Radio Better Offline: Pablo Torre and David Roth

A media.

Every morning I wake up to one hundred punishments, each worse than the last. Also that I can bring you the greatest podcast of all time. I am at Zeitron and this is Better Offline. Now that we've got that out of the way, We've got many new items in the Better Offline merchantore go and buy them. There's a zip hoodie, which I fucking love, and a word mark shirt and a T shirt, and there's a hat it's lovely.

I believe, Yes I do. I am the co owner of a turtle.

What's the turtle's name.

Turtle's name is Marvin, Marvin uh and he is what a pair of turtles? But Marvin is the surviving turtle. Oh, oh yeah, it's fine.

They had he had.

The other guy had a good long life. George had a good long life, okay, And something you don't learn when a man sells you a turtle out of a bucket of dry wall on Canal Street is.

Oh, you got a Giinatown turtle.

Yeah, I got a Chinatown turtle on an impulse twenty four years ago.

Oh wow, so you've had them a while.

Yeah, they live.

Forever, like the people that the vets that treat them are also the vets that treat birds. And the lady that when I took Marvin to the vet because he'd been eating parts of the tank, I was told this was normal, that they happen. Whatever is around goes in and then it stays there until such time as he starts acting alarmingly enough that you take him to the vet. She also treats birds, and she was like, yeah, this is a This is a thing with your pets that

I got this little pet.

I mean he.

Doesn't like me, Like, that's pretty they do they show affection? No, I mean no, like it would be hard to tell. Like if I pick him up and like, you know, give him some pets on his sh.

You appreciate your Bernie Sanders. I do communicate with him in a series of accents. Yeah. He responds well to Bernie.

Once again asking that you eat this piece of ridicuo like your tank. Yeah, he well, they I guess that is how he responds to it is by eating the piece of ridicio that I've lowered into his tank. He loves chickeries. What's chickery any kind of chickeries? You know your cabbages, Castel Franco. I know Pablem's not talking about this.

I'm mostly here to throw Bernie Xander's cues and cabbage reference. Yeah, thank you and forth with Rod.

And that's what we're talking about today. So both of you guys are some of the most gifted sports broadcasters and writers I've ever met. Not blowing smoke, I don't give, but I think both of you have also done something really incredible with like the format in the sense that it's not like it's about sports insomuch as sports is part of the world and culture itself. Even in Pablo, you're like Jordan Hudson thing and the Bill Belichick stuff

Love the disclosures here.

Yeah, yeah, the many non sports listeners say a sports episode, how dare you? Oh my god, do you want to hear me fucking talk about Kevin Russ again? Or do it in like one day? I'll probably do it on this podcast.

You're already doing I'm.

Already doing it though, but it's fascinating because it's.

The underline that I could give you ninety minutes on the turtle. We already know that that's true, so that threat will hang over the rest of this podcast.

Oh, I'm getting emails asking about more fucking telltle stuff.

I don't have turtles.

Wait?

I didn't even ask, have you?

So talking of it ended poorly, small, old wretched things. Bill Belichick is the coach now of unc University of North Carolina football coach, and he was the coach of the New England Patriots. And he has a go friend who is twenty four years old. So it's not really about the sports. It's about that there's just this random woman who has ingratiated herself into dunkin Donuts commercials and the like, and you kind of broke that story open in a very interesting way where it wasn't like just

Had on Katie l and Michael cruz Kan as my accomplices. Yeah, in this journalistic act of alleged malpractice.

Oh and now practice. According to Bill Simmons, who will explain.

The bills, the bills in general aren't aren't necessarily cottoning. Most of your upper New England bills have had some issues with.

It, your William problems. Yeah, And it's it's funny because the way you tell that story is not that you get a lot of people who do they talking to the camera stuff, But it feels that you kind of regale people with the tails and the journalism while also doing quite firm, well researched stuff as well.

Yeah. I was inspired by one of the things that has baffled me the most on YouTube, which is the unboxing video. Because the Unboxing video. Once I learned that there's this kid, I assume your audience is very familiar with Ryan's toys.

I'm not so.

I weirdly am familiar with Ryan's toys and I don't I don't have children, and my niece and nephew do not watch that ship and yet.

My child does not watch YouTube ever.

But this is just it's a kid, and in the channel, I believe, I believe we've watched Ryan, the eponymous Ryan Truly age in real time, thirty one years old, and he's been making like NBA Max contract money. Beyond that, well beyond that. Now I'm in the second and he just yes, but but, but but toys. Ryan's toys. His parents bring him toys that he then opens up and plays with, and the audience is in the tens of millions.

I just think you were serious. I thought you were bluffing. I thought it was a power thing.

Listen, circum if you just take this as a why is this so popular? Question? Right, there is something fascinating about it. You are watching, you are vicariously living through someone else authentically be surprised and delighted by something inside of a box. And this format has been imitated, copied, spread throughout YouTube. And so the whole idea of what if I could authentically surprise and delight a friend of mine, not with a I don't even know if a power ranger is is a reference.

But something you found right?

But but journalism actually right? What if the toy is journalism that they can then open up and play with and poke at and ask me questions about what if I did that? What if I could just sort of channel the thing that the sun god, that is the algorithm, seems to enjoy about the unboxing video? What if I could do that for journalism?

Right?

And so I did exhaustive, insanely exhaustive reporting into the Bill Balichick Jordan Hudson question, which is also a story about the highest paid employee in the state North Carolina public employee, who is also the archetype of a certain privacy discretion. Do your jobness sun Zoo cosplay now being sort of the opposite inverted by this woman who is now running his life beyond just the age gap stuff.

Content and also kind of like a kind of radio show host as well. It's you've got like quite an interesting setup as well.

Yeah, man, we try to do. Look, the show is audio first, insofar as when I edit this show, I am only.

Listening to you're editing it on your own.

We have a staff of a half dozen few people who are on the editorial side.

But me, I always I imagine you're right. Just I was gonna say if you did that earlier on that sounds not connecting.

Even Sobird just like five different credits to the name iPhones, shocking everything on iPhones. I am doing a past an editorial pass which I am making cuts and all that

And you're fully independent or are you backed by some like the is.

Dan Lebttard a corporate monolith?

I don't know who that is. I love that technically is a private equity entity.

That's how you say that.

Do you know about the metals actually really interesting?

No, I don't. But also I thought he was about todd Well like like the French.

Like the Boston the French bread.

Yes, the French Boston.

Dan Dan Dan la Bastard is my corporate partner.

That's a real disappointment.

A Cuban guy with a French name who looks white. All of this is very in a country only.

But beautiful.

You should like, I would love problem. Maybe too modest to do it. Mental ark is an interesting experiment. You should talk about it.

