Better Offline - Radio Better Offline: Pablo Torre and David Roth

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York city.Ed Zitron is joined in studio by Pablo Torre of Pablo Torre Finds Out and David Roth of Defector to talk about independent media, what makes a compelling show, and what it’s like raising a turtle.Pablo Torre Finds Out: https://www.youtube.com/@PabloTorreFindsOut Investigating Belichick's Girlfriend: The Power of Jordon Hudson, Revealed https://youtu.be/As5P5TA-ERk?si=-PfM7fZ-Tw8S-yQc Hank Azaria on His Bruce Springsteen Tribute Band, Apu and Finding His True Voicehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rnyMXm1ThQ David Rothhttps://defector.com/author/david-rothhttps://bsky.app/profile/davidjroth.bsky.social YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/  Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitronSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you. you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your 20s can be so exciting, but they can also be really overwhelming, confusing, and

honestly, just kind of lonely. May is mental health away. wellness month and the psychology of your 20s is breaking down the science behind the biggest roadblocks we face. I was six years into my career, the 80-hour weeks and just the first one in, the last one out, and I ended up burning out. There was a large chunk of my 20s that I like was just so wanting to like be out of that phase out of my skin and I just like really regret not living in the present more. You don't need to have everything figured out right now. You just need to understand yourself a little bit better. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Joey Dardano, and on my new podcast, Hope From a Hypocrite, I'll be changing lives, helping people in need with thoughtful solutions. Sike, I'm a comedian. I'm not qualified to give good advice. Join me and my comedian friends as we riff rant and recommend some of the most legally dubious advice known to me. This is Help from a Hypocrite, the worst advice from the dumbest people you know. Listen to help from Hippocrat Wednesdays on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Also, Media.

Every morning I wake up to 100 punishments, each worse than the last, all so that I can bring you the greatest podcast of all time. I'm Ed Zittron, 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 merch store, go and buy them. There's a zip hoodie, which I fucking love, and a wordmark shirt, and there's a hat. It's lovely. You can also get infant clothing. And I think, like, if you put that on a baby, though, they will take the baby from you. Anyway, so today I'm joined by the Incredible Pablo Torre of Pablo Torre finds out.

And David Roth of Defecta, co-owner of Defecta, and a turtle, 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. And he is, well, it was a pair of turtles, but Marvin is the surviving turtle. Oh.

Yeah. It's fine. He had the other guy had a good long life. George had a good long life. And something you don't learn when a man sells you a turtle out of a bucket of drywall on Canal Street. Oh, you got a Chinatown Turtle. Yeah, I got a Chinatown Turtle on an impulse 24 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, 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 thing with your pets that are basically dinosaurs is that if left to their own devices, they will live for as long as

their owners. Yeah. Yeah, which is cool to think about for the rest of my life. I got this little pet. I mean, he doesn't like me. Like, that's pretty plain. 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 shell or whatever? Does he appreciate your Bernie Sanders? I do communicate with him in a series of accents. Yeah, it's not a lot of it. He responds well to Bernie. I know once again asking that you eat this piece of radicchio, I'm lowered it to your tank. Yeah, he, well, I guess that is how he responds to it is by eating the piece of radicchio that I've lowered into his tank.

He loves chickeries in. What's chikery? Any kind of chikeries, you know, your cabbages. Oh, okay, I didn't know that. Castel Franco. I know Pablo. I'm talking about. This is a tech podcast.

I'm mostly here to throw Bernie Zander's cues and cabbage references. Yeah, thank you. Back and forth with Ross. 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. I'm not blowing smoke. I don't give freebies. 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 in so much as sports is part of the world and culture itself. Even, and Pablo, you're like Jordan Hudson thing and the Bill Belichick stuff, that was fascinating to me despite honestly wanting to know less about Bill Belichick as the former, and the many non-sports. I love the disclosures here. Yeah. Yeah, the many non-sports listeners are going to say, a sports episode, how dare you? Oh my God, do you want to hear me fucking talk about Kevin Ruse again? I'll do it in like one day. I'll probably do it on this podcast.

You're already doing it. I'm already doing it. But it's fascinating because it's not. I don't need to underline that I could give you 90 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 tell stuff now. You think I don't have turtles? Wait, well, I didn't even ask.

Have you? So, talking of... 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 girlfriend who is 24 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 you on your own talking about a, I forget who else you had on that. Katie Nolan, Michael Cruz came as my accomplices in this journalistic act of alleged malpractice. Oh, and some say. Malpractice according to Bill Simmons, who will explain short. The bills, the bills in general aren't necessarily cottoning. Most of your upper New England bills have had some issues with it.

Your William problems. Yeah. And it's funny because the way you tell that story is not, you get a lot of people who do the talking to the camera stuff, but it feels that you kind of regale people with the tales 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 have children.

And my niece and nephew do not watch that shit. And yet, right? 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. 31 years old. And he's, he's been making like NBA max contract money.

Beyond that, well beyond that now. I mean, the second. And he just unboxes his time. But, 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. He is an archetype on YouTube.

He's a genre unto himself that has inspired so many imitators, all of which spoke to something fascinating because you're watching, again, take the, if you can put the pedophilia aside for a sentence. Okay. And you're just watching a kid open toys. Don't say things like that. That's not nice. Legally speaking, Roth, you know what I do.

You know what I have to do. legally speaking. I had to talk with you before he walked in. You said you wouldn't call me out on my disclosures. I didn't think you were serious. I thought you were bluffing out of the power thing. Listen. Certain dominance. 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. Right. 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 a reference. But something you found. Right. 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 Balli-Chek, Jordan Hudson question, which is also a story about the highest paid employee in the state of North Carolina, public employee, who is also the archetype of a certain privacy, discretion,

do-your-jobness, SunZoo cosplay, now being sort of the opposite, inverted by this woman who is now running his life, beyond just the age gap stuff. What if I could do that for Katie Nolan and Michael Cruz Kane and surprise and delight them with what I had investigated? Right. And so that's kind of my solution to trying to make YouTube content. And also kind of like a kind of radio show host as well.

