Pablo Torre Finds Out - What It Means to Be Cool, with Kevin Wildes

Episode Date: March 6, 2025

The world is in desperate need of a vibes transfusion. And so we asked Kevin Wildes — co-host of FS1's "First Things First” and professional counterbalance to Nick Wright — for something even bigger than Jordan vs. LeBron. Ol' K.W. has assembled nothing short of a master list of 71 (!) things that are, in fact, cool. And PTFO's official Cool Committee debates the door policy at a club where anyone, in theory, can be a member... whether you have whale bodyguards or not. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraff Kings Network. What's the situation here? Are we... Sweet. Are we started?

I think we have. Right. This is a very loud new chair. That's an FYI. It's okay. I'm ready to make a... proclamation, but you can start us. I would like to start with your proclamation.

Wherever you think this podcast is going to go, because you've caught me in such a unique headspace, it's going to go further away than you think it's going to. And here's the thing. If you don't like it, I'm okay just severancing this podcast. Being like, you know what? That never happened. we just delete it.

Yep. I'm going to go home and have no memory. Yeah. Of like, oh, Wyathe Giles a pithy thesis while he was on vacation and he became like a different person. You have a sheaf of papers.

And you're always full of ideas, but now you're like champing at the bit. By popular demand, by the way. And Kevin Wilde's, I should say your name aloud for people not watching on YouTube. By popular demand, you're here. And I thank you for that. You sent me a text.

Maybe on when I was on vacation. Yeah, I think it was. Yeah, I was in Maui. It took you a couple days to the point where I was like, I don't know if Kevin likes this idea. Well, that's another part, another leaf I'm turning over. Less phone. Like, just enough with the phones. So actually disengaging or doing the thing that I've been trying to do,

which is also, admittedly, trying to be tardy enough so that everyone's expectations for my responsiveness are reduced. Yeah, treat it like a letter, like a very fast, letter. Like, you wrote me a letter. I got it. I'm thinking about it. Here's your letter back. But it's very fast a day. In the olden days. Right. Not Ken Byrne Civil War letter. No. But closer to, you know, your birthday card from your parents. Yeah. It's coming. All right. So you sent me a text that said one embryonic topic, and this was Saturday, 1.302 p.m. One embryonic topic, I'm meditating on for you. I don't like myself as I read my words aloud, but this is what I am. what it means to be quote unquote cool who the coolest people are whether it can be taught how effort

intersects with cool risks of embarrassment the coolest things we've ever seen yeah and you didn't respond for for hours actually then you got to me and you said quote this is cool yeah nothing else and then you made me wait a day and a half and then Monday morning you said I'm back and working on this and now I have 20 pages so this is where I So many papers in front of you. Headspace-wise. Because I figured when you sent me a text, you just want to talk about, like, hey, Michael Jordan sure was cool.

I'm like, yeah. Hey, remember when Vince Carter jumped over Frederick, nice? That was cool, right? Like, yeah, that's cool. And, you know, Led Zeppelin's cool. Like, yeah, everybody knows that stuff. So I'm like, how do I put a twist on this? And I just so happened to be in Maui.

Have you been to Hawaii? I've been to Kauai. Oh, man. We wanted to go to Kauai. It's so good. Kauai is even more naturey than Maui. It's where they film Jurassic Park. Oh, okay.

So this will be right in your wheelhouse. Were there whales there? Of course there were. Okay. I know you're a big whale aficionado as well. My bachelor party involved whale watching. Did it really? San Juan Islands saw a fully breaching humpback whale.

So did I. Not at your bachelor party. Eight days ago, dude. My skin's tingling. Okay. So this is where it happened. We get to Maui. I wasn't aware prior to this vacation, I didn't even know the humpback whale schedule.

Oh, yeah. I didn't know what schedule they were on. I thought they were just kind of roaming around. Nope. The humpback whales from Alaska and the humpback whales from Antarctica, they come and converge. They have a little meetup to give birth to their babies and then kind of nurture them in Hawaii. In the warm waters. Holy cow.

anyways, we get there and there's all these blowholes popping off in the horizon. And we're screaming like maniacs and like, yeah, it's whale season. And it's like when you shout out to all European tourists that come to Central Park and start taking pictures of the squirrels. Like, guys, you need to chill. There's plenty of them. You don't need to take pictures of them. I rarely feel cooler than when I am the guy just like pointing finger guns at tourists being like,

yeah, this is what New York is like. Yeah, we got squirrels. That was me with humpback whales. So there's little kayaks you can rent kayaks. Oh, wait, you went in a kayak? Dude, we get in normal kayaks that they rent to people at the hotel with a guide who's on a stand-up paddleboard. What does this guy look like? Awesome, obviously.

