The Ryen Russillo Podcast - It’s OK to Love College Basketball and the NBA, Wilt vs. Russell Stories, and What’s Next for LeBron With Jackie MacMullan. Plus, Author Michael Lewis.

Episode Date: April 5, 2022

Russillo shares his thoughts on the beauty of the NCAA tournament and the national champion Kansas Jayhawks (0:29) before talking with Jackie MacMullan about her new narrative podcast, ‘Icons Club,��� the friendship and rivalry between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, the 2022 Celtics’ turnaround, LeBron James’s future after a crushing Lakers season, and more (12:13). Then Ryen talks with author and journalist Michael Lewis about some of his books, including ‘The Premonition,’ ‘The Fifth Risk,’ ‘Losers: The Road to Everyplace but the White House,’ ‘Moneyball: The Art of Winning,’ and more (43:34). Finally Ryen answers some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (1:17:12). Host: Ryen Russillo Guests: Jackie MacMullan and Michael Lewis Producers: Kyle Crichton and Steve Ceruti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

today's podcast we have author michael lewis new podcast book that came out i want to get to a bunch of different stuff it's michael lewis so we're fired up jack mcmullen on the icons club podcast series we'll talk a little current events as well in the NBA Life Advice and an open on loving college basketball again. An unbelievable tournament, unbelievable title game, and congrats to the Kansas Jayhawks. I feel like I've always had a little bit

of a soft spot for the Jayhawks going back to that Manning team that wasn't great around them. I think their big concern too was that they weren't going to make enough free throws, and Manning just carried them to a great title.

And that was also because in 86 it felt like they had a really good team archie marshall tore up his knee uh this is going deep this is kind of the beginning of my first not liking duke experience went on pretty strong there for a long time and then being around espn it kind of uh dissipated a little bit but anyway um one of those games where you're like i love this tournament and i love college basketball even though i don't talk about college basketball a lot i'm going to get to that at the very end of this but at half let's do a little game stuff your little game recap um you unc is up 40 to 25 felt like all the momentum you know you wondered okay wait does duke is that too emotional is that where you pick kansas in this one but the other thing with kansas is kind of

funny too is that if you really look at all the Bill Self teams, and we were talking about all the top seeds before the tournament even started, historically, this was not a really talented Kansas team. They won a lot of games. They win the Big 12. It feels like even when they're not supposed to win the Big 12, they win the Big 12 regular season and conference tournament this year as well. Obagi is a pro. Brown, I guess, is a pro, but they could actually not have one single

lottery pick on this entire team, which isn't to say that that's the end-all be-all of all of this, but when you look at just sheer talent, hell, look at Duke. It's not like they had a disappointing season with getting into the Final Four, but they have five first-round picks on that team, so it's not exactly the same template here for talent. But UNC on the other side, too, here for talent. But UNC on the other side, too, is a weird team, right? I mean, UNC was 12-6 at one point.

They had beat No. 24 Michigan, but a handful of the other ranked teams that they played, they got their asses kicked. And then they went 12-3 to finish the season. They beat K in his final game at Cameron. We know what happened

on Saturday night. So they were different profile teams, even though UNC had the lower seed and Kansas had the higher seed. UNC being up 40-25 at the half, I'm like, all right, I think I like them a little because of the momentum part of it, but I don't look at the Tar Heels as this incredibly talented basketball team either.

If we go pros and start talking about that, I don't know who's going in the first round out of that entire roster. I don't know. Maybe somebody falls in love with Caleb Love. Maybe Baycott ends up becoming somebody late first. You know, I don't know. Like the point is that this was not loaded with lottery picks all over the place. So as UNC is up, Kansas comes right out of the second half.

They start getting into the paint a little bit more, going at the lack of size for North Carolina, because even Manick, who's a big kid, the white kid from Oklahoma, who transferred, it's not exactly something you think is going to hold up defensively. There's another part of this or the way it plays out with UNC losing where a lot of people were saying, well, look at UNC. They only played six guys. Kansas kind of only played six guys. I mean, Remy Martin comes in, the transfer from Arizona State, who scored a million points at Arizona State. He had a bunch of shots. I thought like three of them were atrocious decisions and they went in and he can't really even play point guard

all that much. And yet they were playing them a decent amount. But other than that, light foot played seven minutes and then another guy played two and another guy played three. So you could argue Kansas played for four guys off the bench, but they really only played Remy. And on the other side, North Carolina played puff Johnson Johnson, who's Cam Johnson's younger brother, which makes sense because you're watching him going, looks a lot like the guy in the Phoenix Suns who also played for the Tar Heels. So I'm not quite sure if that's what it was. I don't know that it was because of the emotional part of Duke on Saturday that they couldn't overcome it and that they just ran out of gas in the second half. It's a really easy thing to say.

I hear it said all the time. Maybe I'm wrong, but if you're looking at Baycott's injury, the ankle at the very end, he'd already rolled it. He'd already rolled it. So that was there. Manick, I think on that last play, that was supposed to be him in the corner. I think they were going to try to throw it to him in the corner

and he stumbled along the baseline. Is it because he was tired because of how exhausting Duke was or is it because he got smashed in the face where I was surprised he was even still playing. He looked like he was out of it there for a little while and then got hit again or maybe he just slipped and as far as Puff Johnson out there who at one point I thought is he throwing up on the court they had said somebody had hit him but I didn't really see that replay correctly and Puff at one point looked like he was actually going to save this team and he's not

exactly a guy you expect a ton from because the way he played so as we're looking at how the rest of the game played out i don't know that it was north carolina was still drained from saturday i don't know it's because they had a short rotation i don't think kansas played a ton of guys or we could look at each individual act and say well there's an explanation beyond just what happened on saturday uh when kansas goes up north carolina is coming down and if you know anything about the Caleb Love story, and I'm sure you saw him hit just an absurd amount of big shots against Duke, it's a little bit, I'm trying to think. I have a theory, a working theory here, Trey Young, stop me if you've heard this before. I wonder, and even though they started winning games here

again, I wonder if the Eastern Conference Finals appearance ends up becoming a bad thing for the Hawks because it emboldens Trey to be like, no, no, this is how we do it, and this is how I'm going to do it, and this is the best chance that we have. And you're like, eh, maybe, maybe, because why are you so average this year, right? Maybe they turn it on, maybe the playoff run,

who knows, okay, fine. Caleb Love is somebody who, if you go back to last year when Roy Williams was still the coach, and he was a five-star recruit out of St. Louis, big deal. And he's turning the ball over a ton, and he's not hitting any shots. And they were asking Roy, I was reading this article the other day, and they were asking Roy Williams about Caleb Love. And they're like, what do you think? And Roy had a great answer. He goes, you know, he's going to be a really good player. He's like, I just like it to be before I die.

And that's a coach telling you, and as you watched him, this is a frustrating player. And he had the turnovers last night. But I knew because he took that shot against Duke and hit it, I'm like, he is going to take this shot again. I wrote it down on my notes before it happened. I said, Caleb Love will pull this up from deep because he's going to be that guy. He's like, I'm going to hit this shot because he just hit it against Duke. So you kind of want to say, all right, I love the confidence. I love that you believe in yourself. Maybe you don't need one from 30 feet with 15 left on the shot clock. That was the most predictable shot I've

watched in the entire tournament. Wasn't even close. And then Kansas has the ball. Maybe this will be forgotten. We'll probably remember the next day. But Kansas inbounding the basketball and the guy stepping out of bounds twice while he's about to be fouled up three with only four and a half seconds left.

If that had turned the ball over, ends up going to overtime, North Carolina scores, Kansas losing overtime. If I were a Kansas fan, I would have needed a year off. Straight up, just a year off. I can't root. I just emotionally, we need some space for a little while because it'll be lost historically,

but to be up three with the ball, four and a half seconds left, and the guy who receives the inbounds steps out of bounds would have been one of the all-time ways to let another team back in and lose a game. Which is ironic, too, because Self's only other title was when Memphis just stopped hitting free throws, what, up nine with two-something minutes to go, Chalmers shot. And that's Self's only title previous to this. Which is also something that's worth talking

about because when you think about how hard it is to win in this tournament and all the great teams itself has had where you know the bucknell loss like i was going through it again this morning and it happens to all of these all of these big time because you're around long enough you're going to have a couple early exits that make no sense whatsoever because it's still sports and it's one and done, and maybe it's just not your day. And Self in his 19th season gets his second title. But think of that. This had been, what, a decade and a half? Well, 2008.

All right, so almost there. Yeah, we're talking 14 years since his last title in that Memphis comeback. And Self is one of the best coaches going. But when you start thinking about who are, not the Mount Rushmore, but who are the guys, right? Who are the guys at their place that have done it the longest that are considered among the best? Izzo's had one at Michigan State. I'd argue Michigan State talent has fallen off a little bit in recent years, but Izzo, who's a terrific coach by any standard, has won and it was over 20 years ago. I don't know if I put Boeheim in, has won. And it was over 20 years ago.

I don't know if I put Boeheim in there. He's been at Syracuse 40 years. I don't think Boeheim gets included in the self-calipari Coach K conversation. But he's been with Syracuse that long. He's got one. Cal, speaking of, I mean, Cal's been at Kentucky now 13 years, I think. Yeah, 13 years. He's got one. He's zero Final Fours. Yeah, 13 years. He's got one.

Zero Final Fours in the last seven years. So it's a bit of a warning, too, to fan bases where I always like to say, no matter which college football program you are, what your history is, you start seeing those banners in stadiums. You go, man, there are some gaps in between. What if you told LSU fans,

be like, yeah, that was a nice run in 2019. It's going to be 20 years before you win another one. I mean, that seems ridiculous in the moment, but that's exactly how this plays out. I mean, that's always the point that it is really hard. It is really hard to do this. That's why the Saban thing is so stupid. We'll probably appreciate it

more years removed from it happening because now we're numb to it, right? It is really hard to win. Final thought on this too is enjoying the tournament as much as I did the last few weeks. And I don't talk much

college basketball at all on this podcast. We used to talk about it more on the radio show. It doesn't play as well the regular season. There just isn't... Look, football pays the bills.

The NBA pays the bills. I don't know that I have enough time to watch all the extra college basketball that I'll go back and watch later on. But this always kind of reminds me of NFL Hardo guy. You know who NFL Hardo guys, right? He wants you to know how much he loves the NFL. He just was like, I like the NFL, man. Like I get it. And it feels awesome. I like the NFL too.

I like the NFL, man. Like, I get it. NFL's awesome. I like the NFL too. I'm not going to get a fucking logo tattooed on my nameplate here. And in part of NFL Hardo's argument, it's like college football sucks. Well, first of all, college football doesn't suck. I like college football better. I like the pageantry.

I like the geographical identity of it all. I like the uniqueness of different conferences and different styles. Sometimes I just like the songs and uniforms. I like that it's on a Saturday or a Saturday night. I love that stuff. I love it. But I still really like the NFL. But I understand that the college product isn't the same as the NFL.

I understand the players aren't as good. I understand that, you know, like it's a lesser version. That's why it's a different version. But yeah, I'll give you that. I'll concede it's a lesser version. It's a different version, but yeah, I'll give you that. I'll concede it's a lesser version. College basketball is a lesser version of what we watch in the NBA. I know that. You guys all know that. By the way, officiating, I thought it was a pretty good lesson.

