Pablo Torre Finds Out - Both Sides Old: Share & Tell with Mina Kimes, Dan "Truffle Pig" Le Batard, and Pablo

Episode Date: February 17, 2024

Is Tom Brady just going to be a cranky bastard in the broadcast booth? Is Jon Stewart just SUPPOSED to be a cranky bastard on The Daily Show? Will Joe Biden just inevitably be the cranky bastard we need for democracy to survive? And have group chats replaced hanging out?Further reading:Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out (Derek Thompson)Return to Bullsh*t Mountain (Sam Adams)For Voters, When Does Old Become Too Old? (Nate Cohn) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. Right after this ad. You're listening to Draft King's Network. We are sleep training. Oh, my God. You're going to get ASMR media. The wiring that's inside of you that says you should attend to your child

who is crying out free. you. Like literally their life depends on it. And just ignoring that is like a psychological experiment that we subject ourselves to as parents for the, for the benefits that are worth it. Did you ever put your headphones on? Because I've done that a couple of times. Just noise cancel? To stop myself from. Yeah. Being like, you've got to ride this out for 10 minutes. But then I, it's a little bit mitigated. I look at him on the monitor. So I have my headphones on, but I see him going,

but what's playing in your head is Katrina in the waves walking on sunshine because Mina doesn't care about her son. He's too busy and dancing to 80s hits. It's Zach Lowe, usually. Yeah. Yeah, I think Mina should start. I think the story she brought is germane

to some larger topics you've been talking about on the show for a long time as well as her last weekend, potentially. Yeah. It kind of pertains to what we're doing right now. We can argue about whether what we're doing right now in the process of doing this show satisfies the requirements, I guess, of a hang. Are we hanging out?

Because that is a subject that I am bringing to you today. It is an article by a friend of mine, Derek Thompson, in the Atlantic, called Why Americans Suddenly Stop? It's not like a famous person. An article by a friend of mine. When you say an article by a friend of mine, it was unnecessary. This is literally about friendship. Okay.

Okay. All right. Oh, my God. I just realized we're doing an article. This is about hanging out in friendship. The name drops we were about to be subject to from one Pablo Tori might. Yeah, get that button lubed up, buddy. So the article is about the fact that Americans don't spend as much time as they used to in person hanging out.

And just to give you a few of the numbers, from 2003, 2022, American men reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing by about 30%. For unmarried Americans, do you count hanging out if you're your wife or your husband? I don't know. The decline was 35%. For teenagers, crucially, it is more than 45%. This blew my mind. Teenagers, so 15 through 19, boys and girls, reduce their weekly social hangouts by more than three hours a week. That is a lot of time. Like that's not, you know, in like little percentages on the margins. That is massive.

He talks about how this connects to rising numbers of depression and loneliness amongst teenagers in particular. And then the story, which is really good, gets into some of the reasons for this. And there's a litany of reasons. The biggest, I think most obvious one is that more people, not just teenagers, but especially teenagers, are spending time on the internet, spending time on their phones instead of getting together. But it also has to do with kind of the disintegration of community activities, church being a massive one. But there's other ones too. I think youth sports being on the decline, clubs, group hangs, etc. So basically, we are all online more.

We are all seeing each other face-to-face less, and everybody is sadder because of it. Yeah, I want to just, Dan, I want to give some historical context because the article also quotes like Alexis de Tocqueville, right? As somebody who identified as one of the first, maybe the most famous first observer of American life, someone who identified, and I'll quote this, that nothing in my view deserves more attention than the intellectual and moral association. in America, which is to say that the United States was kind of born with this premise of people gathering and forming associations, hanging out, making community from nothing. And this is a distinguishing aspect of what I meant to be American, actually. And Mina, I mean, the graph, right? So it's been declining. People have been chronicling this phenomenon, like fewer, fewer hangs, basically, from the 70s to the 90s. There's this book called Bowling Alone, which was in the 90s

about this topic. But then the 2020s, like all of these studies are basically just saying, this has gone haywire to the degree that the phone feels like this turning point. And there's so many studies, Dan, in this, but I'll just quote another one. It's very suspicious that teen anxiety and depression

really started to take off around 2012 because that's when 50% of Americans owned a smartphone and social media and all that happens. And so the great con of the internet, which is that it would connect. everybody, right? That's what Mark Zuckerberg promised us. We're connecting each other. Like, the literal exact opposite has happened. The internet exists. It's really a funny thing here, Mina, because it's like walking into a comedy club and then getting poisoned. Because we're all

