The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - PTFO: Share & Tell (Screaming Sh!t-Monster Edition) with Mina Kimes, Dan, and Pablo

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

Deshaun Watson is playing terribly. Does that make it easier to talk about his sexual-misconduct scandal again? Russell Brand is mid-scandal right now. Will his following follow him everywhere? And in happier news: Yes, even if you don't have a kid, you can still be friends with people who do. Further reading: Deshaun Watson Not Acting or Playing Like a Franchise Quarterback (Michael Rosenberg) https://www.si.com/nfl/2023/09/20/browns-deshaun-watson-not-acting-playing-like-franchise-quarterback The Uncomfortable Reality of Tyreek Hill's Success (Mina Kimes) https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/18446978/the-unavoidable-dilemma-talking-kansas-city-chiefs-tyreek-hill Can Parents and Childless People Be Friends? (Allison P. Davis) https://www.thecut.com/article/adult-friendships-vs-kids.html Russell Brand Accused of Rape, Sexual Assaults and Abuse (Rosamund Urwin, Charlotte Wace, Paul Morgan-Bentley) https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russell-brand-rape-sexual-assault-abuse-allegations-investigation-v5hxdlmb6 Russell Brand: In Plain Sight (Dispatches) https://www.channel4.com/programmes/russell-brand-in-plain-sight-dispatches Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Pablo Tore finds out I am Pablo Tore and today we're going to find out what this sound is. Oh my god, that is under water. That's hot tub for you in a hot tub for you. Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraffe King's network. We're doing here, y'all. That's what we're doing now to pop. We're doing it now to pop. We're good.

We're good now. We're good now. Oh, we're good. I'm told that this is a show now. Here he is. I you, I feel feel like would be devastated when you listen back to the audio and realize you missed out on a conversation

about my baby pissing on my face potentially. So that's fit or sweet for you. I missed the baby piss face conversation. I showed up late to the baby piss face conversation. It's a thing that happens. It is. You wouldn't know. You have a girl. Yeah, I am. Well, I've done it probably. I should say. Both have. You just don't know. Ask your mom. I still do it. I still do it to my mom.

Oh, God. I have a question for you guys. Do you guys remember any phone numbers? Have you memorized phone numbers that you still recall? I have my husband's memorized out of which I think it was an art. I was reading an article about it. It wasn't like kind of broke down palace, but it was someone in a foreign country who was like imprisoned and couldn't reach their relatives.

And I read that and I thought, I'm going to spend the next 15 minutes memorizing my husband's phone number. So I've got that one locked out. Yeah. I have a few. Yes. A few important ones, but I also am somebody who comes from an age who I still leave voicemails. I still, that's right. You know, maybe do it. It's the worst. You know, maybe it's the worst. Just getting to imagine if Dan could leave FaceTime voicemails. You can't do that now, right? Or that... Can you?

Oh, thank you. I love that. God. You're going to leave it in for both of you. Somehow the newest technology employed in the oldest possible way. Sure, it's the most time. So I'm gonna have for both of you. Sure, let's face time messages. Well, I have set up a phone number, and yes, this was all my way of sneaking in a promo.

It is 51385 Pablo. It's a phone number. We're taking calls now, requests for me to find stuff out. And so if you're listening to this, 513-85 Pablo, leave a message like Dan Levitard might, and shirtlessly help my show by making content for free. Can we leave requests for you to find things out? No. No, I can't.

I can't. I can't. No. I know what you would do. Yes. You would just, you would mock it. Yeah, I mean, I might ask you how to find out how to start a show on time. I don't know. Maybe something I would request. How to, how to create a working zoom in 223.

Something you should look into. Hey, this is Pablo. Let me know what you'd like me to find out. Tell me a story, leave me a message. We might use this on the show. Thanks. Pablo, I'd like to find out what the fuck we're paying you for. That's what I'd like to talk about.

How much we're paying you, and why are we paying you that much? And for what? Ugh. We should delete that one. Oh man, I'm excited for the stories we're going to talk about today. There's one that I'm really excited about. So excited I was texting you last night, Pablo, my early thoughts. So that's T's.

We'll get to that. I think after mine, mine's the only sports you won, sort of. So here's the premise. DeShan Watson stinks right now. He is playing very bad football. Dan, I talked about it a little bit this morning on his show. Talked about it on my podcast, meaning a kind of show featuring Lenny.

