2025.11.28: Holiday Lessons

Hey, fuck. Hey, long time caller.

I'm gonna restart that the beat beat through me off fair play.

Hey! We're recording the podcast! Telephone job!

Good morning to you!

Wherever you are, because it is that way!

This is 25. My name is Bernie Burns, sitting right over there.

She's a longtime caller, but first time listener

Say hi to Axie, everybody. Oh, man.
This is another day where we've got it together. We promise.
We're professionals.

That drop was from the voicemail box.

If you want the number to the voicemail box, leave a comment. People thought it should be for the QA.
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Surprise, motherfucker. We established it for the QA.
But if you want to use it for whatever at this point, that would make sense because there's no QA currently going on.

Just call and leave a comment. Tell us how we're so incredibly right about all the things we talk about or, you know, correct us on the fly.
I will say this.

We're nice people, but probably

nice people probably won't make it on the air. Stand out.

I used to love, one of the things I would love back in the 90s, listening to Howard Stern. There's been a lot of stuff resurfacing from Howard Stern.

By the way, last thing I heard about this guy, he was canceled. Sirius was canceling his show, and everybody was up in arms about it.

And I was like, he does this every time his contract is up for renewal. He starts some kind of fight that lasts for like eight months.
It's all you hear about.

Is he getting canceled or not, Ashley?

What's your finger on the pulse of Howard Stern? That was in August. Do we have any news from August? We've got an update in September, Howard Stern contract update after Andy Cohen prank.
Is he back?

So the short answer is dunno. Yeah, then he pulled this weird-ass prank.
And all my friends who are big Howard Stern fans, I got to say, I told you so, look at this. It's all just a publicity stunt.

Oh, to finish my thought, he would, back in the days before, you know, internet and everything like that, basically all you had was live radio and pay phones.

He would have some of the most incredible conversations with some of the most insane people from New York City, just like them screaming at each other.

Well, I mean, step one was they're from New York. Right.
Which I feel like if you move to New York and you're not crazy, you're going to be.

If you use a payphone in New York, in any era, you're probably a crazy person. You're probably insane.

uh, I wonder if they would take collect calls, too, because some of the people should not have been had enough money, like even the 25 cents for a phone call. And they were calling from prison, right?

You know, that's a good question. We always say, like, what does something cost? A payphone phone call costs 25 cents, right? No, no, no, they changed that a long time ago.

And I, in your head, what does it cost?

In my head, it costs 25 cents. Right.

Because the last time I used a payphone, it probably cost 25 cents. And that was probably like at the mall to go, mom, I'm done.
Come pick me up.

When I was like, you know, obviously before I could drive.

And that's the last time I used a payphone. Every now and then.
And when I call and you say, if it's a collect call from me, say no. And that's me telling you to come get me.
Right.

Or goes like, please state your name and go, mom, I'm at the moment, come get me.

That's before they had automated systems. Were you, are you old enough to where you actually had to talk to an operator like you were on the Andy Griffith show to make a phone call?

No, no, I never had to do that that I'm aware of. Yeah, they automated the collect call system at some point.
They got tired of dealing with New Yorkers, too.

By the way, the phone company figured out way before anybody else how to fuck you with fees.

So, like, a phone call would be 25 cents, but a collect phone call, if you accepted it, was like a buck fifty or something like that. It was insane how much more it was.
It wasn't just the 25 cents.

So, here we go. The cost of a collect call can currently vary based on several factors.
The average cost of a 15-minute collect call, oh, this is from jail, can range

from $5 to $15.

dollars for five to fifteen dollars for 15 minutes of chatting on the goddamn phone it's weird i don't understand i'm really confused all of the google results for this are about collect calling from jail is that the only place that collect calling still exists or

Does Google know something that I don't know and it's trying to educate me? Also, it's like, do we really need to charge people who are in fucking jail, you know, that much more money?

