Pablo Torre Finds Out - Share & Tell on Location Among the Stars, with Mike Golic Jr., Mina Kimes and Pablo

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

Should you believe astrologers who only say what you want to hear? Is there a better way to enjoy life with Gmail, if you're not at Inbox Seven? And what happens when you stop "living nowhere"? Plus: The Strip-Mall Chain Institution Draft, deodorant, Brozempic, tree-knocking, and Other Pablo.Further reading: Sports Astrology (Andrea Mallis)Happy 20th Anniversary, Gmail. I'm Sorry I'm Leaving You. (Ezra Klein)What the Suburb Haters Don't Understand (Julie Beck) 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. I don't trust people that say they didn't look because either you're lying or you're just not curious enough and lack that dog. You're shying away from contact and I can't win with that effort. Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraff Kings Network. It's good to be here with you guys in person. We're in L.A. I want people to know that we're in Los Angeles.

I came to visit. Hello, Mike Golick Jr. Hey, buddy. Good to see you. Your beard, by the way, talking about beards. Meena, Gojo's beard looks resplendent. Yeah, you got to see it in person to appreciate it, which is why it's good here. Yes, the luster.

I hope everyone's watching this on YouTube later on, because I walked in. And the first thing I did was turn and see what these cameras were doing here. Tested out new beard oil this week, too, so it's got a healthy sheen to it. I'm a look in it, I'm a liking. How did you settle on your beard oil? I walked through Target, and I looked at the one that, label appealed to me most because I'm an idiot. Like the old spice sort of like test of like, am I a, am I an ancient mariner?

Or am I like the Rocky Mountains, a gust of wind blowing through a forest? It's funny you say that because my current deodorant is Old Spice Fiji. And it smells phenomenal. That's fine. That's not. There's so, whenever I walk through the men's aisle when my husband's like, I can give me a deodorant or body wash, I cannot stop laughing at the shameless marketing to masculinity, I guess. But it's like, you know, fire

and ember, like volcano or whatever. Thor's hammer. I saw somebody posted on the internet. They're calling, there's like Bro-Zempic is an hour thing to try to get men to take Ozempic. I don't know if that's a OZemic licensed

mode of marketing. But anyways, what was the brand of beard oil? Don't even remember. Literally just picked one. I had a dog on it. It had a dog on. Had a dog on. it was in kind of like a brown casing. It looked sort of like woodish.

And so I was like, all right, that looks rustic enough for me to trust. Maybe it's of the earth. Maybe it's not. I didn't really check the ingredients. Is the pitch that you're using the same product, a dog would use on its fur? Or just like, you imagine like the focus group at Procter and Gamble, you know, executives making six-figure salaries, putting their heads together, men like dogs. Just put a dog on it.

Put a dog on it. Got that dog in me. Oh, it's you got that dog in you. Quite literally, at least in my beard. The rest of me, TBD. I just can't imagine wanting a product that a dog uses. Have you seen some of these dogs' coats? My parents pug hairy.

Beautiful black coat. I like the idea that you're a dog up here, but another animal elsewhere. Yeah, you know, at this point, like, maybe it would have been a different answer 10 years ago when I was 300 pounds and trying to hit people. But I don't know if I got a lot of dog in me for most situations now in real life. I'm just trying to preserve what remains of my lower back discs and not get an adult injury that warrant surgery. What was the thing that you once told me about?

The activity, tree knocking? Like, that's a, do you? Why did we even start? Do you know what tree knocking is? No. It's how you try and attract a Sasquatch when you go squatch hunting. So a buddy of mine, a teammate of mine, Anthony McDonald was a linebacker for us at Notre Dame.

Him and his brother went to the woods in Oregon to go tree knocking. when like a lot of those reality shows the ones on like the history channel that go looking for ghosts. We're at the time obsessed with finding Sasquatch. And you literally just go and bang sticks together because that's apparently the sound

that attracts a squatch. That's a good deodorant. So bang. Ponging sticks together is tree knocking. Yeah. Okay. Dude's rock. I didn't know how I felt about astrology

until I talked to an astrologer. And the astrologer I did. talked to, her name is Andrea Malice. And Andrea Malice, I got to know... Pause. Andrea Malice. Yeah, what kind of made-up name is this? Sounds kind of like a deodorant brand in its own right.

Oh, Malice. Malice. Malice would be a good deal. I would buy Old Spice Malice. All right, this definitely real person who didn't catfish Pablo. Definitely real person named Andrea Malice. I came across her because she had an interesting line in her bio, which is that she was the official astrologer for the Oakland days.

during the moneyball era. So I was like, wait a minute. So there's this astrologer who's a sports astrologer and she was employed by the most mathematically oriented team, the most influential mathematical rationalist team

in like sports history. And so I asked her in short to do my astrology chart reading. And so this is a brief clip of her doing exactly that. Your son in Libra, harmony, balance, fair, willing to meet others halfway,

spirit of cooperation. It all sounds like me so far. What was that? It sounds like me so far. And check this out. You also have Mercury and Libra, the planet of communication. One of your greatest assets, and I wrote this down, is your ability to see both sides of an issue.