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 the show, I am only listening to it. You're editing it on your own? We have a staff of a half dozen people who are on the editorial side. but me I always I imagine you're right to say

just I was going to say if you did that all your own that sounds like even Soderberg mode just like five different credits different names just iPhones shooting everything on iPhones

I am doing a pass an editorial pass which I am making cuts and all that stuff restructuring but I'm only listening because I want someone who's only listening

to not have the question of like and that feels like they thought about a second right but also we are a three camera setup right in our studio

such that we are YouTube show so that nobody watching on YouTube thinks they thought about a second. And so we are kind of torturing ourselves to be a fully fledged product. And already you can sense the sort of like the discomfort viscerally of being a journalist who is making a product that I've analogized to a YouTube channel that is definitely not for pedophiles. We've established that. Thank you. Just for saying. I cannot say this more clearly. But trying to be where people are with the knowledge that they probably won't

switch platforms, they'll probably just gonna live wherever we find them and we just gotta give them hopefully something that they can spend some time with. And you're fully independent? Or are you backed by someone like? Is Dan Lebertard a corporate monolith? I don't know who that. I love

that. Technically, he's a private equity entity. That's how you say that? Do you know about the? Metalox is actually really interesting. No, I don't. But also, I thought he was Lebertard. Well, like the friends for a bastard. French bread. The French bastard.

Dan LeBastard. Dan LeBastard is my corporate partner. Damn, that's a real disappointment. A Cuban guy with a French name who looks white. All of this is very... What a country. Only in New York. Sorry, disappointed in his name.

But beautiful. You should... I would love... Pablo may be too modest to do it. Metal Arc is an interesting experiment. You should talk about it. Yeah, so basically, Dan Levitard left ESPN, took his RSS feed with him,

which is the key to starting a new business and microwaving a business, is have your audience with you, have your feed, right? And so what he did was he partnered with John Skipper, who's the former president of ESPN. Nice. And they did not want to hire any ad salespeople. And so their licensing partner wound up being draft kings.

And draft kings, you may know from every ad you've ever seen during a sporting event. Yeah. And otherwise, the point being that Dan, who wanted freedom, wanted editorial non-interference whenever possible, found an arrangement in which, yes, the company got to choose its own editorial docket, got backed by this company in which, by the way, I don't know if you pay attention to sports or betting. I have not. But they have the money now. Yeah, it's kind of getting in bed with one devil, I guess.

And for legal reasons as well, I will not comment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Reliiosity of your devilry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the short answer to where I am is that they funded, Metal Arc decided, we want to start a new show from scratch. We want to trust this guy that we are friends with and know and hopefully trusted. And 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 Poblatory finds out is no longer in the licensing deal with Draft Kings. We are now independent with Metal Rark as our co-owner, but looking for a partner. Okay. And so if you're listening out there and you have a maybe. Open AI. Yeah, they're definitely. They're very good.

Oh, they're good. They got money now. But we just met with Palantir. That's great. Yeah, also. They really understand your audience. You should know the social security number of everyone listening. Everything about your audience.

The WWE is not presenting us, actually. Andrew. What is interesting to me about this, as somebody who also works in the independent media, we'll talk about that in the 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 people working on it. I have friends, Jebelund did, there's a guy that I'd do another podcast with.

It's about Hallmark movies, not about sports, or, yes. but like and subscribe yeah but did a feature with you guys and was like I'm not I wouldn't say I was jealous exactly but I was very impressed with the report report reportorial apparatus behind all of this that it's like it's it's it seemed more like working with 60 minutes than it would be like doing a story for defector you're so much better at pitching my show I don't know man it's but what I mean by this was that basically like there were producers there are people that were like I'll file that FOIA for you I will do you I will do you We are trying to be an actual news magazine in an era in which news magazines are either compromised in various ways or just dead now. We're just kind of given up on doing that. Right. So, so Jeb, by the way, who I cannot stress as enough, co-hosts a pod with David Roth about Hallmark. Okay, you can joke about this, but every single, during CES, we did like 13 and a half hours of audio. It's not even an exaggeration.

Every single episode, and I did three 30-minute breaks, so sections even. At the end, I was like, David, what podcast should do it? And every time, like, joylessly, yeah, okay, so this is Chris. 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 about, like, you shouldn't be AI in vacuum cleaners, bitch, you know, and just trying to be big energy on it.

And then at the end, it's being like, and if you like that, you're going to love me, like, breaking down the worst performances of Candace Cameron's career every two months. The guy who kind of looks like Chad Michael Murray or Chad Michael Murray. Michael Murray, sometimes you do get Chad Michael Murray. But yes, it is like a, anyway, we're off, we're far afield. Yeah, that's. No, but what you said just to catch people up was we had Jeb Ludd as a correspondent looking

into his alma mater, which happened to be the college in Florida that Rhonda Sanders had taken over. Oh, yeah. And, hey, college. The new college of Florida. And he had taken it over, it turns out, by basically bombing it with baseball players. So they turned over the student body, re-politicizing it, replacing, you. may even say, great replacement for us. The students, this deep and proud history of like of liberal arts, of like, of like hippie

dumb even. Right. Replaced by baseball player recruits so that they could then change the demographics of the institution as well as refocus everything in the model of various. I can imagine if they tried to put any of this fucking effort into literally anything else? Yeah. It's all pranks, basically. What if Christopher Rufo, who shows up in that episode?

What have he tried to do other things? Yeah. What if he tried, what have he tried jumping out of a helicopter? Yeah, I don't know if that would be something that he'd like. Maybe. That's not, yeah, sure. That's nice of you to say that. It's an idea.

No, no, no, no. We are just riffing. You don't know. Just having fun. Could be a piano in that. He could do anything. Maybe he flies. We don't know.

Yeah. But the bit that I wanted to underline with that, though, is that sort of journalism is hard and expensive, but it is also, it doesn't have to come out the other end as, like, 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 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 baldron on bit where like for 90 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 and then if you're like me slowly the curtain drops and then when it goes back up it's just like a 1989 Dave Magidon baseball card at an empty stage all of that goes away. But when you know your shit and you're like telling people crazy stuff that they don't know and they're responding to it, like, first of all, you feel more interesting than you actually are. But also like, I've been on both sides of it. It is fun. You also learn more about the material as you

get someone to bounce it off of. But I think 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. You kill one more turtle. You may have something on your hands. To me, the idea here is that this stuff doesn't need to just be, you know, a 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, but 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. It's nice to 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 very serious, but when you read objective, quote unquote, journalist, it's just this dry, fucking pallid list of stuff with some degree of context versus the very human reaction you can have. to the news of the day, even if it isn't a conclusive thing, even if it's just open AI did this, or the very strange things that constantly happen with the Bill Belichick thing, like Jordan Hudson getting banned from you and see. These moments are fascinating to discuss and lost in regular journalism, I find. They just go, well, this happened. Shit. Well, I also think that so much of our magnetic field in journalism is the sun god of the algorithm that I was described.

before. And for me, I think, you know, Dave Macadden 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 not here to say, ah, sports television, it's merely that they have dined at the same buffet for so long, that there's all this other stuff. And so it's hard to not just like speaking the language of endless metaphor here. But like, what if there's a restaurant that also served the other things on the menu? But even one of my favorite dining experiences I had recently, my dear friend, Noah Aronstine, friend of the show, I went out with him to the Yemeni Cafe, which is exactly what it sounds like.

