The Press Box - ESPN's Pablo Torre on Podcasting, the Process, and 'High Noon'

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

Bryan is joined by ‘ESPN Daily’ host Pablo Torre to talk through his career, starting at Sports Illustrated fact-checking and covering basketball star Jeremy Lin and Linsanity, before then moving to ESPN to become a full-time writer. Later, they touch on his transition to podcasting and discuss working on his former show, 'High Noon,' and his current podcast, 'ESPN Daily.' Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Pablo Torre Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From the host that brought you to Coding Westworld. And Westworld, the recapables. Comes the Ringer Prestige TV podcast on Westworld. I'm Joanna Robinson. I'm Danny Hyfitts. And I'm David Shoemaker. Welcome to Westworld Season 4 in the Prestige TV podcast feed, where we're going to break down every episode of Westworld season four.

Every Monday, the day after the show comes out on the Prestige TV podcast feed. Wherever we get your podcast, but get them on Spotify. Hello, media consumers. First, welcome to the press box. Brian Curtis of The Ringer here, along with producer Erica Cervantes. I just got back from a mini tour of the East Coast. First stop was in Philly,

where I talked to radio host, Angelo Cotaldi. From there, I went to New York. I went to the ESPN studios in Lower Manhattan. And after a brief moment of confusion where a guard thought I was a guest on Max Kellerman's show, no, I don't think Max was looking to talk about NBA finals bumper music. I met up with our guests this week.

Pablo Torre. As a content provider, Pablo has pretty much touched them all at ESPN. He wrote magazine stories. He was a plug-and-play guest on ESPN shows. From 2018 to 2020, he hosted High Noon with Bomani Jones, and now he hosts the podcast, the ESPN Daily. We talked about all that stuff,

including what happened at High Noon. And a few times you're going to hear Pablo spend a moment on what he calls the therapy couch, wondering if all those cool operations, opportunities have a drawn him away from the thing he's best at, writing. Here's Pablo Torre. All right, Pablo, I realize process is a loaded word for you. But where am I finding you in the process of making the ESPN Daily?

Wow. So I've recorded one interview today already. I'll do another right after this. We're in a weird period where I actually have the first stretch of shows, where I am not on the show because we have a Title IX special four pack of episodes, but I have somehow conned, well, I have been conned into working more somehow on the week off than I do during weeks on because, hey, we can stockpile episodes. So I've been getting ahead of it a little bit. But it's, I'm eyeballs deep, Brian, to answer your question. How many shows are typically in production at once?

Anywhere between one and five. I mean, truly it depends. Like, we have a board, a big board to use NBA draft. Lingo right now full of like just here's a show we want to do two months from now, three months from now in the fall and here are shows that we need to do because we need to do tomorrow's show. And so it's, it feels like 50 at any given moment, honestly. And how many people work on the pod? So we have a staff full time of about a half dozen. Who do you think of as the audience for the pod? That's a very good question.

I mean, hypothetically, the audience is people who don't know a ton about sports, but want to know more about sports. But in practice, I feel like we are doing a thing that is hard, which is we are super serving fans who want to be smarter about sports, which is oftentimes people who already know something about sports, while also trying to be a generalist show for people who, like, have no idea who Chet Holmgren is, you know, who maybe not even are aware of who Russell Wilson is. And so, yeah, we do a strange dance, I would say, on that. So the generalists and the non-generalists and everybody in between? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a show where any. Anybody should be able to get something from it. But yeah, man, like, when I imagine the ESPN Daily listener, I imagine more than anything,

someone who wants to get smarter about sports and hopefully also feel something, via, and this is key, right? I guess the audience, if I can wander my way to the answer here, the audience is someone who cares about journalism. And that is a bet that we are happy to make. A few questions about your background. You're raised in Manhattan, went to Harvard, and your plan was to be a lawyer initially? Yeah. I mean, initially, really, it was to be a doctor because my parents are doctors and

because my Halloween costume was my dad's scrubs, which is a sad, sad photograph in retrospect. And then I realized, I can't do math and science, despite stereotypes of Asian America. And so I go to the next thing, which is hypothetically law school. And yeah, man, I take the LSAT and I don't do great. You could argue that I, not to insult myself, but I Ben Simmons it a little bit, sway, anxious, all of that. I say that out of sympathy. And then I decide, well, shit, I should probably go and do something that is not law driven. And so I had been interning at Sports Illustrated, had always been writing for the school newspaper. And so I say, well, let me try and work as a gap year at Sports Illustrated. I come a fact checker for a year. But before my first day, I take the

L-Sat again. And so I'm just like never really sold on the idea that this is my actual path. I'm always trying to get to grad school and to structure and to, you know, a pathway to a reliable, honest, respectable living. And you did better on the L-Sat the second time. I did, Brian. Thank you for asking. I did so much better. This is a healing podcast. It's a healing podcast that also acknowledges that when I think about that second L-Sat, I always think of like the least appropriate usage. of the Pat Riley quote, got to burn the boats.

Because it turns out that five years after that, the LSAT score expires, my boat is burned, and I am stuck in sports journalism. And yeah, so I remain. You became a fact checker at Sports Illustrated?