here for the same reason to laugh at the same things, but then we come out of laughing at the same things. Oh my God, I've got this film on me and I'm more disconnected from people and I've spent, oh, my screen time is up four hours this week because it's just just easier to sit around fiddling with the iPad in my case because I'm still using the iPad for this stuff. We all know. But it does disconnect to you. I hadn't even noticed how much less I'm hanging out with people. And I assumed it was both life circumstance and the pandemic. I thought the pandemic changed something in terms of hanging out with people. I, okay, I want to, I want to draw a distinction here because I think we all agree social media, isolating people,

people are lonely, everyone's spending more time with their phones. This is clearly a big problem. But I want to ask you, Dan, a specific question about this. Are you active in any group chats? Mike Ryan has like 1,000 group chats about mozzarella sticks. Okay. I believe that Mina Kimes has more group chats than anybody else on the planet, incidentally. We, Pablo and I are in a group chat that's been going for four or five years,

it's pre-pandemic, I believe. So there's that group chat. I have probably... It's three Asian people and Mike Scher, by the way. Play the sound. Yeah. Alan Yang's the other Asian guy. Oh, God.

I don't want to hear about all his star bleeping adjacent stuff. I really don't. I brought up group chats not to name drop like Poppo just did, but to draw what I think is actually a pretty key distinction when it comes to connectivity. Because it is... I am... Look, the Depression...

Clearly it's the internet. Clearly it's the phones. Like that it's just stupid that people are trying to find other. I mean, I'm sure there's other some explanations. But like it's very, like we all have a device in our hands. If I was a teenage girl and I had had this, I don't know how I would have made it through. It's something I'm terrified for when it pertains, as it pertains to my own kid. You have a device in your hands that is like not only reminding you of all the bad news in the world, but also is a constant source of comparison. And it's, it's bad. However, I do, I have found. that while I do hang out less, I actually get a lot of satisfaction and social fulfillment from the fact that I'm in these very active group chats. I'm in a few of them that have been going on for years. We check in on each other all day. We share funny stuff we've seen.

I have been reduced to tears laughing at times because of things. It really reminds me of the high school cafeteria and I just, I want to know if people think that counts as hanging out. It's evolution. It's the same part of my brain. It replaces it, right? You grow up, you become an adult, you get consumed by parenthood, and it'll do. It's a reasonable facsimile in the modern age.

I have several group chats, probably is right. I have one with, I'll just kind of explain, with Nate Tice, who you guys, I don't know. Pablo knows, and Danny Kelly, who's another football writer, that's been going on for several years. And we share opinions about football. It's a lot of football talk, obviously, but like, we're all parents of young boys, and we talk about that constantly. We talk, like, when yesterday, when the shooting happened, I don't feel like this is, I'm not, this is something I said. I immediately hit them because both of them, Danny's kid is about five, I think, and then Nate's kid is a one or two or something, one and a half. And I asked them something, actually Dan, that you asked me this morning,

which is, I asked them, I was like, hey, do these stories hit you guys differently now that you have sons? Because I'm feeling these things. And we talked about it for a bit in this chat. And it's not only no different from when I had people in real life that I would see, but I actually think we can kind of get to the meat of things a lot quicker and talk about things without any of the awkwardness because of the like sort of, I guess the fact that it's mediated or that it's all text-based communication. And then when I see that, I had dinner at the Super Bowl with Nate and my friends Bill Barnwell-R-R-Mays, it's almost like this is like, I've probably hung out with Nate seven times in person. But I consider him to be one of my closest friends now because we have this

ongoing dialogue for years. So I guess I bring this up because I do worry about all the things and I do feel like the lack of hanging out is real. But I do think that there are ways that maybe aren't captured by the same metrics of hanging out where you can still have these like meaningful deep friendships. What I though am nostalgic for, and I think what this article is positive, is that there is something about face-to-face socialization that only happens when you're not optimizing for interaction, which is the best version of the internet. And it is like, what's it like to meet a bunch of people,

some of whom you know, some of whom you don't, and just literally hang, right? What does a hang mean? I mean, this as a hang does it qualify, like on one level, yes, deeply, this is my way of actually spending time with you guys, and we are face-to-face through a screen. But it also fails the definition because this is structured in a way that is literally topic by topic. There's an artificial layer to all of this that makes it less intimate than being in person.

Mino, how was your Las Vegas experience? Like, because Pablo asked you, and it was delightful. It felt like- And yours too, Dan, by the way. No, but it felt like the nutrients I hadn't had in a while. It felt like- That's what I mean. It felt like something I hadn't even noticed was gone from my life.

