Episode 648

Written By Ashley Park

Jamie Loftus, Hari Kondabolu, and Blitzen Trapper

New York Times bestselling author Jamie Loftus unpacks her latest podcast Sixteenth Minute of Fame, where she talks to "internet famous" folks of the past, like NFL half-time legend Elvis Presto; stand-up comedian Hari Kondabolu explains why he's never performed on Long Island and how his iPhone might be stunting his parenting; and celebrated Americana band Blizten Trapper perform "Planetarium" off their latest album 100's of 1000's, Millions of Billions. Plus, host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello share the times our audience members has a brush with fame.

 

Jamie Loftus

Author and Podcaster

Jamie Loftus is a comedian, Emmy-nominated TV writer, New York Times bestselling author, and podcaster. She writes and hosts popular limited-run podcasts—My Year in Mensa (2019), Lolita Podcast (2020), Aack Cast (2021), and Ghost Church (2022)—and co-hosts, with screenwriter Caitlin Durante, The Bechdel Cast. Her first book, Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs, was called "a wonderfully weird and wild mashup of history, social commentary, personal revelation and food journalism" by BookPage and "laugh-a-minute" by Kirkus. Her latest project, Sixteenth Minute (of Fame), is a weekly podcast that takes a closer look at the internet's main characters—one part reported, one part interviews, and one part Jamie collapsing her permanently internet-damaged brain—and was named one of "The Best Podcasts of 2024 (So Far)" by Vulture.
Website • Instagram

 
 

Hari Kondabolu

Stand-Up Comedian and Podcaster

Hari Kondabolu is a critically acclaimed comedian, writer and podcaster whom The New York Times calls "one of the most exciting political comics in stand-up today." His groundbreaking 2017 truTV documentary, The Problem With Apu, sparked a worldwide conversation about representation, with The Nation hailing it as "a devastating critique of the ultimate comedic sacred cow: 'The Simpsons.'" His latest special Vacation Baby marks his most personal work, documenting his journey into parenthood during the global pandemic. Beyond his acclaimed stand-up work, Kondabolu co-hosts Netflix's Snack vs. Chef and previously co-hosted the popular podcast Politically Reactive with W. Kamau Bell. Website • Instagram • Facebook

 
 

Blitzen Trapper

Portland Americana Legends

Led by singer/songwriter Eric Earley, Blitzen Trapper blend country, folk, Southern rock and progressive Americana. Launched roughly two decades ago in Portland, they garnered early attention with a series of self-released albums before breaking out internationally with a pair of critically acclaimed LPs (2007’s Wild Mountain Nation and 2008’s Furr) that would cement their status at the forefront of the modern indie folk revival. Their radiant new album 100's of 1000's, Millions of Billions is inspired by Earley's Buddhist studies, offering a captivating take on rebirth and transcendence. Bandcamp featured the album on their Spring 2024 Hotlist, marveling "somehow, after nearly 25 years, Blitzen still remains un-trapped.” Website • Instagram

 
 

Show Notes

Best News

Jamie Loftus

Live Wire Listener Question

  • Tell us about your closest brush with fame.

Hari Kondabolu

Blitzen Trapper

 

  • Elena Passarello: From PRX. It's Live Wire! This week, podcaster Jamie Loftus. 

    Jamie Loftus: The Super Bowl halftime show, as we know it, is like the pop star playing all of their hits. Before that, it was just no man's land of like, marching bands and weirdos. 

    Elena Passarello: Stand up comedian Hari Kondabolu. 

    Hari Kondabolu: I try to be a good parent, but it's so difficult because, you know, I have an iPhone. 

    Elena Passarello: With music from Blitzen Trapper and our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello And now the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank. 

    Luke Burbank: Hey, thank you so much. Elena Passarello Thanks to everyone tuning in from all over America to our public radio variety show, which has all kinds of variety in store for you this week. We're going to get to that in a moment. First, though, we got to kick things off like we always do with the best news we heard this week. This is our little Live Wire reminder for you that there is good news happening in the world somewhere. I promise we find it for you and present it. Elena, what's the best news you heard this week? 

    Elena Passarello: I'm so excited about this one. Are you ready? Are you ready for full geek Passarello mode? Like, Yeah. 

    Luke Burbank: I've known you long enough to know this is really your lane. 

    Elena Passarello: I know I like facts and I like being happy. Those are my favorite things. Okay, so the year has recently come to a close and there's lots of end of year lists and things. But here is an end of year list that I had never heard of before that I am so excited to look forward to for all the years to come. It's the new species that have been discovered every year. 

    Luke Burbank: We're still discovering species. 

    Elena Passarello: Listeners Luke Burbank. They estimate that we have only discovered like 10% of the flora, fauna and fungi in the world. 

    Luke Burbank: That's shocking. Yeah, I would have figured we'd sort of, you know, found all of them and unfortunately are losing them. But there's ones we haven't even discovered. 

