The Bill Simmons Podcast - Chuck Klosterman on LeBron, ESPN, Queen, Classic Rock, Area 51, Presidential Candidates, and Book Tours | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: August 1, 2019

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by author and longtime 'BS Podcast' guest Chuck Klosterman to discuss book tours in the selfie era, ESPN's political policies, LeBron making news at his son's AAU game, Charles Manson, extraterrestrials, the ideal presidential candidate, TV, film, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network, brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Here's the difference between working hard and working smart. Area 51, Freddie Mercury, Pete Buttigieg. What's that documentary called? I Love You Now Die. I Love You Now Die. Just one of the many things we're covering on today's podcast with Chuck Klosterman. Because we worked hard and we worked smart. We did an outline for this one.

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for this one so that's happening be ready for that coming up the one the only Chuck Klosterman first our friends from ProJab All right, on the line, Chuck Klosterman, BS Podcast Hall of Famer.

He has a new book out that is called Ways to Captivity. He's been on tour. He was at Gillette last week. He played the Meadowlands. He played Dodger Stadium. I know it was an incredible tour. I know everybody turned out. What is it like to do a book tour in 2019, the selfie, get a picture with a celebrity era? Well, you know, the pictures are part of it now. When I was in Austin, almost every person who got a book signed also wanted a picture.

I guess it's just so easy. That slows it down a little bit, I guess. I don't mind. I don't know what people are doing with all these pictures, but they can have them. The events themselves, though, I think they're more of the same than different. It's just that the economics of selling books has changed so much that it's just a weird idea now. I mean, you know, it's like when I go on tour, it's a strange situation because I'm selling books, obviously, ostensibly. That's the idea. But the people who come to a reading, well, they're probably the people who would definitely

buy a book anyway, right? You would think. I mean, if someone's willing to come to a bookstore and sit there and listen to a guy talk and read or whatever, that person was probably going to buy the book anyways. So I'm not exactly sure how it makes like economic sense to do it. I mean, I'm only, the tours are smaller. I'm only doing nine cities this year, I guess in the past, like when I did killing yourself to live, I think I had a six week tour. I don't think anyone does that anymore. Right. Yeah. I think it's funny. I did a book tour in oh five and I did a book tour in oh nine.

But you don't read, right? That's your thing. You do not read, ever. I didn't really know what I was doing and I didn't do that many and we had enough people there that I probably should have read, but it was more like I just wanted to meet people and sign books. And at that point, especially in 05,

you had no connection to people other than they read my column, right? I didn't even have a podcast at that point. And oh nine, I had Twitter for maybe six months at that point. I'd probably had, I don't know, 30, 35,000 followers or something. Um, but I wasn't in, in somebody's life the way that really anybody can be now, like nowadays people are able to be connected to you, even if it's in that weird digital way where they're following me on Twitter or on Instagram and they're listening to this podcast, however else. I'm kind of in their life more. Back then

in like 05, it was like, it's my column and that's it. If you wanted to even see what I looked like or hear my voice, this was the one chance. So I do think that dynamic, I think social media shifted it. I don't do that stuff though. I'm not really on Twitter for that. Like I only kind of promote things. So I'm more like the band tool. If you want to stop, if you want to see me,

you got to go to this thing. But they can hear you in this podcast though. They have a feel for what you're like on different podcasts and things like that. So that's different. And you know what, Bill, this is something I don't know if I ever told you this before. Maybe we've talked about this, but having gone on podcasts for all these years, I'm sure has helped me sell more books.

I'm sure it has helped my career, you know? And yet I do wonder, ultimately, was it a mistake would i have been better off i'm serious like i did all that tv stuff and all these podcast things i've been that movie and all so now everyone knows how i sound right yeah well when you write a book and if the idea like i like I've been, if you're lucky, you know, and people feel like your writing has voice, but they don't know what your voice is, the voice they create is the best version of their own voice. So the voice they hear in their head is the best version of themselves. But like once you know what a person talks like, that's the voice you hear. And frankly, there's a lot of people who hate my voice. I know that's the case. And I'm sure that has been detrimental to me over time. It's like,

can you imagine reading a Malcolm Gladwell book now and not hearing Malcolm Gladwell's voice? It can't be done. And so I do wonder sometimes if I had never done anything in public except book readings, if it would have been to the benefit of the actual book, even though I would have sold way less of it. Or if you just did nothing, you were just this enigma that just produced this book Unabomber style every year and nobody even knew where you lived or what you looked like. Well, that's kind of like what William Vollman does. I mean, he's like the most prolific genius writer out there who's just he's like the most prolific

genius writer out there who's just constantly putting books out i have no idea what he sounds like i have a vague idea of what he looks like if you want to have fun go read william volman wikipedia entry that's as good as most books you know but he's done exactly that like he doesn't he doesn't go anywhere and do anything. Well, he constantly goes somewhere, but he never appears in public. Uh, and you know, I don't know. That's a really interesting point about hearing somebody's voice and then not being able to shake that as the voice when you read them, you know, and whatever. Cause I remember the first time that happened to me,

it was when the sports writers started going on them, you know, and whatever. Cause I remember the first time that happened to me was when the sports writers started going on TV, you know, and, and all of a sudden Mike Lupica and Bob Ryan and people, Will McDonough, people that I'd grown up reading. And I knew what Bob Ryan's voice sounded like. Cause he used to go on local radio in Boston, but for the most part, didn't really know the voices. And then you would hear the voices and you know, Will McDonough started going on the NBC NFL show in the late eighties. And he just had this old school, like he's like a character from the departed or the town had one of those voices. And then when you read his pieces, you would kind of hear that voice. So I get it. Yeah. I'm sure nobody really likes their own voice and nobody's really happy with anyone else's voice with about five exceptions so i'm sure it does it is probably a little bit of a detriment i was thinking more the photos selfies thing just has to slow the process down because i remember when

when i did my last tour um you know there's sometimes there's a lot of people there and you're just trying to you don't want people to wait in line if they have to do whatever. And the selfies pictures thing would slow it down even more because half the time it's like, Oh, Oh shoot, hold on. Oh my, I didn't realize my flash wasn't on. And there's all the, and you're just in that constant situation where somebody's phone isn't working. Um, yeah, well that, that it does, it slows things down a little bit, I guess, you know, at the same time, it's like, where else do I have to be? I have the time. You're there.

You're there all night. Like I said, like the thing in Texas, like in Austin, the one that I did with Shay. Okay. A lot of people came, I think a lot because Shay is really good at getting people out. Okay. And at the bookstore in Austin, they actually set it up. They have a person from the bookstore who stands in front of the table and you hand them your phone and then you walk behind the table and that person,

that's great. So, well, here's the, here's the thing though, by doing that, every person does it. Like they almost think it's part of the process. I mean, I, I, every book I signed, I feel like I took a picture with someone. So you feel like you're like, you're like Barack Obama. You're like Barack Obama at the, like the White House correspondence dinner where you're just, people are in a line, in a receiving line, and you're taking the same picture with them over and over again.

The difference being when someone meets the president, they probably think i want to get photographed person i think a lot of people who come to my reading it never fucking occurs to them picture with him but when someone says like you so if you try to make the system more efficient it actually makes things slower yeah that's why like those little post-it notes sometimes it's book reading They give everyone a post-it note with the idea that they'll put their name on it and then you can sign their name in the book and you'll have the spelling. But then every single person does it instead of just having the book sign. They think, oh, it's supposed to be personalized to me specifically. So then they all do it. And that actually makes the whole process go much longer, but I'm not, I can't really complain about the time it takes. I mean,

it's amazing to me that people come and listen to me. Just talk for 90 minutes. That's bizarre to me. I'm very flattered. It's very weird, but they do it. So I figure if they do that, plus they're spending whatever it costs for the book,

26 bucks or whatever. Like I can, I can sit there and put the time in. You're there for the night. That's it. for the book, 26 bucks or whatever. Like I can, I can sit there and put the time in. You're there for the night. That's it. They gave you their time. You're going to give them. Yeah, I totally get it. I, I loved, I mean, it was definitely, it's a lot of people and you have to be on at some of the stops, but I loved the book tour. I remember one of the stops,

I think New York I had in 09, I had two of my buddies from college, Jacko and House. They just came and sat at the table and just made fun of me and did the whole thing. It's just good to put faces to who's reading you and stuff like that. So that's one reason I would write another book. The reason I would never read another book is I just don't, I just couldn't do it anymore. I think the ship sailed for me. I don't know if the enjoyment of the book signing is worth writing a book for, but it surprises me that you have no desire to write another book.

I would, you know, it would seem like that so many people would be like, I wish I could do that. I wish I had the ability to do it or to get into a position where if I did it, people would read it. What is your reason for having no desire to do it? It's not literally right about any subject you want. Well, I know you've done it, but you know, it's not only two things. One, it's not a no desire thing. It's, I know what it takes. I honestly, it's, it's like the same reason when I was trying to talk my wife into having a third kid, which didn't go well, by the way, it was a disaster. Um, and she was just

like, I've done this twice. I don't want to do it again. I know all the steps and I don't want to put my body through it. And not to compare writing a book to passing a child out of your body, because that's still the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life. But I feel the same, like when she said that, I kind of felt the same way about a book. Like, I know I could probably do it, but I also know like how miserable I would be for those 10 to 11 months trying to get it done and being trapped in it and trying to come up with some angle. Like the logical book for me to write would be to, to do, to write about basketball, everything that's happened since I wrote the last book.

Cause the league has changed so much the last 10 years and there'll be so many fun, different ways to go. And I just, once I, once I would start something like that, that would be all I would be thinking about and doing. And what we're doing here, I'm not able to do that. I can't just shut down and work on that for a year. So that's the reason. I wouldn't want to make it be one of the seven things I was doing.

Yeah, I guess you have other kind of obligations. of, you know, there are many more obligations. Yeah. And after like, when I wrote my last book, which was way too long, um, I, I disappeared for 10 weeks in the summer. Oh, wait, like I was gone. I didn't do anything. I don't know. I think I probably even did like three or four podcasts and that was it. But, um, you know, I really respect the people that can go through that grind and know it's going to happen and then do it again. I'm, I'm always like impressed by, cause.