Yes, a reporter is the title. Fact checker is the reality. What's your favorite fact you ever checked? Oh, my God. I just remember having to take Gary Smith stories and cross out every word to make sure they're correct. And it's not even like my favorite fact.

It's just like, how do I fact check psychoanalysis? How do I fact check a man who is peering into the soul, let alone the brain of his subject? And so I learned a lot about actually how diligent a reporter Gary Smith, the legend, of course, is. Like, these are things that are grounded in reporting, it turned out. You would ask him, how did you get this? sentence. Yes. How can you feel comfortable describing this person in this deeply, almost unreasonably intimate way? And he'll be like, well, at times I like stayed over at their house and it a long, you know, and he'd give me like the scene. And I'd be like, I guess I'm,

I'm drawing a line through this word now. We go across that out. Yeah, that checks out. How do you climb out of the fact checking or reporting pit at Sports Illustrated into a full-time writing job? Yeah, so the entire time I had been pitching stories because I'm an overambitious young Harvard graduate who wants to prove that I have made something of my life. And so I'd always wanted to be a writer, obviously. And I immediately, almost immediately started pitching like these, you know, what they called bonus pieces, the long range sort of stories that I could chip away at in my free time. So I'm fact checking during the day.

And at night, I am like doing the thing of gathering a string on a story. And so I pitched a story called how and why athletes go broke. And it ended up being probably the story that's been most read that I've ever written, which is sad because it was also like the first big piece I ever had. But it was the one that got approved. And once I pitched that one and put that one together, they sort of realized, okay, this overambitious kid who's pitching us stuff actually can be listened to on these matters.

It's March 2009, I think, when that runs. And you're a writer after that. No, hell no. God no. I am a reporter entitled for like years and years after that. I don't stop fact-checking until I believe like maybe two years before I left.

Like I was always partially fact-checking. That was the scam. The great finishing school of Sports Illustrated is that you'd never stop fact-checking. I can't imagine that at a magazine. No, no. It should be doing one thing but you'd also be doing the other thing and have the same title. Yeah, it was the golden age, Brian,

of the drink cart in the Time Inc. Timing building. I had missed that by, unfortunately, a healthy amount. How'd you first get on the Jeremy Lynn beat? Man. I remember this very vividly because, I mean, the beat started with me just watching him and being sort of electrified by this thing. Well, actually, it has to start earlier than that because I pitched a Jeremy Lynn story in 2010 when he was at Harvard because I'm like, hey, Asian American kid at Harvard who's leading the nation. He's leading his team in all these categories. No one else in the nation is doing that in Division 1. And all these people are coming

from Hong Kong and Taiwan and China. And there's this whole story there. And Harvard basketball is good suddenly, what they care about it. And I pitch that story. I write that story. I am now friendly with Jeremy's parents and him and I stay in touch. And so when Linsanity begins, I'm watching the games. And my first instinct, I remember this part vividly, is I don't want to do this story right now because the pressure of like I have to turn this around right now like I can get him for like a long interview I can get him like to sit down with me why am I going to jump in the pool with like Frank fucking Isola and like try and hustle for a Jeremy Lynn story when we're Sports Illustrated and I remember going to the Laker game where he drops 38 on on Kobe and all of that

happens and thinking myself, I'm going to have to write this story now. And that was the cover that week was Jeremy Lynn doing a spin move through the lane against four Lakers. Yeah. So you were playing the long game. You're thinking bonus piece. Yes. Jeremy Lynn reflects on this magical season in the NBA. Because the Knicks were not giving anybody access to him. That was the other part of this too. Like nobody could get to Jeremy because he was being protected for reasons. I guess I understand in retrospect. But Nick's PR infamously, was already like hyper protective and KG. But with him, they were like, no.

Not even you. I remember offering like, Jonathan Soprano, it's a former PR guy for the next. I remember being like, dude, I will, do you want like free SAT tutoring for your kids? Like, what can I offer to you that will allow you to let me sit down with a person I'm texting already? And LSAT tutoring a few years later. That, unfortunately, the L-SAT was a less persuasive pitch. But no, it was something that the Knicks were very difficult about.

And I just wanted to get the magazine piece. I didn't want to be competing throwing elbows in the paint with New York tabloids. And I end up doing that and end up writing another Jeremy Lynn cover story immediately after that one. The next week. The next week. And that one was even crazier because I was reporting a story with David Epstein. We were interviewing a transgender discus thrower. sorry, hammer thrower.

And we were in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where Kieland Godsey was the athlete in question. And I remember getting a call, an alert being like, Jeremy Lynn, just beat the Mavericks and dropped whatever and whatever. And I'm like, David, I got to like step out of this interview for a second and like make some calls. And I wrote that overnight. And it was just like, this is something that I will be talking about with Brian Curtis a decade from now. Yeah.

You told the ESPN website Anscape recently that it was the most intense. hence and satisfying experience in my entire career. Still true? I think so. I think so. I've never felt, well, as a reporter, because I had never felt so inside of a story that everybody else wanted, you know, and it also was surreal. I was this human barnacle on the leg of Jeremy Lynn, and I had all of these demographic commonalities with him. He was a source before he was talking to anybody else, and everybody wanted to know what I was going to write. And nothing has approach that for all of those reasons. And the events we're talking about are in 2012, and that's the same year you come to ESPN?