    Elena Passarello: Right. Can you guess how many new species were documented this year, LB? 

    Luke Burbank: I'm going to go high and say 100. 

    Elena Passarello: More than that. Even I was shocked. 138 new plants, animals and shrooms have been discovered this year. A few weeks ago the California Academy of Sciences presented a press release tallying all the newly discovered species from all these different initiatives all over the planet. And the new species include 32 fishes, 17 leaf bugs, 15 plant hoppers. I don't even know what that is. 14 worms, 12 skinks, 11 gastropods, nine plants, eight slugs, seven each. Spiders and beetles. Two ghost sharks. Spooky. And then one each of an eel, a gecko, a potato bug. And this thing called a pygmy pipehorse, which is this little. 

    Luke Burbank: Is that as cute as it sounds? 

    Elena Passarello: Yes. Super adorable. Seahorse. Beautiful auburn color discovered in the rough waters off the South African coast where it's actually really difficult to look for species. But, you know, technology is evolving so that you could actually stay in those waters longer and look and observe. My favorite story from all of these new species. So there were 17 new insects named from French Polynesia alone. And when you discover a new species, of course, you get to name it. And most of these new species were named by fifth graders from the Polynesian island of Moorea. They named some of the insects after Harrison Ford and Kamala Harris. Congratulations. Elsewhere in the world, there's a salamander whose name is now Synopsis Van Gogi. Okay, like it's a fair go because the back of the salamander has a pattern on it that looks like Van Gogh's Starry Night. There's also and this is my favorite one because my husband loves hummingbirds. The world's largest hummingbird was discovered in the super high altitudes of Peru. They've never I mean, when you look at it, it's actually pretty still kind of small. Like big for a hummingbird is, you know. 

    Luke Burbank: Small compared to, like, you know, an emu. 

    Elena Passarello: Yeah, It's like a jumbo shrimp. 

    Luke Burbank: Why they choose a flightless bird for this example. I don't know. 

    Elena Passarello: I don't know. But it was charming. I'm glad you did. And who knows? Maybe when we're talking this time next year, there'll be some new emu. Although those guys are kind of hard to hide. 

    Luke Burbank: That's amazing. The best news that I heard this week actually comes out of a place that we don't talk about on the show a whole lot, which is India in a region of India known as Kolhapur, where a 65 year old guy named Pandurang Ulpe was out on his regular daily walk. He came home and he said he sat down, he had some tea, and he started to feel dizzy and a little bit unwell. And then he had what the doctors think was a heart attack. And his family rushed him to the hospital and unfortunately, they pronounced him dead. They said that he did not survive this cardiac event. His family was, as you might imagine, pretty upset. But they did the thing you do, which is they were going to take him home to put him to rest, but also to have whatever the local burial traditions are. So he's in some sort of vehicle with his family. They're driving back home. They go over a speed bump on the plane. And when they go over the speed bump, somebody in the family looks over and notices that his finger is moving. They immediately make a hard left turn and go to a this is important different hospital. And at the different hospital they perform an emergency angioplasty and Pandurang  is there convalescing for a number of weeks. Recently, Elena walked out of the hospital. 

    Elena Passarello: Oh my God. 

    Luke Burbank: This is a person who was thought to no longer be alive. And if not for this, a speed bump in this region of India and a very keen eyed family member.

    Elena Passarello: Yes. 

    Luke Burbank: Who was looking for any signs of life. [Elena: Wow.] He's doing surprisingly okay. He doesn't have too much of a memory of the event, but he's back at home. He's back taking his daily walks and having his tea. And he's he's with us again. Maybe thanks to a speed bump. If you hear about my demise, Elena, I would ask you to just see if they'll run me over a couple of speed bumps to make sure I'm really gone, okay? 

    Elena Passarello: It's like the human body equivalent of blowing into a Nintendo cartridge. 

    Luke Burbank: Unplugging it and plugging it back in to see if it restarts better off, by the way. That is the best news that I have heard all week. All right. On that note, let's get our first guest on over to the show. She's a writer of television, a comedian, also a podcaster who has deep dived on such subjects as Mensa, the book Lolita, the Comic Strip Cathy, and of course, hot dogs. That's something else she's investigated deeply. Her latest project is a podcast called Sixteenth Minute of Fame. It had me so locked in as the young people are now saying, Elena, that I listen to all 17 hours of this in the days preceding this interview that we recorded with her. It was named one of the best podcasts of 2024 by Vulture. This is our friend Jamie Loftus, who joined us at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland to talk about the podcast. Take a listen. Hello, Jamie. 

    Jamie Loftus: Hi. How are you? 

    Luke Burbank: Great. Welcome back. 

    Jamie Loftus: Great to be back. 

    Luke Burbank: I feel like this latest podcast from you was, like, scientifically designed in a lab for me to listen to, and I appreciate you doing that. [Jamie: Nice.] Why don't we start by like, what was your pitch for the show when you were when you were coming up with it? 