Check it out wherever you get your pods. Yes. He is not good. He looks like a shell of himself. He has, and this was something that started last year when he came back in week 12, I believe it was. But people attributed it to rust, whether some of the games were like a really bad weather, they have an integrated him into the offense, there was a lot of excuses made. And some of them were legitimate. So he has an entire off season to work with his team,

for the offense to be built around him, for him to ostensibly become the guy that he was, the guy that incentivized Cleveland to sell their soul and give him the most guaranteed money in the history of the sport. And it is not working out. Through the first two weeks of the season, he does not look good in a way that is apparent to everybody. The thing I wanted to bring up, however,

is not, we all agree that's not up for debate. It's something that has occurred to me watching him, something that I've had conversations about with other NFL writers and analysts, something that I pondered going into the season as I mulled over the possibility of a Watson returning to form. This dude just bailed out our entire industry by being bad. Because Pablo, as I was thinking about this season, and I thought, well, the Cleveland Browns have a really good football team. I think the defense is going to be good.

They've got good skill players. Something that kind of occurred to me is like, God, how am I going to talk about this? And my capacity as an NFL analyst, if he's good. I truly have actually talked to other football people about this, how everybody kind of feels like, oh, like a little bit of relief. But boy, it's kind of a cop out in some ways, because we never had to reckon with, and maybe we will,

I just, you know, it's been two weeks, but we certainly haven't so far had to reckon with that cognitive dissonance and what it would have entailed. I love the meta aspect of this story because it's both very funny and also, it also says a lot about us. And I say this because I watch the Browns now and here's a stat that just makes the point that Muno is saying, through these two games, the Browns offense has given up more touchdowns than the Browns defense.

Because Dishon Watson has been throwing pick six as the turnovers, one touchdown given up by the Browns defense, two given up by the Browns offense. And I say that because it feels when I watch it, Dan, like this feels karmic, almost, right? Like the most morally reprehensible transaction in sports history has been rewarded by a comeuppance that we rarely get with this magnitude.

But then in terms of the karma of it, it does feel like we, as people who talk about this stuff, are getting an undeserved break. Like the whole thing about Dishon Watson, and we talked, Meena and I have talked about Watson on all sorts of pods in the past. And we've always done it with the perspective of, here is a test for everybody,

not just for the Browns. You know the Browns failed. You know the NFL failed for the reasons of all those teams signing up in a line to sign Dishon Watson. But for us, there was some like, there was some notion of here we get to show how enlightened we are.

And instead we evade it. And I think that is both something that's eating Dishon Watson's brain. That's the other part of this, right? Like he's on Twitter blocking people. He is feeling the comeuppance in a way that is particular and familiar to anybody who's just been online too much, who's been popular and now isn't. But Dan, like this is something that you

yourself have dealt with, right? What do you do with the guy who was back and is suddenly a news story? Let's quantify though, what mean is saying when she says that he is bad because according to NFL's next gen stats, he ranks deadlasts and expected points added per drop back among all 35 quarterbacks with at least 200 passing attempts. So when you say bad, it's worse than Davis Mills, worse than Zach Wilson, worse than Carson Wentz, you have given $230 million guarantee dollars to somebody who at 28 is playing like someone who does not have long term prospects at the position and in a sport that has gotten better at measuring so many things that are hard to measure i put in front of you guys how do you measure

because you went from popular to unpopular but it's more than that from someone who has had a charmed famed existence to someone who has had his sexual deviant slash crimes put in front of everybody in a way that would make any of us uncomfortable if these kinds of privacy were there for all the world to see and you were unmasked in a way that might affect performance, that might harm you energetically on who you are as a human being carrying around a drape of the world is looking at me laughing at me and everyone I meet, the word association is this guy did at the very least things that are publicly, privately, shamefully reprehensible and at the worst criminal

stuff. I think it's undoubtedly affected him, but I also think that we have a lot of counterfactuals of guys who have not been affected by it, or guys who have been involved in scandals, involving sexual assault, rape, accusations, domestic violence, whatever, and have come back and bald out.

And when they do that, the fans immediately rally behind them. So that's what kind of makes this sort of tricky because we can point to him and try to like arm terror psychologist and say clearly the back nose that he's being mean and hated and that's affecting his performance. And I'm sure it is, honestly.

It is something that I like, we try to put ourselves in, you know, not necessarily those shoes, but the idea of being exposed in the way that Dan just described has to affect a human brain. But there are just so many other examples of it not happening. And I think that's why this story is so interesting to me because I was just so prepared for that to happen. Like mentally, I was like, okay, like if, like right now because he's playing bad too, because he's playing poorly, if I, if you were to put a clip of me saying something about the fact that he's been accused of all these, you know, he was accused of all these

sexual crimes and misdemeanors and whatnot. And if you put that out now, I would not get hate. That's what I wanna, that's what I wanna to build down in here. Like if you aggregated this and put it out, I would not get hate males. If he was playing well, I would be inundated by hate male right now.

