The Bill Simmons Podcast - A Masters–NBA Title Crossover, Caitlin’s New World, and the ‘Curb’ Mini Pyramid With Joe House. Plus, Creating ‘3 Body Problem’ With David Benioff, Dan Weiss, and Alexander Woo.

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Joe House to discuss athletes that have raised the profile of a sport and where Caitlin Clark fits into that group (4:05), NBA title contenders paired with Masters contenders (29:01), and Bill's 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' mini pyramid (1:09:09). Then Bill is joined by '3 Body Problem' creators David Benioff, Dan Weiss, and Alexander Woo for a spoiler-free discussion about creating a bingeable TV show in 2024, David and Dan's decision to leap into sci-fi after 'Game of Thrones,' the future of entertainment technology, and more (1:24:33). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Joe House, David Benioff, Dan Weiss, and Alexander Woo Producer: Kyle Crichton The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up, basketball masters, three body problem, Curb Your Enthusiasm. Lots going on next. This episode is brought to you by my old friend, Miller Lite. I've been a big fan of Miller Lite, man, since college days when I was allowed to have beer. I think nephew Kyle is a fan too. Miller Lite keeps it simple for us. Undebatable quality, great taste. Picture this.

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and listen to the end of the episode for additional details. You must be 21 plus and present in select states. Gambling problem called 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. Put up a new Rewatchables on Monday night. We did War of of the roses as part of rock bottom week. This is a movie that did

really, really, really insanely well in 1989, Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner. It's excellent. It's one of the best divorce movies ever made. I encourage you to check out the podcast, be Maui Rubin, Amanda Dobbins. So there you go. We have a bunch of master stuff happening with FanDuel and on fairway rolling, including a bunch of ringer specials, these special props and bets that we made that you can go on FanDuel before the master start. You can jump in on them. Joe House and I are going to be talking about the combo of the masters and NBA title teams and the odds for both and which ones remind me of which ones. We're going to be talking about Caitlin Clark

and her effect on the sports world. And I'm going to do my Kirby Enthusiasm episode mini pyramid with House. So that's a long, long, long part of the podcast. But that's not all we have because we brought in from the three body problem, the creators, Dan Weiss, David Benioff, Alexander Wu, they came on to talk about what it's like to create a binge science fiction show for Netflix in 2024. What are all the obstacles? We did a spoiler free interview, which I was really proud of because I

wanted to talk big picture with them about, especially with Dan and David, differences between creating a show for HBO in the early 2010s. They created Game of Thrones, one of the most famous shows of all time. You might have heard of it. And what it's like to do now when you're doing a binge science fiction show for Netflix, when attention habits have changed, when the data and the analytics of what you're trying to do has changed, what kind of world you have to create,

what are the obstacles. So we hit a bunch of stuff. I think it's really interesting. And the best thing about it is, even if you haven't seen the show, I think you'll enjoy the interview. But I would encourage you to watch the show because it's really good. Before we throw it to Pearl Jam,

taping this tiny part of the podcast, it's like 7.45 Pacific time. I watched Celtics Bucks tonight. I watched Giannis get hurt. And it was both not that bad, but also like not great. You know, it was the classic inbound of the ball,

just jogging up. All of a sudden, reaches down, grabs his left leg, falls to the ground, limps off. And then even afterwards, they showed him limping out of the locker room.

And they're saying strain calf. He's going to get an MRI. Doesn't seem like it's an Achilles, so I don't want to overreact too much. But it reminded me a lot of the Durant moment, not in the finals in 2019, but in round two against Houston, when Durant had been crushing in the playoffs. He was averaging like 35 a game against the Clippers and Rockets and was the best he'd ever played. And it was a very similar type of situation where he took a shot. You can go watch it on YouTube. And he was jogging back and then all of a sudden

reached down, grabbed his leg and he had a strained calf. He ended up missing nine playoff games, came back near the end of the finals, probably wasn't ready to come back. I don't know if that's 100% why he ended up getting even more injured and tearing his Achilles, but I'm sure it wasn't unconnected. And I mentioned this just because this is at least a three-week injury if it's a strained calf. You don't rush back from that. It's too dangerous. It can lead to way worse Achilles stuff. And it's going to have dramatic implications on the Bucs if he can't play for three weeks, if they have to play without him with all the other injuries, with the fact that he's the most athletic guy they have by far. So storyline to watch. Just wanted to mention here at the top because House and I are talking about the Bucs

during the podcast. It would have been weird not to mention that. So there you go. All right, House is coming up. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. are we taping this tuesday morning before the master starts. Joe House is here. He hosts Fairway Rolling for us. He's on the Ring of Damage show. He's been my friend since 1988. He's coming to California to watch the Masters with me and Nathan Hubbard because we decided not to go this year. We need a break. We want to keep it special.

We've done two years in a row, House. I didn't want it to be stale for us. It has to be special every time. It felt like two in a row. It felt like three or four. We actually did some homework in planning this podcast out. We're going to talk about the Masters in a second.

I was thinking, because we're the same age range, I was thinking about this Caitlin Clark thing, which I think a lot of people had trouble coming up with fancy, cool takes on because it was just like this is really fun to watch but i was thinking about all the people that have shifted an interest in in a sport in our lifetime right like i feel like i know ali was huge but then it went to

another level after he beat foreman and frazier and was on wide rotor sports all the time and it just like it just felt like he lifted boxing to this different level and it wouldn't happen. Would you say Jack Nicklaus did that for golf in the 70s when we were kids? Or was it already there? I think whatever audience existed for professional golf at that time was there.

That's fair. Let's take them off. And the 86 Masters rekindled it yeah but it was people cared about you're right sugar ray leonard held the audience but i don't think he shifted it but i think he held it so i don't think he qualifies here but i wanted to shout him out i have a biased perspective because he's from the uh greater was.C. metropolitan area. He's from Maryland. So we lost our minds at Sugar Ray. He just immediately took the Ali spot. But I don't think he changed the sport.

Bird and Magic in college basketball, I don't think they changed it, but it was the start of the 80s, which was the 80s through the early 90s, which was the glory years. But I don't think they shifted anything because UCLA and those games, they were all huge in the 60s and 70s. Well, the thing that changed was the nature of the tournament.

They introduced seating in 1979, and that coincides with Magic and Birds Rise. And ESPN arrived. So if you want to put all three of those things together... Sports shifter. That's fair. That qualifies. All right, I'm counting them. So we have Ali and Bird of Magic in college so far.

I'm going to say Gretzky for hockey. I just felt like hockey was already important. We had less team sports. We had less stuff to do. But Gretzky in the 80s and the Oilers and their dominance and the scoring records, just, it just felt like he shifted something. Right. I totally agree with this. Yes. He was, it was like a, for us growing up, like a genuine goat.

We had two goats in our lifetime. I mean, in that stage of our lives. Yeah. And where you cared about basically every round of the playoffs and whether they're going to win. And it was fun to watch their games and they're like changing rules, all that stuff. McEnroe and Borg, I'm going to say no, but I thought about it for a while because I feel like tennis in the seventies where we were growing up, Connors, Chrissy Everett, it felt big anyway. I don't know if they shifted it, but it felt like the apex of it. Yeah, those characters were all bigger than life. And they were all on television.

It was network television. Yeah. And I can distinctly remember being out with my father on a Saturday afternoon and seeing McEnroe on a grainy television screen wherever we were, whatever errand we were running. Yeah, for sure. Bigger than life characters. Everyone was in.

Okay, now we have a couple in a row that are no doubters. Bird of Magic in the NBA. Specifically the 84 finals. The sport just changes. Mike Tyson in the mid 80s. Bringing back heavyweight boxing. I'm not going to say boxing, but I'm going to say heavyweight boxing because heavyweight boxing I'm not going to say boxing but I'm going to say heavyweight boxing

because heavyweight boxing during the Holmes era it started to shift into something else and then all of a sudden he became appointment TV so I'm giving him credit Jordan

and everything he does from basically the year he averages 37 a game on we were just so lucky we had Gretzky and Jordan in our lifetimes.

Like in our formative sports orientation. Fab five, I can't give it to them, but I wanted to give them a special shout out. Special star

because they changed the concept of college basketball for what turned out to be for the worst because then we, then they ushered in the one and done era, but I don't know what their impact. I don't know.

I think what they did in terms of the culture and the seeds of this were probably proper, properly associated with Georgetown and John Thompson and his sort of defiance and what he did in terms of grabbing kids from backgrounds that were not Georgetown backgrounds and saying, this is our team and this is who we're going to be. And then the Fab Five, I think, kind of advanced that.

They took the phenomena of their talent all coming together, but they also, they changed the culture. The black socks, the shorts, that was like revolutionary stuff. Yeah. And then ratings were probably the peak during them. I can't totally give it to them,

but we had to shut them out. Tiger Woods is the next one. Clearly did it. Another goat. McGuire and Sosa for one year with home run ball when everyone had turned on baseball after the lockout. And was it a strike or a lockout? I can't remember. A strike. Was it a lockout?

No, it was a lockout. The players don't strike. They lock them out. Yeah, they got locked out. They canceled the World Series. And then the Ripken streak happened. But really it wasn't until the Yankees won the World Series. They were little baby steps

back. And then that summer, 98, everyone went nuts and then kind of rode that momentum all the way through all the Red Sox-Yankee games. The 99 US women's soccer team. Oh, I like this. Where women's soccer in America, not a conversation ever. And then all of a sudden that summer turned into something completely different and I think propelled a women's sports revolution in a lot of different ways. Serena and Venus together,

I don't know if they changed, I don't know if they shifted the sport from like a ratings popularity standpoint, but they shifted the sport in a bunch popularity standpoint, but they shifted the sport in a bunch of directions, so they have to be mentioned. But they didn't elevate the ratings. Like what we're going to talk about with Caitlin Clark. Are we sure?

Did they elevate the ratings? I don't know. I feel like they did. Did they? I feel like at different times in their heyday, I feel like there were some mega ratings for like Wimbledon. You know, the first time they played each other. I bet there's, I don't know. Yeah. But I remember like being disappointed with their matches half the time because we remember we were always arguing about, did one of them agree to lose to the other? And

there was a lot of bitterness about, Hey, why aren't these matches better? That's because they were sisters. Right. That's different for whether or not it was catching eyeballs. I kind of think it was. Messi and Ronaldo in the US, specifically in the late 2000s when ESPN started running the Premier League and the World Cup was becoming bigger in this country. I think for this country, they have to be mentioned. Okay. LeBron going to Miami in those four years elevated the NBA and the conversation about it. The next big one is, is Curry and the three point shooting and what happened in the mid 2010s there where it felt like the league was just going to be tied to whatever

happened with LeBron year after year. And then all of a sudden this Warriors team comes out of nowhere and becomes the most pop, basically the most popular team since the Jordan Bulls three more Conor McGregor okay

making UFC going from like a really popular sport to a felt like it became mainstream after he was you know whatever a cent he was. He became the first A-plus lister they had. So I think he has to be mentioned.

Undoubtedly, yes. The Netflix F1 show, which isn't a person. Wow. But was a sports shifter because there's a before and after with F1 in this country and maybe in a bunch of other countries,

especially with the under-30 fan base, I think was super important. And then I think Caitlyn is the biggest one of these in a while, where she took this... Now, women's basketball, the ratings were going up, the interest was going up, there was momentum in all these different ways, but that rating... Normally, I'm like, I don't really the ratings were going up. The interest was going up. There was momentum in all these different ways. But that rating, normally I'm like, I don't really care about ratings or whatever.

But to get 18 million people to watch at 3 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon in April was shocking to me. That was the biggest basketball rating in five years. Well, the rating Friday night, like a 9 o'clock Friday night game, I watched it at a bar and everyone in the bar came to where the TVs were and surrounded for that second half. And it was like, you know, an ongoing is a true throwback, like being in a bar, having a sports event that galvanizes everybody and everybody's having a running conversation about what's going on in the game. Yeah. Maybe that's what it, instead of sports shifting, maybe it's a pull people over to the one TV in the bar, like who had that ability?

Remember when we had the party in college and it was Tyson Douglas. Yes, of course. And we just had it on in the corner. And then all of a sudden, Douglas started handing it to Tyson. And literally every guy at the party was just crammed on one side. And all the girls there just started like leaving unless they cared about the fight. Well, that was basically Holy Cross. Yeah, that was Holy Cross.

