2025.07.08: Pas De Poop

Can you hear me now?

Good.

Hey!

We're recording the podcast!

Gun up!

Good morning to you, wherever you are, because it is

for July 8th, 2025.

My name is Bernie Burns, sitting right over there.

So far, Ashley Burns.

Say hi to Ashley, everybody.

Good morning, wherever you are.

Feels good.

I can actually hear my own voice again.

So I'm like super excited by it.

Thank you to everyone who gave us such constructive feedback about the audio quality of the podcast yesterday.

We're back to our normal setup.

So you suffered through it.

We suffered through it.

We all made it through it together.

And now it's a badge of honor that we can carry with us for the rest of our days.

How do we feel about that, Ashley?

Well, look, it's a little bit like, you know, sometimes you travel and you don't have the things quite the way you like them.

You know, you don't have like your favorite pillow or like it's too mushy or not mushy enough.

And you don't have like the blanket just quite the way you like it, but you get through it because you know what?

You're traveling and you've got stuff to do.

That was the podcast.

I will say that we did have this philosophy, right?

Of, you know, if we, we don't want to have too many people on the podcast because we're not always going to be able to recreate the energy of having like three or four people on.

I don't like personally doing remote stuff because I don't like the energy of it.

And it was funny because it's literally the moment I said where this is a remote version of the podcast where we're recording from different locations, immediately the floodgates open and people are like, okay, great.

Now put this person on the computer.

Well, and that I should, we should clarify as well that that experiment is not necessarily for this show in particular, but just in general as we look at projects and what we can and can't do.

Yeah, and we have recorded remote before.

You know, we're doing it the way we're doing it.

now, actually, this is remote as well, not to color your opinion of this particular episode.

But yeah, we've done it before.

But enough about the technical details of the Morning Somewhere podcast, Ashley.

I would like to share a personal story that happened not that long ago.

I guess it was just a few hours ago.

I called you and I woke you up at 2 in the morning, your time,

because from 5,000 miles away, I was trying to manage our stupid orange cat, Mush, who had decided to go on a goddamn walkabout, I guess, as soon as I left town.

Yes.

And he does this.

I feel like he knows when the routine has changed and it puts him out of sorts.

And then he acts out, right?

He's basically an orange toddler who just chooses never to speak to us.

And so

he acts out.

He's been acting out.

And so last night, his act of rebellion was to wander like two miles away, maybe more than that.

He wandered on.

It was so far away.

It was so far away.

He decided to wander on out to the highway.

I don't know if he was trying to hitchhike to the big city for an adventure or what he was doing.

But yes, you called me at two in the morning.

Thank you for that.

And I had to like stuff my like feet into slippers and like a bathrobe and go in the car down to the highway and try to wrangle this stupid cat back into the car and bring him home.

Fucking dipshit.

Fucking dipshit.

When you got down there, was he on the highway?

No, he was he was off the side of the highway.

He was being that, you know, that thing that cats do where they go into outdoor mode and this friendly pet cat of yours is

normally very sweet and cuddly, and then they act like they've never met you before.

Like, mom, you're embarrassing me in front of my friends, the badgers.

I, I, yeah, I've had, I've had pets like that before.

Mush is not as bad as some other cats, but I definitely had cats that, like, if they're ever outdoors, they're like, do not touch me when I'm out there.

We do not know each other.

I've never seen this man before in my life.

Stranger danger.

Get the fuck away.

Yes.

So I had, thankfully,

I had enough of my brain working at two in the morning to grab his bucket of treats.

And I'm pretty sure that's the only reason he came home with me is because I had a bucket of treats, which really says more about him than anything.

I was with Scott and we were traveling together.

And he was endlessly amused by the fact that I could try to control the cat.

from literally an ocean away, 5,000 miles away.

I was able to try to control the cat.

But I'm back in Austin now.

I was in Arizona for a couple of days.

Ashley, the heat, my God, the heat.

Of course, the planes were all delayed because of either mechanical issues or just, if you live in Arizona, you must never know what it's like to have a smooth landing because of all the heat coming up off the ground.

