiences we've had when we were younger,

where we learned something isn't a given anymore, right? Like he learned about fevery and reckless, you know, that violation feeling that if you've ever had anything stolen, you know, right? It's just, he feels so violated. So he learned that at a young age. So his system has sort of developed around that to protect him from that happening again. And the way it does it is through some paranoia, right? Paranoia is not, for no reason. Sometimes it's not logical.

Most times it's probably not very logical, right? This seems like a fairly logical line we can draw. But it's a protective response of your system to keep you from getting hurt again, right? So a lot of people's quote-unquote weaknesses or problems or pathology can stem from experiences when you're younger that trained you to have certain responses or overall anxiety generally that everything's not safe. And so you might say, but you're categorizing these things as problematic, wish I could change. They're my weaknesses. Okay. So great.

Those are great, two great examples. So I'm going to ask you for two more other examples in a second. But if we think about focusing on our weaknesses, what do we hope to gain from that, right? We hope it changes. We hope we can stop doing a thing, not eat pastries, you know, whatever. And when you look at what is really effective in terms of changing, it's interesting. You can make some strides and working on weaknesses in certain ways. Like, of course, everyone can improve a little bit in those areas.

But when you focus on strengths and improving your already existing natural strengths, the you know, sort of productivity or life satisfactory, all sorts of things just shoot up. So we're very negative. We have a negativity bias. It's how we stay alive and survive and all those things. And so we are definitely more tuned into what we do wrong because that's supposed to make our lives better, safer, happier, et cetera, right? But what happens when we tune into what we are already good at is really fascinating.

So, I'm going to ask you both to tell me one of your strengths. And then I'm going to tell everybody what to do after this. All right. See, this is where it gets weird. Which is one of my strike. Because I don't want to sound, you know, neither is probably want to sound like we're all one of my strengths. See, you're already running into the problem, right?

Yeah, I hate that, though. The problem is you can't, like, why is this not allowed? Yeah. I mean, it's not allowed because weirdly, weirdly it probably feeds my weakness a little bit by me doing that. But all right. So let's see. Strength. Give it a nuanced one. It is a nuanced one. I always feel like strengths are better reported by people around you. But if I had to pick one. Well, you could do something like, what do you often hear? from someone.

Yeah, that's true. If you've heard it from three different people, it's probably a strength. Yeah, what I'm trying to do is not like go specific, you know, what might be considered talents like, like, I'm a good drawer or, you know, anything like that. I was thinking more like, okay, here you go. I think I'm a good communicator. I can talk to anybody and fill silence as needed and have a conversation with just about anyone from anywhere in any walk of life.

So there's a strength. Good communication skills. Great. Okay. Brian, how about you? Let's see if you guys are hearing me. Yeah.

All hearing me? Hearing me good? Totally hearing me. Okay. I tend to put, and this strength and a week, but I will put other before me off to the,

to my own loss, but out of the gem, like out of politeness and, um, uh, the kindness to other. people yeah i agree with that one he does do that we i don't hell we had a story about it today in Vegas and and it kind of he got some sweet instant kerma out of it but but yeah like there's a

i totally agree with this this is a truth about brian he's always putting putting other people stuff first and i also know that feeling of like well i kind of screwed myself doing it but you know what i mean like i don't know i know what i know what he's saying yeah exactly i know what he's saying okay so so this sort of empathy or care for others like it it is a strength absolutely and and then yet you can sort of see some downsides to it happening right yeah like if you can't not be nice and help somebody who is going to then rob you from your green machine you know what i mean like there's a version of how do you how does your system protect itself um sometimes when that is not the appropriate route to take

but that is just kind of what you do doesn't make sense like Like, that's why some of these strengths, and I think this is why we don't talk about them. Well, first of all, we have social norms that you should not brag about yourself or talk about yourself in those particular ways. Then we also have the everything's kind of a mixed bag sometimes or can be. And then here's another piece to this. You don't really know what all your strengths are. They're so familiar to you, right? In fact, when you, you know, and someone can give you a comment.

compliment and you're kind of like, well, yeah, that was like no big deal. Well, that's no big deal for you. Yeah. Because it is so normal and already in the, in your sort of sense of yourself, maybe. You just wouldn't even consider it a strength. So this is why you have a very common thing when people compare their weaknesses to someone else's strength is they're seeing some awesome thing they can do that I can't do and I feel crappy. But rarely do we go the other way around. Like, you know what I'm so good at talking to people? And that person can barely put. words together. Like, you don't do that or you're evil. Right. Some people do that, but I... Right. Yeah. All right. Okay. So that idea, though, like, it's kind of normal to be a little clueless about your own strengths. Okay. So here's where I'm leading to. I would like people to, if anyone has access to the internet. Oh, what is that? Hold on. We've got to explain what that is. What is it? It's the information super highway. Okay.

