The Bill Simmons Podcast - Smart-Guy Friday: Cycle CEO/Founder Jason Stein and Bill's Dad on 'Game of Thrones' (Ep. 244)

Episode Date: August 4, 2017

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Cycle CEO/founder Jason Stein to discuss the evolution of branded content (5:00), Joel Embiid's Twitter personality (11:00), Facebook curating content (21:00), the YouTube generation (32:30), the reinvention of sports (42:00), monetizing Twitter (52:00), the Rock's social media dominance (1:01:00), and the chances of Amazon one day owning the NFL (1:07:00). Then, Bill's dad joins to talk about the Red Sox's resurgence (1:27:00) and his best guesses for what's next on 'Game of Thrones' (1:30:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by SeatGeek, our presenting sponsor. The easiest way to shop for the best tickets, thanks to their revolutionary grading system. Everything fully guaranteed. Do everything on your phone in two taps. Right now, my listeners, this offer still stands. $10 off baseball tickets. The first time you use SeatGeek, just use promo code B-S-M-L-B, and we will have, I think they're going to send us a promo code

for football season soon too. So get ready for that one. Download the SeatGeek app today. I love SeatGeek. I use SeatGeek all the time. I've been using SeatGeek lately to buy tickets for, my son's going to a Red Sox game this month, and I had to get him tickets to go with my dad.

Guess where I went? SeatGeek. I don't get to use the $10 discount though on the baseball tickets, but go to SeatGeek.com or the SeatGeek app. Download that today. We are also brought to you by TheRinger.com, which is going to have a bunch of stuff happening next week. I'm not going to give away some of it, but we are launching not one, but two new podcasts next week. One of them is going to be called a ringer FC. That is a soccer podcast. Soccer season's heating up. I mean, stuff's happening. Name, Neymar just pulled a Kyrie on a, on messy premier league starting, and it's going to go all the way through the World Cup. And we have some awesome soccer people on staff. Chris Ryan, Micah Peters, Ryan O'Hanlon are going to be the hosts

with Donny Kwok coming off the top rope every once in a while from New York City. So check that out. That feed is going to go up, I think, this weekend. Ringer FC. And then the other pod we have, I'm very excited about this one. This is breaking news right now. The Rewatchables. That's the name of the podcast.

Guess what we're going to be doing on this podcast? Talking about movies that we can't stop watching over and over again. We started doing this on this podcast, Chris Ryan and I. My favorite podcast I've done on this podcast, the first 250 or so episodes, was when Chris Ryan and I broke down heat and we just went all in. We went deep dive and then we did some sports movie hall of fame stuff too that you probably remember from last year and a little bit this year. This is where we're now creating a feed called the rewatchables and it's not just going to be me. It's going to

be a bunch of different ringer staffers. We have gotten pretty high tech with what qualifies as a hall of famer rewatchable versus honorable mention. We're concentrating on 1990 and everything from 1990 on, which, which, um, was very helpful because it turns out the millennials and Gen Z have really not seen any movie that came up for 1990. So we're trying to accommodate for everybody, but we have the first episode is coming next week. Should I spoil it, Tate, or should I not spoil it? You can tease it. I'll tease it?

Yeah. What's the tease? Can they handle the truth? I don't know if they can handle the truth. Yeah. That's a good tease. Yeah. I don't know.

I don't know if they can handle the truth. But that's coming next week, too. The Rewatchables. And speaking of podcasts, don't forget Binge Mode is bouncing off Game of Thrones every single week, late Wednesday. I went on two other ringer podcasts other than this one. I went on Cousin Sal's Against All Odds, which is the funniest podcast I've ever, I think I've ever been on. And it wasn't because of me. It was, we had Brad Mulcahy on, our friend who works for Jimmy Kimmel Live,

who has had an up and down life to say the least. Gambling has intersected with that life. And we basically did the autobiography of Brad. And not once, not twice, but like three different times he threatened Tate. It's indescribable. Getting some good feedback on it. It's a podcast unlike any other.

And you can hear that on Against the Lies with Cousin Sal. I also went on Joe House's podcast, House of Carbs. It was part two of our David Chang interview. And then Rembrandt Brown was on there, my old Grantland teammate, Julia Lippman doing food news. That pod is a really good one. It's for the hungry by the hungry. If you love food, I would highly recommend that one. We have a good one coming next week too, but the ringer podcast network and guess what else is on the ringer podcast network, the bill Simmons podcast. That's what you're listening to right

now. Coming up in interview, I did with Jason Stein, who is somebody that I met a few years ago. And we, we go into that, but is one of the smartest guys I know in terms of where is stuff going. So we thought, who better to have on Smart Guy Friday, which we don't always have Smart Guy Friday, but when we have Smart Guys, it's usually on Friday. Jason Stein's going to walk us through a bunch of stuff. I did want to mention one thing that we talked about, Steve Nash's docu-series, The Finish Line that we did on Grantland and, and how that came to be

and stuff. And I forgot to mention the guy who did that series for us, John Hawk, who directed it, who's one of my favorite people I've ever worked with. And, uh, and we were talking about the mechanics of how that came to be. And I should have mentioned John Hawk and I didn't, but he's a brilliant guy. And he, he, um, not only did that, but he's also done a bunch of 30 for thirties and he did one of my favorite things I've ever been peripherally involved with, And he not only did that, but he's also done a bunch of 30 for 30s. And he did one of my favorite things I've ever been peripherally involved with, which was the second 30 for 30 short we ever did. It was called Jake.

And it was about an author who did all these baseball books called, his name is Alfred Sloat. And my two favorite books by him were called Hank Tough, Paul Mather and Jake. And I'd never really met anybody else who loved Alfred Sloat as much as I did. And then it turned out John Hawk did, and he loved him so much. He went to spend the day with Alfred Sloat and did this 10 minute little mini documentary about him. And I wrote an accompanying piece for,

for Graylin and it was just really cool. And to me, like just the perfect blend of something quirky, like what really, what a digital short should be. It's, you know, I think,

um, when you have like five to 10 minutes, you got to target something and just come up with the idea and try to bang it out. This was just really well done and cool and different and unlike just about anything i've seen john hock super talented dude i miss working with him anyway wanted to give him a shout out and um i'm trying to think what else we have to cover no kairi news nope i'm very excited so when i did sal's podcast which i think we taped on monday i was really out on the Red Sox and now I'm back in.

But that's what life is like as a baseball fan. The ebbs and the flows. The ebb and flow. Ebbs and flows or ebb and flow? Whatever. The Red Sox looked dead. They traded for Eduardo Nunez, who just was red hot when they acquired him. And he had two home runs on Saturday night and basically saved the season

because I think they would have gotten swept and gone into an irrevocable tail splinter if they lost that game. You know what? Instead of going into this rookie corner, I'm going to hold on. We're going to do Jason Stein. And then after that's over at the tail end, I'm going to call my dad. We're going to talk about the Red Sox, Little Pats, and most importantly, Game of Thrones, because I've been dying. My dad actually now watches Game of Thrones and I've been dying to talk Game of Thrones with him on the pod because he might know five of the names, but knows all

the characters and calls everyone the old guy or the old lady or that guy or this guy. So let's capture that on audio once and for all. But first, Pearl Jam. Jason Stein is here. We met at some dinner a couple years ago. He was running his own company called Laundry Service, which has now blossomed into Laundry Service and Cycle. And he is one of the premier knows-'s going on on the internet slash social media people that i know so we're going to talk about where shit's going um how shit's changed over the decade

and why don't we just start with your story how you got to where you got because how many people you have now like 500 uh 450 we have 450 and you have like one of the nicest offices in brooklyn so this is a good story because initially it was just you and like how many other people it was me in a room by myself and then one and then two and then three but we're like packed in like sardines so let's go back to late 2000s right i got out of nyu um two things are happening one is the economy is absolutely crashing like the worst possible time you could enter the job market, right? Lehman Brothers has just gone under, Bernie Madoff fraud has just been found out. And I just needed a job. So that was step one.

And at the same time, the democratization of content was occurring where everyone could run around the streets of New York City with a Canon 5D camera that you rent for like 100 bucks for the day and make a beautiful film that looks like something you'd see in like a Woody Allen story. Right. And you had Twitter taken off to Facebook was starting to morph into something else. Yeah. Things are happening. Yeah. So that would, and then they come in the social platforms with the democratization of distribution. So you've got content and distribution that anyone can do it for pretty cheap and reach everyone. Right. As, as you know, and you've got content and distribution that anyone can do it for pretty cheap and reach everyone. As you know and you've seen with Ringer and at Grantland.

And so I started going on Craigslist every day and replying to around 200 jobs a day in the TV, film, video section. And one out of every 200 ended up being a project. We got our first million dollars of revenue by replying to jobs on Craigslist. We got a footlocker job. We also went on some really crazy, strange meetings 2008 who's we at this point so like i brought on a producer okay uh a creative person and video editor right like as we got more and more projects so you're just feeling like i can shoot these little videos for these different companies and they can go somewhere and i'll do it for dirt cheap and i'll work my ass off and exactly something good will happen that's exactly right and then we got started getting good at the distribution of

the content because we realized just making a video for youtube and putting it out wasn't enough we want to make sure it's seen by the right people and get shared a lot and so that was the the way we started laundry service which is the first agency the first company i started and is now a top 10 ranked agency in the world by adage and the best part of those years there's a good promo right there like how you snuck that in yeah you left out the part i've been listening to the pod enough to know how to smooth it was good you you snuck that one in but you left out the part that the the one out of 200 good jobs that you get on craigslist but then you left out some of the seedier opportunities that you passed up. How much out of like every 200, how much was porn or like women bodybuilders wrestling old guys?

And like, how weird did it get? Really weird. As weird as you can imagine. One that I was just thinking about the other day, this guy who's the general counsel for a Fortune 500 media corporation, right? Public company hires us to help him write a spec script for mad men because he decided he wanted to leave corporate law and become a screenwriter and we would do table reads he's paying us 500 an hour and two or three of us would go to his house and help him do table reads to write this script and then one day we show up there uh for a meeting and we knock on

the door and there's just like weed smoke billowing out and like this is this is a new introduction into the relationship yeah and we open the door and he goes just like weed smoke billowing out. And like this is a new introduction into the relationship. Yeah. And we open the door and he goes, I changed my mind. Don't want to be a screenwriter anymore. Thanks anyway. Hands us a check. Has us sign an NDA that it never occurred.

And that was it. Wow. Yeah. And that was it? Yeah. Yeah. What about the porn though? We avoided the porn pretty well.

Did you ever stumble into an almost porn situation that you didn't, it wasn't presented to be a porn, but then it turned out it was? The first editing studio that we were in, that we rented out, we found out that in the editing suite next to us, they were editing porn overnight. And so we left because our editors, our overnight editors were like, we can't be here. That's how I found Tate. All right. So you start doing these videos and you get a little momentum yep we get some momentum uh we end up signing uh jordan brand over in nike open up our portland office and uh this is happening fast you just went from craigslist

to you yeah so we get a million dollars brad and brandon a portland office yeah if you you get a million dollars in revenue on Craigslist, you have enough to hire good talent. You start showing your work and like it was footlocker. Like it was still an amazing video that went viral on YouTube. Um, so we started going on these bigger pitches, right.