Because that's what happens when we bring up the sort of behavior with players who are playing well, Pablo. This is why sports is such a unique place, is that the definition of success in sports demands celebration literally. Yeah. We're clapping like the idea that you would not acknowledge that that you would try to rain on someone's parade

is itself evidence that you are a hater. You are a player hater in the most definitional sense. And in fact, part of the whole con of this, of sports in this way, is that we shouldn't need someone to be good or bad to render a verdict when they are just there appearing and the whole point is that they are there appearing and paid this much money with this context,

like that's all we need, right? Journalistically speaking, that's all we need. But Dan, as you know, part of being a sports journalist is not merely doing the journalism, it's figuring out how to be a part of the party as well. Because right now, if Mina in this alternate world is pointing out at the journalism, it's figuring out how to be a part of the party as well. Because right now, if Mina in this alternate world is pointing out at the party, hey, you know, let's not clap too hard, it's the definition of being Debbie Downer.

Mina, you saw already Cleveland was when this was starting. You saw what was happening at the tailgate. Cleveland was already rallying around with all of it's history of losing and everything that's happened with the Browns. There was already stuff happening that suggested to you that Browns fans were ready to support this decision in the name of regional identity, team identity, and the name of I support my team no matter what. I felt some of this this this week in a way that was strange where we were just talking about something like this and I mentioned

casually that Tyree kill, you know, that I had declined to go on his podcast. We were going to do podcasts. I would do his. He would do mine. And then I told his people, I'm going to ask just a fair warning. I know it risks risks the interview but I'm going to ask at least a question about some of the stuff that he has hitting, you know, men, women and children and then all of that evaporated and I immediately got hit me and because you can imagine the enthusiasm around the dolphins right now and specifically brought by that guy 20 years of losing this is the dolphins. This is a team with that that was, with Marino and Shula, the winning his franchise anywhere in sports, okay, in the 80s. But for 20 years,

they've been terrible. Cleveland's been terrible, always. And the crimes here are worse, you know, the number, than what it is in number, what we are talking about with Tyree Kill, and what came after me was, well, why would you ask him any of those questions? Why is that necessary? This is what's wrong with journalism today because I'm honestly not sure, Meena. I'm honestly not sure as we speak about this. Who does the average American hate more, the misbehaving athlete or the media?

Because it might be the media. And us asking questions and moralizing about this and and a lot of people don't want it in their huddle like don't want it that they'll take the guy who scores touchdowns no matter what he's done because he makes them feel good and the journalist asking those questions does not make any of it feel good i think it's not it the i think we're kind of getting at and this is both these stories illustrate that is a Lot of sports fans care. They do

but the quality of play try and solve and informs how much everybody cares and the scope of the response I mean when Tyree Kale was drafted by Kansas City I wrote I was writing back then and I wrote a column for it about it, and I wrote about, pardon me, it wasn't even when it was drafted, it was actually early in his NFL career. There, I wrote a column about it, I wrote about how he had pleaded guilty to domestic violence, my strangulation, I wrote about some of the details of why he was kicked off of the tea, all of it. It's all out there, you can find it on thespn.com.

It's pretty, you read the police report. It's hard to read. It's a really awful stuff. I can tell you right now because he was not an established successful player. I thought you didn't get a lot of backlash. If I was to bring that up a couple years later, after his success, completely different.

I don't know. And maybe we're saying maybe it's obvious that, you know, in sports, as a success or failure in the case of Watson seems to inform whether or not people give a sh** about other stuff. But those two athletes are a pretty good case study for the way in which sports fans react to us even bringing it up. But we should also point out too that the tests that we've been talking about here, the tests that we don't have to take because of the Sean Watson's failures is a hard test. It's hard because the question becomes like, so is it a footnote that we have to append to every mention when we're on around the horn,

you know, like do I have to sneak in after talking about Tyreex Hill 80 yard touched out? You know, like do I have to just sneak that in there? Are we sort of sticking a finger in the air and saying, okay, it feels like Twitter's been talking about this a lot so I don't need to talk about it today. Like in an era of fragmentation of media consumption in which no one is watching the same thing.

