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Flightless Bird

Nest Sessions: Tim Kasher on Game Shows

04 Jun 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: Who is Tim Kasher and what is his background?

15.455 - 25.482 Rob

Start with an incredibly simple basic question that I think you can manage. Just love to know your name and sort of what it is that you do.

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25.63 - 31.619 Tim Kasher

Oh, right. Me, I'm Tim Kasher. I'm a musician and a songwriter, touring musician.

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32.281 - 33.603 Rob

And you're about to go on tour soon, right?

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34.103 - 34.985 Tim Kasher

Yeah, yeah, in about a week.

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35.606 - 49.307 Rob

Thanks for coming here first. Yeah, thanks for letting me play some songs here. This is your rehearsal space, basically, for the tour. Did you always know you wanted to get into music? Was that always a thing, or was that a dive in a different direction?

49.828 - 75.972 Tim Kasher

So, I'm also, other than a musician, I'm also a... filmmaker but i'm not ready or comfortable calling myself a professional filmmaker because i've made films haven't been paid you can call yourself that i'm a i'm a i'm a hobbyist i guess yeah yeah but uh when i was young i really wanted to be a filmmaker and uh music was uh in a more immediate uh release it was just like i gotta

75.952 - 89.368 Tim Kasher

And I just got kind of feverish about, I had a keyboard and then a guitar. And then that kind of snowballed in a great way, in a very fortunate way for me. So I got lucky enough to be able to kind of pluck out a career.

89.888 - 93.973 Rob

You're also very good at it, right? And once you dive into that, then... I don't know about that.

93.993 - 104.305 Tim Kasher

How old were you when cursive started? Maybe 20, something around there. Yeah, I think 20. I think I remember having the big 21st birthday and I was with some of the cursive guys, yeah.

Chapter 2: What sparked Tim's obsession with game shows?

127.788 - 130.09 David Farrier

Yeah. They got me like a big bottle of wine.

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130.07 - 132.393 Unknown

Oh, that's nice.

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132.413 - 138.219 Rob

Saying me happy birthday. Yeah, yeah. And cursive was kind of taking off then? Where was it at when you were 21?

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138.239 - 161.909 Tim Kasher

No, real, I think we were really just like writing our first songs and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. So nothing, it was full hobbyists at that point, yeah. My 21st birthday recollection is one of my best buddies and I throwing up in a neighbor's yard. But like in just such a... triumphant way. Like we were laughing and just being like, whoa, it's my 21st birthday. We really are.

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161.95 - 163.152 Tim Kasher

This is what you do.

163.212 - 167.96 Rob

Like we are messed up. Was it very clear to the neighbor that it was you guys?

168.782 - 178.557 Tim Kasher

It was a friend's rental and it was in the grass. It was probably fine. There was probably like worse things. We probably threw up on like dog shit or something.

178.677 - 183.584 David Farrier

Covered it up. And this is all Omaha, Nebraska? It was in Omaha, Nebraska. What do you, David, do you know anything about Nebraska?

184.065 - 192.477 Rob

I know nothing about Nebraska. I've got no images in my mind. I feel it's beautiful maybe and sort of a quiet pace of life.

Chapter 3: What experiences does Tim share about being on game shows?

213.075 - 236.604 Tim Kasher

Omaha, people who haven't been to Omaha, what they don't realize is that it's actually a rolling hills and it's incredibly green. Uh-huh. So when you fly over it, or if you fly in, it's actually really, it is quite a beautiful patch. It's along the Missouri River, and yeah, it's just like these really nice, softly rolling hills that a city was built onto with just tons of greenery.

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236.944 - 240.469 Rob

Yeah, and what are people mostly doing there? What's kind of the thing?

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240.449 - 267.124 Tim Kasher

That gets a little bit dull. It's business. Business would be kind of like the main export. But with us musicians, we kind of really plugged away at the top of the century and kind of made a little name for Omaha for music, and that's nice. And there's some cool filmmakers. Alexander Payne came out of Omaha. So there is arts that exist as well.

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267.424 - 280.602 Tim Kasher

That's just the problem with so many of the cities in the US that, and I'm part of the problem. I live in LA now. But I bet, you know, like the artists do tend to go to the coasts. Yeah, they gravitate out.

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281.023 - 284.007 Rob

But you're sort of saying, no, it's still, it's a great place to be. You love it.

283.987 - 295.284 Tim Kasher

It is. And I'd be happy to live there now. It's not, there's really no, it's just, you know, my wife works out here in LA and I love LA too. I'm pretty easygoing. I love wherever I live. Yeah.

