The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - The Best of SBS: 2025 (ft. Patton Oswalt, Tony Reali, Hasan Piker, Josh Johnson, & William Shatner)

Episode Date: December 25, 2025

The best moments of South Beach Sessions this year from Dan Le Batard's conversations with Patton Oswalt, Tony Reali, Hasan Piker, Josh Johnson, & William Shatner. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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including the final show in Vancouver. Taylor Swift, the end of an era. Streaming now only on Disney Plus. I thought it was beautiful that the way that you honored your late wife super unique to be able, I mean, to cast. to help catch a serial killer? I mean, all I did was Shepard Depp. I mean, I handed that book over to an investigator and a journalist.

And please help me do this because I was still so, you know, wrecked. And they helped, you know, they helped see it through. But she definitely, it was very, it was very funny. We all had a lot of laughs watching at the press conference went because she came up with the name, the Golden State Killer. You know, before that he didn't, and this is going to sound really sick, but another cop, this guy, Paul Holes, was like, yeah, he was never given a cool name. And that does hamper investigations. If there isn't a name that lands with the public, Zodiac, Nightstalker, then sometimes these cases fade away. So when she came up with Golden State Killer, something very evocative and weird and creepy about that name that she came up with, that did help reopen the case. Now, obviously, yes, other investigators brought that case home. She also did suggest using familial DNA, which they ended up doing, but whatever. But it was very funny to watch them at these press comments that someone was like,

what about the work of Michelle McNamara? And he was like, Michelle and McNamara's work had nothing to do with us catching the Golden State Killer. And we're all like, you literally just use the name that helped. Anyway, but yeah. But that was like, that was like satisfying for us to watch. I mean, all of them. I mean, to the degree. degree to find any funny around any of it is a tribute to your ability to find comedy wherever it is, it presents itself. But as a way to honor her work and her passion and enter in a new form of entertainment, really, that has just become really popular during dark times, it must have been gratifying to you somewhere in there to be a part of that.

Yeah. However, tangentially, to honor her something she cared about. Yeah, I just, the thing that I, the thing that I wish was more that she really wanted to be more focused on. And I'm seeing it in a lot of these, but not in all of them is what she wanted the focus to be on was the investigators and was the victims, rather than making these serial killers have to be these dark anti-heroes. You know, serial killers are zilches. The reason that they're killing people is because they're a zilch in life. They're not contributing anything, so I'll take something. So the fact that she was able to do something to put the focus on the people that are trying to bring justice to the powerless or the voiceless, in this case the dead, or the people

that survived and or or you know survived to testify and and still put themselves at risk with these because a lot of these if you relook at the Ted Bundy case like the way that he was treated like oh my god it's so tragic this bright young guy with a could have been a lord he was a fucking idiot he flunked out of every but he's a good looking white guy and everyone's like oh my god we got you know and when the judge sentenced him he's like I feel terrible like you know you just took a wrong path, buddy, but I would have loved to have had you in my, like, can you imagine being one of the survivors going, what the fuck is going on here? This guy is getting all the, you know, and his final statement was like, this is like a

Greek tragedy, you know, like the wrong guy, you're like, what fucking world are we living in? Well, what do you make, though, the world we are living in, what do you make of the social commentary that you could form around murder as a podcast form, you know, serial, series, mysteries, and investigations, all of this dark material for a dark time. I mean, one of the reasons I think we love mysteries is because at least the ones who have a solution and we can see, oh, there was a form of justice was served here because right now in our world, very blatantly and very in our face and very flagrantly justice is not being

served and evil, opportunistic, just weak villains are being rewarded day after day after day. And we seem power, and no one seems to be willing to do anything about it. So

yes, I'll take a fictional world where yes, even though evil's done, evil gets punished. People need that. How did you go, and this is a complicated question, how did you go from the depths of grief to being able to fall in love again and, you know, help heal yourself, some, at least. I mean, I had a lot of help from other people that had gone through this, you know, the grief

group that I went to, and they just said, this is going to sound really weird, but right now, all you feel is despair, and that's all you feel like you can feel. And then you're going to get to a point where you go, well, I can function. And thankfully, you will be thankful the fact that you can't feel anything. That will feel like a relief. And you'll go, this is how I'll exist. I can exist at this point. And that's how I was.