All of us also then feel this responsibility that is also fractured, as to like, so, who am I communicating with? And what context do they have? Here's how I came down in my capacity as an NFL analyst. And you guys can tell me if this is a cop-out, and I'm totally open to being told it's a cop-out. Um, I felt this way about Hill,

who I have talked about a lot as a football player and I have not brought up any of this. I have purely talked about his play, the way impact spacing, the way impact the game, all of it, my feeling. And I was prepared to do this with Watson as well. And I have been, when I talk about him as a player so far, I have in conversations where I'm like, I'm gonna get 45 seconds on TV

and talk about the football, I have not brought it up. However, when you're in an environment where you're talking about the person, their career, who they are, you gotta f***ing bring it up. And people still fall short in that regard. When they talk about why Watson wasn't on the field,

a broadcast have gotten a little bit better about this, or if you're talking about, again, a hill off the field, his life, his, like, whatever, that's when, you know, any emission is egregious to me. And Dan, if you were to, you know, like, I think you were correct. You're gonna podcast with a guy, you've you were to, you know, like, I think you were correct. You're going to podcast with the guy who talked about it. That's not you giving 45 seconds about him, you

know, running a wheel route off of a short motion. You got to bring it up. I find some thing. But some of the things here that are interesting to me, right? Because we've had some pretty seismic shifts in America over the last 20 years. So journalists are allowed to be befuddled here, even though I know we're in the take industry, you got to have conviction and you got to know everything. It's okay to not have your footing here on exactly how I would discuss this because we're setting the template for how to discuss it going forward because once upon a time, we weren't talking about it at all many years ago.

And America's changing sports is going to change too. But when you say that fans do care, I do believe that this transaction when it comes to the playpen sports, it can be as simple as this. Tyree kill scoring touchdowns makes me feel good. You asking me to read a police report makes me feel bad. I am a sports fan. I am here for the entertainment. Don't make me feel bad. The Cleveland Browns make me feel bad enough because they don't get into the end zone enough. And so this is not something I want from my journalists in sports. I understand the customer taking the position. It's not my position, but I understand why some arrive there. Some do. I just want to just, I recently did a survey for my podcast asking my listeners

how they felt about, and so many of them were like, hey, thank you for talking about DeShon Watson. I just want to say, like, yes, it feels the loudest guys are the ones in the parking lot with horrible signs, you know, browns fans? But that isn't the majority. I truly believe a lot of sports fans do feel conflicted about them. This, a lot of sports fans do want to hear about all of these things at once. It's just the tone and the scope of it does tend to fluctuate based on play. I think we are all agreeing here.

Yeah, I look at the idea of human interest stories, right? Like we hear this. I feel for like, for instance, someone who's been getting a lot of this, criticism is Malika Andrews, our colleague, Adios Pien, she does the NBA draft, right? And so, during the draft, she tells stories that are human interest stories that are often sad, or they involve the complications of illegal history.

And the question is like, when you're doing introductions of human beings, do you actually wanna know? Or does it feel like you're raining again on the parade that you are in fact, like why are you bringing broccoli to the party? Like we're not here for that. No, this is not time for vegetables.

And even now at the end of a segment like this, I'm wondering truly, full disclosure, how can I melt some cheese over this broccoli? This has been a really serious topic, Dad. How are we gonna get the fuck out of it to get to the funniest stuff? Yeah, we need to do that, and I think we failed. I think in every respect, we as media members have failed. You did, though, make me flinch when you said

there was funny here, and then we found none of it. Because you did use the word funny on karma, and then we found none of it because you did use the word funny way on karma and then we found none of the funny I I I should mention that I meant to say this to There you go there you go. Yeah, that was that was for the podcast. I would work. That was good. That was that was a Iveley education. That was an Ivy League. I believe first wasn't even a good fart on this. Wasn't even a good one. You guys got better? That was more raspberry. Oh my God.

That is under water. That's not a hot tub. That's a hot tub. I mean a hot tub fart. Go. Oh my God, how did my baby's foot end up right here? It's like on the other side. It's so big that it's almost hitting my back. So your baby knows what you wanted to talk about today because we've arrived at the point where I have to talk about this.

I guess it's in name this New York magazine cover story and I want to give you the headline of this because Mina cannot stop texting me about it as aforementioned. But the headline the cover story is can parents and childless people be friends? And I am laughing for the podcast audience smiling wide because we arrived the three of us in a sort of perfect arrangement of people to consider this because I have a three-year-old daughter, Violet.

Mina has the kid who just kicked her, as aforementioned, and Dan is our childless friend, who maybe won't be our friend if this story has legs. I'm in transition. I don't know when this is coming out though. So it could be, I could be at any of these three pockets by the time this episode cuts out. So I should say, as a matter of setup here,

that there is a line referring to a study from another lens-based researcher that says that friendships of parents are the most fragile when their children are around three. And so I come into this conversation, embodying that. It has been both very difficult for me to feel like a present dad. I don't know how many of the Dutch people this researcher surveyed have been launching shows at a company founded by a man

who demands to know why we're paying this person all of this money. But that's my situation. And I find myself to be struggling the most with just presence. Like it's not the issue of like, I'm I losing friends, it's the issue of, am I just paying enough attention to my child?

