Best News
Luke and Elena discuss busy summers, food-stand hustles, and South Dakota's Corn-Bassador.
-
Luke: Hey there. Welcome to The Best News podcast from Live Wire. Brought to you by Alaska Airlines. This is the show where we talk about what is good in the news. I'm Luke Burbank, and right over there is my friend Elena Passarello. Elena, welcome to week 24 of the best news podcast with a little summer break in there.
Elena: Pew Pew Pew PewPew.
Luke: Now are those air horns or those laser guns?
Elena: It is a hybrid model.
Luke: I like it. I like it. How was your summer?
Elena: It was good, but I can't believe it's over. I was so busy.
Luke: Yeah, you. I would see on Instagram you were at a different writer's colony like every single time I checked in on you.
Elena: I think I hit every time zone, including the Alaska time zone. And I think I stayed in something like 11 hotel rooms in between Memorial Day and Labor Day, something like nine states. It was great.
Luke: Wow.
Luke: Now, I mean, is that restorative for you because you're in these beautiful locations by a babbling brook or is it like does it still feel sort of like work?
Elena: The body does not feel restored, but creatively, yeah. You know, you meet great people. You go to these interesting places, you get inspired. You remember that you're a writer again. But, you know, like you come home and like that just I can't stop sleeping. I have to go to work now. I can't stop sleeping.
Luke: I did a residency during the summer. I worked on my residence. I just like trying to remodel this garage with my dad. And it just made me very, very glad that my primary job is as a radio host and podcaster. Because what I would not be great at is a professional framer. Like we were putting up these big structural pieces in this garage and I was like on a ladder with a nail gun. And side note, my dad is 68, I think and is just so much more energetic than I am. We had to do this thing where we cut this big trench in the cement to put some plumbing down and we had to break it up with like sledgehammers afterwards and a jackhammer. And it was like I was tapped out after 5 minutes and he was just totally, completely, just as spry as can be. So I also don't feel particularly rested off of this summer, but I'm glad to just be back to my actual job, which is way easier than the thing I was doing voluntarily this summer.
Elena: I feel like the earlier generation of dads has a lot more skills.
Luke: Like certainly I'm telling you, the Burbanks are getting softer. I can just speak to my particular family experience. I feel like we are getting way softer generation after generation.
Elena: Yeah, yeah. No. The other day I thought about getting my groceries delivered, so that's. That's how soft I'm getting.
Luke: Right? I'll, like, order a movie on demand because I don't want to walk across the room to where it is on the shelf as a DVD. I'd say that's peak, peak laziness. Normally, at the top of the show, if people can remember back to the origins of the Best News podcast, we would like to read a little email feedback from the listeners. But because we've been on a little break, we don't have any emails, so go ahead and hit us up. It's Best News at Live Wire Radio dot org. Tell us how your summer went. Tell us about the best news from your life or if you have advice on scissor trusses, you know, we'll take all of it. Best News at Live Wire Radio dot org.
Luke: All right. Let's find out what's actually good out there in the wider world. What's the best news that you've been hearing about lately, Elena?
Elena: In Toronto, there's a ten year old kid named David Hove. And over the summer, David and his 15 year old sister went into business together. They started a baked goods stand. And like most kids, you know, they just, like, found a table in the house. They put it out there and his sister bakes the scones and he sells them. He does the marketing. It's been happening, you know, all summer long. One day he was out there for hours. He had to take a bathroom break. And so he goes inside to use the facilities and comes out and everything is gone. The whole big stand. It was a scone day.
Luke: I don't know if you know what the premise of this podcast is, Elena, but it's supposed to be the best news that we heard all week. Not somebody robbing a child.
Elena: Yeah, the Grinched it. Like the whole thing. The table was gone, which apparently made his mother not too happy because it was a, you know, a valued item of furniture in their house. The cooler with the scones in it was gone. It was a homemade lemon cranberry scones day. Luckily, David had taken the cashbox in with him because he and his sister are saving up for a cell phone and an Xbox, respectively. So it didn't mess with their profit. They even took a paper towel and they have a security camera outside their house. And they found footage of a grown man pulling up in a white SUV, loading the kit and caboodle into his car and driving off. And they told law enforcement and people started looking around, the neighborhood, got involved, and unfortunately, they didn't find the person who scone napped the baked goods.