And sort of a fake it till you make it kind of thing. Yeah. And in our, uh, our pitch at Jordan brand, look, I played basketball growing up my whole life. So I'm obsessed with basketball and social media.

If we didn't win that pitch, I was literally quitting and shutting down the company. But what's really crazy about it, I was thinking back, is we showed your Grantland series with Steve Nash in that pitch as sort of like the perfect manifestation of what branded content should look like in 2010, 2011, 2012. I still think that's one of my favorite docu series digital series on the internet it was probably ahead of its time when you look at where facebook is trying to go now i think that was 13 was it 2013 yeah i think so might have been it was great it was you have steve nash doing yoga on a beach like talking about the future not just his career but his

life you've got him in the locker room, uh, riding the bike while the Lakers are playing like that access and that quality for you didn't spend a lot of money on that. I remember talking to you guys about it, but yeah, it was kind of pre players tribune. It wasn't our idea. He came to us. And he's like, I have this idea. I, I, I think this is like my last run and I'd like to i'd like to do some sort of documentary about it but he wanted it to be um you know like a year later you'd see it documentary

and it was actually we we had a lot of conversations about it and i was like i i just and i think connor connor was the same way like we were just like we think this could run immediately like why not the we have We were just like, we think this could run immediately. Why not? We have the technology now. Let's experience this real time. And we went back and forth. He was really dubious of it because there wasn't a track record for it yet.

It was very ahead of its time. Yeah, there was nothing for us to point to. But now it seems like the easiest idea ever. Yeah, the execution is still the hard part, right? Yeah. And I mean mean you look at this jj reddick thing that uninterrupted did and it's clearly like a very similar thing of what you did five years ago with steve nash and uh except we we kept the good stuff in the steve nash thing they they missed the jj reddick thing had the two most important moments weren't in the piece. When he, like, the Philly meeting wasn't in there.

And then when he was like, I'm waiting for this call from Mike D'Antoni, and that wasn't in there either. Like, I do feel like you have to have a little meat, too. The problem with the Steve Nash thing was we were putting the meat in, but then there was backlash to one of the episodes, and it freaked him out. Like, we never finished a series. We were supposed to do six i remember yeah i think we only did four because one of them he there was a backlash to some of the things he said in there by the laker fans who were like this guy's making a documentary series and meanwhile he's killing our salary cap and he

can barely stay in the court and screw this guy and it started to flip and then he was like i don't want to do this anymore. Oh, really? We had to talk him into doing, I think, one more wrap-up part. Yeah. So you can understand why JJ would show those things. He did a careful version of it. Yeah.

It was well done. He's my neighbor. So I see him in our strollers. JJ's a friend of the pod. We love JJ. He loves you. Yeah. I would have encouraged him to, if he's going to do that, put the Philly meeting in it.

I needed more inside. I needed two things from that. One is I needed the inside access of the meeting. And two, I needed to know the money. Like, what is he talking about? Is he one year, $23 million from Philly? Or these longer term deals? The math and the mechanics and what are the reasons you take a one-year

deal that's all the stuff i wanted to know yeah you have to weigh that stuff go let's better take this and i'll take my chances again next year and the new thing it's hard it's it will get there with this stuff i feel like right now it's it's these athletes are still too cautious and this is something we're going to talk about today about how do you manage your brand and how do you be totally candid but yet take chances with it, too? Because right now we're seeing these guys dip their foot in the water with it but not really take chances. I don't know if we'll ever get there. I think we will. I just think it's so early in the process still.

These guys still need education and an understanding of why it's important but like when you do it right like you go look at a guy like joel mb like i i see him as like a smart witty person who has like can do a lot of things besides play basketball just because of his tweets right like it totally changes the way you see someone as a fan as a brand as a team and even if you look back at like kim kardashian pre kanye versus post Kanye on Instagram, like it's like two different people. And now people forget that like she wasn't always like high fashion, you know, Vogue cover. Kanye married her and got her stylists and photographers and all this amazing clothing to wear. And now people think she's a totally fashion icon.

They think she's glamorous. Yeah. The Ray J tape has faded away in the background. But like. That was not on has faded away in the background. That was not on Craigslist when we were, that was not a job we applied to. But yeah, this whole era of Players Tribune, Uninterrupted, these guys are starting to figure out that it's a super important way to connect with fans. Yep. The candid part, you mentioned Embiid.

I think, honestly, the reason people love Embiid over everything else is because of how great he is on social media. He's only played like 31 games. There's this whole counter thing where you could be like, hey, Joel Embiid, shut the fuck up. You've only played 31 games. But people enjoy him so much. I found the same thing when I did the three Durant pods.

He was so candid to them. And it's just like, I don't understand why more athletes aren't candid because people appreciate it so much. And then they might say a couple of things that quote unquote are going to get them in trouble, but they really don't because people appreciate the candor. Well, I think that's, that's the thing that's really hard to embrace is the idea that being authentic is what will make you successful, but you're going to rub people the wrong way. I mean, even if you look at Trump, right? He's rubbed half the country the wrong way, but he rubbed half of it the right way just by being himself.

And it's just about building a brand. And you don't need every single person to love you to be successful. Even if I personally don't disagree or don't agree with anything Trump is saying, I get why as a marketing strategy that's smart. And it's the same thing that a lot of rappers do today, like Lil Yachty. Do you know Lil Yachty? Yeah. Lil Yachty. I've heard about him a couple times on The Ringer.

Yeah. So I love Lil Yachty. Music aside, just because he's built an amazing brand where he just refuses to be negative. And he's always positive. And he's always trying to be inspirational or aspirational. And that's why he has a deal with sprite and nautica because he's just positive like the modern biz marquee and it's just a branding thing but there's a lot of guys who hate him he goes on complex and joe budden wants to literally fight him during the the episode because he doesn't want to say anything negative that's like a badge of honor though when

joe budden gets mad at you he seems like he's mad at a lot of people these days. So you're pitching this stuff. This is 2013 range. You can see things shifting. Yep. But then you also see the possibility of, I'll do well, well done content for your quote unquote company that doesn't totally look like brand of content, but it is. And that was like the sweet spot that really nobody had figured out until the

last five years. I think Dick's Sporting's good. Actually Dick's Sporting Goods actually did a couple, I remember they did that one mother's day ad. That's like a minute long about the mom that brings their kid to the different stages of the kid with sports. And at that one, I was like, wow, that's like one of the greatest one minute ads I've ever seen in my life. But it was a brain of content. It was for dicks. Yeah. A lot of content that's produced by a Jordan brand or beats by Dre or a Bud Light, like it can be just as good as something coming from a media company today, if not better, because they have honestly bigger budgets than,

you know, an editorial operation will often. but i look at it as media and advertising are basically the same thing at this point right like red bull is making some of the best entertainment on the internet and companies like vice or buzzfeed are making or new york times or bloomberg all have agency services now making ads and um this is the biggest reason vice blew up right yes it because it realized media and advertising were the same thing and it bought a few agencies it bought character creative it bought virtue and a lot of most of the money it's making is through these agency services now yeah built around a really smart brand which vice has done like again not everyone loves Vice, but an 18-year-old who wants to see raw political docu in Uganda loves Vice. Yeah. Complex has done some of it too, right?

Yeah, Complex has done a good job. I think the thing with brands, to go back to your point about it needing to be compelling content, not just an ad, is it's easy to do it once like that dicks thing they did it once but how do you operationalize your brand to actually become a media property and do videos and photos high quality high volume for your target audiences every single day of the week and that's where we came in not doing it once which which a lot of agencies can do a spot but actually operating as a media company which is what led to us launch our own media property because we had we had the infrastructure for it and that that's where Cycle came about. I remember when we were doing Grantland in 2011,

one of the ideas that we had was to do podcasts in cars. And this was spring of 2011. This was like a year before the Seinfeld comedian cars thing. I, cause I really love podcasts. And I was like, we could do these in cars. I'll drive the guest around and then we'll cut out little four minute things for sports center. We'll do it with a car company. And just so they'll literally see the escalator or whatever car we're going to use. And we'll just drive around and we'll do it.

And then at one point the idea became, let me drive you to the airport, but I'll do it in this car. And it was like, the way people were thinking back then, they were just, they were like, oh, it seems too. But now it's like, that's the kind of stuff that's happening nonstop. Something shifted that made it okay to do ideas like that, where there was a fear in the early part of the decade from people who were like, no, the audience is going to hate that. They're going to think it's too over the top. But now it's like nobody cares.

Car content is really popular right now. Yeah. Carpool karaoke. Oh, yeah. The Seinfeld thing, which I guess they're bringing to Netflix. but yeah look i think the internet has become entertainment at this point and people have stopped saying like oh it has to be this fully produced like special package 30 minute perfect show and it can just be good content of any length in any location in a car people talking and i mean kind of what you do after game of thrones now right like it's it's kind of a

traditional tv show but it also feels like something that was born and bred from the internet right right and that's what that's what excites me about it is like it has the production value there but it's also not like overproduced or stuffy or stodgy or anything like that and you can watch it the biggest thing on the internet right like you can easily get it on Twitter or Facebook you're not making people like go go to a subscription to a paywall to an app on the TV to get into're not making people go to a subscription, to a paywall, to an app on a TV to get in to watch a show. That's a pretty unique model that I'm not sure. We'll see if it can work for things other than the single biggest TV show on the planet right now.

But we come on right after, but then it's archived in the Periscope. So if somebody didn't watch it on time and they watched it on DVR, they can go watch it after. It would be interesting to see if that model works for sports and for other things, like the Oscars. And is it just Thrones that makes it? I'm not saying it's a runaway success, but it's been cool. And we've seen the audience grow and we've seen good things out of it.

