Pablo Torre Finds Out - PsyOp & Share & Tell with Mina Kimes, Dan, Pablo, and Elmo

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

Is the right wing ganging up on two huge things — Taylor Swift and sports itself — precisely because they're huge? Can you go with the flow and still be productive? Why is Elmo — and the internet — making us so sad? Plus: Dan Le Batard's screaming female orgasm.Further reading:Why Is the Right So Weird About Taylor Swift? (New York)How to Have a More Productive Year (The New Yorker)Elmo Asked an Innocuous Question (The New York Times) 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. Who will join Elmo in the revolution? Because Elmo is tired of this shit. Right after this ad. You're listening to Draf King's Network. So we were talking about Elmo, which is going to be a topic today, and the Elmo voice.

And I said I could do an Oscar voice. And then I remember it's actually Cookie Monster is the voice that I think I can do. I'm not saying I'm the best at it, or I'm Jeff Passon, Elmo, or I guess Chris Cody, who's kind of like Kirkland brand Jeff Passon here. But I can try. Let's hear it, even though you don't know the difference

between Oscar and Cookie Monster. Let's hear what you've got. Don't put any pressure on it. Let it go. Let it fly. Oh, Lord. No. What was that? Okay.

Brock Bertie isn't a game man. He's a game changer. That is good. That is... That is... That is bootleg Yoda. That's Grover. It's something between Yoda and Grover

giving football analysis for some reason. Oh, Big Dad Nepetard thinks he's so much better than me at voices. Let's hear your voice, Dad. No, no, because the only impersonation I do, the only one is one of the characters in Harry Met Sally talking about... how they fell in love, and I don't think it holds up. It's something that would have been funny in 2002 and would not be funny anymore.

I thought it was going to be a different scene from when Harry met Sally. I thought we were about to get Dan Lepitard's screaming female orgasm. Yes, that's exactly what I was saying. I could do Cookie Monster recreating the scene in when he met Sally. I have one cheese, Harry. I'll have what she's happy. All right.

So I wanted to start the show with a little bit of sports. And I mean that very sincerely. Because the Taylor Swift thing with the Super Bowl, we'll get into that to some extent, is one part of the whole, like, right-wing war on America's biggest event. But it's now gone beyond that, beyond Taylor Swift, into just football itself. And I want you to listen to this as our first sound of the show today.

I mean, let's be real here. This is bread and circuses on steroids. Major League sports in and of itself is nothing but a sci-op. Get kids plugged into the cycle of going to public indoctrination camps, playing sports for their school, and go into games. Many end up devoting their entire childhood to competing in various sports, only to be cut from the team, at which point they become brainwashed into supporting professional teams because they know their dreams of becoming a pro athlete

will probably never happen. So then they become obsessed with some grown man who gets paid millions of dollars every year to throw a ball around while promoting poison death shots and child slave labor through various brand deals and endorsements. So sad. Let's see who ends up winning the Super Bowl and if there's a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped up couple this fall. Only time will tell.

But don't forget who warned you and predicted it before it happens. So that is one American news network. And if I showed that to you in like 2015 and I blocked out the lower third, I think a lot of people would guess that that came from MSNBC. The idea of sports being this sports ball. But suddenly, like, we've gotten to this point, Mina, we've got into this point where the right wing, the movement, has decided to attack just sports as a concept, which to me is just the worst political strategy for that group of all time.

Yeah, there was a few things while that woman was talking that made me react in the help. I'm hit fashion because she was kind of nailing me. But I think you're right. It reminds me a little bit of, I saw, I can't remember which network it was. was criticizing Taylor Swift for flying private. And it was pointed out that, wait, so now you're actually, this is a pro-climate change argument, right? And I think that's similar to what you're describing, which is you go so far right

that suddenly you're flanking from the left is how I would describe that clip we just watched. It's what I find fascinating about this is sports. And this is actually kind of a continuation on something. think we've talked about, us three. Sports and Taylor Swift are the closest things we have in modern society to monoculture. There's nothing else. There's so few things now, and this is actually another thing we're going to talk about it. It gets out. There are so few things that are almost just, I wouldn't even say universally liked. They're just a universal thing that product that everybody consumes. Yes, they're enormous. They're the biggest tent that everyone still walks into,

despite liking many other things otherwise. Marvel movies are somewhere in there, right? A distant third, though. A distant third these days, I would say. Yeah, my husband is a music producer. You guys know this. And I remember asking him a couple of years ago, do you like Taylor?

