Pablo Torre - Finding Your Voice in Sports Media - [Glue Guys, EP.40]

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You can get away with that. Don't know if you can get away with no offense to geezers.

Today on Glue Guys, very special guest. It's nice to have someone in the studio with me for once because usually I'm the iban out. I'm the one on the television screen.

So today, look at this.

Look at this in person.

Wow.

The one and only Pablo Torre. You may know him from ESPN features, Around the around the Horn, High Noon. And now he is the host of the Brilliant, the Bizarre. Pablo Torre finds out he is one of the smartest people in sports media and in media. Harvard grad. And he can wax poetic about NBA drama and political discourse. Discord and discourse in the same breath. So it is a friend of the. A friend of the show. Pablo, we've known each other for a long time. I know you've had a relationship with Alex Smith. So this is a very special episode of Glue Guys. Want to welcome our friend Pablo Torre.

I thought this was going to be more adversarial. I was hoping to argue to get some takes off with you. Instead I realized that I'm staring into to my right. Um, A. Not just a media gas bag that I adore in Shane Battier, but I look and I. And Alex knows this. Ravi, I just want you to. I need you to understand. I claim Alex Smith in my coaching tree as a podcaster. Oh. So.

Oh, okay.

Everything I learned right here from this.

Guy, for better and for worse. When Alex and I would do the overnight shift when I was hosting ESPN daily Sunday nights, he would teach me about football, and I would teach him about, I don't know, like, the angle of his microphone on a zoom call. And it was a wildly mutually beneficial relationship, I dare say, because Alex is now doing this shit with you guys, and I'm a fan of what this is, and I am staggered that. What a weird thing to get to regard you guys as colleagues in this way.

Well, Paula, one thing, actually, now that I think about it, Alex actually has told us that you're the godfather of his podcasting ambitions, because part of what he told us was Shane is a bit of a. Shane is a man who likes to do things well. Like, so he is a perfectionist, I think. Right. He is somebody who likes to get things done the right way. And Alex would, early on kind of tell us, like, guys, it doesn't have to be perfect. You don't need a crazy background. And he would use you as an example of, like, this guy is like, a legit podcaster. And before you had this fancy setup, he said you used to record in your closet. You know, he's. And so we want to know, is that true?

Yeah. Alex has seen me at the various. Like, it's sort of like the evolutionary chart of man, where it's sort of like, you know, I was pro magnan. I was prehistoric. I was in my wife's closet. Honestly, not even mine didn't have the real estate. I live in Manhattan, guys. I didn't play in the NBA or in the NFL or work in Silicon Valley. I worked at the aforementioned magazine, which kind of still exists where it's illustrated. And then Alex will also remember during. I think it was all of it felt like it was over the pandemic. But then it was in the kitchen. I was in the kitchen. Because turns out that when you're doing the overnight shift doing NFL analysis with former quarterback Alex Smith, my wife wanted to go to bed, and that closet was in the bedroom. And so I was in the kitchen. Which is why when I say I'm here with Shane in our studio, I went the other way. I was like, look, I did it. That Way I need to, I need to on some level feel like I'm a, like I'm a real boy. Like I'm a homo sapien. So that's where you find me now in the growth chart.

Dude. If you guys could see if I like, you know, because you're doing these podcasts. Like this was when I was first, you know, again, I had never done a podcast before. I'm doing ESPN daily with Pablo where I'm the son, I'm the Monday morning quarterback. So all the NFL games are on Sunday. We don't know which ones are going to be most exciting. We don't know which ones we're going to want to talk about. So you have to keep your eyeballs on, you know, 15 games.

Yes.

Which is insane by the way, with kids and sporting events and like I'd be watching NFL Red Zone on the sideline of my kids soccer game, you know, not wanting to miss anything. We would record Pablo Bicoastal against in New York. I'm on the West Coast. And you'd have to record after the Sunday night game. Right. Like after all this stuff is done. And Pablo again, it's like one in the morning in New York and it's 10 here, maybe even later, probably like he's got a baby, he's married, he's trying to keep it down. He's in his wife's closet or the kitchen. He's like trying to like he had like blankets over him because he's trying to keep the sound, you know, the acoustics and putting this on. It was, you know, and that was my introduction. And by the way, when you turned it on and listened to it the next morning, it sounded great.

It sounded so professional production, post production is a virtue I learned with Alex Smith as well. Look, man, that job, I guess what we're finding out here already on this episode of Glue Guys is that podcasting makes you a worse parent and spouse. That is the through line so far in what Alex's experience and my experiences both were. But you know what? We love ball, Shane. We love the game.

You know, it's true though. Like, my wife yells at me whenever I'm filming and I'm like, you know, babe, keep it down. You're always filming, you're always working.

I mean, like, gosh, when everything, when every something about podcasting that I think is both the gift and the curse is that. So my show, Paula Toy Finds out is structured now fundamentally actually in a combination of that problem that Alex faced as the guy we tasked with doing an almost impossible thing, which is being on top of everything, and then summarize it very analytically in a personal way in like an hour at like, you know, after midnight. What I designed in this show is the gift and the curse. Because now I am far more concentrated in the asks I have of people. But also it means that if my curiosity is the North Star, which is what, by the way, in all seriousness, what a gift for, like, thank God I didn't go to law school. Thank God I'm not doing a job in which my curiosity is something I can only explore, really, like off work. The curse, though, is that when your curiosity is your job, everything is your job. And so, Shane, I feel you. I feel you.

What is your litmus test? What comes into your brain rattles around and you say, you know what, this is worthy for chasing because your stories, your reporting, I mean, it is, you know, it is all over the board, from gambling to coaches to, you name it, your, your, your aperture for, for finding a story. So, like, what's your process? Like what, what's your creative outlet here?

Yeah, yeah. So the thing that I want, number one, is to be authentically passionate about the topic. And so my first sort of like, layer is am I actually into this or do I feel a bit like a cruise director who's like, welcoming people onto this ship that I kind of want to get off myself, right? Am I trapped in the topic or am I actively seeking out, wanting to know more? So the test really is, am I tired or am I energized? That's the first thing. But then the second thing is, what if someone doesn't know any of the principles involved, right? What if they don't know the proper names, the characters? I'm doing an episode of Bill Belichick. Do they know about him? Do they care about him? And my test for that is if they don't know that name, but I can still hook them with the story, then I absolutely want to do this. The test is really like the non sports fan test. I make a sports show for people who don't need to care about sports at all to enjoy it. And those are like the first two layers of filtering out is a world in which I can cover anything. Is that bringing me to something that's worth my, my time and investment?

