The Bill Simmons Podcast - Sports Villains and the Pats, Plus CFB Playoff Fixes, Hillary’s Stern Interview, and 'Marriage Story' With Chuck Klosterman | The Bill Simmons Podcast 

Episode Date: December 11, 2019

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by author and longtime 'BS Podcast' guest Chuck Klosterman to discuss sports villains, the most recent Patriots "scandal," different sports eras, tweaking the CFP, Hillary Clinton's interview with Howard Stern, media subscriptions, and the new Netflix film 'Marriage Story' [SPOILERS]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by State Farm. Just like football, life can be unpredictable. That's why State Farm agents are there to help with over 19,000 agents. A local State Farm agent can be just around the block. Whether you're talking person by phone or through the app, State Farm is there. Go with the one with coverage and agents you can count on. Kind of like I count on Chuck Klosterman to have a really good podcast with me.

I would say about every eight weeks. State Farm, talk to an agent today. Meanwhile, the holidays are time for spending. Why not earn extra cash by selling the stuff you no longer use on Mercari? Mercari is the selling app that makes it fast and easy to sell almost anything. It's easy. You take a few picks at a description and boom, your item is listed. Empty the closets. Fill up the piggy bank on Mercari. M-E-R-C-A-R-I. Mercari is the selling app. Two new podcasts, not including this one that I have up today. Book of Basketball, new pod. Mark Stein and I broke down game seven, 2006 Spurs-Mavs.

The best playoff series of that decade. an incredible game, so many different ramifications, and we covered all of them. I would highly encourage you to listen to that. And we did rewatchables with the Safdies, myself, Sean Fantasy. We did Happy Gilmore. It was time. Sometimes you just got to give America what they want.

So those two are up if you haven't listened to them yet. Coming up, Chuck Klosterman first, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, Chuck Klosterman is here. We're approaching the end of the decade. You're actually here. You're literally here. I haven't seen you in like, it's like two years. Since the last time I was here.

Which I don't know, we did rewatchables. It was a year. We did some rewatchables together. I felt like it was summer-ish. We're coming. We did broadcast news, a couple other things now. A whole bunch of stuff to get through. Right now, it's Tuesday morning.

One of the big stories is the Patriots videotaped the Cincinnati Bengals' sidelines, which is hilarious because the Bengals are 1-12. And now the counter story to it has already come out that it was a video crew for the show Do Your Job, which is a show about basically how great it is to work for the Patriots and how smart they are that they produce by themselves. And Belichick said that he had no idea what

happened with this video crew. I didn't know anything about it. Whatever happened, everybody was so delighted to have a villainous Patriots moment. And it just got me thinking, do we just need three or four sports teams like this at all times where we have like the Patriots and Duke and Alabama? And we just have these built in villains that people just love to root against. And once Brady retires, who is going to be that team in the NFL? Who is going to be the villain? So it won't be the Patriots. Well, before we get into this, I will, I guess this is, I don't know if this is a compliment to you, but I guess a compliment to your people.

My people. The Patriots have clearly usurped the Cowboys as America's team in the sense that they are always in the center of every conversation now. In a way that it seemed as though in the past when like that was the Cowboys or the Celtics and the Lakers or the Yankees or whatever, it was this eternal thing that it was the franchise itself. Yeah. But now the Patriots have sort of by their success, um, have emerged as the only team that's always in the news. Like I did not see this story as particularly newsworthy, although at the same time, I think it does sort of reflect their ethos,

which is like, we just have to push every Avenue. Just, I mean, like I, like, so you, are you working,

are you from the, could perceive this as there was nothing wrong with this? I actually think the fact that the bangles are bad doesn't really mean anything because you can learn things from bad tape as well as you can from a team succeeding i was driving and listening to coward this morning the beginning of his show and he was talking about this story and he was basically saying this is one of those things nobody's going to agree on because they've already decided on how they feel about the patriots so it's like if you hear this story if you're a Patriots fan or a believer that, you know,

all this stuff's been overblown and deflacate didn't happen, all that stuff, you're going to hear this story and be like, oh, well, obviously it was the video crew. They didn't tell Belichick. If you're everybody else, you're like, well, obviously they cheated. And there's almost like no way to even have a conversation about it because people are just here and here. And it almost is a parallel to where we are as a country right now where people are

like here here and there's no in the middle anymore at all so the patriots i would say are a parallel to the united states the knowledge like the idea of billichick knowing this or not it kind of it reminds me of during the deflate gate stuff one of your big arguments in favor of brady was like he's got all these things to worry about right yeah of Brady was like, he's got all of these things to worry about, right? You got to worry about game film. He's got to worry about, um,

you know, like keeping the team together. Why would he sort of worry about this detail? And yet the kind of person who worries about everything, literally worries about everything. Right. Okay. So the idea of Billichick not knowing this,

you could be like, well, he's got so much to worry about. Why does he care about a documentary about the training staff or whatever? And yet his success and the way he succeeds would suggest that there's nothing he's not aware of and that there's no way they would be doing anything like this without his knowledge. Well, I look at the stakes of it, right? Because he's a smart guy, cares about his legacy, which I want to talk about in a second, cares about his legacy a lot more profoundly than I think a lot of people realize. And if he was like, Hey, we got to get those Bengals signals.

I'm going to send a videographer into the Cincinnati media room. We're just going to tape it. Hopefully nobody will notice. Like, what are the ads? He's actually going to tape it. Hopefully nobody will notice. Like what are the ads? He's actually going to do that. What are the ads that he's going to be like the stakes of getting caught are worth this little tiny infinitesimal edge where maybe we can figure out two play calls from the one in 12 Bengals. I don't think it's worth it. I don't know. Or, or he's a maniac. Does he perceive his legacy not through these, you know, these potential small infractions, but the overall

arc of success. I mean, you know, like Al Davis or whatever, like bugging the opponent's locker room or whatever before a game when they were probably just saying things like, we need to get out there and really go. Like, it probably wasn't that useful, but any advantage is an advantage. Well, isn't the parallel Nixon? Nixon's going to win in 72 going away. And it's still such a maniac and so competitive and wants to do every wants to control every little piece that he just decides to destroy the Democratic Party anyway.

Well, it's a personality type. Yeah. OK. Like it's a personality type who sort of you're you talk about, would he perceive the risk of this is too great? You know? Um, I don't think people who get in that position, um, are wired in that way very often. I don't think that they think of things from that detached view. I think that they think of the world as like, uh, everything is an obstacle. Everything is an adversary. So we have to go after all of it.

We have to fight this war on every possible front. Now, I don't know. I don't know as much. I thought you were going a different way there. In that? I think sometimes when people become so powerful, and we've seen a lot of powerful people get taken down in this decade, which I think would be one of the legacies of this decade,

they start to feel like, I'm me. I can get away with this now. I'm at this level. I can do whatever I want. And that's like what a lot of great art is about, right? And that's like what a lot of people have been taken down for, where they just start to feel like the rules don't apply to me.

So if Belichick does this videography thing in the Browns media room, whatever the fuck it was, that would be the case of the rules don't apply to me. I'm just going to do this. I just don't think the stakes are worth it. Like if you told me there was somebody in the stands with some $20,000 spy camera and that person got caught, who was a spectator, and it turned out he worked for the Patriots. I'm like, oh shit. That sounds like they're smoking. This one is like it just sounds like a bunch of bumbling

idiots walking around being like, oh, there's the Bengals sideline. I'm going to film them. And they weren't attached to the team. But it doesn't matter what I think because people saw that story and they're like, Patriots cheated again. And that's it. And they're delighted about it. So in this role the Patriots have, do you feel in any way complicit in this?

What did I do? What do you mean? Just writing pieces about them? Well, OK. So you were the most. You always throw me under the bus. Well, OK. I bet everyone listening to this podcast is nodding in agreement with me right now. You guys can screw off. Stop nodding in agreement with me right now. No, you guys can screw up. You are the biggest. Stop nodding. You are the biggest national columnist writing from a almost local fan perspective, right?

True. So you would write about the Patriots and the Celtics and the Red Sox in this way that you would typically only see if you live in the Boston metro area. But now you're a national columnist at ESPN. You're the biggest columnist. You're the main one.

So do you think that in some ways prompted people to be like, why am I hearing about this team as if I live next to them? I live in Omaha. Why am I reading about the Celtics every week? Why am I reading with the Patriots every week? So do you think that in some good theory that that that do I mean, again, this is a compliment to you, that your success puts you in this position where you change the way the Patriots are seen on a national level. I sure hope that. You hope not?

Are you sure you hope not? No, I definitely hope not. You wouldn't like that? No, but the Patriots became more villainy because of me. I would hope that's not true. And more popular. I just think it was. I mean, there's two sides to this.

I just think they've been the most relevant NFL team for two straight decades. They've been in nine Super Bowls and like 12 championship games or whatever. And I can see why people would dislike them the same way. Like, I hate Duke. And it's not even rational. I just don't like Duke because they've been successful for a long time. I hate watched an entire ACC 30 for 30 type documentary about Duke that Jay Billis produced about the first great Duke team. Did you watch this?

It was about Jay Billis. Was it Johnny Dawkins on that team? Johnny Dawkins, Mark Allery. It was about. The first good one? The one that got beat by. By Louisville. Yeah.

Okay. So it was about Coach K taking over and him trying to put this program together over the next four years. And it's basically, it was done by John Hawk who did one of the, two of the better 30 for 30s for us. Would Mark Allery have been on that team?

Mark Allery's on that team. And it's the same kind of motto as the Valvano doc that we did for 30 for 30, but it's like, you know, team hits rock bottom, coach pulls them back. And now they have this moment of thing.

And I'm watching it, like delighting that I know they're not going to win at the end. I'm like, I can't wait to the Louisville part. This is going to be awesome. The situation with Duke is, is different though, because why, when it's a college program, what people dislike is not necessarily the team itself, but what they imagine is the kind of person who goes there as a student.

Like, I mean, this is part of why, you know, I mean, why I still I just feel college sports are so superior to pro sports. Is that like when Auburn plays Alabama, you're really thinking about the kind of person who would go to Alabama and the kind of person who would go to Auburn and all these things. And Duke is in this situation where, you know, that, you know, they they present themselves kind of as like like, well, as many schools do, like the Harvard of the South. I mean, Vanderbilt does this lots of Vanderbilt's not very good, so it doesn't matter. But the the the idea of Duke is not the success of the program because people don't hate North Carolina. And North Carolina has been, I don't know, probably, I don't know who's actually been more successful over the last 20 years. It would be very close.

I would say it would be Coach K would be the number one reason people hate Duke because they feel like, you know, he's a sniveling hypocrite to some people. I'm not as anti-Coach K as others, but I see it because he's one of these guys who is super emotional, but then he's as manipulative as anybody else. Like he'll go after the refs. He uses the media. As soon as Kentucky started winning with one and done, he just imitated it and did one and done.

And it's like, oh, we're the Harvard of the South. And it's like, but now we're doing one and done. It it's like, we're, Oh, we're the Harvard of the South. And it's like, but now we're doing one and done. It was so hypocritical. It's very difficult to be a beloved, super successful coach for a long time. And also how he did the coach, the K state football team for a bunch of years. You don't feel like Dean Smith,

Dean Smith was beloved. He was, although, you know, throughout the seventies, he was sort of seen as this coach who could not win the title. And it wasn't until they beat Georgetown that that switched. And I but it's true.

He was, you know, John Wooden was never hated in this way. I would say he was John Wooden was probably the most beloved. Yes. But but this is like I mean, this is a cliche thing but like it's a it was a different time i mean these things changed as with the acceleration of culture and the and the changes in media it became difficult for something that succeeds for a long time for example like uh bilicek is seen in a way that tom landry was not as much as the Cowboys were hated, Tom Landry was not seen as a villainous figure. I think there are people who view Bilicek as a villainous figure.

But don't you feel like there was more mystery with coaches when we were growing up? Because we had, yeah, I think about some of the people who had Bear Bryant. Bear Bryant was like this mythical guy when we were growing up. Same thing for Landry. Chuck Nolte Nolan knew nothing about. I just know he won four Super Bowls.

