The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Teams Who Will Change QBs Next Season, Jon Vilma on Mac Jones, and ‘The Debt Trap’ Author Josh Mitchell

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

Russillo shares his thoughts on which NFL teams he thinks will be looking to move on from their starting QBs next season (0:48). Then Ryen talks with Super Bowl champion Jonathan Vilma of Fox Sports about Patriots QB Mac Jones and OC Josh McDaniels’s recent success, identifying and exploiting weaknesses of a defense, the role of a defensive captain, stories about playing against Tony Romo and Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson’s return to the Seahawks, and more (17:20). Next, Ryen is joined by author Josh Mitchell to discuss his book ‘The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe’ (38:35). Finally Ryen answers some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (1:07:20). Host: Ryen Russillo Guests: Jonathan Vilma and Josh Mitchell Producers: Kyle Crichton and Steve Ceruti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

loaded podcast for you on a big time friday we're gonna do a look at mac jones but how that relates to the rest of the uncertainty around the nfl how many teams do we actually think we're gonna change quarterbacks and then we'll look at this at the end of the season and see if we're right or wrong midway through. Jonathan Villma will be on some of the stuff that New England's doing. Who is Seattle with Russell Wilson coming back. A team to look out for in the AFC. We'll do a little story time

about him playing middle linebacker against quarterbacks. And the college student loan crisis. It is a crisis. And Josh Mitchell wrote an incredible book about it, which I read. We had him on, so we talked about that. And life advice, getting you ready for Friday. Normally, my week revolves around Steph Curry, and I had to make a little bit of a change. So I was going to watch football

last night, and then I found myself going, all right, we're going on the fourth quarter. Steph and the Warriors are down big to the Cavs on the road. You're like, ah, this is probably the letdown. And then he goes for 20. I got a text from an NBA scout this morning. He was like, hey, I assume you've watched. I go, actually, I didn't watch it with the way I would normally watch it. He goes, I think the fourth quarter from Steph last night against Cleveland is the best quarter I've ever seen from him. And he was like, you need to look at this. You need to look at what they did here. And then somebody else broke down that basically every single possession Steph had on the floor in that fourth quarter led to something positive.

So like there's guys that study this, that as much as we think of Steph, and granted, I could just start the podcast and do 20 minutes on the guy, but I just did a bunch of Warriors stuff on Wednesday. And I want to talk football to start for the weekend anyway. But to get that text when you know you weren't as locked in because I just had too many days since the season started where I'm like one of the Warriors playing all right well I'll do this before and I'll make sure I'm here for and granted the games are usually later um but that's just how special he was that even guys that do this for a living that have seen him do this for a decade were like last night may

have been the best I've ever seen from him in a what eight nine minute stretch so um you have that as well I again I don't even know fully how many minutes he played in the fourth but I'll go back and check it out a little bit later I want to start with Mac Jones and then pivot this into a bigger topic and that's replacing quarterbacks because as much as I love all the quarterback topics one of my favorite things to do is you check in during the season we're kind of like at the halfway point just just past it. How many teams have a spot where you're thinking, wait, they may have a different quarterback. And you know what's crazy is the list is longer than you would think. So we'll get to that in a couple minutes,

but let's start with Mac Jones. Pat shut out the Falcons last night, 25 zip. Right now, New England is a five seed. And I don't know if you know this right now, but Kansas City is actually a four seed in the AFC. But we know how quickly this stuff changed. I like Mac Jones, but I was indifferent because, as I've said for years now on this podcast, and I'm surprised this isn't just common knowledge that everybody just repeats, is that we know 50% of the first-round quarterbacks the last 20 years are busts. So there are things I liked about him at Alabama. I loved his footwork in the pocket.

That was the first thing that really seemed like, hey, this is special what this guy does. I think his throw to anticipation where some people have to have the guy get open and then they make the throw, which is just not a way to live in the NFL. I think when you looked at the talent where it's basically first rounders all over the place, that can be, it's usually always held against you as a quarterback. But we also can hold it against the quarterback probably too much, where if we look at somebody and go, well, maybe he doesn't have the best physical traits. He doesn't exactly juice the football everywhere left and right. So is he just getting by because he's got all these first-rounders

and he's down at Bama with this great coaching staff? And sometimes it is true. I mean, hell, it might now be the story that we go, well, with Tua, we should have known with all that talent all over the place. Well, for Mack, I actually think it worked to his detriment in the evaluation because you were assuming, well, you know, let's see how he is when he's throwing to other guys. And believe it or not, when you're in the NFL,

New England's probably the worst place you could go to for weapons. But Belichick's done a great job, you know, overhauling this defense and a guy that hadn't done great for a bunch of years in the draft may have hit on a bunch here. Bar more, you know, the fact that he went in the second round and he's just destroying offensive lines right now. And you could see that in the first half. Judon, who I've always loved, going back to Baltimore, making plays.

And I think seeing it, if you're a new fan, if you're in New England, you're going, oh, wait, wait a minute, Baltimore. But Baltimore just kind of trusts their system and feels like, we don't have to invest a ton in this because we're going to find a way to get pressure on guys. They're not necessarily doing that right now. All right. So we understand the defense. We understand Mac. And there's a number now for Mac. Saw this today, 22 or 26. So that's 85 percent completion rate against Atlanta. So he's the

first rookie in NFL history to complete at least 80 percent of his passes and back to back games. That's minimum 15 attempts. If you want to look at some of the other numbers, I like to look at some of that next-gen stats stuff for quarterbacks because it can give you a better picture of like, hey, is this what I'm seeing? And they're like, yep, because I just don't like quarterbacks that live behind the sticks the whole time. Now, there are some times where it's a quarterback you really like

and they'll show up poorly on some of these stats, but even Mack is kind of middle of the pack in a lot of this stuff. And I do think there are games, I think against Cleveland, I mean, they were killing him, so it didn't really matter. So you didn't have to get the ball down the field. But I still think you need to get the ball down the field at some point to carry your team through the playoffs. But it's not an absolute, right? You can have a flaw as a quarterback, as an NFL team, and still win a Super Bowl. We've seen it happen before. And I'd rather have accuracy than the biggest arm anyway, and it appears

that Mack has that. It looks like there's some of that it factor stuff with him too, just the way he carries himself out there. The other part of this too that's really funny is Steve Belichick, who's basically the defensive coordinator. The defense has always been pretty solid this entire season, and it's the strength of this football team.

Yet, when they were losing, because we just look at the win losses we're like wait his kids the these kids calling the plays and when they were losing and yet still had a decent defense and now it's been better it's like wait you know how is this you know and anywhere else this guy would get crushed well other guys have had their sons on staff but if New England were losing then people would start to bring it up but they're going to bring it up less likely because of Bill and the resume and the entire thing. But now you're just like, hey, this team is absolutely getting after people.

So there was a comment that Aikman made on the call last night, though, that I thought was pretty interesting. Because what's happening with Mack here is like, well, you know, it's a lot like Brady in the beginning. And if you watch Brady 20 years ago in the beginning, you're like, all right, defense, running. They don't trust him to do all that much. He's not throwing the ball all over the place. He's managing the football game. And then he turns into this all-timer, which is very different than who we saw with Brady at the very beginning. And physically, he just seemed to get bigger and stronger and all that kind of stuff because, let's face it, he had a dad bot in college. But some girls like that. With Mack, because it mirrors that in the beginning, we're only going to ask you to do this much to then project that he's going to be somebody that's behind center 15 to 18 years. And that's what Aikman said. He's like, well, now with Bill, because they were talking about whether or not McDaniels would ever take over as head coach of the Pats. And Aikman was saying, well, you know, why would you go anywhere now? Because you get your signature caller for the next 15, 18 years. That's a very long time. Okay.

Is Matt going to be there for 20 years? If he's going to be a 15-year guy, I think there's certain elements of his game. Some of it's personnel. Some of it's the way they're going to call it. We're going to have to get the football down the field. But we know this, right? The summary of all of this is very simple.

New England has a guy. And when you're looking for a quarterback and you're trying to figure it out, and a couple of the guys that went ahead of him are probably going to be in a different team four years from now because it's just the way the math works it looks like New England has their guy so I want to throw it out there now because I want to revisit this at the end of the season and run through all the teams as we sit here at the halfway point of this year and go all right who looks like they may have to get a different quarterback and we'll go back and list this again after the season's over and see how accurate some of this

is and how wrong some of it is. Now, there'll be surprises both with a team staying with someone because they don't like their options, and there'll be surprises with quarterbacks moving on. And I think we're going to start to see more and more of that. Guys ask, we're already starting to see the beginning of it. And I think this trend is only going to continue with some of the quarterbacks that are bigger names saying, I want to go somewhere else. So if we want to run through it here quickly, Houston, no question. I kind of think that Deshaun and Miami thing gets worked out. From what I heard, the compensation was already handled and there was like a last minute thing that kind of didn't get worked out and that Miami was ready to sign off on all of this stuff. So that's why I think we saw those

reports. Remember Denver was involved too in a potential three-way. I think that thing was basically agreed upon in principle and then a couple other things had to be worked out. They weren't worked out and that's why Deshaun's still in limbo at this point. But he wants to go to Miami. I'm pretty certain that Miami wants him as well. So maybe that's the solution to it. But that also puts Houston on the list. It puts Miami on the list. I don't know even if Tua has shown some better signs here. I think if they have the chance to go ahead and get Deshaun. And I think it's a pretty hefty price too. I don't think there's any discount there with him. That might be what we end up seeing. Who knows? Denver, Teddy Bridgewater. Teddy

Bridgewater, you get him in. You're like, hey, this is great. He's unbelievable against the spread, Teddy Bridgewater, you get him in, you're like, hey, this is great. He's unbelievable against the spread, which isn't necessarily great for your playoff seating. But I think Denver's a fair team to put down here on the list. Cleveland, it kind of feels like, especially with Baker Hurt, even if he were healthy, who is he? They've got the option on him.

