Best News
Luke and Elena discuss the Millennium Falcon of litter boxes, Elton John's National Humanities Medal and how he made the White House cry, and a kid who went viral when he told his mom she made him a terrible sandwich.
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Luke Burbank: Hey there. Welcome to The Best News podcast from Live Wire. Brought to you by Alaska Airlines. This is the show where we talk about what is good in the news. I'm Luke Burbank, right over there, my friend Elena Passarello. Hi there, Elena.
Elena Passarello: Hey. Hey. How's it going?
Luke Burbank: Good. Now we have days like today where we actually record a variety of different content for the the world of Live Wire. And sometimes when you're recording your announcer parts, because, of course, you're the announcer for our radio show. I'm here in my, like, sound studio, doing a little dance, feeling excited, getting hyped for the show. And I just realized a few minutes ago that as you were reading some of the announcements, I started dancing, and I think I might have actually learned how to floss. You can't see because of the zoom camera on mercifully, I don't think shows my lower half, but I've been trying to learn how to floss ever since that got invented, and I think I just had a breakthrough today.
Elena Passarello: Your shoulders looked like you were doing it right. Good job.
Luke Burbank: I could always do it, like, for, like, three movements. And then I would like, lose the I don't know the thread or something. So that's my personal best news for the week. I guess that's kind of the show. Actually, I have other news to share with you here on week 26 of The Best News podcast. I'm going to grab something. Can you see the box that the world's fanciest litter box came in?
Elena Passarello: That's the size of my freshman dormroom. Which I shared.
Luke Burbank: This is like a box that, like a washing machine would come in or something. I broke down. Basically the Instagram ads wore me down to finally buy this super high tech robot litter box that looks like something that was on like the lunar rover or something. It's supposed to after your cat does their thing in the litter box, the whole thing rotates and it sifts out the offending matter. And then you've just got a kind of a perpetually clean litter box. I just set it up last night and well, I've already got some issues with it. So when you get the manual, like the first two pages are just how to try to get your cat to go inside this thing, because so many cats are sort of apprehensive about that.
Elena Passarello: They don't want to go into a big alien spaceship to poop. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. It turns out it's not instinctive to them. Not the problem that I had with my cat, Bubbles. I literally took this thing out of the box. I put it down in the bathroom. I hadn't even put any litter in it. And she was inside going to the bathroom. She is like obsessed with this thing to the point where it cannot clean itself because when the cat is inside the litter box, it has all these sensors, right? The cat is inside the litter box or the litter, whatever. Globe dome.
Elena Passarello: The litter Millennium Falcon.
Luke Burbank: Yes. Like if the thing did make the Kessler run in 12 parsecs, though, by the way. If the cat is inside this thing, it just like stops. It doesn't do anything, because, of course, they don't want to, like, tumble the cat like it's in the dryer. The problem is, the cat is never not in this thing. She's just been in it for the last basically 12 hours. She loves it. It's like a womb for her or something. And so she'll go she'll use it and then she'll come out for a minute and then it will start trying to clean. And as soon as it starts doing its rotation, she is totally fascinated with it and wants to get back inside and do like a ride. Do like a loop de loop.
Elena Passarello: How is this not in the Instagram ads? It's like both litter box and entertainment for your indoor cat.
Luke Burbank: I mean, it is, except for the fact that now I keep getting errors on my phone because, of course, this is an app. This is not a free ad for them but it's like called like the company is called like a whisker. And I have so many notifications from whisker telling me how much the cat weighs by six and a half pounds. Every time she gets in there, it weighs her. And then just like cleaning cycle stopped. Cleaning cycle stopped. Cat detected, cat detected. Cat's weight 6.5 pounds. Cleaning cycle stopped. I don't know if this is going to work out for me because the cat loves it too much.
Elena Passarello: Well, I mean, maybe you could just turn the notifications off on your phone and just let it happen. It seems like part of the anxiety is just that your phone is blowing up all the time and maybe the the Bubbles stuff will work out. But you just need to disconnect the cat toilet from your cellular communicative device.
Luke Burbank: Or maybe I should just go back to a normal litter box, which was basically fine.
Luke Burbank: Alright. How about we find out what the actual best news is out there in the wider world. Elena, what's the best news that you're seeing?
Elena Passarello: Well, you know, I use this best news segment, especially the podcast version, as an opportunity to really shout out the undersung heroes, you know, the people that you would never have heard about or from if it weren't for us. Which is why this week I selected a story about Elton John. Because I really feel like I mean, it's just not enough has happened.
Luke Burbank: Somebody needs to pay some attention to -- is it Dwight?
