Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 200: Will Leitch on Media, Fans, and Media and Fans

Episode Date: May 10, 2013

Ben and Sam talk to Sports on Earth Senior Writer Will Leitch about the evolution of baseball coverage and the fan’s relationship with sports media.

I think I'm on record as being a fan. Yeah, you're on record as being a fan of the crickets, I recall. You were one of the early pro-cricket votes. Yes, that's exactly right. Which one of you was in the car? Again, one of you was in the car. Yeah, I was in the car. You need to get back in the car.

That was the whole charm of this podcast, was you in the car. You need to get back in the car. That was the whole charm of this podcast, was you in the car. Good morning, and welcome to episode 200 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I am Ben Lindberg, joined by Sam Miller, as always. Every hundred episodes or so, we contact someone more interesting than we are and ask them to come onto the show and talk for a while. And today that person is Will Leach, a senior writer at Sports on Earth, contributing editor at New York Magazine, the founder of Deadspin, an author of actual books printed on paper, I believe. And so we are happy to have him with us today.

Thank you for joining us, Will. Oh, please. I'm very honored. I am such a regular listener of the program that I remember the time that you guys forgot that the Astros were in the ALS. That's actually how much I've listened to the show. So every time I'm on, I'm a big podcast listener. Now that I've started my own, it's literally just to try to pretend to be the podcast that I already listen to. So every time I'm on a podcast I listen to all the time, I always feel like I'm visiting the characters on my favorite cartoon.

I'm just popping in. It's like that Twilight Zone episode, the one from the movie, where the kid could put the people in the cartoon and have them. So it's a very strange thing. So I'm very honored to be on it i hope not to uh to to ruin ruin the vibe so when you imagine us we're animated yeah you are and big huge eyes like just like crazy eyes and like someone will make a point that the other person disagrees with and the eyes will go huge and pop out of your head that is the way i imagine it so i i assume that actually happens if it doesn't happen that way, please don't tell me.

I don't want to know. We rarely disagree. It would be a much better show if we did disagree from time to time. But it doesn't happen. Hey, listen, embrace debate. OK, can we embrace debate? So if people want to listen to your podcast and now that they know it exists, they will probably desert our podcast and listen to yours exclusively.

It is the the will leach experience you can find it at sports on earth.com and on itunes and and you are 19 episodes in although i i like your numbering system uh of of seasons i guess it is it's like one one dot 19 yeah i haven't figured out when we're going to stop because i they certainly certainly the people that are that that i'm sending the podcast to every day and that are formatting it and putting it together and and cutting off all the awful terrible things we're saying at the end i always just save all my horrible things to say so i know they'll cut them off they uh they they've asked that same question like when is so this is a season when is this going to stop what is this

going to happen i've been trying to figure out if there's an arc, if there's a story arc that I'm not picking up on. I'm waiting for the big close. I'm building up to a cliffhanger. There's going to be a huge one. We have Jay Jaffe's coming on next week, and you'll never believe what's coming up next. That's the goal. But I don't know. I assume there'll just be a number.

I'll be like, okay, 37 376 this is 1.376 now 378 and 2.1 and so how have you found the the competitive cutthroat world of of daily sports podcasting we we i think we felt that we had run out of things to say by our first week or so of of doing shows. So you've been doing this for a few weeks now. Do you still feel like you have things to say to the world? Well, the fun thing about my podcast is I don't have to say too much because I can just ask other people things. You know, one of the fun, my major issue is talking slower. I naturally, you know, people have often said that like when they listen, they listen to

me talk or when I've had television or radio stuff, they always say I'm talking really fast. Were you nervous? But like I naturally talk really quickly. I felt really bad about this, and then I listened to – I had Joe Sheehan on, and he talks like five times faster than I do. So I was like – and he's like – like he does this stuff all the time. He has like Radio Tuesdays. So he's like – which I think is an actual trademark that she and has nailed down. And so I don't, you know, I, I'm trying to slow down, but generally speaking, the nice thing about doing the podcast is I just get to talk to an interesting person for a half

an hour. So, uh, that, that to me is the idea of the podcast was just, I didn't want to make it go too long. And you guys were actually good about that. Cause I felt like there's a lot of really long podcasts. And so I felt like if I was going to do a daily one i could not do a two-hour daily one if just so i need to occasionally see my family so uh so i think i just find an interesting person to talk to for a half an hour and i'm four weeks in and i've yet to run out of interesting people but i'm sure that'll happen yeah uh so that was crazy. So much energy. And then Ben just completely dropped it. You've run out of interesting people to talk to. Should I ask a question, Ben? Yeah, I think so. All right. So. So, Will, here's here's here's why I wanted to have you on. When you started doing this, when you were you know, when you were at Deadspin and and you were well, we were all sort of, I think, figuring out