And he ordered it. And there's this guy, Chris Crowley there. I think he works at New York Magazine on 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 tell me what the fuck was going on. Then we went to the Long Island Bar, I think. It's the place where they invented the cost of point. And just having them regale with the stories.

Wait, the Long Island Bar down on Atlanta Avenue? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, good burger there too. And it was just like, no, try the cheese cuts. Let me tell you about that. They're delicious. Seeing around with someone who really loves and knows a shit ton about something and having a discussion about it is 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 journalists. Like you don't, oh, you know us. I had a journalist the other day be like, oh, yeah, they don't want us doing opinion about the subjects we write about. I don't want it to fucking shoot myself. It was just like, oh, I wouldn't want the people who know stuff to talk about this. They might.

It's a category error. I also think that it's one of those things where, and I understand how if you work in a serious 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 bit of defectory experience with this. We were filing a bunch of FOIAs to UNC, everybody is, to try to figure out, you know, what are the emails exchanged between Bill Belichick and Jordan Hudson and the provost and whoever, whatever, just for yucks.

We saw that one of Pablo's producers had filed hundreds of poise. Yeah, it was funny because it's like you can see who else is sort of in there. We're just 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 take some time to do. And yet it is like, you're going to get a better product out of the other end of it. But also, it's funny to spend time using the Freedom of Information Act for stuff like that.

It doesn't all need to be like... I'm chasing down this very bizarre, turtle-esque man and he's extremely young. I'm not getting into the age discourse. It's not worth it. 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 to people and he wears like a hoodie with holes in it he looks like

Donald Trump I mean he's someone that Trump spoke about at one dais or another where he says there is 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 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 records requests. But that's like to me that and I think that all of the 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. Yeah. Like you want it 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 a hundred times out of a hundred.

And everyone has a weird proclivity they can talk about for hours. That's why I can't legally bring up Jojo's Bazaar adventure on the show anymore. I heart ready inform me this morning. But it's just also we all have our own things. So watching someone else do 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 it, who might not know everything, so it's kind of like friends having a discussion, but taken seriously. 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 basically the armature is there. Yeah. And then if you populate it with people that, you know, like you happen to have two really good counterpunchers in there, Katie Nolan, like legendary radio talents of. True, yeah. That, like, you do that and then, like, you make sure that you know the stuff like A to Z. Like, that's, I mean, whatever. It's not revolutionary, like you said.

But it is also, like, that's just a product of doing a good job. 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 Lebitard'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 can compete with us in this category? Like in Silicon Valley, as you know, they talk about the moat a lot. Right. Like how do you build a moat around yourself? I am pleased to report that our moat is just our weird obsessiveness. And also the people, the literature 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 going to 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 out a newsletter this morning, Monday, the 16th of June. I'll probably do a new podcast 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 oath who's curious about everything because he knows nothing. Oh, and we also have this insanely high production thing. We make sure that everything's done really well and it sounds good and it looks good and it's well done on social. And the subject, he clearly has someone doing the research for him because if he has three hours of questions off there, he may just be like a true.

Oh, I don't know that he's doing any research. No, I don't. I mean 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, who's this, Jamie?

That's Donald Trump. Is Donald Trump? Is he good? 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 Lex. I, well, my first question is, why can't he say a sentence? He's just like, hello, welcome. I'm always 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 easy.

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 works. He has mental latency. Like he, he, during the Donald Trump interview, which I only watch bits of because I don't want to die. Right.

He goes, politics is a dirty game. And he just pause and goes, how do you win at that game? This is the most popular tech podcast. Really good. And it's just, don't just like, yeah, this is very true. Like, it's just like so bad. I love that he wears black tie. Yeah.

Does he? He wears, like, he always wears like a black suit with a black tie and a white starch shirt. So cool. Yeah. Like the cater waiter swag. That's a really solid thing. It's a real party down aspect. It looks like a guy that John Wick would kill.

I'm working a wedding and then I'm going to be doing. I don't, but with stuff like that, I'm just insulted by the whole Lex Fribman thing. He's so bad. Aren't those podcasts also like six hours long? They're so long. He would, they won with Sam Orman 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 two dudes, let alone if one of them is Sam Alman. And he's just like, yeah, you know, Dave's dead. descendants will they help build themselves now and it's like wow what is data how do you computer fuck me up i wish i hope this is as long as the irishman no i want i want all of that i want to be

on lex fridman so bad i should just be clear i'm going to read him riddles like it's going to be amazing another podcast from some s nl late night comedy guy not quite on humor me with robert smigel and friends me and hilarious guests from jim gaffigan to bob odin kirk to david letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's that worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, uh, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation to the group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open.

Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle age. One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny.

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Hippocrat, the worst advice from the dumbest people you know. Listen to Help from Hypocrite as part of the Mike Coutura Podcast Network available on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. But you look at like Theo Von or Joe Rogan and you see their production is good. Theo Von is a good interviewer. He's got, despite his insane name, he has like an insanely long name. Do you know his name? His real name?

No. Oh my Christ. I am so happy to be the person. Dutch-ish. It is like, it is. Theophilus. No, this is Von something or other

like Burling game or whatever comes after it. Theo Von's real name is Theodore Capitani Von Kurnatowski the third. That's right. One of the greatest names of all time

and his whole thing's been like you're damn. Yeah. This is a good decision by Theo Vaughn to go by Theo Vaughn given the proceeding. Yeah.

It'd be so much funnier if he hears this whole name though and kept doing they're like, yeah my name is Kernitatat. But his interview Third of my name.

But you don't get the sense from Rogan or Kernatowski that they are 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 and it's kind of like calm and effortless. And it's like maybe there is effort behind it. But it's just, it feels like a lot of that is just genuinely missing for media. It's something you both do in podcasts and you obviously do way more podcasts, Pablo as well. But it's just like, Like, let's get some interesting shit. Let's have a good conversation. Because I don't know, several people who know each other discussing something interesting might have a good interesting conversation like you could listen to on your phone in a podcast. It's not that hard. What's hard about it, though, but I'll tell you what I've found hard about it. I 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. It's like getting to shoot around 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, I'm just, yeah, 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. I actually 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're learning. Maybe they too will learn. It's something Robert and Sophie earlier on said. It's just like, if you don't know something, just ask every fucking time. Yeah, you have to ask. 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 don't know one of the best. One of the biggest basketball men we've got. He's really good. Prominent. He's very strong.