    Jamie Loftus: So, yeah, I mean, the whole idea was I spent too much time on the Internet. I love seeing like, hey, here's this guy. Isn't he weird? And then you go to bed and you wake up and they're like, Here's a new guy, you know? You're like, What happened to yesterday's guy? Yeah. And we have, like, thousands of these guys. And I mean, like, the genderless guy. Like, there's so many of these people at this point. And we've been receiving them daily now and sometimes, like, multiple times daily. And I was like, Well, I don't think I've seen a lot of people that have actually tried to go back and talk to them in depth and in a way that like outside of saying, Hey, wasn't this weird when you were the guy? And it is weird when you're the guy. But also, I want to know what the guy was doing for however many years before that. And so I thought about that about two years ago. And I was like a white man. This is a show I would really love to listen to. And I told my producer, who I've worked with forever, my my friend Sophie, and I was like, If this show doesn't exist in a year, I want to make it. And it didn't exist in a year. So I started to make it. 

    Luke Burbank: How did you decide on you call them main characters? The idea being that somebody becomes the Internet's main character. How did you decide who who you were going to focus on? 

    Jamie Loftus: I mean, it really is kind of a communal decision. There are certain people who I definitely wanted to know more about who I felt weirdly or socially attached to, of like what happened to this person. There are other people who I remember clearly who I'm like. Do I want to talk to this person? 

    Luke Burbank: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that's so fascinating about the show is you there are the way that I think my brain organizes information around these main characters, like, that was the guy that did that one thing. But then doesn't he suck. 

    Elena Passarello: Right. 

    Luke Burbank: That's how I remember them. And then you actually talk to these folks and you figure out if they in fact, do suck. And there's it's usually much more nuanced than, you know, my brain was was was categorizing it. 

    Jamie Loftus: Yeah. I mean, I don't know. It's tricky to do those interviews because, yeah, you go in with your like, preconceptions. You're like, I remember that this guy was supposed to have sucked. And then they generally show you whether that was true or not over the course of an interview. 

    Luke Burbank: Well, here's a good example. Ken Bone. 

    Jamie Loftus: Ken Bone. 

    Luke Burbank: Ken Bone, the guy in the red Izod sweater, who asked a question at the end of one of the town hall debates involving Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, right? Yeah. He was a guy who I remember like was an SNL kind of punchline, and he was kind of a quirky looking dude. And then my mind was like, yeah. But then also, he kind of had like, was gross or something. Yeah, that was it. That was the extent of my knowledge of him anyway. I mean, I mean, he did some things that weren't great and posted things on the Internet that weren't great, but it seemed like kind of a genuinely sweet dude. 

    Jamie Loftus: Yeah. I mean, I think that is something that I've encountered over and over is kind of like the yada yada yada of like, what someone's transgression was. And that doesn't mean that someone hasn't transgressed, but it's just a question of how did they deal with it? Did they take the criticism to heart? What was the criticism? All of these things that, you know, we as people just scrolling and scrolling and scrolling could not possibly take in in the course of a day. And so, like you're saying, I mean, I had the same takeaway that you did of like, well, he was really funny. And then all of a sudden we hated him. Right? And and that was where it stopped for me. And like, imagine being that person. And that's I mean, it was interesting to talk to. Ken, I think was like a really interesting interview because he had clearly in the eight years since that happened, like really thought about that and he'd gone to therapy. And it's always great to talk to a man who's been through a lot of therapy. 

    Luke Burbank: You're doing that right now. It's happening. 

    Jamie Loftus: I knew he got a love for a reason, but like, it was really cool to talk to him because he he had clearly reflected on not just his moment, but the things that he felt he had said in anonymity that were problematic and the things that he said in anonymity that were just kind of horny and weird that people had judged him for. You know, and it is interesting talking to someone who has been through that because it is everyone's worst nightmare, you know. And what I really appreciated about Ken specifically is that he'd not just refer. Acted on it, but he had grown, it seems like significantly as a person to the point where when we were talking, we were talking, you know, we're like, Yeah, we got a free Palestine, man. Like, it was just like. It was really exciting. Talking to Ken Bone as a fellow leftist, it was thrilling. It was awesome

    Luke Burbank: Speaking of people on the left, after the break, we're going to discuss the most probably well-known shark dancer ever from a Super Bowl halftime show left shark. One of the other people that you talk about, this is Live Wire from PRX. We're talking to Jamie Loftus. Her latest podcast is Sixteenth Minute of Fame. More Live Wire in just a moment. Stay with us. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. We're at the Alberta Rose Theater here in Portland. My name's Luke Burbank. I'm your host here with Elena Passarello. And we're talking to Jamie Loftus about her latest podcast project, Sixteenth Minute of Fame. One of the things that you do throughout the show that I just love so much is your use of the we call it air horn or party horn this thing. But the thing is. 