295.304 - 307.522 Rob

You seem like you have an easygoing energy about you, I have to say. Just try to, I just try to acclimate. When did you know that music could be a full-time thing? Was there a moment when you realized that this is going to be, this is going to work?

308.443 - 309.505

Yeah.

309.62 - 316.148 Tim Kasher

Yeah, but I think it wouldn't have been until like the third cursive record. And that was in like the 2000.

Chapter 4: How did Tim and his wife turn their love for games into a trivia show?

403.19 - 425.22 Tim Kasher

Uh-huh. So like Gwyneth and I are the type that when we go to a bar, we'll just like post up and like play cards. Yeah, right. We'll play Scrabble at home. So she's been on Jeopardy and it's really kind of amped up for her. She grew up, she grew up wanting to be on Jeopardy. That was the big dream. And she did it.

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425.24 - 427.644 David Farrier

I mean, that's incredible. It was incredible.

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428.286 - 429.968 Rob

How does one get on Jeopardy?

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429.988 - 433.795 David Farrier

It's a hard thing to prepare for too, because it's just general knowledge of everything.

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433.895 - 443.149 Rob

It's the most terrifying thing. I could think of nothing more hellish than to put me on Jeopardy. Because it's basically just a way that everyone sees how dumb you are and what you don't know.

443.169 - 465.777 Tim Kasher

So I love trivia. Gwyneth loves trivia. And I don't mind. And so also what I'm kind of leaning to is that we started a trivia show and stuff like that. And so I need to be really... In a conversation like this, I need to be really positive and pro-trivia because we ask people to come on and some... We ask musicians to come on. So the show is called Musical Puke. And it's a music trivia game show.

466.898 - 486.72 Tim Kasher

But there's anxiety... Absolutely. There's anxiety of musicians who don't want to come on and be grilled and then maybe look bad or look stupid. And we're always just trying to convince people that it's just fun. We want you to do well. We're not trying to stump you. We want to just have a good time and just have some trivia.

486.74 - 495.87 Tim Kasher

We want you to scratch your head a little bit and think, oh, I almost got it. But it's tough to come up with the questions, to know what people know and don't know.

497.051 - 500.736 Rob

Wait, so rewind. your wife dreamt of being on Jeopardy.

Chapter 5: What challenges do musicians face when participating in trivia shows?

556.583 - 571.32 Tim Kasher

Oof. the buzzers are no joke yeah yeah and you can see she's one of the types of players when you watch Jeopardy she's like where you see her frustrated like she knows the answers but she can't get in she can't get in you know yeah completely yeah

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571.469 - 578.465 Rob

Was that part of knowing that you guys were a good match? It's like, we all love games. Like, we both love games. Or did that come later in the relationship?

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578.505 - 587.706 Tim Kasher

You know, I think that she might say it that way a little bit. I think that she feels like she fell in love with me because I'm fun and because I like games. Yeah.

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587.686 - 596.554 Rob

Oh, that's so nice. That's so nice. So I don't know how accurate it is, but. And when did you get the idea to have your own game show? When was that a thing?

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597.475 - 617.693 Tim Kasher

Her and I just kind of, you know, been throwing around ideas of like something that we could do together for quite some time. And I think I just kind of stumbled upon. So I'm a musician and I'm in kind of like I'm a cog in the machinery, you know, and it occurred to me that musical puke as the concept of it.

617.673 - 632.631 Tim Kasher

uh, I was like, you know, if we had musicians on and then kind of have it be, have it kind of a little more niche about it being specific music trivia. Um, I was like, you know, who would love that is publicists. Yep. That's what, that's kind of what I was thinking.

632.651 - 643.764 Tim Kasher

And I'm not totally sure if I'm right about that or not, but I do, I have, we have good rapport with publicists now as a result, but cause I was thinking when you put out an album, you have, um, you need to tell people about what is coming.

643.904 - 646.227 Rob

You've got to get it to all these different people somehow.

646.247 - 665.247 Tim Kasher

Yeah. And you're just saying the same thing over and over again. And you'd have a few a day or whatever. And you have a lot a week. Anyways, I've been through this a lot. And so it occurred to me, I was like, oh my gosh, what if you could kind of plug into that and be like, hey, this one, it's like, we will still plug it. We'll talk about the tour and we'll talk about the album, but

Chapter 6: What insights does Tim provide about the culture of game shows?

701.029 - 723.167 David Farrier

Completely. For our music series was like, we don't need to talk about the history of the band and how they started and the album coming out. It's let's find that weird American topic that they know about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Still plug your stuff still. And then like, let's show you use your superpower at the end, but let's talk about game shows and Cheetos instead of.