But these little homemade studio shows, the possibility of if you could ever get the timing right between a broadcast and having personalized announcers for games. It seems like a lot of this is going in those directions. Yeah, I agree. We did a live show called Buckets. We hired this guy, perez from fox sports yeah uh worldwide wab on twitter yeah he's he's great he's a total maniac um and we we got a nice amount of viewership for this show which we like one of the it was a small production sort of experimental and we'll we'll do it we'll reinvest next next year in it but i

do think that's where it's going i think you get personalized content from internet personalities you care about it doesn't have to be part of a a tv broadcast to to watch you don't have to watch turner to get commentary live commentary from people you like on an nba game anymore right it does feel like the production quality needs to be up like last year which i think 2016 will be known as the facebook live year yeah where it's just like hey turn some cameras on we did it we tried a few things and we did we just didn't feel like the content was good yeah you know you're just turning stuff on and filming people on a couch yeah and i don't know for some reason for six months we were like live live live and then it just wasn't working well that's what's what Facebook does. They fund essentially marketing campaigns. Like they'll

give you money. They gave people money to make live videos just to market live as a product that they have. And maybe they're just positioning themselves to get sports rights in the future and to show their capabilities. And now they're doing it with recorded shows as, as I'm sure, you know, and they're just promoting the fact that they're going to own everything. Yeah. They're going to have original content. And, and uh it's really not that different than when like netflix used to license its content from stars like it got all this content it got it curated enough that people would subscribe and they made enough money to start making their own content and trying to crush those former partners and i think facebook ultimately will have to make its own content

right yes and and own everything and they'll still have everyone else making content for the platform, but I think you'll see things more like Snapchat Discover where there's some curation element to it as well. My question with the Facebook stuff is how much content do you make? How do you position the ones that you care about the most versus the ones that you're just putting up to kind of eat up innings yeah um where is it archived after the fact how do you rerun it you know you look at something like 30 for 30 um which i will fully admit we had no idea

had a rewatchability component to it we figured eventually they would end up on espn classic because sports century had established a model the previous decade of SportsCentury came on, but then they would kind of rerun them and it would eat up innings. So we figured that would happen. Not on ESPN1. We didn't know we could run Fab Five for the 31st time and it would get a rating. And so with Facebook, when you're buying something and you're getting a show out of it, if you're just getting a one-time watch of it, I don't know how that model, you know, how does the rerun model work for that? We'll see, I guess. Yeah. When everything's an algorithmic feed and they're feeding stuff to you, it almost needs to know when you want to rewatch something.

It's something they haven't figured out yet. They're still trying to crack it the other thing you didn't even mention is you also have to make money on these things which is no one has really figured out how to do yet and that's why branded content and having the agency offering as part of a media company is how these how everyone's making money you're just creating new branded content from scratch to fund your editorial productions which is basically the same issue with documentaries. To make a documentary of a certain quality, it's really hard to make money. Your goal is almost to break even. Yeah.

That's why I think people have expected The Ringers to start doing them. And we will at some point, but it's more of a vanity play than it is a business play. Because if you're going to do them well they're expensive yeah i our strategy towards documentaries has been um shoot them when a brand funds them and like one of the things we used to say early on was like when when thinking about uh how to work with advertisers that cycle on the media company side was come for the meme stay for the branded content and like advertisers get so excited about these viral memes and they want to work with you. And then you sit down with them and they're like, okay, so give us a

one minute documentary. And they're, they're totally different formats, but it makes people like your brand as a, as a media brand. And then you can do a lot of different things. And that's what attracts brands to working with vice is not necessarily like the reach of, of their content, which isn't a lot actually it's small, but they have a brand that millennials really alike and believe in. So there's two models for this, right? One is you're attached to some sort of mothership website. The other is the model you have where you're basically, you know, you're, you're nomadic, but it doesn't matter because it's what matters is that people see whatever you did, but you're nomadic yes but it doesn't matter because it's what matters is that people see whatever you did but you're not attached to anything has that been an issue

it hasn't been an issue for us because um most of the advertisers we work with just want to be relevant on social media i think uh ultimately you do need to have the direct connection with consumers whether that's through a subscription play um or they're going to your app or your website, as well as having the distributed play with branded content and the stuff that we're doing now. And ultimately, you want to have a diversified media business and subscriptions and branded content are the only real ways to to make a lot of money and scale a media business today. From what I've seen. What do you think you're doing this every day. I mean, we're so early in it. I think both models work.

But I think I've been fascinated to see how much social has changed. I think that House of Highlights site that Bleacher Report has. Yeah. So this week, Zion Williamson, who is going to be like, I think he's, what's he, Tate number two? Yeah. Who's number one? 2018, Marvin Bagley.

Marvin Bagley Jr. Yeah, yeah. The bag man. So Zion Williamson's number two. Yep. They have this game against LeVar Ball's AAU team. That's basically, what was the platform it was on it was just facebook right yeah it's just on facebook and like a million people watched a

piece of it at some point and people were like oh my god the balls and i'm like i don't think it was the balls i think it was this guy zion williamson i think it was because on house of highlights i i feel like i i've seen 40 clips of him just dunking viciously on all these different people. And it's like, I would have clicked on that if I was home last night just to see him. Yeah, for sure. That's what's changed is the ability. Like House of Highlights, how many people is that now? We got like, I think 10 million followers.

It's just on Instagram alone. On Instagram. Yeah. followers it's just on instagram alone on instagram yeah and it's like they those guys can basically anoint somebody like zion williamson yeah and turn him into something on the internet which is like five years ago that's impossible i actually am getting worried now about zion just from watching all these clips like i think he dunks too hard and too often like he's gonna be done when he's 22 if he keeps jumping this hard like save some leaves what are you doing yeah he goes he jumps really hard the pounding he must take like he's actually fallen and gotten hurt a few times in the highlight clips because of someone needs

to tell him like chill it should be blake griffin blake griffin should be like i spent all this time blocking shots after the whistle and dunking and warm-ups and all this and now i've had eight surgeries i would i would do it all over again yeah your knees can't take it so many jumps in you a thousand percent there's there's no reason for him to be doing this right now kg was another one kg is trying to block all these blocks after the whistle because he doesn't want the opponent to get in the rhythm of making a shot meanwhile he wasted like 5 000 jumps probably he's so intense he just he couldn't control it like yeah there's only one mode and he wasn't gonna not do it that was it so the athlete the the athlete direct to the fan relationship which i remember writing a column about lebron i don't even know how many years ago because it was clear he was going to be the face which I remember writing a column about LeBron.

I don't even know how many years ago, because it was clear he was going to be the face of whatever this generational shift was where he didn't need the media. You know, you come through all these different generations of athletes where at some point they need the media to shape some sort of public perception of, of what they care about, what they want to portray. It would be the sports illustrated feature or, you know, you'd go on Roy Firestone's ESPN show or whatever it would be. LeBron was the first one who's like, I don't need anybody. You get,

you'll get five minutes with me and that's it. And I'm just bypassing all these people. I'm going directly, I'm doing Twitter. I'm going to announce my own, my, you know, I'm going to go to Miami and I'm going to announce that on an ESPN show. And now it's this whole generation of people who can go right to the fan. Why hasn't more bad stuff happened? All these people have their devices. I mean, I've gotten in trouble.

I'm a professional writer. I've gotten in trouble on Twitter six times. How has bad shit not happen more often these guys have a lot of people around them controlling their channels a lot of the time and thinking this stuff through with them they have brand partners who have a big say in it do you think they even control their own twitter very few athletes are are controlling their own twitter like on their iphone they even probably don't even have the password. Most of them, they may not.

I know a lot of them don't. Some of them do. And the best ones definitely do. And it's risky and everyone's going to get in trouble sometimes. Uh, I think LeBron was definitely the leader in, um, in athletes becoming media properties in their own right.

And he still probably is. I mean, that's why they even launched uninterrupted just so they could go direct to the the fan and a lot of it is his messages and i even think the decision like obviously that was polarizing and i remember how upset you were when it first happened but i wasn't it was mean to cleveland it just was flat out mean maybe he broke up with them on national television it was mean yeah and if if you take that piece out of it it was cool it was genius yeah it was amazing like i i still think like looking back people will say like that was like a really incredible thing he did when they like forgot about the

cleveland piece especially now that he's gone back and like to get the ratings they got in the middle of the summer like that's like an all-time record for him to just say like i'm going to a different team now but what's weird is everyone got upset about that when this is just him being his authentic self and talking and then when there was this like perfectly polished and scripted thing in sports illustrated everyone's like oh this is amazing this is amazing uh and you have to decide do you want these guys to be real and be who they are and just appreciate them for for their authentic self or do you want this like polished package thing and that's where i think players tribune goes wrong for me is when they're oh it feels so ghostwritten and you know it's not the player's real voice yeah but then something like this lamar odom thing that came out last

night i don't know if you saw that like i read it that was that that was i watched the video of him talking and that i I thought was pretty powerful. So the Players' Tribune, the Lamar Odom is the best use of it. A thousand percent. The worst use of it is Gordon Hayward writing three different 2,100-word pieces for each team, and then it's like, whichever one. All right, when I pick my team, just run that piece. So a couple things I hated about that, and I don't want to say too much about it because he's on my team now, and piece so a couple things i hated about that and i don't want to

say too much about it because he's on my team now and i'm you know he's my dude now he's gordon hayward he's boston celtic but man if you're trying to to shape the perception in utah of i just ditched you guys i'm going to boston that was the worst way possible to do it. It didn't really seem genuine in any way at all. I don't understand any upside of that for him whatsoever. I don't get it. You're just better off doing the full page newspaper ad the next day, doing some tweet and then getting out versus the 2100 word piece that you had two other ones prepared. That's where we've been really, I think it's been really clumsy with some of these guys

because they know, they have the right idea, but man, sometimes it gets executed just poorly. I think that's the risk in partnering with any media property instead of going direct to your own audience is a media property is not necessarily a PR agency or a branding agency or always thinking about your best interest or thinking about like reach engagement impact of their content. Right. And when you can really own that message yourself and give it directly, you don't have to worry

about it as much. But at the same time, like that Lamar Odom video that they made, like he's not making that on its own. And it was like beautifully shot, beautifully edited. So I think for all of us in this like new digital media era we're all very early in our businesses and figuring out what they are going to be and how to monetize them best and how to be most relevant but there's clearly a sea change coming like the paid tv ecosystem is in deep deep trouble um i think it's it's more of

a bubble than people realize and i think the the, the media companies are, are openly starting to realize this for the first time and just say like, like maybe TV isn't going to be perfect forever. Like five years from now, it's definitely not. Subscribers aren't going to start, stop, stop leaving traditional cable. Right. And that's a, in advertising alone, globally, hundreds of billions of dollars are spent a year. Like where does that money go to? Facebook, Google, Ringer, Cycle.

Ringer, we'll take some. Yeah, we'll all take it, right? There's not like you couldn't take all 200 billion. You wouldn't know what to do with it, right? Like you can't make that much branded content and can't do that many podcasts. So I think all these new media properties are going to ultimately win in the end, as long as they're relevant on the Internet, where traditional media has really struggled. Let's take a quick break to talk about the Showtime original series, Ray Donovan, starring Liev Schreiber, John Boyd, and special guest star Susan Sarandon. Wow. The heavy hitters this year when the Hollywood elite need a problem to disappear.

There's only one guy for the job. That's right. Ray Donovan. He can bury any secret and solve any problem and do it without breaking a sweat. Damage control, no problem for Ray. Keeping up with the chaos is no problem for you. You know who's excited right now is my mom because this is one of her favorite, favorite shows.