But the Caitlin thing, it's the first one in a while where it's a no doubt about it. Took a sport from one place to a totally different place in the span of 15 months. And I don't think it goes back to the old way. I think this is where we are now. I want to keep talking about Caitlin, obviously. But why did you leave out The Rock? Oh, I thought about it. I didn't want to take shit for sports entertainment it would be The Rock and Stone Cold together

oh I see because then you'd have to put Hulk Hogan too in the mid 80s so those are good actually I mean both of those should go in so Hulk Hogan and then Stone Cold and The Rock fair anyway but yes on this Caitlin point I think you're absolutely right she is the right

person at the right time, the right vessel. Some might say the white vessel, because let's be honest, right? We had two consecutive years of this racial juxtaposition in the first place between Iowa and LSU, and then secondly, Iowa and South Carolina. And Iowa beat South Carolina last year and then lost to them this year. But her style of play was, I think, the thing that is what's captured everybody's imagination, everybody's interest, right? Isn't it the fact that she gave us...

Like, we've had great female shooters. We just watched Sabrina Ionescu go up against Steph Curry at NBA All-Star weekend, and yet Kaitlyn is her own animal altogether for some reason. Yeah, they're turned into a media commentary popped out of the Kaitlyn thing. For me, it's like she's just super fun to watch. I just didn't see any difference between them, this and Steph,

but she also kind of had to deliver on a big stage to justify it, which was why the LSU game was so important because that was like the classic, just a revenge game, you know? And she played the best game she's probably ever played in her career in the perfect spot on the right stage. She elevated herself, which is like the last level of this stuff. This is what happened when Tiger in 97. And I think that's what was special about it. I'm trying to think, are there any other sports that could kind of use a lift like this male or female um because it's it felt like baseball was on the brink but their their

best player got a little trouble right like baseball was kind of there baseball is there with the asian audience um and it seemed like shohei was perhaps on the brink of capturing our imagination as as well like finally on a stage where we're going to see him 30 or 40 times. But I mean, are we? Are we going to see him? There aren't any more shoes to drop in connection with this very curious gambling. It's totally fine. He just had his assistant who made $150,000 a year ran up a $4.5 million gambling debt.

It's totally reasonable. By the story, let's all move on, everybody. I was trying to think what would Otani have had to have done to shift the sport of baseball up a level? And I think it would have had to be

like a 70 home run chase combined with the Dodgers trying to win 110 games. Because to get people to care about the regular season baseball, that's not their team, has now become an impossible task in 2024. You know what's sad is the season he had before he got hurt, if he'd had it on the Dodgers or the Yankees, that would have been national. Every time he pitched would have been a potential moment, right?

Because he had an incredible pitching season to go along with leading the league in the home runs. I think your instinct's right about baseball because I don't think it can happen in hockey. The guys are like too fast and too good. And I don't think there's, you know, like when we were growing up or as a defenseman was just so different than every other player in the league. And then when Gretzky came in, he was just so different and so much better and faster and everything than every other forward in the league. I don't know how you would be that in hockey anymore. I think it's almost like degrees of...

Yeah, it would need to be like a freak athlete, like somebody who shows up that's 6'8", 270, like is LeBron's size, but is like a crazy fast skater. It would need to be that kind of character, right? Oh, that's a good idea. So basically like that guy in the Rangers, but if he had LeBron's size, but is like a crazy fast skater. It would need to be that kind of character. Oh, that's a good idea. So basically like that guy in the Rangers, but if he had LeBron's athletic ability and was just like an absolute wrecking ball. Because it's almost like in hockey

what happened with sprinting, where the sprinting kept getting better and better. And then at some point it's like, all right, well now we're talking about the difference between 9.8 and 9.7 and 9.7 and 9, maybe 9-7. Like at some point there's a ceiling on it. Yeah, yeah.

I feel that way when I watch hockey. The guys are so freaking fast. Like, can you imagine showing us a hockey game from 2024 in 1978? Like, our heads would have like exploded. We would have been like, are these guys going to die? Why are they going so fast? It's probably the same experience we would have watching steph curry back then like you know seeing guys shoot from

i remember that there wasn't even like a really a three-point line that anybody paid attention to so one thing you'll notice i left out nfl for 50 years on this because the entire time we've been alive the nfl has been a monolith and it really didn't matter who the stars were. Every year it was just somebody else. And that's kind of by design. That's how they want it. But I don't feel like a star levitated above the league at any point during that stretch. Do you? No. I mean, who do you give credit for the brilliant innovation in terms of changing the rules every four or five years to make it more offense friendly, to make it more television friendly? Do you say it's the commissioners? Yeah, that's probably Goodell.

Yeah. That doesn't pass the crowding around a bar test. Nicholas is a good one. To me, Nicholas is almost a cutoff line because where he landed in the eighties, where he became basically everybody's dad, but anytime he was in a match, I guess like another one that is a good one is tiger post all the like late 2010s kind of wearing some, some, uh, some battle scars tiger. Cause what happened with him in 2019, I think was probably the biggest sports thing that's happened, right?

For any sport in the last 10 years in terms of people galvanizing around an event. The crazy thing is it happened in the morning too. It wasn't supposed to, it wasn't at its conventional time. So we all, like golf people watched it. They were worried about horrendous weather that was coming that afternoon. He won the golf tournament at like a,

a very unusual time. Yeah, true. The replay of it, I think caught as much attention as the, the live version of it. Cause people, a lot of like normal sports fans were like,

I'm not waking up early to watch the masters. Um, and it very quietly happened. It was like done by one o'clock that day. But yes, I think you're right. Like in the last 10 years, what else could we point to? I mean, really this Caitlin thing the last two weeks, because now she's going to go to the WNBA.

And I actually do feel like they had enough stars in there already and they had enough of a foundation to get momentum. And now they had enough stars in there already and they had enough of a foundation to get momentum and now they're putting her in there. So now you're going to get the casual fans that come with her and now we're off and now we have more players coming right? Like Beckers is going to come and Juju and everybody else.

I'm putting this to you. You can put on I want you to put on your sports czar hat. Let's fix the WNBA. Can we just take care of some of the low-hanging fruit? Can we at least get a schedule where they're not going up against other sports? Pick a schedule and own those days of the week. You know what day of the week there's nothing on in the NFL season?

Tuesday. Tuesday. Give me the WNBA on Tuesdays. Just give them an opportunity to shine where their playoff games aren't buried. It's an insane schedule that they play right now. That's part of, to me, what has hampered the overall acceptance of that sport. Well, the style of play is a hundred times better than it was 20 years ago. It's way more of the slashing kick and the shooting is just really fun to watch.

The players are more skilled. Like, did you watch Juju in the tournament? I did. I loved it. I loved every aspect of it. Her coast to coast speed was kind of just stunning. Like, I just did not expect to see that in a woman's basketball game like that. But I'm with you on the schedule. They have to figure out some way to peak

during the two dead months. So even if that means they have to start the WNBA in like February, March and kind of pick their spots with when the NBA kind of peaks. And right now, I think they started May, but maybe you start earlier because you want to peak in July and August, I think. I would think about the opportunity they would have if the WNBA season started in the next two weeks. Right. So the March Madness ends. Yes. the women's the draft happens ends yes oh so that's you know what yes yes you just explain why they have to wait i didn't think of that part women's tournament ends at the beginning april people have to graduate so they can't really start till may anyway we live in an age where you can be in college and play professional sports.

Those two are not mutually exclusive. Oh, all right. Let's talk this out. Because remember in hockey, I remember this happened with the Bruins with Craig Janney and Bob Joyce when I used to care about hockey as much as the other sports. The 88 Bruins were making a run. And then those guys graduated from college and joined the team. It was like 88 or 90.

It was one of those years. It was one of those years. It was one of the newly born years. But those guys came out of college and were like right on the team and we're adding them. Maybe that's... So if WNBA started like February, they had the draft and you could just add the players to your team pretty much right away. Like innovate. There's no reason you can't do that.

That's pretty good. Innovative. Like catch some eyes. You have this opportunity. The other thing to me is it feels like they still have too many teams. I don't think they agree with you. They have 12 and the two expansion teams coming. 12 is actually pretty good.

I think 16 is a good number. 16? 16 becomes 8, becomes 4, becomes 2. 16 is a nice round number. Get these markets, right? Look at what the Midwest has shown us in terms of the enthusiasm. Yeah, but you don't want to make the mistake

that all these leagues do when they start getting a little momentum and then they just start expanding like crazy because they're trying to grab the expansion fees. Fair enough. We know that doesn't work. So you would say 16? I think it's a perfectly good number.

16 is good because you have the two conferences. Well, we'll see what happens because they have a lot of talent coming in. But it does feel like the other piece with the Caitlin thing, and then we'll move on to a different topic, is the imitators that are coming. Oh. Right? Fifth, sixth, seventh grade girls who have now watched her for two years and like I want to

this is who I want to be same thing happened with Steph Steph happened five six years later the Steph kind of the first generation of Steph guys

started coming in and now you see this you know now the shooting is crazy so I wonder if that's going to happen with that alright when we come back

who's by the way who's your favorite sports shifter out of all of those Tiger Tiger without hesitation or reservation I love MJ and MJ was the most important must see TV

in my household as soon as he arrived on the scene but Tiger just was in my household, you know, from as soon as he arrived on the scene. But Tiger just was transformative in so many ways. And he became, in the same way as MJ, a worldwide figure. I'm going to make the case for MJ. Okay. When he left, there was such a void that none of us knew what to do for like two years with even... Remember all the stories about who's going to be the next MJ? And we're like, not you,

not you. Nope, it's not going to be him. The ratings went down. The league just felt like it was in such a bad place. That led to all of a sudden start maybe shoving some bigger market teams in there. Maybe some teams will get a little bit of help. The Larry Johnson four-point play. All of a sudden, that's happening. Kings-Lakers game six. Oh, very interesting. Blazers-Lakers 2000.

Some shit's going on. See, golf has been terrible since Tiger fell out of the scene. This is what made the PGA Tour so susceptible to live. I mean, plus the Saudis deciding they wanted to spend their money. But the Tiger void is never going to be filled for golf, and they're still scrambling about how to fill it. Well, especially once he had real adversity and then real off the golf course stuff.

And that seemed like it pushed him to another level. Then people were like, okay, let's get this back. All right, coming up, we're going to do NBA Masters. Golf's first major is here, and we teamed up with FanDuel to create special bets for all the action at Augusta. To make it even better, all customers can get a 30% profit boost

to use on any of our specials. Joe House and I are about to talk about a bunch of our favorite bets. I think the one House is most excited about is our Swedish-Colorado connection, Wyndham Clark, Ludvig Eberg, Eberg, Eberg, Ludvig Eberg, the Swedish guy, to finish in the top 20, including ties as a parlay. That's like plus 145 on Fandle right now. But if you bet with our special bets, you get a profit boost, which will be 30% on your win on America's number one sports book. Download the app today to get started. You must be 21 plus and present in select states. Gamble problem call 1-800-GAMBLE. Visit rg-help.com. Opt-in required bonus issued as non-majorable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including token expiration. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com.

So House, I would say the two things you care the most about in normal Aprils are the Masters and the NBA playoffs. But yethington has the number two pick in the nfl draft you haven't said on the pod who you want who do you want justin fields stop who do you want uh i i'm legitimately genuinely torn. I would have without hesitation said Jaden Daniels even two weeks ago. And now I want Drake May. My worry. That's my guy. You motherfucker.

My concern with Drake May is the North Carolina track record. I don't want another Mitchell Turkey. He's not Mitchell. I don't want to hear that from anybody. Mitchell Trubisky barely played. I don't want to hear that from anybody. Mitchell Trubisky barely played. I don't want to see another giant North Carolina turkey. That's my only concern, but I love his strength. The thing that has come to the fore is that he possesses a running ability, a mobility that otherwise might've been kind of slept on.

This giant size is 230 pounds at age 21 where he'll end up in 245 i can't i can't unsee jayden daniels getting smashed into pieces i we we lived through this we had this this guy his name was robert griffin the third he was fast enough in college to not take any hits but that wasn't't the case when he got to the NFL and he was missing games right at the very beginning of his career because he's a super fast guy, but there's a lot of super fast guys in the big boy league. You know why I think you haven't decided who you're taking yet? The Washington football team?

Because I think they're waiting to see what happens with Caleb Williams in Chicago. Oh, what could happen? Who knows? Oh, who knows? I think it's a who knows. How can it be a who knows?

They moved Justin Fields. Sure. But what if he says to them, I want to go to Washington? Like Chicago, I know he's in Chicago this week. He's trying to win them over or they're trying to win him over, right?

So it's like, here's our coach, Matt Eberflus. Here's our organization. Really nothing that good has happened. Here's our GM. We made one awesome trade with Carolina. It's super cold here. There's a terrible history of Bears quarterbacks.

Chicago's good. That's exactly that. What more does he need? I'm just trying to talk you into Washington potentially having a chance for a one-pick trade-up and then getting your heart broken. That's really what I'm trying to do here. No, no, no, no, no.