The curiosity of North Star is super interesting, Pablo, because I actually think that that's sort of true. Honestly, like, that's true for my job too. You know what I'm saying? Like, the idea is sort of if you're not willing, if you join like a board of a company or you go talk to a founder, right, you're basically signing up for 10 years plus on that board, you know, and so if you're not genuinely interested in it, you really are going to have a hard time, right, because you're. You are truly, you are trapped. The cruise director thing you mentioned is like a really good one, which is. It's not just like that moment. It is something that you're signing up for for like a decade. And so one of the things I was thinking about for you, I never thought about that being a similarity, but when you go back to things in the past that you've done, right, like, what was it like to have to go deep on something you weren't actually curious about? Like when you had to do that in the past, right. Was it. Is it just like a discipline? Like it was like working out, or is it something that you could kind of find curiosity later?

Yeah, no, look, so Alex and I doing ESPN daily together, five days a week in which the entirety of sports and really through the lens of what ESPN's news gathering operation was producing that week is where I first used actually the metaphor that you just used now, Ravi, which is like, it was kind of like working out. It was kind of like building a musculature of like, I can take any story. And I prided myself on this. I could take any story and find something I would be interested in. And so the trick was always like, how to pretend that I wasn't actually as disinterested as I was at the outset, by finding the thing, by mining, by digging for it. And I really prided myself on that. And I think anybody who took a course in school that you had to take, but tried to find some passion in it knows this feeling. And I was really proud that the report card came out great. The thing about it, though, was that when I built those muscles to dutifully find joy in things, that I wasn't choosing myself, when I built those muscles, I realized the unlock would be if I could do it on both ends, if I could pick the topic and guarantee maximum payoff, both narratively as a storyteller, but also narratively in terms of what's the direction my life is going, if I can choose my own destiny, what I choose to do now. And I say this with hopefully some amount of self awareness, I do stupid things seriously and serious things stupidly sometimes. We did an episode. I mean, look, the range of my show and I Just want to say this. I'll puff my chest out for a second. We were nominated for a Peabody Award because we did an episode about a death row inmate in Texas who is a giant Cowboys fan. And the episode was about basically football fandom and culture and fantasy leagues on death row and why it is that so many of these men use their last words on earth, shouting out their favorite teams. Let's go. We found a database in the state of Texas where you can see the last words of all of these inmates. And so many of them were saying, let's go Cowboys, or how about them cowboys? And then it was over. And so this is. Again, it's a way in which sports from a. That's a look. I love the blend of highbrow, lowbrow. Right. Of like, we talked to this death row inmate about what it's like to be in a fantasy league where there isn't always next year, you know, where you gotta watch games through the bars. So it's just like the metaph. As you guys know, the metaphorical powers of sports are unparalleled. Yeah. And so we go from that puffing my chest out about that to, I suppose, literally puffing because we did an episode where we tested every brand of athlete sponsored weed that we could find. And so it's just like. And then we're like ranking those. And so it's just. We contain multitudes. But I wanted to do a thing where I could be both sides of myself. The smart guy, but also the absolute idiot who is maybe getting calls from his mom asking, why are you doing this episode?

How many calls have you gotten from mom?

Dude, this. This recently. A lot. What's a lot?

What's a lot?

Like, three times a week, just being like, are you going to do something that's going to embarrass us? And I'm like, kind of probably. Honestly.

This is honestly just. I'm really curious about this. When did you become personally secure enough to. To take that leap? That's a big leap.

Like, I know.

I. Listen, you. You went to Harvard. Like, I, you know, like, I feel like I'm sure worked extremely hard. Right. Could have been whatever you wanted to go do and be, you know, crazy smart and capable and. And then you go down this journalist route. But at this point you do.

Yeah.

Like, this is. This takes courage. I'm envious of it.

Oh, dude. Dude. I mean, I love that. I love hearing any former athlete, certainly Alex Smith, whose career is. Again, I've. I've literally done episodes about Your courage. So that's just absurd that you would say that to me. But what I will acknowledge fully is that if not for failure, I wouldn't have stumbled into this. So, like the alternate sliding doors life. And I'm sure all of us have this, right? Like, if we didn't do the thing we're doing right now, not to say podcasting particularly, but whatever, sports media tech, right. What would we do otherwise? For me, it was going to law school. I took the lsat, had a panic attack because I cared about it so much. If a genie had visited me in the library the summer before my senior year when I was killing myself to get a 180 on the LSAT, and they. That genie had asked, what do you want to use your first wish on? I would have said, I want to go to Harvard Law School and I want to go be a Supreme Court clerk and I want to do. I just, like, I was such a roadmapped man. I was. I don't know if you guys were like this. I was like a person who would take the yearbook from the kids ahead of me and I'd say, I would scout. I'd be like, what did they do? I need to do this. I got to do that. I was like a sports fan, but, like, academically obsessive. And so I was like, I need to follow in these footsteps to get to my goal. And so when I choke, when I have the yips at the thing that felt like the biggest crossroads of my life, I realize, A, I need to take the LSAT again, but B, I need to find something to do in the year in between the bombed LSAT and, you know, this gap year thing. And the whole time in the background, I had been writing for fun. I'd been covering sports. I covered, you know, Ryan Fitzpatrick. And I went to college at the same time I. I was writing articles about Ryan Fitzpatrick, about the Winklevoss twins back when they were heavyweight rowers at Harvard.

I think it's pronounced Winklevi, but. But, but, yeah, please keep going.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I knew them before they were branded in such a way, but, but, but legitimately, like, they were one of the great heavyweight rowing teams ever. And I was like, writing stories about these things just cause I was a sports fan who loved writing. But that was fun. That was whimsy. And then I fail, and I'm forced to contemplate, like, what do I do for a year? And that's when the only thing that I can think of is, let me do the thing That I do for fun for a year while I study again and I take the LSAT a second time. And every time I tell this story, I gotta say, for my own past version of myself, I did better. I did okay. And then I realized that the job I did for a year in between was the thing that quality of life, wise, all of the fulfillment stuff was, was far more satisfying. And so to quote one of Shane's former bosses, and I quote him so inappropriately in this context, I burned the boats. Yeah, right. Riley says that, right?

Burn the ships.

The LSAT score expired. Five years in, the boat was burned. I had. Dude, I have nothing else. I don't have another move. And so I had to figure out what do I do with the boat incinerated behind me.

