Best News
Luke and Elena discuss misremembered vocal stylings, Lizzo taking James Madison's crystal flute out for a spin, and a 91-year-old man who found a new lease on life via macadamia farming.
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Luke Burbank: Hello there. Welcome to The Best News podcast from Live Wire brought to you by Alaska Airlines. This is the show where we talk extensively about what is good in the news, sometimes too extensively for our boss's liking. But you just you just can't keep the good news down some weeks. By the way, my name is Luke Burbank. Right over there is Elena Passarello. Hello.
Elena Passarello: Hi. How's it going?
Luke Burbank: It's going well. This is, I think, week 27 of the podcast.
Elena Passarello: Yep. It's our Saturn return episode.
Luke Burbank: Now, before we started recording, you mentioned that you had a mea culpa that you needed to offer. What's going on?
Elena Passarello: Okay, so do you remember last week when I told the story about Elton John getting the National Humanities Medal and how they didn't play, when he played at the White House, my favorite Elton John song, jokingly... My favorite Elton John song is Someone Saved My Life Tonight, but my joking favorite is Amoreena because in the chorus he goes, "and she drams of crystal strams."
Luke Burbank: Yeah. Which is like so obscure that I had never even heard of it. And so when you said they didn't play it, I was like, well, of course not. I mean, Elton John has like 5,000 songs. They're not going to play the one that has, like, the most bizarre lyric that I can think of.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, well, I guess that's not the reason why they didn't play it. So I was thinking about that song and laughing and singing it to David because David and I often sing it to each other, but we don't play the song very much since like the first time we heard it on like a road trip or whatever. So we put it on, it's a chorus. So that part comes up like four times and we're eating breakfast, and every single time it comes up, Elton John goes, "and she dreams of crystal streams." And I was like, Oh, must be the next one. So it's of the vowel kind of patterning that he has ascribed to the song's second verse, "and she dreams of crystal streams." And it's he's like, he's like making it worse third verse. "And she dreams of crystal streams."
Luke Burbank: The last verse is the rain in Spain flows mainly in the plane.
Elena Passarello: That's right. And it's like when you learn something that you thought was true, your whole life was just a complete falsehood. Like our relationship has been built on "drams of crystal strams." We say it to each other constantly, but we must have just, like, been joking around and then embedded it in our own cultural memory of the song.
Luke Burbank: Mandela effect-ed it.
Elena Passarello: It was that with the Mandela effect is?
Luke Burbank: That's kind of a hot concept right now like this idea that something that never happened, if you just heard that had happened and then repeated the story, like one of the things is that people think that the sun on the box of Raisin Bran used to have sunglasses on, but it doesn't. And it's never had sunglasses. But there are people that will absolutely die on the hill of the Raisin Bran sun used to have sunglasses. That's the Mandela effect.
Elena Passarello: Can it be the Mandela effect if it's only just like a couple, like two people in a house?
Luke Burbank: Anything that you believe deeply, that there's just absolutely no factual evidence for I think it's the Mandela effect. I have so many things like that, too. And it's it's like slightly sad when you actually verify the thing that's been cracking you up for years and years. That has no basis in reality.
Elena Passarello: I'm devastated. No joke. I am. Absolutely. I feel like my life is a lie.
Luke Burbank: Well, you know, we do work with highly skilled technical recording people. We could get maybe like you to record your own version where you sing it all jacked up like you want to. And you can play that one.
Elena Passarello: Play it at breakfast. Good morning honey, "And she drams of crystal strams."
Luke Burbank: Also that's really a function of being in a long term relationship. Right. Which is like and if it's a good one, it's probably 80% based on inside jokes and just like repetitive silliness, it's getting turned in a river of conversation like a rock and just like all of the edges. And let's be honest, reality of it is just getting eventually tumbled right off of it.
Luke Burbank: Let's talk about what's actually good out there in the wider world. Elena, what's the best news that you saw this week?
Elena Passarello: All right. I got to go back into the world of popular music to bring you some Lizzo news.
Luke Burbank: This is about Lizzo lyrics that you only vaguely remember.
Elena Passarello: Good as Hell. I thought she was saying good as heel. It's all about shoes. No, a lot of people probably already know this. I love Lizzo for a million different reasons, but one of the things I love about Lizzo is that I feel like she lives the life that she wants to live, no matter how unlikely some people might think it is. Right. Most people know her because she's you know, she's a fat woman who really loves her body and does all these things the society tells people not to do if their bodies aren't perfect. She was a woman rapper in a male dominated game, but she also, when she became a superstar, kept playing the flute in her concerts. Like, it's not necessarily something that I...
