The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - South Beach Sessions - Mina Kimes

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

Protect Mina Kimes at all costs.  Dan and Mina don't hold back about the crazy, anxiety-filled playground that was "Highly Questionable", the ways they've learned to turn criticism into confidence over the years, and fighting off embarrassment, disappointment, and the downright stupid frustrations that still eat at them today. No one would dare sh*t on Mina or Dan after this... alright, maybe Dan. Watch Mina co-host "NFL Live" weekdays on ESPN and listen and subscribe to "The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to another South Beach session here with our young old friend Meena Kimes I'm gonna say something that is awkward and probably parental at the start of this that I have not told you I don't think I have ever told you oh god I am so proud of you off the jump you have started with I am so proud of you. You have gotten so strong. Like you have gotten so strong. I don't think people listening to this have any earthly idea, the degree of difficulty of what you have done to get to where you are.

And I'd like them to know it. I'd like them to see it. Will you help me? Or do you not want to participate in this portion of it? Because the degree you got to sports journalism, knowing sports, but knowing next to nothing about sports journalism and ESPN's history, right? Like you were as raw as a novice could be. I think more importantly importantly next to zero experience being in the public eye more than the institutional

knowledge, go read these guys all had all the fun or whatever and you can get a great cut. I'm out of free. But being on TV, being on radio, that was the bigger change for me, having an audience. Okay. You say that and understood I will get to that in a second because that was turbulent and unpleasant and this constituency even hours can be really caveman. And so what you endured from my vantage point felt unfair, but I would say you're shrugging your shoulders on

But I would say you're shrugging your shoulders on Learning what it is to be a competent strong Football voice on a sport that not many people are smart on like you downloaded that like a computer You downloaded football intelligence like a computer like artificial intelligence and you're telling me well I could read read about ESPN read one book about ESPN, like the Matrix, like Keanu Reeves, and insert it here, and I know how to fly helicopters, but it ain't that easy. Yeah, I think feeling confident enough about the sport to have opinions about it is not easy. And that's definitely probably more so than anything related to gender or being on TV or whatever.

That's been the most difficult part of... You chose the hardest sport to understand. Why chose the most fun sport and the most interesting sport? Where there's something new to learn every day. And that's, Bo texted me the other day, and he said, maybe he saw I was on NFL live on May, whatever, and the real drags of the Aussies in. And he was just like, how are you not bored? How are you happy to be talking about this?

And I was like, I don't know. I just, I learned something new about this game every week. I tried to learn. I seek out people to teach me things and I think that's what makes it so fun and stimulating to me is like the constant learning. Okay, but again, I want to go through the terrain of degree of difficulty here because you like the hardest things. terrain of degree of difficulty here because you like the hardest things. And a few months in I said something about quarterback play. And it wasn't even on television. You pulled me aside ever so gently and said actually Dan and then cited the 10 ways that I was wrong using stats that I didn't know about.

And you did that a lot in a lot of places that the sport is forever evolving and has a lot of learning. You are still underestimating. I want the audience to know the degree of difficulty on this. You get to ESPN knowing nothing about ESPN. I just didn't consume that much sports media growing up, just sports.

And so I don't, yeah, I just didn't really have an awareness of like the history of the company, the history of most of the shows. Even when I would go on shows, I kind of, I didn't really watch them. So that was yeah, I made it a little bit difficult. Because your history was as a business journalist, which seems not fun. It was really fun. Well, I was an investigative reporter, which is like the sexiest kind of business journalist.

That seems even less fun. It's a lot of getting yelled at, a lot of reading documents. But you know, when you watch Spotlight or the big short, you know, like that, that's, I mean, I wasn't doing work on them, that level at all, but it was exciting. It felt like the stakes were high. It felt like I was doing work that mattered. I miss that to some degree.

Is that right? That aspect of it, feeling, especially when I read like a really great piece of, because I still read business news all the time. And if I read something that's really really good a lot of the work The pro public has frankly been doing over the last couple of years and I read that site religiously because all my old editors and I work there and I'm like ah This is cool. I miss I miss that that little bit Do you have guilt about the work that you're doing not being worthwhile enough because I would say the work that you're doing is more important not being worthwhile enough because I would say the work that you're doing is more important than the work that you're doing. The work that you're doing and being someone who is better

at this than most people. As a representative, I don't know how much of this you carry around with you. It's different work. It's it's enjoyable work and I drive meaning from it in different ways for sure. But don't you, I mean, like if you read, because obviously you don't really write that much anymore, if you read a really great piece. I mean, a heymaker off the top. Don't you ever still feel like a little bit of a twinge of like, oh my god, like it makes you want to write

when you read something really great? I get more, I don't read it or so. I get more inspired to write when I feel something really great. Interesting. Right, it's not about reading somebody's great work. I get more inspired to write when I feel something really great, right? It's not about reading somebody's great work. That's a much healthier state of mind because what I'm suggesting is a little bit more about like competition and but it's more than that for me. Like when I see a really great investigative piece, there's a little bit of the competitive,

like, oh my god, what if I had stuck with this and maybe that would be me, but also like, think about the impact this is having. That's so cool. You know, and so I do miss that. That's funny that you should say that because as I've gotten older, I have realized in a way that is pretty strong. Man, competitive doesn't serve me.

Don't like it. Don't see it as very valuable or virtuous the way that I used to. Now that's also, that can be just the way you get lazy, the way you get not curious or sentient, but if for me it hasn't mean that I'm less curious, it simply just means, man, it's okay if I'm fifth place like I don't need to win, I don't need to. Did that happen recently or? Yeah, I mean that comes with adulthood and growth, I would say over the last five or ten years

mostly, and came with success, right? Like I felt like I'd arrived in some places where I can make my own decisions on happiness. I think I'm, I'm, I wouldn't'm, obviously I'm not at a point where I look around and I'm like, I have no peers, but I have found similarly as I feel more content with where I am, as I feel like when I look at the things that I'm doing on a database, I'm happy with it, I'm looking outward less and I feel less envious or covetous or curious than I did even four or five years ago. But you have arrived.

You've, I don't know, look, you don't carry yourself with a great deal of ego, but you have carved out as far as I can tell, largely the professional life that makes you happiest. You're doing the things that you want with the power that you want, with the leverage that you want. And I don't know that there are a the power that you want, with the leverage that you want. And I don't know that there are a whole lot of people who can tell you what to do anymore. I don't know about that one. Well, I mean, you have a power to,

like people know you're good at this, and you know you're good at this. I can say no more. This is, yeah, I think that may be that. Oh, well, that's a conquering at ESPN. People don't say no at ESPN. Like you can say no more, like they take advantage a conquering at ESPN. People don't say no at ESPN. Like you can say no more. Like they take advantage of that as an ethos.

I think it's a really struggle with saying no to things. That's for sure. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think it's funny, because I'm at a point in my career where people are constantly asking me, what do you want to do in five years? What do you want to do with your next counter? What do you want?