Because you got to see people? Not just people, but interact with them in a social. setting that was aggressive for, you know, four or five days and really see them. Like, see you and hug you. See you and talk to you about, yeah, just talk to you more, intimately than you might in these settings. I think different people flourish in different environment. I guess that's kind of what I was getting at when I was talking about the scripture. Like, I, what I meant was like with these two guys, for example, in my chat, I can talk to them

every day on chats over the course of several years. And even though I'm only seeing them in person here and there, I feel as close to them as I felt with other friends in my early 20s who I saw in person. However, with someone like Dan, I don't feel like we have a good text relationship. Her and Mike have tried to lure me into one of these. I am a little bit averse to this

just because of how many of these show up on my phone that is a bunch of dudes watching a game and I'm getting 40 wows to some play that happened six hours ago. It's okay though. When you, we saw each other in Los Angeles, we got lunch, I was in a hurry. That was lovely.

And I felt like those bonds like strengthening again. It's like, oh, okay, this is the, we're in person. We're talking about, life we're connecting. And I guess I just bring that up to be like different. I find that there are people in my life where those connections do need to be strengthened in person. And there are people where I don't think they do. I think it's a parallel to something that I've been thinking about lately. It's a parallel to love languages. Maybe it's a version of it. It's friendship

languages. Yeah. Right? Like Mina, I know about Mina that she respects and appreciates few things more than responsiveness in a conversation, a group chat, or an individual text exchange. And I am more like Dan. I'm shi with it. It's actually very odd for you someone your age. I know. I'm self-conscious about it because you are like the fastest texture on the planet. And I'm somebody who in person is ostensibly like quick and very verbal.

And I'm here to like spend way too much time hanging out. But on a text, it just doesn't do it. for me. I feel lonely when I don't have my not because of social media. You could take social media off my phone, but because of these text threads that I have going.

And I think that's so, like I'm not, I guess I just want to say like, I think those friendships are as real and as deserving of protection and defense. Just because we're not, you know, going to a restaurant, I get

a lot out of them. But you're saying you're getting in the evolved new modern age, you're getting the nutrients you need from friendship, the modernized way. And it doesn't make you feel lonely. In fact, it makes you feel closer to them than you might have been 20 years ago because none of this could have happened.

You wouldn't have made the phone calls to make this happen. This is more efficient. You can just reach out with your funny and have an interaction that you wouldn't otherwise. In fact, I'm guessing that the two of you don't even use this as a phone anymore, correct? Like that you rarely answer a telephone call, correct? Oh my god.

My voicemail box is entirely Dan Lebitard and Tony Kornheiser. Yeah. Which is to say people who are old enough to still use it like a phone. When I see an incoming voice call, it literally feels like someone trying to punch me in the face. Like, what are you? Like, no! Get away from me. I did not expect to be the guy bringing in the football topic today.

But I have been really interested. in what we're supposed to do with Tom Brady as he is, yeah, replacing Greg Olson in the booth next year for Fox. And we all know that story by now. Greg Olson has... It's just impossible to be better at this than he has while also losing your job. And so there is this clip of Tom Brady

that went viral recently that want to play for you guys because it was this glimmer. It was framed and hailed as a glimmer of what he could be, which is to say, like, actually interesting question mark? If you can play that. they're just calling probabilities. Okay, there's a probability on third down.

In short, they're going to play man-to-man coverage. So therefore, on my call sheet, I'm going to call my man-to-man beaters. Oh, they didn't call man-to-man. Looks like, you know, a simple cover-two zone. This play isn't really working for that. Okay, in my mind, it's like, okay, let me get to my best cover two play against this look. As opposed to now we get the ball. Okay, we've got a bunch of crossing routes into cover two.

that's not good, let me hold the ball and go run it. And then people on TV go, oh, you know, great play, way to run. And in my mind, I'm going, why did you snap the ball? I mean, you clearly knew no one's going to be open. And so that's just Brady talking to Steve Young on his podcast. And having an edge to him and also just this conviction, which made him automatically interesting to me. And Mina, I just want to know for you, right?

Like, there's this conversation, and you've been in a booth calling NFL games for the Rams. He's going to have to tighten it up. Those windows are small. Like, if he thinks he's going to have the ability to explain all of that, he better speed that shit up. Right. So how do you foresee the Tom Brady experiment going as he has basically handed a job that everyone else has to climb a ladder through mud and many sharp elbows to get to? What I found interesting about that clip is not so much the substance of what he's saying, right,

which is he's criticizing a quarterback using his legs for basically not engaging in the sort of pre-snap mastery that Tom Brady engaged in, which I have to think like Brady has probably watched a lot of quarterback mobility over the last few years and been like silently seething. He only ran because he needed to run. I have, Mina, not to interrupt you too much here, but I do think that he will be paid $375 million. to bitterly excoriate that Mahomes is not as good as him in every game that he calls of Mahomes. I can't wait for that. As he calls all of football mediocre and just drains down, just rains down upon Mahomes, he's not as good as I was.