I was watching the game when Woody Hayes flipped out, the bowl game. Clemson game, yeah. Was it a bowl game? Yeah, it was. They were playing the Gator Bowl. He punched a kid from Clemson. You were young when that happened. I was probably 10, 10 or 11.

That was late 70s. I'm going to say 79, 80. And when that happened, that felt like the probably 10, 10 or 11. That was late seventies. I'm gonna say 79, 80. Um, and when that happened, that felt like the biggest thing that had ever happened. And it was just a complete disgrace. And somebody that was, you know, one of the four best college football coaches of a three decade span, his career just getting overturned in 10 seconds. And that was it. He was written off. And same thing for Bobby Knight when he threw the chair and did, and it was like this slow downfall.

It wasn't 10 seconds, but now I feel like we have more kind of information slash content about the coaches. Belichick does. I wanted to get back to this. Belichick has participated, I think in four documentaries. Youichick has participated, I think, in four documentaries. You know, he's- Have you ever seen somebody that cares more about his legacy,

who people think like he's the worst interviewer ever? He's done three documentaries and this NFL 100 show where he's great. Yes. I mean, I watched that running back show because he was on it. I probably would not have watched it otherwise. And I watch a lot of the NFL Network, but something like that, you know, but I was, he, he, he, he. Did you see the defensive back show? I have not. No. They had this scene with Ed Reed and they show Ed Reed's greatest play. And it was a play Belichick pick because he saw, he thought it was the greatest

play a defensive back had ever made. Ed Reed's safety. He's in the middle of the field deep. He's going against Peyton Manning. He starts to go left because Peyton Manning's looking to the right. So he starts to go left, but he knows Peyton Manning's setting him up for this play where he's actually going to throw the other side to Reggie Wayne. So he starts left and then does this 180, hightailing it the other way, just guessing that Manning's going to throw the ball that way, which he did. And he runs in and intercepts it from 50 yards. And Manny was just like, what the fuck?

Where did that guy come from? And Belichick was so excited talking about it. You got to watch this. Belichick is so excited talking about this play. He's like, it's the greatest play I've ever seen. And he also, he has really adopted this idea. It's like, we need to have some living historians of the nfl we must discuss marion motley we cannot have this right we've got to have this you know

and i i i i of course i am the kind of person who gravitates toward that so he is who is that guy who is the guy from the 30s that he had everybody got mad oh uh dutch yeah dutch somebody yeah so we he's like this guy's got to be on the team this is the best three down running back we had in 1928 well it's it's those shows are pretty interesting now because the nfl has been around long enough now where um it makes me think interesting things like you you know, OK, it's a common thing people do is they'll be like, you can't compare eras. But, you know, if we take, you know, any great running back today and put him back in 1960, you know, he wrestles for 3000 yards or whatever. There's just no comparison when you look at these guys. But you also got to do it the other way.

You have to, you know, you got to say like, OK, Saquon Barkley, let's say he's born in 1950. OK, so like, you know, the shoes that he's wearing and like he plays football eight weeks out of the fall and that's it. He doesn't do all these other things. He has like no nutrition. All of these things are different. You kind of got to put when you compare these guys in different times, like you look at someone like Marion Motley and you think to yourself, okay, if he was born in 1980, the experience he would have

instead of being a 238 pound running back, maybe he's a 255 pound running back who's faster than he was, you know? I have a lot of thoughts on this. We're going to take a quick break. Let's talk about Kamikodo. Great kitchen knives using traditional techniques. Each knife comes in a beautiful heavy-duty ash wood box.

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Use the offer code bill at checkout. This is a good holiday gift. K-A-M-I-K-O-T-O dot com slash bill. So what you just brought up, Ryan Rosillo has a theory. What year would he have been the best basketball player alive how far do you have to go back so he's like in 1910 if i just showed up would i be the best basketball player like in a time machine he's transported there and they're and they're like oh my god this guy is awesome how does he know how to do all this stuff

when did nateismith invent basketball? Wasn't it like 1918? Well, yeah. No, it was in the 1890s or something. Yeah, yeah. So I had Koppelman. Brian Koppelman was on. We did a book of basketball podcasts about Julius Irving that we haven't run yet.

And one of the things we were talking about was how Julius Irving couldn't shoot. He had like a 17-footer. So it's like, well, why is that? Well, he's growing up in the 60 so it's like well why why is that well he's growing up in the 60s they don't have aau they don't have these camps they don't have 50 years of evidence of how to shoot and to bend your elbow like this so all the guys in the 60s 70s he's playing he's growing up playing outdoors right so he's shooting like over his head. And so teams just start laying off him. And the book on Dr. J was 16 feet and didn't cover him, but 17 feet now just play off him, stack the middle, let him shoot.

He's probably not going to make it. So do we penalize him historically for that? Because he was the best player in the NBA ever. He, I still think is one of the six or seven greatest forwards there. I think, I still think he's one of the top 20 players ever, but if you look at his stats, you could pick different things apart.

And Koppelman's point was, people have said this about Jordan too, about, well, he, you know, nowadays he shoots threes. He wasn't a great three point shooter,

but it's like, if you put 1985 Jordan in a time machine and just put him into right now, and you're like, here's how to win now. You have to shoot threes. You're going to have to shoot 12 threes a game, get to the free throw line 15 times. There's way more space for you. This is how you win. He would shoot a hundred thousand threes a summer and he would have become the best three-point shooter because he was Michaelael jordan so that that's why it's so hard to just compare eras like that because every era is different and the incentives were different remember steve garvey in the 70s it was like just get some rbi your runs batted in man you're a first baseman drive people in he

wasn't thinking about getting on base he wasn't i'm gonna work this pitcher for a seven pitch count he's just like i'm just gonna got to drive that guy in from second base I got to get my bat on the ball and that's the part we miss is the incentives of whatever the error was I think that you when you're trying to compare people who played at different times you have to look

at where they ranked or to what degree they dominated their peers you know and how everybody else who was covering them and played against them and played with them felt about them at the time this is a big thing i did with my book because it was like there's overwhelming evidence that everybody in his era did not respect will chamberlain so why what was it about him that

made most people be like yeah i wouldn't want to fucking play with that guy it's got something has to translate to as the years go by that it's like this should still matter okay but then there's then there's all these other things okay so there was a bunch of guys who didn't want to play with chamberlain who felt that he was a bad teammate, but jump all these guys forward. All these guys are early 22 year old people now in like the player in Parman era. Yeah. And they look at things differently. They may not perceive the success of the team as important as their success as professional basketball players. They might now see Wilt as sort of, here's somebody who can, um, you know, change the salary cap.

You can do all these things for our benefit. You know, we love him now, you know? I mean, it was, I think it was, it was always, it was surprising to me when I was a little kid is I remember reading about like Joe Namath's big contract. You get like a $400,000 contract and it was, I might have this number wrong, but it was the biggest contract. Yeah. And 400,000 a year. And, you know, uh, and the perception at the time is this guy is overpaid. It's going to cause problems in the locker room, all of these things. And yet, if you talk to the guys who played in the AFL, they were all like, this was the greatest thing that happened to all of us. It completely changed the pay scale because now if you were one fourth as good as Joe Namath, you could still justify that.

Well, I need one hundred thousand dollars a year. Like, you know, it's like so the way even the way people thought about teammates is very different now. Yeah. I mean, this whole thing with Carmelo Anthony anthony and chris paul this conversation they apparently had were like um like anthony goes to chris paul when the rockets uh cut him and he's like do you have anything to do with this and chris paul's like no and then uh carmelo says uh okay you just watch yourself though like you know they're gonna they're gonna you know fuck you over too or whatever that's a very different kind of conversation to think about that just didn't

exist in the past where, where that these guys would sort of see themselves, um, as, um, adversarial with the organization's perception on how they should succeed. That like, like the Rockets are making these decisions based on what's best for the Rockets and players now don't view themselves as members of the Rockets. They're like, we're players who happen to be in Houston. You know what I'm saying, kind of? I do. I think it's more than just sports.

That seems like where everybody is right now. If you work for somebody, that doesn't necessarily mean you have any loyalty to those people because you feel like they don't have loyalty to you. It's kind of been the trajectory of this decade, the trajectory of time, which is that we kind of have made a social decision to prioritizing the individual over institutions. Okay. And when you say it like that, it seems like, well, that's better, right? I mean, institutions are nothing but collections of individuals. We should prioritize the individual.

But, you know, for I mean, this was like one of the interesting things with the whole situation with like with morally in China and stuff like that. Like it's it's hard for people in the United States to relate to the idea of a culture where the individual is seen as considerably less important in the institution. Like, it's not that, well, we've kind of made this decision. That's how it is. It was like it. And the last podcast that we talk about that, that documentary. Yeah.

American Factor. Yeah. I think you did talk about that it's like i really do feel like people should watch that um solely because i think it is a good reminder that the way americans think about things um is not some inherently natural perception like it's like our view of what's important our view of freedom of expression and all these things, that's just a construct that we've come up with. And it's not, it's not like some John Locke idea that all people feel this way. All people don't, you know? Well, think about 50 years ago, the Vietnam war, and you had the conscientious objectors and those people, you know, the people

who objected or went to Canada were considered cowards because, hey, man, we're in a war here. And then eventually things turned around. the institution or the organization or the company or the team or whatever, that would be really fascinating to see how that would unfold. Because I think people see their own value a lot differently than we probably did 50 years ago. Right. Why do I have to go over there to fight? It's not my war. All the stuff Ali said in the sixties, I would think most people would say that now.

Right. I mean, okay. Like, like let the Gulf war. Okay. Gulf war happens. I was in college.

Let's say there'd been a draft. Okay. Not only would I have begrudgingly went. Yeah. the gulf war okay gulf war happens i was in college let's say there'd been a draft okay not only would i have begrudgingly went yeah my father would have given me no choice it would have been like if i'm if i'm not gonna do this if i'm not gonna fight this war which i didn't even have much of an understanding of what was going on in kuwait and i'm a much better understanding now but at the time i was kind of confused i I still would have, I would not have, um, like I w I would have participated in the draft. Okay.

Um, even though I had no knowledge of what the situation really was, I say, well, possibly, or they would have, maybe I'd written for stars and stripes or something, but I know all I know is that I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't have went to Canada. Right. All I know is that I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't have went to Canada, right? Yeah. Even if I, you know. Now, if 13 years from now, we're involved with some war. 13 years from now? What about 13 days from now? Well, I'm saying in 13 years from now, my son will be 18.

Yeah. And if we went to war with a country and I generally agreed with our involvement in the war. I still wouldn't want to go. I'd still figure out a way to get him out. Well, think about it. Because there's no way, there's no international conflict that I value more than the life of my son. Well, especially think about parenting now in 2019. People are like, my son has a peanut allergy. He can't go fight.

Is there going to be peanuts in the military? The over-parent parenting combined with a war would be frightening but uh yeah it's you know one of the legacies of this decade i think it has become a lot more individual versus the team i'm going back to belichick for one second it's so funny people make fun of the belichick press conferences and how bad they are and they're as we know intentionally bad he. He's, he's, I would say not bad, but. Well, but every time he's making a point that this is the dumbest thing, I hate doing this. I'm going to give you the minimum amount of possible. And then two times

a year, somebody will say, Hey coach, can you tell me about Reggie Slater's wedge block in the third quarter and how that was designed? And Belichick will light up and talk about it for three minutes. And it's like this gift from God to him. And with Popovich, when he does the between quarter interviews, and Popovich is as big of a prick as Belichick, if not more. And it's like, oh, it's so funny. He's not saying anything. Oh, here's the thing he has.

Popovich has been able to turn theater into it, whereas Belichick has not. But then you see him on this NFL 100 show and you'd be like, man, if I could go talk football over dinner for four hours with anybody, I'd probably pick Bill Belichick. I think he would be the most interesting. I think he has the most opinions. He has the best sense of history. He probably has the best sense of who's good and who's not good and where the trends are going now and what it's like to have a team. And that would be the best conversation we'd have good and who's not good and where the trends are going now and what it's like to have a team. And that would be the best conversation we'd have.

But I don't think anybody would pick him. Oh, I think he would be the, I think that if, if, if a poll was done, you would pick him. No,

I think, I think if there was a poll, I think people would pick Sean McVay. Well, okay. Sean McVay would be good. We'll have a couple of cocktails. Well,

Sean will tell me Jared Goff stories. Also McVay though. He's like Mary Lou Henner of football though. So that would be awesome. Mary Lou Henner. Yeah. What does that mean? Mary Lou Henner from taxi.