Yes. And the Jeremy Lynn stories helped get you to ESPN? They must have. They must have. I remember ESPN reaching out to me even before Linsanity, like sniffing around very kindly because I was a guy with Bylines at Sports Illustrated, who I guess they thought something of. But there's no question that like when I get hired in the fall, the acceleration of that

process is no doubt aided by the forces that we are describing with Jeremy. You could later have the conversation with Jeremy. You know, those pieces were sort of big for my career that I wrote about you. Yeah, I just saw him because I was interviewed for this forthcoming documentary that'll be out on HBO in the fall called 38 at the Garden. And I saw Jeremy at this press event, red carpet thing. And I basically told him that. I was like, in some way, my daughter's tuition is coming via U.S. you still and I am eternally in that way that every journalist has to be honest with themselves about.

Like, thank you for being a subject that absolutely paid off in a literal way for me. And what did he say? He was very grateful to me and was kind about it. But, you know, like my relationship with him, it's gone from like, you know, I almost wrote a book about him. Like in the in the throes of insanity, like people wanted everything as soon as they could about him. His market, his market value was absurd. And so I was once the guy who was like not only reporting on him, but like having to ask him like very awkwardly via texts and then a phone call,

can you authorize this biography that I want to write? And he did not. And I understood why because he didn't want to have this thing. He didn't want to do a book now. He was in the middle of of everything still. And so I have been the guy who was asking too much. And now I get to be the guy years removed who, thankfully, yeah, got more than enough out of it. So you were going to write the book and you wanted to make sure he was participating in the book.

What I was told was that the way that people care about this book is if he participates and in fact authorizes this biography. For my money, which is not the money that anybody cares about here, I would have written totally unauthorized. But, you know, I've never written a book before. I'm meeting with agents and publishers, and they all want this thing because I'm the Jeremy Lynn guy. And I go as far to like download and buy bookwriting software and stuff. And I'm like, you know, collecting clips and I'm just like overreporting everything. And yeah, I have been told,

I had been told many times, like, can you get this to be authorized? We can put that on the cover. And so I tried and asked and the answer was no. And I was like, very fair answer, Jeremy. me thank you for indulging this entirely unfinancially incentivized request from you yeah so now you're at espn writing for ESPN mag what was the difference between writing a piece for there versus i was in fact checking anymore i was a senior writer i got brought on with a big title brian i was a magazine guy through and through who was there to produce big pieces like i was always sort of like in part in my memory like at sports illustrated i've always almost like wearing a beanie with propeller on it like I'm the little kid.

They're like, oh, look, oh, the fact checker is like writing pieces now. And when I get hired at ESPN, it becomes you're expected to turn out these actual bylines on big magazine stories, cover stories that we want you to do as opposed to you pitched to us. And also, by the way, you can do television now. And that is perhaps, you know, burying the lead. But yeah, that ends up being the thing that changes my life truly. We can get you on around the horn, stuff like that. Yeah, I mean, I had done the sports reporters a couple of.

couple times while trying out, I guess, auditioning for ESPN over the summer before I was hired. And so I'm sitting there with Mike Lupica and Bob Ryan and these dudes. So I'm like, this is weird to be inside of this television. And, you know, it's, it's rough at times and daunting at times because I am a kid, again, a kid with Beanie on his head, as I imagine it. And then around the horn happens in October of 2012. And yeah, I become part of this family at ESPN. on television, which is beyond truly the expectations that I had when I was hired there. Yeah, you're a maid guy in print and then a maid guy on TV, which at ESPN is two different tiers.

Absolutely. I mean, the mafia language, Ryan, I think I'm going to co-sign because I did feel like there is a, but no, there is a family of people that you sort of like connect with and get protected by. There is that, a little less violent, but definitely some. something where, oh, wow, the trajectory of this, my job description, my reputation has changed. You've become identified with the Philadelphia 76ers in the process. To such a degree that there was an article about your breakfast cooking skills called

Pablo Torre trusts the poaching process. This is how deep it is. What first got you interested in the process? It was the idea that something was happening. This grand experimental thing was happening. and everyone hated it or thought it was very stupid and that I could explain it in ways that would make it actually

sort of seem like something entirely different. The process now, I think, the criticism of it, Brian, if I may already anticipate my critics, is simply that it was obvious that they could and arguably were wise to, like, lose games for draft picks. That now is so, like, self-evident. Like, there's no secret here,

there's no strategy here. But you got to go back to when it was first, going. And like the quotes from people in and around the NBA, Russ Granik, the former deputy commissioner of the NBA, said literally, I don't know why they're doing this. Like losing on purpose, like what? Like this was tanking. I mean, again, if I have a role in the, in spreading the gospel of tanking, I have conflicted feelings about that, which we can talk about, I suppose. I don't actually think that more teams should tank as a matter of principle. It's bad for entertainment, bad for the sport, totally get that. But in terms of like, is this a strategic,

wise thing to do? I mean, Jeannie Buss was insulting this thing running the Lakers. Like, people did not get what was happening. They thought this guy was just an idiot, Sam Hinky. And it turned out that you could call it many things, but not thinking through this thing in an idiot would not be the words that I would use. So you're trying to rehabilitate it from a cold-eyed. Here is how we're going to make this franchise better point of view. at the beginning. Yeah, it's always, the argument to me was always like, the thing you think is the least competitive strategy in sports history