They'll probably bring him back for one more year and figure it out that way instead of just jumping in and giving him a massive extension unless he wants to do a cheaper one. But even then, the way this roster is built, it's a very talented roster in Cleveland. At some point, you're thinking the front office may be like, maybe we've got to turn the page on this. But at least they have the option to keep him around. So I'm not predicting necessarily a new guy there.

Pittsburgh, a lot of the numbers for Ben aren't very good. The team's figuring it out. They're fighting through the season. That part of it's really commendable. But if Ben wants to come back one year, that's probably what they're going to do. Detroit, they have golf under contract, depending on which numbers you look at.

Cash out, cap hit. It's like $28 million to $31 million. They can get out after 2022, but they're probably going to end up with the first pick. And even though, and I'm going to do this later because I already looked at it. Almost every mock draft has Kayvon Thibodeau going number one out of Oregon. Plays chess.

Obviously a great pick there. But you know, it works. You're quarterback desperate. You have the number one pick. Hey, when are we going to have a pick this high? Well, with Detroit, probably again the next year.

But Goff at least is under contract for another year. He is now 33rd out of 33 quarterbacks to qualify at QBR. Seattle, that's up to Russ. I think he's going to be nastier about it, especially if this season goes poorly. It looks like it's going to go poorly, but I think Russell Wilson's going to be, there's going to be a team, a Russell Wilson team push here to kind of make it a little bit more uncomfortable to get him to get out of there. But I don't know if he'll be able to kind of pull that

trigger. The Giants, Daniel Jones has been better. He's got only five picks, but he only has eight touchdowns, which is last with Trevor Lawrence. For any of the guys that are actually every week starters, I don't know that we're there yet. Just threw it on the list. Washington probably would love to find somebody. Heineke's probably going to make money for 10 years in this league,

is a sometime starter and all the time backup because he's good enough to do that but he always feels a little bit like a guy you want to go ahead and replace Atlanta that'll be up to them moving off of Matt Ryan which could very well happen Philadelphia I think it's pretty clear they're going to want to get another guy in there and especially with two picks that are pretty high top 10 top 15 at least right now we'll see what the projections are San Francisco will move on from Garoppolo and play Trey Lance, but they already have their guy, so they're off the list.

Carolina would probably love to fix this. The Sam Darnold thing. Hey, here's a side note. Is Adam Gase now slightly better? Remember the Adam Gase stuff after three weeks? I don't think Adam Gase is sneaky better, but he's trending upwards now as Darnold has regressed, and I guess he's hurt too. And they have Cam, so we could sit here and say,

all right, well, they already have their starters on the roster. They're at least worth mentioning. Minnesota has Kirk Cousins. Some of the yards stick numbers again with him. I know what the overall numbers are. You have to watch it every week to truly understand it. And the thing is, as I say that, I realize there's also a week with Cousins where he's absolutely going to light it up.

Just because I may not love somebody doesn't think that I'm going to say they're incapable of ever having a great Sunday. But he's $35 million locked in. That option was back in March of this year. So he's $35 million fully guaranteed now for 2022. And then you have New Orleans, who I'm sure would love to figure out some change there. And that might be one of the bigger name guys deciding, I want to go play for sean payton uh we know russell wilson mentioned new orleans is one of those teams maybe it's aaron rogers all right so so rudy i just want to bring you in a little bit here did i miss anyone is there anyone here that you're like you're totally wrong on no i think all the teams that you listed

i also had down the only i had two that I was like, maybe. I had the Jets only because there have been some rumblings about trades. I mean, we know Russell Wilson wants to leave. They would probably have the assets. Would Seattle take him back?

I don't know. Obviously, Wilson, Zach Wilson, is going to be the guy if they don't make any moves. But I don't know. I wonder if they get antsy and they try to shop him.

So I wrote the Jets down tentatively. but i see why that wouldn't make your list let me just jump in on the jets uh the jets are a perfect example of how brutal this position is though um it depends on who you believe and we talked about this before the season even started i talked to guys that actually broke down all the zach wilson film and were like this is a huge mistake by the jets and then you then you got Drew Brees coming on going, no, no, this guy's like the next special one. And there were other people too that are really established guys

going, no, no, it's great. And then all of a sudden everybody loves Mike White. And then that guy starts saying, I should have been the number one overall pick. And you're like, eh, okay, that's not the case. And then White's not playing now. Flacco's starting. So there's just no way i'm like it's i'm glad you did it to kind of bring it full circle but halfway through the

sentence we need to stop ourselves because there's no way you're you're taking zach wilson there and you're not giving them another year that's just i took it as they're open to upgrading at the position um and i think i think if if a think if Russell Wilson was available and they had the assets to pull the trigger and he wanted to be in New York, I think they would do it. I think they would. The other one, did you have the Packers or no?

Yeah, I mean, I guess I did it with the Rodgers thing. So the Packers deal, although Mr. Emotional, you know, in his feelings, which I appreciate, you know, you get a little bit older you start to look around and here he is whether it was the arizona win where he did the interview with ea where he was great you know he's like we're going to enjoy this one you know on the back of the plane cool kid group and then the win against seattle he's looking around lambo

you're like wait is he getting emotional because he knows he's done and i guess he could could just, they told him, hey, we'll play this year and we'll see. I don't know if he changes his mind. He's a pretty, you know, vendetta guy. So maybe that's what happens. But I think Houston's a lock. Miami's a lock. I think Denver is as well. Cleveland, no.

Pittsburgh, no. Detroit, it depends on what they do in the draft. Seattle's up to Wilson. Washington, no. Detroit, it depends on what they do in the draft. Seattle's up to Wilson. Washington, yes. But I don't know if they just bring everybody back. They can't do any better. I think Philly adds somebody. There was a report about the Panthers, basically.

Unless Cam lights it up, and even though they invested the second-round pick in Darnold, they're going to be highly active in finding another quarterback. I mean, they're just desperate for it. And then they were obviously in on the Sean Watson stuff, and he wasn't on their list, so who knows. But I think the Panthers, unless Cam, who knows? Even if Cam does light up, do you want to lock him up

for another couple of years? I don't know. But I think they are going to be aggressively looking for a new solution at quarterback. Numbers-wise, they hook Cam up for half a season. When you look at what the base and what the full, I'd have to look through every incentive to see how real that is. But for somebody that was sitting around eating cereal a week ago, they didn't get cheap with him at all.

But I think that probably is, you know, a little bit of being respectful of what Cam meant to the franchise as well. So it feels like five or six definites, but there's way more maybes than I would have thought when I actually went through and did the exercise. It's half the league. It's half the league, really. And I remember doing this a little bit a couple years ago and there were only like four or five teams where you're like oh they're you know they're I would say it was probably 25 teams that were like okay you could see the starter or their starter now being their guy for at least two more years and now I don't know if it's just the turnover and teams willing to like you know move on from a guy sooner um or always looking for an upgrade an upgrade. But it doesn't seem like there's been this much

turnover in a while. And I'd like to do sort of the reverse of this at some point, too, where we rank which destinations would be the most attractive from a team perspective. Like what team, if you're Russell Wilson, if you're Aaron Rodgers, what team would you go to that would be the most lucrative for you to win right away?

Kind of like the Tom Brady to Tampa thing a year ago. Yeah, or like Odell was like, I want to go somewhere with a quarterback and a good offensive mind and a chance to win. And people were like, you mean like Cleveland? But again, the stuff with Baker, it's turning on him. It's not all the way fair because it's clear he's hurt.

I mean, he looked like he could barely get up at the end of that New England game. But to also be fair of the criticism here, it's not some pass for Baker. He just hasn't been good enough. He wasn't good enough before he hurt his shoulder, especially later in games, and I couldn't tell if it was a fluky thing or a real thing.

All right, so that's the list. We'll revisit this at the end of the season. Let's talk some football with Jonathan Vilma. Going to check back in with our guy, Jonathan Vilma, Fox Sports. He has Arizona at Seattle on the call there, Kenny Albert and Sarah Walsh, who we all know how connected everybody is now. Before we get to Seattle and some of the other stuff that I want to pick your brain on,

you've gone against Josh McDaniel's offense. We saw Mac Jones in his last couple weeks. The efficiency has been there. It's been terrific. Two blowout wins. The defense is really good, too. They're very balanced. They're not asking Mac to do a lot. What is it about Josh McDaniels that makes him good?