You know, it's so fascinating, you know, and there's so many things to talk about, but you just spurred something in my head, Pablo, that's like very, very, very top of mind, which is this thing about like just sort of being the smart self as well as the quirky self and the highbrow, lowbrow, you know. Do you have kids, Pablo? You have one?

I have one. One five year old daughter.

Five year old daughter. Like, you know, when the kids get a little older, minor, 12, 12, 10, we talk about this, they all like want to like fit in at school. They all want to, you know, figure out where they stack and in the status and all this stuff, right? And as a parent, like all you actually want is for them to be themselves, to have their quirky group of friends, whatever, but like not to enter into that game, you know what I'm saying? Because like, it kills you to watch your kid try to be something that they don't really want to be just so they can, you know what I'm saying, enter into like whatever they view as status. And so how old were you when you got to sort of like this realization of you want to be your highbrow, low brow self and just like.

Whatever that is, it is two years ago. I mean, so I'm, I'm 39 now. So when I was 37 and think.

There'S any scenario where like people could do it or you could have done that sooner. The reason I'm asking is like, it is so aspirational in a fantastic way of just like, look, man, this is me, like, this is what I'm going to do. This is me. Whatever comes, comes. And I feel like there, it's pretty, not 37 is a great age to get it. It would Be even better if it happened at 25. It'd be even better if it happened at 15. Do you think there's any way to have that happen earlier? Like if you look at your own life?

Yeah, you know, it's such a really the formal sort of like again, to return to like the evolutionary chart, like, when did things officially turn? I would be probably simplistic if I said that I wasn't kind of trying on the costume of my true self for a while before I committed to it.

Yeah, yeah.

So. And I'm sure you guys have a version of this, but for me, like, it was literally launching a show in which my name was in it and I had to figure out with the responsibility of a blank piece of paper in front of me. As I look at Shane's notebook full of, you know, his own writings, I'm like, what do I want to put down on the page that's mine for the first time? And so then I had to commit. But before then, yeah, look, doing television, man, was like this, this other thing where it was like, I'm a serious long form journalist. My job is to do enterprise reporting for Sports Illustrated and ESPN the Magazine, but simultaneously. And this is the sirens call that all of us, I think doing anything into a camera and a microphone have answered is like, what if also your own voice personally was your thing? And so doing television was this other funhouse mirror I entered into. And I was like, at first ashamed of how much I enjoyed it, you know, really? Oh, just like it's vanity. Like, I mean, again, it's more than vanity, to be clear. But like the whole idea of I am gas bagging, I am saying things, knowing how hard it is to do the other thing. Writing is so much harder than television to me. Maybe that's not the case for everybody, but the highest degree of difficulty thing to do for me is writing well and reporting well in that sort of a medium. Television always felt like it was superficially the thing and I just really enjoyed it. And so parallel track now is like, I'm a TV person on one side again. Thank you, Shane, for shouting out my also other canceled television show, Honeymoon. Doing that, working for a magazine that also no longer exists at ESPN the Magazine. Doing that stuff and trying to do both and trying to. And Ravi, the answer there is just that I was always like trying to straddle serious and silly. And only two years ago did I really, really. The thing that happened, the switch was I found a thing that allowed me to do both in the same place. In the same show, in the same journalistically rigorous, ambitious, but occasionally stoned way. And that's where it's like, oh, my God, if I can keep this going, this feels good, even if it's tiring.

Ravi, do you not think that this journey, Pablo, that you were talking about, of, I think, owning who you are and being comfortable with who you truly are and all the facets, the, The. The lowbrow, highbrow. This is a journey that I think is universal. Yes, right. Because we as young people, you're so consumed with status, whatever that is, or cool, and like, whatever that is, and projecting, and you want. So you want validation, right? And love. And we all want to be loved. And, like, we go down this journey and we're kind of like, over consumed with what other people think about us. And I was always so envious. I know this is, at least for me. I'm just speaking, like, again, I've told you guys, like, obviously at length about my battles with this kind of imposter syndrome and, like, wanting, you know, again, to be validated as a, you know, number one pick and all this. And I was so envious of older people. And I was actually going to say, like, I think 37 is pretty damn young to have come to this. It is, you know, like, in the stream of life, because it's usually I, like, I actually ran into this, and I think this kind of embodies this recently. This is the geezer's paradox. Because, like, I would always see this in older people. No offense to geezers, but this is it.

You don't become away with that. Don't know if you can get away with. No offense.

So. Yeah, but by the way, so here it is, and I think it's great because, like, and it's something I think I still struggle with, but you don't become cooler with age, but you do care progressively less about being cool, which is the only true way of being cool. Like, and this is the paradox, right? Like, that I think actual strength is vulnerability. Right?

And.

And again, especially in a day, and especially in a content like live tv and. And again, visual content, Pablo, to, like, be comfortable with all of that. And again, I don't. Not necessarily a question here, but I. I do feel like this is such a universal journey. And again, for you to come to this conclusion at 37 is pretty cool.

So how do you. How do you teach that?

And.

And people trying to figure it out, they're listening right now and be like, man, I'd love to do that. So so what's your advice to people who want to get to that lowbrow, highbrow, hybrid life that punches all the boxes that you're looking for?

The thing that I always tell. And I am in the position now where young people will ask me, like, how do I do this? And media, as you guys well know, is one of the more insane industries that exists. Chaos, turnover from the top of any corporation all the way down to the rank and file. Right? It's crazy. The only through line I have felt comfortable advising is have a sense of taste, know what you like, be able to articulate why it is that you like it. Why do you think this is good or bad? Because the thing about Alex, the imposter syndrome, which I still. I mean, I think about that all the time, right? When people talk about a voice, having your own voice, finding your own voice. As a writer, I always encountered this because that always meant imitating someone else's voice. I didn't have a voice, but I knew what I liked. I knew what other voices sounded like, and I knew on some level why I admired them. I didn't know how to sound like them, but I tried. I did some, you know, badiochi, you know, I tried to imitate.

Good reference.

I'm a pro, guys. Come on. But. But truly, like, I'm doing. I'm doing karaoke of some of the great writers. You know, I go back. I don't know if you guys have done this to yourselves, but I went back and, like, reread some of my. Like, I went. I did a creative writing seminar in college.

Oh, Lord.

And it is bad. It is really bad. It is an imitation. It's not good. It's cringe, as every young person would, I think, attest. But. But. But the thing that I discovered is that, like, the more that you do the karaoke, the more that you try to figure out, why do I want to sound like this? You eventually end up finding what you actually sound like. And we're all going to be forever imitations inherited from our parents or from our idols or from our friends, right? We'll accidentally start sounding like the people around us, and that's okay. But do you understand why you like this? So that your North Star for what you imitate is actually something that's driven by taste. That, to me, is so huge.