is actually the most arguably psychotic, hyper-competitive strategy. You care about something so much that you will take the slings and arrows and losses and ultimately the acts in service of championship fetishism. The thing that you actually think they care about the least competing is the thing they care about so much that they're going to die on, this hill for it. And I thought that that was always the most misunderstood and interesting part of the story. Has the process worked in Philadelphia? So the process ended in my accounting when Sam Hinky was ousted in 2016. And so since then, the working of the process is almost like, you know,

well, how did that marriage work out? It's like, well, or how did that family turn? How did the kids turn out? It's like, well, there have been four to five general managers slash spouses since then. And so the vision of it never got to be realized. But I would say that even with that context, which I think sounds like hedging to many of my critics, many of the haters and losers out there, believe that I am now just deflecting. But no, I think even then, it worked to the extent that this was the right thing strategically for them to have done. They got Joelle fucking Embed out of this, man. I mean, quibble about everything else.

And again, we can and I have quibbled. Like, they are where they are now, a contender, a plausible contender. and stop smiling at me, Brian, when I say that the Philadelphia 76ers are a plausible contender, they're a contender because of the process. Are they really a plausible contender? Don't you have to make the Eastern Conference finals

before you're a plausible contender? Plausibility, Brian. Let's talk about what is, is. Let's talk about how, to me, they're plausible. To me, they are close. They're close. And I think that when I think of them, and I think of the teams

that they had been categorized with as the worst run teams in the NBA. I mean, it's funny. Like, the Sixers were never, I cannot believe I'm talking about this at this length with you, but I'm glad to. The Sixers were never actually

the worst team by record in the league in any of the years that they were tanking. There are worse run teams, man. The Orlando Magic are being, they're being called to the podium number one today. We're talking on the day of the NBA draft. Like, they are so much more plausible than anybody who hates the process

S. Wads to admit. Now, you can still write stuff, occasionally still do write stuff, but what do you miss about writing regularly? Yeah, can is sort of a theoretical conjugation of what is possible here. Yeah, I can and I find it very difficult to, simply because my life is ESPN daily and debatable and PTI and around the horn. And I find that not only have my muscles atrophied, but I'm a little afraid. I'm a little afraid, Ryan. I'm afraid, I mean, I'll just jump onto the therapy couch with you. Sure. I'm existentially a little worried that the thing I am best at is writing and that I've been spending years of my life not doing the thing I am best at. I have taken great pride and

passion in everything else I do and I'm not regretting at all my decision to do them. But in the back of my mind, whenever anybody brings up writing, it's like, yeah, I should, I should figure out if that is exactly how I sort of romanticize it in my brain. You can fix this, you know. I could. You can address this. I could. We can get a laptop in here, I think, and you can write something. So could is very different from Will.

That is the conjugation of the verb that I'm choosing. And yeah, yeah, I've been asked to. I have been asked to. And there are stories that I do want to write. But honestly, the way I think right now, I think in terms of how this make a great audio documentary, how this make an episode of ESPN Daily. I truly think of those terms first and foremost now. Because mouths must be fed.

Mouth must be fed and also because I love that format. I don't know if I'm the best at it in terms of like, am I a better writer than I am a podcast host. I don't know. But I think that ESPN Daily and the medium and what we're doing, which is sort of like this insane minor miracle every time I listen to it, I do get off on that. Like that format to me is something that I do want to grow and invest in.

And it's more than just feeding the mouths. It's like actually caring about this thing in a way that is neurotic. And every bit as as journalistically and writerly in its rigor as I think actual writing might be. If it's going to be really good, I'm going to have to pour all my energy into that rather than pour some of my energy into that and then try to do something else on the side. No, I want to pour my brain and I want to commit my brain to the doing of the show. And I love, I mean, honestly, like I think of ESPN Daily as like a, daily magazine. ESPN the magazine, RIP, you know, is no longer with us. I think of where does that DNA go? Where to all of these writers who want to take these big swings and envision themselves

as like, you know, people making works that last, where do they, where do they go? And I invite them invariably onto a platform that is insanely disposable. Like, it's weird to have a work that lasts being featured on a platform that is daily by definition. But every day, I want to make a work that lasts. Climb back on the couch for one more second. Please. When do you feel those pangs about not writing? When I read a story, that's really fucking good.

And I'm like, because I'm always, I mean, still, Brian, like, my skills right now as, as podcast hosts, as guy, just like, I'm looking for the adverb here. That's correct. That's insatiably consuming and reading sports news. For all the jobs that I do, I'm like, clockwork or oranging myself with, like, just people making things and writing things and reporting things. I think about all of this still in terms of structure. Like, how did they pull this off?

Scott Price once told me the greatest thing about structuring a story. Like, how do I leave a bell ringing in someone's head? Right? That's the kicker. Scott Price thinks kicker first. And that's never left me. And so I'm always like, how do I reverse engineer the thing that I think is really good? And how do I do that in audio?

How do I do that in writing? and when I read it in writing first, I feel the jealousy of like, ooh, I remember what it's like for the bat to connect with the ball like that and to feel like just so clean, man, just like perfectly, perfectly engineered for the bell to ring in that way.