What do you want more, more, more, you know? And then you've got people who pay, who want you to want more. And then you've got people who you're interested in. And I always feel like such a disappointment to those people because I'm always like, I'm pretty happy doing what I'm doing. You know, I maybe can mix,

they try working with this person, maybe do this project, but like, for the most part, I'm like happy doing what I'm doing. You know, I maybe can mix, they try working with this person, maybe do this project, but like for the most part, I'm like pretty content with the work that I'm doing at the moment. And I worry that that comes across as unambitious, but I want to... I mean, these are people who don't know you

if they think that you're unambitious, like you are a worker. My ambition, I've found, is really, I just want to be so much better at what I'm doing. I don't want to be doing something else. And it's a different kind of drive in ambition. But I have found that it still causes some confusion with people. Because I think in our industry, a lot of, most ambition seems to be more specific and it tends to be more about a different platform

or a different stage or a different, whatever. But this is one of the reasons that I say uncomfortably that I'm proud of you because you have under duress under unpleasant circumstances, you've found and derived both real strength and real confidence. And it wasn't easy to come by. Like it was hard. You had to earn it.

You had to earn it with I say all the time what you and others taught me on highly questionable. And I didn't realize it until you guys were doing highly questionable with me. And you'd be in the makeup chair, preparing an anxious 45 minutes beforehand. And I'd stumble onto the set with Mac and cheese in my beard and get things wrong and had the comfort of getting things wrong. And you went in, Navas scared anxious,

is like, I can't get a thing wrong. Because if I get a thing wrong on television, the internet is like, I can't get anything wrong. Because if I get anything wrong on television, the internet is going to devour me. And I'm sitting there next to you, and I'm like, getting things wrong all the time, and it's allowed. Some of that is true, obviously. It's not just a gender thing.

If you're new, you're judged more harshly. I mean, I can't remember who told me this. Somebody used to be an early in my career said, knew you're judged more harshly. I mean, I can't remember who told me that somebody used to be an early in my career said, you know, I talked to them, I was asking about kind of feedback and criticism and they're like, at some point people just get used to you. It's true. If you're just on TV a long time, people get used to you and the criticism to some degree subsides. So I think certainly some of it is being an outsider and looking different and that arousing just all kinds

of feelings and people, not only negative ones, but some of it also when you're new, people are more likely to judge harshly. And that was true. But I also think, Dan, in retrospect, I could have gotten stuff wrong, and I would have been fine. Like, I could have made more mistakes and been looser earlier in my career. I would have survived.

But this is why I knew that you were going to be good at this because I'm like, oh wow, her standard is higher than the people judging her, her own standard for it. You wouldn't allow yourself to make a mistake. You were too prepared to look like a fool. I used to feel really bad when I felt like I had bad shows. You saw that sometimes, yeah, I was really hard at myself. But you were also like super meticulous about how it is that you were prepared to not have.

Like I wanted a loose environment. I wanted everyone to be free and easy, be your maximum self, will figure it out over time, but you didn't have that comfort at the beginning. You were still trying to prove something. And that's changed. Some of it is with time, obviously, and confidence, and riding the bike a thousand times. Some of it has changed with like a re-prioritization of things in my own personal life, where the stakes of... The big takeaway from this whole thing

is gonna be meek-hypes, not that ambitious, not that driven, it doesn't really carry more. No, the stakes of the things that are important to me have really changed. And the funny thing is I find in our job, the things that are important to me have really changed. And the funny thing is I find in our job, like it's not that my work isn't as important to me and I don't feel like I have to be, I still prepare like crazy,

but I don't beat myself up the same way because it's just other things have kind of serp, supplanted that, I guess. Do you want to discuss what they are? Is it just growing up, adulthood, things becoming more important, realizing that this is like this is silly thing we do and treating it with the utmost importance when you're who? Growing or lacking confidence. It gets too early for a tear to shed.

Okay, well, wait, no, we're dead to it. This is, well, they're pushing me, they're pushing me to make this an environment where I receive more. It's why we're doing these recently with the people in the industry that I'm closest to and I sense your discomfort with all of this praise and I recognize it. When can I ask you, when you look back at those highly questionable days and you're the end

and I know you're joking about rolling it with totally obviously that's not true But were you happy with how like you're How you felt about doing it? I guess What are you asking me you asking me the evolution of the show over eight years like at the end? I was pretty fried for a number of different reasons that didn't have anything to do with the people I was working on. I guess I mean about like caring, which because what we're talking about is like the concept of like really caring about your work and what that means and how you care and I did care so much, right?

And I felt like it was good. I was really proud of it. I was really proud of those shows and whatnot. But yeah, I do remember that you were pretty burnt out at the end, and I always felt bad about that. I was burnt out though, not for reasons that had anything to do with the actual doing of the show. I was hugely proud of the fact that we had gotten to a place where specifically you

me and Pablo could get up there and do it in 25 minutes and snort laughing because we had a facility and a comfort around each other that made for entertaining television that I knew, okay, that's good, I'm done with it, it didn't hurt. Hey, look, I can get fulfillment without something hurting. It can feel good. It doesn't have to be a process that's a little bit later. That's just surviving. You're like, you're just like, okay, I can survive this.

It's going to be 20 minutes. And. No, but it's going to be 25 minutes of laughter. Yeah, so it's not just surviving. Of enjoying people's company and having it be good. Yeah. Like, being able, I don't know if you have the feeling that with the stuff that you do,

it has to hurt in order for it to be good, but I've been striving all my life to get the fulfillment of the feel good without it having to hurt, make it easier, make it, have it come easier so that I don't have to suffer at the way that you must writing, the way that I, the painstaking way that you have to do with writing in order to get the fulfillment.

That is such a, there's such a distinction between writing and doing television in that regard for me. And this is a part, a huge part of the reason why I wanted to transition to doing television full-time from writing in the first place was, writing was literally like labor. It was like so intense. It's all you think about when you're, especially like reported features. And you're just so worried and stressed all the time. And it's never really done. And then when it's done, you're happy for 15 minutes. And then you're like, what the fuck am I going to do next?

So it's this constant cycle of pain. And it's never easy. And the reporting of it. Whereas TV might hope. And I think I have kind of right to this place, it's like it's just a job. You just show up, you shovel the takes, you get out, the day's over.

And early in my TV career, I think I still almost looked at it a little bit more like I did as a writer where it was like if I didn't have a good day, I was like just obliterated emotionally. Like if I had a bad show, it was like, if I didn't have a good day, I was like, just obliterated emotionally. Like if I had a bad show, I was like, well, that's never gonna recover from that one. And now- You do realize that's part of what makes you good, right?

Well, but I mean, maybe, but it's kinda gone. I mean, I still care a lot, but- No, but it's gone because you're confident, it's gone because you've gotten stronger. You're working with the show because you're confident. It's gone because of you. You've gotten stronger You're working with look the show that you're doing on television looks like it's huge fun It's really fun. It's really easy and even if it's not great. It's another day and it's over That's that's legitimate joy like that's that's mecca right? Sometimes it is great. Sometimes I'm like goddamn that crush

I said like you know damn, that crush. I said, we had this discussion. It was great. I'm gonna put this out. Feel good about this. And then the next show is kind of a stinker, but it's fucking fine. And that's the life that I always wanted with being on TV.

Well, but I don't know that mean of kind. I don't think. I don't know that maybe toward the end, we work together, but I would say that being that kind of comfortable with the experience is not something that was on highly questionable until the end. Until the end. Yeah, I was like, very loose.

The stakes did feel really well. I mean, we were at Feckin's Zoo. It was like, yeah, it worked. It worked. Oh, but that's what I've always aspired to. Please, man, they should be low. It's stupid. Everything we're doing is, it's uncommily stupid.

Like, the stakes should be really low. You are a high achiever at least in part because you refused. Some of those final shows were like, I can't believe the Airdon cable television. Do you know what you did with your Ivy League education that that's what we were doing at the end? That's what we were doing.

