#664 - Crooners Welcome

The first solo episode in a while opens with a bit about a food-stand vendor who kept telling Theo his own al pastor was greasy — 'you made it. You knew it was greasy when you give it to me' — which becomes the episode's running metaphor: life is a second-class meat, but it's still an entree. From there it's a catch-up: singing on stage with Ella Langley at Stagecoach ('I felt like a mountain lion out there'), and his realization that while he's no singer, he is a crooner — the guy who doesn't do the painting but comes in at the end and does the baseboards. He also addresses the death-hoax rumors that had relatives texting him black-and-white photos with doves on them and asking, given everything that's happening, to borrow his truck.

A long affectionate stretch covers the Franklin and Music City rodeos: watching bronc riding and barrel racing from right up on the chutes, the clown stitching his own skin in the back, riders named like injuries waiting to happen, and a detour into rodeo history — 16th-century Mexican vaquero cattle culture, the term from the Spanish for 'to encircle,' and Deer Trail, Colorado hosting one of the earliest contests in 1864. Then the hotline calls: a caller jealous of his girlfriend's past gets Theo's most self-aware answer, that holding old stuff against a partner was always his way of keeping one foot out of the relationship; a father of three boys who never had a father himself; and a gas-station ethics question about whether to vouch for an underage man with Down syndrome buying beer.

The sharpest segment comes from a caller asking Theo to publicize the data center a Georgia company, DC Blocks, plans to build next to the Nashville Zoo and an elementary school. He obliges with a full anti-AI rant — nobody he knows wants any of this, data centers read as control, Flock surveillance cameras are heading for a 'flock versus the block' standoff — and points listeners to the change.org petition, noting Nashville's Metro Council passed a temporary moratorium on large data centers within a half mile of homes. The episode ends warm: after a caller named Nate leaves a message about hitting five years sober, Theo calls him back live on air and catches him on a date walk with his wife, five kids at home.