Dude's getting whale watching towards. He looks like a human stand-up paddle board. He's amazing. And his vibe is immaculate. Of course. That guy's day-to-day quality of life. We should be jealous. He's just fantastic.

Shout out to John. So John takes us out because we don't know how deep to go. We're chasing the blowholes. So we're just hanging out. And next thing you know, here come the humpback whales in the distance. But nearby, a baby, mother, and then the escort. Do you know about this? Oh, wait.

Travel in pods of three. So the escort is either like a senior whale or like mom's friend. It's not the dad. And then the John tells us, he puts his GoPro, he shows us a video of the GoPro. It's the baby and the mom, like kind of side by side. And then the escort's kind of just like, like a security guard for a celebrity. Yeah, not looming. Not whale prostitute, whale.

No, whale escort. Yeah, you're a bodyguard. So anyways, so then the whales start, the whales were doing their thing. Me and my son, Russell, we're to sit in the kayak. And then the big circles start to happen. Yes. We're like, what in the world? Lunch feeding?

No, it's just the way, it's just something's happening underneath us. And then we're in a circle. We're like, what in the world? We got to start battling backwards. Whales come. Then a whale breaches right in front of us. Unbelievable. Like whales, there's nothing you and I love more than a good pot.

Okay. The whale pod you're talking about? You know. No ponds, no ponds. Okay, so then I'm on the beach and I go under the water, right? And I'm, you know, I like to swim under the water. Look, or nothing. Body surfing?

Yeah, but this is, I'm just like patiently, like, just going under the water, just open into my eyes. Oh, it's pop up. Old man with a boogie board next me. He says, do you listen in to the whales? I said, what? He said, you know, you can hear the whales. I said, you can't? He's like, yeah, it's like a elementary school concert of violins, poorly played violins.

So I go back. And really? I go back under. so I popped up and then I got your text at some point I'm like the world is amazing dude I was like oh like this is a very spiritual moment for me

and has like changed my outlook on this particular podcast because I feel like what's cool what's not you know you see in the magazine list oh this is cool and this is not wearing your socks high school and wearing them well it's not and it's just

there's an element of negativity to it. OKW came back from Maui. I've got a very loose door policy at Club Cool right now. Very loose. Hey, oh yeah, yeah, that's cool. Come on in. Because

the world is great and I'm feeling alive. Now we can start the pot. Okay, so number one, deeply jealous of your vacation. I don't want you to be. I want to share it. I don't want you to have any negative feelings. And I don't want to be like, ah, I did this. I'm just saying, like, I'm here sharing it.

I'm trying to spread the positive energy. Don't be jealous. So when it comes to the nightclub that you are now, I use the word Catholic in a different sense, a very Catholic policy, very open, come on in. Yeah. No velvet rope, just. There's still a rope.

Few clubs have as much paperwork as yours. True. You're holding, you're double fisting. have you've printed out what feel like are those shot sheets you have you photographs i can't read the words well what do you want to do i've got a lot of stuff to go through you want me to just kind of throw it at you and you tell me you know you used to be a producer now you're this feels like a meeting though you're now an in-demand talent and i'd like you to run the meeting okay first off so i googled what cool is and i i came up with something AI uncool

It's fine, I guess. It gave me a stupid list of what cool is. It's AI doesn't work. Oh, oh, we're scrapped. Okay, you've thrown out the first piece of paper. This doesn't, I mean, it's cool people are honest. They're diplomatic. They're good with others.

They use humor. They have autonomy, independent, unconventional, don't conform. And they solve problems. That's trash. There's nothing there. There's nothing there. You know what that sounds like? A robot wrote that.

Reddit. Oh, the Reddit community. So I went to Reddit. This is just like kind of... You're polling the internet. It's kind of starting an essay with like, the definition of cool, Webster's defines. Okay.

And then Reddit had... There's two things that I pulled. One was kind of like psychology, which I got lost in. And then the second one, this person wrote it, 2000 Dragon handle is. I'll answer this from a filmmaker's perspective. The question was like, what's cool? When trying to create cool characters, the formula is competence plus calm plus confidence equals cool.