It isn't, I mean, I guess this is one of many ways we are different. Like I, the part of putting the book out to me, that is by far the hardest part. If I could just work on a book for the rest of my life and just be paid for working on it and it would never come out, that would be awesome. Like I love that. What does that even mean?

Just the whole process of it? Well, I just, I don't know. I mean, if I could, if I, I've said this before,

but it's true. Like if, if I could have just made the amount of money that I would make for putting books out, but all I would do is just keep rewriting and reworking Fargo Rock City, it would be a great life. If I could just kind of constantly rewrite it and make it better and add new things, I would just write and write and write and write, and there would be no... It would never leave my life.

It would just be there, but it wouldn't, it wouldn't go to any other life. It would just be mine. That would be great. I had when the last contract I signed with ESPN, which was for, I think like four or five years, there was a book component to it. And, you know, you know, a book deal, you just turn in the idea and they give you like a third or whatever it is and i just didn't have an idea like then i just never did it and and then the then my contract was over i just couldn't summon the the the i i actually did have one idea that was not a basketball idea that i still think would have worked and was fired

up about it. And just, you know, at that point, Grantland was going and 30 for 30 and I was on TV and I was, I was just doing too many things. There's no way I could have done it. And so I kind of look back at that and be like, oh man, there was this one moment when I had this idea that I think would have worked. So. Can I, can I ask you a ESPN related question? You love, yeah. You love when this turns on me, this is your, always your, this usually happens at the end of the podcast. This is purely speculative. Okay. Do you think Dan Levitard wants fired? Because the thing is he would be fine if that was the case.

He can't quit though, because for like, if they, because of his contract, I'm sure locked them in that he couldn't work anywhere for like two years or whatever. Do you think actually he wants to get fired? I think the current answer is absolutely not. I think when he did what he did, I still have not talked to him about this. So this is all speculation. I think the initial act was somebody that was like, I don't care what happens. And if this goes down a certain road, that's fine. But I'm going to do this. And I don't like this policy.

And I'm laying it all out there. And I think what happened is, as somebody who's been in a pretty similar position, definitely different circumstances. But you realize that when you go down that road, but you're also, you have all these other people in their lives that are professionally attached to what you're doing and you see how they're reacting to it. You realize there comes this moment where you're like, am I really ready to take this the whole way or not? And I don't think he was. Hmm. Because my thinking was particularly with like with Fox

sports one, all that stuff. Now it would, he could move his whole show. It would seem like, like, and, and the audience for his show is big, but it's not like going somewhere else would suddenly make him just this forgotten thing. I think the kind of people who are into that show would follow it. So it almost seemed like he had this leverage where he was hoping he'd be fired. But I, I, I don't know.

I mean, I don't know him. I've emailed with him four times or whatever. I don't know him. I think it would have been, I think it would have been serious. I don't think it would have been Fox, but I,

you know, part of the problem with that is the other people that are in his orbit, all like everybody just signed new deals. So it's like, yeah, he could go, but they still have everybody else under contract. It's not, not that different from what happened when, you know, when I left Grantland and they still had a lot of different people that were under contract. So it's not like we all left at the same time. So I think my guess is he was really fired up about it. He had a certain level of conviction for a direction that he thought he wanted it to go. And then when ESPN called his bluff, at that point, it becomes a game of chicken. You have to decide whether you want to collide into the other car or not. And he obviously didn't want to. So I thought it was pretty fascinating to watch. And I talked about it a little on the podcast last week because I think if you're ESPN,

it's the right move to stay away from all of that stuff. I'm talking to somebody who on Tuesday did a podcast where me and Jacko talked about Trump and the Democrats for 25 minutes. Like I can do that because I'm in charge of my own stuff here. But I think if you're ESPN, all their ratings for all the talking head shows are up. In general, they've been able to shed that whole perception that they're too liberal and they want to appeal to all 50 states and they just want to show sports.

So I think as a business move, it does make sense for them. What do they have to gain from Levitard on his sports show on ESPN Radio just opining about the faults of the president for 10 minutes? It doesn't add anything to what their mission is. Well, it's not even, I think, so much the addition or the subtraction. I think that there is this dissonance between a lot of the personalities there and the people who consume ESPN. Because ESPN is this weird institution where it's entertainment and it's journalism at

the same time. You know, that's sort of the inherent problem with ESPN in general, is that they are a journalistic outlet and an entertainment outlet. And I think the people who work there see it more as a journalistic enterprise, and the people who consume it generally see it as an entertainment enterprise. So it's like, it's not, I think people are always kind of this idea, like it's what the politics that they're talking about or how they're doing it. But to a degree, it's like when people watch the Weather Channel, they want to know about weather. Like, okay, I suppose there are political elements. You could talk about climate change or whatever, you know, that could be on the Weather Channel. But for the most part, people are interested in the weather and i think

that when people watch espn of course there are exceptions but i think for the most part they see it as like this is how i get access to sports these other things I'm accessing in all these other ways, I think that is the thing. There's just a little confusion about how the network is perceived by the people who work there. Yeah. I think the fundamental issue is this.

When I was there, the times that I really battled them were because I had been told the rules were supposed to go a certain way. And then I felt like they shifted what they told me. You know, and I think even criticizing Goodell and saying he lied about the Ray Rice thing and all that stuff, which was a big part of why I got in the hot water when I was there. I felt like I was totally justified to do that because they told me, if you stick by the facts and it's a sports related thing, and you're able to back up what you're saying, then anyone's fair game. So I'm like, great. So, you know, when I went after Goodell those last years,

I was like, the guy did lie. Like, dude, he completely contradicted himself. We have all these testimonies of people that were in the room with the Ray Rice thing. Like he lied. He changed, he suspended him for one thing and then he changed his story. I should be allowed to talk about this. Right. And you know, I, my, my take on this remains, and I've told you this before. I think it is the confusion over when you said, I challenge someone to call me on this. Now, you say that you were talking about the NFL, but listening to it, it almost seemed like you were saying it to ESPN. And if you run ESPN, there was already the situation where I know a lot of the people in Bristol

did not love the idea of Grantland. They sort of felt that it was given too much leverage and too much freedom and was kind of able to do the things they wanted to do and weren't allowed to. So I think if they hear this

and they perceive you as challenging the entire organization to sanction you, like, I guess I would have sanctioned you too if I was Skipper. Yeah. And I've said this last week, my big mistake was not listening to it before it went up because that was an easy edit. And I feel like I could have kept all that other stuff. And if they had, you know, I had always been told it was two weeks for the challenge ESPN and the one week for just calling Goodell a liar and being so adamant and saying fucking

when I said he was a fucking liar. I think that was what pushed it over the edge. I'd always heard it was the combo of that. But when I came back, you know, I didn't back off from it. And I remember I had Don Vannetta on a podcast where we just painstakingly went over the whole Goodell stuff. Cause they were like, if you're going to hang this guy, hang him with facts. And we spent, we did like a 70 minute podcast, just like painstakingly doing all the facts to just, to be like, all right, if you want me to hang them with facts, I'm happy to do that.

But the key is it was a sports topic. And I think it was a relevant sports topic because the guy's in charge of the most popular sports league and he was acting inappropriately. And that's something you should be able to talk about on ESPN. I think the people running ESPN now would agree with that. I think where it gets, where it gets a little dicey is when somebody's like, here are my thoughts on the current president who I don't like. And they just don't want that. They've made that clear. So if somebody's going to say, well, I'm giving my thoughts anyway, then don't work there.

You know? And that's why I don't know how I feel morally about ESPN just saying like, we're out. We're not getting involved in the sports thing at all. But I do think it came from a place where once you open the door and allow people to kind of, you give them the window to be able to say and do kind of whatever they want about non-sports stuff. There's kind of no putting the, what is it? The rabbit back in the box? What is that? What's that what is it, the rabbit back in the box? What's that phrase? Oh, the horse back in the barn. The horse back in the barn, whatever.

Once it's out, you can't stop it. So they're just saying like, look, we're out. We don't want this anymore. Don't do this. If you want to do this, go work somewhere else. We're happy to let you out of your contract. So I think that's where we are. And it's a complicated deal because, you know, uh, you know, on the one hand, I guess my,

my natural inclination is always to sort of let people who are paid to be commenters sort of take the conversation wherever they want to go. But it does sort of create a kind of weird things where, okay, so all these shows, it's always like one or two people or usually two people sometimes four people or whatever if one individual is really being political and the other people choose not to it's almost like it is seen as them latently taking the opposite position like it like that like they're somehow supporting what the person is criticizing because it almost, if people start getting political in any sense, it almost sort of demands that everyone do it.

Otherwise, like, okay, the ringer is a good example. Like, you guys don't do a lot of political type coverage, but you do some. And it tends to share the same ideology. And I know the assumption is that everybody at the ringer thinks the same way politically about everything. But why wouldn't they? Because the only slices of it they see sort of have one sort of position. The assumption is that, well, everyone else must be there. Like, everyone assumes that every employee at the Wall Street Journal is a Republican. That's just kind of what people think, because the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal is conservative. I know people who work at the Wall Street Journal. That is not the case. But that's what the assumption is,

that you wouldn't work there if you didn't believe that. Because for a lot of the audience, they think to themselves, well, I wouldn't be involved in media unless I could sort of project my worldview onto other people. And a lot of journalists don't think that way, particularly the older ones who were sort of told that you were supposed to try to overcome your biases at every turn. And that's different now now but it still exists yeah it's also so much different than it was you know even five years ago i think i remember i had in 2008 in the spring i got obama to come on my podcast and i had only had a podcast at that point for like a year

and um and then it got nixed by espn which which has been written about, I don't, this isn't a new story, but I, and I was always really confused and angry that, cause first of all, it would have been the biggest podcast of all time until that point. It wasn't like a really big medium. And I was pretty certain he was going to win the presidency. And I was like, I have a chance to get this guy six months before he becomes the president. This is amazing. And the reason they squashed it was basically, we don't want to be perceived as leaning one

way or the other. But when you think about it in retrospect, what ESPN is doing now with all this stuff really isn't much different than the mindset they had back then, you know? And, and when they had Obama coming on to fill out the March madness bracket every year, maybe that's not something they would do now, you know, it stopped because Trump didn't want to do it. But even that could be perceived as Trump. I was, I was always wondering,

I really thought like, I was like, maybe Andy Katz is like, I'm not doing it. But I thought that would have been very entertaining to see. Oh my God, that would have been the best 10 minutes of TV all year. Trump filling out a March Madness bracket? It would have been incredible. Maybe they can still do that for 2020. So my point is, I look at a show like Mike and Mike, which lasted forever. And it was always a show that people, you know, it did, it had its audience.