how to deal with the internet, et cetera. The average smart baseball fans relationship to the game was somewhat confrontational because we all thought that we were really smart and that GMs were dumb and scouts were dumb and everybody was dumb except for us and the six people we were reading online. And that attitude is almost completely gone. I think at this point, I think that for the most part, the culture war of like 2004 to 2006 or whatever is done except between writers and fans. Uh, there's still just this tremendous like, uh, uh, conflict between beat writers and columnists, uh, not all beat writers, not all columnists, but a lot of beat writers and columnists and fans. And it's the one place where the Jack Morris argument still lives on, and it's the one place where people are still trying to recreate Fire Joe Morgan on Twitter.

And every Sunday, some columnist in North Dakota will write a piece headlined War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. And then we'll all freak out as though like something really important is happening and we need to fix it. So you write about sort of sports consumerism at Sports on Earth. And so I just wanted your take on why it is that we hate reporters so much or why it is that we still have such a tense relationship with writers and columnists. And it seems like almost nobody else. Well, you know, I think part of it is, frankly, remembering how weird their jobs are and how kind of like isolating they can be from the rest of the planet. You know, it was a it was a rough job to be a beat guy. and for the record i'm

kind of exhibiting columnist for this because frankly columnists are kind of half-assed no matter what they're writing about like you know i i feel like uh in a lot of ways uh columnists are just the inherent and i say this as being one of them of course that they're inherently kind of parachuting into whatever they're talking about anyway so So they're never going to be as in tune with the people that are the specialists in the field. But I think beat guys in a lot of ways, it's a tough job. It was a tough job before you had to tweet all day and before you had to file quick updates all day. And these are guys – it's very funny. It's very funny because since I started New York Magazine, I've had to be in the press box a little bit more often than I had ever wanted to be, to be honest.

And there's this great thing. I went to – at Citi Field, they have – on the wall, they have framed photos of beat reporters. But they're all from like 20 years ago. So you see like Joel Sherman when he was like 31. Yes, it's like Moss Klein on there. And yeah, the wall of beat writers recently. Yeah, and it's weird. And I think it kind of speaks to this really kind of clubbish kind of – I say club.

I don't mean that to be like a class thing. I think people hear that they're like oh you're a special part of the princeton eating club i don't mean that so much as much as these guys just this is a tough job you know they they are around each other all the time they uh they really only talk to each other because they're so they're too busy to talk to real fans so i think that it it fosters in them an adversarial relationship and it becomes almost fun for them to stoke it so and and so i think like i think there are a lot of intelligent b guys who i think enjoy the back and forth in a way that's not they enjoy the back and forth more than they actually enjoy finding the answer to things. And I think that actually fosters – I think that's part of the problem.

And I'm always hesitant to criticize those guys too much because their jobs suck. Like I know it's really easy to say that like, oh, you sit and watch baseball all day. That's amazing. And on one hand, of course it is. On the other hand, you are on the road all the time. You have people calling you an idiot all the time, sometimes justifiably. And you are – you also have players that could care less about your existence and really are indifferent whether you are just another face in the crowd trying to potentially cause them trouble. And that's a demoralizing job, particularly when you work so hard at it and so i try to have a lot of i try to have a little bit

of sympathy for for those guys just because it's hard it's a hard kind of thing but yeah when you see them kind of like obviously trolling and uh uh i think analytic uh people it's i can see what it's it's it's not easy to have a lot of sympathy for them in that regard and i think i think it's, I can see what, it's, it's, it's not easy to have a lot of sympathy for them in that regard, and I think, I think it's because, you know, every time I'm in the press box, I always, it's so removed from the actual game happening, like, I feel it's, it's like a fishbowl, like, if I can, like, tap on the press box window, and oh, maybe they'll see me, maybe, maybe the fish in the, in the, in the, this thing, you're so removed that you're not actually experiencing the game, and I think that speaks a lot to the difference and and a lot of the battles yeah

