The Bill Simmons Podcast - Ep. 6: Chuck Klosterman (10/8)

Episode Date: October 8, 2015

HBO's Bill Simmons talks about the value of quarterbacks, Chip Kelly and systems, fixing the length of sporting events, era-specific movies, Project Greenlight, and why Trump is resonating with some voters with old friend Chuck Klosterman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And just like that, we're off. I still do not have entrance music. I'm working on it. It's going to be a doozy if I can pull it off. Speaking of doozies, my old podcast hall of fame partner, one of the last podcasts I did back at ESPN, and now he's one of the first we're doing here on the Bill Simmons Podcast. Chuck Klosterman, how are you? Hello, how are you doing? Can you give me at least a hint about what the possible intro music will be? No, I can't. Give me a hint.

What genre of music is it in? There's no hints. No hints? Yeah, no hints at all. I don't want to jinx it. Why? I don't want to jinx it. I'm really excited about it. It's the only song I wanted, so we'll see. I don't want to jinx it. I don't want to jinx it. I'm really excited about it.

It's the only song I wanted, so. I mean, is it a rock song? I just told you no hints. Well, that's barely a hint. There's been a billion rock songs in the history of rock. All right, let's start here. Okay. Can the Pats go 16-0?

I would be pretty surprised if that happened, wouldn't you? Would you care? Does stuff like that mean anything to Chuck Klosterman? Oh, well, of course I would care. I mean, the last time they went 16-0, those last four weeks of the season were very exciting. They really were. That team was so much better than this team, though.

It doesn't seem possible that they'll go 16-0. I think they're going to lose a couple of games in the division. Well, in 07, the team for the first 10 weeks was better than this team. I think the team in the last six, seven weeks, once they had a couple injuries, they had no running game whatsoever in the last two months. This team can run the ball better. I think the league feels, I mean, I'm sure you're watching on Sundays. The league feels worse.

Like even when you watch Green Bay and San Francisco. And, you know, Green Bay is probably the second best team. And they can't even get to 20 points. And San Francisco and Kaepernick's bouncing the ball all over the place. And I don't know. It just seems like the ceiling of these teams is lower. Or am I crazy? No, I kind of agree with you.

It does seem as though the talent is more distributed now. The difference between the worst team and the best team is much less. The thing about that other Pats team, though, regardless of running game and all that, Moss was the X-factor. Yes. I mean, he was really kind of at the end of his peak, maybe even a step beyond his peak, but he was still

physically the most dangerous player on the field at all times. And, you know, although I will say this, I mean, if you exclude quarterbacks from the conversation, it would seem as though Gronk is probably the biggest factor in any game he plays.

Yeah, I was going to say when you were talking about Moss, I do feel like Gronk is that guy now. Like, if they really wanted to, and he stayed healthy and nobody took out his knees in any game and he was just able to play 16, I really think if they really went for it, I think he could get 25 touchdowns because there's some unguardable plays that they have with them. That play they figured out when they have the three tight ends near the goal line

and it seems like they're going to run, then they spread them out. I haven't seen anyone come close to stopping that yet because if you have them with a linebacker, it's unstoppable. So I don't know what you'd do. I'm not sure if I can think of a defensive player that can cover him on the goal line like that. It would be interesting if somehow they played the Texans and whenever he's got spread out,

they put J.J. Watt out there. He seems to be the only person physically who can match up. And if they were on the goal line, Gronk's speed wouldn't be an issue because he only has 14 yards to go or whatever. But the Patriots are good. Are they better than the Packers? I'm not certain. Yeah, it's early. The X-Factor sound, I talked about it good. Are they better than the Packers? I'm not certain. Yeah, it's early.

The X factor. Sal and I talked about it yesterday. We did a pod. I'm starting. I didn't want to, and I've been fighting it, and I've been resisting it. It's like the girl you don't want to date in high school, but you end up, you keep ending up, like, hanging out with them. The Bengals, the fact that they can block for Dalton,

he's one of those guys. There's certain quarterbacks like this that if people are blocking for them, they're good. And the moment they don't have that same protection, they fall apart. And from what I've seen of that team so far, it really does seem like they can block for him this year. And now I don't know what to think of them. Yeah, I feel the same way a bit about the Cardinals.

Yeah, that's another one. It's just I'll admit I've only seen like kind of clips like on Red Zone. Cardinals, I haven't really seen them play the whole game but it's always weird in these situations where you don't see a team

and they keep winning. And eventually you have to decide whether or not you think they're good or not, despite the fact that you have no idea. You just have to sort of go by what has happened to be like, well, is it possible that they could, you know, win this many games in a row and not be good? Or am I idiotic for being skeptical about things I believed in the past? Yeah. And we've learned over the years to just throw out September and to really get a gauge for who's good, who's not good

right around the week before Thanksgiving is when things start to matter. That's why I'm not going to overreact to the Seahawks yet. I haven't liked what I've seen from them. But two months from now, you could see them rounding into shape. And conversely, some of these teams with the soft schedules, like Carolina, you just kind of wait and see. Well, you know I don't follow college football. I had to give it up, especially now that I'm in the club soccer parent hell

of driving around Southern California every weekend. Give me your number one plot right now in college football that fascinates Chuck. Well, Ohio State, while clearly having the most talent, is either underperforming or just doesn't feel like they really got to start playing hard yet. And it's hard to tell. It's pretty amazing that Meyer convinced all those quarterbacks to stay and seemingly be happy about it. Like, they really, there seems to be no internal problem between, you know, Jones and Baird and any of those guys. I mean, talent-wise, I just, there's no way that they should not win the national championship.

But I have a growing suspicion that they will not. I think Baylor's got probably their best chance, maybe, of winning a title. I think it's probably the best, maybe, and last chance they have. TCU looks good. SEC's going to be a problem because even the good teams are going to get two losses unless

Texas A&M or Florida or something completely shocks everyone so nothing's really happened yet is it fair to say? like there's no we haven't moved toward any sort of foreseeable conclusion and all the stuff's going to start happening over the next couple weeks

where we kind of figure out who's going to be in the playoff, all that stuff. I mean, the most interesting thing with the format as it is, is if there are no undefeated teams and maybe only one or two teams with one loss, and Toledo, who I think is ranked 24th right now if they were to go undefeated um it just kind of creates this strange problem that you know you say to a team like that you might as well just focus on basketball because even if you go undefeated and nobody else is undefeated you'll never be in the playoff right become the four seed and we risk having like a 50 point loss in the first round of the playoffs i mean uh it's i'm really hoping that happens just so i can see kind of what the precedent becomes

yeah if what the city you know because i think whatever happens the first time will sort of become the way it's treated going forward. What about the guy who might sit out the year next year so he doesn't get hurt to get ready for the NFL, the running back? That's LSU's running back. He's real awesome. He's great to watch. And it's strange because I was talking about this with Michael Weinreit. He doesn't seem that big to me on screen, like he's essentially the same size Herschel Walker was. Yeah.

