Pablo Torre Finds Out - We Go Deep with the Unlikeliest of Performance-Enhancing Drugs: Smooth Jazz

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

Forget hold music and Kenny G. Move over Michael Jordan and HGH. Smooth jazz — yes, smooth jazz — is the "stimulax" you've been sleeping on. From geriatric hotel ballrooms to the moneymaker-shaking high seas, correspondent Mickey Duzyj fights off the jazz police to report on the communal power of a comeback genre... then outs a closeted, world-champion super-fan.• Learn more about "Smooth World"• Subscribe to PTFO on YouTube• Previously on PTFO: "Bird-Watching Will Blow Your Mind"("A New Day," "Give It Up," "Honey-Dipped," and "Side by Side" by Dave Koz and "Doctor's Orders" by Phillip Doc Martin licensed with permission. Additional music by Jon Natchez for "Smooth World.") 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. It's like crack cocaine, although I don't do drugs, it brings me to my happy place. Right after this. I just need to establish for our audience, Mickey, that you represent a challenge to the advertising of this program, which has been billed as a sports show. and yet when you show up, non-sports things happen.

That's very true, yes. One title of an episode you did with us is, quote, I was a goth jock and nobody could stop me about your tennis career. That was the most sports, I think, that you've done. It was very sporting, yeah.

Then the last time you were here, you did a show that, I think, presaged a phenomenon that has swept the country since. We were ahead of that. We were birdwatching in Central Park, specifically with a man named Birding Jesus, who still texts me. He's a great guy.

I still want to go to Panama with Birding Jesus. It's going to happen. And The Atlantic has published an article. This is just last week, by the way. The headline is, quote, all the cool kids are birding. And yet, I think some would say, this show that claims to me about sports and what things may or may not be cool is neither of those things. at least when you are here. It's a very specific niche.

I feel like we maybe also just need to establish that the bird watching episode titled Birdwatching will blow your mind was also, I think, probably the horniest of all the episodes we've done in now 400 plus episodes over almost three years. Very proud of that. And we might top it today, though. So today, the story you're bringing us, the thing you want to take a into the world of it begins where?

So I come to you today, Pablo, extremely relaxed and stimulated, having spent a lot of time with yet another intense subculture. This one has maybe the most obsessive fans that I've seen in any of these. And as always, I bring you back an incredible discovery. So you are an award-winning documentarian and illustrator,

and I'm going to warn everybody that we're about to show things on our YouTube channel here, as well as on video and Apple Podcasts, that I haven't seen yet? Where were we going? So picture of this, Pablo. It all started in 2014. I was at an out-of-town wedding in Reading,

in Reading, Pennsylvania. And unbeknownst to all of us guests, the wedding ended up having a dry reception. Which means just ginger ale and like soda. Yeah, like iced tea and Shirley Temples and stuff. It was, you know, great time. But not like we're like alcoholics or anything, but a group of us after the wedding,

we were really looking for a place where we could have like a stiff drink. Can I point out that this is kind of how your birdwatching episode started? You're in a room full of weirdos. Yeah. Well, you know, this is just the way that I live, Pablo. This is your reporting process. So my friends and I, we stumble into what ends up being

the Crown Plaza Hotel in Reading, Pennsylvania, which just so happens that weekend to be hosting something called the Burke's Jazz Fest. As soon as we open the doors, Pablo, we just see an endless sea of elderly people, a full-on geriatric underground music scene. I'm imagining Zion from the Matrix, but also the exact opposite.

The exact opposite. What's the energy level here? Give us the sort of atmospherics. Everyone is like grooving. They are like dressed to the nines. We're talking feathers. We're talking sequins. We're talking high heels.

This astonishing scene that I can't quite process. So we sit down next to these very friendly, very intense people at a bar. And I should point out, that despite what it all sounds like now, this is actually going to be a sports story with this very specific kind of music that was billowing out of every single one of these conference rooms at the Crown Plaza Hotel.

And that music was smooth jazz. You're trying to sell our audience on Kenny G. Being sports, the kind of music that you hear when they're trying to anesthetize you during wisdom teeth removal. That's the one, yeah. The only data point that I really have for the intersection of sports and smooth jazz is the center fielder from my childhood, Bernie Williams.