I think it's so right, what you just said. We said this in a different conversation. But there's like, a great Miles Davis quote of, like, it took me years to learn to play, like, Myself, I think about that shit all the time, you know, which is just like you are figuring out what that is. But I like the point of like the bar should be that you can articulate why you like something, you know, and that you know why you're trying to emulate it. I do get the sense, Shane, by the way, that I actually think you, relative to most of the people I know, I think you did get there a little sooner than I think some other folks. And I still think you had the post career thing of like, you know what I'm saying, like wanting to figure things out in like the new life, but at least as like, I don't know, I feel like you were more willing as a basketball player to sort of be like it. This is who I am, you know, at a younger age than most people. And I think you had to figure it out like as a non basketball player, you know what I'm saying? But don't you think, don't you think that sort of happened earlier for you? The like, don't be cool.

Yeah. It wasn't my choice though. I mean I was the, the skinny when I walked into the Detroit Police Athletic league gym at 1300 Bobian, which was the Detroit County Jail or the city jail, the gym at the jail. I was the, the kid from the suburbs who like no one liked because I lived in Birmingham, you know, and they looked at me as this rich kid. I'm like, dude, I'm not rich. You know, I'm, I'm as poor as you are. And so I realized at early age that like people don't like me just for, for whatever reason. And so I, I stopped worrying about it. I stopped worrying about it. So like that, that's why it was easy to go to Duke back when it was not cool to go to Duke. Right back in 1997 when I said I'm going to Duke, everyone's like, ah, you know, preppy and elitist. Oh, I'm like, I, I, I don't care. I want to go there because I want to go there. And so, you know, it was an amazing lesson, Ravi, that I learned early that I'm wasting my time trying to get people to like me and so I better just be me. And I didn't get the, the goofiness until I got to college when I, I'll never forget the moment where the badioche spirit was born. Okay. There was a comedy troupe on, on campus called, called Duke University Improv Group and they wanted me to be part of their big Show. And so everyone knew me as a very, very straight laced, serious student, serious basketball player. No one knew I, I had a sense of humor. And so I said, you know what, I'm gonna surprise people. And so I was part of their show and they're doing all the improv improvisational, you know, hilarious skits. And all of a sudden they say, you know, we got a special guest. We have the Duke cheerleaders and Shane Battier. Everyone's like, badier. And so we go up and they start playing the song. And Rob, you know, the, the, the dance, they start doing the rock lobster. I had my, my basket. I have my basketball warm ups on my full uniform.

Can we see a little of the rock lobster dance, please? I don't know what you're describing.

Hit it, Shane.

Neither do I. Neither do I.

And I break it down, you know, rip off my, rip off my warm ups. And I have a full black suit on. I think it was a five button suit. It was sweet. This is, you know, 1990, like the.

One Alex wore for his draft.

Yeah, yeah. I was gonna say sand sideburns and.

See why this friendship works. Yeah.

And like, that was the moment. Ravi. I'm just like, holy. I like this. I like being a goofball in front of people and just, you know, wrecking everybody's opinion of me. And it was, that was the moment. That was the moment Badyoki was born.

That thing, though, of like enjoying being the clown. Sometimes I just think that's. I fought that. I think a lot of people fight that because it feels contrary, a contradiction to your other goals. But what if you could be both? Is I think, what if it's, to borrow the language of improv, what if it's yes and yeah, right? Like, what if it's that?

Pablo, the other thing I think that helps, and part of the reason I asked you if you had kids is I think that having kids is very clarifying on this stuff. I think sometimes that helps you. So, like, I actively try to embarrass myself in public as much as possible in front of my kids because I want them to know, like, it's okay. Nobody gives a. You know what I'm saying? Like, so if Taylor Swift comes on in the ice cream shop, I'm singing, you know, like, I'm dancing. I am trying to sing Hamilton in the airport. Dear Theodosia is my favorite Hamilton song. I'm singing it because I want them to see that, like, one, it's fun and like, we're laughing, but also like, Nobody cares. People care about themselves. They don't care about you doing dumb stuff. And so like the world doesn't end, everything's cool. And so I, I think that your point of like the. Yes. And is so valuable. I also think, yeah. Like, I don't know, you don't want to be like a caricature where it's just like the only thing that matters is your intensity and you know, like all this stuff. Like you can be, you can be good and still have fun. I think that's a huge deal for, I don't know, all of us.

Yeah, look, performance, right? What does it mean to perform? It's not just, I am better in moments of highest pressure. It means I kind of like doing this in public.

Yeah.

And I think if you're at peace with that, look, I think a key cardinal rule, and I also say this as often as I can to people. It's okay to do two things. Right. You can take your work seriously, but don't take yourself that seriously. And it's just like there's a nuance. Right. It's easier said than done, obviously. But somewhere in there is, is I think a version of ourselves that we probably like more.

You talked about the change in sports media.

Right.

Like it's, I mean, the ESPNA magazine is no more.

Right.

Like the shows around, the horn is no more.

Yep.

Is this as a sports writer, as a journalist going forward, like, what does it look like with, you know, sports media? How do you guys, how do you fit in? I mean.

Yeah, yeah, look, I. This is where I'll bring Ravi in because it looks like tech. I think all of the time about how media companies are no longer run by media people. They're tech companies in which the math is kind of obvious. It's not terribly complicated. But there are ways in which the levers on audience, you know, respond to certain tried and true formulae. Now, all of which is to say that I don't want to mourn or fight the obvious sort of like tide that everything is tech now for better and for worse. Certainly efficient, data driven. But that gap between, I don't know, I just feel like media. I don't want to bore you with my whole like, dissertation on the evolution of media. I truly don't. But what I will say is that something that has risen to the surface in conjunction with tech. And by say tech, I really mean like platforms like YouTube, right. Where data and their algorithm is really good. What does that mean? It means that it's really good at sorting Stuff. It's really good at surfacing stuff. It's not perfect, but it's a very efficient sorting mechanism that is distributing audience in such a way. And I don't fight that. Authenticity, though, seems to be something that somehow amid all of this multivariate algorithmic stuff, is surfacing as something that people still respond to. Right. And so another thing I think about all the time with politics, I do a bunch of political. As Shane was alluding to political television lately over on msnbc, I think all the time about how there is a difference between authenticity and honesty. What does this mean? It means that you could be authentically dishonest. We may have a president who is authentically dishonest, but authenticity is so compelling as a human characteristic that it wins the day. So too, in podcasting, so too is a public figure in any way. And so it's just important to not confuse the two. Truth and authenticity, so to speak. I'm trying to nuance this in a. In a delicate way, but it does. As a person who tries to be on live television, Alex, as you do, look, it's exhilarating and we are drawn, I think, ever incentivized, to be something closer to our authentic self. But I also just worry, I mean macro, about, like, the ways in which there are unintended consequences of the variables that we prioritize. So that's a longer way of saying that I really like it and it is sometimes scary.

