To Kill Time Podcast · TJ VanBuren, Kain Wilder, Dylan Freeman

E61 Talking Christmas, Walmart, and Ghosts To Kill Time

December 27, 2023·52 min·4 clips

A gym member's hand dislocates mid-workout but asks to keep going.

The boys start with holiday greetings, a moon-and-alligator riff, and the kind of nonsense that makes it clear they are already comfortable. Christmas talk comes fast after that. They trade stories about the week and what everyone got up to, including watching Jordan open presents. There is jealousy in it, but the funny kind, the kind that shows up when somebody else gets the good toy and you are standing there acting like it does not bother you. Then the episode swerves hard into the Walmart story. A 70-inch TV order gets dragged through canceled transactions and a payment mess that makes the whole thing feel cursed. The app does not help. Customer service does not help at first. The guy at the center of it keeps having to explain the same problem in different ways, and that only makes him madder. They talk through how unreal the whole transaction feels, including being told to treat it like a stolen-item report. Friends in the Discord keep telling him to go into the store and force the issue. That advice turns into its own little subplot. He walks in knowing he has almost no patience left. The conversation keeps circling back to how much bullshit people will put up with before they snap. The hosts do the thing they always do when something actually annoys them. They banter, but they stay locked on the details too. That is what makes the story land. There is no fake polish on it. It sounds like somebody telling you about a bad day while still being pissed off about the bad day. Near the end, they wrap the usual way. They ask people to like, comment, subscribe, and leave reviews. They point listeners to the Spotify Q&A. They also shout out Derek and Anna after a fan reaches out at work. It closes on gratitude, but the dirty, messy middle is what sticks. The whole thing feels like a holiday hangout that got hijacked by one absurd retail problem and turned into a group therapy session.

As heard by us

Christmas banter gives way to a 70-inch Walmart TV headache and laid-back back-and-forth.

Holiday banter sets the tone before the episode settles into a drawn-out, irritated account of trying to buy a 70-inch TV from Walmart, with canceled transactions, app trouble, and customer-service frustration stacking up quickly.

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Why you'd press play

When your holiday mood needs a friend-group rant, not a polished recap.

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