I'm not going to. I'm not playing along with that. There's no scenario under which Chicago can tie with that. You have a lot of picks. We need them all. Have you seen the roster? They got rid of everybody. Have you read a quote yet from Caleb Williams saying,

I can't wait to play in Chicago? Because I haven't. I Googled it today. I didn't see anything. Does he need to say that? Yeah. Why? Yeah. Why? Yeah.

You know what? Suck up to the city you're going to and be like, oh my God, I just watched the 85 Bears 30 for 30 that Jason Herod did. I can't wait to play for this team. He hasn't said anything.

No, why be on the record? He doesn't have to say a word. What if somebody makes Chicago a mega godfather deal? it's your team it could be it could be so then him being on record saying he can't wait to play in chicago looks a little foolish all right i tried to set a trap for you it didn't work all right your two favorite things the nba playoffs and the masters yeah i think these. I think 50% of our texts in April are just possible bets for two of those things. And fortunately, there's odds for all of it.

Amazing. You said, let's try to figure out from a betting standpoint, NBA teams with master guys, who are the doppelgangers? And then if we had to pick a combo to bet on, who would that be? So that led to a bunch of texts with us. And I'm just going to go through the list that we had. And we'll do it from descending or escalating odds for the NBA team. So the favorite will be first and then we'll go backwards. So the Boston Celtics are the favorite on FanDuel right now to win the NBA title at plus 170. Rory McIlroy is not the favorite to win the Masters. He is 10 to 1.

And yet, when you sent me your list, you said, Rory's the Celtics. And I was like, I completely agree. Oh, good. It's kind of perfect. There's an Irish lineage with both teams. There's just an incredible amount of talent. And I don't trust

Rory in the last couple holes of a fourth round. And I don't trust the Celtics in the last couple minutes of close playoff games yet. I thought it was perfect. Great job. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, the other thing with both Boston and Rory, lots of championships, lots of chips. It's just been a while. I mean, Rory, you know, had four majors, but he hasn't won one since 2014 and the Celtics, you know,

we're, we're, we're right there. They were in the finals in 2022. Just can't get across the goal line. Rory in the open championship two years ago lost at the very, very, very end to Cam Smith. So thank you. Yeah, I like that parallel. When you said it's been a while, you mean won titles since 1986? For who?

For the Boston Celtics. They traded titles with the Lakers there, 2009-2010. What's more realistic to you, the Celtics at plus 170 or Rory McIlroy at 10-1, if you had to pick one? Damn. That's awesome. Rory.

Rory's more realistic to you than the Celtics, who are going to probably run through the East the way everybody else is playing and will then have a puncher's chance in any series. I would say the Celtics are more realistic. It doesn't mean I think they're going to win the title, but I think they have less ways for it to go wrong than Rory. Also, we haven't seen Rory do it in 10 fucking years. That's a great point. Fair enough. We should mention to the audience, you're Rory's last believer. You're like his Bundini Brown. I, I, uh, this week,

you know, I, I make wagers on the majors. Um, as soon as the odds start becoming available. So I do have some investment in Rory to win the masters. I just haven't done it recently. Uh,

I'm very, very cautious. I'm going to bet him to top 10 this week. He's on my top 10 card. We should mention on Fando. We have ringer specials that we did. A whole bunch of bets that we liked. We'll get to a couple in a second. 30% profit boost on this.

Okay. This was another one I thought you did a great job on. Denver plus 360. Somehow they have the second best odds. And yet I think they're the team all of us would pick if your life depended on it. And then Scottie Scheffler, who right now is plus 450

with the best odds to win the Masters as we tape this on a Tuesday. Very similar where all of the evidence is pointing to both of those, Denver and Shelford being the best bets. And yet you look at them and you try to figure out ways to talk yourselves out of it. Shelford's been the best player in the world for how long?

Going on two years now. Over 24 months. I mean, Jon Rahm had a run in there, including winning the Masters, but overall the body of work for Shelford to me warrants Scheffler over Rob.

If you had to pick one of these, what would you pick? Denver plus 360 or Scheffler plus 450? You put $100 down on either. That's so hard. I'm going to say Denver. I would say Denver as well. There have been some little signs, though,

the last two months. One of my things with them was the way they execute at the end of these games, nobody can beat them. But they had a couple games recently where they didn't execute as well down the stretch and teams beat them. And made you think.

Their record against above 500 teams, it's good, it's above 500,. It's, it's good. It's above 500, but it's not amazing. I think they're like 27 and 20 as we head into tonight's games. So, you know, I, I, Murray, it's like, what's going on with his knee? Why do you have to sit two weeks? It's always that it's always what's going on with Murray. That's the Denver story. So what is it for Sheffler? What's it then that where is he? His putting. He switched putter. He went from a blade putter to more of a mallet putter. Hilariously, Rory McIlroy gave an interview. Actually,

he was in Los Angeles at Riviera sitting in the booth and he's like, I think Scotty would really benefit from trying out a mallet putter. And the next week Scotty puts a mallet putter in his bag and wins two consecutive tournaments. Oh, Jesus. But it's still a little bit the thing. Scotty had a chance to win three consecutive tournaments, but his putting, he missed a five-foot putt

that would have put him into a playoff on the 18th hole, the 72nd hole of the tournament. So that's the only thing that really sort of keeps him close to the field. I mean, the amazing thing with this guy, he had an injury

during the Players' Championship. He had to get physio treatment during one of the early rounds. And even with that, he still went on to win. So he can play hurt. I mean, that's part of the thing with Scheffler.

Denver needs Jamal Murray to be able to play hurt to be able to win. So he can play hurt. I mean, that's part of the thing with Scheffler. Denver needs Jamal Murray to be able to play hurt to be able to repeat. The next one we argued about and switched the golf for a bunch of times here, but Milwaukee is 8-1, which, by the way, is hilarious. Milwaukee is the third best odds of all the NBA title teams. They're losing to everybody.

They've never looked worse. Yes. We settled on Jon Rahm as 11-1 as their betting doppelganger for Milwaukee. Same kind of premise, right? Maybe three years ago, Giannis was the best player in the world there for a split second.

So was Jon Rahm. Giannis won a title. Rahm won some stuff. Rahm in a slightly different position than maybe he has been in years past, and yet there's a fear factor with both sides. Yeah, so you said Giannis three years ago. Yes, that's when he won the title, but we still talk about him as a potential MVP candidate, rightfully so. There's been no drop-off.

We considered this year, is there going to be a stretch that he puts together that the Bucs put together where we're having an argument about him as the MVP again? Wait, you know what happened? Giannis said no. Well, to be fair... Giannis said, settle down, guys. Pack it up.

You know who said no? Dame Lillard's calves. Dame Lillard's hamstrings. Dame Lillard's calves. Dame Lillard's hamstrings. Dame Lillard's glutes. And the new rules with Dame Lillard, where he doesn't go to the free throw lot anymore and his body's already breaking down. Oh, no, by the way, he doesn't really play defense.

Hey, we tried to tell you all of this before this season. Nobody listened to us. Father Time said no. But the Rom thing. So Rom is the defending champion of the Masters. He hasn't lost his fastball. He won the US Open two years ago, but he made the super curious decision

to go take $350 or $400 million and go play on the Live Tour. And he's quietly been complaining about it ever since. He hasn't played a full 72 hole competitive tournament since last November. One of the last DP World Tour events. He finished that. He took the money and he's going and playing these live events. They're all wearing shorts and playing boop, boop, dee, doo music.

Okay, great. I hope you're having a great time. That's what the money was for. He's like, oh, I see these guys, these tournaments. So he's missing out on the opportunity to defend titles that he won last year because he's playing on the live tour. He couldn't defend his title at the American Express. He couldn't defend his title at, at Riviera. Uh, and he said, I'm watching these, watching TV, watching golf on TV rather than playing in events that I think he'd prefer to be playing in.

So there's like stuff going on with him. It seems... Almost like the Bucks having Adrian Griffin as a coach getting rid of him and then bringing in our guy Doc Rivers who's 500 since he took over. So it's unlikely for

Jon Rahm to repeat. It hasn't happened. It doesn't happen in the masters hardly ever. And also unlikely for Milwaukee to keep Chris Middleton, Dame Giannis healthy to just figure out on the fly how to be an elite basketball team in two months when they've shown no evidence that they can. That's it. Wow. This is another one we argued about.

The Clippers are somehow eight to one on Fandoto in the title. We put a bunch of guys in this spot, and then you settled on Xander for the Clippers. That reason is because they're the Clippers. Now, you know, if they all go to the same hyperbaric chamber and they all get on a PJ and get over to Germany and see the same doctor, don't forget Mexico, Mexico too. Right. Maybe a stop over Miami as well. Maybe the triangle. You don't have to go as far these days. That's a great point. They all hit the find the rejuvenation machine.

James Harden and Paul George and Kawhi and they all show up ready for action. Then you can see the Clippers. We talked ourselves into them over the course of the incredible run they went on. I'm completely out. I understand. I'm completely out. I understand. I'm completely 100% out. So what's the case for Shoffley?

Another guy who has been right up to the finish line and then hasn't been able to get across it. With the most recent example being the Players' Championship where he was in the lead. He had the lead through 54 holes, went into Sunday with the lead, and bogeyed the 14th and 15th hole, which let Scotty Scheffler kind of open. It opened the door really for Scheffler to come in and get across to the finish line with a number. And then, you know, Xander had opportunities to birdie coming down the stretch, couldn't get it done, missed out on a playoff.

The other sort of glaring thing on Zander's resume is the year that Hideki won the Masters, Zander had a chance on the 16th hole to be right there and perhaps force a playoff, grab the lead, hit the ball in the water.

His tournament was over. He's a guy like a bridesmaid. He recognizes it, but until he does it, I'm very skeptical. Yeah, Xander became a... Oh!

He might be James Harden. That would be the thing right like crazy talented right up to the brink alright the odds start jumping here OKC 14-1 probably going to be the three seed and you put

debutant number one at 33-1 our guy from Sweden tell the audience who it is Ludwig Aubert yes the very handsome square-jawed Swede who is at the tippy top of all of your advanced metrics uh in golf um this is his first major major that he will have ever played in his life um But he finished his college career, came on to tour, won on tour, and immediately put himself as a top 15 kind of guy

in all of the metrics that matter the most. So he's a guy whose name we're going to start seeing on important Sundays. It could be this coming Sunday. But the thing about Augusta, everybody will say it. It's one of the popular, you know, Masters Week observations

that nobody's won in their debut since Fuzzy Zeller in 1979. So unlikely to win this week has all of the game. Chicken and Collard's fuzzy? That's him. That's the one that fuzzy that fuzzy right there you know why people don't win the first time because they go to the 18th hole

and they see how narrow that fucking fairway is and they get psyched out it's like jesus i have to hit that through there just as fans yeah so oklahoma city right I mean they talk about a team that checks all the boxes top 10 are they top 5 in both offense and defense they checked all the boxes except for making a trade deadline trade that could help the team every other box was checked

they still have 39 first round picks I like that OKC maybe a year away Ludwig maybe a year away. Ludwig, maybe a year away. This was another one we changed our opinion on a couple of times. Phoenix, 20 to 1, a team that neither of us has any confidence in, nor should we. So what golfer fits that profile? Well, we landed on Jordan Spieth at 22 to 1. And there's some Spieth-KD parallels, right? KD won a couple titles last decade. So did Spieth.

It seemed like the ceiling of KD was maybe going to even levitate in the top 10. Didn't quite happen. Spieth didn't quite happen for him either. And yet, there's a blind faith in both entities. Yeah, there's still a blind

faith. And then by Wednesday before the Masters, you're talking to yourself in a Jordan Speed. Well, he did finish fourth in the Masters last year. He's still not 30 years old, so there's still lots of time for him to do great things. Yeah, listen, Phoenix has KD, Booker, and Bradley Beal,

and Grayson Allen. That we did on this very podcast, I think, talk about the idea, or maybe it was on East Coast Bias, that Phoenix, because of the way the NBA playoffs tend to play out, if you have guys that can score the way Phoenix is capable of, they can find the right matchup or even two, and it wouldn't be like a stone cold stunner for them.

It's the Denver recipe last year where the series was 2-2 after four because those guys played two awesome games and then they couldn't sustain it. But you figure like last year was 2-2. Right. So 2-2 after four, maybe something Jokokic foul trouble in game five, or Murray has to lead the game, or Booker just goes nuts. Listen, I'm not talking myself into it. Just telling you now. I don't see it.

