The Bill Simmons Podcast - Malcolm Gladwell on the Future of Books, Kanye Tirades, Sandra Bland, Donald Sterling, Joe Paterno, and Intuition | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: September 18, 2019

HBO and The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by author/journalist Malcolm Gladwell to discuss his new book 'Talking With Strangers,' as well as recent controversies, the audiobook revolution, classic conspiracies, NBA tampering, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You love that one. I love it. It was great. They're like good friends. Yeah, it's good. I listened to it on the plane today as I fell in and out of consciousness because I was on an early plane today. You can listen to that.

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Coming up, my old friend Malcolm Gladwell. He's been on this podcast many times. We've done lots of things together, writing wise, audio wise, and he has a new book coming up. We're going to talk to him about it right now. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. They said Malcolm Gladwell would never read another book. He wrote another book. How many years for you? Six years. Six years? Between them.

Yeah. I'm old. I can't make fun of you because my fingers don't even work anymore. I can barely send emails. There's a whole generation of you because my fingers don't even work anymore. I can barely send emails. There's a whole generation of people out there who don't realize you used to write. I know. I'm a waste of talent. They think you're just a talking head. It's terrible. I'm like the Andrew Luck of

writing. I'm just hiking the Himalayas. You don't miss it. I do miss it, but what I don't miss is you can't do the half-assed version of it. Like when you did this book that you put together, I guarantee you didn't just work on it like once a week like you were doing it.

There's still a thing that happens to me. It's usually in airports. Somebody will come up to me and say, I loved those email exchanges you did with Simmons back in the day, and then they walk away. And I just feel like someone stabbed me in the heart because like— I miss them too. You won't do them anymore. I'd do i never i never said i would never do them

the last one we did was my favorite i thought it was i thought it was we did that one for the ringer did yeah yeah yeah it was really good i do to give me a heartbeat just invite me you own but you're so busy like no that's force i haven't written anything in like two years i get yet now i just get jealous when other people write stuff because i always feel like i had a kinship with the people who are writing less and then you come out and you write this talking to strangers book and one of the most complicated books you've written yeah and it seems like you you started can you explain the thesis in one sentence i don't want to go go into like the morass of the book, but yeah, the thesis is that the strategies that we use to make sense

of our friends are, and work really well in that context, work really badly when, where they are applied to strangers and that an enormous number of the controversies that we find ourselves in the present day are about failed conversations between strangers. You meet the person, you don't understand who he or she is. You're rattling this off with the vigor of somebody who's done like 15 interviews already in the last week. I've gotten really good.

I've gotten really good at mixing it up. And what I've done is, because you do this thing now where it's all, back in the day when you were on book tour, you would give a talk. I would give a talk. Right. Now it's all Q&As. And so now the whole thing is you choose in each place you stop a different Q&A, a Q&A partner who will have a different conversation than a person before.

So you want maximum diversity in your Q&A partner. And that way you don't get stale. So this is like a last three years kind of trend? Because I've noticed this same thing happened with Chuck when he just did his book. Yeah, it's all right. He had his little buddies in every city there, or whoever, or somebody they hooked him up with. It dawned on the book publishing business that the people who show up for your book event are already going to read the book. So the last thing you need to do is to preview the book to them.

They have it. They're going to go home and read it. So they just want to find out about you. Do they have to buy a book to get into the thing? Yeah. So I was of the vestige, which was was insane of you would just go and you would sign everybody's book and it would be a long line and it was pre-selfies and it was just like and i always felt bad because i didn't have you know if there's like hundreds of people on a line you feel you

you got to keep it going but i also was like i wanted to talk to people but you end up just you came out so long ago it It's like the 19th century. It's 10 years ago. It's the 19th century. I mean, you have no more understanding of like the book tour now. It's kind of funny how long ago. I think I would like this version of it much more, doing like the little Q&A in each city. Now you're making me want to write a book.

And also, so there's all kinds of things. Should I get a ghostwriter? Just imitates my style. Well, an update of, I've said for years that an update of the book of basketball. I mean, it's unbelievable you haven't done that. Like, I don't understand. It's not going to be, you've done all the hard work. You just need to revisit the top 100.

You could take a month off and like, right. Maybe I'm playing dumb and I'm doing this already. All right. All right. And because that was. Maybe I've been roping over people all along. Yeah, it has been 10 years. A lot has changed.

Crazy NBA decade. But so is it more fun to sell a book the way things are now? I would imagine it is. It must be like you're talking to, we're taping this on a Wednesday. You're talking to Larry, we're tap on a Wednesday. You're talking to Larry, we're taping on Tuesday. You're talking to Larry Wilmer tonight.

And Riverside. Last night was Britt Marling, the actress. The night before, who's a friend of mine, the night before that was a law professor

at Harvard. The night before that was Sam Sanders, the hilarious NPR guy. The night before that was like, was Brian Lehrer, the hilarious NPR guy. The night before that was Brian Lehrer, who's like the opposite of Sam Sanders. Equally brilliant, but like an old Jewish guy curmudgeon.

And so it's five completely different experiences. So you picked the list? Yeah, you try and mix it up as much as possible. So you're almost arranging like a cocktail party where you're walking around the party talking to all different types of people. Like Brian Lehrer, I just made fun of Brian Lehrer for like being an old guy.

And he was so hilariously down with that. And then last night was sort of super serious because like Brit is serious. I mean, she's a, you know, we talked about storytelling and then Larry, I don't know what Larry's going to be about tonight, but you know, with Larry, you can go in any number of, we could spend the entire night talking about the Lakers. Who knows? Right with him.

It's very possible, especially with this upcoming Lakers season. The book, it's more of a psychology book than anything. Not that your other books haven't been, but it really dives into a lot. And every time I read a book like that, and you've written a couple that definitely dips into it in a big way. I always wonder why I just don't read psychology books. Cause I love reading about human psychology. And on the other hand, I feel like I'm pretty good at site, just like understanding the whole things. And maybe it's because I don't read books about it. Like, do you think it's one of those things where the

more you read about it, it actually could screw up your compass? Well, there's the problem with reading, with jumping to the kind of source material is that it's vast. Yeah. Like, it's just really, really, really, really, really overwhelming. Like you had David Epstein, right, on this, did you read on the pod? Like six weeks ago.

And David, David is the guy who reads everything before he writes a book. So he does an insane, you know, to master the feel before he wrote Range. I don't, God knows how many, I mean, he must have spent like a year just reading. And I don't do that. I'm much more selective. But you have to have a sort of an approach to this because you could literally just spend the rest of your life consuming the literature on these areas. I mean, it's just. So your process is you start out with Sandra Brand kills herself in jail.

Yeah. And I'm obsessed with that. So you're, so you're just obsessed with that. Not even thinking it's a book yet. You're just like, I want to know everything about this case. Well, like everyone. So she's the case of the woman, the young African-American woman who's pulled over by the side of the road in Texas. Cop gets in an argument with her.

Four years ago. Four years ago. She gets arrested. She hangs herself in jail. And there is a, the whole thing is there's a dash cam video of their entire encounter. So it's one of the only, so all of these high-profile encounters between African-Americans and cops, it's really the only one where we have an absolute transcript. We know exactly,

like they're still arguing about Ferguson, what happened with Michael Brown and Darren Wilson. With Sandra Bland, we know, and that's why it's so heartbreaking because you can see just how stupid and banal and idiotic the cop the cops encountered with her i mean it's just like it should never have happened it's the most kind of um and so i watched it like 20 times and became convinced that there was something

both um incredibly interesting and interesting, it seems like a lame word in that context, but also something powerfully typical about it. And I'd also read this book, right around the same time, I read a book by a criminologist at Berkeley called Frank Zimmering called Why Police Kill. And he was trying to figure out how many American civilians

die at the hands of law enforcement in America every year. And his first thing is, it's really hard to figure that out. Believe it or not, we don't have numbers on that, which is in itself incredible. And then he figures out that it's about a thousand. And then he says, well, is that high or low relative to other countries? And the answer is it's way, way high. And then he says, well, how long has it been going on at that level? And the answer is a very, very long time. And then once you read that book, it's like, it's impossible not to be sort of angry. When did you come into the realization that a lot of what happened when she got stopped, the stuff with the cop was about two people that were basically set up

by all these other factors to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Cause that's really what the book's about. Two people in the wrong place at the wrong time for reasons that really didn't have everything to do with them. And then hitting all the same checkpoints that you're going to hit when you don't kind of know how to talk to each other. Yeah. Well, I got, I mean, the really, really, there's many, many, many questions that arise out of that traffic stop. The one I settle on as being the most significant is why is he stopping her? Right. So the first thing you do is you look at the cop.

We have an exact record of his entire career as a police officer, every single police stop he ever made. And what you discover, first of all, is that he was stopping people all the time, constantly, for incredibly trivial infractions. So Sandra Bland is not some anomalous incident. It's his, it's what he did. Yeah. And then the second thing is, okay, so why does he do that? And the answer is because he was trained to do that. And then once you sort of realize that fact, that he is not a rogue cop, he is in fact a paradigmatic cop. He's a cop acting precisely as the system wanted him to act. And that's when you make the leap and you realize, oh, you can't dismiss this. This is not simply a personal interaction gone awry. This is the result of a deliberate strategy

of law enforcement, which has been enacted without regard to its social consequences. And that's the last third quarter of the book. It's just about exploring that kind of how on earth do we end up with a law enforcement system in this country, idea, strategy, which involves stopping innocent people and suspecting and engaging in wild fantasies about their potential wrongdoing. How much of the book can we step on? You want to leave some mystery? Yeah, I'll leave some

mystery. I was going to say, there was... I mean, I didn't know a lot of this stuff. I feel like I'm pretty well read. I didn't realize the volume of stops and how this was actually a strategy that started for not the greatest reason,

but not a terrible reason. You lay that on the book. I won't say what chapter. But then just kind of became everyone's strategy. It was almost like in sports where somebody's offense is succeeding for a specific reason. And everybody else is like, hey, that offense looks good, but it's terrible for them.