Of all the people that you're going to charge charge more for something there's people who are in jail that's who you're going to do it to it's like one of those broke taxes man yes like the like the the people who can't afford it get charged more for always like what's i i guess i could say the rationale because i've been in rooms where they talk about that there's a higher risk profile of defaulting on the payment so the people who do pay supposed bullshit it's the it's a it's a collect phone call it's just it's a call it's just preying on people is what it is yeah but they'll they'll get it on their bill but then the it's there's some actor would say well yeah but we have a higher default for these kind of categories.

Go figure people who call from jail, they don't pay their phone bills on time either. Same kind of thing, but like, you know, you bounce a check or whatever.

Bouncing a check is probably not a great example. You overdraw your account on ATM.
It lets you do it. And then it charges you 25 bucks.
And then the store charges you 25 bucks.

And you end up paying like 58 bucks for a carton of milk, essentially. Right, because you didn't know.
Right.

There's some comedian who said it much better than I just did, which he says, you're charging me money for not having enough money.

But it's, but it is like, it's a, it's a big business, right? Is making money off people who don't have money. So it's huge.
It's huge.

Oh, but speaking of what says Black Friday, any good Black Friday sales out there? So if you have money, there's a good way to not have money. We're not doing a Black Friday sale.

Should we have done a Black Friday sale?

This seems silly to me. Black Friday sales seem to go all through November now.
So it's really, I don't feel the urge. It's like when they changed Steam sales

and they're, you know, they used to have like those flash sales where it's only four hours and you don't know if it's going to go back to 80% off again.

And so there was this like frothing hunger for these Steam sales.

And then they changed Steam sales because they also implemented returns and things like that. So they just made it.
So now the thing is on sale for a week and that's it. This is its price.

That's all there is to it. And it's like, that's a great thing.

Also a lot less exciting. You know what I mean? There's not like this weird gambling intensity to it.
Or when they mark it up and they mark it down. You know? Yeah.
Well, I don't know. I don't know.

Does that happen on Steam as much?

I know that happens a lot on places like Amazon or even retailers where they'll bump the price just before so then they can knock it down and go, hey, it's 50% off when it's really 10%.

Howard Stern also proved something else. And I think we're all, this is a great day to talk about it.

It's the Friday after Thanksgiving, right? Right. This is probably

the best holiday that exists. The Friday after Thanksgiving.
The Friday after Thanksgiving is fantastic because it's like, yeah, Thanksgiving takes a lot of work because it's a big meal or whatever.

You had a three-day work week. Go figure.
You got everything done, right?

Right? Right. You had Thanksgiving.
It was a big obligation with family and everything like that. And then Friday's like.
You get to spend the next 36 hours in a coma. You have so little to do.

The entire economy is trying to get you to spend it, right? That's the whole purpose of Black Friday. And it's like, it's to me, it's like, it's freedom this day.
It's like you're just sitting around.

You got nothing to do.

There's no obligation. There's no implied obligation that you should be doing something.
It's like even the TV is like, here, we're just going to throw a bunch of fucking football at you.

All the stores are like, hey, come buy something for super cheap. Why can't every day be the day after Thanksgiving?

Well, the nice thing is, too, that Thanksgiving really caters to both types of vacationers, right?

If you're the type of vacationer that has your holiday planned like down to the hour, we're going to go do this and we're going to do this.

We're going to get the absolute, we're maxing this vacation, right? You're going to need a rest after this vacation.

It caters to those people because they're out doing the Black Friday sales, the door stoppers or whatever they are. The

door buster deals. Wake up at 5 a.m.
to fight with the people in your community. That option is available to you.
Right. Like you got that.

You want a holiday? This is an extreme sport. We got you.
We will financially reward you for. participating in this battle royale.

