The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Hour 1: The Game Pablo Torre Loves (feat. The Riddler of Sports Journalism)
Episode Date: March 9, 2026"I learned it from you, Dad." Pabloprah Torre found the smoking gun in the Clippers-Kawhi Leonard-Aspiration story, and he's here to wax poetic about the brilliance of his own reporting from the S...loan Sports Analytics Conference in a masturbatory way. How is this anything other than cap circumvention? Why did Mark Cuban disappear? How did he sneak a document under Adam Silver's nose in a literal way? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Uh, where are my gloves?
Come on, heat.
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This is the Dan Levator show with the Stucat.
podcast.
Pablo Torre is getting ready right now, and I don't know if you guys saw what it is that
Pablo did at the Sloan conference.
Pablo.
But Mike, as Pablo gets ready to join us here, do you want to file any of your objections?
And I will tell the people, first of all, if you didn't see what he did at the Sloan
conference, he, I guess taped.
I don't know whether he did it personally or someone else did, but the latest smoking gun,
the biggest of the smoking guns that there has been in the nine-part Kauai investigation was taped
to the chair in which Adam Silver was sitting so that the smoking gun was literally under the
commissioner's nose as he sat on a panel giving a conference and Mike Ryan somehow found a way
to criticize Pablo for this. Yeah, the internet and myself are all wondering why is Pablo trying to be
the riddler. Yes, it was an impressive, and look, drawn out, overly dramatic, self-involved.
These things go hand-in-hand with Pablo Tori. That should be the name of the podcast instead of
Pablo Tori finds out. All right. So like there's this, like, it ends on this cliffhanger,
even though he was promising, like this knockout punch. I'm like, did I see the knockout punch?
Or are there two more bits of evidence out there? Also, I asked to mean, what was in the two other
envelopes that were under two randomly selected chairs because Pablo on top of being the
riddler was also Oprah during this thing and Amiens like I don't even know what's in those
envelopes. Were we trying to start a huge a hud-done it? Is this a caper? Are we, I, the search
functionality on X is terrible so I can't actually find these other wayward envelopes. It was
naval gazing. It was Pablo, it was quintessential Pablo Torre in that there was really good
journalism being done, but it was also very overly dramatic.
Pablo, what say you?
Let's see if we get his sound up here in a second.
Pablo does not appear to be ready for your what say you
because he took those insults, all of them right on the chin.
He was smiling during many of them.
He shouldn't have been.
He should be indignant because he's doing very difficult work,
and he's doing it theatrically because he can't help himself.
I have two questions.
Has anyone called him Pablo?
Oprah yet. And Dan, do you ever get worried about potentially crossing Pablo as his boss here?
Because he seems to be a vindictive sociopath. Good question. Well, it is dramatic. And I don't know
what was under the other seats. I was a little confused by that. I think he was giving those people
also the documented proof. Mike, you're underwhelmed by what is really difficult to do journalism.
And you keep saying, give me more of a smoking gun. When every time he does a report, it is,
is more of a smoking gun, and this is the most smoking a gun has been around this, where he's
got the documentation of a whistleblower telling the government. There's paperwork saying,
look, this is all allegedly a contrivance meant to just pay Kauai Leonard where no one's
looking. No, it was the lead in the whistleblower complaint. That was the nuts. That was the big
revelation that in this whistleblower complaint to the federal government, the lead was they're
trying to circumvent the NBA salary cap with Kauai's endorsement deal.
I'm not the person saying, give me more of a smoking gun.
Pablo Torre is.
He said there's two more smoking guns underneath two more random chairs,
and he ended his live podcast on a cliffhanger, and the broadcast cut out, and it pissed me off.
Yeah, he's doing this in dribs and drabs, and he's doing this because he's got it months in advance,
and he's way ahead of this story.
So, Pablo, defend yourself.
Hi, guys.
Can you hear me now?
Yes, good?
Yes.
I appreciate, I appreciate the insult and the conversation, as always.
Part of what I want to do is always, and this is the curse of me, is draw attention to what we're doing.
Because I unfortunately think we're at this phase where I thought we were going to be done after episode two.
And we're not, you know, the NBA investigation is ongoing.
The MBA investigation has been a focus of what we did at,
Sloan on Friday live, which is to say I talked to five former aspiration employees who all told me
that they were not asked by Wachtell Lipton, the MBA's preferred outside investigation firm.