Yeah. So basically, Dan Lebutard left ESPN took his RSS feed with him, which is the key to starting a new business and microwaving of business is have your auto faith, have your feed right. And so what he did was he partnered with John Skipper, whos before president of ESPN, and they did not want to hire any ad salespeople, and so their licensing partner wound up being draft Kings and DraftKings you may know from every ad you've ever

Yeah, it's it's kind of getting in bed with one devil, I.

Guess, and and for legal reasons as well, I will not comment. Yeah yeah, yeah, but but but the short answer to where I am is that they funded Metal Lark, decided we want to start a new show from scratch. We want to trust this guy that we are friends with and and know and hopefully trusted, and uh, I got to create a show from scratch in now the vision that you have seen or heard. But where I am now, to speed run through my trajectory briefly, is that uh, Parbatory finds out is no longer in the

They got now but we we we we.

Just met with Palenteer. That's great. They really understand your audience. You should know the social.

Everything about your audience.

The w WE is not presenting us actually, and Dreill, what is interesting to me about this as somebody who also works in independent media. We'll talk about in a moment, I guess.

The way that you spent the money that you got from the corporate partner was like, obviously, the show looks good, it looks pro it sounds good, like there are talented

You're so much better at matching my show.

I don't know, man, it seemed.

But what I mean by this was that basically, like there were producers, there are people that were like, I'll file that foya for you.

I will do Like we are trying to be an actual news magazine, an era in which news magazines are either compromised in various ways or does dead. Now we're just kind of giving up on doing that, right So, Jeb, by the way, who I cannot truss is enough co host pod with David Roths about Hallmarks.

Okay, you can joke about this, but every single during CES, we did like thirteen and a half hours of audio, you know, not even an exaggeration, every single episode, and I did three thirty minute breaks so sections even at the end it was like David will podcast you, and every time like joyously, Yeah, okay, so this is great.

I don't like promoting my shit, and it also felt weird because I was not holding myself out as an expert, but the idea of you know, I'm going off like you shouldn't be AI in vacuum cleaners.

Bitch, you know, and just trying to do say that, trying to be big energy on it, and then at the end feeling like and if you like that, you're gonna love me, Like breaking down the worst performances of Candice Cameron's career every two months.

A guy who kind of looks like Chad Michael Murray or Chat Michael Murray.

Sometimes you do get Chad Michael Murray. But yes it is like a uh, we're off, we're firefield.

Yeah I don't, but but what you said just to catch you ple up was we had Jeb blood And as a correspondent looking into his almae matter, which happened to be the college in Florida that Ron DEA. Sanders had taken over, oh and hed College, the New College of Florida, and he had taken it over, it turns

Even if they tried to put any of this fucking effort into literally anything else.

It's all pranks. Basically, if Christopher Ruffo, who shows up in that episode, what if he tried to do other things? Yeah, what if he tried What if he tried jumping out of a helicopter? Yeah, I don't know if that's not Yeah, sure, that's nice of you to say that, certainly, No, no, no, just.

We are just riffing. Yeah, you don't not having fun.

He could do anything. Maybe he flies, we don't know.

But the bit that I wanted to underline with that, though, is that, like that sort of journalism is hard and expensive, but it is also it doesn't have to come out the other end as like morally safer sitting in a chair talking to a whistleblower.

Yeah.

Like the bit that I have enjoyed the most about the certainly the bit about like Jordan Hudson is good for this. I mean, it's good on its own, but like so much of when we talk about journalism, we talk about, you know, the dangerous state that it's in, and you know all of that is is true, it's also fun, like it is a cool thing to do with your time.

Yeah.

And the bit that I think you captured in that.

Which is sort of like at the core of what makes like a good podcast good, is that, like, when you're reporting a story, there's this like sort of like Flowers for Maaldron one bit where like, for ninety minutes after you file the story, you are an expert on a thing that you just did all this reading and all this reporting on it. And then if you're like me, slowly the curtain drops and then when it goes back up, it's just like a nineteen eighty nine Dave Maggot and

You also learn more about the material as you get someone to bounce off of. But I think.

That that part, like I thank you for again pitching the show better than I could, because the premise I'm angling for a job. I mean, well, listen, mister, are you kill one more turtle? Something on your heads?

To me?

The idea here is that this stuff doesn't need to just be you know, and you ought to proposition. It's like you want to actually hang out while we're doing journalism, right, And that part of like it is stupid but smart. It is highbrow butt lowbrow. It is fundamentally silly and also nutritious in some meaningful way. That's why I love and I'm not yet tired by my job.

And I'm the same way with better offline because I don't bother to worry so much about whether I'm perfect. As many people email me, thank.

You, please have people reminding you, thank you.

Oh, there's a slight echo in the room. There's a slight echo in my heart.

Now, great note.

But it's you get to talk about this stuff that's

I also think that so much of our magnetic field in journalism is the sun god of the algorithm that I was describing before, and for me, I think, you know, Dave magnum aside, there are just lots of pockets of sports that are so much more fun than what the a block on a given talk show is that day, and I am somebody who often might be participating in that a block of like I love look, and I'm

Yeh.

But even one of my favorite dining experiences I had recently, my dear friend Noah Arenstein, friend of the show. I went out with him to them Andy cap Fe, which is exactly what it sounds like, and he ordered it. And there's this guy Chris Crowley there thinking he works at New York Magazine or New Yorker. He's going to be really pissed. I forgot about that. It was so nice to just be there with two experts to just

The Long Island Bar down on the Avenue. Yeah, yeah, yah, good Burger there, and it.

Was just like try the cheese coats. Seeing around with someone who really loves and knows a shit ton about something and having a discussion about it. He's electric and fun. It's the basis of all well not all podcasting, but it's the basis of why we like entertainment and why we have experts in general. But I feel like it's something kind of lost on modern journal like you don't,

I also think that it's one of those things where and I understand how if you work in a s pious news gathering organization like you would take this work seriously, But there's also something very useful about taking stupid shit seriously in this case, which is basically this is another

Yeah, it was. It was just funny because it's like you can see who else is sort of in there. We're doing this today seeing what else people filed.

But I love that, like the idea of I mean, all of those cost a little bit of money, all of them takes some time to do, and yet it is like you're gonna get a better product out of the other end of it. But also it's funny to spend time using the Freedom of Incremation Act or stuff like that. It doesn't all need to be taking.

Down this very bizarre took lesque man and he is extremely I'm not getting into the age discourse. It's not worth it, I'm but.

It's the bit that people should know if they don't follow sports, is that Bill Belichick is the crustiest, nastiest dude, just like a guy famous for like being like rude to reporters, rude with.

People here like a hoodie with holes in it, and.

He looks a Trump. I mean, he's something of that Trump spoke about at one Dais or another where he says, there's this letter, this letter, this correspondence between Belichick and Trump. He's he is in many ways truly the paragon of what it means to be the greatest coach in football, many believe, and also the biggest asshole. Yeah, and is he is both. And so this being the character at the heart of this is partly why Yes, we did have one of our producers file hundreds of public.

