Pablo Torre Finds Out - "Who Is Going to Pull a Pablo Torre on Pablo Torre?"

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

How did a firing at ESPN birth this show? Can you be anti-establishment within the establishment? And will the principles of journalism survive, when billionaire principals keep contaminating the newsroom? Dan Le Batard and Human Battery Chris Cote join Pablo for another navel-spelunking edition of Share & Tell. Plus: making Jay Bilas play the race card, a Nazi poker hand with Joan Rivers, the O'Reilly factor, Jared from Subway... and six billboards outside Akron, Ohio.• Subscribe to "The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz"• Previously on PTFO: Le Batard's Lost Trump Tapes, Revealed Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out, presented by eBay Live. I am Pablo Torre, and today you're going to find out what this sound is. Are you Jewish? I am not. I am. Shut up. Then you don't know what you're talking about. I'm on the smart show.

Oh, God. That crushes me. Crushes me. How do you feel, Dan, hearing your producer, Chris Cody, say that phrase as a way of introducing this premise? He doesn't have that kind of jubilant. about working on the show that has built everything here. He's got a jublance about his debut voyage on Pablo Tori finds out. I'm smart.

I'm on the smart show. What are we finding out today? It's good to see how happy Chris is to be investigating journalistically. The reason I wanted to do this is because we get questions here, Pablo Tori finds out. And one of the questions is from a, I want to just get. her name correct. It's from a listener named Jordan Hudson. And in November, this is November 26, 2025, 1156 a.m. Eastern, uh, Jordan Hudson said, quote, who funds PtFO? Question mark. Who is going to pull a Pablo Torre on Pablo Torre question mark? Yeah. If people do not know how all of this was

birthed, Chris Cody in some ways is ground zero on everything it is that we're doing. Him in his bed staring at his ceiling when ESPN, unbeknownst to me, had already told him they were letting him go. He's scared about his future. His father, mentor of mine, one of my best friends, comes in the room and says, well, Dan's not going to let them fire you. Dan's not going to let that happen. And that's him having more confidence in me than I had in me at that time. I have Chris in a race car bed. Is that, look, the picture you're painting of like Greg Cody, long time.

Miami-Herald columnist, legend in South Florida, mentor of Dan Levitard, coming into the room of his son, Chris, aforementioned. Chris is in pajamas? You're in PJs? It wasn't a room in the house, although you can be forgiven for thinking

that he was in his own room and his father had called him, but I've known Chris since he had the equivalent of a race car bed. I'm going to guess I've known Chris since he was six years old, five years old?

Yeah, I have memories of you coming into my house and eating chips and salsa at a very young age. Those tostitos, those tostitos were so good. Erlene always kept them stocked and I would just come over. Yeah, I've known Chris for, I've known Chris and his father for more than a quarter of a century. And so for people who don't know the origin story of a company called Meadowlark Media,

you may know that I have this partnership. We have this partnership with The New York Times and The Athletic, very fancy, the Grey Lady, all of that stuff. But if you just, like, joined the audience of PTFO, the alleged smart show, you should know the birth canal from which we emerged to keep the metaphor of like painful pregnancy. This was a painful labor. You thought it was twins.

It was just one giant self-absorbed noggin. I mean, Dan, the origin story of Metal Arc is the origin story not just of the Dan Levitart show, which I hope people have some sense of, but it's the exit of the Dan Lebitard show from ESPN. Whatever we do here in which we stir up shit and investigate things. It has its roots in a show I fell in love with

until the show abandoned me as I remained at ESPN, actually, in 2020. Well, you say the show abandoned you, but what happened at ESPN is that the president of ESPN left in an extortion scandal, and I had not realized the amount of protection and cover he had been providing for us as an entity, because as soon as he left, things started happening to me professionally that had never happened before,

where I had always had a very simple relationship with all my employers. I do my job well. You keep rewarding me for doing my job well. I get to hire and help my friends in order for all of us to do our job well. But as soon as John Skipper left ESPN and he came over and became the CEO of Metal Arc helping us create the business of this and getting the Draft Kings deal that is a pioneering deal in the industry, I realized that we were in trouble, and the last straw on that for people who do not know, there were a number of things politically happening.