They were not asked directly about Steve Ballmer by name, right? And so I am not just like
dumping all of this as fast as I can because, you know, I'm trying to, I'm trying to be first
on everything. I'm trying to make sure I get it right. And I'm only dropping stuff when there is
reason to say, oh, maybe it's actually worth considering that attention must be drawn to a
story that I think the NBA is actively trying to minimize. And so that's part of why we,
we operative it. Part of why I mean and David had no idea what they were getting in for.
It's why we did at a conference where Adam Silver was on those very chairs hours earlier,
before, of course, going to meet Donald Trump at the White House in ways that I could not have
possibly scripted. What was under the other two chairs? For those who don't know, Sloan Conference
is the Dorka-Balooza. A lot of the smartest people in sports get together, and they congratulate
each other for an assortment of things. And under the chair of Adam Silver was a smoking gun.
What was under the two other chairs in the audience that you placed in? What were the seats?
because you are trying to be the riddler.
There's no dispute on that.
Well, Mike said they were random chairs.
It was Rose K and Rose L.
Seat number two, you know.
But what was there?
So, see, he's even more like the Riddler.
Yeah, but what was there?
I don't want to solve your, I get it.
K and L and two.
Well, unfortunately, that is for the people sitting in those chairs to reveal.
It's their, they have those documents.
Get them to answer the question.
The whistleblower complaint.
The whistleblower complaint.
I'm not, I'm not, I'm not here to step on further reporting.
Just know that the reporting continues.
The whistleblower complaint was many pages long.
You've done nine of these.
There's lots more to find out.
Yeah.
That was the ninth one.
Mike, I'm as surprised as anybody that we're going to have a 10th, right?
I'm genuinely as surprised as anybody.
It's, it's something, though, in the whistleblower complaint that I don't want to just speed past as we get to
whatever sequels here.
Because I just want to clarify,
this is the document that started the actual federal investigation
into Aspiration.
So the co-founder of Aspiration,
Joe Sandberg, was prosecuted.
He pled guilty to wire fraud.
His co-conspirator,
Ibrahim Al-Husani, who was a board member of Aspiration,
prosecuted, played guilty to wire fraud.
Those things happened because of the roadmap laid out
in this document,
would have been rumored for a very long time inside of aspiration,
but no one had ever seen before because a whistleblower complaint is confidential.
And one of the things that has happened that has enabled the reporting,
and by the way, this is why, like when I say I have to get it right,
I really do wait for the actual document.
Like it's not, the evidence is now undeniable in terms of did these federal whistleblowers
under penalty of perjury put into writing in March of 2023,
Years before I ever even published part one, did they say the thing that people have since accused me of grafting and grifting onto a story in retrospect?
Oh, this, why would they ever be talking about caps or convention?
This is a larger criminal enterprise.
What does it matter that anyone care about the salary cap?
Well, this is part nine, parts one through eight, explained that.
And here is kind of the keystone in case anybody still had remaining doubt.
And you can see it on screen.
It says, even to pay Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard and incentivized bonus to circumvent the NBA salary cap disguised as an organic marketing sponsorship agreement.
By the way, we've provided contract of that agreement.
We provided bank statements of money in and money out.
We now have a whistleblower complaint under perjury from two aspiration employees.
And the only way, by the way, this comes together is because in sort of like poetic symmetry with Adam Silver going to the White House,
this administration has effectively turned over multiple federal agencies that have been investigating the story,
the Department of Justice, the SEC, the CFTC, the three agencies that these whistleblowers reported to,
those are all shells of themselves.
And so my ability to report the story, it is like panoramic at this point.
You know, it's like I'm going to every possible place.
And that's the only way you can get to the bottom of a story like this.
And the question is, who else is doing that?
One of the things that I see happening, and I just think that it really shows great ignorance about,
and I will keep saying this, the degree of difficulty on getting documentation that is vetted that makes for proof.
A lot of people are saying, wake me up when there is something that's an update as the updates are incremental.
They are updates.
And Bruce Arthur, the Canadian columnist, is saying, quote, Pablo delivers again.
And there's simply no other plausible scenario other than capser convention in the Kauai case.
Why do you believe that what's happened so far represents the greatest proof of any kind that you have as it relates to a smoking gun?
And how can you possibly say there's a lot more to find out here?
