Best News
In this final episode before a brief hiatus, Luke and Elena discuss their summer plans, including an Alaska writing residency and mega home renovations. The Best News will return weekly beginning September 14, so stay tuned!
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Best News! [Intro Music].
Luke Burbank Hey there. Welcome to the best news podcast from Live Wire brought to you by Alaska Airlines. This is the show where typically we talk about what is good in the news. I'm Luke Burbank. Right over there is my friend Elena Passarello. Hey, Elena.
Elena Passarello Hey, hey, hey. How's it going?
Luke Burbank It's going well. We do have some generalized good news this week, which is looking at the calendar, not looking outside at the record this, but looking at the calendar, I am observing Elena that it is summer or getting close to it.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank And so we are jumping into your podcast feed this week to mention that the Best News podcast is going to take a little summer break.
Elena Passarello Yes.
Luke Burbank So we don't want anyone to to think that we've ceased operation of the show or anything other than we're just going to take some time off and enjoy our summer and really just, I don't know, light, whatever incense we need to do, whatever sort of machinations we need to get the weather cooperating here in the part of the Pacific Northwest that we are.
Elena Passarello Somebody tell Oregon that it's summer because Oregon forgot.
Luke Burbank Now, the thing that's so kind of mind bending about it is there are actual parts of like Oregon and Washington that are very dry and are already entering, you know, drought conditions where you just don't live in those parts of those states.
Elena Passarello No. And well, you know, I live near an Ag school, so I'm always about five feet away from either a soil scientist or a fire expert. And it's great that we're getting this much rain and having this cold weather for like ground water reasons. But, man, I just want to put my shorts on, you know?
Luke Burbank I know I keep trying to remind myself that the rain is good, but it's not great for my mental health as we are now, you know, firmly in what should be the nice weather when you live in the northwest. The weather is so crummy in the wintertime, but then you're always psyching yourself up by saying, "But summer".
Elena Passarello Summer is glorious.
Luke Burbank Summer is going to be great. Yeah. So hopefully by the time this is airing and we are settling into our little summer hiatus, the weather is is cooperating. What are your plans for the summer, by the way?
Elena Passarello I am doing a lot of summer teaching in, not foreign places but foreign to me places. Hopefully there will be summer there. I'll be in Vermont for two weeks.
Luke Burbank Oh, that sounds beautiful.
Elena Passarello And then I'll be in Suwannee, Tennessee, sort of the mountains of Tennessee, for two weeks. And then I'm going to stay and not teach in a cabin with nobody around in Alaska on the Ketchum Bay for two weeks.
Luke Burbank Is that is that for like a writing project or something?
Elena Passarello Yeah, I got like a writer residency. It's all women identified as could be great and they cook for you and you just your only job is to write. There's no TV, there's no Internet.
Luke Burbank Do you do well under those conditions? I've always wondered that about writers, you know, because there's a lot of sort of work that goes into creating the environment to be creative and to not be distracted. Like, do you feel like does that get you in the zone?
Elena Passarello I like the residency model, like this thing that I'm going to because you work all day by yourself and then in the evening there are other people who are there that are doing their own thing. And you all get dinner together or you like, you know, play the piano or take walks together. So you're all alone for most of the day. And then there's social time at night, which is sort of like it sort of serves both sides of my personality. And then when I'm done with that, this is the thing that I'm the most terrified of, I have to fly from Homer, Alaska, to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Luke Burbank I assume that's a direct flight.
Elena Passarello I put it into Orbitz and I just the skull and crossbones came up like I have I don't know.
Luke Burbank Computer started smoking.
Elena Passarello Yeah, it was like, what? I think there might be some kind of like a like a male plane involved. I don't know how we're going to do it, but then my, my family rents, stays in this amazing, I'm not even going to say the name of it because it's this affordable right on the beach place in Pawleys Island, South Carolina, where they feed you fried chicken and you sit on the beach. There's an outdoor showers, no TV, no Internet. But it's like we can actually afford to spend like a week on the beach together. And it's we've done it for almost like ten years now. It's my favorite. Yeah. I can't wait. I can't wait. I'll send you a postcard. But you can't tell anybody the name of the place.
Luke Burbank Okay. Your secret is safe with me. Wait Homer, Alaska, to Myrtle, South Carolina?