You and I sat in this very office in the summer of 2018 to talk about your about to launch television show high noon. Yes. How do you look back on that experience now? I look on it with great nostalgia. It feels like forever ago. And in part, it's because, like, the last sort of gasps of the show coincided with the first gasps of the coronavirus pandemic. And so I think of sitting, we're sitting in the Seaport studio through this conference room glass.

I see our old chairs. I still sit in that chair when I come into the office. And I think of a bustling little town where we put together this show. And I loved doing it. I think about it so nostalgically. and it also feels like, you know, I also, to be on the therapy couch here, I also don't feel like we left much on the table. You know, I'm not like, oh, if only we could have done, it's like, when I think about it in retrospect, it is nostalgia, but also like, weirdly, the pandemic provided closure for me. There was not like a what if, like, oh, what if we got to do?

It's like, no, it's over and I'm so glad we did it. Yeah, that's it. You mentioned wearing the beanie with the propeller earlier. I remember you telling me in 2018, I feel like the junior guy at ESPN, you said, people keep bringing out a show and say, here's a little sparky, he's going to show off how many words he knows. And this was the moment where you became less of a junior guy, the process, to use that word again, repeating itself. Do you feel like that was accomplished with Hain Noon? I do. I do. I mean, sitting across from Beaumani Jones, I just saw Bo, uh,

for dinner earlier this week. And I was reminded what it's like to sit across from him. And I'm like, the amount that I learned and leveled up and figured out how to be confident in the face of a person who is going to pick apart arguments as quickly,

as rigorously, as passionately as anyone else who has ever walked the planet, like to me, doing the show, yeah, I grew. I grew appreciably.

and in real ways to the point where I consider a person like Bo, a colleague, a peer, as opposed to a little brother. And I absolutely felt that way at the end of it. But Moni has been talking about high noon here and there on his media tour for his HBO show. He told GQ recently, we did not have chemistry between me and Pablo. That's all it came down to. Do you agree? Yes and no. I mean, yes and no in the sense that our friendship off screen never fully became what it should have been on screen.

And I think a lot of that honestly was due to the format of the show changing. So I think we felt some of that, the crunch of that, because we are like digressive, expansive people who I think when forced to fit into 30 minutes, we felt the dynamic change. We felt the real estate become more scarce. So when we were an hour live, I would say that was the best replication showcase for our chemistry. when we got to 30 minutes at 4 p.m. and it was taped, it all felt different. And I think that what I wanted to get out of it, which was here is an authentic friendship on screen, displayed for all to enjoy and hang out with, it became something that felt less like its original vision.

And for that reason, I do agree with the sentiment that, yeah, our chemistry wasn't always, not always fully displayed in ways that either of us wanted. Because the idea of the show was we're friends in real life, as the kids say, we have these big conversations and we're going to take those conversations and translate them to television. Yes. And the whole key of this is can we take real conversations and make them TV worthy in some way? Yeah, yeah. And that process, what was that like?

I mean, I think when you have an hour live, you can do that far more convincingly. And by the way, none of this is to begrudge, like, oh, we changed time slots. Like, that's not at all. Like, I truly have no, like, resentment at all in my body about that. I just think that the premise of the show changed to the point where, like, okay, the time is so much more tight. And the ability for either of us to be our best selves, like, that proposition got compromised. And it became a thing where I don't think.

think either of us felt like we were being our best selves in that format. And on that level, I think, you know, we were not our best show by the end of it, even though, again, I am so deeply proud of what we did within that context. Where were you when you learned the show was canceled in February 2020? Oh, my God. I mean, I was at New York Presbyterian Hospital when officially word got out. And I was, this is just the visceral memory of all of it just coming back. Like, I was in the, not the waiting room. I was in the room you're in when you have a baby. What's that called, Brian? A maternity ward? Yeah. I was in the maternity ward with Liz, my wife, and my daughter is there. And I just remember like, it's weird to watch my daughter. I know, actually the thought, because the thought occurred

to me while Violet was being born. I remember thinking to myself, it's weird that this memory I have of my first child entering the world also has attached to it like its own barnacle, the idea that my show has been canceled. That's not exactly how I'd wanted to go down in the history books, in the posterity of my brain, but that's always going to be attached to it. I think I told you that when I found out Grantland had been killed, I was all also in the maternity ward.

Hours after the birth of my daughter. I think I still have the text from Chris Connolly. Brian, check your email. Oh, I wonder what this is. Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord. Yeah, it feels, you know, one of the cliches I do believe in cosmically to remain on the therapy couch is that when it rains, it does pour.

Like, for some reason, it's felt that way to me. And so, yes, high noon, canceled. Violet, my daughter, born. Headline being read off of phone. of wife. Coronavirus, what's that? Like, all of this happening. At literally the same 24-hour span

as I'm like walking like a zombie through the hallways of a maternity ward. Yeah, it all felt a little on the nose. Three months later, you decide to resign with ESPN. Why? Because I love working here. And I say that with lots of like just unironic enthusiasm. I like, I love to do television.

I love to be. working with the people who I've worked with for now 10 years. I mean, it was a no-brander to me on that level. Let's talk about the ESPN Daily. Yeah. This may be me projecting. But when you're recording a podcast, how do you stop from slipping into podcast voice?