andy mccullough wrote a piece for us today at bp he's the he's the beat writer for the the yankees at the star ledger and and he wrote about just kind of the constant anxiety of the job just from the the moment he wakes up he kind of scans twitter scans what everyone else is doing just hoping that he hasn't missed some sort of story uh and i i saw this firsthand when i was down in dc a couple weeks ago and i was there just to to talk to a player for a story i was doing and i had no particular deadline and i didn't have to cover any breaking news or anything and and there was one really good beat writer who was there who I'm friendly with. And he, like the team had just activated a reliever and he hadn't known about it immediately because he wasn't tipped off by the team's PR guy. And so

he got, you know, his, his bosses calling him and saying, why does the team's official site have this story about this reliever who was just activated from the DL and we don't have it yet? And it's just such a mundane story that happens 20 times a year and doesn't have a big impact on everything. But you just you have to be on top of every little item that happens to a team basically 24-7 for seven months of the year, if not more. Yeah, and it's reasonable that they might not necessarily stay on top of all analytical trends, to be honest. And again, so I try to give them as much as, you know, when you hear the will to win crap and all that stuff, like they're very easy to mock and I think a lot of it is justified.

But not to compare all beat writers with Hawk Harrelson. I'm sorry I did that. But but obviously, you know, I mean, it's a different job, you know, and a different job. And I'm not sure necessarily that these are not are necessarily incompatible. I think that maybe people that that criticize the beat guys feed each feed them the way that the beat guys vice versa. You know, I feel like there's something to be said for that. I feel like there's value in both. I like that there are beat guys, you know, finding those weird, you know, talking about how Adam Wainwright, you know,

has a specific way that he throws his curveball and like those little kind of intricate details. I'm glad that exists, but I also don't trust those guys to always be able to see the forest for the trees. So as a consumer, as someone that's frankly neither one of them, I actually love being able to get both. Do you care if they sort of – I don't want to say – this is going to sound like a sort of an arrogant term, but do you care if they're right about these things? If they're, you know, when, does it matter to you whether they're, you know, stat savvy and, you know, modern and, you know, up on the latest trends or whether they're just peddling kind of tired old narratives?

Do you think there's any kind of significance to the world in that regard or is it really just – they're just another part of this whole industry in which we need to have different places to be – to find conflict and different – we're basically yelling at each other over things that don't matter I guess is what I'm saying. So does it matter if they're right or is it good that they're wrong? Do we need them to be wrong? You know, I'd prefer I'd prefer them to be right, to be honest. I've been a little bit spoiled in that as I'm a Cardinals fan. So I've been reading Derek Gould and Matthew Leach and Jennifer Langosh for the last 10 years. Those are all really smart, analytically minded writers. And but they're they're beat people and they they're really good like they're really good and i to me like on one hand i i also feel like part of it's in new york i know that there are a lot of beat guys that are that in other cities are not that i feel like that kind of weird competition thing it's kind of a specific new york thing but

certainly yeah i would prefer my beat guys to be fluent in that. I think a guy like Derek Gould, who is really great. And I think definitively, like not not only is is open to notions of analytics, but is frankly quite versed in them and understands them and knows when to apply them and when not to. You know, I feel like he's a better beat reporter than a lot than a lot of the guys certainly sometimes i kind of enjoy the perspective and it'll be kind of funny to like you know you you'll watch a game and uh and and you know there are times you'll watch a game you're like oh man the b guys are gonna have a heyday in this even though i know it's it's statistically insignificant and they're gonna make a big story out of something that doesn't actually matter in the grand scheme of things just as an entertainment value there's sometimes

uh some some some goodness in that some value in it but uh i all told i would prefer to have both and i think there are guys that do both there are men and women that do a lot of really great job at doing both i just wish there were more of them do any of those guys get any money out of you or are you just following them on twitter no money no money No money. Yeah. I, I'm not, I'm not making enough yet, but certainly, uh, if I listen, if I could contribute to, uh, to, to smart beat people, uh, who, uh, who get analytics and get what the beat has, I would, I would be happy to do it. I'm not sure I would help enough. Why do you think that it's, uh, why is it kind of taken as a personal affront when we, when we find a sports writer or a sports caster incompetent,

or we, we disagree with what they say? Why, why do we take it so personally? Why do we go out of our way to find that columnist in North Dakota who doesn't think wars is worth looking at. When really, I mean, to the extent that there is a debate or a dispute, I mean, it's been settled in front offices where it really counts, right?