Competence, calm, confidence. Yep. It worked. Okay. It tracks. Okay. So I went through and so. The CCC?

Yeah. Four, even four there. It equals cool. So it works. Then I kind of came up with a rosetta stone of cool. What does that mean? So I understand the Rosetta Stone is a way of being able to understand other languages. I kind of just liked the word Rosetta Stone rather than the Madden ratings of cool.

So I saw this video. I wanted to get like something super famous. Certainly walking on the moon is cool, but also kind of unattainable for most people. Then I saw this guy. I'd assume you haven't seen this video, but you are very online. Extremely. I know 2000 dragons. Dragon singular.

I like when I listen to the Chris Hayes podcast, you guys were talking about esoteric random TikToks, and he's like, yeah, that guy's great. Yeah, the hammer guy. What in the world? Have you seen this guy? I pulled a screen grab for it. Oh, okay.

I'll describe it. Yeah, please, for theater of the mind. It's a gentleman fishing with a few of his pals. Looks like he's got a Miller light in his hand, and he's tapping on the water. okay to get the gators to come near alligator comes right up to the boat taps it a little bit more so the alligator

opens its mouth this dude takes a aluminum can of beer pops it on the alligator's tooth gives it to his buddy who then shotguns it some flintstone our bird is also our telephone our alligator is our bottle open

so here's the thing so I went back and looked at it. Is he calm? Yes. Is this dude confident? Yes. Obviously. Is he confident? Oh, you want a shot gun on a beer? Yeah. Does anyone have a key? No, I have a gator tooth. Great, dude. It crushes it. And what I really want to, so what I take away from that, it's obviously cool. It doesn't matter how you look. It doesn't matter where you live. It doesn't matter, you know, your haircut or your sneakers or any of this other stuff. This is why my aperture. is solving. It's just this dude's just being him. And he's getting down to the raw authenticity of himself and doing cool stuff. Are you aware that so far a lot of your cool examples involve

things that live in the water? I'm just going where the data leads me, dude. And this is where I just need to jump in to say that our friend Kevin Wilds, the co-host of First Things First on FS1 and also a former producer at ESPN. He really does love data. He loves making sports infographics. actually by hand. And when Wilde was in the PTFO studio in January, listening to me and his co-host, Nick Wright, debate the smartest person in sports media. Do I think I am the smartest guy in sports media?

Obviously, I think that... One regret I had was that I didn't tap into Kevin's passion for charts. And perhaps appropriately, charts about maybe the opposite topic from who is the smartest person in sports media. which is to say, what's the coolest thing in the world? And so today, before I get to my own story, which involves a guy I met named John,

I should warn you here that Wilds did not curate a list of five things or 10 things or 25 things. What he brought us was... 71 things that are cool. We can discuss each of them. It's a 50-minute show. I mean, I'm like a fly. I threw them.

Then the other thing you asked me was, coolest thing in the world. Did you think of something? Did you assign yourself that? I have done so much less homework for this episode than you, but I have some takes. Zero one. I have some takes.

I ate lunch alone the other day. That's cool. Went to Barney Greengrass, Upper West Side, establishment, great bagels, the sturgeon king, more, again, aquatic life. And I was asked, hey, there's no room for like a one person to get their own table. There's a four top.

There's one guy here. His name is John. Great. He's 80-something years old. And there are two women. They're together. Do you guys want to share one table? All four of you?

All four of us. Like just communal. And choose your own adventure in terms of how much you want to talk to each other. A lot. And so I said, yeah. Great. Of course. You should have brought a microphone.

That would have been a great pod. Believe me, I thought about it. You should have a little travel kit. So I almost put a wire on because John, what happened was at some point the waiter comes by and he's like, a table opened up. Do you guys want to not do this? Because this is, you acknowledge this is a little much. And my move as a New Yorker is to say, you know, whatever John wants to do I'm cool with. That's good.

and John sort of like very blasé like now I'm good great and so me and John that's my signal door is open time to start talking yeah John turns out yes he's in his 80s I'm going to look up his oh you can look John up because John and I are just like shooting this shit

and he begins to explain that he's a writer and John is John Barrett who is the author of a book called Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Oh, yeah, that's a famous book, dude. Which happens to have been on the New York Times bestseller list for 216 weeks. I think we had that book at my home. Midnight spent 216 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list more than any other

nonfiction book in history. I never thought it would be a bestseller. It became a movie Clint Eastwood directed it. So the point being that, like, John, who didn't give a fuck about anything, was down to either talk or not talk. He and I just started doing an unrecorded podcast. Does he lead with that? You know I wrote Midnight in the Garden of Good... That's a famous book.