Brian, I feel like I'm constantly, I'm constantly an animated gif of someone who's about to slip into podcast voice. I don't know if, I don't even know what my real voice is anymore. In some ways, to me, the goal of hosting ESPN Daily or any podcast is to sound like you're not reading something. And so what is podcast voice ideally? I think maybe it's a little timber, a little tenor, it's a little baritone, like you can modulate, like all of those things. But fundamentally, you want to sound like you're not reading a script. And so if I can avoid that at all costs, that is a good day for me.

But see, what happens is, then you overcorrect. And you sound like you're trying to be really casual. Yes. So you sound like this American life where I'm just talking about a thing. Yes, where you're in fact slipping intentionally, where you're like starting and stopping just to give yourself the credibility of someone who isn't over prepared. I mean, I listen to like radio lab sometimes. And I love radio lab. It's great.

But I'm like, wow, these two people are just going to spontaneously generate a story idea now. And it's going to come with full production values and stutters and stops and starts. And I'm like, it is brilliant and also, to your point, wildly conspicuous as to what's actually happening in terms of like the theater of this. Do you cringe when you hear something you recorded? Oh, yeah. When I can tell, oh, this is a guy who is like reading a retrak. This is a guy who had to pick something up and is trying to sound like he's conversational and is in fact failing at it. A couple of templates I've picked up that you do.

You do a download with somebody like Jonathan Gavoni, Bill Barnwell, Greg Washingki, about stuff that's, happening. That's one form of the daily. Then somebody has written a long piece for ESPN and you kind of flush it out and talk about it. That's another kind. And then the third category is maybe your original reported stuff that resembles a magazine piece. Yes. And in another dimension would be something that you are writing for ESPN the magazine. Absolutely. I'm thinking here of the woman who performs the Red Panda halftime act. Yes. At NBA games. Yes. Yes. Like an interview. I interview this woman, Red Panda herself, the legend, and I profile her. And it is an audio, documentary as opposed to a magazine feature. I have lots of magazine stories in my brain that I think about

pitching and then realize I should just do this as a podcast if I can. And that is one of them. We did a story, I call it a story. We did a podcast about how Jalen Rose is really, you know, the godfather of all Jailens. And that to me is a story in which like in another life, we would have just made that a print piece. But instead, we're going to do a super cut of like 20 different Jailens all chiming in a montage as opposed to using like this bunch of quotes. But the framework you've described, Brian, like, yes, I think about it in very similar ways. There are stories that we want to explain.

There are stories that we want to tell. And there are the original reported stories that we create out of whole cloth ourselves. It's interesting, the ones that have already been reported on ESPN. Because I know I have this experience. I'll tell people, somebody will say, hey, did you read so-and-so's big feature? And they'll say, no, but I heard it on the daily. Yes. As an alternative mode of consumption, which is sort of flattering.

But also like. But as a wordsmith, you think, would I'd also like you to go read the story? I'm a wild hypocrite, Ryan. I am eating away at the potential audience for any given magazine story by subsuming that audience into my own organism. Like Huffington Post 20 years ago. Yeah. Those aggregators. Well, so in the sense that, yes, I am mining someone else's work for our own content.

But know in the sense that what I love about working with magazine writers explicitly is that we get to do a version of the story that isn't actually the same. So podcast structure is so different from magazine structure in substantial ways. Like in a magazine piece, you can structure a story in one way that really works in print. But if your kicker is sort of like a sub-stop. allusion to something that came before, like, you can't end a podcast like that. You know, you do need to spell out things a little bit more clearly and loudly, throw some music underneath there, make the full circle bell ringing, sometimes like a more literal version of a bell. And

in a magazine piece, I think there are some stories where I am very proud, I really like this magazine story, but I like it a lot more as a podcast. And I think the writers that we work with, I am glad that they sometimes feel that way, too. Here's another one that could have been a magazine story in another time. Haralabob Varas last October comes on to talk about what happened when he was the not GM of the Dallas Maverick. The alleged shadow general manager. How long did it take you to persuade Haralabob to come on the pod? So I had known Bob casually.

We had met a couple times at NBA finals and stuff. It's like, why is this guy sitting court side? Oh, he's the most successful NBA gambler of all time or better of all time because he's likes to distinguish between those two words. I had pitched him on this for weeks, calling him on the phone, just being like, I think there's a lot to this story that isn't out there. And I knew that from talking to him just off the record and on a background. And the tricky part was just convincing him, like, so much of that story was about, behold, this insensitive, arrogant robot. And I was like, Bob, I know you and there are some aspects of you that I understand why people come away with that sort of headline, but you're also a person who has three dimensions.

And I think a podcast is actually a natural setting for you. And yeah, he trusted me and I think it worked out on that level too. And this is one of those cases where, and I always preface it, as a words guy, and then I go record my podcast, that's that. But as a words guy, it's interesting to be open mind. it. And when you think, I have the first words from a person in the news who everybody in NBA land has been talking about and thinking about for weeks, wouldn't I want those words in audio form, maybe, rather than flattened on a page when I'm trying to tell the same story? It's an interesting question anyway. Yeah, no, it is. I mean, part of me was like,

do I have an obligation to write a dot-com story here? You know, it just as a matter of like, there's a newsroom aspect here, right? And I'm like, we're kind of like this faction inside of ESPN that is eating, arguably, as you just put it, off of the plates of some of the other people. But we're also there to make editorial decisions and, like, treat our platform as one that can break news. Like, we have to make decisions about coverage every day. Like, what are we?