And isn't that important in the job you do? I got to say, you're preaching to. to the choir. And even the biggest asshole in the choir is nodding along, Ryan Cortez. He's like, yeah, I see that. Please proceed, Andrea. What else should I know about myself? Tactful and reasonable, sympathetic to the underdog, understanding of other people's feeling.

Check this out. This is, I really love this part. Venus and Mars in Virgo. I'm a Virgo, the perfectionist of the Zodiac. I do feel like a perfection. Let's show you of high standards for your work. Have you heard this show before? So I'm in on astrology now

Because it was just super positive I felt accurate readings What? What? Why did something bad? There's usually like negative connotations To every zodiac sign I don't believe any astrologer Who only tells you stuff you want to hear So check this out

So what Is your guys's personal view on astrology? I mean I, for every day during college, Notre Dame had a paper on campus called The Observer, and I used to every day check the, like, the daily horoscope for, I'm a Libra, like you, used to check that every day. And my biggest triumph of college was befriending one of the editors of the paper. It was a one to five star scale for there.

So you had a one star day, three star day, five star day, depending on it. And on my birthday one year, because I befriended the editor, I got a six star day. I think the only one in Notre Dame observer history. Wait, your astrology chart for like rivals rankings? Yes, 100%. We're like Jim Harbaugh's new Los Angeles Chargers locker. You manipulated it. 100%.

Mina, your view of astrology, as I plug in Gojo's info, here is what? I don't believe... I'm, like, very anti-anything counterculture as a person. I am like, I'm the least new-aged person you'll ever meet, and I don't believe in horoscopes. I don't believe in Chinese astrologic signs or anything. That said, mine is really accurate. I'm a Virgo.

It's really really accurate. It's so accurate. And the one I sent you guys about a Virgo Libra friendship, pretty accurate. Wait, so, okay, so for people who don't know what astrology is, so Libra, you got a sense of it, right? Gojo and I are balanced and fair scales of justice is how I think about like the whatever iconography of our astrology. astrological reading.

A Virgo is what? Avergo is very inal attentive, to be honest, is the best way to describe it. Super organized. Very controlling, but not of others. So, as I understand it, Virgos do get along with people

and aren't overbearing, but they're very self-critical and obsessed with control over themselves, which is how I would characterize myself. So it's been a big week for the moon. So this is the other reason why I'm bringing this story is because suddenly now people are like, whoa, this eclipse thing. And also, what's the deal with the moon as a concept, I guess?

And my whole thing about astrology personally is I, of course, don't believe there to be scientific basis to it, except that my reading was very accurate, as you heard. And if anything is going to influence a bunch of people on this rock in space, Why not the thing exerting gravitational force upon our tides? So, like, is there something happening that brings this to the realm of, like, not nothing? Well, let's just start by actually adjudicating the accuracy of our signs. We've all been like, yeah, it feels right. Do you feel like what I just described?

I mean, I guess that it could be a little bit self-determining because it's me describing it. So maybe Pablo, you should actually, like, read what other people. Because we've all, like, rather than me saying what I think of Virgo is, or what I think of Virgo Libra friendship is, maybe it would be best if you actually read something and then we all decided how true it was. Because I think you're right, the tendency is to just focus on the parts that feel like us.

Yes. When you read all this stuff. And there is a bunch of them. Like, it is a little bit eerie, how accurate it is? So, like, Aries, for example, are really, like, aggressive. And, like, my mom is in Aries, my brother's in Aries. my brothers in Aries. And if I was like, yeah, I'm an Aries.

Aries is aggressive, loud, intense, passionate. I think you'd be like, eh, like, this is not how I am at all. So I do, I mean, there's a lot of signs, Pisces, dreamy, like, I'm not like that idealistic. I think that there are a lot of signs that are very clearly not myself. Here's Cognolitan magazine. I did get a couple of pop-ups where I'm like, this feels like it's inside of my phone now. So Libra, always tactful, pleasing, diplomatic. Libra's can fit in any place, any time with anyone.

Shapeshifting is almost a sport to Libra. Okay, see, there are some negative commentations. Yes. Overly malleable? Yep, and they enjoy mingling and socializing with different groups and so forth. You can find them lounging and flirting anywhere. Anywhere. Well, well, do you.

Being the center of attention and loved by all around. They'll have to think, analyze, ponderous, high-sex stuff. Great. Get to the negatives. Yeah. Okay. Because I think I've read this one on the site and they do bring up some of the negative. You gotta have negatives.

Mass chaos disorder and conflict. Okay. Uber diplomacy. Um, okay. Bit of a gossip. Yeah, you both love gossip. I do. I'm 90.

I do. Yeah. That's why the burger liber friendship. It's true. It says the easiest way to impress humor, cajole the person in front of them is to drop a juicy goss bomb. Ooh, a gas bomb. So that is what's what. they do, can't help it.

