00:00:08 Speaker 1: Well, I invited you here, thought I made myself perfectly clear. When you're a guest to my home, you gotta come to me empty. And I said, no, guests, your presences presents enough. I already had too much stuff, So how do you dare to surbey me? 00:00:47 Speaker 2: Welcome to, I said, no gifts. I'm Bridger Wineger. You're so happy you're here. I'm so happy you're here. If you have a minute, maybe keep listening to the podcast, or if you're busy. I understand you can turn it off. Now, it's up to you. It's really in your hands for the you know, it's your life. I'm not going to give you any more direction. I want you to just choose what makes you happy. So you know what are we going to do. We're gonna talk to the guest. I'm so I am through the roof about this guest. I just adore her. Maybe one of the greatest voices of all time, Yardley Smith Yardley, Welcome to. I said, no gifts. 00:01:35 Speaker 3: Thank you, Brechire. I am so thrilled to be here. I am a genuine fan of your podcast. This is truly an honor. 00:01:43 Speaker 2: Oh God, bless you, I am. I'm you know before the recording began, you really saw the gears grinding as I just pushed every button on my recording device. It's been a stressful intro to the and so I think it's safe to say that we're both just nervous. We're both anxious wrecks right now. 00:02:07 Speaker 3: I'm sort of an anxious wreck most of the time. So it's just another what day is it Friday? Today? 00:02:16 Speaker 2: Well, let's get into it in a normal way. How are you doing? 00:02:20 Speaker 3: I knew you were going to ask me that there's so much pressure with that question, Bridget. 00:02:25 Speaker 2: And I want specifics. I want to go deep here, and there will be no excuses. I'm not going to let you off the hook. I want to know how you're doing. 00:02:34 Speaker 3: Okay, Well, I've sort of been on the struggle bus recently, which is a wonderful phrase that our social media manager that we have for pay per click er name was Monica. She introduced me to that phrase, the struggle bus. I thought it was one of the best ways to say I'm having a bit of a fucking hard time without people being so alarmed that they either hang up on you or run away or just with your number. Right. 00:03:02 Speaker 2: So, and I think it's just this. Uh, I am, I'm actually. 00:03:07 Speaker 3: A terrible warrior, right, and as things begin to reopen, I'm I'm I am what I refer to as an ambrovert. 00:03:17 Speaker 2: Oh of course I learned about this a couple of years ago, but I. 00:03:20 Speaker 3: Want you to exploit and it's so perfect and I would suspect that you are the same. So because you're a performer, so their ability to be extroverted when you need to and when it's sort of within certain parameters that you feel like, Okay, I get this, but you recharge like an introvert, so that means one on one or with good friends or by yourself, whatever that is. And so you know, while Lockdown for all intents and purposes was pretty intense, and I was like, I'm a homebody, but fuck, this is a lot. I definitely felt that way. But as we get back to normally, I'm a little anxious, and not because I think somebody is going to give me something, but because I already had social anxiety. 00:04:03 Speaker 2: So so great, right, right, It's that I was talking to somebody recently about this. It's so overwhelming to see people, but in both ways, both good and bad ways. When it's like I love seeing you, but I also like I feel like an animal being let out. 00:04:19 Speaker 3: Kinda like how the what the what? Now? What do we? Okay? 00:04:24 Speaker 2: All right? 00:04:26 Speaker 3: So so yes, and and I'm also I was listening to your most recent episode and at the beginning of it, you said that you had had you had not done well with your time management that well that that day, and I thought, oh, that was me today. So I thought our interview was an hour ago. So I was like, okay, I had a morning of things to do, and then came I'm like, God, I'm tired. I need to take a quick nap because so I can be a love like lively and vivacious. And then so I only down for like seventeen minutes, and then I banged out of bed and I bopped on over to the computer and I sat down and nothing nothing. And then I realized, oh, oh and so and that just scrambled my whole circuitry. 00:05:18 Speaker 2: That weird stress of when you plan something, you think something's coming and then you've got a full hour and then suddenly that hour that you have leading up to the event is meaningless. It's just less. 00:05:30 Speaker 3: And said I was like, I was in such a dinner. I thought, well, there are a great many things you could do, because the to do list never ends. And yet I was, I just was. 00:05:38 Speaker 2: I couldn't. Oh no, you're just now in the waiting room. You're just that because your entire life becomes a waiting room for the next hour or so. Do you believe in a power nap? What do you think of power naps? I know some people can do them. 00:05:51 Speaker 3: I suck at them like a nap. For me, a good nap is two hours, which is practically a full night's sleep. Yeah, power nap. I envy those who've truly mastered that. 00:06:05 Speaker 2: I mean, it takes at least a half an hour for me to even fall asleep. Fifteen minutes. What are we talking about? That's just like the anxiety is slowly melting away. There's no sleep. I need to wake up from a nap and just feel like I've been in a swamp for three hours fifteen minutes. That doesn't if you. 00:06:23 Speaker 3: Do an hour, forty five or two hours, you do wake up feeling like you've just been in a swamp. Right several But to your point, I actually read about power naps recently and they said it doesn't actually matter if you sleep, per se what. There is tremendous benefit in just not being engaged in one or nineteen other things, in just trying to be still for fifteen twenty minutes. So I'm not sure I believe them, but I'm willing to try. 00:06:55 Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it just needs a rebranding. Then this is a power lie down or a power no pause, a power pause. I'd be happy to take a power pause. I just don't need the I don't want the stress of thinking I need to be asleep for fifteen minutes. 00:07:10 Speaker 3: And I think that's the notion they're trying to diffuse so that you don't feel as though, oh god, now, not only did I not do anything productive for fifteen minutes, I didn't do what I set out to do, right, which could be a double whammy depending on your personality type. 00:07:29 Speaker 2: Right, I feel like the greatest failing of human evolution is that sleep is not an on off switch. I need to be able to just lie down and fall asleep. I'm with you, I just I don't know. It's especially in the pandemic. My hours mean nothing. I'll wake up at five am some days. Some days I'm waking up at nine am. Who knows the time I'm going to bed. It makes no sense. 00:07:53 Speaker 3: It's true. How was your pandemic? Your lockdown? 00:07:58 Speaker 2: Absolutely gorgeous? I remember saying that it was. Look, it was not as bad as it could have been, and not as good as what am I saying? Not as good as it could have been? That means literally it was it was a fine quiet I don't know twelve. I mean, we're still kind of in it, but I'm vaccinated now and so I feel like I'm getting out of it. But it was, you know, there were it was extremely boring, and my boyfriend and I, I mean, it's probably a miracle we didn't kill each other. And I learned to cook breakfast tacos and meatballs, and that's about it. How was yours? 00:08:42 Speaker 3: It was all of those things as well? And I feel though so Detective Dan, who I co host the true crime podcast. 00:08:50 Speaker 2: Right small Town Digs, let's say it. 00:08:54 Speaker 3: It's so very good, and we co with his identical twin brothers, well, Detective Dave. But Dan and I are engaged, so he's in Los Angeles now, and I was going to say, you know, with you and your boyfriend, do you feel as though, since you didn't actually kill each other, now you're like, Okay, this is probably a good match because Dan and I are getting married. But it's number three for me, it's number one for him. 00:09:23 Speaker 2: Okay, sure, sure. 00:09:24 Speaker 3: You know three. There are times of charm. They said, that's what I'm that's what I'm having my hat on. 00:09:33 Speaker 2: Dan, if you're listening. 