Yeah. There's two places I want you to... Two tabs. I don't remember. I don't remember. recommend having a hundred tabs, though I have 100 tabs at all times, but two tabs. I want you to go to authentic happiness.s.s.compan.org. Whoa. Hold on. That's a long one. If you do authentic happiness, yeah, if you just search for authentic happiness, you'll find it. It'll show up and search. Okay. So I'm on that one. All right. Get to the questionnaires. So there should be a long list of questionnaires, the questionnaire center. Just pull that up.

Questioner, got it. Okay. And then second tab, I want you to pick Google Clifton Strengths online. It should be Gallup.com, Clifton Strengths. Clifton Strengths. Yeah, there it is. Okay. Galap. Gallup.

Gallup. Gallup.com, yeah. Yeah. Gallup. Gleop. Okay. So now that those two things are up, I'm going to talk to you about them for a moment. All right.

A client, a real stepper, points me to the authentic capital. happiness, so thank you. And it's nice because it's all good and free. So if you scan down there, you can see all sorts of emotion questionnaires, engagement questionnaires, your optimism, your general happiness scale, you know, serving children, work life questions, blah, blah, anyway. So this is the sort of hub of positive psychology's research stuff. And so they have all these free questionnaires. You just have to make a login and they don't spam you because they don't care.

It's a Penn State. It's a Penn State University login thing and it's not a big deal to do. It's just free. Yeah. So it's great. And the questionnaire on here that it's a fairly long one is the VIA survey of character strengths. It takes about, it's like 240 questions.

So it takes a hot minute. And then they'll report what you. your top strengths are. Right. And then similarly, and then there's other ones on there, but that's the one I wanted to bring your attention to. And then similarly, the Clifton strengths, it's 20 bucks. I've done this one recently and have had some of the most fascinating conversations with people about it since. Like, it's worth 20 bucks for what you're going to get out of it. It truly is. I think it's 50 to do like a full 34 list. And the 20 buck one just gives you your top five strengths. Now, it comes with a book. This has been used for 20 years now. You probably maybe remember it was kind of hot

for a while. Strength Finder 2.0 or something, I think is what it was called. Yeah. Anyway, so what they do is they come up with your top five. Again, another question in the survey, and they've given it to 30 million people. So it's got some good legs. Um, and here's the thing. I should make this quick caveat. Lots of personality tests, lots of like, how do I categorize people? there's a reason we're interested in that, right? Because you'll see someone and go like, I've known others. Similar or why does this person remind me of that person, right? Like we can be categorized a little bit in certain ways, right?

We have sure similar ways of thinking. And this is why you click with someone or really don't click with someone. So those efforts have been around for a long time. My personal experience, when people love those and like build their lives around their or I-N-T-J or I am a number six on the enneagram or whatever. Like, whatever those, if that does stuff for you, awesome. It just does nothing for me and never has. I always feel like it's a bit of a glorified horoscope.

Like, you're great. You do these things, you know? So I've never loved that version of like strengths, if that makes sense. Sure. No, I get it. That does feel like horoscopes because you could just say, you could say things like it applies to everybody. Yeah, you're a, you're a sensitive, but you're also really outgoing.

And no one reads those and goes, you know, it's like that class, okay, hey, story time. You're ready for this? Here's a story. Yeah. Since we're way into this, now I can do a story. Yeah. The psychology 101 or whatever the heck class it was I took in college was one of my favorite classes.

I really enjoyed it. But the very first day, the teacher, the professor had this survey. They passed it around to everybody. And they had us fill out the survey. Nobody knew what was on it. They were also multiple, multiple colors. So I got a blue one. The girl next to me got a yellow one.

