The Bill Simmons Podcast - Ep. 46: Chuck Klosterman

Episode Date: January 6, 2016

HBO's Bill Simmons catches up with Chuck Klosterman to discuss rabid Boston fans, Peyton Manning (7:00 mark), HGH & career preservation (14:00), PED policies and MLB's steroid era (21:00), Curry's impact (28:00), Chuck's Star Wars theory (35:00), the NCAA blowing its New Year's Eve plan (44:00), Chip Kelly(48:00), Taylor Swift (58:00) and 'Making of a Murderer' vs Fox's OJ mini-series (1:10:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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home. Go to SimpliSafeBuild.com and save $100 on my security pick. Let's do it. I don't remember if we had intro music the last time Chuck Klosterman was on, did we? We did not because I was trying to get out what the music was and you were caging me. Yeah. So since the last time you were on, you lost the entire state of Massachusetts. They won't be voting for you in the 2016 election. It looks like you've lost that demographic. Maybe all of New England.

Well, you know, whenever they have, like, online polls, like, do you believe the Patriots or whatever, it really is only the state of Massachusetts that believes them. It'll be like 49 against 1. So I don't know if I've got to worry about New Hampshire. Everyone in New Hampshire is so me't know you know if i got to worry about new hampshire everyone new hampshire's so mellow you know i think new hampshire man but i think rhode island probably is against you too and maybe parts of connecticut um you emailed me after so you wrote a piece about tom brady for gq that was a mix of opinion and feature and and basically you were doing this man of the year thing,

and the terms changed, and all of a sudden he wasn't nearly as forthcoming as you were led to believe he would be in such an interview, and it made you question how much he knew about stuff, and you just wrote what you thought. And Patriot fans did not handle it well. And it gave you a window into the psyche of Boston fans. So what did you learn?

Well, like I told you in that email, you know, Bill, I got to say, for most of your career, I would read what you write. And you would always sort of talk about how being a sports fan from Boston is just different. And I have to admit, and I'm admitting I was wrong about this, I always assumed that was kind of dumb and sort of kind of egocentric in a way almost. And I was like, well, the reason this succeeds is because a person in Omaha reads this and they're like, oh, actually, the way he feels is the way I feel. If he only knew, you know, Omaha is different in its own way

or, you know, Stillwater is different in its own way. But in the wake of this Tom Brady thing, I got to concede that I think you're right. Thank you. This is the craziest. Okay, first of all, let me say you can't judge an entire fan base by the most insane 1%. But the most insane 1% of these Patriots people, I've just never, you know, I have had, you know, I used to work in Akron, Ohio, and you'd hear stuff from, you know, Buckeye fans.

Or I'd write something, you know, rock criticism that would really kind of upset sort of like the left fringe of the alternative community. Or something about Scientology once. But no one, no group has ever sort of been like these Patriots fans. I find it real fascinating. I don't get it. I don't think it's a 1%.

I think it's like a 41 percent i i don't know how to explain it other than i think part of it is an east coast thing because i think philly has pieces of this too and i think new york does and it's just something about the east coast and sports and the fact that the weather sucks most of the time. And you grew up with multiple, multiple generations of people, you know, the Bruins go back to the twenties and the Red Sox go back to the early 1900s and the Celtics go back to 1947 and the Pats go to 1960. So you got, you know, everybody who lives in Massachusetts, their grandfather rooted for those teams. And most people in Massachusetts stay in Massachusetts. You know rooted for those teams. And most people in

Massachusetts stay in Massachusetts. You know, you, that, that's just, it's a very provincial place. People don't understand why people would ever leave because it's great there. And I, I didn't even understand why I wanted to leave, but I think you tie all this together. And then the, the, the whole DNA of that goes back to the 1700s with kicking out the british it's just a very us against them mentality and the deflate gate was the perfect story for that it brought into all of the it brought that dna into it and the persecution complex and the everyone's trying to get us and all that stuff in the best possible way. Because in this case, I really feel like the Patriot fans were right and they were justified.

And this was a smear campaign and this was a railroading and this was a misreported story and all these things. Well, I mean, what would the reality of this, I guess, we'll never fully know. I just I what I'm saying is that if it's, you's the 17th century DNA, I don't know about that. But the way some of these fans perceive Tom Brady, it's unbelievable to me. He's the second most popular Boston athlete ever, behind Bird. Yeah, but popularity is the wrong word to use. I mean, it's not like we really like this person. It's

almost like, how dare you ask this person a question he doesn't want to answer? Like, there's a religiosity to it, almost. You know,

it was definitely an intriguing experience. I'll say that. So it resurfaced with the Peyton Manning stuff and this story that happened, I guess, two weeks ago, Al Jazeera. And they do this whole PED show. That was actually pretty interesting for the most part um it was weird it was definitely i'm not sure i can't see 60 minutes running a show like that like they did and i can't see hbl running it but it was weird and they had hidden cameras and all this stuff and one of the things they latched on to was that

this clinic mailed peyton manning's wife HGH over and over again. And the source that they had was on a hidden camera. It comes out. He recants his whole story. The Geyer Institute says, no, no, this guy worked here in 2013, so the timeline doesn't match up. Al Jazeera then runs a video of them confirming that the guy actually worked there in 2011 when they were doing their fact checking on it.

So somebody's lying. Either the person lied to Al Jazeera when they said he worked there in 2011 or the guy or institute changed whatever happened. 2011, of course, was when Peyton Manning had all those neck surgeries and all those things. He has never refuted the fact that his wife got the HGH. I'm not sure he has to. He sort of suggested that he is offended that they would, that this company sort of usurped her right to privacy to receive this for medical reasons. And, you know, I don't know enough about how difficult it is to procure HGH for non-athletic purposes.

Yeah. You know, didn't – I feel like I remember back in the old days, like didn't like Jacoby – Dave Jacoby once say like his grandma has a big – Yeah, she had a big bottle of HGH. Yeah, so I guess the question becomes, because by saying he's offended that they ignored her privacy, he is conceding then that it came to their house. So then the question becomes, why would that be the means through which his wife wants this substance and would this be the most reasonable way to get it so um we've seen this situation before roger clemens's wife remember she there was a whole hgh angle with him my stepmother has been an OBGYN since the mid 80s. And I don't,

getting HGH after you've given birth a few months later, I don't ever remember her talking about that. I don't have any friends who had, I feel like I've had a lot of friends who've had babies. And if one of my friend's wives had a baby and then four months later they prescribed hgh to her i feel like that would come up in a dinner conversation like what your wife's on hgh like i've never heard of this now i'm not saying it didn't happen it just seems a little unorthodox

and then on top of it al jazeera is saying that she got all this h HGH during 2011, during the year Manning had all these neck surgeries. All of it kind of sets off the shit detector a little bit. And it's weird to me that the media let this story go after what we just saw happen with Brady and Deflategate. But I am biased because I'm a Patriot fan. So I'm like, well, why did they go after the Pats? But yet the media is letting this Manning story go completely so you're you're an objective observer is it because Al Jazeera doesn't have the same weight is it a bogus story what do you think is happening well a bunch of

things okay first of all it I do sense and now maybe you know things will change in the afternoon after we get done with this conversation but I sense this controversy is going to kind of dissipate. It already has. Jim Nantz said he wouldn't even talk about it. It's kind of disappearing. I think that the fact that it's from Al Jazeera, which is kind of a key moment in many ways for Al Jazeera as a news organization because there are many people in America, the Mike Ditka type people, who assume that they're just some kind of this radical sort of propaganda machine or whatever. They have no idea what it actually is. this story ends up just sort of disappearing into the air, evaporating, or if something happens that proves that it's patently false. I think that the idea of Al Jazeera being taken seriously in this country for things that actually matter will just be over.