So like, do you appreciate her work? And he looked at me, and he was like, it's like an iPhone. I don't know. It's just, like, every, you know, I don't dislike it. He wasn't pro or con. His point was just that it is everywhere.

It is ubiquitous. It is appealing to everyone. most people, it seems. And that's what I find so fascinating about this and what Pablo said. The fact that all these conspiracy theories and hate and politics are being projected onto two things that are so wildly unobjectionable or wildly just generic to an extent is... Yeah, that's... It's fascinating.

I don't think it's strategic. I think it's just throwing darts and they happen to land on the biggest possible bull's eye. But before the last few months of this, wouldn't you say that the single most objectionable thing about Taylor Swift was just that, that she's everywhere?

That that was the greatest trigger on anyone not liking her. That she's had too much success. She's got too much of everything. And then someone goes to her show and there are people outside the arena singing her song because they cannot get in and then they see the show, the people who are there and they're like,

well, that's kind of amazing. But What was objectionable? She's like something out of Disney, but now Disney's also objectionable. Well, it feels like what they've done is they've bullied Goliath into being a David. And so the NFL and Taylor Swift are like this weird underdog

against this political movement. A political movement that I will remind you used to be sports personified. Like, the reason why this is so funny to me is that like the Republican Party, the right wing, once upon a time, Gerald Ford, right? Like playing football.

I think of all of these guys, these jocks, it was the party of jocks. It's the party of all these politicians who, in the caricature from the left, were like the, you know, the numskulled, football-brained idiots. And now what we've done has come all the way around.

It's just, it speaks to just the, I agree with Mita. It's just like a non-strategic decision, but it also just feels like an incoherent one. Well, you say this. a weird one. But you say this, Pablo, and Mina, help me with some of this,

because I keep saying, no matter how some of these arguments continue to stupefy me, the way that they go, I keep saying in this echo chamber some version of this is funny to me or this is dumb. But in the other echo chamber, it is not. And I'm confused by how it is, even as it becomes more and more difficult, to have moral consistencies along all of these lines before you find conflict, I am confused that the other side would listen to what we're saying and just simply argue, no, you're funny and you're dumb the way that you're doing this.

I think there's, this is not strategic. The AFC championship game just broke records. People are still watching football. This is not a calculated, let's take the side opposite football because it's not popular. Football is as popular as ever. I think, however, what is happening is if there's any strategy, it's less about a coherent political stamps or an argument. But the strategy is to see, oh, here's, are the two of the remaining things in culture that move the needle. Let's ride that wave.

Because right now, there are so few things that everybody talks about. and some of that is due to the, you know, fragmentation of culture, as we kind of talking about. Some of it is if I hop on social media, I am directed to Travis Kelsey content, Taylor Swift content, and football content. So naturally, people who are in the business of getting eyeballs, that matters to them more than, you know, electing a candidate. The people who are talking about who are making this argument, they want to get eyeballs, they want to get attention, they want to ride that algorithmic wave. they are seeing, and this is the strategy aspect of it, oh, if I talk about these four topics that everybody is talking about right now,

it doesn't matter what kind of boneheaded insane conspiracy theory I graft onto it, I will go viral, I will get attention, I will join this movement, and I think that is what is motivating this more than anything, Pablo. Yeah, look, I want to, you know, a tip of the cap to Dan for pointing out that somewhere, there's a different echo chamber, and we should be acknowledging the ways in which we are talking to each

other and we generally agree fundamentally on like the bottom line principles of this thing. But what we're trying to do also, as Mina just did, is sort of discern like what's really happening here and why. And you're right. It is about engagement in any form. And it also means that this party, which used to embrace sports. Remember, like, Colin Kaepernick used to be a campaign issue because he wasn't sticking enough to the thing that now the right wing is saying should not be stuck to as a general thing people should like. And so the people who are invading who are like in this tug of war maybe for like the soul of the right wing movement include this guy. Travis Kelsey is this guy who also kind of out of the blue became this big time celebrity.