Throughout a lot of the regular season, especially when NBA people start peering into the tournament and be like, wait, what the hell happens in this? But here's a really simple thing that i think we should all do you don't have to shit on college to say you're an nba guy but nfl people do it all the time i can't imagine thinking like hey what's your favorite food i really like mexican food like what's wrong with italian well i like that too like i don't want to argue against chicken parm to be pro taco doesn't really make a ton of sense to me. I don't know if it's an NFL thing, but I'm glad it doesn't

seem to happen as much at the NBA because I don't know what... It's such an incredible waste of time. For me to prove to you how much I love the NBA, I'm going to dump on something that actually is one of the great sporting events that we have in this country every single year. This was... I thought this tournament was as good as it gets. is one of the great sporting events that we have in this country every single year.

I thought this tournament was as good as it gets. Always a treat to be joined by the legendary Jack McMullen. The Icons Club podcast series is out. Ringer Spotify. Check it out. Great history, great audio, incredible interviews. I'm always super into the Will Russell stuff.

I just am. It's obviously way before my time, just hearing my father talk about it, and then going back and reading everything. I was reading Lee Montville's book last year about that finals, where it's Russ's end, and it's kind of like the part where, if you think of Wilt chamberlain in today's version of the nba the coverage and the way we would have talked about him being like what's the deal because anytime you're trying to put together your list your top five or your mount rushmore

i think we know kind of usually who we want to go with but wilt always becomes this statistical oddity because it's so absurd versus a lot of people that were around that would say yeah but and he's not really that guy. So, you know, where did you, did your mind change at all? What's been your Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain philosophy over the years? Well, so here's the problem. Well, first of all, I grew up in Boston. I wasn't born there, but I grew up there.

And I got to know Bill a little bit, which was such a gift for me because he wasn't very nice to journalists. Seriously, he really wasn't very nice to journalists. Seriously, he really wasn't. And I'll never know why he gave me a chance. I really believe it might have been because I was the only woman around and he was sensitive to that. I don't know. You'd have to ask him. But so, I mean, I was, you know, I always tilt towards team, right? 11 championships in 13 years. How is this even a debate? But then you start talking to people who were around Wilt and he was just this incredible force and people make the connection. And I think it's a fair one. He was Shaq. He was Shaq back in the sixties, you know? And by that, I mean, a movable force, incredible talent, but had other interests, had other stuff he wanted to do. I mean, when he played for the Philadelphia Warriors, then Sixers,

he lived in New York City because he had a nightclub in Harlem. Like he commuted to work and they let him because he was wilt and his hands were as big as a catcher's mitt. And, but he was, I think the part that gets lost in that is that I think he was a pretty sweet guy. I think he was a teammate that people liked. And I think we want to put everything in black and white. We're all so good at that, aren't we? We want to say, well, Russell was the team guy and Wilt only cared about himself. And that makes him sound like a selfish, self-involved guy. And he wasn't. You know, he marched with Bill Russell down the streets of Atlanta to the Ebenezer Church when Martin Luther King Jr. died. He was a was a you know someone that like bill walton speaks very fondly of in this in this series i needed some balance ryan honestly because everybody

raves about bill russell i had to find some people that were willing to say hey you know wilt was a pretty amazing guy too and walton provided that for me which which was important i thought what he was a great mentor to walton what was, and I know I don't want to get right to the relationship of Bill and Chamberlain later on, because I know that takes a turn, but in the beginning, they were a lot closer. Like this, this revealed a lot to me and I'd read some of the stuff about it, obviously, but they were very close for a long time. Well, and they had to be, I think the whole premise of this series, Ryan, is that it's the icons club and there's just this few elite people and they're the only ones that understand how you feel, right? It's not everybody.

You know, like I would argue right now, Steph and LeBron, they kind of understand how the other one feels. Maybe throw Giannis in there. But not everybody else does. You know, with great power comes great responsibility. And so for Russell and Wilt, if Russell's looking around at the league in the sixties, when remember they're hardly ever on TV, they have, you know, I don't know, $35 a day for meal money. They're, they're not flying first class. Half the time they're taking the train. And if they're playing in Fort Wayne, they got to walk across a cornfield

because there's not a stop. So you grab your bags and walk across the cornfield to the hotel. And by the way, if you're black in some cities, they're going to have a hard time finding hotels that will take you. So just consider that backdrop of these two amazing superstars who have what the other one wants. And they're fighting each other every day for the right to be the best player in the league and for the right to win a championship. And yet they're the only two that understands what the other one's going through. So that's kind of what we were trying to get after. What's the story behind Russell letting Wilt score? Yeah. So that's a great story. And Kobe's the one that actually told me this. So I did a piece with Kobe and I forget which year, but he was telling me about how he was tapping into all the great players and learning stuff from

them. And he talked to Russell a lot because Kobe was a student of the game. We all know that. And Russell, what I've learned through this series was probably the OG of icons in that he reached out to everybody. You know, it was important to him to pass on. And one of the first guys he did that with was Dr. J. Showed up to UMass and hung out with Dr. J at UMass for three hours and talked about everything except for basketball, about the responsibility of being a black athlete and a black leader and that kind of stuff. You know, he's the one that reached out to Kareem when they had the Cleveland Summit. So now Kobe's talking to him and he's asking him about, you know, the mental part of the game. And Russ tells him this story about how with Wilt, you know,

he knew Wilt was bigger, stronger, better offensive player than Russ could ever dream about being. I mean, Russ really wasn't a great offensive player. So he would, you know, play him tough, but not too tough. And then if the game got into hand, he'd let Wilt score. So Wilt would walk off the floor with, you know, his 45 points feeling, you know, they lost, but feeling pretty good that he had done his part. And that was all Russell's art of war technique to give him, you know, sort of lull him into a self sense of security. Because what he told Kobe was, if I

played him tough every time down the floor, he was going to get mad. He was going to destroy me. So little kind of interesting stuff, you know? And he used to stay with Wilt in Philadelphia, correct? Yeah. He used to sleep in his bed, you know, and there's a great clip from Wilt that we dug up from the archives with Wilt saying that, talking about it and saying, my mom finally said, Wilt, I don't know, maybe we're making him too comfortable he comes in here he eats our food he sleeps in your bed then he goes out and kicks your ass that's kind of so if you go then to that finals that again was referencing the leave them on bill's book and when you're reading like the game recaps and this is russell's last season you're you're like, wait. Like, Wilt goes out there to save the day.

It feels very Lakers-ish, by the way. It does, right? It's just funny how much stuff stays the same four or five decades later. And Wilt has this knee injury, and I would still say to this day, people were unsure of what really happened between the coach who felt like he was going to get fired anyway if he didn't win it. So he was going to do it his way and,

and we'll not playing the rest of that game and losing the series. Yeah. And it's so interesting to me because what I don't know is how injured was he? How would any of us know that? Right. That's sort of the unwritten rules that other players don't question someone else's injury, but that rule was shattered. In this case, everybody was questioning him. How did you not finish this game? It's, you know, game seven of the finals. We have, you know, this is the year we're supposed to win. The balloons are up there. Come on, man. You know? So obviously I wasn't there. I was nine years old. You probably weren't even born yet, right? No, not yet. So the interesting thing about it was Russell was really, really offended by this, Ryan,

because it was his last game. He knew it. It was his last game. He knew he was going to retire. And he felt by Wilt not playing at the end of that game, it took away from his own legacy, from his final moment. And he was really upset about it. Now, Wilt tried to go back

into the game. The coach was Butch Brant Betikoff, and he was mad that Wilt asked out. And again, I always say, who knows what the severity of this injury was, but the coach wasn't going to put him back in. And of course, in doing so, I think cemented the fact that the Lakers weren't going to win this game. And so Bill goes out on the circuit. They've won the championship. He's retired. He goes to, I think it was Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin. I might have that wrong.

And he goes to a college setting and tells everybody that Wilt should have played. And then he asked out and it was, you know, he really challenged his manhood on it. And then Wilt didn't talk to him for like almost 20 years. Really was the, you know, the split. Cause I think when you think, if you look at Wilt already, he's sensitive to the idea of, oh yeah, I put up the numbers, but Bill puts up the rings. You know, I think he always was already super sensitive to that. And cause he was all NBA. I don't know how many times more than Bill, he won all the scoring championships and yet he never got the respect that Russell got. So

I think he was already a little sensitive. And then Bill says this, you know, it's like, that's a deal breaker. I remember, I don't know, maybe I was 10 and I know, I don't know if I've talked to you about this before my father you know played and he played in college for a year but he when he was in Connecticut and they had all of these guys come through in these barnstorming tours because they weren't making any money and so my father would play in a preliminary game basically like of whatever Connecticut all-stars and then they'd be sharing the same locker room and he got to talk to will and my father's really tall so will was like hey he's like do you do you chase down layups and he was like what you know my father's pretty

quiet you know he's a kid and and will's like you're tall he's like do you you should chase down the layups on a fast break never like give up and always chase down a fast break you should get tip-ins you get six extra points a game or something like that oh that's awesome he's explaining to it right and the irony being he's like i don't think wilt would ever do that it's like i'm not running back down there that is like the greatest story yeah so that's cool the reason i i bring it up then too is i'll never forget and this is going to sound extremely outdated for people, but of a certain age, you'll get it. VCRs start becoming popular and you're just running through like, what are these VHS tapes that are available? Other than just the movies, they start pumping out these really cheesy and short and just terrible production documentaries or just features. And there was this Wilt one. I don't even, I don't think it was an hour. It might've been like 30, 40 minutes on VHS.

So my, my father buys it for me and we watch it. And Wilt is doing, he's wearing like this really nice volleyball sort of track suit. And he was like, really look good. And the guy doing the interview with them, I have to find it where he goes,

well, you and Russell back and forth, very basic question. And he was like but when you think of the two of you as as as athletes or skill wise like what and will's just like there's no comparison he's like athletically it's not even close he's like there's no comparison he was so arrogant and also he might have been right by the way oh he was 100 right and my father just starts dying laughing and i'm like why is this so funny to you?

And he goes, you'd have to understand Wilt Chamberlain to understand how incredibly dismissive, arrogant, and also right he was in the answer that he gave where he wasn't going to be nice about it. He was just like, it's an absurd question to even ask if anyone was at my level then, which is true. It's true because, I mean, Wilt was about seven foot two, I think, or seven foot one. I don't know what they officially list him at. And you know, Russell is 6'10". If he was lucky, slight. Wilt was gigantic, big, strong. And you know, I'll argue that Russell's

the greatest defensive player in history. I'll make that argument. You could make the argument that Wilt was the greatest offensive player in history. And that's not to say that Wilt couldn't play defense or that Russ couldn't score once in a while, but they were, this perfect dichotomy, they represented two different things. And it became, the narrative became team versus the individual, which in some ways is unfair, but in some ways really isn't,

you know? Wilt collected stats. I think Wilkins, Lenny Wilkins says that somewhere in this series that we did. He collected stats. Like he was the guy that went to the scorer's table and said, did you get my assist? I don't think you got my assist. You know, he was that guy. He would go to the scorer's table and like berate the guy saying, you missed my assist, you know.