Record, but that's like to me that and I think that all of this stuff that I remember most fondly reading has that element of like applying a great deal of rigor and work, like not just in terms of and craft too, obviously, like you wanted to read well and sound good and all that, but doing way more than you need to on a silly thing is to me like basically one hundred times out of one hundred.

And everyone has a weird proclivity. I can talk about for hours. That's why I can't legally bring up jud Jo's bizarre adventure on the show anymore. My heart ready informed me this morning. But it's just also we all have our own things. So watching someone else through that and put real love and effort and sincerity into it is a powerful and interesting thing. And shooting the shit with some people that actually give a shit about who

Yeah, it's like the sort of dynamic that I imagine makes Rogan work for people, which is basically like two guys just like you know, going back and.

Forth for a while. But if like one of those people.

Has to know what they're talking about, ideally another one of them would be funny like that, Basically the armature

It's also something that isn't incentivized given the basic math of how to do anything now. Right, So the whole idea of like we're going to spend a lot of work, a lot of money. I mean, again, I cannot stress enough how much of Dan Lebutard's money I've been spent to do this stuff. And I don't expect anybody else like the whole question. At a certain point that you begin to contemplate around like what did we do here? What is this format? Why does it work? Who else

And the people the literally like you, and you.

Like yes, No, it's do you obsess about this enough such that you want to spend money hiring people who are going to obsess about it even more? And that is again, if you're gonna start from scratch, it's not what I would advise anyone to do.

I actually don't know if I agree. I like the high production. I think taking stuff seriously on the production level is good, but I don't know. I have I put our newsletter this morning's Monday, the sixteenth of June. I'll probably do a new podcasts about it as well. But it's like, I feel like they all want the Joe Rogan of the left, and they're like, how does this keep happening? We have this amicable OAF who's curious about everything because he knows nothing. Oh, and we also

Oh, I don't know that he's doing any research.

No, I don't like for him, all right, yeah, for him, Like I would not be surprised if he didn't know who was in front of him, Like who you know, who's this, Jamie? That's Donald Trump? Donald Trump?

Is he good?

Is he?

Is he any good?

Yeah?

Yeah?

Hi? Like it's I mean, there's also Lex Friedman, which is just a.

Mystery, but it's I have many follow ups about about Lex. I.

Well, my first question is why can't he say a sentence? He's just like hello, I'm.

Al struck by this.

On those podcasts, things that are like popular that are not for me. Yes, like that's the story of my life. It's fine. It's just like it's way easier for me to even you know, like seeing a few minutes of ant Man and the Wasp and I'm like, nope, not that does not go you know, in any of my.

But that makes sense.

But it's also I'm just saying that it's like not for me.

The idea of watching a podcast where like someone who is obviously either both unprepared or just like not good at talking, Like I don't get how that.

Was mental latency, like he he during the Donald Trump interview. I only watch bits of because I don't want to die. He goes, Bolatics is a dirty game, and he just pausing, goes, how do you win at that game? This is the most popular tech podcast.

Really good, And it's.

Just like, yeah, this is very true. Like it's just like so bad.

It's like I love that he wears black tie. Yeah does he? He wears like he always wears like a black sea with a black tie and a white Stark shirt. So cool. Yeah, like the cater waiter swag. That's a really solid, real party down.

Yeah, it looks like a guy John I don't. But with stuff like that, I'm just insulted by the whole ex fertment thing. He's so bad. But those podcasts also like six hours so long. He did one with Sam Mormon for like four hours. He could have said anything. I can't watch it. I try to. My brain stops. My brain just like shuts down. It's like I've been in a car accident.

That's an awfully long time to be spending with any dudes, let alone if one of the him.

Samuel, and he's just like, yeah, you know dedis senders. We wild themselves now, And it's like, wow, what is dead? How do you computer?

Ye?

I wish.

I hope this is as long as the Irishman.

No.

I want, I want all of that.

I want to be on next Rippons so bad. I should just be clear. I'm going to read him riddles like it's going to be amazing. But you look at like Theovon or Joe Rogan and you see the productions good. Theovon is a good interviewer. He's got despite his insane that he has like an insanely long name. Do you know his name? His name, his real name? Oh my christ, it is so happy to be the dutchessh this is something or other likes or whatever it comes after it.

Like, yeah, damn, yeah, this is a good decision by THEO Vonn to go by Theovn given the proceeding Yeah.

It'd be so much funnyer if he us this whole name though, and kept her and they're like, yeah, my name is current. But but you don't get the sense from Rogan or Kernatowski, uh, that they that they're condescending or that they have like maybe they are in some way to like people of color, I don't know, but they have a genuine like, oh, I want to be here, I'm interested, I'm interested in getting good material out of you.

What's hard about it? Though? I'll tell you what I've found hard about it? And I mean it's different.

I don't mean it's not that hard.

No, it isn't that hard. I mean it's not hard relative to like we know that people like it, you know, and so like doing it well is a skill that you can learn and we've enjoyed when Pablo's come on.

The Defector podcast distraction, like it's like getting to shoot around.

With a with like Lebron, Like, you're just you've done a lot of this, You're really good at talking. You've less verbal junk than I do. Like it's fun, you're a verbal junk baller. I'm just absolutely.

But beyond that, I think that so that is like it's a learnable skill to be able to do the challenge for me though, is I want to be as good at talking or as knowledgeable as whoever is on and for the most part, I'm not.

And that's not a criticism of me. It just means that, like you have to be willing to ask simpleton type questions.

You want to put this in a more empathetic sense. Same with the listeners, right, they're logging on to hear you tell them something and maybe you Pablo telling you something that you don't know, and you learning, maybe they too, We'll learn. It's something Robert and Sophie earlier on said. It's just like, if you don't know something, don't just ask every time you have to, because there will be a listener who's.

Like total I believe it's funny to mention like Lebron because oftentimes I have to do the exercise my mind of like do I need to explain who Lebron is to people?

Yeah?

Like truly, like I presume that the audience that comes to my show does not know anything about anything.

And Lebron James is a basketball player.

If you on the one of the biggest basketball men we've got, he's he's really good, prominent, he's very strong.

But but what I would say about about like what about like meeting the listener wherever they are it is to me. It is about the exercise of can I make someone who doesn't give a single ship about this care about this story? And so we do stories about fencing corruption, We'll do stories. I mean, I can I could waste your time mentioning all of the obscure things that I have I think confy into listening to.

I mean, Hankazari or interview was fascinating. That was like the furthest from what you agullly do because and he wasn't telling just stories about like the Simpson stuff, like it.