Trying to get the worst thing we did. Something really real. There were no sports going on for a couple of months. We were in our apartments just talking because 20 minutes of space had to be filled. I feel like performance. Honestly. Art, that art's doing a lot of work there.

You deflect it though. You deflect it on. Is my praise making you uncomfortable? No, no, no. I guess it sounds like you're saying I seem different. It's just stronger. It's not even different. It's not, it's just stronger. It's not even different.

It's just you've gotten a facility with what we do. I watch you on television and I see a person who can spar with anybody, who can get along with anybody, who can work with anybody, who can fit into any environment, and it's rare because you know how much vanity and insecurity there is in this business and how people get threatened when someone's becoming a star around them. Yeah, I mean I think a few things have happened with me. A lot of it is just doing it so much. Most for the most part I work with people I really like, which is a lesson I learned

from you, honestly, the importance of just making sure at all. Because I think if I hadn't landed with the people that I'm with in different capacities on ESPN, I probably wouldn't feel as good about the work. It's the number one thing for me. It's not fun to do, it a television with people you don't like. You know, that, so that was a big thing. I think I've gotten a lot better, although sometimes I still fail at filtering

what I allow into my brain, which is something you know, I've talked about in your show, I've been like open about it. I mean, it's like the number one thing people ask me about is like, what's it like to be shit on? That's literally my, the number one thing I'm known for is being shit on like I met Is that the combine I think and I met Steve Smith senior I came up to me

I was like oh my god Steve's a senior I sub-sun You know I got so many things to ask you about is like me to come People shit on you, but I like you You know, you know, the people kind of like I said, like a re-s... calibration of like things for me. I want to explore whatever you're interested or willing to explore here as it regards, because I'm telling the people that what you did, business journalist, going to this sport, and enduring the internet and the questions and the skepticism that the degree of difficulty was extraordinary. I don't know what you want to or don't want to reveal about the anxieties at the beginning. At the beginning, yeah, yeah, you used to really

crush me, yeah, the criticism and stuff, but I'm not unique in that regard. I mean, it's not even unique to women right now, though obviously it's a pretty hyper-focused thing if you're a woman in especially in our industry, but like, I don't know how anyone who sees the things that people say to them on the internet survives in the world today, generally, if you don't allow yourself to, if you're not very deliberate about blocking it out. I have a number of blind spots, and I wanna ask you some that you've seen from me, but one that you taught me about

because I had developed, if not, it's not a famed immunity, but I had been a columnist since I was very early. And so having people yell at you about your opinion is something that I had developed sort of a shrug, you say with reps. I don't even know if it was really confidence. It's like, yeah, every time I write something, people are going to get mad and they're going to say horrible things to me.

And so I've been dealing with it for 20 years. But what I hadn't been dealing with and what I had not grown up with is I had not grown up with social media. I was getting letters in the mail. I was getting people maybe typing me emails, but it wasn't a constant barrage that I can interact with on my device that I was addicted to, that I could find every one out of 100 comments that were negative and be like, okay, that placed my worst high school insecurities. I think especially early in your career when you're tender and you don't know if you're good and you're,

feel self-critical. And again, you were like that at some point in your career. It's just been a minute. Many, many minutes. It's just, it was my early 20s. It was, and I was sobbing in the Miami-Herald bathroom, but it wasn't, it was the pressure of it. It wasn't because people were mean to me

So when you're at your most vulnerable when you become public facing in some way as a calmness to pinionator and analyst not to you or whatever the fact just knowing that there's People out there who hates you some maybe they hate your opinions maybe they hate the way you look maybe hate your identity It's like it's such a tender time and it's the worst possible time to see those things because you haven't built up what I feel like I have now for the most part, which is, you know, thick skin is the wrong word, but a greater kind of, a more holistic view of it, I would say, you know, right? So.

And tools. And tools, yeah. Yeah, and that's what I was saying, like, it's everyone. I don't know how anyone who's doing anything in public now, like starting a restaurant, you know, being a comedian, being as whatever, and then what we do, it's absolutely brutal. So yeah, I do remember what we would talk about

and you and I would talk about it because I would see something that would just break my heart. And I felt like, because we just had such different relationships with the internet too, like me having just being so on it and I don't think. But that was my blind spot spot is what I'm saying. I wasn't understanding what specifically you were enduring because I did not understand what it was like to be tender

with the combination of all of these people see my lack of confidence or all of these people see where I might be telling the right That's the thing that I don't feel now But when you're starting you're worried they're right, right? And I think Yes, do what I always say I just I just look at the compliments and you would say fuck them and I would like I but guys I can't do either of those things my My brain doesn't work that way yet. I have this little prehistoric P brain in the evolutionary timeline of the taker.

I'm still a fucking amoeba over here. You're T-Rex. But I did not have Stugat's as a mental health expert, but in this, he is just retweet the compliment is a, like it's better than most people have a relationship with the internet? Yeah. And it sucks to do that, because when I give advice

to young people, and I could do like talk to a class or whatever, and their ask me, how do I deal with the criticism, how do you deal with the criticism? It's challenging, because my advice isn't really something that they can do, which is, I'm like, why have it set up so I just don't see stuff anymore? Every now and then it breaks through, and I'm an idiot, I look, and I feel instantly shitty.

Well, for the most part, I just don't see it. But if you're young and starting out in this industry, you have to be engaged. I hate it when experienced or successful people on television or writers are like, you should just don't be on Twitter, just do the work. And it's like, no, motherfucker, you have to be on Twitter. That's your living resume. Like if you're a young sports person, you have to be very active on social.

You don't have to because you're whatever. No, I still have to be because I'm not by the way you do. No, but I still have to be because I'll fall woefully behind. I want to throw my phone into the ocean. Yeah. I'd like to not have to keep up. I'd like to. Do you ever see stuff on the internet that makes you angry?

Not stuff about you just generally. I mean, yeah, a lot of the stuff happening in America makes me angry. I mean, I would say that. It's just news. Yeah, just what is, I would say that my mental health has been challenged by... My mental health and my overall happiness has been challenged by everything that is just news these days.

Yeah. I mean, it is... you have a thing in your phone that you can turn on and it's guaranteed to make you upset. Or your hand. And we're addicted to it. And you're addicted to it. Yeah. And, you know, again, if you're a public, you can turn on and it's guaranteed to make you upset or your hand. And we're addicted to it. And you're addicted to it. Yeah. And, you know, again, if you're a public, you can also, you can either see people tell you that they love you and they like to see, you know, more of your feet. Or you can see that.

And that's not happening to you. That one, you might be surprised to know that one is not happening to me. Um, that you know, if you know. Yeah. I know. I'm not, yeah, I'm not frequenting. You do are flip-flops. That you know of.

Or you can see people just tell you how much you suck, right? Or that they love you. It's like it's just a fire hose. Well, but what are you saying? When you say to the audience and to me, when you say the most challenging thing was just suddenly, I'm a public person. And I was not anticipating that while choosing television as a career.

I didn't think that through. I just didn't know what it entailed. I never performed. Even when I was a kid, I didn't do like plays. I wanted to write the play. I wasn't a performer. I don't know. I had to say it.

I never wanted that kind of attention. I never wanted attention visually for how I looked. I never wanted my mannerisms to be subject to anything. But I liked having opinions and being paid to give opinions, and that was like very alluring to me at the beginning of when I started doing more like radio and whatever. And yeah, I just wasn't really prepared for like the public side of it all, to be honest. It's funny, like I think maybe if it was like the 19s, when was he a spam counter? 80, 80 something?