Nuh, period. Damn. Other critiques. Yeah, keep going. Keep going. Slightly entitled. Really? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Idealist, also indecisive. And that is me as well. Yeah. I'm indecisive as fuck. Okay, I'm jumping in because I'm the outsider here, because, you know, I realize you're valuing yourself. I think it's pretty accurate for both of you. And when this drives home for me, and I didn't know you were both Libra's,

and put two and you together, but even though you're your birthdays. Yeah. Yeah, I guess it's obvious. You do have a lot in common. Very much. The two of you have really similar personalities, the way you approach work, the way you approach working with others. Our athleticism, our shared love of just masculine combat.

Incredible calves. Yep. And, like, I... Potential pre-diabetes as well, for me at least. You are... You both are the kind of people I could have... invite to any dinner and you would get along with everyone and you love being loved. It cuts to the core of me.

That cuts to the core of us. 100%. That really is true. Oh, it's both beautiful and sad. A little bit, yeah. But accurate. But painfully accurate. I'm the sort of person.

Go for it. No, I was going to say, I'm the sort of person where I'm like, I'll read some comments. I'm like, just give me a positive comment so that I can. stop imagining negative ones. I'll just take it. I just need, I like the feeling of approval, and then I'll move on, and I'm not going to interrogate it much deeper than that. Yeah, it's the approval, and I think

the other negative I've seen associated with Libra's is the tendency to overthink, which buddy, they got me dead to rights on that one, so, yeah, I would say those all absolutely a probably, you were very quick to point out, like, yes, you were absolutely a Libra when we started talking

about this yesterday, so. We do love, love. What does mine say? All right. But you guys be the judge of it. Okay, here we go. Here's some cosmopolitan.com truth about... Give it to me. Give it to me.

Good and bad, please. Not all bad. Yep. This zodiac sign works hard, all caps... At coming off all effortless and perfect. They have extremely high standards. None more so than themselves, and they obsess over everything.

They are fantastic detail people, love organizing stuff, can be relied on to make everything go smoothly. Virgos can come off as uptight or critical, but actually, their mercury ruler does present a lighter side of their character. They love gossip, information. And by the way, thank you.

If this fucking website did not establish that Mina also loves gossip, I was going to lose a lot of credibility. Right. Listen, this is important. It's true. It's true. They love gossip, information, education, entertainment. Their mind is sharp, bright, and shrewd.

Fergoes make great friends. They're 100% solid. And also, parentheses, secretly, close parentheses, naughty fun. Keep going. Get to the bad stuff. That was all the good stuff. I feel like that was mostly positive.

I think I actually snotted. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I am fun. You'll rarely find a virgo. Okay, boasting, bragging, showboating. That's true. But... No, he said rarely.

Rarely, rarely, rarely. Even world-beating achievements are presented with a humble shrug and a self-deprecating comment. I mean, on the day the M-A-nom comes out. I know. Just Emmy-nominated me and again. Left unchecked, this modesty can turn into a self-confidence.

dip and their critical inner judge can take over, highlighting their flaws and negatives at max volume, making them they're not good enough and don't deserve their spot. This is getting uncomfortably accurate. Buddy, what do you have to save yourself over there? Damn. Damn. Keep going. Virgos are born conscientious, diligent perfectionists, can't bear to see anything delivered in a shoddy way, and will happily take on extra to avoid that happen. There's a fine. There's a fine. line here, though, says cosmopolitan.com between working hard

and the team and becoming a monstrous control freak who tries to do everyone else's job for them. All right, well, what do you think? Ruling? That is, I don't know if I've read a better scatter report of you. Of all the profiles and articles I've read about

Mina, that is, none of them have that level of just, like, cutting to the core of what's going on here. Mike, you know me well. Yeah, a lot of A lot of truth to that I would say the last part about wanting to control What everyone else does

I don't think that pops up Mostly when I've read Virgo It's not like being controlling of others It's being like controlling of the project Or yourself So it's not really Because there's some signs that are very dominating

And it's never presented as dominating But it is presented as This person is way too obsessive To their own detriment at times. Do you want some Virgo turnoffs? Yeah. Those who don't accept your help.

That is one turnoff. Interesting. Also, mansplaining or any shape or form of that kind of patronizing, this is how you do it. And mess. So that's an interesting one because, Mike, you've been in my car and seen my house. I'm not a clean human. Yep. Yeah.

But it's all physical. my, like I have my, we talked about this with Dan actually when we talked about scheduling. There's no mess in my day. Like everything is like, yeah, so Virgo-Liber friendship.

So, yeah, so the friendship, though, is, I mean... Clearly gossip base. We've established that as the baseline. Gossip bombs everywhere. Just loves to spill tea about coworkers. I think both, these are both pretty, pretty, collaborative signs is one of my takeaways.

Right. I think the only thing that we've established, because you mentioned like the schedule, your diligence for that stuff, and the sort of laissez-faire, like laxadaisical go-with-the-flow attitude of Libra's, leads to Pablo always being late. That was the one thing that was just like programmed out of me

by football that doesn't necessarily apply, where I've got a little bit more Virgo to my bag than that. But the schedule stuff couldn't do it. Can't do it? No, simply. I am terrible at it. Really? Like keeping and setting a schedule,

especially now out here because I work East Coast hours, so I have a ton of time. And trying to default to not turning on my PlayStation at 8 o'clock in the morning is a real siren song I have to avoid. I can't do vacations.