Yeah. I don't understand the analogy. Well, you don't know about, you don't know about Mary Lou Henner's memory. Oh, I do. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Mary Lou Henner can remember anything.

Even now. She's like 70. You can say like what happened on, um, you know, February 3rd of 1975. And she'll be like, now, she's like 70. You can say like, what happened on, you know, February 3rd of 1975. And she'll be like, well, it was a Tuesday.

We went to, we had pancakes, you know, all these, McVeigh is like that for football. There are real sports are the thing on this. Like you can say to him,

like what happened on the second drive against Pittsburgh last year. And he'll be like, well, we, you know, we open with a screen pass and then we like he can you know

so it would be fun to just ask him about things that he remembers because you know a lot of great athletes can do that LeBron can do that Bill Russell can do it when I was with when I spent the two days with Russell in 2012 he told this story to us after we had finished filming about his wife surprised him

his late wife had surprised him with uh a video of his university of san francisco game from like 1955 it was a dvd so she got him the dvd and it's like merry christmas they put the dvd in and he could remember every single play that happened in this game and it was like 50 years and he's like in his mid 70s or early 70s it was like oh years. And he's like in his mid seventies or early seventies. It was like, oh, this is going to be a running hook shot.

I block it. Oh, I have a fast break layup here. It was like, to me, that's incredible. I don't know how people do that. Bird can do it too.

Yeah. I mean, but there's also, there's also two versions of this. There's, there's sort of the instant recall that selective. And there's the instant recall that is almost just like a natural reflective thing like like mary lou henner thing it's like she's not trying to remember she's

in her brain yes yeah now uh like so i don't know if mcshay i don't know if he if he can do this with anything except football um so you'd pick mcveigh over well no i would i would rather talk to bill o'chick for a bunch of reasons, but I can understand why that's a good choice too. I think he'd be my second choice. Where would Goodell rank? And what would your dinner with Goodell be like? How long before you – what would your move be? It's like there's two other people and they're like,

Chuck, want to invite you to this Roger Goodell dinner. He's a big fan. He read two of your books. Which ones? Yeah, which books would he have read? Yeah, that would be your answer. Which ones? He's a huge fan.

He just wants to, off the record, just shoot the shit. What would your move be during the course of the dinner? What would you want to get out of it? What would I want to get out of it? Well, two things i guess one would be uh i would want to get a better understanding of how the nfl really works in terms of on like like i i think that there's some things that that you just cannot understand unless you're part of it um and you know are you talking about how they make the sausage or how they do the deals or what well i just you know i i don't actually know um like how it works when a trade happens like when is a trade official when both sides have said that

would be your good question well i would just nuts and bolts type stuff because i don't think he's going to tell me anything super i mean i would certainly ask him uh like about you i would ask him about he is about me what did i have to do that what do you think why did you bring it up no i wouldn't so i would go i would start with i would have a whole plan first half of the dinner talk about the owners because you know those guys never have the thing with commissioners they just have to deal with these stubborn rich assholes every day and they don't really have a lot of people to talk about that with because all these people are just in their life day after day after day and you know they go home you know adam silver goes home he's like to his wife fucking james dolan god damn it

he calls me at five o'clock he's mad about this i gotta do now i gotta call this other and is my whole day it's because james dolan got mad about this stupid thing and you know he's bitching his wife about it i would go with goodell with that like who so who's the biggest pain in the ass owner who's the who's the one that blah blah blah and he would start get comfortable and then you go to the other stuff when he said like you say like an off the record talk i'd still when you meet the person, even though I'm not writing about this or anything, I would get a sense of like, well, how, how candid is he actually going to be? Like, you know, I feel like these people, my experience has been, especially in sports,

they're way more candid than you'd expect. If they, if they feel like there's no tape tape recorder you're not going to be quoting them after the fact they're just getting to know you better i feel like you can get a lot of stuff and then you kind of bank and figure it out what to do with it months down the road or whatever it's odd i guess you know now we're talking about i wouldn't be that interested in talking to goodell there's many other people i mean there's many other people i would be more interested in talking to i just i you know uh you know so you don't think there's any sort of secret layer to Goodell?

Almost. Cause I don't either. Yeah. I mean, I would, I would much rather talk with like an, an offensive coordinator or something like, you know, that would be much more interesting to me. You're talking to like Lincoln Riley or something. That would be an interesting conversation. Lincoln Riley.

Yeah. Well, just somebody who's got like a, who's, who of adopted, you know, a philosophy about how to do this and and and seems like a real intelligent person. And and I would or like I mean, Mike Leach, all these people, I think that would be fun. I think that would be much more to me. Like I the the administrative side of stuff is I'm curious about, but, you know. I think your instincts are right. Goodell would be a terrible hang for a dinner. And I think that's probably one of the reasons he's a decent commissioner, because I don't know if there's a ton there. And he's just a very surface guy. So when he deals with these commissioners, they're just like,

oh, there's not a lot to figure out here. This is just well he's like so he's in a strange position where like his job and his commissioner and like silver's job as commissioner are totally different i mean goodell's whole thing is just keep this together like don't like keep this going i would say further than that it's keep keep the checks coming in well that's what i mean keep making money it's say further than that, it's keep the checks coming in. Well, that's what I mean. Keep making money. That's his job. It's like, okay, our sport, and to a degree, our league is under assault, but it's still incredibly successful. How do I kind of keep these two things happening?

Whereas Silver's in a situation where, like, our league is real robust. It seems like people are really interested in it, but the ratings are going down. People don't seem to care about the sport as much as they care about— That's a fake story, and that sounded like an NBA apologist. What do you mean? The ratings are down for everything on cable. They haven't had any network games yet. Yeah, but the thing is, it's not as negative as that story, true or false.

Let's say it's true. No, the story's true that the ratings are down, but the ratings for everything on cable is down. But it's not necessarily a negative for the NBA. No, because they have nine people who want to buy the rights in two years. They're fine. The NBA is going to be fine.

Here's what I'm saying. Okay. So let's say that there is less interest in watching the actual games. And I think to some degree that this is the NBA is in this interesting position, right, where there seems to be a lot of interest in the personalities and the league itself. But sitting through a whole game to people for whatever reason is not the experience that football is. I think then what they have to do is say to themselves like, well, OK, well, how can we take advantage of this?

How can we take advantage of a situation where people are interested in a sport but not necessarily the games? And I think that he is aware of this. these things are a way to sort of keep interest in something that isn't necessarily related to whether or not, you know, the Mavs Clippers game is entertaining and watchable and something you want to spend two hours doing. Well, I talked about this last week a little bit. What was fascinating to me about the mid season tournament thing was that it

hadn't been discussed for two months and people in the league were surprised that it came out when it did. And he clearly floated it out. And it was the old David Stern trick, right? Where you don't like the way certain narratives are going and you throw out this thing. You know, it's like the Leslie Nielsen in Naked Gun. Nothing to see here with the fireworks exploding behind.

Nothing to see here. It's fine. Well, I mean, I think that they- It was an intentional throw out. They leaked it to see what the response would be, I thought. It's fine. Well, I mean, I think that it was an intentional throw up. They leaked it to see what the response would be, I thought. 100%. Yes.

To see what the response would be and then also get people talking about something else for three days as we had it in Thanksgiving. It was all intentional. Certainly, the midseason tournament is not close. I just think he was trying to encourage dialogue and kind of see what people thought. Yeah, I think that that's what it was. But Goodell would never do something like that. Because the NFL would never want to do what people thought. Yeah. I think that that's what it was. I mean, I think that would never do something like that because the NFL would never want to do anything like it.

The NFL would never want to do anything that would radically change the experience people are having because that's the only thing that they seem to be winning at. Right. People care about watching those games in a way that that all of the things all like if you take if you take all this ancillary stories about the NFL and all the ancillary stories about the NBA. Many of the secondary stories about the NBA are from the perception of the league would be positive. Almost none of the NFL's would be almost every story about the NFL. That's not about a game. And even a lot of ones about the game, because if you come officiating as part of this,

it's just a avalanche of negative publicity about the condition of the sport, the direction of the sport, the way it is run of the NFC East is awful. And it's sort of this, you know, all these things. And yet people still want to watch those games. Whereas no matter how many good stories that we say about the NBA, the degree that people are interested in actually putting on TNT or ESPN or the NBA network seem to be static. Taking a break.

Now it's time for the State Farm Safe Bet of the Week. The player you can count on, just like football, life can be unpredictable. That's why State Farm agents are there to help. With over 19,000 agents, a local State Farm agent can be just around the block. Whether you're talking person by phone or through the app, State Farm is there. So go with the one with coverage and agents you can count on. I can't believe I'm saying this, but the player I can count on these last three games of the season,

Jameis Winston. Jameis Winston's having a really good year. Jameis Winston has thrown for over 4,000 yards, 41-15 to be exact. He has three games left in the season. He has a chance to become the first quarterback ever in the history of the NFL to throw for 30 touchdowns and 30 interceptions in one season. Other than Lamar Jackson, he's the most exciting player in the league. And here's what's happening down the stretch. They have an easy game this week, but then next week they play Houston. Houston coming off Tennessee. I think Tennessee is going to beat Houston this week. And now Houston be like, well, that's fine. We'll get back into it. We'll just beat Tampa Bay. I think Tampa Bay is a major spoiler team,

and I would look out for them in week 16. More importantly, I would look out for Jameis, especially if you're in a fantasy league. He's got Detroit this week. That's going to be 420 yards. I know Mike Evans is probably out for the season, but they're pretty deep at receiver. Chris Godwin has been really good this year.

I think he can step up as the number one guy. More importantly, Jameis throwing for 5,000 yards, at least 30 touchdowns, and at least 30 picks will be the greatest achievement of the season. I know that Lamar Jackson is going to break the rushing yards record and probably average 30 fantasy points a game for the year, and he's going to win the MVP, all that stuff. Don't sleep on Jameis, how week to week,

he's the most exciting player in the league for better and worse. So that's my State Farm safe bet of the week. Jameis Winston will make the last three weeks really, really interesting in a variety of ways. State Farm, talk to an agent today. I think with the NBA ratings, LeBron left Cleveland and went to the Lakers. The Lakers was one of their money teams anyway. So they lose a team in Cleveland that's on the East Coast

that has East Coast games where every time they could throw LeBron on, he's like his own one-man rating machine. And he goes to Lakers where they don't even need him. So you have that.

That's significant. And then if you look at the teams in the East, the Knicks being bad every year. Are you saying in a vacuum, okay, the Knicks are bad right the knicks being bad for 20 years you know you you think about what's going on with the nfl right now and where the best players are it doesn't matter really what cities there are but you know it really helps when like new england and dallas are at least playoff caliber and they're playing against each other. And then 35 million people are watching.

But you can't argue that the Knicks being bad is bad for interest in the NBA without saying the Lakers and the Clippers being great, then should be great. Nobody cares about the Clippers though. It's just the Lakers. The Clippers aren't like, oh, it's going to drive up the LA raid and the Lakers will. The Knicks they've been dealing with for 20 years. And then they have this out with KD and Kyrie, and they're going to New York, and then they go to Brooklyn.

That doesn't help them either. There's no Brooklyn fans. How come the Giants and the Jets being bad doesn't seem to impact the NFL? But that was my point. It doesn't really matter with the football teams except for these iconic Patriots, Steelers, Cowboys, the Packers, for whatever reason. I don't know if it's the 49ers rallied back or not, but it seems like these OG dynasty teams are the ones where the NBA doesn't happen that way.

And the NFL doesn't seem to matter at all who's good and who's bad. What matters when the Cowboys and the Pats are good? It's more interesting when the Cowboys are good. It's more interesting when the Steelers are good just because there's some – it gives the media this sort of – this thing to kind of fall back on. There's this history. But, you know, people are very interested in the Ravens now. They're very interested in the Chiefs now.

So the Ravens – think about those two reasons. Kids. Kids love Mahomes. They love Lamar. Well, that's part of it. People under 20 love those two guys. The Chiefs and the Ravens play a style that is similar to college football. And it's proof that it is a better version of the game.