00:09:34 Speaker 3: Yeah, so I figure, you know, we I'm very I'm not an argumentative person. You know, I'm pretty I was going to say I'm pretty easy going. That's probably not true. I'm highly demanding. I'm like I had a friend once say I'm high maintenance, but I'm high performance. So therefore, but I do feel as though it was a really good sign that we got on really nicely, really quite beautifully during this time. And I think I always say too after this always, you know, a few times I've said in the last since, as we now get out of this, and I'm vaccinated as well. But there's a huge difference between being told you have to stay at home and choosing to stay at home, right, And so I think that that if we happen to have an office for a paper Clip, which is the production company I have with my business partner and I would go there every day, and I had to relearn how to work from home. There are many more distractions, like the cat who's sitting in my lap right now, And also just I'm easily distracted. So now my desk faces a window and I can see out into the garden and I'm like, oh, the hummingbirds are here. That's great. You know, I can easily find more multiple ways not to get anything done. So there were a lot of things that I had to really take hold of and say okay. And to your point as well, you know who knows when we always joked what day is it or what time is it? You had to really if I'm only walking fifty five feet to the kitchen because that's the end of my work day instead of a twenty minute commute, you have to draw a hard and fast line. 00:11:27 Speaker 2: Absolutely and say, Okay, the. 00:11:29 Speaker 3: Days I'm fucking over, it's done. 00:11:32 Speaker 2: Got it? 00:11:33 Speaker 3: Otherwise it could just go on forever. 00:11:35 Speaker 2: It can just become your entire life. Yes, just fully takeover. Yeah, which is so insidious. Now, how long have you been engaged? 00:11:44 Speaker 3: Almost three years? Now? 00:11:46 Speaker 2: Oh this is wonderful. 00:11:47 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's nice. I really, I really love it and it's sweet. Dan is so Dan not only is it for his first marriage, he's also eleven years younger than me. 00:11:56 Speaker 2: Oh beautiful. 00:11:57 Speaker 3: I feel like I'm coming up on fourty years in the business. 00:12:01 Speaker 2: Sure why? 00:12:03 Speaker 3: And sometimes I can make you feel a little long in the. 00:12:06 Speaker 2: Tooth right right? 00:12:07 Speaker 3: And Dan is he's so different from me. He has this superpower, this remarkable ability to live in the moment, which I really struggle with. He is he never lies. He literally never lies, like it's just not his nature. He might wait too long to tell you, and because he'll sort of bottle things up and then it might sort of like it come out, but he will never tell you sort of half or quarter truths leading up to something. He just will tell you. And you were like, ah, oh god, what is that? And I remember, I think I remember hearing you say in one of your interviews that you also grew up in a family where nobody talked about anything. 00:12:53 Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, I mean not even good things. Just is this similar to your situation? 00:12:59 Speaker 3: Yes, So I grew up in this very waspy family. And I was saying to the shrink the other day at how I have this very complicated kind of fucked up relationship to happiness where happiness was not There was no real value put on happiness. It wasn't that they wanted you to be unhappy. It was just not something that you would strive for. On the other hand, you were expected to be ambitious but not expect reward or praise, expected to set the bar high, touch it, but not expect reward or praise. You know, you were expected to always have yourself together but never blow your own horn, so that you sort of lived in this weird liminal space of like, what where you miss everything? I feel like I missed a lot of things. 00:13:54 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I come from I mean, I'm now do you think? I think? And the pandemic is compounded this where I'm just like, how do you enjoy anything? Like even things I'm interested in him? Like I'm now just place judging every moment of it and like not even experiencing the thing in the moment where it's just like is this good? Well, just do it and then maybe later find I mean you can look back and say, oh that was good or rather than just like constantly reviewing every second of every day for myself. 00:14:24 Speaker 3: So that's really well said. That is so true. 00:14:28 Speaker 2: But yeah, my boyfriend is comes from a very I mean, it is probably closer to Dan where it's like there's a straightforwardness like also his family, the way he communicates with his family. He'll be on the phone with his mom just arguing, arguing, arguing, but they're both fine. At the end of the call, they're saying I love you, and they were just expressing their opinions to each other, which is the most foreign thing I can possibly foreign. 00:14:50 Speaker 3: So on what what language. 00:14:54 Speaker 2: Is that is? Truly it's like being from another country or something. It's very I mean, I come from a place where someone even if they expressed that they like something and I don't like it, I just won't even say anything. I just you know, I don't want to hurt. I don't want to step on a toe anywhere at any point, which causes probably a great more deal more trouble than it's worth. 00:15:18 Speaker 3: But yeah, it reminds me of I was listening to Oprah has the Super Soul Sundays, right right, so I think they haven't watched them. I haven't actually watched them, but she siphons off that audio I believe for the podcast version of that. 00:15:37 Speaker 2: All right, Oh, smart. 00:15:38 Speaker 3: Yes, yes, talk about multitasking. She is the most brilliant marketer. And she was having a conversation with Martha Beck, who is, you know, the world renowned thought leader, sort of first life coach, I suppose. And Martha apparently did an experiment when she was twenty nine years old where she said she was not going to lie at all, not even tell any social white lies, right, And everybody was like, Martha, you're fucking out of your mind. What are you doing? Oh my god? And she did it, and she said she lost a lot, but she changed so much more. Right, people were because people are offended when you don't know the socially acceptable line, I think, and some are anyway, your boyfriend probably wouldn't be He probably know, Yeah, dude, that's a good idea. Let's try it and be like, oh god, where's the net. But I'm so intrigued by this idea. I think it's so completely the opposite of the way I was taught to move through the world by my family. 00:16:48 Speaker 2: Right for me, I'm just so untrained in it. It's just like it's a difficulty of even modulating how you tell the truth. It's like for me, it's zero or sixty miles an hour. You know, it's like I'm either just not to say anything, or I'm going to say it in the harshest possible way and it will lead to some sort of difficulty. 00:17:05 Speaker 3: Sure, I was thinking, and while she didn't say so in this particular interview, because they really were promoting her shows a new book out, I thought, okay, well, if you did it, obviously kindness would sort of be the unspoken quality. I would hope that you would want to try to imbue the messages with I mean, to your point, not like, hey, listen, that is a fucking ugly dress on you, as opposed to oh wow, I don't know what you would say, I've never seen you in yellow, or I really love you in blue? You know something positive. 00:17:46 Speaker 2: Oh that's an interesting I think that's a really good strategy. Yeah, I mean, just a nice just weaving around the truth basically, right. 00:17:57 Speaker 3: Well, it in set of hitting them on the head with a just sort of right tapping him on the shoulder and saying, you ask my opinion. Instead of saying you look like shitting yellow, I would say maybe it's good, but you know, blue I just think is really your color. But then you would have lied good if you really thought that yellow is dreadful. It's complicated. It's complicated, Bridger. 00:18:25 Speaker 2: I know. I think the solution is to just, you know, lock yourself in your house, just shut out society, just leave it all behind. And I don't know. And then meanwhile, I'm being as harsh as possible on myself at all times. I mean, it makes there's I can't add any of it up. It makes no sense. The way I live my life is out of control. 00:18:47 Speaker 3: I so get it. That separate set of rules for yourself than you have for anyone else. That is, it's rough. It's so not a way to live your life for any of the young ones who are listening right, Yeah, don't do it. 00:19:04 Speaker 2: Figure it out before it's too late. 00:19:06 Speaker 3: Yes, we're here to help me and Bridger. 00:19:12 Speaker 2: What have you done during the pandemic. How have you filled your time? 00:19:17 Speaker 3: Well, the podcast Small Town Dicks. We're just finishing up season eight. 