I'm like, I'm just gonna take care of my daughter and I don't need to feel anything. And then they said, and despite all of that, you will feel joy and hope and love again. You don't know when it's gonna happen, but when it happens, run at it. Like go run at it. It's there for a reason.

And there were people in my group that are like, I remember, I remarried six months after my spouse died and everyone judged me for it. And there's other people going, I remarried eight years after my spouse died and everyone judged me for it. So get all that shit out of your head. It doesn't matter. You're not you're not grieving to make them comfortable. You're not recovering to make them feel comfortable.

You have to live whatever life is being put in front of you. And I met this genuinely extraordinary woman that I don't think I would have realized is as extraordinary. as she is if I hadn't been in love with and spent all those years with Michelle to really show me what extraordinary in a person means, you know? So there was almost like that was the gift from her. That was the one gift was losing her, having that torn away from me so horribly. But in a way, the tearing away burned the memory of what a truly amazing person looks and feels and acts like, and I was able to recognize it when it came around again. you felt numb for how long or or the relief of of pain free or like how long a period was this

where you viewed it as an accomplishment to simply not be in crippling pain I felt numb for like half a year just nothing and before that were a couple of months of just you know April April May most summer of June was just it's not pain it's C.S. Lewis put this so well. Grief feels like terror. I was in terror. 24 hours a day. It was terrified of everything.

Terror. And then so that's why I was so happy to hit numbness. And I was like, I'll live here forever. I'll take numbness over terror. And then it just turned, it turned into meeting someone who I was not. Again, I wasn't, it was just, it was a weird, we had friends in common. I didn't know who she was. but we have a friend in common

this actress Martha Plympton and my wife, Meredith Saladur, they've been friends since they were teenagers you know, like acting. They were both child actors. And so Martha would do these dinners where she would gather various people, different people just to bring them together

and just have a salon. Everyone just talks and meets. And so I was invited to one and I was traveling or something and then Meredith like posted or she messaged me and said, you know that was a you missed the best fucking lasagna dude like and and then i just said a story of my life maybe we'll go to arby's or something like just it's just joking and then we would just

this is all on facebook just messaging back and forth for like like three months just we never spoke in the phone never met in person it was just somebody at the end of the day that i could talk to in the dark lying in bed which is what i would do with michel we just lie there and just talk in the dark and go about our day and go over our day and go over the world. And then that without it, without it becoming romantic or anything, it then became romantic, just having someone to talk to and then it turned into, and then we finally, God, we didn't meet face to face until May 20th. And we started talking, texting on Facebook at the end of February.

And it was just, and there was a time we're like, maybe we just should never meet, let's just talk like this. And then we was like, oh, no, we should meet. And then that's just how it went. Holiday Hoops is here. And when stars like Kobe White, Jalen Williams, and Tyler Here are cooking, Draft King's Sportsbook,

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Minimum odds required. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dKNG.com slash audio. Limited time offer. I would assume you think it should still be on and you should still be doing it. I think a network would love to have a show like as successful as around the hornets. Absolutely. I think the network, ESPN that I've enjoyed working for all these years should want an expanse of shows. They should want many, many, many different voices.

They should watch shows to get great ratings. They should watch shows to not have controversies. They should watch shows. And then they get other shows that could be more performative in some ways, and this show could be more feeling in this way. And you can say this show became one thing or not, too serious, more, more, whatever. Less about stars and more about journalists, and we didn't want journalists. What it became is more and more yours.

Yes, I think that's true. You were fitting within the confines and the limitations of television, and I don't know what you. And I was pushing it, too, because I wanted to push it. I wanted the show to, I thought there was value in being a differentiator and having that show. Your growth was obvious in every way on the show. Your adult growth as a creator and as an adult was obvious on that show in many different ways over the 24, 23 years, 24 years. 23 for the show, yeah, yeah. That was fun to watch, interesting to watch, interesting to watch your imprint on the show.

But when you say you've done a 180, I don't know what that 180 is. I would just tell the audience that what I was impressing upon you again, and it wasn't cheerleading. It was the dead's honest truth from someone who was just a little bit further ahead on this particular path than you. They did you a favor. They've given you an opportunity. They've given you an opportunity to stretch in a way you never would have stretched if you had stayed within the safety of those contracts. So as much work as I had done on myself, I was still harboring feelings of what is it that I do? What is my skill? Right? Because I have been and called myself a sportscaster my whole life.