I mean, it's like when you. Oh, here we go. Well, no, it is. It just really is. Like it's, I think you would concede that the two most interesting teams to watch now are the Ravens and the Chiefs without just taking, detaching yourself from your relationship with the Patriots. I actually, I would throw the Niners in there because of their speed. You know? And, and.

I just like, I like how fast they are. I enjoy watching them game after game. They kind of play like an SEC team sometimes. They play like, you know. Right. Yeah. Like Texas A&M. It's like they should have a weird turf.

Yeah. They should have a blue turf for home games. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I, I, you know just, you know, I do feel that. Also, hey, oh, this is something. Remember a long time ago, we talked about the quarterbacks coming in when it was Lamar and it was Josh Allen and all those guys, you know.

And at the time. I love Lamar. Yeah. It looked like we had done such a horrible job because we were like, you know. But as it turns out, we both love Lamar Jackson. He was great. Josh Allen seems pretty good. Baker Mayfield, probably not playing so bad that they should move him to slot receiver,

which I think I suggested on the podcast. But it seems like the shine is off that apple to a degree. We were closer on that than we thought. I think we actually nailed it. Well, I think I also said we nailed the Lamar thing. Yeah. Well, it turns out yes we were right about that although like i say i had inside mayfield probably should not be playing

running back or receiver that i was probably wrong about that and it looked like i was in one year in it looked like i was an idiot but now it's like yeah i don't give up on baker mayfield being a slot receiver being julian edelman five years from now. It is funny though. We do this thing with sports where we blow up certain teams that don't deserve it yet. And then when they don't do well, we mad at the teams and then it's this whole cycle. And meanwhile, it's not like the Browns did anything. I mean, they did a couple of commercials. They, they talked a big game, but they hadn't won anything.

But we were also the idiots who were like the Browns. They're going to be great. It's like, there was no evidence they were going to be good. They had Freddie Kitchens as their coach. There was no evidence, but like they'd been building that defense for years. They now had what appeared to be a pretty great young quarterback who had a great receiver, a pretty good possession receiver, a bunch of running backs. All logic did point to them being good. And they had a custodian as the coach. Has it? Yeah.

I mean. As it turned out. As it turns out. It turns out coaching matters. Yeah. But you don't know how good a coach is until he does it. So do you think if the Patriots somehow make the AFC title game and they play Baltimore. The most amount of people ever rooting for one

team against another team with no actual skin in the game will be the Ravens against the Pats. Lamar against Belichick and Brady. Who is rooting for the Pats except for people from New England? Almost no one. I mean, I'm sure there's Pats fans

all over the country here and there, but yes, for the most part, yes. But I'm saying anybody who's not with either team is gravitating to Baltimore, including every single person under 20, I would say.

Lamar is like catnip. He's like the, he's like, I thought Mahomes was the best version of this, and Lamar is even better for the social media era. Like my son,

who, you'll like this. My son doesn't watch football with me, but he watches football highlights all the time at night on his phone. And he has these different Instagram accounts and YouTube things. And he watches recaps of stuff. So he knows everything that's going on,

but does not actually watch football. And I'm like, well, what is this? How is this a way to follow the NFL in 2019? But that's how he follows it. Yeah. So he knows everything that's going on. He's actually following football the way people would have followed it in the 60s. Right.

Where they could have maybe saw one game, maybe. And then the rest was all just disinformation. The thing about like, you know, early in the year, they were saying how the Pats had like this historically great defense that they had constructed this historically great defense. And I think what has happened is this. I think Bilicek put together a defense that was that that was brilliantly designed to succeed in a league where pretty much every team relies on the passing game exclusively. Yeah. And when they play the Ravens, who are a run-based team,

it sort of shows kind of the weaknesses in that. It's a bad matchup. Yeah. Because the one way you can throw on our linebackers, because they're a little slow, and the Ravens just, it was everything that would be a bad matchup against the Pats. They have these mediocre

receivers that are probably going to get shut down anyway but what you really have to shut down is all this weird shit at the line of scrimmage it also shows it's like i you know the thinking for forever was that you can't let your quarterback run that much because he's going to get hurt and you know that is probably true but the advantage you have with the extra blocker is too great to overlook like the fact that in any other situation when a quarterback hands the ball off to the tailback you're basically playing 9-11 because the guy carrying the football can't block anybody and the quarterback can't block anybody but when Lamar is running the ball you're playing 10-11 so that means if everybody does their job perfectly he's got one guy he has to beat on his own.

And I don't know if there's many guys in the NFL who can tackle him in that situation. There's like 15 guys who can tackle him consistently in a one-on-one in-space scenario. Did you see the Giants-Eagles game? Did you know what happened last night? I watched it. So the wide receivers on the Eagles,

they were already starting out with only three, and then two got hurt. And they did this three tight end offense, but they spread the tight ends out like they were receivers, or they would just bring them in and go jumbo. And the Giants didn't know how to stop it. Now, granted, they're the Giants. They're coached by Pat Shermer,

who might be working with a mild concussion. But they were completely flummoxed by it and i was thinking like maybe this is just what the patriots should do just a bunch of tight ends and then lots of weird shit going on and our receivers can't get open anyway so why even use receivers just have basically a nine-man offensive line and then sometimes you spread the tight ends out and now it's like, oh shit, the tight ends are spread wide. Now what do we do? And all the Eagles were doing was just throwing screen passes and little

five yard outs to their tight ends. And the giants were like, what's going on? We can't stop that. And you see that in the big 12. And so in the pack 12 North, you said a lot where you have like linemen who are basically stationed in a position of a wide receiver.

And it just, you know, like they move them out to the perimeters and it's odd to look at, but it kind of creates this imbalance. And I don't, you know, it's. So does each college football conference, is it almost like a country that has its own philosophy? Well. For football? Because I feel like the Big 10 i watched i've watched a couple wisconsin games i watched a surprising amount of college football this year in penn state it seems like there's a certain identity to those teams and then you move to the sec

and it's just all the athletes are there and then you go to the pac-12 and it gets a little wonkier and weird shit's going on and pac-12 now is like where there's the most interesting coaches. Yeah. The Big 12 is totally based around offense, the idea that you can consistently win games 55 to 30. At times it looks like flag football. I have a friend who compares watching the Big 12 to pornography you know the pornography kind of like there's a there's a pornographic element to it because it's it's titillating but it's kind of cheap and sec

is you know certainly understand what that means well because you're watching these games and it's sort of like you know a team jumps out to a lead 31 to 7 but it's in the first half and you know that it's actually going to end up being relatively close. And it's cheap because touchdowns matter less when, you know, it's like it's so wide open that at times it does almost resemble a kind of flag football. This is why like Oklahoma is in the playoff. I totally understand them being in the playoff. They kind of had to do it. They are not the fourth best team. Alabama is better than them.

Georgia is better than them. Georgia's better than them. I mean, it's... It would be... You can't argue that Alabama should be in the playoff, but there are four or five very good teams in the country this year and two of them are not in the playoffs. But the problem is Alabama blew the game that they had to win to make the playoffs.

So at that point, it's... There should be some sort of stakes during the regular season, right? Oh, sure. I mean, it's a different standard. I mean, they got beat twice by the best team in the country, and they got beat at Auburn, which is a very tough place to play and seems to be the place that Saban has the biggest problem with.

I really like the quarterback on LSU. Not a hot take because he's going to be the first pick in the draft, but my biggest issue with college football has always been that the quarterbacks are just not competent enough. And to watch somebody who actually could go into the NFL right now and probably be like the ninth best quarterback is really fun to watch. He's completing 80% of his passes, which is bonkers. His worst game this year was against Utah State where he completed 71% of his passes. Yeah, itkers. His worst game this year was against Utah State

where he completed 71% of his passes. Yeah, it was a tough day for him. And the craziest thing is, I don't know where, like I don't have the stats in front of me and I don't have them memorized,

but there was at least one point during the year where he was either first or second or maybe third in the country in the distance of each pass attempt. Like how far, the ball's literally going up the field.

Yeah. But you left out the part he could also scramble. Well, sure. But what I'm saying is if you told me somebody was completing 80% of their passes, I would assume that was like the offenses Kentucky used to run when Tim Couch was there, where it's these guys running four and six yard patterns and you're just kind of piling up these numbers and then getting in the red zone

and not scoring, but he's throwing the ball downfield. It is bizarre how much better he is this year than last year. He was the third or fourth best quarterback in the sec last year. There's, you know, and now he's the best quarterback in the country. I don't know what happened. It didn't seem like he made any radical changes. He just got better. I mean, cause people do compare him to Brady in this way. It didn't seem like he made any radical changes. He just got better. I mean, because people do compare him

to Brady in this way. It makes me upset. They did it a lot on Saturday. It's like, settle down. Brady's won six Super Bowls. There should always be a caveat. It would be like if... So you can't compare any college kid to Brady? It would be like if we were watching a basketball player on the back. He's like Michael Jordan. Everybody would go nuts.

You can't compare him to Michael Jordan. He's in college. The Brady thing just gets thrown around. Well, sure. But I think what they're saying is it's similar. I know what they're saying, but he's a six-time Super Bowl winner. That he suddenly made, that the person Tom Brady was as a senior in Michigan and the person he was as a Patriot does not really compute. So they should say Michigan Tom Brady when they say that.

He's like Michigan Tom Brady. No, no, no, no, no. He's like Brady's rookie year in the NFL at the college level. Well, then he's like early 2000s Tom Brady before he won the other three Super Bowls. I don't know if that's necessary. I don't like it. It hurts my feelings. We're taking a break.

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Remember, enjoy responsibly. Only available right now in California, New York, Florida, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, with more states available for presale today at drinkworks.com. Quick college football thing. Mallory thinks we should have an eight-team playoff. That would allow Alabama to get in. What's your take on that? Well, I mean, the perfect system does seem to be

the five conference champions, two wild cards, and then one team from the group of five. So you're saying six total? No, eight. Five conference winners, two wild cards. So why not have six and give the top two teams a bye in the first round? Six total. No, eight. Five conference winners, two wild cards. So like. But why not have six and give the top two teams a bye in the first round? I'd only like the idea of byes.

And why not include, make all the conference title games meaningful, that you win that game, you're in the playoff. Two more team gets in. So this year it would be Alabama and probably Georgia. And then the best team from sort of those mid-majors, that way the number one ranked team would still have an advantage. They'd be playing Boise State or some team where they should kind of, you know, have them clean on.

The first round could be, you know, actual home sites, you know, on the campuses. That would be fun. I had another idea for the conference title game. So I want you to think about this. Okay, so let's say it's like the SEC title game and it's LSU and Georgia. It shouldn't be at a neutral site.

It should be at whichever school during conference play had their stadium closest to capacity throughout the season. Oh. So, like if, so if, or, or say like, you know, Clemson's playing Virginia. The games at Virginia, if during the year, the capacity at Virginia was 94% and at Clemson, it was 89%.

What if it's both 100%? Well, then it's the larger stadium. I had an idea for overtime in the college football playoff. Two overtimes. If we're still tied, it goes to a tug-of-war like Battle Network stars. Seven guys on each side. Midfield. Just put

the flag in. You don't like college overtime? No, because you get seven overtimes then they got to play the next week. I just missed the tug-of-war. All they need to do to, I mean, I like college overtime but the one thing they should do is they should immediately eliminate kicking point after touchdowns. You should have to go for two immediately because that would eliminate the idea of an eight overtime game, which for someone who's in a college football fantasy league really complicates things because a guy might score seven touchdowns in a game. Why do they do that?

Why can't it be two pointers? Well do after this you know the there's i think it's two overtimes you can kick and then then you got to go for two the best email i think i've ever gotten in my life was the reader in 2012 who said tug of war should be an olympic sport with a with a weight limit and there has to be like at least two females on the team and the whole thing and how the team would be constructed would be fascinating is this your love of battle of the network stars or something or is that i used to love the tug of war battle network stars it was great we have more stuff to talk about you hit me on the hillary clinton howard stern interview yeah because i dropped my kid off at uh her, you know, and we're driving to school.