However, if this story holds up and there's some proof of this, I think it might make a lot of people realize that this is just an international news organization that isn't necessarily something that we need to ignore, dismiss, or whatever. There is another aspect. I don't know how much of this plays into it, but the idea to me – now, I'm just talking talking from the perception of the public, but okay. The idea of someone taking a substance to heal and order to play again, while, of course, unethical because it goes outside of the rules of the game, seems less morally problematic than institutional cheating to win, which is what it appears or may have happened with the Patriots. So I think that when you look at a guy like Peyton Manning, if he did this, there is a certain part of maybe your subconscious or your gut or something that says, like, well, this is a reflection of his desire to play. Now, certainly someone listening to this would be like,

no one said this about Barry Bonds or Mark McGuire. And that's true. I guess it has to do a lot of times with the personality. Peyton Manning seems like a good person. I'm not saying he is necessarily. The public perception is he's a good person. I'm not saying he is necessarily. The public perception is he's a good guy. Yeah, and he seems also like sort of a pretty genuine person. And, you know, the little details that surround his career,

I was reading how, you know, apparently he memorized the Colt playbook during the first week of training camp as a rookie. And that one time, many years later in his career, someone asked about a specific play from Tennessee, and he could basically even say, like, the timing that was required and all these things. So there's the idea that he's like kind of this brilliant person and his body is failing. And somehow we want this brilliant mind. I guess I do want this sort of brilliant mind to still exist in football. And somehow it's like, well, we would forgive this.

I don't know. There's something about helping yourself as opposed to damaging an opponent that seems different. That might be part of it. So you're talking about career preservation. And by the way, I 100% agree with you. I don't care if Peyton Manning used HGH because I think if it's a choice between I have to get back on the field or on the court

or wherever I'm trying to get back to as an athlete, and this is the best way to help myself, and it's a recovery thing, whether it's him, it's wesley matthews coming back from an achilles or adrian peterson coming back from a blown out knee or uh i don't know about a million other examples if colby bryant if his knees messed up or when he blew out his achilles if they're just trying to get back on the court and preserve whatever's left of their prime or their post-prime, whatever salary they can make, and this is the best way for them to recover,

I'm fine with it. When I'm not fine with it is when it's mixed martial arts or boxing or football, where you have somebody, these juiced up guys, and they're coming back from torn triceps or whatever, and half the time it takes to come back. And then they're knocking guys out in the field. That to me seems a little different, right?

I mean, but look what you just did there. You mentioned a bunch of people by name essentially humanizing what they're trying to do. Yeah, I was just thinking of guys who had season ending injuries. But then you're not, you know, what people are you referring to in category B? I mean, it's a tough thing. I mean, you know, it's... All right, well, here's a good example. I mean, we've talked about this a bunch of times, but, like, okay, the fundamental thing that doesn't make sense about any of this is that you cannot use hgh to have an injury heal faster however you

can't fill it full of cortisone so you don't feel that it hurts right that's a part it's drugs that's that's that's an it's a it's some kind of intellectual obstacle that just exists um and and when we when i the way i just said it, I'm sure many people listening to this are going like, yeah, that is crazy. And yet, in practice, it does seem to be how people feel, that if it's a chemical that seems to sort of mysteriously, at least to a non-doctor, improve your condition, like, well, what does that do? How much is it really helping him? Whereas something that just removes pain, people relate to that because they've taken

aspirin or, you know, opiates or whatever at some point in their life and they know what that feels like. Yeah. It's just weird. Yeah. Well, in HGH, you know, I've talked about this before, but I thought about doing it for a column once because when I was playing pickup basketball after I've talked about this before, but I thought about doing it for a column once. Because when I was playing pickup basketball after I hit my early 40s, I was like, I wonder if I took HGH, how much would it help me?

And did some research. And it does seem like if you take HGH, if you have any cancer kind of lingering in your body or a tumor or anything, there's a chance that it could trigger whatever tumor is kind of lurking in the deep recesses of your cells to kind of come out. And that scared me. And who knows if I was just reading the wrong things in the internet, but I was like, ah, that doesn't sound worth it. But at the same time, let's say I took a crap load of painkillers and I took that, like what happened to Brett Favre? like I'm just popping Vicodin because my back hurts and now I'm addicted to Vicodin

that doesn't sound any better than whatever could happen with HGH and it just seems like we pick and choose what athletes can do and not do like if you take my blood out of my knee and you recycle the platelets and you inject it back in my knee,

that's fine. But if I took HGH, not fine. I think it seems like we're scarred from what happened in the seventies, what we, what you and I grew up with, with the Olympics, where you'd have these Eastern European countries and these women that, you know, looked like men and had armpit hair and the whole thing. And then it goes on through to the bonds era and you know, the residue of the football guys in the eighties, the La Lazo guys who used the steroids and died. But the reality is the drugs that they had back then were bad for you. And they're better at making the drugs now. And now it's like,

I don't know what to think anymore. But I, the one thing I do know is that for boxing and MMA and for football, for sports where you could hurt somebody else, it does seem like we have to police that more. Now Peyton Manning can't hurt anyone playing quarterback. So I don't know. I swear I'm fine with the HGH thing. I just didn't, whether he did it, whether he didn't do it, whatever.

I just thought it was interesting how the media covered this versus how they covered the flake gate. Well, I mean, but here's the other thing. I mean, he, you know, Peyton immediately comes out and he's like, I didn't do this. Probably going to sue, you know. So, okay, so he comes out and says this to, I don't know, I can't remember who, what, Pierre King. Lisa, Lisa Salters.

Maybe, yeah, multiple people. Lisa, I'm so upset. I'm so mad right now. I should be doing my throwing drills. I'm just so mad at this. he's good he handled it well well because the thing is once the guy comes out that's not true and i'm gonna sue well you know i there there is uh i mean he he there's no question over he's not avoiding this you know he doesn't seem to be avoiding this issue it happened four years ago I mean okay let's say let's say that you work for the NFL you're

employed by Roger Goodell oh god and and regardless of how you feel about this personally he says this hat you know we have to do something I mean do you what would you do would you investigate how far back can something be that it still warrants investigation? I mean, let's say this, you know, if this had been in this season, I understand the NFL would sort of have their hands tied. But what should they do, in your opinion, if they feel this is something that justifies a deeper look. Well, the Geyer Institute seems a little shaky. Did you read some of the stories about it? A little shaky.

I have not. Some of the things they're involved with. And I've always thought that when we have more performance-enhancing scandals, it's always going to happen the way it happened with that biogenesis clinic in Miami with A-Rod. It's, I don't think the leagues are put this way. I don't think the leagues are going to go out of their way to try to catch

their best players with PDs. Cause it's so damaging for the league. I mean, look at the NBA. Um, let's talk about all the, all the NBA stars who have been nailed for PDs or steroids. Oh wait, there's been none. It's been zero. If you believe what the testing is for the last whatever years,

no NBA star has ever used performance enhancing drugs. It's never happened. Does that mean that no NBA stars use performance enhancing drugs? I don't know. I mean, the more I read about this stuff, it seems like I can put a patch on my balls before game seven of the finals, get a testosterone boost, and it's gone within a couple days. And they're certainly not going out of their way to catch these people. They just started putting HDH in this year. The NBA, I think, tests drug tests four times a year and that's it and once you do your fourth test they you never hear from it again but um i mean i just it's

this inherent problem with sports being uh like an idiom that's supposed to be interesting eight-year-old or an 80-year-old right yeah so because So because we got eight year old kids who care about the NBA, care about Peyton Manning, you know, I feel that there is a responsibility from the league or the league sees a responsibility in both cases to be like, we test for this. We throw guys out for this. You can't do this. This is wrong. We have not felt that way.