Hell yeah. Hell yeah. In response to Bernie Williams being the smooth jazz guitarist that you seem to be channeling when you're claiming that this is all very, very cool and energetic. I mean, Bernie is a real one in the smooth jazz world. He has played with the New York Philharmonic. This guy has closed down shows at Carnegie Hall. He's got creed in this world.

It is dissident, the idea that guy who plays in a stadium that is brought to life by inter-sand-man by Metallica, when Mariano Rivera would come out of the bullpen. Mariano Rivera Number 42 is also doing this. I see how you feel that way, but this leads me perfectly

to the incredible discovery that I'm here to share with you, which is that in this ever-connected, optimized, metric-obsessed world of sports, smooth jazz might actually be hiding in plain sight as one of the greatest performance-enhancing drugs ever. Based on what I can accurately say is extensive international reporting on this subject. How long have you spent reporting this episode for us?

Years, years. I could argue since even before the show was a show. But I can accurately say that from the reporting, there are even more athletes, like your beloved Bernie Williams, who really enjoy kind of this soft. softer music, but they just might be too embarrassed to say it publicly. You're saying they're closeted smooth jazz fans throughout sports. Yeah, there are, but I promise you this.

On the show today, we will out at least one reigning world champion athlete as a smooth jazz lover. What I want to do is get out of this segment. So just to recap what you're attempting to do here, you're trying to preempting. prove that smooth jazz, the least pump-up sounding music one can imagine, is secretly a performance-enhancing drug that actually makes athletes better. So as much as we fans like to think that our favorite athletes are listening to just like this super hardcore music all the time, playing out loud in the locker rooms or in their headphones before and after games, it turns out that the most hardcore of hardcore players of all time, Michael Jordan,

seconds after Jordan hit the shot. This is the 89 playoffs. It's the Cavs. It's three seconds left. Three, two, Michael falls, fires. The Bulls win one of the most dramatic games ever. That's the one. Jordan literally says in his post-game interview that his pre-game pump-up song was this.

That's giving you the best that I got by Anita Baker. When Jordan is fist pumping, he's hearing that in his brain. So you should know that Anita Baker is not technically smooth jazz. You're saying that song we just heard is too hardcore for smooth jazz. Well, to define smooth jazz is a little bit difficult, but just painting with a broad brush, a nice soft watercolor brush. Smooth jazz is largely an instrument. genre, and it's like kind of a

vibe, actually. A radio DJ that I spoke to told me that he privately refers to smooth jazz as quote-unquote stimulax. Which feels like a pharmaceutical drug that makes you poop.

Well, stimulax is the perfect mix of stimulating and relaxing, which just so happens to be the ideal formula to have you enter a flow state. Hmm. It was actually a radio format.

This was in the late 80s. It was designed to be almost like an uplifting mood service. Why do I feel like I'm entering some sort of like spiritual ritual now with you? It's because you are. So these stations, it was a mix of contemporary jazz. It was world music.

It was like spa music with pan flutes. And it was all designed to be this sort of uplifting, joyful soundtrack to people's lives. People who might have been stressed out in the 80s, which I imagine is very cocaine-y. It's like this was the deprivation tank that they got to hang out. This was the counterpoint. So the iconic station that started this was called The Wave. It was an L.A. Bay Station, and the wave just played banger after banger after banger. 94.7, KTWV, the wave, where the music matters.

I think this is where I got to point out that banger feels like a substantive misrepresentation of whatever verb is happening when you play smooth jazz. What's the opposite of banging? Smoving? I don't know. So the wave was really a phenomenon, Pablo, and Southern California really could not get enough of this music, especially playing it at work in the background, at the office. Wait, so this was the ambient noise of corporate America? Totally. It lifted the mood. It made everything feel sophisticated and classy and arty and worldly. So I am at my desk in the 1980s, type of... away on my clickety-clack keyboard.

I mean, wouldn't you rather be working to music like this? Oh, crank it up. Come on, you're telling me that's not a banger? It feels like I'm on hold. You know you'd rather be listening to this than whatever podcast you're listening to you. Interviewing some billion. Come on. It's just like, this is not pumping me up.