00:19:23 Speaker 2: Oh, it's so wild. You've got eight seasons of that show. 00:19:26 Speaker 3: Well, we do about two seasons a year, and all seasons have usually twelve to fourteen episodes per season. Such a small team, and also all of the cases are told by the detectives who investigated the case right right, so you know, to get law enforcement, most of these detectives are still working. You get them to give you a day off to sit down with you. You know, it's incredibly gracious of them, and so time sort of corraling all of those bodies and minds together can can I always feel like a little bit like trying to schedule the Queen of England. It's sometimes not easy. And then we take the audio and our podcast we do edit it. So again I feel as though, especially with true crime and if you're telling these aren't cases that most people have heard. These are cases, you know, big time crime that happens in smalltown USA, so you probably haven't heard it, so you probably want to follow it. It's not something like, oh, I know about ed Geen, or I know about you know Er or Zodiac or wherever it is. So there's an unfamiliarity there. And so my job, as when I edit on paper, is to make sure that we cut out the fat, to make sure that this story is told logically, but also that you don't necessarily find out who the killer is in the first two and a half minutes, because then oh, well, I mean sometimes that's okay if there's a big payoff for the why at the end, right any who, The point is is that it's quite time consuming that part of it. And then paper Clip, which is the production development company they work. I have a business partner named Ben Cornwall, who's fantastic. And then we have two guys who work with us as well, Jordan and Nick. And Nick actually does my Oil and Water series with me. Oh yeah, so Nick shoots them. It's just him and me in the kitchen. So oil and Water For your listeners, you don't know? 00:21:29 Speaker 2: Is this? 00:21:30 Speaker 3: I call it dumb entertainment for troubling Times. 00:21:34 Speaker 2: It's also what this podcast is called. 00:21:37 Speaker 3: It is you know. I feel like the dumb entertainment for troubling times is sometimes undervalued, absolutely, because sometimes you. 00:21:45 Speaker 2: Just need a fucking break. 00:21:47 Speaker 3: You know what I mean. 00:21:48 Speaker 2: There are some TV shows I'm watching right now. I'm like, I need three weeks between each episode. This is too intense and I am not emotionally ready for this, which ones Mayor of Eastown. 00:21:58 Speaker 3: Yes, yeah. 00:22:00 Speaker 2: And then I started watching Underground Railroad, which is amazing, but they're both just heavy shows to me. It's just like in between I need House Hunters, I need Chopped. I need absolute nonsense that my fragile emotional state can handle. 00:22:15 Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, and Black Monday. 00:22:19 Speaker 2: Oh, Black Monday. Yes, let's recommend Black Monday. 00:22:22 Speaker 3: Let's do. 00:22:23 Speaker 2: I think it's a very fun show. Yeah, look at Yardleigh out here giving a promotion to the show I write on this is pure class. 00:22:32 Speaker 3: I think it's fantastic. We just started watching it and it's so brilliant. It really is a great antidote to so many things, you know, real life. But it's just it's witty, it's fun, it's smart. I just really bravo. 00:22:54 Speaker 2: You well, bravo David casp and Jordan Khan, they're the creators of the show. I show up and say stupid things and they do what they can with what I say, and all the other wonderful people there. But let's get back to Oil and Water. 00:23:07 Speaker 3: So Oil and Water is actually not unlike Chopped, So I sort of it's really a game, and in it I cook. And each episode is only about six to eight minutes long. So if you just bogged down or you just need a little bathroom break, you can, you know, take your iPhone to the bathroom and watch a Little Oil and Water, And the premise is that I choose. I have a bowl of sweet ingredients that are random and blind, ball of savory ingredients random, blind, and bowl of things like it's a cake, it's a pie, it's a pandoudy, and I have to choose one sweet ingredient, one savory ingredient, and then I have to make it into the thing. 00:23:45 Speaker 2: Right, And have you made anything that you've enjoyed? 00:23:48 Speaker 3: Yes? Actually, so we just dropped an episode that was a cupcake cherry tomato parfeit what Yes, Bridger, listen to me, listen to me. So I did it with a strawberry strawberry cupcake, strawberry cake, strawberry I sing, and a vanilla vanilla cupcake. And then because I was gonna make the fucking cupcake, like we have six minutes to put the whole stupid thing together. Not that we shoot it in six minutes, but you take my point. And so I bought the cupcakes, saying the episode God made the tomatoes, so I didn't have to do that. 00:24:26 Speaker 2: That was good. 00:24:27 Speaker 3: And then I decided to bring them together. I would make a lemon custard. Oh, so I made the lemon custard scratch because lemon goes well with strawberry and vanilla, and also tomatoes and my hail mary, which I always get a hail mary spice or ingredients or something to try to bridge the gap between these disparate ingredients, the sweet and savory. And I used fresh basil. And then I mean I layered it like a trifle, right. I cut the cupcake up, put it in a wine goblet, put lemon custard on top, sprinkled sliced cherry tomatoes on top, then some basil. Then and fuck me, it was so good. It was so so good. 00:25:15 Speaker 2: Now would you consider it a dessert or like a meal? See? 00:25:19 Speaker 3: I would consider it dessert. And then at the end, I was doing a rating sort of like on a scale of one to garden party. Would you serve this at your garden party? And the answer was yes, Oh yes you would. And when people said, yeah, I'm not sure I want tomatoes in my dessert, I'd be yes, you do. Trust me. I'm your hostess. I expect you to trust me and try it. 00:25:40 Speaker 2: I feel like that's something I would be happy to try. 00:25:42 Speaker 3: It was actually the thing the beauty of the tomatoes was they were because they're cherry tomatoes, so they have a pleasing sort of juicy but also crisp because the skins are, you know, crisp. They had a pleasing antidote to the very sweet frosting and the sweet lemon. And then the basil was familiar to the tomato as well as to the lemon. 00:26:09 Speaker 2: And I feel like I've had basil with strawberries. 00:26:11 Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, of course you have. You know, they'll Austin do basil and mint together right over strawberries or peaches. Even so, that one was fantastic. Others that have been terrible. Actually did a fun episode where I had Detective Dan as my guest chef. And because on our podcast we don't tell you where the crimes take place, and we change all the names, and Detective Dan and Dave we don't reveal their last names. Dan wore a mask that said I look like Dave because Dave's was identical. Twinn and Dan got to pick the ingredients. It was the Easter episode, okay, and we had pre determined that the thing. No, the Dan got to pick the ingredients, and the thing was random and it was a casserole, and Dan chose I'm not sure I can marry him for this. He chose marshmallow peeps, candy bird and like meat sticks, the sort of the slim gin beef. 00:27:19 Speaker 2: You're kidding, those are not their own Oh. 00:27:22 Speaker 3: My fucking god, oh breacher, Oh so the castrole in order to buy them together. I thought, all right, at Thanksgiving, you do a sweet potato casserole with marshmallow topping. 00:27:37 Speaker 2: Right, of course, very. 00:27:38 Speaker 3: Far, because the peeps are marshmallow at least marshmallow adjacent, and the meat sticks are just what they are, smoked. I was like, oh, so I mashed, I roasted sweet potatoes. We mashed them up. We put the meat sticks at the bottom, then the mashed potatoes and the peeps on top, and baked them. And oh my god, the peeps they melted. First of all, they turned hard as a. 00:28:06 Speaker 2: Rock, like, oh, that's not normal, not normal, that is not normal for a marshmallows boon. 00:28:11 Speaker 3: And it was like a tile. It was like a bathroom tile. 00:28:15 Speaker 2: Oh my god, this is going to be a big decorating trend. 00:28:19 Speaker 3: Yes, it was brutal. And the one peeps have a little eye I made out of, you know, food coloring because it doesn't have any dimension, and so you had this mess of melted pink peeps and just one eye. 00:28:39 Speaker 2: This sounds horrified. 00:28:41 Speaker 3: It was so disgusting. I couldn't stop laughing, and we actually tried to set it on a fire. 00:28:47 Speaker 2: I'm surprised they didn't start on fire on its own. All of the ingredients there are very dangerous and bind oh good grief. 00:28:54 Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of swearing which gets bleeped out. People enjoy it quite a bit, so I highly reckon. It's good dumb entertainment for troubling text. 00:29:03 Speaker 2: This is what the listener needs, this is what the listener begs for. So, listener, you've got a new recommendation. Seek that out now, Yardly, look, I speaking of surprises and being upset with people, this kind of thing. You know, I invited you on this podcast a few weeks ago and you said you would, and I was just thrilled, so excited Yardley's going to be on the podcast. We'll have a nice time and move on with our days. That's, you know, what I've been looking forward to. Then last night I had been out and I got home and Jim said, there's a box on the counter, and I thought, oh god, what's happened. You know, I haven't ordered anything. I don't know what's going on. I left my boyfriend alone at home, and something could have happened. I felt a great deal of responsibility for this mysterious package coming in and I inspected it and it was difficult to tell what it was who had come from. But then I figured it out. It's from you. Yes, Now the podcast is called I said, no Gifts, and oh. What we try to do here is create a respectful space for both the guest and more so the host, where both people feel safe and respected. And so it's a little difficult for me. I mean, I mean, I am making an assumption here. I'm assuming this is a gift for me. Am I correct, it is you are. 00:30:36 Speaker 3: I thought the show is called I said, hoe Gifts. 