Yeah. We don't feel that way. It was these sports. I don't think. But to the Pete, but to us who are just watching the game as adults and can sort of have a more, I guess, nuanced opinion about these things, the main thing that they're concerned about is making sure that we have the best possible product. So if it turns out that the NFL and the NBA and Major League Baseball are essentially claiming that they're testing everyone to really kind

of get this out of the league. And they're not. It's, I think, pretty easy to understand why that would happen, why you would do that. Because you can't, if you say that, like, we're just sort of opening the floodgates of this, we're not going to police any of this. That could, I could see a real damaging impact I could have on very young athletes who care about these guys in many ways the most. But if they actually did do it, and I mean, I, you know, I will say this, it doesn't seem to me like the interest in baseball went down substantially when all the home run

numbers, uh, you know, went to the floor or did it, am I wrong about this? I feel like it, it, it definitely hurt baseball in the,

in the sense that the records are now really hard to understand and put in a context. Sure, sure, sure. But I'm saying that outside of the casual fan, it doesn't really follow sports, but we'll follow it. If there's a streak happening or a record to be broken.

Outside of those people, I don't think people who like baseball and regularly watch baseball are like, yeah, it was kind of great in the mid-90s. I missed that. That was awesome. So the removal of at least the obvious use of drugs from baseball hasn't really affected it. Now, would the other sports have the same thing? I don't know. I have the hottest take I've had. And this take's so hot, my skin got burned.

I kind of enjoyed the steroid air in baseball. I really did. I remember I'll never forget going to the home run derby in 99 at Fenway. And it was like the height of everything that was going on. And McGuire and Sosa, Bonds, all those guys. And they're hitting 700 foot home runs. It was amazing. I'll never see anything like that again.

You know, it was ridiculous. It certainly, to watch what Bonds did from 01 to 04 was like, what was his on-base percentage? It was like, what was it, 600 or something? His lugging percentage was just nuts. Yeah, it was like you can't even compare it to anything. So, you know, I think. But there you go.

That's the problem that you just said. The fact that you can't compare it to anything. Well, in baseball... Part of the reason that we like these things is to compare them. It's sort of like when somebody goes like, oh, well, you can't compare players from different generations. Well, why? What's going to happen if we do?

I mean, we're just talking. It's not like that. If we compare guys from different generations and incorrectly compare them, there's any consequence. Yeah. Well, we see it now with the NBA, right? And, you know, you look at LeBron. LeBron's in year 13. He's never had a major injury, and he's banged out an incredible workload, incredible, so many games, so many minutes, all this stuff.

And the reason i mentioned year 13 is that's exactly how many years larry bird played and and larry bird only played six games in the 88 89 season he didn't play nearly as many playoff games because the rounds weren't as long the first half of his career to think that lebron has played more games as many seasons and way more minutes than Larry Bird is kind of crazy, right? Because I feel like LeBron's still in his prime. Part of me wonders... And Bird played five years in college, too. Well, that's, yeah, he came in late.

He didn't play five years, but was in college for five years. Yeah, he had the Indiana, he had the red shirt, the whole thing, yeah. But he also, he was out of the league by the time he was 35 or whatever. I think LeBron's 30, I think he turns 31 this year. But my point is, this is just happening in sports anyway. It's so hard to compare. Gladwell and I did a whole back and forth about this at one point. It's so hard to compare athletes from different eras because the advantages that the athletes have now are so significantly better than whatever like look at joe namath versus tom brady joe namath hurts his knee once and his

career is basically never the same tom brady's 38 and he's putting up stats that compare to what he did in his prime it's here's something i think i i don't know if i talked about this or said this the last time we talked i might have stopped me if we have, but it makes sense. You're talking about all these things, all these improvements. It makes sense that every generation of guys are more athletic. It makes sense that LeBron would be physically more imposing

than Jordan, and Jordan was more, you know, maybe more physically imposing than David Thompson or whatever. It makes sense that these guys are getting bigger and stronger with nutrition. But I've got to say this. I did not anticipate that at this point, all of a sudden, the skill of shooting would so dramatically improve.

Yeah. Curry's the best shooter I've ever seen in my life. Yeah. There's no question about it. And Clay Thompson might be second. It seems so – he might be like this kind of bizarre, I guess, a Gladwellian outlier or something, but it's just nuts. And my friend who's got a kid who goes to the armory,

it's a little eight-year-old, and they play down there, and he goes, all the kids there used to want to lower the basket to dunk. Yeah. But now, he says, they just want to shoot from 40 feet away, and there's balls flying in, hitting people on the head and stuff. But that just, that really shows to me that, like, Steph Curry has done something good for the society of sport. Like, he has sort of made kids want to do a skill that actually falls in line with something that they have the potential to excel at.

As opposed to kids who want to dunk on an eight foot basket. So when they get into ninth grade, they're like, basketball sucks because I can't do any of these things. House and I talked about this a couple weeks ago. I think the whole, there's this narrative that's that steph curry is launching is you know changing basketball and and now all these teams are going to emulate and this is where basketball is going i'm not sold on that narrative yet because i just think what the warriors have is just as you said it's a totallier. They have the best shooter of all time. Klay Thompson's one of the seven or eight best shooters of all time. Draymond Green is like nobody else in the league.

The lineups that they can play cannot be replicated by any other team. And just the sheer luck of getting Steph Curry and Klay Thompson on the same team in a 30-team league, you can't replicate that. Steph Curry, I don't think we're ever going to see anyone like him again. Yeah, you know. I really don't. I think he's like a bird and like a magic and like a Michael and a LeBron. I just don't think it's replicable.

But because maybe it is that, okay, I'm kind of talking about something that seemingly should take a long period of time, but maybe evolution is happening faster than I think. You know, like, I don't know if you saw any of the Oklahoma-Kansas game last night. Oh, I watched it. I saw all three overtimes. Yeah, but, like, that little guy for Oklahoma, Buddy Held? Yeah, Buddy Held. Yeah, I mean, you know, this is one game.

I haven't watched him play a ton of games, but I thought to myself, it's like, what if now we're going to go through this phase where the league is suddenly going to be saturated with these just kind of blow your mind shooters i mean curry is so weird it's the one the open shots he makes are one thing and the long shots he makes are another thing the ones that just knock me over are the ones where he seems to just sort of not get set and kind of throw the ball from his hip at the hoop. Yeah. And it goes in a third of the time.

He's turned 90 degrees from the rim and somehow just in a split second can be set and shoot. Yeah, he's a freak. That's my point. He'll never be replicated. It's like Clay Thompson is replicable. Yes. He's shooting stroke the whole thing.

But he's also, you know, at the top, top, top, top of where all this stuff is going. Well, but then also you have to assume that both of those guys grew up shooting, like, with other NBA players when they were seven and eight. And we're watching these guys when they were eight years old you know if if say they were playing the celtics or whatever and they go to the gym and he sees that a guy is out there shooting jumpers by himself four hours before the game and maybe he thinks that's normal so what i do you know here's that here's here's uh kind of a random take on this isn't it interesting that thompson and curry were both sons of nba players who were at were at NBA arenas shooting on NBA hoops when they were little kids? I wonder if there's some sort of weird, they became acclimated because if you've ever played basketball, I played at the Staples

Center a bunch of times, that it's really weird to play in a 20,000 seat arena where there's a glass backboard and then the seats are a hundred feet behind that it just it throws you off it takes a while to get used to and i wonder if like you're shooting at that when you're seven and eight if somehow magically it makes what do you think tate i think that makes your brain yeah i think so but i think also steph playing pickup like he just plays pickup all the time steph said tate says steph was playing pickup all the time steph said uh tate says steph was playing pickup all the time from like you know he was probably one of those kids that there's 14 year olds playing and he's eight and he's in the game just shooting 25 footers but making them i'm sure of

it yeah and and you know it might be that although you know we're talking about this i mean his brother is good but his brother's not within the same atmosphere as him so it's like they had the same experience so hey so i wanted to ask you wait hold on oh we have to uh um i have to ask you chuck do you know what your credit score is uh i did one i don't know like most people i have no idea have no idea. And that's what makes Credit Karma so valuable. They offer free credit reports, no strings attached, no credit card required. And it's incredibly easy to use. Just ask the 50 million members already using Credit Karma right now. Credit Karma doesn't show you a score, doesn't just show you a score and send you packing.