A lot of the story, Mina, is about parents being consumed with their kids to the point where they lose friends. I'm somebody who's been so consumed with making sure the show is good that my friends at work and in life don't see me as the guy who has been consumed by his kid that now I'm wondering if I'm not enough consumed by my kid. The story is full of like horror show anecdotes from people whose friendships have been ruptured

when one friend has a kid. It feels like their lives aren't connecting anymore. And the author talked about her. She's a childless person, talked about feeling that way. Like she's losing friends, like she's being judged. Everybody in this story seems to feel that way. Like, oh, this has not gone well. Like, I have lost friends. I have, and I feel like I'm doing this wrong.

So I wanna start by saying, my read on the story was, the lot of these people suck. That was my first reaction. I don't know, Dan, I don't know if you felt that I was like, God, these people are so self-conscious in their or judgy or something, because my experience, so I'm a recently turned 38,

Pablo is about to turn 38, right? That's right, that's right. A little bit younger than you. 27. And so I think I'm in a good position to judge as someone whose friends, a lot of their friends, my friends have had young children over the last five years or so.

And I don't feel like I've lost them. I've been able to sustain those friendships. Frankly, most of them, I feel like in their friendships with me, and I would include Pablo in this category. We just, they don't talk about their kids that much. Like they bring up other stuff with me career. It's a lot of working moms who frankly have seemed relieved to have a space to not talk about their,

that's just my, how I have viewed this situation. I have not felt judged or left out or anything like that with the majority of my friendships. That said, I do think this is important, as I chewed it over a little bit more. My friends and I, I think, come at this from a pretty privileged position. They are all people who can afford childcare. They are all people who can afford to bifurcate their lives in a way that I think a lot of the people in the story maybe can't, I don't know, just generally cannot. Some people have to involve their children much more in their lives by default in a way

that I think me and my cohort are lucky or have the advantages not to. And I will also say one more thing. I don't ask that much of my friends. Like, if I see a friend three times in a calendar year, we are tight. And I think reading this, a lot of people have more significant expectations out of adult friendship. Like, they seem to hang out a lot.

I've got hanging out with that one. There's expectations, Dan, in this story, their expectations of like, sorry, I'm gonna have to bring my kid with me when we go to our all day brunch. And I'm like, what are you guys? Who's having these? What is happening here?

So anyways, that was my read on it. It's like, I was like, these people are very different from me and my experiences. And I am not afraid of this. However, I want to recognize that I bring privilege and a different sort of perspective to the situation. I would assume that in the hypothetical here, just not saying it's a baby, just saying,

your life is everything it is right now, but I am now going to bring into it the overwhelming responsibility of a screaming sh** monster. And I am going to put that screaming sh** monster at the centerpiece of your life in a way that reduces it to something very small because you're always feeling kind of overwhelmed and you've just invited something that is bigger and more overwhelming than anything you have ever known. I would assume that that would

alter your life as you knew it in all ways and friendships would be one of them. My best friends, the commonalities I have, generally tend to be work-related things. People that I connect with because we have similar interests. I would assume if you get new friends in adulthood, that it would be going to games or schools or whatever it is that you're congregating with other people who are dealing with the same overwhelming screaming sh** monster situations that you're dealing with. And so that that would be a place that you would connect and perhaps you would outgrow friendships.

I don't know how many friendships you guys have that are long-standing, that are 20 and 30 year friendships, but they all change, I think. You lose a lot of them and as you get later later in life, you, your life shrinks some. The things that are important to you are the most important things and there are fewer of them or you have time for fewer of them. I mean, I wanna be honest too, right?

There are two things about my life, my work life balance. On the one hand, I like to say what I was about to say, which is that I'm doing this all for violet. I'm doing this all because I'm providing for my kid. And that is on some... Not true at all, not true at all. As the father of a daughter.

As the father of a daughter. I am hosting this show to fund her college tuition that is literally true. But it's also something that, if I'm being honest and I want to be on this show, perhaps uniquely, I also fucking love it. And so something that I'm curious to see Mina go through, Dan, because Mina, like me, like you, we all really care about work.

Like I think if our sample here is over-indexed on something, it is people who are obsessed with their jobs in a way that is legitimately fulfilling to them. That's why I just said all that I said. As I relate to how both of you guys have lived, it's part of why I think we get along, it's part of why our friendship now manifests in literal work for me. And I think what Mina is going to deal with

as this kid kicks his way out of her body is the question of like, how much am I going to have to carve out of my work schedule to feel like I am checking the box of good parenting, which can be anxiety-inducing as I have felt it? I, Deanna, I were talking about this before the show. I know my life is going to change a lot, and my priorities will change, and I fully expect that and approach it with.