People kind of appreciated it. I, I, there wasn't like a rabid Mike and Mike fan base, but it did what it did. And coincidentally, he talked, he gave an interview today. We're taping this on a Wednesday where he was basically saying, I'm not doing politics at all on GetUp and I'm fine with that. And he gave a quote, when I go to McDonald's, I go there because I want to have a hamburger. And if I walked to McDonald's and they said to me, we're not doing hamburgers today, we're doing pizza. I'd say, what are you talking about? You're McDonald's, what you do is hamburgers. If I wanted pizza, I would go to one of the places where they make better pizza than you. It's a depressing quote, but it's kind of, it's a fair quote too, because people go to ESPN for sports. And if they wanted to go, if they wanted politics, they would go to one of

the politics stations. So what'd you think of that? Like it's quote? Yeah. Just the quote, the quote, the mindset. Well, I mean, I, mean, I think it in a way sort of, I guess, reflects what I was saying earlier that I don't think that people go to ESPN for the most part for the idea that they're getting, even though there's like a lot of journalism done there. I think that they see that as if I'm watching ESPN and a game is not on, this is the material that connects to the game. Like, I'm just, I gotta wait through this or whatever. Or I want to see what people are talking about. And sometimes I guess maybe, I mean, I don't know if their political coverage gets them more attention or if it does, I mean, they did, they had that poll or whatever, where they were like 84% of conservatives and 69% of liberals wish there was like less political content on ESPN or don't want politics in there. So that would kind of suggest it was

most people. I mean, if those figures can be trusted. That's a pretty big thing. Hold on. Let's take a break. Hey, Vudu is a leading streaming app with a library of over 150,000 titles available to rent or buy, like the critically acclaimed smash hit Avengers Endgame. Wow. Vudu recently launched an ad-supported on-demand service

with over 10,000 titles you can watch for free, including classic movies and TV shows. Oh man, we've done rewatchables on some of these. The Departed, The Matrix. Cry to kid, we have not done rewatchables. That's coming. Jerry Maguire was one of the first rewatchables we did. Fatal Attraction may or may not be one we're doing in August,

but those are all going to be free in August and a whole bunch of other great ones. Voodoo is the presenting sponsor of the rewatchables podcast where we're covering, God, we have the town coming up. We're going to be doing fatal attraction. We have Chris Ryan and I are doing collateral.

Where do you stand on collateral? Yeah. Yeah. I'll listen. Yeah. Yeah. A bunch of good ones in the works. Watch for free on Voodoo before you tune in the new episode.

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you should be catching up on because that's coming and that's going to be an all-time podcast. But you can catch up on The Town and a whole bunch of other ones at voodoo.com slash Bill Simmons, V-U-D-U.com slash Bill Simmons. Back to Chuck.

Speaking of ESPN, wanted to talk about, so we're in this dead content time right now where especially for a site like The Ringer and some other places where you have these runs, September, October, November, December, that's great. April, May, June, there's just a lot going on. There's playoffs. You got drafts, you have award season, um, biggest movies coming out, all that stuff.

And then you have the dead times you have. Well, we had last week where there's just nothing going on. And fortunately for the ringer and for a lot of people make content, Tarantino had a new movie coming out and it turned into a whole Tarantino movie. Yeah, I'm surprised. I'm shocked you haven't seen that. Well, I was away and I was in-

Oh, you were in Hawaii. Yeah, I was in Hawaii and it was not playing in a movie theater that was within 90 minutes of us. So that was a problem. I'm seeing it tonight. But this week is even more dead than last week was because there's no Tarantino movie. We basically have Hobbs and Shaw

and then the Major League Baseball trade deadline and the training camp starting. I guess maybe you could argue this week slightly better than last week, but just slightly. Does Hard Knocks start to? Hard Knocks is a week away. Next week? Yeah, next week.

Next week things start feeling like normal again. But my point is so this LeBron thing happens where he's cheering his son on in these AAU games a little too vociferously for some people's liking and he went in the layup line

and did some dunks. And I feel like if this happens in November I don't even know if it makes PTI. It might make the third segment for 30 seconds when they do one of those buy or sell or like those gimmicks like that. But because it happens this week, it suddenly becomes the biggest sports story for two days. Are we just trained now where we just need content every day?

We're like a shark swimming around eating fish. And it's like, ah, there's no fish in here. I guess I'll just eat this license plate, you know, where, where you're just conditioned to eat every four hours. The fact that you, that you just spent three minutes talking about the periods of no content. Uh, and then the fact that you write a website would suggest to me that you have trained yourself that way. Yeah.

I don't know if I have. I think you are, the shark you're describing is the shark that you write a website would suggest to me that you have trained yourself that way. Yeah. I don't know if I have, I think you are, the shark you're describing is the shark that you are. I'm talking about the whole, the whole media machine, because this was like, this became the dominant story yesterday on all the ESPN shows. It was the dominant story on any sports website you went to.

It was lead topics on podcasts. People were arguing about this. It's a little compelling because it is something that people who don't follow sports have an opinion on, I have found. It's a situation where it's like you don't need any knowledge of basketball to sort of have a response to it. What was your response to it? If we're going to talk about it, let's just talk about it. What was your response to it? Well, the real reason is because it ties into sports parents, which is a juicy topic that everybody who has either had kids

or been to their niece or nephew's game or their cousin's game, we've witnessed sports parent behavior and we have opinions on it. So now you have the most famous active basketball player their nephew's game or their cousin's game, we've witnessed sports parent behavior and we have opinions on it. So now you have the most famous active basketball player whose son is a seemingly good prospect and he is acting like he's the guy's big brother and really seems to be getting a genuine kick out of everything that's going on to the point that he's becoming as big of a spectacle as the actual game. So some people

are like, what's he doing? That's not how parents should have to act. And then other people are like, this is great. LeBron's in a dunk line. What's wrong with that? What's wrong with LeBron dunking for a crowd just randomly because he's happy to be there? So it is one of those classic sports stories where you can pick a side, which is, I think, why it became a two-day story. Do you have a side? I think if anybody else acted that way, they would be mocked on the internet for five days, but it's LeBron James and the rules are just different for him. So, you know, it's exciting to have the guy there. I went to, my daughter played a game last year when the game before it was LeBron's younger son was playing. So LeBron was there. And when he's in the gym, it's like, you know, it's a thing you can, everyone's talking

about, everybody's feeling it. It's impossible not to concentrate on the fact that LeBron James is there. He's six foot nine. He stands out. Here's what I would say on it, I guess. Okay. I, I, it might as complicated too, cause it's going to seem like I'm kind of hedging, but this is kind of my response. One thing I do think is, is you know it is pretty interesting that who would have been the model or the example of an nba dad in the 90s sean kemp you know the idea that like nba players were literally the worst dad that they just went from city to city siring children and then having no relationship i mean even like i mean, for me, it's the hardest thing about Larry Bird. I hate the fact that he just has no relationship with his daughter who looks just like him

and worships him. And he has no, I mean, maybe he does now, but for a long time he didn't. Okay. So in that sense, it's like, well, LeBron is not like that, right? LeBron seems like a pretty good dad. I also will say that I understand and empathize with the fact that literally nothing is more exciting than watching your kid succeed at something. It is the best feeling I have ever had, I think. Like my little guy is in Taekwondo and when he does, he's really good at memorizing stuff. And I just, I love, I love watching it.

I can't think of many things that make me happier. But here's the thing. I would say this. It's like, I feel that way when I see him, but I don't think you want to ever make the event kind of about your enjoyment of it or have the interest in the event sort of swing to you. And LeBron is very smart.

He knows who he is. He knows that he does this. This is going to happen. Like, you know, and he will just, he would argue, I'm sure he's like, I'm just excited. I'm not telling people to film me. I'm not signing a contract or that, but he has to know that like he is, you say like the most famous basketball player, I would say the most famous athlete in America.

And if he does this, you know, if he dunks in the layup line, of course, in a world where everyone has a phone, that's going to become a story. Now for the other kids playing, I'm sure it's awesome. I bet they're like, LeBron James is at this game. It's like I'm playing and he's there. And several million people might catch a glimpse of me getting dunked on by his kid or whatever. It'd be kind of exciting.

But there may be a point later in their life when they're like, it's kind of odd that that happened that like my experience as a youth basketball player ended up mostly being a platform for somebody who's already super famous and super successful and and i don't know i My thing is I just like, I always wish athletes were more like Robert Parrish. I don't like people displaying emotion in public. It seems performative to me. Right. I'm really happy that LeBron loves his kid, and I hope his kid, I hope they play together in the NBA.

I think that would be amazing. That's something that could happen in baseball. It's never possible that it could happen in pro basketball. So I'm not criticizing him. I like LeBron, but I wouldn't do that. I mean, there'd be a lot of things different about my life to be in that position, but I don't know. It just, it is a little odd. Well, I just want you to know that if you did that, it would also get a ton of YouTube views.

I do think people would be blown away. Chuck Klosterman, dunking in the layup line, doing taekwondo and the constructor or whatever's going on. Um, I do see, the thing for me is, and I think LeBron is a good kind of case study for this topic. Because I was reading G. Tolentino's new book, which I don't even know if it's out yet. But the first chapter- Yeah, they sent it to me. I haven't opened it yet, but they sent me a copy.