What is it about him as an offensive coordinator that you have to be thinking about as you went ahead against him as a linebacker? With Josh McDaniels, he was always great at calling the game within the game. So he would have a game plan of how he wanted to attack. But similar to Belichick on the defensive side, I've been around Sean Payton on the offensive side. The really, really, really good coaches, they start to attack players or they start to attack the left side of your defense right and josh mcdaniels with mac jones he's doing a really good job of saying all right here's the game plan this is what i'm expecting from you and it's as you already mentioned it's not in depth

it's pretty simple and they're purposely keeping it simple for him um and then he says all right now i start to see you know the left side of this defense. I keep saying the left side because I watched the Panthers when I was calling their game and how Josh McDaniels attacked the run game. He all the run game was going towards the left. Right. He was attacking that side. And so from there, he now develops the play action off of that left side. He's able to get Matt Jones some really easy throws and really easy reads. So what he's done for Mac Jones and the offense is he goes into a game, he starts to dissect what he can do against a particular player on defense

or a side of the defense. Then he has his pass games off of it, his passing attack off of that. And I think that's really helped out Mac Jones because it's really simple to tell Mac Jones, hey, Mac, we're going to continue just running at number 93, for example. Now, when this linebacker keeps sucking up, we're going to play action off that, and you're going to have an easy window and an easy read for your dig that's coming in or for a quick slant or even for a post.

Right. Same thing with the safety. Look, I'm watching the safety. He has to keep biting up in the run. Now that he bites up, we're going to go over the top. So that relationship, I don't. It's obviously grown. They it wasn't there to start the season they didn't have their identity as the patriots as a whole didn't have their identity all of a sudden defense has been playing lights out run game is there and mac jones understands his role when you mention attacking a weak point of the defense i mean it can sound really simple um but you know maybe it doesn't happen all the time like would you go into – I imagine it happened. Would you go into a game where you were thinking, like,

this is a bad matchup for one of the corners? The corners, the guys, unfortunately, safeties, they get exposed a little bit more than the guys up front unless they want to try to get linebackers into one-on-one coverage and that kind of stuff, which is something that you could actually do because you run the tournament with guys. But would you ever kind of let go, I can't believe they're not attacking? Is there a something that you could actually do because you run the tournament guys but would you ever kind of like go i can't believe they're not attacking is there a story you remember like i can't like how bad are they in their prep where they don't realize like where

they should be attacking us and they're actually the opposite you see this is why i respect the nfl i wish i had a story for you on that part brian but i honestly have it the other way around, where the whole week going into, I'll never forget this, 2012, we're going in to play the Dallas Cowboys. Tony Romo's still there. This is when Dez Bryant in his prime, and

he's balling, right? So, and of course they have Witten and these other guys, but I'll never forget in practice, we're running defenses where we're, quote unquote, disguising. Yeah, we're about to leave one of our corners one on one with no help against Dez Bryant. So I go to my coach. This is Steve Spagnuolo at the time. And I'm like, you know, hey, Steve, I think that we should help out, you know, our corner because if Tony Romo sees it and the pressure doesn't get there,

it could be bad news for us. No, no, we're going to be fine. We just have to disguise it. We'll get there, et cetera. I'm like, all right, here we go. So sure enough, I'll never forget this. It was like yesterday. Sure enough. We get into the game. We call that defense. And we're trying to disguise it, trying to disguise it. All of a sudden, Tony Romo, he's in shotgun. He looks up. He was going through his cadence.

He literally stops in the middle of his cadence. He's like, blue 20. He looked. He looked over at Dez. Dez looked at him. He gave him this signal right here. And sure enough, touchdown. It was like a 60-yard bomb.

And I'm like, Jesus Christ. Like, I knew this was going to happen, right? And it's because I don't have the stories of like how they don't, that you just don't miss those opportunities, right? The good ones just don't. So, you know, I was always a part of if you weren't sound defensively

or schematically or a player was off, they were going to find a part of if you weren't sound defensively or schematically or player was off, they were going to find a way to expose you. That was just one of many stories I could get. Did Romo talk a lot of shit on the field? No, you know what? If you talk,

if you talk to him, it was, it was kind of like fun trash talk, right? It was just like, Oh, Hey, I'll get you again.

But nothing where it was like, I'm going to kill you, sucker. Like, nothing like that. Yeah, I didn't know. Because, I mean, he's obviously a talker. But you saying he was kind of funny about it, like having fun out there, I think that's kind of the sign of sheer confidence where you're not out there talking shit all the time. You're just kind of like, hey, whatever, I'm going to get you.

Who did talk the most shit as a quarterback? There has to be somebody that you remember. Someone that talked the most trash as a quarterback, Aaron Rodgers. But it wasn't with his words. He would make these little gestures after a play, or he would give you this little stare down after a play, after he made like a 30-yard completion. And I got a good one with Aaron Rodgers where we were at a charity event

in the offseason, and I knew that we were going to play him that Thursday night to kick off the NFL season. They just won the Super Bowl. And at the charity event, you know, like, hey, Aaron, blah, blah, blah. But the competitive juices come out. I'm like, you know, we're going to kick your ass on Thursday. He's like, oh, OK. Yeah, we'll see.

Sure. Good luck with that. So we go, we play. He had Jordy Nelson, Greg Jennings. He had his whole squad, right? Jermichael Finley. So literally, he gets the ball, marches down the field on us. It's Jordy Nelson or no, Greg Jennings on the side for a touchdown. He does his little celebration, and as soon as I'm looking back, this motherfucker looks right at like, I hate this guy.

But I love it, right? I love that competitive talk, smack, things like that. It was always real subtle. He always did little subtle stuff like that. All right, was there a guy you actually straight up didn't like? No, no. Come on. So here was the thing, Ryan. There was too much on my brain to get so emotionally involved in a game.

Right? So let's say I made a tackle or someone made a tackle. The next thing, as soon as that play is done, in my head, I would be like, all right, second and seven, they're coming in 21 personnel. They liked. These are their tendencies in 21 personnel. All right, they split out, let's say it's Atlanta. Tony Gonzalez, then they were going to run these routes.

So I'd start to just think about all these things and then obviously get the defensive play call. So I'd be kind of over here. And if someone were talking trash to me, I didn't really pay attention, be quite honest. I was just like, I just got too much going on bro i was like i'll i'll talk trash to you as soon as i figure out what you what you're about to do so to that point there was no one i could actually emotionally hate in the game and you know contrary to what people believe there weren't too many

dirty players everyone played hard they played hard as hell but not too many dirty players you know i i love that answer because it also speaks to why coaches love you so much There weren't too many dirty players. Everyone played hard. They played hard as hell, but not too many dirty players. You know, I love that answer because it also speaks to why coaches love you so much. Because you're like, look, I got other stuff. I'm captain of the defense, this whole thing. And as you're figuring it all out, you're immediately thinking down-and-distance game situation, personnel set up, and you're probably studied enough out of whatever formation. Hey, this is probably the most likely option, all this kind of stuff.

Yeah. Were your teammates in awe of you as you would process all of that stuff and and generally you were the guy that would be yelling out what they were doing because you were just good at i wouldn't say in awe i would say they definitely respected me because if i made a call and even though i was dead wrong everyone no one no one argued with me. We just went with it. And, you know, I may not be like, yeah, my bad, bad, a bad check. Right. So if we were in a defense, I checked out of that defense because I thought something was going to happen. I had the respect for my teammates that they wouldn't question it.

And if something bad happened, it's like, all right, it's all good. We'll move on because more more times than not, you're right. So and the same thing with my coaches. They would just ask me what'd you see why'd you make that check it was a bad check what'd you see and i tell them they're like all right cool we'll just move on from there so i always appreciated the respect that they gave me not to question all the stuff that was processing in my head to trying and put us in the right position. Yeah, how, I don't know, it's not like calling anybody out or anything like that, but was, there are players that are amazing physical specimens.

There's guys that check every box, but some guys just don't process it the same way. How would you handle a teammate when you're looking left or right, being like, no, no, we need, you know, this is the call, this is the call. And maybe they're just not seeing that. Like, how hard is that to get through to somebody that maybe just doesn't see the game the way you saw it? It's as simple as there's an old statement, less is more. And I always believe that. Right.

So for guys that didn't process as quickly, all that means is you put less on your plate and put more on my plate or somebody else's plate. And you just tell them, hey, look, take it back to high school, right? For high school, a linebacker, the basics is find ball, see ball, get ball. That's it. You don't have to worry about gap integrity and fits and all this stuff. And as you go through college and NFL, you start to understand that. So it was always how much can the person, can you put on that person's plate, keep it real simple if that's the case, and then let them go out and ball, right? We're playing a kid's game. Let's talk about your era with this era, though.

You know, the game is probably won or lost in the line of scrimmage and the free snap reads, you know, whether it's the line of scrimmage after the ball snap before the ball snap, do you have somebody back there that you can trust? Is it the same? I mean, we have a lot of younger guys get in the league early. I think that's the hesitation that coaches have where it's like, I know where they have to learn how to play the position, but until they understand that, I think a lot of the college system stuff makes it easier.