They actually break things down so you can see how your actions can affect your score. For example, if you use too much of your credit limit, does your score go down? I don't know. If you cancel a credit card that you don't use that much, does that hurt your score? I don't know. Well, Credit Karma knows. You don't even need a computer to see your scores. Credit Karma has a free mobile app that works for Apple and Android. So here's what you do. Just go to creditkarma.com slash save and get your free report. Again, that's creditkarma.com slash save.

I'm not kidding. I have no idea what my credit score is. I think it's got to be half decent. Yeah, I have a vague memory of what it was when I got this apartment. Yeah, when you buy something, that's when you find out. I think I remember, but I'm not going to say what it was. Well, it's always disappointing. It's almost like when you get a check after a big dinner and you think the check's going to be less than what it is.

You're like, oh, really? That's how I felt about my credit score. But, uh, I remember I had, I think I bought something somewhere with a credit card and I was like a month late, not even realizing or whatever. Anyway, uh, credit karma, valuable stuff. You should always know what your credit score is. I should know what my credit score is. All right. What did you want to ask me? Uh, well, first I want to ask you is, you, so what do you make of the new Rondo? Oh, we want to go Rondo? Because, you know, we're already at the half hour mark, and you said you had an amazing Star Wars theory for me.

Shouldn't we hit that? Well, I do. I do have a, I have, I think, a great outside-the-box idea. Okay. Let's hear it idea about Star Wars. So before even the new year changed, I heard that Star Wars had grossed a billion dollars. And, you know, there's going to be these Star Wars movies every other year now for perpetuity. They're just going to keep making them, you know.

Everyone seems excited about them they just seem to like the idea of getting excited about them yeah i was thinking like a billion dollars we should nationalize star wars we should make it an extension of the government we make a billion dollars or whatever every two years. People would be excited about something that belongs to America. It's like a totem of America. Plus, they could say that if you work on this movie, you want to work on the new Star Wars movie, it would be like joining the Peace Corps. For two years, you sign up, you get five grand at the end, and all your expenses are paid in the interim, and you would like work on the movie. Plus, it would draw all these people who are really, really talented in computers and art design, and that would kind of get them in to a track of government employment. And suddenly their best engineers would come out of this program of our nationalized Star Wars project.

So isn't Star Wars going to make like $3 billion? It made a billion dollars in like a week. Yeah, I think it's headed for $3 billion. So that's even three times what you were thinking. What does Disney do about this? Plus it's like something about America other countries seem to like. And it's so ingrained now in the way people sort of like think about the world. It is the most populist thing maybe ever come up in the United States. I think in the United States, that would be it.

It would be the most populist thing. Why not just make it like a national property? So what does Disney say about all this? Well, what Disney should say is that this is our chance to give something back from a country we've taken so much from. It's a great answer. You know, I mean, it would be, just think of that, how, $3 billion. Yeah. Just think of that $3 billion. How many problems with the U.S. education system or the U.S. prison system could be solved with a sudden influx of $3 billion in cash?

And it would give people that people could go to these movies and they'd feel great about it. They already love them, right? But the nutso's who go 25 times, they'd be like, I'm helping America. This is like a way of – it seems like one of the only things that is just across the board agreed upon as something positive we've done. So why don't we just lock them together? And then like a director like I think Rian Johnson is making the next one. It's like Rian Johnson would say, i've served my duty to the country i didn't go to war but i made the new star wars movie um i just think it would be a a a kind of an interesting

way to earn a lot of money people would like to pay for that they'd like this tax would you go as far as having the president dress like Han Solo or no? Well, here's the deal. I suppose there would be some fear then that these would become kind of propaganda extensions, right? People would be like, but, what are they going to do? Like, what's the propaganda

in a Star Wars movie? It's like people love to politicize Star Wars and they watch these movies and try to pick up political ideas, but on a superficial surface level, they're the least political thing possible. There's an evil force where a guy dressed in all black with his automaton empire force is trying to destroy these little rebels who believe in, like, goodness. I mean, like, there's no... How could that be twisted to reflect, you know, something like imperialist idea? I mean, as long as they keep them in this sort of like kind of this is made for a 10-year-old mentality, it would be great.

I'm amazed watching this whole Star Wars thing unfold over the last year and then having it come out. Because I've always been a Star Wars atheist. Like, I just don't care one way or the other. You don't believe Star Wars exists? Yeah, whatever. It's fine. I was in the third grade or the fourth grade when Star Wars came out. No, I was in the second grade.

77? Or third grade, whatever. And there were certain kids that just were going to Star Wars over and over again. I just didn't understand it. I went i went once but i was like why would you keep going back to the same movie um but what amazes me about star wars is the lack of backlash because we're in this backlash like the two things that you can always count on with how shitty our society is right now is backlash and outrage and just people looking for excuses to complain about anything and with star wars it just never happened people are like hey star wars coming out

this would be great then it comes out hey star wars is great did you see it yeah it was great it was almost like it turns everybody into these happy zombies which is great there was backlash against the prequels and now i see see some backlash against George Lucas for saying, I don't really like this that much. Yeah, for being grouchy. Well, yeah, and... I mean, the thing is about... I went to the Star Wars movie.

I thought it was very good. I really enjoyed it. However, it was a very weird experience. I've never in my life seen a movie so much based on and replicating previous movies without actually being a remake i mean there are 10 shots in this movie that i have literally seen before in other star wars movies

the way they are framed and it's totally conscious we're supposed to recognize their homages yeah so i i mean the plot is essentially the first star wars movie you know we like we put a little hologram inside of a droid and he you know it, it, I, it almost makes me think if we were going to, if this was a different kind of podcast, uh, I would be like, I don't know if this movie can be considered canonical because how can something be a canonical story if it's actually just an attempt to recreate like a, a patchwork quilt of what existed before. But that's kind of a different thing i mean i would say creed creed was like that in a certain way too where uh spoiler alert but the the arc of

creed resembles one of the rocky movies i won't say which one but it's very similar to the point where it's like oh they just basically remade a rocky movie and made the protagonist black and that's what they did um not a good thing or a bad thing it just is what it is and especially like if for somebody like like my daughter had never seen a star wars movie and didn't care about seeing this one but was sleeping over at a friend's house their whole family was going and she went she really liked it she didn't know anyone was and just saw it and now she's like yeah go see the next one well that's i mean i think that's partially because what they did was take the first three movies and cobbled

together a version of the first three movies into one movie that doesn't really necessitate you know who any of these people are i mean it's yeah it's like a greatest hits it's pretty easy to figure out that you know chewbacca is a wookie so it wasn't like he was a guy who didn't shave it's like we different creature we know who he is so one thing that did get backlash was college football being on New Year's Eve the the the semifinals

and you love college football I'll tell you what I'm not I'm I don't really totally carry the way but people went nuts a travesty. I mean, things that actually get upset about that ruined the day for so many people. You know, it was impossible to watch. It was so perfect when it was on January 1st because it was like that day was then just sort of reserved for football the way it had been in the 70s and 80s it was just absolutely perfect and now i never had a sufficient explanation as to why this

happened is it because that the game when the playoffs are the rose bowl it'll be on january 1st but when it's not the rose bowl when the rose bowl is not involved with the bracket that has to be its own standalone thing i mean if, so they can have the parade, it's good for the local economy of Pasadena, that's just idiotic. Also, if the idea is that the NCAA was like, we're going to stake our claim on December 31st like the way the NBA has done on Christmas or whatever, that is just totally missing the point.

I have to say, Will Leach wrote a pretty good column about this, where he's like, even if you think that New Year's Eve is idiotic, as I do, you can't pretend it doesn't happen. Like, there are people who do things on that day, and it's just not set up for that situation. And it was real disappointing. And really, the bowl season as a whole this year was kind of disappointing. I kind of fear that particularly young athletes who were raised with this idea that they follow the pros fundamentally more than college, that if a playoff system exists

in whatever sport they're doing, then everything around it doesn't matter. And I feel like some of the teams playing in the bowl season just checked out in a way that they didn't in the past. It seems like the whole bowl system is totally broken. And you see these games with no fans there and just these stupid things and dumb matchups. And, like, who the hell cares unless you gambled on it?