I hope a great deal of humility. But on the topic of like whether it'll affect my friendships, I don't really plan on bringing it up around my childhood friends that much. I guess is what I wanna get at. Like I, something that's changed over the last nine months is my friends who have kids. The aforementioned friends who have been so excited

to just go out with me on their own, have sitters, talk about the careers, friend couples with that, like my husband and I, our relationships with them are changing. My relationships with those people are changing. Now I started to talk to them about, like, damn, how much does a nanny go for? It's stuff like that.

What is this like? Yeah, it's diaper or genie. What's that about? Yeah, yeah. So that's changing. But, so that's kind of introduced like a cool element into those friendships, but I really plan on not, like again, having friendship,

and again, this is something that I'm lucky enough to be able to do. My work friendships, my friendships with people who don't have children, like it's really not something I plan on having take over my relationships with them in a way that they haven relationships with them. In a way that they haven't with me. No, I've been past, you know. And so I have, Dan, I've been a siloer.

I silo stuff. I have work, I have a kid, I have wife, I am always trying to, I mean, Mina said this before and I really resonated with it. I'm trying to find out what my friend is interested in. I'm not trying to impose on them the thing that I unilaterally want to discuss because that doesn't seem fun for me

as a person who's wired in that way. All of which brings me to, I think, the elephant in the room here, which is Dan ever even contemplating, whether this thing, this, this, this monster is something that you ever wanted to, you know, bring into your precious world. I have given so little thought to it over the course

of my life that I believe and have questioned myself as to whether there is something wrong with me in terms of not thinking about this responsibility. The size of something that would create so much upheaval that it would take you to a larger place in growth and love, but also would be, I think, a complete upending of anything that you've known. I'm ashamed, actually, to admit to the both of you

how little time I spend or have spent the entirety of my life thinking about this. And I don't know that I have a good reason for you. Like, it's not a fear. I like kids. I'm good with kids. I like renting kids. I don't like owning kids.

I like borrowing them for a little while and turning them upside down and doing TikTok by the ankles, but the permanence of not being able to put that responsibility aside ever and furthermore, because I think this is what's going to happen to you. I would assume it happens to everybody that you only have so much bandwidth that of course something like friendships or something is gonna get gone when this overwhelming thing makes an appearance.

I don't even know what your checklist is on priorities, but I would assume a lot of things would get gone because all of a sudden, the thing that's most important is that child, it has to be. I, that this is another thing from the article, like the way they depicted childless lives is so different from mine. They're like talking about like going to like music festivals and like to, these like, really game nights.

I'm like, my life is like, I work, my husband and I go out to dinner three nights a week and then we watch Netflix. So, yeah, it'll change. I just, I just heard the thing that's changing. You got to dinner three times a week. It's gone. Oh my God. Gone.

They've screaming restaurants. I've been in so many restaurants with screaming babies. You're going to be embarrassed by the screaming babies. I give up. Yeah. Well, I guess this kind of enters into, for me, the decision to do it, because I'm not great with kids.

I don't love them. I don't look at my friends' kids and think that I'd like to spend more time with them. I have never particularly enjoyed babies, and I never fantasized about being a mom my entire life. But as I was kind of pondering existence, one thing, I had a moment, Dan, where it wasn't like, ah,

this is gonna disrupt my life or whatever. I just kind of woke up one day and thought, you know, I'd like my life to be different. And we talked about this when we did the South Peace Sessions. The older I get, the more I realize that I do love my job, but I get significantly more fulfillment from my human, my relationships and particularly my close ones that have kind of expanded my heart.

And I see the way in which this new relationship seems to expand other people's hearts and their minds. And so that seems like an experience that I'd like to have. And I have this recent history of like, my really close friendships, my marriage, my relationship with my dog, all being the things that clearly make me so much happier than everything else.

So why not introduce another variable that will probably do the same thing? I just want Mina's future son when he plays back this video to appreciate that when your mom is talking about you, like an analytically minded GM, that means she loves you as much as she possibly can. Hi upside prospect, I got the cab space. You're just a great variable. I wanted to talk to you guys about everything surrounding Russell brand. I have found him

fascinating for a long time. Wildly charismatic,ipsmart, somebody who I have marveled at as a comedian and a fast thinker, and somebody who's so articulate that throughout his career, I've been fascinated by him. And now, as a recovering sex addict, recovering drug addict, he stands accused very credibly, very thoroughly at a lot of reporting of criminal actions against women that a lot of men are getting accused of these days and getting the support of the usual subjects of Tucker Carlson and Andrew Tate and Alex

Jones and just a strange phenomenon to see who supports this kind of reporting, this kind of criminality, and without getting into too many of the particulars about what he stands accused of. What I wanted to actually talk to you about was I remember after 9-11, the horror of the planes hitting the buildings. I remember mine, local news, my national news. It felt like the anchors were no longer impartial. They were scared and they wanted to attack someone.

