The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Jenkins and Jonez - Pablo Torre Is Unfiltered and He Loves It

Episode Date: April 8, 2023

The guys are joined by Pablo Torre of Meadowlark Media to discuss his move away from ESPN, how he got initiated into the Dan Le Batard universe, what ‘The Daily’ meant to him, transitioning to television, and more. #Volume #HerdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The volume. Very excited to welcome on for our next Jenkins and Jones and Friends episode, Pablo Torre, the new Meadowlark Media transfer. Hopping out of the transfer portal. Pablo, thanks for hopping on. And our apologies that Jackson Filipino fished you. I'm fucked up by this. So I came in hot right off the bat. Tyler hadn't even joined the Zoom thing.

And I asked Jackson if he's Filipino because in my brain, I was like, this looks like a guy who like spam. vaguely multi-ethnic, like, that's the, you know, necessary and sufficient conditions. And he was like, no, I'm a fourth everything. And that is shaking me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I apologize. As, as, you know, as, as, as hosts, we, we want to make you as comfortable as possible. And he does that to a lot of people, you know, he's, he's white on the spectrum. All right. Jackson's just going to sit there quiet. He ain't going to say nothing. Said he Filipino fished? I apologize. I apologize. I'm. I apologize. I apologize on behalf of my

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm just less confident than I've ever been to start a podcast. But we'll figure out. That's the energy we try to get all of our guests in.

So don't worry. That's our investigative interview technique. It's like we have racially ambiguous producers of all types in order to knock people off their pivot. So first of all, thanks for joining us. We're recording this a couple weeks

after you announced the move over to Meadowlark Media. Awesome deal. You know, you're still going to be on, I think most of the ESPN properties people are used to seeing you on. Can you just tell us how crazy the last couple weeks has been for you on a personal level? Yeah, man. I worked at ESPN for about 11 years. I've suckled at one teat as an employee for a very long time.

And I had to explain to my mom, like, why I'm giving up Disney Healthcare to work for a guy that looks like Mike. These are all good questions, Mom. No, but look, it starts because I went to Moss, Miami. So Lebitard has essentially Lebitard Fest, which is one of the weirdest things. You guys would I think strangely enjoy it. I guarantee me would. Well, it's kind of like you show up,

and it's not an echo chamber because it is that, but it's more than that. It's like when you get to sort of go to a, at Disneyland, I think, sometimes you'll see like the characters walking around with their heads off like the costume is it's what that is just like people coming up to you and being like holy shit you're like this and so anyway ron miguel was holding like a giant like walrus penis bone on a stage and you know all of this stuff was happening and i was like this feels like a place that um i i would consider working

and so my contract is up march 31st and it was it was an unintentional recruiting visit i just went down there to hang with my friends, Hawaii and seen in forever. And when it came time, like, Dan asked me if I wanted to help figure out what the fuck they should be doing at Metal Arc. And I was like, yeah, man, absolutely.

And so, yeah, my phones melted and all of that shit. And people have been wildly kind and it's been an emotional roller coaster. All of those cliches are true. But it's mostly something that I'm thrilled about, man. Yeah. Bro, I listen to your going away episode on ESPN Daily. And my dog was going through it.

Like, you know, I know it's a bittersweet time. where, you know, you're excited for the move you're about to make, but you're also, you know, kind of sentimental and appreciative of the time you spend at ESPN. So, yeah, I know it's a rollercoaster of emotions like you just said. Dude, I got lightly stoned and re-listened to that. Did you cry in the darkness while he listened to it? I felt so many feelings that I wasn't even aware that I was, I, my voice, I was like,

yo, this guy, I hope he's okay. But it's the thing of, I hosted, like, again, almost 700 episodes of that. It was my life. And so for me, unplugging from that and figuring out what's the thing that I'm genuinely, genuinely like unable to make right now that I really,

really want to do. And I'm going to speak in ambiguities because I should say that I haven't figured that out yet. But I have this blank piece of paper where they're empowering me to do exactly that. Yeah, I got ideas. And I also have a lot of things I probably should go to therapy for

after working for ESPN for a long time. How did you negotiate the deal? Like, you know, going from ESPN, doing ESPN and Metal Arc at the same time, being that Metal Arc is, you know, part of their brand is the anti-ESPN, you know what I mean? Diplomacy, John, I'm a diplomat. I'm here to build a Rainbow Coalition. I'm here to bring together former presidents and current presidents. I'm here to bring together guys who shit on ESPN all the time with the guys who get shit on by that guy.