00:30:42 Speaker 2: That is my you know, that's my dark web show that's hosted exclusively on the dark Web. But this is I said, no Gifts, And I'm just gonna put all that aside. I'm going to ask you point blank here, do you want me to open this here on the show? I assure you, Okay, It's in a giant brown box ship from FedEx and I've learned a lesson on a recent episode to bring a scissor to the office rather than chew through the tape or what have you. So I'm gonna open this up. I would say it's maybe like a foot by a foot in size. It's hard to say, especially when you have spatial reasoning skills as poor as mine. Say, okay, we're cutting through. Oh I think okay, Okay, We've got a lot of packing peanuts. 00:31:43 Speaker 3: Peanuts. 00:31:46 Speaker 2: There's an envelope here that says miss Yardley Smith on it. 00:31:51 Speaker 3: But you have to open the gift before you open the. 00:31:53 Speaker 2: Open Okay, I'm gonna open Okay, So I'm going to open get into the Let's get some of the packing peanuts here. I don't know if a listenerill be able to hear that that's something for me to clean up later. 00:32:04 Speaker 3: I'm dropping them off to be like cheese doodles. 00:32:07 Speaker 2: Oh, wouldn't that be nice to just be able to eat? I mean that feels environmentally friendly. If you don't want them, you can throw them to the birds. Absolutely, that's something that the manufacturing industry needs to get on as soon as we have a lot of Titans of industry manufacturing, especially listening to this podcast, take responsibility. Create an edible packing peanut. 00:32:28 Speaker 3: Yes please, okay, but no absurd flavors like meat steaks, nothing like that. Don't smoke them. 00:32:37 Speaker 2: Okay, Okay. I'm pulling something out here and it's like a little box with some sort of feather poking out of it. What's happening here? This is a handle? 00:32:50 Speaker 3: The feather is a handle. 00:32:51 Speaker 2: What is this? 00:32:52 Speaker 3: Well, it's like a little box that's a purse, but there's something inside. 00:32:56 Speaker 2: Oh I need to open this. Yes, oh okay, So for the listener, there's like a yeah, it's like a cute little box purse. 00:33:05 Speaker 3: With it like a feather boa handle, right, like. 00:33:08 Speaker 2: A boa for a cat or a mouse or. 00:33:10 Speaker 3: Something, or your your little dog, my dog. 00:33:15 Speaker 2: This is uh, this could go as like a bracelet for my dog. She could wear it around the house. That might be something I'll look into later this afternoon. Okay, so this is it's wrapped up. Still we don't know what's happening yet. Okay, Oh some Franklin, we're getting every sound of that possible. 00:33:34 Speaker 3: You know that those unboxing videos are very popular. You're sorry to get into that. 00:33:39 Speaker 2: Yeah, how do I get into the unboxing. Oh okay, so now there's a little like like an almost jewelry box or something with a ring. Right, I'm about to become engaged to York lady. Let's see here. Oh this is incredible. Is this a pin? Yes, it's a pin of Lisa Simpson. Oh my god, this is beautiful. Tell me more. Tell me that's I mean, obviously, what if at this point, I what if this is when I learned you were Lisa Simpson. Oh you're Rudley. 00:34:13 Speaker 3: That's so great. You're a fan of the Simpsons too. You're like, yeah, funny, funny, how that is so convenient. 00:34:21 Speaker 2: That would be probably the end of this podcast. So good, bridget This is beautiful, But tell me more. 00:34:30 Speaker 3: It's a pin of Lisa Simpson wearing a cape, flying like Supergirl. And I so I first saw this pin, and I think it was about nineteen ninety one, and The Simpsons spun off into half hour in nineteen ninety January nineteen ninety Actually the very first half hour episode was Christmas eighty nine, but then The Ball, the remaining mid season replacement was January nineteen ninety till the spring, and we hit so big, so so big right out of the gate, even though everybody had said, oh my god, you can't put a cartoon on in primetime. It hasn't been done since the Flintstones box is high. Who fucking cares. The network won't be around any longer anyway, and the Simpsons are going to last twelve more episodes and that'll be it. So the following year they really started to roll out the merchandise, T shirts everywhere, every every everything. Simpsons was on everything, but not a lot of Lisa merchandise, A lot of bart right and then a lot of Homer, but very very little of the female characters. So I was in a little shop and I don't know why, because I don't collect comics or anything, but I was. I feel like I was in a little souvenir shop in Hollywood, and I you know how they have, you know, the license plates with your name on it will. 00:35:47 Speaker 2: Never yet, no the courses you've had the name wise, I get a Bridget, Oh a Bridget. 00:35:58 Speaker 3: Well, sometimes people think my name is Ashley, so I guess. 00:36:01 Speaker 2: That would be the closest, not enough, good enough. 00:36:04 Speaker 3: To buy it, not Ashley. So so I saw these pin. I saw this pin and I was like, oh my god, and there was about fifteen of them, so. 00:36:15 Speaker 2: I bought them all. 00:36:17 Speaker 3: And then I went back to the studio store at twentieth Century Fox where we record the Simpsons, and I said, do you have this pin? And they had another I don't know, five or so, and I was like okay. And then I went to the production I said where can I get more of these? I need them all? And they were like, oh no, that's it, we just no more. And I was like, oh no, this can't be so on the down low, I actually did my own run of the pin. 00:36:49 Speaker 2: What you're up at Simpson's boot. 00:36:51 Speaker 3: Like, cause we're just highgal. Of course, I never sold them, but I and they were made in Germany and they're they're perfect replica and I love them and I have a I still have probably I think they did a run of a thousand, because of course they were like, well lady, you got it, you know right right? You can't just have ten. So and so now I still have a probably a nice handful left. But they're very very special. You can't get them anywhere, and I just love them. 00:37:25 Speaker 2: You've put a target on my back. I have like this extremely limited edition Simpson's merchandise. My home is going to be broken into. This is the next episode of Small Town Dicks. Yes, oh pre sure this is all feeding into your podcast. 00:37:40 Speaker 3: I promised. Just saying your praises on the podcast when you're. 00:37:43 Speaker 2: Dead, at least say my hair looks nice. 00:37:49 Speaker 3: You do have great hair. 00:37:51 Speaker 2: Oh god, bless well. I want to talk to you about the Simpsons. I mean I think first you have to read the card. Oh okay, fantastic, Okay, let me first. 00:38:00 Speaker 3: I just want to I just want to tell you that Laura Lappis gave you thank you notes. Yes, of course, So I feel like I've gone I've taken it one step further. 00:38:12 Speaker 2: Oh, let me see. Okay, I'm going to read this. This is wait, this is dear Yardley. 00:38:16 Speaker 3: I've written a thank you note for you. 00:38:18 Speaker 2: Oh my okay, Deer Yardley. Thank you for the charming Flying Lisa Pin, even though you disobeyed me. The show is called I said, no gifts. I do like that the Pin is contraband that people can't just saunter down to the seven to eleven on York and get one. Oh wow. I was also pleasantly surprised by our chat let's see. I guess I should know better than to believe everything I read on Wikipedia. Your Wikipedia, by the way, just devastating. Just this. This woman is a monster. That's the first line of her Wikipedia. You're really very charming and funny and much prettier on Zoom than you are on TV. I don't even mean that the way it sounds. I'm being honest with you, which is much nicer. Finally, if you even have anything new to promote, and I don't mean season seventy nine of The Simpsons, I'd love to have you on the podcast again, next time in person, when I'll probably find out you're not as tall as you look on TV. Either JK. Warm, Regards Bridge or Wineger. I need every guest to do this. I would love to have a script sent to me from the beginning of the episode. I just read it aloud, and then we turn off the recording and I move on with my life. This is lovely. I mean, I mean, we have some very like we have details here about my local seven eleven. I mean, everything about this is truly perfect. I really appreciate this. You know, sometimes you're at a loss for words about the gift, and you need the guests to just say, this is how you should feel. 00:39:58 Speaker 3: I'm just saying I had so many gifts because so many people disobey you. I just wanted to take one more task off your hands. Now, all you have to do is send it. And actually the envelope says by a messenger cod so you don't even have to pay for the messenger. 