And, you know, it's like he just, and he doesn't seem like he has breakaway speed, but he runs away from guys. I do not think that he's going to sit out next season. I, I just,

uh, that, that would be a, I think that that would, well, maybe smart move, I guess, if the, if the only thing he's thinking about is sort of maximizing the amount of money he can make in his life. That probably is smart. But I think that if he did that, his perception would change in a way that would put him in more danger than it would safety.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like, he would be physically safer, but if he does that, he kind of risks having an entire career where any time it doesn't seem like he's killing himself to win, that people will be like, well, he's the guy who didn't play his junior year because he wanted to work out and wait for the combine. I just can't imagine that happening. But he's been definitely the most fun player to watch this year.

Who's the most fun quarterback? Who's the most fun quarterback? The guy from Cal. His name is Groff, I believe. Yeah. I have to say it wrong. I can't help it. A or an O.

He's real tall, and it seems like every time I flip to a Cal game, he immediately throws a touchdown. I mean, in the little I've watched him play, his quarterback rating would be like 148.5 or whatever. Every time I turn it there, he throws a touchdown. The quarterback from SMU is sort of fun to watch. The quarterback at Navy is kind of an interesting guy to watch. But are you talking about, like, which of these guys will be a pro? No, just like on a Saturday.

You're like, oh, that guy's on. You know, the freshman quarterback at UCLA, Rosen, it's fun to watch. Oh, that's my favorite story, because all my Jewish sports fan friends, like, they're all in on Chosen Rosen. It's always a fun subplot when all of a sudden there's an out-of-nowhere good Jewish athlete and all my friends get so fired up. It really should be a website. It should exist, where it's just like all the updates and like like here's what sean green's up to and all this stuff especially since there's there's such a tradition a tradition

it seems in jewish culture to be into sports yeah so many jewish sports writers and it just is like you know you think about all those woody allen movies he's obsessed about watching the nba um and then there's just a small number of actual Jewish athletes in the modern era. I'm not surprised that you say that. Yeah, well, like Sandy Koufax, you know, I follow the whole trading card industry. And the three most popular cards are Mickey Mantle, Sandy Koufax, and Jackie Robinson. Those are the three cards that there's always going to be a crazy market for anytime, any sort of PSA four and above card of any of those guys pops up on eBay. It's like

you have a kajillion bidders and, uh, it's just cut. Koufax is one of those, like there was a great autobiography or a great biography written about him. I don't think there was ever a documentary about him, but that guy stopped pitching 50 years ago. Wait, really, 50 years ago, and is still revered in a way that almost has no parallel. What other athlete who's alive is revered like that 50 years later? I was at the playground with my kid several weeks ago, and I was talking to a guy.

He had another kid coming. His last name is Greenberg. And, like, the kid's going to be a boy. And his, like, his dad and his grandpa are like, you've got to name this kid Hank. Like, they're just like, you know, it's sort of like they didn't name him Hank. But, I mean, like, you know, it's just an interesting deal that that year is. That seems like a long time ago, right? Yeah.

I'm telling you, that should be a website. Hey, Todd Gurley, did you see him at all last week? Yep. Again, I'm not a huge college football fan, but I thought he was really good. At least I saw him a couple times before he got hurt. I would have voted for him for the Heisman as almost a protest vote yeah he was the best player in college football he uh the fourth quarter of that Cardinals game he just there's something about him I actually think he really

has something special about him and I can't remember Peterson I guess was the last running back who came into the league you know LeSean McCoy, Le'Veon Bell, all these guys, like they're really exciting. But very rarely does that running back come in and you're like, oh, this guy's a little different, you know? It's great when guys have that specific combination of skills where they get the ball, get to the hole, run over a guy, fake another dude, and then run away from everyone.

I mean, that's what, like, Peterson seemed to do every play for three years. Yeah. Well, yesterday it was solid compared to a point guard. Like, you look at some of these point guards, and they're going full speed, but they're not going full speed, and they have another gear that's after full speed, but they're able to move as fast as the other guys. And they're totally in control the whole time and can pivot and stop and move. And it's kind of, you know, they have a pace to them.

And when you see those old OJ highlights, I mean, OJ was incredible. Those, those old OJ highlights where he's just kind of figuring it out, figuring out, figuring out, then boom, he's off. But as he's figuring out, he's still going as fast as everyone else. And it does seem like Gurley has that. And it also seems like just his body, like he's a tank. He's like Peterson crossed with a tank. And it's made me, I'm really rethinking how I feel about the Rams. I want to see what they do this week because they're at Green Bay, which is a game they should lose. They're pretty big underdogs,

but if they show a little something-something in that game, I think we have to start taking them seriously. What else has been going on in your mind? With... I don't know, but anything. It's been a while since we've talked. I know.

We never talked about the finals. We never did. The NBA finals you're talking about? Yeah, a million years ago. We never talked about that. We never talked about, I don't know. What other big sports things do we miss? I want to get your take on it.

Maybe you've already talked about this in some of the other pods, and I missed it, about Chip Kelly. I'm wondering what you think is happening there. Because I have sort of a specific idea about what I think is happening, but I want to hear yours first. So it's weird because it's different sports, but I was there for the entire Patino Celtics disaster. And I was going to all those games because my dad didn't want to go.

Unless I was, like, bartending that night, I would just go, I probably went to 25 games a year and it was destined for failure from the beginning because you had this guy who came in with this quote unquote system and he was really highly paid, which in the ads, so the athletes resented him right away because he was making more money than anyone on the team, basically, at least until Antoine got paid the third year. But, you know, I don't know if that works with professional sports where you have the coach and it's like, here's our savior. He knows what he's doing and all you guys are expendable because the coach is what matters here. It just doesn't seem like it's worked that often. And in his case, you you know what he did in

the in the offseason was just strange you know like to to get rid of McCoy and you're basically saying I'm going to spread my money out elsewhere and we're not going to spend a lot of money on running back and then DeMarco Murray's like hey can I play for you guys he's like Chip Kelly absolutely and all of a sudden he's fitting him in there, and it just seems like a really poorly constructed team. And then on top of it, he made a pretty big bet on Sam Bradford, who I've never enjoyed watching and betting on and picking. That guy, I just don't think he has it.

I kind of have two thoughts, and I want you to tell me if I'm just wrong. Because now that I think of it, I feel like the last time we talked, one of my big points in that conversation was like, I kind of take Rondo's side on this thing with Carlisle. I think Rondo, you know, I can be very wrong about things. But this is sort of what I've been thinking about Chip Kelly, because he is my favorite coach in the NFL. I feel like for whatever reason, I'm emotionally invested in his success, I think,

because I love college football. Yeah, well, also, last year, I think you only had one prediction, and it was just because you love Chip Kelly, but you were like, I think the Eagles are going to be awesome this year because of Chip Kelly, and it started off... Oh, actually, you didn't say that.

You said, what did you say? It was going to pick awesome this year because of Chip Kelly. And it started off – oh, actually, you didn't say that. You said – what did you say? It was going to pick up steam as it went along? Well, I said that they were going to initially seem unstoppable, then seem like they were going to struggle for a while, and then get good again. That was actually the first year. Right. One thing I was thinking about is that maybe the downside to being a truly innovative coach is that, for the most part, you will never win a title.

I mean, yes, Bill Walsh did. I guess, like Sid Gilman won in the AFL. For the most part, the Don Correale types and Sam White sort of inventing the no-huddle offense. Mike D'Antoni. What? Mike D'Antoni. Another guy there. Exactly.