I can do them, but they're scheduled. I can't. I don't like know what to do with free time. I just can't do it. I have some of that as well. I also have a, this is another big Libre turnoff that maybe, I think you, unifies us and I wonder

I wonder if this is part of the Virgo Libra Libra turnoffs include conflict. The thought of someone shouting in your face is enough to make you burst into tears on the spot. God. Yeah, that's your boy. Yeah, I hate it. That's your boy. Can't do it.

Yep, yep, yep. Just love me. It's that hard. So I feel like astrology is real. Yep. Honestly, I've changed my mind. Shout out to Andrea Malice. spreading you all over my armpits now.

Who wants to go next? This is your show. Okay. Well, I want to make everybody happy and avoid conflict. And you yelled at me and now I'm a little afraid. Well, I tried to wrap the last segment

to keep us on time. I put a bow on it for you. I don't know if you noticed that. I feel like Mina's topic is a good segue out of this. Speaking of the concept of how we organize ourselves and how we keep order in our lives. Okay, yeah. It is a good, I think actually it probably flows pretty naturally from how I just described myself, which is, so the article that I brought up is by Ezra Klein, ran the New York Times, and I don't have the title of it.

Yep. Happy 20th anniversary, Gmail. I'm sorry I'm leaving you by Ezra Klein in the New York Times. It's basically about how Gmail is done. Yeah. And Gmail sucks. And he kind of lays out the promise of Gmail or the biggest sell of it was the idea. that you, there was no limitations on the number of emails you could have because

so much memory and as opposed to, and that got me thinking about like, I guess it's, it's been in my life so long, I can't remember a time when we were forced to delete and organize emails, like with Outlook before it or whatever services we used, I guess AOL, Hotmail, whatever. I think we got Gmail in college, right? Yeah. Because I remember like my school address and then the open world of bottom. list Gmail. Yes. And Gmail as service basically offers you all these ways to organize your email with tags and this and that. But there's no limit to the amount you get. And like a lot of people,

as her writes about how he had millions of emails. And at a certain point, he was like, this is non-functional for me anymore. I cannot use this. So he was like, I have to go in a different direction. He described a service, I believe it was called Hey, something, something that is more restrictive, like, it keeps people from emailing you, it forces you to make decisions, and, like, when you write an email, it takes over your screen, little things like that. Yeah, it was sort of like the premise of that app, I believe, was like gatekeeping. The idea of, do you approve this person to, like, enter your inbox? Yeah, it gave you, like, the option to, like, blacklist, essentially, where once you do that,

you no longer will see this email show up. So there's a larger trend or conversation that flows from this, which is basically the internet becoming unwieldy generally. and there being too much choice, too much content, too much people who have, too many people who have access to you at all times, and he gets at that. But I thought it might be good to just kind of start with the framework of Gmail and to ask you guys, how big are your inboxes?

It's just... We all have our phones. Uncomfortable. I mean, I've 3,798 unread emails. I have 3,708 emails. That's eerily close. Libra gang. We're out here.

I mean, just like looking in a mirror. My cosmic brother. Looking in a lustrous, bearded mirror. Look at mine. That's my inbox. What do we got? What are we working with? There are seven emails in here?

Oh my God. I've truly never in person. I thought you people were like you were a myth. And a couple of these really shouldn't be in here either. Oh, by the way, I should say, too, that like some of it's... Prospect videos. Archive that. I have 3,798.

in my inbox on Gmail on red, but I have 150,030 in the promotions tag. Under forums, it's 4,66. Updates, it's 93,3,340. Okay. So it's just like hundreds of thousands of emails that I just have never seen. Just a dog file.

This really does flow quite well from our last segment. Okay, so I got it. I just want to ask you, how do you go about your day living this way? Because. Blissfully, largely. Very easily. Because what Ezra describes is the inability to just being like, it's too much. I can't deal with it.

I don't like this form of communication with people where, you know, I have to actively search for things. It doesn't bother you? No, just because I think email is so much more of a passive form of communication that it doesn't, like, I think the thing that resonated with me most about this and the idea of that clutter you're describing was him talking about, on this hay service when it takes over your whole screen. It eliminates the rest of the email box being behind it because that's the problem I have in general

with my relationship with my phone now is there's so much on it between work, between personal life, the group chats I'm in, email threads, stuff I'm posting for work on social, that it all feels tied back to the work that draws anxiety. And so when I go in there to do one thing, I end up getting inundated by something else that pops up and it distracts me to the point where a lot of times

I just set it down and have to put it away. Yeah, I have to put it away. Yeah. I have like almost an eclipse glasses relationship with my inbox. I'm not going to look directly at it. I'm just going to like, yep, that's a thing I should deal with. You peek a little, though. Peek a little bit.