It's not like a tiny book. It's like a record setting. It's about a thing in Savannah, Georgia. Two things about John. Very eager to talk about it, but was honestly happy to just read the New York Times until I said, so John, what do you get here?

And then we talk about order. Right. And cool to me is, showing up, putting yourself out there, and not knowing is this going to be painful or not, and then being rewarded by the universe with the breaching humpback whale of one of the greatest authors, it seems, in nonfiction writing in at least the, you know,

well, that's cool. Recent history of the United States. That's what I'm saying. Eating alone. Cool, competent, calm, confident, all those things describe John. Home run, dude. Home run story.

Is it the coolest thing in the world? It's up there. Not, no, but no, not not. And my list of 71 things, that's not number one. Do you have a number one? Because I think I have a number one. Yeah. I want to, we should alternate.

Or at the very least, I would like you to go next. Well, I have two more, I'll hold up two things, okay? I have all of these. Okay, this one is called Massive List. Yeah, it says it. You wrote it in all caps across the top. Yeah, it's all. organized stuff.

And this one is just the one that I think is the coolest moment. But I'm not sure. This moment can just fold into all of these. Like this moment is not necessarily cooler than I'll give you just number 12 in no particular order. When owls turn their head around. Yeah, that's cool. I went to an owl cafe in Japan. I've seen that.

It's so worth it. Nocturnal? Great question. I also had, I was like, is this one of those, like, we are keeping the prisoners awake in a sort of like experimental torture situation? And I didn't get clarity on that because it was the daytime and these owls were spinning their heads around and seemingly cool with it. And these two key and the Gigi. And they look so angry. That's good.

I got to pet several increasingly tiny owls. Oh, smaller. Oh, yeah. I would have gone the other way. No, because... A huge owl. Well, you start with the big one, and then you work your way to winning the trust of... The smallest ones.

Yes. Once you go through with your everything is cool, isn't it, filter on? It's endless. I mean, the bird as a thing. This is my whole kind of mammals take. Go ahead. We fetishize the dog, and I see of a... Is that a dog on...

Yeah, sure. I'm glad you bring it up if you want me to jump your take. Well... Here's a dog that herd sheep. but there's wolves out there you know so you know what this dog has on him a collar of spikes he's got a spiked the spikes on this collar about four inches long and it's so a when a wolf tries to attack him his jugular is it's basically he's turning him into a dog porcupine so that's number two go ahead that dog about dogs uh calm yeah he is dude herding sheep just mine is

business. Yeah, I mean, that's a good preempting of my take, which was dogs overrated, birds underrated, because birds, of course, can literally speak English and we don't care. Okay. Dogs can smell cancer, so like, let's slow your role here. Okay, dog. I want to substantiate that. That is a thing. So this is Lucy. She's a Labrador Cross Irish Water Spaniel. Rob Harris is training dogs to smell prostate cancer. They take your samples from eight different patients. Now, one of the eight patients has cancer, and it's the dog's job to sniff it out.

They can smell like Alzheimer's as well. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, they can't ask for, you know, how old are they? At the same time. It's a real Jordan LeBron situation, dogs versus birds. Dogs have jobs, like several jobs. Birds don't have jobs?

With delivering messages. Eagles, they've trained Eagles to take down drones. The Dutch national police have found a unique way to take the flying device down. They have trained eagles to take down drones. This is me. I mean, the falconer wrist. I do not want to be painted as anti-eagle. I'm just saying you can come across dogs working.

Dogs have, like straight up have jobs. dog they're get like they're in the military they're in police they do jump out of plants yeah they do they're all sorts of stuff they're at the airport birds can literally fly so so this is my issue this is this this is where i think that i don't want to get off on the wrong foot yeah this has become contentious i think if you get the badge of cool you're in the hall of fame i'm not i'm hey The Hall of Cool. Are you Babe Ruth? Are you a guy who just snuck into the Hall of Fame recently?

