227 – How does one pull a butt cheek?

The boys are back! After taking a well-deserved mental health break (and weathering what we’re told were hundreds of concerned emails — each one personally answered by Adam, naturally), Daniel and Adam return with fresh energy and a new member of the extended Mix family. Daniel introduces us to Sebastian, his AI personal assistant who helped prep the show, and we quickly learn that saying “Hermes” out loud leads to instant confusion with luxury handbags. The show kicks off with Adam’s mysterious butt muscle injury (“I herniated a butt muscle”) and some exciting James Corden news, before things take a more serious turn: Adam’s mother, over lunch following her doctor’s appointment, asked him to remove the word “gay” from his podcast name. Adam handled it with grace and conviction — gay isn’t a bad word to people who know it isn’t one — and we couldn’t be prouder.From there, the show spins into classic Mix territory. Daniel delivers a forensic breakdown of Apple’s WWDC keynote videos, convinced the outdoor walking shots were studio-voiced and AI-lip-synced — an audio Uncanny Valley that had the internet buzzing. A fascinating science piece argues that adults who reread the same novels aren’t stuck in the past; they’re using fiction as a mirror to measure who they’ve become, which leads to a discussion of Adam’s third rewatch of The West Wing (season 5 is a struggle, we hear you) and Daniel’s revelation that his local UPN station once followed Mama’s Family with “more sci-fi adventure” as the lead-in to Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the Contact segment, Brian writes in about YouNify, a tool for consolidating watch lists across streaming services, and we get a moment of silence for synthesizer pioneer Michael Iceberg. Then Adam tells us the sweetest story about a baby bird in his crepe myrtle tree — which takes a hard left turn into a possible lawnmower incident he insists was pre-existing. The News Game delivers a respectable showing (even if the World Cup final being in New Jersey remains deeply funny), and the 60-second bonus round tests Daniel’s trivia mettle on everything from Pixar to moonwalkers. A delightful digression into a 1982 ABC7 consumer report on home computers — complete with cassette tape programs and the immortal advice that “if you could bake a cake, you can write a program” — reminds us all that the home computer market was supposed to fully evolve by 1985. Spoiler: it took until 2000.Adam shows off his latest UV printer project — a custom metal sign for his stepfather featuring ChatGPT-generated art (sorry, artists) — and the Birthday segment brings us Noah Wyle, Anderson Cooper, and Dana Carvey. Then comes the segment Joe Betance probably won’t hear: an exasperated PSA that pairing a Bluetooth phone to the RODECaster Pro 2 takes exactly three button presses. Three! The show wraps with the kind of scheduling certainty we’ve all come to love — they might be here next Friday, or maybe the week after, July’s spotty because Daniel has a long vacation, but they’ll definitely be back at some point. We hope you enjoy!Email: Contact@MixMinusPodcast.comVoice/SMS: 707-613-3284