I want to credit Bruce Arthur because Bruce, of course, covers the Raptors in Toronto.
He had heard and has reported since what Dennis Robertson, Kauai's unlicensed representative, his uncle,
had been requesting of the Raptors.
And he had been requesting, per Bruce's reporting, a no-show job and equity in a company
that he didn't have to do any work for.
And that is the story, incidentally, of aspiration.
So these requests were made.
The question is, how were they delivered?
And here we have nine parts showing that.
So credit to Bruce for truly, like, reporting out that aspect of the story.
To me, there are three indisputable examples of why this is cap circumventing.
The first one was in the first episode.
It was that no one ever announced this deal.
Why would an endorsement deal be secret?
Like, I've been waiting for any...
I had Mark Cuban in the studio at length, like asking,
why would this ever remain confidential?
An endorsement agreement with Kauai Leonard in which not only did he do nothing,
you never announced it.
Why would that never be announced?
Why would that be protected by the clifference?
When you say do nothing, the alleged no-show job that he was paid for that required him to
do nothing. He was he was signed to a $28 million contract an endorsement agreement that he did nothing for.
In fact, the greatest example is that they never even announced that the endorsement contract
existed even as Kauai was getting paid to never talk about it. Why would the Clippers and Kauai and
aspiration all agree none of us should not only we should never say anything about this,
we should deny it in the future. Like what other reasons?
other than this needed to be a secret deal to violate the NBA salary cap?
What other reason would there be?
Right?
So this is just the logical like documentation and evidence around that part.
The second thing is the fact that Dennis Wong, the Clippers co-owner,
Steve Balmer has one co-owner of the Clippers.
It's rare, Dan, a 99 to one ownership group.
Two people.
One guy was 99.
One guy was 1%.
Dennis Wong went to Harvard with Steve Balmer.
He is his close friend.
He is the vice chairman of the Clippers.
He, as we've reported exhaustively, when aspiration was in default, Dennis Wonkin never put money in before, and he decides in December of 2022, I'm going to invest $2 million into a broke company that I know via the disclosure form on the contract, which we also published.
We know that they are under investigation by the SEC.
We know that they have no money.
They're broke.
I'm going to invest as if they're a normal company.
And then nine days later, Kauai Leonard will be paid $1.75 million, his quarterly,
payment to do nothing after months of not getting paid that sum because aspiration had burned through
all of their money, right? Why would they do that? Why would they pay Kauai when they had no other
money to pay anything? Why would they pay the guy that is a secret endorser who does nothing?
Nine days after the co-owner of the Clippers puts in money for the first time, the only outside
investor to give money to aspiration, right? No one's ever explained any other.
plausible money in, money out explanation for that.
So that's the second thing.
And the third thing, we're just talking about like,
what feels the most indisputable, the rankings here.
The third thing is this complaint,
the whistleblower complaint under penalty of perjury
to the federal government in 2023.
One of the questions has always been,
why is it that are, you have all these anonymous sources,
even on tape, voice modulated, right?
It's very easy to say, in retrospect,
they were circumventing the cap
because maybe you were convinced by episode one.
Maybe you were just, you know, connecting dots on your own.
This complaint shows in writing under federal penalty that can be prosecuted if you knowingly lie that people said this long before I ever heard of the company.
And so I'm okay with the demand for a smoking gun.
All I ask of anybody who takes that side of the argument is to provide one alternative explanation to Bruce Arthur's point that it's,
something else. Tell me what you think explains this and no one has ever plausibly done that.
There's something about college hoops this time of year where you tell yourself you're just going to casually watch one game.
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Maybe pretend I wasn't checking scores every five minutes. Then a text comes in. We've got multiple screens set up.
That's how they get you. So I said, yeah, I grabbed a pack of Miller light on the way. A little while later,
Nobody's casually watching anything.
Somebody's yelling because their bracket is already cooked.
Somebody else suddenly cares deeply about a school.
They hadn't thought about it in 10 years.
And a game that looked over is somehow tied late.
You take a sip, you look around, and realize, yeah.
This was absolutely the right move.
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and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel.
While those things stayed in the 90s,
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Here's to WestJetting since 96.
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and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years.
Don Lebertard.
Pablo leads all of podcasting in reading while smiling.
If you listen to ESPN Daily, he sounds like he's having the time of his life.
Stugats.