I dreamt of being a sportscaster my whole life, and now I am a sportscaster. I've got this dream job, and I host a show. And I work with journalists. I would not call myself a journalist. When I do my job, I'm trying to get up to their code of journalism, and they're not committing daily acts of journalism on our show when they're debating sports,

but it still is a show about journalists, and that's a wonderful thing. So most of all, I thought of myself then as a team. TV host, right? I started to adapt. And I was, are my, am I a sports host? Well, I'm dealing with people. I'm dealing with feelings. And we're talking about sports topics, but I game more comfortable thinking of myself, okay, now I'm a TV host. But even that, I don't think was getting to the crux of it, because you can, you can be a TV host and you can be A to B, get through. I was still doing something that was more connected to an audience in my mind. But now

I am receiving that back in how the response of the finale of the show and the last six months of the show. But in the absence of me really allowing myself to talk about myself and be seen for a while

I'm sure I processed those feelings around the horn which was first hosted by Max Kellerman or around the horn which is produced by Eric Rideholm or I'm like those things are factual sentences but if someone is knows the story, and is writing the story, that's not the story.

It's your show. So it wasn't until I started talking. Like, how do you write Around the Horn is going, possibly, this is how I found out, I was on vacation in California with the family, around the horn possibly, looks like it's going to be canceled in the summer of next year. How is that not, next sentence, not? The show, his ratings were up 5% this year, because if you're writing that article as a journalist, you'd be like, oh, around the horn is getting canceled.

I'm hearing. Wait, let me look at the ratings. Oh, it's up 5%. Oh, that's an interesting sentence. Nobody cares about you the way you care about you. The show didn't cancel. It's currently hosted, currently hosted by me, was first hosted by this other person, and then the next one is, you know, expendable and overpriced.

And I don't know which one I was more insulted by it because neither of those are true. And then I was like, wow, you know. So to have those things written about you, I recognize they weren't coming from nowhere. Somebody was feeding this. I'm like, okay, so I get this. is being played right so the second I started talking I heard too I read on my birthday I'm on my balcony drinking with my wife and I read the news lebitard show going to be replaced by my greenbergs and everything else because

someone leaked it and I'm like what is this what is this because I didn't think it could possibly be true and then I called and was told it's not true and then it was true yeah I was told that you know you heard we don't know where that's coming from you know where that's coming from so so the point is There are any moments in your life where you know what's true about yourself. This is social media for me. I don't have the same opinion. Everyone else says, I get it.

It's a negative place for a lot of people and all these things. I know what's true. Those things bounce right off me because I know, I mean, somebody's telling me something about the show. I can take any type of feedback and criticism this show got too blank for me. That's real maturity, though, from you. Oh, yes. That's not the person I met. That is not the referee who's telling me I had a traveling violation.

and I'm telling him that's not his call. That's referee's call, so you can't pass. That's the reality I met, furious with referees, unable to control his anger during basketball games. Right. So what's Dan you're alluding to is that we had pardoned the turnover, a wonderfully named recreational basketball team for PTI and around Warren. Won't bring any attention to you at all as the star player of pardon the turnover.

And I approached it with a lot of gusto. I was still the youngest one on staff, and I was fit in ways they were just wanted a little bit of exercise I wanted to qualify for the Olympics or I don't know what I wanted to do. There was a little arrogance there. You were getting a lot of success

at a very young age. Yeah, I don't, I mean... That's really young, Tony. To be nationally televised as part of a daily sports lineup on the worldwide leader in sports when you're the youngest person on television? Right, but I don't know if I ever processed that as arrogance,

honestly. You know, I didn't... I'm just talking about the... If I give you, Look, maybe it's a temper problem, whatever it is, to think that you're in your early 20s, that you've got enough confidence in who you are and what you are, that it's okay to publicly berate a referee whenever, multiple times when everyone on the court knows that's television's Tony Reilly, that seems arrogant to me.

I think my brother does the same thing, and he sees not televisions. Oh, but I don't think of arrogance as real confidence. I think of arrogance is something that is a barbed wire armor around insecurity. Like, the most arrogant people I've ever met have this undercurrent of insecurity. Somebody wrote a blog that got picked up that were saying, you know, I'm a jerk playing intramural sports, and that hurt me. That's it. But you grew out of it. I stopped at cold turkey.