Was like he was great. And we tried to the joke of my shows that were a technically sports show, which means that like somewhere like an easter egg, you'll see a sports reference. I don't think anybody cares enough to check the box, but I'd check the box. And Roth,

And did the one of my favorite ones is like my good friend Beetle Juice.

Yeah, there's a lot of because the idea of thinking about who you could convince him is a real guy as a fan of his, he's segning you know, I knew, well we were friends, we were great friends, but we're not friends anymore.

Can die.

But the the bit that I the dumb question thing, the version of it that I sort of like, whatever, this is like positive self talk that he was saying into a microphone we had.

Bob mold On was Bob old uh hooskerdoo and sugar like iconic punk rock musician man.

And also very strong yes and a sweet yeah. Also worked in wrestling and really just like one of the most interesting guys in the listening as a writer, not as a as a performer. But he uh, you know those bands being a great deal to me. M he is my co host Drew McGarry's favorite musician. And the question that I asked him basically after you know he had a new album out to listen to it and I don't know enough about it helped that it was about music, which is basically just a foreign language to me.

Like is it is it cool for you?

That question?

And I think I had to get past the anxiety of like asking someone I respect a question that is basically like something a seven year old would have asked, and yet like we got a really good answer, and also like I wanted to know, you know, like it's better to admit what you don't know and ask the seven year old question than it is to try to like bluff and do the expertise thing along with someone who's a real expert.

And I have I have this theory that I will never be able to prove, which is I think most people forget stuff all the time, Like you will be on listening to something and be like who's Lebron James go fuck uh golf uh? You know, or like who and like you will forget all terms, Like on the show, I ownerous thing and people say you repeat yourself. I repeat myself, like defining what generated AI's probabilistic, What does

Him for all the stuff.

He's the guy that gave the interview where he's like, all day I'm just fucking asking questions of our AI.

I talked to Gemini all day long.

That's such a dela of micro That's what it was. No similar gargoyle like yeah.

But it's just profiling on my part wrong. Remove it from the.

Podcast profiling of like extremely rich asshole rooming products. I mean, like you welcome to the show.

But there was something I think the idea of like what is any of this four?

Is that a good question to ask yourself? To bring it back to Rogan for a second, though, it also feels like anyone whose industry is seeing rates of ketamine usage increase so dramatically cannot possibly what does that indicate to you? It just it just feels like there is a fundamental searching for something like fulfillment and a happiness.

With lonely and by the way, like this the one is like like everyone is more disconnected.

And I find that in sports of course, Like if there's any lesson to learn from Bill Balichick and Michael Jordan and Tom Brady and every greatest of all time and any category you want, it is that they wont everything and are miserable.

Yes, completely, And and.

So how do you fill the void that you thought the trophies, the money the generative AI was going to fill? You search for other things like the Silicon Valley thing. Again, I'm not, by the way, something I'm frustrated by is just how now uncool Joe Rogan made psychedelics? Yeah, and maybe maybe I'm the least cool person to think of it in those terms. The point being, though, that there is something that is missing that people are trying to find,

And I would be this would be a hostile interview technique that they will never because one of my favorite things is that I grew up thinking I was stupid. I thought I was stupid until like two years ago. I'm deadly fucking serious. It's an incredible technique.

Though no amount of you have like a real nice house, Yeah, like there was no point where you were like damn, non accidents keep happening.

No, it's luck.

Like I like how the thing where you have the accent that makes you sound smart didn't work on you as it did, But it means though.

It's worked on me from the very beginning, Like, damn, this guy really knows his Raiders football?

How did he learn so much?

Oh God, I'm gonna get emails about the writers. Do you know? Looks good? I think broke anyway, But it means that I've never walked into a room being like, oh, I hope he doesn't think I'm stupid, which is actually

That, Oh but sports is full. We did an episode actually that's kind of related to this, and it's about kind of the tyranny of jargon in sports and how lots of people are trying to perform the vocabulary of a coach, which is kind of like, right, like a scout.

What is the vocabulary of a coach or a scout?

So there's a lot of phrases. Do you have like a couple of like brown note like nightmare phrases?

For me?

Is impact winning? That's an NBA one?

Does that mean it means it's a good basketball player.

It's the most annoying way to say that. This is all No, it's not.

It's not like it that's that's like an it's almost like.

An idiomatic just sort of like so they just say someone's an impact. But there's also just like the Fighter Pilot kind of like call sign stuff where it's like, yeah, Spider to wy Banana, Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a lot of what within sport? Oh sorry, just within the game.

So Spider too by Banana? Is this is a play call that I will not even begin to summary. I thought I thought you were literally Spider doing like a plain thing.

It is a John Gruden play. I know a listener of the pod friend friend of.

It friend, but I don't even know what a friend Spider apocryphal or it's real not because Ed's been to uh Gruden's quarterback. Yeah camp, you were doing squads with due.

Yeah, Jered Lorenzen coach. It didn't go well.

R I p Yeah, briefs so yeah, but there is there's all this vocabulary that sort of signals that you have the fluency of a of a of of of of a code that is so indecipherable, uh to the outside person that it becomes a point of pride. And so in sports there's just a lot of peacocking around that language, a lot of like, oh, they're you know, they're running cover three there, but they're doing a stunt of them a gap to be just like stuff that's

And the thing is you can say, like I've seen some THEOV and I've seen some Joe Rug and they fucking host white supremacists in the open it fucking sucks. You can still look at the format and learn, and I think people have trouble separating those things because it really comes down to they their questions are simple, and then they get like Jordan pieces of prok. Have you seen the Nightmaan Man? Yeah, like you just some insane shit.

That happened to my buddy Eric. Yeah, yeah, there is that sense.

I think also there's a difference in sports discourse where there's everything that you said about, like the sort of ostentatious performance of expertise and like inside y you know, like everybody wants to be plugged in. Yeah, it has impacted in some ways, like the language. In fact, I just used impact as a verse.

It's clearly it's mainly something on an impact made an impact on like a concussive. You used it correctly, yes, I guess I did.

But the way that that's like worked out, I think that there's the way that people like Scoop Smith type guys here, like Seamstrania dudes, like they write not in like a syntax that is observable outside of text messages from Russians to guys like him, that there's something very like artificial and.

Shouts just for the listeners. Is a guy who mostly says a guy has been traded.

Yes, he says it first, he exactly, he is five seconds ahead of the actual public.

And he also was the one that scooped Donald Trump getting COVID.

I hate that gets yeah.

And what sucks is I found out through I was speaking to someone at the time for some reason I can't disclose, and they showed me a clip from the barstool show the Yak when it happened, and when they showed this guy on their Stephen Chay, and it's just like the worst ten minutes of just like a guy who made basically was like, yeah, I think Shams would break World War three, and just these guys like wanting him to be wrong, and they just hate every like

That's his only and that he's like there's a guy that does it for the NFL. Yes, a guy they're trying to make Jeff Passon, who's like an ace feature writer. They're trying to make him that guy for baseball.