Now remember too, Will's a guy that decided one year, I'm going to lead the league in assists. And then went out and did it. I mean, that's pretty amazing. He's seven. You know, he's a center. So I have great respect for Wilt as an as an athlete and a basketball player. And he just came in the wrong year.

You know, well, he would have been thrilled with today's assist. How often they give him out now with the score table, especially at home. Oh, God. We used to love having fun when it was right at the height of the Lakers Celtics when we were at the forum. And Magic was an amazing player, and he was dishing the ball all over the place. But Bob Ryan and I would sit there going, I didn't see that one, did you? That looks like a hockey assist to me. We used to have a lot of fun about that.

one did you that looks like a hockey assist to be you know we used to have a lot of fun about that what do you do when you try to stack like the historic figures like the people you're talking about a lot in icons club and and how it compares today because the easiest thing to say is like hey the the 10th guy on an nba team today if he played in the 1960s he'd be a hall of famer you know what i mean i mean just the evolution of athletes the evolution of people i think i don't think that's even remotely controversial. I don't know if you disagree or not. But then I also, at the same time, don't love being dismissive. I don't love looking at Bill Russell's stats and say, okay, well, the reason they got so many rebounds is the pace. Like, look at the shooting percentage. It just go up and down, up and down, up and down. So it does bump up the rebounds. But I never want to be like, hey, that's the era that they played in.

So we can't be totally unfair while also acknowledging the evolution of an athlete well it's not just the evolution of the athlete it's the evolution of the game the way the game is played remember these guys had off-season jobs they weren't getting paid millions of dollars so they could go sit in their hot tub during the off-season and have a trainer come 24 hours a day to fine- fine tune their body in their private home gym with their Peloton and whatever else they have, whatever that thing is. LeBron shows us on TV that makes his muscles really big. I mean, they didn't have any of that. They played on black tops. You know, their careers, if you look at the length of their careers, they were short because nobody was taking care of them. They didn't have trainers. They taped their own ankles. They were wearing Chuck Taylors, half of them.

Think about that. I mean, that's what you're supposed to wear out to the bar. You know, you're not supposed to actually play in those in a game. And so I think a lot of those things make a difference. I would argue that Russell and Wilt in any era would be stars. And a lot of that has to do when I'm talking about Russell with just, he might be the greatest leader of all time in sports. I mean, everybody I talked to during this series,

and we talked to a lot of people, like almost 50, I think, athletes and coaches, but mostly athletes, mostly these icons from all the way from the beginning. You know, I think Kuzma's our oldest, all the way up to the modern day players, some of the modern day players. And every one of them has a story about Russell and how Russell helped them or called them. I mean, Isaiah Thomas,

okay. Isaiah Thomas throws away the ball. Not, I mean, everybody remembers this against the Celtics, right? Remember that famous 87, you know, and he's at home and he's like devastated and he's the, you know, the laughing stock and they haven't, you know, they he's at home and he's like devastated. And he's the, you know, the laughingstock and they haven't, you know, they haven't even lost the series yet, but he's like inconsolable. And his wife comes and says, well, there's someone on the phone. And he's like, no, no, I'm not talking to anybody. She goes, no, no, no. He said, I just said, she said, take the phone. It was Bill Russell. And he said, listen, young man, you got to get back on the horse. I'm paraphrasing here. Get back out there. You know, you're good enough. Just go back. And Isaiah says, I don't even have a chance to say

anything because like the phone calls over click, you know, but that's what Russell would do. And he did it with everybody, not just Celtics or, you know, he did it with everybody and everybody has a story. And the only other guy that seems to fit that bill is Julius Irving. He's another one that just was very magnanimous when it came to offering his time and his insight to young, young players. I want to catch up on what's going on now. Uh, I, I love that Mike Gorman on the broadcast recently for the Celtics said something that I think all of us could see, and you certainly have more perspective on it than, than a lot of us, but he was watching this group just smoke everybody, another 20-point lead. And he said, this is pretty telling that this team plays this way because you go back in January,

I don't know that it was a locker room that really loved each other. Bill and I have talked about it endlessly, 200 games, you're 500, and then it turns into this. Have you ever seen anything like it? I mean, I probably have. I can't, off the top of my head, I can't think of it. I mean, I would say things turn around. Like, think about the Atlanta Hawks not that long ago, how they turned their season around pretty quickly, and all of a sudden we're in the conference final.

So it does happen. I think with this team, the reason it's so fascinating to me is there wasn't any drastic change in personnel. So that's why it's interesting to me. I think a few things happen. I think, number one, Jason Tatum obviously has become what we always thought he would be. And I really think the whole Jalen Brown, Jason Tatum, which one's better? I mean, we always knew Jason Tatum was better, but he has separated himself so significantly now. You know, he is just clearly, I mean, he's going to be, I think, in the top five, six, seven in the MVP voting, right? So I think that separation had to happen. And I don't mean

it as a criticism of Jalen Brown. It's almost everybody else watching this dynamic. It's clear now. It's not one and one A. It is one-2. And I think this team needed that. I really do. And I just think it makes a difference. The second thing is, Schroeder was a bad signing. I understood why they did it. He was a bargain. But from the very beginning, you could see that was a guy that was looking for stats and for his next contract. And he was exactly what they didn't need. So he needed to, he needed to go. The third thing in my mind was Marcus Smart got hurt. He has a lot of time to sit out and think. I'm sure that Brad Stevens had a lot of conversations with him. I'm sure Adoka did as well.

And I think what they, in essence, said to him was, look, you're really important to us. We want to keep you. You're a trade piece. Everybody wants you. We want to keep you here. But the version of Marcus Smart we need is a version that's going to spray the ball. That's not going to take 12 shots a game. There's all sorts of data that tells us the more shots he takes, the worse off they are. And then he comes back from that injury and he's the player they need him to be. So add the fact that they finally got the defense down. That explains it to me yeah I went back and looked at it last year because anybody that's watched Marcus play

it was obvious it was stunning that I think for seven years he had lower field goal attempts in games with a higher winning percentage where the higher field goal and it was like seven straight there was a couple years where it was close but there was never a year where the higher field goal, it was always lower. And it was like seven straight. There was a couple of years

where it was close, but there was never a year where the more shots he took, the better the team was. And it plays out too when you watch it. And I think for Marcus, I think for anyone that's younger, like you have to be

an incredibly confident person to play in this league and to score in this league and to be a starter and all these other things. And I would say, based on stuff I'd heard, like it was always hard for Smart to kind of think, okay, I don't think these guys are that

much better than me, but now seeing Tatum, now seeing Tatum play like this, maybe it's a little easier thing to reconcile. Well, and you know, in fairness to Marcus, he worked really, really hard at his three point shot, really hard. Like the numbers went up every year. He worked really, really hard to make himself a serviceable is the the word I would use, serviceable three-point shooter. He wanted to be a good or a great three-point shooter. It's not in the cards for him. He's accepted that. He's still a guy that in spot situations, if you leave him open, he can hit it. He's not nervous. He's never afraid of the moment. It's nothing like that. And you can't possibly overstate his importance on the defensive end of the floor

and how that's become the identity of this team and why you worry because Robert Williams was the other part of that. And, you know, they clearly miss him. There's no question about that. So what do you think of the East then? It's so exciting because I don't know what, you know, Brooklyn, what are they right now? They're in the 10 spot?

Where are they? I don't know. It's so close. They're obviously better than that, but are they right now? They're in the 10 spot. Where are they? I don't know. It's so close. They're obviously better than that, but do they have enough time? Now we hear that Ben Simmons isn't even going to be available for the rest of the regular season or the play. And like, do they have enough time? Joe Harris, to me, I don't care what anyone says was a big loss. I think people don't talk about that enough.

So, but would you want to play them in the play in game or in the first round? I wouldn't. I think I've said this all along. enough. But would you want to play them in the play-in game or in the first round? I wouldn't. I think, I've said this all along, I think no one's paying attention to Milwaukee and it's a huge mistake because I still think they come out of the East. The Sixers, the Harden thing Bill and I talked a lot about, I bet you have too, that didn't make sense and it's not panning out too well. And I don't know, how good are the Celtics? Are they good enough to come out of the East? Oh, I just don't believe it. And I'll tell you why.

I just don't know what happens when they double and triple Jason Tatum, who's going to make the shot. Jalen Brown had a wonderful year. He can drive to the basket. I love watching him in the open floor driving in transition. But who's knocking down that perimeter shot that makes you pay for that double team? I'm just not 100% sure I know who it is. Yeah, a lot will fall on Jalen just because he's going to have an easier go of it.

Yeah, it's going to be an easier run for him than Tatum just because you can tell by the way they're playing. I mean, there was one game recently where Jalen was terrific close. I think the one game they lost, he struggled a bit and it's like, okay, so it's going to be kind of up to you to figure out some of this stuff, but at least it's good enough to do that. I wanted to ask you again on the Brooklyn thing. Cause yeah,

there's a 10 seed, same record there in Charlotte, but Kyrie part of it, Bill and I touched on Sunday and you're like, all right, this is not exactly somebody I would want to give 250 million, but it's not really, it's not really up to the nets.

I mean, it is and it isn't. But I don't know how they tell Kevin Durant they're not going to do it if Durant wants them to give him this contract. It's going to be so interesting. I mean, Durant already signed his. I mean, Durant's locked up. Kyrie, three out of four days is so incredibly talented, but then there's always that one day and you're like, what's he thinking? You know?

And so his ability is not in question. And, you know, he has unbelievable street cred with the other players. Like other players will never question him. He's that good. I mean, he really is. He's really a tremendous talent. But if you're the Nets, are you going to lock him up? I don't know.

I don't know. Maybe you give him a shorter deal and maybe that'll make him mad. And maybe he'll walk like he'll Kyrie will. My limited experience with Kyrie is no one's telling him what to do. Nobody, not Kevin Durant, not the Nets, nobody, not his father, nobody. He's going to him what to do. Nobody. Not Kevin Durant. Not the Nets. Nobody. Not his father. Nobody. He's going to decide what to do. And there will be someone who will be interested.

Yeah. I don't think there's any doubt to that. I really look at the league and go, well, that doesn't make any sense. Well, it does make sense for a team that doesn't feel like they ever have a chance at anybody that has this kind of talent level. It's so intoxicating. It is. It's's his talent level right till the end even with the celtics when it had obviously gone south and it was clear to me anyway he was not coming back

they were danny ains was still trying man because he knows he knows generational talent when he sees it and kairi irving when he's right, when everything's, you know, he's a generational talent. The problem is there's just always an issue, right? That has nothing to do with basketball sometimes. And I, and I, and people question Kyrie's sincerity when he starts saying there are other things that are more important than basketball. He means it. He does. He means it. These things, these causes he believes in these, you know, these stands that he takes, it's not grandstanding. He, he means it. He believes it. He causes he believes in, these stands that he takes, it's not grandstanding. He means it. He believes it.