I took that out of my life. I stopped playing sports publicly, which you might say, why, you didn't need to do that. Well, that's how I decided to address it. developed in 24 years, or 23 years, an immunity that is legitimate. I don't think it's bravado when you say this criticism now bounces off of me. I mean, I know most of the time it's about that person who's talking. I know the, the, I like using social media as a tool and as a, I like to model what I aspire to be, or model good behavior, or model fair exchange, good faith exchange. I like to do that, to show people.

I would respond to eggs and retweet it. And people are like, you do know, I go absolutely no, but I wanted you to see it, and I'm in TV. I'll re-air my episodes. I don't care. I'll retweet this out to demonstrate that I had intention behind what I was doing. Why did the show talk about this way? Well, first off, you're right.

Maybe I missed that one. But here's what I was thinking in the moment, and I know what I was thinking. So I'll put this out there, and you guys can give me feedback on whether I was right or wrong, but there was intention behind it. For me, life has become about intention, not habit, right? If we wanted to distill, how did I mature in the way you just, you said maturity, right?

I started to get away from doing things habitually, routinely. I got to work out every day because that's how I'm wired, because I got this energy. off. When I got banned for saying that if Republicans were serious about Medicare fraud, they would kill Rick Scott. He's the worst. Yeah. I mean, hey, that's Florida's very own, Voldemort. It's amazing that people don't understand what that person has done. Oh, yeah. In terms of fraud, and that that keeps being somehow electable. I don't understand. I don't understand your world enough to understand how that happens. I got banned for that. How many times have you been banned? You've been banned a few times. A lot. I don't know. I think seven, eight times maybe. I have no idea.

So what's the last day off you've had that's not a ban? I can't recall. I think the only time, sometimes I'll take Sundays off because I have a podcast and we just have to shoot it in the middle of the day. So I just, you know, I'll be like, you know what? I'm not going to stream today. It's fine. I guess technically that's not taking a day off because I'm still working. There's never been a moment where I haven't. I never don't work. I don't know if you're a loner or not, but this would seem to be hard on relationships. No. I don't talk about my private life at all because I don't want to like associate anyone else. I didn't mean romantic relationships. No, no, no, no. I know. I just meant that like how hard it must be to be present.

present in any interaction you're having with anybody if you're always working. I'm very family oriented and I have my whole family around me at all times. So if that didn't happen, then you would be right for sure. And I have a lot of good friends, like great normie friends that I also interact with with regular frequency that keep me grounded and keep me centered. My family and my friends are what has allowed me to, I think, stay in tune with what's going on in the world. Don't talk about your private life because I imagine there's some fear involved.

I imagine you're in some danger just the way that you speak would be dangerous. Absolutely. Yeah, that's the reason. I just don't want to bring anyone else into all of the stuff that I have to deal with. What is the stuff that you have to deal with? I also don't talk about that too much either, but it's just the basic stuff. It's what every content creator goes through. The reason why I don't talk about is because you don't want to offer,

you don't want to encourage people to do it because there's a lot of copycats. All I'll say is this. The government has very few ways of dealing with cyber crime in general. They're not very good at it. And that's it. What would you assign as the tax to what you do, the cost to what you do? mental health physical like a toll on your mental health toll on your sanity toll on your expectation of privacy toll on uh your your physical body for sure because you're sitting a lot um

obviously you can change that if you want to but many people just like they sit in front of the computer myself included uh yeah toll on your relationships but ultimately on the other side of it everyone will say what are you talking about you're just describing like a regular job that sucks in the exact same way, and you make not even a fraction of what you are able to make as a top Twitch streamer, and they're right. I think the real privilege that I have, on the other hand, doesn't even come from the finances.

It comes from the freedom. Because I've worked with someone else. I worked for someone else in the past, and I've worked for myself. And I know the incredible freedom that you have when you set your own time, when you even know in the back of your mind that you don't have to work that day, like that is infinitely more preferable to working for

someone. The reason that I'm smiling about that is because when I left ESPN, I thought I was embarking on freedom and then didn't see the number of restrictions that would come with freedom. And what you're describing in the abstract is freedom, but the cost of it has enough restrictions that you can't take a day off. You're doing it eight hours a day. So yes, you're making the choices on it, but it can also be a prison that you like the prison doesn't really make it necessarily less of a confining place. Yeah, you're absolutely right about that, but I really like the prison. And it's doubly bad.

