Clapcast 27: Who Gets the Costco Card? (A Partizan 00 Companion Episode) (November 2019)

Transcriber: meko

AUSTIN: Thankfully I can just do that right here. ‘Tips’, boom, done, save. Easy. Just waiting on—hey chat, we’re all here, we’re just here waiting on Dre, who’s getting some water, and we started talking about water.

KEITH: Mm-hm. And calcium.

AUSTIN: And calcium. Which is good for your bones?

KEITH: But not good for the taste of your water.

AUSTIN: Bad for that.

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Probably. Though I bet there’s the—I bet there’s a right amount, do you know what I mean?

KEITH: For the—yeah, yeah, I think that that’s right. There’s definitely—so, um—you know how I drink a lot of tea?

AUSTIN: I do.

KEITH: There’s some people who take it very seriously, and it’s—

AUSTIN: You.

KEITH: —to the point where it’s a detriment—no, no.

AUSTIN: Oh, more seriously than you?

KEITH: Way more seriously.

AUSTIN: To set the stage for people as we continue to wait for Dre, you brought tea stuff with you to Indianapolis for GenCon.

KEITH: Yeah. Yeah. I did.

AUSTIN: So it’s not like you don’t take it seriously, is the thing I wanted to get at.

KEITH: Right. Well, I take tasting it seriously; there’s people who take it seriously in a way that is a detriment to them and the people around them.

AUSTIN: Oh.

KEITH: They’re very serious about the sorts of—it’s the—you know how some people take something serious because they like it and some people take things seriously because they want to tell other people how they’re doing things wrong?

AUSTIN: A hundred percent.

KEITH: Yeah. There’s people who are like that with water. And so—

AUSTIN: Yeah, of course.

KEITH: These are the people that are like “I read this really old Chinese book that said that the best water comes from this one spot in this one lake in China.”

AUSTIN: Oh, okay.

KEITH: It’s those kinds of people.

AUSTIN: Are they—do they have pH-testing apparatuses they bring around with them?

KEITH: Yeah, totally.

AUSTIN: Okay.

KEITH: Well, so that’s the thing is that those people, they will get water from natural springs—

AUSTIN: Right.

KEITH: Which I think is a good idea, and there’s some springs around me I would like to get water from those because my water at my house tastes bad. But they also are like ‘Don’t use filtered water because filtered water takes out too much of this—it makes a flat-tasting water.’

AUSTIN: Too much...Right, right.

KEITH: So, there is a certain amount of stuff that makes an ideal water-tasting thing. And I guess I technically agree, it’s just that they’re jerks about it.

AUSTIN: Right.

KEITH: They’re really—they’ll be like “Don’t use—” you know, and they’ll fight amongst themselves about whether to use—a lot of them use bottled water, which is, I think, a really bad compromise—

AUSTIN: Wait, for tea, you mean?

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Huh.

KEITH: They’ll buy jugs of bottled water and use that. Some of them don’t like that but it’s like, I would rather use water that is slightly less ideal than be, you know—

AUSTIN: Buying—yeah, yeah, yeah.

KEITH: —using a bunch of extra plastic bottles.

AUSTIN: That feels like you’ve missed the—

KEITH: You’ve totally missed the point.

AUSTIN: —the point of it, right? Mm-hm.

KEITH: Yeah, what’s your—

AUSTIN: Sylvia^[1], what’s your closest thing to Keith’s tea thing?

SYLVIA: Oh God.

AUSTIN: Do you have something like that?

SYLVIA: Uh...I mean, it might just be wrestling at this point.

AUSTIN: Yeah.

SYLVIA: Is the thing.

AUSTIN: Yeah.

SYLVIA: But I’m trying to think of a more interesting answer.

AUSTIN: No, wrestling might be right.

KEITH: The problem is when you have too many things like this.

AUSTIN: Is that where you’re at? Are you also like that—’cause like, if I had a list—

KEITH: I just fee; like I have too many things that I really care about, in terms of hobbies.

AUSTIN: So, tea. One.

KEITH: Tea.

AUSTIN: Music?

KEITH: Music.

AUSTIN: But like—

KEITH: Both listening to and playing music.

AUSTIN: And making synths on your desktop.

KEITH: Yeah. And guitars.

AUSTIN: Right.

KEITH: Um—

AUSTIN: Um, weird car radios.

KEITH: I could—I mean, I could give you an example of how I’m weird about synthesizers, which is that I actually don’t use any on my computer, I only use hardware.

AUSTIN: Sorry, when I said desktop I did not mean your desktop computer.

KEITH: Oh, okay.

AUSTIN: I meant your physical desktop space.

KEITH: Okay. Right, yes. I do have a second desk.

AUSTIN: Right.

KEITH: With synthesizers on it.

AUSTIN: Is it the door desk?

KEITH: The door desk...door desk?

AUSTIN: Was that me? Who had a door desk? Who had a desk—

KEITH: It wasn’t me [laughs]. It wasn’t—

SYLVIA: I have no idea.

AUSTIN: Oh—You didn’t that was just like a piece of wood on some stools or something as a desk?

KEITH: No...um—oh! For a little while I was using drywall [Sylvia wheezes] being supported, but it was only for like two weeks.

AUSTIN: [amused] Oh, sorry. It wasn’t a door, it was drywall. My bad.

KEITH: It—I take it back. Maybe it was more for like two or three months. But I did eventually find someone’s giant desk they were throwing away and I replaced it with that.

AUSTIN: Great.

KEITH: Oh, and you know what? I’m now remembering, ‘cause this was a couple years ago, [laughs] the drywall was for my computer. [laughing] It was for my computer stuff, was on the drywall desk.

AUSTIN: God. God.

KEITH: Yeah, hey, you know, sometimes you need to have a desk and you can only find some drywall.

AUSTIN: Yeah, sometimes life be like that. Sylvia, you find something? You figure something out?

SYLVIA: Yeah, it’s really stupid. It’s—

KEITH: They all are.

SYLVIA: It’s emo music. It’s definitely Midwest emo [laughs].

AUSTIN: Emo?

SYLVIA: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Wow.

SYLVIA: Specifically like American football jangly shit I care way too much about.

AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh-huh. Good. I thought you were gonna say emoji [laughs].

SYLVIA: No!

[Keith laughs]

SYLVIA: That thing—I—eh. Passing interest.

AUSTIN: Wow.

SYLVIA: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Now, as someone who has a—

KEITH: That’s what they say as they’re like “You have to start a niche podcast but it can’t be something care about actually.”

AUSTIN: [laughs] As someone who started a Kanye West podcast last year, yeah, I agree with that statement. You never make a podcast about things you actually care about.

KEITH: Because the emoji will betray you by having a public rant. The crying emoji is gonna start supporting Donald Trump or something.

[Austin snort-laughs]

KEITH: That was my favorite one, that was my favorite emoji!

AUSTIN: That was the good one! That was the one I—aw, I can’t believe that colon-sob-colon now wears a MAGA hat, it’s terrible! Um...I hope Dre’s okay. Dre left twenty minutes ago to get water and then settle in and we’ve not heard back. Thirty minutes?

SYLVIA: Do you think he fell in the water?

AUSTIN: It’s possible. Should I text him? I shouldn’t have started the stream; I thought this would be like “Oh, he’s gonna sit down any second now, this will be perfect—”

KEITH: With water.

AUSTIN: I pinged him. I’m gonna DM him.

KEITH: Right. Oh, and that ping was from six minutes ago.

AUSTIN: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying!

KEITH: Right. Yeah, maybe Dre’s hurt.

AUSTIN: Gosh, okay. [typing] Did you fall into a water well?

KEITH: [chuckles] Do you need Lassie?

AUSTIN: Lassie doesn’t save anyone! Lassie goes to get help.

KEITH: Oh, Lassie just—Lassie’s the middledog.

AUSTIN: What? Oh, yes.

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: [laughing] I thought you meant like the youngest, oldest, and middlest dog.

KEITH: Oh, no, no.

AUSTIN: I’ll let other people do comedy around this; I don’t need to be the one. [pause] Yeah, there’s a chance that he went to go to a spring and get fresh water, which I can’t—I can’t judge about, you know? Where’s my phone?

KEITH: I can’t—yeah, I wish that he would’ve said “By the way, I’m going to a spring to get the water.”

AUSTIN: In China [laughs]. To get the—

KEITH: I’m driving to a specific lake. I’m driving to the lake around which longjing green tea is harvested produced and I’m going to use it to brew my longjing green tea.

AUSTIN: Right.

KEITH: Because you want to get water from the source around which that type of tea is produced.

AUSTIN: Right.

KEITH: Because the tea shares a spirit with the water.

AUSTIN: Did—do any of you have the phone number to—for Dre? [laughs]

SYLVIA: No.

KEITH: I don’t think I do.

AUSTIN: Our creative collaborator for the last five years?

SYLVIA: I don’t have anybody’s phone numbers because of long distance charges

AUSTIN: Fair. We could text?

SYLVIA: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Is that true actually?

KEITH: I have someone in my contacts and their name is “Scooby Drew” and I don’t know who that is and I don’t think it’s Dre but it’s definitely the closest I have.

AUSTIN: No, that’s Dre. Definitely, just message that person and be like “Where you at?”

KEITH: [laughs] “Hey Dre, are you back from your well?”

SYLVIA: Just call them live on air! Put them on speaker!

AUSTIN: God. Never again will I call someone live on air.

KEITH: Who did you call live on air?

AUSTIN: Actually that part of it went fine. The bit where we called Art on the streets of New York after he got spaghetti.

KEITH: Oh! Was I—yes! Oh, right [laughs].

AUSTIN: But is that—was that the same stream as the crossed streams, where we crossed the streams?

KEITH: Yeah, that was that one!

AUSTIN: Okay. Whooo! We’re talking about ancient history here.

KEITH: There’s nothing else to say about it! [laughs]

AUSTIN: Nothing else to say about the time we crossed the streams, except never cross the streams.

KEITH: And we knew that and we did it anyway and we paid for it.

AUSTIN: We were joking about it, we were like joking about it. God.

SYLVIA: We’re mavericks, you know?

AUSTIN: We are mavericks. What else is going on today?

KEITH: People in the chat are saying “Can I text Dre?” Sure.

AUSTIN: Yeah, Katie, if you have Dre’s number. So the thing is Dre is away on Discord, which means all these ats, I think, he’s just not gonna get. So—

KEITH: Well, do not disturb is the one where you don’t get them.

AUSTIN: Is that what it is? Red?

KEITH: Yeah, he should be getting—unless he physically doesn’t have his phone.

AUSTIN: No, he’s red. He’s do not disturb.

KEITH: Oh, okay. He’s gone. He’s gone.

AUSTIN: We lost him.

KEITH: We lost him. [pause] I’ve been trying to harvest yeast.