Luke Burbank: Associate with hip hop?
Elena Passarello: Or pop diva-dom, you know, but it's just a part of who Lizzo is as a classically trained flutist. So then this is great. On Twitter, the director of the Library of Congress, the first black woman to lead the Library of Congress, Carla Hayden, got in touch with Lizzo because I didn't know this. But the Library of Congress has the largest flute collection on the planet. She sent a picture of all these beautiful flutes and invited Lizzo over to come play them. When Lizzo's tour stopped in D.C. last week. Lizzo shows up, and among the flutes that she played is that speaking of crystal streams, Crystal flutes. She plays a crystal flute that was owned by the third U.S. president, James Madison. Not only that, it was a gift from a French instrument maker named Claude Laurent. And it was one of the very few items that Dolley Madison saved from the White House when it burned to the ground in the 18 tens. I remember she saved that famous portrait of George Washington that hung in the National Portrait Gallery or something.
Luke Burbank: This is the first I'm learning of this. And by the way, I was just in the National Portrait Gallery like three weeks ago. Clearly, I should have paid more attention.
Elena Passarello: I love it. Don't get me started. The best news I've heard all week is that somebody went to the National Portrait Gallery. I'm obsessed with the National Portrait Gallery. If I was a pop diva instead of playing the flute, I would just sing songs in, like a spangled leotard and then talk about the National Portrait Gallery. But I digress. So Lizzo plays this flute, and there's footage of her playing it in the Hall of the Library of Congress, which I believe you were kind enough to help me figure out how to work.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, this is this is beautiful, too. And again, I didn't even know a glass flute was a thing. A crystal flute was a thing. This sounds amazing. Take a listen. I think I forget how actually good Lizzo is at the flute because, you know, a lot of pop stars have some musical background. Maybe they played in, like high school band or something or whatever. And I guess, I knew that she played flute, but that's really good. Like, that's beautiful.
Elena Passarello: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's really, really something. And, you know, that clip goes on and she just plays a lot of lovely things. She played a bunch of different flutes, but she took the crystal flute or someone brought her the crystal flute to her performance in a local arena that night.
Luke Burbank: Can I just play you a little bit of this arena thing? Because I think there's something interesting that happens here. Okay. This is about midway through her sort of trying to play the flute.
[Clip from Lizzo at the arena plays]
Lizzo: This is crystal. It's like playing out of a wine glass.
Luke Burbank: And here it comes.
Luke Burbank: Do you think, Elena, that is the loudest applause that has ever happened for a flute performance.
Elena Passarello: I mean, Jethro Tull dude.
Luke Burbank: I guess they probably had a lot of people at their shows. I was just thinking of the time when Flute was at its high point. I feel like the crowds would have been smaller than a Lizzo concert in D.C.. But maybe I'm wrong. You're thinking Aqualung?
Elena Passarello: Yeah. And there's a lot of great jazz flute out there. No, but I loved the concert. Lizzo was wearing this amazing gold spangled bodysuit. She's glistening in success, right? Because she's been just dancing hard. She plays this crystal flute that's over almost 200 years old or over 200 years old. 209 years old. And then she says, I just twerked and played James Madison's crystal flute from the 1800s, and the crowd goes nuts. And then she hands it back to a very differently dressed official representative of the Library of Congress who takes it in her gloved hands and then puts it in some kind of like carry case or something.
Luke Burbank: The one thing that I hadn't thought of was, I mean, that that would have been a bad scene if that flute got dropped.
Elena Passarello: If I were Lizzo and I dropped that flute, I would have taken the recording of the crashing and worked it into like, like sampled it into a track.
Luke Burbank: I mean, that would have been an incredible, incredible moment. I mean, it was an incredible moment nonetheless. But now I'm, like, retroactively nervous about Lizzo handing the flute to the Library of Congress staffer. But that is awesome. Yes, I think we can all agree that Lizzo is really the best of us and kind of one of the few things holding this country together at this point.