Sorry to interrupt you. That's what's interesting about the clip. So I do think something that either bothers you or you love is when announcers are critical of quarterbacks. Like whenever you see Chris Collins worth trending on Twitter, it's usually NFL fans complaining about him being too positive about a quarterback. I would say the reverse has been true of Aikman in the past. Troy Aikman tends to be more critical of quarterbacks. I love it personally. I think it's really funny. And I think he had a fantastic year too. So I think what we saw there was a glimpse of the possibility that Dan alluded to, which is Tom Brady might actually be critical.

I've never heard, like the clip of him complaining about the NFL, that was very general, right? But if he actually does what he did there, let's say we turn on a game and it's Jalen Hertz and he's just struggling against the Blitz again, Tom Brady going in on him would be the most controversial and interesting thing Tom Brady has ever said. So if he actually were to do that and then given his, the fact that he has the authority to do so, I would find that fascinating. I hope that that's the case. I am most interested in this part of it, and he's an old man by athletic standard.

So he is approaching 50, and the way that he's approaching this, when athletes struggle a great deal with what do I do after I have buried who I used to be? After I have grieved that my identity is I was Tom Brady who played, and now I'm Tom Brady who talks about this and wants to be successful and I'm treating it competitively. I'm going to sit out a year until I get good at this. And I ask you, Mina, because I do believe this part is funny and interesting. I believe Tony Romo's enthusiasm just like John Gruden's. You like football.

I like football. That works. Hey, Tony Romo, there has to be an intervention with you and CBS executives because you're not taking this job seriously. enough, I really don't know what the balance is on this. I think Tom can take it so seriously that he strangles it or he could get good at it. But I do wonder if he thinks he's going to get his smart off in 15 seconds at a time. Enthusiasm and likability counts for something. He's starting from a likable place. But the fact that he cares so much about this, I think can be as a preparation. It can give him comfort. But it also can be overprepared. And you can think you've got this

handled and not have it handled because you're not treating it as relaxed as Romo did from the beginning. I also think, though, we're talking a lot about the craft of announcing, and we should, because it's a really interesting job. It is a very, you know, high-paying job. It's a very high-profile job. There's a reason, by the way, that, like, the greatest of athletes, I mean, truly, like, Wayne Gretzky is calling, or he's, like, in the studio doing, like, hockey commentary now. Tom Brady wants to be in the booth, the greatest of all time. Would LeBron want to do this? He seemed to enjoy being at the desk after winning a championship being very open and interesting, right? So there's a, I get why people want to do this. I just think it's very funny that inside of any

sort of like broadcast network, the conversation is very simple. It's like, oh, yeah, get Tom Brady. Yeah, him. We want Tom Brady, period. Because on some level, you just want to know what he thinks. Like everything he says would make news in a way that must be infuriating to like other competitors for that job. Like Greg Olson went from a tight end who was. like mildly well known, you know, to most normal people, if at all, to Tom Brady, where it's just like, whatever his take is is inherently interesting because that's how good he used to be. Now, there's going to be a diminishing returns on that where if he's like super boring all of the time, people will stop being interested. But the bar, the floor on him. Because he is.

Yeah. Because you just want to know what Tom Brady thinks. And that's going to carry him through a lot of the first year. But what if what he thinks is that football today is more mediocre than when he played it? That's his starting point. His starting point is not the affection for football. Now, we know he loves football, but Olson and Romo make you feel like they're enjoying their Sunday as much as you are. Brady's starting point is, I think the product's mediocre the moment I leave the field.

I don't think he's going to be a crank. That dude loves the game. I mean, the brief glimpses you get of him on the field where he does show personality, you know, like, so what we're talking about is that clip is him criticizing quarterback play, but quarterback play isn't the entire broadcast, you know, just that.

Like I think Tom Brady, I just picture Tom Brady calling a Niners game and watching the way Christian McCaffrey is used, he'll go crazy about it. For example, just drawing that out. I'm actually pretty optimistic about the depth of both the, the tone, which is what we're talking about,

and the depth of knowledge he's going to bring. And I think because of who he is, as Pablo said, it adds an additional layer of interest. To me, it just sucks that, like, he's replacing Greg Olson, who is, you know, doing such a fantastic job. Those are big shoes to fill. I thought that he was pretty critically celebrated almost by consensus. I know it's a ridiculous thing to say, how will Tom Brady ever replace Greg Olson? But Greg Olson, I felt like was a huge media darling. Not since Romo had I seen a broadcasting.