Coming up next, I'm going to tell you the Savannah bananas are changing faces.
How do you know I'm smiling?
How do you know I'm smiling?
That's how I find my vocal range.
Sometimes I just say Savannah bananas.
Savannah bananas.
This is the Dan Levitar show with the Stugats.
These documents are really difficult to get a hold of unless you're randomly seated in Rose K and L at the Sloan Conference.
And then it's just in your possession.
Pablo, did you embargo this?
Because you ended the episode on a cliffhanger.
And I just assumed, well, since two randos have these documents, I'll just check social media.
And this will be posted there.
But I haven't heard what's in these envelopes at all.
Are they in your employ?
How have you kept this buttoned up?
Well, you know, I'm a careful person. I'm a careful guy.
Why even do that?
Because I don't think you need anything else.
I genuinely think that after part one, and let's say part two, right, the first two things in this power rankings are the three things that are most undeniable.
That was accomplished in the first two episodes.
Everything else has been further roof, reporting, sourcing, dissection, counter argument, pressure testing, all of that stuff.
you know, for seven months.
And so if anybody wants more, there is more.
But frankly, like, I don't think I need to say what else is out there.
But I guess I'll get to it at some point, though.
Two questions, Pablo.
One, did you run into Adam Silver at all at the conference?
And two, have you heard it all from Mark Cuban lately?
You know, I, Mark has disappeared.
Mark has summarily disappeared.
It's interesting that like the episode I did with Dan, when I brought Dan in for one of the aspiration episodes, it was about the carbon credit stuff.
And we retraced that in this episode, Part 9 on Friday at Sloan.
Dan was the first person to experience that.
And I bring that up because the reason I booked Dan for that episode was because I wanted to get Mark Cuban and I had to settle for another Cuban.
And Mark was the person who first theorized if we were going to do it's true.
It's true.
And the question that Mark Cuban theorized was, if you're going to do caps or convention,
you do it through carbon credits.
And so I'm not going to redo all of the Friday episode here, although I've basically started to.
It's, yes, great point.
And we show that that is also what happened here.
And so Mark Cuban has disappeared, which is, I think, telling as to your point.
Adam went almost immediately from that stage to, I presume, this is just
connecting of the dots, how you get to Washington, D.C., in time for a four o'clock meeting with
the president from Boston, where he was.
He went right to the private Jedi, I assume, to the White House.
So no.
Although, again, it was the number of people who were in the audience, yeah, these are, these are all characters who I think might have thumbs on the scale of what the NBA does.
And we'll see whether that was, you know, persuasive to that.
Take us through how it is that physically you got the document taped under his chair, and did you literally want the evidence to be right under his nose?
So it started, it didn't start, look, as much as I like being, you know, something like the Joker or the Ridler.
The Ridler. You're not the Joker.
The Ridler.
You're not the Joker is evidenced by this sound.
I think that's better.
You're not the Joker.
You don't get to be the Joker.
You can be the Riddler.
That's a good photo.
The Joker would have killed him.
Adam Silver looks like somebody who could be a villain in one of these movies.
He just physically, more than anyone in sports.
But how is it physically?
Take me through both the thought process, the decision, and who physically did it?
Yeah.
So, again, I'm not the Riddler.
I'm somebody who got invited to do a panel at Sloan and thought to myself,
who else is speaking at Sloan?
Oh, wow, Adam Silver is speaking earlier in the day in the same lecture hall.
And I'm going to have David and Amin there.
Like, how can I convey to,
David and Amin this new information. Well, typically I'd give them folders, but there's not a desk.
So what if we'd do it some other way? And then I thought, well, it'd be funny because I've,
I'm an American who grew up in the age of daytime television. It'd be funny if like I did the Oprah thing.
It was like, look under your chairs. There's a gift for you. Instead of a car, you got to pay taxes on,
it's this document. And so I thought, wait a minute, if we put those documents under David and
means chairs, early enough in the day, it's possible that Adam would be sitting in that same
chair. And so I had one of our producers, uh, who will remain nameless, perhaps for legal reasons,
uh, show up at Sloan at 7 a.m. on Friday and tape it underneath the chairs. And I should say,
for legal reasons as well, Darry, the organizer and the co-founder of the conference had no
idea what we were doing. Uh, nobody at the conference.
was in on this in the way that, of course, our staff was. And so for that reason, we just woke up
really early. And it turned out that, yep, these were the chairs. I should mention that Balmer and
the Clippers continued to deny all wrongdoing. They declined to comment for this episode,
as they have for a while. And they say they are fully cooperating with the NBA's investigation
that was sparked by Pablo. Pablo is up for yet more awards, I should tell you.