SYLVIA: Oh!

AUSTIN: Tell me about this.

KEITH: So I wanted to make bread. And I was like, “I should make bread.” And then I was like, “I should make sourdough bread from a sourdough starter.

AUSTIN: You—right.

KEITH: And then I was like, “I should cultivate my own wild yeast for my own sourdough starter,” and—

AUSTIN: My own—was that because you were like, “That sounds like a fun process”?

KEITH: Yeah, yeah. Yeast is very cool, in general.

AUSTIN: Yeah.

KEITH: I have tried, semi-successfully, to do the same with—you know what a ginger bug is?

AUSTIN: N-no? What’s a ginger bug?

KEITH: A ginger bug is a—it’s basically a starter, but for ginger beer?

AUSTIN: Ohh, that sounds good!

KEITH: And so you kind just mash up some ginger.

AUSTIN: Right.

KEITH: And I guess you can add sugar. And then there’s tons of yeast just hanging out on the ginger.

AUSTIN: Right, sure.

KEITH: And it starts eating all the sugars. And it turns into super-gingery alcohol.

AUSTIN: Gotcha.

KEITH: And then you can use that as a base for ginger beer soda.

AUSTIN: Right.

KEITH: And, you know, or ginger beer beer. I guess it depends on how fermented you let it get. And, uh, I was like, “I could probably—I have tons of plants in my yard, I could probably get some ginger—some yeast real quick.” It didn’t quite work; I don’t know exactly what I did wrong, but it was my first try. And someone on Twitter sent me a recipe book page for a starter for sourdough that used rhubarb in it for the first feeding.

AUSTIN: Okay.

KEITH: And I was like, “Hmm, I don’t have rhubarb, but I do have grapes in my yard.”

AUSTIN: Alright, Keith—

KEITH: So I picked some grapes—yeah?

AUSTIN: Those are not the same thing.

KEITH: Well no, but the grapes are covered in yeast. You can see it on them, actually.

AUSTIN: Okay.

KEITH: If you look at the grape, you can see it’s covered in yeast. So I—and also it’s acidic, so it lowers the pH. So it might kill some bacteria if I—if that was my problem, was that I was having bacteria overtake the yeast cultures.

AUSTIN: Issues. Yeah.

KEITH: So I mixed the grapes in with some water, got the yeast off of it. And I mashed a couple of the grapes and I just started a new one. So hopefully that turns into some sour, tangy mess in the next week or two!

AUSTIN: And then you’ll use that yeast for bread.

KEITH: Right, yeah. You’ll use—you use like one little scoop. You use like a couple of spoons.

AUSTIN: What are you going to do with the rest of that mess?

KEITH: You keep—you just keep it. You feed it—

AUSTIN: Okay. So you’re just—yeah.

KEITH: —like it’s sea monkeys.

AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. That’s your starter indefinitely.

KEITH: Yeah. Yep.

AUSTIN: Yeah. Gotcha. I just didn’t know if you had any non-bread plans for—

KEITH: Um, well you could do, you could do pizza crust—

AUSTIN: Right, true.

KEITH: Yeah, you could do doughnuts—anything that uses bread, you can use yeast for.

AUSTIN: Hey, here’s a question. I was in a pizza place yesterday.

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Like a, you know, a slices place. Like a good, New York walk-in—

KEITH: Yeah. [slight New York accent] It’s like I say, get you a slice.

AUSTIN: Get you a slice. I got two, got two pepperoni slices. They pulled out—

KEITH: That’s a good slice.

AUSTIN: —four or five of these big, square pizzas. And just [laughs] flopped them on the counter, one on top of another.

KEITH: Square?

AUSTIN: Yeah. But like—

KEITH: But that’s not a—that’s not a classic New York slice.

AUSTIN: No, no they have pies. You can get a pie delivered from the place, if you wanted to. I’m saying they had, like, metal counters. They went under the metal counter and produced a big, square pie. Pizza pie. And flopped it, face first, onto the counter. And kept doing that, building a tower of these.

KEITH: [incredulous] What? I—

AUSTIN: I don’t know what they were doing!

KEITH: I don’t—and then, wait, what was the next thing that they did? Is that all you had time to see?

AUSTIN: The next thing that they—that I—that happened was I got my slices and left.

[Sylvia laughs]

KEITH: And you didn’t have weird square slices.

AUSTIN: No, I got regular old slices. But it felt like they were producing these from...a cabinet.

KEITH: Hell—oh.

AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah [Sylvia laughs]. I don’t know what it—I don’t know.

KEITH: Maybe—okay, I was in—I was at a taqueria yesterday. And someone ordered—

AUSTIN: Uncut, also, to be clear. Non-sliced pizza. Just a tower—

KEITH: Large size? Party—

AUSTIN: Like, a big pizza. Like a, you know, two feet by two feet square pizza.

KEITH: So my—I was at a taqueria yesterday and someone got enchiladas and they went under, to where a cabinet might be, and they put it in an oven that was down there. And maybe they were refreshing this pizza.

AUSTIN: Maybe. But this—

KEITH: But if they were in a weird stack—because they came the cabinet!

AUSTIN: Katie in the chat wants to know if there were—if there was stuff on them. There was sauce and cheese. But it looked like it was cold and completely dry, you know what I mean?

KEITH: Oh.

AUSTIN: Like, as if it were old pizza.

KEITH: Maybe it was, um—and they were doing it face down? Like, cheese-side down?

AUSTIN: Face down. Cheese down!

KEITH: This is outrageous.

AUSTIN: It’s outrageous!

KEITH: The only thing—’cause I also—I worked at a pizza place for a while and the only thing I can think of is they keep prepped pizzas down there.

AUSTIN: Right, that’s possible.

KEITH: To go in the oven.

AUSTIN: Right.

KEITH: And it’s, you know, a refrigerator. But if they’re going face down—

AUSTIN: Right, this is the—and stacked!

KEITH: I don’t know what kind—yeah, I—this is absolute chaos!

AUSTIN: I’m gonna have to look into it. I’m gonna have to—

KEITH: Yeah, you’re gonna have to go back.

AUSTIN: Maybe I’m a fool.

KEITH: Can we—we’ll send you on recon.

AUSTIN: There could be something super obvious about this. Yeah, I’ll have to just go hang out there until they’re doing it again. And be like, “Hey, what the fuck is this??!” [laughs, Keith laughs] “What are you doing?!?”

KEITH: They start stacking, “Hey! Hey! What are you doing?!” From the back of the room, “Stop that!” Flip a badge: pizza cop.  

AUSTIN: “It’s me, pizza cop!”

[Keith laughs]

DRE: You guys can’t spoil the new Bluff City like this.

[Austin and Keith laugh]

AUSTIN: Hi, Dre! Welcome!

SYLVIA: Hello.

KEITH: Hey Dre, how’s your water?

DRE: Actually, it’s brown in the dishwasher, that’s why I’m late [laughs].

AUSTIN: God. No worries.

KEITH: It was brown?

DRE: Yeah.

KEITH: Did you go to a well? Do you have a well?

DRE: No.

KEITH: Do you have access to a well? We thought maybe you went—you took a long trip to a well.

DRE: No, if I went in a well then my dog would have came and barked at you. Come on.

KEITH: Yeah, we also supposed that might have happened too.

AUSTIN: Mmm, yeah, we did suggest that as a possibility for sure. For sure. Is Detroit-style pizza upside down now? No! No, it’s upside front! Up!

KEITH: Up.

AUSTIN: Front.

KEITH: Cheese up! All pizza is cheese up.

DRE: Maybe they were making upside down cake, but as a pizza.

AUSTIN: [musingly] But with pizza…

DRE: Pineapple upside down cake as a pizza.

SYLVIA: I hate this.

AUSTIN: I would fuck with that. Like I would—

DRE: Yeah, me too.

AUSTIN: People are saying—not people. The internet is telling me right now that Detroit-style pizza is apparently blowing up. So maybe they were trying it and they got it real wrong.

DRE: I feel like I’ve seen on my Youtube cooking channels, people making Detroit-style pizza.

AUSTIN: Yeah.

KEITH: I don’t understand what Detroit-style pizza is. What is that?

AUSTIN: It’s a style of pizza developed in Detroit, Michigan. It’s a rectangular pizza, it has a thick, crisp crust, and toppings such as pepperoni and mushrooms. Rectangular-shaped, um—

KEITH: Hey—

AUSTIN: —it’s twice-baked crust in a well-oiled pan—

KEITH: Okay. Okay.

AUSTIN: —to a chewy, medium-well done state that gives the bottom edges a fried or crunchy texture.

KEITH: I—

AUSTIN: But it looks like, if I’m being deadass, like, “I’m from the suburbs” honest with you, when I look at Detroit-style pizza, it looks like rectangular Pizza Hut pizza to me.

DRE: Yeah.

[Sylvia and Dre laugh]

AUSTIN: In terms of, like, the thickness of the crust and the way that there is, like—I like Pizza Hut, I’m not here to slam Pizza Hut—but in terms of the—

KEITH: Never been.

AUSTIN: I know, we talked about this last week.

KEITH: Mm-hm, yeah.

AUSTIN: The—we almost—I looked to see if there was one, there wasn’t one. Or there wasn’t one we could’ve walked to. In terms of the thickness of the crust, and the—I want to say almost like the degree to which the crust has oil in it, you know what I mean?

DRE: Mm-hm.

AUSTIN: Like the moistness—

KEITH: The greasy crust.

AUSTIN: The grease—yeah, that’s what it feels like. And Pizza Hut isn’t greasy, but it is like the crust is fused with oils.

KEITH: So the—

DRE: From what I understand, part of the Detroit-style pizza is that when you are cooking that crust, you put enough oil in that pan that you are basically frying the outside of the crust.

AUSTIN: Sounds great, honestly.

KEITH: It’s like focaccia pizza.

AUSTIN: [imagining it] Oh God. Sounds good.

KEITH: That sounds good.

AUSTIN: Oh! Keith, did I tell you?

KEITH: No. Well, I don’t know.

AUSTIN: A new Cheese—well, I said it on Waypoint. A new Cheese Factory opened up outside of Indianapolis last year that includes the production of burrata. That’s why there was all that burrata.

DRE: Mmm.

KEITH: Ohhh, that makes total sense.

AUSTIN: That’s why—Because there was burrata in the airport.

KEITH: Yeah, there was burrata in the airport, it’s nuts. Great burrata, what we had, that airport one.

AUSTIN: That burrata was great. Absolutely.

KEITH: I love burrata. I’m a big fan.

AUSTIN: I had a burrata two nights ago, three nights ago. Wednesday. Wednesday, Thursday.

KEITH: Oh, so this is a thing now, that you identify—

AUSTIN: It’s in my life.

KEITH: It’s in your life.