Yeah. I think the other thing that, on your point of, like, everything is tech, I. By the way, I think that's like a. I totally agree with that. I think the other thing that comes along with that is one, like, niches are bigger than people think. Like, niches are way bigger than people think. You know what I'm saying? And I think that the only way to figure out how big a niche is is to serve it and be like, oh, man, and have it, like, emerge like your thing of, like, I want to try all the athlete branded weed. You know what I'm saying? Look, listen, I don't smoke weed. However, I want to listen to that episode because it's just like, that's so funny. It's. I don't know why, but, like, somehow that is something that would appeal to me. And I think that, like, it wouldn't be obvious. I don't know how to think about that. I could express to you that I'd be in that niche, you know, that's so.

So. Thank you for. I feel like I'm the opposite of McGruff the crime dog and like convincing people to think that actually drugs are cool. So apologies, apologies.

Family friendly show.

Yeah, I'm just like, man, I think I got just one of the strangest co signs that I'm very proud of. But, but truly like something that I, I pride myself in. And this is where the algorithm, right, like where, how do I work around and with the algorithm, which I often consider like the Sun God, right, We like put it, we put stuff on an altar and we're like, does this please you? And we just wait and sometimes the Sun God is pleased and sometimes we gotta sacrifice one of our own. It's just like, ah, crap, that didn't work. Well, one of us has to go. But the thing about it is, what is lost in that incentive structure is the idea that. And Steve Jobs now again, to sound truly highfalutin, right, there's a version of a paraphrased quote which I think about, which maybe wasn't even him in the way that Abraham Lincoln never said half the things he said, but it was, people don't even know what they want yet sometimes. And the algorithm is reverse engineered based on expressions of desire. Right. And it's really good at that, as I said. But the question of surprise, surprise as a concept, right there is something ineffably human about. I think this other person would enjoy this. Even if they have given no data driven indicator that they would. That to me is part of the secret sauce of like human curation, which isn't the same as I'm putting all my chips exactly where the computer says I should.

That's why I think it's important that you're prolific too because you have to try stuff. And the only way to figure it out and have an emergent thing emerge is to put real things out and see what comes back. I think that this is where like again, on tech, like the best founders, people think of them as like they're perfectly curated. They know exactly what they're going to do. It's like, no, no, no. They just like do a lot and they get a lot of feedback, you know, from doing that and then they adjust and they make moves accordingly.

When I understood VC in a very basic way for the first time, and I still totally don't totally understand it, but the whole idea of like you're making an array of bets and you just need one big one to justify basically the probabilities across your portfolio. And if you can make your bets wisely enough, it's okay for many of them. To not work, just to paraphrase it again and just sort of a simple, like, explain to me like, I'm five way. It's like, yeah, so too in content, right? And I think the key thing though, that you said is that, because look, ESPN being the worldwide leader is one thing, and there's a level of scale there that is impossible to replicate. And we see this all of the time. Sports, by the way, the lone monoculture we may have left, football especially. Right. Fragmentation everywhere. What that means, though, to Ravi's point, is that niches are emerging that are self sustaining. What if you didn't aspire to be the biggest. What if your aspiration was to support the project that you have bespoke, sort of like tailored for your own passion, supported by an audience which wants some version of that. And so my, my real like media hot take is we're all onlyfans. Like, can we all be supported by an audience that wants to give us money because we show a little bit of our, you know, our ankle, you know, you guys like this, Would you pay for that? Right? Like that's in the, in the apocalypse. We're all onlyfans. We're not there yet. But I think about that part because it's not a matter of I'm an A list Hollywood star. It's. I'm a person who gets to do what I love because enough people love what I love. And that's exciting in a weird way.

So what's success in media? How do you define success in your career outside of fulfillment chasing amazing stories, what's a winner? And don't tell me demographics and ratings.

So day to day, I try to disentangle myself from data while also being very responsive to big learnings that the data is also telling us for the reasons I said. Right? Like, what I actually love is not trying to game the system, it's trying to see if. If the. Look, it's hard not to do this job and not see everything you do along the lines of like a stock chart. Right?

Yeah.

Like, how many downloads do we get? How many views do we get? How many retweets? How many quotes? Is it good? Is. Is. Is. Why does 99 retweets feel different from 100? Right. Why? Right. It's that whole thing. It's like, it's so we fall victim. By the way, this is my, my other hot take, which I've now just Trojan horsed, is like the triple. The tyranny of the triple. Double. Yeah. Why? Yeah, base 10. That's why in China, which doesn't use base 10? Yep. What does a triple double mean to them?

Ridiculous.

We've invented these sort of like inheritances around round numbers and this branding of.

Like 10, 10 and 8. You failed.

Exactly right. Crazy. Just crazy. So I always try to remind myself that, like, there is no actual, I mean, this is now a well worn thing. There's no actual magic number. Right. That's gonna make me happy. When I study sports, by the way, and tech, I'm fascinated by both. I am always in awe of how the biggest winners are often the most miserable. And so when I try to, when I, when you ask me, like, and again, not to sound super, you know, Zen about this, because I'm fighting it all of the time. Because I want the bigger number, I want the rings, I want the equivalence, really. It's process stuff. Do I love what I'm doing and can I keep doing it? And are there enough people. Yeah. Are there enough people who are telling me that, like, hey, we're into this too. So it's not merely that, like, I. Look, I, I, I would be lying to you baldly if I said that I could do this without knowing a single person is ever consuming it. That is not the case. But I'm just trying to calibrate what I need to honestly get back to the thing I love. What I need are enough indicators that suggest keep going. So I can just do the thing of going. But to reverse it and be like, my success is. This number is just a path to insanity. I have found we feel the same.

Way about glue guys. You know, outside of our moms and grandmas that, you know, listen to the show, you know, we don't care about the winning awards and things of that nature. No, we just like talking to cool people and.

Well, it is interesting though, because I'll tell you, Pablo, in all seriousness, on that, like our, one of our best, best, best episodes or one of our favorites was with Wright Thompson. Okay.

Yeah, love, right?