This is the spread offense of law enforcement. Yeah, and it's just, like, ridiculous. Yeah. And the numbers don't back up at all. It makes sense to do it this way. I mean, when you're stopping 1,000 people and you're finding one gun and, you know, two pounds of Coke, you have to ask yourself,

is it really worth alienating 998 people in order to find, that's essentially what we're doing, right? We're stopping thousands of people. You're institutionalizing fear and anger and all these things that just don't need to, you at least don't need to do that. It's not worth it for what you get out of it.

But you also, in this book, tied in a whole bunch of things that I'm just interested in, like Amanda Knox and the Sandusky case. I've been emailing with Amanda Knox. Really? Yeah. That documentary was good.

I liked that one. It was very good. Yeah. Cause she, for, we did this, what we call an enhanced audio book. So we did our audio book like a podcast. So all historical archival tape, whenever I interview someone, you hear them, not me reading them. It's a completely different experience. We got a song from Janelle Monáe.

That's a theme song that runs throughout. Anyway, I wanted to use some of Amanda Knox's own audio, like from her audio book, in my thing. So I had to ask permission. So we get in touch with Amanda, and I start emailing with her. It's like, it's sort of interesting, like kind of, and she turns out, of course,

to be incredibly thoughtful, interesting kind of person. But the notion is one of those. So I divide all of these crazy public controversies into two very kind of broad groups. There is the one, there are the ones that

stand up to the test of time. So 10 years later, when you look back on Controversy X, does it still seem like a legit controversy? Right. And then the other category

are the ones like, you just have, you cannot understand what in God's name were we thinking? Amanda Knox is the latter category. It's like,

in retrospect, it makes no sense. It's crazy that millions of people around the world were convinced that this kind of, you know, Seattle, middle class, slightly awkward Seattle girl who goes, who's been in Italy for three weeks, honored like a year abroad. She was like 20. Like 20 years old. Who's just like, I mean, she's a little bit quirky, interesting. We somehow convinced ourselves that she was this murderous femme fatale who was like roping in her roommate or her boyfriend and some random like drifter who comes in off the street

into some thing that ends in a bloody massacre. Like, it's just, it just is crazy. It's like OJ is one of those things too, of course. OJ is the paradigmatic. It's like O.J. is one of those things too, of course. O.J. is the paradigmatic, it's crazy 10 years later. Whereas, what's one that stands up really well? Well, you know, Jean Benet, Ramsey. It's not like we've resolved it or we now think, why did we get? I mean, it's still a kind of grand mystery that kind of commands our attention.

The OJ case had two things that we didn't know enough about in 94 and 95. One was just the domestic violence pieces of it, which everybody just kind of blew off. Yeah. You know, there was this mindset of, oh, well, you can't judge. We weren't there. And, you know, people, the way they thought about it, it wasn't a red flag. Like it became post-OJ. way they thought about it it wasn't a red flag like it became post oj i never thought about this in the me too era the presumption of oj's guilt is so much

stronger because they play the tape the 9-11 tape it's it's stronger post oj because that was that was the one that's shown the light on this whole thing and it's and she's the worst one was when she calls and this is a after a couple times the police had come and she's just like completely defeated and she's like it's Nicole Brown Simpson you've been here yeah it's about OJ he's gonna kill me like hey she's not even like scared it's like she's just convinced she's gonna die I think people heard that and it made them completely flip the flip how they thought about this stuff. The other thing was DNA.

And we just didn't understand that in 1994 and 95. And even like, I think younger people understood it, but I think older people were like, well, you know, they could just leak the blood and they just didn't get it. Are you, so you think that the switch was flipped on our kind of understanding and appreciation of how serious domestic abuse is. You think it's flipped by OJ? I think right around then. I think that was— I think it's later.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe OJ is the beginning. I think OJ—and this is why—one of the reasons why Ezra's documentary about him was so great. It's this tipping point of like nine different things. Yeah. Where it's like just life is different after this happens in this spot, in this spot, in this spot, in this spot. And even the concept, you talk in the book about people's perception versus what the reality is and they see what they want to see. And a big piece of this OJ thing was, oh, he couldn't have done that.

He's OJ. Yeah. You know? And 10 years ago, I think we did a back and forth on this where we were talking about, like, who would the most surprising person be, like, right now as surprising as OJ was in 94? And it was basically, like, Barkley. Be like, if all of a sudden Barkley just murdered somebody, and we're like, nah, Charles would never do that. That was how we felt about OJ in the mid-90s. I was like, no way.

Yeah. Stop it. Also, the question that would be asked today about OJ is whether he had CTE. Had CTE, all that stuff, yeah. Immediately. Or whether it was, the other thing was whether, I mean, his behavior also looks a lot like Roydridge. Yeah. It's either CTE or, like, I always feel like with Aaron Hernandez,

I know who we are talking once again about the Patriots, but. We've disowned Aaron Hernandez. We never went to Super Bowl with him. It doesn't count. The discovery that Aaron Hernandez had the CTE of, I mean, it wasn't like some insanely advanced case of CTE. I feel like I actually watched Steve. I watched Stephen A on ESPN talk about this. And he was like saying, don't use that.

He was like, he didn't want to. He didn't want to incorporate that fact into his understanding of Aaron Hernandez. And I thought, you know what? That's a big mistake. I think you have to. It doesn't let him off the hook. But it does say that this is like a, this is actually a kind of a way of thinking about problems that I like a lot, that I use in this book, particularly when I talk about the Stanford rape case. an outside consideration that affects behavior does not mean you are letting the perpetrator off the hook.

So to say, I have this chapter on Stanford rape case, which is all about alcohol. What does alcohol do? How does it feed into the Brock Turner case? How does alcohol drunkenness contribute to sexual assault? And a lot of people, their first impulse is, oh, by saying alcohol contributes heavily, you're trying to let Brock Turner off the hook.

Wrong, 100% wrong. In fact, it greatly clarifies his responsibility for his own behavior. So he's not just responsible for his behavior towards women. He's also responsible for the things he puts inside his body. So we've now told him,

dude, you're 18. There are two things you need to worry about. One, do not act like a criminal towards women. Two, don't ingest substances at such a rate that turn you into a criminal, right? It is- Or that you can't control even what you're doing, walking straight.

Walking. Any decision you make, you can't control. And with football and CTE, the same thing applies. Well, I've noticed with the Antonio Brown thing in the last couple weeks, the way people have talked about him. And you saw a little bit with Andrew Luck, too, who I joked about at the beginning of this, where I think that people have been hesitant with Brown

because they don't know if there's something wrong with him. Yeah. You know, and I think if this had been 10 years ago, 20 years ago, it would just would have been like, that guy's a lunatic, but he's taking his crazy pills again. And he would have been like a character. Yeah. And I think this has happened in a lot of different parts of sports and culture, like even something like, um, like child actors, you know, and you think like in the late eighties, early nineties, which um, like child actors, you know, and you think like in the late eighties, early nineties, which was really when child actors started growing up, child actors were fucking up left and right. People like Howard Stern and center alive. They really started making fun of those people like Danny Bonaduce. And it just became a funny thing. Now I don't feel like

we would do that. I think, and I think Twitter has a big part of that and the internet. I think people are just a lot more feeling these days. But I do think people consider a greater range of factors. That's a good thing. There's other bad things that come with that too. But I think that's ultimately a good thing is at least we give people a little more of a benefit of the doubt from the mental health side. And the CT thing is a great example. Yeah. We don't know.

Antonio Brown, he might have had like eight concussions. We don't know. If he didn't tell us. You know, Gronkowski, did you see some of his quotes? He said he had like 20 concussions and he's blacked out concussions five times. Like, who knows if he's exaggerating. But, I mean, I remember watching Patriots games and thinking he'd been concussed at least four or five times. Kyle, right? Oh, no doubt. I wouldn't be surprised by any number.

I mean, Edelman got concussed in the Super Bowl when they were coming back against Seattle. And stayed in the game and caught the game-winning touchdown. So God only knows. Oh man, it's so Leo. I mean, and not even, we haven't even talked about how many concussions Brady's had just by virtue of being on the field for that long. It's just made him more handsome.

Make his hair grow. Turns out that's a side effect. It's a huge man ahead right now. We've had hair. The WWE, the worst. Everyone talks about dead wrestlers and crimes at WWE. They had one thing happen that was so terrible that it's kind of been. It was almost too horrible.

It was Chris Benoit where he killed his basically his family himself yeah and they said his brain was like not even recognizable yeah and he he there was just so much damage and he was you know wrestling in the height of the chair shot era where for four or five years it was like a big thing hitting people over the head with chairs and these guys were like getting dizzy and then they're going to the next city and doing it again. And he just, his brain was just mush.

There's a guy who I interviewed for my book. I have a chapter of the book on, the chapter, remember, on torture when I sit down with the CIA guy who did all the waterboarding. And then I had to sit down with this other guy who studies what happens to people when they've been traumatized.

And that second guy, super, super interesting. And one of the things he told me, and it's not something I went into in the book, he was saying the thing that's fascinating about PTSD is you could have two soldiers who go through exactly the same experience, exactly the same. One guy will emerge 100% healthy and and one guy will have suffered from profound PTSD. And there's no obvious reason why. In other words, it's not that one guy is from a good background and healthy, and the other guy is drug-using. They are objectively indistinguishable.

And then something about the way one person processes that, um, that experience proves to be, um, highly pathological and the other guy's fine. And he was sort of the, the question he was trying to answer was, can we distinguish between those two people before they go into battle? But what's really interesting about that is then, then you, you have a situation where in order to be a soldier, you would be screened for this. And we would have this weird thing where they would say to you, you know, Bill, you're one of those people who's not going to get PTSD. You're a grunt. You're on the front lines.