226 – That’s what the druggers do, Adam

This week on The Gay Mix, Daniel gave us a full tour of his new AI assistant Sebastian — and honestly, we’re not sure who’s more excited about it, Daniel or Sebastian himself. From automatically capturing podcast topic ideas the moment they pop into Daniel’s head (fig tree, anyone?) to reading transcripts and prepping show notes, Sebastian has already embedded himself deep into the Mix Minus workflow. And if Daniel’s after-show automation plans pan out, Sebastian might soon be editing, posting episodes to WordPress, and doing everything short of fetching Daniel a drink. Adam — who admitted he couldn’t even get the previous assistant set up — watched all of this unfold with the look of a man who knows his own tax refund check might be fake but can’t be bothered to verify it. Speaking of which: Adam received a mystery $195.62 IRS check that he definitely wasn’t expecting. We walked him through how to verify it, but honestly, we just hope it clears.Adam spent his Memorial Day weekend the way all proud gay men do: wrestling garden hoses and planting 60 vincas — or periwinkles, depending on which nursery you ask. What followed was a surprisingly heated botanical debate, with Sebastian himself weighing in (via Daniel) to fact-check the whole vinca-versus-periwinkle controversy. Michael in San Diego posted photos in the chat room that only deepened the mystery. Meanwhile, Daniel played us a clip from “Josh and Mama,” a mother-son cooking YouTube channel with Southern accents so thick they circled back around to suspicious. Adam thought they were authentic; Daniel and Auntie Scott cried foul. Either way, the kitchen was a mess, the pans had black spots, and as Daniel put it: “as fake as they might be, everything else is tragically real.” Kathy Bacon checked in via text message to vent about streaming services advertising for each other, Cathy Marshall kept the chat room lively, and Lamont Cranston came through with a celebrity death call for Grizz from 30 Rock — which Daniel immediately recognized, because of course he did.The News Game saw Daniel cruise to a 4-out-of-5 finish (damn that Latin encyclical name), he nailed the speed round for a perfect score, and we rounded out Celebrity Birthdays with Kylie Minogue turning 58, Jack McBrayer at 53 (“and a screaming homosexual”), and Richard Schiff — yes, Toby from The West Wing — who Adam describes as playing “Eeyore” in every role. Daniel closed us out by predicting internet drama over Disney’s Carousel of Progress refurbishment once people notice the Progress family isn’t all white anymore, and shared the tragic tale of his pantry shelf collapsing under the weight of too much Walmart cat food. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed making it — and if you’re not in the Level 13 after show, you’re missing Daniel’s Tailscale revelation and whatever else happened after we yelled “we’re out of time!”

Email: Contact@MixMinusPodcast.com

Voice/SMS: 707-613-3284

225 – I was drinking. I thought you were gonna take longer

This week on The Gay Mix, the show opens in classic form — Adam’s mixer is haunted by a poltergeist that only Daniel can hear, forcing him to do both halves of the intro like a one-man vaudeville act while narrating the technical difficulties in real time. It’s the kind of barely-controlled chaos that reminds you this is live radio, baby, and nobody’s editing it. Daniel then takes us to Disney World for not one but two exclusive previews — the new Soarin’ Over America film (sesquicentennial! semi-sesqueent! whatever!) and the Muppets re-theme of Rock and Roller Coaster, which he loved so much he almost threw up. It turns out our bodies betray us in our forties, and Daniel has joined the ranks of gays who can no longer ride roller coasters without feeling it for hours afterward. A profound loss for the community.

The Survivor 50 finale gets a proper postmortem, complete with Daniel’s righteous fury about Jonathan being “just the man taking credit for the women’s work” and the truly cringeworthy moment where Stephanie turned her jury question into a campaign rally. But the real showstopper is Jeff Probst accidentally spoiling the fire-making competition live by calling Rizzo to the jury before the footage aired, then scrambling to rebrand his blunder as a brand new twist called “See the Future.” Daniel’s physical reaction to watching someone fuck up on live television is worth the price of admission alone. Meanwhile, Stephen Colbert said goodbye after eleven years, the Pope refused to come out of his dressing room over a Chicago hot dog dispute, and Daniel cried. Of course he cried. That’s what he does.

The News Game delivers a rare and glorious 5-for-5 sweep — Daniel nails everything from the Justice Department’s absurd $1.776 billion Trump ally fund to Elon Musk getting laughed out of court for missing a deadline. The Birthdays segment nearly breaks Daniel’s brain as he spirals into an existential celebrity sorting crisis: is that voice the pale ginger with the loop pedal, or is it the gay one who sings about staying with me? Adam calmly confirms the gay angle, then drops Ed Sheeran’s age — 34 — like it’s nothing. Daniel, who has admittedly been drinking, is genuinely floored. Add in a dinner with Jean featuring a window-raccoon, Cher turning 80 (she’s 49, argue with the wall), Mr. T at 74 still doing the same jokes, and the celebrity death phone pot climbing to $111, and you’ve got an episode that careens from tender friendship confession to chaotic celebrity confusion with the elegance of a trash panda on a restaurant balcony.