Really rich, really powerful. Why? He's a tight end. He's like a glorified lineman. That doesn't make any sense. Tight ends aren't famous people in football. What are you talking about? What world are we living in sure seems planned sure seems like something that is like concocted in order to accelerate the fame of these two people get them to the super bowl largest screens on earth do you know how little you need to know about sports and talking to a microphone for me to feel like a jock in comparison to you like that's benny johnson one of these influencers that is now very popular dan And that dude doesn't know shit about sports in any way. And that's the party that, you know, the former grift that again, campaigned on Keep Sports Pure.

These guys just don't even like it even vaguely. You say this, but I'm assuming that the two people we have shown have followings that probably aren't coming here to do anything other than end up in the comments. and do the trolling that so many people enjoy doing because there are a lot of lonely people out there addicted to their devices who enjoy having a voice in these forums that perhaps they do not have in other places. And I want to again press you guys on because I did some of this on our show this week

and I am genuinely confused by it. I thought Taylor Swift was just benign. I don't think her telling people to, vote is anything controversial. I do feel and see the undercurrent of a party that seems to be anti-woman in a lot of very obvious ways going after a woman who has powerful young women in her influence and can actually be someone who uses that power in a way that is threatening because where we are right now, anyone who has power right now in these calls for equality that I keep saying sound like threats becomes a threat to the people who are armed and are used to having

that power. So anybody in those instances can become Taylor Swift. If they simply ride against you politically, it doesn't even matter who they are. They are simply a vessel for trolls to attack because it's on the other side of something. And no matter who's talking about this, they all have their armies and no one's coming to the other side. No one's being persuaded. No one's changing their minds. There aren't even fence sitters anymore. I think there are a lot of fence sitters. They're just not online. But I also think, Dan, you hit on something that we should acknowledge because Pablo and I were talking about sort of the creator side of it. Like, why are these people making this argument and we're both very cynical? We're talking about how they're just trying to

surf pop culture waves and get eyeballs. And I think that's true. However, you have hit on something in your points about misogyny and why Taylor Swift in particular that I do think we also, Pablo and we have to acknowledge, well, why does the argument work? Like, why is it, it works in part because of the fame and you're writing this wave, but it also works because of, there are undercurrents of misogyny and gatekeeping and this feeling of having masculine spaces invaded that I think do underlie a lot of the bad feelings. And there are people who have bad feelings about seeing Taylor Swift for 0.5 seconds

on their TV screens. I don't think it's a straw. Like, it's so funny. This thing is so monolithic now that Cowan Cowherd has become like the feminist icon of Taylor Swift. So this is my... I don't mean to interrupt you

like so many of these people would like to force Taylor Swift to stop talking. But that's exactly it. No, like Colin Coward, okay, has become this icon to Swifties because he actually is seeing the marketplace clearly. There's a lot of really weird, lonely, insecure men out there. The fact that a pop star, the world's biggest pop star is dating a star tied in who had one of his greatest games ever. And a network puts them on the air briefly that it bothers you. What does that say about your life?

And this is where the fence-sitter stuff, I think, is actually quite relevant. I think there are a lot of people who love sports. Okay? There are a lot of people, forget about Taylor Swift. They just love sports. And when they hear a guy talking about a tight end, clearly this no name has become an engineered product by the Biden administration, they're like, oh, wait a minute. I can't even swallow this bull-s.

Right? It's not a political take. It's not a conspiracy. It's something that they know so intuitively and obviously as a fan of football that they're like, oh, no. I think this is bull-sh-h-it's embarrassing. But, Mina, you can talk to what, I mean, you can have specific experience and knowledge how men, or cavemen, have reacted to you invading the man cave.

You particularly, you coming in to the football sphere and sitting next to Ryan Clark and Orlovsky and Dominique and having your opinion, looking the way you do, looking like most people don't look when talking about football over the last 50 years. You've invaded this space and you've been made to feel welcome by colleagues, but I think the constituency, the customer, has made that somewhat difficult for you. That's been an obstacle course. Yeah, I think, though, you have pretty different dynamics at play. I think for me, a lot of the misogyny or resistance I've encountered over the years

has been men feeling suspicious of why is she here? What credibility does she have? I must know more, et cetera. I think with the Taylor Swift backlash, and it's not universal, and maybe it's even being overstated, I don't know. But the impression I get is that people are annoyed with the idea of, the product or rather other fans being allowed into their space.