Yeah. And it was awesome. It was an awesome, awesome conversation. It is not like the biggest download episode or whatever, but truly it's like a perfect example of like, on that one I am like, no, we are right. That conversation was awesome. It was fantastic. We had so much fun. We learned we have an ongoing text chain about it and we think about things through that lens. Like, I truly don't care. I actually feel bad for people having not listened to that one. That is like the primary emotion I feel. You know what I'm saying?

It's such A good way of putting it. That's how I feel. I'm like, I'm bummed that you didn't get to enjoy the thing I. I loved so much.

Yes. And, like, there are other ones that have done well. That's. And I'm like, oh, okay. Well, like, great. You know, cool. That wasn't the best thing we've ever done. But I agree with you of, like, the other thing I like about your saying is, like, it's a constant battle because everyone's competitive, all of us, like, by nature, you know, hey, what are the numbers? What about this? What about this? And truly, like, for us, like, it's not even our job. Like, this is, like, our lives are no different. You could triple any number. It doesn't matter at all.

Like, that's what's so funny to me about your podcast, by the way, is that, like, there's a big difference between you guys and me in this regard. I am eating. I am. I am. I am eating what I kill. Right? Like, these episodes. Like, man, that's how I'm feeding myself, you guys. The love of the game part here, though, is where we share this. It's like, you wouldn't do this if you weren't actually into it. And by the way, people can tell. People can tell when you're the cruise director and when you're just a guy who loves who for whom. Ball is life. Yep. You know, that's real. That's. I think that's palpable and authentic. Right. That's why it comes through the screen. Yeah.

Pablo, who. I just think about this because, like, I. Who are your mentors from. From a. You know, I. Obviously, we talked about how it's changed, but in the end, whether it's a microphone or a pen, newspaper, magazine, tv, podcast, whatever, it's still who from sports journalism.

Yeah. You know what's funny about mentors is that I never had the conversation where I was like, man, this guy just signed the paperwork to be my mentor. You just sort of end up talking to them enough, and you're like, I think Tony Kornheiser is a mentor of mine. And I say that because he's somebody who initially told me that, like, some people just have in them the performance gene, you know, Like, I don't know, maybe you can teach that. Maybe. Maybe you can. I don't. I'd be interested in that research. But what he told me was, you know, like, if you ever felt, like, the joy of being the class clown, why are you fighting that? You Know, he is somebody who, again, the reason I look to him is because was a writer, did culture, sports, politics, all that stuff at the Washington Post, became the archetype for what it means to be a sports gas bag on television and did silly things and loved it and abandoned writing. Right. Like I, by the way, the self consciousness here also is that, like, as I said earlier, the hardest thing that is the most fulfilling because it's hard is writing. It's also the loneliest thing. And so how do you do something where your satisfaction also feels communal? And Kornheiser doing PTI with Wilbon, it's like the reason why he, as he puts it to me, these fingers don't type anymore. It's not because he doesn't admire writing. We all do even more now because we've stopped largely. I should also clarify, he once literally wrote a book whose title is I'm Back for More Cash, who is an anthology of his columns. Like, there's also just like, look, the money is better. The money is better. So I also just want to be very real about, like, why you leave writing. The incentives are real, but then it's, man, if you do this with your friends, how much more fun that would be. And I look to him as somebody who is very different. He's like Larry David in very real, like, unironic ways, in his quirks and idiosyncrasies, but he's somebody who just lived a trajectory that I accidentally wound up kind of falling into.

Do you find young people calling you up now and would you consider yourself a mentor?

I don't know if I've earned it yet, but I do have conversations regularly, actually. Maybe I am. Maybe I shouldn't be self effacing in that way. Yeah, look, it's. Yeah, I think I am somebody who has. It's just, look, man around the horn. I started 13 years ago.

Alex Smith, man.

Alex Smith. So one of the. For those not familiar with, again, the first time I humiliated myself on television, around the horn, many voices in your ear. Me looking into a camera, terrified into a plasma, which I had never really done before in this way. And we're arguing. We're arguing. Okay, October 2012. Who should be the starting quarterback of the 49ers? Is it Colin Kaepernick? Is it Alex Smith? What's going on here? And I very innocently take up the side of one of your co hosts. All right, And. And spoiler alert. The take didn't age great that season. But. But I was like, look at how this guy has been done. Look at how, how cruel it is for him to be injured and lose this opportunity. I empathize with the human side of Alex's story, beyond him being an athlete that I legitimately respected and thought was very good at what he did. But the point being, get a voice in my ear that says rap, rap. Like I was going on for too long, as listeners of this show now understand. And I had to stop. And I had never really been told to rap before in this way, in a five way conversation. And so I just had to come to some punctuation. And all I could muster, terrified. 12 years ago, 13 years ago, was Alex Smith, man. And just like shook my head ruefully, hoping that like someone would pick up from there. And no one did. It was just dead silence. Five way, four way. Excuse me. Laughter. And a viral video that became my first branding, which was Alex Smith, man, because I was bad at television. So the surreal nature of me talking to Alex in my closet kitchen here is a bit much, honestly, in the cosmic play that we all are participating in.

I think that the saddest thing I think about around the Horn is being no more. It's a show I grew up on like childhood. Woody Page, Tim Kalashaw, like these, these national columnists, right? Huge markets, you know, LA, NY, Dallas, you know, Denver, like that had been doing this for so long and it was craft, it was their craft, right? And not only did they cover sports, they covered all sports, right? Like this is the beauty of when you, like I've had the privilege to you talk to Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon is like, they, they've been covering American history through sports and they can tell you about the history of Kentucky derbies and boxing as well as the mainstream, you know, sports, and been doing it again for decades and decades and decades. And so this perspective they have on American history through that lens is so unique. And I think that for me, I, you know, again, I work for ESPN and there's such demand now for former players and personalities to fill that void, to attract eyeballs and that we lose some of this perspective that this, this giant perspective, this like 30, 30, 000 foot view on history, American history and how sports interact with each other in culture. I think is sad to see it go, right? And obviously, or change. But I just, this is like something I've been thinking about, right? Like as, as ESPN has changed and all these stations have changed how we take in sports, but that this is a unique lens, the, the journalist and there's such craft and perspective.