Yeah. I bet it's going to be good. She's real talented. Yeah, she's great. I think if Grantland had been around a little longer, she would have been our next hire. We, we loved her, but, um, we, this first chapter is about basically how she grew up in the age of the internet and then how the internet kind of changed over this decade. I don't want to step on it and you know, I want people to read the book cause it's good, but she has this whole thing in there about

performative, the performative personality of somebody versus their actual personality and how the internet started to merge that, you know, because by the time we get to 2019, I was, I was thinking about it last night. I was watching Raphael Devers is up. My favorite Red Sox player base is loaded. He's three for four. He's on this three-month tear unlike anything I've seen with a young Red Sox player really since Fred Lynn. And it's this really big moment. They're down a run. They have to beat Tampa. And the pitcher on the raise is taking forever between each pitch. He's taking 40 seconds, 45 seconds. So it's just a lot of like nothing happening. And I was looking in the background behind Devers

and all these people are standing watching the at-bat, but they're all videotaping it with their iPhone. All of them. And it's like this whole basically stands of people that are all standing up taping the at-bat that's also on television. And I just think that's what's happened with everything we do now where they tape that at-bat, they put it on Instagram. By the way, I've done this too.

And it's kind of like you're performing your own life. You're a version of yourself. The performance you're putting out there, whether it's on Instagram or Twitter, you have a podcast you're writing, that's your performative profile, basically. So when LeBron's doing this sports parent thing, he's performing the role of a sports parent to some degree, I would think. My question is, would he do that if he didn't know people were going to videotape it? I have no idea. Well, I mean, even a more complicated question is,

does LeBron believe he can go out in public and not be videotaped? How often does it happen that he is in public and someone is not taking his picture? Right. So when he's doing the dunk line lane thing, which by the way, I approve again, I'm,

I'm pro LeBron James and all dunk lines. Um, but he knows how it's going to go real high on that for a second. I was like, are they playing on an eight and a half foot basket or something? I wonder if not playing in the playoffs is going to give LeBron just like two extra months of rest. He's going to come back and just rip the league apart.

But anyways, back to your point. Yeah, no, you're right. He hasn't, he played 55 games since. Never happened in like 12 years to him. Yeah. Mid June, 2018, all the way through today, which is now, you know, 15 months later, he's only played 55 games. So now I hear he might play point guard. So I'm like,

is he, is he, despite his age, is he the number one pick in a fantasy league? If he plays point, right. He might be, I don't think he'll end up playing point. I think he's too old, but, um, I don't know, but back to the basic question of the sports parenting thing, what you said before about how the most exciting, probably the happiest thing you've seen in your life was when your son was succeeding at something, in sports-wise and watching him compete and just how thrilling that is. I think that's why I do think this really is genuine.

I think he loves the fact that his son's good at basketball and he gets to be a fan. I think he can't contain himself. I don't question his enthusiasm. There's another clip of him talking to be a fan. I think he can't contain himself. I don't question his enthusiasm. There's another clip of him talking to his kid. Once you've probably seen it, it's like the kid has missed a shot and lost the game. And he's like,

actually you made these three key plays. You hit the one guy on the outlet path that got that layup, you shut the kid down in the corner. And he's like, he made that skip out. It's like he, you know, he,

it, it, it's not as though you know i i have a feeling that their relationship you say like he seems like his big brother well i mean what is the trajectory of parenting every generation of parents is closer to their child emotionally and also like interest wise and all of those things. And the previous generation always says like, you know, you're not supposed to be your kid's friend.

You're supposed to be your kid's parent. And yet you can go back generations upon generations. Everyone is closer to their kid than they were to their dad. And their dad was to their grandpa. Like it's just, that's how it works, you know? Yeah. Well, the other thing I would say, he's not that much older than his kid. So he really is in some ways he kind of is that in that big brother range,

LeBron's 35 and his son is 14. So, you know, like I'm my daughter's 14 and I'm 49. So I feel like more like, more like the, the old way older person, but he really is more of a contemporary. They probably listened to the same music. My dad was like, my dad's only 21 years older than I am. And we were always like really close like that. So, um, but the one thing I would say with LeBron, when he was at that basketball game, when my daughter was playing the next game, his son's game ended and then we had warmups for my

daughter's game. And, you know, it was like 10 minutes and LeBron came back out cause his team, I guess they were talking to, uh, the team or whatever, packing up, getting ready. And LeBron came out and watched the first quarter of my daughter's game. And there was no reason for it other than he just likes basketball. He was in a gym and there was a basketball bouncing and he just kind of was like, I just love basketball, I'm going to watch this.

He's watching an eighth grade basketball game, girls, that he does not know. And was just like, I'm just going to watch this. So I really just think he genuinely loves basketball. You were there sitting like with the guy from the game of thrones and like judge Nelson was probably there and you're sitting around and you're like, Oh look, there's LeBron.

Paul Lind. Paul Lind was there from all the squares. Your very normal life where LeBron watches your daughter play basketball. It's a normal thing. We can all relate to it. Everyone listening to this podcast is like, it is weird when LeBron comes to them.

Listen, this is the shit that happens when you're in LA, but I was so proud of my daughter's team. I thought they would just throw every ball out of bounds and just be completely nervous. Did she step it up?

Did she really be like LeBron? No, she came in after. I was like, did you see how well I played because LeBron? No, she came in after. I was like, did you see how well I played because LeBron was watching? I was like, all right, settle down. But yeah, I think his love for basketball has always been really genuine from day one. And I think Zion, what I've seen from him so far, I feel like is very similar in that respect, where you have these guys who are phenomenal athletes, but who also seem like they just genuinely like the sport.

And they just like playing and being around a gym and just being in the mix. And I think those are the guys that end up usually making it in the biggest possible way. I saw footage of Zion throwing a football around the Drew Brees. He was throwing a pretty around the blue breeze. He was throwing a pretty good spiral. I was looking at it on my phone, so I couldn't see that tight, but it looked okay. Oh, yeah. His hand must have just wrapped.

You act like I didn't study that one. Yeah. To me, watching guys like Zion play another sport, I would just watch hours and hours of that. Like Zion playing hockey, Zion playing baseball, whatever. Hold on. Let's take another sport. I would just watch hours and hours of that. Like Zion playing hockey, Zion playing baseball, whatever. Hold on, let's take another break. Hey, Shady Rays is not some big corporation that overcharges for shades. They're an independent sunglasses company that's out to do it differently.

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of deal. Two pairs for just $45 only at ShadyRays.com with code BS. Back to Jeff. All right. So I have not seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood yet. I'm actually seeing it tonight, but I have been really, really into the Manson family revival of just like a new generation of people finding out about that story and how fucking crazy it was. And, you know, I think all of us in our general age range went through, you know, you would have your Watergate week, you would have your Manson family week where you just like kind of deep dive different topics that had been around for a little while. And you would just kind of be like, wow, what's this? And either watch or read everything about it, Manson family and the Helter Skelter book and the two-part movie with Steve Rilsback. Like I was in on all this stuff. Now we have this

new book comes out that takes all this stuff that I had already thought about, digested, and accepted in my head that Charles Manson was this crazy cult leader who had this band of women that he would have sex with and who were just completely loyal and faithful to him. And he decided he would start this helter-skelter war between whites and blacks. And then they would recede into their ranch after it started, wait for everyone to kill each other, and then emerge as the new leaders of this whole revolution. It was the single craziest heat check theory I think anyone's ever had and awful for 19 different reasons. But this was actually what carried the day in court. Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor,

convinced the jury that this was Manson's plan. And it seemed like the evidence was there, that this actually really was the plan. And now 20 years later, this book comes out and this guy who spent way too much time and basically his life fell apart as he researched it and reported it and hit dead ends and all this stuff. And then ends up releasing the book and has now turned that history on its ear. I know you care about this. There's no way you don't.

What are your thoughts? Well, okay. First of all, I haven't read the book yet. Okay, I haven't read this new book. Okay, I'll save it. Okay. The idea that Manson did not really mastermind, like, the Leigh Bianca murders and all that, that that it was a speed deal that went wrong or whatever and the whole idea of this this of you know manson listening to the white album thinking helter skelter was a description of this coming race war um that really was entered into the conversation by buliosi that was sort of his thing i mean he wrote the book Helter Skelter. So is it possible that these murders actually played out very differently than sort of our historical record and that, you know, they were closer to just like bad hippies and not really murderers. I don't know, possibly. I will say this, though. If the book, as you say, indicates that Manson was actually a CIA operative, there is a lot of evidence to contradict that, particularly his whole life growing up.

I mean, there was a very good book about Manson that came out five years ago. I think it's just called Manson, that really does a pretty granule investigation of his early life. And there's absolutely no way that the CIA would target this person to be their operative. I don't even know what the, to understand the counterculture

they were using him. And then in order to make sure the cover works, they put him in jail for the rest of his life. And he's like, sure, I'll do it. Obviously, he was in a cult. Obviously, Squeaky Fromm and Susan Atkins and all these people had carved X's in their heads with knives to show their support for him. He was obviously leading this cult.

So I'll probably read this book, but it's going to have to be pretty persuasive to persuade. The writer is Tom O'Neill. He gave an interview at the New York Times a couple of days ago, and he said, they asked him, why is the CIA referenced in the book title? And he said, it may sound like a crazy conspiracy theory. That's how he starts.

But I discovered a lot of evidence that right after Manson was released from prison in 67, he was spending a lot of time in the same medical clinic in San Francisco where it's been documented that a CIA employee was recruiting subjects for studies of LSD and its ability to influence behavior. Coincidentally or not, Manson suddenly transformed from a harmless little ex-con who nobody ever gave a second glance to an all-powerful guru surrounded by a harem of women who would do anything he asked, including kill complete strangers. So the Times says, okay, Manson has a Manchurian candidate. That's pretty crazy. So this guy responds, well, it's a documented fact.

The CIA had a program called Chaos, and the FBI had one called COINTELPRO, the object it's a documented fact. The CIA had a program called chaos and the FBI had one called COINTELPRO, the object of both at the time, secret operations, destabilize the left-wing movement, make hippies appear dangerous. And if this was a government operation, boy, did they succeed. Do you believe this now more or less after I read that? Well, I mean, okay. He's right about one thing. If this was the plan, it worked. It's the one time the CIA did something that succeeded. They could not kill Castro. They considered trying to poison his mustache.