    Jamie Loftus: Oh, it's not a huge laugh for that?  

    Luke Burbank: Well, yeah. That's right. Yeah. Portland Public Radio fans, I mean. There you go. You used to be punks. We'll turn this into a jock jam before you know it. But here's. But this is a thing that you do, Jamie, that's so great is you never. I don't think you ever even play that amount of air horn. You will just sometimes be finishing a line and you'll play like this. And then sometimes it'll literally just be this. What? Explain to me the science behind the duration of the air horn that you will play while you are while you're doing your podcast. 

    Jamie Loftus: Yeah. I mean, I feel like I have to earn the full horn. And so sometimes, like when I play the horn or any like duration of the horn, it's because I say something that I think is funny and... 

    Elena Passarello: It's your rib shot. 

    Jamie Loftus: And so it's a conversation between myself and my editor of. Well, was that funny to just Jamie? Is that funny to everybody? Or is that so funny that we get to play the horn for five full seconds? And generally it is a half horn. 

    Luke Burbank: It's usually. 

    Jamie Loftus: That's funny to just Jamie. 

    Elena Passarello: Yeah. Because this is multiple podcasts that the horn has been a part of your sort of sonic landscape. 

    Jamie Loftus: Yeah, the horn is cannon. 

    Elena Passarello: It's really funny to hear that horn in a, like a podcast about Nabokov. Right. Which is one of your podcasts. 

    Jamie Loftus: Yeah, people, people don't. Not everybody loves it. And I admit and I understand that, but I do want to remind them that, you know, I have some editorial freedom. You know, no one's going to tell me to not play the horn, right? 

    Luke Burbank: Yeah, exactly. Okay. I was so excited to talk to about this podcast, but I was also excited for my good friend Elena Passarello, who is into all things Elvis related. [Elena: Yes.] Because when you're talking about this left shark performance during the Katy Perry Super Bowl halftime show, you know, the left shark was kind of dancing in a way that seemed like maybe they didn't get the choreography memo or something. But before you get to that, you get really into the story of somebody who was known as Elvis Presto. 

    Jamie Loftus: Yes. 

    Luke Burbank: Could you tell us about Elvis Presto? 

    Jamie Loftus: I would love to tell you about Elvis. Presto, I love Elvis Presto. So, yes, I started researching the left shark, a very popular main character, and someone who was very lovely. He now works at this very high end hair salon in West Hollywood. And I got to go and see him and he gave me a bunch of free shampoo because I think he was like, Your hair sucks. And that was that was my he was very nice. And I was like, I guess my hair doesn't look great anyways. Yes. But when I was going into, I was like, I want to give, you know, sort of a brief history of what was the Super Bowl halftime show like up until this time. And the things I found were like kind of incredible and horrific because the Super Bowl halftime show, as we know it is like the pop star playing all of their hits. And that was not a thing until like the early to mid-nineties. Before that, it was just no man's land of like marching bands and weirdos. And Elvis Presto was like the best weirdo of them all. It was the 1989 Super Bowl halftime show, and the whole idea was that they were going to hand out in like grocery stores, 3D goggles to watch the Super Bowl halftime show. And yeah, I, I bravely , I was not alive for that. But there was like they, they gave out a thank you so much a quarter horn for my youth. 

    Luke Burbank: Is that Chaucer a quarter horn for my youth. We had applause break although. 

    Jamie Loftus: Great Chaucer drop. Really good.

    Luke Burbank: Only this crowd responds that positively to Chaucer. 

    Jamie Loftus: But I found this guy. There was a show called the Elvis Presto Show, and I was like, I'm going to need to watch this show. And it was, as it sounds like an Elvis impersonator doing magic, which is on. 

    Luke Burbank: You didn't even get there with Presto. 

    Elena Passarello: Maybe he was just a really fast Elvis. 

    Luke Burbank: Right. 

    Jamie Loftus: It is like still to me, unbelievably clear why this happened, because the man who ended up lip synching the songs did not lip sync a single Elvis song and was not a magician. So it was this really incredible show where this got it was originally supposed to be another guy, but then he got a Levi Jeans commercial and bailed on the Super Bowl. And so the guy who ended up playing Elvis Presto was the choreographer for the whole show. He looks nothing like Elvis. He has he is not lip synching any Elvis songs. He's a good dancer, but he is not a magician. And and he he's just dressed as Elvis singing not Elvis songs, not singing and not doing real magic. And he headlined the Super Bowl by himself. And it blew my mind. It was the coolest. I was like, I would give anything to be there because even the audience at the Super Bowl is like, What am I and what everyone looks like. They're like, Should we help him out? What is going on? It was awesome. 

    Luke Burbank: Well, so good. And the the maybe funniest detail for this crowd is that Elvis presto moved to Portland and ran and was running a very successful yoga studio here. Yo, yo, Yogi. Yeah. And we were trying to get him on the show and unfortunately, he is now retired and he does not apparently live in Portland full time. But we were this close to getting Elvis Presto to come out and say hi to you. 