And then Malcolm, you are. You're going to work in the commissary back in the base and be totally. Now, the same thing is, of course, going to happen in football because the same is true. There are some people who get multiple concussions and they're fine. And there are others who develop profound CTE. We don't, we have vague reasons to understand what distinguishes between these two. But it's very clear that someone like Aaron Hernandez has this profound susceptibility to that, had that profound susceptibility. And he was off the rails by 22, right?

Right. And it's quite possible that, you know, Gronk could live to be 95 and, you know, could be a brain surgeon and, like, you know, go back to school. I mean, it's just, there's no... So we're probably a generation away from people screening your kids and saying... I think this is, by the way, the only way football survives, is that in the early teenage years, they start aggressively screening kids and saying, okay, this kid, you don't have any of the susceptibilities to concussion.

You can play and you can't. And that's going to be a really interesting. And what if the percentage of kids who have susceptibility is 70% of the football playing? Or what if it's 5%, right? Huge difference in outcomes. And soccer, lacrosse, and hockey too. Yeah, you will do it for, you know. And the only sport that will flourish is running, of course, my favorite sport. Because everyone's going to have to run cross-country.

All the people who get kicked off the soccer team. It's going to be the last one left. It's going to be fantastic. I think about the concussion stuff constantly because my daughter is now five foot eight and she's playing striker and there's corner kicks or crosses. And this is one of the things she's good at is going up in the air and trying to get a header. And if you watch soccer games, a lot of times, you know, you go up for a header, somebody else does, you crash heads

or you hit the goalie. But not only that, it's a, I had somebody when I did that story years ago explain this to me that it's really,

really crucial that your neck muscles be strong and that your head be fixed at that. So she's good at that. So that's good. But if she hits head to head

with somebody, it doesn't matter. And it's been interesting because obviously watching her the last 10 years and your little kids running around in a little circle,

but now she's like a grown woman and a goalie's running out and somebody else is running in and they collide and the danger's going up. And then you start thinking as a parent, like,

am I doing the right thing here? Like, isn't it my job the right thing here? Yeah. Like, isn't it my job to protect my kids? Yeah. My kid loves playing whatever. My son's playing. He's on the seventh grade team in sixth grade playing running back. But it's flag.

Yeah. But he's going to want to play with the pads in a couple years. Sal let his kids do it. Yeah. Yeah. And then I have to decide. Like, all right, do you try it? And you,

like, Sal's whole thing is like, if you get one concussion, you're done. You're using Sal as a role model here. Yeah. This is like the first time in history.

I was on Kimmel last night and I was like saying, is Sal here? Because I never met him. Yeah. So it's like, is Sal here? I'm like, no, no, no,

Sal here. And then like, these random people come up and just start telling me Sal stories. Because. I mean, it was like. He's a legend.

Yeah. This is like, yeah, I don't think you should be taking life advice from this man. Yeah. Gambling advice, perhaps. No, I'd rather take life advice than gambling advice from the cuz. By the way, speaking of gambling, someone told me the following gambling story involving Lee Trevino. Okay. Who I guess is one of the all-time great hustlers.

Yeah. Grew up on public golf courses. So he's in a golf, Tommy, correct me if I get this story wrong. Trevino's like years ago. Trevino's in his height. He's in a golf clubhouse in Minneapolis. And the,

the clubhouse is right on the, a par four, right? It's just next to the green. Next to the, to the T. And so he's in, he's in a table in the middle of the,

of the golf, of the clubhouse. So he turns to the group. All these gamblers have gathered because they know he's in a table in the middle of the clubhouse. So he turns to the group. All these gamblers have gathered because they know he's in a choice game. He says, okay, each you chip in must get $50,000 on the table. What I'm going to do is a par four. I'm going to use a putter, and I'm going to drive from the middle of the golf club. Open the windows.

I'm going to start right here in the middle of the room, and I'm going to make par. And if I don't, I'll pay you 50 grand if you do. And he makes par. And then he goes, okay, double or nothing. And here's double or nothing. On the next hole, I'm going to make par, but we're going to start by putting the golf club,

the golf ball inside a plastic cup. I'm going to tee off with the ball inside a plastic cup and I'm going to make par. And they're like, double or nothing. Like, we're all in. What does he do? Takes their money. How hilarious is that?

My God, you mean, Jesus. It's fantastic. I always thought he'd be a good documentary. Oh my God, he'd be fantastic. He's like, all those guys, those public course guys are so much more interesting. It's why the Williams sisters, it's all, anyone who's like comes up some orthodox way is going to be infinitely more interesting and more resilient, by the way, than the kind of metronomic private course guys. That's why I like the Canadian who won the U.S. Open, your brethren. What was her name?

Monica? Now I'm blanking. Oh, her. Yes, yes, yes. With the Eastern European, Slavic last name or Ukrainian last name. Yeah. How do you pronounce it? She was old school.

Andrisik? Something like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just call her the Canadian. I loved her, though, because she was kind of old school. Andrisik? Something like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just call her the Canadian. I loved her, though, because she was kind of old school and really super competitive and didn't seem like she came off an assembly line like all these other tennis players. I want to talk about intuition and some other stuff. Let's take a break.

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And it got me thinking, you didn't put this in there, but you could kind of read between the lines with it. I think all of us have watched so many TVs and movies that we've been conditioned to think certain people act certain ways, especially like those Law & Order and CSI type shows. And it's like you go to see the person and whoever's playing the possible suspect has like four moves basically. And you kind of have to guess with those four moves.

And as you point out with like the Amanda Knox thing, she fit the profile if it was the Law & Order episode of like, oh, I bet she did it. I bet she's the one. Which is how the Italian police actually acted. No, no, she did it. She did it. I'm using my intuition here. And they just convinced themselves that they did it.

But how much do you think like pop culture plays with all this? It's got to, right? So I do this thing in the book where I take an episode of Friends and I had, you know, there are these psychologists who are experts in what's called FACTS, which is a notation system for identifying and registering

all of the expressions that your face can make. So they've, there's like, I forgot what the number is, a hundred expressions your face can make and they've got a number for each one. So they can look at, what you do with the fax is you look at a two-minute stretch of friends,

and you can notate every expression that goes across the face of the- So if your brow furrows, it's like F2. Action unit one is where the inner part of your eyebrow goes up, which is a sign of distress. Yeah. Right? So that's called AU1. And then-

So do you have to memorize all these little codes for each face thing? It takes like two years to master facts. It's like really, really hard to do. Yeah. But I found a facts person and I sent her two minutes of a Friends episode. And I said, do a facts analysis of every expression made by the people on Friends. And then we went through it together and we said, okay, does the expression on their face match their internal emotional state?

So if Joey, there's a scene where Joey is angry, does his face show anger according to the classic? And in absolutely every instance, the facial expressions of the actors perfectly match their internal emotional states, which is why you can watch an insanely complicated episode of Friends with the sound off and know what happened.

You don't need to know. You know that Monica is upset and you know that Ross is perplexed and that Joey is dumb because their faces perfectly show the thing. If you watch a lot of Friends on a lot of TV where actors who are trained in this, what's called transparency, they are trained to perfectly represent their emotional states on their faces. You think that that's the way the world works. But in fact, that's not the way the world works. If I were to reach across the table right now and punch you in the face, right, which would be both surprising and then angering for you. I'd use a safe word probably. You would use a safe word, probably. You would use a,

you would think your face would show surprise and then anger, right? Yeah. Probably wouldn't. You probably, your face might not show anything at all. I would think you would explain why you did it. I think it was part of the podcast.

This is a test. Tommy and I have cooked this up. You know, the French, oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. No, no. So I mean, that's one of the many ways in which, you know what's a great example of this is

Kawhi is drafted by Seattle. No, no. Seattle is considering drafting Kawhi, right? They bring him into the room. And I forgot who the GM was at the time of Seattle. It was just before they moved to OKC, to Oklahoma. And they bring Kawhi in. And Kawhi is sweating through his suit. And the GM is quoted, do you know this story?

No. The GM, it's a fantastic story. They weren't in Seattle anymore in 2011. I thought, wait a second, whoever it was. Was it OKC? Maybe it was OKC. Whoever it was, there was a team that could have had Kawhi that was high in the draft, and they interview him, and he's sweating through his suit.

And the GM says at the time, we don't want him because we want someone who's cool under pressure. Of course. And Kawhi has like no heartbeat. He's got no heartbeat. Nobody's cooler than Kawhi. What that guy was doing was he was making what's called a transparency assumption. He was assuming that if Kawhi is showing signs of nervousness, what I consider to be signs of nervousness in my presence, then he's nervous. And not only that, that that represents a kind of stable trait of his. Now, Kawhi could have been hot.

The suit could have been ill-fitting. Or he could have been nervous, but maybe Kawhi is the kind of guy who's only nervous when he's talking to a middle-aged white guy on the day before the draft, right? So it's like, that's a classic mistake we make is like, we jump to all kinds of conclusions based on some. So the real lesson of that is there's a million, you know, hours of tape of Kawhi playing basketball. You don't have to meet the man. Don't meet him. Well, what's, you wrote Blink.ink, which is like the cousin of this, maybe even the brother. Blink is like first three seconds you come up with your thing. This is like now I'm spending time with this person,

and that's almost screwing me up. You're almost better with the Blink thing. And Blink is like a great way. With basketball, I'm in or out within 10 seconds. Sometimes I'll look at somebody's body and I'm like, I'm out. Well, there's a, so there's a difference.

There are certain kinds of things that I think are, you can pick up in that, particularly if you're an expert, you can get the gestalt of somebody very quickly. Yeah. But I'm talking about much more complex.

Yeah, this is the nuanced cousin of it. Yeah, emotional. Like your famous thing about, that you've said on a number of occasions um about uh greg odin that you just have watched the way he walked yeah you just realized he can't play bionome was like that too yeah saw bionome i was like the guy's 23 he's running like that already that's not good yeah i worry about yokage with this by the way really yeah i think he runs heavy I think he has a lot of weight. Yeah.