Everybody had different colored sheets. So it kind of gave us the feeling that we were all getting something unique or whatever. I don't know if that was part of it. But anyway, we fill out the thing. And it was a lot of questions like, how much do you spend a day meditating? Or, you know, do you have a favorite this or that? Or was this just a bunch of questions? Then we turned them in and she claimed, she says, now based on these,

I'm going to be able to pull one of these out. and I want you to raise your hand if I'm talking to you. So she just pulls one out like almost like a hard trick, pulls it out and says, all right, you are sometimes frustrated, but often, you know, the opposite or whatever.

It's like a bunch of stuff like that where it was like both things. And we didn't know a bunch of dumb 20 year olds. So she finishes this and then says, all right, I want you to raise your hand if this is yours. And something like 89% of the class raised their hand. Right. And she went, ah, and then explain this whole thing.

So what that's what that reminds me of. And that really stuck with me because to this day, I don't trust things like that at all. Because I'm not saying they're trying to screw me over. Maybe they're just trying to make me feel good. But there's no like, there's no science to it. It's just, you know, it's just to make you feel good. Right. And here's where this feels different to me.

First of all, the UPenn Research Center, like the quality is clear. Right. but they don't go further like Clifton Strengths has made a business out of this right but their stuff is I think it's maybe because it's more for business and more leadership and training

and that type of thing that they have to stay a little further away from sounding like it's pop psychology or something I don't know what the attempt is here but I'll tell you what my experience with what is with it and then why I would recommend these two things as opposed to kind of the other things If other things sing to you, ooh, enjoy, right?

Like, if it feels like it explains things for you. But, I mean, truly, a horoscope does that same. It feels the same to me. Like, this month, you will have a surprise. I don't know. Like, I just, I'm like, okay, well, I have a surprise every month. So I don't know. It's what we're talking about.

It's very, yeah, it's very, it's very the stupid fortune cookie thing. Yeah, and it works because, and this is why your teacher can pull that up, is A, we're not very self-aware, right? And if you put things in certain ways, yeah, it applies to all of us. And that goes to everyone. Someone you think is completely straight up evil and has terrible ideas and is probably the worst person you know, would also raise their hand and say that they think that's them. And it speaks to a couple things. Humans are a lot more similar than they are not, or than they are different. We all have a lack of self-awareness about our actual stuff and we have this bias though we have a negativity bias having things come in right so

one person doesn't like our work and 100,000 say it's awesome we're only focused on the one that's the negativity bias it's to protect us right but then our actual bias we have another bias right which is that we can't really hear all the negative feedback and so we're going to hear or pick up on the things we think we want to think about ourselves it is another form of self-protection right right so here's what i like about this thing is the strengths get really specific and and it's maybe the first time i feel like it has actually connected with my experience not what i think of myself so for example i took the five and i'm assuming scott this is going to be in one of yours because it's very similar to what you mentioned.

But my top one was, ironically, called woo. Woo? Okay. Woo. W-O-O. All right. Which stands for, because you guys are not aware,

stands for winning over others. That's why we use the word woo. You woo someone. Doesn't they say on the newlywed game, the couples would have woo or something? What was the deal? I don't know. Whoopi.

No, that's whoopee. Not even quick. All right. So woo is winning someone over. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, I'm immediately annoyed. Like, all right. Is this like everything else I've ever worked with where I'm like, yeah, yeah, I like

people and I like to talk to them, okay? You know, like it's, it just isn't giving me anything interesting. Sure. And as I'm reading the qualities of this strength, there are things about it that I'm like, yes, oh my gosh, yes, that happens. Oh, and they're not all positive. In fact, I realize why I can never say no to a salesperson. I buy everything.

I give away my real number constantly to people I shouldn't because they're going to call me and try to sell me gutters. Like I can't. And it's related to this concept of, and it's about strangers, me and strangers, I want to win them over. So the cashier. So, Scott, I have a memory of me, you and Misha getting in an Uber in Vegas. And all three of us were trying to woo the driver.