I got George Spieth in the top 10 and the top 20 bet. I mean, it's just, you know, it's the Masters. I'm required. Minnesota at 22-1. I'm required Minnesota at 22-1 you have debutant number 2 at 40-1

Wyndham Clark a guy that you've liked for a while liked him a ton big municipal guy shout out our pal Harry Arnett and municipal yeah so Wyndham Clark since winning the US Open at Shout out our pal Harry Arnett and Municipal. Yeah, so Wyndham Clark, since winning the U.S. Open at L.A. Country Club,

we watched it with our own two eyes. I came out and visited. He has validated that by being one of the three best golfers on earth so far in this 2024 season he has been right there with scotty scheffler in a lot of the the categories he won at pebble beach that was rain shortened he went to bed you know saturday night and woke up sunday morning the winter because uh uh you know the california equivalent of a nor'easter came through there and wrecked the course but um he's been he he had a putt that hit the back of the hole at the players championship that would have put him into a playoff with scotty scheffler it should have gone in um the golf gods were somewhat unkind in that respect but um he is another guy he famously said i will not go play any rounds at Augusta until

I've earned it. And so it wasn't until... I said that too. Just this spring that he finally played some practice rounds at Augusta. He declined invitations all the way up to this point. So Minnesota was... I want to earn it. I want to

earn my master's. I want to be... Oh, and also if I get invited, I would play tomorrow. I had a hard time with Minnesota. Do you think that they're a debutante? Yeah. Fuck yeah. They've never ever won a playoff series since 2004. Okay, great. Good. But I think

the advanced metrics case is good, though. Everything you just laid out, Wyndham Clark, Minnesota, they're number one in defensive rating, right? 107.7, almost three points better than anybody else. For net rating, they're second. They're probably going to be the one seed in the West unless they screw it up this week. I saw them in person on Sunday at really good seats.

That team is locked in. That team likes each other. That team plays defense in a real way. They're very well coached. I was watching their coach, who I've never been a giant fan of, but I was watching... I'm not against him, not for him.

I never really put thought into him, but I was watching the way he handled himself during the game with the players, with the referees. He's got this really calm demeanor. It's like when you watch and your kids have a play date and you see somebody else's parents

and the mom is just super calm and has her shit together and you're like, oh, that's what that looks like. Same thing with him where it's just, even when there was bad calls, he would kind of wait for the referee

to walk over next to him and then he'd be like, what the fuck was that? But he was always calm, always really supportive of Ant because they're really trying to get Ant to go to this next level where he's beating guys up to dribble, but not going to the basket like a rocket ship. Now, if you watch him really carefully, he's beating guys up to dribble,

but he's slowing down and he's picking his spots. And it's a little like the evolution of what happened with Jordan, not to compare him to Jordan, but he's trying to slow the game down so he can find shooters. And it's not just like, I'm an athlete. I got by somebody. I'm going to the basket. Now he's going by people.

He's using his body. He's just trying to figure out, oh, do I want to post this guy up? Should I just accelerate, get to the basket? Should I bring the guy over and then slash out? And Finch was so happy with all the decisions Ant was making combined with the defense they have and Gobert, they got Towns coming back. I think they're really dangerous. I'm kind of back in on... I think the two teams that could beat Denver are Minnesota and Dallas. Wow. And that's where I've landed.

Right now, with a week to go in this season, those would be the two I picked. In the last 10 years, we've had two guys show up and finish runner-up in their first try at the Masters, Jordan Spieth and Will Zalatouris. Right. Do I think Minnesota can make the finals?

I do. Do I think the odds are fair for what it is now? I think a Celtics versus Minnesota finals is 16-1. That's kind of a long shot. That's fair. I wouldn't say Minnesota is a favorite, but if you're looking for teams that could beat Denver, I think they have the

infrastructure because they can play defense and their main guy is getting better every week with decision making. And they have Conley. They have a bench. Nas Reed? Holy shit. I mean, we've liked Nas Reed for three years, but Nas Reed is like a fucking weapon now. Well, Wyndham Clark

loves this. Wyndham Clark's thrilled to hear all of this BS. Well, here's the other thing. They might have the one seed. They might. You're going to have to beat them on their court. So I don't know. I think the odds are pretty live. We're going to talk about Dallas in a second. Take a quick break.

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All season long, watch Prime Monday night hockey deliver unreal plays, the biggest goals, can't miss moments. Matthews, McDavid, Crosby, the NHL's best. They're all on Prime. Prime Monday Night Hockey. It's on Monday. It's on Prime. All right. I mentioned West teams that I think have a chance to beat Denver. And it's basically for me, it's Minnesota and Dallas. Dallas, I can't believe... I think I've changed my opinion on them 10 times. I'm ready for them to let me down in any round, any week, but

the Luka Kyrie combo and how well they're playing combined with the defense and the puncher's chance they have just with the two scorers they have. It's a better version of what Phoenix has with a guy who's a little more confident at the end of the game.

You can pick either of them, but just, you know, I feel like they could go in any city, any stadium, and not be scared. I don't love the coach. I think it's going to be an uphill battle because they'll be an underdog. They'll be the lower seed in every round,

it looks like. They're going to be the five seed, so every round they'll be the lower seed. But I feel like they have a puncher's chance at 24 to one to win the title. And their doppelganger is a guy named Shane Lowry, whose odds are not commensurate with Dallas. They are 55 to one. You had the great Justin Ray on fairway rolling, and this was his favorite Masters

non-favorite pick. What did he say? Well, um, Shane Lowry checks a lot of boxes in terms of the kinds of attributes that are successful at Augusta. He, uh,

his strokes gained approach. He's, he, he scores very well. His, uh, strokes gain T to green. He scores very well. His strokes gain T to green. He scores very well.

His best masters, you know, you need to be somebody with some experience. Yeah, he's third in strokes gain approach. Fifth in strokes gain T to green. Strokes gain around the green is positive. And his best masters finish is third. Those are all attributes, the kind of attributes that go along with historical winners at the

Masters. And you left out Unafraid, which is why we thought Luca Kyrie as a combo, the perfect kind of parallel for that. I love you using Puncher's Chance because one of my favorite vignettes from this most recent season of Full Swing on Netflix was the Ry rider cup and shane lowry not afraid one bit to go get his nose in the mix with uh patrick cantlay's caddy joe lacava who created a kerfuffle with with rory uh big boy shane was not afraid to let his opinion know. Now, he had the role of peacemaker, but it looked like at any minute

he might have been willing to flip the switch a little bit and play a little bit of Irish bar jig on him. So, Shane Lowry won a British Open. Kyrie made the biggest shot of a Game 7 of a Finals. Yes. It's a little bit of pedigree. I like it. I like that as a guy.

Yeah. I think this is the funniest one. Philly is 25 to one, and we put a beefy Bryson with them at 35, 35 to one as the doppelganger. It's perfect. They're physically imposing. Oh my God,

Embiid. And you kind of talk yourself into it. On East Coast bias, our poor guy Raheem has already talked himself into Philly being a live playoff sleeper. Meanwhile, I don't know if I would bet the over on Embiid playoff games at four and a half.

And DeChambeau is just the perfect parallel for them. Yeah. I can see it on paper, but I don't see it. Two guys, two situations where they have absolutely no chance whatsoever to win their respective title.

You said that you made the most salient observation with salient observation with Embiid and Philly. Let's get Embiid through two playoff series. Can we see that at some point? Yeah, let's see a month of playoff basketball. Bryson has been playing well on

the Live Tour. It's just that I think that Augusta National is beyond him. It is, you know, the way he's wired his brain, he hasn't yet. Augusta National requires an artist, not a scientist. And Beefy Bryson

hasn't yet shown. His best finish was his debut, where he finished 21st. And since then, in the last three years, he has two cuts. Now, one of them, he missed the cut. One of them is because he was hurt. Well, what about in 2021? He lost to the Hawks in seven and round...

Oh, no, that was indeed. Sorry. That was Ben Simmons? Yeah, that was Ben Simmons. Yeah. It was Ben Simmons. Um, all right, we'll blow through Cleveland 37 to one. Um,

we have either can't lay at 41 or more a cow of 50 to one for this. Like a lot of talent on paper. There's been a lot of conversations about them and just a ton of signs that neither of these guys are going to do anything. You've like can't lay in a bunch of these tournaments in the past, but I don't see you backing up. He's having a down season. He's spending a bunch of time and energy and brainpower on trying to get this deal done

between the PGA Tour and live. He's leading part of the player contingent on that front. And it seems like it's detracting from his attention. Yes. It's like how Donovan Mitchell is on Redfin looking for condos in New York. Well, it better be Brooklyn. It's not going to be Manhattan.

No, it's going to be New York. Miami. This is a great one. Miami's 43 to 1 to win the title. Odds have been dropping week by week. Brooks Koepka, 22 to 1. Very similar on-off button situation with these two entities,

right? Yeah, of course. I mean, the playoff version of Miami, they've been to the finals, the NBA finals twice in the last four years with teams that nobody on paper and by regular season performance, you would say, oh yes, we saw, we could see it coming. Brooks, I like so much here. I actually, I love Brooks to win this week. I think five people can win. Brooks is on that list of people that could definitely win the Masters this week. The same is, now, I don't think Miami

is going to win the NBA title, but under what scenario would you write them off? What team in the East can they flat out not compete with, not beat? I don't think they can beat Boston if Porzingis plays the entire series. Okay. I just think there's too much size. Okay.

But Porzingis is a little like the Embiid thing. Every week we get by where he's healthy, I'm happy. But you know, you watched him in Washington last year. Porzingis is really good. We didn't have anybody like him last year. He's healthy, I'm happy. But you know you watched him in Washington last year. Porzingis is really good. We didn't have anybody like him last year. He's good. I like him. I like the Brooks Miami. That's a really good one. Just ripping through. Nick's 60

to 1. Put Finau at 45 to 1. Really fun story. Fun crowd. Always fun when Finau's involved. Beloved. Like Jalen Brunson in New York. Right. The most beloved Nick in 50 years. Tony Finau's involved. Beloved. Like Jalen Brunson in New York. Right. The most beloved Nick in 50 years. Tony Finau, beloved on tour.

New Orleans, 80 to 1. Victor Hovland, 35 to 1. Victor's in a funk. I don't know what happened. He ended last year. He won the tour championship and then promptly undertook some kind of a swing change, new coach, and he's in a funk. He hasn't gotten himself out of it yet. New Orleans just can't get healthy at the same time. Right.

Ton of talent on both sides. Victor's got a bunch of first-rounders coming up. Indiana, 100-1. Cam Smith, 50-1. Just talented, fun, but ultimately not expecting much. Yeah, no idea what to expect. Maybe he could upset a round. Orlando, 180-1.

Cerruti's team. Will Zalatoris, 40-1? So the Zalatoris thing is we're not sure. He's performed excellent at the Masters, and he's also been a guy... Like Orlando has a real defensive identity which should work in the playoffs all and it's

all feels like it's a brand new thing so for Willie Z he was injured for the majority of last year he withdrew from the Masters last year in fact because of an injury but the talent is there and the eye opener with Orlando Orlando could be the two seed they're right so they played the Bucs twice.

That's why I put a good odds guy next to them because if Orlando's the two-seed with the defense that they play and if they get any sort of home court advantage at all, who the hell knows? Maybe they win like two rounds. Who the hell knows? We've seen weird shit happen.

We saw that Dame-CJ-Portland team made the West Finals one year. We saw a couple weird Celtics teams make it. You know, the year they didn't have Hayward or Kyrie, they still made it to a Game 7 in the East Finals. Like, you never fucking know. And if you have home court, it's a game changer.

And you made the key point. Orlando has a chance to get a two seed. All right. This is the big part of the pod right here. The Lakers and the Warriors. Lakers, 32 to one to win the title. Odds are dropping. So I'll give you two choices here. Are the Lakers going to be a possible Hideki Matsuyama? like a 22-1. Sleeper veteran, don't count them out. Oh, shit.

It's round four. I can't believe he's one back on the ninth hole. Jesus. Or Phil Mickelson at 270-1 with dyed black hair and Ozempic Phil. Ozempic Phil, right. This is fantastic. So Hideki is also on my list of guys that can win. Absolutely can win.

He is my pick, in fact, on Fairway Rolling on Monday. And we'll have a chance. Nathan Hubbard and I will go on the Fairway Rolling podcast. It'll be up Wednesday afternoon. If you want to finalize your card, here are our final thoughts. We're getting some information from the grounds right now. We'll know what the draw is. There's bad

weather on Thursday, so whether you play early or late and whether Thursday gets washed out, all that stuff matters, so we're going to do a final show on Wednesday, but Hideki is on a tear right now. Not that

dissimilar from the tear that the Lakers have been on, 8-2 over their last 10, fighting hard to get all the way up to the 7 seed, and they're not exactly completely ineligible for the 6 seed as we sit here taping this pod. Now, a whole bunch of stuff would have to happen. They're a game and a half back from Phoenix. They're a game and a half back from Phoenix.