He really does. Pivoting to the Lakers, I thought that Brian Windhorst had a great phrasing of the LeBron experience. He goes, it's basically fatigue. Fatigue. And we're at four years. What do you think happens with this? Because I don't

think LeBron wants to leave Los Angeles, which I think is the ultimate deciding factor. I have a really hard time believing, and look, he's got a year left on the thing

with the over 38 rule. He can do a two-year extension. Right. He can ride out the final year and try to do a three-year extension next year. But this is a little different this time around

than him just saying, hey, I can do whatever I want and you have to fix this as he gets older. And I also don't think that he really wants to leave the city. I think he just likes being here, likes having the family here. Sure, but doesn't he want to catch Michael?

I don't know what's most important to him now. What's more important to him now, trying to catch Michael or making sure he controls his own destiny so he can play with his son? Like, which is more important now? Because this series, you know, this series I just completed, this Icon series, it's all about how someone like LeBron James

has the power he has to be able to manipulate rosters, manipulate his contract. He has literally rested all the power away from the owners and put it in the players' hands. And Kevin Durant has followed suit in many, I mean, look at all the players

that have changed teams in the last three or four years. Some of the biggest names in the game, Paul George twice, Kawhi Leonard, Russell Westbrook, Harden,

you know, I mean a lot of the big, big names and that all is tied to LeBron and this player empowerment that he has. But I still, you can't tell me that he doesn't want to catch Michael. And if he stays with the Lakers, how on earth is he going to do that?

How? I don't know. What flexibility do they have for their roster next year? They're locked into those guys. What are they going to do? The only trades that exist for Westbrook are the wall one, which I think LeBron wanted to do. The team

didn't. And I think there's also, you know, does Oklahoma City say, all right, we'll get to the salary floor by taking on Westbrook's deal. But the problem is you're actually going to have to give sweet. So what pieces are you getting back that actually improves your basketball team? So that's not a great basketball one. LeBron's not going to care about the draft picks. No, never.

And I still think if I have a young team where I'm trying to develop some stuff, I actually don't want a guy like Westbrook playing with all the younger players. That's the other problem is it's not just a really expensive player. It's an expensive player who still thinks he's one of the five best players in the league. Right. And that's why the Chris Paul trade to Oklahoma City worked because Chris and Sam Presti sat down and Sam Presti said, look, I think you're a great player. I think you have great value to us as a leader. Here's what I'm hoping you'll do for us. We got Shea Gilgis Alexander here.

We want you to take him under your wing. You give us a year, a really good, solid year as a leader. And, you know, if you remember, Chris played off the ball for OKC even. He did whatever they wanted to because they said, we'll get you someplace good. That was the deal. I just don't see that same dynamic with Westbrook. No, no, I would agree with that. All right. Last thought here on another one of the icons pieces. Again, you can check these out on the bringer homepage or wherever you get your podcast,

Spotify as well. When Jordan hit the Celtics for 63, were you in the building were you covering yeah I was there yeah right there yeah that's probably not an easily impressed group that Celtics squad in the mid-80s yeah what was what's your favorite memory of of a guys like Bird McHale like all these guys being like what like and we know we won but what's going on like what's going on with this guy see the thing about bird was he would come out they had a table in the middle of the locker room so he would shower and get dressed somewhere else and then he we'd all wait for him to come out and he'd sit in this table in the middle of the locker room and i just remember that that game and i was like the eighth person in you I was like a scrub. I definitely was not doing the Jordan story.

I assure you that. I was like 25 years old or whatever I was. But I remember being in there. And what I remember kind of vividly was Bird coming out and sitting down and just going, like just shaking his head. And you just never saw him do that. Like he was always so stoic about other players and he just wasn't even pretending to be this time you know and then he says the

famous that's god disguised as michael jordan like even when it was happening on the on the floor the celtics guys were kind of like oh my god like they i think they were secure enough in their own greatness that it was okay to give a nod to this young guy that was really doing something special. I think there's just some security in that. That was a great Celtics team that year. Yeah, I mean, he goes for 49-63 in his first two games against the 86 Celtics. Yeah, but they lose. And see, in the end, I remember Bird telling me once, he was leading the league in scoring, which was unusual.

And he was only leading by a little bit. And I'm like, you was leading the league in scoring, which was unusual. And it was, he was only leading by a little bit. And I'm like, you're leading the league in scoring. He's like, that will never happen. I said, what he said,

go back and look, has anyone ever led the league in scoring and won a championship? And probably at that time he's, he was probably right now it's happened since then. Yeah. But he's like, I don't want to lead the league. Nope,

nope, nope. That we won't win if i do that so that was just his mindset you know but that doesn't mean he couldn't appreciate he bird and jordan have one of the coolest relationships i've ever seen they just get each other you know like jordan and we we document this through the series really struggled with magic magic was his idol magic you know he still believes, froze him out in that all-star game. And they were, their relationship was very much arm's

length for a long, long time. And, you know, they finally came around. In fact, the dream team is when they kind of finally came around. Everything kind of, that was the great thing about the dream team, I think, was how they all let down their guards. Finally, all these proud, sort of secretive, close to the vest guys like Bird, Magic, Jordan, Ewing, they all kind of let their hair down, finally, on this team. And that's, to me, like, the relationship between Larry and Jordan, there was never any of that. They were always kind of in concert with one another. They thought the same way. They, you know, behaved the same way. They called out their teammates.

Magic would put his arm around you and hug you. Magic and Larry are really cut the same way. It's kind of a secret little great friendship that most people don't really know about. Yeah, we got to see a little glimpse of it in The Last Dance where they just started swearing at each other. a little glimpse of it in The Last Dance, where they just started swearing at each other. It was just, I don't know.

Like when I talk to, still, every time I talk to Jordan, he just raves about Larry, still to this day. Still going on. Check out the Icons Club. Again, Ringer Spotify. They are all over it. The Jordan one, Bird Magic, the Russell one that I was talking about, the Dream

Team. Looks like we get another Akeem Kareem deal here. Jackie, this is a lot of great work, so thanks for this. And be sure to check it out. Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for having me on. You've read his work. You've probably seen the movies based on his work. Michael Lewis is one of the great authors of our times and a great storyteller.

Against the Rules, his latest podcast, is out. We're going to touch on some of that in the premonition of a book that came out about the pandemic. So thanks for joining us today. Total pleasure. All right, so as we were talking a little bit about this, you know, the fifth risk was like my first wake-up call

of like, oh, wow, this is how things work. And I always tell people, like, even at ESPN, and I'm not trying to, like, knock it, but the closer you are to things, it feels like you consistently become less impressed once you realize how things work. And you have done a terrific job of teaching us how things work. And when I think about both the podcast and the premonition of the book part of it, what is it you continue to challenge yourself to learn about new things? Are you finding yourself more disappointed as you learn?

learn about new things. Are you finding yourself more disappointed as you learn? You know, so it's right that the fifth risk and the premonition are kind of companion pieces. And it's right. I had the same reaction to you as you did to the material of the fifth risk. If you had told me I was going to write a book about the federal government, I had told you you were insane, right? I mean, how you do it. But Trump, Trump electrified the material by not paying any attention to it. And so he gave me an opening. And when you, and I did, I found that like when you walk into the department of agriculture or the department of energy, the department of commerce, you might think you're walking into the world's most boring place. it is unbelievable what's going on in there. And it's also unbelievable with sort of like how passionate and mission driven people are about, I don't know, weather forecasting, which is what they do in the, in the department

of commerce or, or, uh, fighting forest fires in the department of agriculture or whatever it is. And, um, so did I, do I find myself getting the, your question was, do I get more depressed? The more I learn about, about how the world works. I think, I think these two books are a response to a feeling I've had for a while that goes back to the financial crisis of, uh, that our society is more disturbed and unsettled than I knew. And it's expressing itself in a really dysfunctional relationship with the government. So that's what led me to this. It doesn't, you know, depressed is not how I feel.

And I give you a really good example of how I don't feel that way. So the premonition is about the pandemic, right? Kind of. It ends in May of 2020. It's kind of about if you were with people who actually understood how public health worked in America before the pandemic, you would know that we were going to screw up the response to the pandemic. But these people were so incredible and such great characters that they filled me with kind of joy and hope. And when I was writing that book, this is going to sound bizarre, but it's true, absolutely true. When I was writing the book, I never had more fun in my life writing anything.

It was an exhilarating experience. It's maybe the one time I've had the feeling from beginning to end of a book that I was just a conduit for a story that had to be told. It was just coming through me. And I wasn't depressed or sad or despondent or any of those things. I was exhilarated. And I kept asking myself, we're in the middle of this pandemic, we're screwing up. Americans are dying left and right who don't have to die left and right. And I still, I feel this way.

Why do I feel this way? And I think it's because I was responding essentially to the talent of our population. That it's sort of like, put it, let's use a sports metaphor. We just got the crap beat out of us during a college football season. We finished 2-10.

But I look at my roster and I think, I actually have the best players in the country. This is not a hopeless situation. If it were 2-10 and that was what our players were and I know, oh, no matter what I do, I'm going to be 2-10 next season. I feel one way, but I was responding to like, our players are so good. We're just really disorganized, badly managed, badly coached. And that's fixable. You can't fix the talent problem, but you can fix the other problem. And so I think that's why I don't feel like hopeless

and despondent and despairing. The major problem seems to be these people, the Wolverines, the doctors that you profile in this book. And I'll admit, too, and maybe I shouldn't admit this during the interview. I was like, I want to read a book about this. Am I ready for this right now? I don't blame you. I was perfectly aware that I was like flying into a headroom, right? But then you're reading it and you're seeing like a lot of your books.

You're like, okay, here's the movie. Like, you know, I can see the backstories. I mean, all right, now we have this collection of people and they have a way of problem solving. They have a way of challenging things. And yet they're not really politicized yet, right? They're not part of the CDC. And that seemed to be at least for the first half of the book, like truly understanding the part where you're hopeful because of the talent, as you make that analogy, but also maybe really frustrated because of the league you're in or the coaching. Because the CDC, it seemed like to survive, it's survive in advance at that level of having that kind of job. And the Wolverines, this group of just incredible doctors were not really involved in that process

until they kind of came in ahead. Yeah. There was an accident here. The two guys, the two doctors and basically all the characters in the book of doctors and none of them have this kind of any kind of political life. They're not political people, right?

They just want to save lives. The, the two doctors, Richard Hatchett and Carter Mesher, who in the most extraordinary, cook up the pandemic plan for the country during the Bush years. Those two guys were that close, like inches away from running the U.S. pandemic response. It was really just kind of an accident of personnel that they weren't in the White House in charge of this thing. And I think that might have made some difference uh maybe quite a bit of difference

you'd had real knowledge there real history um but the uh the bigger thing like all right you're trying to drag me into a place of despair i know uh with the cdc but just today peace in the new york times um the cdc has come out and said we need to fix ourselves uh that we clearly need they they're saying they need to modernize they're finding a nice way to say it basically they're saying we need to overhaul the place and that's the first step it's like it's like the alcoholic realizing they have a problem uh it's the they they, they, they, they're acknowledging the problem. What we as a like country need to do is acknowledge a bigger problem. And it is, it's like, we need to take governing ourselves seriously. You can't, you're not going to function as a society if a third of the country thinks that

the government is the enemy. Or if you have one party bashing the government all the time, it's got to be, you got to say, look, some part of this is not political. We have these risk management tools that aren't ideological. Nobody wants nuclear weapons going off when they shouldn't go off. Nobody wants us to run out of food. Nobody wants financial crises. No one wants another pandemic like this. There are knowledgeable, talented, passionate people who can build the risk management structure that stops these bad things from happening. Both parties should want that. They probably do in theory. And what's the best structure? What the best structure is not

is what we have, which is presidentially appointed heads of places like the CDC. presidentially appointed heads of places like the CDC. It used to be, you know, back when the CDC was acquiring its great reputation, the person on top was a career civil servant, which is a big, it's a big difference, not a presidential appointee. The president couldn't just fire that person with a phone call. They had to, it would take cause and a long process. They had some distance from the political process.