On the other hand, are you the type of holiday goer who likes to just go somewhere and then sleep the whole time that's me thank you right this this holiday also caters to you while your you know significant other or whatever is out doing extreme sports and they're going to come back battered and bruised with a lot of shopping bags you relax you chill out you watch your football maybe have a sausage or something you know just relax right take it easy you got like eight weeks of trip to fan for leftovers so right you're set

This is what life should be all the time, right? This is the future we could be living in, right? Is the day after Thanksgiving. This could be a three-day work week.
It's completely fine.

We could get everything done that we need to get done. Right.
That said, the flip side of that is I've worked Black Fridays before. Yeah, that's true.

Anyone at retail, it's like the worst day of the year. That's because no one comes away from their extreme shopping happy.

That's all robots in like four years though, right? Four years from now, it's either going to be all online, it's already already gone online, right?

This whole Cyber Monday, that was like a thing for about five years. Nobody talks about it anymore.
No, now it's now it's all Black Friday all the time. I've been

getting all these emails about Black Friday deals that go all November for weeks now. What is the logic? I've been doing this internet stuff for a long time.

What is the logic behind the companies, and it's a lot of them, where you buy one thing from them. Like you see an ad online.
Typically, it's a company that advertises online.

You buy the one thing from from them and then like, we're going to live in your email box for the rest of your life.

Like we're going to send you four emails the first week after you get this thing to the point where you're like, I am so sick of seeing the name of your company. They ask you to review the product.

They thank you for buying the product. They three weeks, they're three days in, they give you tips on how to use the product better.

And then when it goes on sale for like Black Friday, they go, do you want four more of the things that you already bought? Right.

It's a lot like if you buy a fridge or something, something suddenly you start getting advertising for fridges like you clearly you love fridges did you like another fridge no i don't want another fridge this company has my email because i bought this thing from them you know that i've already got the product right right yes i would love another set of artisanal dominoes that i bought for a friend of mine i want i want 50 more sets of dominoes thank you what the hell are people thinking with these things one for you need a set of dominoes for every person in your life bernie it's the ultimate gift.

I don't get it. I don't get the, I don't, I don't think we do that, right?

I don't think we like anytime somebody buys a shirt, we're not constantly in their goddamn inbox saying, buy another shirt, buy another shirt. At least shirts are different.
Don't think so.

I don't think so. We should double check.

I know we don't do that stuff. I've turned all of that stuff off to our detriment.
I'm sure.

I'm sure we're losing sales somewhere, but it seems like, do you really want to contribute to the overall goddamn noise floor of buy this, look at this, fuck you, get this, get in here, spend some money, fuck you.

No, no, by the way, Bernie, speaking of constantly getting in people's ears, we need to talk about what you did to the cat feeder. You're welcome.
Am I? Am I welcome?

How did you program the cat feeder the first time and not discover this function? Did you know it was the thing? Okay, so I was in the like the kitchen the other night.

Um, and suddenly, like, I heard a voice. I thought it was you, so I went looking, and I, there's no Bernie around.
There's no one else in the house. And I was like, what on earth?

I was like, am I being haunted again? Is this posty ghost? What is going on? And so

that fell out of my mind. I managed to unhaunt my own brain and give it until

this morning I was in the kitchen and suddenly I hear

Mush, come get some food.

Like the most like auto-mechanicalized, poor recording. Let's see, this filter will do it.
Mush, come get some food. That's exactly what it sounds like.

As the cat feeder is spitting out food, and to his credit, Mush absolutely jumped up and immediately got it. He's in the room with his, his ears just worked up.
He wants to go get food now.

I'm teaching him to love me. He's going to love the sound of my voice.

You're doing what you did to like all the pets and kids in the Rooster Teeth office where they would walk in the door and you just start handing them treats so they would like you?

We had, so we had an incredible

snack array. at the Rooster Teeth offices.
Like it was just, it was awesome. Like you could walk in, you could get a little bit of a game.
It was its own set. An energy bar.
You could get whatever.

Coffee would grind yourself. Juice, artisanal coffee.