It doesn't matter, dude. My plaque is up. So whether you're, I had this originally, Jimmy Hendrix closes Woodstock with the Star Spangled Banner, number one seed. Conventionally cool. It's unbelievable. One, Marvin Gate the All-Star game.

That's my one-seat. Are you kidding me? That's my one seed. Or you're just a kid in Little League who hits a triple and decides to slide head first. You both are doing your thing, dude. That one has hammered to left, it's now to second and third. Yamaguchi's going to score, heading to third.

No, no, no! And in there with a triple, Bruce Boucher. What a day. Well, so this gets to something that I think is integral about what we're defining as cool, though, which is deliberate versus spontaneous. right so you mentioned the slide and i i agree the counter argument to a good slide is that it feels so practiced so like for instance you know the thing that baker mayfield does you've seen that that

animated gif of like him i was saying well i've seen it several times when he slides and that pretends to be a photographer yes unbelievable it's just like the fluidity yeah baker is sick dude it's just it's like that's that guy's fucking cool that's cool yeah but then the question becomes like what if you apply the standard of what does it look like when he was practicing that in the mirror? He wasn't practicing that. Okay, so this is a standard

that we have to scrutinize. Does it undermine the committee's case if this thing was practiced, practiced, practiced, practiced versus felt as Jimmy Hendricks, I think did, and spontaneously performed. No, you're allowed to practice it.

Some of my list are just nouns, dude. So this is where I get into it. This is where I started to get into, like, not just people. So you're talking about proper nouns? No, just swords. Like just... All swords? I mean, I don't know, most swords.

If there was a sword here, but that's cool. Have you seen the Instagram account that is cool sticks? Of course I have. Hello, Stick Nation. I'm here in Guarapariz, Frit Santo Brazil. I found this beautiful, awesome stick. It's a white curly stick, and I found this here on this beautiful place. Yes.

Official stick reviews. Yeah, they're great, and everybody likes it. So again, that's an offshoot of swords. Well, it's like, what if you didn't plan to make a sword? Speaking to my practice thing, and nature itself just presented you with an excalibur made of bark. Yeah, that's cool. That's objectively, obviously. Just raise, I've got so much stuff here, and we're almost.

almost out of time already. Just raise your, just stop me when you want to talk about something. Are you ready? Yeah. They're not everything cool in the world. You actually have 71 things, but I'm looking at your paper. And some of them have ABC. Pablo gave me a job on my vacation.

Hey, can you go through everything and everyone that's ever existed and come up with a list? And I only came up with 71. You've been asking for an aside bit and I wish I could have credit for us. Everything ever. So I just, this is just stuff that just popped into my brain recently. Surfers, obviously. That dog with the collar. Octopi.

I mean, ejaculates out of its tentacles just as a side note. Spies. Bats, which is basically swords. Scorpions. Diving. But not necessarily Olympic diving. Again, this whole thing of like this feels very practiced versus this feels like a thing you do spontaneously and ecstatically. Old cars.

Cars from the few. future. Okay, this is where I, this is a large, large catch-all. Pretty much all musical endeavors, pretty much all artistic endeavors, pretty much all dancing hard, pretty much all motorcycles. The committee needs a little bit more exclusivity than this. No, we don't. That's the point. Pretty much all of, you just included pretty much every music. Pretty much human performance. Yeah. I know. Pretty much every music. Pretty much every music. musical endeavor is cool. Can I confess to something that I agree must be uncool? I was at my daughter's ballet recital. And you know how this works. Like, there are like a hundred kids. I've never,

just because I'm in the boy world, I've never, I'm unfamiliar with like dance recitals. As the father of a daughter, I went to this dance recital and they're like a hundred kids. And violets, like in the last quarter. And I am embarrassed to admit this, but in the interest of journalistic transparency, I will. Stuck an ear pod in. That's allowed. For like the non- children of mine in attendance. My kids did a swim, we're on a swim team for a little while. It's like a five-hour thing. And then my kid gets in there, flops around for 45 seconds and get and then comes out. I'm like, no. I was like, we can't do this anymore. We have to, he has to be. Even if he's on the bench in basketball, like, I'm looking at him.

He's there. He's going to get some run. Can't be there for five hours. I was listening to a podcast. You can't do it. That's fine. You want to keep going? You want to argue about.