There's not as much on the guys, but when you have somebody you can actually trust that the pre-snap reads, have you seen that evolve? How has it changed much? Or is it the same for everybody just based on experience? How have you, now that you're not playing, how would you compare that part of the game to when you were playing now that you're doing in the booth? You know, the mental part of the game, it's still on par with when I played. I would say the business part of the game has changed so much where you have now coordinators who are on such a short leash

that they don't want to give up that control to the Mike linebacker even if he's smart enough. And I've spoken with some D coordinators and they told me, look, if I'm going to go down, then I'm going to go down on my call as opposed to, you know, the linebacker safety checking in and out of the defense. So unfortunately you have a lot of smart players who kind of get a little frustrated at times because they see the game, they understand it, they know the game, but the business side

is such a factor now on Sundays where a D coordinator that's young, you know, it's one thing if you're Belichick and you have whoever it is, Dante Hightower, right? And you're like, look, 10 years in, it's all good, or 10 plus years in. But these new coaches with younger players, they're like, I have two years, three years, max. And God forbid, I try to develop the player on year one and have these growing pains. I literally might not make it out of year one, right? That's just the nature of the beast. So a lot of the coordinators are not,

are shying away from relinquishing control in that regard. And they're kind of giving – they'll do similar to what the offense does. They'll give a run-pass option, but not a full control of check out of this defense completely and get into something else. You're getting ready for the Seattle game. They just got Wilson back. Yeah. Green Bay's defense has been really impressive,

especially the last few weeks. It's not what you're expecting with Seattle, but I'm not going to freak out about it. Russell Wilson, to me, is still one of the best quarterbacks in the game. I'm so glad because I do not want to sit here and overanalyze one game of Russell Wilson. Yeah, whatever. With the

prep that you've done though for this game what is the seattle team like what can they be what are they right now the seattle team is a team that is trying to find their identity again i remember calling their their first game against the colts and i remember how happy Pete Carroll was, like visibly happy that all his players were healthy. He had his run game. He had his defense. It was like, he was like, we are set. And you can tell this was the first time. And if you remember, he purposely didn't play guys in preseason. He was doing everything he can to get a healthy team out there because the identity is still run first, as awesome as Russell Wilson is. It's still run first because he's at his best with the play-action game, the boot game.

That's when Russell excels. And then, of course, playing great defense. So you look at this team now. Carson hasn't been in, and Carson's their best back. you look at this team now, Carson hasn't been in, and Carson's their best back. With Carson in, it's like a different mindset or attitude for this offense. With him out, you start to now put a little more pressure

on Russell Wilson. And like I said, I'm not going to overanalyze a guy that was on the bench hurt for the past three, four weeks, goes in against one of the better defenses and doesn't play well. That's what's going to happen to everybody, right? So what I do look at is how do they help them out? How do they get this run game established again? Defense is actually playing better now.

They were just abysmal in the first, you know, four games or so of the season. They started to come around, and then they have studs over there. Wagner and Jamal Adams and Quandre Diggs. They have some really good players. Really, the identity, once they get the run game back, you'll see Seattle get back to being the Seattle

that we know. I don't know how much you put into it because Kyler, still some uncertainty. He's saying he's closer to playing in this game. I can't know how much you put into it because, you know, Kyler, still some uncertainty. He's saying he's closer to playing in this game. So I can't imagine the film breakdown with them missing all their offensive guys made a ton of sense to you. But is there anything in all the film study that you picked up from, again, an Arizona defense that people didn't think they were going to be this. So is there something that you saw there that maybe surprised you? saw there that maybe surprised you surprised me in a good way prior to last week was the defense uh communicates really really well and the you can see so budo baker i've always loved watching

this guy man he's he's like uh you know lightning in a bottle you know small stature comes up brings it really good at baiting quarterbacks into making throws, Aaron throws. And, you know, he does a good job. And you can see the communication on film of him talking to his corners, linebackers talking, et cetera. And then, of course, they play hard as hell. So and then, you know, on the flip side, what surprised me in a not good way was going to last week. The communication, it was there, but the intensity wasn't there and i was very surprised by that because i was expecting the cardinals defense to match the intensity of the panthers defense right and the panthers have a really good defense

sam darnold's frankly the reason that they've lost a bunch of games they're like oh and five this season turning the ball over too many times uh undefeated when they win the turnover battle so I was expecting that matchup didn't see it I do expect that the Cardinals defense will match the intensity of the Seattle defense in this game give me something from you know just past the halfway point here of a team that either is being overlooked or you think is hyped up a little too much. A team, I have to be very careful how I say this, a team that can be

overlooked right now would be the Indianapolis Colts if they beat the Buffalo Bills. I watched this team. Carson Wentz just got beat up by the media the past few years, comes over, only has three interceptions, two of them in one game that they could have won against Tennessee, who's arguably the best team in the AFC. And I watched their running game get going. Jonathan Taylor, who I loved watching at Wisconsin, he's just bringing it.

They have some really, really good defensive guys. And, you know, I say, all right, what's holding this team back? Well, they've corrected their issues from the first start of the season. We talk about Buffalo and their turnovers and producing them. The Colts, right up there with them. Protecting the football, Buffalo does a good job. Colts, right up there with them. Everything that you want from the team or a team that's ascending is what the Colts are right now.

And so I don't want to say overlook them just yet. You beat this Buffalo Bills team, then we can talk about a team that's kind of being overlooked. I really believe the Colts have all the ingredients to be a playoff team. They do it the right way. Frank Wright does it the right way. Their issue is they haven't beaten the team that made the playoffs last year. This is their game. So if there isn't a very important game for any one team that's like a signature win this Sunday, it's going to be the Bills, excuse me, it's going to be the Colts going against the Bills.

Yeah, it's a good point. I would say those picks against Tennessee, they should count as like two picks each because they were atrocious. But I think as you, as you say that out loud though, about the Colts, Hey,

they take care of the football. Like those picks were so bad that I bet some people listen to this. They're like, wait, do they? I mean, Buffalo's number one and plus minus at plus 14 in the NFL and, and the Colts are number two at plus 11.

So you're right on point with that. And then Jonathan Taylor on top of everything else, Taylor has the two fastest carries in the NFL this season. So of anybody that's had the ball in his hands this year, Taylor got over 22 miles per hour on one, and then he's, I think, at 21 points, something else. Or there's other guys that have been at 21 miles an hour. But yeah, Taylor has the two fastest carries of any guy that's touched the ball this season for anyone

that has paid attention to taylor since his college days this guy's a track guy he was a state track champion in jersey he would break for wisconsin it it was like if the linebackers didn't get him he was out the gate like this is this track guy playing, and he's coming into his own. Frank Wright, when I say raved about him, absolutely raves about this kid. And you can see it now all really starting to kind of gel and mesh. And like you said, you only heard about the horrible INTs that went through in that Tennessee game. He's been playing good ball.

He's been a really good quarterback and exactly what they needed. He's been playing good ball. He's been a really good quarterback and exactly what they needed. He's been efficient. Enjoy the game this weekend, man. Say hi to Sarah for me, all right? I will, Ryan. Take care, bro. We're going to talk the debt trap, new book by Josh Mitchell, how student loans became a national catastrophe. The reason I like this topic is I think almost everyone wants to become educated on it, which is very rare for us in this country to go, hey, yeah, this is fucked up. And Josh joins us now. So Josh, I don't know if you agree with that, but this feels like one of those things where

once people become the product and no longer the consumer, this is a problem. So let's go to the start of this, because you did a ton of research on this. Can you give us kind of the numbers, like put into perspective what the numbers are, total debt, the scale of increase over time, default rate on this, the inflation of tuition? Where are we right now and how much of a crisis this actually is? Yeah. So right now we have about $1.6 trillion in student debt. That's about the size of Canada's whole economy. It is the second highest form of household debt out there in the US. The only other form higher is mortgage debt. It has completely exploded in the past 15 years. I mean, we're talking about it tripling student debt-wise. So it's just a really huge amount of money out there that Americans owe,

and it's really happened in a quick amount of time. And this affects a lot of people. You're talking about 43 million people right now owe student debt. That's huge. I would say most people out there either have student debt or know someone who does. Now, if I go back and look at the start of the student loan program, which you outline in the book really well, I love some of the stuff that you brought up because there was a movement, I would say, after the Second World War where it felt like the United States was falling behind

other countries. There's some crazy numbers. You go back to 1910, only 14% of Americans above 25 had a high school diploma. But then there was, you know, whether it was Sputnik that you reference and the race with Russia and other countries, there was a real push after the Second World War and some stuff that later happened, you know, in the 60s,

where it felt like the government was saying, we need to find a way to prioritize higher education. So the crazy thing, like a lot of times, though, this started with really good intention. So can you give us the framework of how this actually started? Right. So I would take it back to the GI Bill. With World War II winding down, there was kind of this experiment that Congress and FDR embarked on, which was to say, okay, we have these soldiers coming back. How do we make sure that employers have enough time to hire them? And so they basically said, let's give everyone, in addition

to the housing vouchers to buy homes, let's also give everyone who fought in the war the opportunity to go to college. And this was really the first time that we had a universal college policy in the United States. Before then, it was really hard for people who didn't have money to pay tuition to go to college, at least in a lot of different states that didn't have free college. California actually, interestingly enough, had free college back then. And so that was an experiment that ended up proving pretty successful. But once those vouchers expired, there was this big question of, okay, what happens now if people want to go to college, particularly the baby boomers who were born at that time.