This is depumping. This is deep-pump music. Deflating? I mean, dare I say, it's the opposite of the effect that you're arguing. One man's pump up is another's deflate, I guess. But back in those days, people could not get enough of this. And very quickly, in markets large and small, radio stations started to copy this format. And it wasn't just like some suburban, white, yuppie thing either.

It got to the point where if you were driving across the country, coast to coast, there would not be a single moment where on the radio dial you could not find music from artists like Grover Washington Jr. We're talking cities and suburbs, white and black, smooth jazz was born. So what I'm not going to argue with is the data, because the market is speaking, and more and more stations seem to be agreeing with you. So if you want some analysts, on this, just to give you a baseline. In the 90s, Kenny G.'s huge album, Breathless. It actually outsold Nirvana's Nevermind album.

You're saying that Kirk Cobain was outrated by... This right here. Come on. Tell me you're not pumped up right now. I just like how this is just Kenny G. crossfading into other versions of Kenny G. In which he's somehow losing more clothes. What a legend. He's on a beach, he's sleeveless. What instrument is that?

That is a soprano sax. Of course. In one shot, he's wearing suspenders in like a villa of like an ancient ruin maybe of some kind, wearing high top sneakers. But I should say, Pablo, that Kenny G himself actually shied away from the smooth jazz label. How could the guy who seems like the face of smooth jazz reject that? So the jazz world really resented. that Kenny G.

In the ways that we were just talking about with Nirvana, was outselling, even like the greatest jazz artists of all time. And this points at another phenomenon, something that the other guy in this photo, actually, a guy named Dave Kaz. My name is Dave Koss.

I'm a professional musician, and I play the saxophone. It's what this guy, Kaz, calls the jazz police. the word smooth, not the word jazz, interestingly enough, but the word smooth kind of became a dirty word along the way. And there was such a bias in the jazz community who looked at smooth jazz artists as kind of lesser than. So it was like an identity crisis for a lot of smooth jazz artists.

And even the fans who became like, because it was such a powerful voice of this jazz police, saying, if you're listening to smooth jazz radio, first of all, the artists suck. Your music tastes suck, you know, and you suck. It was so heavy-handed that a lot of us guys and gals that became associated with this radio format, we kind of carried this burden. I tried to distance myself like we all did from the term smooth jazz for a number of years. So a couple of observations here. One is the Jazz Police That sounds to me like a smooth jazz cover band of the police.

And the second thing is, dude's Zoom background appears to be an enormous house. What's his deal? Do you hear this music underneath us, Pablo? This is why they call Kaz the Sultan of Smooth. People told me that listening to a Dave Kaz's saxophone solo makes them feel like they're taking drugs. This guy was,

A saxophone player in Arsenio Hall's band. He became like the industry's anointed successor to Kenny G. Capital Records held this meeting where they decided that for marketing purposes, they're going to change his name from David Kaz to Dave Kaz. And then quote-to-quote, Dave Kaz becomes this like crazy sex symbol. It's hard for me to not point out that by dropping the ID, by dropping the id, he unleashed Be it.

One newspaper called it Sacks Appeal. And Kathy Lee Gifford simply called Kauze a very hot guy. Dave Kauze, great, great jazz performer, a very hot guy.

There were music videos with these women fawning after him. And Kaz is just standing among ancient ruins, just squealing gloriously.

A saxophone solo while he seductively looks on. I just like how at any given moment you could pause one of these music videos, and it's going to be across this all. So at his peak in the 90s. Atop those ruins. Really peaking there. He went platinum as an artist. He was selling like a half million records for each album. He even wrote the theme song to General Hospital.