Not since Romo was correctly predicting plays on television. I've seen a broadcaster of any kind, any sport celebrated the way that Greg Olson was for starting as a rookie and being great at it immediately. But that's also why I imagine Tom Brady is putting out clips like this. Like he's hearing this. That must be so frustrating for Tom Brady to be like, wait a minute, you guys do know who I am, right? So if we as a media organism can basically dare Tom Brady enough to be interesting, it's kind of like that guy cannot possibly pull off this comeback with two minutes left in the fourth quarter.

I feel we can actually shame him into being interesting. His one personality trait that we know of is competitive freak. Yes. That dude is hearing all of this. And by the way, like, you know, when he took a second, right, he didn't. jump right into the booth. Again, knowing what we know about him, he's probably been doing an insane amount of preparation. Like, he is not, like, the criticism of Romo now is that he's maybe not as prepared as he was initially.

These are all the, you know, leaked stories we're seeing. That's not going to be the case with Tom Brady based on everything we know about him. But, Mina, I would say to you as someone who has done that, I would say to you as someone who has a lot of information at her disposal, you know how fast all that. that moves. You can prepare for that. Tom Brady, I'm sure, will have a lot of things to say and not enough time to say them because you are not prepared for how quickly all of that moves when you've got 700 sheets of paper in front of you and you need to know who the backup nickel package is on the left side, you know, who's in too deep coverage this time. You need to know every, I don't think people

understand that Al Michaels every week for 17 times a year, however long. it is that the burden that is Al Michaels at his age, just learning every player on the roster because you need to know who recovered that fumble. As opposed to the NFL when he had three seconds to identify every player on the field and get off like a perfect path? What are we talking about here? I just want to send Tom Brady specifically that clip of Dan. Just watch this and make my Sundays better as a result.

My concern about Tom Brady, the broadcaster, is not anything Dan said, which is. come on, it's that he was going to be bland. And that's why this clip has got me intrigued. Because if he's willing to criticize quarterback play, he will not be bland. That was my, you know, I was just like, oh, is he going to be afraid? Because this dude is studiously non-controversial. Right. It will be political with his takes.

Yes. But you guys laugh at me as if the difference between sculpting 25 years of I need the ball out in two seconds. And, hey, Tom, be smart, funny and interesting in four seconds. as if that's not an entirely different skill set. He doesn't have to be funny. He can be smart. You hear that, Brady? Brady, you hear that?

Be smart, interesting, and likable, and do it in seven seconds here. And don't step on your lead guy because he's got to get to the next play because it's hurry up offense now. I don't know. I'm not worried. Look, I'm the guy who said seven years

before his career was done that he was declining. And he had another Hall of Fame career after that. I'm certainly used to questioning Tom Brady. I'm just saying that the degree of difficulty on this, no amount of preparation actually prepares you for it. The first time he does it, he will feel like he was less good than he wanted to be

because no amount of preparation will prepare you for it. I just can't wait to analyze every little thing he says about Patrick Moeuf. It's going to be so good. It's going to be so good. I was trying to quietly open up, think, a trail mix, and it's just not happening. You're going to have trail mix while we start this? You're going to eat the trail mix.

You're going to chew while we start this. Okay. The level of comfort that Tom Brady should aspire to. All right. Eating trail mix while keeping the show. I will start with Pablo. I'll direct this to Pablo and you can munch like a rabbit in the background while you crunch. Pablo.

Sorry. It's ASMR. I'm just over here sustaining human life with my own body once every four hours. Sorry that I have to sustain myself in the very few times the day I have a chance. Neglecting a child. you do it because you're too busy listening to Zach Lowe on a podcast to take care. He's asleep. Pablo, the thing I wanted to talk to you and Mina about was John Stewart returned like a welcome

salve to comedy to political commentary this week. And I want to know while Mina chews and covers her mouth while chewing, if you think his style is going to hold up. Comedy notoriously doesn't age well. And he's the best I've seen do it. And he's coming into a field. Colbert is doing it daily. John Oliver, with the help of a lot of writers,

is doing it every week, better than just about anybody. These are the people he taught, and now in a very important election year, he returns to the Daily Show and reminded me in week one, oh, hadn't noticed that Trevor Noah had diluted it some, and don't mean that as a knock on Trevor Noah at all.