Elena Passarello: I think that's exactly right. Yeah. I mean, that big blockbuster movie wasn't enough. That great Muppet Show that he hosted wasn't enough. The fact that we let him play Yankee Stadium while dressed as Donald Duck. That's not enough. I'm just kidding. I love Elton John. I love him. I just think he's really interesting and cool. I loved Rocket Man. He's been around my whole life. I think his great sense of humor and so many people love him that he just gave a command performance at the White House as a part of this special evening called A Night When Hope and History Rhyme. So he was there, along with civil rights advocate Ruby Bridges, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and a bunch of teachers and nurses and LBGTQIA advocates. And it was just a concert, right? Like a great concert. But he played Your Song and Rocket Man and Tiny Dancer. He didn't play one of my favorite Elton John songs, which is Amoreena. It's the song where for some reason the line is she dreams of crystal dreams, but he pronounces dreams and streams like, And she drams of crystal strams.
Luke Burbank: He declined to play that and decided not to play that one.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, I don't know why that was the song of my dreams. I don't know why he didn't want to play that. But apparently Joe Biden cried.
Luke Burbank: That's what I saw. Okay. I didn't know anything about this performance other than the headline. Joe Biden like gets teary during an Elton John performance. Do we know what song it was?
Elena Passarello: Yeah. And it's funny, until you hear the story behind it, it was Crocodile Rock, which is kind of like, that's a funny thing to cry during Crocodile Rock. Also my least favorite Elton John song. But Joe Biden used to drive his kids to school and sing that song. And then when his late son Beau was dealing with his brain injuries, that was a way that they sort of like kept communicating with each other.
Luke Burbank: Oh, wow. Yeah, that's intense. You know, I have to say that when I saw that headline about Joe Biden becoming emotional and now you're kind of filling me in on the details, I had the thought like, I mean, even when we're doing maybe more the radio show than the podcast version of this, but there are certainly times where I feel emotional. Just when we're like interviewing people could be on stage, could be when we're doing it remotely. I think if I was president, I would be crying a lot just because of the enormity of every situation and because you're meeting people who have lost children, you know, you're meeting Gold Star parents whose children maybe have died in military service. Like every day it's some intensely emotional thing that you're part of. I would be known as the crying president.
Elena Passarello: And you're meeting people who are saving the world and you're finding occasions to make other people super emotional, which is what happened the evening of Friday, September 23rd. After Elton John played all these songs and everybody was so happy and had a great time, Biden comes on stage unannounced awards Sir Elton John with the National Humanities Medal, which is one of the highest honors that can be bestowed upon a citizen in our country. This is the Sir Elton John. Like this is like up there with knighthood. Elton John in the video obviously had no idea. Jill Biden is up there, first lady and then another person is up there holding this kind of red medallion. And I don't think it's a put on like I think he had no idea. And it was announced that he was being awarded for being an advocate with absolute purpose. We all know that he was an incredible advocate for AIDS awareness when it wasn't cool to do so. Who found courage to challenge convention, shatter stigma, and advance the simple truth that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. So at this point, you know, you need Crocodile Rock. Everybody's crying. Elton John's crying. The Bidens are crying. Laura Bush, who is a major ally for a lot of legislature to get passed in order to help people with AIDS. She was there and I'm sure she was crying. It was just tears all around.
Luke Burbank: What a novel idea to have people from different political parties who can get together in the same room and agree that, hey, we're all trying to get this country moving forward, even if we have maybe a slightly different letter after our name, you know?
Elena Passarello: Yeah. And that's I mean, that's arguably a way in which people like Elton John can bring folks together, which is super cool.
Luke Burbank: I feel like you were saying the other day to me that you're lane on the best news stories is often insect related or ice cream related. I feel like my lane now is cute kid related. We talked about Corn Kid. I got another cute kid update for you. Have you seen the terrible sandwich kid?
Elena Passarello: No.
Luke Burbank: At the time this was filmed, this was a little guy. He was five years old. His name is Abe Ndege and he was coming back from his first day of kindergarten. And his mom, Ricki Weisberg, was doing the thing that, you know, parents do a lot now, which is that she was filming him on her cell phone. He's getting off the bus after his first day of kindergarten. And he's like two steps down the steps of the bus when he has to tell her how bad the sandwich was that she sent him with.
[Terrible Sandwich Clip Plays]
Ricki: He did it!
Abe: Mommy?
Ricki: Yeah.
Abe: Terrible sandwich by the way.
Ricki: Thanks for letting me know that.
Abe: Really terrible.