This guy, he did cameos on Melrose Place. He was on Family Matters. As someone who watched a lot of Steve Urkel, I remember that Erkel loved smooth jazz, which feels like a great counterpoint to the case you've been making until this moment. Okay, but there's also sports. Dave Kaz also.

played four teams like the Lakers, for the Cowboys, for the Dodgers. He plays this incredible national anthem. And he has actually performed with athletes like your beloved Bernie Williams. What we're hearing now is the cause feature on the track Ritmo de Otonio from Bernie Williams' album, Moving Forward. So just to do by elementary Spanish translation, Ritmo de Otonio is Ritmo de Otonio is Ritmo de Otonio. rhythm of autumn. And what a great fitting soundtrack to all of their successes. Caz also played with, do you remember the late great Wayman Tisdale? One of the great college basketball players of all time. 6-9, 260 played for the Pacers and some other teams, the Kings and the Suns. Yeah, one of the great

power forwards and a gold medalist. And power forward happens to be the name of his debut album as a smooth jazz bassist. I mean, look at it. these guys, Pablo. That's Dave and Weiman. The Kaz and, wow. The much larger. He significantly larger. Wayman Tisdale. Collaborator. So Kaz told me, whatever it is that animates a professional athlete, that focus, preparing for the flow state, whatever you need to do. And believe me, I, Mickey, I am so far from being an athlete. I barely can swing a tennis racket. But I recognized something very distinct with those two experiences with professional athletes,

that they approached music in a different way than a regular musician. He said that these athletes, as musicians, smooth jazz musicians, were different. Dave Koss says that he absolutely believes that smooth jazz can be a performance-enhancing drug. I absolutely do think that smooth jazz can be a performing-enhancing drug. used by athletes, doctors. Actually, I've heard a bunch of stories, Mickey, about how my music actually has been used in operating rooms all over America by surgeons. This is where I have to admit that you've made a persuasive case that sports and smooth jazz actually have a history,

and that smooth jazz as a market commodity was quite valuable. But when you make the case for performance enhancement, what happened to the performance of smooth jazz since then? So things have been a little bit rough in the smooth jazz world, specifically because of something that happened in 2008 when everything changed. The great financial crisis. So there was that, but the wave that we talked about earlier, the wave crashed, Pablo, because, and I brought a prop today,

In 2008, the radio ratings company Arbitron rolled out this futuristic new device called the portable people meter. That looks like a beeper. Totally. It has a belt clip. Absolutely. It was designed to be worn on people's belts. And it was brought in to replace what were these like kind of archaic ratings books that people would have to write down longhand.

what radio stations they were listening to throughout the day. This reminds me that Nielsen, the Nielsen rating system for TV, they used to have people input by hand what they were watching. So the way that this thing worked is that radio broadcasters would actually embed an inaudible signal within every single one of the radio stations, people meters, have a tiny little microphone inside of them that would pick up the signal from the different radio stations and log how much rap music or heavy metal, classic rock, talk radio.

This is like how we think our cell phones are listening to us now. This was actually a device that was designed to openly do that very thing. It was listening to everything, Pablo. But these devices had a significant flaw. They really struggled to pick up the signals from stations that were played at a low volume. Which disproportionately affected. the music that we're talking about today. So the bias was music that was made to be blasted out of a speaker was accurately counted,

but the music that was played almost definitionally as background music that suffered. Exactly. So in every market where the people meter was integrated, ratings for smooth jazz just absolutely took a nosedive. We're looking at a March 2008 headline. It reads smooth jazz sinks in rough airwaves. It's pretty hard to recover when you're that underwater. So it looks that way, but let's go back to this wonderful hotel event that I was telling you about earlier

when I'm at a bar drinking with all of these smooth jazz fans, or smoothies, as I like to call them. It was that night that the smooth jazz fans described to me that in the wake of, the collapse of Smooth Jazz Radio, that the scene kind of evolved and rebranded as this in-person subculture. At small festivals like the Berks Jazz Fest, at Wine Tastings, and at an even more spectacular venue

that was pioneered by the Sultan of Smooth himself, Dave Kass. My first cruise was in 2005, and in 2011, we started doing it ourselves, producing ourselves. And every year, we decided to push the envelope and try new places. The average amount of guests that come on the ship is around somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 per cruise. For the next cruise in Japan, I think our waiting list is up to like 10,000 people.