I wasn't allowed to talk about the things that I wanted to. There was interference, there were issues, and then the last straw on that was during layoffs, one time they just come in and didn't even tell me they were letting go of my best friend's son, and nobody was even informing me until after it happened. And so I rehired him at a dollar more than whatever it is that they were paying him. And I kept him on air. And that's when the whole thing just blew up. What was the job that Chris had when he was rehired, Chris?

He was so bad at it. He was so bad at it. He was so bad at it. He was my assistant, allegedly, but I couldn't get a hold of him. Yeah. That was not my strength. I'm way better at my job now, believe it or not. The way to prove that ESPN made a mistake firing Chris was for Dan to put him in a job in which he,

was absolutely terrible. The thing about that, though, is that as a symbol or a hood ornament on what we're doing, I would say it ended up being a huge favor that ESPN did me because I never would have even imagined, never mind done. I never would have imagined doing any of what happened next, which is to create a safe space for the people I care about and the things I care about. in a world that I now don't recognize and didn't see coming because it's so unsafe. I did not see any of this happening five years ago.

When I say any of it, I mean this company, but I mean America, too. I did not see any of this company and happening to the media. Well, I think it's really important to point out that, like, why do I feel protected and certainly funded, but also emboldened to take on figures that have a lot more money than all of you. of us combined multiple times over in billionaire owners and at times the actual U.S. government and various celebrities on and on and on, is because of the stuff that Dan actually was like kind of coercing Chris to do while you guys were at ESPN. Like that was the spirit was even inside of the company that was paying you, you would be

willing to do things that made it uncomfortable for those people who were in charge. And so the thing I think of is a video that is not even of Chris. It's of Chris dressed as a battery. I'd like to play that for everybody who's not seen this before. I've got a battery back there. It is a corporate sponsor. I want to, on air, take that battery down there myself and stand in the crowd behind first take. Billy and Stugats can handle whatever it is that we have to do there.

I want to do that. Do I have permission to take? I want to put in the first take shot. both me i'm not asking i'm i'm asking your assessment dude dude is the uh authority given to me as eternal yes man to one day in levitard knock yourself out pal all right let's go uh battery we're going down there chris uh you help the battery get down there the battery has entered the shot yeah okay they have cut away they have derrick henry on first take right now this is not terrestrial radio norms where you tell your audience to tune away supplemental

Finally, if you watch, there is a battery and a Dan Levitart at a bar. Jiggling. I believe ordering a drink in front of some bikini beachgoers that are sitting at the edge of the Cleveland pool. It's amazing. The visual. There is a producer trying to stop Dan Levitart right now. Oh, no, this is getting testing. Oh, my God.

Dan is in his face. Oh, boy. Are you seeing this? This is a better idea. Forget about a happy place. Play-by-play of Dan and the security guard. Oh, my, this is awkward as I'll get out. All right, so being Billy.

This is the absolute strangest guy on. Oh, God. I remember that so vividly. Cannot underestimate how many bikini-clad beachgoers, whatever Mike Ryan said there, were actually at the edge of the pool right in front of Chris, also teetering on the edge of many things

at that point in his life, it seems. The thing that I remember there, and Chris is doing the happy hands of the battery now, is that there was a black screen in front of his face, and I could see out of the side of my eye as I was yelling at the security guard, that he looked terrified inside of the costume, but there was no evidence of that because his hands kept moving happily the way a mascot does.

So he stayed in character as a mascot, but he was indeed scared, correct? Oh, I was very scared. What I remember most about that was in the stairwell before we walk down, Dan kind of just checked in with me of like, hey, we're going down here, but you're cool. Like, you're good with this, right? And I hit him with like the bad boys, Dan, we ride together, we die together. Like, I legitimately said that verbatim.

I'm like, I'm in this with you. Let's go. You know, what I was actually pissed off about there? It's the first take came down here, and I'd been asking for years to have our staff be able to have some of the continental breakfast that they put out. And they told me it's $11 a day each person, Dan, if you want to do that. Then first take comes down here and they just start eating all the muffins and they don't have to pay for anything. And so that's where it started.