    Jamie Loftus: But I really appreciate it. I was also trying to track him down independently. 

    Luke Burbank: Okay. Let's see. No conversation about sort of 2000s like Internet culture would be complete without talking about the dress and the fact that when you say the dress, people, generally speaking, know what you're referring to. That was the dress that was at a wedding someone was wearing, but they couldn't nobody could tell what color it was. 

    Jamie Loftus: It was either blue and black or white and gold. Okay. Yeah. 

    Luke Burbank: So what was the story on that exactly? Why was that significant to you? Why did you want to put that in in the series? 

    Jamie Loftus: That was one that I remembered very specifically because that happened very early into me starting to write professionally. And if you don't know, congratulations. I was very blown out of like high contrast photo of a pretty ugly dress that was going to be worn as a mother of the bride dress that to some people looked blue and black and two others looked white and gold. And it was this weird optical illusion. But the really interesting story that I found sort of underneath all of that was that it was sort of the end of an era in terms of like how things go viral. And so part of what I had a lot of fun with on Sixteenth Minute is finding like, okay, here's the story that you remember, but here is why. It is probably significant in a way that we still talk about, because that story happened in really early 2015, right before things sort of shifted to a lot of our main characters. And the people that we see now are algorithmically presented to us. And the dress was sort of one of these last stories that was spread organically and that like someone would send to you and be like, What color is this? And you're just like, it's it's all dumb, but used to be something dumb we would talk about with each other instead of something. You would open your phone to whatever app and be like, Here's the dumb thing, I guess. Right. Which is how we do it now. 

    Luke Burbank: Right. One of the other things that I was was fascinated by was the 30 to 50 feral hogs guy who was unfortunately, there was, as there are most days of terrorism, terrible gun related events in the country. Jason Isbell, the singer, was tweeting about it and saying, we need to stop arguing about the semantics of what is an assault rifle or assault weapon. And a guy checks it and goes legit. Question here from rural America. What am I supposed to do to defend my family against the 30 to 50 feral hogs in my yard? And. The Internet went crazy. 

    Jamie Loftus: Yes, that was another really fascinating thing to research there. There had already been I remember there had been an episode of Reply all four on that same topic from back in the day and revisiting. It was really interesting because, yeah, I mean, that was a main character that could not have been, I think a lot of people who become our main characters are sort of accused as being attention seeking or whatever it is. But this was a guy who replied to a celebrity. It could have been any of us. Right. And because the way that he phrased his question was so bizarre and the timing was very weird that he became this main character. And that's something that I've found very interesting because he is kind of right to ask the question. The timing was poor. Yeah. And it was really interesting talking to the guy who asked that question, William McNabb, and sort of get a better idea of who he is, because I think people made a lot of false assumptions about him to be right, was that he was trying to kind of, you know, gotcha questions that were, you know, because Jason Isbell was making an excellent point about school shootings. But I don't know. I mean, something that was fascinating about that was, yeah, he was just sort of cherry picked out of nowhere as like, isn't this a ridiculous question? But if you live in the rural south, it's not a ridiculous question. 

    Luke Burbank: I mean, is that your big takeaway from doing all this research and talking to all these people? Is this always more complex than we think it is, basically? 

    Jamie Loftus: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I every once in a while you're like, this was, you know, this was exactly what it seemed like it was. Yeah. But usually I've really enjoyed finding, like, there's usually something about the story or the person that is far more complex or at least speaks to. Well, why was this interesting to us at this specific moment in time? I think Ken Bone is a great example of that, of like would a guy being like a little bit weird at a debate phase us now? Most likely not. 

    Elena Passarello: Right. Yeah. It's like the Howard Dean yell was so huge. I know. You know, And now it's like if if a politician yelled into a microphone, we'd be like, Yeah, they use the microphone. Yeah. 

    Jamie Loftus: They knew where to speak.

    Luke Burbank: Going to go with the podcast is Sixteenth Minute of Fame. It is so good. I can't recommend it highly enough. Jamie Loftus, thank you for coming back on my archive. That was Jamie Loftus right here on Live Wire. Her latest project is the podcast Sixteenth Minute of Fame, which you can listen to wherever you get that kind of stuff. Live Wire is brought to you by Powell's Books, a Portland institution since 1971. Powell's offers a selection of new and used books in stores and online and Powell's. com. This is Live Wire. I'm Luke Burbank. That's Elena Passarello right over there. Of course, each week we like to ask the Live Wire listeners a question. And inspired by the topic of Jamie Loftus' podcast, Sixteenth Minute of Fame, we decided to ask some people at a recent live taping. What question, Elena? 

    Elena Passarello: We wanted to know what their closest brush with fame was. 