Elena Passarello I know and I don't know. I mean, and I you know, I got a I don't know how I'm going to do it. I don't know. Wish me luck. [Laughs]
Luke Burbank All right. I am going to be spending the summer trying to do some home renovation, which I purchased, a kind of a small, very old home. And I've been doing some sort of like initial stuff where I'm starting to do some demo work. I demoed a fireplace recently, and let me tell you, at 46, you just don't bounce back the way you do at 26 when it comes to any kind of really like tough physical work like that.
Elena Passarello Does that repeat back in your bones for a few days?
Luke Burbank Oh, boy. Yeah, I'm still feeling it as we're recording this. But the other thing is, because this is a really old house, every wall that we open up has some mysterious situation. Actually, I found these really cool matchbooks that the person who had built the fireplace in the 1930s, they were probably like smoking a cigarette and building a fireplace and like, their matchbook fell into-.
Elena Passarello Oh, that's amazing.
Luke Burbank And it's from this, like, Tiki Bar in Lake Laguna, California. So I am kind of finding some cool stuff as I unearth this this place. But I'm also finding that like nothing is up to code. Like one whole wall was being held up basically by, I don't know, the wallpaper. So it's also really, really hard to find people to work on these kinds of projects right now because there's a labor shortage and stuff like that. So a lot of it is going to fall to me and I don't know how to do any of this stuff. So, so far my move is YouTube. This is going to be the house that YouTube renovated.
Elena Passarello I have faith in you. You seem to like I remember with your old house, you took a lot of initiative in making it good and your boat.
Luke Burbank Well, this is the thing. My, my. This is this is my system. I just start demolishing stuff, and then I have to figure out how to fix it. Like, that's that's how I get myself going on this. Like, so I walked in there with a sledgehammer and just walked up to this fireplace that I didn't want to have in there anymore and just started wailing on it. And so once that started, I was like, "Well, I guess this is happening now". So I when when we come back, September 14th, which, by the way, will be when we reconvene the Best News podcast, I'll probably have a full report about. You have been somewhere in the beautiful nature writing and thinking deep thoughts. I will be listening to baseball games, drinking Tecate and swinging a sledgehammer at things in my house.
Elena Passarello I feel like that you could do a writer's residency because, you know, like, you know, you have to let it out at the end of the day when you're kind of just stuck on your project all day. So imagine you're in like a cabin working, and then at a certain point you just get to demolish Luke Burbank's fireplace. Like, I think some artists would enjoy that.
Luke Burbank I just realized what I need to do. I need to market this place as one of those rage rooms.
Elena Passarello Yeah!
Luke Burbank I could sell tickets. Yeah. Come in here with a sledgehammer and just knock down anything you want.
Elena Passarello Yeah, they'll probably the renovations would start paying for themselves, and then you wouldn't have to use YouTube.
Luke Burbank That's very smart. Yeah, right. I could actually hire some people to do it. All right. Well, we'll have a full report on all of this come September when we get back into doing the show. I do want to say a big thanks to everyone who's been listening and writing in and including Tony Passarello.
Elena Passarello Tony P!
Luke Burbank And others, people who like the Best News podcasts. It's been really fun making this and again, we're going to get back to it in the fall. We're just going to have a little summer time off coming up on the radio show later this week, Sam Jay is going to stop by. She's a really funny comedian who also hosts this HBO show called Pause with Sam Jay, which is in its second season. We're also going to get some stand up comedy from Sean Payton with just a spoiler alert: it's the most flatulent related stand up comedy we've ever aired on Live Wire. So I don't know, is that a trigger warning for people or is that going to make people want to tune in? I don't know.
Elena Passarello It's an inticive.
Luke Burbank That we're going to get some music from Kurt Vile, who I've been a fan of forever. He's got a new album out, which Rolling Stone calls "a majestically Mellow Zone out session". So that will be coming in this podcast feed on Friday, and then it'll be on a public radio station near you over the weekend.
Best News! [Outro]
Luke Burbank All right. A big thanks to the fine team of folks who have been making this Best News podcast happen so far. Our executive producer, Laura Hadden, also our producer and editor Melanie Sevcenko. Our assistant editor is Trey Hester. Special thanks to our intern Jonas Meyers. Yay! Jonas we'll miss you. You've been incredible as a part of the Live Wire team. Molly Pettit is always incredible. She's our technical director and mixer and one of the best people in America at talking celebrities into holding an iPhone near their mouth. Our theme music, arguably the best part of the show, is composed by A. Walker Spring. Thanks again to all of you for joining us on this journey. We're going to pick it up again, like I said, September 14th. So we will see you then. In the meantime, head on out there and have the absolute best summer.