Although, I mean, with basketball, it's a little harder, I think, to quantify. But in football, it seems as though if you sort of have a forward-thinking idea, the one downside is that you're not going to win the title. Other people are going to take the bits and pieces from what you did, implement them into the traditional view, and sort of almost steal the success that you deserve. So that could be part of it. Here's the other thing I was wondering.

Oregon's kind of struggling now. I think you're 2-2. Eagles are struggling. Marriott looks like he might have been even better in a traditional setup like he might just be flat out good he's the perfect quarterback for kelly's system but actually he's just a very good quarterback in any system and i was sort of looking at the personnel moves he made well i don't think that like he's only a college coach and he can't figure out the n. I just think that's bullshit.

I do wonder if he has carried over one sort of college philosophy, which is that he looks at his system and he thinks to himself, I need the best guy to do this one thing in the system. So I look at Foles and I look at Bradford. I think Bradford, maybe he gets rid of the ball a little quicker and he can make the one read he needs to. So he's an upgrade. And then I look at McCoy and Murray, and I'm like,

well, the big thing about this is who gets to the hole fastest? Who gets upfield first? Well, Murray's an upgrade. He looks at his offensive guard and he thinks, well, the backups I have, they can zone block as well as the starters. So we'll get rid of the starters. And in college, for the most part, that does work because not only did he have a better system at Oregon than who he was playing with, most of the time he had better talent. The only time it seemed to be a problem is when he'd play someone from the SEC or you'd play LSU or whatever. And they took away the thing he wanted to do.

In the NFL, that happens all the time. So while he may have amassed the best talent to do what he wants to do, very rarely are they able to actually do that. They've got to change. And because of that, the personnel moves he made end up being wrong. Like maybe Foles is better than Bradford you know I think McCoy maybe he's better than than Murray and like like the changes he made um weren't necessarily insane they made sense assuming he would be able to do

exactly what he wanted but in the NFL that never Yeah, and I would add two things. One is that he's going against better coaches and coaching staffs and better everything than he was in college, you know, and people that can actually figure out how to foil some of these things. I don't know if the coaches in the NFL are necessarily smarter, though. I guess I disagree with that. You don't think so? Oh, I totally think so well i i guess i've always viewed it like this um well actually this is something dan dakich said the guy who played for indiana the announcer now you know yeah he had said that he had always assumed

that the best coaches were at the elite programs uh but then he realized that actually at the elite programs, it's almost putting the pieces in play and sort of all using the same kind of system, where at the smaller schools, you almost had to figure out a way to get the most out of guys. That's why I feel the same relationship between college and pro football. I mean, in pro football, the offenses, for the most part, are kind of similar. I mean, nobody's doing anything with the exception, I guess, the offenses, for the most part, are kind of similar. I mean, nobody's doing anything, with the exception, I guess, of Kelly, the Patriots a little bit, that's totally outside of kind of that middle channel of how you play. The defenses are pretty standard. So I think that at the NFL level, I mean, maybe they're better at game planning that might be true but i

don't uh i don't know if i agree with that all right we'll we'll agree to disagree uh but you know one other thing about chip kelly and patino and i think this counts a lot of times with college guys that move over and for some reason jim harbaugh didn't do this, but when college guys take over the pros, they operate the same way they did in college, right? There's a ton of turnover in college. You only have people for three or four years. They might, you might even have transfer. You might have a guy for a year or two years. So they're used to shuttling human beings in and out of a system that they've created some sort of infrastructure that accommodates constant turnover.

And so like when Patino took over the Celtics, he made a million trades. My favorite thing was even before he played a first game, he had signed Chris Mills to this contract and then realized before the season started that Chris Mills didn't fit the system he had. He traded Chris Mills even before the season started. So I don't remember how many people he traded, signed, gave up on, like he traded Chauncey Billups after 50 games, but it was always like him just feeling like he could just move pieces around. The problem is in college that works. In the pros, it doesn't work. And constant turnover is bad. And I think, you know, these guys, they have, you know, they're getting paid. So they have to be properly motivated. If there's a fear of they're not buying into whatever the infrastructure is, sometimes they can check out, they can be unhappy, whatever. only person that I've seen who's really been able to manage constant turnover and actually

been able to get wins year after year is Daryl Morey in Houston. Because when he took over the Rockets, he's pretty open about it. He's like, I want to just add assets. I don't care how I get them. And he just make trades every year. And basically everybody was expendable for year after year after year after year until recently. Now I think Harden, Dwight Howard, the team they have in place now, you kind of feel like that's finally the team, but it took eight years to get there, and somehow that didn't compromise the year-to-year goal. Anyway, my point is, with Chip Kelly, I don't think you can just have constant change like that year after year after year after year and have it work.

I think you need some sort of infrastructure in place with players. I mean, that's probably true. Because, I mean, like at the college level, if you're a coach and you're a basketball coach, you don't like your point guard, well, you go out and get a bunch of new point guards. I mean, you know, like Golsan was the quarterback at Notre Dame. Kelly clearly did not think he was the guy, so he got a new guy. He just kind of moved him out. In the NFL, you're stuck with people.

In the NBA, you're stuck with people. So you've got to be able to sort of say, with the talent I have, I'm going to figure out a way to make this work. And I just, I mean, we've talked about this before. I think definitely at the pro level, it's got to be a guy who is willing to sort of be flexible

and change with his talent. Yeah, and here's the other thing with football, and I hate to make football sound this simple, but I really think it's starting to become more and more true as you watch the difference between the great quarterbacks and the mediocre to lousy ones. Like, I watched Jedets' offense last week, and Tannehill was not allowed to audible at the line, basically.

The Jets just said, we're just going to blitz you over and over again. And he couldn't figure out what to do because they already had the plays, and he's just running backwards, throwing off his back foot. When you see somebody like Brady, or you see Rodgers, even like Eli Manning, Roethlisberger, there's eight or nine quarterbacks who can go up to the line with a play, see what the defense is, and they make the decision, actually, this play's not going to work. What might work is this.

And that's why Brady could play until he's 45, because the Bills that get that week two Bills game, everyone's so fired up, all the Bills, the Pats were road underdogs, and the Bills that came in with all that intensity, we're going to bring the house. And Brady's just going up and being like, oh, you guys are doing this? I'll just throw to Edelman here.

Oh, you're coming this way? I'm going to swing it out to the running back here. And the best quarterbacks seem like they're now ahead of the defenses. And my point with Chip Kelly is I don't know if anybody can compete with Sam Bradford. You know what I mean? Like I, I, I just feel like maybe the line right now for how you can contend is Andy Dalton is about as low as you can go. And even he needs like a great offensive line. But other than that, you're, you're just not going to make the Super Bowl unless you have a really good quarterback.

I don't think. It's possible. I think I like Bradford more than you do. But what you're saying in a general sense is absolutely true. There's no bigger advantage than having a quarterback who has the autonomy to make his own calls because he's actually seeing what's happening. It's sort of like if you're in the military, you don't want to create an army

of robots. Right. You want to create an army of guys who can think independently. I mean, because the circumstances they're going to encounter are going to constantly change. Well, and Mariota is a good example of somebody that seems like he's wired like that. And his team will get better as it goes on and and I'm not a Ken Wisdenhut fan he'll have a better coach at some point but when you see him go to the line his his quick decisions and who to throw to and how fast he gets it out like there was some stat in the in the Buffalo Pats game

where it's like every single pass Brady threw except for like two where he got rid of the ball in under two seconds. So if you're a defense, how do you stop that? It's impossible. If the quarterback knows what he's going to do immediately on every play, then what do you do? And that's why I think Mariota has a chance to be really great because it seems like he's wired that way. Is it too early to say he's going to be better than Winston.