But if this is the one that worked, it worked very well. I'm sure, I mean, everyone kind of knows now the CIA was giving people LSD to see what would happen and see if it could be used to create super soldiers or to true therm, all that stuff. But at the same time, there are many, many, many people who have taken LSD and had a big trip and then became themselves again. Right. There are many more of that than there are people who become...

Also, in 1969 in LA, it's not like... LSD was very, very accessible. You don't need the CIA to give it to you. You could get it. About the Tarantino movie, I'm not going to give anything away because you haven't seen it yet, but I will say this. There's one, there's a lot of interesting things about it. I really liked it.

But it has been a very long time since someone made any kind of art that was this anti-hippie. Because that has really fallen out of favor, especially among young people. I mean,

you talk to young people about the late sixties, it's pretty clear who they think the heroes were. Yeah. And it is really surprising to see like, like it's almost like a mad magazine from the seventies. Like it's like, they hate, like they hate hippie so much.

It's movie. It, it was jarring might be too strong of a word, but I was surprised by it. Like, I did not, I mean, granted, the hippies that they're using are the worst hippies that ever lived.

I mean, unless this guy, this book upends this, but I mean, you know, but they sort of, you know, like Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio are people who are like, we're of the 50s.

This is how we think of hippies. And that's it. Yeah. I'm surprised. This is the 50th anniversary of just a lot of stuff. Summer of 69, I think, was one of the most iconic summers that we've had. And I'm surprised that Manson had a bigger shelf life with the whole nostalgia crowd this summer than Woodstock did. I really expected Woodstock, the 50th anniversary and all that stuff, to be this. But it's interesting, Woodstock 99, which Quint still, they were doing a podcast about for Luminary right now, but it seems like Woodstock 99, just because it was closer in time, it was only 20 years ago, is more interesting to somebody who's under 30 than Woodstock in 1969 and all these bands are.

And I wonder if that era is now kind of dying off. Well, part of it has to do also with Charlie Manson never disappeared from the culture. Like he was a very prominent culture in the 80s when the relationship between heavy metal and Satan was common. Axl Rose covers the Charlie Manson song on their punk covers record. It's like the secret track of Look at Your Game Girl. It's actually kind of a pretty good song, to be honest, to say that now, because Charlie Manson wrote it. There was a release of the music he had recorded in prison i think i got this in like 1995 or 1996 like he was on the cover of spin magazine once like like manson has always been uh like a figure

in culture because he seemed to sort of obviously embody a lot of the qualities that are incorrectly applied to countercultural activity yeah but he actually sort of embodied in a lot of ways like the worst nightmare people would make up about rock music or whatever whereas woodstock you know that music uh like you know Crosby, Stills and Nash and stuff like that like that was that was just kind of gone from like the middle 80s well into the 90s you hear it a little bit more I think it's kind of being re-appreciated now but there was like a lot of the artists who performed at the original Woodstock. That was,

it was not like nobody was listening to the Woodstock soundtrack in the early nineties. That was not like an artifact people cared about. Yeah. I will. So my son started playing bass about two months ago and is really into it. And a lot of the songs that he likes are these classic rock songs. And I, there's just songs i haven't thought

about bands i haven't thought about in years because why would you but like he's playing sunshine of your life by cream and that's a hard song to play jack bruce is a real good bass player yeah yeah he can play that well he likes that he likes uh there's a few of them but it's just funny that like when I was growing up we had so we're talking like 81, 82 and I started getting into music 1981, 1982

and we just didn't have a big library of music to kind of dive into right so classic rock had this incredible power and kind of 14 years of music, you know, like the Steve Miller greatest hits band that that's this, that album has just kind of disappeared at this point, but was one of the biggest albums of the eighties and an album that was on it every party I went to in high school.

But now I look at the kids. If you're, if you're like 14 now, like my daughter, and you're really getting into music, you have 50 plus years of music to draw from. It's kind of staggering. I don't even know where you'd begin. So you have stuff like the whole classic rock genre is just kind of gone because somebody like my son would have 30 plus years of hip hop to go through. He likes hip hop more than rock. So it was just kind of startling to me that we have enough music now to last for the rest of our lives, basically.

But when I was in 1983, I didn't feel like we had enough. I was always excited to discover a new album. Well, and also when you first get into music in 83, how old are you in 83? You're like 13 or something. Yeah, I was like 13, 14, yeah. You know, when I was getting into music in the 80s, bands like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin and Rush,

to me, seemed too old for me to be into. Like, I was into Motley Crue and Guns N' Roses and Poison and Tesla and all the bands that were happening then. Because when you're young, it doesn't take a lot for something to seem too old. Now, Black Sabbath doesn't seem any older now than they did when I was a kid in 1985 because time has changed with this. Like, and like the,

the ability to sort of control what we listen to is increased so much where it's like, you don't have to worry about like whether or not you're being exposed to this on the radio or records or whatever. well, and I also think, you know, also kids just list now because of, of,

of downloading music. I mean, as everyone has said, this is like, people won't really get into albums ever, ever. It would have been very weird for somebody having that experience in 1990 to only know two cream songs, because that would mean they consciously did not play the rest of the best of cream record. They got. Yeah, that's true. And I think queen is the best example of this.

Like my, my kids absolutely love queen and they love the movie, which is hilarious. I think they were probably the IQ level of, of the audience for that movie. But there's, you know, Queen, I would say had like five or six really, really iconic memorable songs. And that's all you really need to do. Queen was around for, I don't know when,

I can't remember when they started, but they were around for a solid decade. I, when I was in the moment. More than that. Yeah. Well, then Freddie did a couple of solo albums, all that stuff. But in the moment, I never considered them even remotely on par with somebody like Elton John. I just didn't. I just felt like they were a level below, two levels below Rolling Stones. Bohemian Rhapsody was obviously, you know, an all-timer. But it was just the body of work just wasn't there. And really the Live Aid performance in a weird way was kind of their apex mountain, to borrow a rewatchables term, where it was, they just blew everybody away on a day when like everybody was there. And now it's been funny to watch that evolve over the course of history where

now my son assumes that they were probably the biggest band of that era. They were bigger than the Rolling Stones, bigger. My son was like, dad, we were just, we just watched Bohemian Rhapsody this weekend. He's like, dad, when they played Live Aid, was that like the biggest thing ever? And I was like, no, it was actually a much bigger deal that Led Zeppelin was there. The Queen was a fucking afterthought.

What you're saying is kind of instructive. First of all, it's like Queen probably was the biggest band in the world in England because even like Robert Plant has a certain degree of like jealousy toward the amount of coverage that Queen would get because they were just seen as sort of more, I don't know, like a more polished, less, you know, even like a more polished or more like sort of, I don't know,

formal sort of thing. Wouldn't you say they were more liked than Beloved, like just appreciated in UK? Well, here's where I was, okay. So you say, when you describe Queen, you're like, so they Queen, you're like, so they had, you say like four or five kind of iconic songs.

And these are like, you know, how we understand Queen. What is interesting is that if you were a Queen fan in the seventies or the eighties, you would have never thought of them as a singles band. They were an album band. If you like, it would be um

pretty uncool for a queen fan in 1978 or 79 to say but he mean raps favorite queen song that would suggest he really wasn't a queen fan or if you are another one bites the dust that was that that was actually probably had a bigger spike in the moment than any of the other songs. But that was like, it was sort of seen as outside of what was good about the band. But now you're probably right. Now, for most people, Queen is a collection of five or six songs. And what that does prove is that pop music is more important than rock music. It just is. Like, rock music is cooler.

I obviously prefer it. But pop music is more important because it sort of transcends time. Like, when you think of the biggest pop artists of the 20th century, it's like Sinatra, Michael Jackson, you know, it's like these people, you know, Elvis, these people who are famous to people who have no relationship to the music, you know, because pop music means that popular music is popular. That's what people want is popular things. So Queen now, when you think of them historically, the average person, not somebody who thinks about rock music for a living, but like the average person, what they really think about is the pop extension of their rock catalog, the songs they made that were played on pop radio. One of the interesting things about the debate between rockist people and poptimists or whatever is they use all these kind of complicated arguments to explain why pop is so important.

All they really have to say is it affects the culture more. It doesn't matter what the reason is. It's just something in pop music is important because it's important to people who barely care. So, I mean, like, like the way your son used queen,

that's probably how queen will be thought about going forward. Yeah. Oh, I don't think it's even probably, but by the way, just for the record, I always thought Radio Gaga was a terrible song even in the 80s. I'll never

change my mind on that one. Not a fan. What do you think of One Vision? One Vision is used really well in the movie Iron Eagle. That is true. Well, I just don't feel... Here would be my case for Queen was a level below. Like Freddie Mercury released two solo albums in,

I think like 85 and 87. And, you know, I'm sure it was a pretty big deal in the UK, but it just really wasn't a big deal in America. Well, it wasn't. That Mr. Bad Guy record actually is great. Okay. And then the second record he made with a popular opera singer from Italy and America. Well, it wasn't that Mr. Bad Guy record actually is great. Okay. And then the second record he made with a popular opera singer from Italy and people kind of critically like that record more. I don't like it as much. Um, but your argument is that I just wanted to make sure that I stayed at this record. Good. So you're saying he made those solo records. They weren't huge.

Well, I, I, I think he didn't stand out in the mid-80s like about 10 to 13 other people because that was also you know you're talking about one of the most action-packed loaded eras we've had of just stars you know like you like springsteen and madonna and michael jackson like these are like all timers and they were all kind of peaking around the same time um but i just felt like the live aid thing the movie does one of the only good things that movie did was do a nice job of pointing out that they kind of needed that performance you know that especially they had broken up and they had lost momentum and they were kind of an

afterthought you know the right the movie has them not together for a period where they put a record out like it's like it's like it wasn't it wasn't like they came back together again for live aid it was like it was just sort of the most for whatever for a lot of reasons like the most memorable performance i mean like yeah zeppelin's performance at Live Aid was terrible. Black Sabbath wasn't that good. You know, there was a handful of people who performed and it was like a weird deal because it was like this short 20-minute set

in like the ultimate festival situation and they performed real well. See, my memory of Live Aid was it being pretty disappointing and the sets feeling like they weren't long enough. And the Zeppelin thing was such like a wah, wah. The hype for that versus what actually was delivered. I remember from a musical standpoint, I liked the Prince's Trust concerts more

because they would put the CDs of those out. And those had really good bands that were kind of on their way up. And those were good compilation albums that were kind of on their way up. And those were like good compilation albums. But I'm... Kind of a weird thing, you know. I didn't watch a lot of it. Oh, really?