Luke: I would say if you find the 48 year old guy who's selling scones three blocks away on a table that looks very similar, that might be your person.
Elena: Yeah.Yeah, no, I'm assuming that he left maybe even the province of Ontario. Yes. And is hawking these scones in Regina, Saskatchewan or something. But of course, once people started hearing about this, they wanted to pitch in, some of whom were just, like depressed because they had gotten addicted to these baked goods. So some of his biggest fans pitched in and bought him David a new cooler and a new folding table. And then orders of, of course, started pouring in from all over the place, including the United States. They've got like 70 orders in. Their coffers are full. They won't do a GoFundMe. They won't take any money that they didn't work for. But also they will take this. Somebody about 55 miles away felt so bad for the kids and was so inspired by their plucked entrepreneurship that he bought David an Xbox.
Luke: Wow.
Elena: Yeah. The only sort of hiccup in this great reopening of the baked goods store is that school has started. And David's sister is a 10th grader and she doesn't know if she's going to have as much time in her busy schedule to make scones for the 70 plus people who have put in orders.
Luke: Wow. Do you know, I got kind of hustled at a lemonade stand in Portland this summer? It was like one of those, like three card monte quick change type of deals were being run by these two adorable like eight year olds, brother and sister. Yes. First of all, the sign was like $0.25. And I was walking down the street with my girlfriend and I was like, boy, that's cheap for lemonade. And it was a really hot day. So I was like, okay. Well, what I didn't read closely was the sign said, “If you buy two cups of lemonade, it's $0.25 off.” But each cup was like $2.50 or something, which, you know, that's whatever the market will bear. But then it got into this thing where I gave them five thinking I was buying two cups at $0.50. But then I somehow in the getting the change made, I think this ended up somehow cost me like $10 for like two cups of lemonade. I walked away and I was like, okay, well, tip of the cap. You know, you guys hustled me.
Luke: I've also got a sort of noteworthy kid story as my best news that I heard this week. Now, this story overall has kind of been around all summer, right? It's the story of Tariq, the Corn Kid. Yeah, but he has now been named South Dakota's official Cornbassador. That was the update in the news cycle. That's why we're talking about it today. Now, I don't know. You know, we got a lot of public radio listeners to this podcast. And so it's possible that they've been busy, you know, being highbrow and reading Noam Chomsky and they missed the Corn Kid. So it just in case here's a little bit of this kid, Tariq. He's being interviewed by a guy named Julian Shapiro Barnum for a Web series called Recess Therapy, where this guy, Julian, just sits down with some kids, talks to him, you know, kind of kids say the darndest things. Updated for 2022. This is Tariq talking about his love of corn.
[Clip from Recess Therapy plays]
Tariq: For me, I really like corn.
Julian Shapiro: What do you like about corn?
Tariq: Ever since I, I was told that corn is real, it tasted good.
Tariq: Did you think corn wasn't real?
Tariq: And when I tried it with butter everything changed. I love corn mmm corn.
Luke: I want to mention that “When I tried it with butter, everything changed.” That's such a profound statement because I totally agree with you. Throw some butter on that corn game changer.
Elena: My favorite statement from the extended play of that clip is when he goes, “What? It's just a pun I made about corn.”
Luke: Because he says it's corn tastic at some point. And you can tell that the interviewer is like kind of shocked at how clever little Tariq is being, by the way. Tariq is now one of the most famous kids on the Internet, but we don't know his last name and we don't know his exact age. That's not listed. I think he looks like he's maybe around like seven ish or something. But there's like it doesn't say on the original Recess Therapy video, although I'll tell you this, Tariq is having one heck of a summer. He's doing cameo videos now. He's making 200. Forget lemonade stands or baked good stands. He's making $220 a pop on his cameo videos. He's in a Chipotle ad now and he's the official Corbassador of South Dakota. This is where things really, though, went to the next level was when these guys, the Gregory Brothers, you know, who are kind of famous for a song of fighting a lot of these viral videos that where somebody's talking and then they'll take what the person is saying, they'll Auto-Tune it and pitch it up and make it into a song. So, of course, this is the Corn Kid song, which is everywhere and as they say, lives rent free in my head. I spend about half of my day just thinking, it's corn. Here's what happens.