Space Jam, too. And he is so strong. Sorry. 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 shit about this, care about this story and so we do stories about fencing corruption. We'll do stories, I mean, I could waste your time mentioning all of the obscure things

that I have, I think, con people into listening to. I mean, the Hank Azaria interview was fascinating. And that was like the furthest from what you regularly do

because, and he wasn't telling just stories about like the opposite Simpson stuff. Like, it was like, he was great. And we tried to, The joke of my show is that we're a technically sports show,

which just means that somewhere, like, as 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, by the way, just the thing that compliment I want to pay him is that when it comes to, like, thinking about politics in a way that speaks so fluently the languages of hyperintelligence and utter stupidity, no one is better at David Roth in diagnosing that in Donald Trump. That's nice.

Like, you need to be someone who would be. was so brilliant that they're also a moron. And, and, like, truly, it's being fluent at both sort of registers. And one of my favorite ones is, like, my good friend, Beetlejuice. Yeah, there's a lot of, because the idea of thinking about who you could convince him is a real guy and a fan of his. He's just standing in front of a Candyman. Yep. Candyman.

You know, I knew Wario. We were friends. We were great friends, but we're not friends anymore. You can die. Yep. But 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 I'm saying into a microphone. Go for it. We had Bob Mould on.

Who's that? Who's that? Who's that? Who's good do and sugar? Like, iconic punk rock musician man. And also, very strong. Yes. And as we, yeah, also it worked in wrestling.

I'm real, just like one of the most interesting guys in the world. As a writer, not as a performer. But he, you know, those bands being a great deal to me. he is my co-host Drew McGarry's favorite musician. Oh, I got to listen to this. The question that I asked him basically, after, you know, he had a new album out, I listened 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. So I can't be like, when you made this decision, your fretwork on the bridge here, like, I can't.

You know, like, I even saying it here, in a friendly space, I did not either. I had to do, I had to do the dumb guy voice to put it over. But I asked him, like, is it fun to write a song? Like is it cool to do that? 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 listening to something and be like, who's LeBron James? Go, fuck. Golf? No. Or, like, who? And, like, you will forget all terms.

Like, on the show, I onerously in people say, you repeat yourself. I repeat myself, like, defining what generative AI is probabilistic. What does that mean, though? Because sometimes you will be listening to an hour and a half of me talking. You might fucking forget something. And also, being empathetic, like, I don't know with, like, when I'm hanging out with my friends, People don't know shit all the time. Part of the fun thing of being alive is helping people know stuff and having shared experiences.

And I love that question of whatever. Like I want to ask, and this is for somewhat meaner reasons, my dream question to ask any tech executive is, are you happy? I want to ask Sundar Pishai, are you happy? Because it's a hell of a question. Because you want to say yes. But you know I've got a follow up. What makes you happy? And you know they don't have shit.

For him, it's all the stuff. He's the guy that gave the interview where he's like all day, I'm just fucking. and asking questions of our AI. I talked to Gemini all day long. That's such an adela of Microsoft. No, no, that's what it was.

No, but similar gargoyle. Like, yeah, but it's just... Profiling on my part, wrong. Remove it from the podcast. Profiling of like extremely rich asshole ruining products. I mean, like,

welcome to the show. But there was something, I think the idea of like what is any of this for is like a good question to ask yourself with it. To bring it back to Rogan for a second, though,

it also feels like anyone who's industry is seeing rates of ketamine usage decreased so dramatically. Cannot possibly... What does that indicate to you? It just feels like there is a fundamental searching for something like fulfillment. And a happiness. We're lonely.

And by the way, like everyone is. Like, everyone is more disconnected. And I find that in sports, of course, like, if there's any lesson to learn from Bill Ballicheck and Michael Jordan and Tom Brady and every greatest of all time in any category you want, it is that. that they won everything and are miserable. Yes, completely. 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 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 true. trying to find. And I think, are you happy? I presume that all of them are actually quite un. 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, accidents keep happening. No, no, no, it's luck. All right.

I like how the thing where you have the accent that makes you sound smart didn't work on you. It did not work on. But it means though. It's worked on me from the very beginning. I was like, damn, this guy really knows his Raiders football. How did he learn so much? Oh, God. I'm going to get emails about the Raiders.

Gino looks good. I think Brock. Anyway. But it means that I've never walked into room being like, oh, I hope he doesn't think I'm stupid. Which is actually useful for the PR business as well. But in any given interview, I feel like interviewers, Lepael, we'll go in there and be like, I'm going to ask the best fucking questions in the world. Not the most useful, not the most interesting, but the ones that make them sound good and get the biggest most self-engratiating thing done.

And I understand why, but it's you have access to someone that people don't have access to. Can you at least get something new? Can you at least not line them up with the buffet of options? I don't know if you get it as much in sports just because if someone lies about being good at sports and then go. and plays poorly, you can notice 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 a- Or write 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? The one for me is impact winning. That's an NBA. What does that mean?

It means it's a good basketball player. It's the most annoying way to say that this is a helpful player to have on your team. No, it's not like an acronym. That's almost like an idiomatic to sort of like. So they just say someone's an impact place. But there's also just like the fighter pilot kind of like call sign stuff where it's like, yeah, spider two Y banana. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a lot of like play calling.

Oh, sorry, just within the game. So Spider 2 Y Banana is this is a play call that I will not even begin to summarize for you. I thought you were literally talking about planes. No, Spider-2. I thought you were doing like a plain thing. It is a John Gruden play. I know a listener of the pod, friend of it. So be gentle.

And I don't even know. Is Spider-Tew-W-Banahcrapherful? It's real. It's a real play. Me and Deuce. Ed knows this because Ed's been to Gruden's quarterback boot camp. You were doing squats with Deuce Grudence. Yeah, Jared Lorenzen coached me.

It didn't go well. RIP? Yeah, I believe so, yeah. All right, but it's the legend. But there is, there's all this vocabulary that sort of signals that you have the fluency of a, of a, of a, of a code that is so indescipherable 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. Right. A lot of like, oh, they're, you know, they're running cover three there, but they're doing a stunt to the, blah, blah, blah, the A gap, the B, just like stuff that's meant to exclude.