She loves the strong anti-hero males on Showtime and she especially loves Ray Donovan. So shout out to my mom. Listen, stream and catch up before the new season of Ray Donovan by downloading the Showtime app and starting your free trial. Oh yeah, free. Don't miss new episodes of Ray Donovan every Sunday at 9 PM. I know my mom doesn't miss any of them only on Showtime. All right, back to Jason Stein. So the TV thing has been fascinating. Couple of things that I've noticed just this summer, ABC's 10 o'clock shows, you look at ABC, NBC, CBS, which is what I grew up with and you grew up with. And, you know, like Jimmy did the man show on Comedy Central the first year. That rating is higher than any late night show right now.

Just the man show on Comedy Central. Crazy. He's getting, he's had nights where ABC's lead in for him is like a 0.3. This is 10 o'clock on a primetime prime time network and it's like where is this going people i look at i've talked about this before but like tate's generation and my kids generation like they don't even go to channels i'm gonna have logan paul and and uh lily pons i'm gonna have them on a podcast my kids are gonna be more excited about that than any other guest i've ever had on my podcast what are you gonna ask them what are you talking about

i want to find out how the hell they got to where they got yeah i'm fascinated by it these they are the biggest celebrities for people who are like ages 9 to 13 on the planet right now yeah they literally are like i was saying abc did this terrible battle network star show right it's like this old school, awful idea. And it's like, ah, we get old washed up celebrities. There's Zion Ziering and there's Corbin Bernson. If they had done that with YouTube stars, that thing would have been the highest rated show they had in five years for like stupid reality stuff, right?

All these YouTube, Vine slash, all these people had just been, then they would all been tweeting about it and instagramming it i would say yes but though they would have had to broadcast it on the talents youtube channels or instagram channels and not on tv if they wanted kids to watch it which is like the crux of the challenge for everyone now but it's like clearly there's scripted broadcast network shows at night are are only going in one direction i think the question is really like what happens with sports and sports rights and um so wwe is the first one yeah wwe dave melzer whose newsletter i get every week shout out to dave been reading him forever um he followed up on something that I had been fascinated by last week about basically no rights are up with the big sports until next decade.

Yeah. But WWE and UFC are up sooner. And it's like, what's the market for this? WWE, it actually makes more sense for them to go to Facebook than it would be for them to stay on USA. USA, they have to have these three-hour shows to get enough advertising. Facebook could just be like let's we'll take it what's your we'll top whatever usa's offer is and we'll run it on wwe's facebook page which i think has god knows how many millions of people plus they could position a certain way it'll actually be seen by more people probably they

could have tighter shows be two hours instead of three everyone makes more money it's a fucking no-brainer yeah that's where we're going and the question becomes what happens when you bring wwe and ufc and esports directly to audiences on facebook and twitter does that cannibalize traditional sports who are stuck in these old deals on tv like i i wonder if it's actually bad for the leagues that they're stuck in these long-term tv deals as much money as they're getting short-term like is it going to hurt the popularity of their sport because you're not bringing the content to people in the place in the ways because you're not second yeah you're not putting in four different places that would be fun yeah like esports is incredibly popular now and that has to

take time away from watching other sports the traditional network ratings on the esports were super disappointing right yeah that's exactly the internet they're gigantic yeah that's that's the thing is is you have a no matter what the sport is you have the potential to reach a bigger audience if you're going direct on the internet and if you're stuck in you know the wall's garden of tv it could be bad for the actual leagues i mean the nba has done an amazing job with its apps and trying to bring the content to people wherever they watch it like right in china is by far the leader yeah the nfl made some announcement yesterday they're trying to do more stuff like this but well you know what's been funny about this is they're finally rethinking commercials and what works and the second screen experience and split screen and all this stuff.

And you saw it a little bit last year, but then I really noticed it in a profound way during the British Open because they were just staying on the course and running the ads on the side. And now I think the NBA, they haven't said this yet. But I think because they cut down from 18 timeouts to 14, which was huge. And they cut down. They're really trying to speed up the end of the games. And I think one of the things they're going to experiment with is commercials when somebody is shooting free throws. Because you can have. They've done it sometimes. ESPN will have these wide shots of somebody taking free throws.

And they'll be like, hey, Thursday night on ESPN. Don't forget about blah, blah, blah. But now you can basically do that wide shot. Put the free throw shooter in the corner. So we make sure we know what's going on. And then you're running an ad. And now I'm keeping the person on versus letting them do whatever. I think that's kind of the future of some of this stuff.

Yeah. It's interesting. You know, like they've talked about that with extra points as well. There's like some putts in golf and stuff when there's gimme's. Kickoffs. Yeah. If,

especially if the kickoff is going to go out of bounds. Yeah. I mean, that out of bounds, out of the end zone. Yeah. I think there's two ways that it can go. I think one is where you're sort of co-opting attention where someone has to

watch to see what happens with that, that foul shot. And you also have an ad running but as an advertiser like i would wonder do i want to be like forcing myself into the screen while they're clearly just there to watch the kickoff and like hope that they like hear a bit of what i'm saying or would you rather have the tv network be in charge of all programming including the commercials and i feel like as a as media companies who are creating all this content creating a whole hour to three hour broadcast you should also get paid to make the commercials or branded content that air during the show and don't let other people make those um those spots like buzzfeed would never run on

its channels on facebook or its website a spot that it didn't make right and so you're saying like espn should do that with an nba game absolutely yeah like eventually i think all media companies the way it's going will have agency services right and they'll be offering oh you want this 30 second spot okay here's here's what we're gonna do here's what it would cost for the creative here's what the media buy is gonna cost and that's a way to make a lot of money it's like if you think about what vice has done, they have the editorial and the agency services. It's the same thing we're trying to build now. And I think ultimately media and advertising converge in that, in that way.

So maybe that's something that happens during these little moments in the game, like the, the split screen free throw the split screen. Uh, there's some instant replay review in the nfl that we know is going to take four minutes yep and they start running the commercials on that all this stuff should be faster baseball is the one that needs it the most oh well that's a whole separate conversation the i i think the the big like takeaway is whatever runs during the game should be entertaining like if if it's a suns game and Devin Booker has, you know, is going on 40, 50, 60 points, you should be running a one minute documentary that you've produced for Nike about Devin Booker. So you're actually learning and being educated and entertained by, by this content. It's not just like something you're being forced to watch. It should be

additive to the experience. I don't think the networks ever figured this out. They're trying to like, they've all sort of launched agencies now. They're all trying ever figure this out. They're trying to. They've all sort of launched agencies now. They're all trying to figure it out. I think it takes time. They can't even figure out how to run music from after 1990 when they're coming out of commercial. Yeah. They're still running the 70s rock music.

It's Innovator's Dilemma, right? You've got all these big TV companies making billions of dollars, way more than any digital media company is. And they have to decide, do I just keep doing that? Or do I sort of disrupt myself and try and build for 10, 15 years down the road or risk being gone then? And that's sort of the crux that all of these companies are facing today.

I'm amazed by, I mean, little stuff like, you know, I have MLB, the MLB League Pass, whatever it's called, MLB TV. Yep. And I'll be watching the Red Sox game on there in my office because we don't have League Pass on the cable. And between innings, they won't show anything. Yeah. They'll be running this weird porn music

and going on for four minutes, and then it's just the telecast comes back, and it's like, that's four minutes? I don't know how many people are watching this, but that's four minutes of something. You could have any kind of content that would be better than porn music and a blank screen. If you're talking about baseball,

that content could probably be more entertaining than the game, for totally just show me aaron judge homers with like you know he's hitting nikes instead of baseballs like anything yeah i i don't know where baseball goes they need to reinvent the actual game and i think that's going to start happening either the sports have to reinvent themselves or new sports will be invented like ufc is a is a new invention of like that competes with boxing now right because boxing didn't evolve it's sport right and i think the nfl will have the same challenge especially with like the players health issues eventually like that just clearly is gonna be the story i think esports could build an nfl with just like robot

players in 10 years where like drone racing meets the NFL and you like program a player, you design the player, their look, their feel, what they say, their entire brand, their like, their, their attributes, like you're playing a video game. And I think the best teams will have like the most innovative software and hardware developers that, that build players like robot NFL would be incredible. I think that's a good idea. I think e-sports has a similar problem to UFC, as weird as it sounds, to compare those two, where it seems like there's a lot of turnover with the stars. They have this window from, what, 19 to 22

when they have their fastest reflexes. And then by the time they're 24, a lot of them are on their way out. In UFC, it seems like that's been the biggest obstacle for them. You could argue that the turnover is great because it makes it so unpredictable, but then it's not great when all of a sudden you have UFC 213 and there's just no draw. It's even crazier in esports where you don't even really get to know these guys.

They fly them in usually from Korea. that's where the best esports gamers are and they get paid like 70 000 a year and they practice like literally 15 hours a day seven days a week and then they go play a game and that's that's all they do and they sleep six hours and then go back to there's some adderall there's some adderall involved pds man yeah there's a lot of pds in esports i like that it's trickling into colleges there's some colleges that have esports esports pds or adderall or all of the above are in colleges what have you found with um you i i would say you're in the top percentile of of people who know who the best influencers are yeah we work a lot with influencers on social that's been one of the ways you built up uh laundry service and cycle you kind of well explain explain the whole concept of influencers

to people who don't understand it so that every every person is a brand now they can build their own brand right whether you're trump or you're lavar ball or or you're Joel Embiid or you're JJ Raddick, right? What about Tate? Tate hosts two podcasts. How many Twitter followers do you have? 27,000. Tate is almost there. Yeah.

I mean, that's real. There's an audience that cares about what Tate has to say and people would pay to reach them. You can make a whole video series about Tate just mixing this audio right now. As Rasheed Wallace once said, CTC, cut the check. Tate's available. Don't wear any sponsored hat. Yeah. And so you go from 20,000 to 200,000 to 2 million followers and you're a media property now, right? Like if LeBron posts on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or all of them, he's reaching more people than most media brands would. Right. And so he can he can he's influential over that audience. You get an endorsement, you get content, you get the distribution and reach. I mean, that's a media company.

And so that's how we've always worked with these guys is find authentic pairs for them between a brand and talent who. So you're like a matchmaker a little bit yeah we have a tech platform that that matches the audiences of of athletes and influencers with the audiences of brands and and find the the best match and then we create good stories video content photo content around with the talent that they can distribute for the brands and you're always going to reach more people uh if you have more properties so for us, we have the cycle properties relatively small compared to the whole Internet. But if you had 3,000 athletes and influencers, you're now reaching billions of people and you have a network effect on your content. All right. So let's talk sports first.