It kind of reminds me of like summer camp for, I don't want to say senior citizens, but I might have to. It's really diverse. You've got all different races and religions and different ages. You've got gays, straits, and everything in between. And for one week, all the lines that separate everybody in our worlds, they just get erased. And that, to me, is the true power of music. What I'm finding out here is that there are thousands upon thousands of people that board a cruise ship in which the music.

in which the music that they celebrate is music that once again is typically played so softly that electronic devices cannot hear it. This is all true. And from here, Pablo, it's really time to step aboard. Things are about to get very horny. I'm PtFO correspondent Mickey DuJet, and I come to you from Rio de Janeiro, where I'm aboard the Dave Koss smooth jazz crews.

This week, thousands of sequined clad smoothies are packing themselves onto this ship to indulge, guilt-free, in a massive dose of something that most people think is horrible. What we're here to find out is whether smooth jazz, commonly seen as the most corny and loathsome musical genre in history, is actually hiding in plain sight as the key to unlocking peak performance. Let's investigate. I just need to point out that you were lying,

horizontally on a deck chair before getting up and beginning to traverse the deck of an actual cruise ship docked off of the coast of Brazil. All true. And you were wearing a nautical themed shirt. That's my cruising shirt, Boblow. And your journalism, your embedded on the open seas reporting, brought you to wear. So my first stop was to stop in at the Lido deck, where a large, you? A large group of smoothies had already congregated and seemed to be really feeling the effects of stimuli.

I mean, we had smoothies dancing on top of jacuzis. We had champagne flowing. Everyone was just shaking their moneymakers in the full Brazilian summer sun. This is, yes, a rainbow coalition of older people and saxophones, and everyone is loving it. But in terms of the performance enhancement thesis you've brought to us today, this is not quite what I'm looking for. I have to agree with you at first glance, unfortunately, peak performance was not immediately apparent. Not on the ping pong tables, not in cornhole,

and definitely not in the pools. I'm glad that we are continuing to do sports journalism. So for me to learn the true secrets of Smooth, I had to dip my toe further into the water. What I want to know is how do these people, many of them older people, have so much stamina this week? So the stamina comes from your passion. You must know what your passions are. I personally say, I know what my crazy is. So my crazy is music.

I just got to say you are interviewing a woman who is, literally now inside the jacuzzi. And she's just getting started. How many shows back to back to back to back to back do you think that you could, you know, take in on a cruise this intense? So when I get the schedule, and of course you have to pace yourself,

but there is 24 hours in a day, and the day starts about 10 ends about 2. So 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. and then you can sleep from three to eight. Let's just do the math here. That's 16 hours a day of smoothing for a week straight. That's right, Pablo. And these people made me, as a middle-aged guy,

think about performance and enhancement in a totally different way. I have kids in their 30s and 40s. I'm not quite sure that they could hang if they came onto the ship. As you know, we go from morning to them. night and we probably will put someone in the shame. It's like crack cocaine, although I don't do drugs, it's, it brings me to my happy place. You're incredibly stoned right now on smooth jazz. Absolutely. I am in my natural high.

What I thought would be a downer is instead proving to be an upper in ways that are scientifically disturbing. So you've got to understand, Paul, though, these 2,000 smooth jazz fans, on this ship are co-mingling with their favorite artists in very, very close quarters. And again, it's black, white, gay, straight, Democrat, Republican, everybody's mixed in. Yes, the bipartisanship of this horniness is becoming also apparent. So speaking of that, I don't want to get too explicit on your show here, but there was a moment where one night, as I was walking along the ship, an elderly woman grabbed my wrist. and flirtatiously asked me if I would guess her age.

And then, you know, gazing at me with the most seductive look, she said to me, I'm 80. And I was like, and I'm scared. Feels like you're getting journalistically compromised, Mickey, by your reporting here. So I actually felt. the opposite. I was in these concerts. I was searching for my own high

and people are wearing these incredible outfits that have flowy fabrics and flashing lights and I'm there in my stupid cruising shirt. Your buttoned down? Yeah. So rather than feeling like I needed to stay on the sidelines, what I decided to do was totally double down.

So I, I walked over to this onboard store, which is called Glitz. And inside Glitz, I bought myself a new smooth jazz shirt. I mean, it is a button down, but it is split down the middle by the buttons. The right side on the screen is white and has musical notes, and it's coming out of a saxophone that seems to be blowing smoke out of itself. And on the left side is... More giant notes.