Uh, 2026, IHard podcast awards are next Monday at South by Southwest.
Uh, he is nominated for podcast of the year.
Uh, he's also up for best hosts.
So podcast of the year, he's going up against the daily, Call Her Daddy,
the Breakfast Club, Mel Robbins, Theo Vaughn, all the big names in podcasting.
And on best host, it's Amy Polar and Emma Chamberlain and also Alex Cooper, uh,
from Call Her Daddy.
Uh, the biggest award that you have been proudest to win.
far and do you expect to win this one? Because the work you're doing is unlike anything,
anyone, never mind sports broadcasting, anyone anywhere is doing in podcasting.
Yeah, look, no one, no one, for better and for worse and the award stuff is for the better.
And I am like, you know, I'm heart in that people have felt boxed in enough by journalism that
they feel like they got to put us into those categories, frankly, because we're doing it in a way
that no one else is doing it for better and for worse, which is to say with these,
documents like we're where where we're i i would love to get to a point where you know the sheer force
of my charisma is the reason why i'm in a category with amy polar in any way but no man it says
we're doing journalism like we're we're we're really showing the power of doing evidence driven
reporting and so i am so thrilled that we've we've been included because it's weird like it's a bunch
people that I would say
billionaires would love to invite to
a cocktail party and in the one person
who they absolutely don't.
And I take pride in that.
I take pride in the fact that it's a
weird thing for us to be in those rooms.
Who's on the other side of arguing
the other side of this right now?
Who are you hearing from?
And are you willing to say that
Mark Cuban is now hiding from you
in a sheer act of cowardice?
If Mark Cuban is
is out there.
I would love for you to come back on the show.
He came in studio and we talked at length and he was
such a delight.
And then he tweeted nothing after it came out.
And he stopped talking about aspiration entirely.
And I'm just curious why.
So I'm not going to call him a coward.
I'm merely going to say that a silence has been conspicuous.
And I'd like to figure out if his thinking has changed.
He was team bomber.
And since he's been very, very, very, very, very quiet.
Who's on the other side of this?
Who else is out there?
Because look, you've become, it's strange to me, okay?
I underestimated 10 years ago that the president of the United States could become the president of the United States taking a hatchet to journalism.
People hate journalists more than just about any occupation.
It's right up there with used car salesman and agent and lawyer in terms of not liking somebody.
You, despite doing legitimately extradict.
extraordinary work have now become polarizing, at least in part, because you do it as the riddler and you do it with some self-involvement and you call it charisma.
I call it hateability that you were taught at the knee of us.
You?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
I learned it from you, Dad, by the way.
Dan, Dan, I learned it from you, Dan, said in the voice of Dad.
You have been surprised by the reaction and who's on the other side.
side of this because you keep presenting facts that make it damn near impossible to be on the other
side of this because of all of the things that you said, show me the alternative reasoning here that
no one can explain. Yeah, look, the reason that I do the theater of this is from a place of,
wow, I got invited to this conference to do a live show. How can I make this interesting?
And then it was if I'm going to do another chapter in this series that people are pretty numb to
because I think most people out there, by the way, fans, head coaches, owners, general managers,
when I run into them, when I see them at games, at conferences, they all agree that this is egregious.
These allegations feel like they deserve punishment, right?
These alleged schemes must warrant punishment.
That's what I hear all the time.
So I'm not saying that, like, you know, people are idiots who don't get what I'm saying.
I think they largely do.
The theatricality comes from the premise of journalism needs entertainment to cut through.
and I was a writer who only wrote.
I was a TV person who only gas bagged.
And now I'm trying to do both of them together.
Because I am at odds, I guess, with what is required otherwise to make an impact.
And so I decided, fine, I'll play the game too.
And I enjoy the game.
And so that's why I do it that way.
The people who are on the other side of this, though, frankly, it's people who cover and talk about the NBA.
who find that this story should be adjudicated by the NBA.
And I'm like, guys, I'm not here to say that we're Woodward and Bernstein, right?
I'm not here to say that this is the president being forced to resign.