No, but I realized that like around the horn and PTI, these shows that I've done, I'm functionally like, you know, family with them. Right. And as long as it became clear to me that they still wanted me to do that stuff. And they had this evolving perspective as far as I could tell in my position as labor as to like, okay, wait, there's this other thing you could be doing with your other time. We love you on ESPN Daily. But if you have this offer that's out there and you want to, you feel strongly about it. and it's going to take this and this and this. Diplomacy really is the answer,

and I should say that it's entirely possible that I fuck all of this up. It is entirely possible that I am a canary in a coal mine, and I don't know if you know about coal mines, but canaries tend to die inside it. It doesn't always work out for the canary. But we're going to find out, man. I'm somebody, look, the only thing I want to bring to this

is like a transparency of like why this is happening and why people are letting me do it. And the good news, it's that like in most, in most sort of shared custody situations, there's a lot more animosity at the top. And right now, I feel like the happiest child of divorce. It's a really weird thing to kind of be, yeah. You're getting two Christmases right now? That's the plan is both Christmases.

I'm playing one household off the other. I'm telling him, yo, look what I got from mom. What are you giving me? Yes, I'm making everybody feel deeply emotionally insecure for my own personal stuff. you stay up and watch Conan. That's hilarious. So, I'll go ahead. I was going to say, you know, Dan, Dan is, is a very unique case in that during his time at ESPN,

he kind of created this whole universe of his, right? I love it. It was like, there was like this Leveratara universe where, you know, he was as a senior ESPN guy, he was reaching back to the younger talent, right? Like, he took you under his wing. He took Beaumani, you know, Mina, you know, Katie Nolan. And that's, I think that's just so commendable. of him to like reach back and you know provide y'all with tangible opportunities.

Of course, there's plenty of people who men are behind the scenes. But Dan was like, you know, I have a platform here. I'm going to make y'all regular guests on my show. I'm going to give y'all, you know, more ears and more eyes on you. And I think that's really his legacy there. So I'm just kind of interested in like the whole process there. Like how did how did you kind of get initiated into like the Levitart universe when he was at ESB. Hazing, man.

Like you sort of figure out, wait a minute. Can this person handle the kind of show this is going to be? The first time I ever appeared on Dan's show, I'm pretty sure. Long story short, I was assigned a story on Canello Alvarez for a cover of ESPN the magazine. Another writer Tim Kewan, who's great, was a sign of story in Floyd Mayweather. Dan, when he was at ESPN, had both of us on air at the same time. I had never really talked to Dan, but what he had done was set up a like, you go and then you go, take turns, like giving us the five most interesting nuggets from your story. And so Tim Kewan, I'll remind you, profiled Floyd fucking Mayweather, who speaks English.

is as described, and I have Canelo Alvarez, who is wildly not interesting. And so I made my chicken salad out of chicken shit as a writer, and I love that story. But on air, I was set up to essentially be laughed out of the room because

everything Tim gave was better than my shit. And Dan knew it. And it was like, if this guy can swim in this pool full of, you know, of bits and frankly, like, discomfort then I think there's something there.

And the more real answer long term was, yeah, Dan has always been something of like a talent scout. I think a lot of it is because he's a deeply generous, genuinely generous person. Other parts of it are because he is also lazy and wants other people to do work for him. And he was like,

I don't have to pay these people and they can come on my show and make me better and younger and smarter and more diverse. Great. And for me, obviously, like where it nets out is Dan became, a mentor and a really good friend who yeah, no, I was about to tell a story that betrays his confidence about what he may have thought at my wedding reception,

but I'm going to save that for later. But the point is, Dan got really fucked up at my wedding reception. So I took that as a sign of like, we are in each other's family at this point. And Tyler, to your larger thing there about like what it allowed us to do, so much of sports media and media in general

is about structure and fitting into it. And I love structure. I love format. I get it. And that show is the opposite. And you get to fill that negative space with a more three-dimensional version of yourself where you tell stories about your life.