81 I think. So, so we were doing, you know, yield highly questionable or whatever. And like, if I had done television, but without knowing what the world thought of it, I don't, maybe it would have been easier. Although then you probably leaned, you probably got more feedback from people above you and stuff, so maybe that would have been a different kind of stress.

But, you know, being a public figure has changed so much because of the... But what were the challenges for you? Like what? So you've talked before about high school you, about high school you, not being a public performer, being someone more likely to write the play than started. And what would you say the first, what were the first 18 months of challenges to that surprised you as again a brilliant person who was surprised that being on television would get her attention. Well, being able to just type in your name and immediately get the feed just see how people feel about you is fucking insane. Like you suddenly can, it's like, you know, rate my professor or something.

You're like, you're just, I just never had that feedback loop before of like, oh, I'm like, I didn't know. I have a big nose and I laughed weird and I said this thing wrong. I just you just as so that was new to me. I was really stressed about disappointing everybody. Like not like like people who gave me chances. Like I just like I got this opportunity. I it wasn't even like oh if I Don't do well. That's it for me. I'm gonna go back to the the writing Minds, you know, it was more like well. I don't want to let this person down who invited me to do this or gave me this opportunity This kind of that was something and just like anxiety for the first time I had never had

I had never had anxiety in my life before being on television really dude. I walked into the SATs It's like I cried I was that was I cracked my knuckles trying to make a knuckle sound I thought it would have been great. Well throw it in and post make it like I get like a lumber jacks knuckles cracking to help her out there I wasn't nervous about school. I wasn't nervous when I played like sports as a kid, like soccer, you know what I was in that grief, but you know, I just, you know, I had social, I wasn't like, there were times in my life where I was like, I'm not cool and boys are like whatever, but I never was like a socially anxious person.

So I had never had like true anxiety and like the various physical manifestations of that until I started doing television, like 2016, 17. Like everything else in my life I could prepare for, you know, I took test prep, right? Like I mean, and also I didn't feel like, how do I put this? Like being on television to be good at it,

there's things you can work at and there's things that you can't work at, I think. Most of the things you can work at, by the way, but you know you're gonna be judged on how you look, how you laugh, stuff like that. And so I think that was probably the first time I've ever felt like, well this is, I can't make myself different and more appealing.

And so that was super stressful. I was like, you know, I can prepare, but maybe I just, I'm not good at this. Maybe I don't have that innate quality that other people I work with seem to have where, you know, they're just naturally charismatic or magnetic or good performers. We're assing, like SAT is, I just read a bunch of books. Where does that thing come from on disappointment, though, that was, I can't imagine you've spent a great deal of time disappointing people. The Korean American.

I mean, it's cultural. It's all of its cultural. I mean Korean American mom military dad is like you know the All pro disappointed parents like It's quite although weirdly my my Mom was not that hard on me as a kid so She wasn't so But you know, I also just never really failed at school and never really saw it.

So, yeah. I don't know, I've just always been, I hate letting people down generally. What were you thinking of there? You don't have to name names, but I just... Everybody, you, Eric, for letting me on a show? You kidding me? Are you kidding me?

I had no idea. Anyone who gave me a shot. I had no... Meena, like that never crossed my mind. I don't... when was the first time you were on with us? It was Darryl Rivas, a magazine story, was it before then? Oh, like you mean not actually coming down? Just the first time you were ever on with us in any capacity, um, was probably to talk about one of my stories, yeah. But you don't remember which one it was. I don't remember, but that, that, that, I had no idea what the show was.

So it was just like, well, that was weird. Um, no, I think probably the first time I came down though, was when I got a sense of like what, you know, what it meant. Which would, it must have been like 2017. Well, what did it mean? Forgive me because I don't know entirely what it meant. What should it must have been like 2017? Well, what did it mean? Forgive me because I don't know entirely what it meant. Just like, you know, it's like, I was in analogy. I don't wanna say it's like getting called up

because it would be like being called up but not to the Yankees, to like a weird team that some people like and a lot of people are confused by. The Savannah Banana. Yeah, this would be like all of this. You've been called up here, the Stilts. No one's gonna explain,

because I didn't talk to you. Now that you tell me this, I'm coming to realize I didn't give you anything in the way of a handbook or expectations. Yeah. I just said, here's your uniform, here you're still. Go out there and be a banana. Yeah, yeah. And I really didn't prepare because I was just told

there's nothing related to prepare for. Yeah, but all you had to do was be yourself though. That was. Yeah, which I've, that's always been easy for me, I guess. And it was going to be good enough. I. And it was going to be good enough. I knew that it was going to be good enough that you being yourself because you were going to be, you, you, you've seen a lot of meticulous preparation in our environment.

Thank you and more prepared than anybody was. You were 10 more, 10 times more prepared than you needed to be for anything. How many notes on highly questionable? How many points and thoughts never were on the cutting room floor because they never made so many. All of that preparation ends up getting discombobulated at the moment. My father gets you on a fake handshake

and you're the fool and the butt of the joke. I hated the part where we just react to funny videos, Dan. Did you really? Because you can't prepare for it. And I never, I don't think of myself as like a particularly funny person. How are you kidding? Um, are you kidding? I think people laugh at me.

With you and you around you. I think I'm funny to people. I mean, the story I was talking to earlier about my shoe, that shit kind of shit happens a lot of times. Well, but we've got to know, we've got to tell the people about what just happened to you. I'm going to give you the setup, the runway, what just happened to you in Miami. She's with a mover and shaker and the knobber of all hobnob's micrion. He's getting her into Kardashian places.

And then... I went to this really fancy restaurant slash club. I don't even know the distinction here. And on the way to the bathroom, my shoe broke, a heel broke. The guy said that there was a store that I could buy a new shoe. I don't know why I get this. So I leave the place.

I walk on one barefoot, one shoe, through Miami. I don't find in, you know, my name's on my party. Don't be bored in the retelling. It's a great story. I need you to sell the story because you're walking. You've been sent to a deli by the door man in a prestigious Foufou nonsense Miami shit place. And he's told you there's a shoe

down there you can buy a shoe down there. It says it's open. It's how he put it. I should have known. What is it the way he phrased it. So I'm walking. I don't see a store. I walk like a full block and downtown Miami.

You learn a phrase. Patasucia. 30 foot because you're barefoot right. Patasucia. Yes. Couple of nice well-meaning gentlemen offered to carry me somewhere. Like Cleopatra, like.

Like a very, very old man and a very, very young man both made that offer, which I feel like captures Miami pretty well. So anyways, I get to the store and it's like a deli. There's, I'm like, why, why did this guy think I would give you you have to get a shoe at a deli? I think he's making an assessment on your overall style when he thinks you're someone who could buy a shoe at a deli.

So I walk back. I try to, and then I'm walking up, this is a door man to get, well, why would the restaurant need a door man? I don't know. And the guy looks to me and he's like, You can't come in, you have one shoe. I'm like, yeah, I literally I want to show because you're bus or whatever somebody told me that there'd be a shoe. So he's just looking at me. And I was like, I went in with two shoes. You saw me and he said, not you got one. Because I'm holding the other one.

And then I saw a security guard and I asked for a rubber band and I sort of jerry rigged a shoe, which I wore for the rest of the night. Basically used a rubber band to hold my shoe together. Anyway, so that always seems to happen to me. The videos you don't think of yourself as a funny person, I would think of you as the funniest person on NFL live. Am I wrong? Uh, I don't, again, I don't know.