Yeah, we were all in woo mode for sure. Totally. So clearly at our house, we have. had woo lessons or something. Anyway, so at first glance, I thought, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then when I did some of the work they have you do with it, you start to, you name what it is and you realize, okay, there's all these things that connect with my experience. And then the idea is you name it, claim it, and then you aim it. So the idea is claiming it is just like trying to own what is good about this thing that you have and seeing that. And then aiming it is

like, what action items can you do to actually strengthen, keep strengthening this strength? Sure. Right? Yeah. So being around more people is the advice that it gives me. Like, well, you should be around people. Clearly, if you are isolated, this is not good for you, right? And obviously, my job has meant I've met over 10,000 people, strangers for the first

time and gotten to know their deepest dark secrets. Yeah. Right? So my woo comes in handy, right? Yeah. You got handy woo is what you've got. I have handywood. I backfires when it comes to salespeople or bad service.

I just will eat a hair in my salad. I will not take it back because I need that stranger to be won over. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that's just an example of like, I think for me it just opened my mind to like, wow, this can actually, if it goes deeper like these do, and you work with them a little differently and you move it from not being very self-aware or conscious of it to getting specific about how it has helped you and then how you can utilize it. It feels good. So I would recommend

this for probably anyone who maybe is spending a little too much time focused on their weaknesses or I wish I was like someone else or I wish I had this thing. I did this with a group of friends and it was so funny because everyone had that same initial reaction like oh i knew i was analytical you know yeah and mine's like oh yeah i know i'm social okay great you know um but that as we've gotten deeper and and given each other feedback about the strength that is identified from the test and how they see that in me and i see that in them it's like holy crap so one gave an example of because I've already won someone over, I can have way harder conversations and bring up sensitive things and ask for stuff that other people could not because they haven't done step one

of winning the person over. And I'm like, oh, that's so true. That's why I can get weird crap done sometimes or a deal or someone lets me in the back door of the store to do a thing. And I've never thought, I've never been manipulative. I've just been like, hey, I'm an idiot. Can you help me? And it seems to work. Anyway, point is, you can use these strengths for good, not evil, right? But just there is such a lack of focus on this, I think, for most of us. It's kind of an interesting, it doesn't feel braggy, it doesn't feel arrogant in any way. It just feels like, oh, maybe I could use this thing that comes so naturally to me for ways that I haven't thought of before or that, you know, could improve somebody's experience other than me.

I don't even know how to explain it. So, for example, Brian's niceness, let's take that for a minute. That is a strength. It's probably, they have different words for everything. It's probably empathy. Maybe it's, you know, like he can see outside of himself. He can see that somebody needs something. Yeah, maybe.

And that you can do that, right? Like take that strength. So Brian, really quick, where has that been an absolute asset for you? how do you see that as a strength definitely in getting um i don't want to say getting what i want but getting uh uh results that that helped me later on right like it's it's almost like i'm banking some some karma some goodwill that even if it doesn't pay off later on that's fine but it but it usually does right it's like oh hey you you know here's a here's a you know you've been really nice chatting with me this whole time, here's a, this shot of something, try to see what you

think of it or whatever, like a bartender last night or, or that sort of thing. And it's not like I'm doing it to get that, but, but, you know, it's the, it's a nice little perk of, of that sort of thing. Yes. And if you think about, like, okay, so here's a good question, because people can fake that stuff, but lots of people can feel the vibe of someone faking it. They can feel like something's off, right? And I feel like I can usually tell when somebody's trying to do that to me and they're being fake about it's like, oh, you're just trying to be, you know, you just want something. Yeah. Totally. Okay. So, but this comes just really naturally. So I have a question. Do you get like a buzz that's maybe two on the nose at the bar? But like do you get a jolt of adrenaline or not even adrenaline? More like dopamine or like just feel good chemicals. When I'm being nice to somebody or when they're, you know, something nice for me in return. Yeah, I think so.

Yeah, for sure. It's like definitely a dopamine like, oh, I'm being good to this person for no reason with no expectations or anything like that. Yeah, for sure. And it's a virtuous cycle, right? So you feel good about it. You do it. You're training in it without even consciously training in it, right? Yeah.

And then tell me when that, when do you not get dopamine in an interaction with someone who could use your help? When they either blow me off or they seem indifferent. Like in other words, they're, they've been so like jaded or, you know, one spit and twice shy kind of thing. And so they're reluctant to take my kindness as what it really is, as opposed to like, oh, yeah, what's this person one? Why is this person being so friendly to me with, you know, like, I get the impression they're suspicious of me. Gotcha, yes. And it does not feel good. In fact, it feels almost insulting. It does. Or just like the opposite of dopamine. And so that is it, you might have woo, my friend, because that really is what it's like.