We're probably like listening to Frozen or the Beatles Network or something. So then I'm flipping around on the radio as I'm driving home. And all of a sudden I'm hearing Hillary's voice on Channel 101, which is the start channel. And I was like, there was no promotion of this, that this was going to happen. They probably didn't think it was going to happen until the last second. But, you know, the part that I happened to stumble into was ultra fascinating. I went back and I listened to the whole interview and there were parts of it that were not as interesting, but I thought the section where she was talking about her initial relationship with Bill, meeting him in college.

Well, what about she was dating somebody that it seemed like she really liked. Yeah. And she said it was like running his course, but she made a point of talking about how athletic and handsome he was and what a catch he was and blah, blah, blah, and then Bill, and then she went and broke up with the other guy. Bill was this big bearded dude. He was kind of like, you know, he had a big beard and long red hair.

And like her story. He kind of looked like Will Ferrell in the cowbell sketch a little bit. You know, it's just because we know all these things about Clinton now. We know all these things about their marriage. You know, actually, we don't have a complete understanding of their marriage, but we know about. I would say no. Some of the complexities in it. Yeah, that's the word.

And the character that Bill has in his relationship with women. And yet, like, there's a story she tells how, oh, she had a party and she got sick afterwards. So she calls him and he brings her soup and does all this stuff. When they hadn't had a date yet. Yes. does all this stuff when they hadn't had a date yet yes it's it's real telling sort of how sometimes people who have very problematic qualities to facilitate those problems they have to have these sort of empathetic qualities as well to put them in that position it's just it was and it's it's odd how she like you know there'll never be a situation

where someone's going to directly ask hillary about the epstein plane i don't know where to go there about the lewinsky situation right you know you can read clinton's bill's autobiography it's like a thousand and some pages he mentions football 10 times i think lewinsky's name is in there once or no times or whatever like it's never it's there's there's certain things that for whatever reason we do give presidents like experts like he'll never really be asked about that so we'll never really know like the inner workings of their relationship in that way but she still talks about him um as someone who's still very much in love with him like it doesn't you don't get any like it seems pretty sincere to me i mean anybody can be fooled

i can't read someone's mind but like their relationship still seems good, even though all logic would say it must be horrible. Because she sprinkles little stuff in there about how me and Bill still go to the movies. We have to bring the Secret Service with us. They sit behind us and we really still like to go to the movie theater. I'm like, well, that's sounds like a normal couple. And then you think about all the other stuff that's happened with them and decided the abnormal. I'm with you.

I was struck by how sincere she seemed the whole time. And looking back, it was probably a major mistake. She didn't do that interview in 2016 when there was a bigger spotlight on her because that was exactly how sincere in the interview. He's sort of like, if you would have come on, I think that I could have convinced a certain kind of person that you were cool. I think he has a name for them, some kind of like ground dogs or something. He uses some term or earth dogs, which he uses to describe this kind of like white, blue person who, uh, see someone like Hillary and is reminded of a person in their life they don't like.

And he was like, I think I could have, I could have, you know, helped us. Although I, I don't think four years ago she would have been on because at that point, Stern was still a little third rail-ish for the guests, you know, and even if he's changed a lot in 2019, he's about as big of a celebrity suck up on these guests as we have. Even as he is now, as different as he is now compared to the person he would be, it would be perceived as too big of a risk to do that. Even now, if you're actually running for the presidency, because just the fact that I don't

think it would be a risk in 2019. Well, I'll tell you what, I don't think he's going to bring up Lewinsky and Epstein and Vince Foster, all the stuff. By the way, I wouldn't either. There's a 99% chance he would not. But there's a 1% chance. But 10 years ago, he's bringing it up. Yeah. Five years ago, he's bringing it up.

And when you're... It's like... He obviously likes Mayor Pete quite a bit. He mentions him every so often. But it would probably be a mistake for Buttigieg to go on the show just because it's too unpredictable. See, I disagree. I think Stern would handle it a lot differently than he would have five years ago. I think he's at a different point in his life.

And he's so interested in whether somebody else has had therapy and all these things that just was not what he was like for decades. Oh, totally. He's totally different, but there's just certain situations that from a risk-reward perspective, which is all that these candidates think about.

You know, like when you think of like when- I would go the other way though, because I think it's more like, I don't think Pete can win the way things are now. And the reward outweighs the risk, in my opinion, for him, because if he goes on that show and he's awesome and it gets forwarded around, there's clips. I think that really helps him. It probably does. But is there any singular like, OK, so Bernie went on Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan has a bigger audience than pretty much any national talk show that all human beings. Yeah. It's not really going to change the election. However, had he made a mistake on that podcast, it could have been devastating. Now, I'm not a Sanders thing is kind of like I do these things other people don't do. You know, I'll go on Fox and I'll talk.

I'll go on this podcast. You know, like Mayor Pete, probably in a lot of ways, I really feel he's gotten much further than he ever possibly anticipated. I know people who think he can win. Well, I think that he entered the race with the idea that he could win the presidency in 2028. Right. Like, I think that he thought, well, this is what I'm from this very small town. He's doing his little test.

Yes. That test fishing. I want people to have seen me before and to know something about me because I'm not going to be able to sort of create a resume of political experience as the mayor of south bend that's going to justify me being president however a pretty successful presidential campaign is its own kind of experience now i i i i don't think he can win i i don't think it's possible he's done much better than i thought he would though yeah so i was struck by that stern interview and then i'm not a not a huge hillary fan just i'll start there this is i'm not in the bag for you supported her against obama i recall i don't even remember yeah did i yeah i mean a lot

of people did because it seemed like obama was you know uh what he seemed i don't yeah that's not definitely not true. I liked Obama. I tried to get Obama on my podcast. I know, but in 2008, I feel like we talked about this. I think I was concerned that he didn't have the credentials yet. I mean, my thing with Hillary all the way through was that she had put in so much time, and I thought that was what Stern did a really good job at. Like, it's kind of amazing the resume you have compared to a, who we ended up in the white house now, but then also like even the people running where like mayor Pete's the fucking, he's a mayor Hillary, which

he read four years ago. She'd been secretary of state. She'd been the first lady. She had been all these different things. And when he made that point, I was like, she's probably more qualified than Elizabeth Warren right now. If we're actually if the Democrats are actually trying to win Hillary, she makes more sense. Elizabeth Warren. Hillary was the most qualified person to ever run for the presidency. She had been in the White House inside the White House for eight years or whatever. But the counter argument would be, is that there is no degree of experience that really prepares you for that job.

That like, you know, there are often these discussions like, oh, maybe you need to be a governor first because, you know, if you oversee a state like Texas or California or Florida, that's, or Ohio or whatever, it's like a kind of a microcosm of the country. If you've been in the Senate, you know, you've had to work through this legislation. You know how things actually get done, all of these things. But there is no experience that prepares you to be president. It's such a singular job that the fact that she's the most qualified person, while true,

is not enough justification for her to be president. I mean, I think she might have been a very good president, but the fact that she's this experienced is not really proof of that. It's not that kind of job. Well, she made a point of saying how the experience matters zero because it's a popularity contest now, as we found out in 2016. I mean, the experience that she has that is rarefied is that she understands she has the emotional experience because she was, you know, in a room every night with the president as he sort of dealt with what that job does to you, you know? So she does have an insight that is unlike any other candidate, but.

Her explanation of why she didn't stand up to Trump when Trump was stalking around her at the debate, I thought was fascinating too. And I know, I know she said variations of it before, but I thought one of the things that jumped out at me in that interview was, and I include myself in this, I never felt like she was sincere over the years. I always felt like there was a calculation to her and all the choices she made that just didn't resonate with me personally, whether I'm right or wrong. I don't know.

It doesn't matter. It's just how it felt. And I watched her in that interview and maybe it's the wisdom of age. Maybe it's the fact that 2016 was so emotionally scarring for her and it caused her to reevaluate stuff or whatever. But the person in that interview felt presidential to me. And that, that was, I never felt that way before about her. Well, I mean, going into the 2016 election though, it seemed like it was such a lock. It seemed like there was no possible way

she could lose. I'm sure she was advised constantly, you know, not to be yourself. Just don't be someone who can like almost in like Roger, don't blow that position. Yeah. Just don't blow this. It's like you're up by four with three minutes left. Just hand the ball off. It's fine. You know, more like, more like you're up by 17. That's what it, how it felt. I mean, I, I, I texted somebody at 7 20 PM on election night. They were like freaking out. And I was like, don't worry. She's still going to win. It's like, it's not like it's, you know, it just, it's see, it seemed impossible. She's still going to win. It's like, it's not like it's, you know, it just, it seemed impossible. She's a five to one favorite 36 hours before the election.

That's like the same odds as the Ravens against, were they playing the Jets on Thursday night? Same odds. Although when you put it like that, it's like, well, the Jets could win. Sam Darnold could get out. Yeah, it almost seems more plausible. What would happen if she just said,'m in I'm gonna run right now sigh there would be a lot of pushback

from people who would feel that that she is putting especially from the Warren people and the Sanders people they would feel like your this is ego based. You're going to you.

You've just sabotaged a situation that we really, you know, if we just, you know, because there's still this weird thing. It's like, you know, Trump's like this kind of historically unpopular president in any other time period. If you're a Democrat, the idea would be like, this is when we need to push our most liberal, most progressive candidate. We have an incredibly unpopular incumbent. This is our, you know, but it doesn't feel that way now. It feels so, um, uh, fragile that it's like, well, let's get, let's run Biden. Okay. It's like Biden seems

like the, like, like they feel moved to make a safe decision, even though Biden's like, well, let's run Biden. Okay. It's like Biden seems like the – like they feel moved to make a safe decision even though – Biden's like Joe Flacco. Yes. That's actually a very good – He's been there before he can throw the deep ball. And it's like he'll – so I think that it would be – I think it would probably be a mistake for her and the Democrats. But I mean, as for what would happen.

I agree, it's too late. I think it would go too. I mean, even Bloomberg coming in now, I don't, that was a. Let's take a break and get to your billionaire attacks. Hey, Zoom didn't invent video conferencing. They just made it better. And now Zoom is how business gets done.

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You're going to keep workshopping it. Well, it was an interesting thing for the listeners at home. We actually started taping this, but I just didn't feel like it was translating correctly. I felt like it was too, I felt like the point I was making was confusing. You need to go back to the garage and workshop it somewhere. Yes. I think, or maybe I, maybe I need to type it. Maybe it's something I need to write.

Do you care about, I want to talk quickly about how we'll remember the 2010s. Yeah. Which I think we'll remember for all the obvious reasons. But I think from a content standpoint, having all these subscriptions has been, I think, the strangest thing that has changed about all of our lives since 2009. Right. We have so many subscriptions now. And now it's the case of as there's a new subscription being offered what do i get out of it and we all look at it now you look at something like apple plus and they're going hey we're the

morning show we have m night sham on and we have the show where jason momo is the only person who's not blind and people are going okay i'm not paying five bucks for that. So now they have to Audible and they just paid $25 million for a Billy Eilish documentary. That's not even done yet because their goal is just to bring subscribers. Disney looks at it differently. And they're like, we have this whole library. We're going to buy Fox. We're going to get their library too.

We're going to have all this stuff. It's going to be fucking awesome. It's every show your kids have. If you're 15 years old, it's every show you probably ever cared about for the last 20 years. We're going to have it all here. We're going to have all the Simpsons.

We're going to have all these Disney movies, Marvel, all this stuff. They just put together this unassailable package and anybody with kids, and it's going to be you in about a year. How old's your now five and three well you have a five oh so you have they're going to be six and four next so you have disney plus already uh you know i you're getting it good now we're gonna have it yeah i don't think that they've specifically asked for anything yet that's only available there so i haven't got it yet so here's my point people People are like, oh my God, how are we going to do so many subs?