Elena Passarello: That's the first thing he said when he got off the bus.
Luke Burbank: Literally. I'm just going to play it for you again now that you know the context. Also, I love that it's hard to hear on the tape, but after he says terrible sandwich, by the way, she says, Thanks for letting me know. And he just goes, really terrible kind of quietly.
[Terrible Sandwich Clip Plays Again]
Luke Burbank: So yeah there's actually a story to the sandwich which I only found out reading this article. So basically this mom, Ricky Weisberg, has been posting this video on like Facebook and stuff every year since this. Like this was, I think four years ago that this was this actually happened. So Abe, her son is actually like in I'm not sure what grade he's in now, but this is a kind of older footage. But she likes to post on the first day of school, just kind of like as a fun memory. What was different this year was she put it on TikTok and that's a whole other level. So that basically that video has now received 15 million views on her TikTok page. Terrible sandwich kid is the new it's corn kid. Now, the story on the sandwich, though, is that Ricky said because this was half day kindergarten, I just love this honesty from her perspective as a mom, she goes, I thought the benefit of half day is that I don't have to pack him a lunch. Like that straight out of the Suzy Burbank School of Parenting. Let's send him to the whatever it is that involves less lunch making for me. Let's send him there on that one. She didn't realize, though, that even though it was only a half day, they did need to send the kids with lunch. So she didn't have any of the proper fixings the night before his first day of kindergarten because she didn't think she was going to have to make him lunch. And also, I guess you don't send kids with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich anymore because a lot of kids have nut allergies. Maybe she was erring on the side of caution, I don't know. But she basically said we had nothing in the house. We couldn't send them with peanut butter because the kids with peanut allergies. So I came up with an idea to do a butter and jelly sandwich, and that's what she sent little Abe with. And that's what the terrible sandwich was. By the way, she did have a bite of it later and agreed it was terrible, which I don't blame her for trying this because of course, toast with butter and jam or butter and jelly is delicious. But I think the bread has to be toasted. I think it has to be like the butter has to be melted, the bread has to still be kind of warm and crusty. Like that is a thing. Toast with jelly is a thing, but just a cold sandwich with butter and jelly on it. I don't think it's going to work.
Elena Passarello: Probably not good for the ole brain either. Like I don't know if you do fractions in kindergarten or whatever, but you're not getting a lot of like neurological food. I'm assuming.
Luke Burbank: To bring this whole story home because of the 15 million views of the terrible sandwich, they have now created a website, terrible sandwich dot com where you can buy merch. But here's what they're really doing. They're raising funds and awareness to fight childhood hunger. And so they are going to donate 50% of the money to Feeding America, which is a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks. They feed 46 million people a year through food pantries and soup kitchens. So this is actually going to really help out some really deserving folks. I love this quote from Abe. I feel like this is not the last that we've heard of young Abe Ndege. They asked him if he's getting recognized at school for this video still and he said, Oh, at school I definitely get recognized. I hired three bodyguards. Then he explained that his bodyguards were his three friends, and then he quote, I'm always running around at snack. I'm escaping crowds of children. That's what Abe said about his life as a famous person. And then when they asked him about donating the money, he said, How I feel about this little time in fame. First of all, he realizes, you know, that he's in his 15 minutes. He goes, I don't want everything going to me. I want some of this funding for someone else, like the hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of hungry children around the world. So that's the best news that I heard this week.
Luke Burbank: Now, speaking of this week, coming up on the radio show this week, we are going to be talking to podcast host and pop culture connoisseur Sam Sanders. Sam is the host of Into It, which is a pop culture podcast from Vulture and New York magazine. You probably also remember him from being the host of It's Been a Minute on NPR, which is the show that he founded. We're going to talk to Sam about his evangelical upbringing, his love of pop culture, and what public radio ended up meaning to him growing up in the South as a gay person who was as a young person closeted. We're also going to hear from the writer Erika L. Sanchez, about her new memoir, Crying in the Bathroom, as well as her love of Lisa Simpson. And then we're going to get some music from one of our absolute favorites, John Craigie, who is one of the funniest musicians out there. So that is going to be out on Friday in this very audio feed that you're getting this show from. And then it'll be on radio stations all over the country this weekend.
Alright. A big thanks to the folks who make this show possible. Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Our assistant editor is Trey Hester and our production fellow is Tanvi Kumar. Molly Pettit is our technical director and our mixer. Our theme music is composed by A. Walker Spring. And of course, thanks to you, our listeners. Thanks for tuning in to the show. We're going to be back here next week. In the meantime, head on out there and please have the absolute best week.