And then they wouldn't let us interact with their show. And so I just got pissed off and made a mess. Yes, you made a mountain out of a muffin. I don't know what jumps out at you when you think back at all of the times you were asked, why are you guys harming us? What jumps out as like the greatest hits of stuff you guys did that you knew would be interfering with the money? what was on that list? The one that I remember that was sort of the starting point on it,

we hadn't been there very long. It was a funny one in retrospect because of everything I'm about to tell you, which is during a quaint time when newspapers mattered, I was calling around during our show as content all over Cleveland asking how much it would cost to buy a newspaper ad

that said to LeBron as he headed back to Cleveland, hey, you're welcome from Miami. And we got stopped at every turn and we're asked to pay like $100,000. And furthermore, they wouldn't take our money when we were asking about it. So we decided to put up billboards at much less of a cost,

which as the newspaper industry falls apart, it's funny to think about getting billboards a lot cheaper because newspapers wouldn't take our money. But we were talking about all this on air and then ESPN suspended me because they said once we did it, we were going to fly a banner over his homecoming and everything else,

once we did it, they said, you didn't give us any notice. And I'm like, but I was talking about it for weeks on the show. They weren't listening to the show, which is how that happened. And we came to get a babysitter after that because they, what I'd requested when I got there from Skipper,

just leave us alone. They did. They didn't listen to the show. And so we were getting away with things right up until we didn't. And in that case, we offended LeBron. his camp, and literally the money.

Yeah, I should clarify that you also offended the general state of Ohio, as this newscast kind of illustrated. Not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six. That's right, six of these, your welcome LeBron love Miami billboards spread across Akron. They cost about a hundred grand, and they were put up by ESPN TV and radio host, Dan Lepartar, who lives in Miami, well, the four-letter network suspended him for two days because they say they had no idea what he was up to. They released a statement saying in part, his recent stunt does not reflect ESPN standards and brand. We were not made aware of his plans in advance.

Lepatar sent a text to a reporter in response to the suspension, which reads, I guess ESPN didn't find it at all quite as funny as I did. Good times. What were those two days of suspension? What did you do with your free time? Do you remember? It was lovely. I remember being lovely.

They yanked the whole show off the air. I thought the rest of the people were going to be able to do it, but they yanked all of us off. Those billboards did not cost $100,000. That's fake news. I got that wrong. You'd be stunned how cheap the billboards are in Akron. And the money that newspapers refused in Akron

was about 10 times more than those billboards. But I remember getting the call because I was on the beach. I was literally on Ocean Drive in a convertible as they're calling me, and they're saying, yeah, you're suspended. And I've just got a giant smile on my face because it's like, this is exactly how it is

that I want all of this to go. I want to be anti-establishment from within the establishment. I want to rail against nonsense and see if we can be a playpen where people can just do absurd things. Yeah, I got to clarify. This was long before the movie, three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. It was six billboards outside Akron, Ohio.

And my favorite part, honestly, about all of this, was the newscast, which proceeds to interview another familiar character. Dan did it all in jest. You know, to him, it was all good-natured fun. You know, it was never meant as any sort of harsh criticism of LeBron. There's no news interview that that guy will not turn down. Greg, Cody, Chris is. dad showing up, like they interview the neighbor of the serial killer to be like,

did you have any sense that he would be like this? He was so serious. Dan meant it in jest. He meant no harm. I need to keep on reaffirming to people that one big part of why your show was the way was the way it was inside of ESPN was because you had a problematically fearless capacity to just get people mad at you. But Pablo, we weren't that dangerous.

Like, it's such a silly sports playpen. The idea that somber interviews from Greg Cody about Dan just meant it in jail. Like, it's all nonsense. We played those sounds for weeks. Look at what we're talking about here. So there's just, whatever we were doing wasn't that controversial. What got us gone at the end when it became politics and stuff is more serious. But any trouble that we got into was always silly.

It's me selling my Hall of Fame vote to Deadspin to make a point. but it's just nonsense. It's just noisy. My brother used to call me a provocateur, and you've taken over the mantle from us. So people should understand. Pablo Tori finds out represents the things in my career that I am proudest of having caretaken by him.

I realized coming in to do this today, I've been paid for this to do journalism since I was 17 years old, so I've literally been doing this for 40 years now. And your show represents, your show represents the modern evolution of all of my sensibilities, because the smartest people at ESPN, like you, wandered over to what we were doing and we're like, how's this allowed to exist over here? It was always smart, but also stupid.