Mark Spier is pretty funny. He's very naturally charismatic and, you know, I think it depends on your sense of humor. I don't think of myself as a funny person. Okay, so you come in here as a not funny person and you get no prep. I appreciate you. You get no prep. I appreciate it. You get no prep and you're thrown

to the wolves immediately and what happens? Everyone loves you, you're curating a spectacular off the bat, you fit in with everybody immediately. I was, I really loved it because it was just kind of a different part of my brain that I had never used before. This is something kind of I crave professionally is just like feeling like neurons firing in new places. And I remember at that point, you know, I'd been doing it around the horn. I remember. So it's not like I hadn't been on TV or anything like that or whatever.

And I had a radio show with Dominique and Cleaning Hades. But, yeah, I was just like, I remember, I was like, it was so surreal just the doing of it, the interactions, the things we were talking about, the jokes. I mean, just, I didn't know that, like, you could really just like laugh that much on air and people wouldn't mind. And so that was really exciting to me, like to do something new and different and talk about things in a different way. I remember that.

You mentioned Dominique and I've always thought you guys have a really cool and special relationship and that he's just an extraordinary person in a number of different ways, but also the support that he was for you. I was touched by, how consistently insistent he was to be support for you. Yeah, I mean we were talking, you and I are just talking about kind of, you feel that one of your blind spots was maybe not understanding the anxiety and some of the things that probably not just meet you frankly, a lot of the people you brought into your world probably experienced early on.

I had no idea. And oblivious to it. But Dominique was always, always, it's funny because he does not feel it at all. So it's not like an empathetic thing. Um, for it is an empathetic thing. No, it isn't. It's an empathetic thing. He's, he's conjuring.

He's just, he comes in. I fit on the greatest time. I have maximum confidence. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it was an empathetic thing. But I don't want to like conjecture too much or blow up. It's just kind of say what Dom Nixing, but I think like experiences he's had with loved ones.

And yeah, he kind of always, and this is, I also think, by the way, him and I had worked together in that radio show and like, he kind of just, from the very big, I always get emotional talking about relationships, like, because that's like the one thing, like I just treasure them so much.

Oh, and anyways, so he just has always really understood my psychology, I guess. He always, he could always tell, he could always tell if I'm really upset. That's like 90% of relationship, right, is actually knowing when you're significant other. Do you mind if I? Yeah, I'm sorry.

No, that's okay. It's just, thank you. Is having an intuitive understanding of when your partner is actually upset even if they're not showing it? And most, as you know now probably being several years into marriage like myself most fights are when you don't catch you don't see it yeah there's great learning in that so you know to have like a people in your work life who have that same ability is really so I mean do

you you know what I'm talking about well Not only I feel like I failed you here, right and in doing some of these I recognize I recognize this the other day with isy He told me some stuff that I did not know Because I thought that I was providing a Because I thought that I was providing a maximum open environment to people, I thought that that would be enough to feel like support. You know, check in on them, see how they're doing and stuff. And I don't think like I was checking in with how people were doing, but I think they were concealed and I didn't know them well enough to know.

Yeah. I didn't, because I'm, I, I, I, I referred to this when I was talking to Eric ride home because it was a whole bunch of people who were coming on highly questionable that I'd never worked with before and didn't know in any capacity really other than some of their work. And so I, I said it was like a bunch of first dates on television. It's not an optimal way to do television where not only is it awkward because I don't know this person. Hey, here's my dad. Here's my dad doing the show in his second language.

And this is a, I've got to produce him too because he's not a television person. And so what I thought I was giving that was supportive is just like, here, this is all for you to share with us and we'll figure it out together, right? But I think I didn't provide enough... But you don't have to be that for everybody? Well, but in that setting, when you're walking into my home, I'm the guest. I'm the host, right? Like, this is all, all the pictures are of me.

It's an environment that you're like walking into my high school bedroom or whatever, you know what I mean? And so, I'm the host and I think I failed some of you in that regard. I thought the giving of the space and the sharing of it and like, Hey, we'll learn together. I thought all of that was understood and didn't need to be spoken necessarily. I mean, I guess I asked what I asked earlier just because, you know, I love doing that show so much, and I have so many good memories, it's like some of my favorite things I've done. But like, you know, I do remember how tired you are a lot.

And so like for me, I think, yeah, I, I didn't, I never went to that show thinking like, well, it stands job to make this easier for me or whatever. I thought, I'm gonna make a good show. And I actually thought I was always trying to make it easier for you. But you were, you all did make it easier for me. That's what, that show, if not for originally Bermani, and then the rest of you, the show couldn't have been done. I couldn't do it with just my dad. I almost quit doing it with just my dad. That show would have ended if we hadn't

brought in Bomanie and then a group of people to help me carry the load of that. Um, can I say something that might make you a little bit self-conscious? Sure. I don't think there's many things when I think back to being on TV or do I do now? More rewarding personally in my professional career than when I would watch the show. Because we don't see people watching. It's such an odd situation because you're sitting like you're at a bar, right? So you don't see each other all the time. And when I watch the show and I would say something and you were visually delighted.

And I wouldn't feel it in the moment because you don't see it. But when I would watch it late, I would go back to the diet, I used to say that I'm fucking that high it. And I would watch it. I think that's what it's called. If you look it up on the internet, that fucking high, I believe that's the way to look that up. Actually, it was actually quite nice.

It's a very business-like. But I would say something, and I could see your, there's this way you have where your eyes are kind of slowly lighting up as you're processing the person kind of, you know, cooking a little bit. And I don't think I've, that's probably like one of the most deepest moments of professional pride I'll ever feel. That's great. That's touching. Thank you for telling me.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who felt that way. I, I really appreciate that you feel that way. It's hard to explain to people how we did that show. So here's some of the backstory on the ridiculousness of that show. I've told some of this before here, but Eric Ridehom Matkeller, her legitimate friends of mine, really created an environment behind the scenes and television that I wanted that is the roots of what it is that we do here

And so when they wanted to do a TV show, I wasn't particularly interested in doing a TV show wasn't really my idea, but the way that I told them I would do it is if the audience was to Eric and Matt my friends you will be in the prompter and you are the audience and I'm performing for you. And so I was doing it through them. And when someone over there would do it well, or when chemistry would be achieved through the reps of stuff, yes, those were the greatest moments of delight because, oh, look, somebody gets how weird we're trying to make this and is equally delighted. Now we can surf on whatever that or whatever you have on NFL live.

You guys, Meena, I was talking about this the other day. Do you know how rare it is for people on television instead of to do the the chuckle fest to lose it laughing on television? Like, you people have to really like each other's company in order for that to happen genuinely. Yeah, I, I, we do really feed off of each other and I genuinely love them. But, I mean, this is why I say I'm so happy for where it is that you've arrived in, in all realms professionally because I don't know what's going to make the synapses for you fire in different places. You will need to be challenged wherever it is, but you seem

to have a lot of the things that you've never even dreamt of, that you didn't think were possible when you became an investigative business journalist. This was not the path. Sometimes I feel like I get paid to be at grad school. Because right now my job is like, I'm really worried with people, I'm really like, I talk about things that are genuinely interested and the actual structure of the day is pleasant to me. And I have time to learn. And I'm still learning on the job a lot.