He always seemed like a safer bet, right? It seemed like if you're betting your life on one of those two guys, yeah, you'd say, well, Winston has a higher quote-unquote ceiling. But if I was betting my life on one of those two guys, I would have taken Mariota, wouldn't you? Well, the thing was the the knock on him at the time was all sort of personality-based. Right.

That, like, he just isn't talkative, that he doesn't demand leadership, all these kind of intangible things that would suggest a greater bust if he were to bust. Right. Talent-wise, I mean, he was more talented. I mean, Winston just seemed like he had always succeeded and had some kind of, I don't know, toughness, problematic toughness maybe. I don't know.

But they've only played these four games, so I really can't say yet. But I was curious what you thought. This week will be interesting. I forget, they're underdogs to somebody, and I actually like them in the game. I can't remember who it is, but they're home dogs. Have you turned up the gambling now that you're an independent person? Gambling's a bigger part of your life than it used to be,

and it used to be a huge part of your life. But now whenever I see you talking, it's almost like you got back in podcasting because you need to get back talking about gambling. Is that true? Not true. Because your first podcast back was a discussion on the NFL lines? I found that pretty surprising. Well, the people needed Cousin Sal. We didn't have week one, week two, week three. There was a huge void. No, I love gambling exactly as much as I did the year before.

But are you gambling more? No. I'm actually, what's interesting is I've scaled back a little. I've tried, I've gotten rid of teasers and parlays for the most part. And I just do the straight up bets. What's funny last night, though, Sal and I made all these Pirates World Series bets like in August. Because we thought they were the third best team in the league, in either league. And they end up in this wild card game against Jake Arrieta, who has given up, I think, four runs in August and September

and October. And what do you do? Like, well, the Pirates are home. And Arrieta just came out and killed them. So this Cubs playoff run, there's some fun teams in the playoffs this year. Baseball has become a six-week sport for, I think, almost everybody. You watch your own team, and then starting around the last week of September,

you care about all the other teams. But this year, Cubs, Mets, Dodgers, there's some fun ones in here. The Astros, some teams with some baggage and some tortured history. You don't care. You don't watch baseball. You know, yeah, I got to say, it's almost weird how little I follow it. I mean, I follow it about as much as I follow hockey, which is none. And I'm not even sure how that happened.

No, I know how it happened. It's where you grew up. What? It's where you grew up. You didn't have a baseball team. Baseball is not that much fun. It's like you root for baseball because you live somewhere that had a baseball team. When I was growing up, I was into baseball much more because following the Twins during that period was great.

I mean, they were the most likable team in the league and happened to be the local team. And when I was a real little guy, I feel like during the summers, you know, I was interested in Ricky Henderson. I was interested in Mike Schmidt. There was a whole bunch of guys I was interested in. I believe I had a Mike Schmidt poster. But now I, I just have, I have no relationship to it at all. Like, uh. Well, you have, you have a little relationship because a lot of the pictures are on your

beard corner. Well, the, the, the beard explosion has now sort of become like just the way a certain kind of dude is. There's no novelty in having a beard anymore. No, you've kind of... I don't know what you do now. Maybe you get like a Fu Manchu. Nope, not changing.

You're in with the beard. Yeah, it's sort of like, every so often somebody will be like, you should get LASIK eye surgery. And I'm like, well, you know, it'd be great to wake up and know what time it is, but I'm a guy who wears glasses. That's who I am. I'm just one of those people. I will be until I die. I can't get it, and I will have glasses.

We hit our 40s. We became that advertising demo that you always hear like, yeah, advertisers care about 18 to 35, because once people pass 35, they don't want to change what they do and who they are. I'm a living example of it. I still have AOL. I got it. I got an email from AOL recently congratulating me on my 19th year with AOL, which was probably the saddest email I've ever gotten.

Hey, uh, quickly, uh, it's time for our biggest mailbag question ever presented by our old front stamps.com. Going to the post office is a miserable experience from start to finish. It is.

I hate it. When I go to the post office, it's the worst part of my day. I get assaulted there. It really is one of the worst places on earth. I wish I knew a better way to mail and ship stuff, Chuck. Mail to criminals. Oh, Stamps.com. You can buy and print official U.S. postage for any letter or package using your own computer or printer.

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And here's the mailbag question. I'm making this up on the spot because I forgot to go get one. Chuck Klosterman. You could see, let's say at Barclays. How far is Barclays from your house? Like 10 minutes? I can walk there in about 12 minutes.

Okay. You have your choice to see anybody in the world play music for two to three hours. Who would you pick right now, tonight? There's tickets, somebody's there, and somebody says to you, I have tickets in the 10th row for blank. Who would you want to go see? Boy, that's an interesting question because I go to concerts so rarely now. I know.

That's why it's a great question. I would want to feel as though I was seeing something that almost outside of my actual taste. Not that I wouldn't like seeing this, but I would want to see something that sort of kind of reflects what's going on in the world right now. I'd probably say Kanye West. Particularly since I guess his last show at Barclays apparently was insane. I didn't go to that. But, boy, I don't get much enjoyment out of going to arena shows anymore. It's been a long time since I had the experience.

Like, that was great. Have we ever – I don't remember if we've ever talked about this on the podcast, but I'm convinced that – well, in your 20s, you're always going to love going to shows more. There's just something about that in late teens, early 20s, or mid-20s, whatever. But I do feel like all the YouTube footage and all the availability of all these performances that you can, you know, if somebody plays tonight, you're going to be able to see footage of it the next day somewhere.

And I do wonder if it's not quite as special anymore to some people i mean first of all i just like records i mean i'm interested in the way things sound and nothing is going to sound as good in the barclay center as it does on record right it's a real small place sometimes you can have sort of an exceptional experience. But it's just a lot of waiting. I hate when people stand up. I hate people who cheer at anything, particularly when I'm trying to listen to something. I just don't look at – when the Barclays was new, I went to Rush there, partially because I wanted to see Rush, but mostly because I just kind of wanted to see the new place.

Yeah. It's a long time to be somewhere, you know? Yeah. It's just a long time to sit. There's a lot of waiting, and I don't... God, we sound so old.

Well, but I've always kind of been this way, Bill. Yeah, no, I know you have. When I worked at newspapers for eight years, I went to I don't know how many concerts to review them. And, you know, I was working in the newspapers like I wouldn't drink when I was at the show. You know, I would be taking notes during the show. And maybe those eight years sort of shifted the experience to me kind of associating going to a concert with a kind of work. Right.