AUSTIN: Thank you so much for turning me on to burrata.

KEITH: You are welcome. I’ll have to get the name of the deli that my friends buy their burrata at, ‘cause they say it’s their favorite burrata. So I’ll—

AUSTIN: Please. Thank you, I appreciate it.

KEITH: It’s in the city that you’re in. So.

DRE: Ooh, this looks good.

AUSTIN: Oh, I’m in that city.

KEITH: Yeah, you’re in that city that you’re in.

AUSTIN: Are you looking at burrata?

DRE: Yeah.

KEITH: Burrata’s great.

AUSTIN: Yeah, so we got burrata from, um, from uh—

KEITH: Connor’s Kitchen and Bar.

AUSTIN: Kitchen and bar.

DRE: Huh.

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: It was a kitchen and a bar. They had burrata. And It was great. It was right across the street from the convention center.

DRE: There was a really great—

KEITH: If anyone doesn’t know, burrata is like a half-made mozzarella. So the outside is like fresh mozzarella, like a ball of—

DRE: Oh, it’s like—

AUSTIN: Yeah.

KEITH: but then you open it up and the inside is curdy-creamy—

DRE: Aw, man.

KEITH: —and really soft and super spreadable.

AUSTIN: Put that on a cracker or some bread.

KEITH: Yeah, yeah.

AUSTIN: Put some tomato on there.

KEITH: I like it on some nice crispy crunchy toast.

AUSTIN: Yup.

KEITH: With some sundried tomatoes.

AUSTIN: Yup.

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Damn.

DRE: Could probably finish a good, very thin crispy-style crust pizza with some burrata.

KEITH: Oh yeah.

AUSTIN: What if we just didn’t—what if we just went to dinner? Instead of doing the live show?

KEITH: Yeah.

DRE: See, I already ate though.

AUSTIN: I did not. So because of that, we should start this podcast.

DRE: Okay.

AUSTIN: We should go to time.is.

KEITH: [laughs] Okay.

SYLVIA: Oh, right.

AUSTIN: Uh, y’all wanna do thirty seconds?

DRE: Sure.

SYLVIA: Mm-hm.

[pause, followed by claps]

AUSTIN: Okay. [laughs] Today’s quote is from someone who I don’t trust. I don’t know anything about him. His name is Eckhart Tolle [pronounced Toll], or Toll-y—I think Tolle. “True power—capital T, capital P—True Power is within and it is available now.”

DRE: Preorder.

AUSTIN: Preorder now!

KEITH: Best known as the author of the Power of Now, and A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. This, this—

DRE: In 2008, the New York Times called Tolle the most powerful spiritual arthur—author—in the United States.

[Austin and Keith laugh]

AUSTIN: [laughing] Spiritual Arthur?

KEITH: “I’m Arthur the Aardvark!”

AUSTIN: Yeah.

KEITH: “I thought I was the most popular spiritual Arthur!”

DRE: Well, this was 2008 so you’ve probably usurped Mr. Tolle at this point.

AUSTIN: Good.

KEITH: I had a renaissance. I had the Arthur the Aardvark renaissance.

AUSTIN: Yeah. Yeah. The fist.

KEITH: This guy doesn’t look trustworthy.

AUSTIN: I don’t trust him.

DRE: It’s a wonderful kind of day. To learn to laugh and play. And play Microscope with each other.

AUSTIN: That’s what we’re here to do. So, ready to do a show?

KEITH: I’m Buster. I’m the Buster of the show.

[Dre laughs]

AUSTIN: Oh my God. Okay.

SYLVIA: I’m Francine.

AUSTIN: Like Buster Bluth? What?

KEITH: No, Buster the rabbit. The friend—the best friend of Arthur.

AUSTIN: I don’t know anything about Arthur. I don’t know shit about Arthur. I missed Arthur.

SYLVIA: Arthur’s good.

AUSTIN: Like—I believe it. I almost said Chance likes Arthur and then I started thinking about that Chance album and that was a mistake.

DRE: Mmm.

KEITH: I heard that wasn’t so good. I didn’t listen to it ‘cause I—the first I heard about it was that it wasn’t good.

AUSTIN: I’m very happy for Chance the Rapper. Is what I will say, and I’ll leave it at that.

KEITH: [laughs] Ringing endorsement.

AUSTIN: This is me leaving it at that and moving on.

[musical interlude 21:19]

KEITH: That is—yeah, that is too much soup for me, um, just enough time to eat it before starting and now it’s—I’m warm from the soup.

JANINE: Soup-warmth is good.

KEITH: I’ve learned this season that soup is great.

JANINE: It’s pretty good. I mean, I guess the downside—I don’t find soup very filling.

KEITH: Mm.

JANINE: I think it’s probably just that it drains out of your stomach faster than a big, hard to digest chunk of whatever.

KEITH: I make a good hearty soup.

JANINE: Yeah, that helps.

KEITH: My soups are very full of stuff. The problem is, I grew up on canned soup.

JANINE: Yeah, that is the problem.

KEITH: Which is fine. It’s fine—so I was like, I just don’t care.

JANINE: It’s so high in sodium! It’s not fine.

KEITH: Well, I mean—

JANINE: It’s, like, bad for you.

KEITH: I don’t hate the taste of it though.

JANINE: Yeah.

KEITH: But I don’t care for it. I just don’t—I just thought I didn’t care about soup.

JANINE: Yeah.

KEITH: But it—then I, you know, I tried—I had homemade soup a few times. But the homemade soups used box, um, stocks—

JANINE: Mm-hm.

KEITH: Like chicken stock in a box.

JANINE: Yeah.

KEITH: And I have learned that I don’t very much like that very much either. So this season I’ve, like, made—

JANINE: I don’t mind that but you have to do shit with the rest of what’s in there. Like—

KEITH: Right, yeah. ‘Cause it’s very bor—it’s very bland.

JANINE: Yeah. The best—I still use boxed stocks just because I’m too lazy to make my own stock. I just—I just don’t care. But the best soup I ever made was leftover pot roast—

KEITH: Mm.

JANINE: Like, roast beef that I’d done the day before. So that was heavily seasoned and stuff already.  

KEITH: Great.

JANINE: And then red peppers that I’d roasted in the oven beforehand.

KEITH: Ooh.

JANINE: And then also I did the full, like, mirepoix, like the onions and the celery and the carrots.

KEITH: Mm.

JANINE: That you almost burn into the bottom of the pan [laughs].

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: And then add the stock and stuff. And it was like—it was also the beef broth that has red wine in it and that’s way better.

KEITH: I’ve got a hot tip. I’ve never done that—I’ve never done the full mirepoix thing but I heard a tip recently of doing that with some tomato paste. I can’t remember the word for it.

JANINE: Oh! Yes, yes, yes. No that’s—the other thing is that I turned my nose up at that for a long time when I was trying to figure out how to make a soup. And I always made shitty bad soup, like my mom also used to—she used to try to make soup out of leftover white turkey breast meat—

KEITH: Great.

JANINE: And it was just meat-water. It was not good.

KEITH: Super bland. Yeah, yeah. Totally.

JANINE: It was just that and celery and carrots. Just no.

KEITH: Yeah [laughs].

JANINE: But yeah, no, the thing I also did with the soup was, like, so I had the beef broth with red wine and stuff.

KEITH: Ooh.

JANINE: But then I also added—one: I added a spoonful of gravy from the roast.

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: Which, like, it makes it kind of an oilier soup, like a fatty soup, which is a little unpleasant-looking when it’s cold but when it’s hot it looks fine.

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: But then I also added two tablespoons of tomato sauce and it was great—

KEITH: It’s hard to tell though, ‘cause like if you have a really—

JANINE: I don’t like tomato soup but, like, it just rounds things out nicely.

KEITH: It totally does, yeah.

JANINE: Yeah.

KEITH: But if you do it, I—the tip that I heard, I haven’t done it, but it was a chef that was talking about this. But it was like if you put in the tomato paste while you’re browning the vegetables.

JANINE: Mm-hm.

KEITH: Like, during that cooking part, then it’s supposed to be a very good way of doing that.

JANINE: I bet it would sort of—not caramelize but it would develop the sugars in the tomato more?

KEITH: Yeah, yeah, totally. I want to try it but I don’t have tomato paste. So I didn’t do it. But, um, my—

JANINE: Tomato paste is one of those things that, like, I need it so much more than I realize.

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: There’s so many recipes I like that need tomato paste but I just never keep it around because I just don’t think to.

KEITH: What I do have, though, I do have, like, this—so I have paprika but I also have this paprika mixture.

JANINE: Mm-hm.

KEITH: So it’s paprika and then also some tomato-y thing. So I tried to do it, and I don’t know if it worked—the soup was very good.

JANINE: Hmm.

KEITH: But I tried to do it with this paprika thing. So I did have heavily spiced carrots and onions browning in a pan with this paprika thing. And that seemed to work pretty good.

JANINE: That sounds good, yeah.

KEITH: Yeah. But I was at Isaac’s parents’ house and his mom made us a chicken dinner and was like—on our way out was like, “Hey, can you throw out all these bones?” Like, all the car—like, here’s the chicken carcass and some bones.

JANINE: Oh, free bones, come on!

KEITH: Yeah, and I was like, “I’m actually going to take this and make a stock out of it.”

JANINE: Mmm!

KEITH: Like, I hadn’t been planning on making soup but I was like, “I’m not just going to throw out two pounds of bones! I’m going to make stock out of this!”

[Janine and Keith laugh]

JANINE: Perfectly good bones!

KEITH: Hi, Sylvia. But, so I went home and made soup with it. And I made chicken stock and then pork tenderloin soup. And it was so good. And then I made pulled pork and used the bone from the pork butt to make a new broth.

JANINE: Butt broth.

KEITH: So then I made chicken soup with pork broth. I switched it, I reversed it [Janine chuckles]. And I’ve just been going back and forth with chicken and pork all—for like two months now. I’m into the soup, I’m into it.

JANINE: I guess that’s the main reason I don’t tend to make my own broth ‘cause we just don’t usually get meat with bone in it.

KEITH: Mm.

JANINE: Like, we are the assholes who are like, “Just give me fucking the skinless, boneless chicken breast, thank you.”

KEITH: [chuckles] The skin is so good.

JANINE: I tried chicken thighs and I really, really, hated them, so much.

KEITH: You’ve never had chicken thighs?

JANINE: No. No, no. Like, we’re—for one thing, my parents don’t like any—or my parents didn’t like any dark meat and I sort of inherited that not-liking dark meat kind of thing.

KEITH: Oh, wow.

JANINE: It’s like fattier poultry? I find the texture of it very off-putting.

KEITH: It’s a little bit—yeah, it’s greasier.

JANINE: It’s—there’s a gelatinous quality to it.

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: That, like, even when I picked off the skin—’cause I also do not like the skin—

KEITH: [softly] Wow.