But just like vertical now, shooting vertically, like you are smooth jazz two-face. You are smooth jazz Harvey Dent. I should say I was extremely excited for my new uniform to wear on the cruise. This was made of what fabric? This was a silk. I mean, why did I even ask? Yeah. They don't sell anything other than silk on that boat.

And immediately, just from the reaction, just from the reaction. of the people who, as I'm walking out of the store, this shirt was just a gateway into the unknown. And so as you are now festooned in silk, where do you go? So I'm feeling great with this new second skin. I happened to stumble upon an onboard ping pong tournament that was happening on the Lido deck. This crew ship has everything.

It really does. And I decided to put my newfound Stimulex to the test. The moment that I stepped to the table, Pablo, a wave of calm really came over me. I mean, it's a wave of calm over the guy who is asleep right behind you watching this. Okay, he might have been more calm than me.

The ball just danced from my paddle like a bubble in the breeze. You're biting your lip with a confidence that I got to say, betrays your goth tennis background. This is actually the polar opposite of my goth tennis days, but I'm out there and some, you know, cracking balls all over the table.

Celebrating. Like a smooth jazz saxophone solo, Pablo. Is that the guy you beat? Yeah. He had to go down, Pablo. I was really feeling it. It was like popping your jersey. I don't remember any of this.

I feel like I was, like, unconscious. But what I do remember is that after I won the tournament, people were coming up to me to take selfies. I had this, like, totally new stature on the ship. You're grinning so wide that it almost makes me ignore the woman to the bottom right of this frame. She's loving it, too. Oh, my God.

I ended up going to a bar where the bartender just, for no reason gave me a double pour of Baileys on the house. A literal flow state at this point. Everything I did just felt effortlessly cool. And, you know, heads were turning my way. I had never felt so smooth in my entire life. So, Pablo, everywhere I was going on the ship, I was suddenly getting love.

And I was wondering, was this all because of this, like, stupid silk saxophone shirt that I was. was wearing? Or did the shirt actually unlock something that was deep inside of me that had been laying dormant? I really needed to go deeper to find the answer. We've arrived to day five of this here's smooth jazz crews and I've never felt more comfortable in my own skin. Tonight's theme is Brazilian Carnival. Even though it's early in the day, all of my new old friends are already clad in sequins and feathers, ready to dance the night away. Let's check in on the dance floor and see how they're doing.

It feels like you robbed an old person and are now wearing a blue feather boa, a blue Jim Dolan-esque pork pie cap. And somehow there's enough fabric left over from the hat to make an entire shirt. It's also sparkling in the sun. It was a set, Pablo. Apparently Glitz had a back room that I hadn't initially noticed for the serious smoothies. And yeah, I went even harder with the outfits. And I have to say that as someone who doesn't typically dress up, tapping into my inner smoothie was really liberating. But even as I was reaching, you know, the pinnacle of the smooth world, I just felt myself wanting more. So as night fell on the ship during this carnival celebration,

I'm really feeling that I think we should move down. I found myself like wanting to be up front, like running down the aisle into the front rows of these shows. The music is just washing over me. And I finally felt like I was accepted into this world and was communing with everyone's fountain of youth in this way that made me feel whole. You're doing the John Hamm meme from Friends and Neighbors.

Does the camera right down barrel to your face, eyes closed as you're like gyrating? A wash in some sort of like moonlight. I mean, again, I don't remember any of this. That tracks. I was really living the dream. So earlier in the week, a new friend of mine told me, me that smooth is actually a feeling and that if you let the feeling overtake you on the inside, it'll radiate to the outside.

That is a hell of a pickup line. I really felt that, though. I really felt that. So for one magical week, Pablo, I really forgot all of my troubles and can honestly say I was peaking. as you're walking down the moonlit Lido deck with your arms raised like Judd Nelson in the breakfast club I have to wonder now is your wife aware that you were peeking on this cruise ship What happens on the cruise ship stays on the cruise ship, Pablo

until today, I guess. So this is where, now that we're back on land, I do feel obligated to disclose that I did not consent to mere sponsored content for Dave Kaz's smooth jazz crews, which clearly you found to be a very transformative experience. So I don't feel like Kaz or the Cruz or the smooth world needs any more than they already have.