I'm not saying that.
All I'm simply saying is that if you ever talk about cheating in sports,
if you talk about caps or convention, which is how you get the most important assets in this sport,
star players, to join a team, which everybody cares about so deeply that entire off-season's,
Entire seasons are overshadowed by the acquisition of star players, right?
That's the whole thing with NBA Twitter.
We're obsessed with it.
I'm telling you the most egregious, and the ringer has said this to its credit.
The most egregious cap circumvention scandal in history, allegedly, is this one.
And so why would you leave it to the NBA to tell you how big a deal it is or not,
months removed from its initial impact such that the footprint of it, the accountability of it,
the importance of it can be reduced.
Right?
Like that's, I come at the, and this is where, you know, I do feel like I just got to reassert
something.
I do this because I'm like actually a sports fan because I grew up loving the NBA because
I grew up writing into a little notebook, the dream team statistics and fetish eyes the New York
Knicks and admiring Michael Jordan despite my fandom of the Knicks and going to games
and really caring about this thing and then watching our sport, my favorite sport, become a
thing that built up credibility over time, that became a very popular mainstream product, welcomed
into American homes all around the world as well. And they decided to get into business with a bunch
of people who, frankly, are misrepresenting the truth of what they're doing to the public.
And I mean this to say, in the Epstein class sense. I mean this to say in the crypto scammer sense.
I mean this to say in the sovereign wealth fund sense.
I mean this to say in the Silicon Valley sense.
And certainly in the case of a company like Aspiration,
which the NBA and the Clippers decided to present to the public
as if this is a real company and they didn't do the due diligence.
And there's still, it seems, allegedly, not doing the due diligence.
And the question of like what has happened, you know, what's that meme?
What's happened to the game I love?
The reason I'm on this and why I'm not leaving it to the NBA to tell you
what's really happening here is because,
I think the truth when it comes to sports should be taken seriously.
And I got to be a turn in the punch ball sometimes, I guess, to do that.
And also that and also literally the Riddler.
Perhaps you've also noticed that when he gives the ringer credit or Bruce Arthur credit
and says to their credit, it's only when they're saying that he's done exactly the correct thing
the most correctly.
You've noticed that perhaps that he doles out credit to people who already agree with him.
on things and the whole
exercise is fairly masturbatory
but it does seem
well it becomes less masturbatory
the more participants right become something else
there are other terms for it
it's true you know
thank you Jeremy I appreciate you
he's right he's right I appreciate you
co-signing on that yes to your credit
to your masturbatory credit
wherever it is there's one person
masturbating verbally you'll get right in
and masturbate verbally even more
Like here, I have to masturbatorily be right about the Miami Heat, but Pablo has people there to help him when it comes to the Clippers.
Hey, by the way, Pablo, what do you think of the five-game win streak for the Heat?
So anyway, the other things that Pablo is doing, because he is doing an extraordinary job on Pablo Tori finds out, is every episode has something interesting in it.
You just did one on AI.
When you say the sport I love, the social media parts that I used to love, Mike Ryan just pointed out on X,
how hard it is to search for things.
Mina Kimes is pointing out that Google doesn't help her do her job anymore because it's been
so contaminated as a search engine.
I was alarmed by your recent reporting on artificial intelligence.
You've done a couple of pieces on this.
What is the last and most recent information that you found most interesting about just how
damaging and dangerous artificial intelligence is?
Yeah, I mean, economically speaking, and I'm talking to all these experts who are far better versed in the industry of artificial intelligence than I am, there's just no way of avoiding the sinking feeling that AI is becoming too big to fail, which is to say that Amina was a great voice to this as a former business journalist herself.
Like, we're being sold a product and we're being told that this product is so popular and so good.
And whether or not that resonates with you at home using AI in the way that you do or don't,
the money pouring into it from the U.S. economy is unprecedented.
The speed of money and the scale of money entering artificial intelligence as an industry
is so enormous that we are going to get to a point that reminded us, me and Mina, of 2008,
the great financial crisis when we were both reporters working in New York City.
And there were companies, there were banks that were too big to fail.
And what does that even mean for those who forgot the great financial crisis?
It literally meant that there was so much money tied up in certain financial institutions
that even though those institutions were corrupt and betraying the public in the most definitional ways
and were not using that money responsibly.