And so it's hard for me to point to anything I would want to be different. When I say you made it, I don't even mean it like a finish line. I mean, you physically constructed it. You made the professional life that you saw possible, that you couldn't have, like it couldn't have, in your late 20s. Yeah. Where were you going? Where were you headed? Where was your imagination taking you in your late 20s? I did that point just wanted to be a really serious magazine writer forever. That would have been really lonely. I don't miss it. I don't. I miss writing. I don't miss reporting.

Well, you said business investigation is fun and I'm like, God, almighty, that sounds like a John through the bells of hell. I would rather do that than be a sports writer though, thousand times. I'd rather go work for a public, oh, you know, like I'd rather look into companies again than do what I was doing, which is writing about athletes.

No one would do that again. Because? Because I got tired of being dicked around by 22-year-old football player. I mean, like, I... Yeah, I mean, it's so hard these days to be a reporter in sports and to get to something real and to have access as awful as a nightmare. And, um... and to have access is awful, it's a nightmare. And like, it's really like, dwindled, profile writing, features writing, and sports obviously,

but like, it is just, it's a nightmare. I would think though that you would enjoy writing things when moved, that would be more columns than necessarily profiles on people, that something has hit you, you're thinking about it a different way. You'd like to present it to the audience in a way that doesn't work on television. I was never as good a columnist as you

or like an essayist though. Like I always like using features to convey ideas and like kind of get that. But only because you didn't sculpt that skill. If you had put your will toward doing that, you would have been great at that too. I don't know, but then I read, this is why I paused on when I said the word empathy

because it just took us something. I'd read Jeremiah and your Rodin essay in the New Yorker recently about being a ghost writer. And. Okay, so one of the best writers. Well, and there's a line in there. So one of the best writers. So somebody who wrote tender bar, okay. So that's what we're gonna compare ourselves to.

And open. I'm mangling it, but there's a line there where he talks about, so he did a profile, he or probably he goes wrote Prince Harry's book. And afterwards the British tabloids were coming up to his house and at the end, just as line where he says, empathy is thin gruel compared with the marrow of shared experience, because he finally understood kind of what it was like to be hairy. Anyways, every sentence is like

that. I'm like, yeah, I'm good doing takes. I'm gonna do it first take. I can never write that. That's how I feel reading like, because I love read, I read so my, that's probably my main hobby is reading. And when I read really, really, really great prose, I don't feel like it's something that I have in me. Let me go back for a second to cultural upbringing, military father. How did it go over when you said you wanted to do for a living both? Blank. Sports or business reporting? My parents kind of, because I think maybe it's because I made the transition later in life, but they inherently just trust my judgment in most things.

Because probably because I had a lot of credibility with them built up. As I mentioned before, I never really had a phase where I broke ranks. So yeah, it's, I've just been independent for a pretty long time. And so they've always been pretty, I mean, they've always been really supportive of it. You may not have been willing already for whatever it was to be public facing, but your mother ran right into that into that light and is like, I'm here everybody who wants to see the front-facing mother of Mena Kines. Poppy, Poppy, draft that baton and Sun Meen Kines picked it right up. It would have

been a better show with her in the middle of the video. No, he was, I... That's no knock on my dad. That is a tribute to your, what seems to be your mother's charisma and love for you. Like that relationship on television would have been funny. She, I have mixed feelings about her being exposed to the internet as she is, but it also really delights me. My mom immigrated actually a little bit older than I am now from, she was born in North Korea. I immigrated from South Korea.

And we moved around a lot. And for her at the age of 1970, 1947, so 75 now. 74 to feel the love because she really is mostly love that people are sending her because it's nice, honestly. I don't. A great gift to give her. It's the one I'm happiest to have given my father to be in his 70s and have people buy him a tuna sandwich. I mean, you know, with the sacrifices that they made so that I would be able to do this,

like I was thinking about this just today, right, that my, as I see what's happening in, in Florida education and how people, private schools, more and more people are going into private schools, I just was thinking today about, man, it would have to be hard for my parents to send me to private schools. Like, they did not have the money to be doing that. Yeah, that's... And then, yeah, how do you pay them back? I think that's more than, you know, like I said, my parents always supported me. When I talk about disappointment and stuff, or just wanting to please people,

I do think a lot about like sacrifice and just trying to, I just, whenever, I just get really overwhelmed thinking about, like I'll never be able to really pay them back in the way that I wish I could. But, you talked to them about that? I think I I try to be attuned to like the things that they want to want at this point in their life and the the ways that I can be a good daughter I guess it's you know it is the most important thing to me.

It's just a few relationships and that they're certainly in that group. One of the things that I love that Esquire did, I don't know if they still do it, is a single page where they person who has some wisdom, who has done some learning, what I've learned, a report goes in, you know, investigates and interrogates somebody about their entire life and then makes it a single page of learning. If I ask you professionally, you can answer it personally if you want, it's a broader question, but what have you learned? What's the answer?

How to turn that on and off button when you just did there. I, you realized it took me like six years to actually understand what those buttons did. You are so bad at the technical aspects of all of this. I still, I'm not entirely sure how they work. What have I learned? A few things. Can I get, can I say, if it does have to be one thing? No, yeah, of course. Okay.

It could be a page of things, but only one page. I think two things, especially just over the last six, seven years professionally, right. How long have you been doing this? This particular job at that time feels like longer, I don't know why. So I think I have something I've learned that took me a really long time is to really only place weight in the value of people whose hearts I know, whose minds I respect, people who I actually believe care about me rather than not just the masses. This isn't just a PSA for muting the world on social media, but even people who seem important, I really have figured out who I care about and respect professionally and what personally or whatever.

And also, like, actually listening to them, right? Because I think there's this thing that happens in your industry where you suddenly you devalue the people you really should be listening to and you start listening to whether it is ex-person on Twitter or maybe it's someone who seems really important, you feel like. And you kind of lose sight of which are the voices that should be in your ear. So I think being really intentional about that, seeking it out, actually asking for it is something that I've learned a little bit. There's real wisdom in that. Like that took me a long time to only care deeply about the position of people who I knew cared about me and whose opinions I respected. If you, there's a distillation

of, you can almost put it in a cube and digest it. If that's the only thing you're consuming, it's a very healthy thing. It's a very healthy way to interact with criticism, with disagreement, with everything. And I still struggle with it. I got in like a fight with dolphins fans on the internet last year. So I'm not on, I just want to be clear, I'm not on this like enlightened mountain of wisdom where I don't get dragged into the mud and get frustrated when I feel misrepresented and suddenly find myself in a three part thread with, you know, Johnny

Florida 69 or whatever. And that's 2am. My husband's like, what the fuck are you doing? Like, that happens to me. I am far from- You're fighting with a 19-year-old. I know. And you don't know it.

A 19. I still have weakness, but I know now. All right. And I move with the most part, do a better job of, and you know, that certainly is helpful with, I get dragged into whatever controversy of the week or whatever stupid stuff seems to kind of follow me around every now and then.

When I talk about your degree of difficulty, Mina, when I talk about where you've arrived and why it is that I'm proud of you, you have overcome some shit that requires real strength, and you've grown on the other side of stuff that hurts, which is where a lot of growth is. And I don't know, though, if your anxiety was impacting your health. A little bit, yeah, that was part of it. But, and then the funny thing is now, like I said, like when you, I found, as it's kind of been reprioritized

for me, I feel a lot less life's anxious. I truly, I was talking to someone about this the other day. Who was it? Was it an athlete? It was someone who, I think it might have been an athlete. And they were asking, it was, it was at the draft. And they were asking me if I get nervous. I was like, no. I can't remember the last time I was nervous on television.