But John Stewart limped in first week of many months during an important election year with the president is old and both candidates are old and kind of both sides old. Now, Democrats will say that any criticism like this, especially of Biden, is unfair because you just don't know Biden like they know Biden. President Biden, who I've been around numerous times just in this last year, is sharp, he's focused, he's bright. He is sharp, intensely probing, and detail-oriented and focused.

This is a man who is sharp, who is on top of his game, who knows what's going on. He's smart. He's on his game. I was in almost every meeting with the president. And the president was in front of and on top of it all. Coordinating and directing leaders who are in charge of America's national security, not to mention our allies around the globe. Did anyone film that? If you're telling us behind the scenes, he is sharp and full of energy

and on top of it, and really in control and leading, you should film that. What did you think of his debut, and do you think he's going to have an impact? I wanted to establish how much Dan loves John Stewart, right? Like, that's the Tom Brady comparison, is that... And I respect it, I get it. I also regard him as, like,

one of the most wildly talented people, comedians to ever do a job that involves political analysis, and it's not particularly close, right? He's obviously on the Mount Rushmore, whatever metal stand metaphor you want to use. The thing about this election, though, and the reason why people aren't responding the way that Dan has,

which is to say, thank God the goat is back, is because the way this has been framed has been in the context of the election, which is not just very difficult, but unique. Like, we have never had an election involving one guy in Trump who is, I don't even need to say what he is, hopefully, but he's that, right? And the other guy is Biden, which is to say 81. And the entire problem right now for the left,

I'm bringing big scare quotes around this, is that Stewart was framed maybe unfairly by everyone or lots of people around, you know, daily show fandom, as the guy who would come in and save democracy. And this has been a thing he's bristled against ever since he was doing the job. He's always said, I'm a comedian, I'm not a politician or a freedom,

He's a guy making fun of people. And this election feels like one that is particularly ill-equipped for that degree of needle-threading. Because the whole point is, are we actually acknowledging in a way that I just didn't that Trump actually has this rap sheet that demands us to remind ourselves over and over again how singular he is as a problem? And therefore, to criticize his opponent feels like you're actually abetting and underweighting how much of a problem Trump is. Yeah, I think you're getting at the core question here,

which is what do we actually want out of political comedy right now in a moment where everything feels so precarious? Are there people who just want to laugh, regardless of what that laughter means, the weight given to the parties involved, the things that are being overlaught? looked and ignored or, you know, disregarded. And I think that's, that's a, it's a, it's a reasonable question because I am not so sure how big the audience there is for that down the middle

political laughter right now. Um, you know, uh, which is like kind of what he was betting on there. And if you watch the clip, like, you know, I don't think it's exactly, both sides is. He makes it pretty clear where he stands on things and then the actual the Stewart clip, the actual stakes of it all. But if you are coming to political comedy wanting someone who is acknowledging the seriousness of the moment who is forming a political argument, he's not going to do it. And I think like, you know, I just don't know how big the audience is for just pure comedy. Well, let's examine that for a second,

because what he did his first night was a million viewers, which is hard to do just to get anybody at an appointed time to do it. And then over the course of the week, the word has spread, I thought that what he was doing first time in, and maybe I've got this wrong,

maybe I've got the expectations too high, is he's just sort of coming in with like, look, I'm going to try and be fair here at the start. going, I'm not going to come in with a screed. I'm not going to come at you sanctimoniously. I'm going to show you that I will make fun of Biden too in the event that there are any fence sitters out there that are assuming I'm just going to go hard left in my return to this because you have no experience with what my past is here.

So I ask you guys, because it sounds like you're not expecting him to be able to meet what is the current moment of you have to take a side. You cannot be someone who just goes comedy and goes for laughs. but I don't think he would come back to work and leave Apple the way that he did unless he intended to be impactful with his voice over these next few months. I don't think he's coming in just for laughs.

Dan, I want to frame it even in a more blunt way, I think, because I'm thinking about this out loud, is there is the job that you have as a commentator and all of us can relate to that part of it, and there is the job you have ostensibly if you believe democracy is actually at risk, the Republic is actually at risk, of helping Joe Biden win.

Right? And there are sub arguments under that, right? Like, should he be the candidate? Are there better ones out there? As far as I can tell, there's no one out there with a better chance at winning this election than Joe Biden. And that is on some level saddening to me. I think there could be better candidates, but the political organism has not surfaced them and they don't believe themselves clearly to be a better candidate. Otherwise, they would be out there doing it, trying to do it. And so for me, it's about the age thing, right? Like how much, like, that's the issue underneath this. There's the big picture, which I just described, and then the specific, which is a super majority of Americans believe that Joe Biden is way too old. And it's like, how much do you feed into that and how much do you try and help that guy overcome that, knowing that the stakes are existential

in the minds of at least a couple of us? I want to ask you guys this question when you talk about grave danger to the Republic. One of the great frustrations I've had over the last many years caring about newspapers is it doesn't seem voters or the public at all care at all about the checks and balances that journalism is supposed to represent as the fourth estate to protect democracy because you need an independent arm that you trust.