And you can win them over by serving them or chatting or being funny or just connecting, right? So connecting might be another one of your strengths. Yeah, and I tend to probably even go overboard when I do get that negative response to just, oh, well, I need to try harder than. Right. Yeah. Right. I found that I work with a person who's like everything I say, his response is something like like pooping on whatever. ever, I have to say. So as soon as I could see, visualize, I'm Tigger, he's Eeyore. It's not personal.

Like, wow, has it helped so much? Because I'm like, well, just Tigger all over your Eeyore then. But just that, like, I'm trying to win everyone over. That is not his strength. His strength is to, I don't know, poop on everything. I don't know. He needs to take a strength finder's test. And so that, but then you think, okay, well, where does that, you know, this strength, how can I use it a little more. So this idea of you, you can see that you do this. Is there a place to aim it is the idea? So name it, claim it, aim it. Where can you aim this that benefits you, others, work you do, relationships? And it can be small. Like in mine, I just need to be around more people. And that's post-pandemic life, really, truly. I just need to be face to face to somewhere. I need it,

desperately. So clearly that's my advice for my aiming it. But how about you? Any thought how you can aim it? It's funny because I tend to be more introverted than people probably would guess from the shows I do, right? So it's getting that first, getting over that initial hump of talking to somebody that I don't know to be nice to them. So I don't know how I am. Or like what how I can use those powers for good, other than what I'm currently doing, which is podcasting. And you might already be using it, you know, for good. Yeah, totally, totally, totally. Okay.

So that's where you would start to, you know, when people are like, oh, I wish I had some other skills and I'm going to work on that. You know, when they start to work on the natural state of the skill they already have and increase that, you know, sort of lots of good can come for that. So, for example, I would assume all three of us are probably not mega strong in computing or analytical, well, strategic. I don't know. Some of those that are just, like, tend to be an organizer or someone who is just going to always put things in certain ways. And maybe you guys are not. I don't know. I am just definitely not.

I'm not as much of an organizer as I would like to be. I go through the initial steps of organizing and something happens. and it falls apart. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so some of it is, you know, it's just inevitable for our weaknesses to show themselves. But if we find a way

to sort of appreciate the thing we have and then put people in our lives that are sort of balancing of that, some of that happens naturally. So think about the people around you, what are their strengths that are really different from yours? Like, Scott, I think of you and Kim

as like a perfect example of this. You know, what balances your, weaknesses is somebody else's strength a little bit, you know? Maybe we're not always conscious of it. Sure. I mean, what did it go ahead. Go ahead.

What are you going to say? I was just going to ask what strengths that let's talk about yours. Um, well, so in, well, in specific to the idea that you, who you're with sometimes counters or how do you,

how do you explain this? Like, okay. Compliments. Yeah. Compliments. Yeah. So my,

um, my reach out and help people stuff tends to be a little more specialized, meaning it often happens on the internet or it's, you know, finding out what we can do for somebody who recently is deceased or what we can do for their family or stuff is because I'm paying attention there. Kim is more troops on the ground, kind of in that mode. And so she's an activator. She is an activator, and she's, she's, how do I, I don't know how to explain it. She's like, she does that so well that I do feel, at least on kind of the ground level, that it's taken care of more because she's already on it, if that makes sense. So my focuses in those ways are usually a little more specialized or, or verbal.

And verbal. Yeah, that's true. much more verbal than using and not that Kim's nonverbal but like action is her first language in that yeah it is if somebody says somebody says oh uh they've got they just got a cancer diagnosis in her home and not feeling well she's already got in her head what food she needs to get where what to prepare and how to get it over there and how soon and and it's all done it's basically done um for me it's it's like oh where do i start like i don't know where even where to start with this person. But on the flip side, she's even said this to me. She's not as good at the ones where

you have to kind of reach out, communicate, figure it out. Again, yeah, like that stuff. So, yeah, in a lot of ways, that puzzle piece fits really well for us. Yeah. And so that idea of like, okay, so she could just force herself to learn how to say the right words and go to say the right words class and you could start to plan menus and we're going to spend so much wasted time. Yeah, it will be a lot of wasted time. That is true. And because, and this is why, you know, we need actual tribes to survive as humans is we need all the people coming with all the things, right? And so the general stuff we all hope we're good at or, you know, like your experience with your class is we all sort of like to think of ourselves in sort of certain ways. But then we're