You know, at the founding of this show, part of the reason why we are, I think, organically grown out of you and funded by the empire you built was, we want to make sure that we are also being laughed at as well as doing stuff that hopefully cuts through in a way that matters. Except in this case, to be, yeah, I'm frank about it. Like, instead of Jay Billis hanging up on you, because I think it was you asked, like, what would happen if Tyler Hansborough was black, right?

Was that why he got mad at you guys? He was the player of the year but wasn't considered somebody who would be a high draft pick and Michael Beasley was somebody who was considered better. And so I was just asking if any of the white biases made us look at Tyler Hansborough as less than. I made the mistake of asking Billis this question, though hours before the national championship game.

He was in maximum serious mode, and I'm throwing him questions about race and why it is that the white player is viewed as less than than the black player. If someone with Tyler Hansborough's resume, We're black. Do you think people might say he's unathletic or he's not athletic enough? Dan, Dan, no offense, but this is stupid. I mean, I'll do respect.

I mean, if you guys want to talk about this, I'm here to talk about whatever you want outside of this. No, we don't have to talk about anything, but it's not stupid. And you can't start a sentence. Jay, you can't start a sentence with no offense and then say this is stupid. Okay, then take offense. It's stupid, and I don't want to talk about it anymore. You want to talk about something else? No, thank you.

Good talking to you. You too. He even ended up doing bits for us. I know. They'll come around. Eventually, you're going to be hosting a podcast with Jordan Hudson. I know you are. Why did, I mean, the list of people who inspired, like, do the thing, ask the question that you're interested in, that no one else may be when they are tuning into a sports show, but you're going to make it kind of nourishing.

Who else is on that, on that Mount Rushmore, Dan? Because I have some names that I recall. I'm like, is it Joan Rivers? Like, who's the, who are the people that were just like, oh, they don't get the show? And you kind of love that, actually. Do you have the sound back there, Chris, of Joan Rivers hanging up on the show? The premise of our show has always been some form of get them into the circus tent, however it is that you get them into the circus tent.

and then at concession surprise them with some vegetables, with some nourishment, be able to go from dumb to smart, have some range, and occasionally make someone like Joan Rivers hang up on you. You know, guys, I'm going to hang up now because I thought we were going to have a nice talk, and I wanted to talk about my coming to Miami tomorrow, and if you think now, I'm going to defend that I called somebody Hitler, are you Jewish? I am not.

And shut up, then you don't know what you're talking about. Do we get any clearer? No. And shut up. You don't know what you're talking about. It's very strong. It's all I'm saying. Goodbye.

Pablo, I was asking her follow-up questions because she had called the old poker player Doyle Brunson Hitler. Because she didn't like how something went in a poker game. And so I just said that's a bit strong. She hangs up. Goodbye. But there is something to like the, okay, people you think would have a sense of humor about this,

absolutely do not because they come to sports and they're like, ah, finally I get to like have my version of fun. It's like Bill O'Reilly. Do you have the Bill O'Reilly? I'm sorry, I'm not just going to throw names at Chris. Did Bill O'Reilly also hang up on us? I remember this. I was unaware, but I see it now.

It was in 2016. All right, let's hear that then. Is there anything in your career that brings? you shame, anything that you've done that you're embarrassed of? Nope. I think we've been an honest purveyor of the news. Never had a retract a story, made mistakes, and we make them, we correct them. And it's because we're very careful and we're very honest. But what's the biggest one? What's the one that caused you the most unrest? Because it's not fun to go through those things. I'm not going to get into any of that stuff.

So if you guys have another question, I'm good. If not, we'll say goodbye. Wait a minute. What do you mean you're not going to get into any of that stuff? understand. We'll see you guys. Thanks for making the time. I appreciate it. A guy who asked questions for a living. I realized in retrospect, I didn't realize the correct answer to that was, oh, yeah, it's that controversy I had with the Lufta. Am I pronouncing that word right?

Lufa. The lufa. That's right. Sorry, I put the tea in there. Yeah, but he had a controversy involving a lufa. Now I'm very interested to find out more about that. Yeah. Yeah.