I mean, you love college football. Do you watch all these games? Well i i watched as many as i could i i really liked the bowl season but i also feel like in my memory that because they were college athletes and they just like that this was a game you know an interesting matchup might be happening and they played hard and it was the coaches took interesting risks and i you know didn't feel that way this year there were not many close games until the very end there were two good games on january 1st um i just thought the new year's eve thing i mean it was funny reading and listening to how upset people were about it, just because it's like sports. If you're that upset about it, it's a little crazy. But it is just weird that the NCAA was like, hey, we know New Year's Eve.

We know that's a great day, and it's a busy night for a lot of people, but we're claiming it. We're going to make ourselves part of this. It's like there's very few days you can do that with, and New Year's Eve is one of them. Was there a hope that people, instead of having Super Bowl parties, would have NCAA playoff football parties? They overlooked the fact that a lot of people who don't care about football

still have a vested interest in doing something on New Year's Eve, whereas they do not on February 7th or whatever, you know? Right. I mean, it's a – you know, the first game I was over at someone's house and it was hard to watch because there were kids running around and people talking and you want to be social and there's, you know, mixed company and all these things. Then the second game ended up being a terrible game. Yeah. But even so, we were still – I was still talking to people. You know, I wasn't like – and You watch college football all year, you really

look forward to those games. I mean, I really look forward... Last year was perfect. So Christmas and the NBA. First of all, Christmas you spend most of the time trying to avoid talking to family members if you're at a large group. It's part of the art

of Christmas. It's like, oh, this game's heating up. I'm sorry. I'm not going to talk to you, Uncle Johnny. New Year's Eve's different. You're out for New Year's Eve. It's fun. You're dressed up.

You're partying. You're seeing friends. And it's festive. Like a regular season NBA game in December, like you care if the game is good. You don't really care. None of those games have any consequence if you have it on with no sound and you look at it and the game is close and there's four minutes left

you can watch it and by the way dirty secret about the Christmas NBA games they're always terrible there's this myth that these are like this Golden State Cleveland it was freaking terrible game it was awful to watch it was poorly played and there was no intensity.

There's that book about the 86, 87 Celtics, and there's all that stuff about how McHale is so upset about having to play on Christmas and kind of make some really kind of volatile accusations towards Stern. You remember what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hated it. That was a strange thing.

I did not expect to read that passage in that book. You know, it was funny about what they did with the New Year's Eve. Um, so Saturday was what? January 2nd. There's nothing going on. There's no sports at all. And there's football. Football's just the next day. And if they'd put those two games on that Saturday against nothing, they would have been massive. And that's the part I don't get. It just seems like the New Year's Eve is just stupid. That's a day you leave alone.

They're scheduled for the 31st for three of the next five years, from what I can tell. I think they'll change it. I don't know. I mean, those things are hard to change because there's a lot of little moving pieces that go around them that makes it tough. Too much money at stake.

They'll change it. ESPN will make them change it. ESPN has done far worse things than making college football change New Year's Eve. They will make them change it. ESPN destroyed the Big East. They can change New Year's Eve. So, Chip Kelly. Oh, Chip Kelly. Okay, yeah. them change it uh these people destroyed the big east they can change new year's eve so uh chip kelly oh chip kelly okay yeah i'm uh pro chip kelly anti chip kelly where you stand after uh

you were oh i'm very pro on my old podcast now defunct you were about as pro chip kelly uh revolutionized in the n as anyone I knew. And then it started, and it looked like that was headed that way. And now, within three years, he's gone. And he's gone for reasons that were pretty strange. Like, he wanted to move the Philly Christmas party. It upset the owner. It was all these, like, very petty things that didn't seem much to do with football.

I mean, okay. Chip Kelly. Seemed like a dick. First of all, he's my favorite NFL coach. Yeah. Okay. Second of all, I got to say, every decision he made personnel-wise this year was wrong. Every one.

Yeah. All of them. And I think that he just, I think that he had some bad luck, and I also think he had just made some bad decisions. Okay. Now, he contacts the 49ers. I'm guessing his thinking is that, well, if they retain Kaepernick, there's a guy ideal for what I want to do. Yeah. I would love to see him go to Dallas. Because the thing with the Eagles was...

Dallas? Yeah, I think that they should get rid of Garrett and put him in there. Can't they just put him in Tennessee? Who's against Chip Kelly in Tennessee? That was my initial suspicion. First of all, for the longest time, I thought it was going to happen. He's going to take a year off, and he's going to wait out less miles at LSU. And then he'll go down there.

And that was my hope. I'd like to see him in the SEC because SEC football is the football I care about the most. But it looks like he wants to be in the NFL. I feel like he feels like he's got to prove some abstract thing to whoever he feels like he has to prove it to. And he's looking kind of for a place where that will work. But he needs, if not necessarily control over all the personnel, he does need more control than the average coach because he's one of the only guys who's really doing something sort of outside of kind of the norm, the fixed parameters

of how NFL teams play offense. The thing is, if you do what he tried to do, you have to have successful results within two to three years or you're going to get bounced. But he went 10-6 his first year. No, but I'm saying... He had success immediately.

No, but you have to make the NFC title game within one of those first three years to pull off everything he tried to pull off. And the parallel is Belichick because Belichick went to the Patriots did everything Chip Kelly did couldn't have shook it up anymore got rid of a whole bunch of guys who had been there um acted like the same kind of distant I'm in charge don't tell me like he did all the same things Chip Kelly did bench drew blood so for Tom Brady. Got rid of Laura Malloy.

Got rid of Tyler. He did all the same things Chip Kelly did. His personnel decisions were better, but it was the same kind of mentality. But the difference is they won the Super Bowl in year two, and that bought him the rest of the decade, whereas Chip Kelly didn't win anything. Yeah, I mean, if you win the Super Bowl in your second year,

you're almost, I mean, if you win the Super Bowl in your second year, you're almost... You're untouchable. But let's say the tuck rule, let's say they don't call it that way, and let's say the Raiders win that playoff game, and then the Patriots go, I think we went 7-9 or 8-8 the next year. Could Belichick have been Chip Kelly? It's possible. It's possible.

I mean, I'm sure that's how Belichick feels because I don't think there's, I mean, he's one of the most outspoken supporters of Kelly. They're buddies, clearly. You know, I mean, and he pretty much has said that this just seems like, what does the guy have to do to kind of keep his job here? The one thing, the one thing, the parallel that,

you know, I lived through the Patino era. I was in Boston. My dad gave me all those tickets. I went to all those games. And it was just so miserable to watch. And my biggest takeaway from that, other than it reminds me of the Chip Kelly thing and the fact that Patino was so bad at personnel that it kind of handicapped everything he wanted to do as a coach. He was just terrible at it. He made so many bad moves.

And Chip Kelly made a ton of bad moves, too. But the other thing that stood out during the Patino era, and I think was also the case here, Patino got all the credit if anything good happened. And he was such an overpowering personality slash presence with everything. And it was like if the team won, it was because of Rick Patino. And if the team didn't lose, if the team lost, it was because of the players. It was the players' fault.

It wasn't Rick Pitino's fault. That's how everything was positioned. And with Philly, it's like Chip Kelly would get so much credit when things went, oh, Chip Kelly, oh, that offense. And I wonder if the players, as professional athletes, check out a little bit when that's the case. And they're like, oh, this guy gets all the credit. I think that could be.