There were a bunch of like different.

There was an entire team dedicated to stalking the snacks. It was one of their duties.
But yes. And then there was a room in which they stored all of the stuff.

And that room to me was way more impressive. Oh, yeah.
I went in the cage all the time. So whenever anyone would bring their kids over, I'd go, Hey, come here, check this out.

And I would take them in. It was like a giant

closet candy store. And then

I won't say who, somebody came goes, stop feeding my kids.

Shook with it coming,

and uh, yeah, so I would always like, it was like, oh my god, it was incredible. And all the, like, the really good stuff was at kid level, too.
Like, there was like fruit roll-ups and stuff.

We tried to, I think, gummies. There was an effort to keep it healthy, but people got mad about it.
Well, no, there's an effort to be able to call it healthy, right?

Which is a which is a big difference. If you have like fruit gummies, you're like, look, it's made with fruit.
It's healthy. Never mind all the sugar part.
It's got fruit. So I'll tell you a story.

This is one of those things. This is kind of the thing that happens a lot when you work at a big company.
When people, there was, of course, people who would complain about the snacks or whatever.

And you can't like fire back, right? The company can't fire back at somebody who complains.

Great example of that was Meg Turney came to me at one point and she talked about she had an opportunity coming up and she wanted to like just like, you know, sounding board, bounce it, bounce it off somebody else who would keep it quiet.

It's now well-known. Uh, she was featured in Playboy, and you know, she was like talking to incredible set.

It's also, by the way, kind of an interesting conversation because now in the era of OnlyFans, that would not even be a conversation. Like, what do you think of the ins and outs of this?

And everything like that. I was like, that's fucking awesome.
You know what I mean? And she had to get ready for it. Like, she had this was coming up.

It was on the calendar, like, 45 days out or something like that. So, she's like getting prepped.

She's like, you know, you do you have that 45 days and you're like, all right, exactly how fit can I get in 45 days? Right. And you start like, you pay attention to everything.

So we're in the snack kitchen and I'm talking with somebody. We're just having a conversation.
And Meg walks up. This is, I do this all the time.
She walks up.

She walks over and she grabs a bag of baked lays. This is like two weeks later.
She does that. And we're in a group of people talking.
And I go, Meg? And she goes, yeah. And I go, are you sure?

Do you really want?

Do you really want those baked lays?

And she goes, fuck no. And she puts them back and she walks away.
Dude, I got that group that I was with, they fucked me up. They were like, how dare you? Did you get frozen?

They were like, I go, you don't understand why I did that.

That's actually really justified and I can't tell you why. And I just got to take an enormous amount of heat now

because I said that to her. You know what I mean? You don't understand.
I'm being, this is the supportive thing that we're doing right now.

You and I do that to each other all the time and it still doesn't stop the light. Dude, if I was in in Playboy you could guys

If you see me in the office and not in the gym I would say get out of here burns go to the gym I was like I had to like weather so much heat from the people in that room who were just like

You can't do that. You can't say that I got brought up in a meeting later.

Hey, I heard you said something was really strange to make dirty. It's like, it's not that strange.
I just can't explain why I said it. Fuckers.

Like, if we have an understanding, we're being mutually supportive.

Shut up. So everybody who has that, that issue of Playboy, I don't know if it was being printed at that point.
You're welcome. Right.

I had to take so much heat in order to have you to have an incredible pictorial feature of Meg Turney. And then you should all be so fucking lucky.
And then on the flip side, you're going,

come get some food.

I miss that snack kitchen. Although I kind of don't.
That was, it's like,

that was a bane of my existence going in there and chomping on food. Yeah, part of the trouble is like when it's there, it's really hard to stay away from it.
Super hard. And I'm one of those people.

It's it's like, I watch what other people eat. Like, for instance, while we're calling out things that people do in their own house, I woke up this morning a little bit late.