They are a game and a half back from New Orleans for the 6-7. Not insurmountable. Everybody's playing each other. I think losing that Minnesota game on Sunday, I was surprised because LeBron, I was surprised they used LeBron for the Cleveland game and not

the Minnesota game because I feel like they probably would have beaten the Cavs with or without LeBron. It's the way the Cavs are playing. So anyway, they used their bullet on the Cavs game and then sat him for the next game. Davis got hurt. Minnesota really wanted it. They're probably going to be...

I think they're going to pass Sacramento, which they're basically a half game back, and they'll be in the 7-8 playing New Orleans. If they go to New Orleans for the seven, eight, are you picking new Orleans? Cause I'm not. No,

no, sir. No. And then if they get to the eight seed, seven seed, seven seed, they could play. They could potentially play Denver,

a team that I don't think they'd be unafraid to play. I don't know if they come close to beating Denver, but I don't think they'd be unafraid to play. I don't know if they'd come close to beating Denver, but I don't think they'd be afraid of the matchup. What would the numbers be for Lakers, Oklahoma City, or Lakers, Minnesota? Both Minnesota and Oklahoma City. See, I think Minnesota's a bad matchup for them. They have just...

Because of the size. They have defenders to throw at LeBron. They have the Go bear Davis thing. I watched it on Sunday night. Like Davis was not too pumped to go against go bear. Uh, I just think that's a bad matchup for them. Okay.

See is the team they would want, right? I mean, their idea would be if they could get to six and play. Okay. See in round one with the size they have, I think that would be their dream. So we'll see. We'll see if they can, uh, put it together. and play OKC in round one with the size they have. I think that would be their dream.

So we'll see. We'll see if they can put it together. So you're more on the Matsuyama camp for them than the Mickelson washed up camp. Yes. Although, you know, anything can happen here this last week. Golden State 60 to one to win the title. We have either Dustin Johnson at 45 to one. Super talented. Peaked in the past. we have either Dustin Johnson at 45 to one, super talented,

peaked in the past. I've been there. I've done that. You want to count them out. You should count them out, but there's something stopping you from counting them out or just Tiger Woods, one 50 to one ceremonial ovations at every hole. And it's just, we're happy to have the words as a 10 seed but

ultimately nothing is going to happen with this team uh so my favorite one of my favorite bets we'll get this into the ringer specials um and this is all i'm rooting for and the same would be true of the western conference playoffs you can parlay tiger woods and phil mickelson both to make the cut uh and that pays over $320. It's like plus $323 or something like that. I went on the parlay combobulator at FanDuel to see if I could parlay the Lakers and the Warriors and Phil and Tiger all together.

Phil and Tiger to make the cut along with the Lakers and the Warriors to make the playoffs. You couldn't do it. You can't do it. Well, maybe FanDuel will go off the menu for us. Oh, that could be one of your off-the-menu selections for sure. So that would be what's going to make the playoffs? They're plus 245, some crazy number.

So plus 245 plus 330. The Lakers are minus 110. Yeah, so that's probably plus 245, 5-1, plus 3-1. Yeah, that's probably like a 15 or 16-1 bet. There are a lot of ways it could go wrong,

but it's fun. Much tougher road for the Warriors. Yes. With that said, I thought they had no chance to make the playoffs.

Like, none. Zero. But, if they play Sacramento in the 9-10, I think they would beat Sacramento. I just think. Yeah, we didn't do Sacramento. For me, I would give Justin

Thomas to Sacramento. Forget Sacramento. I think Golden State would beat them. Justin Thomas is fine. Golden State beat them in the 9-10. And then the Lakers beat New Orleans. And then Golden State goes to New Orleans.

So New Orleans would be in a situation where kind of a little bit of a up and down basketball market. And they would have the Lakers and the Broncos coming in for one playing game. So that's going to be a shitload of Laker fans. And then you have the Warriors coming in for the next playing game. And that's going to be a shitload of Warriors fans. That's a tough situation, man. Go to the grounds at Augusta National.

Score yourself a ticket and see what the groups look like. There's the fans around Tiger and Phil. I would put the Warriors more in the Dustin Johnson camp. I would put the Lakers more in the Hideki Matsuyama camp just because this playoffs is going to be a free-for-all.

All right, we're taking one more break. Coming back, doing the Curb Pyramid. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember. You'll do great things too. You won't win the Super Bowl ring. He rocked that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember. You'll do

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credit unions, and associations, or visit SecurianCanada.ca. Securian Canada, insurance designed for life. All right, Curb Your Enthusiasm ended on Sunday night. One of our favorite shows since you and I have known each other.

I don't know how long that list is, but it certainly spurred as many conversations as any show we've had, right? I mean, one of the few shows where one of us would call the other after the show. This guy, Larry David, taking on taboo subjects and not just crossing the line, annihilating the line, putting it inside a nuclear reactor. And many of your shows on this pyramid are line annihilators. Which is what we love in comedy. So we're doing a mini pyramid. And it's going to be three, six, 10,

15 episodes. Total honorable mentioned things that got cut out. Sorry. Sorry to the spite store. Super clever. Loved the whole spite. So it was great. What a way to end it. Sorry to the shrimp incident and earlier curb Curb episode that really laid the foundation

for a lot of where the show was going. Also, spoke to you because if somebody plucked the shrimp out of your Chinese food order, I feel like that would have caused an international incident. Affirmative Action, one of the last shows of season one, which was when Larry offended the dermatologist and Richard Lewis had one of the funniest jokes in the history of that whole... Oh my God. Ken Kendra from this season. Springsteen.

I thought that Ken Kendra with Springsteen, that whole five minute scene was one of the best scenes I can remember in the show. Just because I was so stunned. First of all, they're like, oh yeah, we got to get Springsteen. It's like they're not going to get Springsteen. Then all of a sudden, Springsteen is right there. Amazing. Larry realizes the... Yeah. And then last but not least, the group, the Incest Survivor

group, which I think was the last episode of season one. But that was probably as close to the line as they got but a show that they pulled off and was really really good so honorable mention to all those we're gonna get to some other lines

yeah yeah meet the blacks I'd want to put up there too I mean the whole the whole first season when the blacks come to live with them is just and we get JB smooth in our life and I think super Dave's coming in right around there and that's when the blacks come to live with them is just, and we get JB smooth in our life. And I think super Dave's coming in right around there. And that's when the show went to another level. I said this on the, I think I said this when I did the pod with Larry, but I do feel like

as soon as he started having marital issues on the show, the show went to another level. Once he started dating and other possibilities, it just opened up the universe. Otherwise, I don't know if it would have been able to go 12 years. Okay. The Curb Mini Pyramid. So we're going to do first level, one episode, second level, two episodes, third level, three episodes, fourth level, four episodes. And then the lowest level is five episodes shaped like a pyramid. I have Palestinian Chicken as the level one best episode

in the history of the show. I don't think you're alone. It has some of the funniest moments in the history of the show. It's a high degree of difficulty episode to say the least. The concept of Larry loving chicken this much. And then when I did the event with him in Boston last week,

when he was just saying, he started with the premise, would I have sex with an anti-Semite? And the answer was yes. And then they started making the episode. But this was season eight, episode three, and I think it's the best episode. It's not my number one favorite, but I couldn't put my number one favorite first.

This is the best. It is recognized as the best. And with good reason. On topics that now have a different resonance, he couldn't do the show now. He wouldn't do the show now. I don't know. I wouldn't rule out anything with that guy. Well, that's a fair point. Okay. It feels like the degree of difficulty might be a little higher. I think that's fair.

I think that's fair. But yes, to take the taboos and to jump all the way into them and explore them this way, it remains as groundbreaking feeling as it felt watching it the first time. Yeah, very similar to the contest, I think is considered to be the best Seinfeld. And the same thing.

It's like, whoa. Oh, they're going to pull this this off I can't believe this is working level two really the two favorites for us the two that I think we enjoyed the most Crazy Eyes Killer season three episode eight

I don't know if any half hour comedy ever brought me more delight than this episode and the character of Crazy Eyes Killer. And then Funk Houser's Crazy Sister, which we did a Hall of Fame episode of on the Prestige TV podcast. But these two are just like two of the funniest, craziest characters ever introduced in the end of the show. Are you okay with those as two and three? Yeah, sure. Of course.

You and I have had these two shows with Curb and then probably Boogie Nights in terms of the number of hours that we've discussed. Yes, but pure enjoyment. Fuck me, fat boy! Fuck me, fat boy!

Put that on my tombstone. Come on. Next level. The doll, the carpool lane, and the table read. The doll is... And it's funny. Larry, I think this is Larry's favorite episode. Oh, wow.

And he was explaining that the reason he liked it was because the doll is omnipresent every moment of the episode. And they figured out how to string all of these other things around it and stay true to the Larry character while at the same time like just crazy

shit going on. That's season two episode seven. Carpool Lane is the famous one where he needs to bring somebody to Dodgers game so he can use the carpool lane and ends up being a working lady and shit happens being a working lady. And shit happens.

He's a sex worker. And then the table read season seven, episode nine from the great Seinfeld season. This was really in a lot of ways the Seinfeld reunion watching those guys around the table shooting stuff. But the bigger thing is this was

Marty Funkhouser doing the in the sink joke which is I mean the funniest minute in the history of the show in the history of the show I think that's right yeah it might be the funniest one minute clip that you can see on your Instagram feed it's up there it's just perfect everything's great about it. Okay. Level four. The show that really took you and I to another level with the show, season one, episode three. This is when we knew the show was going to be in our life. Gil Bang, played by Bob Odenkirk. Larry goes to dinner with somebody who invites him over to his house, and it's Gil Bang, a former porn star

who then tells a bunch of off-color stories at the dinner and Cheryl is absolutely horrified. There's the double goodbyes in this. The camera guy sticking Tabasco sauce in his finger and sticking it up Gil's butt so he can get an erection again.

Gil Bang. Gil Bang. When we watched this, who knew what TV history had in mind for Bob Odenkirk? Right. Look at all the places Bob's been since then.

I just knew him as Larry's agent on Larry Sanders' show. Right. He would pop up on different things. He'd been in a couple different behind the scenes comedy stuff. The grand opening, season three, episode 10, when they open the restaurant and they hire a chef who has Tourette's

who starts swearing at something and then all the people in the restaurant start swearing. But this leads to Susie coming in and saying, fuck you, you car wash cunt, to Cheryl, which is probably

Susie's greatest moment. And Mr. Softy, which was the Bill Buckner episode, season eight, episode nine, also had the orgasm car, which was like one of the funniest bits they've ever had. Do you remember this?

I don't remember it. I have to go look it up. His girlfriend, the car starts vibrating and she's just sitting in the car all of a sudden kind of enjoying the car and then really enjoying the car and he doesn't realize it. Then she has to take her home

and then he realizes what happens after J.B. Smoove sits in the car. He's like, you guys have a fuck machine. But it leads to Susie sits in the car. He's like, you guys off a fuck machine. But it leads to Susie sitting in the car and him sitting next to Susie as she starts enjoying the car.

Mr. Softy is amazing. The Ugly Section, season 10, episode 7, this was the Jets fan who ended up killing himself and Larry was convinced it was because of the Jets. But it up killing himself and Larry was convinced it was because of the Jets but it also had the ugly section of the restaurant the last level

first one I have is the final episode No Lessons Learned I thought they landed the plane on it would you think of it yeah I mean it was so self-referential it took the fact that it was such a perfect mirror of Seinfeld. Um, and having Seinfeld in, it was very like nostalgia inducing for me.

That that's the thing. Like I had, I'm going to have to watch it again. I sat down, I watched it all the way through. Um, I, i enjoyed it it felt like you know it was grabbing from a lot of different places because it was but for me the i i want to watch it for the comedy now that the nostalgia is so i watched it out of my yeah i watched it a second time and there was a lot of good bits in it because you're watching the first time you're wondering where's this going how are they going to end this and then the second time there's a lot of

stuff packed in there I love the meta thing about the Seinfeld thing where it seemed like it was going to end the same way and then it flipped and Seinfeld saves them and it was like oh we should have ended Seinfeld this way I really liked that I thought it really I thought the last two episodes were the best episodes of the

season the bisexual season 8 episode 7 this The Bisexual, season eight, episode seven. This is the Rosie O'Donnell episode when they're chasing the same girl. And Larry ends up using Viagra. The Ski Lift, season five, episode eight. That's the giant vagina. Amazing. Denise Handicapped, when he has two different women in wheelchairs that he's dating. And then the last one is The Freak Book, which a lot of people... We did The Ringer last, which we just published the last version of all the

curbs. And The Freak Book, I think, was... It might even have been number one. Oh, wow. But it was... People feel like The Freak Book's in the top five or six. I don't have it that high, but it's definitely pyramid worthy. So that is the pyramid. Palestinian Chicken, Crazy Eyes Killer, Funkhauser's Crazy Sister, The Doll, The Carpool, and The Table Read,

Gilbang, The Grand Opening, Mr. Soft, The Ugly Section, Series for Now, Bisexual, Ski Lift, Denise Handicap, Freakbook. Who is your favorite character of all time on the show that wasn't a cast member?