I mean, if you're somebody like Nick Foles, who had a really incredible year, and the reaction tended to be, can you believe Nick Foles had a good year? How great must this offense be? Yeah, Chip Kelly did it. Nick Foles is Chip Kelly's robot. Because when the Celtics got rid of Patino, they immediately started playing better,

and they didn't have a good team. It was basically just Antoine and Paul and Jim O'Brien just telling them to shoot nine threes a game, but they played harder, and I watched it. I was going to those games. The moment they got rid of Patino, those guys were now invested again, and it seemed like with this Philly team, they kind of checked out on him,

and maybe they checked out because he was too big. Do you want my ultra hot take? Yeah, please. Okay, this is the hottest take I will offer you today. Okay. I read an interview with one of the Eagles linemen. And one of the things he noted was that, like, well, you know, you pass Chip Kelly in the hall and he doesn't say hi to you. He didn't say hi to the guys when he passed them in the hall.

And I thought to myself, is this part of the problem with millennials? Oh. Now that they have a – that essentially millennials are now – and, like, the caricature of the millennial is sort of like now the guy who's the age of an NFL player, and he actually is bothered if his coach doesn't say hello to him. I know maybe this just proves I'm a jerk, but when I worked in an office, I didn't say hi to every person I passed. You might say hi the first time you see them in the morning, but like you got to go, you know, it's like, I'm sure Chip

Kelly has a lot on his mind, and part of it has to be to what nurturing the emotional well-being of his offensive lineman i was like maybe this is maybe he's got to be in college where even if the guys you know feelings are hurt there's nothing he can do about it but guess what you know he doesn't you know it's like he's just got to live with it and you know get through it i guess what though balachek's a huge dick like that too too. He walks by people all the time and doesn't say hi. But he's won four Super Bowls, so it's fine. And that's the thing. It's like, I think you can act that way if you produce.

And Chip Kelly had three years. He made a huge bet on Sam Bradford, who's not that good. He made a huge bet on DeMarco Murray and getting rid of LeSean McCoy for Kiko Alonso, who sucked, and did all these other things, and none of them worked. And now he's out. And the thing is, there's a little less room for error with that offense. I mean, I think Bradford had his highest completion percentage of life as an Eagle. And yet, if you watch those Eagles games, inevitably, every game,

he missed someone who was wide open. And then bad body language, too. Yeah. And, I mean, that's why I think if we put him in Dallas, like, Romo's real accurate. And, like, you know, he's got a big physical receiver and sort of a whole collection of running backs and these sort of bulldozer offensive linemen.

It just seems like he would just kill people down there. I'd like to see San Francisco. They signed Manziel, so Manziel's kind of the change of quarterback. Come on. Manziel's like Corey Feldman. I'd like to see him go to San Francisco. Oh, I just wanted to know. I believe in Kaepernick.

I think Kaepernick is salvageable. That guy almost won the Super Bowl. You can't tell me that. He's not Sam Bradford. He's better than Sam Bradford. That guy's had a weird career. He has. He spent all this time being underrated underrated underrated underrated and

in a span of three weeks he was overrated like he had the shortest possible time of being properly rated yeah the whole time he was in nevada like people like oh he won't play in the nfl though maybe you know he'll be a kick returner or something and he gets in the nfl it's like well i guess maybe he'll be sort of a decent career backup. And then suddenly it seemed as though he was going to be the future of the league in terms of that all quarterbacks were going to sort of be these kind of hyper-athletic guys with super strong arms to throw downfield, throw deep. And then it was just done. So you just want the theater of Chip Kelly going to Dallas? No, I want the way Chip Kelly plays football to become the way most teams play football. And I want him to succeed. And I think

it would be great to have Dallas be good again. I think that there's certain franchises in all sports where it's good for the game if that franchise is good. And in the NFL, number one is the Cowboys. When the Cowboys are good, the NFL is more interesting. And proof of this is that when you watch those little talking head shows, they have to talk about the Cowboys even when they're bad. But the Cowboys are going to get talked about regardless. But at least if they're good, it's sort of like, you know, hey, so we usually talk about making a murderer. Yeah. You know what? We're going to do that in one second. Okay.

But we just survived the holidays. You know what helped me survive the holidays? Making a murder. Because I like binge watching shows. But if you survive the holidays, that means you survive the brutal month of trying to find parking in a packed post office, standing in a line that was way too long, listening to annoying people take forever to mail holidays, gifts and packages. Oh, I didn't have to do any of that. I used stamps.com.

At stamps.com, you can buy and print official US postage for any letter or package using your own computer and printer. All you have to do is sign up for stamps.com right now. Use the promo code BS. You get a four week trial plus a $110 bonus offer. That includes postage and a digital scale. Chuck, what's the post office situation in Brooklyn?

It's just a, it's a madhouse. Not good, right? It's like going into Vietnam. Yeah, not good. Go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage, and type in BS. That's stamps.com, enter BS. Yeah, I want to talk about, we'll end with making a murder

because I don't know if everyone's finished that one yet, and I don't want people to turn off the pod. I wanted to ask you quickly because I didn't ask you this the last time. You spent time with Taylor Swift who just had an unbelievable season. My friend Nathan Harbour wrote a piece for Medium about how Taylor Swift just had one of the greatest years in the history of music,

like a year that was on par with Michael Jackson and a whole bunch of other people. After you spent all that time with her, is she here in the same form in 20 years? What do you see her like as a 45-year-old? Well, you know, because of her ability as a songwriter, and particularly because I think it's even more important, her ability to understand the space she occupies in the culture and sort of what her fan base wants from her, I would be pretty surprised if she does not have a long career. Major legs. Yeah. I mean, you know, there are people who are really media savvy and there are people who are really talented. And every so often that's the same person. Yeah.

And when that happens, you know, also she's like a 25-year-old who's thinking about what she will be at 45. I mean, I think her entire life is the project of her life. Sort of like the project of this career. Like everything she does is sort of designed to be part of this narrative that's going to go on and going to move. And I don't, you know she she's like adverse to controversy she just doesn't put herself in positions where anything super damaging could happen um you know i so it seems as though that and also uh there's a i think that as she gets older she'll have like a sort of this has already happened to someone like you know britney spears and obviously having a madonna they have a they they retain an extremely

loyal gay fan base yeah you know what you know that's what if a female musician is female and she has success when she's young they they tend to sort of stick with her even if the music starts to falter. So I guess I would say she's the safest bet for having a 25-year career of Relevant. She reminds me of LeBron in that it's the total package. One of the things that's interesting about her is she can throw out different looks, right? Like this last album she put out, my daughter didn't like as much. And my daughter is her fan base my daughter's 10 and a half but you know little girls is a big chunk of what you're talking about but she really likes when taylor swift does country western stuff like she likes her songwriting and her more you know less the songs that she this last album had

some songs that you create to play in a big stadium right she made a pop record i mean like she wanted her to make it more country and she said no but the thing is she can always go back she can always go back is my point you know she can she's got moves she doesn't do like you know i know she hates when people use the word calculated around her but i mean like she's calculating also in in the positive definition of that word like she she thinks about like okay you know if i make if i if if i sort of drift in this direction musically uh what will that allow me to do later and what will it stop me from doing uh if i want you know if I wanted to drift back. Well, Madonna did that, right?

Madonna wasn't nearly the songwriter and singer that Taylor Swift was, but she was always trying to kind of push what she was, and it extended her prime, I feel like. Yeah, I mean, and in many ways, Madonna's career is actually a little closer to what David Bowie did in the sense that she would see, she was kind of a cool hunter. She would figure out that this is something that's happening outside of the mainstream. And I can do the mainstream version of this, like when like Ray of Light or whatever, like Ray of Light was basically taking music that existed that wasn't,

that was only popular to a subset of the populace and saying like this is just what i came up with you know and and uh so you know kelly swift's a little different that she doesn't seem to be doing that as much but she might five years from now she might she could you know i mean unless she's unless she's actually a authentic songwriter i mean if someone's a great songwriter, you don't expect them to run out of ideas. It seems like people who can do that for real can do it

forever. I think that's what... I was watching Montage of Heck, which I'm very conflicted on. But I think it's worth watching, especially if you like Nirvana. It's very personal. the home videos they show, it's almost too raw.