I went down to breakfast a little bit late, and I saw our lovely daughter having eggs and grapes cut in half and little slices of watermelon with lovely breakfast.

And then I saw my beloved wife sitting across from her eating a bowl of cookie dough with a spoon.

I almost took a picture of it, but I felt like I probably still have anxiety from the snack room Playboy issue

no look it's it's true i have a problem i have a problem but i've uh here's my solution because i have i go through these streaks where just like i can't stop craving snacky things uh and i figured out the healthy way to deal with this is i just replace all my meals with these horrible snacks yeah yeah it's i don't want to tell you it's awful i uh i'm i can't stop eat the horrible meal and i eat the horrible snacks so and and if you were like are you sure you you want to do that?

I'd be like, go fuck yourself, Burns.

I think, because our kid really likes Pringles. I don't know why.

I never had Pringles in the house. I have to police his Pringle usage.
But here's the deal, though.

I think maybe there might be a false positive going on there because I think I eat about 1,000 calories a day of Pringles, but I eat it one Pringle at a time.

You walk through the kitchen, you grab one Pringle. It's a really easy thing to mentally justify.
I don't know how you do anything else. You go, I'm just going to have the one Pringle.

One Pringle is not bad. And then I'll continue on my day having sated the desire for Pringles.
Or discussion. Except I walk through the kitchen again.
That's right. That's the secret.

Just don't walk through the kitchen ever. You don't actually have to go through the kitchen in this house.
You can avoid it completely. But I don't.
But you don't.

We also have this thing here. Like we said, it's an old place.
There is this very traditional stove. that we have in our kitchen.
It's called an aga. And you can go look this up.

But it's basically like a giant block, from what I understand, giant block of cast iron that gets up to temperature.

And because it's cast iron, it just stays that temperature and take, it takes very little energy to run this thing, which is surprising because it's on 24 hours a day. Yeah, it's, it's cool.

It's weird. It's, uh, you don't want to turn it off because if you turn it off, it's going to take like three, four hours to heat up again when you need it.

Um, so you just leave it running all the time instead. It's a heat source as well.
Yeah, so it's like your oven is always on.

And it's really weird to get used to, but when you get used to it, it's really convenient. And then the idea of waiting for an oven to heat up is like a very foreign concept.

But it also comes with these really weird quirks that I think over the years we've now gotten used to. But for example, you can't set the heat on it.
You turn the thing on. No.
And it's on. No.

And then there's different like different like cubby doors depending you're like do you want it do you want it hot as hell do Do you want the roasting setting?

Do you want to bake something or do you want to simmer something? We almost never simmer something, but we have to choose if we're trying to bake something or roast something.

And we put it in the appropriate door because, based on where it's located in relation to the heating element, I guess that determines how hot that drawer is. Right.

And we have the discussion all the time. What's this one? Is this one the hot water? Are we going to look it up? We should put a little label on the outside of it.

But it's really cool to not have to preheat something ever.

We also don't go out and buy stuff like toasters and toaster ovens and stuff like that because this thing just does all of that stuff it's weird though it's pretty rustic like to make toast on this thing you got to put it in this like paddle with a grid on it you know and i'm the only one who seems to be able to do it well you gotta you gotta really pay attention i i can't do it it comes out like half raw half black yeah that's part of the fun though I guess so.

That's part of the art. I feel like cooking with one of these things is as much art as science.
I just want to point out it's not raw. You know, it is raw.

Your bowl of cookie dough bow that you had for breakfast. I do want to say thank you, though, because it is nice.
You learn after living with someone for a while. I have,

it's refrigerated, cookie dough, right? It has to be.

I have no idea where that is in the refrigerator. Like, I would not be able to find it.
You are getting so good at hiding food, and I appreciate that. I feel like I genuinely appreciate it.