If I gave you Gilbang, Bam Bam, Funkhauser, or Crazy Eyes Killer? that wasn't a cast member. If I gave you Gil Bang, Bam Bam Funkhouser, or Crazy Eyes Killer. For me, it's Crazy Eyes. It is for me as well. It's a great category, though. It is.

Part of it is because I can't imagine any other person being Crazy Eyes. It was such a perfect casting match. I think his name was Chris Williams. Yeah, and isn't he Vanessa Williams' brother? Isn't there a relationship between him and Vanessa Williams? Maybe. I think there is. I think it goes that far back, but in any event.

So who's your best supporting actor slash actress? Susie, and what reminded me of it was the doll because the doll to me was really the episode that revealed the full capacity of Susie to decimate both Larry and Jeff for being complete morons

so I'm a fan of Susie I think I am too I really love Marty Funkhauser. Oh, I see. But he wasn't on long enough. Yeah, he had like four years there. It's a tough one.

Recurring character. Favorite season for me is either the Seinfeld season or this season right after, which had a bunch of these. The season eight, which had, uh, I think it had Palestinians chicken and Mr. Softy and the bisexual.

I just thought that was an awesome season. I'm going to miss this show. It's feels like the end of an era in some ways for HBO. I don't think it's the end of HBO, but it just feels like something has slightly shifted to some sort of... It's fitting that we're entering the Max era with HBO and that Curb's wrapping up now. Because Curb is the lineage to Larry Sanders and Sopranos and Sex and the City. Basically a quarter century of the channel.

Right. It was the connective tissue through an evolution of HBO programming. What funny show is out there now? What's a funny show? What do we watch? It's just way more

niche, right? Netflix specials. Is that what we watch? Or HBO specials? Is that what we watch? Yeah. Or HBO specials? See, people are going to suggest, Kyle, what's your favorite show? What's your favorite funny show right now? No, just right now.

That's a show that's on TV right now that you think is your favorite funny show. Yeah, it's very niche now. I don't think it's like... I thought Abbott Elementary is charming. I've gotten some chuckles out of that. Yeah, it's very niche now I don't think it's like that elementary is charming I've gotten some some chuckles out of that yeah it's a good show

I don't know like like when you think like we grew up with that Seinfeld Cheers kind of show and then we kind of moved to the Larry Sanders curb veep the more targeted stuff

it'll be interesting the turf is open for somebody anyway all right well good luck on oh some Kyle says always sunny in Philadelphia more targeted stuff. It'll be interesting. The turf is open for somebody. Anyway. All right. Well, good luck on... Oh, Kyle says it's always sunny in Philadelphia. Oh, yeah, yeah.

For sure. And that's beloved. But I would say it's beloved, but a little more niche, right? It's not... I don't think it has the same size as some of these other ones.

All right. Good luck trying to get Caleb Williams. I'm fine with Drake May. You're going to be mad. You're going to be so mad when Peters takes Drake May. You're going to be mad. You're going to be so mad when Peters takes Drake May. We're going to do, you're coming to LA, I'll see you on Thursday and we're going to do some Masters stuff on Thursday

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UCC, a place where tradition, excellence, and innovation meet. Learn more at our open house events on October 15th and 16th. Register now at causeandeffect.ucc.on.ca. All right. We are taping this on a Tuesday. The creators of Three Body Problem on Netflix, a very ambitious science fiction show that in the binge era with some big themes. And I wanted to figure out,

for people listening to this who have not seen that show yet, we're not going to spoil stuff. We're going to go big picture. What is it like to put together a TV show like this in the 2020s, especially during COVID, was a piece of this too. So David Benioff,

Dan Weiss, Alex Wu, they're all here. They started working on this. Dan, what was it, five years ago? 2019? We started, yeah. I guess you would say 2019. We were reading it and David and I were reading it over, I think, the summer of 2019? We started, yeah. I guess you would say 2019, we were reading it, and David and I were reading it over, I think, the summer of 2019.

We finished the third book towards the end of August in 2019. So you and David, you just come off Game of Thrones, which is one of the most complicated TV shows slash adaptations anyone's ever had to do. And instead of just being

like, let's do a rom-com or maybe we'll just do a feel-good show for Hulu about a Red Sox manager with an alcohol problem. You went even bigger and more ambitious. We see three-body problems primarily as a rom-com.

I didn't realize. One about the red sex manager was pretty good. Where were you like that? Yeah. We were making our choices. Jeez. You could have saved us a lot of trouble. If you guys want to take that idea, go.

But was there any point just with the two of you where you were like, do we really want to dive into something this complicated with this kind of fandom again we definitely didn't want to do fantasy again like we knew that um we we were done with horses done with knights and you know armor and dragons at least for a good decade um and science fiction was probably the other genre that we grew up loving and there is something about genre stories that we are keen to tell. You know, it's something that attracts both of us. And, you know, as someone,

I'm in the middle of reading Stephen King's The Stand right now, and it's just so much fun. And, you know, a lot of it has nothing to do with genre. A lot of it's just like interpersonal relations, but it's all heightened and made more powerful because of the genre overlay. You know, it's the heightened and made more powerful because of the genre overlay. It's the 99.9% of the country has been wiped out by a virus, and now what do the survivors do? And a lot of it's just almost like soap opera stuff, but it's so much more exciting

because of the dark, horrific, apocalyptic part of it. And when we first read these books, I think we just, first of all, we just encountered stuff we'd never read before and which is so rare at this point. And this could be a TV show so different from anything we'd seen before, which in an era where there are 800 shows or whatever, you know, coming out every year, it's really hard to differentiate yourself from the other shows. And this was unlike anything we'd read before. And we thought it could be a very different show. So yes, it's ambitious. The books are so ambitious. And we knew it was going to be a ton of work, but it was also

just more exciting than a lot of the other things that we were thinking about, including the Boston Red Sox manager. Alex, how'd you get sucked into this? Was it because you thought of the end of the world a lot as a Red Sox fan or were there other reasons? Well, after a bunch of World Series, then it wasn't, you know, like it was a new dawn. So I wasn't thinking about the end of the world, but I was thinking about what

i was going to do next and uh i just come off of my own show and uh one of the execs at uh at netflix his name is peter friedlander whom i've known for a really long time uh called me up and said you know i've got this project that i think you might be really interested in. David and Dan are working on it. I can't tell you what it is because we don't have a contract with you, but I'm sure you'll love it. So it was kind of a bit of a blind date. David and Dan and I all kind of cross paths a little bit. We overlapped at HBO.

The last few years of True Blood were the first few years of Game of Thrones. And we had a lot of friends in common, but we didn't know each other personally. But Peter thought we'd get along well. And it turns out he was right. And then after I signed on,

they told me what the book was, which I'd heard of but had not read. And I knew its reputation as something that was really, really dense and really, really hard to adapt. But I had already signed up. So it's almost like you're thrown into the deep end, but you've already signed the contract. So you got to do it. When you're thinking doing a show like that, say in the 2020s for Netflix, where, you know, people are binging them all at once versus what

all you guys had during the HBO era of it's going to be on every week. You're going to have this Sunday crest and then next Sunday, and you're going to bring the audience down a little bit. And then the next Sunday after coming up, like how hard was it to, uh, I guess go with Dan on this. How hard was it to wrap your heads around the binge concept versus what you had kind of been weaned on? I mean,

it is definitely a different approach and it's a different approach that informs the way you think about the shape of episodes and the way you think about the shape of a season. We had been watching shows that way ourselves for a while. I mean, Breaking Bad, I watched that way. I watched the first four seasons of Breaking Bad in a month. And it was an amazing month because it's arguably the best TV show ever made.

And so I was used to consuming something that had been designed for an even more kind of formatted and restrictive way. I mean, like where literally every episode had to be 47 minutes and 21 seconds or whatever it was. All the act breaks had to come at the right minute. And it was like really a much more demanding like the stricture to fit inside and so we we came from something that was had a bit more freedom than that but still was like you said it was basically like you're thinking about you need to leave people are going to by and large watch it day and date you know at the time it airs and they're gonna you need to leave people with things that shoot them across the gulf of a week to the the following week whereas

in some ways like the binge model was gave us more freedom in that like we knew between say the first and the second episode you need to You need to create something that gives people the momentum they need to shoot them across the button click into the next episode. It doesn't need to hang with them with a cliffhanger necessarily every week in, week out. So it can just be like, I need to know what happens enough

to watch the next episode, which is cool. It lets you design. I think with this one, our first two episodes are kind of a very concise, dramatic unit, like clear, dramatic unit without giving too much away. So it was no real way to jam them into one episode without making it a two-hour pilot, which is something that we had thought about.

But ultimately, we decided to to do it this way we could do it this way because because of the binge model so i guess the the short answer is we knew going in that that's what we were signing up for because at netflix at the time when we signed up um you know with those guys in 2019 the, the drop all at once was the only option. So it just from the very beginning, even as we were reading the books and thinking about how you might break this thing down, it was with that model in mind, which, you know, which I think gave us some, it gave us some freedom to do some things we maybe couldn't have done the other way, and it also imposes other kinds of... There's something we loved about doing it the way it was before. There was something about the idea of trying each week to have the episode that was going to make people talk for a week and look forward to the next week and be there the second it shows up. There was something just great about that, but there's kind of no... It's hard. It's easy in

your mind to hold on to the way things used to be, but there's just... Things change. Well, can I tell you what we love at The Ringer. We love every week shows because we just get more content out of them. It's been really hard for us to figure out content strategies for the binge dramas because you never know who's on what timetable. I know some people

that have watched half of your show but not all of it or they have two episodes left or they watch one and they really liked it and they're saving it until after March Madness. And then, oh, the weekend of April 10th, I'm in and that's when I'm going to watch it.

And for us, it's just different. Like Thrones was amazing because we had a whole podcast strategy around it. We had the website around it. We were doing shows right after the episode, shows leading up to the next episode with the bench staff. But what's interesting, even if you Google some of the stuff people have written about it, it's almost like reading big critical pieces about a giant book or

a three and a half hour movie, which I guess... Alex, is that where we are now just with culture? With the White Lotus type of thing accepted? There's something that was kind of great about the last getting towards the end of any great show that everyone is on board

with. So whether it was the last season of Thrones or Breaking Bad or Mad Men, where everyone was on the same pace, you know, leading up the same week. And you had six days in between episodes where everyone had their own theories and everyone had their own gripes and everyone had their own things that they would talk to other people you know about and uh and that i think allowed those shows to become more of like a a real conversation you know part of the national conversation yeah um covid may have actually changed that now you know where you're not actually going around seeing the same people every day and you have to do everything at your own pace.

Even though obviously Netflix and the binge model existed well before COVID, I think it has made it more of the norm where some people, if they really, because I got nothing to do but spend eight hours watching one show tonight. If that's what I want, I want it and I can have it. So I think it's changed. It may swing, the pendulum may swing back again some other time. But I do remember and have kind of a soft spot for those times when like everyone in the country or sometimes the world was along on the exact same ride as you, as you were. As you, as you say that, I realized that it also skews things in some ways, like something, it skews things in the direction of the kinds of shows that, that are appealed to the kinds of people who can watch eight hours of television in two days. Right. Cause that's like, there are plenty of people out there who might like can watch eight hours of television in two days, right?

Because that's like, there are plenty of people out there who might like to watch eight hours of television in two days, but just they can't because they've got kids and they've got jobs and they have like, their responsibilities, like maybe make them lucky to be able to watch an hour or two of television a day. So like the numerically data wise, like stuff the stuff that's aimed at demographics that like can sit there like my my kids like when they watched anime one of my kids watched anime and he would watch he'd watch a show that had a thousand fucking episodes one thousand right like he was 13 he could watch a show that had a,000 episodes in a bizarrely short period of time and get through them all. Even though I found that show model and streaming in general pushes the data that comes at you that's the most

impressive and the most eye-catching in terms of the ratings data. I mean, that's the stuff that's going to explode the biggest and the fastest and make the brightest fireworks is going to be the stuff that is geared towards the people who can watch things all at once, even if

it's eight, 10, 20 hours, whatever it is. It's interesting because on the one hand, I still feel like the every week thing helps certain types of shows, right? Like White Lotus definitely helped because you could have theories and it just tied into the whole culture when shows like that work. On the other hand, we know from people catching up on binging shows that have already happened, people are watching Mad Men in three weeks,

especially if you're in your late teens or your early 20s and you just kind of miss some of these shows. I know people that have watched Lost over the span of four weeks, which to me is insane. So they're kind of used to that habit. I guess the thing that worries me is just like, how much attention are they paying to everything as they're watching if they're, if they're binging? It doesn't, it doesn't simmer.