Elena Passarello: Lizzo for president, 100%
Luke Burbank: I would support or if Lizzo isn't interested in running, I would vote for this guy, Henri Bader, who's in Australia. I don't know legally if this would work out, but this is the best news that I saw this week. It is from ABC News. That's not like American Broadcast Corporation. This would be Australian Broadcast Corporation, which always gets me always confused that they've got the same name. But they did a piece on this guy. He's 91 years old. He's a macadamia farmer. His name is Henri Bader. The reason he's kind of notable is because he took forced retirement from his job as a sales manager when he was 70. So, you know, that'll happen. He reached a certain age. They said, here's your golden watch and, you know, have a nice retirement. But he was not interested in retiring. So instead he bought this like bare land in an area of northern New South Wales called Knockrow. I've never been to Knockrow, New South Wales, but a bare piece of land in Knockgrow, New South Wales. It sounds challenging from a landscaping perspective, but he decided he wanted to become a macadamia farmer. So he went out there. First, he went to school to learn how to be a farmer at 70. Yeah, and at this point he's probably older than 70 and he starts growing macadamias and now he's got three macadamia properties with 25,000 trees out there. He's 91. He still works the farm every single day. These are the things that this guy Henri has done since he turned 50. Okay. He moved from South Africa to Australia. This is all after the age of 50. He remarried. He went to school to learn how to become a macadamia farmer. This was all on the back half of 50, which is giving me real life this week because, you know, I'm approaching 50 now and one considers, you know, kind of what I guess we'll say the back the back nine are going to look like. And it's easy to fall into this trap of kind of thinking, well, you know, you're beginning the initial descent. You know, like if you're on the plane and they ask you to put away your laptop. You know, I thought I was 47 for like the last three months. And then I realized like four or five days ago I'm 46, which I was seriously like, I got a new lease on life. I would highly recommend misremembering your age by one extra year for a period of time because it is like I just got an entire year of my life back.
Elena Passarello: Oh, congratulations. You could use it to macadamia nut farm. It sounds like.
Luke Burbank: I got to start by going to Macadamia Nut College. He also does Pilates several times a week. He just seems like a person who has not allowed whatever his age is on paper to impact how he goes after his life. He says that he does the pilates because he's got to stay fit for farming. He says you've got to retain your social consciousness. You have to be active and do things. He says, after all, we all live in a very interesting world. He like has made all these new friends since he moved to Australia and he goes in like hangs out with them and he's just so engaged in life in this way that I found very, very inspiring. He also has recently taken up furniture making. So he just recently made a chair that was inspired by the Dutch artist Mondrian, which he learned how to do this kind of furniture making in his late eighties by watching a YouTube video.
Elena Passarello: Good Lord.
Luke Burbank: I know. Now it's just kind of making me feel bad.
Elena Passarello: I'm getting annoyed.
Luke Burbank: Started off inspirational. I started off sad cause I thought I was already 47. Then I got inspired by Henri, and then I started to be kind of like, We get it, Henri, Calm it down, dude.
Elena Passarello: Slow your roll.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, exactly. He says we only make use of 20% of our capabilities, so why not make use of the other 80% if you can? Forget about what you can't do and focus on what you can do, forget about yesterday and focus on tomorrow. So that is the advice from one Henri Bader, age 91, of Knockgrow northern New South Wales. Elena, that means I've got 45 more solid years in me at a minimum.
Elena Passarello: Awesome. Think about how many best newses you're going to be able to share.
Luke Burbank: Welcome to Week 1 million of the podcast.
Luke Burbank: Hey. Coming up this week on the radio show, we're going to be talking to Tom Scharpling, who hosts the long running radio...They're not related episode 1 million, but they've done a lot of episodes of The Best Show, which if you know, you know. It's a very legendary, very cool call in program. He's also a TV writer. He worked on the show Monk, and he's got a memoir out which kind of chronicles the ups and downs of his life and also his dislike for Billy Joel, which, you know, it's mostly that Tom is upset because he had bad seats at a Billy Joel concert when he was a teenager, which I don't know if I blame Billy for that anyway. You can hear the whole thing on the show next week. We're also going to get some comedy from one of our standup pals, Mohanad Elshieky, and we are going to get some music from the Oregon band MAITA. So that's all coming up on Friday in this very same feed and then on radio stations all over the country throughout the weekend. So we'll see you there.
Luke Burbank: Hey, a big thanks to the team who makes the Best News podcast 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 mixer. Our theme music is composed by A. Walker Spring and also thanks to you, our listeners. Hey, drop us an email sometime, why don't you? It's Best News at Live Wire Radio Dot Org. We'll be back next week. In the meantime, head on out there and have the absolute best week.