[“It’s Corn” from The Gregory Brothers plays]
Luke: By the way, I believe, “It's a big lump with knobs. It has the juice.” I also think about that constantly. If somebody said to you, Elena, I like try to describe corn, I don't think you or I could come up with a better description than a big lump with knobs.
Elena: Yeah, I have an MFA and I can hereby say that that is the best description available for what it is.
Luke: Yeah. Thank you.
[“It’s Corn” from The Gregory Brothers Continues]
Luke: So now this song, of course, has been like viewed more than like three or this interview has been viewed more than 3 million times. The song has been used in almost 700,000 videos just on TikTok and is now spread to, you know, Twitter and Instagram and everywhere else. And so and I believe if I read right, the Gregory Brothers, Tariq is credited as a co-writer on the song. So they're sharing the revenue, as well they should, right? I mean, this is 100% the genius of this little kid. I mean, it raises the question, like, how in the world did this kid have this many specific thoughts about corn? And they happened to be talking to about corn. Like, that's just like a perfect intersection of - Or maybe just this kid, Tariq is just that kind of like clever about everything.
Elena: He’s a special poet. We found it. We found our next Bard.
Luke: We really did.
Elena: The voice of our spirit.
Luke: And you know who else loves it is Kevin Bacon, who is apparently also just releasing songs now on the Internet from his porch, by the way, like in Malibu with the ocean crashing behind him. This is Kevin Bacon just playing the It's Corn song on a guitar using an ear of corn.
[A Clip of Kevin Bacon performing “It’s Corn”]
Luke: I always forget that he's, like, into singing, right? Isn't he in a band like the Bacon Brothers Band or something like that?
Elena: Wait, is he holding a cob of corn and striking the strings with it?
Luke: He's striking the strings. Yes, that's exactly what he's doing. Sounds pretty good, considering.
Elena: I wish he used it as, like, a guitar slide.
Luke: I was telling you about this before we started recording that. There's this Kevin Bacon version, and I think you said something to the effect of, well, that's a real 2022 phenomenon.
Elena: Yeah. I mean, who would have thought that, you know, when we said goodbye for the summer, the first thing you and I would be talking about together is Kevin Bacon singing a song about corn written by a child who probably now is getting his college funds covered.
Luke: Yes. Who's probably now earning more than Kevin Bacon in terms of the summer. I think it's debatable if Kevin Bacon or this kid, Tariq, made more money over the course of those three months.
Elena: I think one of the things that's great is just we get to hear somebody talk at length about something that they just love, like that simple, positive pleasure is probably exactly what we needed.
Luke: Yes.
Elena: And what Kevin Bacon needed.
Luke: Yeah. And, no, you're 100% right.
Elena: Like, he's so good at articulating joy, his personal inner joy.
Luke: Yes, exactly. I think that's well said, Elena. And probably along with the notes from our executive producer, Laura Hadden, a sign that we should wrap up this edition of The Best News Podcast. First, though, we've got to talk about the radio show that's coming up this week. We're talking to the writer Isaac Fitzgerald. He has this memoir out called Dirtbag, Massachusetts, The New York Times bestseller. And it's a really fascinating read, gets into how he and his friends just deeply misunderstood what the movie Fight Club was really trying to tell the universe. So they just formed a fight club. We're gonna talk to him. Plus, we're going to hear standup comedy from Carmen Lagalla on how her deep love of women's basketball led her to actually break up a teenage romance via the Internet. It's kind of a crazy story. And here to get some music from No-No Boy, talking about this particular song about the plight of a doctor fleeing Vietnam after the war. This No-No Boy project is a really interesting intersection of kind of academic research and music and public performance. It's really great. So do not miss that. It's dropping in this very feed where you're hearing us right now on Friday and it'll be out on public radio stations near you this weekend.
Luke: All right. We also have to thank our team that makes the best news podcast possible. Of course, Laura Hadden, our long suffering executive producer. Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Welcome back from Berlin. Our assistant editor is the always reliable Trey Hester, our production fellow. Welcome to the crew is Tanvi Kumar. Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer. Our theme music is composed by A. Walker Spring and of course, thanks to all of you for tuning back in to The Best News podcast. We're gonna be back here next week as another show for you. In the meantime, head on out there and just have the absolute best week.