Basketball, by far, the best influencers of the American sports. Yes. Not even close right isn't it crazy that football gets much higher ratings much bigger whole thing but basketball has most of the marketable guys slash influencers made for this generation yeah i mean basketball has the culture and the the audience is um a reflection of that and so much comes from basketball like it informs music and in a lot of ways and there's like tighter relationships there entertainment crossover is way bigger yeah um the the talent isn't wearing a mask all day so i think that that helps a lot you can like get to know them much much longer careers for the most part except for the quarterbacks too

much longer careers for sure um i mean think about lebron's year 15 this year he would be his nba career is basically entering its sophomore year in high school well he's like a freak of nature like his body's not even like wearing down like he could play for seven more years you may play until 22 years i'm just saying like think about the concept of just somebody being around 15 years as a hugely and even kind of senior high school that's 16 years because he was relevant that year the hummers all that stuff uh action sports is also really big for influencers on social media like these skaters who because like their job is basically to just like do cool shit make a video and put it out like they don't have another job really you don't make your money if you're in action sports uh in the competitions you make it from the brands that you work with

because they think you know your audiences are cool yeah and you know guys like ryan sheckler who are basically like from his show on mtv till now he's like he's an amazing talent on when he's skating but he's even more well known for for just hanging and being cool and doing cool tricks and having good tattoos on his shirtless body around the internet. And he's a media brand, right? He could build a- I'm the same way. My tattoos have really helped over the years.

Yeah. Yeah. And your different accents. And my falls. My falls that I put on. Yeah. You know, that's another one of my favorite Instagram feeds, by the way. What?

Hall of Meat. I've never seen that one. It's just skateboarding accidents. Really? Yeah. And it's terrible, but somehow my son found out about it. And the whole feed is just people wiping out. That's pretty awesome.

And it's grisly sometimes, but it's like, I found my favorite two you know uh instagram video feeds are house of highlights and hall of meat well that's what tv's competing with how do you compete with that they're not even making any content they're just taking other people's content yeah these people are just sending them skateboard videos my favorite is actually everything bagel on instagram everything underscoreel. It's just everything bagels with like egg sandwiches or turkey sandwiches or just cream cheese. And you just look at it and every one of them looks amazing.

It just makes you want to eat a bagel. It's my favorite one for sure. We're trying to get, you know, Joe Haas, my buddy who's hosting our food podcast. So it's in four, but trying to get him to get his Instagram going, when he whenever he's eating like just take a picture of the food and go and it's what's weird is i would always be interested in what he's eating i think 2017 is gonna go down as unless 2018 can top it is one of the weirdest years it has to be the weirdest year no all the trump stuff between where the internet has gone um what people care about it's all these barriers are just gone now and it's just like well what's interesting to you

all right go there yeah it it's definitely got to be the weirdest year of of our lifetime and just in terms of unpredictable things occurring and like john mccain yesterday he's thumbs down we're taping this on on uh last friday in july john mccain does the thumbs down on the health care bill that that uh clips on my on my twitter feed like what five minutes later yeah 10 minutes later people are putting jim ross's audio to it and 20 minutes later it's become a meme and 30 minutes later it's old news yeah like it's gone like that's the thing that's craziest to me is all these wild things keep happening and we're just like so jaded at this point that like okay whatever no big deal on to the next thing like no matter what what it is whether it's an athlete

doing something or like this like the tiger woods dui thing that happened like that was so big and then like the next day and it goes yeah it's like okay cool what's the next insane thing like I don't know if we're just like too exposed to stimulus now across like social media and news and where we're always getting it where like unless something insane is happening you're just like all right whatever what's the next thing yeah it does I noticed I flew back from Chicago yesterday and just going on Twitter like I'm just want to see what's going on with this Trump thing. You're just refreshing it. Yeah. And it's like, there's gotta be a hundred better things I could do with my life than

this. I could read a book. I could help out people at the ringer, but I'm just refreshing my Twitter feed, trying to figure out what the hell's going on. I almost wish I didn't have that option. I might get, I i might i might have to like turn my twitter off for a month see what happens i've gotten better at putting my phone down and like reading a book or like making myself do something because i go on twitter a lot yeah

but like if you can just put it down just your phone down for like a half hour an hour like your your brain just thinks of so many new things that you oh yeah it's crazy like you really have to try to get away from it. But I don't know, Twitter is such a utility at this point that I can never do without it. Like Twitter just had its last quarter came out and it didn't do that well. And it's stock dropped by like 10, 12%. And it's always been, it's in the, it's the stocks always been

that not to turn this into a stock podcast, but it's just interesting that it's the stocks always been the, not to turn this into a stock podcast, but it's just interesting that, um, wall street's been suspicious of their ability to monetize it. And yet I look at Twitter and I'm like, how are they not going to figure out how to monetize this at some point? They, it is the place to find out what happened. That's gotta be something. What would you do if you were in charge of Twitter? So we work with Twitter. So, um, I'm a little biased, uh, but I've, I was addicted to Twitter long so we work with twitter so i'm a little biased uh but i've i was addicted to twitter long before we worked with them i think they're doing a lot of the right things actually uh i think the way that that um they've made it clear what their role is in your

life or what it's what's happening now it really is and and the latest evolution where this the see every side campaign with chance the rapper and that commercial was really cool. And like that, that's the role. Like when I go on Twitter, I don't agree with a lot of the things I see, but I'm glad to see things that weren't what I expected. Right. And kind of break that like news media bubble.

Um, how do you monetize it though? Would you go subscription? Are there things you would do potentially to, to, to change the experience and almost make a hierarchy for what you're getting out of it? Yeah, I think there's definitely opportunity for a subscription business there.

And I think they've openly said that they're going to leave no stone unturned. I think the advertising business still has a ton of upside, especially as they launch these longer form shows, because the more time people spend on the site, the more you can show ads and monetize them, right? like longer form shows because the more time people spend on the site the more you can show ads and monetize them right so instead of it just being this fast experience where you scroll through you may quickly see an ad um and you go on to instagram and then snapchat now like i find myself spending like deeper experiences in twitter like if i'm watching your your game of thrones show like that's a really long time to be sitting on twitter right and uh i think they'll just continue to evolve that experience so you can you can make more and more money over

time with it but there it's such a critical utility i mean the world revolves around trump tweets at this point like it's not going anywhere as a business i don't think what's scary is that's completely true the world revolves around trump tweets right now that is not an inaccurate statement no that's literally what what's happening and it's like i wake up in the mornings and i check twitter to make sure nothing horrible happened yeah you just don't know if it's the day that he's gonna be like i've decided to bomb north korea yeah you just don't know and then there's an entire discourse around like what is what he said possible is it true is this is this like a real thing to to happen like the the transgender uh military tweet this week um it seemed like a red herring yeah

threw that out there because he was it's it was like to push everybody's attention that way versus whatever else was going on yeah because you have to get upset by something like that and and then everyone's talking about it and you're like okay well what's he really doing right now or like this this thing with the scarmucci guy yeah like whatever that was like that had that that has to be planned right like he they didn't just he didn't just randomly say a bunch of crazy stuff that got leaked like he knew exactly he knew what he was doing or it's completely haphazard that's even scarier or it's completely not planned it's the lavar ball theory is this all uh evil genius mastermind uh or is it is it totally random but like trump and lavar ball have a lot

of similarities in in that sense like um yeah any attention is good attention yeah and it's all just about making noise branding marketing like he's more wwe to me he's basically when he was on wwe it all fell into place yeah it's like this is what he is he's a wwe manager yeah with children yeah i mean i think the difference with him is like he's not he actively is not trying to like offend anyone i think he's just trying to have a good time. Right. Whereas I would say there's a lot of differences between them. But yeah, he's a benevolent version of it.

Yeah, exactly right. That's exactly what he is. Facebook versus Twitter versus Snapchat. Instagram basically took Snapchat's two best things and they just took it. We're taking these and people are very concerned about Snapchat. I'm sure you deal with them too. What, what, uh, what's your, what's your short term prognosis for Snapchat as they try to recover from that?

I think they're still exploring different ways to make money and build a business. And it's very early for them. They do have some really good things going for them, right? They have a bunch of really young kids who are obsessed with using it as a messaging app for communication. And it's like all these kids do. Because the adults can't figure it out.

Yeah. It's their way. They go in these little rooms and we can't, I'm too stupid to figure out how to get in there and they can have all these conversations. Totally. That's exactly it. And then they have, like I actually do, they're a camera company and in there and they can have all these conversations. Totally. That's exactly it. And then they have, like, I actually do,

they're a camera company and that's what they've come out and said unclear how that becomes a business. But you know, this is like hot dog lens that they have the dancing hot dog thing. I've seen that on Instagram way more than I've seen it on Snapchat. And then you're like, wow, they really are a camera company. They're doing the most innovative things that you can capture and shoot and make your own animations. How do they monetize that when it gets shared on every other platform in the world and then they have the discover thing which is is interesting they're the furthest along in

how to have you know original productions with media properties alongside a social app so not inside of it but next to it i thought what they did with the nba was pretty cool those stories right after the finals yep that uh were well done and just like here's the finals on snout here's what you missed last night boom boom go through the nba did versions of that for uh for youtube yep they make like these fancy five minute mini documentaries about each finals game and then they do the snapchat thing it was, it was cool. It was smart. And I think a lot of people watched it. I mean, I heard it was like, you know, between eight to 10 million people per little Snapchat

thingy. Yeah. And, and Snapchat is going to have to make a tough decision because ultimately if they really want to grow that discover section and their media property business, you have to open it up to everyone and let that democratization of content and distribution occur because even if you have 10 or 20 or 50 media properties there's like thousands that people are obsessed with so if i go on snapchat discover i should just see whatever is most interesting to me of every media company it shouldn't be walled off to just the 15 they're

working with right day right and i think right now they're trying to differentiate from Facebook. So they're actively saying like, no, we're a curated experience. But, uh, my guess is they will, they will come around on that. It's intimidating. Like we looked at that when we were launched in the ringer, uh, two years ago about whether we wanted a Snapchat and did we want to go for a discover channel, stuff like that. But you got to hire 15 people that are just producing content constantly and for us it's like well what's the level of that content what's the ceiling of it and it just it's it just seemed like a hamster wheel maybe that's

gonna evolve over over time but for us it didn't make sense yeah i agree i see it as a marketing expense right now like it's great marketing to be in discover i'm not sure there's a whole business to build around it just yet or i think there will be doesn't seem like they've totally hashed it out yet the biggest thing is and this applies to facebook and youtube and twitter as well i haven't seen any business model where if you do a revenue share on on ads in your content that you can be profitable because video is so expensive to make yeah even if you're like a fully operating media business like if you then have to put an ad in it and then split it with someone it's super hard to to be become a bigger business that's what happened with these

youtube mcn networks right that were part of like um like awesomeness tv and like full screen and stuff like that like those youtube channels never really became like big businesses in their own right because it's hard to monetize. I think Funnier Dye is a good example too. Totally. They, at one point they could have sold Funnier Dye for like, remember the number was like 200 million. It's like four or five years ago, but then they had all this content, but then it was like, all right all right well how do you make money from that where do you put the ads yeah and had they built a full service like agency the way vice did within funny or die to just make the funniest ads for brands they'd probably have a huge business right and they build an app and they get they sign a bunch of comedy talent that has a big following

cool stuff but i always felt like they had the inside road for a couple years there that they could have just basically dominated that whole, the comedy slash YouTube world would have been theirs. Is Will Ferrell even on social media? Doesn't seem as much. Like, if he had just become, like, huge on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook, like, his following alone for Funny or Die

would have been worth so much money, right? But part of the problem with that is he had so much success. It's like I didn't he doesn't if you don't need to be on that stuff. That's the athlete problem. Right. Like if you're making hundreds of millions of dollars a year, are you really going to take the time to have the perfect, you know, Instagram or Facebook? And LeBron is the one who's like, yes, this is important to me as a person for messages I want to get out, whether they're, um, political or cultural or, or basketball related, um, or for my businesses. Uh, and so he's, he's been like the leader in that. And the question is when will, will there be a lot of other athletes who want to be, who are as, um, business savvy

that will use their social media in that way. I would say The Rock is the leader. Does he count as an athlete? Yes. I think The Rock is the number one greatest. He's the goat of social media. And in fact, you could say that HBO gave him ballers just because he agreed to be in it. Because it's like, there's no way that show can't get an audience with his social. It could be the worst show of all time.