Right. when you say like a person who asks a question that is intended to signal their knowledge as opposed to help the listener understand anything, I think of the ways in which people are cosplaying coaching all of the time. And also it's kind of why as much as we have already been crapping all over Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn, something that I do appreciate generally speaking. I've not listened to all their episodes, but what they do tend to do is not try and perform. Over intelligence. And the thing is you can say, like, I've seen some Theovon. I've seen some Joe Rogan. 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 their questions are simple. And then they get like, Jordan Piezenberg, have you seen the nightmare, man? Yeah. Like you're just some insane shit. And then he says nothing to that because Joe Roggan's like, yeah, yeah, I met. I knew a guy like that. That happened to my buddy Eric.

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 insidey, 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 verb. It's clearly made something on, made an impact on like a concussive. But 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, you're like Shamstrania dudes. Like they write not in like a syntax that is observable outside of text messages from agents to guys like him, that there's something very like artificial about it. And sham is 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 scoop Donald Trump getting COVID.

I hate that Shams gets great. 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 Barstall show, The Yak, when it happened. Oh, wow. And when they showed this guy on their Stephen Chey. And it's just like the worst 10 minutes of just like a guy who made, basically was like, yeah, I think Shams would break World War III. And just these guys like wanting him to be wrong and they just hate every, like everyone's kind of miserable.

Yeah. Like, anyway. So Shams just breaks news. That's his only thing. And that is like a function. There's a guy that does it for the NFL. There's 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.

The incentives are to be a newsbreaker because you are, I mean, by the way, when Woj was doing this, Adrian Mojnarowski, who I should disclose, is a person who now works for St. Bonaventure as a Thursday. General manager. He's the GM, but was making, you know, millions, what millions of dollars being the newsbreaker. Basically, like the human, yeah, like, school. scoop machine. Just fielding texts 24 seconds. And there was just a bit, I don't know if you remember this, but during the NBA draft one year, when Wojj, I think, was at ESPN. So he was working for the broadcaster of the draft, but trying to scoop the draft.

I know what you're talking about. By five seconds ahead. Okay. And so in order to get through the, to thread the needle, he ended up just not saying the Bulls are about to take Jimmy Butler or whatever. This is, you know, got it. I'm retconning. We're dating ourselves. Yes.

But it's basically like, the bulls are targeting. The Phoenix Suns are circling. He kept coming up with new phrasing, and it's hard. There's like 32 picks. So he'd be like, I'm hearing that the bulls are insorseled by Wendell Carter Jr. At the spot, which is just amazing. I mean, every single better offline episode says walks you through because I cannot fucking think of another way to say it, and I refuse.

So I get missed. 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 20 hours a day. But although when Wojj, that's me. When Woj left the job, he was basically like, this sucks. I hate it.

Again. I'm having a hard time. He was 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 gone.

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 it's fun.

No one is here because it is important. That, like, especially with sports. There are aspects of it that you can use as sort of like a way into seeing things about the broader culture that are important. But none of this is like mandatory. Right. You know, and so. It's a game.

And so to the extent that you can talk about it in a way that is fun and that is not either like actionable gambling intelligence or part of some like endless barbershop set to that like where everybody's arguing about who's now or somebody's legacy or whatever. Legacy. Yeah. That's one of the best topics to play fight about with the fellas. But the thing is this is something missing from the tech industry because most. people in tech when you talk to them 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 jokey ones, with other people that have played games of sports for money. And that's why it's interesting, because you're hearing their experiences and it's kind of rough and ready, probably a little bit cleaned up more than we know. I imagine in some of the, I don't know in his case, I imagine there are more harsh cuts. He's got like a real job to avoid losing. Right. 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 Generative AI the other day and it just changed my life. How I were going to ad break. And it's just like these fucking people piss me off because tech is so universal. Whether or not you consider yourself technical, kind of the same way of the sport. It's like baseball, one of my favorite, Casey, Kagawa. friend of the show once said it to me. It's like, it's still a child's game. It's still the same game. Aaron Judge plays baseball a lot better than a kid playing Little League, but he's still hitting a

fucking ball. And there is something universal about that. I think tech's getting there. Perhaps we're not there quite, I think most people are not accepting it yet. But the fact is, I think there is something deeply personal about tech that no one's fucking touching in this way. And they should because it's interesting. Yeah, this is one of the big ed points to be 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. And now they don't.

And they still, they like, no, they like the stuff, they hate the tech industry. Yeah. And that 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 gratifying 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, I think that that is criminal. When someone is doing that to you for sports stuff, I just think it's rude. Yeah. I just think it's like a dick move, basically.

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

that we now know in a dimensionality that didn't previously exist because, you know, Jordan Hudson posted an Instagram thing of a philosophy textbook that was autographed by Bill Balli-check, the day that they met, which it turns out 19 years old. Cool. Not important.

Look, again, it's a little bit important, actually. You know my disclosures. Yes. You know my disclosures. 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 god 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 omnipresent. Yeah, the challenge with this too, this is for Defector, which is more of a, it's a print product. Yeah. 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 Pablo'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 turn against their users, that idea of like, I guess discoverability is the term. I say that word all of the time and I hate myself every time.

Yeah, I mean, it feels bad because it's like it's a fake, ugly word. It feels like impact. But it is. Yes, it does feel it has that. But it kind of goes back to the thing I was saying about the money side. It's like, I don't know. This show was quite successful in part because IHart Radio put it on the fucking. Not the actual show, but they put a bunch of advertising behind it, which is awesome.

I'm really glad they did it. But it's like a big part. What a surprise. A show has trouble finding new listeners when they have no discovery. And just. We are. we every, look, obvious sort of statements of fact, it is harder to find anything now because all of us are fragmented, siloed, not consuming the same things, have personalized feeds,

again, explained by the tech industry. And personalized by their standards. Absolutely. And so true. 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 success becomes, do you know that this exists? Yeah.

The game becomes, I mean, again, to return to another sort of like axiom, it becomes an attention game. Because that counts as something in a meaningful way. And so to have, in Defector's case, a subscription-driven site, by the way, everything now wants to be a subscription. Yep. So kudos to... Yeah, we were early. Kudos to journalism to... Just start a premium feed on where's your ad?

Please subscribe. Any money. Also, it cost me thousands a year to do. That's nice. What are you going to put on the premium? I do a Friday, Friday news. You said nudes? Nudes, yes.

Artistic news. Yeah, you have to get the magnifying glass tool. Anyway, no, it's Friday news, N-E-W-S. It's why I can't say the word porn, either, P-A-W-N, because I'm like, oh, you're watching porn stars, huh? I'm like, yeah, the show with Rick. Right. Oh, yeah. Best I can do you is more.