I actually like it. I think it's survival of the fittest. We're heading to a point where if you're going to ask somebody to pay for whatever, you really have to bring the goods. It can't just be, we were in this weird subscription thing over the course of this decade where people are like, hey, this now costs money. Give us your login stuff and you're going to pay for it. And some people did. And then they realized after a couple of weeks, a couple of months, whatever, like, oh, this is stupid. Why am I

paying for this? Now we're hitting the real part of this where people are deciding what's good, what's not good. And now a company like Apple trying to get Apple plus going, they can't just launch the service. Like it has to be fucking awesome. It's weird to say, Hey, it's a good idea. If you're going to have subscription content, make it awesome. But I think, I think the bar has been raised that I think it's actually going to lead to some awesome content over the next five, six years. Cause everybody's thinking the same way now. Like, how do we keep people? What do we have to do? Like, you look at what Netflix did this year. Netflix has Marriage Story, which we're going to talk about in a second. And they also have The Irishman, which were released in theaters for two to three weeks and then went right to Netflix. And it was fucking

awesome. I didn't have to go to the theater to watch either of those movies. It was in there. I think the bar is being raised and I really like it and i like where it's going but i wanted to get well i mean though those two examples they were going to exist whether this model was there or not i mean which just would have been nine months before i could pay-per-view it now it's two weeks yeah uh but that that's one small example of like that's fun i'm glad i get to see these movies at my house, you know? And it's, it's all of these little victories that I think we're getting where like Disney plus, oh, it's really fun to have all of these things under one roof. I can go to the app and then it's all there and boom, boom, boom. I can do whatever I want. And then you see a Hulu, which they've

just not figured out yet. You go to Hulu. It's a complete mess. You don't know, where do I go? What do I do? I can't find stuff. They'll fix that eventually and they'll make that awesome. And it's just going to, everything's going to get more awesome is my take. I mean, it might, you're probably right. But I got to say, as a consumer, I don't think of it in those terms because the way I, for me, it is really more of this case by case situation. I never think of the platform as something that to me, like thinking of the platform is like,

I never growing when I was growing up, I didn't think like I prefer NBC to ABC or whatever. I never thought like that. I was always an ABC guy. That's funny. I was like very loyal to ABC for some reason. To me, it was the show itself. So what happens to me is like, okay, so I decided that I want to be able to watch some of North Dakota State's football this year.

And all the games are on ESPN+. So I got to get ESPN+. I don't think of ESPN+, as an entity. It's like it's the only way I can do this. Like if I, when I want to watch a movie or I want to watch something like my wife will bring up something that we're going to watch and we'll be like, okay, where is it? And it's like, well, well, oh, we wanted to watch the new, uh, twilight zones. Okay. The Jordan pill twilight zones. So it's like, okay, I guess we got to get this CBS Plus or whatever now. Or CBS All Access.

Yeah, like it's, so for me, it's a kind of a mild inconvenience because it drives me crazy when I want to watch something. It's like, oh, I got to put my credit card in now. Yeah, but you just stumbled on the key to all of this. Why did you feel like you had to get ESPN Plus? I wanted to watch this one thing. Right. Yeah.

So all of these things launch. A good example is that really weird SI app where they're like, we're going to have stuff and it's $4.99 a month. And they didn't have stuff that you felt like, Oh shit. I want to watch this one game. How do I get it? ESPN plus is the same way.

They were like, we have all this stuff. And people are like, okay, cool. Not getting ESPN plus. We have some new shows. Great. We have the 30, 30 library. I already seen them. And they're like, fuck. And then they go to get UFC. Like we have the UFC. People are like, cool. And they pay for the UFC. And then they're like, we have some boxing and now it's going to lead to, we have the NBA red zone channel, or we have NBA league pass. And all these things are thinking the same thing.

Cause they're trying to get you to be like, fuck, I don't want to put my credit card in, but I have to. So how is this better? It seems worse to me. I think eventually it'll be better though. Well,

why? Because all of these people are going to figure out how to put this stuff under one roof in the best way possible so that it's a seamless transition for you to just be like, I have these five subs that I care about and I'm getting them. Or are they going to manage this to maximize their revenue regardless of how that impacts the consumer's desire. I don't think for the next five years, they care about the revenue as much as the people signing up. That's certainly the athletics model. Well, athletics lost a hundred million dollars. So why would, okay.

So what you're basically saying is that ESPN plus came up with this idea that it's like, there's going to be some things people want. So they will buy this thing because they want this one thing. No, initially, I think the idea was we're esp and they'll get it and then they realize oh shit oh we actually have to make them get this we need incentives for them we need stuff that they're going to actually want to watch so my point is we're in this golden era now for the next four years where everybody's just going to spend to try to convince us to get there. Eventually it's going to end five, six years down the road. Once they figure out the economics of it, it's going to suck.

But right now is the good moment where Netflix is like, let's spend 300 million for the Irishman. We just want to get people to stay on Netflix. So we're winning right now is my point even though it doesn't seem like it is i think five years from now we're not going to be winning right now it's like okay i i i guess we just see this differently like i would have much preferred if espn instead of creating espn plus would be like we're going to put subdivision football on espn you but you would have you would have to pay for that though they just would have jacked up your espnu rate and you wouldn't even realize that you're

like oh my cable bill went up i don't know what happened and now i'm paying 190 dollars a month but then i they were doing that anyway they've just reallocated the money but i i like when it was all one thing and there was only one thing to get like there you had a cable bill and that was the totality of your experience with television and your bill went up if you got more channels. But that bill was crazy high. I mean, you're paying for all the stuff that you didn't want. You're paying for the Discovery Channel. And it's like, did you watch the Discovery Channel? You're paying $2 a month for it. But now I'm on ESPN Plus. Once football season ends, I'm probably never going to look at it,

but I'm going to keep paying for it because it's already, like, it goes out of my account. I'm not going to think about it. I still pay for Hulu. I still pay. I've never watched Hulu, but I still pay for it every month. There's all these things. Well, Hulu's important because they have all the Chicago shows a day later. Chicago PD, Chicago Fire.

I just feel like once you get into the situation where you pay for these things, it's like it's not a huge amount. It's a little bit so it's like it's 4.99 a month or whatever but you're controlling every single thing you're paying for versus the old model where yes now maybe i haven't checked to see does the math add up to what when we just paid for everything the old way we just got everything is it less or more i mean i just like that i used to i would have direct tv they would have a thousand channels and i would be watching 22 of them so i was like well how is that good i still like flipping through channels though i love i love to just flip from channel to channel like you come across say like i don't know like the news from korea or whatever and it's in a

language you can't understand that's weird well it's it's real interesting because you're seeing you're seeing the way the person how high are you at the at this time when it's in a language you can't understand. That's weird. Well, it's real interesting because you're seeing the way the person – How high are you at this time when it's interesting? You're like, oh, Korean news. That is neither here nor there. But it's like I'll use as medicinal. But, you know, it's interesting to me to be able to flip through channels. All these different – I mean Netflix is a pretty good service, I guess. I mean, I'm on it.

I'm on all these things. I ended up paying. I still love flipping through. And we talk when we talk about the rewatchables and we'll say something like when you're flipping channels and this scene comes on and Kyle's generation, they're not flipping channels because they're just going right to the app. So there is no flipping channels. They see Castaway on the Hulu app.

They'll be like, cool, Castaway. Whereas like we're flipping channels in AMC and it's Castaway and it's like, oh, cool, he's about to make a fire. I'm going to keep watching. I don't think anybody under 25 watches TV that way. I don't think that they do. That sounds like the old guy.

I mean, it's,'s you know and in the past if this could be described to us say like in like in the 70s they just said like okay you don't got to worry about whether you miss wkp in cincinnati you can watch it whenever you want in fact it's on at eight o'clock tonight you can watch it at eight or you can watch it at nine you can watch the next day it would have seemed great would have just been like yes this is what this is almost like a fantastical dream i do notice though that like with with my kids for example they do have this sense that you don't really wait for anything now like it's like everything happens when you want it. Welcome to parenthood. Yeah. And I don't, uh, I don't know if that's really like a, like, it's not like a tragedy

or something, but, um. I would say that was one of the legacies of this decade. I want something. I'm hungry. I'm going to order food. The pizza will be here in 31 minutes or my favorite chicken Parmesan from the Italian place. That's 10 minutes or my favorite chicken parmesan from the italian place that's 10 minutes away i want to watch a movie what should we watch boom boom you go and there's a lot less there's less potluck now well everything is in our control i mean it's a weird question i kind of i like it more i like it more the current way it i mean everyone does in a way like nobody would be like i don't think we should be able to order food online anymore.

Everyone who does it prefers it. Right. It's, you know, because you don't have to talk to somebody. You can it's easier to just, you know, if you have any special requests, you can type in and know what will be seen. There's all these advantages in a larger macro sense. You kind of say, like, does this in some way cheapen the experience? But then there's a question beyond that. Okay. Let's say it does cheapen the experience. How valuable should this experience be anyways? I don't know. It makes me think about a lot of things.

I'm reading this book about Mike Nichols. If you heard about this book. Is it oral history? Yeah. It's like 150 people weighing in on Mike Nichols. It's really fascinating. He escaped Germany right before the Holocaust. He wore wigs his whole life. There's like all that. But the basic thing was like everybody's interactions with him day in, day out. And I wonder, will people be like that with these next couple of generations? All of the stories are about Mike had this dinner, Mike had a party when you had dinner with Mike, when Mike was on a set and it was all about the human interaction, that's it. And now I think we're heading toward this era where I'm stunned

when people have friends that they've never met. I think people, that's like a real thing now. Now I sound like a fucking old guy, but I do think people have friends that they've never met. Kyle, you have friends you've never met? No. Never met? Yeah, just, you became friends online, and they're now your friends, but you never actually met them.

But then I got off Facebook, and that's what it was. I was just like, shit, I have a thousand friends. Well, I know, you know, it happens way more now, but there are other ways to look at this. For example, let's say I came on your podcast, and I said, you know, when I was growing up, I had a pen pal in France and for 10 years we wrote letters back and forth constantly. I would have thought that was weird. You also would have been a charming story.

And if I would have one day said like, eventually I traveled to Europe and I met Pierre or whatever, and we had this, it would be like, oh, that's a real interesting thing. Cause it would, it would be a unique thing. It'd be a strange thing. I thought this happened. You grabbed Pierre too quickly. I couldn't think of any other French name, to be honest. It's a pretty cliche friend of mine. I have my mythical friend is cliche, but, um, you know, it, it could happen in the past or you would, you know, you would, um, you know, you would hear romantic stories about a couple, you know, in the, in the past or you would you know you would um you know you would hear romantic stories about a couple you know in the in the 40s and and like their whole relationship was through telegrams and writing letters and it was years before they were together and that actually seems

hyper special because it was it was so outside of the norm but now when it becomes the norm it seems odd that this is that this this thing that was once sort of unique and surprising is now like a normal way to be a person well it's like the before sunrise sunset movies sure sure the first movie it ends and you have no idea if they're going to see each other again and if for some reason they don't stay in touch or whatever, how would they even know how to find one another? And that was kind of the cool thing of the movie, right? Will they see each other again?

They might not. Now, if you made that movie in 2019, they're following each other on Instagram right away. They have each other's emails. There's no way they're going to lose touch. It's impossible. You'd have to create some kind of weird plot point where they've both lost their phones on the so they're walking around with no phones and they can't even exchange information and they for some reason they can't

even give each other their phone numbers or something already it's a terrible movie yeah you have to build in some crazy conversation. Because the sequel, which is, I actually like the sequel more than the original. Or not the sequel, the continuation movie. But part of it is they fell out of touch and how annoying it was. And then he becomes a best-selling author. And she comes to one of his book signings because she wants to reconnect with him. Well, because he also wrote about their relationship.

And he wrote about their relationship, which was dicey. We're going to take one more break and then we're going to talk about Marriage Star. Let's talk about a gift you can feel good in and good about. All birds, stylish, comfortable, sustainable. You can't go wrong. Streamline design, versatile. They look great anytime you lace them up.

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a little less uncomfortable for everyone on your list. Give the gift of comfort this holiday season or get a pair for yourself at allbirds.com. All right, last thing we want to talk about, marriage story. Your parents never got divorced, right? No. Well, my parents did when I was nine. So I'm an historian of divorce movies.

This one was on the radar, Noah Baumbach. One of my favorite directors, been kicking, screaming, much beloved movie in the mid-90s. And this was on the radar. Then it starts getting the buzz. Then Fantasy sees it and he's like Adam Driver's gonna win best actor it's amazing

ScarJo's gonna get nominated too it'll be considered one of the best films of the year the reviews are great watched it on Friday night I was surprised by how much I liked it I had moved into that point where I'm gonna be like I'm actually not gonna I'm to try not to like this mentally, but it actually was really good.