But for me, the thing that resonated from Ezra Klein's column was this notion of a shame closet. Yes. So this concept of like, it's the place you put everything so you don't have to figure out what to do with it. And as I was contemplating, I saw the headline of his article and I was like, fuck this dude. Like Gmail and me, we get along great. It's not stressful. if I, the search function is actually key to it, right? Like, if I need to find something, I'll get a couple of date qualifiers and, like, subject lines and all that stuff, attachments.

I can find it. But what I realized as I was reading it was that it is like my, it's like my photo album on my phone at this point, on my eye cloud, where it's just hundreds of thousands of things that I don't have an intuitive sense of. Like, I know if I need to get something, I can find it. It'll just take me a long time. And it's just, it's detaching me from the premise of like, oh, I consult a nice, tidy box of people trying to reach out to me. Instead, it's like a ball pit where I'm like searching for treasures at the bottom of it. So I have that with photos, actually. You mentioned photos where we used to be like, what are the best photos I took at this thing?

And now you just take zillions of them and you look and you try to find, you kind of lose, you know, I mean, having a child now, it literally is just millions and millions of photos. And it really bothers me and stresses me out knowing that I can't find a photo. Like if I want to find a photo from something that happened in a specific year, most of the time, like, I'm not really sure if I can find it. I know there's like search functions, but they don't really work super well. Yeah. It's like, yeah, the AI, so you can put in like sunset. Yeah.

And you'll get all of the sunsets, but also it's imperfect. That bothers me a lot. But I, and I actually have been like, I should take a day and go through my photos. I'm like, you know, but I'm just not going to do it. Whereas with emails, it's like, okay, I have kept this thing under control, and I want to keep doing it because it would bother me in the same way knowing. That's a Virgo for you, buddy. Look at that.

Yeah, I guess so is it the, so it's the fact that you can't immediately control all the parts of it, that it is just something that overflows in a way that you can't somehow organize. Like a lot of, when we think about like, what do I have to do today? Okay, what do I have to do today? I had a taping at 12. I had this taping at two. Those are the main things. I got, you know, my hair done. But inevitably, every day, you have to reply to emails. I can't fathom conquering that part of my to-do list without a clear look at the emails in front of me. Without a clear look at like, okay, I have seven emails in my inbox. I have to reply to two of them today. If it was millions, I don't know even how I would begin to. assess which ones matter to like understand even how to go about it. My approach to scheduling my day is comically incompetent compared to Mina. What is your approach? So for a long time it used to be my to-do list was a draft of an email in Gmail.

So it would just be like an email that was blank that I would fill in with like my tasks and it would save because it was a draft. And I would just update it day by day. I did this thing, let me delete that. So it was a constantly updating single email that was like very, very simple and like the opposite of like strategic. And then it got to be, I use Google Calendar.

But in Google Calendar, I'll put like reply to this email. Yes. And it'll just move every day. So there are some to do tasks about responding to like a friend from high school who's like, can you meet this kid that asked me for like a career advice, wants to get into sports media.

I'm like, cool. Absolutely. And it's been following me on delay for literally a month. That's how I'm dealing with email, which is to say I need to respond to that actually now that I remember that. I guess what it comes down to is how much this specific overwhelming aspect of the internet right now, how much it overwhelms you or whether it bothers you or it comes down to how you approach work, generally and like scheduling and control. And I think somebody with my personality type could probably

never live with email a million. Well, I think it's interesting because I have a lot of the same feelings you do about the general technological overload and the general internet overload. Like, I had to start separating some of the functions away from this because it, like, I look at my phone the way you look at a stacked email box. Like, I had to get a physical alarm clock again because having my wake up associated with the phone, wasn't a mental connection that I liked. I have a physical calendar that I write stuff down in. I have a whiteboard in my kitchen where my to-do list goes.

So I go there and I write it down at the beginning of the week or the beginning of the day and I get the satisfaction of a racing, but I have it in a separate place. I don't have to keep going back to this again. That's how I look at email is as a to-do list that needs to be cleared every day. And that includes, by the way, like I get the New York Times News email every day.

and I have to read it because if I do not read it, my inbox will go over 10. So I read it every day. Purely because of that arbitrary line that I have set for myself. So that's what keeps you accountable to reading that every day

is not the desire to actually read it but just the desire to keep your inbox clean. Exactly. Although I do, I enjoy reading it. Sure. But, you know, when will I find the time to read it? Like, well, it doesn't matter. I have to find it because otherwise my inbox goes over 10,

and it is like the bus from speed, if it goes over 10, I will die. My inbox is full of shit that I... I'm just like opening it right now. I get a lot of emails for another Pablo Torre that I've just never corrected or responded to. Really? Yeah, so it's like a guy, I believe he's like in Argentina.

And I just get like bills. And I had to check... I did have to check, like, am I being billed? And once the answer was no, I was like, this dude can cohabitate with me. Sure, whatever. But you're also not alerting other Pablo that he's being billed, and now he's under a mountain of death.