In fact, collapsing the economy, the U.S. people, us, the government, public money,
had to save those companies to prop them up.
Otherwise, the economy would have been even worse.
And so AI is getting to that same point.
There is so much money propping up AI,
which is in turn boosting the U.S. economy.
When you think about the most valuable companies in the world,
like Nvidia, these chipmakers that are funding,
the processing that AI runs on,
when you think about open AI,
when you think about anthropic,
when you think about Google, these are all comp.
Apple is getting into the AI,
is already in the AI business.
All these companies are saying AI is the future, cool.
And before they have to prove its use to the people,
to customers in real life, they're getting investment
such that if those products end up being
not a thing people wanna actually pay for, right?
Like what's the actual business at the end of this?
Meno was asking the question,
are real people paying for these AI products
or are companies,
are enterprise customers paying for them.
And therefore, it seems like a lot of normal people are,
but really it's just companies paying other companies to boost stock prices.
And if that's the case, and AI as a product turns out to not be the revelation,
then by the time those stocks fall,
the U.S. economy will be so reliant upon them that we may have to bail them out to.
They will become too big to fail,
which is to say we are inviting potentially another economic crisis,
if we don't watch where the money is going.
And that is a little bit terrified.
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Don Lebatard.
There's sunglasses and boxes today.
Lives all the same.
Stugats.
It's the fun.
This is the Dan Lebatar show with the Stugats.
Have any of you guys seen the movie,
2073,
20073, it is put out there
as a dystopian future.
sort of action movie, but it's actually a documentary inside of it. And all of it's horrifying.
Like what is presently happening with the government of the United States, for example, being so
brazenly purchased by billionaires, more brazenly than we've ever seen? It's always been so,
but the government being used right now by billionaires to create a dystopian future that separates the
billionaires from all of the little people, I had to turn it off in the middle of it because the
truth is so horrifying. Your podcast with Mina felt the same way. The truth is so horrifying,
I wanted to turn it off because there's no coming back from where we already are.
That is a downside for us in the awards categories we've been entered into, that people find
the things we're reporting to be so horrifying. It's not call her daddy. It's not call her daddy. It's
That's not what you're doing.
Those shouldn't be in the same category.
We're reporting on glucking of a different kind in this case.
In this case, it is the administration of our country and the corporate leaders that you're referring to.
Yeah, man, it's scary.
It's scary.
And I, you know, I think there's, again, the water is warm, by the way.
I think the, it's just funny, Dad, that, like, again, the I learned from you stuff.
I think there's a lot of room for people to make an impact here,
about this stuff. And maybe people have made a calculation that serves them best and that's okay
on some level. But I don't know, just seems like in the documentary of our time, and this is the
exercise I always tried to do, 10 years from now in the documentary of our time, you know,
which character are you're going to be? And I think people are maybe not making the right choice on that.
The name of the podcast is Pablo Tori finds out. Can we do something a little more uplifting when we
talk about the end of the world?
die, we're all gonna die, not die.
The sky seems to be falling and hear,
let's turn on the news and find out that we're gonna die, die.
Thank you, Pablo Tori finds out it really is extraordinary.
I urge all of you to check it out.
I remember when the quaint apocalyptic movie,
was it called 2011 or 2012 with John Cusack?
sack, the movie where he's just
driving as fast as he can. I like that movie.
As Earth falls apart
behind him, it seems quaint
and charming and fossilized.
Just an antique
compared to where it is
that we are actually headed. You like
the movie? Is it 2011 or 2012?
I think it's 2012. 2012.
Where the Statue of Liberty just
falls into the ocean.
I like those apocalyptic type
like what's the one with Jake Gyllenhaal
as well, right? Day after tomorrow.
I like that movie too.
Yeah, I like those kind of films.
We're living in the middle of it right now.
We are at the center of it.
So let's distract ourselves with the Miami of Ohio undefeated.
It's like we're going to say Miami Heat.
Oh, man, thank you for finally bringing it to the spectacle of the sporting weekend.
It was a great weekend for sports.
It's basically sports equinox.
You got a million things going on.
And I was positively dialed, sound on, to Miami of Ohio at Ohio.
A college basketball game in the game.
the hundreds, them going back and forth at each other into overtime.
I mean, the lighting in the arena was terrible.
It had a film on it when you were watching the game broadcast, and it was like another time.
It was March basketball.
It was everybody clear out of the way.