It's fucking crazy. And it's just crazy because his live television, like I could take my career with one misspoke, and I mean, it would take a lot of time. Yeah. And this one, it would. It's real confidence though, Meena. It's real. But I just, I just don't get nervous about it anymore.

I get much more nervous about other things. Can you talk about where the breakthrough was for you? Like, did you have to break in order to get through? Yeah, honestly, that was it. Yeah, I was just kind of like, just taking a teeny bit of time off and, yeah, just really thinking about. And just like, Yeah, just really thinking about it. And just like, I guess just kind of, I felt like probably, I feel like I really only have perspective on of this now for the first time

in my forever, because, you know, my whole life has been working towards something and from working to college, working to whatever towards this. And I don't really feel like I'm working towards anything professionally specific. Other than just trying to be better at the thing that I'm doing, which I do care a lot about. But yeah, I would rather spend a lot more time, not more time, but like, I wanna, just really work towards improving my relationships

or that kind of thing. I mean, you've got life perspective, you've got balance, you have, I had a, I haven't, I haven't. That's a Lou. Well, but okay, it can sound like that. Or, and I don't, I'm not speaking specifically of you here. I had a nervous breakdown after, after stuff that happened with me and Ricky Williams and for a year,

I went through an unholy hell of obsessive compulsive sort of craziness that represented at the time a genuine horror for me and on the other side of it There was a newfound clarity I I tell as many people I can and I look man I've been to therapy on this and I've never understood it until I lived it Because talking about it didn't help me process it. But where there is pain, there is growth, where these things happen to you sometimes and you think they're the worst thing in the world and then you get to the other side of it

and you're like, I'm so glad that happened to me. But isn't it funny how you end up being better at your job by kind of caring about it less? Well, especially someone like you, Meena. But television in general, I think, is covered in all of these rigidities. But what I saw in you from the very beginning, almost the first time I saw you preparing for highly question, I'm like, does she not understand

that we're just going to show a guy getting hit in the package by a sledgehammer? Like does she not understand that we're just going to show a guy getting hit in the package by a sledge hammer like the she not? I'm like I mean see a guy getting hit in the balls. There's gonna be women. I almost hit by a train and what I'm gonna say I don't know I did look at it before I don't really It seems like a totally reasonable thing to stress out about in my transcript I really don't like watching myself on that show early or any of my TV stuff.

Just like, oh, who is this? It's embarrassing. She's just so tightly wound. I was so uptight. But the looser, the looser that you got in terms of exhibiting your personality, the easier all of it got, right? And yeah, I just, I just now I'm just, that's crazy.

I mean, I just, a lot of shows I go into now with football stuff. I mean, all my prep is just watching and during the week taking notes. So, you know, they'll call me, do like sports. I mean, I haven't really thought about it. And last, and it's like, I know this shit. I'll come up with something.

It's just different and it's way better than it was. It's why I started with where I did about About being proud of you. Can you tell me the audience enjoys this whenever friends of ours call me out on my blind spot? So so where did I air beyond not knowing that people needed a little more? I air spoken warmth where that people needed a little more I air spoken warmth where were my blind spots in or what are my blind spots in our environment? You know our environment pretty well. You've gotten to know all of it. Right. You mean like things that you like topics or ways

that you can take that? Wherever you want to take that, whatever you can correct me on where I speak about things poorly or I'm offering you an open invite to the discomfort of not being gentle with what it is that I've been bad at, so that this doesn't become Southby Sessions is where Dan makes his friends cry and he doesn't give up anything.

I, I, okay. I think, I think there were times where I did feel like ask a woman with you. Yes, I do that. I do that every time there's a woman here, by way of introduction, every time we bring in a woman, I do it awkwardly. I still haven't gotten any good at it.

And I think obviously it's coming from a very like enlightened place of realizing that you want to talk about things that other programs don't talk to about with regards to issues of race and gender, and sports, where those things intersect, and the importance of having people who actually represent, you know, actually minorities and women actually speak on those things. But I think, yeah, that's something I would try to avoid generally, or at least trying to cultivate the other things in those people. I don't know how much better I've gotten at it. You're one of the first that I screwed

up on it with. Because no, because I don't have experience working with women, this industry did not provide me that when I was coming up everywhere I was walking into, everywhere it was, was all men. I wasn't collaborating with women. I had to learn that on television and to learn that on ESPN. You're so good at working with women generally. But don't have any experience with it and you were one of the first I think in our environment. I guess so. Yeah, means Sarah probably, in our environment. I don't. So, yeah, me and Sarah probably are on the same time. I did her some some disservices, right?

Because you realized early that the place to side when you got here is with Stugat. Yeah. Sarah said that's the move. That is the move. It's the move. So it's it's natural, a hockey nut. That is correct.

But Sarah sided with me. That's not the move. No. That's not going to help Sarah. Yeah, that's bad cop Good cop kind of picking wrong sides there for sure um Do you let me ask you this do you like okay when there's a story like a involving sexual assault or discrimination or Women's stuff. Do you feel comfortable weighing in yourself? Do you feel like

Do you feel comfortable weighing in yourself? Do you feel like? You know like you have thought about these things a lot and you're a person who you feel like you can Give like an opinion and feel good about it. I Don't know that my opinion is worth very much. I think that's bullshit. Why? It means more. You think so? Fuck yeah. Because it's not... When I get asked to talk about this stuff on TV, you know,

Sean Watson or whatever, all I want is for the men on TV to talk about. I'm happy to talk about it. It means so much to our mostly male audience with the world to see that it's not just like the, and here we've got our female correspondent, you know, Mena Khan's weighing in. Yeah, yes, I'll do danceider again for the 3,000 time and remind people that he himself was accused of sexual assault. Like I, all like, you know, you absolutely should be the person weighing in on these things. Not the only person. But um, and then, you know, like, yeah, you think about them too. And you have opinions about them.

Usually thought out. But what do I do beyond wrong, wrong, wrong, scold, scold, scold? Like I don't feel like I have terrain to know what that feels like, to know the horrors of that, that I am not a qualified expert to know what it is, to be a woman and exist as a woman in hostile spaces. I outsource it at least in part because I believe that the people that we're bringing in can speak to it more eloquently than I can. It's, you're saying to me that you don't think that you can have column takes, the way that I have column takes, and way that I have column takes. And I'm saying to you, I don't feel like I can understand a woman's pain in a male world

and speak to it the way a woman can. I think even just saying that is probably a good start, but I don't know. I don't know. If you've done the reading and you've thought about it and you've listened to the experts, you've already done more than 99% of people who are talking about any of the stuff on, you know, sports networks or whatever. So I think it's really valid.

And I think, you know, when people hear your voice, it's just taken a different way, honestly. You don't have to like prostrate yourself to be part of that conversation. Do you think I've set it out though? You know, I think that no, but I'm mostly just saying I'm hope you feel comfortable being like a voice on these kinds of things. Should I ask you how you feel talking about it? But I feel like I am comfortable being a voice on it. I just don't think that my voice has the kind of weight that your voice would have on it.