I mean, maybe there was a reason to be defensive about this sort of thing a decade ago, two decades ago when it hadn't clearly kind of won where it matters. But now if there's a media person who isn't on board with that, it's really, I think, maybe more of a reflection on that person than it is on the merit of that way of looking at the game or looking at sports. So why can't we let it go? Or why can't we let it go or why can't we just kind of accept that viewpoint and move on? Because it's fun. It's fun to find someone. It's fun to feel smarter than someone.

Everybody – there's not a single person in the world that doesn't take a little cathartic joy, kinetic joy from feeling smarter than seeing someone that has a larger stage than you do do something stupid and uh there there's something inherent and i think deeply human about that kind of that kind of idea everyone wants to feel smart and and and i don't i think when this happens it's not necessarily a case of just feeling smart i think it's maybe actually a case of actually being smarter um but you know i it's you're right like i don't know if to to think of – to go back to I think the obvious example of Fire Joe Morgan, I don't know how a site like Fire Joe Morgan would do right now because it's so much of the stuff that they satirized brilliantly. does it they're either just completely clueless and they yeah the north dakota columnist who is like why are people talking about math so much i like my baseball like i like my women and just you can just guess whatever weird thing he would say next and um but and so it's so there just aren't that many of those people anymore which i think is again a sign of progress but also you know it's it's not as

it it feels like piling on because generally speaking the revolution has won you know it has and and and one of the things i love about that keith law will do uh when he he i feel like he always takes the right angle on this when he discusses it because he'll talk about how, you know, the people that don't understand the importance of this in baseball are actually just not doing their jobs because people within the game not only fully embrace it, but have fully embraced it for years and think people who don't are idiots. So, like, if you are not doing that, you're actually bad at your job. Like, regardless, it's fun for me to make fun of you and fun for all of us to make fun of them that's actually part of the job now and if you are

not you know it would be it would be like someone you know covering the movie industry but like having no idea like how actors work you know like like so wait so you you have some device and you move around is there is there are there words that are written down for you to say before you go on the set? It's like this basic kind of obvious thing that how baseball works, and I feel like if you don't understand it, you're just not good at your job. Yeah, I get the feeling that a lot of writers who are most anti-stat, they think that they're reflecting GM's positions or front office positions. They just haven't really gotten the memo that this is what the GM's and front offices they cover are doing because players don't talk about it. Managers rarely talk about it. And a lot of times front offices downplay it. And so I think that

they actually think that that they're the ones who are kind of reflecting the team's position. And they think that they're you um, uh, you know, that they're more in tune with, with standard industry practice. I think that's probably the, the, the great divide is that slowly they're, uh, they're, they're, they're getting, uh, uh, I don't know. I think front offices are, are feeling like those people are not really in tune. Anyway, uh, you mentioned, uh mentioned wanting to feel like you had a that you were smarter than a person with a bigger stage than you. You now have a bigger stage than a lot of people. Do you find people put many much effort and much energy into making you feel dumb?

They don't really need to. But certainly, you know, I I've always kind of – listen, I'm raised in the internet. I'm comfortable with the internet. I love the internet. And so I have to say I've never quite understood – I think my stage is a little smaller than you imply, but I'll take it nevertheless. I do feel that – I never understand why anyone that has any sort of stage or has any sort of readership or any sort of whatever, it's very baffling to me. It's always been baffling to me why they get upset when people say bad things about them. Like, I don't understand it. Like, if you got into this field, like you're not like an anonymous accountant in Omaha. Like, you are in a field where you put your name on things that you write. You don't get to be, oh, I can't believe this person responded to me in a negative, low, even personal manner. Like it's so strange.

Like this is what we signed up for. I feel like kind of self-indulgent and a little egotistical when people are like – people want all the good side of being able to make a living writing about sports and they don't want any of the bad. They want to feel like experts and be experts but don't want to actually be challenged. a field where your name is literally the first thing that people see before you use whatever words you have to say and then be like oh how could you say this horrible thing to me it's this is this is what you signed up for if you really didn't want this you could have you could have been a construction worker you could have done all sorts of things you could have been a teacher you could have done a ton of things that would allow you to leave a live a perfectly happy anonymous life so i i never understand why people get so upset about what people say about them on the internet. This is the way – this is what we signed up for.