It's doubly bad because, like, I'm a committed believer in the things that I speak about. Because, like, if I was just grifting, that would be probably a lot easier to just be, like, I love the cloud. I love the money. I'm just going to stop tomorrow. But because on top of, and I certainly don't hate the cloud or the money, make no mistake, but because I also am like, this is something that matters. I feel like I stopped doing this and, you know, hundreds of thousands of people that normally tune into my broadcast on, and at any point of the day to like figure out what's going on the world are going to be like, oh, what the hell? I just don't have NPR today. You know what I mean? I don't have

I don't have the New York Times the daily today and I see that as like something that is important. A responsibility? Yeah, I see that as a very important responsibility and I find that very fulfilling as well though. Like the fact that I

have this role and I try to fulfill it and I have reached levels of success that I never ever in a million years would have thought I'd be able to. So I don't take any moment for granted and uh i i really love it i imagine that the part that you love best isn't the clout or the money i would imagine from where i'm watching it's the crack of having your passion

giving it voice and then having it have influence yes yes impact that's what matters to me when i hear about um you know a chipotle unionizing and in the article they talk about how like they met over and bonded over their mutual appreciation for myself. And I'm like, that's it. Because that's my goal. My goal is that my goal isn't just to yell in a room and have hundreds of thousand people watch. My goal is I yell in a room by myself.

I'm going to do that whether people are watching or not. But about something you're caring about, right? About things I care about. And then you're going to hear that. You're going to internalize that. And you're going to take matters into your own hands. You're going to go and you're going to organize. You're going to go and run for local office and win.

start the change that that is necessary for become the change that is necessary have your parents absorbed that you're a modern teacher that you're doing the same thing they do you're just doing it in a different classroom yeah i think so i think to a certain degree but i'm too brash for them to recognize that so i think it's hard but yeah i mean especially during COVID like my mom was doing you know, Zoom teaching, like remote education, which is ironically the exact same thing that I was doing, you know? Well, you are teaching to a certain degree, yeah, and having fun with it. I mean, your audience is at least partially in there.

There can be entertainment, but they're not in the circus tent because of the entertainment. They're in the circus tent because of the information, the nourishment. Yeah. But I definitely do try to make it as entertaining as possible because I think like it's, it's, I always have my entertainer first and foremost. Well, but that's, I mean, your gift is that you're making it digestible. You're taking subject matter that, well, what is your gift? What would you say is your gift instead of me telling you what your gift is?

I think it's just working hard and being super stubborn. Those are, those are my gifts. I have an incredibly addictive personality. And early on in my life, I realized, like, if I focus my addictions, not on vices, because I've struggled with alcoholism as well. So like for me, I realize if I, if I just get addicted to working out and like eating right and and working hard in general and bettering myself. Healthy vices. Yeah. If I if I just focus on healthy vices rather than unhealthy ones like gambling, alcohol, getting laid, you know, things like that and partying, then I will I will be

able to to I'll be very successful and happy you mentioned that your father never got to see you perform you've had your family give you the proud moments and that one is absent in a way that you would have liked because he meant what to you along this path oh no just I think he I think he would have got a real kick out of the fact that things were things have gone so well and like he was so optimistically supportive from the very beginning like even when we were on the phone and I was telling him like oh yeah I've started doing a little bit of stand-up and stuff like that and he was like oh really like such a genuine interest and and such

an excitement about it that that would that would have been something nice for him to see you know but yeah it's it's it's it's it's it's It's tough because losing my dad, and especially, like, when I lost my dad, I feel like, was also that, like, sort of formative time because I was just really getting going career-wise and everything. And it really is shaped, at least to the best of my ability, how I treat people close to me and try to treat everybody as much as humanly possible of, like, you could, like, really lose someone. You could have the last conversation with somebody and not know what's going to be the last one. And so it's important to let people know how you feel and to be as generous as possible with all of the good things that you have to say. You know what I mean? You never want to lose somebody and not have them know exactly how much you care about them, how much you enjoy their company, what they mean to you, all this stuff.

And so like one of my, yeah, that was like one of my big, like regrets, I guess, or like, I think everything happens on time. But I wish I would have started, quote unquote, like making it a little bit sooner so he could have seen some of it, you know. But you also can't learn until you learn what the impact is of grief changing your perspective on that because my guess is you were young and probably bulletproof enough to not consider that that's what was going to visit. The last conversation is going to suddenly visit is not a way to carry yourself until you felt it one time. And then you only have to feel it one time. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Because it hurt so much that you won't take it that much for granted. Like there's real life wisdom in death that way I've found in the early stages of grief.