That it never, you know, I've been to like all the rock kind of festivals. And I'm trying to think of which one I like the best. And I can't even come up with one. Well, for me, would i would pick on you but um the taylor swift i had some friends that went to taylor swift and we're just talking about what an unbelievable show it was and what an unbelievable performer she is and how unique she is and just how surprised they were and especially like the dads with the daughters and i have a daughter who's kind of right in that Taylor my daughter's 10 and a half now so she has like real opinions on Taylor Swift and some are good and some are bad

it would have been fun to take her to the show just to watch her reactions to it so I almost feel like I'm now at that stage where if if I went to a concert I'd be thinking about what would be the most interesting concert to go to my daughter with. And when you go to a show like that, though, it's going to be the same way, I suppose, any kind of big arena show. If you do sit very close to the stage, it is a pretty unique experience because you're looking at something that's meant to be enjoyed 250 feet away. It's right in front of you, and it's kind of a hyper-reality to it, because all the people on stage and everything about the stage show is designed to translate

in the far distance. And the people are stoned. But I mean, the best concert experiences I ever remember was going to South by Southwest, because all the bands played 25-minute sets. You watch a band for 25 minutes, minutes and see a different one for 25 minutes and then I want to do that for 25 minutes. That's kind of perfect. There are very few things that I feel are not long enough. Most things are too long. I mean, one problem with the NFL, they've got to solve,

and college football too, they've got to figure out a way to keep these games a little more compact. You cannot have a touchdown, a commercial, the kickoff, and then another commercial. That's never changing. It's just awful.

I was on that. It's the one thing soccer really does have going for it. It's the biggest advantage I have. I know how long the event's going to be. It's the length and the HD has helped soccer more than anything else. This has nothing to do with like, oh, youth soccer, it's it's the length and the hd has has helped soccer more than anything else this does nothing to do with like oh youth soccer it's finally paying off it's like this is convenience and the way it looks on tv because soccer hasn't changed for 40 years

but um i just finished this book come out next year and you know and maybe you i guess well it's an interesting experience whenever you finish a book you're always kind of thinking about is it the right length yeah will it seem slight or will it seem bloated or whatever and every time i do find myself kind of falling on to the same conclusion it's like how many books um have i been disappointed with or stopped reading because they were too short? The answer is none. How many books have I stopped reading or sort of didn't even read at all because they were too long? And the answer to that is many.

And I don't think of myself as somebody who doesn't read books. I just know. I mean, I feel like I read a lot of books, but I know that if I see a book that's 480 pages, that the investment into that of time and energy compared to what I'm going to get out of it, it's a real difficult ratio. You know? So I always think, ultimately, it's better to err on the side of slim. Couldn't you have told me all of this in 2008? Well, you're a maximalist, though. I know, but that should have been two bucks.

Part of what you do works because of the size, and that a lot of what you do would be less effective at a shorter length. Not to say that that wouldn't be, you know. Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah. That there's a meatiness to it. You know, I spent a lot of time history with john mackinac because we did this vanity fair summit about uh the future of sports journalism was called

but we hung out for like 45 minutes before the panel and then then uh afterwards and we were on the same plane coming back and um it was really interesting talking to him about length in tennis because I think the die, die, die, diehard tennis fans, they love these five-hour matches. But most people don't. And five hours to me is an insane request to make from any human being. Like, hey, watch this for the next five hours. Five hours, I could fly from L.A. to Boston. You know? And it's just interesting that baseball and tennis

have made no effort whatsoever to change with where the times are going. And where the times are going is shorter, faster. People like to do multiple things at the same time. Plus, in tennis, there's a situation that just often happens, and it's just unavoidable. One guy goes up two sets to none.

In the third set, the guy who's down 0-2 gets up three games to none. And it's like, there's no need to watch the rest of this set. Right, you know they're throwing it out. You might as well go put a puzzle together or something and jump back. There's no way that he's not going to concede the rest of that set knowing he's still going to be up 2-1. And that happens all the time. Well, it does seem like they could have a couple tweaks. Now, the tennis people are going to get mad at me,

but maybe if you go up by more than four games or more in a set, the set ends. It's almost like a mercy roll for a set. I just think it should be three sets. Or it's three sets. When there was that period in the internet when people were just, we love Serena. It was like there was all that kind of constantly, constantly happening. When it looked like she was really going for it. And then there were like some stories saying how, well, you know, if women played five sets, Serena would be even more dominant as if somehow it would be better

if we, I mean, I guess if they played nine sets, she would really be better. I mean, like if the men's game was three sets, I, my interest would be greater. Now, of course, anybody who doesn't love a sport feels that way about sports they don't love. I'm sure there's people who don't really like basketball, and they're like, boy, you know, if it was just give them both 100 points and let them play three minutes, you know, they'd be like, I'd watch that. And, of course, people who love basketball are like, ah. But that is how I feel. Well, in tennis, they could easily go the first four in the men's.

The first four sets could be first to five instead of first to six. And they could put in the mercy rule or if you're up by four or more if you if you get up four oh or five one in the set you win it and then this the fifth set could be you know that a more traditional set but i do think it is more fun to watch like the serena matches were more fun in the u.s open for me than any other match because i knew they i knew they had a shelf life. It was like, I have to spend two hours watching this. That's great. And the match when, and I didn't watch it live, but, um,

I watched the replay of it, the match when she lost, that was like this decades Douglas Tyson. I mean that the woman she lost to, I don't even think there's's it really is like a Buster Douglas situation she's fine she doubles player she'd never I don't think she'd won a major but um at one point she was like a 20 to 100 dog in that match and for that for her to have just gone to this crazy level of tennis and then Serena got tight which happened which is one of the reasons I love tennis is because anyone can get tight during a match, even Serena Williams. And it just all of a sudden was like, wow, is this really going to happen?

And that was because of the best of three. I don't think it was quite like Tyson Douglas, and here's the only reason why. I'm not saying that the difference in talent wasn't the thing, but people were really watching if Serena was going to do this. They were watching everything she did. When Tyson got beat by Buster Douglas, I think there were a lot of people who weren't even aware the fight was happening. It's like it was all of a sudden across the scroll on their television on Saturday night

was like Mike Tyson. That was, in fact, one of the first times I remember a scroll being involved with television that wasn't actual, like, breaking news that was sports news. It was sort of surprising that this event had even happened because Tyson seemed so unbeatable at that time and Buster Douglas was so unknown. I'm proud to say that in college we had a party at my apartment that had Tyson Douglas on and it was live. And obviously you have the pretty equal ratio of men and women at the party. And around the sixth round, all the guys were just near the TV. It was amazing. It was like

a movie scene where you had probably 95% of the guys just crowded around this one TV set. And then all the other girls, the girls at the party, just wondering what was going on. Hey, we have to do one more live read. And this one, this is our friends at SeatGeek, a familiar sponsor of my podcast, as well as my favorite app to buy tickets for any sporting event. When you shop at SeatGeek.com, you can check out virtually every ticket option available for any sporting event. When you shop at SeatGeek.com, you can check out virtually every ticket option available for any sporting event. The best ticket options from hundreds of online sellers are ranked 1 to 100 on one color-coordinated page. Download the free SeatGeek app today, enter promo code BS, and SeatGeek will send you $20 once you've made your first purchase.