I don't mind turbulence, and those were some of the bumpiest landings I've ever been in.

I didn't realize that, but you're right.

Now that I think about it, probably just the heat coming off the tarmac would create a lot of of what unevenness in the air pressure?

Yeah, and when we flew back tonight, Ashley, after so many delays, I was kind of like I was over it, as they say.

I was over it, Ashley.

And there was a woman, thank God, I wasn't seated next to her, but I was right behind her.

And

Ashley, she had not flown in 15 years.

And the reason why I know she had you flying with my mom,

right?

No, the reason why I knew why she hadn't flown

in 15 years is because because she said that she hadn't flown in 15 years about 15,000 times.

And she said it to the woman sitting next to her.

And she was obviously anxious and everything.

But also, I'm not a professional diagnoser.

She also, I think, might have been a little altered as well, like maybe some drinks, maybe something to alleviate the anxiety.

But that just led to her talking and talking and talking and talking for about two hours straight.

And I was just like, holy shit.

It was only, even when we're up in the air, which I get being anxious, I don't know how you maintain anxiety for two hours straight, right?

Got to take a rest at some point.

Well, I think with a lot of people, the flying anxiety sort of subsides after takeoff, usually, right?

But there's also, I mean, I guess it's not necessarily just the flight itself.

I can see if you haven't really...

you know, been traveling much or something in that long period of time.

I guess the anxiety isn't just about the flight itself.

It's about sort of everything around the flight.

So there's excitement.

Yes.

And then, if you've done something like have, you know, sneak a cheeky shot or two at the, like while you're at the airport, or God forbid, take them on board so that you can have a little rum and coke for yourself in flight.

I can see how for a lot of us, that would be a relaxing thing.

For

if you're in flight and you're anxious about being in flight, that could just, you know,

take the filters off.

By the way, I have got to learn that when I come back to the U.S.,

that there's going to be sticker shock.

And I need to start asking for about it in advance because on the way out, going out to Tucson, we had a layover in Philadelphia.

And so we got a cheese steak, of course, you're in Philadelphia.

Come on, you know.

As one does.

Got to get a cheesesteak, of course.

Do you have like a favorite place in Philadelphia or did you have to just get an airport one?

Well, remember, I took the boys to Philadelphia before

the first I'll just call it the 2016 election and it was such a contentious campaign I thought I'm gonna take these kids to where the country was basically born the government was born I'll take them to Philadelphia and maybe restore a little bit of the idea of the nobility of the American government and so we took a trip to Philadelphia of all places just like a weekend trip and there's like

there's two

cheesesteak places that are right near each other.

I'm not versed in this.

I think one of the things is Pat's and one is Gino's or something.

And you either like one or the other.

I'm going to let you in on a secret.

They're all incredible.

Like, it's, it's steak.

It's melted cheese and steak and bun and it's, it's great.

And onions and peppers and mushrooms and everything else.

It's so good.

But in the airport, it was 20 bucks for a cheesesteak.

I'm going to say that again, actually.

20 bucks.

And then, and then, and then we went to a bar, like a little bar, because we had about an hour to kill before our flight.

And I went and got a maker's mark and Coke, okay?

Diet Coke.

Maker's mark and Diet Coke.

Fairly standard drink, sure.

That's all I got.

And then the guy goes, Do you want to make it a double?

And I said, You know what?

Yeah, I do want to make it a double.

I'm glad you asked that.

I'm feeling a little bit of anxiety about my upcoming flight.

I'm just going to be able to get it.

I actually have to load it down.

15 minutes, Ashley.

It's been 15 minutes.

So I got a double.

Let me just ask you this question.

Let's say you were a person who ordered a maker's mark and Diet Coke in the airport, and then you were upsold and got the double.

What would you expect to pay for that before tip?

Oh, God.

Six, eight bucks?

$31.

It is.

What?

And then what do you do when you get the double?

Did they say, did you get the bottle of jack?

Isn't that insane?

I sat there looking at it and Scott came up and I go, this this drink is like, but like

the bartender, I guess I should have like held back a little bit because I was just like, what the hell?

$31?