JANINE: It just felt like I couldn’t find the meat in it? It was—it all just felt like fatty fat and I was very unhappy with that. So—

KEITH: I can’t—I feel like I had the opposite. I grew up on chicken wings.

JANINE: Mmm.

[Keith chuckles]

KEITH: Um—that’s not true. I grew up on whole chicken and everyone wanting the legs, pretty much. Like, everyone was like, “I want the legs!”

JANINE: When I—yeah, that’s actually true. When I was little, I was always like, “I want the drumstick!” I think that was just ‘cause it’s easier to hold.

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: ‘Cause once I grew up a little more I was like, “I absolutely don’t want the drumstick, it has that big rope of stuff—”

KEITH: Well—

JANINE: “It has that big sinew-tendon thing and I don’t wanna fuckin’ deal with that. Someone else eat this thing.”

KEITH: It’s easy to hold but also you get to eat it with your hands.

JANINE: Mm-hm.

KEITH: Which is not typical at the dinner table.

JANINE: Yeah…

KEITH: Unless you were a really cool kid [laughs].

[Janine chuckles]

KEITH: Yeah, it’s true. It depends on how much you care what your parents are telling you to do.

JANINE: At this point—

KEITH: When I was a kid, I pretty much used a fork when I was told to.

JANINE: At this point, I just don’t like meat that I really have to work for. Like, I don’t like ribs, ‘cause I feel like the effort-to-meat ratio is bad. There’s very little meat on—well, I’m—we get—[exhales] we get okay ribs. We’ve gotten a variety of ribs over the years. We don’t get, like, the big ones though. They’re, like, they tend to be pretty small.

KEITH: If you cook ‘em long enough, they’ll just slide right off. Although you kind of want to get—

JANINE: No, I know. I—we—I promise I do that [laughs].

KEITH: Okay. Alright.

JANINE: I mean, I just don’t like the amount of meat on them. I mean, part of it is that we also tend to get—I think it’s back ribs, which are the smaller ones, I think? But the meat’s better—it’s good meat, it’s very good meat, it’s just there’s not enough of it given the—

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: Given how—I guess also the mess.

KEITH: It’s pricey too.

JANINE: I count mess in as work. And I just—yeah. It’s also just the price for, I dunno. I would rather just have, like, a steak.

KEITH: Yeah. That’s why I eat a lot of pork. Pork is really inexpensive compared to beef.

JANINE: Mm-hm.

KEITH: And it’s also not worse. It’s not a worse kind of meat either.

JANINE: Pork makes me hiccup. I don’t know why.

KEITH: That’s weird.

JANINE: Whenever I eat pork chops, I get the hiccups and I never get the hiccups when I eat anything else.

KEITH: [laughs] That’s really weird.

JANINE: I don’t fucking—I don’t know why.

[pause]

KEITH: It’s cold here.

JANINE: How’s everyone doing?

[sound of loud nose blowing]

[Janine and Keith laugh]

[sound of nose blowing]

KEITH: It’s just like being in second grade again.

[Janine laughs]

KEITH: About the same, oh, okay.

JANINE: Mm-hm.

KEITH: Every, you know—I would get in trouble in school for blowing my nose too loud. And I would just be like, “I have allergies, I don’t know what to tell you.”

DRE: That’s bullshit. You just gotta blow your nose.

KEITH: Yeah, I just gotta blow my nose. Well, everyone would laugh and I knew that I could get a laugh blowing my nose.

JANINE: That’s the thing is you were definitely like a class clown, right?

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: Like at some point the teacher probably thought you were just milking it for the chuckles.

KEITH: Yeah. And I was—it wasn’t that I—it was def—it was like the blowing your nose version of kidding on the square because I definitely knew it was a joke and I knew that it was funny and I was hamming it up, but if I wasn’t hamming it up it wouldn’t be substantially different. You know, it’s like—

JANINE: Mm-hm.

KEITH: There’s barely a difference between me—

JANINE: It’s like the difference—you’re blowing your nose and then blowing your nose and wagging your eyebrows.

KEITH: [laughs] Yeah, basically.

JANINE: It’s functionally the same thing.

[Dre laughs]

KEITH: Yeah. Or, like, doing an extra one at the end of a laugh. Um, but yeah, almost half of my elementary school teachers would try to send me to the principal’s office [laughs] for blowing my nose.

JANINE: Ugh.

KEITH: Yeah, yeah, it was fucked up. Eventually they just learned; they were like, “Either he’s never going to stop doing this joke or he’s being serious.” And it was kind of both. But mostly I was being serious. [pause] Jack’s PC is in the shop. I feel like Jack’s PC’s always in the shop.

JANINE: Do you?

KEITH: I don’t know, I just remember it happened before. [laughs] Which is weird, because my computers have never been at a shop. I’ve never taken my PC to the computer vet.

JANINE: The computer vet?

KEITH: Yeah.

JACK: Hi.

JANINE: Hi.

KEITH: Hey, Jack.

DRE: Hello.

JACK: Hi, Keith.

KEITH: How’s the computer vet?

JACK: The computer vat?

KEITH: Yeah.

JACK: It’s being submerged in the liquid. In the gelatinous liquid.

JANINE: Computer vat?

KEITH: Oh, wrong—V-E-T [laughs].

[Janine laughs]

JACK: It’s being submerged in the gelatinous liquid.

KEITH: Oh, same answer. Good.

ART: We’re learning a lot about animal hospitals in the UK right now [laughs].

JACK: Yeah, absolutely. We do it a bit differently here. But, uh, yeah, it’s just—it’s one of these things where it has an intermittent fault where it wouldn’t turn on. And I gave it into the shop and the man called me the next day and said “It turned on fine!”. And I said “Yeah, it’s—”

JANINE: “It’s intermittent.”

JACK: “It’s intermittent! Can you try again?” So he said, “Yeah, we’ll call you next week.” Which is, I mean, fair, but—

[Janine sighs]

KEITH: How many times in the last couple years has your computer been at the computer shop?

JACK: None.

KEITH: None? I feel like I remember this happening before. I don’t know why I have this memory.

JACK: Oh, I keep sending computers to different—ooh.

DRE: Ooh.

JANINE: Ooh.

KEITH: Okay, so other computers are going to other shops.

JACK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. To various different shops.

KEITH: Okay. Alright.

JACK: How’s it going?

ALI: Hi.

JACK: Austin fell down a hill into the call.

ALI: Oh!

KEITH: In a wind tunnel. It was a hill in a wind tunnel.

ALI: Oh.

AUSTIN: It was a big investment, but I think it’s paying off.

KEITH: Now you know exactly how much wind it takes to float a Behringer microphone.

AUSTIN: Yeah. Seventy knots.

ART: That’s a lot of wind.

AUSTIN: They’re very heavy microphones. They're very well made. How’s everyone doing?

KEITH: We just—I just talked about soup for an hour, I think.

DRE: Mmm.

AUSTIN: Ooh, soup.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: For an hour?

JANINE: We had some soup chat.

KEITH: Yeah, it was a soup chat.

AUSTIN: Soup chat...

ALI: Keith, you’ll be happy to know I just got some bones. So I’m ready.

KEITH: Ohhhh.

AUSTIN: For soup?

ALI: I’m ready to take the dive. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

AUSTIN: Nice.

DRE: Making, like, broth from those bones?

ALI: Well, Keith was selling me on how good stock is, and like—

DRE: Yeah!

JANINE: Yeah.

KEITH: Yeah, I didn’t know until recently, it’s sick!

DRE: No, stock is fucking awesome!

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Like, you didn’t—wait, what do you mean, you didn’t know?

ALI: Well, okay—

KEITH: Well, I grew up on canned soup.

ALI: Keith said something that resonated with me, which was that the difference in quality between making your own stock and buying a box of stock is the same difference in quality as making your own mashed potatoes to having boxed mashed potatoes.

DRE: Mm-hm.

AUSTIN: That’s true.

ALI: And if that’s true—[laughs]

AUSTIN: That’s true.

JANINE: Mm-hm.

JACK: I think it is.

AUSTIN: It is true.

JACK: It absolutely is. What bones did you get?

ALI: I just have some chicken bones.

DRE: Nice.

JACK: That’s a classic.

ALI: There’s chicken attached to it.

DRE: That’s what you want.

JACK: Oh, so what you have is—[laughs] you have pre-bone.

ALI: Right.

JACK: Which is to say, a chicken.

ART: Do you have just a chicken? You have a rotisserie chicken, is that what you mean?

ALI: [laughing] Yes, that’s exactly what I—

KEITH: Is there a full chicken around the bones or is it just the remains of a chicken?

ALI: It’s a rotisserie chicken that’s this week’s lunch.

JACK: Hell yeah!

AUSTIN: Like, from the grocery store—

ALI: And next week, I’m going to make a soup—

AUSTIN: Wait, real quick.

ALI: Huh?

AUSTIN: You went to the grocery store and got one of those pre-cooked rotisserie chickens?

ALI: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Those are good.

DRE: Those are good.

[asset from the table]

AUSTIN: I’m not going to fuck around and complain about that. I would eat one of those right now.

JACK: I’m grateful that you can go to a store and just get a chicken that’s ready to go.

AUSTIN: Yes.

KEITH: If you want to sell me a loss leader chicken for six bucks, I will buy it.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: Yes.

JACK: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

AUSTIN: Are those loss leaders? Do they lose money on those?

KEITH: They abs—Yeah, they totally are. And more for Cost—Costco sells them for $4.75 or something. It’s insane.

AUSTIN: That’s not enough money.

JACK: Oh, I think I’ve heard about this!

JANINE: I mean, that’s the thing is five bucks for a chicken is an amazing price, so of course you’re gonna go in there and be like, “I’ll just pick up a chicken,” and then you see like, “Oh, toilet paper’s on sale!”

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Yeah. Right.

JACK: Mm-hm.

AUSTIN: I do love—

KEITH: I watched a twenty-minute video about how Costco refuses to increase the price of their chicken but they just keep moving it further and further away from the front door.

[Jack laughs]

AUSTIN: That’s very good.

JACK: Oh, that’s a pro tactic! That’s so good.

AUSTIN: They gotcha.

KEITH: Yeah.

ART: Useless though, because Costco is already basically a supermarket maze.

ALI: Right.

DRE: Mm-hm.

KEITH: Yeah, yeah.

JACK: I’ve never been to a Costco.

[Ali gasps]

ART: Oh, you should go. It’s awful.

JACK: I know! [Austin laughs] Art, can we go to a Costco together, next time I’m in town?

ART: Absolutely.

JACK: It’s like an Ikea for, like—

ART: For everything in the world.

AUSTIN: For food.

KEITH: It’s an Ikea for a hundred bags of chips.