Every ticket purchased on SeatGeek is backed by a 100% guarantee so download the free SeatGeek app enter promo code BS just do it speaking of geeks Project Greenlight which has been phenomenal this season it has been you know I liked that show before but you know the first time it was on

but it's so different now in that the level of talent has jumped dramatically in a way that it's just almost as an illustration of just what's happened with technology in general i mean it's um and what i'm kind of intrigued by this season i don't know what you think of this director um He's a wacko? Well, he's strange, right? But he's not bombastically strange. Like, one of the things you keep noticing about the other people is they say,

I'd be freaking out if this was happening. He doesn't seem like he's freaking out. We can't find a location, but he seems cool with that. And yet he keeps pushing. He keeps saying, I want to shoot on film. I want a different location. I want to shoot on film. I want a different location.

In a way that makes me wonder if he might end up being like the Kelly Clarkson of whatever this is, of becoming a director through a game show or whatever. Oh, he's convinced you that he's a talent. Yeah. I mean, if he isn't, he's going to be like almost a comical failure, and it's going to sort of contradict a lot of the way we perceive directors as having a specific kind of genius, a visual genius that they usually can't explain verbally, but also a tendency not to compromise. I mean, Stanley Kubrick never compromised.

Quentin Tarantino does not like to compromise. And this guy is uncompromising, but he's not a jerk about it. He's a weirdo about it. And maybe an uncompromising weirdo is kind of what a film genius is. And when I hear this guy talking about camera filters and stuff like that, I think when I see clips of the short he used, it looks pretty good to me. I am very curious as to what this guy is going to end up making and what his career will be like. It's so hard to tell, you know, in these episodes,

like they kind of were doing a read-through of the script, and the script sounded terrible to me. A lot of times, scripts seem terrible. In fact, good scripts that read well often make bad movies. So I've been pretty intrigued by this. I was intrigued that they selected him at all. It made me suspect he must be significantly more talented than the people he was competing with, even though they all seemed pretty good. And also, they knew he'd make for good TV.

I mean, that has to be part of it. He did, but not in a conventional way. Right. He's not going to say controversial things. No, but he's going to be weird. He's going to push for stuff. He's going to stick to some principle that is in his head that kind of doesn't make sense.

That's the thing. And that's maybe the most important thing a director can have. What I like about this season, well, I like a lot of things about this season, but, you know, first of all,

it shows you how hard it is to make a movie. You know, they're about to start filming it and I think that they did four episodes so far and they just got the location for where the house is.

They're still casting actors and it shows you like just what a sprint it is to just get to whatever weird deadline you had but it also shows you and i think this fits for stuff you know that isn't just movies but just how collaborative it is and how if you have one or two people that have difficulty collaborating how many problems can pop out of that right where you have basically the director from the moment he gets picked he's trying to hire fire that guy pete he's he wants to shoot on film he's mad about the location he's going to one of the Farrelly brothers he's going over Effie's head and he's doing all that stuff and then you have Effie who has a real chip on

her shoulder and seems to have she she takes things personally that seem like they're just part of the whole process of making a film like Peter Farrelly's brought in to be the quote-unquote mentor for this guy the guy calls Peter Farrelly about brought in to be the quote-unquote mentor for this guy. The guy calls Peter Farrelly about something, and she feels like he went over and blows it into a big deal. And just watching it makes me think, this has to be what most movies are like. I think it's captured the experience of making a movie better than any other season has. Does that make sense? Yeah. sense um yeah probably because you know and they the like affleck and damon kind of admitted this in at the first episode when they did this originally the candidates were guys who like

shot a short film in their kitchen with one camera on a tripod and that so these are people who wanted to wanted to make a film but really did but really did not have the skills maybe to do so, and had to be almost shown how to do it. I mean, there was one guy who made a horror movie that was set inside of a house. I remember that guy. What was that guy, John Guliga? Yes, John Guliga. And he was pretty good. I thought that this is somebody who knows what they're doing. But this guy seems much more polished to the point where I have absolutely no doubt that if this show didn't exist, he would still have gone into filmmaking. It seems like all of these people should be trying to make mumblecore movies. Like, my wife and I watched this movie that had Adam Scott in it and Jason Schwartzman.

Yeah, I watched that two nights ago. Yeah, I can't remember the name of it. It just came out. It's basically just four people in a house for most of the movie. It seems like that easily could have been Project Greenlight. Just find four actors and maybe this is what this movie is. I don't know.

This is all going to be set in one house. I mean, that Adam Scott wasn't really mumblecore. Well, you know what I mean. It was a movie that required, I think this would be the same way, like it won't require a lot of special effects. They won't have to go to a lot of different places. They'll probably be able to shoot it pretty quickly.

That movie kind of, the Adam Scott, Jason Schwartzman movie, that neither one of us can remember the title of despite having just saw it. Probably a bad side. Yeah. It really felt like a 90s movie to me. Yeah. It seemed kind of like the kind of movie that would have came out around the same time, like, Threesome came out.

Like, it seems like that was sort of the, you know, like, maybe like 1994 kind of a, I mean, I didn't find it bad, but I just, it seemed not of this time. That's, see, I feel it's called The Overnight. That's right. I feel like there's a lot of movies like that where it's people in their 30s, and either they have kids or they're trying to have kids, and everything seems right on the surface. But then as the movie goes along, it's clear that things aren't right,

and there's some sort of catalyst, and they have to question the relationship. That seems like, I feel like that movie's been made 25 times in the last eight years. And it's like, somebody can't get an erection, somebody's got a small dick. It's like there's always some wrinkle. Somebody cheated on somebody, and the guy can't get over it.

Or the baby died, or there's always some sort of catalyst that brings up all this. It's kind of like a mainstream transgressive movie. That if you take any of the details and say the movie involves this, people will be like, oh, it's kind of edgy. But as you watch it, it didn't seem edgy at all. I was watching, yeah, like Kicking and Screaming is a good example to me of like a 90s movie like that

that's a that's a pre-internet movie that captures what life was like for people that graduated college in the range of 91 to 94

and had no idea what they were gonna do next like it was called Generation X but it really that really was a generation I know your I know your buddy

Wine Rep loves that movie what I like about Noah Baumbach's movies is that I really think more than any other director, he has no problem with saying, I'm going to make a movie that addresses what my life is like now, the age I am now, or the age I was two years ago,

and this is what I was thinking about. His entire career is based on that, The age I am now. Or the age I was two years ago, and this is what I was thinking about. His entire career is based on that. That his maturation happens chronologically in his films. Like, the things he's thinking about in his life are in his movies. I think that makes him a pretty big fan of almost all his films. Maybe all of them. They're always interesting. I don't always love the the film but I'm always glad I saw it

if that makes sense I didn't like Mr. Jealousy yeah that was I remember thinking it was okay when I saw it it's been a long time I didn't love that one you know last night Pulp Fiction was on and I was watching the scene

when Travolta goes to pick up uma thurman and just that whole 20 minute sequence and they go to the the place with the the 50s uh diner that has the waitresses dressed up as the actresses and they do the dance and the pace of it everything about it was so interesting and it made me um it made me nostalgic for that whole wesley and i talked about it, everything about it was so interesting. And it made me nostalgic for that whole, Wesley and I talked about it last week, but that whole era of movie making when it seemed like just people trying to try things. And now I'm not seeing that as much.