But his social media will still drive people to the show. He's just a man i can't believe how many people he reaches that there's another perfect example of is this similar to the kim kardashian transition where like okay we go from football player at miami to like sort of wild all over the place wrestler to like really buttoned up like movie star and social media star and now he, he had this ad with Apple that came out this week that was like, it was blew up on the internet. And like, that's as polished as you get of a transition. Right.

Yeah, it's true. And now he could probably become president and he very well might off of his social channels and his following. You know, it's funny though. I was there cause I loved wrestling, especially late nineties.

And I always felt like he was overqualified to be a wrestler i think a lot of people did it was like this guy's actually too good like this guy's gonna leave wrestling and become an actor like yeah the promos that he would do in the ring with the mic were just unlike anything anybody was doing and yeah the delivery of can you smell he had such command of the room and especially if if he went in person and you saw it, his command of the room was, it was like one of the great politicians or something. There were a lot of good guys in wrestling at that time.

Like him versus Stone Cold. Yeah, him versus Stone Cold. He was the great. All right, last thing we got to talk about. You want to defend millennials. You want to defend the millennial generation. Yeah. Are you going to take the other side on this?

No. I mean, our whole site, I mean, millennials are the driving force of... I learned this at Grantland. Young people know where shit's going. And they might stumble along the way a little bit, or they might be wrong a couple times, or their passion might be a little misdirected sometimes, but for the most part, they just have a better feel. Yeah. So I think it's that, but I think people give millennials a bad rap because they say like, Oh, they're so entitled and they expect to just like be able to like go to the top quickly

and they expect you to like treat them really well and communicate like, yes, of course, that's how businesses should be run. right if you're amazing at what you do and you're you're 24 but you're the best at it you shouldn't have to wait 10 years to get to vp or you know editor or something like that if you're good and you're composed and uh i think when you embrace the fact that they're just that millennials will will keep you honest and make you run your business the way it should be run in 2017 you have the best workforce because they work so millennials work so hard um it's a mindset right where you're just like always connected it's not an age uh you're willing to respond to emails on saturday at

1 p.m or at night when when that happens they're on call millennials are on call all the time because they're always aware of what's going on because they need that the stimulus of like oh a new email oh like a new post is going out. Notification. Yeah. And technically, I'm a millennial, so I'm obviously pro-millennial. But I think it's just a mindset where you expect the place you work or the businesses you shop from to have values and be open and transparent about what they are, whether you like them or not. So yeah, our business is largely run by a millennial workforce too. I do think there's, there's, there's two groups of millennials from ages.

And I've even noticed that with the people that have worked for us at Grantland and the ringer where the people, the people that grew up where they have no recollection of a world without email texting or the internet are wired slightly differently than the people maybe i'm going to say early 30s early to mid 30s who also grew up with email internet but it kind of came into their life at a certain thing but like anybody who let's say you're like 23 youtube youtube came in like 06 yep so basically by the time you're a teenager streaming video is in your life yep that's a different generation than the generation right before so it's almost i don't know is there another word for millennials that are like the 25 tate what what do they call the

25 and unders it's gen z do you have anything generation z gen z gen z millennials are millennials are over and done that sounds like something I'd order. Millennials are over and done. They're old. That sounds like something I'd order at Sugarfish, the Gen Z. We need a new name for that. Okay, we'll work on a new name for Gen Z. Gen Z, that's awful. Maybe with Logan Paul, you can figure out whoever these kids you have on, you can rename

their generation. I was Gen X. Gen X was basically, we had grunge music and nobody could get a job and we had the writers had nowhere to write and it was it was just it was a lot of melancholy with gen x yeah a lot of a lot of introspection yeah i think it's very different millennial my generation is like say how you feel at all times, 24-7. Here's my opinion. Yeah. Whether it's warranted or not.

My generation was tied together by a lot of the same experiences because there weren't a lot of experiences to be had. Right. So, like, I remember SNL was huge in the early 90s especially. It had this big resurgence. And there was this one sketch with Susan Day from the Partridge family. And they did this Partridge family meets the Brady Bunch sketch. And everybody was a different character from each show. And it was like anyone basically 15 and under watching that sketch understood it, got the jokes, understood the thing. I don't know what the equivalent of that would be now because everybody's experiences are so scattered.

There is no Partridge Family meets the Brady Bunch sketch for those people. The closest thing I can think of are Internet memes. Like that's what gets seen the most at the end of the day. Like we did one for like Rihanna and Lion King and Lebron at the nba finals and like rihanna posted it but then like time magazine like has it as like a cover story on their website that was big yeah but like that's like that's the world we live in now where like memes are the like most common form of they come and go in five minutes oh yeah like that, like that. Like that. But if you look back and you ask a 25-year-old, what's the funniest thing you saw this year

or the most popular thing among your friends, they'd probably pick something that happened, some meme that happened on the internet for a day. I think some movies, but it would have to be specifically in an age group. Like my daughter's generation, they love Moana. My daughter's 12. Yeah.

Everybody she knows has seen moana i don't know eight to ten times and if the songs come on my three-year-old probably like 450 times it just keeps going over and over so you're 12 and under moana any of those songs come up don't know all the words for the previous generation it was probably, I don't know, Toy Story or one of those. So yeah, it's tied to the specific theme, but I don't know. Yeah, we don't have that anymore. I do think there's basketball and the fact that it's like when Gladwell was on here and he was talking about how few things are in the middle. Everything is so scattered and everything's so niche, but there's a couple things left left that are still in the center and basketball has become one of them for whatever reason.

Everybody has an opinion on, yeah, I could go anywhere and people be like, like I was in Chicago this week and people like, what do you think is going to happen with Kyrie? Yeah. People kept asking me, like I know,

I was like, I don't know. I don't work for either of the teams. I think he's going to get traded, but anywhere we go, somebody in that room will have an opinion on where kairi's gonna go yeah there's not a lot of things left like that sports is probably the only thing that does that music doesn't really do it like some degree it's like i i could talk about the new jay-z album

a lot but like i can't talk to my dad about it i can talk to him about the knicks though you know star wars the new star wars movie star wars entertainment game of thrones to some degree but yeah it's it's definitely a decreasing list yeah but that's good for what you do it's great yeah we we love the sort of like you love scattered scatter is great for us like hyper bifurcation of of content distribution is great because we know how to reach the right people with the content we're making so make one prediction for 2018 one prediction for 2018 in in what world sports or media or internet internet um you can't you can't include the words pivot to video because we both know that that's an excuse for we had a really bad media strategy so let's try this doesn't necessarily mean anything i think

2018 is the year where um internet programming starts to be seen as as like the primary form of entertainment and uh traditional tv is start you start to see it as really legacy media that people are just not flocking to. And advertisers and media companies and brands cycles are going to live or die on the fact that the internet is is becoming the the primary way to consume information and entertainment um and and pushing legacy media aside how's that that's pretty good that's a good prognosis for your business i i would say i would say the internet we felt pretty strongly about that from way back. Yeah. We were bullish on digital. Who knows? But you know I agree with you.

It'd be hard to disagree with that, with the internet piece of it being the most popular. I think it's when the business world or all this old money is still locked up in these hundreds of billions of dollars of TV buys or in print still. There's still a lot of ads, believe it or not. When that starts to shift, you're going to start to see a big change in these traditional media properties. My theory is that everybody's always five years behind in everything. So like Serial was a huge hit and people were like, podcasts. And it's like, well, podcasts, we're already something.

And then so that means Serial is 2014. So that means 2019, that's when the old school old school giant money advertisers will be like podcasts hey yeah look at these but like just to use podcasts as one example i think the stuff you're doing as five years from now will make even more sense to the people who are four to five years behind. Yeah. And our whole businesses will change as those, as those spaces grow and become more evolved and, um, into, into real businesses, like our properties will evolve with them, right? Like you're the leader in podcasting now. So by the time a traditional media company in 2018 or 2019 decides to do it, like you're already multiple years ahead of them figuring that out

right like it's i would hope so it's hard it's hard to that sounds really nice thank you it's hard to build a podcast business right and it's hard to know like you've been doing this for so long that you know what works and what doesn't like the back of your hand right and if you start from scratch you have you have to figure that out and most podcasts aren't good well you made you made that point before about there's 200 billion dollars of ad money or whatever it is yeah once certain parts of media are failing that money has to shift elsewhere yes and you know radio is a good example amfm radio as everything goes to satellite and podcasts and radio on demand and all that stuff where does all that amfm money

go um where does the 10 o'clock abc money where they're like where i'm paying all this for a 0.3 where does that go and then that that will lead to better internet content and more chances and all that stuff but i'm sure facebook's like i still think facebook and amazon like what happens when amazon just decides to get involved well you saw what happened with the thursday night football rights they just came in and paid way more than everyone else and now it's being distributed on amazon they're not even trying to make money on the games they're just trying to get more prime subscriptions because you make more money that way um i think it's going to be hard to compete with the Apples and the Facebooks and the Googles when they want to buy sports rights.

Like, how could you? Football's 2021. That's not that far away. The rates come up. That's not far away. UFC, WWE will be two interesting test cases for it. And I think make a lot of sense for either of the streaming companies compared. There was some stat that I saw this week about how UFC is 20, no, 34% of all the FS1 programming. And it's like, all right, what's that worth to them?

Versus just Facebook just coming in and be like, you know what, we're going to take this. What do you need? All right, we'll offer 100 million more. Yeah. As you know, the Facebooks of the world are not really adept at how to create programming and content right now. So I could see a world where they buy an FS1 and let them basically manage all of that for them and do the production. But it just airs on Facebook instead of on TV. That's interesting.