I don't know how much that has to do with you choosing therapy, espousing therapy. Yeah. I think therapy, okay, there are two things that I think are important about therapy. One, I think that even if you have what you feel like is a handle on an issue or some problems or something like that, I do think that talking it out sometimes. Like, sometimes I will really think I know how I feel about something. And then when I talk to anybody about it, having to say out loud the thing that I've been thinking in my head is a different barrier to break than, than people recognize sometimes. It's sharing versus being alone with something. Exactly. Exactly. And so it's like, I think that while therapy doesn't replace these things, I do think we're in this sort of era of isolation. We're living in like an epidemic of loneliness. And so I think therapy sometimes is just the first step in like it's not necessarily quite the same as community building because I understand it's like you go up there,

you pay a therapist, this person's being paid to listen to you, so it takes a little bit of the softness and the sweetness out of sharing sometimes, I guess, because there's a little bit of money involved. But at the same time, I think that even people who have community, who have whatever their religious leader is, or who do have people to talk to, sometimes you have your people to talk to about certain things and not that you should be putting everyone in buckets, but like here's someone who is not, it's literally their professional job to not judge you or to not bring any preconceived notions about you when you share something. And so I think that therapy is important for those two reasons. One, a lot of people don't have someone to talk to.

Even if you have someone to talk to, sometimes they're not the person you want to share that thing with because you're worried about them looking at you differently or no matter how much they say they won't judge. There's something about what you have to say that carries a certain weight that can't be taken back. So I think it's good for those two main reasons, but I'm also like, I don't know how to put this without sounding like I'm anti-therapy now. But I do think that therapy is only, to me, worth it with the effective practice of what you do outside of it. And so I think that, you know, I've known people who have been in therapy for years and they're still like kind of jerks. And it's not a, it is not as if it is a chemical imbalance thing or a prescription thing or it's like, no, you go to therapy and then you tell your therapist how you were terrible to everybody and then you don't change the behavior feels like,

therapy is not really working for you. It almost feels like you're not going at this point, if you're just going to go and... Well, if you're just going to rummage around in your bin of narcissism and self-involvement, as opposed to going there to get the tools open-mindedly to see yourself clearly, to have tools so that you can go to work on yourself, on the things, I liken it to just, why wouldn't, if someone has some expertise, someone you trust, has some expertise in me they can feed my narcissism and help me be a better me get me closer to the things that I want to be like that's and and make me more gentle with myself and all the things that you need to to learn because you don't quite know everything about yourself that you think

you do and it's also like I'm not saying it as if it's some sort of catch all for me I looked at it as like I do think it could uh it could and does at times help me become even better at what I do because like you said with tools right give you give you um either give you the tools or or show you the tools I think the same way that a drill will never be a hammer like not really you can use a drill as a hammer if you want and you can make a hammer a drill if you want it's not going to be that effective but if you go somewhere and they're like this is actually a hammer you should use this a hammer things now you and the tool are more effective and And that's kind of how I look at it, is that, you know, I'm not, it's not as if I go every week

or even every month. I think that I have a decent, and this may be misguided of me, but I do think I have a decent barometer for when I should be going and when it's time to talk to somebody and when it's, you know, when I feel like, all right, like, I do, it's not about going until you feel okay, because you can still go and feel okay. I think it can still be, very important. But I think knowing when it's serving you versus like you're just doing it to do it. And so I feel like sometimes if I think I'm going to be just going to like do it in a way that's not productive, I do take a little break, you know. You used a phrase epidemic of loneliness. And I think you have a chance because of the style, the way you're doing this generationally new

voice. You have a chance to speak to some things in comedy that are new because pandemic is new, loneliness of pandemic and everything that changed with the anger of the loneliness. I just got done talking to Lewis Black, who said he could be at home for like 12 hours, and then he started looking at all his problems, and he thought he was going crazy because of what the pandemic did to us. I read the other day, a stat like 74% of adult American men feel moderate to high levels of loneliness. The epidemic of loneliness. It's new, isn't it? I mean, I don't know how new it is, but I know it's been building up and it needed something like the pandemic to fully be exposed because I think that before, before anyone was ever talking about anything 2020,