Because I love watching him. I fear with him. There's some number where if NBA players get over a certain weight, it starts to get a little dicier. It's like 260 pounds, something like that. Isn't there a Sabonis, Sabonis the Elder? Yeah. Who was a very similar body type to Jokic.

No, he's Sabonis. The other one is just his son. Sabonis gets to be Sabonis the Elder. Yeah. Who was a very similar body type to Yelkish. No, he's Sabonis. The other one is just his son. Sabonis gets to be Sabonis. He doesn't get to be the older Sabonis. But he had like all those millions of surgeries. Yeah. And he ended his career still as a very good player, but just never moved. Well, no, but if you saw the clips in the 80s, he's, you know, looks like.

Oh, he was incredible. He looks like David Robinson. Yeah. The transparency thing. you know looks like oh he was incredible he looks like david robinson yeah um yeah the transparency thing i always thought it was interesting with the friends because i pictured you watching all all 20 seasons of friends trying to find the perfect two minutes but then i realized no he's way too smart he probably picked three episodes i've watched a lot of friends in my life no but i mean when you're actually researching the book. Oh, I see. Yeah, I did actually enjoy it. It was enjoyable to come up with a good,

what you wanted is a stretch of a particularly difficult. What's funny about Friends is the plots are so insanely complicated, and yet they're transparent. Well, Friends was a son slash daughter of the sitcoms that I grew up with in the 70s. Like Three's Company was the ultimate one where it's like a misunderstanding. Yeah. I saw you with, with that girl at the bar.

Oh, wait a second. That's your sister. But it looked like your arm was around her. I'm mad. Oh. And then at the end, it all turns out. Yeah. And they, they just, friends took that to a whole other level.

But we were talking about with the transparency of the actors. That's one of the reasons, in my opinion, none of them were able to translate into like massive movie stars. Aniston probably came the closest, but it's not like Aniston was, you know, getting nominated for various Academy Awards

or things like that. It was because they were so big on that show and they had to, it was a lot of eye bulging and mugging and exaggerated whatever. And it's just tougher to do that in movies. That's why Jennifer Aniston, she's had the most success in Sandler movies. Because those Sandler movies are kind of just like that. They're like extended Friends universes.

What's interesting? Oh, go ahead. I was just gonna say sometimes i watch because i'm always fascinated by studio shows especially because i've been on one um if you mute a studio show you can learn everything about the show without hearing what they're talking about by the body language um how engaged people are yeah Yeah. The looks on faces, do they seem, and the reason I know this is because the second year I was on Countdown, which was not a happy second season,

it was on in a bar and they were rerunning it, or they were running a SportsCenter segment. We did it like three in the morning, but I couldn't hear it. But I looked at us, and my body language looked so bad, and I was like, oh, no. Oh, I didn't realize I looked like that. I'm just like kind of standoffish. I'm sinking.

I don't want to say. I'm sinking backwards. And I look suspicious and just like I'm dying for the segment to be over. Yeah. Well, this is my. And that's a telling thing. My body language critique in these situations is that as a viewer, what you want is you want body language narrative over the course of the segment. So it's totally okay to start out uncomfortable as long as you end up comfortable.

This is my, although I think he is actually a performance genius. My issue with Stephen A is that he only has one gear. No, that's not true. You missed acoustic Stephen A in my podcast. Yeah. He came on the pod. No, I listened to that podcast. No, he didn't bring a band.

It was just, it was him and his guitarist. He was, but he, come on. He talked nonstop. It was a stripped down Stephen A. It was like Nirvana. There has never been a podcast you have ever done where you said less.

I loved it. I love when somebody else does the work. It was great. You turned on the tape. I think you probably nudged him a couple directions. I thought you'd left

for coffee in the middle. That was the easiest hour and a half I've ever had. He's so epic. But what you want with, like, where is the voice modulation? I want him in an emotional moment to get really quiet and soft

and then rev back up. I want that kind of, I want the, you know. So I know he can do that because we would hang out at the finals on the big set that they constructed, and that's when we got to know each other, when everybody thought we hated each other. We actually liked each other. But he can do it.

We can do it. Yeah, he has mastered performance with opinion. and everybody thought we hated each other. We actually liked each other. But he can do it. We can do it. Yeah. He has mastered performance with opinion. He's figured out. It took him forever. Yeah, yeah. But he has figured out how to do it, where there's like a little twinkle in his eye the whole time.

You never take him 100% seriously, but he's put real thought and analysis into what he's saying. And no one has worked the accent better than his accent is just fantastic. It's great. It's just fantastic. He's done an unbelievable job. You just reminded me of speaking in the NBA.

By the way, West Indian. I always have to bring this up but Stephen A. I think one or both of his parents are Jamaicans if I'm not wrong. Really? Of course.

He makes so much sense as a West Indian. Totally does. That should be your next book. I have a Popovich quick rant I want to do. I've been thinking about Popovich. I wanted to do some PTI. I was in PTI yesterday,

but we did all football. I'm just annoyed by Popovich. The cult of Popovich. I cannot believe you're saying that. I know. But this ties into your book and perception versus reality and how people think versus actually

putting thought into stuff. Here would be a totally valid criticism of Popovich. I'm not saying I 100% believe this, but here's a totally

valid criticism. He's a fucking bully. He's a bully to sideline reporters. Doesn't need to be. Wait, that's your argument that he's mean

to sideline reporters? I'm not done. Okay, all right. Bully to sideline reporters. Doesn't need to be. Wait, that's your argument? That he's mean to sideline reporters? I'm not done. Okay, all right. Bully to sideline reporters. He gets his ass kicked in Team USA and then goes on the offensive and is like, anybody who

is complaining about how we did, like we don't need, he does this whole thing that just sounded like so lame. It's like, take some ownership. You guys finished seventh. We have all the best basketball players. Yeah, they weren't playing on that team. Yeah, but we still had—

You did, like, seven podcasts. Did you see the team that won? I know, but did you see the team that won? It was Marc Gasol, Ricky Rubio, Rudy Fernandez, and Sergio Lowe. And we had, like—people were acting like we were sending, you know, Brian Scalabrini out of the big three to play in the thing. And it's like, our players were really good. This should make you worried.

If you add up the salaries of all the players, our players were 10 times more. We sent the Boston Celtics and they got their black leaned. He picked the wrong team. Yeah. He did a bad job and take some ownership. But no, no. Anybody who criticizes us, like, wait, we don't want to hear it. Are you sure those guys were, if you're playing for Spain, you try.

This is about motivation. Those guys are trying. Our team was motivated by the fear of being embarrassed. I think everyone was trying. They just got rattled because they hadn't, it was such a chemistry thing. But the thing with Popovich, though, he has disdain for basically all the things that come with being a coach. But the thing that has flipped is the people around him really love him, which is great. He does this whole thing. He takes everyone to dinners. He buys the wines and everybody says

if you knew him, you'd love him. And that has now become the reputation. That's the prevailing reputation. It's like, well, what about the part when he's a big grunt but a sore loser and all this stuff? So we don't get to criticize him for this anymore? Now it's like Pop is hands off. Like right now, I'm sure somebody will put this on a fucking blog. Like Simmons rips Pop. I'm not ripping Pop. I'm just talking there's like a double standard with him.

He finished seventh in the world championships. If I had the record that Pop had, I would, he's got the right, first of all, how old is he? 70. I'm sorry, once you're past- Late 60s? No, he's 70 something. No, he's not that old. I just think it's like a Pop love fest.

What happened with Kawhi? Why did that not work out? Was that, whose fault was that ultimately? He lost a guy who just won the title on another team. It's just nobody asks the question anymore with him. I think it's weird. I think this cult of personality slash people kind of fall in the grain of a certain whatever because that's what everybody else thinks becomes ingrained.

I think it's weird. You're not with me? He's the greatest coach of the last 25 years. Okay. But think it's weird. You're not with me? He's the greatest coach in the last 25 years. Okay. But now it's 2018. People pick Belichick apart. Belichick's a good counter, right?

Yeah. They always talk about how bad Belichick is in press conferences. Make fun of him. They get super mad about him. But he's not a character like Popovich.

There's not like a little twinkle in his eye, allegedly. He has no time for it. He's a jerk. But then Belichick will have these press conferences where somebody will ask him a really interesting football question and he'll answer it for like three minutes. It's fucking awesome. And it's like, yeah, somebody will be like, hey, Bill, the way you covered that punt in the second quarter in Miami, the way you used the gunner, what was that? Because I've never seen you do that.

And his eyes will light up. He's like so happy. Yeah. And then he'll explain it. But here's what I understand. I understand why do you need a great basketball coach to be good or excel at anything else? I'm just talking more about how somebody's character takes hold

one way or the other. Yeah. Whereas with popovich now who's been a grump this whole decade publicly basically but now that's it's part of his shtick everybody's like oh no he's great we love him he gave up his summer to coach a b team an american b team i don't think you can harsh on him everybody else was like on the beach pop is like but do you think that it's blameless that they finished seventh we're not allowed to wonder like what happened what i'm upset about everyone got mad i was like don't don't seventh place shame us But do you think that it's blameless that they finished seventh? We're not allowed to wonder what happened?

What I'm upset about is- Everyone got mad. I was like, don't seventh place shame us. That was the attitude. It's like, well, you guys did finish in seventh place. If the Canadians had put together a real team, we would have won, right? Yeah, you would have. Easy, easy. Jamal Murray and just a bunch of hockey players.