    Luke Burbank: Okay. And we recorded those answers. And we've got them for you right now. Play some of them for you. This was someone named Failon talking about their closest brush with fame. 

    Audience Member: Well this one time I was at National Ocean Science Ball in Alaska, and an avalanche knocked out the road. So it kept the best teams from coming to compete. So we won. So I became this the state championship winner. And I got to go to nationals where we like lost so epically because Alaska does not live up to the other states in our country. But yeah, I got a lot of fame in the in my hometown for that. 

    Luke Burbank: Now, I want to say we are on a number of stations in Alaska, and we we love the folks in Alaska. I do not support the last part of that statement. 

    Elena Passarello: The champions all. Yeah. 

    Luke Burbank: Thank you. But that, you know, I mean, that's the problem with flying too high on borrowed wings, right? You might win the state championship, but then when you got to go to the Nationals, that it's the rubber really meets the road. 

    Elena Passarello: But that town you know you to go do like a high school gym and there's like state champions 1974, like they got a banner in Fallon's hometown now, thanks to that avalanche. 

    Luke Burbank: How about this from Fernando? I brush with fame. 

    Audience Member: I was in a paid audience member in a comedy taping, and they sat me in the front row. And I you know, they get you laughing and things and it hurts so they can cut in anywhere. And I was before the show and once the show started, I realized it was not the kind of thing I wouldn't want to be shown laughing at. And I was in the front row for the whole taping and it's on HBO, Max, now. And you could you could just see my face there. The entire time I was very visible. 

    Luke Burbank: I first of all, I'm dying to know what comedy special it is. I would like to find it, and I would like to observe Fernando's facial expression. I haven't been through that specifically, but I can identify with this idea of realizing like, I don't necessarily maybe endorse this particular brand of comedy or I don't find it funny, but I also don't want it to be weird in the room. 

    Elena Passarello: You got to find the perfect medium face, right? Exactly. I don't endorse, but I'm also not going to tank this whole enterprise. 

    Luke Burbank: That's right. All right. How about this brush with fame from Patrick, who attended a recent Live Wire episode? 

    Audience Member: One time I was contacted by some. I'm a therapist, so I was randomly contacted by a reality TV show that asked me if I was interested in auditioning for a couples therapy reality TV show. And it was I was it's like my worst nightmare. So I said, no, of course. But I was curious where they even got my name or like, contact information. 

    Luke Burbank: So a brush with near fame of being like a TV therapist. You know, I once invited my actual therapist to come on Live Wire, and she declined. And that was an indicator that she's actually. 

    Elena Passarello: A good therapist. 

    Luke Burbank: And ethical therapist. Yeah. 

    Elena Passarello: I think Live Wire is my therapy, which is why I want to talk to you now about this dream that I've been having. Sure. Where I.

    Luke Burbank: You know, actually, I'm looking where it's time for a break. 

    Elena Passarello: That's our time. 

    Luke Burbank: That's our time. For this edition of our audience card. Thank you so much to everyone who provided us with a response. This is, of course, Live Wire from PRX. Our next guest might have the current title Elena for most Live Wire experiences. And when he's not on our show, he's a panelist on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. Or sometimes you see him co-hosting Snack versus Chef on Netflix. Or maybe you've seen him performing stand up comedy in a town near you. He performs all over the country. His latest comedy special is Vacation Baby, and it tackles a whole variety of topics, from dark chocolate to white replacement theory to Curious George. Our friend Hari Kondabolu joined us at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon. Take a listen to this. 