also pretty hard on ourselves with those things that just aren't very strong for us. But I don't know how often we're encouraged to really make our strengths just serve us in the way that they can. And I think we just take them, we take them for granted. And so, okay, so what I want to challenge everyone to do if they're up for it is to do one of these. If you want to blow 20 bucks, it's great. Like, I think it's very well. worth of 20 bucks because it's going to just get you to look at things and they do lots of things with like your leadership style and some other businessy kinds of stuff if that feels like you like some help with work stuff so I've been doing this with a few clients and their

work lives individually we go through their results and and again the results are both like oh yeah totally that makes sense and also like what why is that one and you just may be surprised and they work together in a particular way. And what's funny is I have found multiple favorite people of mine have certain strengths that I'm like, oh, I am attracted to someone who can do that. Because I need a strategic person in my life because I am not at all. And so it's really a helpful blend.

And I was like, oh, this is why I really like working with them or talking to them. I'm like, I do my thing they do their thing. So it's kind of fun to figure some of that out and see it in your partners or your children. And the free UPenn one has some children surveys so you can kind of get a guess of what their strengths are. How young can you do that with a kid? I don't know what they say is the age range. But I think as long as they can answer it, let's see, I'll pull the test up really quick. Oh, it wants to know my age.

I can't lie. say 35, there you go. I'm sure if they can read and answer some questions. They're probably old enough. Yeah, that's a good point. If they're taking, I guess because they'd be taking this themselves, so they'd probably be eight or nine or ten or something. Right.

There's also a grit survey, which is a good one. So check out what your level of grit is. And yeah, and so some of it is, and I think I wanted to bring it up today. Yeah. Good point. True. I wanted to bring it up today because I think, you know, we all fall into this trap. And of course, my industry is very much, tries not to fall into this trap. And positive

psychology has been a really helpful movement to get us to not just hone in on what's wrong in the pathology. And I think it's been really important. But just for individuals to spend some time being curious about your own strengths, I know a lot of times on the show, I'm like, people please be curious about your problems and get help you know like that's that's usually what I'm saying um so I just thought I'd throw everyone off no that's good I like it I like it um last week's I'm gonna spend the 20 bucks and do this one I like this yeah I think I will too and then we can well I'll share ours next week if you want yeah we could do that I really liked um last week's topic stuck with me man hard I don't know what the deal was there I must have been just in a mood

or something but yeah I've been thinking about it since and kind of used it in a couple of cases. And we had somebody who, this is a total side story, but my co-host for the video game show I do is from and lives in Canada. And Canadians see a lot of what's going on down here as just a complete insanity. They just don't understand why people are doing certain things that they're doing, whether it be how we handle the pandemic or how certain political parties act in certain ways or whatever, whatever. And so he just is saying, well, yeah,

from an outsider. This is what it looks like to me. And I'd somebody write in and get all been out of shape because they were like, you know, this co-host of mine should not have a free pass to just dump on one side of the political spectrum. And my immediate gut was to say, or wanted to say, dude, are you freaking talking about? Are you kidding me? He's a Canadian, first of all. He's not part of our political spectrum. He doesn't care about you thinking it's both sides or whatever your issues are. And I wanted to go off. Like, I was just irritated. Partly because he's just a really nice, soft, heart of dude, and I don't want people going after him. So anyway, I didn't do that.

Instead, I did what you suggested, which just tried to dig in and figure it out. Like, where is he coming from? Why does he feel this way? Make him, not make him, but figure out a way to get him to tell me why he feels this way or why he's this and that. And it ended up being really enlightening, like a really enlightening conversation about somebody who's got some deep-seated stuff. we did it in a civil way and you know I came away still going well

he's pretty wrong about a couple of these assumptions he makes but at least I came away with the understanding where this dude is coming from and understanding the source of his you know what some would call his dysfunction but

you know instead I see it I got to see it in a different light so anyway that stuff that stuff really stuck and I don't know if anybody else out there felt that way but like two or three major experiences during the week were colored by that. And so it made me think one of two things.

Either this is great and Wendy's really giving everyone a good advice or two, my sister has figured out a way to remotely control me. I don't know which. I don't know which one of this. 100% of the second one. Yeah, why not both? There's benefits on both sides. It's totally both.