00:40:16 Speaker 2: This will be arriving in your mailbox and it'll be sealed with a kiss, as all of my envelopes are. And I'm just thrilled that you've just taken a lot of work. Look, I'm a very busy man. I don't need another chore in my life. 00:40:31 Speaker 3: And I'm saying that I feel that about. 00:40:34 Speaker 2: You, especially now that I'm you know, going to be hunted down by some Simpsons fanatic. There's one out there. I know they're coming for me. These there are. You know, if any show has a fan that's going to that's been following it and looking for the merchandise this long, it's the Simpsons. 00:40:52 Speaker 3: It's that you know, you could wear it on the underside of your lapel and then it would just sort of be your own little secret or your cattle secret. 00:41:00 Speaker 2: I like a little secret. This is so beautiful. My god, I'm just thrilled about this isn't great. 00:41:05 Speaker 3: I just love it. I mean, it's just such a great symbol of her resilience and joy and grace and empathy and all the best things that we want to be as human. 00:41:18 Speaker 2: Beings, right, and that Lisa. I mean, in the Simpsons, I think Lisa and Marge are the two characters you look to to make the right choice and who are also but aren't just kind of dour, you know, like kill joys. They're super fun. I mean, God, bless Bart and Homer. I'm in the show for Lisa. I'm in the show for Marge. I don't care what anybody else has to say. But that's a really interesting thing you bring up that, like initially that I mean, and it's probably true now even that Bart merchandise is probably still the main thing. I mean, as a woman on the show, has that been an ongoing experience for you? 00:42:00 Speaker 3: I mean, like, oh yes, And you know, I feel like I actually don't quite understand it because I feel as though, at this point now where we've just started recording season thirty three, four thousand, Switch is insane. We have over seven hundred episodes. Wow, it really is. I mean obviously, well, I don't think we'll ever see anything like this again in scripted primetime, you know, So it is. It's there are so many people that identify with Lisa Simpson. Who who when at least when they meet me, when they find out I do Lisa Simpson, or if they recognize me and they say, oh my god, you got me through a really hard time, or my daughter plays saxophone because of you, or you know, i'd love Lisa's sense of humor, or any number of things that they wouldn't recognize that there's a legitimate fan base that little girl who wears the red strapless dressed to school. 00:43:04 Speaker 2: Absolutely. 00:43:04 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's bizarre to me that they haven't, But they just don't. They don't really load into Lisa merch, which is sad because she's so cute. 00:43:13 Speaker 2: Yeah, she's adorable, so swilling, did I know? 00:43:17 Speaker 3: And I really feel about her as though she is a living, breathing sentient being like you and I. She's so real to me. 00:43:25 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, totally. I mean she's been alive for how many years? Thirty years? 00:43:30 Speaker 3: Well, and honestly, if you have the Tracy Yellmon Show two seasons there as well. So I think I've been doing Lisa Simpsons since nineteen eighty seven. Were you ben born? 00:43:39 Speaker 2: I was. I'm eighty five years old. 00:43:43 Speaker 3: I'm ninety three. 00:43:48 Speaker 2: I was, but I wasn't allowed to. I mean, I was pretty young when the show started, and my famly, I mean, I grew up Mormon, like my family was one of these families was like, we're not watching the Simpsons, which is still I look back, I'm like, The Simpsons is such a mild show. I mean, I think people were just so shocked that a cartoon would say anything that wasn't just for kids. 00:44:07 Speaker 3: Right and well, and because it was never written for kids, but the cartoon aspect of it of course made everybody assume right out of the gate that it was for children. But what's interesting is because I remember also when George H. W. Bush said, we need more families like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons. And the thing that he missed about our show was despite the dysfunction, despite the things that go wrong, despite the way that they actually express themselves often in ways that you and I never learned to do and aren't comfortable doing, they really deeply love each other. Yes, there is great love and devotion there, and so there's no malice. I guess it's it's you know, even as they as Bart acts out, it's not out of malice. It is out of you know, he's a ten. 00:44:57 Speaker 2: Year old boy just being who he is. Yeah, and so they learn to figure it out together. 00:45:02 Speaker 3: Yeah. But I mean, you listen to my detective dad is Actually it's so funny. He's a huge hip hop fan, like yeah, like he knows all the lyrics to everything. And I always say, the only place, the only two places that the age difference between us shows up, which is eleven years, is work and music. Oh, decade of music, of course can be completely different, so much can change. And he he still loves hip hop. But you listen to that then, and then you listen to some of the you know music now in any genre that has lyrics, and you're like, oh my god, oh my god, it makes me feel like a pretty old lady. 00:45:57 Speaker 2: What sort of music do you listen? What's your like main go to with music? 00:46:01 Speaker 3: Well, I actually we didn't grow up listening to music, although my parents really loved classical music. Sure, so on the rare occasion that we would have music on in the house, it would be a lot of Bach, a lot of Mozart. My father liked opera. But when I'm in the gym, my secret sauce is eighties hair metal. 00:46:25 Speaker 2: Oh that's great workout music, absolutely. I mean that music is nothing if not for that for working out, I would never want. 00:46:33 Speaker 3: To go to a concert. It's like too much century sensation, I think for me. But I love it in the gym. I just love it. Sometimes I like it when I drive, although now driving I listen to podcasts all. 00:46:46 Speaker 2: The time, so oh right right, yeah, my podcast listening with my I mean I haven't driven that much in the pandemics of my podcast listening, but my afternoon walks have gone through the roof, and that's when I'll listen to a podcast. 00:46:59 Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, So, which is good because you want to keep up with your favorite podcasts, which makes you go on a walk because you aren't going anywhere else. So I feel like it's win win for us. 00:47:11 Speaker 2: Bridger, Yeah, Simpson, going back to Lisa Simpson for a minute, Like those first two years or so on the Tracy Almond Show, do you feel like you changed as the way you portrayed Lisa at all or did as it felt pretty consistent the entire run. 00:47:28 Speaker 3: Well, it was the first two years of Lisa Simpson when we were on the Tracy Almond Show. I really was just a sort of Brady foil for Bart. And we told a whole story in a minute. I think they were about or maybe it might have been a minute and a half. But the point is before every commercial break there would be a little thirty seconds twenty seconds of the Simpsons, right, and so the stories were very, very simple, and it mostly was Bart and Homer because Bart was an anagram for brat and the and the brat was Matt, Matt gret right right, right right. Because he named all the other characters after his family members. He has a sister, Maggie. His sister Lisa amazing, she's a teacher, she's so lovely. His mother's name was Margaret, and his father's name was Homer, and his grandfather's name was Abe, So Abe's wild. 00:48:22 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's the way to get good character names. 00:48:26 Speaker 3: Although, now, of course the show being so successful, you're like, does your family feel like you ruined their lives? 00:48:34 Speaker 2: Yeah? No, Maggie can just be a normal Maggie. At this point, no Marche can be a Marge. 00:48:41 Speaker 3: So it wasn't until we spun off to half hour that James L. Brooks is our executive producer, decided that Lisa Simpson should be a prodigy. He wanted her to be a saxophone prodigy. He wanted her to be also a prodigy in a school like super Smart, so that she was the black sheep, was the outlier, and she possessed an emotional intelligence that I have heard all of our writers are particularly attached to because they're all like you. They were all, you know, the smartest people in the room when they were growing up. They excelled at I mean, one of our showrunners was a physics major at Harvard when he was seventeen, sixteen or something that al Jean, Oh that's right, yeah, yeah, super ridiculously fucking smart and so and I feel like any time as a young person you excel at anything, whether it's math or sports or in my case, I did a lot of school plays and I got a lot of attention for it. It sets you apart from your peer group, right, which is incredibly difficult when you live in this dichotomy of wanting to stand out and wanting to blend in. You want to be able to sort of like fame. You want to be able to have your choice, like I only want to stand out here this day, at this time, right, but. 00:50:03 Speaker 2: I also want all of the other things, right. 