I don't think most men who watch football games are like really upset by the fact that they're showing Taylor Swift for two seconds. I think they're upset with the idea of what it signifies. Oh, other people are now being allowed in here or, you know, the product is being diluted in some ways, I think that's kind of a different phenomena. That's normal with like bands and stuff, right? That you're attached? You think that's what's happening there?

You like this indie band and all of a sudden they become more and more popular. Football's a funny one to do this with because it's like the Rolling Stones or the Beatles. It's not an exclusive club. I feel like when men, when these morons, these misogynists, frankly, when they get mad at Mina, they don't eventually get radicalized. into hating football itself. Like that is where, like, the ceiling on that as a coherent approach absolutely falls short. And actually, the coward thing was so funny to me, Mina, because it was just like the easiest

layup of like, oh, wait a minute, one of the sportsmen are going to, like, elevate our queen. And I just want to help Dan get a version of that. How can we strategize on a take that Dan can say in a similar fashion? the Swifty audience. You were doing, you're doing the same calculus that Ben Johnson, that Ben Johnson and that weird O-A-N lady did, by the way, in doing this. Oh, but Pablo, I mean, Pablo loves the idea that the entire world has turned attention into currency. Pablo, like, well, they'll take his shirt off. He's like, yeah, slather it all over my chest, all over my nipples. Attention, currency? I'd love to be there. You're trying to get me somebody

that elevates me that way. while secretly strategizing so that Pablo finds out has that particular viral appeal. I mean, I see through you. I'll show a nipple. I just think it's funny. We're in a world. Look, you wake up in 2024, and the face of math is Dan Campbell. And the face of ball knowing, relatively speaking, is me.

Because I know that Travis Kelsey is good at football. Okay, but you guys say this. What a life. The part that we explored some on our show this week, when Mina's talking about fandom being earned, the idea of that, that I actually understand. Jets fans looking over at the Swifties and being like, really? You just got here.

You don't know who Travis Kelsey is. You think Colin Cowards a Silver Fox, and you get to play in the Super Bowl six minutes after you got here. I know. I know. How did you literally, you just show. up and you're rooting for the best team in the NFL. You won two road playoff games.

You think that's normal to go just, hey, let's go through the playoffs with the best quarterback and the best tight end. And even though we're the underdog, we're going to win road playoff games. A glorified Langman. I just caught Dan with acidity, say, Silver Fox. And I think that's a solution. That's the pivot Dan needs to make. Don't seed silver to coward as his brand.

You can compete on that front end. Just go get grayer, have more stress and death in my life. Just go, yes, good suggestion. Perhaps I'll do that. Excellent, yes. My face is aged 20 years in the last two. Yes, let's do more of that. The story that I sent to you guys wanting to discuss it is from the New Yorker.

The title is How to Have a More Productive Year. it's by Cal Newport, who is a professor of computer science at Georgetown, I think. Yes, Georgetown University. So it's about time management and productivity. And he gives some advice. He talks about the history of productivity books, how to books in the space over the years, how they've evolved. And then, and this is really the focus of it, the unique challenges of productivity, or of trying to be productive, rather, at a moment where not only are we inundated with distractions because of the internet, we also, people can reach us at any time, which also makes it very difficult to segment your schedule, to get things done, to be productive.

So he has some advice on that in terms of time management, to-do lists, organizing, being fluid. And I brought up to you guys because... Because you bragged on a text chain? Because you bragged unapologetically. Listen, okay, I'll just tell everyone what I said. Please. There are not many things that I feel very confident in that I think I'm great at.

Very few things that I would, to my own horn about, that I would view myself as being an expert in. I am amazing at time management and productivity. I have always been amazing at time management and productivity. It's the nerdiest possible brag. I just get things done on time. I don't know what to tell you guys. I am not late. This was in college.

I'm going to lose a lot of people here. I was the student who sieved whenever professor has handed out extensions. Because I would be watching being like, well, some of us got this done two days early because some of us know how to do schedules and manage their time. And here you are handing out extensions to everyone and the class is cheering because they got another 24. hours and meanwhile I'm like what should have got your shit down on time so um I enjoy this article

because I think I thought his tips were good uh but I also think he was correct in uh the writer and the New Yorker in explaining how difficult it is right now to be productive which is interesting because you know people work from home they work remotely because of technology you have all these tools at your disposal to get work done on your own time and to organize that work. But I think the challenges outweigh the pros of technology. And I was curious to hear your guys' thoughts as inferior time managers. Well, I'm curious what Dan hears.