And the incentives are to be a newsbreaker because you are I mean, by the way, when Woj was doing this, Adrian Morjenerowski, who I should disclose is a person who

He kept coming up with new phrasing and it's hard. There's like thirty two picks. So he'd be like, I'm hearing that The bulls are in Source so Old by Wendell Carter Junior.

At the Spot, which is just, I mean, every single better off line episode says walks you through Yeah, because I cannot fucking think of another way to say it, and I refuse, so I ge't miss the But.

You can see all of what we're describing here. These are not These are great paying jobs, and they do tend to select for people who are like metabolically capable of responding to text messages for twenty hours a day.

But yeah, although when woj' that's me. When wod left the job, he was basically like this sucks. I hate it again. I'm having a hard time. Like who's like, I'm unhappy? Yeah, was basically his press release and like, yeah, whatever, the opposite of Michael Jordan, I'm back. He's just like Nope, I'm not the whole thing.

But like that is a function of all of this. But I think the bit that is kind of missing from it, and you see it when you know, like when a podcast works, or if you're reading a story that's written by somebody who is given the space and the time to write something that they like, which is increasingly rare all this shit is fun. Everybody's here because

Legacy.

Yeah, that's one of the best topics to play fight about with the fellas.

So the thing is, this is something missing from the tech industry, because most people in tech when you talk to don't seem to want to talk about anything. You've got this growth of who is it? I really should know this one? Ryan Something. There's a former player who has a really good podcast with a bunch of players, Ryan Clark, Yes, Ryan Clark, and he just sits around and he has very serious conversations, sometimes quite joking ones with other people that have played games of sports for money.

Got like a real job to avoid losing. But I do think that there's what you're talking about, though, is that like people want something authentic.

And the tech industry constantly tries to create it, but it always ends up being a venture capitalist and three of their investments being like you know, I was using general if Ai the other day and it just changed my life. How I were going to add break and it's just like these fucking people pissed me off because tech is so universal, whether or not you consider yourself technical. Kind of the same way with the sport. It's like baseball. One of my favorite Casey Kagawa, friend of the show,

This is one of the big edd points to me, one of the ones that I think like you were first to and should be repeating as often as possible, which is that basically everybody that at some point everybody liked all this stuff.

Yeah, and now they don't, and they still.

They like they like the stuff, they hate the tech and.

Yeah, And then I think that like and so that you know, you create this demand for people that they you.

Know, it's cool to be able to like read anything as it happens, Like it will make you insane, but it's not bad, Like it's like kind of gratitude actually, yes, And yet like that you take that interest and then you use that to like sort of leverage ways to make more and more money off of it and dilute the experience more and more. And I think that that, you know, when someone is doing that to you for information that you need to understand the world around you,

Well, I also think big picture that everything I mean, this is this is going to sound profoundly unprofound, but like everything is tech, yes, like sports is. It's impossible to talk about everything we've basically talked about so far has been filled through the lens of tech in ways that it's different now that it used to be, in ways that these characters are people that we now know

Sometimes when you're looking at Jordan Hudson's Instagram account, it's just for work, it's.

Just because I'm a journalist. But look, my point being that it's when it comes to like media, the future of media, it's just impossible to disentangle every conversation I ever have from the fact that we are working in some direct or stochastic way for tech companies.

You even mentioned the sun good of the algorithm.

It's just impossible to not think about standard of success through the lens of what a tech company has engineered. Yes, and so it's it's yeah, it's omnipress. Yeah.

But the challenge with this too, this is for Defector, which is more of a it's a print product, ye, you know, like it's a website that people subscribe to and read, and we have a podcast and we do videos every now and then, but most of what we do is writing that. To Publo's point about the tech industry, this has been like the challenge for us. I think, like we've got a steady, loyal subscriber base.

We're good.

It's a good business. How you direct people to your posts is not just I mean, it's the challenge that we're talking about the most, but any place that is print, as these sort of the tech mediated spaces through which people used to discover this as they either dry up or actively turned against their users.

That idea of like I guess discoverability is I say that word all the time. Yeah, I hate myself everything. I mean, it feels bad because it's like it's a fake ugly one feels like impact.

But yes, it does feel it has that, but it kind of goes back to the thing I'm saying about the money side. It's like, I don't know this show is quite successful in pomp because iHeartRadio put it on the fucking rate. Yea, the actual show, but they put a bunch of advertising behind it, which is awesome. I'm glad, really glad they did it, But it's like a big pomp. What a surprise A show has trouble finding new listeners when they have no discovery and just.

We are we every look the obvious sort of statements of fact. It is harder to find anything now because all of us are fragmented, silo not consuming the same things, have personalized feeds. Again explained by the tech industry post lines that standards absolutely and so true and and some platforms are now like disincentivizing hyperlinks to places I mean literally like this is this is why it's so hard to get discovered. And so if the standard for just

Premium feed on on you please subscribe any money, like, so it costs me thousands a year to do that's nice. What are you gonna put on the premium Iriday news?

You said, dudes, nudes? I take artistic news.

Yeah, you have to get all right, the mic magnifying glass tool. Anyway, it's Friday news and WS. It's why I can't say the word pawn either, a pawn because you're watching porn stars.

Huh.

I'm like, yeah, the show with Rick. Oh yeah, best I can do. I'm sorry. Uh, it's just even doing that felt dirty. But it was kind of like, yeah, this cost me thousands of dollars a year.

Like I'm contemplating the same thing. What are we going to put behind our premium sort of.

Value wall And it's just the only advantage I think I really have is that I can write so much so fast, and I'm pretty good at the writing, but I can just fucking today.

It was like, your like, average newsletter is my monthly output in.

Terms of word count, but I don't post it at full fifty five pm on a Friday.

That's that's a failure on your part. It's as editorial best practice.

That's that's what everyone loves and what they signed up for. But it's it's fucked. But I also think it may end up being something good because people are being way more direct with what they actually want. I also think this is something where legacy media really fucks up, because okay, you've got the Daily. Actually I want to tell a really fucked up story. So I heart Media Awards right, which I did not win. To Kevin Ruce's very unfair.

I think if you did a live recording of The Daily, you would have to do it at like the forum at Madison's.

That's so sad.

Yeah, it's tough, man. This is a real hard thing to get your head around.

But this is like, but this is the thing with these kids. It's a Buddhakana.

He's gonna do a live episode.

Opening up the fucking pit about Daily about.

How the subway is too scary. Now, that's gonna be the episode that they're gonna perform.

And that's when I'm here and with the wheelbarrows, that's when I'm just fucking spinning. And the legacy media people are pissing it away because they have the discovery discoverability part. Don already The New York Times could do so much interesting shit, but they're so afraid of this vague objectivity thing. I know, probably you have to do your like disclosures and shit, but they're just like, nah, instead of doing the disclosures, well just too a really boring and hitty job.