No. Skateboarding. Pretty much all sports. I recently discovered my sister in her house. They have a skateboard, and I had never skateboard before. I spent a week just like teaching myself. How'd you do? I've been posting Instagram videos that,

One of our producers here, Nadir, he has been demanding that I show him what it looks like when I'm like, you know, this is me revealing I don't know how to skateboard, when I'm taking off, because all I'm doing is like taking a video of me like rolling along. So I'm like partially cool. Yeah. Just trying it is cool. Thank you. Almost all convertibles. Almost everything with a gas powered motor. This includes what is not limited to go carts.

dump trucks, chainsaws, weed whackers, monster trucks, and street sweepers. What do you think about electric cars that have a device that makes the sound of a gas-powered engine? Obviously, practical necessity for safety to gauge speed and distance. Obviously, cool to compose it because it falls under all musical endeavors. I was going to hold you to account. All turtles. There's in Chinatown. I grew up, they sold tiny, tiny turtles that, like, live in like a, whatever, a bowl of water and then inevitably die.

I thought they grew super big. Yeah. But they were cool. So does everything. Yeah. We had sea turtles and, you know, tortoises, all turtles. They get so old. They get so old.

That's great. My buddy's got a turtle that's going to outlive him. They need to, like, plant. They have to, like, do estate planning for it. But there is something reassuring, much like a redwood. Yeah? Which will outlive us, make us feel small. So, too, does.

How long do you think those baby humpback will? are living. A good amount, right? Oh, they've seen some things. Yeah. I'm not the babies. The babies have just seen Maui like me. Almost all mechanics. Maybe all mechanics. Pretty much any job that requires having a lot of stuff. A superintendent's key ring. Yeah, that's, yes, that works for everything.

Yeah, just any, whether you're a lumberjack, you know, any job where you're holding a lot of stuff, this is another catch-all that you'd probably be upset about. Stuff that is faster than that stuff usually is. People, animals, or vehicles. Just a little bit... Just faster than the normal thing. Whatever the standard for that thing is, if you're a little bit faster, great.

The committee demands, this side of the committee demands, that you're trying to have your cake and eat it too. You're trying to praise everybody for their efforts. All efforts welcome, no judgment. This is an open division. And yet those who are surprisingly fast, you get bonus points. Yep, there's a little bit of bonus. There is a little bit of bonus.

lily pads. Also, stuff that is much slower than that stuff usually is. The last person who crosses the marathon finish line. Sloths. Old jalopies.

Any car that you have to crank in the front of it to get it going. Sunglasses. This is an odd one. People with long hair and barbers. Figure that one out. Venus fly traps. Cacti.

Many trees. Almost all sea life. Almost everything that can fly. old guys wandering around of flip-flops with good vibes people with their shirts off crossing a river on a horse Hold on the shirts-off thing

chill chefs The shirts-off thing I don't know if I can be down with that In fact I am not down with that I put this in any in the same category as people dancing

Okay Man People are like Are you worried about being embarrassed Everybody with every dude with the shirt off, usually just crushing it. But it's a lot of it's just being confident. Who cares?

Right. Don't let the internet trainers get you down because you don't have trapezius muscles. Doesn't matter. Look at the guy who popped the beer on the alligator tooth. Most doorman. Agree. Fully agree. Problematic zone.

Oh, wait, this is a, this is the sheaf of paper that's just. Bank robbers. What do you want me to do? Sorry. A lot of weapons. Sorry. Venomous snakes. Mob bosses.

Spitting tobacco juice on the floor of a saloon and then looking at the bartender, like, what are you going to do about it? It's just, there's an element of badassery that is cool. I don't quite, it doesn't quite hit the goodbyes, but I'm also not going to ignore it. Right. The sound of a spittoon. that's cool I've never heard I've never heard

I mean I I I think right I mean sorry I didn't mean it's like a three

pointer this is in the category of stuff that are of stuff that is in cartoons that I just assume happens in real life but I've never actually seen yeah

so many people dip and they have those like gross dip is not cool no dip is not cool it's not cool I mean it's kind of again

I got a loose door policy It's kind of cool. Guys got a big dip in there. Turning me into a cool nationalist. Like I'm trying to close these borders. It's cool. I'm just saying spatoons probably could make a comeback. If somebody wants to start a spatoon company,

like you're going to carry around a Gatorade thing or a coffee, a Starbucks cup and spit into it. Look, we've got a beautiful sputoon in the corner there. Old bartenders, all amphibians, everything nocturnal, as mentioned. Most people in rocking chairs, rocking chairs themselves, coolers, hammocks, anything that glows in the dark, including things and animals. Have you seen bioluminescent aquatic life? Swam in it in Puerto Rico. Same.