I'm sorry. It's just even doing that felt dirty, but it was kind of like, yeah, this cost me thousands of dollars a year. Dude, I'm contemplating the same thing. What are we going to put behind our premium sort of paywall? 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 was like your like average newsletter is my monthly output in terms of word count. I don't post it at 4.55 p.m. on a Friday.

Well, that's a failure on your part because that has editorial best practices. That's, that's what everyone loves and what they sign out 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 HART Media Awards, right, which I did not went to Kevin Ruse. And the case in you very unfair. Very unfair. When they did an announcement of the different, someone was in a category, they were saying, okay, we've got this podcast.

And they went the daily with Michael Barbarone. And it was like, and now I went outside and then there was a politician there. And I thought, does he do politics? And someone goes, we love you, Michael. That's nice. I want that person found. I want that person in jail. A Michael Barbaro super fan.

No, who is the Michael Barbaro superfan? Like the Japanese idols, but for Michael Barbaro? I think there are thousands. I think if you did a live recording of the daily, you would have to do it at, like, the forum at Madison Square. 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. It's at Buda Khan. He's going to do a live episode. I'm opening up the fucking pit of the daily show. About how the subway is too scary now. That's going to be the episode that they're going to perform. And that's when I'm hitting with the wheelbarrows.

That's when I'm just fucking spinning. Another podcast from some SNL late in. night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Who's the worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, uh, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The yard birds, right?

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And the legacy media people are pissing it away because they have the discovery discoverability part done already. The New York Times could do so much interesting shit, but they're so afraid of this vague objectivity thing. I know, Pablo, you have to do your like disclosures and shit, but they're just like, nah, instead of doing the disclosures, we'll just do a really boring

and shitty job. What if it was just really dull? And so they already have the hard part done, and they choose not to do anything extra because they're like, oh, well, people want this. Have you fucking tried? Yeah. Have you tried even once? I'll say this with sports, too. This is an advantage that we have

in this space over a place like the Times. I mean, the Times has got a report on things that are not fun. Yeah. So a little bit of whimsy. And any time the Times attempts whimsy, 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 doesn't like right. You don't experience this feeling. But also you're like impressed.

You're like, well, I didn't know you could do that. Like, please stop. Like 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 with the audience of this podcast than the people that listen to WFAN. But there are, like, there's guys whose job it is to just go sit in a studio for five hours every day and, like, every day. Like, this is a weekly thing. And just somebody calls in and they're like, I don't think the island you should do that.

And then the guy's like, you're wrong. And that goes on for an extended period of time. That is like, it's a grim way of doing it. But it also is like, it's not, there's very little in that space where you see people like sort of trying to do something different. Yeah. There are other ways of doing it. How it all sort 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 probably come.

out of it pretty crusty too. So I actually, the reason that I like doing the talking with the microphone 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. Are you doing talk or playing music? Both. Okay. He was co-hosting with Joe Peterno. He did the weekly call-in show. I didn't know who he was. I just thought he lived there. He's an elderly Italian man from the community. No, I did crazy shit. I had like a band on This guy 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 in Vegas, I know. It was fun. I'd never really done that before. And people, because talk radio is actually magical when done right. But the done right is having a host that sounds like they're just talking, but has thoughts about everything.

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 is generally is stuff that makes you mad, right? I mean, I feel like that's the idea of like where that.

It's not of stuff that's already big. Yeah. 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. Everyone is called like the smile hour with Dr. Geneen Benin. And it's like each episode is 60 minutes long and it's like, how to smile more? I've brought smile expert, Jesus de fat, and he will tell us all about smiling. And they have like 10 million like five star

reviews like this podcast chain. And you listen to them and it sounds like it sounds like what I imagine they'd listen to in the sound garden video of Black Hole Science. It's like what's coming out of the radio when the lady's 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. 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. 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. There's just too much competition. And short of having, I'm trying to get the genealogy right, short of having someone whose husband's sister dated Taylor Swift or something. Is this how Bill Simmons? No, I'm just like, there's certain ways to like speed run growth. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Theo Von, was on Rogan and they all cross-pollon. The Joe Rogan cross-pollination being another.

In general, yeah, we're aspiring to smaller arenas, but we are also aspiring for the people in those arenas to give us money. Yes. And that only fans' economy of like, hey, if I show you some ankle, will you pay me for my, increasingly bold takes or reportage or I cannot trust this enough, Bernie Sanders' impressions. Yes, it turns out they will. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing that, and I try to like sort of count my blessings with

this with the vector, because like it is, it's a good business. Like we're not, we're growing. And yet, like, I think that the challenge with it, 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 going to change and yet there's a part of it where like we don't all want to just like

get old and die with our readership either you know that like we want to be able to do new stuff and we want to be able to hire more people and change sort of the perspective of the site over time and all of that cost money i think just because we want to feel like we're growing and not repeating ourselves why do you want to grow so i push back i like the alt-day slogan democracy dies with us yes right 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 Trumpism. 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 economy is the growth that all cost thing. It's people don't 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 the biggest thing ever. It's not about the product. It's about the position. This is where I'd put an emphasis and like the difference for what. Like, Defector does not want to become Fox Sports. But even then you feel like to televise a bowl game. But you feel the allure of growth still.

And this is not criticism. The growth is just to like, because we want to have like new people and do new shit. 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. We're making more money. We have ads for people that aren't signed in. Like they see that now. We've got the podcast.

Those have ads. You sell those cell phones. We sell gold-plated cell phones, which are very, those are great. And we're looking forward to making those right here in the United States. We're going to make them in. Did you see the Smartler cell phone? Oh, yeah, there is one of those, right? So Smartless, one of the biggest comedy podcasts in the world, listeners, has made a MVNO.

So a cell phone network that lives on top of T-Mobile. What is MV&O? I forget what it stands for. It basically means you can have a sub. It's the same thing as like Mint Mobile. Yeah, you can run your network. Yes. A network.

Is Ryan Reynolds going to lead to the collapse of the telecommunications industry? Can that possibly be? Thank you, Danil, our producer, mobile virtual network operator. Oh, I knew that. Yes. Dannell, thank you. But it's that really, there's a great slate piece on it as well that was just really echoed how fucking sad it was. because these guys are like super rich already and super popular

but they needed it so far growing for for the sake of just being like there's more money out there to be made is I think this is an area where like everybody at Defector wants to fucking blog that's our job exactly 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.

Yeah, yeah. I worked 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 template, you know, at Vox, basically, whatever it was that Vox was trying to do. Yeah. I was briefly a part of that. In all of those instances, everybody that I worked with just wanted to do our work. Yeah.