You didn't like it as much. Well, okay. So we're doing spoilers from now on. And then the podcast is going to end. So if you don't, if you haven't seen marriage story yet, thanks for coming.

We'll see you next time on the BS pod. Okay. I need to, before I get into this, I got to say two things. One, which is that like among the contemporary or like directors working now, like Noah Baumbach is among my favorites.

I mean, you know, so as a consequence, I hold his movies probably to a different level. Like I think if I'd seen this movie and I'd heard some first time director, you know, Jeremy Jones or whatever, I probably would have thought this is, this is excellent. Or Pierre. Yes. If Pierre had done it.

I'd be like, Pierre, you made a movie. The other thing I got to say is- You told me about that in your letters. I kind of know Noah Baumbach a little bit. What? Well, what happened was there was a kicking and screaming reunion of the cast in Brooklyn where they played the movie and then the cast was on stage. And I interviewed them on stage.

You motherfucker. So when the movie was shown- This is was shown, why'd they ask you? Well, I do. Wouldn't you be like watch watching a T-ball game with the game of Thrones dude or whatever? Would you have time to get away? But anyways, so anyway, so, so during, during the movie, we all went out to dinner. So it was like me. Well, because it was interesting.

I guess this is obvious when they show a movie and like have like the, the people talk afterwards, like the people don't want to watch the movie again. Yeah. So we went to dinner and it was a real great dinner. And I had a great conversation with Noah Bombeck about Paul McCartney's solo career. So I really like him as a guy. Like, you know, and I like him as an artist and I like him as a guy. And so saying that, I will say that I was a little disappointed by this movie.

One thing is like, okay, you call the movie, you know, a marriage story. It's a little bit like calling the movie, you know, ordinary people or calling your TV series girls. If you use a title like that, what you're really saying is that this experience, though it's happening to specific characters, is a universal experience. And we're tapping

into some sort of universal thing about this experience. And it didn't seem that way to me. I didn't, I didn't, it didn't seem that real to me in a way that, you know, when you look at, watch like the squid and the whale or like Margo at the wedding, these things, there are these characters who are completely unlike anybody you've met in life. And yet when you see them on screen, they seem palpably real. Like there's an authenticity to them that it's like amazing that this crazy strange person can seem honest. Now here's a different situation where really Adam Driver is the stand-in

for any man in a marriage and Scar Jo is the stand-in for any woman in a marriage. It's called a marriage story, okay? And- It should have been called divorce story. Well, I guess, regardless, it did not, like the situation seemed really highly specific to me. I did think that there was a degree of

overacting to be honest i i i know that like all the people in this movie are great i know like we're like we're not supposed to criticize laura durn or whatever but i thought she kind of overacted i kind of thought adam driver at times was overacting so um but the but here's my main thing with this okay so if we do the rewatchables who wins the overacting. But here's my main thing with this. So if we do the rewatchables, who wins the overacting award, Laura Dern or Adam Driver? I would go Laura Dern. Possibly.

I like Laura Dern, but she definitely was dialing up. Is there an apex of overacting too? Apex overacting value. And there are funny parts in this movie, and there's parts of this movie that are good. There are moments that are insightful, like he's a real smart writer and, you know, he understands some things. It was interesting to me that that's ScarJo's character is actually much more like Greta Gerwig than Jennifer Jason Leigh in terms of what like her life is.

And I thought there was kind of a to me a telling point in this movie where she's at one point describing like what has went wrong in the relationship. And she's like, you know, at one point in my life, you know, I would have ideas and it would filter into his work. And that was enough for me. I almost feel as though maybe Greta Gerwig said to Noah Baumbach, it's like, you should make a movie about what it would be like if we got divorced. Because it doesn't seem like that's Jennifer. I know everyone thinks it's Jennifer Jason Leigh, but it doesn't seem like her. I agree.

One of the things that Bombeck said was that like, well, I showed it to Jennifer Jason Leigh and she's cool with it because she knows it's not her. And I wonder if she knows it's not her because he said, but this is actually about like a fictional thing. But what you just described is, if somebody is really good at this they're not gonna say i'm

making a movie about what happened to me and jennifer jason lee they're just gonna be like i'm making a movie about divorce i'm gonna grab pieces of all these different things i'm gonna make stuff up i'm gonna create these characters i might have a couple things from them but i'm not just i'm not just doing my autobiography. And I think that movie got, this movie got pigeonholed a little bit of that because people did think of it. I agree with you. I thought it was more Greta Gerwig-y.

The, the, this is a situation where our knowledge of these people is a problem. And in the past, like you were talking about how, like, you know, you didn't know things about coaches and all these things. We would not have known so much about Noah Bombeck's relationship. And he's just he's not enough. You know, people didn't know that much about the life of Stanley Kubrick or whatever. It's like, this is a movie that, that I'm not telling people, like, I'm not saying people shouldn't watch it.

It's better than most movies, but so I watched it on Saturday night and around it on Friday and, and Sunday, um, my, uh, my wife has been watching this show on Showtime called couples therapy. And it's one of these situations where, you know, sometimes you're watching TV together and sometimes one of you is watching TV and the other person's just there. So I'm like on my phone, I'm looking at my, you know, fancy basketball information and stuff and kind of half watching the show. But I was drawn into it.

I thought initially it was a fictional show, but it's like a reality program. It's like actual couples in therapy with a heavy focus on the life of the therapist and her, well, not her life, life but she also when she talks to these couples she then talks to like her boss and describes like what's going on with this therapy and and she's got like it's almost kind of like the sopranos a little bit when when when milfey would talk to uh peter bakdanovich a little bit like that got it it. But what I noticed watching this show, which really became clear to me, is that when there are problems in a relationship, they are so nuanced and so almost intangible that when you try to make a fictional movie about it, the conflict in that relationship was too straightforward. The way they were talking about why their marriage had problems and what was wrong with it, that's not actually how interpersonal failures happen. Like when you

watch couples therapy, you see sometimes people talking over a problem that if described would not be a problem like it wouldn't you you would say to these people it's like okay so she doesn't trust you that much even when you're just with your friend you know these things that seem minor but as they discuss it you realize is that it it has to do with these things that are completely outside of the actual events that happen. And you maybe just can't capture that in a fictional setting because in a fictional story, you need a story, and the story has to have clarity. And I don't—so the problems with their marriage,

it just didn't feel real to me. I can see that. And I think one, one of the reasons I think Kramer versus Kramer is just a better movie is because ultimately that's not really a movie about his marriage. It's a movie about him and his relationship with his son and how he tries to keep that together after his wife basically leaves and then him coming to grips with maybe why she left. So we're not actually in that whole relationship and the mechanics of it. I'm with you.

I, there was stuff with this movie if it had a flaw and I liked it more than you. The flaw was like, I never totally understood why she turned on him. She has that long speech with Laura Dern. She's like, he cheated on me,

all this stuff. But to me, that's cut and dry.'s cut and dry at that point it's like alright he cheated on her she doesn't trust him anymore and she wants to move to LA that's actually not that interesting they tried to make it seem like there were all these other things going on and it's like well sometimes people get divorced because somebody

cheated on them. It's kind of an interesting balancing situation where if you remove the infidelity, it would seem as though you would gravitate toward Adam Driver. If you remove that. Right. You need a reason not to like him. Because that is in there, it kind of makes it obvious. Like there's one point in the movie where he's sort of like, you shouldn't be mad that I slept with her. You should be mad that I had a laugh with her.

And you know what? That's fucking dumb because when you get married with someone, you don't say to the person, I'm never going to have enjoyable relationships with people again, but you do commit to not having sex with them. Okay. So if we're to look at that, like if we're to look at that as a failure of his character or sort of his inability to understand reality, that's great. But if it's actually supposed to be a justifiable argument that his emotional relationship with this person was actually more troubling than their physical relationship, that's not true. That's not how

relationships are. I also didn't like that her mom liked him so much and was really looking out for him. I didn't think that was realistic. That was funny though. It was funny, but it just wasn't realistic. At some point with this stuff, when we're headed toward a separation or divorce, at some point, the family is just, you're on one team or the other. Yeah.

I wasn't buying that. I also thought that was the wrong- There are some exceptions to that sometimes. I'm not going to get into it, but it's- I thought it was the wrong actress too because I think of julie hagerty is like airplanes modern problems she was good she was good she was good but i wanted like an

a-list awesome fucking actress in that part because i thought it was a really interesting part i wanted to know more about her she was this and jennifer i think that was the part that confused people jennifer jason lee because her mom was an actress this lady was obviously an actress in the movie and i don't't know, that was, that was like a Meryl Streep kind of part or somebody, I wanted somebody like with real weight in that part. Julie Haggerty is like, all right. Well, you know, it was odd. We, we talked about the, the Hillary thing earlier, you know, cause I, so I listened to the Hillary thing on Thursday or whatever, you know? So I guess that was kind of on my mind in this too. When you think of Bill and Hillary's relationship, imagine if

they were in a couple's therapy. Okay. So you imagine those two in couple therapy discussing their problems. Okay. There are some very obvious things, right? There's some obvious indiscretions on the part of Bill that would seemingly put this relationship in jeopardy. But the relationship stays together for these reasons that would be extremely difficult to understand unless you're in the relationship itself. And I think that when you look at this movie, while it's like, I mean, it's it's I'm not saying you should never try to make a movie about a divorce or whatever. But I think it can only be appreciated as like, I enjoyed the performances in this or I found bits of this, you know, entertaining. I don't think it can possibly capture this.

I mean, do you remember? I think you're grading it as on the highest. Well, I am. I am. You know what's shocking to me, though? Because you've said this before and I always enjoyed this about you. You love like raw arguments in movies. It happened too fast in this one.

That argument happened too quickly. And it like, it was. So you want a more foreplay before you got to the argument? What about the argument when near the end when he punches the wall though? Okay. That was at the end. That was about as raw as it gets. Sure.

Sure. But every day I wake up and I wish you were dead. Yeah. as it gets sure sure but every day i wake up and i wish you were dead yeah and then she says like so do i which is could be like i wish i was dead or i wish you or i wish you were dead or whatever the case be i mean it's he's he's a very good writer um but the the the intensity of that fight did not seem in line with the people from the rest of the movie. I mean, I know that I'm being really hard on this thing, which I – You're picking some nits. Well, sort of.

I mean, it's like, you know, I went into this movie thinking, like, this could really be great. I mean, like, this is a real talented person. There are some very good actors in this. Like, this could really be great. So maybe I am being unfair to it. person there's some very good actors in this like this could really be great so maybe i i'm being um unfair to it uh i i i think it had so i'm now i'm gonna defend the movie i think it had a couple of really really great scenes um the scene in the kitchen when she's gonna serve him gonna serve him

and merit weaver who everybody loves including me and just the dynamics of that and people in and out of the room and how they filmed it i thought was great i thought uh scarlet's big speech to laura dern when we when she has like that six minute speech about the marriage and it's all one shot and she's crying and just seems completely broken the fact that they never edited that and it was just straight through, I thought was awesome. It's interesting that ScarJo's in this movie, though. Like, this seems like a role Elizabeth Moss would get.

Well, it's interesting because they definitely, they gave her the worst possible haircut. It was like they didn't want her to be too good looking in the movie or something. That was smart. Her haircut's awful.

Because it would have been real. I don't, I mean, I don't know. It would have been distracting if she would have been as hot as she usually is. You know, it would have thrown things off in don't, I mean, I don't know. It would have been distracting if she would have been as hot as she usually is. You know, it would have thrown things off in a way. They definitely, yeah, they definitely tinkered with it. So did you relate to the kid in the movie?

Well, so I had those two scenes and then I thought the last two scenes of the movie were really great and brought the whole movie around to me because I wasn't sure what Adam Driver was doing for two-thirds of the movie. I was like, what is his motivation? Where's he heading with this character? And then when he melts down in the last third and we get to the scene when he's in the kid's room

and he's reading a letter and he breaks down. I thought that was really good. And then I actually thought the best scene was the last scene when she's about to walk away and she realizes his shoes untied and goes to tie it because, you know, that's as a child of divorce, like what's interesting about like seeing my parents now, there's still affection with them, even though they've been divorced for 40 years, you know, and it's the kind of thing like my mom would do for my dad. She would tell him your shoes untied, but they're not together. I mean, I just like that touch.