I'll say this with sports too, that this is an advantage that we have in this space over a place like The Times. I mean, The Times has got to report on things that are not fun, like so a little bit of whimsy, And anytime The Times attempts wimsy, there's this sort of like dog walking on its hind legs thing where you're like, we shouldn't be doing that.

Like that you don't experience, but also you're like impressed. You're like, well, I didn't know you could do that, like please stop. Like the the.

Thing with sports that does sort of like move you in a direction where like you could do more of that type of stuff, like you don't need to talk about sports in any particular way. The challenge for you know, I think for sports talk radio, which is something that I can't imagine an audience that overlaps less in the audience of this podcast than the people that listen to Wfan.

Of defaulted to this like sourpuss play fighting shit is a mystery to me other than the fact that it's like, if you had to sit and do something into a microphone for five hours a day, you'd probably come out of it pretty crusty too.

So I actually the reason that I like doing the talking with the micro front thing is actually Penn State. I was on the Lion FM. If you are a Lion FM listener who heard me on college radio, email me.

You doing talk or play music both okay, And I was co hosting with Joe Paterno. He did the weekly call in show.

I didn't know who he was. I just thought he lived there.

Elderly Italian man from the community.

No, I did crazy shit. I had like a band on this go called Epileptic Pete was epileptic. He had his own eight string bass and they played like video game music. People fucking loved it. You just have some fun with it. But talk radio is extremely interesting. It's extremely when it's done well. It's I hope that this is kind of the format I'm going for here.

Yeah, that was the idea of Vegas. I know.

Yeahs fun.

I'd never really done that before, and people.

Because talk radio is actually magical when done right. But done right is having a host that sounds like they're just talking but has thoughts about everything and they've been thinking about it to ask questions in some way. Pablo, you do this excellently. And it's like it pisses me off because it's like they don't want to try anything other than the exact standard. But I think the answer is it's the fucking algorithm. It's that they want to normalize and fit into what they think will go viral.

Baby, which it generally is stuff that makes you mad, right, I mean, I feel like that's the idea of like that kind.

Of stuff that's already big. It's that or you already work for a big newspaper, it's already a big brand other than the top of the iTunes podcast I don't know what's going with everyone is called like the Smile Hour with Dr Janine Benin, and it's like each episode is sixty minutes long and it's like how to smile more. I've brought smile exper Jesus to fat and he will

It's what's coming out of the radio and the ladies about to chop the fish.

Yeah.

So I think my overarching theory of the future of media and everything is that we're all only fans now, which is to say that nudes yep, which is to say that like, there's a bunch of stuff that's wildly popular that's just not my kink.

Yeah.

Now, I can also access the hyper specific thing that is mine, or create it and monetize it. But it's that thing of like in an era in which scale of the level of the New York Times or any incumbent publication is now impossible to recreate. For various reasons, including by the way, like to get back to Joe Rogan or Bill Simmons, like the first mover advantage of like being one of the first podcasts cannot be replicated anymore.

Like sort of count my blessings with this with the factor because like it is, it's a good business, right, Like we're not we're growing, and yet like I think that the challenge withere that you know, we're going to turn five in September as a website, and that like more or less by website standards, is like middle age. And I don't think anybody like we all love it, we all love working with each other, like it's not

Why do you want to grow?

So? I like, I like the look it democracy dies with us, yes, right, that's but that I feel like is the cultural moment that we're in. Not to get too depressing about it, but you can see this with like this is the apex of Trump, like he wants all of America buried with him like a fucking pharaoh. This is not a culture that is built to last beyond his like last breath, because what happens after that is none of his business.

He doesn't care but I actually think it's grimmer than that. I think it's one step further and it's everywhere. It's the rock on me. It's the growth of the cost thing. It's people don't know. I know why they want to fucking grow. They just want to grow. Everything in our society tells us to grow. What do you want to do? I want to be a CEO. I want to I want the biggest thing ever. It's none about the product, It's about the posiness.

This is where I put the the emphasis and like the difference for what like Defector does not want to become Fox, but like we don't want like to televise a bowl game.

We need a llure of growth still and this is not grossly.

Is just to like because we want to have like new people and do new ship. The challenge with it too, though, is that like the ways in which you can make money there And we've had new revenue streams and we're making more money. We have ads for people that aren't signed in, like they see that now we've got the podcasts those have ads, and we sell those.

Cell phones, those gold plated oh my god s.

Which are very those are great and we're looking forward to making those right here in the United States.

We're gonna make them.

Cell phone Oh yeah, there is one of those. So smartness. One of the biggest comedy podcasts in the world, Listeners, has made a MV and O so a cell phone network that lives on top of T mobile. What is V and L I forget what it stands for. It basically means you can have.

A suba things mobile. Yeah, you can run your yes a network.

Ryan Reynold's gonna lead to the collapse of the telecommunications industry?

Can that possibly be?

Thank you Daniel our producer Mobile Virtual Network Operator. Oh I knew that, Yes, Daniel, thank you. It's but it's that really There's a great Slate piece on it as well. It was just really echoed how fucking sad it was because these guys are like super rich already and super popular, but they needed its cell phone.

Growing for for the sake of just being like, there's more money out there to he made is I think this is an area where like everybody at Defector wants to fucking blog. That's our job, that is what we want.

And that's why I fucking pay.

Yeah, and I think that like.

And it's why I feel happy in this work in a way that I haven't felt before. I worked at all different types of sites in the past, with all different types of funders. I don't know what vice was. I guess that's a Ponzi scheme. Or for places that were owned by private equity that wasn't great. I worked for places that were owned as part of some sort of like venture back to tempt you know.

At Vox.

Basically whatever it was that Vox was trying to do, I was briefly a part of that. In all of those instances, everybody that I worked with just wanted to do our work, and yet you were subject to the I mean not even just like the whims kind of like cheapens it. I mean it was whatever it was that they wanted to do was what you were going to wind up, you know, downstream that would arrive as an avalanche when they rolled the snowball from the top

Just going to come on the show at some point. Goods.

But we were talking about the experience of trying to convince the private equity concern that had bought was Gizmoto Media now it is Geomedia and basically unrecognizable.

Spanfeller Jim Spanfelder, bad.

Guy on the question.

But he great had a hair though I hate to say it, but it's like it's amazing. Yep, it's got a quiff. Yeah, yes, anyway, he looks great. He's been getting by and his looks for years though. But we were trying to like go to them with the information that we had, which is like we're making more money than we're spending. People read this, These people comment on everything. These blogs get passed around. It's this many, you know, millions of unique readers for stuff. They just didn't give

Yeah, I think so to get back to the misery of Mike Jordan and every tech executive and blogs that aren't run in the way that I think Roth is describing, I think that's all the time at work, Like the point of getting the money is to do the job that you want to do, and it is not the other way around. It is not to contort and develop some sort of content dysmorphia such that you've convinced that you're sucking good, that oh, this is what beauty is. Now,

I just what pisses me off is I'm pretty sure that if you just did everything with discussing, it would be insanely profitable because no one's fucking trying. So just if you just did it at the broadsheet types, I'm sure that there are people who are desperate to have Michael bob Ura or like tell them that the subway.