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 of the mountain where they were. But the thing with all of that, I never felt safe in any of those jobs, including the ones where, you know, I organized one workplace at Vice. I worked at a very strong union workplace at Deadspin. In all of those instances, the, I mean, obviously it's much, much better to organize your workplace than not.

And I advocate anybody that wants to do it and should try to do it. But at some point, the people that you're working for don't want what you want. They don't care about what you do. And they don't read it. And they don't read it. Which is extremely important. That I think that like in any of those, there's this wish. And I remember this.

I was talking to Megan Greenwell, who is my editor-in-chief at Deadspin. Brian New Book, I think. It has a new book about private equity called Bad Company. That is very good. And I recommend it. She's going to come on the show at some point. Good. I should.

To Oscar. Megan, if you hear this. But we were talking about the experience of trying to like convince the private equity concern that had bought was Gizmodo Media. now it is geo media and basically unrecognizable. Fucking Spanfeller. Spanfeller. Jim Spanfeller.

Bad guy. Come on the story, man. I got some fucking questions. But he, great head of hair, though. I hate to say it, but it's like, it's amazing. Yep.

He's got a quiff. What do they call? Yeah. Quaff. Yes. Anyway, he looks great. He's been getting by in 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 a shit.

It wasn't a business they wanted to be in. And the difference with Defector, and I hope that this is the case for you all at Metal Arc, too, because it is like as similar as something that is that much bigger and more popular can be, that there is, like,

you're doing the work that you want to do and you're doing it without somebody's hand in your pocket or trying to fucking ratatoo you around in editorial ways. And that is, when you remove that interference from the equation, it feels as fun as it actually is. Yeah. I think, so to get back to the misery of Michael 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 that you've convinced your stuff that, oh, this is what beauty is now. It's like, no, trust your own. We got into this because we have a sense of taste around what we want to do and what's good and what's bad. The more that we can actually earnestly believe and act on that is the whole reason to try and engage with the market in whatever way we're allowed to. I just, what pisses me off is I'm pretty. I'm pretty sure that if you just did everything with discussing, it would be insanely profitable because no one's fucking trying.

So if you just did it at the broadsheet types, I'm sure that there are people who are desperate to have Michael Barbaro, like, tell them that the subway scene was sticking. Yeah, many millions of people. No accounting for taste. But what 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, give this a go? I think that there's, I think that a lot of that stuff could be better or could be different. I think the more important to me is the idea that, like, you should be able to pick more widely what experience. Yes.

And if the, 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. Maybe try this out. See if you like it. That, like, it doesn't, it shouldn't be just one platform offering all of this stuff. But I do think that there's enough ways to. to enjoy things that like, you know, and the difference with sports, I mean, there's like ways to be a fan. Maybe you like to shout about legacy or maybe you are somebody that likes

to grind tape, whatever. You're all working off the same text. Everybody fundamentally understands what they're talking about. There's just a lot of different ways to talk about it. It should be a healthier ecosystem than it is for that reason, I think. 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 Heirwath-Rae over at the Globe. You had Eric Benderoff over at the Tribune. You had all of these like David Polk, one of the most well-known tech reporters. Cutter, Steve. And every week, and he would sometimes just be like, yeah, I tried a new e-reader, it sucked. It's my first interaction with him, actually. And it was like, people didn't read David Poe. He was kind of like your weird uncle and then had some stuff that happened, which made. you really potentially not like him. But nevertheless, there was a level of entertaining

that came from these personal voices talking about something that was very personal to people that worked in the New York fucking time, in major broadsheets. I just think that they've got safer. But I also wonder if that's not me just being kind. Or maybe they're just fucking lazy. Yeah, this is a, this is a, an incurious as well.

Another ed point that has been instructive to me, this kind of like the Rod 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 columnist from Houston Chronicle from your ledger. You're not paying a guy $90,000 a year or whatever it is. These guys used to get paid shit tons of money as well. Which means, no, but they used to get paid shit tons of money and they were on there for years. Yeah. Do you think they were adding some 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, what is Jim's, is it you just like you book that? The fucking chain smokers to play a party at the Super Bowl weekend? I must be clear. The answer is nothing. So is that, so I imagine it sits there on a. You have some like transparency into this scene of super wealthy people. It's nothing. It's absolutely fucking nothing.

They sit 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, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the looming sort of storm cloud, 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 its actual standard of success and growth, yeah, profit, right?

So the whole idea of like the part of sports that is seemingly elemental is here, our goal is to win. Yeah, everybody's trying to win. If when that breaks. Except winning isn't always profitable. Right. 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 outlawed. 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 a system that is created.

And to explain for the listeners who don't listen to sport. Pittsburgh Pirates are a baseball team. 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 you're welcome to jump in when I get anything wrong. 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 also being legislated in by shares from Abu Dhabi.

Yeah, and so that's like all international sport is all that. It just hasn't really happened in the United States yet. But it's coming. I mean, a team like the Cowboys or the Giants, their valuation based on what the number is, it's like no person could buy it. Right.

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... Elon must have. by the pirates. This is, I considered a blog calling him out on that, like being like, you coward, buy the A's. Like, prove it. Prove how smart you are.

The perfect one is like, I'm a fan of the Eagles and the Steelers. And it's like, oh, classic. Like, it's like somehow, like, you took a Hillary Clinton line and you made it sound worse. They call me the bus of tech. Anyway, so here's how the pirates make it work. It is not expensive to. run a major league baseball team if you don't pay anybody. But you can not pay people and still make money.

There is no salary floor. So the product that you put out there basically needs 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 100 out of 162 games basically every year. The other way that you make money off of it though is like there's TV deals. That money is guaranteed. There's like, you know, parking. There's concessions.

There's a million different ways to make a little bit of money. 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. Socialism. It is socialism for rich guys, exclusively for rich guys. Awesome. 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 because Pittsburgh is so much smaller than New York, they pay money into a system that it is then reallocated to the pirates. The idea being that this would create some sort of parity because

that money is supposed to be used on either major league payroll or player development or there's ways that you can use it too that are more responsible than others. Like using it to pay a big league ball player is good. Using it to develop a player development program that teaches a raw high school kid that you drafted how to throw a pitch that he doesn't know how to throw. That is also extremely cost effective. And works. Good teams do both. The Dodgers do both.

You don't have to do any of this shit. You don't have to do neither. Yes, you don't. Because you can just sit there and the money comes in. Right. And 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 like, you have a choice.