You end up being friends with people live in front of an audience that has these, yeah, as I said, like these genuinely, like the word parasocials become this like clinical term for describing like how listeners obviously feel, you guys have this too, where you guys feel related, you know, close to your listeners. because you guys bring your full selves to that. That's Dan, man. There aren't a lot of places on ESPN for us to do that.

Yeah, and that's actually a great segue into one of the things I wanted to ask you about. First of all, I wanted to give you props on ESPN daily. Like all three of us, I think all four of us have kind of a similar approach to sports. It's like, it's interesting to an extent, but it's mostly interesting as a doorway into other conversations and bigger topics and everything else, right? like I'm curious about your approach to that and the way that the industry is evolving. I agree with you. Dan's had a big part in kind of shifting that, you know, and making podcasts like ours possible. Honestly, like you said, where it's like, okay, we're talking, sometimes we'll talk about basketball for five minutes, you know, and then we're talking about what your worst

English teacher said to you or some shit like that. But, but that, like, I think when we were all starting out, that really was not what sports was at all. So how much. of you enjoyed being able to have the freedom, I guess, to kind of bring all these different topics into sports. So you just mentioned reminds me that, like, the reason I wanted to become a writer was because I wrote, like, uh, like an epilogue to the giver. Do you guys read the book, The Giver in school? You know that shit?

Lois Lowes Lowry, shout out. Do you still have the epilogue that you wrote to the giver? I think my mom may have saved it. But to the point, to the point, and it's embarrassing actually to go back and never revisit that. But it made my sixth grade. teacher cry. And I was like, holy shit. Like, I think I want to be a writer. This is an emotion that I have, like, I have not felt watching her get emotional about this. And so the thing I've

always followed is like, what makes you feel stuff? And insofar as sports is that lens, like, why don't we consider sports something that is more akin to, I mean, look, sports is the toy department in the sort of classic imagining of a newspaper. And to me, I'm like, it's also, It's also everything. It is also every section in the newspaper. It is also the politics, business, culture, arts. There's real shit in there. And for me, it's always been the widest possible aperture to talk about society, life, you know.

To me, as somebody who only got into sports full-time professionally because I bombed the LSAT the first time I took it, right? I was always somebody who loved sports. talk about this later. We're going to talk about this later. I have to ask you about that. No, no, no, no. But the point is, like, I was always passionate about sports as a fan and as a writer and working for the newspaper in college and all of that. But my concern was never that it would be too limiting because where I came up in sports, it was through magazine, Sports Illustrated, then ESPN the magazine, and then shows like Dan's, even PTI and around the horn, like, there are ways to talk about so much more. And so I have never felt limited by it. And that to me is

why it's the greatest fucking scam you could run is to work in sports media man. It's unbelievable. It's like people expect nothing from you. You soar over that low-ass bar and sometimes you make people feel things and they get smarter because of the things you're talking about.

It's an amazing thing. It's an amazing thing. But you make, I just want to like, you make such a good point and I'm always having this argument with like our friends who are not sports people who are like, you know, who sort of totally like you said,

it's the toy department, right? every newspaper. And I'll always just point out, it's like, civilizations played sports before they formed economies. You know what I mean? It's like religion and sports are the first two things that any group of three or more people figure out. You know what I mean?

So, yes, that's a, that's a great answer. Thank you. John, I'm sorry. I didn't mean this. It's all good. It's all good. I'm interested in, like, the production behind, like, the daily. You know what I'm saying?

The daily show. You know what I mean? Like, how much power did you have in, like, choosing the, like, the topics? You know what I mean? Where those things are like, we got to talk about this. This is important. Or this is clickworthy. You know what I mean?

Because, you know, like, or I'm truly interested in this. Like, what was that process like? Yeah. So I always prided myself on being curious, like stuff that I don't know about. That's the other thing about my approach to sports is stuff I don't have takes on from the jump is the stuff that often is most fascinating. Right. Right. Right.