It's so weird. You're a tiny bit younger than I am. Well, no, it wasn't age. It was on TV. But I was just like, Motley Crue's not playing. I'm out. Like, none of the bands

I wanted to see were playing. So I was like, I'm not watching. I don't want to see, you know, I don't know. I don't want to see any Lennox or whatever. I want to see, you know, LA Guns or whatever. So I didn't even watch it. I do think it's amazing, though, that if I had said to you two years ago, there's two movies coming out.

One is about the life of Elton John. And one is basically the life of Elton John, and one is basically the life of Queen, only the band is really heavily involved, and they're not going to go into any of the really interesting Freddie Mercury stuff. It's just going to be a hagiography. Which one do you think will do better? I think

Elton John would have been like a 10 to 1 favorite. Well, I mean, particularly if you include the word hagiography, I'd like probably going to be bad, but you know, people like hagiographies about people they like. That's kind of what, you know,

it's like, Hey, they, uh, like this Mr. Rogers movie is coming out. Like I have to say this comic movie, like if it's like gonna problematize Mr.

Rogers, I don't want to fucking see it. Like, I don't, I have no interest in seeing a movie that complicates the identity of Mr. Rogers. Like, you know, I mean, maybe it doesn't, I have no idea. I just seen the trailer. I saw, I saw the doc that I really liked.

I really liked the documentary and I just don't feel like I need to see the movie. Well, the thing is when you watch the documentary though, it does raise this question. It talks very little about his childhood. And his childhood sounds real interesting. But, like, it could be too interesting. Like, it could be too interesting in a way that's like, I don't want to be that interesting.

You know, so I was like, I don't want to know. Hold on. Let's take a quick break. Hey, you love to cook. You're not in the mood to do the dishes tonight. Well, watch your favorite show with your favorite people instead. Get it delivered with DoorDash. They connect you with your favorite restaurants

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I want to talk to you about something else that happened on this book tour. Since I'm kind of doing this to promote the release of raised in captivity, I thought I would mention this. Okay. So I'm doing an event in Boston. Um,

and, uh, like, like Tom Prada Prada is interviewing me on stage. So cool of him to do that. I'm actually doing with David Shields in Seattle. That's kind of exciting. I'm coming up next week.

Black planet. Yeah, exactly. any, have you seen his Marshawn Lynch film? It's pretty cool. No. But regardless, people are coming up asking lots of questions. And this guy asked me, what do you think

about the people who are going to storm Area 51? And I was like, what? And he's like, yeah, these people have gotten together on the internet that kind of made this decision that they're going to storm area 51, you know, in Roswell, New Mexico. And I was like, I don't know much. I don't know anything about this. I haven't heard about it. The guy goes back to his chair and I'm kind of just making jokes about it. And I'm like, you know, i wonder when is this going to happen and then a different

person in the audience yells out september 20th now there's a hundred people at this so now at least 150th of this audience knows about this uh you know and september 20th it's my anniversary but it's also going to be the day with all these people apparently are going to get together outside of maybe Las Vegas or something, supposedly go to Area 51 and just kind of they say like they can't stop all of us. see what they've been hiding. And the military now has basically said, well, if you attempt this, which I'm sure you're not, but if you do, we are going to shoot people. Like we're going to shoot people who try this. Now, maybe they're just trying to be threatening or whatever, but I get on, I mean, it's a military base. I'm just curious, what do you think about the idea of a whole bunch of people trying to get into Area 51? Well, as we head to the end of this decade, isn't it the logical conclusion to a really bizarre decade of people mobilizing with weird causes on the internet and then actually following through with weird proclamations. Like this is pizza gate, but like a more relatable pizza gate where we've all had,

we all have thought about area 51 and had takes on it and wondered about it. So now you have all these people who have just said, we're fucking going there and it might actually happen. Like my kids asked me about this a couple of days ago. They were like, what's going on? It's a much bigger deal. I couldn't believe that two people, at least, because I don't know how many people at this reading

stayed quiet after I sort of acted like, what in the hell is going on? Why are all the people here annoying? It is a, you know, it's a, for the longest time, you know, there was, you'd hear about an Air Force guy or something, saw something he couldn't explain. It's like, you hear this a lot. But prior to the early 90s, the assumption was always, well, it's probably Russian stuff, right? It's probably Russian military personnel.

That's probably what we're seeing, and it's kind of scary because who knows what they have. Well, then Russia falls, Soviet Union falls. We now know all about their technology. As it turns out, for the most part, they were ahead of us on some stuff, but mostly behind us and definitely like didn't have anti-gravitational drive or anything like that. So now, like even in the New York Times, you will see a story about, like, what information does the government have about extraterrestrial beings visiting Earth or whatever. Let's say you were

president, okay? You're President Bill Simmons. And you are briefed. And it was like, you know, in Area 51, there is a crashed spacecraft. And we did find the corpse of an alien. And we did dissect it. And we found all these things.

But the information you found is very troubling. Like, it is something that would definitely cause people to be very alarmed. Would you say continue suppressing it? Or would you feel as though, well, this does seem like something of a national interest. It must be told. So you've had how many presidents since this allegedly happened? Let's see. Well, at least like eight, nine, five, six, seven, eight, nine, nine or 10.

Yeah. I think, I think if I'm right. So if your theory is correct, which I enjoy the theory and I'm debating about whether I want to support it, I'm very close. All of those presidents would have come to the same conclusion that people can never know about this because they'll be really disturbed.

Now, we have a president in office now who doesn't care about stuff like that and probably wouldn't mind people being disturbed about something like this and would bring it up when he kind of needs something to deflect everybody from something else he doesn't want people talking about for two days. So I could see him, if it was that disturbing, I think he's the one who would kind of tell us about it,

which makes me think it's all smoke and mirrors and nothing actually happened. Well, I mean, so much time has passed, though. It may now just be like when the president asks, what's going on in Area 51? And they go like, oh, nothing may now just be like, when the president asks, what's going on in Area 51? And they go like, oh, nothing. You know, nothing. Yeah, they're lying to him about it.

We don't know what Area 51 is. Because it's kind of a curious thing. It's like, if you were president, like, would you be interested in saying getting more into reinvestigating the JFK assassination or Area 51 or anything? That would be one of your platforms.

This is one of the many reasons I can't be president, because I would take office and I would immediately try to find out the answers to eight things that have always bothered me. I'd be like, hey, just, just, can you just show me all the JFK stuff? Can you show me the stuff nobody's seen? The stuff that can't be released until 2025? Just can I have that at my desk by Monday? And just the actual video of the first five moon missions. I just want to look at it. Just give me a gander.

Someone check it out. I want to see the unedited. Not the director's cut. I'd want to see all that stuff, but that's why I can't be president. The real president should be trying to go through his agenda. We have the ability now to videotape everything immediately. So the whole thing with UFOs was it was always somebody

grabbed their camera at the last second and there was something up there and they were able to get like a terrible video camera footage of it. But now it's 2019. We live in a world where Raphael Devers is up at bat, bases loaded, and every person in the ballpark is videotaping it. Wouldn't you think like the number of available cameras, the number of times people are just shooting things with their camera, which I would say has increased by what a billion times what it was 25 years ago. Wouldn't the number of, of accidental UFO sightings have also increased proportionally? Wouldn't we be getting one like every six weeks?

They actually have, apparently. Like particularly within Russia and in Europe, it's much more common to have those dashboard cameras. Like a lot of people have dashboard cameras. And that seems to be where a lot of this is coming from. I mean, I think there has been an uptick in this i don't know if it is commensurate with the number of people who are now kind of randomly shooting things with their camera but um i i in general there does seem to be a more of a willingness for kind of credible military and political leaders to want to have this conversation. You know, because they've always sort of worked from this interesting premise.

You know, mathematically, it's almost a guarantee that life exists in the universe outside of us. I mean, like, the math demands that that be the case. If there aren't, that's the best argument for God possible, that this would somehow only have happened once in this one place. However, while conceding that the math says there must be aliens, the idea is like, well, but, you know, we'll never reach them. They'll never reach us. Space is infinite. So it's like, who knows what the distance is. It's kind of interesting to have both of those thoughts at the same time i mean if you accept that within infinity everything

that can happen will happen there's actually a lot of opportunity for life to exist in space so why why is it so unthinkable that there would be cultures who could travel at a much higher rate of speed than we can? Like, our understanding of science could be very primitive to some other world. I mean, these are all obvious thoughts that people have said a million times, but I would be surprised if in my lifetime contact is made with aliens, but I think there are other things that would surprise me more. I just looked over at Nephi Kyle,

and if there was a giant bowl right now that he could just smoke from, that monologue you just had, he was like, it was the only thing he was missing. He was like, yeah, he was really into it. I do think it's interesting how many people care about aliens versus how it's dispersed in popular culture. Because, you know, think about like there's that famous Will Smith story where he wanted to be the biggest star in the world.

And he looked at the box office and realized like five of the top nine movies were alien movies and was like, I just, I need to start making alien movies. And just that became a career directive. And it is true. If you look at the biggest movies of all time, it's basically aliens and superheroes. So people do care about this stuff. And we do have the technology that would be able to capture any weird event, but they always seem to be happening in Russia and these countries that aren't here. The area 51 thing,

it seems like people are now trying to force this to happen. They're for, they're forcing an alien encounter. They, they want to almost manufacture it themselves because they've been dissatisfied that they haven't had that they haven't been able to have it. So I don't know. That'd be my theory.