I thought it was good. Without getting too personal. Okay. So your parents divorced when you were nine? Yeah. Separated. So, so do you remember sensing that something was different about your parents' relationship that was serious? Or when you're that age, is it like whatever relationship you see

is what you think is normal? No, I think you know. My thing happened at a really bad age. I think the worst possible age is like 9, 10, 11 because you think- Yeah, they say that's the most common age they say. Because you're smart enough to know what's going on. And kids will think that they are somehow-

And yeah, you see everything through your lens. So you think it's, this is my fault. How does this affect me? So you got all that stuff going on. But like, did you hear them yelling or was it like, you could just, they don't, they don't seem close anymore. Yeah. There's a couple of things where it's weird that this person's not home or that person's

not home. And you're like, this seems off compared to the TV shows I'm watching where the families are together all the time. I think you kind of know, but maybe you don't want to admit it. But I think, I think the part. And when do they talk to you about it? Like when it's like, do they, do they finally say like. After.

Yeah. Usually it's after it happened. Like if somebody's, if somebody's moving out, you have to kind of tell the kid at that point. Like in the movies, it's always like the parents sit like in the squid and the whale or whatever. They sit the kid down and they say. That's kind of how you have to do it. And when that happens, is it like, I know what this is going to be?

Like, I know what you're going to tell me. Or are you like, what is happening here? Yeah. I was, I think freak out. Yeah. I think it's a, what, what is happening thing? Yeah. I don't want to go too into it, but yeah, I understand.

It's a, it's a personal thing. And it's, it's a part of your life that I I'm sure in has, you know, shaped you in ways that, you know, not even aware of. Well, definitely gives you a better sense of humor, but, um,

no, I think one of the things that resonated me with this movie is the wife deciding I'm going to move to LA and I'm going to raise the kid here, but he's in New York, which is a pretty inherently selfish act to do in a divorce. Because like, if you're getting divorced, you have to see through everything through the lens of, I have to do what's best for our kid. And usually what's best for the kid is for the parents to be in the same place or relatively close to the same place.

And if one of the parents is like, I'm going here and you're going to either have to move here or we're just going to have to do back and forth, that's a really selfish act. So I'm watching that through the child, through the child divorce lens, you know, how the things you say to your kid. And that was what, what the subtle thing that you probably, I don't know if you caught it completely or not was it starts with how close he is with the son, right? And then Scarlett does all these things that make Adam Driver and the kid less and less close as the movie goes along. But we never really see how it happened, but it's all intentional on her part. Like she's actually, he's the villain because he

cheated and he caused the snowball to roll down the hill. But she's actually, he's the villain because he, he cheated and he caused the snowball to roll down the hill, but she's also the villain because she willingly ruins the relationship with the dad. Well, I mean, I guess as I'm talking about this, I imagine Noah Bombeck actually listening to this. And I, part of me thinks or suspects that he might be going like the point of this was not figuring out who the villain is, but trying to make it clear that there are not villains in these situations. Marriages don't work. The real villains are the lawyers and the real villains are these aspects of

culture that says relationships have to be. See the lawyers are the least relatable part of this movie because not everybody's paying $25,000 plus whatever to get divorced. Well, a lot of times, I mean, that would, a lot of times you're getting a much worse version of the whatever to get divorced. Well, that a lot of times, I mean, that would, a lot of times you're getting a much worse version of the Al and Aldo

character. No, I think, I think he, that was the point he was trying to make. Hey, if I was trying to psychoanalyze and I don't know anything about his marriage or his family situation or whatever, it seems like the underlying theme of this movie was how the kid was affected by the divorce and the fact that the connection with the dad was compromised by the mom and my guess would be that's what happened with him and his kid right i mean i don't i have no idea no i also don't know i didn't research it but i mean

there's a whole bunch i think that was the theme he was trying to make was like this kid so the key scene is at the beginning right where he has he goes to the kid can't sleep adam driver goes in the sleep of them it's the bed's too small he ends up sleeping on the floor the kid leaves the bed to go to the floor with him to sleep next to him he's like this doesn't work either i'm gonna go back on the bed now the bed's free and then the kid goes back up like i took that scene as like this kid idolizes his dad. He loves his dad. He just wants to be with his dad. An hour or 15 minutes later, the kid wants no part of his dad.

So to me, that's all intentional. Well, I mean, you know, I'm sure it's certainly intentional. It is an interesting thing too. You know, like. I'm swinging you on this movie no no i that's why i was like it i i don't want people to walk away thinking like i didn't like this movie i thought that compared to most movies it's good but i just sometimes there's you know pt anderson i put in this class link later tarantino i their movies are different to me

like i think about them differently because um i, I just think that they, that they're, they're, that even though they're not similar in how they make movies, that there's something that they're bringing to movies that is, uh, more significant. Well, you know, it is interesting, you know, when you like, it does show how it is, I guess, maybe this is a point in their favor. Like you're watching this movie and you see that kid moving from bed to bed and you're like, this is like this kid who idolizes their favor. Like you're watching this movie and you see that kid moving from bed to bed and you're like, this is like this kid who idolizes his dad. It seems as though that one consequence

of your parents' divorce was not any kind of splintered relationship with your father. It actually seemed to make your relationship with your father closer. Right. So, I mean, so I wonder if the whole thing about a movie like this is that you have to accept that what your experience as a person is, is going to color how you feel about it.

Like maybe if. Right. Because you're watching the movie from Adam Driver and Scarlett's perspective. And I'm watching it from the little kid's perspective all the time because I was a little kid. Because, you know, like when I'm watching it, like going into it, like, okay, I had this, I had this fear. I had this fear when I was watching this movie. I was like, what if this movie is so insightful about male-female relationships that when the movie's over, my wife is mad at me? Like, you know, like you've heard your wife like has a dream.

Like you've heard your wife has a dream. Everyone had that fear. Everyone was asking, like, should I watch this with my wife? It was like a conversation I had with multiple people. Is your wife ever had a dream where you did something in the dream and then she wakes up and she's mad at you? Yeah. I think everybody's had that situation. And I was thinking to myself, like, what if it's like this?

What if there's something about this movie that's not really specific to us? It's actually a collective thing that just happens and it's you know um but it didn't it seemed more distant than that like i i didn't uh i didn't feel as though um i was seeing uh a reflection of something that i was like boy that's a little too close i'm uncomfortable with that didn't seem that way because they way. Because they caught them after the relationship was already over, which is a different kind of movie. They tried to accomplish everything with, why do these people like everyone in the first place?

And that's the first four minutes, right? They're reading the letters about what I like about this person, what I like about my spouse, basically. And I think he thought, now I'm covered. I don't have to show again why these two people ended up together. about my spouse. Yeah. And I think he thought, now I'm covered. I don't have to show again why these two people ended up together. My,

if I had a big criticism of this movie, it's like, I was never sure why they ended up together. Like, I really felt like it, I hate flashbacks

most of the time, but I really felt like it needed a flashback because like Kicking and Screaming, the coolest thing about that movie is it starts with the end, right?

They're at the, they're at the, uh, graduation party and they're just done with each other. And she's like, I'm going to Prague. He's like, what you're going to,

and they're just, they, there's not a lot left, but then it flashes back to the beginning of the movie when they're falling for each other. And it's like, oh, now I understand why they were together. And this didn't have it.

I never got it. Well, there was a kind of, because of what the people do in this movie, the idea that she is sort of like a teen star who then gets involved with his plays and his theater troupe because she kind of respects him and respects that he does something more serious. And then initially her star power raises the profile of him as a playwright. But then over time, his playwriting becomes the dominant thing. And he's more

important than she is. It's like, that's a, that's a highly specific scenario that I think that like, and maybe it is unfair of me to watch this because there's a lot of movies. Most movies you don't like. I haven't had a chance to watch The Irishman yet, but like, I don't think I'm going to watch it and be like, I, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm like De Niro on this. Like, I, you don't usually expect that. You don't demand that you have to find a character who sort of reflects the life you have. But when you like to say, like you call call the thing like, you know, a marriage story like I remember this like I was when I wrote the novel Downtown Owl, my initial title for that

was Normal Americans. But then I thought to myself, you know, if you do that, if you say that what you're really saying is that anybody who does not see themselves in these people is somehow abnormal, that this is what things really are. You know, so I changed the title because I, I, it was, um, it was, uh, it was, it was, it was too, it was so broad that it implied that it was capturing a universal thing and not a specific thing. And I feel like this movie, the intention is to capture a universal thing about why relationships fail. And that might be impossible. I also think every divorce is different, as weird as that sounds. And I think when there's divorce movies, they all get lumped together, which is really strange.

Cause like, so my parents got divorced. They both remarried in the, uh, in the eighties. And then when I was in college, they would come up for my birthday every year. And it was always all four of them. And people in college thought that was weird or not, not weird, just different, I guess, where it was like, wow, all four of your parents are going to get together. They're going to have dinner together and take pictures. And I was like, yeah, other people have had the complete opposite experience of that, right? Where there's a divorce and it's like, I'm never talking to that person again. And they're using the kid as an intermediary. I mean, divorce can go a thousand different ways. And so anytime there's a divorce movie, I get, you know, I'm hypersensitive to it.

Now I sound like all the people online, but just hypersensitive to the themes of the movie because I don't feel like divorce can be this sweeping thing. If somebody made a movie, if he called it divorce story, that actually probably would have been worse than calling it marriage story because divorce story is like, here are my thoughts on divorce. You know, it's a terrible version of this, which is a really awful movie. It's the story of us. Okay. About it's Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer. It's directed by Rob Reiner. It's basically about his divorce. And it's just

them yelling at each other for two hours. So when people make these movies, they can be really bad. And I appreciated that this was so nuanced and he was trying to something. I thought the acting was excellent and I really liked how it wrapped up. So I'm pro. I thought this was a good movie. I wish a couple of things had been different, but I need to see it a couple more times. I still think Kramer versus Kramer is the goat.

When do you watch all these things? You're going to watch it a couple, you're going to see this movie again twice, two more times. I have, how do you, when do you, what's your TV watching schedule? We'll wrap up on this. have, how do you, when do you, what's your TV watching schedule? We'll wrap up on this. What, how do you manage to watch? Like sometimes you'll be like, I'll see you. I'm very economical. I, I watched a replay of the sun's Mavs last night and Devin

Booker is still there. It's like, you know, it's like, wait, so do you, do you probably did watch that? Do you tape sporting events and watch them like game film? I have a mix of stuff. I have, there's, what do I do? So basketball, sometimes if there's a clump of games together, I'll try to watch like three, four games at once and do it that way. Because if all the fourth quarters are won. That's understandable.

That doesn't seem, I bet there's lots of guys. If there's like a Thursday night game and that's the only game, I'll always DVR that and either night game and that's the only game I'll always DVR that and either skip it if it's a bad game or watch the second half, you know, something like that. Marriage story though. Like I like,

we do a lot of Oscars content here and I like to be prepared for the movies. I want to watch. It's good that you do, but when I have to watch the Irish, well, right now I'm watching the OJ document, the OJ series from five years ago. I watched that at night as I'm falling asleep.

When do you go to bed? At like 1.30. And get up at? 6.30. So you're sleeping five hours, basically. It's probably too few. Yeah. Well, five is about right.

Maybe get up at seven, five and a half hours. Have you seen the OJ, the Cuba Gooding one? Yeah, when it was on. It's an amazing rewatch. so in a have you seen the OJ the Cuba Gooding one yeah when it was on it's it's an amazing rewatch I gotta say like I'd forgotten most of it

I forgot how fucking entertaining it was oh no it's on Netflix it's really good we have to go we're at like the two hour mark I suppose we do

I'm sorry this was fun though it's always good to have you here Chuck Klosterman working on a secret project for us well that's at some point in our lives

yes okay don't forget about State Farm don't forget about Osterman working on a secret project for us. So, well, that's at some point in our lives. Yes. Okay. Don't forget about state farm. Don't forget about the new rewatchables, the new book of basketball 2.0 podcast. Don't forget about Mercari. Earn some extra cash selling the stuff you no longer use on Mercari,

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Back here on this feed on Thursday. Until then. I don't have