As long as I figured out, like, an angle on it that I found engaging, I knew we could do something with it, especially if the guest, I mean, so much of it is reliant on these guests that we pulled from. But the production process, John, to your point, like, I had not worked in high production audio storytelling until ESPN Daily. I love, look, again, to go back to Dan's show or how most shows are filmed, they're, they're, they're so lo-fi deliberately because they are meant to be conversational and less about a cinematic aspect of how to tell sports stories. And so, for me, I essentially was the managing editor of the staff. And so

I got to weigh in on every topic. We also had to manage, of course, like ESPN has this awesome piece, investigation, documentary feature. Like, can you guys do something with it? The challenge to me was, look, I know this is not my show. This is not the Pablo Torre show, but it is a

host, is a show hosted by me that I'm again, like, overseeing. So the challenge was, here's a topic I don't know about. Maybe I wasn't responsible for the piece that we're about to discuss. But what's the way that we could do it that is substantive and pushes it to another level. And so that challenge every fucking day, man. Like, we had a staff of about eight people and we worked our asses off. It was, it was, it was the thing of I have never been swimming in so many Google

docs in my entire life. You know, it's just a thousand fucking Google Docs all of the time. How long was that process? Like, from my idea, like, you know, doing the narration, sound design and then dropping like that's a I mean that's a that's a process how long was that? No man we were like it was like a NASCAR pit crew kind of a deal where we would come up with the docket for the next week

by Thursday for the following week and then we had to slot in five shows and very rarely would we have a show in production more than a couple days before and so we were just constantly keeping the ball in the air and occasionally there would be stories that I pitched that I wanted us to

work on that were slower burning things. Our investigation into whether Jalen Rose is actually the first Jalen was a thing that we pieced together over time. Those are the pieces. Evergreen. Yeah, more evergreen shit.

That's, by the way, spoiler alert, that's the shit that I always wished we had more time for because we were always trying to swim in the currents of a due cycle. But yeah, we were trying to do all of those things simultaneously. And so production, narration, like, honestly, like, yeah, we'd be doing

voiceovers and pickups and edits. it's like the day before. And that's something that no audio storytelling platform if they had their druthers would want, man. It was, it was hectic. It sounds stressful. It sounds exhilarating, no, as a cutest person. All that research, writing, it sounds fun.

It felt like a newsroom. It felt like a newsroom in ways that I had not felt since college. We're like, we haven't slept enough. I don't know if we're getting paid enough. We love this shit. And yes, all of that, all that's true. So Pablo, you're making this pivot The metal arc from

You know, ESPN ABC Disney Mickey Mouse isn't writing Isn't signing off on the checks anymore, right? So that filter is coming off Which is something I'm very looking forward to I look forward to that shit When all of my like favorite mainstream sports folks Go this route.

So I'm curious, man, which curse word are you most looking forward To use it on a regular face? And why isn't it? Motherfuck is my. That's my favorite. By far. I'm trying to reclaim some old-timey

Asian racism and just use that as a point of pride. I want to preempt Jason Whitlock whenever possible actually. I want to make it so he has no power over me. I want to claim all of those words. I cannot believe that motherfucker.

I have unfortunately I have too many thoughts and all of them mostly help him at this point. Yeah. Because he is he's a shame he's a shameless script. When that motherfucker was defending fucking obscure

World War II slurs. I was like, bro. Can I tell you the two things, though, that always wore my, that wore my cockles. I don't think I'd say that on Disney. I don't even know if that's something that I shouldn't be able to say on Disney. We appreciate it, though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The two things I love whenever Whitlock gets in the news. One, of course, is the LeVar Ball Snacks clip, which is the greatest line read of a line in sports media history. Totally.

The pause, the pregnant pause, and then snacks with a definitiveness is amazing. And of course, the second thing is Tyler's tweet about shortened and shortened. Which is just like, I just go through the comments looking for that. And it's like an Easter icon for myself every time. I'm like, yes. Bro, I, that's how legit, that is the bat signal for when I know that Whitlock said some fuck shit. That I start, that tweet starts getting retweeted in my mention. Like, this is all that ever needs to be said about Will.