This is part of the deal. You don't get the good part of internet fame and – putting those two words together always feels strange. But you don't get the good part of internet fame and not – but then act like the bad part is trolling or people just trying to fight it. Like this is the way it works. I generally – honestly, I spent a really, really long time waiting a large portion of my adult life, writing all the time and hoping someone would notice, and no one did, and not getting paid for it and not like so the idea that now now that i've got a little bit of a bigger stage and i'm able to make a living at this the now the idea that now i would be like oh how could you say that terrible thing you don't understand me at all you just you're just insert name of this thing it's it's it would be not only

would be hypocritical it would be a betrayal of kind of the – of what inspired me to be a part of this in the first place. So yeah, I think it's honestly – even when someone says the meanest things, and they've said so many mean things, I honestly – I don't – this is what we signed up for. I don't understand. I feel like if you are someone that gets like personally offended by people saying mean things about you on the Internet. You really this is the wrong industry for you. I don't really understand it. Do you find that you have changed your voice or your tone at all or mellowed to any extent as your audience has grown and you've kind of gravitated from the outside of the establishment to to basically the establishment or close to it. Has that kind of affected the kind of stories that you write or the way that you express what you write?

I feel pretty lucky in that like I remember in the early days of Deadspin, one of the first things that someone wrote about it, they said that it was the insider sports blog, which is hilarious because it was literally me walking nine steps from my bed to my desk and typing words and they're like it could not have been more outside if i'd been writing it from mars so like and i'll be honest i don't i don't really spend a lot of time like i have friends like you know i i think of i think of friends of mine that work in the industry but like they they're really like Tommy Craggs is a friend of mine and AJ is a friend of mine and, you know, and Jason Fry is a friend, like my personal friends. They're like that. Those are my personal friends. The idea of of being in the industry or having a wider readership or like I don't really

hang out with that many sports writers. I just don't really hang out with that many sports writers like i just don't and um so i feel like that like i'm always gonna feel like an outsider because i don't really i don't like i occasionally go to press boxes but i'm not good at it i have to say i like the trend of press boxes now because no one talks to one another they all just sit and tweet and put their headphones on which is exactly what i do all day anyway. There's just now a game going on over my computer top. So I actually – that actually makes the press box easier for me. But I mean I really – like I guess I mean obviously I'm paid professionally to work in the industry.

So obviously I'm a part of it. But I don't really feel a part of it because I don't really hang out with a lot of people. I'm not a beat guy. So I don't really hang out with those guys that much. They're all nice guys. I respect what they do, but it's just not really my world in a lot of ways. So I like to think, and I'm sure obviously there have been probably thousands of small changes in myself that I have not noticed the way that humans never notice small changes themselves over a period of time. certainly uh i like to think and maybe this is alluded i like to think that generally speaking i'm coming at things from the same angle and doing

things in the same way than i did when deadspin started in uh in in 2005 and obviously i've learned certain things and there's a lot of dumb things that i did deadspin that i would do differently now but i i generally think that the viewpoint and the mindset, I hope, is the same. And I can say, one thing I can say is that it's a common thing that people have asked about sports on earth because it's part owned by Major League Baseball. If there is, you know, if there is yet to be, and I would have not taken the full-time job. I'd been freelancing there for a while. I would have not taken the full-time job if there had been a single point where they had told me I couldn't write something or there was something I couldn't do or I couldn't say.

I've made fun of Bud Selig's hair on the site, and if you're doing that and not getting shined – It's edgy. Yeah, it is. It is. It is. Who says that? Like, hey, listen, I'll say the things that no one is willing to say. Next, she'll go after his suits and his ties. What? Oh, hey, listen, I'll say the things that no one's willing to say. Next, she'll go after his suits and his ties.

What? Oh, hey, let me tell you. He's like a car salesman, right? Hey, who's with me? So we've talked a lot about bad sports writing or sports writing that we might perceive to be inferior. And I wanted to talk about good sports writing, because there is just an awful lot of that these days. I feel like there is more good sports writing or more sports writing that I would want to read than I could possibly have time for. No matter how much

you hate your desk job and are searching for distractions, I can't imagine that any one person could possibly get to everything that is published just on a daily basis. And I wonder, I mean, with just the explosion of all of these sites that are sort of dedicated to sports and media and popular culture, whether it be Sports on Earth or Grantland or the new USA Today site or the classical or all of these just, I mean, is there a bubble that is going to burst at some point? Is there going to be a consolidation or is there just a limitless appetite for this kind of material that can just keep spreading? And I wonder also, I mean, it sort of seems like in some cases these sites are sort of

incestuous. You can find writers who write for two or three of those sites at the same time. I mean, Sports on Earth has writers who write for Baseball Prospectus or SBN or just all these different places. And I wonder how difficult do you think it is to kind of establish an identity for any one of those sites, and can they all continue to coexist and thrive indefinitely? It's worth noting that still, even Sports on Earth and frankly even Grantland, if Grantland doesn't have – I like Grantland a lot. I have many friends that work there. I read Grantland every day. You take away the front page link from ESPN.com.