even in 2016, you could feel a little something like bubbling up and there were just practices that we had of like how social had the opportunity to connect everyone as far as like all the apps, all the different ways of communicating, but then all of it was also very isolating in it of itself. You could feel like you had had a bunch of little interactions with people all day while not having a single intimate conversation with anyone. And so I think that that's something that I think was gearing up, that just like, I mean, even if you want to talk about pollution, 2020 exposed a lot of stuff, because just people being like inside for two months and not having, the air and the pictures, the aerial pictures of cities was like incredibly

clean. It looked like whole cities were healed in a month, you know? And so I think that as far as an epidemic of loneliness, there are certain practices that are going to be really hard to get out of just because it's human nature. Like, for instance, even with the phone, There's that phantom reach. Have you heard about that? I haven't heard about that, but I've done it. The phantom reaches this thing where let's say you are on like a cruise ship and you have no reception and your phone is useless and you have all these people around you to talk to. Even if you are, whether you're a kid or your or your middle age, there will be times throughout the day just because of how much we're on our phones that you'll reach for your phone and you may even open it and and then be like, oh wait, yeah, I can't do anything with this. And those are some of the only indicators that we have of how much we're actually on our phone. Because if you ask someone how much they're on their phone, they might say a lot or they might give you a certain, like, metric.

But it wasn't until Apple itself decided to expose our screen time and tell us every week how much we had been on our phone. I was introduced, I thought, to another side of you when I read. a quote of yours from space, having returned from space. I know it had a poignancy that reached a lot of people for whatever the reason was. You're in space as a symbol for American television in space. You're going as the oldest person to have ever gone into space. And what comes over you is a profound sadness that you articulated with great eloquence. Can you take me through what you were expecting and what happened there?

Well, the original thought was, what an adventure. I had gone up to Seattle to visit with Bezos to talk about my being in the first launch. And they thought it was a good idea, then COVID-did. And the next thing I read, Jeff himself is going up with his brother, a lady astronaut who never did get into space and a kid. some kid I should really find out who that was because I never have

so he went first and then they invited me to come up in the next launch and I thought about it you know there was publicity about the first thing but then I thought just the experience to going up there because there's no question the second launch is now boring who cares and and even

Bezos's trip didn't attract that much attention. So I agreed to go, and the story of my going, you know, they got me there a day early. I said, what am I doing here? There's nobody here. And they said, oh, no, I said, let's go to the, let's go to the gantry, they suggested. Let's go, let's go to the gantry. It's 20 miles away. So we hopped in a car and went to the gantry. There's the gantry. The Blue Origins launch pad is a mile in the air, about 4,000 feet in the air. Then they had a gantry, there's 11 flights up. Now, let's walk up the gantry. So now I'm at 4,000 feet walking up 11 flights of stairs. Now, finally I get to the top. I'm out of breath. And, okay, we're here

at the top of the garr. Well, let's look over the gantry. And I look over that, see that, look at that room that's got 12 inches of concrete around it. And what's that? Well, that's in case something goes wrong. What? What could go wrong? So the next day everybody comes and We try and rehearse a little bit about what we're going to face. And then we get to the spaceship a couple of days later. And it's venting what looks like steam, but it's gas. It's hydrogen. I said, what's that?

He said, it's hydrogen. I said, hydrogen. Well, anybody over 12 remembers the documentaries about the Hindemerd, burning. And that guy who was the announcer's name, Nobody remembers, but he was screaming, oh, the humanity of it, and people are dying and running away from them. I mean, there's a real newsworthy experience going on in front of your eyes. An event for the ages is taking place on camera, and there's a guy ad-libbing trying to have the words to be the equal of the event in front of him. Can you imagine this spaceship, this lighter than air

ship, is burning, consumed by hydrogen gas. Are you admiring his commitment to the broadcast right now? Well, I'm thinking, what would you do? You're a broadcaster. And I would be in a position how do you add lip? My God, and all he could come up with us the humanity of it. Yeah. But That word humanity meant the world is coming to an end in front of him. And he comes out with the humanity of it and in his voice, the torture. But you haven't even taken flight yet. You're just standing. I'm looking at the venting thinking, my God, the humanity of it.

And then I get in the spaceship. And on the countdown, the guy says, there's an anomaly. It's an anomaly. No. No, I'm the only one who knows what the word anomaly means. What's anomaly? Anomily means it shouldn't be, though. Oh, I see.