00:50:06 Speaker 3: So that was how Lisa evolved. There were a few benchmarks that had now been laid when we went to half hour, and I think that those things have remained really firmly in place and sort of if I liken it too. When the Simpsons started, it was drawn and painted by hand, right, and then they literally stopped making the material, which is the cell for cell phane that all animation was painted on. They literally stopped making it. So we were one of the last shows to go to computer animation. One of the benefits where you lost some things. One of the benefits you get with computer animation is you get they literally call it, I think, a billion colors. 00:51:00 Speaker 2: Oh wow, Lisa Simpson. 00:51:02 Speaker 3: If she started out with a million colors with those benchmarks in place, now as she's grown, she sort of has a billion colors. 00:51:10 Speaker 2: Wow, that's incredible. Now as of like you've obviously you're extremely well known as Lisa Simpson but like, do you feel like when you call for a pizza or whatever? People are like, do you get bothered? 00:51:24 Speaker 3: I do sometimes I get recognized. Back in the day before you could do everything online and never actually have to have any human. 00:51:30 Speaker 2: Contact, right, I like that I referenced call for a pizza like it's nineteen ninety seven. 00:51:36 Speaker 3: I was gonna say when I used to call to make an airplane reservation, I mean the same thing, right, And I would be on the phone and they would say, because that would take a while if you were if you remember, I mean, making a plane reservation could take fucking forever. 00:51:51 Speaker 2: So hell, they. 00:51:52 Speaker 3: Would say, as they're typing away waiting for somebody to come up on the computer on their end, they would say, I just have to ask something. You sound so familiar. You sound like that girl. And sometimes they would name a movie like I've done a bunch of movies that are called favorites now, like Maximum Overdrive and Legend of Billy Jean and stuff like that. But sometimes they would say, you sound like that girl on the Simpsons. Are you part Simpson? I'm like, oh no, I'm Lisa Simpson, but yes, I have such a this is me and physic Lisa Simpson and you can see. 00:52:29 Speaker 2: Wow part Well, that's a pretty impressive impression. 00:52:33 Speaker 3: You know, it's funny. Princher. I was over at a friend's last Sunday and she has a six year old and a six year old had a friend over and a friend had been told that I do the voice of Lisa Simpson. So the six year old, who's actually my business partner's daughter, says, Yardley, will you do the voice? And so I'm like, I think the girl's name was Cora. The other girl said, Hi, Kara, it's least the Sampson and she sizes me up and she goes, that's pretty good, and I'm like, oh. 00:53:03 Speaker 2: Thanks, you might almost be able to do it right. 00:53:11 Speaker 3: Maybe you could get better between now and the next record. 00:53:14 Speaker 2: It don't fire you. Good luck, Jesus. I will also say one of my favorite roles you've had. It was a smaller thing, but on Madmen it was one of my maybe my favorite guest star of that entire series. Saying you, it's just like, oh my god, she's so I don't know. Anytime I see you outside of the Simpsons, I'm delighted. Thank you. That's very fun. Well, this is very exciting. I'm excited to have this little pin, and you know I've got to keep it safe somehow. 00:53:44 Speaker 3: But nice for forgiving me. I've now put your life in danger and pissed you off because I disobeyed you. 00:53:49 Speaker 2: Not just a tornado of emotions. I think we should play a game. You don't play a game. Yes, Okay, I'm gonna give you a choice. There's a game called Gift Master. There's a game called Gift to a Curse. I'll tell you how they work once you pick. 00:54:03 Speaker 3: Okay, I'm going to go with Gift Master. 00:54:08 Speaker 2: Okay, I need a number between one and ten. Seven. Okay, seven is the number. I have to do some calculating while i'm doing this. You can promote something, you can recommend something, you can do whatever you want. I will be right back. Oh okay, Yardley, you have the mic and you are in control. 00:54:26 Speaker 3: All right, Okay, all right. Well I've actually been thinking a lot about cognitive redirection, so bear with me for a second. So there's listeners, lovely listeners of Bridger's brilliant show. There is a thing where almost every woman I know, including myself, when we in the before times, certainly and probably in the when we get back to those times some version of that sort of normal again, when we gather and your friends say hi, and you slide into the chair at the restaurant and you say I feel so fat today. Like if I had a dime for every time I've said that, or any number of my friends have said that, we'd all be billionaires. So what if instead of sliding into that chair and saying I feel so fat today, you slide into the chair and say I feel so beautiful today. And I've been thinking about this and the amount of the number of just first of all, the horror that because of the way I was brought up, that I would actually say something that braggadocious, that affirming, that joyful, that all of the things that were just none of those, none of that kind of affirmation or joy were valued in my upbring And again it's not that they wanted us to be miserable at all. It just was like the pursuit of happiness was secondary to your measure of productivity, and that your value was how much you had accomplished in any given day over the course of a lifetime, what your particular job was. And so now when I hear myself in my head say I feel so fat today. I'm trying to counter that literally with another voice in my head saying I feel so beautiful today, and it's very hard. 00:56:29 Speaker 2: Yardly, I'm so mad that I was doing my job while you were saying that, because I feel like you were saying something important that I could take into my own life. And meanwhile I'm calculating game pieces. But fortunately I'll be able to go back and during editing and hopefully learn something for myself. The listener just gets off this for free. It's disgusting. 00:56:50 Speaker 3: It's disgusting. It's very gracious of you, very gracious. 00:56:55 Speaker 2: I'm doing a lot. This is basically community service at this point, and it makes me sick. Okay, this is how the game works. I'm gonna name three potential gifts things you can give away, and then I'm gonna name three famous people, celebrities, this kind of thing. You're gonna tell me which gift you're gonna give which person? Does that make sense? Yes? 00:57:14 Speaker 3: And then are there consequences if I get it wrong? And is there a wrong? 00:57:18 Speaker 2: No, there's no wrong in this game. The other game there are you know, there are wrong answers and people have been career careers have been ruined. Let's just say that. 00:57:26 Speaker 3: I know I actually remember that because I do listen to your podcast and I was, oh, yeah, I don't think I want gift or curse. 00:57:33 Speaker 2: This game is purely, you know, the safest possible, enjoyable time for everyone. Okay, these are the gifts you're going to be giving away. Number one is a motor home. Number two you will be giving away seventy pounds of bird seed. And number three, the third gift is a circular saw, so you know, a big you know, one of those saws that's kind of a rotating place, right, yes, and you're going to be giving them to the following people. The following people are Martin Screlly. Is that he's pronounce that guy's name, the pharma exec. That's just kind of horrible. Oh that guy? Yeah, yes, you know, I've never taken the time to learn how to pronounce his last name. Why bother, Why bother? Number two Riba McIntyre, Country Great, Riba McIntyre. And number three is Tom Hardy. You know who I'll just say is a heart throb. 00:58:33 Speaker 3: I love Tom Hardy. 00:58:35 Speaker 2: If you don't love Tom Hardy, I don't know what to tell you. 00:58:38 Speaker 3: Oh my god, that guy. Okay, so I have I have seventy pounds of bird set to have a circular saw. And what's the other? 00:58:48 Speaker 2: A motor home? Oh, a home r V sort of okay, situation in Winnebago. Are those all the same thing? 00:58:54 Speaker 3: I don't know, because it's sort of my worst nightmare. 00:58:57 Speaker 2: But I'd love to see you driving a motor hole. 00:59:00 Speaker 3: Wouldn't you. I actually had a very had an exotic car. If I had known it was literally classified as an exotic car, I never would have gotten it because I just don't need that. I just like don't get a shit. But the men in my life were like, oh my god, yard leadest car, so fantastic. It was an aston Martin. And I was like, oh, okay, all right, here's the problem. 