There's a, I mean, this is 2004. There's a whole series of headlines. Yeah, you can Google that. It is funny that the first television I tell the story on the show, probably to everybody's boredom at this point. The first television I ever did, Dan, was the O'Reilly Factor. I was at Sports Illustrated. It was the Beijing Olympics 2008. I had never done television before.

I'm a fact checker who's way too eager, working late at night. And someone ducks their head in, the PR person, and says, hey, Bill O'Reilly wants to talk to somebody about Michael Phelps. And so I survived the Michael Phelps thing, only to realize years later, that Michael Phelps also hung up on you guys. Do you go into the nightclub with these Kellogg's products and just drop them on the floor with your face on them?

Sorry, I think we have to thank you very much for your time. All right, Michael, good talking to you. I didn't even get to ask what the... He didn't realize he hadn't properly... That guy's ridiculous. You Robert Dursted Michael Phelps. You the jinxed him. He went and had the live...

Mike, because he thought he was gone. That's right. That guy was a joke. I can't believe. We did not actually, just so the audience knows here, Pablo, we didn't talk about going through a litany of the people who hung up on us before this show. We just ended up there organically as we talked this through. Chris is huddling over his keyboard, just searching through the more that you negotiated for.

And I'm telling you type up. You type in the word, the phrase hang up. into our search, it just goes for days. I want Chris to pick... Did he? Wait, you got Dickie Vee, the happiest man in sports broadcasting. You made an enemy of? Let's see.

Come on, I'm not going to waste my time, dad. No context. Well, no, I think the context was, if I remember that correctly, he was saying that no college coach would cheat that no college basketball coach would cheat under any circumstance. I don't remember whether he was talking about Patino or Calipari. It was one of them. And that's what happened at the end where we're like, come on.

What do you mean? Come on, I'm not going to waste my time, Dan, forget. Oh, love a landline hang up. Miss those. I do miss those. But, Dan, but that, look, I think for people who don't remember your sort of, like, worldview as a columnist, you would be the guy, as Chris looks for the next person to get mad at you,

you would be the guy who was saying the thing that people found rude about like this is what's actually happening in sports. There are people who cheat. There are scandals. There are ridiculous characters who are lying to you. And you wanted to laugh at those people when it felt very rude to even acknowledge that they existed. Like that was your whole thing as a writer. Well, you say I wanted to laugh at those people.

I'd shorten that sentence. I just wanted to laugh. the origin story on my career change is that I get to my early 30s. I'm writing about things. Writing is lonely. I get to PTI. I love the standard that they have in the back rooms where it's Wilbon and Kornheiser yelling at each other, laughing.

I wanted something communal. And so I just wanted laughter. I don't want to laugh at people. I don't, like some of this stuff that we're doing here makes us sound like a, you know, a morning zoo hijing show. We really were just challenging standards on. why don't you guys all laugh more? There was an interview you guys did with Ryan Howard,

Ryan Howard from the Phillies, great slugging first baseman, who had a special co-star for that appearance, who you may recognize as a certain Jared from Subway. Yeah, this was hijinks, though. You know, I got a guy named Mr. Ryan Howard over here, who I think just won a help to win a World Series for the Philadelphia Phillies.

He's a world bleeping champion, Stu God. He hits a whole lot of home runs. 55 Ryan Howard with us on 790 the ticket. What you got, Ryan Howard? You're a world bleeping champion. What's going on, gentlemen? How are we doing? And that was the end of the interview.

We never actually talked to him. We just went to commercial. And that's why guest bookers hate Dan. The performance art in that, though, Pablo. We were making fun of the fact that all these athletes are available for seven minutes and all of them are selling something. They're all there. They're not there to actually engage with you,

give you anything interesting. They're there to get the percentage of subway money. But this actually gets to, like, the thing that I have been also fighting, as I do things on Pablo Torre finds out, like tape underneath Adam Silver's chair at the Sloan conference, the whistleblower complaint

that had remained confidential until we published it, you know, that had information about the Clippers caps or convention scheme as alleged by two government whistleblowers from inside the company. Like that thing of you say you're doing journalism, but now you're doing a parody of yourself.