And the bartender was like kind of sheepish and I was like being really loud when Scott got there too.

There wasn't many people around.

And I was like, look at this.

I go, this is the most expensive drink I've ever ordered in my entire life.

$31 for a drink.

$31, actually.

Anyway, so I'm over it.

Anyway, I'm over it now.

Did you spend the next like four-hour flight telling the person next to you about your expensive drink over and over i did i stated i did i said i haven't had a 39 drink in 15 years

yeah so i was i i find that happens again and again like when i come back to the us i'm just like because i even spending just a we were last here in april right

And so it's been not that long, but every time I come back, it's like, oh my God, this is like,

this is incredibly expensive.

That's incredibly expensive.

Tucson has some pretty expensive gas, too.

We're kind of lucky in Texas.

We get really cheap gas, even whenever when I'm sick.

Yeah, yeah, even when the price of gas is going up all over the place.

But it's weird too, Ash, because I feel like Austin has cheaper gas than even like Houston, which is an oil city, you know, or Dallas.

You know, I don't really think of Austin as an oil city.

And we still get pretty cheap gas in Austin.

I've really never known why that is.

Well, you're lucky, at least, that you are in the U.S.

right now.

I know that in Austin, there was just the enormous rainfall and the fatalities from the flooding are rising.

But, Bernie, I have to say, at least you're not in Paris right now.

Do you remember during the Olympics, it was a whole big thing that they really wanted to have some of the swimming events in the Seine, the river that runs through Paris, and they kept having to delay them because the

poop, there was too much poop in the river, too much fecal bacteria in the river.

And so they kept having to delay that.

You're talking about something totally different than what I thought you were going to talk about.

I also have a like natural disaster France story.

But yes, of course, I remember that they had to delay swimming events in the Olympics because of poop.

I'd never heard of that.

Well,

this must be like some project that

France and Paris in particular is undertaking.

They really, really want people to want to swim in that river.

They just a few days ago opened the river for swimming for the first time in like 100 years after all these water cleanup efforts they've been doing and guess what

they had to close it a day later the next day really they had to close it because it rained and the sewers overflowed oh gross gross at what point do you just not try to swim in that river maybe is there a lot of demand to swim in that river well austin is the same way because austin's got a really weird thing that's been going on over a long period of time where they just keep finding

This is going to be awful to hear.

They just keep finding dead bodies in the Colorado River, which is called Ladybird Lake, which is the river that runs through downtown Austin.

And then there's these horrible algae blooms that are really toxic, especially for dogs.

And yet people still seem to want to swim in that river at all costs.

They can't wait to get in there and paddleboard around.

And people who have lived in Austin for a long time, just like,

just don't do it.

Don't do it.

I mean, you're either like

jumping in where they've dumped a bunch of construction stuff and there's a rebar under the water, algae blooms, dead bodies, or a million bats pooping in the water if you're underneath a certain bridge.

It's just overall, it's not a great experience.

Yeah.

And it's like, I understand the need to get out of the heat some, somehow, but maybe we just.

Maybe we make more pools or something.

I don't know.

I just feel like there's got to be some other answer than swimming in poop water.

That's why God invented air conditioning, Ashley.

That's why.

I thought you were going to talk about a different story in France.

So listen about, listen to this.

So did you hear about this town in France where they were attacked by bees?

I did, yeah.

Yeah, it's Auriac, France.

Yeah, it was this little tiny town.

And I guess there were a bunch of people attacked by bees.

Three of them ended up in cardiac or in critical condition.

One of them had cardiac arrest and had to be resuscitated after being stung by these

aggressive swarm of bees that attacked town.

It's pretty impressive.

The guy who had a

cardiac arrest had to be resuscitated in the ambulance was a 78-year-old guy.

But they figure it was this beehive that was installed on top of a building about a decade ago.

And then the bees were agitated by Asian hornets that were then threatening the bee colony.

But then the bees were just like, fuck it, we're attacking everybody and attacked the entire town.

And I think it was something like, let me get the actual numbers here.

24 people injured, including three who were in critical condition, but have since improved.

So nobody died, thankfully, but 24 people were attacked by bees in this little town.