As they came of age, there was this big existential question facing Congress, which was, what do we do with all these people who are going to want to go to college, who are going to want to increase their lot in life? And so Sputnik happens, the Soviet Union launches Sputnik, and this really forced Congress's hand. Until that point, you had the same debate that we kind of have now, which is conservatives and Republicans in Congress are saying this is not Washington's role. This is going to turn into a mess if we give everyone vouchers to go to college. But you had Democrats who were saying, no, we need a civilian version of the GI Bill. We want everyone to have the opportunity to go to school. And so the compromise was student loans.

It was basically a way to say, let's have people who want to go to college have the opportunity to go, but it's going to be their responsibility to pay for it. They will have to pay us back. And that's really when we first went down the path of student loans. And the program really went off track from there, which I can tell you more about, but I'll leave it there for now. Yes. Yeah, because I think the GI Bill is something that's fascinating too, because when you lay it out and you know, I had older relatives that would tell me about it and you're like, actually,

this is an amazing package. And then you read further and you're like, Oh no way. Blacks were discriminated against. They didn't qualify for the GI bill the same way other soldiers did. And then women would actually serve in the military, but didn't qualify for it at all. So, you know, sometimes you'll read about this stuff historically and you go,

this is in the 1850s and the 1950s and this stuff is happening. And you're setting back people generationally when you're doing this kind of stuff. So moving to the position where it's really Lyndon Johnson, because he himself was able to borrow money to go to school, I think his intentions are very pure. It's hard for us at times to find politicians who go, you can read his thinking the way you lay it out that he's like, we got to figure out a way to get money to students. How do we do this? And then the banks get involved. So how does the very beginning of a great thought and something

that everybody was on board with immediately become toxic with the banks. Yeah. So, um, yeah, I just want to reiterate, I think you're right that Lyndon Johnson, he, he would always think about how if he didn't have that $75 loan, $75, not 75,000, $75 back in when he was going to college. Um, and he was a janitor too, right? I think it was in the 20s. Yeah, yeah. And even with that loan, he worked throughout his time at Southwest Texas State Teachers College to become a teacher. And he was really nervous waiting in line, not sure how he would pay the tuition bill.

And he was so thankful that he was able to go to the local bank and get a loan. And so he felt very strongly. I mean, right now we talk about student loans as like a burden. Back then, he was like so proud of that. It was like this. And he would tell bankers in the Oval Office, this bank made me a loan and it was the best investment that the bank ever made. And I would not be the president if it weren't for this loan that I got 30 years earlier. So this was really when a lot of people like him

thought student loans are a good investment. Now, the problem was the way the government did accounting, the way it, I would say, in some ways, cooked its books. Now, this was because Congress at the time had a very primitive accounting method to set the budget, and they only looked at basically one year spending. And any cash that flew out of the Treasury Department was considered spending, even if it went toward a loan program. So this meant that if you originated a billion dollars in student

loans in a given year, from a budgetary perspective, the federal deficit would go up by that amount. Even though, if you think about it, if you're doing a responsible job of lending, those students are going to pay back those loans over time, and Congress might actually make money on the program if the students pay it back with interest. But the important thing was, the way the government did the budgeting at the time, loans looked really expensive. And so LBJ came up with this idea, which actually already occurred in the housing market with federal housing programs. But he said, let's just have banks make the loans.

Let's convince banks somehow to make the loans on our behalf, and it won't show up on the government's books. And so therefore, this will look very cheap. Actually, it will look like it'll cost nothing from the government's perspective. And guess what? Students are going to pay it back and the banks will get paid back and everything will work out well. Banks will make money. Students will go to the college of their choice and the government doesn't have to put up any money at all. And this will help everyone live the dream of college. Okay. Now, as the banks get involved, they're not going to do this for free.

That's not what banks do. And so it turns into, okay, we need these interest rates and LBJ is kind of fighting with a bit on it. And they always know they're going to win because the bankers, when they're talking about money, they're almost always going to beat the politicians. And then it starts to become really screwed up. And maybe you can help us with kind of the flow chart where it's like, okay, well, if the government is approving the loans, that means they're also insuring the loans and the bank is making money on the interest and they have almost zero risk. much tuition is, and the student just keeps having to take out more. The consumer in this is the only one in the flow chart or the taxpayer on defaults. There was no downside.

This was a great deal for the banks and the schools. This was the mother of all moral hazards. I mean, if you look at, I would say, the 10 biggest gaffes that Congress has done, I would say the creation of Sally Mae and the student loan program is probably up there in terms of unintended consequences. Obviously, Congress has done a lot of other horrible things in the past, but I would say this ranks up there as thinking it was going to do one thing and instead it did the other. So let me just explain a little bit about what I mean by that.

So Congress actually tried to play the role of the private sector. It basically told banks, we will pay you an interest rate of 6% on each student loan you have. That was how LBJ tried to get banks to make loans to students. And again, as you said, banks are not going to do this out of the goodness of their heart. They want to make a profit. That's the whole reason for existing. And so at first, 6% sounded okay. This was in 1965. But guess what? Inflation really started to go up in the late 60s and particularly in the 70s.

And so Congress had to keep on coming back and raising the interest rate again on student loans. And banks kept on saying, look, this interest rate is not enough for us to make enough money. And they weren't just saying that. It was true. Why would you use your capital as a bank to make loans at 6% interest when you can make a mortgage at 10% interest? You're losing money if you go for the student loans. And by the way, it's important to jump in there too. Mortgage rates for younger listeners now, mortgage rates way back in the day were absurd. Right. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean,

and we think inflation is high right now, and it is obviously relative to 10 years ago, but this is nothing compared to what it was doing in the 80s. So this was when inflation was rising. Banks were saying, look, this isn't making us money. And so Congress, after several times of coming back and raising the interest rate, created this really sweet sounding company called Sallie Mae. And Sallie Mae, I will try to save you on the nuances here, but Sallie Mae was a quote-unquote government-sponsored enterprise, which basically means Congress said, you are a for-profit corporation, Sallie Mae. Your role is to make a profit. However, we will have some say into how you're run as an institution because your board is going to be appointed mostly by the President of the United States and Congress.

And your shareholders are banks and schools. And so now what does Sallie Mae do? Basically, the Treasury Department gave Sallie Mae money, taxpayer money. And then it was Sallie Mae's job to funnel that money to banks so that banks could then give that money to students. Now, the important thing to know is that every time Sally Mae gave money to a bank, it was guaranteed a profit. So when you say that banks and Sally Mae had very little risk, I would say it actually is much further. They had no risk. They were

guaranteed a profit. All they had to do was get the money out the door as quickly as possible into students' hands as quickly as possible. And if they could do that, they were guaranteed a profit. And specifically, they were guaranteed a 3.5 percentage point profit, meaning that every loan they had, they were guaranteed to make 3.5% interest on top of Sally Mae's own borrowing costs. That was huge relative to what other private banks could make on other types of products. And so if you think about this, this is what I mean by moral hazard. Because there was no risk, you think about this, this is what I mean by moral hazard. Because there was no risk, and because there was guaranteed profits, the whole incentive was to get students to go to college, to borrow to do so, and to pay as much as they could to do so. That is the short story here,

that the financial industry, Sallie Mae and then its owners, which went public on the stock exchange in the early 80s. So Wall Street started getting involved. This turned into a huge for-profit center very quickly in the 80s. That really is the heart, the through line of what happens here. It's like, okay, so now it's off the rails because Wall Street's involved. And there's also a really important part of this Sally Mae story that maybe you didn't want to include because it just you could go in a million different directions but i as soon as i got done with that chapter i started laughing and that's michigan senator who's a democrat bill ford at the beginning was like hey if the if the title is

let's get student loans out there so more kids can go to college no one's going to argue with that which i think is part of the problem why we haven't had any reform on this, because just that the top line of it is, wait, do you want to restrict kids for access to student loans? Like, no, that's not what I want to do. I need to change and overhaul the system. So here you have a senator who's very for that premise and then starts digging into what Sally Mae is. It's like, this thing's a disaster. Like, I'm out. I'm out on this. Like, nobody understands it. No one in Congress understands it. But this is a joke. Like, these people are making all this money.

It's guaranteed. And anything that's defaulted, they're not on the hook for. The taxpayer is. And tuition keeps going up. So what? And then they send a lobbyist who he ends up dating. Yes. So, I mean, I couldn't help but go, oh, here we go.

Well, so, first of all, just to clarify, so he was a congressman, not a senator, but he was a very powerful congressman. In fact, when it came to higher education policy, Bill Ford, who was a Democrat from the Detroit area, as you say, was the most powerful member of Congress when it came to higher education. And every policy that affected higher education went through him. He was in charge of the committee that oversaw this stuff. Now, Jimmy Carter, President Carter, Bill Ford, everyone very quickly by the late 1970s was saying, this doesn't make sense. We're really lining the pockets of Sally Mae in these banks. And that wasn't really what our intention was, even though they're a for-profit company, they are making way more money than we ever thought.