Look, I really appreciate you saying that because my point of view is not that there should not be former athletes on camera at all. It is merely when you're crafting the dinner party, that is a conversation, you kind of want different points of view. And the journalist, for whatever reason, again, I'll spare you my even longer diatribe on the decline of journalism in America, but that role is endangered for reasons that Alex just alluded to. And for me, another thing Kornheiser would tell me as a mentor, you know, and he would say this self effacingly, but he'd say, you know, as a generalist, right, and my show is a generalist show. It is designed to be that because I am not merely interested in one sport, I'm interested in the world, in history, in all of these intersections. What he would say is it's better to be a mile wide and an inch deep. And he would say that knowing that he had more depth than just the inch. You know, but like the whole thing of what if you surveyed everything and followed your curiosity that way, you know, and that's hard. It's hard because a bit of the tension there, by the way, to acknowledge that is in a world of niches, in a world of specialties, it is. You're not going strange to be sitting across everything. But that is kind of what the premise of some form of journalism was, was somebody was there with a cosign from an institution that was training you to seek some version of the truth using again, a skill set that I won't even valorize here. Because of course there are bad practitioners of it, of course there are bad columnists. But the point is, don't you want the best of them to be, I guess, literally in a seat somewhere on your network doing that point of view? So I mourn it. I'm realistic about it. I think I said, someone's writing an article about the end of around the Horn. And what my recommendation was for a young person who wants to get into sports media is something that I. I'm living. I said start a YouTube channel.

Can I, can I do something dangerous and try to argue with you about this thing that you know a lot better than I do with you?

Please do. Please do.

Okay, I agree with like all of the premise. I think the thing that I think is better about where we're going now, okay, is if you are actually great at your job, like a Kornheiser or any of these other folks who have this craft, there are More outlets for you to do it with your own voice. Today, you actually can be the name that people come in for. You don't actually need, like, the central platform. You can do it on substack, you can do it on whatever it is you want, and it's your name and that you are then gonna, like, monetize and charged for. You know, like, here's my perspectives and here's what I'm doing, and, like, you can go direct. And I think that the only reason I bring that up is, like, I agree with you completely. Like, I enjoy watching ESPN less when you're on Alex. I watch it, I love it, you know, I enjoy watching it less now, you know, than I did when I was younger, because it was a better a dinner party. I was more interested in watching, you know what I'm saying, than today. I feel like some of the. The hot takes amongst people that I don't enjoy watching are less interesting. However, I also think the opportunity, if you're actually good, if you're actually unique, if you actually are substantive, is probably broader even today than it was back then, because you. You don't have to rely on a big platform to give you an audience. You can earn your own audience. And I have no idea how much, like, the money is different or anything like that, but that's like, at least the. The hope for what's true.

Yeah, look, it's a good point. I don't deny that opportunity. And look, the broad democratization of media in parallel with the rise of the Internet is real, right? I think access and the ability to have a platform and earn a platform and monetize a platform. Again, the everything's only fans theory speaks to this, and I totally get it, and I'm living it. Even more pressingly, I am. I have a substack. Subscribe, Pablo. Joe, you know, I have. I'm on all these things, I'm doing it, and I. And I. So I get it. For that reason, the thing that I mourn, though, to be nostalgic and as old as maybe my take is suggesting I do mourn on some level, the death of institutions. And it's not that they're better categorically, because of course, the world we knew was rife with problems, was rife with corruption, was rife with pipelines that were skewed demographically in every possible way, and scandals and secessions, societal injustice. And all of that is so real. And it's not to say that the pendulum must swing towards that. It is merely saying that I Am worried of. I'm worried about the lack of sort of like middle in that regard, where there is a place where an institution can train people in a collective way and then earn the trust of an audience based on its authority. And by the way, this is now a very unsubtle metaphor for politics and everything, but truly the influencerization of everything has, I think, swung to a degree that we should be concerned about, even as we acknowledge that it has opened the door far more welcomingly even to people who couldn't get access inside of those institutions before.

I agree with that.

Yeah.

Alex.

Pablo, as members of the media, do you think people understand and think about sports differently today? They did 10, 15 years ago, as we grew up. Just sports as, as, as an institution.

It's a good question.

I mean, do they view sports differently?

Yeah.

Do they understand it? You know, obviously, the nuance, a lot of the nuance that you describe on NFL Countdown, like, do people get it like they used to? Like, you know, I grew up watching. River grew up watching. We understood, you know, why you sent a guy in motion.

Right.

In football. I didn't, I didn't play football. You know, I, I understand when you, when you roll a safety over top right, and just, just nuance of sports, you know, just talking to my, to my son, I, I know my son doesn't understand the nuance that I, that I knew growing up.

Blaming the media for your poor fatherhood.

No, I'm just, I'm curious your take on that, Alex.

I want Alex's take most pressingly because he's doing this. But it's interesting, the super serving of expertise in some regard. I see lots of people. And this is my hot take again, as I increasingly ratchet up the takes. Alex, I think we've alluded to this before, but, like, there's the theater of expertise. There is the whole vocabulary of, like, look how complicated this is. I'm gonna give you the fighter pilot call sign stuff. And film Breakdown has never had more of an audience online in that very detailed, very arcane way that is, in fact, exclusionary when it comes to welcoming people who are just like, trying to be smarter, but as a casual. But the broad. Alex, I'm curious for your opinion here, like, the broad broadcasting of football. Yeah, I defer to someone who has done it from all sides. Why?

I mean, I love football. Growing up, like, I loved, I loved sports, I loved espn. Like, I would just couldn't get enough. But I would watch football growing up college or pro, and I don't Know that I like gleaned a whole lot from the announcers and there was some ex quarterback on there that was doing the, you know, doing the color and you know, using to your point, Pablo of like he sounded really good. It sounded really nice. He had, you know, he was well spoken but like I didn't learn a ton from it. And I think that's probably no different today. I don't know. Right. Like, I mean again, it's, it's, it's like when we talk to. Right. Like when he was talking about the Celtics and Tatum being the same, you know, as Russell, as the same as all the other Celtics. Right. Like even though it's a different era, they make a different amount of money. Like they're just on the same continuum.

Right. Like I.

Is it no different on this side of the seat? Like on this side of the camera? You know, from a sports perspective, I think there's more outlets. I think players have a, a much greater microphone. I mean listen, if you, you can get to know Micah Parsons, you just turn on his podcast and right. Like this guy's broadcasting all the time like that you only, you're only lens through the players before and there was a magic and nostalgia about it was through this, through the beat writers. Right. And the beat writers of your team were that mirror, I guess or you know, that window. I should say. Sorry. And that they had such access. Yeah. To the guys. But in some ways now, like cell phones and cameras and microphones everywhere. Like I think guys are even more guarded too. Right. Like when you're out and about and there's a.

They're not singing Hamilton at the airport. That's right.

Hell no.

I think there are a lot of non traditional teachers of sports now. Right. My, like my son has never played it down a football.