And I saw on my television, objectivity evaporate. And I also saw what had been the newsmen of my time, the Dan Rathers, the Walter Cronkites, the Ted Coppils, whatever the respected newsmen were, polling showed that the most respected newsman in America was John Stewart, became John Stewart after 9-11. And as comedians have become our independent thinkers because government, everyone thinks government and media are corrupt. The following that Russell Brand has,

not unlike Joe Rogans, makes him a media entity unto himself and part of his platform is, he's just showing you all the time how corrupt the media is it's part of why he's popular it's part of why he has an enormous following it's part of why people will follow him anywhere on conspiracies and it's part of why those people will now support him as he stands up and says say it's a witch hunt I'm now the victim women aren't victims of my crimes I'm the victim I told you they were going to come after me I'm now the victim. Women aren't victims of my crimes.

I'm the victim. I told you they were gonna come after me. I'm just fascinated by everything happening around this person and I wanted to explore with you guys. We'll start with Pablo, I suppose, with you guys, the media element of this, the audience grabbing of this and how it is that these people get so much clout

that their following will follow them anywhere. Yeah, I wasn't sure when Dan brought up 9-11 Mina. I was like, where the f*** are we going? With any got there. I wanted to state very clearly that when Russell Brande is the subject of an investigative report that involves testimony, credible reporting about four women, including one who was just 16 years old, right? Accusing Russell Brand of rape, sexual assault, and abuse, it's not something that is merely interesting because holy s***, a lot of real reporting here.

I encourage you guys, go to the Times, the London Times, go to check, go out and see what the reporting here is, the BBC was involved in this stuff. It's not just like a couple of tweets. And we should say that when it comes to Russell Brand's defense, what Dan is describing him as, this sort of sharp-tongued, British-accented charismatic leader, it's probably easier if we actually listen and watch what he said. These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was

in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies, and as I've written about extensively What he said. I'm being transparent about it now as well. And to see that transparency, metastasized into something criminal that I absolutely deny makes me question, is there another agenda at play? We are obviously going to look into this matter because it's very, very serious. In the meantime, I want you to stay close, stay awake, but more important than any of that. If you can, please, stay free. There is what Dan is describing, Meena. I am transparent, I am free, I am a truth teller in an era when you cannot trust the mainstream

liars who allege the truth. And this has been, I don't, again, I don't know how much of this was strategized. I'm gonna pivot so that I can claim this if these accusations come out. That has been a theory, but it's clearly an effective strategy that he has followed because lots of other people have done it to great monetary success.

Living in a space or cultivating sort of an ideology that's trust nothing, when accusations like this come up, it's a very convenient place to be in. Conspiracies. Yeah, right. Like, it's, you know, if you've already cultivated your fan-based question, everything, naturally, when these sorts of very credible accusations, again, like his defense is that he had a consensual relationship with a 16-year-old when he was 31,

I just want to hit that again. Yes. You've already kind of primed the pump, so to speak, right? Like that's kind of what is happening here. I think the first thing I would say is his primary stances as a truth teller are really easy ones to take. Mainstream media and big pharma are bad. That is literally the easiest thing you can do, right?

Like in terms of things that people are already, and all people, frankly, in a society right now around the world have suspicions about, you know, like that's the elites you can put the things that these people have. Politicians are bad. I don't know if you've heard. Politicians, politicians, big pharma, really billionaires, and mainstream media. Yeah, but don't underestimate it as a platform. Donald Trump took out the career I care about

Yeah, no, because because they're it there's something to be said for gathering followers just simply telling people again and again The media is bad. You're choosing the thing that people already want to believe or already have feelings about and then what we've seen as people who are unusually charismatic, Donald Trump probably falls into this category, good at being on television, or in the case of brand. And this is what Stan, you brought up at the beginning, just very hyper articulate. You combine, so you take these things

that people are already suspicious of, that just lots of people, but a certain type person in particular is already inclined to be suspicious of. And then you take someone who's really good at talking and you combine those two things together and we shouldn't be surprised that they've developed these like massive, massive fanbases. It's take, it's an easy platform combined with a skillful order. easy platform combined with a skillful order. All these people who traffic in this space on the internet and there's a lot of them or in podcasting, they're doing it because, I mean, this is the great, the hilarious thing about it. They're making a ton of money off of it. Like, they have recognized the most lucrative, possible space. This is there, like, equivalent of big pharma