We're giving it to the best player, Scrappy, number 13 in white, Pavelski,
trying to hold on to this rivalry advantage that Ohio has had over Miami, Ohio.
Miami, Ohio, undefeated this season in college basketball, gunning for their 30th victory.
Ohio had had victories over their arrival, I think, dating back at home since 2011.
So this was a huge win streak.
And the game friggin' delivered back and forth the entire time, heroic shot making absolute
cags from each team and such hate from the Ohio attendees.
that at the end of it, has Jeff Goodman tweeted?
Because at the end of it, there were mother bleeps and bleep ewes and smiling faces, hidden meanings, projectiles.
It was a scene.
I loved it.
It was the best basketball game I'd seen this year.
Miami of Ohio against Ohio.
Ohio was a small dog in the game.
Miami of Ohio ends up perfect seasons, Zaslow, that nobody believes is going anywhere in the tournament
because they've had the 300th tough.
schedule or something like that.
The last time I checked, it was at
280 and they're an undefeated team
playing against Ohio
on the road and they're just a
four-point favorite because everyone
knows that team is not all
that good even though it's
undefeated. They are not favored to win their
conference. Akron is. Whatever. If you're
undefeated, you make the tournament.
If you don't lose, if you're
playing Division I
basketball and you don't lose a single
game in your regular season, you deserve to be in the
tournament in one college sport.
Yeah.
But it has so much juice to it, and they've had several of these games where they survive when you don't think they are.
That's a fun story.
It's also a TV show.
Like when the committee is making their selections this weekend, you don't think that's going to have some juice to it.
Miami of Ohio, first round game Thursday or Friday the following week.
That game's got some juice to it.
I want to check that out.
Man, they got this like a little, you would think that the underdog, undefeated Miami, Miami, Ohio team would be beloved.
but they've been villains.
I don't want them to continue to be undefeated.
And now I've kind of come around.
Like, I rock with these guys.
They're trying to be bad guys when no one believes in them.
They're trying to bully people around when they're four and a half feet tall.
It's great to see.
Who would you rather have in the tournament,
undefeated Miami of Ohio or 15 lost Auburn?
Like, get the hell out of here.
Get the hell out of here.
When Mike Ryan says no one believes in them,
I saw him wandering around.
during our break
trying to get someone
to believe him
that the Ben Shapiro
eyebrow situation
wasn't photoshopped
wasn't altered by others
there's no way
Mike this can't be real
I have multiple
I have videos from his social media
selfie videos
videos are never fake
videos are always real
he posted this himself
he has Tom Selleck's mustache above each eye
That is a selfie video that he posted.
That is not real.
Like, how do you even get eyebrows like that?
Nobody says, hey, I'm going to grow out my eyebrows.
That's not a thing.
You can't just, like, you can grow out your hair, you can grow out your beard.
You don't grow out eyebrows.
Put it on the poll, please, at Levitux show.
It's not real.
Does Ben Shapiro have Tom Selleck's mustache over each one of his eyes?
This doesn't seem like.
Dan, that's not real.
it can be real. Occasionally someone
will send me a
picture or a video of
me that day that Ron McGill
said that I looked like a Papi Trullo
when I was just doing an impersonation
of somebody who had done
a fake, highly questionable
with me and Bumani and I had just painted
on my eyebrows
and on my mustache,
something so very dark as
to clearly be fake.
I saw over the weekend, I saw a
Hispanic crooner of some sort,
an old guy singing with Tony Bennett who had, yes, thank you.
That's him right there.
Look at that, Zaslo.
Which is the more egregious offense between those two people?
I am remiss and not knowing who that Latin legend is.
Well, yeah, see, that's the thing.
That guy's eyebrows, he may have been born with those eyebrows.
That may be just how he looks.
Ben Shapiro all the day, all of a sudden is showing up with a bush above each eye.
It's not real.
It is real. All the videos are real.
I understand the skepticism I shared in it.
And then I researched the Internet for 15 minutes to try to find evidence to the contrary.
He dyes the eyebrows, but he also made them bushyer.
It's irrefutable.
Gender affirming care.
My mother has rarely been more frustrated with my father than when it is that he would go from totally gray at work when he was an industrial engineer.
the plant manager for a fiberglass company in Hialea, he would go from totally gray to looking
the following day like this Latin gruner because he had painted everything black.