It doesn't like. Yeah. Are they locked in or are they doing one other thing at the same time? But on the other hand, maybe because watching it all together like one giant movie they're they're aware of connections that if you're spreading everything out you might not get as much i mean i had the same experience as dan where i watched breaking bad oh because i was trying to catch up before the finale aired and i would watch one episode on the ipad on the way to set this is back when we were shooting thrones yeah so on the way back from set and you know

watched the whole thing and i don't think it was a lesser experience for me i mean i was so like i was so in that world and like everything all the characters and all everything was so fresh in my mind and it worked i could imagine some shows where it won't work as well and you are talking about maybe the greatest show of all time but still like it did feel like you're reading some thousand page russian novel and all the characters have names that you can pronounce them it made sense i always like it was funny with thrones obviously i liked it i loved we've just been talking about how much fun it was to write something and produce something that was could it was watched by people in that you know the edit lock themselves in and watch it but when sometimes people would tell you that they they didn't catch up until later and they bought all the

DVDs and they watched it they watched five seasons at once or they binged five seasons six seasons at once to catch up and there was something with that show where I think there were probably benefits to watching the show that way because as you said but we started this thing out like it was a complicated and with that show where I think there were probably benefits to watching the show that way because as you said when we started this thing out like it was a complicated and like there was a lot of information to hold in your head and it's easier to hold information in your head for five minutes than it is to hold it in your head five days and on the flip side there's a show like Beef just came out limited on Netflix that I think would have been just because of how well it

was written and structured, it would have been amazingly successful as a week-by-week water cooler show because it was built that way even though it was something that I watched much more quickly than that. Yeah, there's certain

shows that were clearly designed for the binge era that I don't think would have the same kind of meat if it was, I'm waiting until next Sunday to see if FBI Agent X is going to be able to get out of this. Even when I think about 24, 24 was like the

ultimate binge show, but it wasn't a binge show. It was once a week, right? And it would be like, countdown and that was it. There have been people who have done the stunt of trying to watch all 24 in a 24-hour period and staying awake for the whole thing. Really? Yeah, it's been done.

Cocaine? What kind of drugs are involved? It's been done. It's not a pleasant experience. It's rough to stay up for 24 hours to watch a TV show. That doesn't sometimes always hold together. Sorry. Is science fiction mainstream now? Because when I was growing up and it was like Star Trek and they were, you know, we had a couple of Star Trek kids and we're like, oh, those guys,

you know, and then Star Wars hit. Star Wars hit when I was in like third or fourth grade and it was really interesting because Star Wars became huge and then it was like three camps. It was like the super Star Wars nerds. They were like the people that went both ways and they kind of could go in and out of the group

and then there was the other people like, fuck that, I don't like that stuff. I'm out on Star Wars. And then as you watch, you think of like some of the biggest movies we've had over the last 50 years. So many of them have to do with aliens.

Is there an afterlife? What does this mean? Are we all going to die? What's the biggest movie of this year? What is it? I'm saying this having absolutely no idea whether I'm telling the truth, but I think I'm pretty sure Dune 2 is the biggest movie of this year.

That's not simplistic science fantasy, like Western dressed up as science fiction. That's epic, interplanetary saga science fiction, and that's the biggest single movie or one of the two or three biggest movies of the past year. So Alex, you think it's mainstream now? Yeah, I think the nerds have taken over.

It's swung in that direction. A giant fantasy show, Game of Thrones, that you would think would have just been for the Dungeons and Dragons crowd, became mainstream. We've got a whole bunch of science fiction shows. There was a show about chess that everyone was watching. It's like how all the sabermetricians have taken over the front offices. I was the one reading the Bill James baseball abstracts in the mid-80s. That was my nerdy thing to do.

That's next. That may be next. So David, you got this show. It's a huge premise and you have to figure out how do you hook people in the premise in a couple episodes while also doing this. I mean, you have two different things going on.

Are the aliens going to take over, basically? But then you also have humans versus humans. So there's two different kind of wars going on. One's a little bigger, one's a little smaller. And you have to suck somebody into all of that and then also create this world that makes sense, but also lead to some sort of cliffhanger at the end of the first season and account for everybody trying to watch this all at once, potentially. What did I leave out? That seems like a pretty good song. I think it was one thing we learned on

Thrones is that it doesn't really matter how great the battle scene is. It doesn't matter how great the stunt choreography is or the visual effects, any of that stuff. If you don't care about a character who's in the middle of it, it's not going to be a great fight scene. So, and we found this out the hard way, you know?

And so it became really important to us that every time there was any kind of like violent action, one of our key characters was in the midst of it and in genuine peril, which means like you really have to think they might die. And which means that some of them do have to die because otherwise there's no real peril when you're just in a Marvel movie. And I guess Marvel did start killing people off, actually. That's not fair.

So I think the thing for us was the novels presented these incredible, brilliantly imagined set pieces and just a whole universe of insane science fiction. But what was crucial for us for the series was that the characters at the heart of it, we need to care about them. So Dan talked before about the first two episodes and how it's really kind of like one big pilot, all leading up to, no spoilers, but all leading up to a button being pressed.

And we always knew that was going to be the very end of episode two, is someone pressing a button. If you don't care about that woman, you're probably not going to stick with the show because so much of it is she's the one who starts everything and pressing that button is really what triggers all the all the events that happen. And so some of it's in the writing. And honestly, some of it's in the casting. You know, we got very lucky that we found Zine Sang, who's brilliant. Derek Sang is directing her brilliantly. But I think that people do care about her, at least the people who stick with the show. And, you know, really, a lot of it's just, in this case, the woman whose face you're looking at, do you care about her? Is there something about her that makes you want to follow her and that makes you fear for her when she's in danger? So that's, you know, I don't know if it's a trick, but that's kind of at the heart of it. Wait, you said, you said before you said we learned the hard way in Thrones.

Now I have people on, on staff and people I'm friends with who would be furious if I didn't ask the follow up question of what, what did you, who did you learn that from the hard way? I just mean like we would have these fight scenes that we'd spend days on you know like any kind of action scene it's longer to shoot because you stunts are involved you gotta you have to get shoots at different angles you have to cover it so so well and if it was a fight between characters you know and we'd have to go back to like the first couple seasons to like go go through these. But if it wasn't, if there weren't people involved in it that you're like, oh, you know, like Ned might actually get like stabbed here or is Tyrion going to get cut. If they're not in the middle of it, it just feels like you're watching a YouTube like Kung Fu video. It's like, oh, that's great. Wow, look at that guy's martial arts techniques. That's amazing. But I don't really care that much on any emotional level. And so, you know, I think about like Miguel Sapochnik, who directed Battle of the Bastards, and one of the things he did so brilliantly, or Hard Home, one of the things he did so brilliantly is, is like his shots were so much about getting you in tight with the characters who you care

about, like whether it's Jon Snow or Arya or whomever else. And you're there with them and you're fearing for Jon because you know that this is a show that might kill somebody, even like a Jon Snow. So it's just... And the other quote I remember a lot, and this is again just talking about action, but we worked with a great director named Dan Minahan, and Dan said, every time I've seen in real life, seen something violent happening, I'm never standing in the right place. Or if you see a video on YouTube or something

and something terrible happening to someone, the camera's never perfectly set up to capture it. And he shot maybe the greatest fight scene in TV history in a Deadwood episode where, Dan, you're going to remember the character's name better than I am. Or Alex. Well, it's Earl Brown.

It's Dan. It's fighting the as Dan is fighting the... What's his name? The other dude's enforcer. The two kind of main antagonists, their must, their heavies, are fighting each other in the middle of the town.

In the middle of the main drag. It's just an incredible fight scene that ends with thumbs going into the eye sockets and but he damn when he was describing how he shot it he's like you know the camera should never be like just perfectly set up because it always feels more real if you're you're kind of like trying to peek around the shoulders of the guys to see the two dudes fighting the bar um so i got i got a little bit farther away from your original question. No, that was really interesting.

Alex, what was the biggest challenge for this? The biggest challenge is in adapting the novels, they are structured in a way that, you know, a novel is not a TV show, is not an opera, and is not an epic poem. They're all really, really different. And the novels are structured, have a lot of complicated physics. That's certainly one challenge. But also, the protagonist of book one, mild spoiler, is never heard from again in the other two books. The protagonist of book two never shows up in book one. Protagonist of book three never shows up in books one or two, even though they all exist at the same time. And for us, this is what David was touching on. We all came to TV from different mediums. And the thing we really all share

is that you get into it through character, because that's the one thing that's going to carry you from one episode to the next to the next to the next. There's an old episode of This American Life called What I Learned from Television back in 2007. And David Rakoff referenced a study, a medical study that found that the brain chemicals that are fired from watching episodic television were the exact same brain chemicals that are fired from having actual friends. Experientially, it's the same thing in your mind. And that's why these shows stick with you. That's why you go from one episode into another. And then 10 years later, they feel like real people to you. And that's why the actors on these shows, the actors on these shows are approached like that, you know, by people who think they genuinely know them.

And so that's always at the heart of it. It's like, you know, how can we make people engage with the characters? And it would be a very weird kind of show is if you went two seasons in and said, okay, here's the new lead of your show whom we've never met before. Rather, we pulled in the leads of books two and three into season one, and we made them all know each other.

They also don't cross paths very much at all in the trilogy of books. We gave them pasts. We gave them feelings about each other. And whether it was rivalries or romances, whatever it was, they connected with one another. They had the scenes together.

And what that allowed us for is when all the whiz-bang stuff, all the craziness happens, you care about them. You see when something horribly violent happens, you see the reaction on someone's face that you care about. And I think that's kind of the secret sauce if there is one. So you're working on this during COVID when it feels like the world

been in, at least for a little bit there, but then you're working on the show where the world been in, like what kind of Dan, what kind of mental state are you in? I remember running into you a couple of times. You look a little hackery. Yeah. We were walking, just sort of stag were you in? I remember running into you a couple of times. You looked a little haggard. Yeah, we were walking, sort of zombie walking around the neighborhood, right?

Bill and I live close to each other. And yeah, I mean, it was, it was a, it's a weird, it was a, in the being in the middle of something that was starting to have kind of almost science fictional like vibes to it i mean every time i think about disease that hits everybody in the world all at once it's like well when what was the most formative experience i had with that it wasn't in my life i wasn't alive during the 1918 pandemic or any other pandemic my formative experience with the idea of a disease that hits everybody all at once was the stand as devon king when i was 11 or whatever i was when i read that book so like that you're still you were in the middle of something that started it almost

like there was a genre of feeling to your everyday life where everything had been interrupted and replaced with a new world with a new set of rules that everybody was like trying to navigate and figure out and in the middle of all this you're coming up with a world with a new set of rules and trying to make it make sense to people so there was a weird kind of mirroring effect there and then i mean it's a lot of weird. I remember we were, we were doing all of our, all of our, uh, rooms are our writer's rooms on zoom, just like this. And so, which meant you could do them from anywhere. And I was, we were doing a little movie up in, in Portland during the middle of the pre vaccine pandemic. And so I was up there it was working with some wonderful people but miserable experience in a lot of ways because you don't get to spend any time with those wonderful people or even see their faces and and then we were doing i remember us doing we were in the middle of a writer's room for this on january 6th and like i was doing we were doing a writer's room like i'm looking at this screen

like the one i'm looking at now and zoom and then my eyes would like tilt up to the TV like in behind the screen where there was something else that seemed like something out of a near-future science fiction movie happening and so it was just it was a it was making a show about the ultimate in kind of strange days in the midst of some really fucking strange days and I don't know i'm sure it definitely had it definitely informed like watching the way people were acting though it's all related i mean watching the kind of the strain the way that the strain on people and the anxieties and the fears and the frustrations watching the way they leaked out in the way people related to each

other and related to their culture and their government and everything. I think that definitely informed in ways I'm sure we aren't even entirely conscious of informed the way we were writing about the ultimate sort of strange experience for the whole world and the way it made people as a whole act, the way it made the characters act. I think that it colored it for us in a way that probably has found its way

onto the screen and the show in a whole bunch of ways we're aware of and in a whole bunch of ways we're not. There's a virtual reality piece to this that becomes more relevant. Strange days. Becomes more relevant. Even like Apple releases the Vision Pro.

When you see something like the Vision Pro's out and you're thinking about your show, you're like, what the fuck? We all, the three of us, Netflix was kind enough to give us Super Bowl tickets. I'd never been to the Super Bowl before. And it was a major bucket list item. I was super excited.