Well, it is a, it is an odd thing. When I was in college, I took a class on UFOs. We had a UFO class by a guy named John Seltzer. He was in the Indian Studies program. I guess it would be Native American Studies program now. He was a big guy involved with civil rights, like he used to make your Evers.

He did all these things. He was very big guy involved with civil rights, like he used to make your Evers, he did all these things. He was very, very political. But he also was very insistent that he had been contacted by aliens early in his life. And we had this, it was like a two-credit class, weirdly, in the Indian Studies program about UFOs. But, you know, so we talked about all the different kind of encounters. He always, I'll never forget this. Like, I forget so much stuff I learned in college, but I remember this. He was describing things that were different about him after the UFO contact.

Because his argument was that UFOs contact the most open-minded people. That they're good, they're not here to hurt us, they're slowly contacting the most open-minded people. That they're good, they're not here to hurt us, they're slowly contacting the most open-minded people, you know, to sort of come out of our society. So, he had three things that happened immediately

after he was contacted by these aliens. One was that he no longer had anxiety. He was completely at ease all the time. Wow. All anxiety he had ever had was gone. The second one was that he had never been able to grow a beard, but now he had to shave every day.

He could grow a beard in a week if he tried. He was like, he'd never been able to grow a beard. Now after the encounter, he can grow a beard. But the third one was always the strangest one. Prior to contact, he said he hated peas, but now was ravenous for

them. That any opportunity he had to eat peas, he would, although growing up he despised them. These are the three things that happen, apparently apparently if you get abducted by a ufo so it's almost like when somebody when your wife is pregnant and they have like a craving for boneless chicken wings or something he has a craving for the rest of his life but you know but then you know's come from pods, right?

So we often talk about UFOs being pod people, correct? So maybe the UFO sees the peas on earth is like the closest extension of who they are. And therefore they have some kind of kind of metaphysical connection with peace because they come from pods. And therefore if you meet these aliens and you exchange ideas and you exchange emotions, you will then want to consume, you know, the alien life force, which is the common pea. Amazing.

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that everybody gets excited about, and is that even possible anymore in 2019? And if it was possible, what would that candidate look like? Oh, I misunderstood. I thought you were saying, like, I'm looking at these candidates and, like, they all seem bad because I will, I got to say, I have been pleasantly surprised by the field of candidates. I mean, like, I don't know.

It's been a long time since I have liked a candidate as much as I like Pete Buttigieg. I just, I think he's a, I think he's a real thoughtful person and uh you know and and like even in the debate last night i mean there's another one now tonight but the one from tuesday when but warren sanders were talking about the idea of trade and how it's like if you give businesses the opportunity to to build a factory in vietnam to save five cents they're going to do it every time, so we almost have to create legislation to stop doing that. The other candidates were sort of like, well, that's antithetical to what trade is. It's like, you've got to be able to trade with

our allies. I thought it was, I've been, for the most part, maybe, I don't know, I just, I have kind of found a lot of these individuals more competent than I would have guessed. Yeah. So you're comparing them to years past, like even four years ago. You feel like competency is higher. I'd watched all the Republican debates when Trump was running, and these debates are so different. I mean, like, the people are so different, you know? I mean, you still get some stupid stuff.

You get, like, oh, people arguing over what's really patriotic. Like, is this patriotic or is this actually patriotic? It's like the difference between patriotism and nationalism is the magic. Being patriotic is stupid, okay? There's no reason to love a place more because you happen to have been born there. That's just going to be a rational sort of reaction. So don't try to build into your policy about, like, what's the most patriotic thing? Are human rights patriotic?

Is the economy patriotic? It's like, that's dumb. You still get some of that sometimes. But in general, I find sort of the discourse pretty good, like pretty interesting. Wow. Well, so going back to my, the question, do you think we'll ever have a candidate again that people remember, you know, fondly years later for whatever reason? It could be Republican or Democrat.

Cause I think, you know, I think Reagan is somebody that whether you want to pick apart how his eight years went and especially the last couple, I think was somebody that most people liked. And just for like, I liked that guy. And is that even possible to have anymore?

I mean, it's kind of true question. Is it possible to have a candidate that people in the, you know, in retrospect, we'll look back at fondly. Absolutely. I mean, look at the way people now perceive George W. Bush. You know that you can go back and read village voice from like 2003 or 2006. And the language they use to describe Bush is identical to the language now used to describe Trump is identical to the language now used to describe trump yeah search and replace bush and trump you would not know it okay there was a cover of the village voice where bush was a vampire biting the neck of the statue of liberty that was the cover

of the village voice but now it's like he's a painter and he's not so bad at it and he gives you know obama's wife a mentos at a state funeral and boy he sure seemed kind of reasonable and he could speak spanish and like that has already happened i think for the most part bill clinton being the odd example because of how culture has changed in terms of like sexual politics for the the most part, you know, anyone who wins the presidency as time passes tends to kind of be beloved. I mean, Jimmy Carter was one of the worst presidents of the 20th century in terms of how much success he had as a president, but he's had a great post-presidential career and people love him now. Now, if you're asking, could there be a candidate in the present tense who is below as he or she runs?

No way. I mean, partially because the system is set up against that. How could there be someone like Obama was a pretty popular president. I think his reputation is about as good as one could hope, having been, you know, away from that job for less than 10 years or whatever. But he was in no way a beloved candidate. I mean, there was, you know, he was criticized in the same degree anybody else is. So, like, I'm not sure. You look at somebody like, OK, Marianne Williamson. OK, she after the debate last night

which I had to kind of see on tape because I missed when it was live but I was looking at Twitter and judging from my Twitter feed she won the debate it's like if you use my Twitter feed as an example of the world, it's like Elizabeth Warren already president and now

Marianne Williamson is vice president or whatever so she seems there's like a cult of personality around her that people are just sort of charmed by her. And they're like, do I like her ironically or do I like her seriously? She, of course, is not a serious candidate, but I think that she is pretty close to being a widely liked candidate. Well, it's funny how as the years pass when somebody's not in the spotlight position that they are in, then we were, like the George W. Bush thing is a great example.

This happens with NBA players, right? This happens with, this could happen with Chris Weber. This could happen, it's happened with Vince Carter. This could happen with, weber. This could happen, it's happened with Vince Carter. This could happen with, we saw Kobe Bryant the last few years and how people just choose to remember

either what's happened lately or what their feelings were near the end of the career and they'll throw away all the other stuff. And then this alternate universe happens about how this player, how their career went versus what actually happened in the career. First of all, I commend you for always being able to bring it back.

I had to listen. I know who my base is, Chuck. It's sort of like, I know my base is. Well, I know, but it's a real interesting thing.

It's like your ability to see the world through the lens of basketball completely validates the success of your basketball book. That is how you understand life. I would think that the reason that you only had two kids instead of three, I would have thought it was your choice because you're like, we have three, we can only play zone.

I want to play math. Now you're getting carried away. I think basketball is the only sport where, and especially now, just because- Everything can be described. Well, it might be. Maybe that's the title of a book.

No, I think the personalities are so powerful that sometimes the career takes a different form. I don't know if this happens with other, like in baseball, you're just trapped by the stats, right? Whatever, whatever ends up being your legacy is, is the stats, not whatever, however everybody felt then versus now. And then football, you know, the careers are so short and, you know, Joe Montana was great. I don't feel any differently about that 30 years later, 25 years later than I did in the moment. But in basketball, for some reason, it can really shift. And the one person it hasn't shifted for,

for whatever reason, is Carmelo Anthony. There's like this real animosity to him that I think I find very bizarre. It is, but I mean, he's still going to try to play this year, right? I hope not. I think it's over but well you don't I mean I don't I've been watching him work out he was pretty good working out in the empty gym but uh uh I would think somebody would say well you know the thing that uh who was it I think it was Chauncey Billups it was Chauncey Billups. It was Chauncey Billups. He said something oddly candid about Carmelo Anthony,

which was like, he was just, he was too interested in getting 30 points. Yeah. And it's like, it's something everybody knows, but it was real surprising to hear teammates say that. Right.

Because I do feel like in a lot of ways, like they feel like the, like, you know, the, the, like the lock block is, is shut on my teammates. Like, I'm never going to say these things until like, we're really old

people. So that was pricing. I mean, but now, so let's say it is 10 years from now. Okay. So come on, I've been out of the league for 11 years or whatever. Yeah. I can certainly see whatever version of us who's currently in their 20s or whatever, you know, they're running their, I don't know if the podcast will exist or whatever it will be. And they'll say like, do you remember how everybody was just like, Carmelo's terrible. And then let's call up his numbers. Oh my God.

Look at this. Oh, he went all these. I could see that changing. Especially since. I think it that changing. Especially since... I think it'll happen sooner than 10 years. I think it'll be when he retires. I think there'll be an immediate shift and people will be like, hey, you know what?

Carmelo Anthony actually was really great. And it'll totally shift for him. But for some reason, because he's still trying to play, there's... I'm just amazed by how much shit he takes because you know they he came within two wins of making the finals in 09 and the 2013 knicks were really good i think he was the number two mvp pick one year wasn't like people make it seem out like he

was well but the you know overrated guys the analytics guys hate him and that's a bad group to have turn on you because you can't defend the guy. Like if the analytics people say like Carmelo is actually a fraction of as good as Tobias Harris or whatever the case may be. Any argument you use to sort of defend that, they'll just say like, well, you're not a rational person. You don't care about evidence. You just, all you care about is grit. What's weird about that is he has some good analytic years though. That's the thing. It's, that's why I feel like it's irrational.

You did make me think of something as you were talking about that. If, if we had had analytics like we do with sports for politicians and people were being like, look, Jimmy Carter's war was way higher than people realized in 78. He had incredible gear. He did this, this, that, and the other thing. Because it's, you know, the perception of how somebody did as a president.

Carter was, I thought, when I was really into this stuff, when I was a political science major in college, all that stuff, Carter was, I thought, the most riveting president to study after the fact because he was the one guy that went into that presidency with real ideals and tried to accomplish them and just got demolished. And it's a really good case study for everybody that came before and after. But I'm sure there's some version of politics advanced metrics that could be, that could make a case that he was a better president than we thought.