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723.908 - 734.805 Rob

Right. Because talking about music, the music should stand on its own two feet. Right. Talking about, I mean, it can be interesting, but it can get pretty fucking boring as well. Talking about the origin of the lyric.

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734.785 - 759.038 Tim Kasher

in the well just gonna say isn't that just the thing right it's just like if you get into the weeds as musicians you don't really know I don't I enjoy getting in the weeds yeah but there's that that's a slippery slope right of just like you start talking about um like theory or something like that and you just people are gonna start glazing over yeah and there's enough you're gonna have to do that anyways so you're gonna go do it on 10 other shows like go on song exploder if you want to really dive into it yeah

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759.018 - 762.183 David Farrier

which as a musician, I think that's one of my favorite podcasts.

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762.564 - 764.107 Tim Kasher

It's awesome. It's so interesting.

764.207 - 770.718 David Farrier

And we're not trying to recreate and beat that because you want that? Go listen to an interview on Rolling Stones.

770.738 - 779.372 Rob

Instead, we're trying to beat Tiny Disc. Yeah. Who's been one of the most fun guests that you've had that was quite a good...

779.352 - 801.704 Tim Kasher

the good at trivia or particularly bad at trivia or just stood out or both let's hear both yeah um so probably put them in it shame them yeah so probably the most fun the first one that popped in my head as far as a really fun show we had is um it's not out yet um It's coming out in a month or two or something. But we had Shannon Shaw on, of Shannon Shaw and the Clams.

802.585 - 824.479 Tim Kasher

And Shannon brought, so it's generally, it's like a three-person game or a two-person game or a solo game. We did a three-person game with that. She brought Cody Blanchard, who's in the Clams. He's just a really fun and affable guy. And also brought Seth Bogart of Hunks and his Punks. And this guy is just, I don't know if you know him or not, but he's just so funny in the group. So the

Chapter 7: How does Tim describe the creative process of writing music?

936.688 - 937.71 Tim Kasher

You know who this person is.

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939.194 - 944.224 Rob

Just for anyone listening along that's sort of going, I want to watch this thing. I want to engage with it. Where can people watch it?

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944.525 - 965.065 Tim Kasher

Well, it's Musical Puke, and it's a podcast. But we do it on YouTube as well. Great name, by the way. Thank you. It's really fun. And we really try to promote it as a game show. Well, because it is a game show. But by doing it as a podcast on YouTube, that's our way of making it incredibly DIY.

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965.546 - 971.612 Rob

What were your main inspirations from other American game shows? Were you lifting from anything that you loved in particular?

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971.592 - 988.112 Tim Kasher

Yeah, you know, we actually try to, like, lift, borrow from, like, all the different things that we watch. Like, I love watching Price is Right, and I'll try to think about, like, how, like, different little games they have, and if I can, like, turn that into something that's, like, I can't think of an exciting example, but really, it's like that.

988.172 - 1002.551 Tim Kasher

In Jeopardy, for sure, we watch Jeopardy every day, and it's certainly, like, borrow from Jeopardy style questions. And Jeopardy is actually a lot of, like, the template, like, Jeopardy, is it not like kind of the template for most trivia? Yeah.

1002.571 - 1005.215 Rob

I was going to say, I mean, I feel like that's the key one, right?

1005.235 - 1010.122 David Farrier

That's where it all kind of began. And the mustache comes from Family Feud, Steve Harvey.

1011.203 - 1021.778 Tim Kasher

All right. This is actually, thank you for bringing and pointing out my mustache. I'm actually growing my mustache this month for a donation for a charity. It looks really good. It suits you.

Chapter 8: What themes are explored in Tim's songs performed during the episode?

1172.939 - 1185.82 David Farrier

We went up for the buzzer, which mine did not work. We got killed, and the other team was practicing the buzzing beforehand, and we were like, look at these nerds. That's what took you out. Apparently. Or that was the buzzer.

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1186.14 - 1188.844 Rob

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we've done Family Feud.

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1189.025 - 1189.926 Tim Kasher

What have you done?

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1189.946 - 1190.447 Rob

That's so cool.

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1190.427 - 1191.408 Tim Kasher

Well, it's a chain reaction.

1191.689 - 1191.889 Rob

Okay.

1191.989 - 1205.628 Tim Kasher

I've tried to be on Price is Right, and I even made shirts for me and my friends. Because you know that that's, as you're learning American culture, Price is Right, what people generally do is they make shirts to kind of be like, pick me.

1205.768 - 1212.217 David Farrier

I did not notice. Aaron Paul famously got on Price is Right very early on and had a shirt made.

1212.718 - 1217.785 Rob

Wait, so what do you mean? You make the shirt so that they take notice of you, and then they say, come on the shows?

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