finding the drug and then pricing it up. And a very willing audience. So we shouldn't be surprised by any of it or surprised by the fact that, like, you know, it seems to be one of the most lucrative spaces in independent media or entertainment right now. It's about the internet, right? Like so much of this is about the rise of the internet

and what has been called the democratization of media, which has resulted in authoritarian impulses, of course, as you've alluded to with Trump and all that. But to me, it's about, okay, now you have the ability to get what you want to hear from anywhere. And the media as an entity has such a losing hand. Because two things are true. On the one hand, yes, it is totally bad that elites have determined the flow of information

when you say that in that way. What's less bad is when you have people who have devoted their lives to professional standards and ethical introspection and accountability, who may fail a lot, right? But they're still trying to hold themselves to a rigorous standard, and in fact, can be shamed. They can be shamed. Shamed being the guard rail on all of this, I always return to this because reading and listening to Russell Brand talk about his relationships reminds me of the immunity

that so many of these people also have to conventional shame. And conventional shame, again, I get why it's an outdated concept, it feels musty, but it's also a guard rail in a world without them. And so the media has to have, the media is like a goalkeeper that can't allow a single goal otherwise. They get to be criticized by the fan who's like, I could do that.

But in this case, you actually get to get podcasts. I mean, it occurs to me also that part of what Dan is nostalgic for, that I am too, despite being that much younger is, I don't know, the era of a guy in a suit and tie who has a newsroom behind him telling you, we've thought really deeply about these stories. We've investigated them, we've reported them,

and he has a very sonorous voice, and he brings you this news. And now, for better and for worse, the guy giving you the news media can be dressed like Dan. And that's a little dangerous. I think it's not that people can draw the line from John Stewart to getting to Russell Brand or whatever, that all these people are trusted or credible or whatever.

It's just what Pablo is saying, which is that everything now is kind of algorithmic, right? Like we're not being fed something that's curated with standards, with you got to have this, you know, there's accountability. That's all gone. You're being fed what you want. And what a lot of people want is slap. Or they want to be made to feel like smarter, or like they're seeing through things,

or whatever, I mean, every king is looking at everything. That's the point I was trying to kind of make about, like when I say, what am I saying? Like he's attacking big farm on mainstream media. It's like the easiest thing you can do. That's what people want. That's what the algorithm, the algorithm saw a reward, what we want. That's what the algorithm, the algorithm, solve, reward, what we want. They reward hate. They reward conflict and dissent. And so I think what's, this is not a figurehead

problem so much as it is a distribution one. The pipes have changed and the pipes are giving us slop and that's how you end up in this place. There's always been bad faith actors and people and hucksters, but they've never had the kind of distribution that they have now. By the way, YouTube.com slash Pablo Torre finds it. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out the same thing right now. By the way, youtube.com slash Pablo Torre finds it. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out the same thing right now. I'm like, how do we get jumped on this algorithm to like get

people to get this piece of it? I'm watching them. He's doing it for you, Violet. Only for you. Pablo Torre funds out. So at the very end of every episode of Share and Tell, we go around and we find out what we found out today. So, Mina, what did you find out on today's episode? Um, hmm. I find out that Dan calls kids s**t monsters,

which is gonna hit differently when he sends me a present pretends like he's happy for me. S**t. S**t. S**t. Sorry, S**t. S**t. S**t.

S**t. S**t. Takes one and no one. S**t. I found out that Pablo Torre lies to himself daily Screaming sh** monsters. Takes one and no one. I found out that Pablo Torre lies to himself daily and believes that he is working and spending time away from the daughter and wife so hard because he's doing it for them.

That is his crucifix. Jesus had his crucifix. Pablo has his crucifix. He is doing it for you, Violet and Liz. Yes. I found out that I need to password protect YouTube so that Violet can never gain access to the ability to watch what we just recorded today.

Pablo Torre finds out a show with a phone number, a phone number that is again, 51385 Pablo, that's 51385 Pablo, a number that I now realize David Samson is furious about because guess what Samson, yeah we have a f***ing phone number. That show is produced by Michael Antonucci, Ryan Cortez, Sam Daywig, Patrick Kim, Neely Lomon, Rachel Miller Howard, Carl Scott, Ethan Shryer, Matt Sullivan, Chris Tumonello, as well as Studio Engineering. By Brady and Tech, post-production by NDW Post,

and our theme song, by John Bravo. I'll talk to you next time.