I feel like a squirrel, like, I have to, like, I have to hide things away. Uh, because the thing is, too, if I don't, then I will come back to one bite being taken out of it.
So, for example,

we have our kid has a thing at school, and they ask, sometimes they'll have these days where

you can come out of uniform,

you dress in whatever you like, and then they ask for like a donation of like a small treat or something instead for an upcoming fundraiser.

So, today I went to get the suite I had set aside for the fundraiser, and there was

a Twix bar

with half of one stick eaten.

So I didn't know that it had a purpose. I didn't know it was being used for a fundraiser.
And I thought, that's okay. I did buy like a bar of milk chocolate recently.

And I don't think we've made chocolate bread for the kids. So I'll just use that instead.
And I went to it and it was open with like one piece of chocolate removed. That thing's massive, by the way.

How dare you climb down like that? I had to like go down the list of things in the house that didn't have one bite taken out of them until I finally got to one. So learn your lesson.

That cabinet that had the Twix bar in it, that Twix bar was front and center. You might as well have put it on a pedestal with a light on it.

It was right, it was like, it was even displayed like it was for sale. Well, you know, you know, the next step would be me recording, Birdie, come get some treats.

Birdie, come get a Twix.

It was a delicious half of a stick of Twix. It was delicious.
It was absolutely delicious. Here's what I'm getting at with this Black Friday.
Okay. We should live like this all the time.

Three day, week.

This proves it. Three day work week, whatever, family day on Thursday, and then on Friday through Sunday.
You got nothing to do. You got nothing to do.
You have so little to do, you're bored, right?

You know, that's why they put out movies that nobody wants to watch during the holidays because they know people have nothing better to do and they have to go watch like the Paw Patrol fascist agenda movie or whatever, you know?

They know you're going to go see it. By the way, there was a, you carried a kerfuffle in the community.
My apologies. Apparently, that's just a televised program.
You worried everyone.

There's the way they release stuff in the UK makes no goddamn sense.

I even saw somebody who wrote to us on a comment and said, Hey, we're in London this week, and my wife wants to watch the Aggie game. How can I do that?

I go, You clearly don't fucking listen to this podcast. If you're coming to me for advice on how to watch a sports game from America in the UK, I have no clue.
Good luck. Right.

You can check now TV, I think, is like the one service we've found that sometimes shows

a selection of football games. Also, I feel like, what's with all the rebranding, every time I learn of a service in the UK, they've changed it to something else.

Like even the mobile carriers, they change their names all the goddamn time. Or they're like merging like, or like someone is now offering this person's coverage in their own coverage.
Right.

It's always.

They're always like making deals. I don't know.
I don't get it. Media mergers.
You know, it's funny because there's a media mergers subreddit and it's like the lamest discussions in the world.

Like they're excited about media mergers and they like,

I guess there's a community for everything.

Are they just like frothing over who's going to buy Warner Brothers? Right. And they're upset about certain things that...
don't make a lot of sense.

Like they're just there to talk about the deal and stuff like that. And they're not worried about branding and all that.
It's so weird. It's just like, it's such a niche community.

Look, buddy, everyone needs a hobby. Okay.
Some people get really excited about mergers. Some people eat half a twix and record silly voice messages on their cat's food food bowl.

Look how happy he is though. He's happy because it's like, now he's got his,

I upped his portions on all of this thing. He's look at him.
He's putting on wood.

It's his winter coat, as it were. Yeah, your winter coat.
Mush, you need to, you need to get, you got Playboy coming up in license weeks.

Whatever that is for cats.

Chill out over there. All right, Ashley, who do we have to thank for providing us delicious snacks today? All right.
Big thank you to today's snack masters, Jonathan Sagatsume, and Nikhil Pele.

Thank you both so much for sponsoring this episode of our show at patreon.com/slash morningslimmer and richardheath.com. Okay, that does it for us this Thanksgiving week ending November 28th, 2025.

We will be back to talk to you on Monday. We hope you will be here as well.
Bye, everybody.