And, you know, let's, instead of giving these profits to Sally Mae, let's actually reform our accounting standards so that we don't have to rely on banks anymore. So very early on, there were some red flags here. And so Sally May, which was making a lot of money, said, okay, we can't let this happen. Let's hire a lobbyist. Her name is Mary Whalen. She was very young at the time. She was very ambitious and eager. And so they hire her and very quickly, they convince Bill Ford to back off. And in fact, he didn't just back off. He became Sally Mae's chief ally in Congress.

And he protected them for years and years and years throughout the 80s. Sally Mae became a Wall Street behemoth in the 1980s. They were making money hand over fist. And every time someone raised an objection, Bill Ford protected them and made sure that they backed off. And people in Congress were scared to challenge him. Lo and behold, and I got just about everyone I could to verify this, at some point, he started having an affair with this lobbyist, Bill Ford, started having an affair with the chief lobbyist of Sally Mae while he's protecting them. And in fact,

they ended up getting married in 1990. She had just relinquished her job as they got married and their affair became official. But the point is, very early on, there was some sketchy stuff happening. And again, this was all in the name of, you know, expanding access to higher education. And in one sense, the student loan program did do that. But it became, it came at a very high cost, both to the students and to taxpayers. Yeah, you have one note in there where Sally

May in 1980 saying, we expect to be worth 20 billion and they're worth 40 billion. They were right. Or they, they had, they had $40 billion in assets on their books. I mean, it was just insane. Okay. And so I have this chart. I regret not putting this chart in my book, but if you, if you look at the rise in tuition over time, whether it's public school or private school, both were kind of flat after you adjust for inflation in the 70s. As soon as Sally Mae started to ramp up and the banks started to ramp up lending around the early 1980s, tuition just skyrockets. And I think that we've taken for granted, at least I did for a while, that, you know, oh, tuition, you know, college

tuition is supposed to go up by a large amount. I mean, it goes up by triple the rate of inflation. That's just the way it is. That's the status quo. Actually, it wasn't always like that. And it was only in the 1980s that the era of skyrocketing tuition really started. And we're talking about rising at triple the rate of inflation. There aren't many other expenses from a household perspective that have risen that quickly. And I say one big factor, not the only factor, but one big factor was because banks and Sallie Mae were just pushing loan money out the door with the backing of Congress. And that's really, you know, we want to even talk about the expansion from the late 80s, early 90s.

And, you know, I'm mid to late 90s for college. And, you know, I remember looking at all the loan stuff and never really understanding any of it. And, you know, dealing with it after the best I could until you start making some money. But then you'll look at the pricing of it now and it reminds me a lot of college football. And you have a chapter in there about a student who decides to go to Alabama, fulfill a lifelong dream.

You have some main characters that you add into the story along the way. But television contracts for college football have increased facilities salaries staff numbers i mean all they're doing is spending all the money any way they can they're not they're not they're just going well if we have more of it we're going to spend it and that's basically what's happened here on a much larger scale in a much more devious way is that the schools are in line with the banks and that they can just keep charging more and more and more as long as the loans keep coming in. And it doesn't feel like anybody can get their arms. When is this shit going to end?

Well, so first of all, what you just said, I think some people will hear that and they'll say, okay, he's pontificating, he's exaggerating. But like what you just said, I've been told by college presidents themselves. You know, before I wrote this book and when I started covering student debt and higher education, there's a lot of advocacy groups in DC from both sides of this debate about what's causing tuition to rise. Why are colleges raising tuition? And one side says, oh, you know, it's because states are not investing enough money. The states are not giving public colleges enough money. And so therefore, the colleges have to turn to students to raise their money. And then you have the other side who says, well,

it's strictly, you know, Congress's fault. If Congress wouldn't make access to money so easy, then schools wouldn't be able to raise their tuition so easily. I think that there's multiple factors involved. But what I will tell you is when I've talked to presidents and I talked to the former president of Alabama, who basically turned that college around. That state school used to be an afterthought when it came to academics. And this president who came in in the early 2000s, he really turned Alabama from an afterthought into a national brand. And it was a very specific strategy that he did.

But I asked him, how did you do this? And he said, well, we knew that if we could recruit from a national basis, not just recruit in-state Alabama students, but went to the Northeast and recruited students who went to prestigious private high schools in the Northeast, they would come and they would pay higher tuition, private high schools in the Northeast, they would come and they would pay higher tuition, double what in-state students pay. And so how did they do that? They relied on student loans. If you look at the amount of money that Alabama collects from the student loan programs, it has really increased by a dramatic amount in just the past 10 years. And a lot of that money is parents. Parents are now

increasingly taking out loans on behalf of their students to send them to Alabama. And so I think that there's a very direct link between the availability of student loans and some schools' ability to raise tuition. And again, I've had multiple presidents tell me this, that were it not for the student loan program, a lot of their students wouldn't have the ability to pay the high tuition. And that's, in fact, why there hasn't really been a lot of reforms in Washington. One of the reasons why is because every time someone tries to reform the program, schools will come in and say, oh my God, you can't do this because then we're going to lose a lot of money and there's going to be a lot of dire consequences as a result of that. Yeah. Well, you could stop building buildings. You could stop saying that you need... This is

where if a college professor is listening to this, be like, well, I'm not going to argue against my salary over nine months. I need a competitive salary. I need to do all these different things. There's no way we should have this many people worried about defaulting. All right. We have what? How many? What are the default numbers right now? About 7 million to 8 million people have defaults on their student loans.

The government doesn't keep a clear tally of that. Some of those people are duplicates. In other words, some people have more than one student loan. So it's kind of hard to know precisely how many people are in default, but there's probably there's about 7 million. Now, that's not far off from the number of people who lost their homes to foreclosure in the housing crisis. I make this point all the time. A lot of people say, oh, why are you calling this a crisis? And I say, well, if you look at a lot of the consequences that happened from the housing bubble, they're happening now with the student loan bubble. All right. You've spent a decade

reporting on this. And I think some people would hear some of this and be like, hey, don't sign up for all those loans too. I mean, there's going to be people that are completely unsympathetic. And even your student that goes to Alabama, who is a heartbreaking story, there'd be somebody that reads that and goes, well, don't sign up for all these loans and don't go to Alabama. But it's very clear there's predatory approaches to this. The fact that they don't share that once you go into forbearance, that you're still going to have to pay interest. I don't think people quite understand this until you're in it, is that your first year loan, that interest accrues, even though the payment isn't being asked for all the way through some of the grad school numbers that are ridiculous. What would be the top line things? Let's not make perfect the enemy of some kind of progress here,

but what would be three things, Josh, that you think, hey, look, these things need to change to at least try to get this going in a better direction? Well, I think history can be a guide here. One of the things that really surprised me when I started researching this program is there actually were student loan programs before the federal government got involved. And in fact, a lot of them were run by the schools themselves. In other words, you had schools, including the University of Minnesota, that would lend directly to their students, and they didn't have the government involved in this. Now, I'm not saying the government should end its involvement, but I do point this out because when Minnesota put its own money on the line, when it lent its own money to

students, the default rates were quite low. Now, again, there's a lot of factors for why that was. I believe one of those factors was because Minnesota knew at the time that if the student defaulted, Minnesota would have to eat those losses. It would lose money. And so I think this is a very basic concept. If you spread the risk, if you ensure that schools will suffer consequences when their students down the line default on $50,000, $100,000 in student loans, schools will be much more reluctant to package reckless predatory loans. I think that history shows that. And we've

seen this in other industries. We've seen this with the mortgage industry. When banks didn't have enough risk on the line in giving loans to families that clearly had no ability to repay them for houses that were way overvalued, when banks didn't have that risk, they made a lot of reckless loans. As soon as they started to share in that risk and were required to, and as soon as they started suffering losses, they cleaned up their act. I think a similar thing could happen with student lending. Schools have to have more risk here. So that's number one. And again, I think history can be a guide here. And I think people from both political parties would agree on that concept. I think that's one thing where there's bipartisan support for that. I think, number two, there needs to be more transparency in this whole system. It's shocking to think about this, but it's only been in recent years that you as a consumer or as a student or

as a parent could actually go online and determine what is the average salary you can expect to earn when you go to this public college or when you study this major at this private college. You can actually do that now. The data is still pretty early in terms of how much detail you can get. For example, you can determine how much you'll earn one year out for this graduate program. Well, as we get more years of data, you'll be able to see what you can earn five years out and 10 years out. But the point is, you now have more access to data to understand whether you're making a good investment or not when you go to school. So that would be number two, more transparency. And number three, I think I would just throw out there, I'm thinking off the cuff here, don't get so caught up in the