And look, the Times Daily is the obvious analog for, like, what we are aspiring to do. But not only do they have dozens and dozens of names that they have when they do the credits of their show, and God bless all of them. Their show is the most successful podcast in the news medium of all time. But, like, they are beholden to different things. So for me, like the Bob Volgaris story is not going to lead first take.

You know, I don't know, I'm trying to think of what's the equivalent of, like, the Times front page now in sports, right? It's not going to be the thing that everyone's talking about more than anything else. But it's an incredible magazine story. And so because the news in sports is less unanimously urgent, we can make coverage choices where it's like, hey, this magazine story

with Bob Volgaris, the alleged out of the Mavericks, that can be our front page today. And in that way, it does feel like we're kind of like an old school operation too. You can tell that I'm like trying to creep back towards words and journalism and feeling we have credibility, but I do think we get there. Here's another one that stuck out to me. earlier this month, you did a show on the Tuanon conspiracy. For listeners who live outside the footprint of the AFCEs, can you explain what Tuanon is?

Yeah, so the Miami Dolphins fan base, it turns out, deserves to be on a couple of different lists, I guess. One is like the list of most passionate fan bases. The other is like a possible watch list because they have like an insane aggression when it comes to litigating the question of whether Tua of Iloa, their franchise quarterback ostensibly is actually good at football. And so it emerged that, okay, this fan base has taken on the characteristics of a cult. They took on the nickname

to anon, which was just a term of art for like just how they would enter the Twitter mentions of sports media members first and foremost. But then out of that sort of primordial ooze arose an anonymous character who would create videos while wearing a rubber dolphin mask and have a voice modulator and basically do these hostage-style videos in the style of QAnon, and they took on the identity of Tu-Anon themselves. And I thought to myself, I want to know more about this rabbit hole. And this feels like a podcast. And so we asked Marcel Louis Jacques, our Dolphins Beat writer, to like go tumble down the rabbit

hole for us and we'll make a show about it. And he was able to get some audio from the secretive To-Anon group. whatever we're calling them. Yes. And then you use that on the podcast. So that's all original. That was not a print story, but that was all original for the podcast.

Correct. It started with us saying to him, I know you haven't been assigned this, but do you have any interest in doing it? And again, like, what ESPN Daily is now? It's like this outlet for writers to be, you know,

podcasts, storytellers, like short film documentarians in some way. And it really does require some ingredients that are necessary, not always sufficient, but necessary, but like can we get you to collect sound? You know, can we set a producer up with you such that we can do theater of the mind

with this patently absurd topic, which is, yeah, a conspiracy around, yeah, Tuotunga Vyloa. You mentioned your daughter, Violet, being born two and a half years ago now. Yeah. What's been the most surprising thing about fatherhood? Just how much of a cliche I am, you know? Ryan, like, I, like, it's all true.

Like, oh, the happiest day of your life is always the next day you get to spend with her. It's like, oh, all of us, you're a, you care about things in ways you never did. Everything tastes and smells. It's like, check, check, check. Yes, I am living all of it. I feel the circuitry activate. And again, when I get to thinking about this stuff in a sincere way, it's like, yeah, I get, I become, I become the guy that I scoffed at.

Like, oh, great, a dad who loves his kid. Congrats. And I'm just like here with like a thousand photos. on my phone. Like, check out how beautiful this is, you know. And now she's at the age where it's like interactive, you know, the two-year-old mark. And so I realized that she's just listening to me.

And so I do have a fear, Brian, in the back of my mind that my daughter is going to emerge, you know, with podcast voice. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Yeah. Just a lot of, hmm, a lot of, hmm, is going to be in there just for like decorative effect in conversation. And I'm going to be...

That little thing to know that you're listening to whoever you're interviewing. That little, mm, oh, it's key. Mm-hmm. So I will say this on, because I, you know, I don't have stolen valor here.

I want to prove that. I have just been, I've been doing that naturally as a human who is maybe insecure about whether the other person is enjoying the conversation as much as I am. I've been doing that for years,

but it is that like, I'm here too. Like, conversation is happening. I am listening. All of those boxes also get checked. Yeah, well, it's like the debate shows, you know, when they do the split screen and somebody's doing that kind of like slow nod. So, so the first TV I ever did was the O'Reilly factor.

Bill O'Reilly. You may have heard of him, Brian Kerr. I have. So I was at Sports Illustrated. This is the first TV I did that sort of laid the groundwork for everything we talked about before. But I was in the office at SI. It's 2008, Beijing Olympics. Everybody who's an actual real reporter and not a fact checker with the title of

reporter is out in China covering the Olympics. Time zones, as you may understand, are very different. So I'm in my office just like crossing out words from like a Tim Layden feature to fact check. And a knock on the door comes. It's the PR person at Sports Illustrated. And she very sheepishly is like, so the O'Reilly Factor wants to talk about Michael Phelps with someone from Sports Illustrated. She sort of looks around gestures at the empty hallways. It's all dark. And she's like, are you available tonight? And I had done debate in high school.

