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

222 – Lifting Her Up Caused Her to Fart

The episode opens with Adam disclosing that he is currently unemployed and wrestling with depression-fueled boredom — the paradox of having nothing to do while lacking the motivation to do anything. He reports filling his days with chores, daily Peloton rides, occasional haircuts, and no travel on the calendar until July. Daniel follows with his running update: he completed his fourth Springtime Surprise event at Walt Disney World — a Joy and Sadness–themed 10-miler — marking roughly three years of running. Friends Zach, Taylor, and Rodan tackled the full 19.3-mile challenge over three days. Daniel’s next race target is a Peanut Butter and Jelly Run in September; in the meantime, he plans a low-intensity summer of 5K and 10K maintenance runs. Adam then recounts a pre-theater taco dinner before seeing Mamma Mia with his partner Marc, and relays an incident where his elderly mother — on oxycodone for a pinched nerve in her wrist, compounded by chronic back pain and two knee replacements — fell out of bed and couldn’t get up. Adam drove over to help, and the two managed to lift her back onto the bed, with an involuntary gas release from the patient marking the climactic moment of the story.

The middle section of the show is dominated by two extended recaps. First, Daniel delivers his long-teased Survivor debrief, skewering a game twist in which contestant Christian Hubeki was sent to a time-limited floating-raft puzzle with no upside if he lost — he was forced to return to camp and publicly announce both a lost vote and a pre-placed urn vote against himself, eliminating any strategic maneuvering. Daniel and Adam agree the compelled public confession was the design flaw, not the puzzle itself. A follow-up two-hour episode featuring MrBeast and a food auction (fries, charcuterie, sea slugs, and a whole cheesecake) rounds out the Survivor talk. Second, Daniel delivers the episode’s anchor segment: a full recap of the inaugural Dollywood Half Marathon weekend in the Smoky Mountains. He and Zach stayed at the DreamMore Resort, collected their bibs from a comically undersized expo, ran their respective races, and spent two days in the park. Daniel extensively praises Dollywood’s immaculate landscaping and overall cleanliness, visits the Dolly Parton museum and life show, and comes away newly converted to the Dolly Parton canon after learning how many songs she wrote.

The back half of the episode cycles through several recurring and one-off segments. The Contact segment produces one voicemail from friend-of-the-show Scotty Aussie Battler, which launches a debate about hot pot and fondue restaurants, with both hosts arriving at the same verdict: you are paying restaurant prices to cook your own inferior food. The Gay Mix News Game follows, with Daniel answering five NYT current-events questions perfectly — touching on the Supreme Court Louisiana redistricting ruling, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner assassination attempt, demands to fire Jimmy Kimmel, a Trump-portrait anniversary passport, and the Elon Musk vs. OpenAI trial — before stumbling slightly in a Trivial Pursuit bonus round. A semi-comedic side story involves Daniel being recruited by friend Joe Betance for a cross-promotional appearance on an escape-room podcast, only for his Riverside recording app to crash immediately upon joining, leaving Adam to carry the interview solo. The episode closes with the Birthday Segment — featuring Kate Mulgrew (71) and Jerry Seinfeld (72), identified via themed audio clips — and a coda in which Daniel recounts discovering an Air Supply YouTube recording from Epcot’s Garden Rocks concert series and concluding, with audible relief, that he had not missed anything of value.

Email: Contact@MixMinusPodcast.com

Voice/SMS: 707-613-3284