And one of the things that I've aspired to, and no, it's a good thing to tell me, but one of the things I've aspired to is to try and make our environment so that when we come on and bring an expert on all things, her opinion as a woman about being a woman is also respected and heard and received correctly, as opposed to so often when I get on this microphone because I don't know when I have my blind spots about obnoxiousness, but our audience has long ago

gotten tired of my sermonizing, I don't think that's so. My moralizing about things. And so I pulled back on that, like that's something we did a lot 10 years ago. But now that everybody in the country's got to take it the trough on, like, we're not even original anymore. We used to have a race board in there where we would talk with Ken Dan, go three days without talking about race. Now I'll go weeks and months without talking about race because it's like, okay, now everybody's doing this. This doesn't,

this isn't serving up much of a purpose anymore. Yeah. I, I, I, all I'm saying is that, um, I think this started because I was saying, you know, if you have a woman in the mix, doesn't need to be the voice on these things. I think it's perfectly okay, actually, for you to be the voice instead sometimes. It's a good, it's, I've been learning it with Jessica, right? There are any number of times that we go down this subject matter in this terrain and I'm looking around, I got a bunch of dudes around here and I got Jessica. And Jessica doesn't necessarily want to be that and I don't want to put her in uncomfortable

positions, but I also want to be able to talk about some of this stuff and I can only do so if I feel like I have a facility with it, if I have an expertise with it, which I don't presently have. I have to talk to others and report and get that anytime that I'm going to enter those waters. I don't know if I have many other pieces of critical feedback. Okay, well that was planning. That was too much for me. I'm unhappy with the amount I got. I know I solicited it, but I was hoping for the answer. Dan, no, you don't know. No, you get it all right, Dan. The environment you create is a wonderful one. No, but that's I think that's fair criticism. And I'm glad

that you shared it with us. I think it's changed a lot, like you said, too, because even in five or six years, as more people have entered the midst and your approach has changed towards things. I have, I have learned a great deal, but there is more learning yet to do. Like just, just recently here, I have been sort of shocked and appalled in a way that I probably shouldn't be at the sheer number of people in our own audience reacting very viscerally and very hostily to me talking to a couple of Miami drag performers, for me talking to a trans politician from Montana, like the reaction has been alarming. Yeah. And even understanding the stats on what happens

to the trans community, the reaction at simply platforming, a politician fighting for the rights of a vulnerable minority to see my audience. That's what hurts, right? Because it's like, what are you doing? You know intellectually that the numbers tell you we see that there's a large portions of this country that feel certain kind of way about these things, but your audience is in a lot of ways your work, life's work, like you created and facilitated

and attracted and then they're wonderful in so many ways. And so I can imagine it probably hurts more than if you see some random, you know, politician on the internet or, you know, speaker, whatever. But I'm glad that you still want to do it. Yeah, of course. Like, there's no point in having these microphones if they're not going to.

At this point, when you talk about life balance and priorities and stuff, I would find next to no worth in what we were doing if it didn't have some of that stuff in it. Like, it requires advocacy. Do you have that feeling sometimes where, I probably, I don't think I'm as outspoken as you on a lot of things, but 90% of what I talk about on TV is sports, 95%, right?

But every now and then, I mean, I felt the same when the Watson stuff was going on But this is where I think you would write good columns. This is where I think you there a sub-stacker New York times like this is stuff Challenger brain new new runs like if you were to write once in a while on things you really cared about that inspired you I still have a pretty good platform to talk about it and I would have time to organize my thoughts It does feel a little bit like a kind of column in a way, right? And there's this part of my brain that I can never turn off

where it's like, yeah, your life would be a lot easier today if you just said, you know what, let's just do a newser. And then I'll talk about the sealer's offense or whatever. And there's just still this part of my brain. That's like, nope. Not today. You're gonna do this if you're gonna be mad. And I still can't.

And I feel like that part in your brain's a lot bigger than the part in my brain. But every, it's like, I don't know what it is. It's like, but I just, every now and then, I just feel like, you know, like, I've been given this opportunity to this platform. And yeah, I'm not writing investigative stories anymore and whatever, but like, hey, here's your chance to at least like do one good thing. The few times I've seen you do it on television, you do it very well. Like, difficult to unspool thoughts with three and a half minutes. I've no, I will be heard on this. Like the passion does come through. I'd like you to do more of it.

I'd like to see it. I'd like to see you inspired more that way because you have become whether you realize it or not. I think you realize it. An important voice. You do realize it, right? I think, um, thank you. And I, I sometimes I feel like it's because I clearly love football so much and it's been 99% of the time talking about it. I sometimes feel like it actually helps when I do break ranks a little bit and say the other thing that maybe won't always go over so well with people because you know it's like I don't know if it's credibility or whatever but it's not the thing that I do it's it's if I feel really passionate and driven to but I don, it's not like you where I feel like you're, I don't know, I feel like just going after we were saying about, you know, the things you're

talking about with regards to Florida and Dragon and the transgender community, that's kind of a decision you have to make every day. For me, it's like, okay, this is the news, we're kind of a decision you have to make every day. For me, it's like, okay, well, this is the news, we're gonna do it, but every day you're like, okay, we can do like the fun sports stuff and the goose and the inside jokes and I love doing that. But like today, I really wanna do this

and it's not, I really gonna like it. And it might not be the best for the bottom line. And I think that's fascinating that you have to, especially now that you're on your own Oh, I was telling this to Billy Corbin the other day because Billy Corbin doesn't understand why we keep doing what we're doing with him because It's very political and it's an hour Once a week and the audience objects to how different it is from the rest of what it is that we're doing and I'm just like what are you talking about like of course There's no part of you that's like, ooh, maybe not today. There is a cost.

Every time that we do it, we're going to lose listeners. But I mean, I didn't make the choices. I made the leave ESPN because that's what was going to govern me, right? I can't. Let's leave people with this story because you and I haven't actually talked about it. Oh, no.

I don't know what you remember about the day that ended it all for me at ESPN. I'm not talking about the Chris Cody day. I'm talking about I remember the specifics of where I was with anger, seething anger about what was happening at the border and seeing children, brown children, and cages. And you take it from there. Because I, all I remember is you being there and me telling you to not be around it. I was in town guest hosting and it hadn't come up at all. And I remember, I don't even know what the transition was, but you were like, okay, I think you're gonna want to sit out the next 15 minutes.

And I actually had no idea why. And so I just did, and I actually couldn't hear what you guys were talking about. And then when I returned, it was like a very different atmosphere. And you were simultaneously energized and also appeared to be on the verge of panic attack at the same time, but very amped up, I guess. And then you were like starting to get calls and whatnot. And I was very oblivious to kind of, because like I said, I had literally, and what people don't know in the old studio, if you step out, you're not here in it, it's not being broadcast around.

And so I didn't find out later, and what had been going on. I think afterwards you explained it to me and then I saw the internet. I didn't want to foul up your career. I thought I only wanted to foul up mine. I think, yeah. God, that was, you're right. That was such a weird day. But afterwards though, we just didn't really do highly questionable.

Yes, we just went about. We just went, I wasn't. I was, after some guys getting kicked in the went up. Yes, I wasn't. I wasn't. We did. We laughed at some guys getting kicked in the dick. I mean, it was nice seeing you. It's always nice seeing you. Thank you for spending time with the tissues. That's what we need to reframe the name of the show

as no longer Southeast sessions, sob beach sessions, time with the tissues. Appreciate you for all the things you are, have become happy to see your success. I'm happy to be here at Missy Guys. the tissues. Appreciate you for all the things you are, have become happy to see your success. I'm happy to be here at Missy Guys.