Is many millions of people no accounting for tastes one.

If instead of that it was someone entertaining, do you think that they would get scared or do you think they'd be like, Oh, I think that.

There's I think that a lot of that stuff could be better or it could be different. I think the more important to me is the idea that like, you should be able to pick more widely what experiences, yes, and if that, you know, the Times isn't going to offer you. They could, you know, but The Times isn't going to offer you like, here's a version of the Daily where the guy doesn't sound medicated like or you know, some of these things that are just a different energy.

So this is dating me a bit, But there's a crazy thing. They already tried this with the tech media and it worked really well. There used to be like seven different tech columnists. You kind of used to have like Dwight Silverman over at the Houston Chronicle, I think, or Dallas Morning News. Forgive me, Dwight. You had like hiwath Bray over at the Globe, you had Eric Benderoff

Another ed point that has been instructive to me. This kind of like the row economy idea, and I've sort of I mean, it's hard to not spiral when you think about this, But like, what are you gaining by Like, you are getting some small savings by eliminating the tech columnists from Houston Chronicle from your ledger. You're not paying a guy ninety thousand dollars a year or whatever it is.

These guys used to get paid shit tons of money.

Yeah, well that which there is that.

No, but they used to get paid shit tons of money and they were on there for years.

Yes, usually they were adding any sort of value to me. This is the bit that I don't get. Is like when you drain a company and kill it and you get some money from it. The private equity model of basically like piling a bunch of debt onto something. You take from this company what is valuable, You leave them with the debt.

In a few years they go away, So.

You have all this money now that might otherwise have gone into that company. We can understand that that's bad and that it's unfair to.

A lot of people.

Also, what do you do with that money? This is the bit that I've always sort of wondered about.

Like, now it's Jim's is it? You?

Just like you book nothing fucking chainsmokers to play the weekend.

I must be clear, the answer is nothing. So is that it sits.

Theres some like transparency into the.

Scene of super wealthy. It's nothing, It's absolutely fucking nothing, so they sits on it.

So, by the way, this is where again the metaphor sort of becomes the reality.

Right.

So sports is currently grappling with the influx of private equity. The leagues are now passing rules to allow shares of teams to be bought by private equity firms, and part of the the the looming sort of storm cloud here is the idea that actually, as with content, as with grocery stores, as with any industry, there's a conflict between what that thing is meant to do and it's actual standard of success and growth profit. Right. So, the whole idea of like the part of sports that is seemingly

That winning isn't always profitable.

Right, So well, and that breakage between winning and profit, that's where you are inviting a corruption that has been visited upon every other thing in American life that we've already.

Out yeah, and this is I mean true as a fan, but I think that anybody that participates in the culture in any way, like there's you don't have to know what the Pittsburgh Pirates specifically are like to understand that, like, this is a team that is owned by a billionaire, that is part of the system that is.

Created and to explain for the listeners who don't listen to.

Spoil Pittsburgh Pirates are a baseball.

And also but specifically, the fact that they can be a bad team and make a shit ton of money.

Yeah, how so, and probably welcome to jump in when I get anything wrong. A couple of things built a great ballpark with some public money. It is a great place to go and hang out and drink beers. Even if the team is bad, which the team reliably has been for more than a decade. The owner has a lot of money, enough money to buy a baseball team, which you need. This is another area where private equity and then I think eventually sovereign wealth is.

Going to be is also being legislated in buy shares good. Yeah, and so that's like all international sport is all that. It just hasn't really happened in the United States, but it's coming.

I mean a team like the Cowboys are the Giants their valuation based on what the number is. It's like no person could buy it. It's too many billions of dollars like whatever, like Elon or Jeff Bezos could buy it, but they're not going to.

Because they must to buy the Pirates.

This is I considered calling him out on that, like being like you coward by the A's like, prove it, prove how smart you are.

E was like, I'm a fan of the Eagles and.

The Steelers, and I was just like a classic, Like it's like somehow like you took a Hillary Clinton line and you made it soundly.

They called me the bus of tech anyway.

So here's how the Pirates make it work. Extremely it is not expensive to run a major league baseball team if you don't pay anybody, but you can papers get there is no salary floor. So the product that you put out there basically needs to be at least to be minimally competitive, like you can't have people like coming to your house and burning it down. But minimally competitive for the Pirates means losing one hundred out of one

Is getting paid.

There's like you know, parking, there's concessions, There's a million different ways to make a little bit of money at a time. And then the big thing that makes it work is that because this structure that baseball has a revenue sharing system, so that basically this is money coming from the biggest It is socialism for rich.

Guys, exclusively for rich guys, because it is.

It is only within that system. So a team like the Yankees that makes all this money and plays in a big market has this huge TV deal that the Pirates could never get us Pittsburgh is so much smaller than New York. They pay money into a system that

Good teams do both. The Dodgers do both. You don't have to do neither.

You don't have to do anything, And yes you don't, because you can just sit there and the money comes in.

Right, And I think about it also not merely because I think there's yes, there's a philosophical approach that is overarching here. There's also just like the edge cases of

And you don't need business.

You don't need him to make the margins exactly. Yes, that in fact you could still make without them. That's exactly the point. The margin thing is to me, like it's and this is the sort of short term thinking that you see.

Attack a lot, which is why I brought it up.

Now, if you think of the business that you have as something that you're gonna own for the rest of your life and then you're gonna leave to your kids, now that's a little bit perverse. I don't think you should necessarily be able to do that, But if you're thinking of the business that way, the free agent that you resign is essential to the survival of your business because it shows people that are fans now that you care about them and you care about the team in

And I think that and it's everywhere. The reason I wanted you to go through that is I think listeners really understand the basics of like how you have tech companies that will do as little as possible to keep the service running to make the most amount of money. I think it's important for people to know this is everywhere. The rot economy is everywhere. It's insane. How endemic it is the baseball though, you could just run a shit team forever.

Yep.

Well look at Google. Not to make it the whole thing about tech, but it's like, it is very fucking depressing seeing how these people work. But I think that one thing will work in tech that doesn't work as often in sports but does a bit is attacking the owners.

Yep.

Because Dick Mondfort from the Rockies, who I email with, he he has stopped responding to me.

Oh really, I think it was people email with dick Man for like, if you email him, he'll email you back. Yeah.

He didn't email me back about JoJo's bizarre adventure, which I think was what broke Hi.