    Hari Kondabolu: Hello, Portland. How are we? God, it's good to be here. As of next year, it'll be 25 years for me doing stand up comedy. And thank you. I don't say that to brag. If you also focused only on one thing for 25 years at the expense of your friendships, personal growth, and mental health. You too could one day perform in the basement of a children's restaurant in San Antonio, Texas. What you did not know was a children's restaurant until you got there and were greeted by a man dressed like a pirate who says to you, How can I help your. And it is in that moment you realize that the only difference between you and the pirate is that you weren't downstairs. And unlike him, this is your dream. So it's all been worth it. I have performed all over the world doing stand up comedy, but strangely, I've never performed in Long Island, New York, even though I grew up right next door in Queens, never performed in Long Island. And the reason for that is my mother worked in a hospital in Long Island for 25 years, and I'm not sure what happened in this hospital, but she does not want me to play Long Island. It has been it has been forbidden. Right. And part of me gets it, you know, like in my mom's hospital, half the nurses quit during Covid because they refuse to get vaccinated. Right. Which is a little strange. It's like, you know, if you're a cafeteria worker and you quit because you refuse to wear gloves. Right. Or if you're a proctologist and you quit because you refuse to wear gloves, it's like. So something like that. Right. But still, you know, I'm not scared to perform in Long Island, but my mom does want me to do it. And recently I got an offer to perform in a club in Long Island. Right. The money was decent. So I texted my mom like, Mom, the boycott has to end. I need to make some money. Let me perform. And she texted back. Harry. I worked with these people. You are not for them. They are very dangerous. Stay away. Have fun in Oklahoma. So something happened in Long Island. My mom is so funny. Here's another text you sent me. Stop writing down everything I say to you and write your own God material. I am the father of a four year old child. And I thank you. I try to be a good parent, but it's so difficult because, you know, I have an iPhone and the iPhone just has so many more options than the kid. And, you know, and it would be so much easier if kids were like iPhones, you know, and you could just lower the volume or raise the brightness. And I mean, it doesn't work that way. You're stuck with the factory settings. Trying to be a good parent. Focus on my child. Right. But I hear the phone, right? I hear it trying to seduce me, like, pick me up. Hari. You know, you want to leave me alone, iPhone or I'm spending time with my child. This isn't the time. I know that. Hari. But don't you want to know the difference between Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton? Only one of them is alive. But which one? I'm sure you want to know right now. Hari. No, no. IPhone. Leave me alone. IPhone. Okay. I'm spending time with my kid. It's dinner time. We don't have phones at the table. I know that. Hurry, but don't you want to take a BuzzFeed quiz to find out which house in Harry Potter you would have lived in? The answer is none of them. Because you're a muggle. Hari, please, I phone. It's bedtime. I'm putting my kid to bed. I can't look at you right now. I know that, Hari, but don't you want to find out if you can use Ozempic on just your face? You can't, by the way. It's nice to be here in the Pacific Northwest. It's my favorite part of the country. Out of doubt. It's the northwest that taught me to appreciate good coffee, right? My drink of choice is the Americano with whole milk. Right. But I don't I don't call it that anymore because whenever I use that Americano with whole milk, baristas used to put oat milk in it by accident because whole and  oats sound similar. So now I say Americano with regular milk. Right? So I was in a coffee shop recently, went to the barista. I said, I'd like an Americano with regular milk. And she said, Did you really want to call it regular milk? Because, you know, it's not regular for everybody. Are you accusing me of being prejudiced against people that can't drink cow's milk? Are you saying I'm lactose intolerant? Intolerant? That's not a real thing. You know what I mean? We're talking about milk, not people. You know what I mean? And I'm sensitive to this. People will come up to me and say, Hey, what are you? Which is, like, the more impolite way of saying where you are from? Right. It's like saying, I don't care about your feelings. Why? You look like that. So somebody asked me what I was and I just humor the person. I said, I'm Indian. And I said, Well, what are you? And he said, I'm just regular. That's messed up. Do you see the difference? That's people. That's not milk. I'm a regular. Should be in a rack on TJ Max, Apparently. Love, love, love. The Northwest loves Seattle. But it's hard going to Seattle now. I see. It's not the same city it used to be, in large part because of Amazon, right? I just. my God, I hate Amazon so much. And it's it's it's I'm so glad that that union and Staten Island happened. Right. That they organized and they passed that union. But. And of course the executives didn't like this when they passed the union and they accused the workers, the union organizers of bribing the workers with marijuana in order to get them to vote for the union. So you're telling me that you think that weed was used to get people to actively do something like that? Do you know how this works? I'm I'm here to vote for the union. That was yesterday. And this is a bathroom. Getting older, which is so strange, man. There are moments that crystallized to me that I have aged. This one time I was talking to my friends kid who's 15 years old and he wants to do stand up comedy. And so, you know, I told him, I always tell him no, but I say, if you still want to do standup when you're 18, tell your dad and he'll give you my number. Or you can find me on Facebook. And when I mentioned Facebook to this 15 year old, the look on his face, it's like I said, would you like to ride my steam powered locomotive? 42 years old, When I turned 40, people had the audacity to say to me, you know, hurry, you don't need to worry about 40. You know, 40 is the new 30. No, it's not. Do you know who disagrees? 40 is the new 30 cardiologists. OB-GYNs disagree, right? 40 is not the new thing. If somebody tells you 40 is the new 30, you tell them to shut the hell up. And if someone tells you ten is the new 20, you call the authorities immediately, because that is not it's not a real thing that people say. Do you know who doesn't think 40 is the new 30? The 25 year old barista I tried flirting with last week, she she thinks 40 is 40. That the look on her face when I try it is like, I think he wants to be my Facebook friend. I know I'm getting older. I remember just two years ago, I tore multiple calf muscles playing pickleball. Pickleball. That's like low end tennis, high end ping pong. Elderly people like to play because it's easy on their joints. And I wanted to play it so I could beat elderly people at sports, which did not happen, by the way. So I'm playing and I go for a forehand, right? And I go for the back and all of a sudden I hear multiple pops coming from my calf. Right? I hit the ground. Then two men, twice my age dragged me to the other end of the gym. One of them was wearing a life alert bracelet. And then two retired nurses had to take care of me. One elevated my leg, the other gave me aspirin and said, You know, young man, athletics isn't for everyone. And the only thing I heard was. Young man. All right. What are you doing after this, Doris? You want Facebook? Hey, here's 70 is the new 40. All right, Thanks, everybody. 