prestige game. I use myself as an example. I thought that if I didn't get into Northwestern University in high school, my career would be doomed. Far from it. I didn't get in. The only other school that I applied to and that I got into was my state school, University of Maryland. I ended up just fine. So I would just caution families, don't play the prestige game. Schools are relying on you to do that so that you'll end up paying a lot of money, but it doesn't always pay off. I also love too, the proposal of some of these, you know, we talked about the alphabet companies and what their power is going to be in the future, which doesn't seem like it's going away anytime soon, is that they should be taking it upon themselves to have their own programs to start finding a way to educate. And I would say,

streamline the process of education for the next generation of employees and have big companies take on some of this as well. And I know everybody talks about taxing the shit out of all of them. Maybe this would be a better use of doing it. And look, I'm not anti. I always think it's kind of funny whenever we talk about, I don't care about Jeff Bezos' tax rate. It's going to be something I'm going to spend the time on the podcast worrying about. But hey, man, this was a lot of fun. And the last part was terrific as well. So make sure you check it out with Josh Mitchell, The Debt Trap. Great work on this. Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate it. 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 could possibly imagine. And best of all, kids, I am liquid. So, now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. Before we get to life advice, again, that email is lifeadvicerr at gmail.com uh kyle sent me over this one i appreciate uh you guys setting this account up with a uh well this email address

up with an account at farmers only so whoever did that thank you appreciate it um trying to find love yeah we got a username and a password here so here. So we'll check in on that one a little bit later. Another thing that we needed, this was a little bit of a Chris Long, Doug Peterson thing. Because remember how we had Doug Peterson on this week and I was like, hey, did you, why did you play Chris Long so many snaps?

And Peterson was like, ah, come on. You know, he played him like 17. Nope. Nope. Nope. Somebody looked it up. Somebody looked it up. Chris Long played 42 snaps in a week 17 game

where, look, I could tell when Chris told me the story. I don't think he was going to lie about it. He's like, I was out there and I was playing playing the whole game. And he had himself six tackles in that one and a QB hit. He was out there. He played 62%

of the snaps week 17. He was not thrilled with that. But Peterson was like, nah, I only played 17 snaps. Nope. But that's an offensive coach. He's not keeping track of that. We wanted to clear Chris's name on that. I don't think it's a call out to Peterson, but

maybe it is a little bit. I don't know. Did Chris send that email? Did he create a fake Gmail account just to vindicate himself? That's a stat-catting game for Chris, too. I get it. You don't want to play. I'm sure Fletcher Cox and Brandon Graham were playing that game. I think the real thing was Barnett wasn't playing and he was the rookie.

And it's like, wait, now I'm out here? I think it's just because people knew that Chris would. Because I always think about whenever I watch Braveheart or some of that medieval stuff, I'll be like, what guy would you have been? Where would you want to go? Because in the movie, it's cool to be out front screaming like a crazy person with your Lance and shield.

But you also realize like, yeah, I'm going to kind of let a few of you guys go first and then figure it out. Archer. Definitely be an archer. You'd want to be an archer. Yeah, totally.

I thought about that from a Lord of the Rings perspective. Definitely would be an elf. Um, but I'm with Kyle. I'm not, I'm not on the front lines. I don't have the strength. I'm not like one of those guys holding like a spear

running straight into guys with shields. No way. I'm like fire arrows from 200 yards away. Yeah, I just would love to know, like, is it all luck? Because if you're too big and strong, then you're too big of a target. And I'm talking about like huge guys from Scotland,

not myself. But, you know, do you, what's your longevity if you're a frontline guy all the time? I got to imagine you can only make it like four or five battles. It's almost like being in the UFC. You remember, we had the producer who was like, oh, that sport sucks. He's like, the best guys lose all the time.

You're like, that's, do you know, like, what are you talking about? That's exactly why it's so ridiculous. You can't just have a 20-fight run in this sport. It's fighting, and everybody's pretty tough at this level. And all you have to do is... Whenever I watch great boxers, and I'll go back and watch old fights, do you know how amazing it is that they don't get knocked out all the time? Of all the punches that you have to avoid,

imagine being Tyson Fury and having to avoid Deontay Wilder's right hand for 10 rounds, 12 rounds like that's ridiculous so anyway um I know we've mentioned the Braveheart positioning thing before but I think as we bring it full circle to Chris Long it's that he knew if he was asked to go up front Chris would be like all right I'll go up front yeah and he'd get he might he might get a couple but he wouldn't last. He'd be too big. They'd be like, we've got to take this guy out. I was like, how many generals two have we lost? Because George

Washington survived wars. Ulysses S. Grant survived wars. Guys over the time who died in battle and we'll never know if they could have been a future president or some dictator or conqueror or whatever. We'll never know because they died on the front lines

because they were trying to be heroes. Yeah, because Washington used to just... Every time you read about anything with him, and again, it can turn into legend hundreds of years later, but there's pretty clear accounts from other people that he just was amazing. But then again, when you read about Ulysses S. Grant, a lot of the stuff's the same

thing so i don't know you know we didn't we didn't have we didn't have talk shows the next morning is he really you know there's some mythical stuff going on here avoiding bullets and then you'll hear about some guy i remember reading about grant and there was another dude who was like all right let's get him and he wanted to be that guy like ride his horse through all the melee and just show how heroic he was. And he just got taken out like immediately, just a bullet right through the throat, dead. They were like, that was stupid. Like, why did he ride out ahead of everybody else?

So, you know, look, if you're getting any land conflicts this weekend, pace yourself. Actually, we had like analytic stats for like battles. Like actually George Washington, you know, he was on the front line, but didn't really get, it was mostly two on one combat he was never one-on-one with anybody like i that would just be unbelievable that's what i was thinking for like pre-gunfight area like if

you're if your group had a shield wall does that make you like a system qb like if if you guys actually employed the shield wall rather than just a bunch of guys with axes and spears the front well the thing with grant was always that it's like oh he's not that good he just has massive numbers and he overpowers people and he was heartless and that he would just overflow people and take you without caring about how many bodies he lost up front um that's one argument that doesn't seem to tell you that grant is the legend that he is but i think the missing bullets thing probably is a bit of hyperbole, but that Washington apparently had no fear. There's enough accounts with Washington,

whether it was luck or overstated or whatever, there still seems to be enough constant, whatever battle he was in, he'd be like, let's go, let's do this. And he wasn't a hang in the back guy. So let's give him that at least. All right. All right. Let's talk environment here. Cars versus bikes. Check let's give him that at least. All right. All right. Let's talk

environment here. Cars versus bikes. Check it in from Orono, Maine. Go Bears. I like this one. It's simple. My wife and I live a mile and a half from the city center. My wife bikes from home to the city center for work at the university. I work there too, but drive my 2017 GMC Sierra onto campus. My wife, who is an eco-friendly individual, wants me to ditch the gas rig and bike in with her. Help. I have no desire to do this, but I don't want to disappoint her.

Look, if we were staying a mile and a half out and you were living in Southern California, San Diego, whatever, Florida, you know, I would say, Hey, do this Maine. You're supposed to ride a bike through the, the entire winter of Maine. Uh, I'm with you on this one. I would not want to have to bike through the snow. I think what you need to do here is I support your choice to be eco-friendly, but I'm going to take the GMC to work every day. I don't think you're going to win this. It depends on how environmentally friendly she is. I recycle. I think it's weird when you go to somebody's house, they just start chucking plastic bottles in the garbage. I personally think that's weird, but I also can understand that people that doesn't even register with them.

Um, but I also can understand that people that doesn't even register with them. Um, I don't, I don't know, man, I feel like you may lose this one and I don't know if you can get into the, you need to respect my, I respect your motives. You need to respect that. I don't want slush all over my pants every day for about four or five months. That's a cold commute. Kyle, you're not biking. I got two, I got Kyle, you're not biking. I got two questions. Definitely not biking.

Well, one is you could say we're going to the same place. If for whatever reason, you can't get back, we're just going to throw the bike in the GMC, and I've saved us. You know what I mean? It's a fail-safe. The GMC is a fail-safe. We're both going to have our vehicles at the same place and worst comes to worst

you can throw yours and mine and we'll just get home. Do this for the team. And then the other thing I would ask is how long has she been doing this for and has she had to stick with her stick to her guns through a winter yet? We don't have that information. Yeah. So maybe all you have to do is wait.

Maybe the time is coming and it'll just be it'll just be done and then if you really wanted to get shitty you could find out something that she does that's hypocritical to being environmentally conscious and then just have that be the hell that you die nice don't flush the toilet for number ones right if it's right if it's yellow met let it mellow or something you start saying hey you come home one weekend you're out in the roof she's like what are you doing like installing a windmill right you have a car all this space all the space for solar panels and we're not even doing anything about it lights out at five i gotta be honest you kyle I thought that but didn't say it out loud that's why it was the

end of my answer yeah garbage time answer I was like what can you do to turn it back on her to start an argument while you're having where you have a valid point I just thought like being a little bit older I'm like why you know why that's just gonna make it worse yeah it's gonna make it worse why I didn't say it but i i do like that you did that because then i mean you could just be the most annoying guy ever recycling coffee grounds uh wait grinds be grinds i'm not a coffee guy as you could tell that one just come up with all sorts of stuff compost everything yeah yeah back yeah like tomato sauce jars keep them and be like they're great for water. Yeah.