When Mina is bragging about how she doesn't need the extension, and truly the worst, just the worst perspective to have, is celebrating. Celebrating. No, just celebrating a gift that basically means that, everyone who could have used an extension is actually just playing the game wrong. Like, come on. Spoken like someone who got a lot of extensions.

Love, love, love a sudden extension, love a grace period when you show up late to your own show potentially. But Dan, I hear discipline in that. I hear Mina saying like, oh, my superpower is discipline. I can actually just do the thing that I say to myself I need to do. And I don't see you in that way necessarily. You, I think this is fair to say, certainly compared to Mina, but maybe in general, I believe you'd be Pablo, someone who is inclined to certain procrastinations, a lack of discipline. I'm not efficient in that way. Some people might call it lazy if they wanted to be pejorative.

I had never considered the question before Mina asked it. It's not something I had ever thought about. Am I good at time management? And then I started thinking about it because my brother was an artist and I am in a creative field and both of us coming from exile family. both of us never missed a deadline, ever. It was not one of the options, and it was unusual. It was sort of, I was surprised when I got to ESPN and ESPN the magazine that it was sort of understood that writers were going to blow the deadline because they're used to working with creatives,

and that's how that one goes. But I also, when I started thinking about it, because I was made responsible by my parents at an unreasonably young age, that you can argue might steal some childhood, I would say that my punctuality, my always being aware of how much time there is, gets in the way of being present, gets in the way of just enjoying where you are at that moment because you're always cognizant of I've got this on the horizon. And if you're a task completer, and I don't know if this is gender specific,

but I know men like to fix problems and be task completers, generally speaking, if there is some of your identity wrapped up in that, you're not going to enjoy moments to moments because you're always off to the next one. My mother used to say when I was little that the thing that she remembers about my imprinting as a child is I'm on, it's a small world, the ride, and I'm in the middle of the wonder and discovery of that,

and I'm like, and what's next? And what's next? And I mean, if you get to 55 years old on what's next, and it's a small world ride and you're not filled with wonder and awe and joy because you've got to get to the next meeting. I have so many thoughts about this. So I mentioned actually earlier,

my husband is a music producer. My husband is very creative. He's an amazing writer. He is not good at time management. He has asked me for advice. He gets overwhelmed by schedules. There have been moments where he's at the end of the day. He's just like, I just couldn't get all of it done.

And I went down this rabbit hole. And I don't understand how you're done at 5 p.m. every day. And I'm happy to walk you guys through my system if anyone wants to know. but he gets really frustrated by it. However, I also think a lot of his creativity, some of his best work, stems from the fact that he is willing to go with the flow and go down those rabbit holes

and emerge 24 hours later with a unique idea or he's seen something in a way that he didn't plan on because he let himself get lost in his work. I have always viewed that actually as a little. limitation of mine. And as much as I'm here bragging about time management and getting things done and my productivity and I do view those as strengths, I also feel that a negative side effect of that, Dan, is that I don't go with the flow sometimes. I always, you know, I was really stressed about this as a writer because I was so hell-bent on meeting deadlines, getting things done. And then I

would turn in my work and then feel like, but maybe I missed out on something interesting or something unconventional or creative because I was so strict with myself about being productive. And I felt that way in school as well. Like you're always going to be I always met Mina, you're always going to be, you're going to be good enough to get it done and get it done well

and the teachers love you. But then I would look at someone else and be like, you don't really have that creative genius that you know, Bobby has or whatever. So I think there's positives and negatives that come with being very productive. There's a TEDs talk in there somewhere about the freedom to get lost.

The freedom to just lose your way and find a new idea because you're painting outside the lines outside of discipline and structure. I, it's funny, like as a writer, I think I'm more like Nick, mean his husband and just like my capacity to get lost and literally lose track of time.

But I remember as a writer, some of my own drawbacks are just about when my brain is good to move on. Like, I think something I admire about Mina is like, it's good enough. I'm going to move forward. But Mina, do you ever, forgive me, Pablo, but do you ever, do you ever show up late or lose track of time? Does that, because I rarely, if ever, and Pablo, let's come back to what you were saying there. I get the drift, okay? I get the jest.