    Luke Burbank: That was Hari Kondabolu right here on Live Wire. His comedy special Vacation Baby is out right now. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. We've got to take a very short break, but do not go anywhere because when we come back, we're going to hear some music from Portland Americana Legends, Blitzen Trapper. More Live Wire coming your way in a moment. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. It's that time again on the show where we like to play a little station location, identification, examination. That's where we quiz Elena on a place in the U.S. where Live Wire is on the radio. She's got to figure out where I am talking about. This place was known as the apple capital of this state. The first ever apple trees in the region were planted in this place. Despite the belief that it would be impossible for them to grow. And there are still a handful of orchards to this day. So that kind of tells you we're talking about a part of the country where you wouldn't think of people trying to grow apples. 

    Elena Passarello: Right? Like maybe where the soil is like clay. And so somewhere maybe toward the south. 

    Luke Burbank: Maybe I would say go north. 

    Elena Passarello: Okay. 

    Luke Burbank: I don't think this is going to get you any closer. But in 1851, when the city was founded, it was originally called Camerons. It was named after Peeta and Emma Cameron. Their big project, they were, I believe, a husband and wife. They were trying to dig a canal to change the flow of the Mississippi River so it would flow closer to this town. 

    Elena Passarello: Okay. So it's either Iowa or Minnesota. 

    Luke Burbank: The second, second thought, best thought.

    Elena Passarello: Minnesota. [Luke: That's right.] Apple City, Minnesota.

    Luke Burbank: Close, you're in the right state. I'm going to give it to you. It's La Crescent, Minnesota, where we are on the radio, on KXLC-FM, La Crescent, Minnesota, formerly known as Cameron's Minnesota. [Elena: Woo!] All right. Before we get to our musical guest this week, a little preview of what we're doing next week on the show. We are going to enter the depths of Wikipedia, which is actually more fun than it sounds. We're talking to Annie Rauwerda. She has amassed over a million followers on her social media account, the depths of Wikipedia, where she highlights just some of the delightful deep weirdness of Wikipedia, things like the Kentucky Meat Show. Who doesn't want to learn more about the Kentucky Meat Show? You will next week on the show. You're also going to hear next week from the photojournalist Ivan McClellan about his latest project. It's called Eight Seconds. It is this incredible photography book that explores black cowboy culture in America. And we're going to hear some fiddle folk magic from the musician Sami Braman and her band. We recorded this live at Pickathon, which was a blast this last summer. So tune in for all of that next week here on Live Wire. In the meantime, our musical guest this week, they formed in Portland, Oregon, way back in 2000 and since then have gone on to play all over the world, including Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Coachella while releasing hit albums. Rolling Stone loves their hazy, psychedelic Americana. While NPR has praised their explosive live performances and infectious roots rock swagger. Nobody has ever described my roots rock swagger. In the media Elena. So something to work on, that's all. Their latest album is 100's of 1000's, Millions of Billions. And it draws inspiration from Buddhist sutras. It's been praised by Bandcamp for somehow remaining untracked, which is like a weird thing to write about a band unless you know what their name is, which is Blitzen Trapper. They joined us at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon, not that long ago. Take a listen to this. Welcome to Live Wire. 

    Blitzen Trapper: Thanks for having us. 

    Luke Burbank: So nice to have you all here. I've been a fan for years. What song are we going to hear? 

    Blitzen Trapper: We're going to do a song. This is  a new song called Planetarium. 

    Luke Burbank: All right. The Blitzen Trapper on Live Wire. 

    Blitzen Trapper: [Blizten Trapper performs "Planetarium"] Thank you. 

    Luke Burbank: That was Blitzen Trapper right here on Live Wire, performing their song Planetarium off of their latest album, 100's of 1000's, Millions of Billions. Now that's going to do it for this week's episode of Live Wire. A very, very big thanks to our guests Jamie Loftus, Hari Kondabolu and Blitzen Trapper. 

    Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michele is our executive director and our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Eben Hoffer is our technical director. Leona Kinderman is our assistant technical director. Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid is our assistant editor and our House Sound is by D. Neil Blake. Ashley Park is our production fellow. Andre Castro-Martinez is our intern. 

    Luke Burbank: Our house band is Sam Pinkerton, Ethan Fox Tucker, Ayal Alves, and A Walker Spring, who also composes our music. This episode was mixed by Evan Hoffer and Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid. 

    Elena Passarello: Additional funding provided by the City of Portland's Office of Arts and Culture. Live Wire was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week we'd like to thank member Susan Bailey of Portland, Oregon. 

    Luke Burbank: For more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast head on over to LiveWireRadio.org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire crew. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.

    PRX.

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