I mean, and that breaks my heart. We could have won- Even you're afraid to criticize pop. This is what I'm talking about. Everyone's afraid of Pup. How did this happen? Where did we get here? This comes up in,

you know, I have a chapter on Jerry Sandusky in my book, and it's all about how I feel like the leadership of Penn State was totally outrageously

attacked over this. I think they're blameless. But with Joe Paterno, Joe Paterno essentially did nothing wrong. He hears about the allegation, immediately tells his superiors. And the But with Joe Paterno, Joe Paterno essentially did nothing wrong. He hears about the allegation, immediately tells his superiors. And the critique of Joe Paterno was essentially,

why was a 75-year-old football coach not behaving towards a suspected pedophile with the savvy and insight of a psychiatrist? Like, he's a football coach coach he doesn't even know what the words there was this hilarious isn't that hilarious there's this moment in i think one of the trial transcripts where someone has asked well does did you use when you went to when they asked the quarterback who goes to paternal mccreary the former quarterback goes to maturity to tell him this allegation did you use the word sodomy? He's like, no, I didn't use

the word sodomy. And then there's a sort of thing, I think, where they're wondering whether Paterno actually knew what the word sodomy was. He doesn't. He's been thinking football 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for 60 years. He is not going to be alert to the darkness inside the heart of one of his former coaches, right? You can't ask him to do that. That's why you have mental health professionals or fit, trained psychologists in the world to handle those kinds of problems. And we do this thing sometimes when a crisis happens, we suddenly expect our leaders to be skilled at absolutely every job under the sun. Well, you covered this really nicely in the book about the spy from Cuba. Oh, yeah.

And 40 signs that this was a spy, and they just botch it. They have her dead to right at one point. They miss it because they see what they want to see, much like people think Pop did a good job at the World Championships. You're not letting this go. No, I'm having fun with it because I'm going to enjoy the blog post tomorrow when somebody gets mad. Cause God forbid somebody criticizes pop. Yeah. The aggregators are going to come for me. That'd be a good, that'd be a good horror movie. The aggregators new from Blumhouse. Um, in this book, I love spy stuff. And I realized like my dad is

like a big, he's going to like Martha's Vineyard for the weekend. He goes to the bookstore and it's like whatever has a red cover with like a Russian symbol on it. He's like, I'm in. I'm that guy. Oh, is that Cuba? Is that the island of Cuba and a red cover? I'm in. Yeah.

I have all those books. And I've never been that guy, but I kind of feel like at some point in my life, I'm going to be that guy. Where I just started plowing through those books. I have read, I mean, literally hundreds of those. If it has the word spy in the title, I own it. I have a whole section of my library at home,

which is just nothing but spy books. And there's spy stories I didn't put in. I mean, if I had my way, I would have written the whole thing about spies.

So that may be your next one, just spies. What's crazy is Cuba had like the upper hand with the CIA. They were like the small market hoops team just battling the Knicks and Lakers and beating us.

First class spies. It's true actually. Double agents. An interesting thing about, in general about spy stories is that small countries always have, so East Germany played West Germany, like, I mean, they routed them in a spy game.

Cuba has bested the United States over and over again. Israel massively outplayed its larger Arab neighbors. Right. It's always the case that there are these. So you think we need more funding with spies? We got to tell Trump. He's got this. The spy thing, my conclusion is since we're so pathetic at finding them,

and why bother at all? Like, why don't you just give up? Just give up completely. No, spies, spies, spies. Shut down the spy division. There was a paper I read by this former CIA guy who said the spy game, the espionage game between the Soviet Union and the United States

over the course of the Cold War ended up as a wash. By the end, we knew all their secrets and they knew all our secrets because each of us had spies from the other side high up in our defense intelligence that gave everything away. So he's like, at a certain point, you have to say, well, why don't you shut down all of the espionage operations

because you're no further ahead. Just like, give it up. Use the money for something else. I mean, the only thing the CIA ever pulled off was killing JFK. That's the only thing I can remember them doing successfully. And they murdered a president. I watch,

I watch one of those, uh, uh, the podcast. I forgot what it was called. The aggregators are coming for me again. Simmons says CIA killed JFK. There was an RFK podcast last summer,

which purported to be a podcast about how all the conspiracy talk about RFK podcast last summer. It's on Uproxx. Which purported to be a podcast about how all the conspiracy talk about RFK's death was nonsense that had the effect of completely radicalizing me and thinking that there was a huge conspiracy about RFK. It did seem like there was a second shooter. No, I've done the RFK deep dive. That's like, I bought all the books.

I went down the rabbit hole. And I was like, I'm more convinced of the RFK stuff than the JFK stuff. Well, JFK, there's nothing to be convinced of. There was a second gunman who shot him, killed him with a shot to the head from a different direction. What else do we need? They doctored

the Supruder film. In a back and forth we did once, I mentioned my favorite theory, which is the fact that JFK was shot accidentally by a Secret Service guy who was in the car behind. Yeah. He panicked, and that was the second gunman. I love that one. I love that one, too.

That's a great theory. I don't believe it, but it's a great one. And I had not thought of it. I sort of tossed it out I can't believe Gladwell. Like apparently that's like the least credible. It's like, yeah, it's like it's what it's the beginner's error. But that's Bill James was the was a big proponent of that. James, James's book on, on his crime book

is so completely fantastic. Yeah, it's good. He does a good job with that whole. The man is genius. I go on the, the only Reddit page I go to. Yeah. And this is the God's honest truth.

Other than I have Celtics, Patriots, Red Sox, Reddit pages and conspiracy. Oh, you go on that. I go every day. I always, Conspiracy Bill loves to read a conspiracy page.

It's completely crazy. But they've been on this Epstein thing from like day one. And as the Epstein thing unfolded over the last few months, it was like a victory lap for them. Oh, really? They really felt're finally we hit one of these you know what were they saying from day one they were just like from the from the moment i mean he did go to jail in 2007 but then when the miami new i think it was the miami new times they did that huge long piece like a year ago the fix was in on his initial in his initial sentence that that

that fix was in but then when the mi Miami paper broke all the stuff that actually happened and, you know, if you go into the deep internet, they feel like there's this whole rich people. Yeah. Rich people and, you know, underage girls all over the place and eyes wide shut's a parable for all these different things that happened. And, and somebody probably has an island. And then it turns out this guy actually had an island. When you have the island, it's a problem.

And the island that nobody's been able to really see. It's a red flag when you have the island. Island with weird shit and weird pictures. And that story is fucking bonkers. That was like the worst story in 10 years. Yeah, it was bad. And I actually feel like it didn't get enough attention, weirdly,

especially the part where, oh, he managed to kill himself in jail as the two cameras just happened to be malfunctioning at the same time and the two guards were sleeping because they had been overworked.

And it just kind of came and went. It was like, what is going on? And now people think he's still alive. Really? They think they took a different body out.

That's where I'm off. I'm in on all the other stuff, but. Yeah, the whole fake your own death thing. Yeah, the conspiracy thing, which has gone sideways in a lot of horrible ways this decade. And I think is one of the ways we're going to remember all the bad things that happened this decade. I still enjoy some of the old school ones,

like the JFK era. Yeah. I like when that like kicks back like the JFK era. Yeah. I like when that kicks back up. First gen conspiracy, yeah. I thought that was going to be Trump's only positive thing he did this entire presidency, was unleash all the JFK files. Just be like, I'm finding out. JFK, UFOs.

I'm like, all right, well, at least he did this. It's like, no, he couldn't even do that. Let's take one more break. Let's take one more break to talk about DoorDash, an app I just used about five days ago. It's dinner time. Your stomach's rumbling. You still don't know what you're going to eat tonight.

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from Innovative Dynamic Creators you can't find anywhere else, Trevor Noah. There's a sex podcast. I'm not going to say the name, but it's a good one. Guy Raz has one. Fiasco,

about Trump's daughter. That one's there. There's a lot of good ones. The Luminary app, free to download. You can use it to listen to thousands of podcasts, including this one, whether you're into music, TV, film, comedy, sports, whatever.

Check out Woodstock 99 and so much more, like Rewatchables 99 only on Luminary. Get your first two months of access to Luminary's premium content for free when you sign up at luminary.link slash Simmons. After that, it's only $7.99 per month. Luminary.link slash Simmons. Two months of free access. Cancel anytime. Terms do apply. Let's talk about something you told me before we started this podcast. Yeah. This book's been out for how long? One week. And the actual hardcover is selling 70% as much as the audio book. The audio book. So right now, yeah, we are the number of audio books.

So we did a special audio book. This is supers. So we did a special audiobook. This is super interesting. We did a special audiobook where the audiobook is produced like a podcast. So you hear, I don't read someone's quote in the audio. I give you the tape and we have score and we've got a song from Janelle Monae, which is a theme song of the thing. And we use archival tape. And it's like listening to 10 consecutive revisionist history podcasts. If you listen to the book, 10 chapters, 10. And what's happened is that the, so the book came

out and I said to somebody beforehand, cause I was in England and my English publisher said, you know, Jordan Peterson's book in England, the audio book outsells the physical book. And I was like, really? Cause historically the audio book is like 10% of total sales. Yeah. But what was happening was that a generation, he has a lot of very, very young followers who experienced him online. And they were, for him,

for them that he was a digital phenomenon. And so when he put out a book, they just, they want, they've been listening to him on YouTube or listening to his, they just want to listen to him. And so what happened with me is, I think the same thing has happened is that a whole universe of podcast listeners who tend to be much younger, who know me from revisionist history, not from my previous books, are just migrating over and getting the book, like, oh, a book's come out. Oh, I'm going to listen to it.

And now there's this weird thing where I'm not even sure, you know, five years from now, what percentage, how small would the percentage of physical books be? Is everyone going to be, is that going to be the primary way you consume some large number of authors? So I'm trying to process all this because I'm stunned that I would have expected a higher number, but not for it to beat the number. And I think it goes back to what you said earlier about the Q&A and how your book tour changed. I think this whole decade has conditioned audiences to be used to a conversation, you know, and to be used to hearing the author speak or the host speak or that kind of intimacy and then listening to it when they're working out

or when they're driving or when they're flying somewhere, commuting or whatever. And I just, I was in New York City in DC, you know, last weekend. You just see everybody with the AirPods. Everywhere. Everybody.

Yeah. It's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Everybody. It's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This would be the next Invasion of the Body Snatchers where they just fix the AirPods and you become an alien. Yeah. And guess what I didn't see? Anybody reading a book. Well, it's changed.