I don't know if I've ever seen a documentary quite like it. Like the Courtney Love footage, like she's just whipping her boobs out. And you just, it's almost like it's, you feel like you're violating them by seeing this, even though Courtney Love was a producer, but it made me think of what Kurt Cobain's career would have been like if he wasn't you know this suicidal druggie who eventually took his own life fascinating about the scene you're referring to several of the scenes of courtney and kurt you know their private moments yeah it does sort of

illustrate that even in her private moments, Courtney Love was performing. Always. She doesn't really have, like there's no one else there, right? There's just a camera sitting there and left, who know what I mean, unless there was a third person hanging out. It was unclear. You almost get the sense that, that they, you know, just, I think a guy from the Melvin actually suggested that those were filmed by the guitar player in Hole, who Courtney Love used to date before Kurt Cobain.

But regardless, it's like... Well, so, but I was saying that... Those private moments don't feel private. I mean, they're amazing. It's amazing that we're seeing them. Right. It's amazing that they're actually preoccupied with how much they don't like Guns N' Roses in these things.

Like that's, I wondered how Axl Rose felt when he, I'm sure he watched this documentary because he seems like he has very Catholic interest in music. And it must be odd to see, oh man, you know, 20 years ago, this major person was talking about me in his bedroom in a dismissive, angry way, you know, a mocking way like that, that would be a very strange thing to, to, to experience.

But that, that got me thinking about what his arc would have been like, had he not gone away. And what's interesting about him is I think he could have released an album that was just like a total acoustic album. Like they would have had different looks, Nirvana. Where I think you look at a band like Pearl Jam, and part of their frustration, other than the fact that Eddie Vedder

just didn't want them to be that popular. He was scared of the popularity and almost created certain types of music to drive away some of the bandwagon fans. But they also didn't have the kind of variables that Nirvana could add. And that's when I look at Taylor Swift, I just think, you know, her next album could be just an acoustic guitar album, just all songs that she wrote with no band behind her. I think the flexibility is what's going to make her last.

And the fact that she just seems really smart, really smart in an atypical way for musicians. But you too tried to keep reinventing themselves. Remember in the 90s? It went sloppy. It's really hard to do. Yeah, but ultimately it worked. You two still exist.

Oh, yeah. I mean, because the fact of the matter is, if you are able to stick it out, if you are able to still be a band 25 or 30 years down the line, even your missteps become interesting. Right. If you look over Neil Young's total discography, there were records that in the present tense could really only be perceived as bad,

but none of them are like that now. Because even like, you know, landing on water or trans or whatever, you play those records, you're like, you're thinking about where his life was at that time. Because you know the end. Like, you know, it's like the middle chapter of a book

where not much happens. But when you finish the book, you might be like, oh, it's interesting that that was part of it, you know? Have you heard about this app called Quello? Yeah, but is this an ad for the app or are we no no this isn't i'm actually just bringing it up okay i know i never heard of it um they have all these concerts and documentaries on it and um it's actually pretty cool it's almost like if access tv that whatever that cuban station that shows all the concerts if that if those were just all in one place.

And, uh, and my daughter and I, we, we go on, we'll watch it sometimes. And Queen was on and it was like this 1981 Montreal concert. Yeah. Well that's, they, they showed it on television. Yeah. Yeah. Is Freddie Mercury, would he be the number one all-time draft pick for who you'd want as a lead singer in a big stadium?

Was there anyone better than him? Mick Jagger, maybe? That would probably be the conventional answer, that he probably had the greatest combination of voice and showmanship. Yes. Whereas, you know, he was more of a showman than, you know, Robert Plant, but he could sing way better than David Lee Roth. And, you know, and he, The Queen in general is one of the few bands who you could look at them and say,

this is kind of a wonky studio experimental band. And another way you could say, like, well well, actually they're just a big arena rock band who exists to play live. Right. Because they did both of those things very well. My daughter was like in awe of him. She just couldn't believe it. Just couldn't believe how captivating he was

and his voice and everything. And then I was like, oh, we got to watch Mick Jagger. She just knows Mick Jagger as the Moves Like Jagger song. She's like, Moves Like Jagger? I was like, yeah, he's only one of the greatest bands ever. I'm failing as a parent that you don't know that. Young people will still really be kind of drawn to the Beatles and to Led Zeppelin, but not to Rolling Stone so much

because the Rolling Stones look old. Right. They have the ability of ending. So I showed her a 1974 concert that they had on there. look old. Right. They had the ability of ending. They should have, but so we showed, but I showed her like a 1974 concert that they had on there. Jagger was amazing. He's got to be in the top three or four of any of this discussion. Like just his command of the stage.

And it's funny to watch him do that now. His voice is shot, but there's nobody quite like him either. I think I have Mercury versus Mick Jagger in the finals. I mean, his voice is kind of going now, but I'll say this. It lasted way longer than all the guys like that. I mean, I reviewed a show of theirs, and it was like Bridges of Babylon or something, Babylon in 1999 or whatever, and I was very surprised how good he still sounded. And of course, those songs translate live very well.

If you like Freddie Mercury, you can go on the internet and find the isolated vocals from him and David Bowie singing Under Pressure. Oh, I've heard that. That's amazing. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Yeah. All right, we have 10 minutes to talk about Making a Murder. Okay.

So it's on Netflix. I feel like I was one of the first people that watched it because I had to go had all this email stuff going on I just wanted something to kind of binge watch as I was doing it and I banged it out in like two days and

my main thought is that I didn't think it needed to be ten episodes I think it could have been six I think that they spent 10 years doing it and they were like, if we put that much time into it, we get to make 10 episodes. I feel like they could have either made 8 episodes or every

episode could have been 10 minutes less. Which actually I would have preferred. It's too long. You know, the case obviously is amazing. It's an amazing case and that alone makes it worth watching. I do have to say, though, that I feel like some things from this story are missing, because he seems so obviously framed, the way it is portrayed. It seems like it's just that there's no possible way he was not framed twice. That – I don't know. So I was looking on the internet for like where there are aspects of the story that were left out.

And I guess there are, but they're not particularly convincing. I mean, I just, I don't know, like, does this happen way more than we realize? Or is it the fact that this happens so rarely that when it does, they make a documentary out of it? I don't know. I think the most jarring thing for me was seeing them coerce the confession out of somebody who was obviously disabled mentally a little bit.

And to watch how they did that was just traumatizing. I mean, and i have to say the prosecuting attorney for the state of wisconsin i think his name is ken kratz yeah he got he was uh his life fell apart after this among the most diabolical problematic people i think i've ever experienced in one of these shows yeah and i mean, and just, just, I think it might be another lawyer, but at one point, you know, he says like, innocent people don't make confessions. And there is such overwhelming evidence that that is an untrue statement. There's a frontline episode where an interrogator convinces four different guys in a row to a commit to a crime. None of them did.

It's like, that's just, you know, the one thing that's really good about this is I just hope eventually everybody realizes that don't talk to the cops, ever. Doesn't matter what happened. Get a lawyer. Don't talk to the cops. There's no, there's just no,

the risk is too high, you know? Did you see there's an ABC show called American Crime that was recommended to me by my friend brad and that was another one i banged out over the holidays it's like 11 you can get it on the hulu amazon one of those it's like uh 11 or 13 episodes basically the same premise where it's like this kid talks to the cops without a lawyer you watch these shows you're like hey here's an idea just say i'm not saying anything till my lawyer gets here. We should all adopt that one. That's the one thing you learn over and over again with these shows.

Just don't say anything until the lawyer shows up. Speaking of crime, though, you know what I've seen the first six episodes of? What have you seen? People versus O.J. Simpson. Cuba Gooding? Yes. Oh, my God. It is not good, but it is not good but it is great it is fucking great i i don't think that i have i

mean i'm i love biopics yeah general i think that just the the formal nature of exposition in them is just always is hilarious like at one point marcia clark is like i don't even know who this guy is and the response is you rushed for 2,000 yards in 1973. Like, it's so crazy the way that they try to jam all this backstory in. Yeah. And, you know, Travolta's in this. He's Robert Shapiro. He's like Brando in this.