I'm not sure how that site does, to be honest. These things are still all niche products, and I think that we forget that a little bit because we get excited because there's so much – to me as a consumer, what a – just a terrific time it is to be a consumer of sports media, of media in general. Like there are so many i'm so well informed it is funny like i know that we have this idea that the internet is making everything dumb and everything is i can't stop watching this video of this dog hugging this cow and and uh and 57 ways that uh that this that you're that you're that the 90s were awesome you know and and all these kind of dumb things that the internet does but honestly man like think about the way we were before the

internet was around i know so much more about everything like i really do like it like it's even just by accident i'm so well informed on matters of politics and entertainment and sports and across the world just as a consumer I have so many places what like even if I was not trying even if I wasn't even on Twitter I would find I just couldn't help but get into my brain. I feel like this is actually a pretty Awesome positive step in at least brain evolution as he says while watching a video of a cat playing a keyboard but You know, so i i think in a consumerist sense it's so awesome like i i i i would i if i had any idea you know when that's

been started in 2005 the number of options that were coming i would have been too scared to launch it like there were just there were so many there were so there's so much so many options so many places to go now and i think it's great great. Now from the other end, the actual creation of this content, you know, that, that's a little, that's a little harder. You know, I think that, you know, one of the things that I love about working for sports on earth is it's the, you know, sometimes it succeeds and sometimes it doesn't, but the goal is to do smart writing about sports. Like that's the goal. And sometimes, piece here won't be great and sometimes one will hit it out of the park and sometimes a great piece won't connect and sometimes a dumb piece will go huge. And that's just the way of the internet.

It's just the way that it happens. But I think that like clearly that's the goal of Grantland and that's the goal of Sports on Earth and that's the goal of the classical. So I feel like is that sustainable in the long term? I don't know and I say that as someone whose livelihood relies upon it. Like I don't actually know, but the reason I don't know that is not because of the quality of the content. It's just because no one has really necessarily figured out this distribution system yet and uh and on one hand you know we live in a world where bleacher report is said but reggie miller is talking about bleacher report on nba playoff games like in in that world uh and i and i for the record i just to cover my butt here there's people that work for bleacher report that do a perfectly fine job.

And yeah, yeah, you know what I'm saying. But like certainly generally speaking, you know, this is – that's not the highest quality content you're finding on the internet. I think that's probably a fair assessment. And, you know, so certainly can that subsist and go on forever? I don't know. I don't think it can to be honest. I think that that's kind of a trick. And I generally do believe, and maybe this is idealistic and maybe this is dumb, but I generally do believe that good stuff ultimately is rewarded. And doing something

the right way and doing something in a way that you think can appeal to thoughtful, rational people who want better stuff, I think that's sustainable in the long term. But again, I'm also a guy that types into a box rather than, I don't even know how to use Excel. I have no idea. That's a very easy place for me to throw things from a mountaintop when I have no idea how finance works. But certainly speaking, I do think that overwhelming the consumer and doing it's hard to find this stuff is an okay problem to have. The problem is going to be when it's hard to find good stuff and it's hard to find stuff that isn't 13 reasons, 13 funny faces in the too legit to quit video. I keep going back to 90s nostalgia.

It feels like that's all that BuzzFeed does. And so, again, I know many people who work for BuzzFeed and do a great job, just to be clear. and do a great job, just to make that clear. But I think that this is a nice problem to have, and I'll be worried when we're no longer going. If the worst thing to happen is there's so much good stuff, how do I find it all? I feel like we're going to be okay. All right, well, we can stop talking

on that hopeful, optimistic note, I guess. That's it for episode 200. Perhaps we will get to 300 one day and have someone else interesting on, but until then, you are stuck with us. We will be back with new shows next week. All right, so plug this in. What creature is that? What creature is what? Is that what creature is what is that a bird it is a bird are the birds gonna ruin this those are so loud and exotic sounding

they're not that loud to me it's crazy what they're it sounds like you're in an aviary they're not that loud to me it's crazy what they're it sounds like you're in an aviary i'm not do you want me to go somewhere else i guess i don't i mean all right hang on you could kill them