You even walk down an airplane. It's used to see every person had a book. Now half the people are working or they're on the computer or they're just watching a movie or they have their headphones on. So it's super interesting because it's a balance of power from people who wrote well to people who talk well, right? So I always think about this when I listen to Ringer podcasts, you have a group of people. So give one random example, Mallory Rubin. Yeah. Mallory Rubin talks really, really well, right? She's a voice you want to listen to for whatever, we can break it down, but there's just something, her personality comes through, she's incredibly compelling. 10 years ago, that would

not have mattered, right? It would have been, if you talked to her casually in the office, you would have been charmed by the conversation. But the fact that she had an incredible verbal presence was a stray fact. It was, unless she went on TV, but then TV is complicated too, because then you have to look the part as well as sound the part. Now with audio, all of a sudden people who have this particular weird, previously undervalued gift of being able to express themselves really well, but also the tone of their voice is a voice you want to spend time with. Right. That person is now suddenly elevated, right? The book contract Mallory could get today is 10x what it would have been.

Oh, don't tell her that. She's going to leave. I know, yeah. Love Mallory. tell her that. She's going to leave. Love Mallory. I find that fascinating. Like this happened, Bill, this happened in like two years that everything flipped and a random group of people with compelling voices suddenly went to the head of the line. I think something else happened though. Yeah. I think people have been listening to this stuff now really since the middle of last decade, but they have this whole 12, 13 year history of just listening to podcasts. And some people are listening to them at 1.25 speed. I've never done that. 1.5 speed, which I've done one, two. I can't do higher than that. I feel like it's like you just, your ears did cocaine basically is

the sensation. But I think they're just by hearing constantly everybody else's podcast, it makes somebody better at a podcast. They, certain rhythms, they pick up certain tricks and things like that. And I, you know, you weren't learning anything from talk radio. No. You weren't going to be listening to like your local shitheads on the drive time show, like, you know, like the guys in Boston talking about, we got to pick between Mookie and JD. And you're not getting better. You're not getting better professionally by listening to that.

But if you're listening to podcasts that you really like and borrowing certain things, I think that helps. But the thought of your audiobook outselling the physical book, I would not have predicted. So it seems like this is now like, and they do this every, the serial thing bothers me when they were like, and when serial podcast took off, it's like podcasts had already taken off.

Narrative podcast took off with serial, but podcasts had been around for a while and doing really well. Trust me. What's changed, I think right now when we talk about revolution steps is could audiobooks and podcasts replace books? Well, that's the question. So why 10 years from now do I put out a physical book at all?

Or is it simply an afterthought? Do I do an audiobook and then someone sees it and says, do you mind if I turn that into a physical book? And I'm like, okay, sure. Or maybe it's like, like Shea has a book coming out and Shea's basketball book did really well and this movie's book's going to do well.

And one of the cool things he did with the book is there's a lot of illustrations and it's just a fun book to read and interact with. It's not just traditional. Yeah. Here's 400 pages of illustrations and it's just a fun book to read and interact with. It's not just traditional. Yeah. Here's 400 pages of words. Yeah. So that, okay. So there's a clear. So like, if I ever did another basketball book, I would, I would do, I would make it a more fun book to read than just hear all these words. Yeah. And maybe that's. If you redid Book of Basketball and you broke up the top 100 into 10 segments of 10 players each, and it's a 10-chapter audiobook, and you release the audiobook one chapter a week for 10 weeks, and you charge $2 for each chapter, I mean, that's a really interesting proposition all of a sudden, right? Build up a sense of suspense about what's coming next. I mean, it's like you could do a kind of, it could be a kind of.

Should I get the ghostwriter? No, but. I think about the books, the book ideas I have in my head that just sail away. I just watch them go. Like I could write, I feel like I could write a really good Kevin Durant book. Because I've spent time with him. I think you could tell the story of the last 12 years of the league through him. I think he's a fascinating guy.

I think he's misunderstood in some ways. I think he's properly understood in other ways. And he'd be a really good book. I would never want to spend the time doing it. But the thing that you didn't do, and forgive're, forgive me for returning, because I love book to basketball so much. And the thing you didn't do that you should have done, my one critique. Oh, there's more than one critique.

No, this is my big critique. Other than splitting the book up into two books. Sure. Is you should have had one absolutely bananas choice. You should have put someone in the top 10 who no one in the history of basketball has ever put in the top 10 who no one in the history of basketball has ever put in the top 10.

Like you needed to do, like you had controversy at the lower. Just to make sure people are paying attention. Just like, like pick somebody, make, give me,

give me, make a case, a wholly implausible case for somebody to get me thinking about, like, so with a reason, right? So if you, if there's something

about basketball players and you have ideas about this that you think is radically undervalued yeah so pick take a chemistry guy and put him in the top 10 and just say you know what this guy was the ultimate chemistry guy i know his stats don't measure i would never besmirch the pyramid like that the pyramid was very carefully constructed the thing is we need the pyramid now more than ever because everyone gets in the Hall of Fame. Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Everybody. It's ridiculous. It's unbelievable. Yeah. Derrick Rose is probably getting in because he won the MVP, but you know. Yeah, oh my God.

It's ridiculous. Wait, we got to talk about- I had a Kanye thing I want to talk about. Kanye. So I've been experimenting with my podcast listening, trying to broaden it.

And I've been listening to this podcast called Dissect. Yeah. Which is genius. It's a good one. Nerdy in the absolute best possible way. It's about somebody, this guy,

what's his name? He's a funny, Chris, no, so the C, anyway. He does, the podcast is a guy,

one guy, who breaks down typically rap albums, but sometimes R&B albums. He does Frank Ocean, he does Tyler, the Creator, and he does Kanye.

So I was listening to the first episode, or maybe it was the second, in his Kanye series. And he's talking about that moment in 2009, I think it is, when Kanye member interrupts at the Grammys. He says when Taylor Swift is about to win, he says, you know, with all due respect, Beyonce had the greatest video of all time. And it's this big controversy.

I had forgotten that Obama, among other people, called him a jackass after that. And there was this huge moment in pop culture that Kanye stood up at the Grammys and dared to call into question the fact that they voted Taylor Swift over Beyonce. Right? Now, what's fascinating with that, of course, is that the idea of a participant in a contest

disputing the result in the world of sports is commonplace. Yeah. You and- Daryl Morey did it with Harden and Westbrook. Complained about it. But no, in the game too, like the Rams-Saints game, like in the playoffs, every single player speaks up after that.

And what's interesting about that is that a football game is, the outcome of a football game is actually highly legitimate in a sense that the game goes on forever. You have 100 chances to win. And the complaint, but even then we allow someone to complain about one of those 100 outcomes.

If they don't, if they aren't entirely fair. And we're fine with it. We're fine with the coach or the players popping off in far more blunt and uncivil terms about the unfairness of the outcome. Kanye complains about the outcome of a totally absurdly rigged, illegitimate,

like Grammy voting. Are you kidding me? Like Grammy voting is like a bunch of, it's, I mean, I don't even know who votes for it. It's a people, did they even, half of them probably didn't even pay attention. It died when Toto won like five Grammys. Nobody ever took them seriously again.

1982, the death of the Grammys. So you have a kind of preposterously, a preposterous election. And a guy stands up who is a legitimate player in the world of music and points out something that, by the way, is true. In retrospect,

did Beyonce deserve the Grammy over Taylor Swift? I think people got upset because it was embarrassing to her and it was a young woman and people felt like it was not cool. First of all, Taylor Swift can take care of herself. Well, we didn't know that at the time. We just knew her as a young, up-and-coming artist. Few people can take care of themselves more effectively than Taylor Swift. Well, now we know she's... No, but my point is, in sports, it's fine.

And the process is legitimate. In music, they act like Moses came down and had the Grammys on stone tablets. And Kanye, how could Kanye question Moses? It's the whole thing. And the fact that we got so upset at this, that Obama, Obama felt compelled to weigh in and call Kanye a jackass. That was one thing. Secondly, if you listen to the tape.

Can I interject one thing? It would be funny to have a game show of Obama's worst interjections versus Trump to try to figure out which is who. Because Trump totally would have intervened on Kanye versus Taylor Swift. He would have. That was a weird move for Obama.

Well, I think he was- He did have some weird ones over the eight years. Like he definitely was feeling himself a few times. We taped music very seriously. Yeah. I feel like he had to, and I don't know the context in which he weighed in, but- All right, go ahead for your second one.

The tape itself, it's not like it's an outrageous, he actually, he says, I forgot the exact words he uses, but he says, you know, I respect your accomplishment, but I got to say, Beyonce's video was the best video of the last 10 years, whatever. It's not like he's saying, you know, fuck you, you don't deserve this, you know, white girl. Like, no, it's actually. That would have been awesome.

He's doing what any music fan would, real music fan would do. But in the world of music, you're not allowed to be a music fan. Yeah. Which I just think is bananas. What is wrong with the world of music where everyone acted like an atrocity had just been committed because Kanye dared to prefer legitimately Beyonce over Taylor Swift? And let's flip that around to a sports example. Yeah. Serena at the US Open last year.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Gets the penalty for being coached, which she was, which they caught on videotape of the coach coaching her. Yeah. And the ump nailed them on it. Now, whether that was her fault or not, and I don't think it was, and that's why she got upset,

that's her coach and he was coaching and the guy saw it and he nailed her. That's one penalty. Second penalty, she broke her racket on the court. A point went the wrong way. She shattered her racket. And then after that started berating the ump and was calling him a thief and all these things.

And then lost a game penalty in a match that, in my opinion, she would have lost anyway. And it all swung Serena's way. And everybody's like, oh, man, it's so unfair. What happened to Serena? It's like, what happened to her? She got coached. Her coach got caught. She destroyed her racket.

And she called the umpire a thief. I don't know if I'm going with poor Serena on this one. Yeah. I think that story was somewhere in the middle, right? I think the umpire maybe didn't handle it perfectly. I'm erring. I much prefer a world where athletes or music stars express their legitimate emotions and passions in the middle of these highly charged contexts.