00:59:27 Speaker 2: Several problems. 00:59:28 Speaker 3: One, I was actually too short to comfortably see over the dashboard and the steering wheel because the seat was so bucketed and I am we and I was like, oh no, So I toyed with, you know, a phone book and sort of sweaters under my bum and all sorts of things. Never really worked out a comfortable solution. The second thing was which was really a non starter and which I didn't figure out because I just don't care about cars, and so I didn't do my due diligence. I guess was it had no trunk latch. Oh not what So how am I when I go to the supermarket and my arms are full of groceries? Am I fucking getting get the trunk open? There's no trunk latch. You had to open the driver's side door, push a button on the little you know arm wrest. That's where the trunk latch was. 01:00:24 Speaker 2: This car is exclusively for putting a body in the trunk. This is not for you know, day to day. 01:00:32 Speaker 3: I mean it was so obviously, which I found out too late, a car if you have another car. It was like, oh, I'm so fancy I have a weekend cook and I'm just not that girl. So I was like, oh shit, So I had to give it up, and you, okay, win a bag. Well, Reba McIntyre doesn't need a murder home because I'm sure she has a fleet and they're all. 01:00:54 Speaker 2: Trip access right, So yeah, totally. 01:00:58 Speaker 3: I really want to give the bird seed to Martin buck Face, because first of all, I think he'd be super mad to get seventy pounds of bird seed and that. But first I would clear out all of his cupboards. All he had left was seventy pounds of bird seed. And then I would poke a little hole in the bag, several little holes, so that when he brought it in or tried to move it out of his apartment or house wherever. 01:01:28 Speaker 2: He is, he's in prison, Oh well, then he. 01:01:31 Speaker 3: Could leave a little trail. I think he is too. But if he's in you know, wherever he is, I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to draw that kind of attention to himself. Prisoners would not appreciate a trail or a pile of bird seed. Martin was a bird seed. I think that. I mean, the obvious answer is to give Tom Hardy the circular saw. But you know, I feel as though he's probably used that in a in a movie as a one of his bad guys. So he doesn't want that. He wants to see things, he wants to, you know, drive around whatever continent he's on. We could ship the Winnebago slash motor home to him wherever, of course, can handle that wherever the dream is, you know, unless it's like in a toll in the multiple and then you sort of, well, Doe, you're not going to probably get very far. You might just right just be careful of high tide. I don't think it floats, It's not amphibious. So I'm going to give Tom Hardy the motor home because I think he would absolutely love it, and I bet he would decorate it inside with some fantastic sort of either a museum of really eclectic kitsch that he had collected around his travels or some specific period of time that he he's a big fan of that he always wanted to live in, and so now he just takes it with him wherever he goes. 01:03:05 Speaker 2: I really love this traveling music. 01:03:07 Speaker 3: Yes, so he gets that, and RIBA's going to get the circular saw. And I actually would not be at all surprised if Riba was pretty handy around the house. Now it's whether or not, right whether or not she really enjoys the DIY, but I bet she does. She just seems like a hands on, let's fucking get her done kind of woman, you know, And she's not going to wait around for some dude to show up with his circular saw and fix whatever. She's going to be like I got it. It's all good. I am busy. So Reba gets the circular saw. 01:03:47 Speaker 2: That makes pert. I mean that was I mean, the way those pieces fell together was perfect. I mean you start with the bird seed Martin Screlly opening that in the middle of prison and just being humiliated, and then things just fall into play. It was so perfect. I really appreciate that gift giving skill there. 01:04:05 Speaker 3: I'm actually a pretty good gift giver, although I don't I only give gifts if I feel like it really is perfect for you. I do not like I don't exchange gifts on my birthday or Christmas unless I find something. But if I find it in October I might just give it to you in October and not waiting. 01:04:25 Speaker 2: That's a really interesting philosophy on gifts. 01:04:28 Speaker 3: Why not? But I don't need any more stuff, so I really have. Finally, it's taken decades. I mean, I'm fifty six. It has taken decades to teach everyone that it's not false modesty, a sort of oh look gifts, Oh yes, come herether with the gifts. I know. 01:04:47 Speaker 2: So I feel like you're trying to say something right now, ardly, message loud and clear. 01:04:57 Speaker 3: I'm here. 01:04:59 Speaker 2: No, No, I totally get what you're I mean, I'm similar where I'm like unless I don't like people. I mean, there's just no once you're an adult, no need. Getting gifts is almost always pointless. 01:05:15 Speaker 3: And I'm very, very difficult to buy for. 01:05:17 Speaker 2: And I appreciate that. 01:05:19 Speaker 3: Like, Honestly, if I truly want something, like I really love clothes and I have a few pieces of nice jewelry, I probably would get it for myself. So I honestly I don't want you to stress over it, and I don't need that to be the symbol of Oh now I know you love me. Oh no, trust me. 01:05:39 Speaker 2: Hopefully there are some other signs that you love me outside of things. Yes, can you remember any recent great gifts you've given or received? 01:05:52 Speaker 3: Oh? My assistant Aaron, who have had for I think we've I've had her for about fifteen years now. He's the only system I've ever had, and she's fantastic. I really love her. And she invited me last summer to go play pickleball with her. Oh, I'd never played pickle I don't even know what the fuck pickleball was. 01:06:16 Speaker 2: Is that the one with the paddles? 01:06:17 Speaker 3: Yes, it's basically life size ping pong is what it feels like. So it's a shortened tennis court looking sort of court, right, and then you play with a whiffle ball and paddle. So anyway, I loved it so much. So for my birthday last year, she got me pickleball paddles and two which is so fun and so great. Of course I haven't used them yet, but. 01:06:46 Speaker 2: But it's the sort of thing you would have never considered buying yourself ever your mind. 01:06:51 Speaker 3: Yeah, and uh, I'm trying to think, have I given a gift that's good? 01:07:02 Speaker 2: No, well, you just gave me this beautiful pin. 01:07:08 Speaker 3: I did. I did I have a I don't have a lot of Simpson's merch. I do have one room in my house that's covered floor to season ceiling in Simpson's cells. 01:07:20 Speaker 2: Oh no way, Oh that's beautiful. 01:07:23 Speaker 3: And amazing, and I still have. 01:07:27 Speaker 2: I have quite a. 01:07:27 Speaker 3: Collection actually, which of course we have to buy, but that's all right. 01:07:32 Speaker 2: Yeah, don't get an employee discount. 01:07:35 Speaker 3: Do get an employee discount. But people think, like, oh my god, that's so great. They just gave you those. I'm like, yeah, And so they're quite hard to come by now because there aren't that many left because we stopped obviously having physical cells. I think it was season fourteen or something, and now we're on season thirty three. So I gave my business partner as Simpson cell for Christmas. 01:08:05 Speaker 2: Oh That's beautiful, which. 01:08:06 Speaker 3: Was very which was cool. He was happy about that. 01:08:09 Speaker 2: What was the What was on the cell? 01:08:12 Speaker 3: It was from one of my favorite episodes called Lisa on Ice, Oh Sure, which is such a great episode where Lisa we find out she's actually a really good hockey goalie and she's on opposite teams with from Bart and I love that show. It's written by one of our showrunners at the time named Mike Scully, who's a huge hockey fan. I love every I love the sibling rivalry between Bart Lisa, and I love it when they take, really when they take any character out of their comfort zone. So when they make Lisa Simpson either really bad at something that she's used to because she's used to being good at everything right right, or make her really good at something where she's never good at that thing, such as sports, and so they do that really beautifully. 01:08:59 Speaker 2: This actually reminds me I have one more question about Lisa Simpson. Have you ever tried playing the saxophone yourself. No, actually never, no, temptly don't like the saxophone very much. So perfect this is going to get the show canceled. This is the thing that cancels the Simpson. 