That is potentially the downside. Interesting. If he's listening to this show, I'm sorry. I feel like, okay, the sort of questioning all of this is like, is this actually a problem, right? Because as your client presents, this is a problem. And I think it's a problem, one, if it gives you psychological stress in the case of,

emails, and it sounds like we're all fine because we've all figured out our relationship with it is different. Yep. But I do think that there is a actual problem here. Is there a better way, I guess? Right. I mean, so with the question about photos, it's like, what does it mean when you can have infinite everything?

Music. Is that the problem that you're talking about? Like, what did you think the actual problem is? Yeah, I think the email thing is a little bit different from photos and music and search and all of that, because if there is a problem, it's. If you don't have a handle on it, like either you have a handle on it, which sounds like you guys do, or I do, but we do in our different ways. One of the Pablo's does, yeah. I think there are, like, we're all actually like, oh, we're fine.

I think there are a lot of people who are like Ezra Klein and who are, like, very much stressed by the way email is conducted now where, like, you don't, it's just so overwhelming and you lose sight of what to reply to and it's just too much. I think that that is the thing. But I think with regards to actual like the photos and music and content, that is something I actually view as more of a problem for myself. Because I think the way my mind works is, it is easier for me to wrap my mind around, you know, something that's limited in a way. Like 20 photos or a single album or whatnot that I have to listen to all the way through. and I think my experience of those things, photos, music, news has degraded because I have so much choice. I think that's one of those things that also you can zoom out more. And one of the things he talks about at the end of this is he lump social media into this is also.

And the line that really hit me was, I've stored everything and I've saved nothing. Like this idea that there's a lack of permanence to all these things. And it's this, what you just described always makes me think of when people talk about just humans in general in their relationship with social media. Like we were built to exist in groups up to a certain size, and now we're simply interacting with too many people all the time. And does it limit or cheapen the value of each of those interactions? The same way that having too much music keeps you from really enjoying one bit, by having all of these interactions and the idea in here that, like,

oh, have I given so much of myself to this space like on social media where I have not contributed meaningfully to actual relationships in my life in a way that's beneficial and has permanence. Yeah, I think the throughline concern is like a lack of intention around like what we're allowing into our like private collections of our most, sometimes, our most like important sacred memories. Like when it comes to photos, because you don't have to think about it, everything is allowed and you do save nothing effectively.

And when it comes to email, it's like you have been sort of like fighting the battle for intention. And I've like so far, I've, I gave up on that battle so long ago that now, email is effectively not an effective way to reach me. Yes, very true. A thing that I'm not mad about insofar as like, one goal I have in general is I don't want to be expected to be super responsive on so many platforms. Like, if you got to get to me, you need to, like, the terror alert scale color needs to be

like red, right? Like, call me. Text me is like an orange. An email, it's like I may get back to you in six months, legitimately, which is, not the worst way to gatekeep, but it does mean that email as a concept is just less, it's less useful to anybody who deals with me.

I just never want to be called by anyone, so please just send me an email. All right, Gojo. It's funny, thinking about some of this is actually kind of an interesting transition into what we value that I found here and has a tie-in to the place we're all at right now. We're in Los Angeles, as you established off the top,

And I just moved here about a year and a half, two years ago in June. And the differences I am feeling relative to being a lifelong suburban guy. So the article was by Julie Beck. It was in the Atlantic. It was called What the Suburb Haters Don't Understand. And basically, the whole article was about just the whole notion and nature of suburbs as they call it kind of living nowhere, these places that are so similar from location to location, regardless of where you're at, that there's really nothing.

special or unique about the experience. And this idea is that, you know, robbing people of something, is that, you know, actively decaying, growing community and things like that. But also touches on the nature of the article of what they don't understand is that even in these places that themselves don't have a ton of meaning, you hold on to these memories. The drug of nostalgia is so tied to all these places. And for the first time coming out here, it talked about the self-hate of being in a

suburb like this. I grew up in Avon, Connecticut, as white picket fence a suburb as you can find in a state that doesn't have a ton. And there was always, especially when people come into town at ESPN, you kind of sh** on your own state. It was kind of the party starter there. And as I got here in L.A., I found immediately that drug of nostalgia hitting where I remembered all the little things about a place where I had so many memories built up that was different. And so I wanted to know how it was for you guys relative to this because we've all kind of gone. gone through life differently, where Mina, you've got more suburban in your background and then lived in New York, lived out here, got to a city a lot sooner than I did. Pablo, you grew up in a city.

We could not be more different than in this specific subject. Yeah. Because I grew up in Manhattan, in the city. And so the very premise of like, oh, they're these templates, these repeating motifs of like strip malls and like these chain restaurants and all this stuff. The rituals about what you do, like, I presume like, I've only seen, I've only seen. I've only seen. seen this in TV shows and movies, but like at lunch in school, you'd like drive somewhere to like get food off of your campus or whatever, or like the rituals of literally getting a driver's license. I got my driver's license in 2012. Wow. Before I got my job at ESPN, because I survived without Ad Sports Illustrated through a truly like rude Goldberg device of like friends in various

places who would like drive me, plus like a network of like taxis and all that stuff. And then I just got it because I felt like it's shameful that I was 27 and didn't know how to drive. And so I finally got it. And so for me, the suburbs has always been this place of, this feels alien and eerie. Like, it just, yeah, it's just the opposite sort of like city planning metabolism when I'm used to. For us, it was like our vision of the city was like watching Hey Arnold or something. Yeah. That was my exposure.

