Young MC
Luke Burbank, Podcast Host
LUKE BURBANK WILL COP to being a lot of not-so-hot things—vain, insecure, unphotogenic—but he shies away from the one nice label that everyone wants to give him these days: the future of radio. Last September, three days after KIRO-AM canceled Too Beautiful to Live, his uncategorizable talk radio show that mines the oddities of pop culture and the banalities of his day-to-day life for sly chunks of funny, he started producing it as a podcast in his house. And one year later, the 34-year-old former NPR host is averaging more than 1.5 million downloads per month—about 1.3 million more monthly listeners than he ever had on KIRO. If Burbank isn’t the future of radio, he’s at least proof that it ain’t what it used to be.
What my studio lacks in functionality, it makes up for in the fact that I don’t have to wear pants. So that’s awesome.
We named the show Too Beautiful to Live for a reason. I figured it was going to get canceled. But I thought, If I can just build up a cult following during however much time I’m allowed to be on the radio, then when I move to being a podcast, I’ll just take those people with me.
David Foster Wallace did this really great piece about talk radio. He said that anger is the easiest and least authentic emotion to create in people. You can get people mad about anything. But that’s not a real connection. But if you create joy—actual, real joy—for someone, even for just a moment, that shit stays with them. And I think that’s why people get so obsessed with the show.
I don’t always realize how close listeners feel to us and how much they feel like we’re sort of their pals. People email me questions like, “How much licking of an envelope is too much licking?” I do feel close to the listeners, but we’re not friends in that way.
I was a really big radio listener as a kid. I would listen to talk radio that I didn’t even understand. What happened was, when I was a little kid, I became aware of how babies are made. I became aware of sex. And I was terrified that I was going to hear my parents doing it, because I just assumed that all adults basically started having sex as soon as it got dark out and didn’t stop until it was light again. And I’m one of seven kids, so it was clear that it was going on to some degree in my house, because babies just kept coming out of my mother. So I was like, “I’m not going to hear that if it’s at all possible.” So I would blast KIRO, interestingly enough, as loud as my clock radio would broadcast it, all night long.
I really don’t want to get fat. I eat and drink like it’s going out of style, but I fret about it all the time. I’m always trying the latest diet, like, “I’m going to cut out all foods that start with the letter Q,” which would be a bad plan, because that would mean I can’t eat quinoa, which is delicious and healthy.
I have this X-Y axis in my mind. Along the x-axis is the thing we’re talking about, and along the y-axis is my experience with it. And wherever those things intersect, that’s sort of where I take it. But sometimes that’s a disaster because I do it in conversation, too. One time I was in New York, and I saw this devastating send-up of Ethan Hawke. It was this puppet show that was just totally making fun of him. And then I ran into Ethan Hawke in real life, and my x-y axis intersected at “puppet show.” I just started telling him the story, and I couldn’t stop myself. And at the end he was like, “It really sounds like those guys were making fun of me.” And I said, “I can see how you would think that, but…”
When I interview people that I’m really a fan of, I have this thing in the back of my mind where I want them to think, “This is the most fun interview I’ve ever done! This person gets it.” Ultimately, at the end of the show I want them to say, “You’re awesome. Can we be friends?” That’s kind of dumb of me.
The thing about modern-day radio that’s so screwed up is that everything has to be very easily categorizable for people. You’re not going to get far if you’re doing a sort of amorphous thing. It’s better to just be like, “We’re the show that hates immigrants.” Even if people don’t agree with you, they know what you are, and then they file you away under that category.
We’re 610 shows into it, and I still don’t know how to describe the program.
Read web-exclusive extras from Burbank.
Published: September 2010
since moving to seattle in ’07 tbtl has been an incredible discovery. now if i can just find a buried treasure or maybe a taco time gift certificate. luke, jen and sean… cheers to you all.
I love my friends in my earbuds! I’ve been a devoted 10 since the beginning and I really do have more joy in my life :)
It says published september 2010, but how am I reading it on August 31?
Oh my Gosh…Time machine.
I can honestly say I’ve had WAY more joy in my life since I discovered TBTL. Life can be absurd and comical, and people take themselves way too seriously. TBTL lets me feel that there’s a magic joy in being alive, one that involves laughing at yourself and others as often as possible. I love love love this podcast. And that’s why I’m leaving in an Audi…
I’ve been a fan of Luke for years and have enjoyed more hours of TBTL than I can count. The work that great podcasters like Luke are doing is a refreshing change from the decreasingly interesting traditional mass-media, so I hope that people continue to support their work in whatever way possible to make sure it can continues to exist.