I'm the one who's late. on the show. No, but I'm saying that almost with envy, though. I'm not saying that it, look, my responsibility has obviously gotten me some of the things that I want, but one of them is not the creative

expressions of things that will be found because you've stumbled in a different direction than the one that was scheduled. I think, Dan, you might actually share this quality with me. I'm extremely regimented professionally.

And then outside of work, I'm very disorganized. And I will get lost in like hanging out with a friend. And suddenly I'm like, oh, my God, it's, you know, been four hours. What are we doing? So it's interesting. Maybe my capacity for organization only goes so far. Because I think a lot of people who would describe themselves as organized, it is totalistic, right? They're like, I'm just how I am.

Everything is regiment. It's really just work with me. Me too. Me too. Yeah. Like, if I showed you guys the other side, if I just spun the camera around and you saw the office, it is appalling right now. I like how Mina's office looks like my inbox, which is to say like 25,000 unread emails. Mina is an inbox zero person, but now she's spinning us around on YouTube and the Draftings Network to, yeah.

Oh, man. There it is. So literally, the order is only in this one little box of her life, this one little box where, this hermetically sealed box where she lives for televised purposes. There's like a shoe hanging upside down somehow. You were saying, though, Pablo, I interrupted you. I'm sorry. No, no, it's something I've told you about before,

which is, like, for me, I almost need to give myself permission. Like, I've checked the box on this being as good as it could be. I am kind of just OCD in that way. It got to the point where when I was in a Google Doc writing stories when I was a magazine writer, I realized far too late that the only way I could really feel comfortable moving on to the next paragraph was for the previous paragraph to feel like a rectangle. Like it needed to be evenly weighted. So like I hate it.

If the last line of the previous... Yes. Oh, that's crazy. If the previous line of that paragraph, if the last line of a paragraph, was just like a dangling word and a period. I could, I, I would literally change the paragraph. That's like bringing architecture, arguably. Architecture school to like the circus.

Like, what are you doing? Yes. No, it was, it was deeply unhealthy and, and admittedly, um, revealing about like what I need to feel like, okay, good enough to move on. And I ended up conceiving of an entirely artificial, counterproductive rule, which was, it needs to feel geometrically symmetrical. And I, I, like, it's just, I am that guy, but also the guy with 25,000 unread emails.

Like, that's what's happening in here. This, you know me, I'm an inbox 20 or less person. Are you able to manage, like, the understanding and acceptance needed with your husband to sort of tolerate that he's the opposite of this? Or not even tolerate it. Just meet it with compassion. at all times, even though it's not you at all. I have, although we've had to communicate

through it so that I can meet him where he is and he can meet me where I am. This is probably the most I've ever talked about my marriage and my husband, but this might be helpful for anyone who where one person is very time time. My wife, I should say. My wife

is the opposite of me. Super regimented, always on time. Highly organized type A in that regard. So something that we would sometimes, like that would bother me is if he'd say he'd be home at a certain time and then would be home late. And what I had to explain to him was I'm not upset because you're late or because you're working or whatever. I'm upset because you set incorrect expectations. No, this is, if I can give one piece of advice, like this is it for people who have these types of relationships. All you have to do is just not say you're going to be home at the

wrong time. Just tell me, be like, I don't know when I'm, and I'll be like, fine. In my to do list, I will change that to reflect that. My expectations will be set and I will be happy. I don't care if you're late. I just don't want to have my schedule. And once we realize that and started communicating about it better, we never have any issues about punctuality. I just personally hate that I've created a podcast where I get nagged by my wife through the vessel of my friends. I cannot imagine how frustrated your wife is daily that you are a professional communicator. It's unfortunately. You didn't learn this lesson from her where I'm guessing you are constantly failing to meet

expectations that you've raised to an unreasonable level. I am constantly home in five minutes, 25 minutes ago. It's a disaster. It is hard to love that, Pablo. It is hard to love that. The worst. She should be allowed a physical leash on you is what she should be allowed, given how frustrating that must be. You will forgive me after we've talked about discipline and organization that the article I was supposed to have in front of me to tell you who wrote it and what it's about is not in front of me because I left it near a sandwich outside.

However, the article points out in the New York Times that what happened when Elmo simply asked the. internet on what used to be known as Twitter, how is everyone doing out there? The response, the clingingness of the internet responded with a sadness, an acidic well of unhappiness that basically told Elmo that everyone is in a deep, deep acid pit of despair. And I know that this isn't surprising. I know that many people on the internet are. not merely addicted to the internet, but are also addicted to the ability to show some of their personalities on their internet, have a voice they might not have in other parts of their life.