JANINE: Yeah, once you buy a rotisserie chicken, you have to assemble it with an Allen wrench.

[Austin and Jack laugh]

JACK: Oh God. Yeah, no, I’m excited. I’m—you have to have a card, don’t you? Aren’t Costco cards like a thing?

DRE: Yeah.

KEITH: Yeah, you have a membership.

DRE: You have to have a membership.

ALI: You can, like, sneak in.

JACK: You can sneak in?

ALI: Yeah!

JACK: It’s like Disneyland front gates?

DRE: Yeah, but then you can’t buy anything. ‘Cause they swipe the—

ALI: You can’t buy anything, they check your card.

AUSTIN: They card you at the door, yeah.

ALI: But you can get the samples.

DRE: It’s true.

ALI: And you can also—you don’t need a membership to buy the one dollar hot dog that comes with a soda.

AUSTIN: Ooh.

JACK: Ooh.

ALI: I think it’s $2.50—I think it’s $2.50 and it’s a footlong hot dog and a drink

AUSTIN: Okay!

KEITH: That’s not bad. That’s not a bad deal.

AUSTIN: I’m not mad at it, I’m not mad at it.

ALI: [laughing] So good!

JACK: Here’s the thing. If it’s $2.50 and it’s a hot dog and a drink.

ALI: Uh-huh.

JACK: I could pay double that and get an entire chicken.

[Ali laughs]

DRE: Yeah.

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: But you don’t have a membership, so you couldn’t, Jack.

ALI: Right, you couldn’t. Yeah.

JACK: So I couldn’t, right. And this is how they get me.

AUSTIN: And this is how.

JACK: They make the chickens further away from the door—

AUSTIN: Yeah.

JACK: —and they say, “Do you want one?”

ART: The hot dogs are outside.

JANINE: It’s way harder to eat a whole rotisserie chicken with your hand while the other hand is holding a can of Coke.

AUSTIN: Yeah, it’s true.

DRE: I’ll just mail you my Costco card.

ALI: Oh.

DRE: And then you can mail it back when you’re done.

JACK: [laughing] Thank you.

ALI: But there’s your face on it.

DRE: Eh. They don’t really look at that.

ALI: I think they look at the face.

DRE: Not really.

AUSTIN: Do they?

DRE: No.

JANINE: I bet they don’t.

DRE: Wait—

JANINE: Because you have people who pass their card off to their spouse or something.

AUSTIN: Hmm.

DRE: I don’t—

ALI: I think you need a special membership to be able to do that.

DRE: No.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: Love it.

DRE: ‘Cause like, the one I bought there was like a—you can get a second card for someone in your house. Like, Jas has a card.

AUSTIN: Mm.

ART: And you don’t need a second card to just go with your spouse.

DRE: Well, yeah.

AUSTIN: Well, ‘cause you’re at the checkout, right? Presumably, that would be a situation where they’d be like—they wouldn’t be like, “You both need a membership to check out together,” right?

[Jack chuckles]

DRE: No, yeah.

AUSTIN: That’d be funny.

ART: There’s no—you can bring as many visitors as you want to a Costco.

JACK: That’s how Art’s gonna get me in.

AUSTIN: But they can’t check out, right? You couldn’t—I couldn’t go with you—

DRE: Yeah!

AUSTIN: And then be like, “I’m going to pay for my own stuff.”

DRE: No, you totally could.

AUSTIN: Really? They would let me pay for something on your card? Or, not on—on your membership—under your membership card but with my credit card?

DRE: Probably. Yeah.

AUSTIN: Hmm. Hmmm.

DRE: As long as it’s a Visa credit card, ‘cause they don’t allow any other credit cards besides Visa.

ALI: Oh.

AUSTIN: What?

JANINE: Uhh.

DRE: They have like a—they have a deal where Visa is their credit card person, so.

AUSTIN: Ohh.

DRE: You can use any debit card, just not a non-Visa credit card.

AUSTIN: Interesting.

DRE: I learned that the hard way.

KEITH: That’s probably part of how they get that chicken cost so low.

AUSTIN: That’s how.

KEITH: Visa bucks.

AUSTIN: I mean, the chicken cost is low everywhere, right?

ALI: I think seven—

KEITH: It’s lowest at Costco. The video is very explicit about that, it’s lowest at Costco.

AUSTIN: Okay. That’s adds up. I’m not, you know—that adds up.

KEITH: Yeah.

SYLVIA: I’m learning so much about the chicken economy today.

[Ali laughs]

DRE: Hmm?

AUSTIN: Y’all have them up there. Those chickens are in Canada for cheap.

SYLVIA: I know. I’m just saying I’m very ignorant to the differences among chains.

KEITH: I just—I want to make it clear that people who have been eating soup for billions of years already knew this but what I didn’t realize about soup was that you make the soup with the bones and fill it with meat, and then you’ve got leftover bones from the new meat and then you use that to make the next soup.

DRE: Mm-hm.

KEITH: It’s perfect! It’s a perfect system.

DRE: Yeah.

ART: Did you say billions of years? Did you say billions of years?

KEITH: Billions of years.

[Ali laughs]

ART: Billions of years [laughs].

AUSTIN: Billions.  

KEITH: Well, whenever soup was invented, right?

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

KEITH: Like, thirty thous—I don’t know, twenty-five thousand years ago.

DRE: Probably a long time ago, honestly.

JANINE: Where do you think stone soup comes from?

AUSTIN: Wow.

JANINE: It’s when stones were making soup.

[Austin laughs]

SYLVIA: We all came out of the primordial soup, so.

ART: Out of other stones?

JANINE: Yeah.

AUSTIN: We were cannibals.

KEITH: [Googling] How...old...is...soup?

AUSTIN: How old is soup?

KEITH: Twenty-five thousand years! I nailed it!

JACK: Wow!

KEITH: Yeah.

DRE: I would have believed longer, honestly.

AUSTIN: Uh, well what are they—

KEITH: It says at least twenty-five thousand years.

AUSTIN: Yeah, what are they calling soup here?

KEITH: Uh, I dunno.

JACK: If I put an apple, a single apple, in some water and I’m a caveman...I’ve kind of nailed it already.

DRE: Yeah.

AUSTIN: You did it.

DRE: That’s soup. Or is that—wait, is that cider?

JACK: No, I haven’t pulped the apple, or you know—I mean, cider is a kind of soup, you know?

AUSTIN: Is it?

SYLVIA: Wait, so then is bobbing for apples just sharing soup with your friends on Halloween?

AUSTIN: Aww.

JACK: Yeah.

DRE: Yeah.

KEITH: So the soup being invented at least twenty-five thousand years ago comes from people finding big cauldrons—

JACK: Oh, wow.

KEITH: —that have evidence of being put over fires.

SYLVIA: That just means that witches existed twenty-five thousand years ago.

ALI: Mm.

[Dre laughs]

AUSTIN: We knew that though.

DRE: Yeah, I’ve read Macbeth.

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: That’s when they invited—

KEITH: You know what they say: as long as there’s been soup, there’s been witches.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: It is what they say.

DRE: The Salem Soup trials.

[Austin chuckles]

ART: I don’t think Macbeth was written twenty-five thousand years ago if—

JACK: No, it was.

ART: Oh, okay.

AUSTIN: No, it takes place twenty-five years ago.

JANINE: Oh my God.

KEITH: It’s the—the story that William Shakespeare wrote Macbeth from was written twenty-thousand years ago.

JACK: From, yeah.

AUSTIN: Right.

JANINE: You remember Macbeth’s famous ‘The guy born from no woman, Grog, who killed him.’

AUSTIN: [laughing] Yeah, Grog.

DRE: [laughing] Grog.

AUSTIN: He goes “Ooga booga,” and then kills him.

DRE: “I Grog!”

AUSTIN: That’s the famous—Shakespeare has invented a lot of words; the first word Shakespeare invented, chronologically, was “Ooga booga.”

[Jack and Art laugh]

JACK: Yeah. And then he managed to get his way to ‘wheretofore’, later along.

DRE: Mm-hm.

AUSTIN: A little bit after that, yeah.

JACK: Truly the poet of our age.

[Dre laughs]

AUSTIN: I’m almost ready. This is good—I need you to know that I’ve been prepping a map for everyone in this time.

SYLVIA: Ooh.

JACK: Oh Jeez. Wow.

DRE: Do we have a Roll20—

JANINE: Yeah, is there—

AUSTIN: We don’t need—we won’t need one today.

DRE: Okay.

JANINE: How do we go see a map then?

AUSTIN: I’m just gonna put it in the chat.

JANINE: Okay.

JACK: Austin has posted it. Via UPS.

DRE: Ooh.

[Janine laughs]

AUSTIN: I have not done that—[laughs] Yeah, I have given it to a porter. Jack and I have been playing Death Stranding.

DRE: Oh God.

JANINE: Mm.

AUSTIN: And what the two of us have decided is just hand couriers from here on out.

SYLVIA: Simultaneously, there’s a knock at all of our doors and someone is there holding a map.

AUSTIN: Oh, could you imagine?

SYLVIA: Really well planned.

AUSTIN: Yeah.

KEITH: “I found these old magazines!”

[Austin and Jack laugh]

KEITH: “Is someone here?”

JACK: “The map that Austin has sent us is eighty-five kilograms.”

AUSTIN: Okay, but you make that joke but—I did that for Jack once. That was a Christmas gift for Jack once.

JACK: Yeah—

AUSTIN: Or a birthday gift.

KEITH: Old magazines?

AUSTIN: Where I just sent Jack a bunch—I did like a—this was very fun to make. I did a bunch of old magazines and, like, what was it? A book about dogs and—

JACK: Yeah—

JANINE: There was a weird book you picked up in a local bookshop that I remember you were—

AUSTIN: It was five books—

JANINE: Was it used? Was it a used bookshop?

AUSTIN: It was five used books.

JANINE: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Including, yes, one about dog breeds of Nova Scotia or something.

JACK: God.

AUSTIN: One about—like a prairie diary. And I’d written one-page letters for each of them that tied them to a family. It was like a metafictional multigenerational narrative  It was very fun. It was a very fun exercise.

JACK: It fuckin’ ruled. One of the best gifts I’ve gotten.

AUSTIN: Anyway, my point is, that is exactly the sort of shit I would do if I had more time. I did when I was a student and had time to do fun gifts. And then immediately—then Jack returned the favor once with a very similar situation and I dropped it. I never replied, ‘cause I felt too bad ‘cause I didn’t have the time. I don’t even know that I said thank you; Jack, thank you for that gift.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: We’re really just airing it all out at this point.

JACK: That’s okay, we just—and now we’re paid eight hundred dollars a week to tell a dog and a cat what to do.

AUSTIN: Right, exactly. And here’s a map. Now I’ve done this map. This map is very—don’t worry about it. It’s—I used—some of this was done weeks ago.