Well, you know, I actually, I would say that there probably would be a version of that and it was bad because the thing is analytics only seem to work in sports. They don't even work that well in politics in terms of polling. They end up giving us this, they end up giving us like a specific sense of something that we already sort of agreed on our own. Like sports has the most steps.

Yeah. But at the same time you see these things like, let's try to do, let's try to use analytics for the Oscars or like, let's try to use analytics to like understand like, Oh, I don't know what's the, uh, like what's the best way to do anything that is not that measurable that we don't have numbers. Yeah. You know, so like, okay.

So Carter one time went on television and it was kind of during the, like the oil crisis. And he like looked into the camera and he was like, everyone should wear a sweater, turn your thermostat down, wear a sweater. It was kind of during the oil crisis, and he looked into the camera, and he was like, everyone should wear a sweater. Turn your thermostat down and wear a sweater. Right. Okay. So now that is an attempt to sort of humanize a real issue, but it did not come across well.

So it's like, how do you somehow quantify the fact that when Nixon talks about his dog, people love it. And when Carter talks about his sweater, people think it's crazy. Or like when Carter says, I was on a boat and I got attacked by a giant swimming rabbit. OK, like I bet that did happen to him. Why would he make that up? But people are like the president was attacked by a giant swimming rabbit. What's that like? He's not very presidential or whatever.

Like, you know, I don't think there's a way to measure the things that we actually use to understand these people. Like, there's no analytics that would describe why Williamson did well on the debate last night. It would be funny if there's... You know how like with basketball or baseball, they're able to put whatever was going on in the era

and then adjust the stats that way? So like in basketball, they have like the pace of possession and baseball, they can do it. It'd be funny if you could do that with politics and be like, well, actually Carter, if you look at the late seventies, like, yeah, the, the oil and Iran and you had, you had a ton of cocaine, like he had a lot of obstacles. So we got to factor that into his pace of possession presidency

versus Reagan comes in the 80s. Everybody's happier. Yeah. The Malay speech was the other thing that killed him. That was the death note. To have a president just stare in your TV and just be like, you guys suck. We got to do better.

People are like, no. No, this can't, no, you need to go. Yeah. You cannot do that. You cannot tell, you cannot be honest with people if the honesty means that like there's something sort of wrong with you inherently. Right. I mean, the hostage, the hostage situation was bad because it made him seem real powerless. And then the attempt to rescue them failed.

So then it was like, you better not try again. Then the fact that they released the hostages on the day Reagan is being inaugurated, which was the same day as the Eagles and the Raiders played in the Super Bowl. So there was all this stuff going on. And it like the fact that, that it, it happened at the same time. It just, it almost made it seem like Iran was basically saying like, we waited for him. Well, they did. Like we waited for him to be president, to release him just so, you know, it made him seem like an impotent figure. Uh, even though he really did all the work to get them released. I mean, Carter was working like 20 hours a day up until their release. Yeah. Tough one. Jimmy Carter, poor guy. Um, all right. So what, what are your book tour stops

on August 6th? Next Tuesday, I'm in Portland. Then on the eighth, um, I'm in Seattle. And then the following Monday, which I think is 12th, I'm outside. I'm in like Parma, Ohio, which is Cleveland, Ohio. Those are the last three ones. Yeah. Did you, when you were on the last time you hadn't seen Chernobyl yet? I have seen it now. And it was everything I told you it was going to be, wasn't it? It was very good. I mean, I'll say this. I've never watched a dramatic series like a non-documentary where I learned so much stuff. As it turns out, I did not know how a nuclear reactor works. Right. I had no idea whatsoever. I will say that somebody is listening to this and they're like, oh, man, I've got the time for that. If you watch the first episode and the last episode,

you get almost everything. Yeah. I mean, it's helpful to watch the whole thing, but there's like a lot of exposition, particularly in the last episode in the courtroom that really explains a lot. I mean, you'll miss like the personal relationships or whatever, but it was very good.

Nefi Kyle, did Nefi Kyle, did, but it was very good. You know, did Nefica, did you watch it? I watched the first episode. That was it. Nefica was one and done. I'm not out, but I just watched it. And that's tough. It's tough to regain the momentum. I felt one criticism of it that I thought was real interesting. Somebody said that because they used all British actors, um, it really sort of skewed the way it was told because they say that depressed British

people are very different than depressed Russian people. And that the way Russian people express depression is very different than the way British do, British people do. That's kind of, you know, that's kind of an interesting idea. I never know what accent somebody should have in a show like that. I don't know. What are they going to do, like a Russian accent? Yeah. British seems like neutral. Why in fantasy?

Why do most fantasies involve people speaking vaguely British? I mean, granted, they had kings and catapults and stuff, but Game of Thrones is not in England. But everyone's kind of British. That's a great point. I love Chernobyl. The last thing and then we'll go is just, are you watching Loudest Voice or no?

What is it? Oh, it would be the most Closter Mini show of the year if Chernobyl hadn't come out. It's Russell Crowe playing Roger Ailes. Oh, yeah. You know, I forgot. I didn't know what it was titled. I saw the trailer for it. I'll probably watch that. I'll probably watch that. I would say it's in your wheelhouse way more than you realize it is

because it's really a history of Fox News and how they put that channel together and the mindset behind it and how that channel evolved through the era. But also a ton of Me Too stuff going on. And it's way better than I thought. I've been watching this show years and years. Yeah. And I have really enjoyed that. It's kind of melodramatic.

Some of the storylines are crazy but like for people who are kind of interested in like a dystopia that's around the corner it's very well done in that regard a lot of action in terms of news yeah and we both watched that documentary that should have been one part and it ended up being two i love you now die which i i found i found has been a really interesting reflection on somebody's relationship, whether they think the girl was guilty or not or what should have happened to her.

It can end up turning into an argument between a couple because some people think, yeah, put her in jail. Other people think actually she, she shouldn't have been convicted. And then there's the third party, which is the correct answer, which is my answer, which is guilty by insanity. I don't know what happened to guilty by insanity, but she seemed like that should have been the verdict. Well, okay. For people who don't know what we're talking about, there's a documentary about a case that I think happened pretty recently, 2015 where a girl had a relationship with a guy. I mean,

I guess they were boyfriend and girlfriend. They'd only seen each other five times in two years, but they texted constantly and then he was suicidal and she supposedly convinced him to commit suicide. You know, it was the two part documentary. And it's like you watch the first part and it's like, she's obviously guilty. Then you watch the second part. It's like, oh, maybe she's innocent.

It was like it really wasn't very instructive about what really happened. Also, she doesn't talk in this documentary. Right. And I guess it's, you know, I can understand why. And like, this is probably kind of an arrogant thing to say, but I feel like if I talked to her for 20 minutes,

I'd know if she was guilty or not. I think it would be real telling what she's like as a person, you know? Yeah. The guilty by insanity is odd because what you're kind of arguing in a way is that being in high school makes you insane.

That a normal high school kid is kind of insane by adult standards. And that might be true. I don't know. I thought her behavior was way past the normal level of behavior. And they had a lot of stuff in there that, you know, she's pretty off the rails and their relationship was off the rails. And, and the poor Kato ended up killing himself. He, he was, he had a lot of stuff going on and it was just like a toxic match.

And I don't know. I have found that as I talk, when I talk to people about it, I am surprised by how many women I've talked to who felt a lot of empathy for her. And said, like, that that's not so far removed from the experience of being like a female in high school or whatever, that the way that, you know, the importance of your friendships and and also like the idea of seeing things on television and sort of adopting it as your own narrative. Like I didn't feel that way in high school, but I've been surprised by how many people I've talked to have expressed that. Well, she was basically convinced she was one of the characters from Glee.

To me, that's like the insanity defense. We've been really helped with that information. But no, I don't think she was convinced she was a character from Glee. I think she longed to have the light that she saw on a television show. And yes,

that when a person is an adult, that's weird. When they're 14, I don't know. i don't know i don't know what you like i you have a better sense that you have a daughter maybe like you know did your daughter watch it that would be interesting i uh i could have her i i wish it was an hour shorter but um yeah i'd actually that's not a bad idea it's pretty it's it's disturbing but not like super disturbing. I really want Nefica to watch it.

I'm interested. Oh, I saw it. You saw it? I had a long talk with the girlfriend about it. Oh, did you disagree on whether she was guilty or not? Yeah, yeah. We kind of met in the middle. Yeah, see, this is the thing about this documentary is I haven't heard of a couple yet who agree

completely on what they think the verdict should have been. It's a good litmus test. Because you know what the thing is? It is a new problem. Yeah. It's not as though there's some version of that that happened when we were in high school. There is none. There is no version prior to this period of time

where people who have only seen each other five times in two years could have that intimate of a relationship. Right. If they wrote a letter every day, which people used to do when their boyfriend was in the Army or whatever, it's not like continual texting. It's just not like that, you know? And I kind of, I'm pretty mixed about it. Like, in some ways, I feel that just having this happen to her is almost

enough of a penalty. I mean, she was in jail for what, like a year and a half as this thing was going along. And it seemed like, and then they let her out. They did the time serve thing. And then the family rightfully was like,

what the fuck? And then she ended up going back in. But yeah, I mean, she had, she had no, like up going back in. Yeah, I mean, she had no teenage experience, really. I mean, you know, it's like the memory of her adolescence is going to be

completely negative. I guess that almost seems like enough to me. Well, it wasn't a feel-good documentary. But what is feel-good is Chuck Costman's book tour. It's still going right now. Raised in Captivity. Chuck, a pleasure-good documentary. But what is feel-good is Chuck Costman's book tour. Still going right now. Raised in captivity. Chuck, a pleasure.

As always, look forward to doing this again soon. Thank you very much. Thanks to Chuck. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. Don't forget to go to ziprecruiter.com slash BS.

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Wow. Head to voodoo.com slash Bill Simmons to sign up and start watching today. Voodoo.com slash Bill Simmons. That's the last podcast on this feed for this week. Rewatchables with the Town coming on Friday on the Rewatchables feed. And shout out to Nephew Kyle. Until the next one. I don't have feelings with him On the wayside

On the wayside I don't have feelings with him