So yeah, there's a prediction for it. I think the tech platforms will buy the media companies. And the media companies will buy the agencies. I was wondering what would happen if Amazon just tried to buy the NFL, like the same way WME tried to buy the UFC. Yeah. So they bought the UFC for $4 billion. If you added up what all the NFL teams are worth on the open market,

I don't know what, it's 32 teams, and you say, let's say an average of 3 billion a team, it gets to a hundred billion. And Amazon was just like, I'll give you 200. Here's 200 billion. Can we own the league? What would they do? I think a lot of the owners would take it pretty seriously. I think some of them would be like, no, screw you. Nobody's buying me. But I think they'd have to have meetings about it. Yeah. That's similar to like the NBA player who cares about social media situation

like when you have so much money like you just do what you want to do so the owners are like you don't buy me yeah you can't buy me but some of them be like yeah you can absolutely buy me that was like the famous bob agger story when they hired bob agger to help uh help with football in la and he had this whole plan and some of the owners were like who the fuck are you i'm a rich guy i don't i don't need your help yeah owners were like, who the fuck are you? I'm a rich guy. I don't, I don't need your help. Yeah. I've already made my money.

Why are you telling us what you think should happen? And they just, and they went the other way. Being a commissioner of a league is gotta be like one of the hardest jobs, but the number of personnel, like really wealthy personalities and egos you have to deal with. The NFL commissioner. I mean, which is funny cause he's not good anyway but wrangling those dudes the most stubborn old school money dudes on the planet i think adam silver and the nba has an easier job because some of those guys are kind of new newer money yes newer thinkers things like that the

football guys are just all old school let's keep things the way they are we can't have anything change that would be a nightmare yeah the the new money helps a lot that's why i like nba all-star weekend better than the super bowl like any day of the week in terms of how much fun you have next year oh yeah i know i already booked a hotel yeah um let's throw a party we should let's do one let's do let's do a psycho ringer and we'll get we'll get one famous athlete to put on the poster we can definitely get the famous athletes pick pick fight now fight for the poster spot and we'll get one famous athlete to put on the poster. We can definitely get the athletes. Famous athletes, pick, fight now. Fight for the poster spot. And we can get World Wide Wob and Shea

to host something together because they're bonding now over not being on some kind of sports business journal, like Top 100, 30 Under 30 Talents or something like that or whatever it is. The two of them got left off and they each have an army on the internet of fans who are very upset about this so is there a worldwide

wobb worldwide west tension i don't worldwide west probably doesn't know who worldwide web is because there's not on the internet that much yeah i don't know what what happened to west he's been kind of quiet but worldwide wobb and bleacher report have a tension between each other there's a lot of beef going back and forth there between his fans they get upset because they think uh bleacher report takes some of his ideas um so they they have it out on online there's like a whole tate what side are you on in worldwide web versus bleacher report i like rob he went to carolina yes he did there you go all right tate. Tate's sign of approval. Awesome. All right, Jason. So we can follow you at Jason Stein on Twitter? Jason W. Stein.

Jason W. Stein. Twitter. At Cycle. At Cycle on Instagram. And at buy, B-Y-C-Y-C-L-E. We can't buy at Cycle on Twitter. It drives me crazy. I've been messaging this person who is in Asia and doesn't speak English. And we've been trying to buy it from them.

So if anyone can help us get at Cycle on Twitter instead of buy Cycle. That's why we were at Grantland 33 at Twitter. Some dude had Grantland. He just wasn't giving it up. Some dude in some weird state like Indiana or somewhere like that. He's just like, I'm not giving it up. Like just name the price. Yeah.

At Cycle on Twitter. We did. We offered them money. No. They won't even respond to us they won't even acknowledge that we're offering to pay them for their handle and they they don't have any engagement on their tweets ever thanks for coming on this is fun thank you bill pleasure all right we're gonna call my dad to talk about the uh maybe possibly resurgent red sox and their hot rookie and then also um i'm gonna ask him about the kairi irving trade I'm going to ask him about the Kyrie Irving trade. And I'm going to ask him about Game of Thrones, most importantly.

But first, a quick break to talk about Game of Thrones. Talk to Thrones. Sunday nights. At Ringer on Twitter. Right after Game of Thrones ends on HBO. Go right to Twitter. Go to at Ringer. We talked about it during the Jason Stein pod.

You can watch our post game show with Andy, Chris Mallory and Jason. They will break down everything that's happening. I think this is going to be a pretty action packed episode. I'm guessing. I'm guessing there's, we haven't really had enough blood in the first three episodes. I'm guessing there's gonna be a lot of blood in this one.

Talk to Thrones, hashtag talk to Thrones. If you want to find it that way, go to at ringer, go to Twitter, the Thrones if you want to find it that way. Go to at ringer, go to Twitter TV, whatever you want. It's on Twitter. It's on right after the show ends. People are finding the show. It's doing great. We're really proud of it. And we got, I think, four left before the end of the season. So yeah, hashtag Talk the Thrones, Talk the Thrones, produced by the ringer. And also the Binge Mode podcast with Mallory and Jason, if you want to hear two of the world's leading experts on Game of Thrones

breakdown every episode about two days after it happens, because they have to write their 22-page outline and really bang out all the plot points they want to do. But you can subscribe to that too, Binge Mode, Game of Thrones. And don't forget to subscribe to our new podcasts that are coming out, The Ringer FC, The New Soccer Pod, and of course, the Rewatchables, which if you like this podcast, I'd have a hard time thinking that you would not like the Rewatchables.

Anyway, all right, we're going to call my dad right now. All right, this is totally impromptu. Fortunately for me, my dad is retired, and I can basically, it's like a bat phone. I can get him just about any time. We're going to have Jason Stein in a second, but I just wanted to quickly talk about Raphael Devers. I was doing the intro for the pod dad and I started getting excited about Raphael Devers and man, I don't want to jinx this. I don't want to overreact, but, um, we are both super duper, duper, duper, duper, duper excited about what we've seen so far.

And I think I remember every young Red Sox guy since Fred Lynn, so going back to when I was five. And he's way, way up there. Where does he rank for you from what you've seen so far in two weeks? You know, he's way up there. It's a small sample, less than 10 games, but everybody is really excited up here. This was a team that was really dead after the All-Star break,

and they've had these small injuries, whether it's Pedroia or Benintendi going into a slump or Betts not hitting like he hit last year. And looking at the players on the bench, they just didn't have much enthusiasm. So then you add this 20-year-old kid who just has an infectious smile on his face all the time. I mean, whether he's making a play in the field or, I mean, he's hitting over 400 already and a couple of home runs.

But one of the announcers on the national broadcast made a really, I think, astute observation. His bat whips the way Adrian Beltre's bat whips. And there's something special about that swing and the way the ball comes shooting off off the bat uh unlike most of the other players so small sample size but 20 years old and suddenly the bench has life you add him to Nunez who just came on the team obviously how do you say his name Nunez you have trouble with the N with the little thing over it. Yeah, I do have trouble with that. And the bench is different, and the team is different.

And, you know, you see him on the bench when he's not even up at bat, and he's walking along in the dugout, and he's smiling, and he's high-fiving people and this kid's having a good time our team is not a team of guys that are having a good time yeah they really missed they really missed Ortiz in so many different ways but definitely the Johnny Gomes was talking about it last weekend about how um Ortiz was it wasn't just that he was the best hitter on the team but he was the first guy to greet you when you reached the dugout after you had scored a run or hit a home run.

He was the guy that went and talked to you when you were in a slump. He was just like the big brother slash father figure slash leader for everybody. And you could feel it when the team's not doing well, especially the last couple weeks when they looked dead. And I'm with you there. You knew there was going to be some up and down because guys weren't hitting and whatever. But I think this kid did bring some excitement.

And, I mean, man, we've overreacted to so many Red Sox rookies over the years. I still remember thinking Kevin Morton was going to win five Cy Youngs. But this kid, there's a couple things that stands out. One is the swing, which is just like a gift from God. I don't think there's no way to screw that swing up. It's just beautiful to watch. I always thought if you go through the greatest swings in the history of the Red Sox, Manny's got it.

Manny's still my number one. Manny's still has the best swing I've ever seen. I think Hanley's strangely up there. Fred Lynn. Ben Attendee has a good swing. Ben Attendee has a nice one. I think there's Devere. He keeps on hitting, wait.

No, I think he, you and I were talking about it this morning. I think he hit the rookie wall a little bit. And now they're trying to pace him a little bit more. But Devere's just, man, it's just beautiful to watch. I really like watching him. And, you know, he's got power, and they need a little power in that lineup. That third base until about two weeks ago was a dead black hole. And suddenly, and again, I guess the plan

was to platoon him with Nunez, but with Pedroia out, you have Nunez playing second. So this kid's going to get a real shot. I mean, he'll be in there. He looks just as good against righties and lefties so far, which is really tough for a rookie who's, again, 20 years old. So I'll say one more thing. You and I talked about this over the years. Sometimes there's a certain player where you don't want to miss his at-bat, and this is one of those players. He was going to bat fifth in the lineup last night if they didn't get rained out. That's crazy.

I mean, he started at ninth, and now he's moved to fifth in the lineup When they brought him up It was a total Hail Mary It was like five days before the trade deadline Third base it's hard to explain To people who didn't watch the team How awful our third baseman were this year Fat Pabell Sandoval

Who my son who just started following baseball This year just immediately gravitated to Why the hell is he on the team? Why does he play? He was just awful. He was awful defensively and offensively. And then a bunch of this rotating cast of dudes that are

really AAA guys. Yeah, guys that really tried very hard. Yeah, they're AAA guys. And then poor Brock Holt coming back from concussion and vertigo. And then so they bring in the kid, and he comes in, and people are pronouncing him Deavers, Endeavors. He kind of really came out of nowhere.

He was in AA like a month ago. So the other comparison people are making, it was a little, not quite a year ago, it was a little bit maybe later in uh end of august or or even maybe beginning of september when they brought moncada up and and uh you know he may end up being a phenom for the white socks but he was horrible when he just seemed overmatched he seemed fast but just raw overmatch he was horrible. Yeah, he just seemed overmatched. He seemed fast, but just raw. Yeah, he was overmatched. He was striking out.

I think he was out, struck out like six, seven straight times. He was not good in the field. And now you bring up the next kid that was kind of behind him on the minor league depth turret. This kid does not look overmatched. Yeah, but by June or July this year, I think he had risen. He was like the fifth ranked prospect in baseball by July. Yeah. That wasn't the case though. A year ago.

I think he's obviously has something going on. I've been impressed by, he's also only 19 years old a year ago. Right. I've been impressed. The three things, the swing is just off the charts. The patience and the poise. And, you know, Tench and I, my buddy Hench, we're texting during these games, and it's just the poise, patience, swing. When you have those three things, I don't know.

I don't want to jinx it, but, man, those are the three things you want from a hitter. And you and I didn't even contact each other when he had that four-hit night. I've been trying not to tweet about it. I've been really reining myself in. Me too. But we'll get a good sample size. It's August 3rd. Yeah, August 3rd. So presumably he's going to be in there for the next independent race.