I think, Dan, the thing that I am always trying to navigate is the danger of you are satirizing something or you're drawing attention to something and using techniques that seem to betray your alleged goal here of doing something that feels different and nourishing by being a troll. And I have made some form of peace with that

because people don't pay attention unless you grab their attention, right? You need to do things that are challenging and dangerous with people such that they can't escape it. They need to actually have it right there in proximity to the characters you're trying to hold to account. While art is too highfalutin, although I do believe that what you're doing presently does classify as modern art within our silly sphere,

performance art is in the eye of the beholder. And in this particular case, you've got Ryan Howard on. You're a sports show. Ryan Howard has just led the league in home runs. He's your big guest. You've been promising him all show. And you've just spent 10 minutes talking to Jared from Subway about the footlong and ham and just nonsense. And finally, we get to a question to Ryan Howard and he never gets to answer it.

Right. The question of like, what does it mean? to be different from what everyone else is doing, and why is that race one that no one else seems to want to run? It comes at the cost of guest bookers don't want to send the celebrities to Dan anymore because he's going to fuck with them. In my case, yeah, I will say that booking guests for my show has become a bit of a dance of us trying to explain.

We don't just try to do the thing of investigating everybody. Some people we just want to have a, we want to hang with, because we respect and like their work and think they're fun and they get the show that we're doing. For people who don't remember how my show was born, truly, like, Dan, you came to me and you were like, we're doing this thing here at Metal Arc. We want you to do something.

What do you want to do? And the first episode, of course, that I decided to do, we put Dan in the chair of discomfort. Because, I mean, genuinely, Dan did not know that what we were doing with episode one of PTFO was reliving. the entire history of his phone conversations on his show with literally Donald Trump. Can you fire my co-host on your way out the door?

Stugats. I know everyone requests this of you everywhere you go. Just fire Stugats. Tell him he's fine. Well, Stugats, you are absolutely fired. You don't have it. There's no question about it. As a team, you're phenomenal, but individually, you're fired.

So you are just actually physically trying to become like small. and you're trying to shrink inside of yourself. It's hackery of the highest order. Like, I'm just, hey, real estate television monkey. Do your television real estate monkey phrase. That's why we started the show the way that we did was to invert the premise upon the person who had pioneered the premise.

In this case, it was the guy, to answer Jordan Hudson's question, the guy funding us. We were doing this even to him. In retrospect, right, I'm embarrassed by a great many things that happened there. Your first show embarrassed me more, and as a symbol, you're very purposeful about what you choose when you choose it. You take years in some cases to investigate certain things, and so you show the full range of what it is that I've tried to spend 40 years doing, and symbolically, you made the choice to open your show.

with embarrassing the guy who was funding it, which also honors me because I've spent my career in some ways challenging the people above me to try and do things differently. So I don't remember, I mean, I remember how I reacted on air, which was with some embarrassment, but I don't think I said to you anything afterward other than, you know, good show. Well, that's, I mean, Chris, this is the key part of Dan, right, as a boss is that because the show,

and for better and for worse, because I now resemble this benefit and this cost, because the show is the most important thing, and because it is only fair to have done all the things we've played for the audience here today, it is only fair for that guy to also be subjected to it, there were zero edits, concerns, objections, censoring, of anything.

And we didn't ask for it, and it was not insisted, which is how I knew from literally the first show that we're going to get to do some things because this guy's going to let us do this to him that no other show is going to be able to get away with because the people funding them he's the only boss that I could ever call fat sorry I just wish the chemistry had been better with Pablo there and you hadn't interrupted him it would have been fine as a joke if you delivered it with some chemistry there was a pause there was a slight pause by him trying to get in there twice you had such a good show

Really, that's your self-assessment, is it? Up until now, I was cooking. The reason that we started down this particular memory lane, because I did not know we were going to end up in any of this muck and nostalgia, the reason ostensibly that we got together to do this is because I don't believe neither you nor I have done a very good job of explaining to the public what Metal Lark is doing and aspire. to or to even Chris necessarily what Metal Arc is trying to do.

I don't know if I asked Chris Cody, why are we here both today? Not just to do this. Why are we here? To do this? Why are we here? Metal Arc. Why are we here meaning of life? To do work that helps people I care about be most of themselves?