JACK: Oh my God.

AUSTIN: Some of it was done today—and good luck telling the difference, ‘cause it’s all amateur. I’ll clean this up at some future point. But it’s good to have. Good to have a reference point. Um, we should clap.

SYLVIA: Right.

KEITH: Is this a lake or an ocean?

AUSTIN: That’s an ocean. That’s the Prophet’s Sea, a thing I should add to this thing.

KEITH: Oh, yeah, of course it is.

AUSTIN: Yeah. The three at the bottom though are definitely all lakes.

JACK: I [laughs]—sorry. Before zooming in, I thought that the city—the northernmost city on the map—was called ‘Crascist’.

[Keith and Janine laugh]

AUSTIN: Crascist. That’s a—

JACK: A new, different type of racist.

AUSTIN: Yeah, uh-huh.

DRE: Against craisins.

AUSTIN: Against craisins! [deep voice] There will be no craisins.

ART: Uh, cranberry racist, if you were—

AUSTIN: Yeah, thank you for making it very clear. And as a note, I want you guys to keep me on point whenever I say something that’s like, “Oh, the audience might not know that.” So when I say ‘cracist’, you need to remind me—[laughs]

[Dre laughs]

KEITH: Right.

AUSTIN: —to introduce the audience to the notion of cranberry racists, a long-running Friends at the Table in-joke, obviously.

JACK: Of course.

KEITH: It’s like racist but more tart.

JACK: Mhm.

AUSTIN: I like the cracists better, honestly.

[Jack laughs]

KEITH: They live in bogs.

ART: We should start back-laying inside jokes. Inside jokes that we claim are old and are new.

ALI: Mhm.

AUSTIN: We can do that, it’s powerful. That’s a thing we could do.

JANINE: I feel that would stress people out a lot.

AUSTIN: Yeah, fair. Including us.

JANINE: Yes.

ALI: Mm-hm.

JACK: Definitely.

AUSTIN: Alright. Can we time.is?

SYLVIA: Sure.

AUSTIN: That was a good, loud—

SYLVIA: I thought you all were clapping and I missed it somehow.

[Austin and Janine laugh]

AUSTIN: Mm.

JACK: Aptly, the quote for me today is from Roy T. Bennett. He says “The beginning is always now.”

AUSTIN: Huh.

DRE: Hmm.

KEITH: Wow.

JACK: Thanks, Roy.

JANINE: That’s not always—

DRE: Wait. I think I have a different—

JANINE: I feel like if you began something yesterday, that was the beginning.

JACK: Right.

DRE: I have a different time.is quote.

AUSTIN: We’re in different days.

JANINE: Me too.

JACK: It’s ‘cause I’m—because you're yesterday.

DRE: Ohhh.

AUSTIN: Wow.

JANINE: Harsh.

AUSTIN: Brutal.

KEITH: Everyone else has Kent Conrad?

AUSTIN: Yeah.

JANINE: Now who’s the cracist?

[Austin laughs]

KEITH: Who’s saying actually almost sort of the same thing.

AUSTIN: Yeah. “We shouldn’t just live for today; we prepare for tomorrow.” Let me tell you, I think most of these quotes are saying the same thing.

JACK: Mm-hm.

AUSTIN: Which is...time...dot is? [laughs]

[Keith laughs]

SYLVIA: Slash just.

AUSTIN: Slash just. Um, you want to do—are we good to clap?

ALI: I am.

JANINE: Yeah.

[other noises of assent]

AUSTIN: Twenty, let’s do twenty.

[pause, followed by clap]

KEITH: Pretty good.

AUSTIN: That was—

KEITH: For almost no—

AUSTIN: For almost no lead up, that was a pretty good clap.

KEITH: Yeah.

SYLVIA: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Mine was maybe a little late ‘cause of how good the rest of it sounded, but.

[musical interlude, 47:12]

AUSTIN: Wow, everyone is getting disconnected and reconnected. This is a nightmare.

ALI: I think I’m gonna—while we have this pause, I’m gonna switch to a different server.

AUSTIN: Good call. Everyone keep recording. though.

ALI: Yeah.

KEITH: Human hands too.

AUSTIN: Got it.

ART: Do they—do they make poop?

SYLVIA: Ooh.

KEITH: Uh-uh.

ALI: Mm.

SYLVIA: Did anybody else get that really loud noise?

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: I did not.

KEITH: No.

SYLVIA: Oh, it was just the Discord connecting noise but it was so loud.

AUSTIN: Ohhh. Alright.

KEITH: Sylvia, you seem much quieter all of a sudden.

SYLVIA: I was backed up because I got scared by the loud computer noise.

KEITH: Ohhh.

AUSTIN: [laughs] Because the noise attacked her; that was, like, bad.

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Um, are we good? Are we on the new server, Ali?

ALI: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Alright.

[musical interlude, 47:47]

AUSTIN: ...Which is good. Alright, Dre, tell me about your character.

ALI: Dre’s not here. Dre just got the bug.

AUSTIN: Oh, did Dre get it?

JANINE: Yeah.

ALI: Uh-huh.

AUSTIN: What is happening?!

ALI: Um—

AUSTIN: Dre, you’re back?

DRE: Yes.

AUSTIN: I think—is Discord being hacked?

[Ali gasps]

AUSTIN: What if they’re hacking Discord? It hasn’t hit me yet, which is very strange.

KEITH: I also have not been hit.

JANINE: Me either. I’ve been  fine.

AUSTIN: Yeah.

ALI: Well, it’s been one at a time. I feel like we should all just hang up.

AUSTIN: No, this is not just us. Rag—rag—hmm. Ragnarok, but, like, intercapped constantly with some numbers on Twitter: “@Discordapp: friends keep disconnecting from the server as if they were being kicked offline. Happened five times now. Wonder if it’s just the server going a little goofy.”

ALI: Mm.

AUSTIN: This is happening to a lot of people.

KEITH: I refuse to be disconnected.

AUSTIN: Hold on tight, everybody. Um, hopefully it stabilizes soon? There’s not like an update, right? No, there isn’t. Alright. Dre?

DRE: Yes.

AUSTIN: Um...tell me about your character.

DRE: Oh boy, okay [laughs].

AUSTIN: Sorry. I was trying to catch up, I was trying to see if I—

DRE: No, it’s—

JANIN: It happened to me. It happened to me.

AUSTIN: It did happen to you! Wow!

ALI: Austin, it’s coming!

JANINE: You’re next, man.

AUSTIN: Okay, I’m gonna hold on tight, everybody. Woo.

KEITH: They all fall down.

AUSTIN: Ahh! What if I don’t come back?!

ALI: We all came back.

ART: If you die on Discord, you die in real life. That’s true.

AUSTIN: Noooo! Wait, who’s left? Is it just me?

JACK: I haven’t gone yet.

KEITH: I also have not.

AUSTIN: Alright.

SYLVIA: That’s right folks: we’re finally doing a horror season!

[Austin and Ali laugh]

KEITH: What does the last person to drop get as a prize?

ALI: Satisfaction.

JANINE: A Costco membership.

[laughter from the table]

AUSTIN: Oh, that’s good!

JACK: I’m angling for it, Austin.

AUSTIN: At least one of those Costco chickens.

JACK: [laughing] Right.

AUSTIN: I think it’s gonna be Jack; Jack is overseas.

ART: Jack is the furthest away; I think it’s the safest bet.

AUSTIN: Right.

JACK: I wonder if it’s gonna reach me last...

AUSTIN: Jack?

JANINE: Maybe it—

AUSTIN: Jack??

KEITH: I was the first person in the channel.

JACK: Yeah?

AUSTIN: Oh, okay. It sounded like you cut off in the middle of saying that to me [laughs].

JACK: [laughs] God, we’re now—we’re jumping at shadows now.

AUSTIN: Ohh, this is very funny and good.

KEITH: I was the first person in the channel; maybe that means I’m immune.

AUSTIN: Oh, could mean you’re immune.

JACK: Oh, God.

SYLVIA: [spookily] Maybe it happened before any of us got here and you’re trying to hide it.

AUSTIN: Ooh.

[Ali gasps]

[assorted oohs and ahhs, from the table]

AUSTIN: It all starts with you, Keith.

KEITH: I’m trying to scam my friends out of a four dollar chicken.

[Dre laughs]

JACK: Okay, everybody close their eyes and then the werewolves open your eyes and recognize each other.

[Austin, Dre, and Janine laugh]

AUSTIN: Alright.

JACK: Are we all here? Should we just keep going?

AUSTIN: Let’s just keep going for now.

KEITH: Yeah, just keep going.

JACK: See what happens.

AUSTIN: That’s the best—the best way to make it happen is to just keep going as if we’re fine.

JACK: Yeah.

KEITH: The way we know it’s a curse is ‘cause it keeps happening right as we’re trying to start again, that’s the problem.

AUSTIN: Exactly. Exactly. Dre, can you tell us about your char—

[musical interlude, 51:03]

AUSTIN: Um, so that’s a fun angle on this character. Why are you the thing you—why are you here?

DRE: Oh nooo! Nooo.

AUSTIN: I guess just to investigate and scout stuff?

ALI: Uh-oh.

JACK: That doesn’t bode well.

AUSTIN: Did I get disconnected again? I did.

JANINE: Why are you? Just that. That’s just the question.

[Jack laughs]

KEITH: Yeah.

ART: Why are you?

KEITH: You ever fuckin’ thought about why are you?

DRE: Uhhh. I gotta go log off and think [laughs].

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: Wow.

ALI: Hi.

AUSTIN: Hi.

SYLVIA: Hi.

AUSTIN: I—my hubris. Got the—wow.

ALI: Have you restarted?

JACK: —three, four, five, six, seven. Wait.

JANINE: It’s very weird; you’re not in the li—woah.

[assorted woahs from table]

AUSTIN: What was that?

ALI: [spookily] Be careful.

JANINE: You weren’t in the list, then there was just a very loud “ba-doop”. It was like five ba-doops all at once.

KEITH: Oh, Sylvia got one of those!

AUSTIN: Huh.

SYLVIA: Yeah, that was the big ba-doop I got that scared me.

JANINE: Scary.

AUSTIN: I have not heard a big ba-doop.

KEITH: Big ba-doop [laughing]. That’s my call sign now.

[Dre laughs]

AUSTIN: Big ba-doop.

KEITH: [laughing] The big ba-doop.

AUSTIN: Oh, someone else just disappeared!

DRE: Oh nooo! Jack!

ALI: Was it Jack? Oh!

AUSTIN: It got to Jack!

KEITH: No, no, I see Jack.

ART: Keith, you win the chicken!

DRE: Yeah, Keith, you do win.

ALI: Janine gets the Costco card.

AUSTIN: No, Keith’s gone!

SYLVIA (and others simultaneously): Oh!!