Like that, even the scene in that diner, everything about it was so creative, you know? And I would love to see that come back. Well, I mean, I think a lot of what you're talking about actually was happening in the mumblecore movement. I mean, I think like someone like Andrew Jowski and stuff is trying a new kind of filmmaking. So I still, I mean, I, you know, I watch more television now than I watch film, but. Yeah, I do too. I don't feel as though...

I'm not worried about the future or current state of film. I still think there's a lot of pretty good... Oh, I'm more worried than you because it seems like the financial model is either go for broke or make a cheap movie and there's no in-between movie anymore. But you can make such a good movie cheaply now. I mean, like the fact that regardless of what the guy on Project Greenlight

seems to think, for me, it's very difficult for me to distinguish between film and video. Yeah, I agree with that. And that allows the directors to take so many takes of stuff that they can get better performances out of people. Wait, let me ask you this. Let's say you were a talented director. You're a talented writer and director.

Would you rather do a movie that's going to make, I don't know, it'll make its money back and then maybe a couple million more and you'll get respect. You're Noah Baumbach. Or would you rather be the creator, writer, director of some HBO drama or Showtime drama like The Affair? Where you're doing eight to ten episodes a year, but you can really get deep into the characters and go in some directions, and you know people are coming back week after week? What would be more fun?

I would pick the TV show. I think that it would depend on how complicated the idea was. The idea was real complicated that I was trying to go after. The TV show does work better because you've got more time. Yeah. The problem, I would say, and this is a weird thing because we're talking about my career that I don't have. Okay, but if I had this career which I don't have with this skill set I don't possess, the one thing I will say is that even great television tends to sort of date badly. And it just kind of disappears, not just from kind of the cultural discourse, but even from a person's own memory.

They kind of remember the show, you know, wherever it is, they sort of remember it in this kind of hazy abstraction. Whereas movies keep getting rediscovered. It's like someone can get Kicking and Screaming and play it now for the first time, and it can be good on just a straightforward entertainment level. It's also kind of a period piece about that time in the 90s. It also informs the other movies you're going to see from Noah Baumbach, and it really seems to sort of reflect something about him. The TV show does not reflect about its creator, with like the exception, I guess, like of, you know, like the Wire and Treme do sort of reflect something about David Fryman. But every director is like that. Any director that I've seen more than five or six films with, I guess with the exception of Steven Soderbergh,

who doesn't seem to have a discernible style, can't do anything. For the most part, the catalog of films sort of tells me something about what the person likes about movies. So it's almost like the difference between being an author and being somebody who writes um columns very much yeah hey you know i want to ask you a few questions about donald trump could you be interested in talking about that yeah let's let's make this the last thing because we gotta go okay um first of all i want you to give me a date at what date will trump not lead most neutral polls for the Republican nomination?

That's a great question. So when is the Republican convention? The actual date. It's like summer, right? Like June? Yes. But let's get an exact date. Because it would feel like things would have to start flipping

over the next couple months, but they don't really show any sign of flipping. Well, okay, July 18th to the 21st. July 18th, okay, that's a long time away. The thing is, what makes it an interesting thing, picking this date of what day he will no longer be the leader in that poll, and we're talking about neutral polls, not a poll, you know, someone can find a poll from, you know, that Marco Rubio's people put forward,

but like in a kind of a general like CNN, USA Today poll, picking the date for this is particularly interesting because you can't use typical logic. Typical logic would have had him drop several weeks ago. His campaign completely inverts all sort of reason. So I'm wondering when you think there will be a poll where he'll not be on top. Pick a date. I'll take the over-under. April.

April what day? I'm going to say April 8th. Okay, I'm going to take the under. I think it will happen before that. Really? Yeah, I think it will probably happen around the time of the Super Bowl is my prediction, when he will dip below the top of that bowl. Now, here's the main thing I wanted to ask you.

And it's easy to make jokes about this, but why do you think this has happened? So I'm looking at that. How would you explain this? How would you explain it? I'm looking at the polls right now. So from three days ago, Trump's 25%, Ben Carson's 16%, and then everybody else is 8% and below. He's still got a pretty – That's a pretty big lead. But then she kind of faded again.

I mean, it's just been a fascinating thing. I mean, if you're a Republican regardless of how you feel about Trump, you have to love how he has raised the profile of everyone involved in this race. I mean, many of the people involved in these debates were unknown to the vast majority of the country. And now they all seem marginally famous because it's been on television talking about this one guy. bring attention to everybody else. I think, I think this happened for two reasons. One is I,

I don't think when people do these polls now, it's not like they, I don't know, you know, if, if the election was happening like tomorrow, I think the polls might be a little different, but now I think people are like, yeah, I'd pick Trump, but I don't know if I believe them. So I don't, I don't, I think that 25% is a dubious number. But it does seem like something about the stuff he's doing resonates with a certain group of people. Because he's just shooting from the hip and saying what he thinks and not being politically correct. And I do think there's a segment of the country out there that thinks the country has gotten too liberal, too politically correct, too afraid to say how they feel.

And he's tapping into that. And it's undeniable. Yeah. Well, you know, from like, I think for people on the left, they see this and their perception is usually one of two things that he's like, he's kind of tapping into this sort of entrenched, unspoken racism and xenophobia. Or they say, well, you know, this just proves that the American populace now looks at politics solely as entertainment. And it's like, it's still a reality. It's a reality show to them. And that's what it is. But, but actually what you're saying, Bill, I guess I really do just, I agree because when I, I because when I talk to people who like Trump, a lot of my friends in the Midwest are pretty right-leaning.

I'm always curious what they think about this stuff. And they don't say, I think he'd make a great president. They don't even say, I want him to be a great president or even necessarily I like him but the thing they say is exactly what you just mentioned that that they they say like it's getting to this point where it's just they feel like that trump is somehow a corrective to the way language in america is kind of been changed and limited yeah you know like there was a there's a story in the new yorker I think it was like last November or December. It was written by this Harvard law professor. And she said that how complicated it is to teach law at Harvard now,

because one student said that she didn't want, or they didn't feel teachers should use the phrase violate the Constitution or violate the law because it's a triggering word kind of yeah i'm just trigger warnings in general i think when to a lot of people when they sort of hear the idea that that there's a move in the academic world like in the world that's ostensibly educating people that the goal should be to sort of remove discomfort from conversation. That's not even the idea you're presenting. It's just like the words you use or whatever.

And I think that that bothers people, and the only way that they feel like they can voice this sort of fear is by kind of letting Trump continue to run for president. And what will really be interesting is if it keeps going like this and gets to a point around Super Tuesday or whatever, where Trump still leads these polls, and there's going to have to be a decision by a lot of these people who support him. It's like, we're almost making a protest vote by saying we like this guy. And are we going to keep going and actually vote for him? And I just think that's going to be a real amazing hinge moment

kind of in democracy if it gets to that scenario. And it does feel a little generational to me. And maybe Trump's tapping into those people where they're like, ah, these young people, they're so sensitive about everything. Well, and it's sort of just this flopping of how people had always believed generations were supposed to be. That young people would be saying these problematic things that make us uncomfortable. And now it's the opposite.