You know, the pitchers will certainly try to adjust to him, and that will tell us a lot about how he adjusts back. So looking forward to it. I was out on this team, and then I was out just like it just didn't seem like they had it this year. And now that he started hitting it became a little infectious. Nunez has really helped.

The league isn't that good other than the Astros and the Astros have had some bad luck with injuries. And you start looking at it. What happened with him coming up? You're not up here experiencing it but all anybody on the radio or TV or in the newspaper, all they wanted to talk about was Price and how Price was doing appropriately. Yeah, Price versus Eckerson.

Well, Devis has kind of put that on the back burner, as has Nunez. And it's, it's good because it, you know, you want to talk about baseball and production and price seems to be a jerk and that's the way it's going to be. I guess. Oh, you're not well again.

I'm not ready to call price a jerk. I think this is, I think, I think the team wasn't doing that well. And we've seen this happen in other seasons too, where there's some incident happens or whatever. And then it's all anyone could talk about for five days and everybody kind of takes their sides. And I don't know, Boston,

Boston's not an easy place to play. We've seen a lot of different people struggle with it. Yeah. A lot of people struggle here. And it's probably not even newsworthy outside of Boston, the incident with Eckersley, but believe me, it was all that you read about

and heard about up here. For a week. And now suddenly we're talking baseball again. Eckersley's like only a couple years younger than you, you know? You know, people haven't, not to belabor the same story, but it must have taken every ounce of patience he had just not to come back at Price and, you know, try to put him in his place.

He handled it beautifully. He, uh, he was quoted yesterday as saying that when the Red Sox made an overture this week to try to get the two of them together, he said, no, it's, that's not happening. Uh, you know, it's, uh, and I just think he did it the right way. Um, I do wonder, does this stuff happen in other cities where you have this you have the overpriced pitcher who people are ready to get mad at about anything anyway and then the longtime guy reason yeah the longtime media guy and then the and then just the perfect media infrastructure to just blow this out and turn this into a story that was just way bigger

than it should have been. He's a Hall of Famer. I mean, put it in perspective, Price hasn't won a playoff game, and this guy's a Hall of Famer, so I'm glad we're talking baseball. I hope this 20-year-old rookie,

I'm looking forward to watching him tonight against the White Sox. Unfortunately, he probably read Moncada, hurt his knee, and he's not playing at the moment. Yeah, terrible play. I'm shocked that you sided with a guy in his mid-60s against a pitcher making $30 million a year. I didn't know where you were going to stand on that one. You weren't quite sure where I stood on that? See, when we give you your when we give you your own podcast the blue plate special this would have been the lead topic you

would have just you know i walk the dogs here in the streets of boston and people say when is your podcast starting um we're retired and we can't wait to plug in we don't have a forum we don't have a place to talk. I think your first episode would have been Accuracy vs. Price, and then the second episode would have been Tom Brady starting to get weird. My next podcast.

Because the Tom Brady starting to get weird is like the secret Patriot storyline that all the Patriot fans are afraid to bring up to each other. It's starting to get a little bit weird. Just a tiny bit. I'm not experiencing that. Okay. Okay.

TV 12, live your life like me. It's the greatest of all time. There's nothing ever that you would do that's weird. That's what I'm saying. It's the greatest of all time. We all look the other way. Okay. No, I just want to get through one more season. I all look the other way. Okay. No,

I just wanted to get through one more season. I mean, Miami's quarterback. How long is Tannehill out for? Is he out for the year? They haven't said yet, but already the news story was that they're going to sign the quarterback. I can't pronounce his name, the quarterback from

San Francisco. Oh, Kaepernick. Yeah, Kaepernick. Kaepernick should be a starter. I think these teams are afraid to have him as a backup, but he should be a starter. One of the teams that did scare me on our schedule, because we play them at the end of the year and we always play poorly in Miami anyway, is Miami. So I hope that he's only going to be out for this year

and he'll be fine for next year. I love when you put your own interests over the health of professional athletes. I was the last person in on Matt Moore, but then he cost me a lot of money in the playoffs, and now I'm out. So anyone would be better. It does seem like another year that the Pats would be hard-pressed not to go 6-0 in the AFC East. What do you got going on back there?

Is there a dog fight? As you know, we have an almost five-month-old puppy and a five-year-old old puppy and they play a lot a lot going on over there wow wait last question I have two more quick questions is Chris Sale the second best

Red Sox pitcher you've ever seen no Is Chris Sale the second best Red Sox pitcher you've ever seen? No, third best. You put Clemens Adamson? Yeah. Okay. It's too small of a body of work. And sometimes the outing, like the outing the other night,

makes you just kind of wonder, where did that outing come from? How did he give up seven runs and two innings? And it's too small a body of work. When he's on, he's terrific. Right. But I'd have to put Martinez first and Clement second. And this guy is must-see baseball, though. If he's pitching, it's the game you want to go to or the game you want to watch on television.

Right. And that's exciting. That's a lot of fun having a pitcher like that. Second question. Would you trade Isaiah Thomas, Jay Crowder, and the Lakers-slash-Kings pick for Kyrie Irving? Yes. Just because you'd be getting rid of Jay Crowder?

No. Okay. Just because I thought he was the scariest guy I saw in the playoffs. He was scarier than LeBron against us anyway. This has been my argument for three weeks. My only concern, the reason I hesitated was he only has two more years in his contract. Right. It's not quite a rental, but to give up all of that for only two more years, it gives you a very short window. And then where are you?

You've given up some pretty significant assets, particularly when you know Thomas wants to be here. So poor Isaiah, who helped rejuvenate the Celtics and brought us to the conference finals, and you're driving him to the airport. Well, I was driving him to the airport because we were dropping off Jack Crowder. He's in the car. Take him out of the truck. He was in the back seat, yeah. Last question. Game of Thrones,

which you finally started watching and you caught up on. I'm so glad that I talked myself into watching it. Six years. Yeah. I'm so glad that I talked myself into watching six years. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm thoroughly enjoying this year. And then I always watch the Twitter show that you guys are putting on.

And it helps me to understand maybe a couple of things I didn't quite get, although I'm getting most of it. Having binge watched 60 episodes in about three weeks, my mind is still pretty active in terms of what's going on. I don't know the history of some of it though. If you read the book, there's more that you know that's going on, I guess, right? The books. So what are your predictions for the last four episodes? And you have to use the actual characters' names with the predictions. I can't do that. Well, the house, the old lady who got killed this week. Right. I liked her a lot.

Yeah. So I didn't see that coming because she seemed to be a significant character. So that house, Terrell, so that whole house is out of the way now. Yeah. I'm not sure. I'd be guessing like everybody else. I'll tell you the one guy I really don't like at all is the new character who came in on the boats. Lovejoy.

Yeah, I don't like him at all. Yeah, okay. You don't like him, like you root against him, or you legitimately just don't like the character and think they made a mistake introducing him? Both, actually. He just doesn't seem to fit in, and I hope he gets killed off very quickly. The other one who really weirds me out is the young kid who fell and got paralyzed and now he's the three-eyed something. Yeah, he's kind of weird.

He definitely is that age well as the show has got along. Yeah, I'd be worried if he was my son. Who's your favorite character? Jon Snow. Yeah, Jon Snow. Who's your favorite character? It's terrible, but I always root for Jamie Lannister. I'm in on Jamie Lannister.

I like him. Jamie Lannister. I'm in on Jamie Lannister. I like him. I like him myself. I start from the... There were a couple scenes... Oh, go ahead. A couple scenes that still make me shiver. Yeah. One of them was when the guy cut his hand off.

Yeah. I didn't see that coming. But I like him. He seems to have... I was going to say he has act together, except he's sleeping with his sister. Well, you take that away. It's kind of hard to take it away. But if you took it away, he's a pretty gallant guy with great scruples and morals. But he is sleeping with his sister and they just have three children together.

Hey, you know, can't judge. You can't judge in whatever universe this is. If you ever walked in his shoes, I guess you can't judge. He is the Kingslayer. I just feel like almost everybody is morally unredeemable on this show. So he's my favorite character. Just like I always enjoy when he's on. But I think like the one, the one that I would root the most for is, uh, the queen of dragons,

the mother of dragons. I mean, more so than Jon Snow. Yeah. I like Danny. I want it to work out. Danny's, Danny's arc. I also think, uh, she's, she's got some holes as a leader. And I just worry that she's going to screw this up.

Like Mallory thinks one of the dragons are going to die soon. I'm concerned about that. Well, Mallory read the books. So does that give her insight into things that are going to happen? I don't know. I think we've passed beyond the books now for that give her insight into things that are going to happen i don't know i think we've passed beyond the books now from what okay for the most part yeah so it did seem like the when when she seemed very interested that john snow took a knife in the heart it felt like they were foreshadowing that and uh i don't know i don't know where i i'm like you i i half

understand what's going on the whole time but I love watching it and I think the acting's great and you have those moments like Dinklage the little guy

he was just awesome in the third episode it was like an old school great Dinklage episode but yeah he was terrific but that scene when Jon Snow

goes to visit Dany and just like the first time they meet in that giant, awesome, whatever the hell you call it. And it was just, it was just so good.

It was, it was, there was real tension. It was riveting. Oh, the terrific tension. I think she, I think she asked him at least twice, maybe three times, are you going to bend the knee or bend the knee? And, uh, you knew he wasn't going to, so you knew that was going to create tension doesn't bend the knee they ended up in a good place

he got some dragonglass out of it it's all good it's a great show he's going to need that dragonglass alright dad this was great thanks for coming on say hi to the dogs for us

alright that's it for the podcast thanks so much to the Showtime original series Ray Donovan starring Liev Schreiber Jon Voight and special guest

our Susan Sarandon when the Hollywood elite need a program to disappear there's only one guy for the job Ray Donovan can bury any secret

and solve any problem without breaking a sweat damage control is no problem for Ray and keeping up with the chaos is no problem

for you Ray Donovan returns Sundays at 9 o'clock only on Showtime control is no problem for Ray and keeping up with the chaos is no problem for you. Ray Donovan returns Sundays at nine o'clock only on Showtime. Download the Showtime app. Start your free trial right now. Also, thanks to SimpliSafe. Getting a good night's sleep is easier said than done, especially when you think you just heard a noise downstairs. Install SimpliSafe's home security system. Arm your home with powerful sensors that actually tell you if a door opens or if a window breaks. Please don't spend another night second-guessing your home safety. Go to SimpliSafeBS.com and get a special 10% discount when you order today. That is SimpliSafeBS.com with two I's for 10% off your order.

Make sure you go to TheRinger.com next week. Stuff is going to be happening there. Make sure you check out the new podcast feeds we're launching. And next week, I have a special treat on the BS podcast. An old friend is going to be returning for one episode. An old close friend who has not been on yet. Sometimes we like to give the people what they want here on the BS Podcast. Enjoy the weekend, everybody. I don't have feelings within. On the wayside.