It was like cartoons and TV shows, like trying to. figure out how the people and friends afforded the amount of sheer square footage that they had in a New York apartment. Sold a lie. We were sold a lie for sure. Yeah, I, like my, so I grew up in mostly suburban towns all over America, but, which actually is a big part of why this story really resonated with me that this woman wrote in the Atlantic about sort of the nostalgia of the suburbs, because for me, someone who grew up, my dad was in the military, so I grew up either on military bases or when you retired, we still moved a lot. You know, that was sort of the connective fiber of all the places I lived, which was chains, those familiar signposts, movie theater complexes,

malls, places where kids hung out when I was growing up. And then, as Mike said, you know, I lived in New York City after graduating from Cal, I went to. So I, and then moved to L.A. So it's super nostalgic for me. And I have really pleasant memories of that. And when I, And yet, that's not what I've chosen for myself. Obviously, I live in Los Angeles, a pretty urban environment. I consider Los Angeles a suburb. Well, that was going to be my question. I don't know how you feel about this, but...

It's sort of halfway between, to be honest. But the idea of, like, strip malls and you're in a car all the time. Like, these are, like, the big checkboxes on what I consider a suburb. Well, the other interesting part about this article and the part that I disagreed with this idea that it was somehow, like, antithetical to building community, that being in these suburbs put you too far from other people to interact. act like and I don't know and again like part of this is always going to involve like class like

I grew up not wanting for much we grew up in a nice neighborhood where you felt safe to go out and certainly I think that was more a sign of the times as much as anything but like I had a lot of close relationships in my neighborhood where you could walk or bike to go and meet your friends and do something in person and you had a lot of these places where you could kind of build a lot of those memories I think when you're a kid you do and then when you get older it gets harder and I'd be interesting in your hearing your experience but like I actually actually hit me yesterday with the eclipse because I didn't have eclipse classes.

And I was thinking, God, if I was in New York, I could just, like, go downstairs or, like, walk outside and probably someone would hand them to me. I don't really see humans most of the time in, like, in my neighborhood. Like, when I walk around, it's empty. So I had to make a really sad box and cut some tinfoil. Honestly, I was impressed that you maintained the level of, like, craftiness from elementary school.

the most of us lose. Related story, Mina's is blind now? I looked in 2017. Did you guys look? I looked yesterday. I got that dog in my shrimp. It's so bright.

You can't tell a million people don't look and expect me not to look. That's what I'm saying. I don't trust people that say they didn't look because either you're lying or you're just not curious enough and lack that dog. You're shying away from contact and I can't win with it. that effort. Yeah, you're getting in an Oklahoma drill with the sun. I think it was like Hillary Clinton

who's like, you know, made a fight of Trump. And I'm like, Hill, this is the most relatable Trump's ever been. This is not good, like, you know. Bad take. Yeah, like negative campaigning. Okay, but yeah, no, it, I think Los Angeles is more like, it reminds me more of the suburbs in a city as someone who lived in New York for a long time, too. Especially the car culture. Yeah, the car culture. So to me, like, what defines a city? Okay, I can walk everywhere. It's neighborhoods just like back to back to back to back, endless walking. There is zero car culture. In fact, a lot of people that I know still haven't gotten a license.

That's how extreme New York is in that way. But then the third part is like just comfort in massive crowds of people all the time. Sure. And noise. And so the idea of like there's this strip mall, this like holy place that you guys have in your like most nostalgic childhood memories that this author also shares where it's like, you know, picking your top, asking people, give me your top five favorite chains.

If you were going to build your ideal strip mall. So, such a good question. I mean, just before we get, like, the strip mall concept is really pivotal to growing up because I don't know, like, when we were growing up in high school, we all went to the same mall. We did not have malls in the city.

Or the same movie theater complex where there were like, you know, there was like an outback and an AMC and a borders. And that's just where everyone hung out. you would see, if you had a crush on someone, you might see them there. Your friend would be like, we're going to meet after school here. But truly, like, the great glory, and this is the New York elitism, like, really, like, coming out of me. It's that the things I did as a kid are the things tourists go to visit. Yeah. Like, I went to the greatest museums and restaurants, some of them.

Like, diners, I would suppose, would be the closest thing to, like, what is the, that place that I think of nostalgically where I'd go to, like, see my friends all the time, like, diners. But that's the closest thing I had to like a mall, basically. Well, and I guess that's interesting to me because I thought a lot about this moving out here because growing up at a place that was largely like that, where everything was cookie cutter, ours for what it was worth, the Simsbury Commons was a borders, a Hoyt's and a Chili's. What's the Hoyt's? A Hoyt's a movie theater.