As all of us can't tell with AI and other things, what's real and what isn't, I will remind you guys as I've reminded our audience ad nauseum that at the height of his powers, John Stewart, in polling by Time Magazine, was shown to be the most trusted newsman in America. More than all the television anchors that we grew up with that taught us how to listen and watch the news, what's objective and what's fair, John Stewart, in this media climate, was viewed as more trusted as a news source than any other. It's a formidable power.

As I've seen Donald Trump run on a platform of the media is fake, you don't trust the media, you trust me, you'd, I could shoot somebody in Times Square and you'd still vote for me. I ask the both of you, what's it worth that people seem to trust John Stewart when they don't trust the media? They did. You said this media climate, and I would argue that the media climate in which he thrived is very different from the current one. And I think that the question that's at the heart of this is, is there any capability for crossover from a commentator, a comedian, a writer? Just kind of gets to what I was saying.

Like, there is this, you know, belief that someone like him can cut through and cross over. But now all of us get our news consumption not only in like polarized platforms, but also we're on social media that further polarized. those platforms, can anything cut across that? Let's say, you know, the clip that we're talking about, he, you know, I don't think, I wouldn't call it both sidesism, but like it doesn't come across. Yeah. Oh, I, all like, the only reason I made it both sidesism is because in his debut, he didn't just attack Trump, he also made jokes at Biden's expense, which I thought was strategic. Well, but so like your belief is that he is, to Pablo's point,

like he wants one side to win, but he's trying to like Trojan horse that winning argument in both sides, you know, colors or whatever. That's a mis-mat from you understand what I'm saying. I don't know if that's true, honestly. I believe he has like strong beliefs and he is catering to one audience. But I think generally he is trying to cut through to what I'm saying. I think he views himself as someone who can cut through. I'm not so sure that's possible anymore is what I'm saying.

Do you think his early returns are successful, man? You're willing to give Tom Brady the benefit of the doubt. He's even giving you an early return on announcing. I've seen this guy do it. I mean, like so if the goal he's, you know, here is to like cut through because we're this is where we're talking about like you you you depressed me meena when you say nobody can like what i'd argue if if anyone can it's him and you're saying no one can and i can't argue with that maybe no one can the one wrinkle i would add though

is that the campaign that we are looking to beat donald trump clearly could use some help when it comes to strategy and messaging and how to own the fact that Biden's very old and all of that stuff And if Stewart is not going to help them make that argument, and it's his right to not. It just becomes, oh, that's not what a lot of people wanted from him when it was announced that he's coming back. Okay, allow me to, like, say what I really think rather than just talking about the mechanisms here, if your strategy as a campaign to get people to not focus on your age is just to never acknowledge it and hope that no one ever talks about it and just hide, that seems like a bad strategy. to me. Yes. So I don't have a problem with John Stewart talking about it. Now I'm just saying

what I think. I wasn't like, wow, this was a great piece of little commentary. So funny. Like, no, I wasn't that entertained by it. But I don't have a problem with it. And I think it's a problem to think that it can just go away and that no one's going to talk about it. I agree completely. And so the question is just, okay, here's a guy who's super old and no one can be fooled into thinking otherwise. What do you do with that? You don't run, you don't hide, but it requires a candidate and a campaign to message around this, right?

And look, this is my take. This is the take I've been trying to, like, I don't know, inceptic campaign with. Like, America does like old people. They do, right? I mean, look, as I say, right? Be Sully Sullenberger, landing the plane on the Hudson, and tell everybody else that Donald Trump is the guy in Conair, right? Who are the old people that you can be like that, yes, get some stuff wrong, right?

But I don't know, Dan, you worked with an old guy, your literal father next to you. Yeah, he couldn't be president. He couldn't be president of the United States. Okay, that's not helping him. He'd be snacking the entire time in the way. He can't be. My father is younger than Joe Biden. Do you think you would fake handshake, Kim Jong-un?

That would be his diplomatic strategy everywhere. Get everyone to laugh with the fake handshake. I am depressed by what Mina is saying, because it seems like neither one of you think that political commentary and comedy for the time can have any impact whatsoever over it. That things have changed too much. It's too volatile.