Now it's young people saying, the older generation is saying these problematic things that make us uncomfortable. And then make us feel as if we're unsafe. The microaggressions thing, in a way, it's kind of similar to the microconcussion problem with football. Yeah. In that if microconcussions are really the issue, then essentially the sport as we know it is the whole thing. If everything is a problem, there's no way to fix it. If there's a way to fix it if there's a possibility that guys are getting a micro concussion on every play

football can exist and if we accept the idea of micro aggression and the idea that that there are all of these things that on the surface on any you know from any sort of kind of distance view seem just like statements but are actually offensive terminology well that kind of does the same thing with language we kind of demand an entire way to rethink the way people communicate in every possible way and you know i i'm not even necessarily forwarding an opinion on this but i feel like this is all tied in to this idea of Trump going, you know, like, okay, like Rand Paul, he seems like he has kind of very questionable ideas, but, here's a guy who's like, he's not a lunatic. And in one of the debates, he's saying like, you know, why is Trump name calling? You know, are we in eighth grade or whatever? And Trump's response was like, I haven't said anything about him, but I could have or whatever,

you know? Right. And coming from a politician that just seems insane, or when like, when Trump would say things like, I'm not a fan of John McCain. I like the guys who don't get captured or whatever. That was unbelievable. Coming from a politician that just seems absolutely nuts. And yet I think for a lot of people, they think to themselves,

that's actually closer to a joke me or someone else might make. And everybody at the table would know the person's not serious, but we would think, oh, well, I don't know about that, but it's kind of funny. I just, you know, because Trump doesn't talk, this idea that Trump talks like a normal person, that's not true. I don't know anyone who talks like Trump, but somehow his amplified version of, like, non-political correct discourse or whatever resonates with people who wish that they could talk that way, even if they never would.

And it does seem like everybody is retreated to their respective corners more than ever. Vox had, in the big interview Vox did with Obama a few months ago, they had that chart of the approval rate of Republicans and Democrats for whoever the sitting president was and how that, how every, basically every presidency, the president has become more and more polarizing and Obama has the lowest approval rate from the other party of any president ever. And the next president's going to have an even lower approval rate than him. And it just feels like everybody is now in their corners.

Well, I mean, that's... Wait, wait, though. When Lyndon Johnson left office, his approval rating was 49%. Right. When Reagan left office, his approval rating was 63%. I'm not like a memorizer of these facts. I just happen to have been reading this very recently. So I don't know if, like, Obama's approval rating is low and it will just continually creep up post office, right?

I'm not talking about the overall. I was talking about one party versus the other. It seems like the thing I'm wondering is if it's easier now in 2015 for somebody like Trump who's, you know, like think about Ross Perot in 1992.

If you took that 1992 election and put it now, would Ross Perot be doing better? Okay. Ross Perot got 19% of the vote. Right. That was after he had dropped out and come back. Right.

Initially, at the time, the assumption was that he had stole 19% of the vote from Bush. Statistics now seem to indicate that he got about 9.5% of Clinton voters and 9.5% of Bush voters, so that maybe he was a non-factor in that election although it still feels like he was the principal reason clinton became elected now if someone like perot um was in the race now um i guess in some ways he shares qualities with trump because he was it seemed like he was a real free speaking straight speaking straight-speaking person. Right, shooting from the hip. Would he do better, though? Like, I mean, I suppose he would. The field is so, I mean, it depends.

Would he run as a Republican or would he run as an independent? I think this time around he would run as a Republican. Do you think Trump will run as an independent if he, and he probably most certainly will, not get the GOP nomination. Do you think he will still run? I think he will run. And I think this has been, I said this last week, I think a lot of this has been about the sport of the whole thing for him. And the fact that he's rebranded himself as a celebrity in one of the most unbelievable ways we've ever seen

he's on 60 Minutes he's the first guest on every 1130 show he's certainly more famous than he's ever been it's so bizarre to see a guy publicizing the ratings

for a debate that's so antithetical to anything we've ever thought about politics, ever, that somehow one of the concerns one of the candidates would have is how much the debate was seen from a popularity perspective. But, okay, so let's say Trump runs as independent. Does he get more or less than Perot's 19%? That I don't know. I'm not educated enough on this whole thing to know.

I think he would get 21% of the popular vote. You think it would be slightly more? I think that he would get 21% of the vote because I think that his diehard supporters would vote for him, and a lot of people who just have no interest in politics and might not have voted at all will do it just at all, uh, we'll do it just because they will sense this guy can't win, but I'm just going to do this. Well, it's certainly working because we just talked about him for 20 minutes and I, you know, you've been coming on my podcast since 2007.

I don't ever remember us talking about politics for 20 minutes. So whatever he's doing is really interesting. I watched a three-hour debate every minute of it, 14 months before the election or 15 months before the election. And I wouldn't have minded if it went a little longer because the whole time, his involvement in this is so, I mean, is it a problem? Well, yes, but not in a way that makes me really disturbed. More so just kind of makes me confused about, like, what must be happening in the world that I don't inhabit. Like, how they must sort of view. I mean, it's just, it's so interesting to think of, like, when he says things like, you know, like, well, I get along with Putin.

You know, Putin would like me. Well, you know, maybe that's true. It sounds like he's broken your brain. He might be more like Putin than the other guys running for this position. That doesn't mean he's qualified to do it, but that's possibly true. So what he's done for you, basically, is completely flip the idea of what you thought would ever happen with the presidency of the United States.

Because this is actually now a possibility that Donald Trump, as crazy as it sounds, that Donald Trump could actually have a chance to become the president. Well, I don't know if I would go that far, but I'll say this he is he is definitely um existing as a candidate that in a fictional story would make the story seem unreal like if you made a movie about politics and all the things

trump has done and sort of the success he has had, if there was a character like that in the film, anybody would say that would never happen. The first time he criticizes a war hero for getting captured, it would be over. But it's not happening. It's not. And every time there's some incident that seems to suggest that this was the mistake, he seems to get a little bump from it. It's so unlike anything else. I can't remember in my lifetime any situation remotely similar.

I always thought Bullworth was the most unrealistic political movie ever, but I think this Trump thing is really Trumping it. All right, we have to go. Okay. Anything you want to plug? Any plugs? I mean, I don't know. By the time this runs All right, we have to go. Okay. Anything you want to plug? Any plugs? I mean, I don't know. By the time this runs, when's this going to go up?

In about two hours. Well, I think next week it might be. I have a story for GQ on Taylor Swift. I don't really plug in that. People need it if they want to. Taylor Swift? Oh, we should talk about that the next time. Please come back.

Chuck Klosterman, always a pleasure. We've been doing this for eight years. I've never not had a good time. Thank you for being on the Bill Simmons podcast. And two things. Don't forget my listeners can use promo code BS in the SeatGeek app and get a $20 rebate off your first SeatGeek purchase. You count as a podcast listener. So do this. It will take you less than a minute to download the SeatGeek app. There's no faster or easier way to buy tickets for sporting events, concerts, whatever you want. Download the free SeatGeek app and enter promo code BS today. Oh, and why deal with the post office when you get postage on demand from stamps.com? Sign up now and use promo code BS for a special four-week trial.

It's a $110 bonus offer that includes postage and a digital scale. Go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the home page and type in bs that's stamps.com enter bs thanks to seat geek and thanks to stamps.com thanks to chuck closterman back on uh friday with joe house nfl nba coming enjoy the day