That's where I come from and all of this. That's like my sort of training ground, I guess. And intuitively, I was like, yes. And then I began to realize what I had just done. And the first lesson I learned while watching back my appearance with Bill O'Reilly on the O'Reilly fact in which Bill O'Reilly almost entirely just lectures. at me about his high school swimming career on Long Island, which is why he wanted to talk about Michael Phelps with anybody, literally anybody, including me, random 25-year-old, was because, you know, I was there to be his audience. And I realized the first thing was, I need to improve my

listening face. I need a nod. I look like I am being held hostage myself. I look terrified. I need to do the theater. I need to do the performance of nodding. And I never forgot that ever since. As you yourself nod in kind. We make fun of it, but it works. That just kind of slow nod, pursed lips. Watch, I say this to, you know, when I get asked about like doing TV and by young people, I say, just watch Stephen A on mute. Watch him on mute.

You know, I don't, don't do that, but know why he does that. Know why he is, he is demonstratively reacting. Oftentimes it's because literally the people watching you are watching you are watching you on mute, like at a sports bar. Absolutely. That alone when the sound is up. An airport. Oh, no doubt.

Just walking by. Hey, there's Pablo, you know? Presumably saying something. Yes. Or nodding in this case. Or just very vigorously agreeing or disagreeing. So we've been talking about work stuff. How has fatherhood made you think differently about work?

I'm certainly more existential about why I work. Like, I got to send this kid to college. I need to prepare for a life in which, I don't know, the cable bundle falls apart. And like, I mean, just like all of the apocalyptic sports media scenarios are just more real to me now. Like, I need to make sure I'm in this. Like, because again, the boats are burned, Brian. I don't know what I would do if I wasn't doing some version of this.

And so I think about like, yeah, how long? Where does this all go? Like, and I think about it just on the very, yeah, the survivalist apocalyptic sort of wavelength. I definitely think about it on those terms, but I also find with kids I think about on the, my kid is going to have an opinion about what I do someday. I mean, am I going to be judged by my daughter in retrospect? Yes, is the answer to that question, but please continue. No, I think the answer is unequivocally yes.

And, you know, I'm somebody who likes high and lowbrow things. You know, I am not above being the butt of a joke as needed. and are there going to be video montages of me being, I don't know, docked 300 points on around the horn that my daughter will just be like, what, what, why are you a rodeo clown? And I'll be like, that's a fair question. And then I'll probably say, huh, and then I'll wait. And then I'll remind her that that paid for her college tuition.

What did you do during the embrace debate era, Daddy? Violet, I embrace. it. Magazine writing, daily TV show, daily podcast. What else do you want to do?

Sheesh. Um, I want to do something scripted. I want to do something that is like a thing that I can sort of like a non-sports thing.

A non-sports scripted thing. And when I say scripted, I really mean written, but it could certainly be in the realm of like a screenplay or something. I just have a vague ambition to like do the thing I have never done. I'm kind of,

like nervous even vocalizing the fact that I want to do it, as you may have noticed, because I don't have a great idea for it yet. But that's the next project. I don't think it's the thing that replaces what I do. But it's the thing as somebody who like, again, when I watch or read and I really love it, I grow jealous of it. And I've grown very jealous of friends of mine who are making shows and movies. And I'm like, what is that like? But to be honest, like in the near term, I spend very little of my time thinking about that because I am swimming. I'm doggy paddling to stay afloat. When did the notion of doing something script and start banging around your head? When all my friends moved to L.A. And I got to know people

who make things. You know, when I got to be a barnacle on the leg of Ezra Edelman as he won an Oscar. And I got to be at, and this is not even a humble brag. So I want to portray this in the most humiliating terms possible. When I got to sneak under Ezra's skirt into the Vanity Fair Party, I'm just like, this doesn't feel beyond, beyond any normal man's capacity.

Like, can I also make my mark in entertainment? So yeah, I think about that. Pablo Tori, thanks for coming on the press box. Brian Curtis. Thank you. Was that convincingly conversational? All right, it's time for the second weekly edition of David Shoemaker

Guess is the strained pun headline Yeah, yeah, yeah Monday's headline about a British estate getting a glow up was Downton Shabby Today's headline comes from me, David, it's from Air Mail, a story about an attempted comeback by what the site calls Me Too culprit Charlie Rose. Charlie Rose is attempting a comeback. The tweet from Air Mail reads like this.

During the pandemic, Rose wrote and circulated a 75-page treatise on why he deserves a second chance. Are people really buying it? So will people buy a Rose comeback? What was Air Mail's strained pun headline? Is it like a Rose by any other shame? This is my... That's not bad. Charlie...

Oh, God. Rose is definitely going to be in this. Rose. Pete Rose. What if I directed you toward the realm of culture that our very own Juliet Littman? Yeah. Rose ceremony.

Rose, Rose, Rose. And at the Rose ceremony, you say? Will you accept? Oh, will you accept this rose? That's really great. Will the world accept this rose? He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis.

Production Magic by Erica Servantes back. Tuesday. Tuesday, not Monday, with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.