KEITH: Oh.

AUSTIN: Wait, Janine, did you not get—you get the Costco card.

ALI: Janine gets the Costco card!

SYLVIA: Hey, congrats!

JANINE: Oh. No, I got—I was kicked before.

AUSTIN: Oh.

ALI: Oh.

AUSTIN: So wait, was it Jack or Keith?

JACK: Keith—Keith is the winner! Keith, Congratulations!

AUSTIN: But Keith—Jack, Keith is gone! Jack?

JANINE: I do think it was moving from west to east.

AUSTIN: Jack, Keith is gone. Jack?

KEITH: Hello?

JACK: Wait, what?

AUSTIN: Jack is—Keith is gone.

JACK: Keith and I went simultaneously?

SYLVIA: Right after you.

AUSTIN: Right after.

ALI: Right after.

AUSTIN: I think Keith may get the Costco.

JACK: Oh, Keith still gets the—Keith gets the Costco.

AUSTIN: Yeah [laughs]

JACK: The Costco card.

SYLVIA: Eh, full Costco. We’ve upgraded.

AUSTIN: Yeah, in the time you were gone, we decided that Keith gets a whole Costco.

JACK: Oh, wow.

AUSTIN: Just for him.

JACK: That’s impressive!

AUSTIN: Yeah.

JACK: That’s a real poison chalice though, isn’t it?

AUSTIN: Yeah. “What the fuck do I do with this?”

JACK: [laughing] With a Costco.

SYLVIA: We’re gonna get more emails about being small business owners.

[Austin laughs]

JACK: That’s my favorite Roald Dahl short story. Where a boy is gifted an entire Costco by eccentric Costco ruler.

[Dre laughs]

AUSTIN: By—yeah, by Cost—by—

JANINE: And it’s full of large bugs.

AUSTIN: By Sir Albertson Costco.

JACK: [laughing] Sir Albertson Costco, yeah.

AUSTIN: God.

ART: Sixth in line for the throne.

[Austin and Jack laugh]

AUSTIN: Moved up one.

JACK: UK line of succession...let’s actually work this out. It is—let’s see.

[Ali gasps]

AUSTIN: Jack?  

JACK: Oh?

AUSTIN: Oh, you’re back.

JACK: Yeah?

AUSTIN: For now.

JACK: Did I—did I disappear real quick?

AUSTIN: You did.

ALI: Yeah.

DRE: Real quick.

JACK: That’s weird. I didn’t even get a sound.

JANINE: Unless you were just fucking with us, which would admittedly be funny.

JACK: No, no.

ALI: It was like a drop-out. It was like your voice cut, it wasn’t that your—you didn’t—

AUSTIN: Uh-oh, did I drop?

JACK: Oh, who was that?

ALI: Austin.

JANINE: Oh God!

ALI: Oh, oh my God!

JACK: Oh my God, everyone’s going!

SYLVIA: Noo!

ALI: And Art.

JANINE: The crowd is thinning.

JACK: And Keith is still not here.

SYLVIA: [softly] Yeah.

ALI: Oh God. Are we going—

JACK: Friends at the Table: Battle Royale.

JANINE: Fantastic.

[Ali sighs]

JACK: Austin has just posted an image saying—it’s a screenshot of our server and it says “One other server is unavailable due to—” oh fuck me.

SYLVIA: I’m gonna be right back for a second while we figure this out.

ALI: Oh, I changed the server again, so it wasn’t your fault.

JACK: Okay.

SYLVIA: Oh, did I just drop?

DRE: No. No, you’re still here.

SYLVIA: Oh, okay, no one reacted so I was like “Oh shit, did I go too?” Okay, I’ll be right back.

[typing sounds]

ALI: Maybe we do a call...I gotta set this up.

JACK: I hope we don’t have to switch to Skype.

ALI: Jack?

AUSTIN: Hmm.

JACK: Yeah? Hello?

ALI: Okay, [laughing] I thought you left.

AUSTIN: Hmm. Hmm. I’m gonna try to restart Discord.

JACK: I disappeared for one second.

ALI: Keith...Dre...okay, I’m gonna call everybody.

JACK: Okay, I’m gonna leave this.

[long pause, with intermittent typing sounds and whistling]

ART: Hello? Is anyone here? Janine?

JANINE: Hey?

ART: Alright. Sylvia and Dre have not made any noise since I’ve come back [laughs].

JANINE: Hmm.

ART: There went Sylvia.

JANINE: Yeah.

DRE: Hello, I can hear you.

ART: Hey!

JANINE: Hey.

DRE: I was refilling my water.

ART: Oh, there’s a call. We’re not supposed to be over here.

JANINE: I dunno what that—no.

[Dre laughs]

ART: You’re not on that?

JANINE: No.

ART: I see you.

DRE: Oh you’re—yeah, you’re on that.

JANINE: On the call?

ART: You’re in the group.

DRE: Hello?

ALI: Hi.

JANINE: What?

ART: You should have the little green thing up on the top.

ALI: You’ve weirdly—You’re weirdly the only person who’s gotten this call; I don’t know why.

JANINE: No.

ART: If you go to your friends list, you see the groupchat with all eight.

JANINE: Nuh-uh.

DRE: Well, no, Art was talking about seeing it, I thought he was gonna come over here.

ALI: Oh.

ART: Well, I’ll stay here with you then.

JANINE: I don’t got shit.

[Ali sighs]

ALI: That’s so weird.

ART: What a wonderful time for a massive Discord outage.

JANINE: [laughs] Fantastic.

DRE: What a good time.

SYLVIA: I’m back.

ALI: Okay, that didn’t work, I guess.

JANINE: I guess not.

ALI: Would’ve been nice if it did [laughs].

JANINE: Yeah.

ALI: Hi?

AUSTIN: Hi.

JANINE: Hi.

ALI: Hey.

AUSTIN: Hi.

JANINE: Hi.

AUSTIN: I think I’m back.

ART: You’re back.

DRE: And I hear you.

JANINE: Sounds like you are.

AUSTIN: Did I send that one image multiple times? I did.

ALI: Mm-hm.

JANINE: Yeah.

DRE: Just twice.

JACK: Hello.

AUSTIN: Okay. Hi. It feels better. This sounds better, to me. Maybe?

ART: I mean, who knows?

AUSTIN: We’re waiting on Keith. We’re waiting on Sylvia.

JACK: Who’re we missing now? One, two, three, four…Sylvia and Keith.

AUSTIN: And Janine. No, Janine’s here.

JANINE: I’m here. What’re you talking about?

AUSTIN: I was not looking at the thing right.

JACK: We’re waiting on other-Janine.

AUSTIN: Right, we met while you disconnected; we got another Janine on the show.

JANINE: That gonna be very confusing.

[Austin and Jack laugh]

JACK: No, it’s the mirror version of you; it’s the sort of Coraline-style—

JANINE: That’s terrifying.

JACK: Everyone has one.

KEITH: Hello.

AUSTIN: Hi.

JACK: Hi, Keith.

ART: Hey.

KEITH: Am I—did it—was I the only one that totally dropped?

[Jack laughs]

AUSTIN: No, we all—

JACK: No—

KEITH: I did win the chicken though, I think.

AUSTIN: Oh, you absolutely won the chicken.

JACK: You won the chicken by a whisker, Keith!

AUSTIN: Yeah.

KEITH: I know, I did. It really was a photo finish on the chicken.

[Ali laughs]

KEITH: Yeah, I heard everyone say, “Keith, you won the chick—” and then I was down [laughs, Jack and Janine laugh]. And then Discord wouldn't even start up for me again.

JACK: Hi, Sylvia!

SYLVIA: Hi! Oh, I was away! Okay, I had no idea.

AUSTIN: Wait, really? You missed—okay.

SYLVIA: It said I was connected this whole time.

JACK: ...three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Okay, everyone’s here.

ALI: Mm-hm.

JACK: Who the fuck knows. The weirdest bit, for people who missed it, was when Ali tried to invite us all to a call in our DMs and we just didn’t get the message.

ALI: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Yeah.

SYLVIA: Oh, yeah.

ALI: I think that’s weird.

ART: I got that.

AUSTIN: I got it on my phone but I didn’t get it—

JACK: Oh wait, damn, have I got it on my phone?

KEITH: Luckily, according to—

SYLVIA: I just got every notification at once.

KEITH: Yeah, so I got a notification on my phone but when I tried to open Discord on my phone, it wouldn’t open

AUSTIN: Mmm.

JACK: Oh yeah, Discord on my phone is just not working.

AUSTIN: Right.

KEITH: Luckily, status.discordapp.com: “All systems operational.”

AUSTIN: Yeah.

KEITH: No problems here!

AUSTIN: Yeah, uh-huh. They’re like, “This is great! Whatever’s happening for you—”

KEITH: Yeah, this is as—yeah.

AUSTIN: As intended [laughs].

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: We love to disrupt your first recording of the season! Um, where were we?

KEITH: I literally don’t remember.

AUSTIN: Dre? We were talking about—

DRE: Yes.

KEITH: Oh, we were talking about Dre’s ghost.

DRE: You asked me why am—why I am and then you cut off.

AUSTIN: Why are you am? Why are you here? So, why is Valence at Partizan again? We talked about this—

ALI: Can we clap? I’m sorry, can we just clap?

AUSTIN: Yes, we can—let’s just do a clap. Agreed.

ALI: [laughs] We can do a 3-2-1.

AUSTIN: No, let’s—okay, you want to do a 3-2-1?

ALI: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Okay.

ALI: Just 3-2-1. I just want to see the claps.

AUSTIN: Okay. 3—

ART: So it’s—wait, wait, wait. We—

AUSTIN: Oh my God.

ART: At the beat of 3-2-1, we clap at like the theoretical zero.

AUSTIN: The theoretical zero.

ALI: Yes.

AUSTIN: Yes.

KEITH: Yeah.

ART: Great.

AUSTIN: 3, 2, 1—

[claps]

[musical interlude, 1:00:02]

SYLVIA: Yeah, and I might be vervain actually now that I’m looking at it. I don’t know. Someone will tell me. I’ll look up the Youtube video, which maybe I should have done before recording.

AUSTIN: And it’ll go—a robot will go “Verbine. Verbain.” Or something like that. And then you’ll be like, “I still don't know.”

SYLVIA: I couldn’t tell what that letter you used was. Was that ‘b’ or ‘v’?

JACK: The robot will say, “Thank you for listening to my video about pronunciation.” [laughs]

AUSTIN: [laughs] Yes.

JACK: God, I’ve been trying to find that. What was the word?

AUSTIN: Which one? I don’t remember—I know the one you’re—yeah.  

JACK: You linked to us in the Bluff City chat that was a pronunciation video that, like, ninety percent of was the robot voice [Dre laughs] saying, “Thanks guys, for listening to my pronunciation video.”