Look,

bees are a funny thing, too, because we,

we, every time I now see a bee, I'm like, good job, little bee.

If I see a bee crawling on the ground because I don't know, it's, you know, it's old or it like didn't get enough nectar or something, I have to pick up that little bee and I have to put it in a flower.

Like, there you go, buddy.

Give it your best shot.

I'm going to help you if I can.

And so the bees have got really good PR.

But then I guess, you know, they haven't traveled in a while, maybe 15 years, they've got anxiety and they just attack a town.

Right.

And then you're on a bridge and you're getting attacked by bees.

And what's your choice there?

You're going to jump in the river with the poop or are you going to get stung by the bees?

Those are your two French choices right there.

That's it.

That's all you got.

Well, Ashley,

in a week of first, we said we wouldn't do remote podcasts.

We haven't yet had three people in the podcast.

But the other thing we said we would do from a content perspective is that we would never cover YouTube drama.

And I'm sorry to say, I think I have something that is very close to YouTube drama.

And I'm very reluctant to say it, but everyone's talking about this.

Are you familiar with the boxing event called Creator Clash?

That's the one where they get influenced.

Yeah, and they put influencers in a ring and they fight, right?

Yeah.

And

it's been a big event.

Like, I feel like the first one was big and the second one was just kind of, I know it lost money.

Suddenly, like something happened with it.

They blamed piracy and for some reason it lost a quarter of a million dollars the second iteration.

But this third one has been just beset by drama.

It's been delayed.

The only thing I really know about it is I try not to follow it if I can avoid following it.

I know Ren from Corridor Digital and formerly of the Rooster Teeth Forums.

He was involved with it.

So I was like, I was excited that he was because he was getting in shape and training and everything else for it.

But it has now been officially canceled after months of drama.

And apparently the entire brand is being retired.

It's over.

Creator Clash is now in our rearview mirror, Ashley, so we can all rest easy.

So no more influencers punching each other, at least not in the ring.

No,

in 2040, you'll have to sit next to somebody in a plane who says, you know, I haven't hosted a Creator Clash in 15 years.

But we know live events are hard.

Like you did a lot of big live events for E3.

You know, we, of course, we had our own convention series for a while.

Live events are hard, man.

Live events are always difficult.

And I think I remember hearing a little while back that this one has been beset by a lot of troubles, I think,

specifically as far as where, because it was a fundraising event for charity.

And I think there was a lot of scrutiny about where the money was actually going.

There's been a lot of drama between the founders and things like that.

I don't know the specifics of it because, kind of like you, I make an attempt not to follow all that stuff too closely.

But I do remember hearing it come up over the past few months with a lot of scrutiny.

I got to say, too, when I start reading it, it's like, here's this YouTuber, and they did this, and then somebody else did a video breaking down all the problems with it.

And then this other creator came back at them, and then this one had to apologize, and that one had to re-appoint.

I can't stop reading that stuff fast enough.

I can't tell you how little I care about YouTube drama.

And God, the YouTube audience just fucking loves that stuff, man.

They eat that up.

It's just insane.

I don't think there's any other form of media where people just like

love to fucking dogpile and get involved with shit and spill tea and all that other stuff.

Man, I honestly, I cannot stop reading it fast enough.

Yeah.

Well, if you need a bit of a reset,

may I suggest you could go for a walk outside or if there's too much poop water outside, there's an interesting new study that

you can do what's called like a forest reboot, like a VR experience of being in a forest that works not quite as well, but pretty well to like reset your brain and your mood and all that sort of stuff.

So, which in its own way is actually kind of weird that like you could go for a walk outside or put on a helmet and just not go anywhere near the outdoors because there might be a bee.

It's a VR like immersive experience where you're in a forest and it resets you.

Yes, it doesn't work.

Yeah, so um here's the there's a here's a study from Science Daily.

Here's the summary.

It says, immersing stressed volunteers in a 360-degree virtual Douglas fir forest complete with sights, sounds, and scents, boosted their mood, sharpened short-term memory, and deepened their feeling of nature connectedness, especially when all three senses were engaged.