Now you've got this sort of like revolving door leadership of a really complicated institution and tens of thousands of people and really complicated stuff going on in there. And when you turn that job into president appoints the job and Senate has to confirm it, basically you're saying the person is going to be there 18 months to two years, gone when the president's gone, signaling to the whole organization that the leadership's not permanent. The person who's running is not going to be able to figure out even what's going on in the place in the time they're at the place. So this is a long way of saying, we need to sort of put some parts of our government on a longer leash from our mad political process and just to restore some and give some trust to the people who run these places to do their best. And I think you'd get a different kind of relationship. First, you get a different kind

of nerve at the top of the CDC, which is what they lacked in the beginning of the pandemic. And you could build a different kind of relationship between these risk managers in government and the rest of the society, where there would be a version of Anthony Fauci, whose specialty was stopping disease outbreaks, which is not Anthony Fauci's specialty. You'd have that person who was in a stable position on the top of this organization, some distance from the White House, being able to talk directly to the American people.

And that, until you get that, you're not going to get like a decent institution. But we need to have, as a country, this gut check. And I'm kind of surprised we haven't had it yet. Like, I'm kind of surprised

that a million Americans have died. And if you kind of like look at it, honestly, maybe half of those would still be alive if we'd managed this thing as well as we could have. That half a million people die unnecessarily. And that's not enough for us to have the gut check. It hasn't happened yet, but I just think we're on a road to that, that it's going to have to happen. And I trust us to have it, that we kind of figure out how to run ourselves.

You know, it's weird because in my notes of how I want to do the questions, the last question I was going to ask is like, do we have to absolutely get our asses kicked to learn the lesson? And it's the same thing when you go back to Solomon Brothers. It's the same thing when you go back to the financial crisis and the banking. It's the same thing here with the CDC and facing a pandemic where it's like, are these the test runs? Or like, we think it's the lesson, but are they the test runs? I think you're right. I hate to say it. I think they're the test runs. We're going to have to run our society the way we've been running our society for this long stretch. And we're indulged because of kind of an extraordinary stretch of relative peace and prosperity and lack of a genuine existential threat. and prosperity and lack of a genuine existential threat.

We got a whiff of an existential threat with COVID, but it wasn't really an existential threat. People could tell themselves a story that it didn't affect them. It just got old people. It just got people with diabetes. I can hide from this thing. I think there has to be a more visceral fear in the society before it responds intelligently. Could be wrong. It could be that I'm missing this entirely and that actually what's happening right now is we're going through something and we're going to fix ourselves. But

my sense is something's coming, I don't know what, that will force us to wake up. Anyway, to me, I don't want to get too far away from how much pleasure I had in writing this thing because there is something reassuring about the talents of the society. We are a really unusual and interesting and powerful society. That's just badly organized right now. It's like, we are the university of Texas football team that every, every year we get the best recruits and every year we're ranked in the top 25. And then somehow we, we suck. Uh, but, but, but, but we have the, we have the talent. When you mentioned, you know, not only in the podcast series, but I think there's some really obvious similarities between that and the premonition, where the experts seem to be hiding, though.

The expert. And this is the talent that you're talking about. When you come across somebody that you've dealt with so many people, what's the thing that you realize about the special people among us? Oh, that's great. Because that is what I'm thinking about a story. It usually drives the stories. I found somebody who I want to bring to life on the page. And what's usually true about this person is they are expert in something and they're really good at, they're really good at teaching it or bringing it across to someone who knows nothing. across to someone who knows nothing. Um, so, uh, that's when I'm, when I'm kind of out thinking about, Oh, am I going to write a book about, I don't know, baseball statistics or, uh, the financial crisis or the pandemic. Um, what I, what I do, I do wander around and talk to lots and lots

of people. And then in that, from that pool from that pool of people emerge a very small group of people who I know I can make swing on the page as characters and who will also teach the reader a whole lot. And they have some things in common. The biggest thing they all have in common is that none of them ever think of themselves as characters. They are not, I'm a character. In fact, most of them have no idea how interesting they are. And it enables them to soar on the page. When people kind of think of themselves as quirky and interesting and I'm a character and you need to write about me, they lose elevation on the page.

They're not interesting to write about. So all the people I end up identifying, and they're often people who are kind of nobody's ever heard of, are people who are great characters who don't know they're great characters. That's kind of what I'm in the market for. In the middle of some situation

that I think is important with some ideas at play that I think are important. I ideas at play that I think are important. I know between the backdrop of Moneyball and Bill James is coming on the pod, you said that'll be next week? Yes, Bill James is the subject next week, yeah. Okay.

As somebody who's made a living in sports, I didn't know that... People don't like to change their minds. Okay, we know that, in and out of sports. I didn't know that. People don't like to change their minds. Okay, we know that. We're in and out of sports. And essentially what's been proven here is that a lot of these people were right. We should have passed more in football.

We shouldn't have been running the football all the time. In basketball, we should have been taking more threes. There are little things that I can push back on, but the nerds won. Yeah, the nerds won. The nerds won, yes. So does James have any, like what,

you know, you kind of brought it to the forefront a little bit. I think maybe you made it, I didn't say a little bit. You've made it mainstream, you know, for those of us that were in sports, we're already in it,

but you made it mainstream and like, okay, a newer way of doing things. Uh, how come that hasn't happened then in other parts of, of life as much? It has happened in other parts of life. Let's come back to Bill James because there's something I want to say about him.

But he's the, you know, Nate Silver wanders out of baseball and transforms political forecasting. It's no longer eight fat white guys who happen to have gone to a diner in Iowa telling you who's going to be president of the United States. It's like someone using data to make better forecasts about what public opinion actually is. And it's not perfect. Just like baseball forecasting is not perfect. It's just better because you finally got some data that you're using to make these projections. That kind of thing. I think of the whole data science revolution as being an extension of what happened in moneyball and baseball and in sports.

The sphere where it hasn't happened is government. Yeah, that's kind of the point. It doesn't feel like it's been a death threat. You're right. I mean, look, if you read about the movie industry or studios you started realizing like the same people now that are working in baseball front offices are working with the studios going why are you guys buying a million scripts and making all of these movies let's just spend more on the right ones you know so you're right yes so so why it's troubling that we've gotten so good at predicting what aaron judge's war is going to be year, but we have no idea what COVID is going to do in two weeks. There's every reason to think you could use predictive analytics for disease forecasting to create a kind of weather service for disease.

We should have done that already. There's a nugget of, there's a fact that captures this perfectly. In the federal government, there are now, in technology in the federal government, information technology, data science, that kind of thing, in the federal government. They're now six times more employees over the age of 60 than under the age of 30. So that tells you all you need to know about whether Moneyball has happened in the federal government, right? Moneyball is everybody's under 30. And they're all the kids with laptops thinking, you know, doing the things that kids with laptops do. That we just, we have not, the revolution that has swept through professional sports has yet to sweep

through our government. And that's a great shame. But it has swept through the private sector. Can I say something about Bill James? Because I think he's the beginning of it, right? He's sort of like late 70s, having these radically interesting thoughts about baseball strategy and baseball players based on data, based on a better use of statistics. He himself is not that interested in numbers. He's not a data geek exactly. He's more of a thinker

and a writer. But the thing, the show we did with him, I went back and it wasn't just redoing Moneyball. I wanted to know why. Like, what was it? Why did he even do this? Like, it was a weird thing to do. He didn't have a laptop. He was sitting there with, you know, scissors and paper and box scores from newspapers. And it was not an obvious thing to do, to start thinking about baseball differently.

And it turns out that it really was really, it was deeply rooted in tragedy in his childhood. His mother died when he was four. His father had some horrific accident. He was effectively orphaned with an older sister who was a couple of years older than he was. And they were both sought to kind of go find something, some, some part of life they could control. The sister becomes

an evangelical Christian. The family had no religion. Bill finds baseball. And he said, it was like, it was this universe that could be unlike my wider world, which seemed chaotic and senseless. It was this world that I felt could be understood, the baseball field, what was happening. And he starts when he's a kid thinking, well, it's reassuring to him. Everybody seems to understand it. But then he starts kind of thinking and he sees, well, that guy said on television about that play, that doesn't make any sense to me. And he start, it was this need to have a little world that was just perfectly understood that drove him and probably drives

him to this day. And so he triggers this revolution that becomes money ball revolution. And now when you, he said, he looks at it and he's, he's dismayed by it a little bit. dismayed by it a little bit. He doesn't like where it's all gone because he felt that what he was doing when he really got going was showing how little we know. And that he felt he was operating in a spirit where wonder and there's wonder and mystery and a humility about limits of understanding that that was the message he was trying to convey. And instead, he feels like we're now at a place where there are a lot of smart asses who think they know everything. And and they don't know as nearly as much as they think they know. So it's a it's a funny it's a he's got a funny perspective on the revolution that he triggered. But you're right.

You're right. The nerds won. There's no question. The nerds won. Largely, you know, I'm not sure it was for the best for baseball. For basketball and football, it's made it more interesting. It's opened up both games. But baseball, actually, the nerds winning has made the sport a lot more difficult to watch.