01:09:18 Speaker 3: Oh god, I did take them. I took piano lessons when I was really really young, and then I started again when I was like thirty, and I played for about four years and I actually got pretty good. But here's the thing, and here's so, here's why, back to the we have a separate set of rules for ourselves and we have for everyone else. So one of the reasons I took piano was that I wanted to be able to go wherever, break out at any piano and just play from Yes, I wanted to go to nord Stow and play the piano. I know exactly what you're talking about. And what I found out after the fact was that there are usually two kinds of musicians. There are the ones that read music and then the ones that learn it by wrote. And I wanted to be the one that learned the learned it by wrote. And I was the kind of person who read music. So I if I didn't have my music with me, there's no fucking I was. There was no chance I was going to sit down at Northtrum and play for the people. That was not happening. And I was so discouraged by that. And I and now in retrospect, like you are, what is wrong with you? 01:10:30 Speaker 2: Yardley? 01:10:31 Speaker 3: Like what is that set of standards that because it didn't turn out exactly the way you planned, you were unable to find pure joy in it? And that's actually been a theme of my whole life, where I had such a specific idea of what my success would look like from the time I was about five and then it is, even as successful as I've been, it didn't look anything like like it does like the life that I live. And for many years I felt like, well, I guess it doesn't really count. I mean, it's really it's a great loss, I think. And now of course I've been able to re sort of reframe that, but it took me forever, right, I think. 01:11:16 Speaker 2: Like the I mean, I deal with a similar thing. I think that most people, most people don't get exactly what they want. You have probably fifteen percent control over what actually happens, and so when you get, when you do succeed, it's like, well, this is not what the plan was, and so now it feels like luck and it has nothing to do with who me or what I actually do. I just stumbled into this. Yes, but but. 01:11:39 Speaker 3: CONVISI that is, if it goes badly, then it's a whole fault. 01:11:44 Speaker 2: Right, it makes no sense. The brain is a trap bondered right. The brain is just out to get all of us. Let's answer a couple of questions here. This is called I said no emails right into I said no gifts at gmail dot com. 01:12:02 Speaker 3: I really hope that Jim does most of the things you ask him to do, because people around the world, I'm just telling you to fuck off. 01:12:08 Speaker 2: I don't do what I want. Jim does not do a single thing I asked him to terfect, So I'm just living a life of chaos. Yes, this first one says, let's see, hello Bridger and very special guest of this. So they've nailed it. 01:12:24 Speaker 3: Thank you. 01:12:25 Speaker 2: I would love your help with figuring out birthday gifts for four of my closest friends. This person's getting greedy with their request already. Their birthdays are between the end of May and the first week in June. I guess I have a thing for geminis. We're all reuniting for the first time post VAX for a beach vacation in July. I'd love to bring something to the beach that we can do or enjoy together while we're all here, as they're all flying and we will have limited luggage space to get a gift home with them. Interests we all have in common. Taylor Swift cooking, making cocktails, and playing games. Went to college together. Okay, so congratulations on maintaining relationships. Thanks in advance for your help. I love your Oh this is very nice. I love your show so much and your advice is always spot on. Thank you, Maddie. Maddie, is you know ending this on a really good note despite it kind of asking the world of us for four gifts? I got it. 01:13:22 Speaker 3: What So she's going to wed give them an experience because nobody has any room in their luggage, right right? It should probably be a cooking like a cooking class where they will make you cocktails and there's a time limit on which is the game aspect where the time limit on how when you have to have the dish finished? 01:13:45 Speaker 2: Oh that's great. You're basically in it together. You're pitching your oil and water to them life for Shad. 01:13:52 Speaker 3: I mean I was thinking, well, listen, if your birthdays are all together and you're already going to be traveling to go to the beach, isn't that gift enough? But if you want to gild the lily, yeah, you might. 01:14:05 Speaker 2: As well go for it. Hire some cocktail what do they call those people that I'm mixologists? Yes, hire a good looking mixologist to guide you through this game. Hell yeah, and maybe you know, buy everyone matching bathing suits that'll make everyone uncomfortable. Good God, that would be the end of the vacation. It would be the end of the friendships, which they've been together since college. It's probably time to meet some new people. Maddie, you've gotten your answer. Let's do you mind if we answer one more. I'm just okay. This one just as high period, which is I'm going to be honest as a little stern way into an email. 01:14:52 Speaker 3: It could be to anyone. Are you sure it's to you? 01:14:55 Speaker 2: I know this could have been sent to the wrong address. The see Hi, I've fallen madly in love with a fan of your show. Oh interesting, and I overthink everything. His birthday is at the end of July. He likes punk rock, both playing and listening, and is talented in a lot of ways, making neon poop sculptures and housemade musical instruments, vegan burritos and what is happening here? And sweet sweet whoopee. This person's just invaded my email to tell me that she has a great sex life. 01:15:26 Speaker 3: Plow. 01:15:27 Speaker 2: Maybe reading this request would be enough. Okay, yes, but if you want to suggest a good first birthday gift to give your lover after you pair up, that'd be great too. Be well and lmk let me know. Thanks, kisses. And that's from Rachel. Now the last name here, let's just say Rachel Kay apparently doesn't even listen to the podcast. The boyfriend's listening to the podcast. This is ridiculous. She's writing in and asking for my work. I don't even know that she's listening to the show. She's writing into brag about sex. Boyfriend loves punk music. I'm not giving this per I mean, maybe Yardley has something. I'm not giving Rachel another second of my time. 01:16:09 Speaker 3: I have an idea, maybe she should give him a whoopie cushion since they make sweet sweet whoopie And then it would be a pun but also a gift, and that you know, there you go. I'm just saying she could write a message on the whoopee cushion. 01:16:26 Speaker 2: Like right, I love you or listen to I said no gifts. 01:16:31 Speaker 3: Yes, that would be actually really the best message. 01:16:35 Speaker 2: Rachel. I'm giving you my permission to sign my name for me. So get the whoopy cushion and sign love Bridge or Wineger. You can do whatever you want there. I don't care. I will not sue in this particular case. 01:16:51 Speaker 3: You heard it here first, Rachel. 01:16:56 Speaker 2: Yardley, We've done an excellent job. I mean, just five stars all around, answering questions. People can't complain, and if they do, you know, I'm going to ban them from listening. So I am so thrilled to have had you here. What a wonderful time I've had. And now I've got this lovely gift which is also a threat to my life, which I just love. I like a little danger. 01:17:20 Speaker 3: It's the gift that keeps on giving. 01:17:23 Speaker 2: You bury me with it, That's all I ask. Yes, so I can become like grave robbers. I would love to have my great grave robbed. That's the dream. Why not? 01:17:35 Speaker 3: Sure? Why not? What do you care? You'd be very. 01:17:37 Speaker 2: Charming about getting your grave robbed. 01:17:40 Speaker 3: That means they really really want you. 01:17:44 Speaker 2: That's an ith Raje. 01:17:48 Speaker 3: This has been the most fun. I really feel like we pulled today, you know, out of a doward spiral. 01:17:54 Speaker 2: Oh we started at negative fifty with the audio issues that we dealt with at the list or didn't even have to deal with. We came from a very stressful place to a place where I think we can move on with our lives and feel better about the world. 01:18:09 Speaker 3: And I feel I've laughed so much with you. I find you just so delightful, a wonderful conversationalists, incredibly gracious, awfullest time. 01:18:22 Speaker 2: Well, everyone go listen to Small Town Dix and stop listening to this podcast now because it's over. Take care of yourself. I'm going to stop talking. I said, No Gifts is an exactly right production. It's engineered by our dear friend Analise Nelson and the theme song is by miracle worker Amy Mann. You must follow the show on Instagram at I said No Gifts, that's where you're going to see pictures of all these wonderful gifts I'm getting. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you found me. And why not leave a review while you're there. It's really the least you could. And if you're interested in advertising on the show, go to midroll dot com slash ads. 01:19:07 Speaker 1: And I invited you here, thought I made myself perfectly clear. But you're a guess to my home. You gotta come to me empty, and I said, no, guess, your presences presents enough. I already had too much stuff. So how do you data, Surbey mean