What I don't like is this sanctimonious area that people have that treats sports contests like it's an election or like it's the cardinals meeting in the Vatican to choose the next pope. And how dare you question the selection process. Since when are these popular culture rituals sacred? They're not sacred, right? The world's a lot better place when people roll their eyes at a Grammy selection and say, you guys screwed up, right? And that's – and the other – actually, the lot of –

See, you feel this way because the Jamaican sprint team has been cheating with steroids for the last, like, 20 years. And you've just looked the other way. They have not been cheating. No, you've just looked the other way as it's been a steroid factory. I'm sorry. Which sprinter in the past few months was temporarily suspended? That is true. I'm kidding about the sprinter, the Jamaican team, by the way.

Don't get mad at me. Not Jamaicans. No, there was. What was it? It was a U.S. sprinter, right? She just got caught. Christian Cole. Although it turns out it's a much more complicated case than it appears. He wasn't caught for cheating. He had a, you know, you're required to you have, it was

a whereabouts violation, you know, because they you know, you get tested as many as 50 times a year and they show up at all hours and you have to tell them where you are. And if you don't tell them where you are, then, but basketball and football, they might want to take a page. And tennis might want to take a page out of this.

Basketball, what are you talking about? They throw those tests in the garbage. No, I'm saying- They're never, basketball's never having a PD scan. Every once in a while, they get like some no name. We do it right in track and field Those tests are in the garbage. No, I'm saying. They're never, basketball's never having a PD scan. Every once in a while, they get like some no name. We do it right in track and field. And we test you, you know, once every couple of days.

And in the middle of the night, we'll come knocking on your door. And you, if you don't produce a urine sample right there, you're in trouble. Right. That's the way it works at that level of. The only way there would be an NBA superstar PD scandal is if the guy was being photographed by an investigative team walking out of the pharmacy or whatever with a whole box that said steroids in big letters. And it was like, pick a superstar. And he's just walking, oh, I got my steroids. That's the only, even then Adam Silver would be like, wow, we don't know what was in the box. We don't know.

I don't know. We can't judge. We couldn't find the box. Nothing was in there. We'll never see an NBA player get caught. This reminds me of the basketball story I want to tell. Nothing to do with steroids, but having to do with the greatest basketball player of all. I had this really-

Larry Bird? No. Oh. LeBron. I had this really interesting chat. No! No, the current generation. Michael Jordan is the greatest.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. Don't be a LeBron truther on that. I had a chat with this guy who runs a company that, it's one of those, you have this little wristband, and the wristband collects, you know, it's called a whoop. It collects like 40 bits of, I've forgotten how many bits of physiological data. Yeah. And they crunch it. It's all sent

to a server and they crunch it and they give you all your readouts. They do all this work with athletes. And one of the things that it does is it tells you about you. It's really about your recovery. So it will say after you've worked out, it'll say, and you wake up the next morning, it'll say, how much have you recovered from your exertion the day before? And why this is interesting is that you've had all these discussions with Rosillo and others, I know, about the 82-game NBA season.

Is it too long? Which would be extinct soon. Yeah. So this is all about that number, right? That if you are day in, day out, not getting back into the green, the green is, I've forgotten, I think it's 75% and above. If you're below 75% recovery, you are, or below 50% recovery, you are risking injury by continuing to exert yourself at a high level. So the guys who

don't, and this is a very, very powerful predictor of your chances of getting injured, right? So if you're someone who does not bounce back to 75 or 80 on a nightly basis, you're heading into danger zone. So they were talking about LeBron. What's fascinating about LeBron is he said, they've never seen anything like it. LeBron is a guy who can, right after his workout, he'll be in the 20s. And the next morning, he's like at 80. He just, and the argument was, it was really fascinating, that maybe one of the things that makes him so extraordinary as a kind of, as an athlete, is that not that his overall levels of performance are greater than his peers,

but that he returns to something close to normal faster than everybody else. So that other guys, so if everybody was fully rested, LeBron's advantage over everyone else would be 5%. But in game 75, his advantage is 25% because he's at 85 and they're at 40, right? And then the second question is, well, how much of that is innate

and how much of that is, this is what I ask, is that because LeBron's doing something different? And they said, yeah, that it does. Some of it is innate, but some of it is LeBron has taken this question of recovery more seriously than his, than his, than his, his peers in basketball. I love that. And so it was the 2011 finals when he, they flipped it. Cause he, the Miami felt like he was tired during that finals when he sucked against Dallas. Yeah. And they put him on that minutes limit that next regular season and basically forced him to come out and he wanted to come out. And there, that was, I think the first time a team was gearing somebody toward peaking in the playoffs. But this notion is that you now have a way to precisely measure this.

Yeah. I think that when this, and this guy was suggesting that these tools are now infiltrating professional sports. And so, and if you game this out, it's really clear. What's that? What tools are infiltrating professional sports? The tools of measuring someone's recovery. Oh, okay.

Just that, that's all we're talking about. Got it. Okay. So I think the question of whether basketball has an 82-game season or not is moot. That what you'll see in a couple seasons is simply teams will manage their everyone's minutes according to these independent metrics. And no one's going to play 82 games. Right? I'm going the other way.

I think we're going to see teams driving their stars into the ground because they're going to be leaving anyway and jumping to another team. It's the Dallas Cowboys' DeMarco Murray, right? Yeah, he's gone. It was free agent year. It's like, hey, DeMarco, here's another 30 carries. You're leaving. Like, in retrospect, if you think the guy might be leaving,

like, what do you care about preserving him, you know, unless you think you actually could win the title? Does this mean that the Raptors genuinely thought they had a shot of hanging on to Kawhi after this? I was going to mention this. I'm really fascinated to see what happens. There's a whole bunch of shit going on

behind the scenes right now in the NBA with the tampering. A lot of it's been reported, but we're talking about owners or people that work for certain franchises really trying to crack down on tampering in crazy ways. Like, we get to check your phones, that kind of stuff. And Adam Silver is at a point here where he could start morphing into David Stern if he's not careful. Wow.

You know I don't say that lightly. I know your feelings about David Stern. Well, I think people are looking to him to solve this. Yeah. And the only way for him to solve this is to have more power. And what's more power? It's the tampering fines are ridiculous.

You actually have people checking phones and stuff like that. But the thing is, like, let's say you owned a team. I'm like, I need to see your phone, Gladwell. Wouldn't you have, like, seven phones? Yeah. I don't think checking the phone. You'd just be like, hey, Tommy, can you get another Apple 11

and then I'll just take it and pay the bill. And then you're texting whoever from the thing. They can't stop what happened. But I think this, I won't say there was something that happened this summer. I won't say the teams. But a player went from one team to the other. And there's just a lot of smoke. And there's a lot of smoke that dates

back a lot of months. And a lot of very clear... This isn't conspiracy, Bill. This is things that were brought up in certain meetings that made people go, wait a second. There's just a lot of

smoke. And what happened this summer cannot happen again. You cannot have... Which deal are you talking about? I'm not saying which team. But by the way, there is more than one team. I think multiple teams were the maddest. We had more mad teams this summer that felt like last season

was actually compromised in some way for them by players having one foot out the door. Now, ironically, Kawhi won the title. Yeah. So he can't be blamed for that. I refuse to feel sorry for the owners because, although I realize that you need to do a rule change for this, but there's a very simple solution to this kind of player movement. Yeah. And that is owners need to give equity stakes in the franchises to their star players. Why not? Right? So if you're worried, if you're Toronto,

you want to hang on to Kawhi, in a perfect universe, you should be able to say, Kawhi, we'll pay you your normal amount under the cap, right, that you're asking for. But there should be a rule that says, if you want, if you're an owner and you want to give a player, I don't know, actually, it's not legal, I'm guessing now, to do that. You should be able to say to Kawhi, we'll give you 1% of the franchise. You try to do it with Magic Johnson. But only if you stay. And by the way, if you stay two years, you get 2%. If you stay three years, you get 3%. Why not? Does Kawhi increase the, is that a good deal for the owner? Absolutely. Does it introduce a really positive trend in ownership? Totally does. The idea that players don't have equity stakes in franchises makes no sense whatsoever. What I would like to see is, I've been thinking

about this for startups as well, the partnership, the law firm partnership model is a really, really useful one. So imagine if you had a franchise in which the starters on the team are the partners. They all own a piece of the franchise. If they get, you know, if you leave the team, the team buys back your seat, right? The same way if you're a partner and you retire. So it's like a seat license. It's a seat license. If you're a partner and you retire, they buy you out, right?

You get a lump sum upon leaving and your share of the franchise. No, they don't. So you give, imagine if you said as a general rule in the NBA that 25% of the franchise, the equity in the franchise, needs to be held in partnership by the starters on the basketball team. It's a super interesting way of, and by the way, you don't have to do it. You could do it if you want to do it. What if it, what if they made a rule that the franchise could invest in the players,

buddy, multimedia empire? Cause they all have one now. I knew you were going there. No, they all have, they all have their own empire now. And it could be,

that could be part of it. It's like, you have a salary, but then you also, it's a $10 million investment. Why make a cover? In the Kevin Durant, whatever, the KD35. But imagine, so we pass this rule.

And so I'm Dan Gilbert. And I say, oh, I have a way to make the Cavaliers the number one destination for every star player. Win the lottery for the sixth time in 30 years? Is that it? No. I'm setting aside my franchises. What are the Cavs worth? A billion?

A lot less. Oh, come on. They get a billion for it. These days? I think 800 to 900 is probably the high number right now for a low team. I'm going to set aside a $200 million equity stake in my franchise to my five starters. And so each starter will have a partnership that is worth $40 million. They would never do this.

I know. Well, but no, they would do that if they thought that would, if, if, would you, if you're Dan Gilbert and you thought that by doing that, you could attract five of the biggest stars in the game to come to Cleveland, would you do it? Yes, you would do it. You're talking about a group of rich guys that are always convinced they're smarter than everybody else. They'll just be like, I'll just find the next whoever.