And the part I wanted to talk to you guys about, because I believe social media is the single largest untreated addiction that we have in the globe where people aren't paying attention to the fact that we kind of like this thing, even though it makes us unhappy. And if you live in this thing and addicted to your devices, you will find more and more on happiness. Why are you laughing, Mina? Because this is a story about Elmo and I've gone dark on it. No, because while you were talking, I picked up my phone to look at the article because you didn't remember it. And then my fingers, like literally, it was like an out-of-body experience switched over to Twitter. Just your addiction. I literally just instinct drove them. This is a podcast and also

an intervention. And so, but I want to talk about. I want to talk about. I want to talk about what's happening all over the globe in a way that we all understand. If we were all wandering around addicted to heroin, we would understand that there was a health consequence to this. And if we're wandering around addicted to something that foments so much unhappiness, that it metastasizes when an Elmo character merely asks how you're doing, this has to be treated. Unhappiness, mental health, combined with an addiction, all of this, even through a cartoon character, should alarm us, on what's happening in the world right now, where people are everything from broke to broken.

And I just find it all disheartening, and I have found, because I can't frisbee my iPad into the ocean and just be done with it, that I am consistently with a feeling of a film of anxiety on me that's not normally there because, are you doing it again, Mina? Are you back in? You're the only person I know who uses their iPad to look at social media.

I'm the only person. He's talking about Frisbee, your iPad into the ocean. Dan is at a concert videotaping it with an iPad. He is that guy. It's just a bigger screen. I need a bigger screen because I'm not just old. I'm not just old technologically. I need a bigger screen with bigger fonts.

The phone's too small. My hand's too big. Whatever he sets texts and it's always an adventure. What account is it going to come from? I assume if it comes from your email, you've typed it And all you gotta know about his email This is about

Is that it's aOL? Oh stop it I've got a metal arc media email now I've got a metal arc I've graduated from AOL But occasionally I'll slip in there If I'm on the iPad That's not what this is about

That's not what this is Up from AOL Stay on point Do not point your finger at me And laugh at me Do not do not point And AOL God damn you

We're interrupting Dan presidential campaign speech. I'm just... By laughing at him. Am I wrong? Did you not read this story? Elmo's stories don't make me sad. They don't make me sad.

This one made me sad. It's just very on the nose. Like all of this is clearly the thing that I talked about sports before is like sometimes you do something often enough such that you immediately know what's bullshit or not. You don't have to fake being informed about it. We all know this is real.

And it does take a card. character to be like, yeah, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, sorry, the, sorry, the, social media affects your, sorry, social media affects your, and strategize around it. I think the same thing applies with mental health. sadness, the way being on our phones affects our brains. There needs to be more education around this. We need to be strategic around it. It feels like for the last 15 years or so, it's kind of been the Wild West where this thing has slowly taken over our lives,

but nobody has, we haven't had that many conversations about how to deal with it, how to regulate it, how to be more careful with it. and I feel like now it feels like we're kind of beginning to think about it. Like, Pablo, I have a kid now. I hope that in school this is taught. Like I hope that teachers are thinking about it. I hope that mental health people are thinking about it because everything is different now.

And you can't just take it for granted that you can go on living your life the way we did before when the way we interact with the world is so different. Well, Dan, the scariest thing that happens as the father of a daughter is just how immediately obvious operating an iPad is to her. Right? It's old people and little kids who love tablets. And it's just intuitive. And it's intuitive. And that belies, I think, the larger truth, which is that human beings, despite that ease, were not meant neurologically to consume information like this.

I just can't come up with any other answer other than we weren't meant to be like this. But it is. Even the most time managed people like Mina, we're not meant to manage all of these morsels of information. I think that's revealing about who can handle this. Beyond that, though, right? Because if you have a parenting blind spot, and I don't have kids, but I would imagine that these devices are excellent babysitters and you should be disciplined. about how early you put this in a child's hands.