There's an anomaly. Wait, you're not during the countdown? There's an anomaly? Yeah, the guy says, T minus 17, T minus 60. Oh, there's an anomaly. He didn't make that sound. You're making that up. You didn't make that sound.

No, he didn't make that sound. No, that's true. He didn't go up. He went, oh. There's an anomaly. Holy cats, what's an anomaly? What's going on? You mean that vending?

Maybe it's caught fire. No, no. It's okay. The anomaly's gone. T-minus 14 minutes. Now he gets to about T-minus 10, and this is what he says, and this is the Godstreet. Word for word. All right.

We're removing the gantry. Anybody who wants to get off should get off now. Can you imagine? Can you imagine being an astronaut and you're sitting with your back to the ground? You know, you're looking up at the sky. You know that this thunderous engine is going to take you to Mars and the geysers, if you want to get off, you get off. Ten seconds. Last ten seconds.

Last call. Right. Don't envy you. If you want to get off, man, I would get off if I were you. But you're expecting what? You're like roller coaster adventure. I want to live big. I don't know.

They say weightlessness. And we've learned how to deal with weightlessness. by anchoring ourselves to a five-point harness and and and and but no but 600 people apparently maybe a few more now have been weightless there's no word for weightless in our language there's no comparable experience you're in a swimming pool underwater that doesn't even that you know you're still part of gravity do not have gravity and when I undid the five-point harness and when they said, you're okay, and I floated out of the seat? Can you imagine? So, obviously we went, we got up. The Carmen Line is a... Let me stop you here, though. Searching for what? Before you

get up, you're searching for what? It's not just the adrenaline, Roch. There's discovery. What do you... So far, the experience is about what you wanted to be, even with the dark comic humor of interrupting with an anomaly. And weightlessness is an amorphous term. You can't describe weightless. You can't say it's like because there's nothing it's like. There are no words. You know, there are scientists who look back, who do digs.

What do you call them? Archaeological. There are archaeologists who dig into the ground and discover the history of man, history of the earth by digging down over the coating of dirt and dust that have happened over the millions of years that Earth's been around.

So the digger, the further down you dig, the more you read the levels of things that volcanic ash and the age of things. How to measure the age of life? How to measure the age of the earth and thus the age of civilization. Okay, archaeologists. Another way of doing it is by language. When words entered the language is about the time that thing existed. So the word for horse came into our language. It wasn't

English, but the antecedents of English about 10,000 years ago. So archaeologists have found bones to to what's the word I'm looking for? To validate the fact that horses came in about 10,000 years ago, but it's also part of the language. A word called horse entered the language and we then did well the horse runs the horse

and we eat the horse together and get on the horse and it became a fact. There are no words for weightlessness yet because nobody's 600 people have experienced it. There will come a time when Agadudu is weightless, okay? Oh my God, Agadudu happened in, in 2025. You say all of this with the purpose, though, of someone who did a spoken word album. You're saying there are words for everything.

Here, I'm offering you. I've gone to a place only 600 people have been to, and there are no words. That's right. Because that sensation, when I loosened. The word, there was somebody, Audrey, I don't remember Audrey's last name, who's a member of a Blue Origin, was on the trip. And Audrey says, we're above the carbon line. We can get out now.

And I did my harness. I floated out of the seat. And we were warned that would happen. And there was a little ledge on the floor to hook our toes in, to keep ourselves in the seat. I floated out of my seat. So when Bezos did it, and there's obviously numerous cameras around the interior of the spaceship, Bezos can be seen floating on his tummy with his legs akimbo, spread out, and the camera's looking at his feet.

He's like facing a window in the cameras where he, and the kid, is throwing candies at his rear end. He's having fun. I saw that. I thought, that's not what I'm going to do. I don't care about weightlessness. I want to see outside the window. So I ignored.

I floated to the window, held on to the whatever I could at the window, and peered out at the blackness of space. I have been fascinated. as I'm sure every human being to one degree or another about what's going on in the universe, the incredible amount of energy, the mystical, unknowable forces at work in the universe

that fascinate anybody who thinks about it. And the more you know about it and the more I began to acquire knowledge through my association with Neil Tyson, The more incomprehensible, the more awe of not just the forces on Earth, but the incomprehensible forces in the universe.