But you should know that my embedding in this world, my experience with this world over six years in 15 countries and interviewing doesn't. of people was not just for this episode. I really saw something substantive and beautiful in this world. And all of this footage and all of these people that I've met served the larger purpose of me making a feature-length documentary about smooth jazz, which is called smooth world. And what the film is really about is that despite, you know, the ridiculous optics of it or its history that has been lampooned, that actually peak performances when you stop trying to be so cool all the time and you give in to community and joy and being silly and being in person with other people.

These are the analog virtues of a world like that. And I feel like the world, not just older people, but people our generation and younger, in the world that, like, is becoming rougher and rougher, could be well-served by something that's actually much smoother. As I can salt my notes here, I love that your film will be premiering at the Newport Beach Film Festival in October, where the vibes promised to be exactly as you described them. But what about us?

Okay. So I did promise in true PTFO fashion to out. To break news. To break news and out a reigning world champion of a major American sport as a true lover of smooth jazz. So Dave Kaz, a legend of this musical genre, he told me about, you know, a whole legion of closeters that are not willing to admit it in public,

but in private, they got it going on. From his own best friends to the Obamas. That's a hell of a tease. To a guy whom you also might recall from his playing days with the Boston Red Sox and is now the manager of the reigning world champion L.A. Dodgers. Oh, no. Even though I don't play sports, I grew up around sports, my dad was a psycho Dodgers fan and had season tickets, the whole thing.

So we went to a lot of Dodger games. So the Dodgers are very much a part of my heart, you know, growing up in L.A. And so it was an event that Dave Roberts was at that I was playing at and I met him backstage. And he was like, he totally, I hope he's not watching this, but I just want to say that he kind of fanboyed out on me. And of course, when the Dodgers won the pennant, you know, it's like congratulatory messages and immediately. I remember texting Dave right after the Dodgers win, the World Series. And I was thinking, this guy's got to be getting hundreds or maybe thousands. of congratulatory messages.

But I'm just going to be one of those guys because I want him to know that I was watching and I was so excited for the team. You know, go Dodgers. And I texted him literally within three minutes. There was a text message saying, thank you so much, Dave. We are so excited.

We appreciate your support. I'm like, why are you texting me, of all people? Like, what is going on here? That is also how I feel at this point. What the hell is going on? Now, I know that you guys have standards around here, Pablo. You can't just make claims about a four-time world series champion in the same episode that I'm, like, grinding up an old lady. Yeah, yeah, we need to request comment, typically, for such allegations.

So the other day, at Dodger Stadium, we had one of your colleagues at the athletic, Fabian Ardaya, fact-checked this. And confront Dave Roberts about my theory that keeping it smooth is actually, a performance-enhancing drug. So I think that it just puts my mind in a peaceful place when I listen to jazz music. And it's certainly the contrast from clubhouse music, you know, where you get rap, hardcore rap, you get the bad bunny, you get some country in there. We don't have as much rock, rock and roll or having that old, thank goodness. But it's a lot of rap, a lot of Latin stuff.

But I do think that, you know, for me, it's like I can listen to jazz. just to kind of keep me grounded. I just need to stress how utterly serious he was in answering this question of your theory. And with that seriousness, what is now sinking in to my life and my brain is the idea that whenever I think now about Dave Roberts, that same guy stealing second base on a guy who loves to come out of the bullpen to Metallica, what I'm really hearing underneath is not heavy metal. It's not the dropkick Murphys, even.

It's the Sultan of Smooth. Haunting me as the Red Sox come back from down 30 to beat the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS. Yeah, so I'm sensing your anxiety here, Pablo. This is a remarkable practical joke you played. I have something to help you. Okay, so one last thing that I'm bringing you as a surprise here to really enhance your own performance. Not that it needs enhancement.

A smooth jazz rendition of the Pablo Torre Finds Out theme song. The great Bernie Williams. Ladies and gentlemen, Bernie Williams. This has been Pablo Torre finds out. A Metal Arc Media. production. And we will talk to you next time.