There was the Hoyt's Crown Plaza back then. I don't know if it's, I think it's since defunct, but that was the highway where everybody went to meet and hang out. The goth kids hung out in front of Starbucks and played with snakes. It was awesome. It was fascinating. Starbucks was a huge hangout spot growing up. And if you had a friend who worked there who could hook you up, that was a big thing, too.

That was always the key. You needed to have someone that worked at a place that sold coffee and breakfast stuff. Lockstock bagels in West Hartford. Shout to my buddy Tito. Should have gotten fired for how much free stuff he used. I worked at Bagel Nash in high school, the amount of free bagels that I gave out. Yeah, there's a plug. But, like, I guess that's kind of like bagels.

The interesting point to me is coming out here now for the first time in my life, I live in a place that is inherently interesting, where there are places and things to do that in and of themselves are a draw versus everywhere where I grew up in Connecticut, which is where I spent the majority of my life. I moved around before that when dad was finishing up playing, but too young to remember.

All of these places had these basically like hollowed out cookie cutter places where you went and then you made the memory inside that with the people there, all the stuff that we've talked about, like meaning and things. Like we had a diner called A.C. Peterson's in West Harper was where we went after every like, football win, major school function, and it was wholly unremarkable food, but it was just the place that we all went where you went and built all these memories and relationships. And now I was

curious as someone experience a place for the first time that has stuff that's a draw, how that may be affected the way you remember things from your childhood, because you did have these inherently interesting things to go and do. But like, does that, do you still have the experiences with people tied to those places, or is it about the experience itself that you had there? Yeah, like, I remember, like, we would gather in, like, Central Park, you know? Like, but it's, you can't really claim Central Park is your place. So, like, the idea of, like, we have almost this tribal memory in which we, we claim this as our own, like, part of what you can't have as a New Yorker is the idea that, oh, that's mine.

Sure. Like, the ownership factor. But it's not like the, it's not like a secret inside joke that, like, we hung out in Times Square, which is a real thing we did. Like, yeah, it's not the same. No. Yeah, the red lobster there is actually. So that's my exposure, though, to some of the chains.

There's an olive garden there. That's how I know this shit. But they're not like normal. And they're the most expensive ones in the country. Yeah. $49 for like a breadstick. We're going to draft chains or what? I as you say, it feels like the right time.

As our final segment of the day of what we found out today, I want to do this draft. I want to find out what my... with Mike Goli Jr. Amina Com's suburban experts are going to take in a competitive draft with me of chains to form

your dream strip mall. Well, who do we want to give the first... Should we give Pablo the first pick since he's so disadvantaged in this? I would appreciate that. Okay. With the first pick in the strip mall chain institution draft,

Pablo Torres selects Pizza Hut. Ugh. Such a rookie mistake. Yeah, I was going to say. Pizza Hut taught me how to read. Unless it's the one that like the old school dine-in ones that are now extinct, that was a great experience. The book-it program, I ate pizza for free because I read books. So I'm approaching this kind of like strategically in that there's just so many restaurants.

Restaurants to me are kind of like the quarterbacks of this draft where I can get one a little bit later. I'm going for higher value anchor position. I'm taking Barnes & Noble. Son of bitch. You can't, I mean, Barnes & Noble. It has everything. It has... That was on my board, too.

Books, movies, games. You can sit around and look at stuff. Magazines. Last minute presents when you're desperate. Coffee. It's a little cafe. Now I've just got to go best on the board because I am reeling after that pick.

So I'm going to secure Chili's right now. Fine. Take it. I don't want it. Please. I, for a long time, had the same meal. I think for like five straight years every time I went to Chili's. It was boneless.

buffalo wings, grilled shrimp alfredo, the skillet casso, and a molten lava cake at the end. Every time. So much heat. So many better chain restaurants. We're going to do one more round. Yeah. You were snaking.

We're snaking it. Okay. All right. This one is, I don't even know if this store exists anymore. I'm praying to God it does, but to me, this is peak strip mall, the sharper image. Oh. That store.

Oh, boy. That's good one. Part of Golick family lore. I'm going the place that my family all. always went for special occasions, and that's Outback Steakhouse. Ooh, it's a good pick. Blumen Onion was, I loved them so much. You're getting choked up?

That was audible? No, that was drool. That was Mina doing what happens to me when I talk about food. I love Blumen Onion. This is a real story so much that at the, not the sharper image, but the made-for-TV store, as Stone-on-T-on-TV store, I bought a bloom-in-onion device, which is, it's like a circular knife thing that you. you would put into an onion to slice it, then you dropped a bloomin into the deep friar. Oh.

And for show-in-tel in fourth grade, I made a bloom-and-onion for the class. I don't, I think that's... In the class? I think that's, I know. I got permission to bring the device and the knife and the deep friar. I think that's when I peaked as a child.

Auntie ants! Oh. You know why? I'm so proud of you right now. How often can you eat ante-hast? Sometimes, I'm glad you asked. Sometimes the most important sense you have is smell. I'm just starting to huff some f***in pretzel fumes, man.

Zero calories. Delicious every time. This has been Pablo Torre finds out. A Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.