Yes. You can resign the player that will make your fans not merely happy, but feel on some level fulfilled as part of the allegedly civic trust here. Right. Right. Right? You got a star player that's about to ask for more money and everybody wants to keep him. And in fact, it makes sense for you to keep him because your goal here is to win a title. Instead, what you will do is let him go because he is now too rich for your blood. And you don't need him to run your business. You don't need him to make the margins. Exactly. Yes. That, in fact, you could still make without. 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 in tech a lot. Which is why I brought it. Now, if you think of the business that you have as something that you're going to own for the rest of your life and then you're going to 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 the future. And when those people bring their kids to the games, they're going to be watching that player at the end of his career. So that idea of any of this stuff being built to last in any meaningful way, I think is gone. And I think that it's everywhere. The reason I want 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 can just run a shit team forever. Yeah. 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 that will work in tech that doesn't work as often in sports, but does a bit, is attacking the owners. Yep.

Because Dick Monfort from the Rockies, who I email with occasionally, he has stopped responding to me. I can't tell it. Oh, really? No, that's true. I think it was emailing him about Joe. A lot of people email with Dick Montfort. 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 him. Maybe a bridge too far. Okay, well, it's a delightful show. But you can't really humiliate someone like that, but the pressure on owners 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 Sundop Ashai or Samalman is. And I think the more people who learn and mock them, because they are so rich, they don't have anything other than their 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 multibillionaire is like to obsess over the price of like polypropylene or some other, you know, material that I monetize. 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

In that they are owned by What you can only call a prolific financial criminal And Steve Cohen Like it's just a guy that was banned by the SEC from trading because of all the insider trading that he did. Oh my God. Yeah, I know. I can't have friends. I know, right. They're mad at them. They're jealous. I would love, I would love Francesa on

this topic specifically. Who is that? Going over his art collection, you know, there's a lot of Maldigliani's, you know, and I don't like them. You know, they're too skinny. But the... We love Mardigliani jokes here on the back. So who is that? He's a sculptor. Okay. And they are very skinny.

But the Uh... More of a Brancousy guy. But so Cohen, though, like, bought the Mets. This is the team that he was obsessed with as a fan as a kid. And basically, this is what he's going to do with the rest of his life. He went and he took a team that was owned by a fail family, not just fail sons. 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 they need to be sort of, like,

treated as such. This is, like, the story, such as it's told about how the Mets managed to outbid the Yankees for Juan Soto. Part of it was, like, the Yankees were dicks to him. They were dicks to his family.

And Juan Soto is an extremely good player who's not been as good as shipping. He's not been, you know, he's been a little bit of a disappointment, 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 in the Mets case, it was basically like they have a really nice family room for the kids of the players at the stadium, which is not something that they did under previous 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 yeah 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's not a fake fan is a real fan as well and not even in like always the most flattering ways like he's sometimes we'll get on twitter and like recommend some like lower tier met's 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 there um just going to say Steve Cohen, if you're listening, come on better offline, let's talk about the Mets.

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 this. Do you know about Steve Cohen, this is more for Pablo, because I know, do you know about his Guy Fietti fixation? Who is that?

Guy Fieri, diners drive, ins and dives. Oh, sorry, I've just never heard it said like that. That's how he says it. Oh. Guy Fieri, I'll say it the way that it's written. How I was. He's the medicliani of television chefs. Yeah, he's, yes.

I think that's fair to say. And for our Europeans. 5,000 calorie meals. Yes. Donkey sauce. He looks like smash mouth. Yeah, he's a crazy... He looks like...

Accurate. Everybody from Smashmouth made into one guy. Smashed into one mouth. Yes, it is. Like, a smash burger of sorts. In fact, no one has resembled the term smash mouth more than Guy if he had. Even the band. But so his...

Diners Driving and Dives really is good, though. Yeah. I've never eaten in a restaurant. And he's also like a good guy. Anyway, but so the show is him driving around the country going to some place eating a hot dog and be like, that's crazy, brother. That's a crazy hot dog. Steve Cohen,

super fan of the show appears in a couple of episodes as a diner in kind of like a weird, I saw one. Just like sneaks in. Yeah, there's one in Los Angeles of him just eating a Luganiga sausage and he's not like a handsome man, he's just like a guy, but he's at some place, he doesn't

have any lines, but then he did apparently pay Guy Fieri $100,000 to hang out with him for a day and go to all of his favorite restaurants, like, the hot dog places in Connecticut that he likes. That's exactly. See, to me, that is actually, like, that's an inkling of that person might do a good job

winning 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. I would please have me up. It sounds amazing. That actually sounds like an incredible episode. It's not always guys that are good at being owners.

Honestly, it's just not being unhappy about everything. Right. And through line that you established. You wouldn't tell Jim Ursay, you wouldn't tell anyone to be more like Jim Ursay, RIP. And yet, like, Jim Rese 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 songs you've ever heard that he would sing. That fucking rocks. It rocks. It's great. I have no notes on that.

I wish more people like that makes off. I regret to confirm it rocks. Yeah. So we wrap up here. And I will say, another thing about all of this is that two wonderful men I'm here with, actually, Danil as well. It's like, we all fucking love our jobs and we truly, like, deeply into them. I talked to Danil about random fucking production stuff. It's a 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? I mean, now the pressure's on because we already know that Ed is very critical of my promos. Defector.com is the website. It is a subscription site, but you can read a few articles for free and decide if you like it. The podcast I do there is the distraction. The podcast I do about Hallmark Movies is It's Christmas Town. Yeah.

And if you like Pablo and Ed, you can hear them on the distraction. Neither one of these guys have been on the Hallmark podcast yet, but it's a long process. It's hard. Yes, mm, indeed. And then, I don't know, I'm blue sky, I guess, David J. Roth. I'll have the links in that, Pablo. Pablo Tori finds out is the show. It is on YouTube, and it's a podcast.

And I have a substack. It's at www.pablo. dot show and I aspire to 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 turtle but and I'm Ed Zittron you can find me on a podcast

It's called Better Offline Yeah God killed That God smote my turtle It's like well God friended me

Yeah anyway I'm Ed 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 newsletter as well, Where's Your Ed?com. What's great is this is going to end, and you're going to hear exactly the same shit again, and you're going to

email me and say, Ed, 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 Mattosowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Mattisowski.com. M-A-T-O-S-O-O-S-O-O-O-O-O-S-O-O-E.

WSKI.com. You can email me at EZ at betteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat. Where's your ed dot at to visit the Discord and go to R-slash Better Offline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Coolzone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the I-HeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.

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