All right.

But he plays college football every single day. And he knows the difference between cover three, cover four, video game, cover five.

Yeah.

Right. Not saying he can go out and, and run defenses, but he knows like what a, what a corner blitz is versus like, you know, that is exactly.

The same way my kids have learned about it. Video.

Right?

There are video games. Yes.

There's a generation of, of young, you know, young people who know WABA in baseball because they gamble on every single day.

Yeah.

Right.

Xfip.

Right.

Like yes, you know, all those things. So like very non traditional teachers of, of sports. I don't know if it's better or worse, but video games, gambling, all these different mediums that are, that are very different than we. What we grew up with.

Well, there is that, you know, Marshall McLuhan. Right. His whole thing was the medium is the message. Part of me does suspect that the fragmentation of everything has resulted in. I mean, I think the. What I'm very confident in saying is that there is no large, coherent, universal sports fandom anymore. So what Alex is articulating as I'm listening to him, and I'm like, yeah, I feel that. I feel that it's that ESPN at its peak was the dinner party. Now it's a zillion. Let. Let a zillion food trucks bloom. Yeah. You know, and that's okay. But. But there is no.

The community.

The community is not, is not attending the same thing. So while there is the. Sorry, there's the monoculture in sports, it's also consumed, so fragmented by medium.

Well, it's self curated too, as opposed to somebody with very good taste curating it for me, you know?

Yeah.

And again, there's. I. I don't know which is better. Right. You know.

Well, that's the thing. It's just like what you said, which is the shared experience. Like, I don't know, like, okay, if, if, if my kids are allowed a certain amount of screen time. Okay, like, like any kids or like many kids, I guess I can tell you it's a totally different experience for me if like we sit down and watch a basketball game or a football game on TV together versus each of us has our own screen in front of us, even if we're all watching sports or something. Do you see what I'm saying? And so to your point on sort of like, do we all attend the same thing or not? You know, there is value that comes along with like getting to do exactly what you want that's targeted for you. But there's also value, and this is the part, Baba, I totally agree with. There's also value in like everyone attending the same thing. And I think that the thing that I take from what you said, it's so funny because it's like kind of like your serious and silly point is it does feel like we're sort of only heading towards, like everything is personalized and it's like, no, no, you don't want that. You actually want some stuff to be central and some stuff to be personalized. Right? Just like you want to be serious and silly. Because I don't want it to be that every moment is always me directly. One thing that was built for me, I want to do some things with my friends, you know, or with my family. You know, or with an entire community or whatever. And so I do wonder if you're fragmented. I don't want to just do his food trucks. I want to go to a big restaurant where everyone's at sometimes.

Yeah.

You know, one of the more fascinating things that has happened. Right. Is everything. I also. The other parallel theory, on top of a theory, on top of a theory is the. Is the pendulum. Right. So it's just, like, swinging back and forth. So recently, I don't know if you guys. If your kids are young or old enough to have experienced this thing, but, like, the whole Minecraft movie phenomenon.

Yeah.

Where it's like the headline was, guess what, Kids love movie theaters. It's like, well, this is now. I mean, it's like, yes, we disrupted it only to rediscover what we lost. The communal nature of people throwing popcorn in the same room.

Yeah.

Has been obvious since before Jaws. But now this generation, which was deprived of it because the pendulum swung away from them, is back to discovering it. And it feels new and special and. Oh, my God. Right? It's the feeling. You get to be very corny, poetic when you walk into a baseball stadium for the first time and you see the green grass and you're like, there is something. And by the way, the other parallel thing you observe over the pandemic, as Alex Smith and I are podcasting out of our respective homes, when there are not people at games, everybody agrees it's worse for reasons that would defy some explicit logic. Right. It's sad, but there's again, the ineffable. Right. A lack of human touch, a lack of human presence. Literally, even if it's just over a screen, you feel the degradation of what the best version of this should be. So we're always trying to optimize, but we're always also forgetting what and why we were there in the first place.

And that just everything is a barbell distribution. If you do it.

That's right. Correctly.

It's actually, you want both ends of the barbell. You know, you don't really want the middle. Like, you know, in tech, one of the things people talk about a lot is, like, retail is dying. It's like, no, no, no. Retail is not dying. Undifferentiated. Retail is dying. Right. Like, there's still a great place for, like, something cool and curated. But I guess if I just take your point, like, yeah, I don't want everything to be fragmented. I don't want everything to be communal, but I want both. I want some communal. And I Want some fragmented, you know, and so, I don't know, that's like a. A take that we can add on to yours of, like, everything should be.

This has been the weirdest quiet promo for the ESPN app. Now 29.99amonth. It's like, we kind of do want Goliath, right? We want some Goliaths as well as, you know, people with their slingshots.

Blue Guys is free.

You don't.

You don't even have to pay for it. This is the advertisement for that. People can just listen.

Well, Pablo, one question. What you got out of here before we wrap up? It's called Glue guys. All right? And the unsung hero behind the scenes. And so we ask every guest on our. On our pod, who are the Glue Guys? The Glue gals of.

Of your life, man.

They were. They were in the shadows. You would not be sitting in this chair with this fancy mic without them that you want to give them a shout out or just a little bit of love.

So this is a literal question for me, because I sit here in bright lights, and in the shadows on the other side of this reflective, darkened screen are people. And so the producers of my show, who love it, frankly, preserve my sanity. But even, like, specifically if Nadir. Nadir. Is Nadir here? Yeah, there he is. Look, Shane. So what you can't see is the. Is the waving hand of Nadir Rivera, who is the guy who makes sure that the cameras are on that. I can zoom in with you guys, like these human beings who are not on the show, but we need to make the show. Nadir is an avatar for many others who are in the credits of our Friday episode that we always want to shout out. But I also want to be sure that when you make something special, you have people around that enable that. Because now to fulfill the cliche of a theory inside of a theory inside of a theory is like, yeah, man, you want a locker room, you want a team? It's more fun that way. It's always more fun that way.

Well, Pablo, this was super insightful discussion today. I hope everyone enjoyed it. Please listen to Pablo Torre. Finds out wherever you can find your favorite podcast. It's. It's. It's a fantastic listen, and you're a fantastic friend of the show. We appreciate you, Pablo.

I just want the merch, man.

Thank you.

Give me the merch.

We'll get you some merch on the way.

All right, I'm gonna. I'm gonna look through Shane's suitcase here and make sure he's not holding out on me. It's been a. It's been a real pleasure. In all. In all seriousness, thank you. Thank you for having me, J.