Like meaning of life stuff. Why do you work for four? 40 years I have worked to get to the kind of freedom that allows these people to be themselves in a safe space that, less than ever in media, it seems, allows them to feel safe. I feel super safe. I mean, you said it, Dan. I mean, this has been, like, I can call you fat, but I also feel extremely safe in your bosom. And it's just like, you can't do that in a lot of places. There's a lot of range there. And that's why I love you. I feel like Floyd Smyrnich holding his step.

Epson to his chest at the beginning of DTF St. Louis. I'm honestly rattled after I just cut off Pablo a few weeks ago, so I just didn't want to talk anymore. I didn't really like you going to me there, if I'm being honest. Made a mountain range that is Dan's breasts out of a muffin. Yes, we're continuing. Oh, really? Me? Minor penalty, two minutes for leaking confidence.

All right. The thing I do want to say for people who don't understand how it is we get away with this stuff, which has legal jeopardy potentially. and has like financial costs is because, uh, Dan, you have, and this is the sincerity of it,

you have protected the journalism. At a time when other people funding things, they have legitimately actively run from it because it has costs. So when I say that like the premise, and this is where it comes, I think, around full circle, the whole glory of ESPN was that there was a wall, between journalism and business at its best, right? That was what I enjoyed in ways that I am so grateful for at the version of ESPN that we worked for, right? When I was there full time,

it's what you enjoyed when despite the fact that you do all these things up until the very end, they still were like, you know what, we get the value of having somebody who will be beholden not to our business compromise, but to something like his own. own personal perspective and principle. Like, that is so important for any media company to have. And so here at Metal Arc, when I do stories that are investigating and, in fact, jeopardizing potentially, if I don't do them the right way, business relationships, right? I do episodes that interrogate and investigate gambling scandals, prediction markets, the government,

all of these hot button issues, there is a wall that you have constructed. with your body between the business and the journalism. Genuinely, the question I have as I look across the landscape is who else gets to be protected by that? And there aren't many places left, except for places that are independently trying to carve it out as a matter of pride, of this is why we do what we do. Free is expensive, and the way you use the word principle, we have seen principles, L-E, contaminated by principal P-A-L because the newsroom is now being run by billionaires who don't care about the need for separation between the editorial board and the sales team. And all of that stuff has been contaminated.

And all of this stuff that we're presently doing is not merely expensive. when you talk about the cost of journalism, journalism is no longer a good business. The way that we're presently doing it allows us to make it a good business because of all of the things that are in play that allow us to have the number of employees that we have and we have draft kings supporting something on the front end because we're using their sales staff to sell what it is that we do and allow us to be fundamentally independent. And there'll be any number of people who say,

get off your high horse here, you work for a gambling company, all of the money that anyone takes is polluted. But Draft Kings allows us to be 100% independent, not 99% independent. We have no partnerships that compromise us. It is at the front of everything it is that I have chosen here and has been chosen for me,

because as I said, without taking too much credit for being a visionary, ESPN forced me into this position. I would have never done it if they hadn't pushed us out the door. It's not anything that I was thinking of there. So as I reflect, you know, pridefully on the ways in which my journalism remains uncompromised, Chris Cody is shooting finger guns as the guy who was actually the precipitating event. A lot of blame pointed at me, not today. Like, I feel like I wanted to hear you weave the tapestry of what it is that you do

because I don't think Chris knows. Like, if I ask Chris, what is Metal Lark doing? The difference between how Chris would explain that and how you would explain that would also explain why he isn't usually invited on the smart show. Let's go out on this, Chris. How would you summarize Pablo Torre finds out in your understanding as my colleague and financial backer in some sense. Just finding a bunch of shit out, man.

He's an investor. He's a stockholder. He's an investor in the company. Not in some ways. He is. He has equity in the company. Chris Cody is technically kind of your boss. Not just the reason for you being over here, but kind of your boss.

Hey, Pablo. Hey, hey, hey, you're doing great. Keep it up. I feel like I can't really. improve on that. So it's probably just ended up. Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Walter Averoma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Loman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumenello. Our studio engineering is by RG Systems. Our sound designed by Andrew Bursick and NGW Post,

Digital Strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern, and our theme song, as always, by John Bravo. We'll talk to you next time.