I don't have a video of this guy. I would share it with you. There was a dude with the Apple Vision Pro sitting right in front of us in the middle of the Super Bowl. He had this thing on and he would periodically stand up. He could see the game through the glasses. He would stand up, and he was DJing his own private DJ set while watching the Super Bowl. And the first thing I thought was,

I've never seen anybody look more ridiculous than this dude. And the second thing I thought was that in 10 years, everybody in the world is going to be this dude. And the second thing I thought was that in 10 years, everybody in the world is gonna be this dude. And so, sorry to derail the virtual reality question, but that was just, it really fit in. Like we were there promoting the show where people had a big techno shiny headset on their heads, and that was a key element and image in the show and then seeing seeing the

real world version of it three rows in front of us doing you know doing his own like club set in the middle of the super bowl was like in its own way so much weirder than anything we even came up with in the show that uh made me feel, oh, we could have just done that. It would have cost a lot less money and a lot less time. Right. Yeah, I don't know where this stuff goes because there's a world where I could see 20 years from now where you don't even have season tickets anymore

for like the Clippers. You just put a headset on and you're sitting courtside and it's as good. There's a world where they could take all the Game of Thrones episodes you guys did and retranslate them so that when I put the headset, now I'm on the set watching the show versus watching it as a TV show. I don't know what to expect anymore. Even you think when we started The Ringer and we're doing podcasts and the producer had to be in the studio or the office when we did it, right? And then the pandemic happened and we're like, well, we're not going to be able to do a podcast anymore. It's like, wait, no, there's got to be some way. And then all of a sudden we're doing them on Zoom and the guest is on Zoom like you guys are right now and we're recording and it's like, all right, we figured it out. I just wonder, how is we going to figure out sports, movies, TV? Where does this shit go?

What are movie theaters going to look like in 10 years? Are we going to have one-tenth as many movie theaters? How many movie theaters do you think we have in 10 years, Alex? I think there's like 38,000 now. I think we'll still have a lot of movie theaters because people still want to be around other people. Now, over a long period of time, that might lessen, but there's still, I think, a need for people to want to socialize. And there's certain kinds of movies. There's certain kinds of movies that are

better when you're watching it in a room with 300 people. Fast and the Furious is a lot more fun when there's 300 other people screaming with you than if you're watching it by yourself looking at an iPhone. I do think it'll still exist. I mean, thinking about and trying to speculate

what the future is going to look like, you know, 10, 20, 100, 400 years from now is something that we're kind of doing now as we're trying to piece together, hopefully, a season two. Because the show goes into the future and you want to make it look like a future that isn't a future that someone else has drawn up,

you know, a million times. It's not the Jetsons, you know, that it's not, it can't be something that has already been done, but also seems plausible and also seems cool. And so we do think about this kind of thing a lot.

Yeah. You think about the future stuff and the TVs and movie shows, the stuff we grew up watching, and some of it was pretty good, like Total Recall, you know, where they would have a big TV where they were just talking. Basically, it's FaceTime, right? But nobody knows what FaceTime is. It's like, all right, you guys

nailed that one. There's some other stuff, like people being beamed to different... You did a pretty good job. Right. I think we're kind of half in the minority report sort of interface world. Feels like it. David, so HBO is all feel and it's creative execs

and they're just going, we love this, here are our notes. Netflix in the 2020s, they can tell you exactly exactly to the second when people are checking in and out who the audience is. Is it male, female? What countries is it more popular? What do you do with all this data? Because it's kind of antithetical to with the three of you trying to do TV with feel and what makes sense to you, but then you have all this advanced metric stuff that you kind of have to listen to. So how do you listen to it? Man, that's a great question.

I don't really know in terms of what to do with it. I don't really know. I think it's probably incredibly useful for the company in terms of determining what shows work for them and what shows don't work for them and where to allocate their resources and all in terms of actually making a good show i mean it feels like if the if the metrics if the information was sufficient for that then ai could be doing it right now you know i mean you pump that into what's it called sorrow what's the one that does the video yeah it's like this is by by minute two and 12 seconds in, they have to have a scare,

like a jump scare here, a sore, a crit. And we're clearly not there quite yet. Maybe we will be in 10 years. I don't know. But so I feel like it's really useful information for the companies and for them, for the people making the shows. I honestly don't know. I mean, I think

there's a lot of things that we wanted to do on the show that we knew probably wouldn't be, you know, this is probably not the way to create a big hit show, but this is what we want to do to tell the story the right way and by our lights. And ultimately a lot of it just comes down. It's subjective and it's taste and it's, you know, well, the three of us, our job is to, is to write the show and, and produce it and make it work by our lights, not, not by the lights of, you know, 272 million subscribers to Netflix. It's just got to come from our, our minds. And, uh, so it's, um, that's the kind of a, a non-answer to your question, but I honestly don't know what to do with with a lot of the information i think it would be you know um if you're if you're deciding like do i pull this pitcher right now when he's going up against this left-handed batter who's hits

that that i see being like incredibly useful in terms of like how to write this scene or how to cast a person or anything else i don't know how to apply the stats when do you start sketching out season two? We're doing it. Yeah. Has it been greenlit yet or are you waiting? No, it has not. It has not been greenlit yet, but we're already outlining it.

We're deep into it. We have already like six episodes. We've got parts of everything. Yeah, we've got parts of everything yeah we got Dan what how do you so the show comes out it's it's just thrown every episodes out right away then there's that weird people are on the different time cycles some people are writing about it what

have you learned over the years how to pay attention to certain things versus ignoring certain things? I'm talking about reviews. I'm talking about Reddit boards, feedback from friends. Have you gotten any better at learning what to tune out? What you're talking about is actually a different facet of the same thing you were talking about a minute ago with David. That's just data.

There's a lot of information. There's a lot of information. There's an exponential increase in the amount of information about anything and everything that could find its way to you if you open the floodgates to any and all information. I think we found with Thrones, it was a cuspy show where it was when the curve was starting to get steeper in terms of just how much potential information you could receive at any moment about the thing you just did if you so chose. So we were lucky enough that we were getting eased into the pool with it a little bit and what i think we found was that you need you need to self-regulate because if you if you it used to be like i would say imagine 35 years ago 40 years ago you put something out there the world has

something to say about it you have a you you get limited snippets of that, like views from 10,000 feet or a fan mail from this person or a letter from that person. Yeah, you like engaging with it in any kind of a major way was, it was just, it was overload. And it's sort of, it was like that thing on your computer where if you, you know, have you ever checked the thing,

if you have an Apple, they've got the activity monitor where it shows you like what your computer is doing. It's like looking in the computer's brain. It's like 95% of your computer is now clocking on like looking in the computer's brain. It's like 95% of your computer is now clocking on Zoom, you know, this program. And I realized early on

that I started was reading about the show and thinking about what other people were thinking about the show. And like 95% of my brain was just grinding on that. And I just, that wasn't a really smart way to use the increasingly limited resources that my brain has to provide so i was kind of like i was like i gotta shut this

shit down because if i like this is it's not it's not healthy and it's also like not i've i've got first and foremost a job to do so i think that and it's the same thing with like, you could dive into the data pool about like who turned the show on two minutes and 74 seconds, two minutes and 34 seconds into it, who turned the show off in scene five. Like you could find slice they have access to if you wanted to.

You could get so deep into the weeds on the data of like, like what is happening, the data swirling in a cloud around the thing you put out there, you could, you could drown in it because there's, there's so much of it. And maybe, I mean,

I'm old man, like I'm, I'm not really native to this. And maybe like my, our kids generation, like maybe they're just going to be congenitally like more equipped to deal to surf that data and not fall off the board and drown in it but like i i do think it's going to require it requires a fundamentally different approach to like

information about your show when there's that much information out there about your show and about any show and anything that anybody does anywhere. So you didn't listen to binge mode or Game of Thrones podcast, that three hour episodes about every episode. That's your way of telling us that wasn't on your radar. Most impressed. My brother-in-law,

who's a a muscle whoever was with me ever in my whole career was when he forwarded me your bill your uh i think it was after the first big battle we did the battle of blackwater um and like to him that was like okay everything you do is so boring to me but the fact that this guy's talking about it. That it crossed over. That was one of the biggest indicators with half of my friends that what we had had left the kind of petri dish that we grew it in and moved out to people who we never thought it would reach.

Seeing linemen talk about it on Logbox was... I remember there was one Sunday night and I think I might have even written about it when Thrones was going against some giant Sunday night football game and I want to say Mad Men was on too and it was like

the single greatest TV night anybody could ever remember. It was like, what are you going to watch first? What are you taping? Now I just feel like people would probably be watching all three at the same time on their phone. Watching it all and catching

not really being fully invested in any of it. But I always hated when we were up against football. Being up against sports is always the worst because you're never going to beat live sports. Ever. You're never going to beat a good football game. You're never going to beat March Madness.

You can't compete with what that means to people and what it means to people to be in the moment. Even my son was watching. we were watching the finals last night, and he rewound to listen to something a commentator had said. Then he fast-forwarded through two or maybe even two scores. He fast-forwarded because when he got to the end of the game, he didn't want to be behind he wanted the end of the game for him to be like

concurrent with the end of the game in real life like that's how important Alex if we're going to bounce around on three body problem could we maybe bounce backwards and make the Mookie Betts trade not happen is there a way to put that

in the show so many things I would love he's just on the Red Sox bounce backwards and make the Mookie Betts trade not happen? Is there a way to put that in the show? Could that be an alternate universe? There's so many things I would love to take back. He's just on the Red Sox. There's so many things I would love to take back. There's a whole sort of dark era where it was not so much fun to be a Red Sox fan. It is true.

The most fun, I actually have to say, was David is just like his cousin. I know, that's why I had to bring this up. I can tell you actually now, even though David is just like his cousin. I know, that's why I had to bring this up. Like, yeah, I can tell you actually now, even though I wasn't born on the... I can tell all the years the Red Sox lost in

seven games in the World Series, but after 2004 and then 2007, winning the World Series became a little less fun to me than this team that was just always would be at the doorstep of heartbreak again and again and again.

The feeling of winning a World Series for the first time was one of the greatest feelings I've ever had as a sports fan. The other odd thing is that my NFL team is the Saints, who also historically never won anything. And the feeling of them winning the Super Bowl for the first time seemed

insane. What kind of childhood did you have? Are there any other New Yorkers who are Red Sox and Saints fans? I've yet to meet one. I've always been contrarian. I was always rooting for the underdogs.

When I was a fan, I was 78 was when all the kids around me were following sports. Talk about that to you. They were all huge Yankees fans. I'll be a Red Sox fan.

I've never bought this. I have the baseball card somewhere. There was a baseball card of a utility man named Jack Broheim from 1978. I said, that's what looks like a baseball player to me. And that's why that's going to be my team. I followed the Saints because I started following football in, uh, in, uh, in, but was it 81 when they went one in 15 and they, they,

everyone was wearing paper bags over their heads. And you had a cocaine scandal too. I think, I think it was the, you did the combo, the worst record league with the cocaine scandal. I, I,

I didn't know that at the time, you know, but you know, it was the Ains and, and, and, and all that. So,

okay, that's going to be my team too. And Archie Manning is going to be my favorite player. So it was always like the perennial losers were always... It's kind of childhood if somebody ends up becoming a screenwriter. It sounds like a lot of torture and pain. All right, guys, this was fun. We got through this without spoiling any of the show,

but I would encourage people to watch it it's on Netflix they've done a good job of promoting it I feel like it's been on the main screen I know they feed stuff to my algorithm to things I'm going to like but it's always been there but congrats on the show it's fun to watch I'll be really interested to see

especially where it goes down the road how many I guess we can ask this question like how many seasons ultimately is this in your heads can you even answer that is there is there like a cap is this like this is four seasons and we're done what is it there are three books and we all love the ending of the third book um the third book the books get bigger as they go so the second season would more or less um be the second book but the third book the books get bigger as they go so the second season would more or less be the second book but the third book is so long it's hard to say right now if it would be one season

or two seasons because or maybe one slightly longer season or whatever but i'd say at least three seasons but i'd cap it at four all right so this won't be Grey's Anatomy. We're not going to be year 21. Just changing everybody. Just Ellen Pompeo's there. Nobody else. You don't know who it is. We'll never make it to a thousand episodes. All right. Good to see you guys. Thanks for coming on and talking about the show. Thanks, Bill. It was great to see you. Thanks for taking the time. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Joe House. Thanks to Dan West, David Benioff, and Alexander Wu. Thanks to Steve Cerutti and Kyle Creighton for producing as well.

I will see you on Thursday on This Feed. Until then. I don't want to see them When we start to say I don't have feelings with him. On the wayside, I never said I don't have feelings with him. Must be 21 plus in present and select states. Fando is offering online sports wagering in Kansas under an agreement with Kansas Star Casino LLC.

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