[Keith laughs]

JACK: “If you’ve been looking for how to pronounce this word, the pronunciation is—”

AUSTIN: It is—oh, it is Galaca. Which is the name of one of the Elects, one of the pilots. It’s so fucking good.

JACK: God, can you link it again? ‘Cause I want to hear it again.

AUSTIN: I’ve linked it again in Bluff City. It opens with just vaporwave playing, basically. Unless this is a different one, which is possible.

JACK: No, this is it.

AUSTIN: Okay.

KEITH: This is fifty-seven seconds long [laughter from the table], for how to pronounce a word.

SYLVIA: Yeah, this is long.

KEITH: Every word, a short story.

JACK: [laughing] Twelve seconds in and the music is just stopping.

SYLVIA: I don’t want the music to stop.

AUSTIN: [laughing] It’s so good.

JACK: “Hi everyone, greetings on my video.”

AUSTIN: Also, I think the robot pronounces it wrong. I think the robot—

JACK: The beat that gets me is when the robot says, “So, to begin.”

[Austin laughs]

JACK: [laughing] It’s one word!

KEITH: Galaca.

AUSTIN: Galaca.

SYLVIA: They will repeat again.

KEITH: Galaca. Galaga.

AUSTIN: Galaga. It’s galaga!

KEITH: Galaga. Galaga.

DRE: That’s all.

AUSTIN: That’s all. Oh my gosh, that’s it. Oh my God. This is a whole channel, by the way. Wordbox. Eight point—eight—oh my God, the views on this thing!

ALI: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Galaca only has two hundred and seventeen views. But this!

ART: Well, we’re gonna change that.

AUSTIN: Yeah, we are.

ART: Gonna break that down.

AUSTIN: Look at this one! Look at the views for “How to say BF”

[Ali laughs]

JACK: Brackets ‘high quality voices’. Wait, let’s see, it’s loading in.

KEITH: 8.5...eleven, how to say ‘Saxe’. Or—

AUSTIN: This video has 8.5 million views!

KEITH: Did you see the one above that?

AUSTIN: Yeah, 11 million, I know!

KEITH: 11 million.

SYLVIA: It’s about to get—

KEITH: That is a six. One million.

AUSTIN: “Best video I’ve seen in years. So much hard work and love went into making it and it’s so prevalent. [laughs] Prevalent. Thanks for everything, Wordbox, you’ve helped me through thick and thin, I owe everything to you lovely people.”

KEITH: S—

AUSTIN: Yep.

KEITH: People? Are you sure? [laughs]

AUSTIN: I don’t know. ‘Cause it—the link out here is to yeta.io, which just goes to the thing. Anyway.

SYLVIA: These are all also at least two years old. There has not been an upload to this channel in two years.

ART: Oh, do you think the Wordbox people are okay?

AUSTIN: I hope the Wordbox people are okay.

JANINE: Yeah, they’re just making videos where the robot reads Reddit posts now.

[Austin laughs]

AUSTIN: Wow, the account was suspended!

KEITH: “How to say ‘XXXAdult’.

[Janine and Austin laugh]

KEITH: “High quality voices!”

JACK: Well, to begin…

[Austin laughs]

KEITH: [laughing] Hold on—

AUSTIN: Thank you.

SYLVIA: “How to pronounce ‘PFFFFF’. Best quality”

AUSTIN: Best quality. Thank you for this. This sidenote. This is the real Clapcast material right here.

ALI: Don’t say it!

[laughter]

JANINE: This is not how you say it!

KEITH: Do you—sixaddled.

JACK: Wait, can you link PFFFFF please, Sylvia?

SYLVIA: Yeah, hold on. I haven’t actually watched it. Here it is.

AUSTIN: Wait. Sixadled.

KEITH: This is funny for a whole new reason now.

AUSTIN: Thanks for watching. Ooh, this one opens different! Oh, hell yeah!

KEITH: Ooh.

AUSTIN: Listen to that jazz!

DRE: Oh, this is great.

KEITH: I hope there’s some extra music before they start.

AUSTIN: Look at the nature in this!

JACK: Mm-hm. The clouds.

JANINE: This is also how a bunch of Reddit videos start.

AUSTIN: I feel like I’m at church.Yeah.

SYLVIA: [laughing] Have you got to the part where it says it’s really good.

[Keith and Dre laugh]

AUSTIN: Yeah, you know what? Oh, there’s different voices!

[Keith keeps laughing]

AUSTIN: I’m the third one. [laughs] Tag yourself. P..F..F..F.

KEITH: I’m—I’m—

JANINE: They're not even saying the right number of ‘F’s! Oh, they are.

KEITH: [laughing] I need to go to youtube.com to figure out how to say ‘PFFFFF’.

AUSTIN: This one’s—

DRE: Oh, I like the one at forty seconds.

AUSTIN: Ooh, that one’s good.

ART: Oh, that one was great.

AUSTIN: That’s all. Thanks for watching. Please—

JANINE: Please share if you enjoyed the video.

AUSTIN: Here’s a question: do you think they also have one for PFFFFFF? And PFFF.

[Keith laughs]

JANINE: T?

AUSTIN: They’re so many.

SYLVIA: [laughing] I can’t. I can’t.

KEITH: By the way, this—this channel has 160 thousand subscribers.

AUSTIN: I know!

KEITH: It’s not just people searching and finding and watching. People are subscribed to this channel.

AUSTIN: No, they’re not. Again, people?

SYLVIA: I mean, I am now.

AUSTIN: Okay, fair. Just in case. Oh, I got a good one. I got a good one. I got a good one [laughing]. I’m gonna hide the title so you have to click through and see it. Everyone just [laughing] go ahead and click in.

[Dre laughs]

JACK: [laughing] Okay, let’s see what we got here.

ART: Alright, here we go.

JACK: I can’t—

DRE: What is this fuckin’ music?

[Keith laughs, more laughter]

JANINE: This is Sixardult music is what this is.

AUSTIN: [laughing] They can’t pronounce it either.

KEITH: I like that they’re reading the book, that’s nice.

AUSTIN: That’s good [laughs]. Nin-jaturtle999.

ART: Nin-janurtle!

JANINE: Oh hey, every Wordbox video is created by both American and British speakers. That’s good to have the perspective of both ways to pronounce the thing.

AUSTIN: Yeah, uh-huh.

KEITH: Nin-jaturtle.

AUSTIN: That—[laughs]. Nin-ja-turtle.

KEITH: The one—

JACK: This has eight views [laughter from the table]. Are we the first people in the world to see this?

AUSTIN: Us!

[wild laughter from the table]

KEITH: How do some of these have 11 million views and this has eight?

AUSTIN: People aren’t searching for Ninjaturtle999!

KEITH: But how come people had seen PFFFFF?

ART: I think you mean nin-jaturtle.

[more laughter]

KEITH: I can’t think of anything more self-explanatory than how to pronounce PFFFFF; it’s right there!

ART: How do you think—is comedy channel? Is this already a joke and we are just—are we laughing with them?

SYLVIA: I think it’s just odd.

KEITH: It’s either a really strange joke—it could be a joke, it really could be a joke.

AUSTIN: I could be.

KEITH: Or someone made a machine and the machine did a bad job.

AUSTIN: I will note—

JANINE: It has to—

AUSTIN: Go ahead.

JANINE: It to be a joke because if you look at the popular uploads, three of the four—okay, so it’s how to say ‘saxe’ with an ‘E’—

AUSTIN: Uh-huh.

JANINE: Then how to say ‘six’, like the number. Then how to say ‘seax’. These are their top—these are three of their top four videos.

AUSTIN: Season Seax.

JANINE: That can’t be a coincidence [laughs].

AUSTIN: They’re banned on Twitter.

SYLVIA: Yeah, that checks out.

ART: The videos are banned on Twitter?

AUSTIN: No, the account is banned on Twitter.

ART: Oh.

KEITH: Do they think—they think it—Twitter thinks it’s a bot.

AUSTIN: Twitter is like, “This is a bot for sure.”

KEITH: This is a bot.

JANINE: I wonder if it was actually—if it was a Twitter bot where people had—was like, “submit a word to pronounce.” It was like a robot that would do it.

AUSTIN: Yeah.

JANINE: So people were submitting a bunch of misspelled words and usernames and shit.

AUSTIN: That looks exactly right. ‘Cause I’ve done a Twitter search [Keith laughs]. And it’s like “@yetaio Why did you make a video on how to pronounce my name? WTF” and “Hey @yetaio can you please tell me how to pronounce ‘zizor’ ‘cause everyone did it wrong but I think Google won’t help.” This is all very funny to me. Alright, we should get back to the show we do. Before it’s—

ALI: Can we clap?

AUSTIN: Yes. 3, 2, 1…

[claps]

KEITH: I missed it.

ALI: It’s fine.

AUSTIN: It’s fine. It’s just about seeing it. Thank you, Dre, for this. This is why I’m telling you, recon. You’re really scouting things out.

ALI: [laughing] You have to stop.

AUSTIN: Alright, I’m stopping. I’m stopping.

[musical interlude, 1:09:06]

AUSTIN: ...And help all of us do that. I don’t take all that money. That isn’t just my money. I’m not, like, a Hoover.

[Art laughs]

JACK: The astonishing salary for podcasting.

AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: Um, alright.

ART: Really bad news for us.

[Austin laughs]

JACK: Mm.

AUSTIN: I just took it all the whole time. What I gave you was IOUs, and I owe you, so.

ALI: Wooo.  

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

ART: We have Austinbux.

SYLVIA: That’s why my credit—

[Keith laughs]

ART: We have all these twenties with Austin’s face.

AUSTIN: I’m smiling. It’s me—I’m not—it’s me doing the—that face when—that feel when me Mondays face.

[Ali and Art laugh]

AUSTIN: Alright. Fifty?

ALI: Mm-hm.

AUSTIN: If we’re not there, it’s fine.

[claps]

AUSTIN: Were we there?

DRE: I was.

ALI: I was there.

KEITH: Right there!

AUSTIN: Nice work. Alright.

JACK: Let’s do it.

AUSTIN: Shout-outs to everyone. “The beginning is always now,” says Roy T. Bennett.

KEITH: Wow.

AUSTIN: We reached it.

KEITH: We crossed over.

AUSTIN: Yeah. “The future is always now,” says Roy T. Bennett, finally.

KEITH: Art, I’m sorry that I couldn’t pull your mood ring hat. I fuckin’ had such a feeling it had already been done, but I was—

AUSTIN: It was only in a live game, that is now in the main feed, but, like, if you haven’t heard that, you wouldn’t have known, you know?

KEITH: I have heard it.

AUSTIN: Oh, okay.

KEITH: Pretty sure.

AUSTIN: Well, that’s—yeah.

[Outro music]