I'm like, what the fuck did you do that? Yeah, it makes me very happy that someone I'm friends with has literally the definitive, like there's no other sentences need to be said about that guy. That tweet. I just want to, yeah, we should just go through Tyler tweets at this point and reread him roasting Jason Whitlock. But, you know, I wanted to ask you, you mentioned coming up at Sports Illustrated. I was doing a slight prep, I guess, for the interview, Pablo. But I didn't realize you wrote the SI feature on athletes going broke, which was like one of the first things I first pieces I read where I was like, this is really like this is what I want to do. You know what I mean?

Like this is like I grew up in Long Beach around a lot of people who became professional athletes. So it's like this is what the actual world is. this is what they're talking about. This is what they're worried about. Not like sort of the noise part of sports media, right? And so I, you know, you have this great,

really strong background as a writer, but obviously anyone our age and younger is at some point also doing something else, right? Like, Wright Thompson's the last guy who it's like, I'm going to write. And then as my multimedia thing, I will read the things that I wrote on television.

He's a great voice. Right. A total wonderful voice. But you're one of those examples of people who, like Meena, who we've had on, transition from writing into bringing sort of those same skills but into podcasting and into having a personality and being fun on television. You mentioned you grew up wanting to be a writer. Like that was sort of the motivating desire.

So what's that transition been like for you? And how much have you embraced it versus sort of having some trepidation about that transition, I guess? Yeah. This is where I can squarely lay the blame. at the feet of Dan Levitart. Like, Dan Levitart and Tony Cornheiser are both

people that I've looked up to in this business and both people who have pulled me aside and said, isn't writing fucking miserable? And I'm like, yeah, it's really hard. And they're like, you know what's not miserable and pays you a lot more money? Television. I was like, oh, these are good points.

I'm taking notes now. I'm like, okay, got it. But no, I had a number of conversations. So the other thing about going to South Beach to do Dan's show during the ESPN era was that you would fly to fucking Miami and you would hang out with Dan on South Beach. Then afterwards he'd take his Mercedes-Benz convertible out

and it had, you know, all of the things that you'd imagine. It's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a caricature of Dan how he lives in Miami. He's the mayor of that town. He's rolling around in a drop-top convertible with like a mat wrap on it. And it's, it's just him convincing me without eating to try very hard,

that writing is not going to be your future. And so there is a real angel devil on my shoulder thing where the devil is obviously Dan. And the angel is that teacher I made cry in sixth grade. Is the sixth grade teacher. She read my thing. And I'm like, but what if I'm actually a better writer

than I am any of the other things I do? What if even if writing is the hardest, it's the thing that's most satisfying to feel having written. That's always the joke. right. I don't like writing. I like having written. And Dan and Cornheiser are both people who were made miserable by writing and wanted to hang out with their friends and talk. And once you get over the preciousness of like, you know, I look down my nose at no, but to your point, no writer is actually trying to live a pure life here.

You know, like everybody is, everybody has realized that we live in an age where we're trying to do everything because we're also people. people who like doing more than one thing. And so I have a conscience that bothers me and bites me that tells me on this substack that I just made, Pablo Tori.com. Sorry, this is very, I'm going to do this so often for the next couple months. Thank you, thank you. But it's like, do I write there, do I, is that where I put things that I actually use these fingers to type again?

And so tentatively, the answer is yes. And we'll see how much my sixth grade teacher haunts me from, I think she's alive, but from her grave. From the grave of your daily life. Yeah. I'm a very self-centered person. She's effectively dead. I wanted to ask you about high noon.

I love high noon. It was the smartest sports show in existence while it was existing. What I learned from it, you know, not existing anymore is that a really good show. You know what I'm saying? Like, might not make it. You know what I mean? Like, it can be great. You could, you know, you could, you know, you got a great producer.

great talent, great topics. You know, it felt like, it felt like, you know, the old interviews that I would watch when I was younger that were, you know, I learned listening to y'all, you know what I mean? That's why I would have it playing, you know, while working and things like that.