Maybe a bridge too far. Okay, well he might not be ready the.

Delightful show, but you can't really humiliate someone like that. But the pressure on onners has changed things in the past, like they don't want to be despised by an entire town. I don't think enough people know who Sundapaeshio Salonment is, and I think the more people who learn and mock them because they are so rich, they don't have anything other than the names, and unlike sports teams, they don't have anything cool.

So I think one difference with sports than tech is, in fact the broad cultural popularity inherited over generations, such that you are invested in this team in a way that you could never really be invested in the same way when it comes to even the device you use all of the time.

Yeah.

So I've talked to owners about this, NBA owners who are like, yeah, my day job as multi billionaire is like to obsess over the price of like polypropylene or some other you know, material that I monetize. None, none of that is as resonant. Is as much of a pain point in my life as the guy on the street who is actively booing me when he sees me.

But imagine if they fucking like them, yeah, like a beloved owner, Like if the product was really good. People used to fucking love Google.

So the Mets have a great example of this, and that they are owned by what you can only call a prolific financial criminal, Steve Cohen. Like it's just a guy that was banned by the SEC from trading because of all the insider trading that he Oh my god, yeah, I know, and guy kind of friends, I know, right, they're mad at him, they're jealous.

I would love I would love FRANCESSA on this topic, gahly, who is that going over his art collection? Meal, it's a lot of Modigliani's, you know, and I don't like him, you know too skinny. Uh but the we Lovegliani jokes here?

Also who is that?

He is a sculptor? Okay, and they are very skinny, but the uh Brakouzi guy but uh so.

Cohen though, like bought the Mets as the team that he was obsessed with as a fan as a kid, and basically this is what he's gonna do with the rest of his life. He went and he took a team that was owned by a fail family.

Not just fail sends.

There's a whole multi generational thing, and did the stuff that I was talking about in terms of like basically investing in the little things that make an organization work better. In this case, it's people that help your pitchers pitch better, coaches that actually help in an individual way, and then also executives, executives that like understand that these are people and that they need to be sort of like treated

And Wansto is an extremely good player.

You have not been you know, he's been a little bit of a disaployment. But he was paid the biggest contract in the history of sports.

Yes, and so.

It's like you have to pay the money, but then also if you want to win that person over the generational talent that you give that amount of money. You and the Mets case, it was basically like they have a really nice family room for the kids with the players at the stadium.

Which is not something that he did ownership.

Yeah, and so Steve Cohen, who is a guy that is like the definition of a class enemy of mine. Everything that I want this country to be. He is in the fucking way of it being that. And yet he does own my.

Favorite baseball team, and he has done a pretty good job hiring pitching coaches. And at some point you like.

This is all true. You know, it's all true, it's real. You can soften your opinion on the guy for that reason.

Absolutely. And Steve Cohen authentically is also a guy who like listens to sports talk radio. Yeah, and he is not a fake fan, is a real fan as.

Well, and not even in like always the most flattering ways, like he sometimes will get on Twitter and like recommend some like lower tier Mets prospect guy and it's like talk to your own fucking prospect guys, dude, Like they definitely know more than this guy does.

So I hate to wrap it up that. I'm just gonna say, Steve Cohen, if you're listening, come on better off line, let's talk about the Matt.

Can I say one more thing about Steve Cohen?

Absolutely?

So, this is why I think he is game and why I think he will be on on this. Do you know about Steve Cohen? This is more for public because I know do you know about his guy Fiertti fixation? Who is that guy Fierti Diner's drives?

Sorry, I've just never heard it said like that.

That's how he says, oh, guy Fieri. I'll say it the way that it's television.

Yeah, he's yes, I think that's fair for Europeans. Five thousand calorie males, Yes, and sauce. He looks like smash mouth.

Yeah, he's a crazy he looks like everybody from smash Mouth made into one smashed into one. It is. In factly no one has resembled the term smash mouth more than Guy. But so Diners, drivings, and dives really is good though, yeah, never eaten a good guy anyway, But so the show is him driving around the country going to someplace eating the hot dog and be like, that's

But he's at some place. He doesn't have any lines. But then he did apparently pay Guy Fieri one hundred thousand dollars to hang out with him for a day and go to all of his favorite restaurants, like the hot dog places.

In Connecticut, And that's exactly see to me, that is actually like, that's an inkling of that person might do a good job bending a baseball team. There's a follow up episode that maybe I need to do on my show where I find out who's actually good at being rich?

Yeah, what I would please have me on it sounds amazing. That actually sounds like it incredible Always guys that are good at being owners. Honestly, it's just not being unhappy about it, right, And a through line that you established you woudn't.

Tell jim Irsay, you wouldn't tell anyone to be more like jim Irsay rip. And yet like jim Irsay, spent the last years of his life with like a touring band of notable blues musicians, traveling venues across the country and doing the worst versions of Neil Young's songs you've ever heard, and he.

Would sing it rocks.

It's great. I have noticed. I wish more regret to confirm it rocks. Yeah.

So we wrap up here, and I will say another thing about all of this is the too oneful minium here with actually Danealds was like we all fucking love our jobs and were truly, like deeply into them. My talk to Daniel about random fucking production stuff is it joy to do? And I think that that is actually the real solution to a lot of these problems is give people who actually give a fuck money and let them do cool shit. David, where can people find you?

Uh?

I mean, now the pressure's on because we already know that Ed is very critical of my promos. Defector dot com is the website. It is a prescription site, but you can read a few articles for free and decide if you like it. The podcast they do there is the Distraction. The podcasts they do about Hallmark movies is It's Christmas Down.

Yeah, And if you like.

Pablo and Ed, you can hear them on the Distraction. Neither one of these guys has been on the Hallmark podcast yet. But it's a long it's a long process. It's far, yes, indeed, and then I don't know the blue sky I guess David.

J Rothblo Pablo Tory finds out as the show. It is on YouTube and it's a podcast, and I have a substack. It's at www dot Pablo dot show. And I aspire to uh talk about some Hallmark movies with a guy who's only killed one of two turtles that he's.

So far you know, God killed that. But and I'm at ZiT Tron. You can find me on a podcast. Yeah, God killed that.

My turtle.

It's like, well godfriended me. Anyway, I'm at Zitron. You've been listening to the podcast Better Offline. We talk about technology or some such business. Wonderful producer of course, Daniel Goodman here in the beautiful New York City, Nevada. Please please subscribe to my newsletters. Well where's your head? What's great is this is gonna end. You're gonna hit exactly the same ship again, and you're gonna email me and say re record it.

No, don't do it. Thank you for listening to Better Offline.

The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Matasowski dot com, M A T T O S O W s ki dot com. You can email me at easy at better offline dot com or visit better offline dot com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat dot Where's youreaed dot at to visit the discord, and go to our slash.

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