So I guess you're going to want to put on, you're going to want to get some like one of those like Douglas fir essential oils or something in one of those

little like humidifiers and just really get the scent as well.

But researchers suggest such multi-sensory VR forest baths could brighten clinics, waiting rooms, and dense city spaces, offering a potent mental refresh where real greenery is scarce.

You know, Ashley, you have never been one of those people who experiences the ASMR phenomenon, are you?

Like, is there anything that gets closer to you?

Not really.

Yeah.

No, I mean, if I go down one of those sort of like relaxation paths, paths, it's probably oddly watching like makeup tutorials that will never be relevant to me because I don't have the right eye shape or something.

But just watching people slowly do something and be really good at that thing, I find it very relaxing.

Is that a thing, by the way?

Eye shape matters for that kind of thing?

Sure.

I mean, I have hooded eyes burning, so trying to do a wing is an absolute nightmare for me, but that's neither here nor there.

Gosh, I'm so sorry I brought that up and had you had that.

It's a hardship.

I'm going to go take a forest bath to recover i don't even know what that means i don't even know but i i'm one of those people i've always like early on i i discovered asmr videos before it really had a name like i would watch uh boba sen's videos you know like the cosmic barber we did a whole documentary about it for rooster teeth and like just the other day it suggested some video to me of a girl selling at a mall kiosk she's selling a nail polish uh like a file like a nail file and it's like and the comments are just filled with people going like I watch this video literally every day.

And it's got a million views and it's from 16 years ago.

It looks like a complete time capsule.

She even says, oh, our kiosk is here outside of Old Navy and there's one by the food court and there's one by like Forever 19 or whatever store.

You know what I mean?

How many, how many kiosks does this one mall need for nail files?

They have quite the business, quite the business.

But it's one of those things.

And it's just like, I don't know what that is.

Even after we made the documentary, do you remember when we like reached out?

We wanted to do an MRI while Gavin and I watched videos to see if they could like track any changes.

And we had to like try to get permission from medical professionals.

And do you remember one of us wrote us back and said, I implore you not to go down this path.

Do you remember that?

I do.

I do.

I do.

It was, it was very strongly worded.

It was very polite, but like they, they were not big fans of the concept.

Yeah, yeah.

It was all like pseudoscience to them and everything, which we weren't claiming it was like real science, but we were just recognizing that a lot of people experience this phenomenon and if you don't know what I'm talking about there's like some videos that people watch that they just get kind of a very relaxed kind of a fuzzy feeling when they watch it and usually is something with somebody doing something either very attentively or or quietly but it's it's all different things like some of the some people watch some stuff and when i watch it i get completely skeeved out and i can't think of like clicking sounds and mouth sounds some people really like that and it's different for different people And then some people don't have it at all, and they think we're all freaks.

And they're probably right, to be honest with you.

Maybe, you know what?

I bet they just haven't found their thing.

Maybe it's swimming in the sun.

Who knows?

Like, there's, there's, look, there's something relaxing for everybody, right?

Or this, like, this study they're doing with this VR headset.

Actually, maybe they discovered another thing and they're like, wow, this thing really works.

Or it's like, maybe this is just another category of that that they found.

But that sounds like something I would love to do.

One of the most engaging things in VR is when you just put on the headset for the first time and you're in a new environment that feels very 3D.

And to me, what really sets it apart is the verticality of it.

When you look over your head, you can see up into the sky or see the ceiling or whatever.

That's always a very like cool first experience.

We always try to get even older people who have never used VR and show it to them.

And it can be really shocking for them the first time they go into that virtual space.

And then in 2050, they're on an airplane being like, you know, I don't think I've VR'd in like 15 years.

No, stop, stop.

Well, Ashley, who is joining us in our Matrix of two today?

All right.

Joining us in the Matrix today, David Ramirez and Sabrina VG.

Thank you both so much for sponsoring this episode of our show at patreon.com slash morningsomewhere.

All right.

Well, that does it for us today, July 8th, 2025.

We will be back to talk to you tomorrow.

We hope you will be here as well.

Bye, everybody.