It is. I mean, it's, it's tough. I don't, you know, and the thing that I love that what you just said about James there, though,

in that like doing it every day for me in sports, like I go, yeah, I get it. Like you should be doing some more of this stuff, but the way it was presented at times, you'd be so annoyed. You would find yourself arguing against some stuff

being like, maybe deep down I might agree with them, but I'm just sick of hearing from you. That's true. You said something about institutionalized cowardice

when you were talking about the CDC in the premonition, right? Where it was kind of, you know, another sports analogy here. I look at politicians, I look at some of these groups, I kind of pivot back of like the survive advance, almost like a team and the incidentally tournament to survive advance. When I think about

the way I could have just a simple basketball take on Twitter, right? I could do something very simple, a couple sentences, but I'll already know the 50 to a hundred responses that are going to try to dig holes through it. And I go, this wasn't a college thesis folks. Like it was just, I'm watching a Raptors game and I had a thought. That's it. That's all holes through it. And I go, this wasn't a college thesis, folks. Like it was just, I'm watching a Raptors game and I had a thought, that's it. That's all I was doing. And when you started talking about the way the language was written in these government things

that again are not politicized, but they become politicized. And that's what it reminded me of. It reminded me of the people were just trying to figure out every way to prevent holes being poked in anything. And that's where you end up becoming like the biggest waste of time. The lack of efficiency is directly related. These stories that you're telling, you're going, everybody just like the

whole chapter was about how an entire like years were wasted on people just trying to figure out the best exits in a way to protect themselves and nothing about policy, nothing about actually solving problems. Well, and especially nothing about dealing with a fast moving disease, which is really like managing a battle. That you're making decisions. If you're doing it well, if you're managing, if you're actually trying to prevent people from dying from a communicable disease that's sweeping through the population, you're making decisions with imperfect information. You don't know. You're coaching a basketball team on the fly. You're in the middle of a battle. You are going to make mistakes. You're going to be wrong sometimes. It's probabilistic. And the best you could do is stand up, acknowledge that, explain it to everybody, say, I might be wrong, but I think this is what we're going to do, and this is why. And if we're wrong, we're, of course, correct. Instead,

we ended up with this fragile institution, the CDC, that thought that if it made a mistake, it was doomed. So what do you do if you're that way? If you are afraid to make a single mistake, if you think you get the death penalty for an error, what you do is you try to kind of remove yourself from the battle. And that's what they did. They got themselves in a position where they shoved all the actual disease control

on kind of low status, local public health officers. This is before the pandemic and let them deal with the fire. Uh, and they avoided it completely. So they, so they narrowed their position to make a mistake, um, and became kind of academic institution. They were really good at coming in after the battle and counting the dead and the wounded and writing about why it all happened. Uh, weren't actually good at fighting, at managing the battle. And the reason they preserved, they had been way back in the 60s and 70s. They had a history back then, but something changed inside the institution. And we didn't detect it because we never had a real battle to fight,

that they never really had to do it. And now all of a sudden the shooting war starts and lo and behold, this is what we got. An institution is not really prepared for war. I, uh, I'm going to pivot here because losers is maybe my favorite book that you've done. And I remember it's probably boomerang just because I absolutely love the Icelandic banking theories. And then the, the chapter, every chapter of boomerang, I i've i've read it twice just because it's entered it's so entertaining and you're like so wait you guys are gonna put this resort here in ireland like has anyone ever wanted to be here before be like no it's rainy

it's cold it's terrible it's like okay let's go to the resort um but the reason i love losers and it's a bit like this i'm not very political you know i would say like the problem with politicians is that at some point you decide that you want to be a politician. And it's enough for me to just be like, I don't really I'm not going to spend a lot of time with you. You know, I don't like disingenuous people. I don't like people that insult us all by lying to us. I don't like trying to play it safe as we were just talking about. How can I just sort of get through the maze of of of criticism to finally get at this point?

And here you are, a younger Michael Lewis, maybe a little little edgier. And you are, a younger Michael Lewis, maybe a little edgier, and you are traveling. You have a front row seat to the 1996 Republican Party as they try to figure out who's going to get through the campaign and face off with Clinton. I found that there's not really a question as much as it's, there are similarities though in your work and that you're right there and you're up close and as you are as close to it it you're like it's unbelievable these are this is the crew this is the crew that we have to pick from this is like how did how did we get like what did you do that you we got to this point and then it's funny because in the book you're the least impressed you have the access and the annoyance is almost that like wait why isn, why isn't this Michael guy more impressed with us? And as you spent more time, you became less impressed.

With the exception of a character named Maury Taylor, who was a tire and wheel CEO. He invited you over all the time. Yeah, he was about, he spent $7 million in Iowa, New Hampshire and got 7,000 votes, but everybody loved him. And actually, he was the one who, if in a sane world would have been the nominee, but nobody thought he could be. So it was like, you can't have a real guy who actually says what he thinks, who's actually not afraid. That doesn't work. People think that doesn't work in politics. And even though that's what they like to vote for, they don't vote for it. So it was an odd situation.

What I loved about that book or that experience was once you decide, screw the process, this process is idiotic. Nothing that comes out of the mouth of Bob Dole or Bill Clinton is ever going to be that interesting. And certainly nothing that comes out of the mouths of the people around them and that whatever that the machinations are of these campaigns is actually it's it's it's a waste of everybody's time um once you abandon conventional political reporting and you just start looking at what's around you get great stuff like what i would do after those debates,

there would be like 10 guys on a stage, right? Everybody would, it would end. People think, oh, it's over. Now we got to decide who won. We all go to another room and then we get spun by the operatives. So I would let everybody leave into the other room because they thought that's where the action was. And I'd go and there'd be nobody in the auditorium. I'd go up on the stage and they'd all left little notes and squiggles and doodles and pieces of paper they'd written on and thrown away in the garbage can. I'd collect it all. Like what they were doing when they thought

nobody was watching. And it was just great stuff. It was just like, once you start looking where people don't think you're going to look because they think it's not important. You see all sorts of, you see, you see the important stuff. Um, it was, that was a fun, that was a fun, it was a fun, uh, like it was fun material to play with, um, once, but once, once I had no ambition to go back and cover another presidential campaign. Once was enough. That's a perfect way to end that answer. All right. I don't know. I would just think with your background, the financial background in the beginning, which I always loved your honesty of just going like, I can't believe this is real and this is how it works. And then revisiting a

different angle on the economy prior to the big short and then the boomerang stuff in there as well. I can read a ton of stuff. I don't know who to believe. I don't know why. So I'm just asking your opinion. If you think of some of the real estate projections and how they mirror some of the stuff we saw before, but then when I ask somebody else about it, be like, yeah, but there's all these other numbers that aren't even close to what was happening before. You think about inflation concerns, we could sit here and guess about Fed rates and all that kind of stuff,

which can be a waste of time, but I think we're all leaning in a certain direction. We can talk about printing of money and everything to try to get through this pandemic. Just with your, you know, this is just, I'm asking your opinion of it. Do you think there's a bill come and do, or is this just too big to fail again for a country instead of a bank?

I don't know. I think there's a bill come and do, I don't know what form the bill takes. I don't know whether it's a collapse of trust in the dollar or a collapse of the belief that, um, treasury bonds are riskless securities. But there is this thing that I haven't heard. Look, nobody should act on anything I said, because I don't know, and I don't think anybody knows. But one of the things I'd be curious to know more about is we have a massive deficit that we've been financing at basically 0% interest rates for a

while. And interest rates are now creeping up and they're going to creep up more. It's going to blow a hole in the federal budget. That may be the form that the bill takes, that we wake up one day and just servicing debt is a number that you won't believe. So a lot of it will eat into other federal programs. But I don't know that. I mean, if you had told me that on the back end of the financial crisis, I mean, talk about a funny, a perverse response. We basically are the engine of the global financial crisis. Wall Street's the epicenter.

The irresponsibility of American finance here is by a big part in it, that we blow up the world. And what's the world, the financial world's global financial world's response. They want to own us treasuries. So we are in a privileged position and just questions like how or when do we lose that privileged position? We've been abusing it. Uh, we can't, there'll come a point where we're not allowed to abuse it any longer. I don't know when that is or how that happens. Uh, but the immediate thing I'm thinking about is interest rates are going up and nobody's really thought about what that means for just the federal budget. It's a huge deal. An extra percentage point on a treasury bond is a big, big deal.

Less money for everything else. I'll finish on this. In Adam McKay's depiction of the book, I love the scene. I mean, there's a million scenes in that movie I love, but when it's everybody's going to bed and they're cycling through and they're going to bed not realizing

what's waiting for them the next day and the days that come after that. I felt like in The Premonition where Carter's at the mall with his wife and they know what's happening in China. They know what's happening with the cruise ship. They've done the models. They're right.

They know they're right. And they're walking around the mall buying supplies that they don't think are going to be available. And the wife says they have no idea. And it felt like the exact same thing in your storytelling. Yeah. And it was just, it was, it's weird to have it be so recent to go back and read about it

when it feels like it was so long ago. It's funny you say, to draw that analogy. It's completely true. It was very like what the characters of the big short went through. They saw what was going to happen

and they knew what was going to happen in the movie before the people in the movie knew. And that's why those two books actually are the closest two books I've ever written to each other. They're stories of a handful of people who are in a kind of interesting position in a very complicated, screwed up system whose experiences are telling you about that system. The Big Short and The Premonition are a pair in a funny way. Well, check out the book and, of course, Against the Rules, the podcast with Michael Lewis.

Thanks for your time. Thanks for having me. You want details? Bye. I drive a Ferrari, 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house

in the South Fork. I have every toy you can possibly imagine. And best of all, kids, I am liquid. So, now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. Life advice. Life advice email is lifeadvicerr

at gmail.com. We have a couple, but I don't think that's the headline. Kyle, sounds like you've been at the frolic room, frolicking a bit lately. What is going on? You said that you tweeted out the swindler strikes. We have not talked about this at all.

We didn't even prep for it, but you know the spot. What is going on? I want the rawness. What happened? It's a short story. I'll keep it short. Guy comes in Friday with a taser looking for this guy. He comes in.

He's like, hey, is this guy with white hair been in here? Immediately, we all are like, we know exactly who he's talking about. And he's saying that that he um called him up i guess he met the guy a long time ago and just called him up out of the blue and said that he wanted to um list a building because he knew this guy the guy with the taser now is the is the realtor guy and um he's like yeah i know you're a realtor i gotta i gotta build i got an apartment in this building i want to sell it's a big building on Hollywood Boulevard, the one that he's been telling everybody he owns.

He doesn't own it. He says he owns the entire building or just the apartment? I don't remember. I don't remember. He'd probably go, this guy sounds like he'd tell you he owned the whole building. Yeah, but he only wants to sell a piece, right? Yeah, that's probably what he'd say.

So he tells him that, and he says, oh, by the way, I got this IPO thing. So boom, he gets this guy for two grand from IPOs. And then so then the guy went to the cops after he basically he was basically told him that like, I respect the long con, but I'm not the mark. So give me the money back. I'll consider it a loan. And then I think he got blocked by the guy or something. I think our guy, the swindler, blocked him.

So then he went to the cops after doing his own research, found out who this guy is. The cops say that there's 24 open cases on him right now in LA. So, I mean, I don't know. He came in all heated. They gave him a couple drinks to calm down. He was like, I don't know, basically told us all he had a taser on him. And I didn't know what he was going to do when he found him, but he's going to his old hangout spots. But we're like, sorry, buddy. he got everybody on a lesser thing, but he hasn't been around for a while. So we just kind of all swap stories and everything. So it was just kind of like a fun revisit to that situation. I'm sorry for that guy. I lost two grand. All right. A couple of things. I love the guy saying I'm not the guy. Well, apparently you are

the guy you did. I'm not the one to fuck with. I don't fall for that stuff. Actually, you already gave me two grand. I got that vibe from him when we were sitting there, too. Just saying what he's going to do when he finds them. We're like, I don't think you're going to find him, dude. He's not around here anymore. OK, what kind of vibe did this guy give off?

Did he give off like he was going to do something to this guy? Were you was he intimidating physically? What was no, he wasn't intimidating physically. Honestly, I think he was one of those guys that really didn't know how to react. So I think he just wanted everyone else to know he was a tough guy. I don't know. Maybe you are a tough guy. And sorry, please don't come for me.

But he just, I didn't get that air about him. Like, it was just sort of like, almost like, you know, when you first go to college and some guy's like, oh man, back home, this, this, and that. It's like, it just seemed like that. He was talking about like other stuff. I don't know. He said he'd been to jail twice. Didn't have the look of it.