I had a friend. David Epstein, actually, friend of the show, fellow correspondent like yourself, a Pablo Tori finds out. He told me his story. He was in a... There's a lot of just maritime life stories today. That's okay. I think we're learning so. I think we're finding out actually something about what I mean. Can I tell you why that is? Most of the earth is water and most of the earth is cool thus far. A manta ray jumped out of the water covered in bioluminescent film.

Come on, dude. Flopped on his kayak. Yeah, that's awesome. This is going in the dark. Yes. Beaver dams. most mammals a good amount of cash but not as much as floyd mayweather has huge waves wave pools most water activities see now we're back here okay i'm almost done oh you're not done driving a car through a

huge puddle which might be considered that's you can see how my brain works there i feel like i've seen how your brain works this entire time and it's mostly water the universe all the planets especially Saturn's rings, comets, shooting stars and black holes, also revolving doors. That concludes the giant list. Now I have a new category. What's this new category called? What is your most, this might be your most famous? I don't know, this is going to hurt your feelings? I hope not. What do you think your most famous take is?

It's probably, I mean, I probably am attributed. Trust the process. Okay, I think you're right. This is one of your famous takes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. What's... I wrote, wow, what an upset.

Pablo's 16 over a 1. So, people who don't know, I would go in around the horn every single year because, of course, statistically it was overdue, and I would say, this is the year that a 16 seed will finally upset a 1 seat. Yes, for two months, we have been talking about how this season is going to be the season

when a 16 upsets a 1. So on this show, around the horn, I am predicting, Southern University will upset Gonzaga tomorrow afternoon, I did it for 10 years in a row. And then the one year that it happened, UMBC, upsetting Virginia, I picked another team. But you should have been able to just pick every 16. That's right.

I told Tony Realli. You'd be like, I'm taking a 16 seat over a 1. Yeah, I got minus 300 points. I mean, it's uncool. Everything's cool. But just for the sake of this podcast experiment, these are some surprising 16s over ones. I don't want to get your reaction. I don't totally understand the dynamic, but I'm going to sit here and quiet.

In a shocking upset, Rodees, number 16 seed, upset the band that they work for, the number one seed. Unbelievable. The guys doing the wiring and the staging, cooler than the band itself. Rooties have seen some things. They're so cool. They know some things. Upset the band. Wow, no one could believe it except Pablo.

He called it. That's a one shining moment level upset. In another huge upset, being very good at billiards, falls to being pretty good at billiards. I don't even really play. Cooler than being excellent at it. Okay, so this leads me to a clarification. Go. Guy who brings his own pool cue, guy who brings his own racket, guy who brings his own thing,

unsheaths it and says, guess what I am, an expert? Cool. But if you just never play and you're like, wow, you're like surprisingly good, cooler. It's an upset. Another upset. No, it's fun.

Shiny things. Upset by old dull stuff. Game worn. You like game worn more than you like fresh off the assembly line. Yeah, it's like that's a big in the watch world. By the way, as AI. Watch world? Well, I'm not, but I know I can tell.

Well, no, but like, if you send your watch away, you have to be like, don't polish it. Oh, this is kind of like the cast iron theory of things where it's like you don't want to, I don't cook or have a cast iron pan, but I'm told that if you were to like put it in your dishwasher. No, don't do that. You got to keep the grime. Shiny things take an out there. All right, that's that list. What is this? This is kind of.

I wrote, tough call for the bouncer at the cool club. Not a definite no, but also not a definite yes. Did I send you the giff of Isaiah Thomas from the last answer? He's like, I met the criteria, but I wasn't selected. Yeah. Ziplines. I just, I don't know. Depending on my mood.

Artificial plants. Tough to argue. It's objectively, like, you get none of the, it's stolen valor. It's just stolen. Artificial plants aren't great. They don't oxygenate the air. They pretend like you are taking care of them. It's an inauthenticity that you don't love.

I don't like, the man-made nature stuff, I just, no, no. Have you seen this meme of Ricciano or Ronaldo? No, I somehow, despite being very fluent in what I thought were the universe of Ronaldo memes, no. Ronaldo is about to take a penalty kick. I titled this one, Cool as a Renewable Resource, because one of the questions you asked me was, can it be a taught thing? Yes. Ronaldo might be the second best soccer player all time.