But when we were talking about this a moment ago, and I was thinking of the effect that it has had on me as someone from the AOL age who is a formed adult, if it's this corrosive and contaminated to someone who knows what he wants and needs at this age, what is the impact of this thing on teenagers? What is the impact of this thing on younger people? When you talk about not having the tour,

the education to properly identify this. If I told the audience right now, do you realize that everyone listening to this that you know is addicted to something we know is, at least in part, unhealthy? If it was anything other than social media, there would be alarms going off all across the globe on this is a huge crisis.

This is a crisis for future generations because this is so corrosive and it is so unknown in spots that we are really. rotting our young people because I'm telling you I have difficulty with it when I'm a, you know, otherwise confident formed adult that finds myself plagued by certain anxieties that weren't there before.

They just weren't there that this thing is responsible for. It is still unappreciated, I think, how significant of a problem it is, to your point, Dan. And just speaking for myself, like I, there have been points. there was a point last year where some people were making videos about me or whatever, and I was looking at it, and I broke down in tears. I remember I was about to go for a run, and I sat down, and I opened my phone, and I looked at it, and I started crying, and then I remember I called my friend Michael, Jr., and he kind of talked

me down, and after that, I changed it so I could no longer see what people I don't follow say about me. and I you not it probably like increased my happiness from that point on by like 25%

in real life and I bring up this example to sort of I guess get at where I think we have to go which is we need people experts, teachers,

whatever to develop these types of strategies for everyone. That's just a concrete example of something. I had to have like an intervention in how I used the internet because it was affecting my mental health. I think those sorts of strategies are needed

for children, teenagers, adults, because it feels like a crisis to me. It makes me long, to come full of circle here, for the days of AOL, where there were like walls around our audience. One of the issues, of course, is that like everybody's professionally talking to people

they don't mean to talk to. And we're now also overhearing conversations that in Mina's case, we're deliberately meant to torture her. But even the ones that aren't targeted at us can be exhausting and affect how... There was that chart recently that was staggering about Gen Z, men and women, boys and girls. Just the political divergence of boys becoming conservative,

girls becoming liberal along these standard political axes. And I have to imagine that just the way that the algorithm is sorting us, like an evil sorting hat, we don't want that. We don't want that degree of difference. And it reminds me that, like, Michael Oleg Jr. is a great person to call in that circumstance. And he's maybe second only to this person. Elmo wants to know why everyone is so angry. Elmo has been pondering the secret sadness hiding inside everyone living in modern society.

And what Elmo wants is everyone to be happy. But we live in a dystopia where everyone assumes everyone is lying. And the only thing I believe is that everyone is sad. It makes Elmo regret capitalism. Elmo wants to burn capitalism to the ground. Who will join Elmo in the revolution? Because Elmo is tired of this shit. Whoa.

Chris, nailed that. I mean, sorry, Elmo. Yeah, thank you. My bed, yeah. That was really good. That was shockingly good. Shockingly good. Not as good as my cookie monster.

God. Ten takes. It only took ten takes. So at the end of every episode of Pablo Torre finds out, we go around this table and we say what we found out today. Who wants to go first? I'll go first. I learned more about Mina's marriage than I have ever known before. We got up in there.

And we found out about what a functional union Mina has in the chaos of trying to raise a little shit monster. You know, Dan, I was watching you, and I could see you had a little bit of hunger in your eyes, so I threw you a few emotional morsels. Oh, my God. They were so good. The Truffle pig. That'll keep you satiated for a while. I'll just throw a little bit your way.

Well, speaking of marriages, I learned that Pablo's wife is a saint, and God knows what she is dealing with. I couldn't even imagine. God Almighty. Right? And I know her. She's great. Yeah, Liz. What I found out today is that I need to text my wife.

right now before she hears this episode. So I can show proof of change before she realizes that it was just content below long. He will forget. You're not going to do it. He will surely forget. He will not do it.

I'll do it in like five minutes. Cookie Monster. So hungry for emotional truth. Tear down those walls. What? Did Cookie Monster become Ronald Reagan at the end? Build the wall. Tear down the wall.

I don't know. Don't go up. me for your politics. It's not Guggy Monster. It is Yoda. It's Yoda. But speaking of people that I need to immediately say thank you to, Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Michael Antonucci,

Ryan Cortez, Sam Daywig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Loman, Rachel Miller-Howard, Ethan Shrier, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Chris Tumenello, and Juliet Warren. Studio engineering by RG Systems, post-production by NGW Post, our theme song by John Bravo,

and we will all talk to you next week.