And actually, this today is all about hinting that you need to work on some of your strengths. Yep, there you go. More control. Yeah. I mean, I have to say that that's great. I'm really happy to hear that. After taking this test and studying just one, I haven't even gone through my other four. I'm just sticking with Wu for a minute to try to figure out like, you know, I hate that it's the word woo. But I, like, what is this asset and am I utilizing it and do I, you know, whatever? And then I just keep having experiences like somebody at the grocery store, I can't get to smile or they don't laugh at the little. joke I make or and then I'm like oh and then someone else I crack them and I am high as a kite for the next half hour and I'm like wow this is so me and I just had never noticed before I just thought people are grumpy and then I'm like no I am requiring someone to be one over and that feels so different than being like that dude sucked it's more like oh yeah I didn't get my hit

from a stranger. So it's helpful. It's helpful. It's made me less weirded out by people that don't respond to my charm. To your woo, yeah. I cannot woo them. And so it's really weirdly been, yeah. And so I'm hoping you guys take this and I hope others do and either that test or the free ones

and just kind of wake up a little bit to yourself because we're not awesome at this. Like you said, Scott, sometimes we need other people to. express this, or we don't hear it. And even then, think of all the compliments you don't take in, right? And so it's this sort of way that you can dig into some of this without maybe some of the social problems of like, oh, I'm bragging or, because this is not my experience with Wu. It's like, no, that's a strength. Oh, I can see how this is harming me. All right, how can I improve this? So like there's a bit of some power in it, you know, we're not talking about my weakness. We're talking about my strength. So it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's,

It's fun. Anyway, so I'm hoping people have a good experience with this. So I'd love if people did it and could, like, be in the chat when we're talking about it next time. It would be cool. Yeah, that would be cool. I'm going to take this. So that's the one on the Gallup site, just to make sure I'm doing that.

The Gallup site. Okay. That's the one I'm more familiar with. The other one, you know, it's pretty basic, but helpful. And then there's lots of other things they could do for free. Okay. Cool. Well, there you have it.

Wendy, of course, busy doing other cool stuff. No new openings on Real Steps yet, right? Not yet. Nope, that'll be coming in the fall and I'll let you guys know what's going on like August. August is like next week. Yeah, August is soon, man. It's almost here. All right. Well, have a good one.

And may all of your, I don't know, days be free of. There, yeah, strengths be strengths. There it is. That's what I was looking for. We'll see you next time. All right. Brian, I think you're sounding better now. Let me hear you.

Yeah, it definitely gets better when it's just two of us. And I think also switching to my phones, sharing my phone's Wi-Fi as opposed to the hotel Wi-Fi. I think that's the thing. Everybody's waking up and turning on porn, downloading porn. So it's killing the hotel Wi-Fi. Yeah, they stopped downloading porn at 3 a.m., finally passed out drunk, and then now are waking up going, All right. Let's roll it in again, boys. Let's go. Let's get that porn. Back to the porn, everybody. Yep.

Well, awesome. We are toward the end of the program here. I wanted to end things real quick with a very fast email. This is an email regarding the key situation I ran into with my freaking mailbox the other day. And here's what he says. Send and receive email. This is an email from Bob, Cliff Claven's Carrier. We've talked to him before. He says, hey, S&B, the problems you've had maybe explain. lane in a few ways. Number one, the Sunday carrier is most likely not the regular carrier, because in my office, the regular carriers cannot work Sundays unless it's an emergency due to overtime rules. So the carrier you have is probably a sub of some kind, which is no excuse, but probably an explanation. Number two, here's option number two. The key you were left

should have come out of the lock for that box. But if not, the carrier should have been aware that it was broken. Number three, post office does not own that box. It only owns the carrier locks for the back to allow carrier access. Your HOA probably needs to have the locks fixed in conjunction with the post office. I actually think three is the likely one. Yeah, I think so too. He says, I would either try to meet with the carrier to solve the problem or leave a note in your box and let them know about the problem.