There's an argument that he's the best soccer player at all time. Sure. Leo Messi, Maradonna. Pele and that one Pele guy? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's in the mix. They're all in that club. He's scored over 900 goals.

Out of those 900 goals, 170, over 170 have been penalty kicks. He is rich beyond his wildest dreams. The most followed person on the internet. Also, and arguably, gorgeous. Yeah. Okay. So he hits all those calm, cool, confident, right? He's got all of those.

This video of him, before he takes this penalty kick, translated from, it's for he's playing for Portugal, is talking to himself, he says, you can cross the barrier the same as always. For you, it's normal to score. He has to gas himself up before. or taking this penalty kick. It is him saying very clearly these words as like a positive affirmation. Yes. And there's so little irony.

He looks legitimately like he needs to make himself less scared. Yes. So this is, okay, interesting conflict for the committee to consider. We said confidence was a key leg of the tripod. Yep. this man in this moment seems like he needs to lather himself up to get to that my most optimistic takeaway from this assignment was if you can are the second best at something in the world or let's just say for the

best you've scored 900 goals you're the face of soccer for your country and if you have self-doubt then of course it's okay if you're listening to this pod to have a little self-doubt but all you have to do is be like, you know what, I can do this. You can cross the barrier. You can cross the barrier. I thought that was super interesting. You can cross the barrier, same as always. For you, it's normal to score.

My son played in a little league tournament in Cooperstown, and I had seen this video a long time ago. And, you know, you always got to, like, yell, encouraging to the batters. And we're playing kids from all over the place. Like, there's teams from California who are very good at baseball. So anyways, so my, after I watch this video, I wouldn't be like, come on, you can do it. You know, straighten out.

And then people trying to give actual tips, straight on my elbow all this. My thing was, my son, Russell, I was like, Russell, this is normal for you. That's what I tell him. Like, this is normal for you. You do this. This is normal for you. It's the best thing you can tell someone. It's the best thing you can tell yourself.

This is normal for you. can do this. And if Rinaloa has to do, it's good for you. Final thoughts. This is kind of, this gets me in trouble on first things first. When I get a statistic that I don't totally understand, but get the gist of. And Nick Wright is like, hold on what? I'm like, I don't know, dude, but you get the gist of it. Okay. The biomass of animals, biomass is measured by the amount of carbon and organism contains. Yeah. Okay. Carbon primary component of all known life on earth used in complex biological molecules and compounds. That's not really my thing per se.

That should be a combine measurement, your biomass. Comparing all biomass to life on Earth. Bacteria. Lots of it. Fungi. Tons of it. Plants. Protists?

I don't even know what protests are. Well, most protests are single cells, viruses, archaea, single cell microorganism, animals. And then finally, here's what, here's the, the point of this okay humans make up approximately 0.01% of all biomass on earth so when you're accusing me you're just letting everybody into club cool because I can't have that open door of a policy man everybody can come in and I'm only letting in 0.01% of all biomass on earth in a few fungi and a few animals and no bacteria has made it and a few plants. Some protests.

The moral of the story is the world is amazing. You got to believe in yourself because if Christian Arnold Rinaldo doesn't believe in himself has to gas himself off, so can you. And the fact that we're just so few of us on this earth at this one time being able to see whales, you are cool, even if you don't think you are. Part of what I found out today is that I think you did all of this work. Yeah? Just so you could throw your glasses onto a table. Did I truly do it? Sorry.

They're only $80. I couldn't get them on. It's more in frustration because I couldn't get them on over there. I'm not used to wearing these things. That's all I got. Wilds. What else you got, anything else? Let me see my notes.

I got a free cup of coffee out of it. Let me see my notes. Oh, we'd even get to magicians. I know. What the fuck? The one thing I had prepped is magician ticks. I had a thing on illusionists, too. You didn't even, they didn't make the list.

They are. I skipped over them because I felt like, don't get me starting on mimes. I got an issue with mimes. The one group that should not cross that barrier, Mimes. No fan of mimes. Kevin Wilds, it is an honor and a privilege to be on this committee and also clearly, much like every other person on this planet,

a member of Club Cool. That's right. I don't know if you did any. tell you what was cool. Tricking me into producing your whole podcast. You just sit here and I ramble. It's like a day off for you. Honestly, you got to go on vacation more.

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