Tillman Furtada, the Houston owner, he released a book this week called Shut Up and Listen. That's the actual title of the book. It's his advice for business and life. This guy owns an NBA team. That's so fantastic. Shut Up and Listen. That's so fantastic.

These are these guys. These owners, they're not, they feel like they don't need the players. That's what's so frustrating, I think, to them about this is like the players have flipped the dynamic on them. Yeah. It's one of those rare things where kind of everybody's unhappy except, I think,

people in their 20s who love NBA players who think this is great, that it's just musical chairs. I was telling you earlier that I was in love with Ramona Shelburne's podcast on Sterling. And one of those episodes is really the one that goes into Sterling's past as a landlord in L.A. That points out that on two separate occasions, he had to settle cases brought by the Department of Justice where he was accused credibly of discriminating against African-Americans. And this happens, and he's settling these cases for systematic housing discrimination against black people. And he's the owner of a sports franchise

largely played by African-Americans. And what happens? Nothing happens. Nothing happens. But 20 years later- I used to call him the racist slumlord in my column. That's right. This is like in the 2000s but somehow a taped phone call with his girlfriend when he objects to her putting an instagram picture with magic johnson that's going to bring him down right and

there's a wonderful moment i think it's matt barnes of course it's matt barnes in the in the podcast he's like why does the like why does the stray comment to his girlfriend bring him down when we knew the dude was systematically discriminating against black people? And that was like fine with the NBA. And what I, so question number one is why is it? Also, he heckled Baron Davis, who was on his own team. On his own team. From courtside.

No, but there's an interesting distinction. And I get into this actually in my book. That the distinction between the institutionalized racism is the kind of stuff that somehow we're oblivious to. But the personal stuff is the stuff that we flip out about. Personal conduct, if it seems a little bit, you know, off color or disreputable, we go nuts and we drive the guy out of the league. But the guy was systematically discriminated against black people. Right. Nobody.

It's harder to explain. It's just that kind of contradiction. And the second thing I would say is. Because I think that the actual audio. Yeah. Of hearing his voice say this stuff. It's just easier for people to understand. It's like,

this is the same thing that came up with Ray Rice. Ray Rice goes to the NFL and says- I'm going to get fired from the ringer. I'm going to get fired from the ringer. I'm going to fire myself. He can say, we all know he hit his girlfriend really hard. Because he was dragging her out of the elevator. It was the assumption.

We're fine with that. Like, all right, just take a couple of games off. Right. And then we see the video which shows, oh, he hit his girlfriend really hard. We weren't fine with that because the suspension was too low, which was one of the reasons that became such a big thing that summer. But it didn't. We had a description of an activity which generated X amount of controversy. And then when we had a picture of the activity,

which confirmed exactly what we were told before, we freaked out. Right. That's this. And it's a similar version of that. Somehow the existence of a tape with Donald Sterling is a scandal off the charts. But, you know, documented evidence that he runs a business which discriminates against African-Americans is something that, you know, where was David Stern? He was like it just kind of like it was considered to be an irrelevant fact. But my question is why? So when you when you when you fast forward to the present day and you look back on the lessons of the Donald Sterling affair, the lesson is not that Donald Sterling is a bad apple. The lesson is there's something fundamentally wrong with a league where a

handful of billionaires are quote unquote owning these teams. They couldn't, they couldn't figure out how to get rid of them. Yeah. I would talk to people about this who worked for the league and they were like, we, he's got to do something first.

It was a, it was almost like going back to your book. Like they're just doing the random stops, hoping this will be the day they stop his car and he'll have a gun in it. Ultimately, once you buy a team, that's it. You own the team and you can't get rid of the person. But there was a way which we figured out with the second final Donald Sterling. The thing that brought him down ultimately was the decision by both the players and the advertisers to say enough is enough, right?

But ultimately, he didn't have to sell. He didn't, but it was- He got an awesome price and there was a bidding war and he had Russ Caruso and he had Balmer and one of the- Ultimately, they weren't going to play. I don't believe that. Do you not believe that? Because they, I think one of the

great missed opportunities this decade was them not playing in that playoff game. And I did countdown that day. And we thought there was a chance

the Clippers weren't going to play. And then they came out and just threw their warmups in midcourt and got blown out. They should have not. I wish if we did that

over again, I think that would have been such a cool moment if they were like, no, actually, we're not playing. Because now what happens? Now you're pushing.

You get all the power. Now you have all the power. It was a huge missed opportunity. And they had some smart people on that team. You know the hero of that podcast? I love that podcast so much. The hero is Doc Rivers. Right.

He's great in those situations. Everything, whatever problems you had about Doc Rivers in the past go out the window when he like comes across as like thoughtful. Well, he was awesome during that whole stretch. He was. Have you revised your... I like Doug.

I have two Sterling things. Yeah. These are both real estate things that explain how he treated the Clippers. Yeah. He had, he has a building

and he might still have it on, I think it's on Wilshire in Beverly Hills. And it's like a 10 or 11-story building. He's the whole Wilshire corridor. He's the only office in the building. Or at least this was the case five years ago when he owned that team. These are all stories people told me five years ago.

So whether they're true or not, now I don't know. But he didn't have anyone else in the building, didn't rent out any of the other offices, because he didn't like riding the elevator with anybody else. They don't know. But he didn't have anyone else in the building, didn't rent out any of the other offices because he didn't like riding the elevator with anybody else. They didn't know. So he had a 10, 11, 12-story building, and it was just him in the office. That was it.

The other thing is, in Malibu, on PCH, for people listening, Malibu is on the ocean. There's one way in, one way out. It's this long highway and there's houses on the, on the ocean and a bunch of stores. And there's this one part about like when you're driving down, maybe like 20 minutes from Santa Monica pier that has the Maury's pizza. And it's got this little shopping center. And if you look across the street, it's maybe a four house lot. that's just empty. Nothing's there. Sterling owns it and doesn't do anything with it. It's just empty. And he kind of likes it. He doesn't like

selling stuff, but he likes holding things, which is how he treated the Clippers. It was like, here's this team. I'm just glad I have it. I don't care what happens to it. And then he would go to the games dressed in all black with his arms folded, like yelling at Baron Davis. Like he is the weirdest person who has ever passed through the National Basketball Association. Why would you yell at Baron Davis? Of all the people to yell at. Well, he was pretty heavy that year. I was yelling at Baron Davis from the sixth row.

Have a salad, Baron. I think I told my Baron Davis from the sixth row. Have a salad, Baron. I have a, I think I, did I ever tell, I think I told my Baron Davis story. What's that one? I was in a hotel in Chicago, in the lobby. And I look out of the corner of my eye and I see four very tall people come in. Baron and Matt Barnes. Oh yeah, you've told this story. Tell it again then.

And then Baron Davis spots me and he goes yo you the tipping point and they were reading Tipping Point in their book group it's so fantastic

on so many levels that they had it was like the 07 Warriors right they had a book club they had a book club and they were reading my book I love Baron Davis so much

that was like but it did cement when I heard about Matt Barnes on the podcast I was reminded I think they were reading my book. I love Baron Davis so much. That was like, but it did cement, when I heard about Matt Barnes on the podcast, I was reminded, I think, I don't know anything about Matt Barnes, but he strikes me as

deeply, deeply interesting and cool. Am I wrong? Yeah. I've always thought he had media potential. He's done, he's dabbled in some,

but I'd be interested to see if he could. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was, yeah. He could go up a notch.

That was like, in the, you know, in my my entire life that's like a top for baron davis to shout across the crowded lobby yo right the tipping point is just like the best thing ever you know i did the nba draft diary for blake griffin's draft he was the first pick and it had like goals or whatever they would run these graphics and his goal was to host Saturday Night Live. And I made this joke in the diary. I was like, oh yeah, the odds of that are 10,001. He was on the Alec Baldwin roast last week and he was like, great. Like he has really good delivery.

His jokes were good. I'm like, that might actually happen. That would be amazing if that was in the NBA draft just that year that his goal was to host Saturday Night Live and he actually might be a Saturday Night Live host. Do you watch the Alec Baldwin roast? No, I saw that part. Oh, I see. Part of it was online. I'm going to watch it though. I still love roasts.

It's one of the last places yet left where anything goes. It's really it. It's just roasts. It's the only place you can make jokes anymore. It's like Jeff Ross and he will be doing this until he's like 90 years old. I know. We make fun of him constantly about that. Because in like

06, he was claiming he was done with roast. And now it's like, you can't have one without him. I think we covered everything. Didn't we? We had everything. Where are you going next? I am going to Northern California where I will do more endless events.

You'll sneak in a couple rich guy events. It's possible. Tommy, what are the odds? Gladwell sneaks in some rich guy events. No, that's not true. I'm all about the people.

You're like the LeBron of rich guy events. LeBron's played 56,000 minutes. You've done 56,000 minutes of rich guy events. Just youron's played 56,000 minutes. You've done 56,000 minutes of rich guy events. Just you and seven CEOs having tuna fish at 11 in the morning.

So, this is completely unfair. This is completely unfair. This is good. Read the book. It's called Talking to Strangers. Thanks for coming on,

Malcolm Gladwell. Thank you, Bill. All right. Thanks to Gladwell. I can't wait for Thursday. Million dollar picks. Mallory's most intriguing and a surprise guest. You guys aren't going to guess this one.

I promise you. Thanks to ZipCruiter. Don't forget to go to zipcruiter.com slash BS. Thanks to Malcolm Gladwell. Thanks to Square. Square is more than a little white credit card reader. It's a whole system of tools built to run and grow any kind of business from point of sale and payroll to invoices and online stores. Go to square.com slash go slash BS to see all the ways you can take your business from square one to whatever's next.

Kyle, Thursday, House and I are starting a new segment called Kyle's Corner. You have to tell a story about your life at the end of the podcast. Yeah, Kyle's Corner. That's coming Thursday until then On the wayside On the first summer I never lost it I don't have to ever forget