Hopefully he was not just being lazy. Maybe he or she just didn't know the key wouldn't work. Hope that helps. Well, it does, Bob. It straight up does. Hearing it right from a Newman mail carrier himself, I'm not saying you're Newman, but you know what I mean like a real the real deal I don't know why I brought Newman up anyway you're awesome thank you Bob for the feedback if you guys want to send in answers to questions we ask on the air or anything else really you can do that easily with the morning stream at gmail.com that's the address to use and as always the show is brought to you by you find folks at home through patreon.com slash TMS even a dollar a month would help and you guys are awesome I don't want anyone to think I don't love the dollar people whenever I bring it up about how dumb we are are the way we set things up that's about us not you you're amazing where we we love the dollar

people we love the two dollar people twice as much yeah and then if you're more than if you're the four of the five dollar people oh man we love I'm just kidding anybody yeah all of you is fine more of you to love we don't care we will take you that's patreon.com slash tms uh that's it obviously you're you're paying what you can afford and that's what we love that's right that's what we need really, to survive here. Anyway, hey, we got to get out of here, but we can't do it without a song, and I know Brian made a thing ready for now.

So what do you got there? I did, and this one, it's going to involve some work on your part, so I'm hoping that you're able to pull through. So Nikki Ackerman's A&TP contestant, and now a DTNS headline reporter or headline caster for Tom. She does a bunch of stuff. for any kind of science segments as well over there.

She's really good at those. She's awesome. She's so good. All right. So she says, Hi, sheep and buck. Just like Jurassic Park, I'm turning 29 this year,

and I'd love to request a song from the cover master for my birthday. Aw. As in the previous years, I'm requesting the silky tones of Orville Peck to celebrate. Can I also get a random sound clip from Scott about sheep? Oh. I love the slow-mo.

Nicky. Damn. Now, do you have a sheep audio clip? I don't know. okay let's try this one I got one it says

let's play it and see what we get cannons and town halls and sheep and stuff you gotta do I think that's our bees

guy too by the way oh it might be it sounds like yeah yeah yeah I think that's let me just make sure

I don't have any bah um so what's this one me oh that's just me yeah that's as good as I got Nikki

I feel bad I don't have any good sheep, like yelling or doing anything like that. Maybe you have goats. That's good, too. Yeah. Oh, here's a goat. Here we go. My name's...

No, not that. Okay, it's not quite the same as a sheep. But it's a fun, it's a fun goat. Goat make you sneeze. There you go. Goat make you sneeze. Anyway, that's as close as we're going to get. It's like I'm watching Thor 11 Thunder again.

All right. So, Orville Peck, this guy is awesome. I love, he has an incredible voice. And, but he also is, he's shrouded in mystery. I don't know what he looks like because he's always wearing a mask and then some frilly fringe coming down from that mask. So he's a mystery wrapped in enigma smothered with secret sauce. Wow. He got together with Trixie Mattel, who is a RuPaul Drag Race winner, I believe, certainly a contestant who's parlayed that into a music career.

And Trixie's released an album called Full Coverage Volume 1. on which she pulls in Orville Peck to do some guest vocals in a classic duet that was originally by Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. It's the song Jackson. Here is Trixie Mattel and Orville Peck. Perfect. I will see you guys. We'll also you guys Monday for a brand new TMS. We'll see you then. Hotter than a pepper sprout We've been talking about Jackson

Ever since the fire went out I'm going to Jackson I'm going to miss around Yeah, I'm going to Jackson Look out Jackson Town Well go on down to Jackson Go ahead and wreck your health Go play your hand

You big talking man And make a big fool of yourself Yeah, so what if I do? Yeah, go to Jackson Go comb your hair Oh honey, I'm gonna snowball Jackson See if I care When I breeze into that city

People gonna stooped band bow Ha All them women Gonna make me Teach them what they don't know How I'm going to Jackson

You turn to loose in my coat Because I'm going to Jackson Goodbye, that's all She wrote But they'll laugh at you In Jackson And I'll be dancing on a pony

keg lead you around like a scalded hound with your tail tucked between your legs Yeah, go to Jackson You big talking man And I'll be waiting In Jackson

You're gonna be waiting a long time I'll catch you if I can Well, now we got married in a fever hotter than a pepper sprout Yeah, we've been talking about Jackson Ever since the fire went out I'm going to Jackson And that's a fact

Yeah, we're going to Jackson May never coming back Youhoo part of the Frog Pants Network. Frog Pants Network. Get more shows like this at frogpants.com. Would you zip me up, please?