I loved it. What did you learn from it? And how was that experience for you? And do you think there's room for that in sports media? Like a show like that again? No, I really appreciate you saying that. And in a, I am so nostalgic for the mission that we had.

And the big what if that you think about now in retrospect is like, was that more of an internet property than a linear television property? You know, like what if that was a video podcast show? Like,

what would have been different about that? I think the trick of what high noon was was that it was trying to subvert a medium certainly in production style. And look, I loved, oh my God, that first episode, we played fucking music

underneath the whole thing and it was like Western music and it was like immediately too weird and we changed it we like never did it for the whole show again I like it though I'm telling you man I loved that shit

that one of my crazy as the internet property owner you're right that right there that weirdness is like invite that we invite that on YouTube or something you know what I'm saying exactly and that's so I should say

I correct myself like that was the first example of like audio production so to speak on television or medium that I really did was the music bed under high noon. And so what we were trying to do was figure out a way to be ourselves and build chemistry and do the stuff in the daily sports news cycle. We're also trying to balance the mandate of like, yo, we're coming off of first take.

And so we are giving people something that we absolutely want having watched first take. But our lead in being particular, and Stephen A, owner of nine of nine of the other 10 greatest line reads in sports media, by the way. No shade. He is fucking unbelievable. I love that dude in ways that he will probably never fully appreciate. But it is, it is

it was an experiment that, you know, and then we go to half an hour in the afternoons, which I wasn't bothered by, but it ends up changing the very premise and real estate becomes scarce and it's harder to build chemistry in that format. Yeah, man, I have no regrets

about that, but I do have mostly nostalgia for the fact that we tried to have discussions that went to levels that sports television in the linear cable television model just never really had time for in the talk show daily setting. And yeah, man, working with Bo like, dude, my, I like to think that over the last, so high noon started in June of 2018, went away at the start of the pandemic of 2020, so about two years. Then went right into ESPN daily. I just feel like I've been working out these muscles, man, like doing a show with Bomani Jones in which you're going back and forth five days a week and you're being challenged and you're standing up for what you want to argue for. And like it's, yeah, I got so much better and learned a lot about how I do and don't need to do conversation on TV. And I'll always be in debt to Bo for that. Yeah. Bro, if you've got, you know, sparring off with Beaumani five days a week on your resume for two years, like, Jesus Christ. Like, you know, you're prepared for anything.

man. So, for real, for real. I will say, like, when I look back at my TV career, right? So that 100% is how I feel about it. And then the first TV thing I ever did was the O'Reilly factor. The first, the first TV appearance I ever made was in 2008. It was the Beijing Olympics. I was at Sports Illustrated. We got a call, the PR department got a call late at night on a weekday. And it was like, Bill O'Reilly wants to talk to somebody about Michael Phelps. And I'm like, why the fuck are you coming to me? I'm like a fact checker. I'm like 23.

I was about to say, how old are you? I'm the only guy in the office. And they just wanted a warm body for Bill O'Reilly to go against. And I was like, okay. Like, I did debate in high school. Like, let's see how this feels. And you show up and you realize,

this is like right after the we'll do it live clip went viral. Oh, my God. Yeah, like one of the first great viral, like YouTube got invented because they're like, we need a place to put shit like this, right? Absolutely. And so I just remember like sitting across from Bill O'Reilly who was like, who had the skull size of, you know those like the alien race that created humans in Prometheus? This like giant skull.

I'm just like in awe of like this fucking old. Underrated movie Prometheus. Oh, great, great movie. Great movie. But his eyes are two-thirds of the way down his head. Right, right, right, right. I'm staring at this Republican Olmec. And I'm like, what, what am I about to do here?

And it turned out that, again, just trials by fire and TV for me. Like, he just wanted to lecture me about his high school swimming career on Long Island because he watched Michael Phelps and just needed a sports person to, like, be a corpse to throw ideas at, that were not ideas, mostly just his memories. And I learned a lot that day. Like, I could survive that. And that I really needed to know what my face looked like when I was not talking because I was mostly on screen listening in awe of how I climbed into this television.