I didn't believe it. The realtors, the guy with the taser said he'd been to jail twice didn't have the look of it i didn't believe it the realtors the guy with the taser said he'd been to jail twice yeah i didn't believe it imagine kyle just being like yeah for dui like just like all right did you see the taser on the guy no he was like he said i think this was the order of events he said i've been to jail twice that's why i don't have my real gun on me i got my fucking taser or something like that but i don't know i just think he like just didn't know what to do i think he just didn't know what to do and he just was like spouting off of him out so we were all kind of laughing our own you know we were kind of remembering our super bowl thing but also kind of laughing at this guy who like came in here looking for it's like oh god your intel's so

bad he's been out of here since february don't know. Dude saw him around though, didn't they? Wasn't the guy like... Yeah, they have seen him around. Was there a reported sighting somewhere? They think he might be in Venice right now. They think he might be living in Venice. Do you have a picture of him, Kyle? I could get one. I could get one, but I don't...

I don't think we're going to... No, we're not going to post it. I never took a picture with him, but I could get one. Yeah, I'm sure. He's been around. He called this taser, toting realtor out of the blue. He said he hasn't seen him for a year or two. And he just must be on

his list of marks. And he was just time to pay the rent. I don't know. Imagine a guy that you haven't heard in a couple years goes, hey, I got this investment idea for opportunity here. Just give me two grand. I'll sell you part of a building and he's like yep i'm no he opened up he opened with the building and then he was like by the way he's like i want you to list this building by the way i have this ipo thing right so what he's doing is he's he's basically like you know if you take care of me a little bit on this i'm going to look favorably upon you but this guy is long yeah the long con i i don't know i just love the frolic room i gotta go i just

love that i can't express to people where it's located the imagery of it is different like you think of it as this kind of like divey little spot off a street or a back alley and you're like no this is in the heart of taurus section yeah where all this stuff's going down where guys walk by looking for con men maybe with or without a taser yeah so uh i don't know man i'm thinking field trip here soon i just want to be in the mix i may bring people with me all right uh that'd be an amazing thing like hey we're still doing any remotes no but we have a show thing where i'm getting uh i'm getting a party bus, and we're just going to head up from the South Bay up to Frolic Room and then see what develops.

Maybe check out Hamilton, depending on the show, because I am reading Hamilton now. I was thinking about doing a playoff-based promotional thing where it was called Jamilton, and I would tell you something historically about Alexander Hamilton while telling you something historically about a playoff matchup called Jamilton. But then I realized I just like the title Jamilton. And I don't know that.

I think it's like, hey, that's a great idea. What is it? And then you're like, yeah, it doesn't really back it up. It doesn't work. And I don't know that I want. Yeah, I don't know that I want me in a, I wouldn't say a triangle hat for alexander hamilton man that guy was successful at a very young age now i understand why they did a musical about

it's like one of those things where you just sell the script it's like i don't know what it's going to be i don't know how we're going to pay for it but god damn it i like this i like the premise just buy it lock it up now i think Earth, a lot of that stuff stopped happening in the script world. Yeah. Speaking of, not to get, not to get, ah, whatever.

I don't know. I was trying to make some sort of Oscar joke. Ah, whatever. Yeah, it's like I really didn't feel like doing it. Okay, life advice. Here we go.

Life advice, rrgmail.com. All right, what's up? Ryan, Kyle, and Saruti. Huge fan. 5'8", 23 years old. Say about 160 pounds. Born and raised in Mass.

Decent looking guy. 6.8. Probably be bald by 28, though. All right, well, live life, man. Just make sure you maximize those hair years. I go to the gym on the regular, but struggle to build muscle, play pickup ball once a week. An average player, hustle up and down the floor, diving for loose balls, willing to take a charge. Hey, that's a problem.

Don't take charges. Red flag. Yeah. I don't know what the rest of the email is, but that scares the shit out of me. You're taking charges. You're willing to take a charge. Somebody tried to take a charge in 2-on-2 with me the other day. And I went, what are you fucking taking?

Were you trying to take a charge there? And the guy was kind of like, ah, I just had such disdain. Like, what the fuck are you doing? And the guy didn't want to admit that that was exactly what he was doing. Because I think even he was embarrassed. So that's good. All right. So if that's just the email, we probably end it there.

Don't do that. But I guess there's more here. He doesn't argue over fouls because I could care less for that shit. I'm just there to play ball type of athlete where I played sports in high school, but tell people I was a special tennis specialist, a.k.a. I rarely played. Oh, a special teams specialist. No. All right.

Yeah. So the cursor was over teams. Sorry. All right. Yeah. So, all right. The cursor was over teams. Sorry. All right. Let's get to the point. I could have done a better job of getting the point here as well. I'm about to move to Boston in the fall.

Most likely the North End. Must be nice. North End's where I want to live, but I never had any money. I go out on the weekends to bars, clubs, and the city regularly, and already have noticed the same people with the door-checking IDs. I want to start and try a conversation with the bouncers, try to become friendly with the goal of just being able to walk up to the bar and walk in without having to wait in line. What would be some things I could ask them, talk to them about?

Does slipping them money actually work, or will they take the money and kick me to the back of the line? Obviously, it won't happen on the night one and realize this will have to be a continuous thing. Long play here is what our guy is talking about. Managing a bar, I would imagine there are a few things that you have heard and stand out. He suggests talking points that he's thought of.

All right. Sports, very general, but great for Boston. How the lines have been. Wait time. This is fucking awesome. Have they ever had to throw anyone out? Oh, God. How long they've been a bouncer,

how they got into being a bouncer. Any other topics or suggestions would be appreciated. Love the show and keep up the great work. So you want to do a podcast with him about his career, basically. Hey, man. How the line's been? Long? I've been long lately.

Hey, I'm Chuck. I just moved here. Fucking lines. What's going on with the line over there, you think? All right. Well, good seeing you. See you next Friday. I'll going on with the line over there, you think? All right. Well, good seeing you. See you next Friday. I'll be on the lookout. Hey, man, what's going on? What's that Pat strap? That's a line is long again.

Is that the longest line you've seen? That's some kind of you guys ever. The shape of lines can be different. Look, first off, the biggest problem is you're moving to Boston. So I would pick a different city if you want to become friends with bouncers and cut the line. But yes, money works. Money works.

But here's the move. Here's the move. Patience. And by the way, cutting the line thing, most people don't get to cut it. Now, unless you know the place, it's your spot, right? Then maybe you can. But the thing, if you're desperate to enter this world of line cutting,

what I would do is I would be patient. I would get in. You know, don't be an ass. And then on the way out, slide the bouncer at 20 and be like, Hey man, thanks a lot. For no reason. He didn't do anything for you. Slide him at 20. And my experience has been that if you look out for people that way, like you're clearly moving to this small part of austin you know i don't it's not like a ton of clubs there by the way um but you know if you were trying to get i don't know standing room with brico i'm just trying to think like out loud like again i'm it's not like i'm in the north end all the time so i don't know uh although i do

usually visit when i go back i would i would just do your if you're going to be a neighborhood guy you can say hi but when you try to force it and you try to force it with a guy who's a bouncer already in the city of boston you have all these things working against you those guys are not usually like i can't wait to make friends with a random guy who may take charges and pick up who's not from here yeah who's not from here i Maybe we can talk Celts turnaround. That guy's not super friendly. He's just the stereotype is accurate. So the best thing you can do.

The other thing with Boston is like when guys from Boston think you want to be friends with them, then they definitely don't want to be friends. What the fuck is wrong with this guy? Right. with this guy. Right. So yeah, I would, I would not, I would go into it not wanting to be friends

with anybody, but a nice 20 spot on the way out. You know, that guy might recognize you the next time. It's, it's not going to happen

overnight. All right. It's not going to happen overnight, but if you put the time in, then maybe you can get to line cutting guy, but I'm a little afraid

with these talking points that this is the best you could come up with. And if it were the midwest i'd say hey great job this will work out yeah weather throw a little weather in there that works great in the midwest the only way this could be worse if you said you were moving to philadelphia that's it so good luck check back in with us there but yeah the 20s are probably a little bit better than asking about the red sox bullpen yeah i would say you could also maybe show up a little bit earlier if you got the time i know you probably it sounds like maybe you don't want to spend all day in a bar um some people do just letting you know but um maybe if because you know the guy doesn't show

up right when people start showing up for the lines maybe he shows up at six and maybe it's really not cool to be there until nine i don't know so maybe you show up at six don't do that no don't well i again you're right kyle we don't know what the kind of bar scene is there but if you're going while he's about to you know tuck in his towel no no pour a crayon ginger um you know hey guys i'm ben i'm new here no no not like that you're just there and you're being seen before he sees a million faces. That's all I'm saying. If the guy starts, because honestly, at least the places I've been, like the bar, the bouncers aren't always right outside.

If there's not like a million people lining up, you know, they've got time to like walk around. They talk to the bartenders or maybe there's a couple of patrons that they like that are regulars. That's all I'm saying is if you, if you've seen the part of a regular, I'm not saying sit there every time, three hours before you actually want to start drinking but i'm just saying if you're actually thinking of this that much so you got talking points or whatever like you know maybe maybe it's just time to show up at the tail end of a happy hour but you know when

it's like you know you can actually be seen there you don't have to fake like you're a regular and think about like awkwardly handing him of you know 50 or something it's just like oh yeah we see i saw brian brian's been in here before. The problem is, though, there's one fundamental thing that would be obvious. Are you cool enough to pull this off? Where the people there are going to want to be nice to you. You could go on Sundays.

A big move back when we were younger, the move was to go out on Sundays because all the other bartenders were off. Again, this is a long fucking time ago but that was always the move there was maybe a female bartender that you were into and then you were like oh hey we're all going out on sunday and you know it was like the school dance this is not new news but i'm just telling you like if you're really disinvested in all of it but ultimately it's going to come down to your personality so

if you're showing up on those off nights if you don't have the personality to back it up and i'm not saying i always have it either uh then you're going to like the longer you're in these spots where you can be seen you could expose yourself as somebody that they don't even want to spend any time with so that's why i'm saying limit the exposure give the guy fucking 20 bucks on the way out and slow play this and you'll get to that point or maybe you weren't you know what i mean like not every but most people don't actually just get to cut lines all over the place. Can you just be up front about this transaction? Because that's what this is.

It's a transaction. He's not going to be looking for friends. The bouncer's not looking for friends. You can just say, hey, get him on a, you know, as Kyle said, on a slow day and be like, hey, going to be coming here a lot. Like to get in. Don't do that. I would say no. I don't know these things. I wouldn't do this, but I'm just asking. You can't just be like, hey, can I throw you a hundred bucks to get in? Like, you know, what's the price to get in, you know, on a busy night? No, no. I don't know these things. I wouldn't do this. But I'm just asking. You can't just be like, hey, can I throw you a hundred bucks to get in?

Like, you know, what's the price to get in on a busy night? No, no, I wouldn't. That's too aggressive. What are you, a narc? That's too aggressive. Yeah. Sorry. Cerruti feels sorry. No, that's fine.

Your face looks defeated right now. I don't care. I'm telling you, I'm not the guy to ask this question. I'm just I'm I'm asking questions. I feel like people would want to know. I wouldn't go to bars where there's a big line situation. I think you should find a different bar, pal. Ah, there's other places that you can go to.