Like, he's going all the way in, you know? Oh, I love when Travolta goes all in. Every person, they've kind of made Marsha Clark, like they've really played up the sexiness of her. It's like everything,

every possible detail of this is exaggerated to the highest possible degree. Cooper Gooding Jr., interestingly, is not really doing an O.J. impersonation,

which does disappoint me. I was hoping he was going to do a straight-up impersonation. Instead, he's kind of doing an interpretation of how he thinks, you know, O.J. must have been as a person. And he's okay. But, like, you know, it's like Nathan Lane is F. Lee Bailey.

What? These crazy decisions are made for the casting for this will just blow your mind. Like, I almost don't want to say anything about it and don't read anything about it. Just start watching it and seeing all the strange things that happen. Plus, you know, there's just something about two things. One, seeing a fictional depiction of something you remember so vividly is really a strange feeling. And also, you're reminded, and also by making a murder and all these things, in something based on reality, things happen that could never happen in a fake story, because you

wouldn't believe it. But because it's life, they do. And it just shows that life really is so much weirder than anything that a writer can construct. I mean, the things that happened in OJ's case are so goofy. And I remembered a lot of it, but some of the things I had forgotten. I can't wait. You're going to love it. I would say, in fact, I would say try to get a screener of it and watch it before you hear

anything about it. I was like a 15 out of 10 for excitement for it. But when you told me that Travolta is trying to be like Marlon Brando in it, you just pushed me into like a 20 out of 10 because few things in life make me happier than when John Travolta overacts. I mean, there are some things that make me happier, but not many.

It's a short list. It's like seven or eight things. Wait, make it a murderer quickly. Um, so there's no blood in now. Spoiler alert for if you haven't seen it, just turn the podcast off. Maybe there's probably only five minutes left alert for if you haven't seen it. Just turn the podcast off if you haven't seen it.

There's probably only five minutes left. Yeah, you're in like three minutes. So Steve Avery gets out, murders somebody allegedly in his little trailer thingy. There's blood everywhere. Cleans up all the blood. Leaves her car key there that has no house keys on it, just a car key that the police don't find until the eighth time they're there. Um, her car

is magically, um, very close to where she was along with all the bones, uh, from her body, all on his property. Um, he has a car crusher on the premises but decides not to use it on the car if he was actually the murderer. You just watch them lay this all out and you're like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. How could anybody convict this guy?

And then they get to the jury part and people are like, yeah, some people just wanted to convict him and we just wanted to get out of there. It's like, oh yeah, this is why America sucks sometimes. They really did also handcuff the defense team by essentially saying you can't propose any alternative theories. And they also kind of realized, even though at one point they had no choice, that if they come straight out and say the cops framed him. Because if you're a prosecuting attorney right the idea like i'm sure every prosecuting attorney in the country who watched this was like i hate to see

this because the one thing that they bank on is that if they say oh you know a knife was found in the pantry there's like two ways you could get there the person who killed the person the murderer left it there or the cops planted it. And you kind of have to take that second part out of the equation if you're a prosecutor. You have to almost – it's a bizarre thing. It's like no matter how much evidence society gives us that makes us question whether or not we should trust law enforcement, people still do. That's been so ingrained, I think, in the minds of people that they just – I mean there was one scene in this thing where they're talking to a guy, like a broadcaster talking to somebody in the Wisconsin penal system,

and he's like, well, why would we frame Stephen Avery? We could have eliminated him if we wouldn't frame him't frame him so he kind of implies what does that mean they would have killed him yeah if they really wanted to and it's sort of like that's supposed to be the reason we believe them more right because we're supposed to believe they didn't frame him because they admit they didn't kill him well Well, it reminded me of the OJ thing a little bit where the people are saying one thing about what they thought happened, but it also contradicts the other point they're making. So with the OJ trial, this was the cops trying to frame OJ. But at the same time, they're saying the cops were so incompetent, they couldn't figure

out what to do with the blood and all. And it's like, yeah, but those things are obvious. You can't be totally incompetent, but at the same time be involved in this massive conspiracy to frame somebody there's two opposite things yeah and that was basically what johnny cochran proved to the jury yeah they're in in this people versus oj they uh the johnny cochran characters he's really represent, very positively. This is all based on Jeffrey Toobin's book. Yeah, a classic. There's a Jeffrey Toobin character in this.

Ooh. In fact, I mean, there was a time, I think, when the consensus had become that, you know, in the OJ case that, you know, the LAPD framed a guilty man. Now, in retrospect, I don't know if they even framed him. I think he was probably just guilty. And the prosecution did a really terrible job in a case that they should in no way have lost. Well, the huge difference between 20 years ago and now is that none of us really understood what DNA was. It wasn't until CSI happened.

And what was that HBO autopsy show? Remember that show? I used to love that show. That we really kind of understood like, oh, yeah, if your DNA is in a crime scene, you did it. You know, there's no way you can't fudge DNA. But in the 90s, it was like, oh, what's this DNA stuff? Like people were confused by it. And I always thought OJ was there.

I don't know if he did it by himself or if he had help or whatever happened, but it's pretty irrefutable that he was probably around there. I think it's pretty irrefutable that he did it. Yeah, I do too. You know, in that book that he wrote, If I Did It. Yeah. Okay. At one point in this book, the most of the book is a description of his relationship with Nicole.

Yeah. That's the majority of the book. And then it gets to a point where he's like, but if I did it, dot, dot, dot. And then he describes a scenario in such specificity yeah that it would be the best writing in the book if he made it up like he talks about that he talks about ronald goldman like adopting certain kung fu moves in the attempt to thwart him yeah i mean it's like it's just a weird the kind of it's it just it's it's, there's nothing, there's nothing else like it. I've never read anything else like it where a guy essentially

confesses to a crime in a book as fiction in order for the book to be successful even though all the money only went to the victim. It's like,

it's, it's hard to even describe. Um, I can't wait for the miniseries. I think Making a Murderer is worth a watch if you like binge watching stuff we're out of time

Chuck Klosterman what are you working on? anything you can talk about? well I'm just I'm doing the very last edits on this book that's coming out in June and then

I'm expecting another child and good luck with that and I sort of occupy the next three months of my life. And that's, I guess, right now, that's my main concern. My concerns are I'm the compliment family man. All right.

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scale. Go to stamps.com. Click on the microphone at the top of the homepage, type in BS stamps.com enter BS. Thanks to HBO. You don't need cable or satellite to watch HBO anymore. Download the HBO now app. Start your free one month trial today. And thanks to SeatGeek, the presenting sponsor of the BS podcast and channel 33. Uh, Chuck, did you listen to me andGeek, the presenting sponsor of the BS Podcast and Channel 33. Chuck, did you listen to me and Chris Ryan doing the Heat Podcast? I did. I felt like we both brought our A games. Maybe even Chris Ryan might have even brought his A-plus game. I've never seen him more focused, fired up, really locked in,

like the way you talk about great athletes. Yeah, you guys like that movie. We do. I'm sure you've – what don't you like about it? Well, I only saw it the first time in the theater, and I was a film critic at the time, and I remember giving it a somewhat negative review. Oh, my God.

That's the worst thing I've ever heard. Well, but isn't the general, I mean, I know it is. The general consensus is that that movie did not live up to the expectation. It's very long. It has that long... How dare you? ...minute shootout in the middle. How dare you?

This is the worst thing you've ever done to me. You're going to trash heat at the tail end of our podcast after I've already said goodbye? I don't even know what to do right now. I think I gave it a C. A C? I gave it a C. A C? Well, I'm giving you a C, as in a see you later. Thanks, Chuck Klosterman. You bet.

We about this bitch. Anytime y'all want to see me again, rewind this track right here, close your eyes, and picture me rolling.