Email: Contact@MixMinusPodcast.com
Voice/SMS: 707-613-3284

224 – A Failure to Duck

This episode opens with the usual comfortable chaos: a fumbled intro that Daniel immediately clocks as “off-syncopation,” a brief tribute to a listener-written birthday song that threads back to Daniel’s old World of Warcraft podcast, and the unexpected reappearance of former co-host Jean in his inbox ahead of an Orlando conference visit. From there the show settles into personal-journal mode — Adam’s Mother’s Day recap features a chocolate pie that survived a second-degree burn from a saucepan handle (the second week running that a metal object has wronged him), while a side discussion of the TV show The Pitt leads Daniel into a candid, sobering reflection on his mother’s Alzheimer’s and what he’s already told his partner Zach to do if the same thing ever happens to him.

The show’s recurring segments land in the second half. The Contact segment surfaces a voicemail from loyal listener Tony in Illinois and a text reporting the death of Jason Collins, the first openly gay NBA player. The News Game has Daniel going 4-for-5 on the New York Times quiz — correctly nailing YMCA as Trump’s Beijing banquet song and the mid-2010s as the start of declining student test scores — before snagging a bonus point in the Disney Trivial Pursuit lightning round by pulling “Edgar Bergen” out of thin air under the wire. Celebrity Birthdays covered George Lucas (82, fresh museum at Skywalker Ranch) and Stevie Wonder (76), with the segment capping on Stephen Colbert’s impending final week, which prompts a recommendation to seek out his recent David Letterman interview on YouTube.

The back third weaves in a tech segment on OpenAI’s Codex Desktop: Daniel is an enthusiastic evangelist, citing his own custom Linux clock widget as a proof-of-concept, while Adam has hit a permissions wall trying to automate his podcast show-prep workflow on Mac. A sidebar on the Little Fatty Cast and its chronic audio ducking problem rounds out the runtime before a deliberately early wrap — the hosts are actively trying to trim episode length, partly, Daniel deadpans, so as not to cannibalize Tony’s Level 13 after-show content.

Email: Contact@MixMinusPodcast.com

Voice/SMS: 707-613-3284

223 – No One Will See Me Decline

The episode opens with the hosts fumbling the video intro cue — a recurring live-production hazard they blame on aging — before Daniel delivers a running update: four years into a habit started to lower his cholesterol, he’s benching himself through the end of May to recover a back injury (a pulled muscle that resurfaced during a mid-week run after the Dollywood race weekend). He uses the injury news as a pivot into a pair of birthday acknowledgments: Pride48 network fixture “Auntie Scott” turning 60, and Daniel’s partner Zach hitting 39 — the latter celebrated with a dinner reservation at Jiko at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge, joined by friends Rodan and Darwin.

The middle third of the show runs through the episode’s recurring segments in sequence. Survivor Season 50 gets a lengthy debrief: both hosts’ preferred players, Ozzy and Christian, are now sitting on the jury, with Daniel laying blame squarely on Ozzy for going home with an unplayed idol. Listener mail surfaces via voicemail and texts from regulars Kathy Bacon, Cat, Kathy Marshall, and Mel — topics ranging from a Florida Wawa gas station sighting to Adam’s vaping habits to the long-overdue “So-So Question” game winner announcement. The News Game segment follows, with Adam reading five questions from the New York Times weekly quiz; Daniel correctly identifies the Hantavirus cruise ship outbreak, gas prices crossing $4.50, Ted Turner’s ownership of the Atlanta Braves, Heidi Klum’s Met Gala marble-sculpture look, and GameStop’s reported bid to acquire eBay. A Disney Trivia Pursuit bonus round caps the game block.

The final stretch meanders through Discord listener content — a cast-iron skillet restoration that launches both hosts into a mutual review of why they’ve abandoned cast iron cooking — then settles into a tech-and-AI conversation sparked by Adam’s interest in learning machine learning from a programming angle. Daniel advocates using current AI models as personalized coding tutors over structured courses, and both reflect on where the AI development community’s culture is heading relative to early programming pioneer eras. The show closes with Daniel apologizing for a late edit the previous week and the two locking in tentative dates for a May camping trip.

Email: Contact@MixMinusPodcast.com

Voice/SMS: 707-613-3284