It's too divisive. And what the hell are you going to do when we're starting at insurrection and then escalating everything from there? I'm not saying it can't have any impact. I just think that the circumstance, it's a lot harder than 10 years ago, 15 years ago, during, you know, when most of America watched,

like a lot of the same cable programming, things can still cut through. And it's, it's, I don't believe that someone like Stewart should just give up and only cater to, you know, the resistance or whatever, because what's the point of trying to talk to everyone? My point was rather just that it's a lot harder these days. Yeah, yeah. Look, I think that his demographic, I don't know.

Is Biden's age? His demo is Biden's age. That's what you're saying. There is, I am caught desperately wanting to. to like help a candidate that is deeply flawed as somebody who thinks that lots of things that are vitally important are at stake. And I also don't expect John Stewart to help me.

You know, I just don't think that's his job. Like I don't think... As a private citizen, yes, I would love to give takes. Yeah, I'd love to give takes. Like, hey, can you guys consider, consider like, I don't know, like leaning in? Like, can you have Joe Biden make fun of how Donald Trump needs to dye his hair and wear makeup to seem younger? Like, can you do that?

And be like, be authentic. Be authentically f*** old is what I'm really asking for from Joe Biden. John Stewart's job professionally is not to help the DNC be better at messaging. And unfortunately, that's the number one thing that the Republic needs right now. And that is the conflict when it comes to a bunch of people watching him who are hoping for optimism because it's a very specific kind. He's just refusing to give you. Pablo, did you hear the Vegas creep into her voice at the end?

She's been working for a couple of weeks. You heard Vegas make an appearance there, huh? I am trying not to yell. We are going on two hours with the nap over here. This has been a successful morning. Mina's ASMR combined with trail mix. Yeah. It means we probably end the show at this point.

We have a whole Photoshop of Dan worked up as an emotional trouble pig, and I didn't give him anything. It's ironic that we spent a lot of time talking as Mina is still snacking on. trail mix about how her child, her baby is crying wildly in the other room. And yet all we've done is mostly just laugh. The truffle pig has not yet emerged, despite the fact that there's a baby literally crying in the other room. How often does he make you cry with tears of gratitude? Not painful tears, but you're just amazed at how much bigger life is than you ever thought it could be.

Is that the best he can be, Dan? Well, come on, get the graphic out there. I'm trying to help you with the emotion. emotional truffle pig. There, he's coming around and he wants to know, when's the last time you were moved to, move to tears by your baby in a positive way, just simply love and gratitude. Yeah. I was really frustrated about some work stuff the other day,

just whatever usual stuff. And I was so, I was mad at myself, which that tends to be how that manifests itself with decisions I made. And then every day at 5 p.m. is when I pick him up for the first time in a few hours. And my baby now does a thing where when I smile, he immediately smiles back. And it has truly... That's the good stuff. Give it to me. It really has a magic eraser effect on every other emotion that you feel because it really.

is the only thing that matters. Yes. That wasn't that. I'll do better next week. The Truffle Pig will truffle better next week. What I found out today is that our graphics department is the best part of this show at this point. The emotional Truffle Pig needs to make an appearance more often. What I found out is that Dan has never been invited to a group chat.

I hate, I just, I hate, I hate how connected you. Can we try? Can we try one? You f***ers in your phones. Pick up a phone call. Answer an answering machine message. An old-fashioned answering machine message. Every time I leave an answering machine message, it's always the same.

Does anyone do this anymore? Does anyone check their voicemail anymore? You used to FaceTime me from your car. Oh, my God. I've gotten the 8 a.m. pre-show convertible ride with like the wind whipping into the speaker phone. You know how many people would love to have that in their lives? Look at this.

Everybody would love it. Just like, just like the snout, looking up at the snout. Do you know what I can make on cameo by just calling people on FaceTime on my way to work? This thing, this valuable thing, this treasure I give you guys, the Truffle Pig gives you guys, that you just decline. You just send right to voicemail. Yeah. She's just snacking on four kibble and bits. No, no, never on the ground.

That's just like no one tells you about being here. You're just fucking disgusting. That's right. I have a troubled pig on my right and a stye on my left. But as for the mess that gets cleaned up by a whole staff of people on this show, I should point out that Pablo Tori finds out is produced by Michael Antonucci, Ryan Cortez, Sam Daywig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rachel Miller-Hawr, Ethan Schreier, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Chris Tuminello, and Julia Warren.

Our studio engineering is by RG Systems. Our post-production by NGW Post. Our theme song is by John Bravo. I should probably go check on my kid. I'll talk to you next week.