And I'm now sitting across from this caricature of a person. That's incredible. I need to YouTube that shit, bro. Dude, it is, I hope it is, like it's on my IMDB page comically. I don't think there's video evidence and I really hope there isn't. I look terrified. By the way, that's another thing I learned from that was like to appreciate Stephen A. It's like, watch Stephen A when he's not talking.

He is an active listener. He's probably the most active listener. Because he's filling up the screen. Like that. Like he hits that all the day. He has the reacting part of it. the first improv class down, fucking pat, yes.

He's not just a static foil. Like, he is, like, his eyebrows are part of your conversation. He is a big yes-butt guy. He's not a yes-and guy. But he is absolutely selling everything you're saying with his face. And so I bring it up just because I've gotten to work with people who are at the extreme ends of talent and caricature and reputation and I just feel like surviving that shit, man.

Like, I still feel like I climbed inside of the television, to be honest. Like, I'm very comfortable on TV now because I know all these people. And there's a real demystification once you realize that, yo, this guy needs to go to therapy just like me. But the point is that, yeah, I'm just not scared anymore of, like, whoever I might encounter on TV. According to your wiki, you said your dad was the LeBron James of Urology. So we have the LeBron James of Feet and the LeBron James of Asian urologists. And I want to ask

that you saying that makes your dad sound like the best urologist ever. Why when hearing LeBron James say he went to LeBron of Feet did I feel the exact opposite? We talked about it a little, but you went to Harvard. So I trust that you're really smart. I'm wondering what you think about that.

So I should be clear, though, as a journalist that I said that my dad is the LeBron James of Filipino urologists. Oh, okay, okay, okay. Which is a very distinct level. It's wiki, so, you know, it could have been completely false, you know what I mean? But I want this, I want this episode to be footnoted. I want this to be the correction. The asterisk episode.

But I did, I did, I did laugh my ass off when I saw LeBron use the construction that I did farcically to describe my dad. And yeah, the LeBron James of Feet feels like you have the, you have wildly polarizing, but arguably the first or second greatest feat of all time. I just feel like he missed the characterization and the framing there. Like he was talking about like, he was talking about like WikiFeet rankings. And I'm talking about, you know, the best urologist, the best surgeons in the country. He just fucked his shit up. Oh, that's awesome.

Everybody, pablo tori.com. keep your eyes on Metal Arc Media as well for Pablo's nothing. Pablo, before we end, do you have any questions for us? Oh, God. You guys are still friends. Guys all like each other still. Oh, my God. Yes. When to do this with anyone else. You haven't gotten, the disease of Moore hasn't set in

for you guys. Like the Warriors shit. No. No. No. Not at all, we goo-it. Not at all. When I saw John golfing and I was like, this guy is having the time of his goddamn life. Like, you guys have all have this Zen. I mean, I watch

Tyler go to war with people on Twitter. It's one of my favorite things. But I feel like even in that, even in that, when you're like the one guy who was conducting the interview with KD that I always wanted people to conduct. Open invite, Katie, whenever you're ready, though. He's making the exact face

that he's making right now when he's tweeting with KD. Bro, bro, I'm never like out my character when I'm like, you know, going at people on Twitter. Because for one, I'm not like arguing you to get my point across. I'm usually arguing like, bro, the shit you said is really fucking stupid. Do you realize that? Like, that's usually where I'm coming from during these back and posts on Twitter.

So, yeah. What I want to say is that you guys for me embody, like, a form of internet brain that is one of the rare healthy kinds. You know, like internet brain to me is a disease that has afflicted all of us.

And I look at you guys and I'm like, you guys have figured this out in a way that very few people have, like how to be happy online and make careers on the internet. And it's fucking great. No, I'm fans of all you, seriously. Appreciate you, I appreciate that so much, man. Well, thank you. Everyone, please hit pabloatori.com.

Sign up for the substack. You get a very nice welcome email. Spoiler alert. And yes, we're all looking forward to what you got coming, man. And thanks so much for hopping on with us. We really appreciate you. Thank you, guys. Yes, sir.