But this guy's young. He's young and he's going to lose his hair in five years. He wants to grow up. All right. Yeah. Wait in lines now. All right. Here's another one from a dude.

26, 6'1", 190. I consistently dunk at peak athleticism. A filthy DeGrom-esque slider with a wiffle ball. Also played D1 soccer. Not a huge EPL or MLS guy, though. He says sorry to Cerruti. Anyway, real barn burner of an argument with my fiance. Okay.

Background. We're happily engaged and have lived together for a few years now. We have a really healthy relationship. Trust one another. My fiance, fake name Wendy, dated another guy for the majority of her time spent in college. Her core college friend group was completely centered around the fact that she was dating this guy she didn't know any of these people before she met him after they broke up her friendship with this group naturally faded and she went on with her life uh side note wendy and i didn't meet

until we were out of college uh there's one girl who wendy still remains in contact with from this friend group we'll refer to the girl as alicia wendy and I have been together for almost three years now. I've never met Alicia. Main reason being we live multiple states away and Alicia's husband is best friends with Wendy's college ex. So do we all understand? Yeah, I'm caught up. Our guy emailing his

fiance, girl from college, name's Wendy. Her best friend is Alicia college. Alicia's husband is best friends with the college ex of Wendy. Good. I feel like we get a handout index card sometimes. Alicia and her husband got married at the very beginning

of our relationship. Wendy was up front with me about asking if it'd be weird for her to go to Alicia's wedding. She explained the whole situation to me and my gut reaction was yes, that would be weird. No. Yeah. Quick vote here. all of us think that's fucking weird weird yes but it'd also be weird to say that it's weird so i would have just kept my mouth shut and you know i phrased i phrased that poorly do we agree with

the emailer here in saying it's weird to his fiance if she were to go to her best friend's wedding from college because the husband is best friends with her ex? No, that's not. It shouldn't be weird. And if you feel weird, it's fine. But you shouldn't say it out loud. That's what I think. Cerruti? I keep my mouth shut.

Yeah. I wouldn't tell her what she can and can't do. Yeah. Yeah. I just think it's weird. Like, hey, guess what, folks? Hey, a little breaking news the boys out there listen to the podcast today your wife probably slept with somebody before

and it's like land right they're not making any more college friends either the ones that you had are the ones that you have yeah they most most of them had sex most of them did all right um and considering that wendy's clingy college ex who still texts wendy's All right. And considering that Wendy's clingy college ex who still texts Wendy's mom, texts Wendy's mom happy birthday every year would obviously be there. And it sounded like a nightmare situation for our new relationship at the time. I told her there's no chance in France. Did he say no chance in France? That's cute.

That I'd go to that wedding with her. She agreed. It would be extremely weird for her to go by herself. It was never an issue of conversation after that. I gotta tell you, I don't like any of that paragraph, man. I'm sorry. I appreciate you liking the show. I just think that's fucking psychotic. You're like, I wouldn't go with you? That's weird.

Yeah, I can't go. Why? Hey, all of us have done it, okay? I've walked into a situation where the guy's looking right at me going, I know this guy slept with my wife. I've into a situation where the guy's looking right at me going i know this guy slept with my wife and i've had the situation where i've shown up with the girl that i'm dating and then the guy's looking at me being like you know like if you're out there in the game long enough it's going to happen to you and so i don so I don't like that paragraph at all. Fast forward almost three years later,

Wendy and Alicia still remain in decent contact. They've seen each other one time in person since we've been together. Despite them keeping in loose touch, Alicia and her husband still didn't get the invite to our wedding this upcoming fall for the previous. So wait a minute. So now you didn't invite them to your wedding

that hasn't even happened yet. All right. They didn't invite them to your wedding. That hasn't even happened yet. All right. They didn't get the invitation or they didn't send the invitation. They didn't get the invite. They are not invited. They are not invited. There's more to this. I thought of them as some very easy fat to trim from the rough

draft of our wedding invite list. And there was absolutely zero pushback from Wendy on this and she definitely isn't afraid to speak her mind. Let me tell you. This all leads to the main point of contention. After the two girls caught up on the phone for an hour today, Wendy hit me with, would it be okay if I planned a trip to Europe with Alicia? I thought she was kidding

at first, but she's being dead serious. Once I realized it was a serious question, I told her I thought it was extremely random and I don't know how I feel about it. The hills I'm willing to die on. One, never met alicia and i thought well you didn't meet her because you didn't want to go to a wedding for your own fucking weirdo reasons and you didn't invite or your wife's best friend from college to your wedding because her husband is buddies with an ex from college so that's why you haven't met her. Not putting off great vibes there. You're not being super welcoming. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Why? Do you think so? What's gotten in the way? Okay. So I've never met her. And the thought of my soon-to-be wife traveling across the world with someone who I don't know is somewhat unsettling.

Even if I've met her before. I think I still feel this way because they definitely aren't the best friends currently. All right. But you just mentioned the state and all the wedding bullshit it is a little weird i mean i get what he's saying oh actually go ahead no it's like all right all of a sudden you're gonna i i i have a core group i don't really extend beyond that i do kind of find it weird if like oh this person's back in the picture and all of a sudden we're going on vacation together they're just like around all the time now and they haven't talked to you know frequently in like years

but again it's your wife's friend i'm not in business of like telling my wife or future wife what she can and can't do with people that don't really have any business with me i don't know just off okay uh point number two to me this trip uh seems like a classic gimmicky idea that may sound fun initially but would take a ton of time and effort to plan which leads to my next point three their friendship seems a little awkward overall from my point of view. If I had to guess, they definitely won't keep in contact for the long haul. So what's the point of planning

an... Are you a psycho, pal? What a lie. Are you a psycho? So what's the point of planning and executing... What's the point of planning and executing an expensive, extravagant trip to Europe with someone who clearly isn't a lifelong friend? We don't know that yet, especially because it'd be coming from

our soon-to-be joint finances after we get... There we go. Yeah, here we go. This is the problem. Money isn't an issue for us. We both have good jobs. It would be a low-key burn me up that I'd be technically partially paying for this. I wouldn't care at all if it was one of our actual close friends. Number four, no matter the circumstances, I personally don't know how fired up I'd be to travel across the world with someone who I wouldn't even invite to my own wedding. This has got to be a fucking joke. Think of this. No matter the circumstances, I personally don't know how fired up I'd be to travel across the world with somebody who I wouldn't even invite to my own wedding. You just explained why she wasn't invited to the wedding.

There were extenuating circumstances here for that transaction never have happened. And then he says, we had 140 other people invited instead. You said earlier, you were looking forward to being like, cool, we don't get to invite him. 150 bucks plates. I'm saying for two. All right. Um, he included his wife's name here. Good thing I caught it. He didn't so wendy wants to uh she loves to travel to other countries to be fair i don't love to travel the same way she does all right i already know what's happening here all right i'll summarize this quickly i did a europe trip with my buddies after college and i wouldn't say i'm itching to get back anytime soon

i'm in the camp there being plenty of world-class activities and scenery much closer to us in american canada uh wendy's in the opposite camp this is someone she formed a solid relationship back to college to travel together other countries before she's apparently a trustworthy person and a great travel companion for my wife if it was solely up to the girls they definitely would have been at each other's weddings if you think unique circumstance caused them to not be each other's weddings my last point isn't valid referring to the last hill all right so am i in the wrong here am i being overprotective paranoid fiance or my accurate my initial assessment of thinking that this random euro trip with uh her friend would be probably a waste of

time and money you're about to get flamed bro i can't wait yeah i i hope you still listen to the podcast afterwards but this is 100 about you this is so weird like okay you don't want to go to europe all right there's certain things I don't like doing. I just wouldn't say to anybody that would be like, oh, ziplining, that's for losers. And I'm like, oh, I kind of like it. You don't want it. You don't like Europe.

You don't like to travel. Don't project that onto her if she likes it. And the other thing, too, is that you don't want to pay for it. And you're not even paying for it, really. You're already projecting how it's impacting your future finances, and you're not even married, it really you're already projecting how it's impacting your future finances and you're not even married and you said you guys both do well so basically this is a hundred percent about something your wife is going you're soon to be wife you hope fingers crossed wanting wanting to do something that you don't have this is so fucking selfish that i i don't even know what the counter to this is like you're you're looking

at his or her decision only through the lens of how you would see the decision and the only reason the relationship is strained is because this thing about you can't be at a wedding with a guy who was like you can't invite her best friend from college because the husband is friends with the ex. You weren't inviting the ex to the wedding. So I think there's some stuff here that you need to kind of get over. You just need to kind of get over it. And I think for a long, longer term, healthy relationship, I don't have anything else.

Really. There's not more that I can say on this one. So I don't know if you guys have more, if there there's a blind spot somewhere i'm missing something here i don't want to do too much i think you really nailed it i think empathy is important pal i think you should look it up try to have some empathy i think it'll go a long way if you want to have a happy long relationship and also you know one of these one of these years you're going to be fucking ready for her to take off for a week and so i would say maybe you want to foster that and not like not push it away.

Because one of these days you're going to be like, oh man, I can't. Just got to make it to April and then she's gone for a week and then I can't wait for her to come back. So I would just say maybe have a different perspective, pal. That's all I got. And at the end of the day, he probably doesn't have a problem with his wife going

on this trip to Europe if all the college bullshit didn't happen. If he was engaged and going to get married to some random girl who didn't have any connections with her college people or whatever, and she wanted to go to Europe with a friend that you didn't really know that well, you probably wouldn't have that big of a deal with it. So I'm with you guys. It just doesn't make any sense.

Let her go. And I think Kyle, it's a great point by you. I think you should probably the alone time will be good for you too. So do your thing. Maybe. I don't know. I just, I'm past all the college stuff and the not going to each other's weddings.

But some of the way that you frame this where you're going, it's probably going to be all this long planning. You clearly don't like to do this kind of shit. So you are taking your personal tastes and you are applying that to what somebody else wants to do. Like there's plenty of stuff. Like if you're in a relationship, a brother or a sister, a really close friend, we were like, wait, what are you going to do? And just because you don't want to do it. And you could say, well, it's different if it's your wife or a safe, it's not about, you're not talking about safety. You're not talking about like, what are you afraid that the Liam Neeson over here? Yeah. the college friend is going to start planting seeds in her head being like you know derrick is still available

you know is that what this is because there's there's specific things that are brought up here where you clearly you're mad about the cost and it hasn't even happened yet and it might not even be your money yet i don't know i sorry man we'll see we'll see i just love the there are plenty of great things to do in america and canada what do we need to go to europe for that's the that's the most incredible line i think in the entire thing yeah kind of like to go to europe for i actually kind of like that kyle's on board it's like well why do we gotta go to malibu what the fuck you know we gotta be right around here. How about a 20-minute drive? This country's awesome. How about a 20-minute drive? Why do we have to drive two hours?

I get it. The Amalfi Coast. You know? Overrated? Uh-oh. Have you been to Amalfi? Have you been to Albuquerque? Are you serious right now?

Thank you to Kyle and Steve. Please subscribe to the Ryan Rosillo Podcast. We're on Spotify. And we will talk to you on Thursday. Thank you.