Put them out when company comes over. Yeah, that's great. Start mulching paper bags, make shirts out of them. All right. Make your own paper. There you go. I had two things really quickly. One, can you, I mean, he drives a Sierra, so seems like a truck guy.

I don't think he's going to probably compromise on that. But can you maybe say, all right, well, could I buy a more eco-friendly car? I don't know. Maybe you buy a hybrid. That's maybe something you can do. Maybe you get a new car out of the situation, which probably isn't going to happen because I doubt either of you would compromise on that. The other thing is, though, more on the biking to places. If you have a lengthy bike, I've always thought about this with people in the city who are

wearing full suits and they bike to work. Aren't you gross for the rest of the day? Don't you sweat? Especially if it's in the middle of the summer and it's hot out, you probably can't shower when you bike to work. Aren't you gross for the rest of the day? Don't you sweat? Especially if it's in the middle of the summer and it's hot out, you probably can't shower when you get to work. So you're just gross the rest of the day. I've never understood that. Yeah. Remember Jim

in the office? He started biking to work. Why would you want to do that? Give deodorant sticks at work, I guess, but that's not going to do the trick. So I don't want to be the guy that smells at work. It depends on what kind of pheromones you're kicking off as a dude. Some of us smell bad. Some of us don't.

I've never had a job with a shower. Actually, there was one. Where you had to shower? No, with a shower. With the option to shower. There was one for Bill's TV show. We had a bathroom with a shower and they were like, do not use that shower. So I never got to. Wait, you were going to use the shower at HBO just to do not use that shower so i never got to wait you were gonna use the shower at hbo just to do it yeah but they said not to so i didn't did anyone use it

i don't think so there was like a weird piece of wood that was leaning up in there that looked like it had been there for a while but it was just a nice bathroom in general that's where i would yeah you're right that's where i would poop nice whole thing oh all right there you go whole thing sounds a little sketchy. Okay. Let's get to another one here. All right. This is a good one.

Conversation hog. Six foot, which means 5'10 and a half, 175. Don't go to the gym. There's a group of us in our mid-40s who've been friends 20, 25 years. We used to hang out all the time, but now that we're older, we all have kids, families, busy jobs, and are able to all get together just a few times a year. Oh, okay. All right. But it's great that you guys are still doing that. It's always great to have beers, catch up with each other. It's just like old times, but we have a problem with one guy.

He's a great dad. He's a little league coach, all that. When we hang out, we love to hear about his kid, of course, but he ends up talking our ear off about little league minutia. It's never, hey, my kid is really loving baseball. It was cool to see him league minutiae. It's never, Hey, my kid is really loving baseball. It was cool to see him get this big hit. It's more like our shortstop is going on vacation with his parents next week. And I'm not sure how I'm going to change the batting order or the team we play tomorrow has a kid already thrown a curve ball.

Here's how I'm going to get our hitters ready for that. And none of these are two minute conversation. The dudes, the Jeff passing of of Little League, without the awkward dollar-dollar pills y'all reference. We just had a hangout, and I promise, the first 45 minutes were almost entirely him talking about this stuff. I tried to kindly point out when he took a breath

by using one of your lines, and that's talking Little League. He said everyone laughed, but he didn't get the hint and just kept going. Again, we all like this guy. But we get a few hours every few months to hang out, and none of us want to spend a big chunk of that time talking Little League. So far, we've tried the usual of kind of jumping in when we get a chance and changing the subject, but he ends up going right back to it.

Is there a way to bring this up more firmly without sounding like a complete jerk? All right, a couple different things on this. Yeah, some guys just don't get it. Like, you'll be so hyped to be hanging out, especially if you're not normally hanging out, that they're just so excited, okay? I'll admit, because I don't always, you know, have a social routine that when I can see my guys,

like, I might get excited, and I probably talk about work too much and what's going on. I'll admit, I probably go with the concept that my thing is a little bit more interesting because of what I've been doing. But again, that's a little selfish. Poor Saruti gets stuck on some calls with me where I'm giving him a whole segment for 10, 12 minutes. And then I'm like, Hey dude, I got to hang up on you now. Cause you just, I'm I sometimes I feel like I'm like a father and Cerruti's this son that I annoy with these long phone calls.

So I'm slightly aware of dominating the conversation because I've certainly been guilty of it. But this is where the guy has zero self-awareness. Like when I start to, I had a thing with a dinner the other night where it was kind of me, me, me, the first 10, 15 minutes. And then I was like, hey, I got gotta pivot this and start spraying the infield here.

Little league reference to make sure everybody gets involved in the conversation. Now, some people don't care, right? But, but this is a bad topic. This isn't like this guy is crushing it. And he's, you know, it's not like you're friends with Vince Vaughn. And then you want Vince Vaughn to tell you stories for 45 minutes. This guy's talking batting wars because the kid's going on vacation, short stops even. So you're right. This sucks.

And there's a couple of things. One could be that he's just this excited and this proud, and he clearly doesn't pick up on the social cues of it. Because if you talk 45 straight minutes about Little League baseball when you haven't seen your guys in a while, that's a real lack of self-awareness, which some of us have none. Some of us are so self-awareness, which some of us have none. Some of us are so self-aware we get in our own heads about it. It's nice to have some, even if you have some of these tendencies. Now, I think the way to combat this, it could be a couple of things though. We have a friend who I'm convinced no one at his house listens to him. So he has an opinion on literally everything and people are like, what's going on?

And I'm like, you know what? I just don't think anybody listens to him. And we're the people. So when he's home, nobody listens. He can't get a word in. So now we get all that stuff. So that could be what's going on with him. What I would do is I would, as the group, not him, the next time you meet together, all of you come up with what would be the worst possible topic to discuss and i'm not talking like offensive but just what would be the most boring thing you could ever do maybe you talk recycling we just did it for five minutes it wasn't great uh go 30 minutes don't let them in box them out for 30 straight minutes and you guys just start firing off the worst follow-ups follow that up with terrible anecdotes that don't make sense.

Be the worst conversation you're capable of for 30 minutes and box his ass out of it and see if he figures it out. Be like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't care about the shortstop. Be like, did you hear what Doug is doing? Get a compost out back. It's nuts. He bought a shovel and everything.

I think you should just try to make such a point of being a horrible conversation, a horrible hang that I don't know if that'll even get through to him or not, but that's what I would do. Yeah. There's two things. One, I'm a little bit more,

maybe crass is the word when it comes to stuff like this, because I mean, my friends are every once in a while when I come home, I don't come home often and we're all like hanging out and i'll i'll tell them like what i've been up to or something and like yeah we had tom hanks the other day and immediately they're like we don't care we get it bro you know they say that to you so of course so i am hung out with tom hanks while building a pod for an hour and a half and that just doesn't pass the test yeah they're like yeah fucking great kyle yeah we get it it's like yeah fuck you you work outside whatever so i'm just no but that's only after i get a little respect

after i get rad respect to the outside guys listen yeah of course i don't like that kyle i don't like that out of you come on i'm an outside i'm a former outside guys just when you get a little you got to give a little so that's one thing and then the other thing i would say is i've actually done this with my girlfriend and I'm glad the door's closed because it's like, she, she's a talker. She's got stories. They all, you know, a lot, a lot of them do. And sometimes I'll just say, yeah, what else? And she'll get the idea. And sometimes the first couple of times she was like, Whoa, what did you just say? And now she, now she gets it. Cause like, we're like, all right, we've been on this topic for 10 plus minutes. I said, yeah. What else you got? What else?

You just say that. That's not super mean. Yeah. That's not super mean. Yeah. Is it mean? No, because we kind of have our own little rapport going. Your own secret language?

No. I don't know. Is that what else? I mean, everyone gets it. So it's not that secret. It's just not as offensive the second, third time around. I don't know, man. Go ahead.

Go ahead, Ryan. Well, no. I just, I don't know what the dynamic is with the guy like is he the main guy is he the worst guy is he was he always like this that's what I would want to know too did he become a dad and all of a sudden become lame that's what I would want to know and then did he get really into little league baseball because he has nothing else to hold on to maybe

that's kind of the one thing that he's got I don't know maybe his life's kind of kind of depressing you got to give him that for a little bit but yeah not a great scene yeah that's that's a good point. What's going on in his life? How careful do you have to be with him? The other thing is too, is everybody in the group has a different approval rating. I was usually in the middle. I was never the highest approval rating guy out of my group. Go to the guy with the highest approval rating. Because there's a couple of guys in my group that literally can get away with anything. Anything. They can do stuff,

they can say stuff. And everybody just likes them so much it never matters. Me, I had to be a little more delicate about it. I was never the bottom of the group. But I was not the highest approval rating guy. Because I didn't work as hard to be as liked, which I know is shocking to everybody. But if you have somebody in the group that has the highest approval rating and just says to him, hey, dude, last time, straight hour, literally, no one gives a shit.

Let's hang out. Might be the most efficient way other than my, you know, you guys rehearsing your horrible story story for 30 minutes. Just try to get him, you know, get the point across to him that he may not even realize. So I don't know. A lot of Guys can say stuff in a mean but joking way, and that's like, I don't think you have to be very delicate at all.

Well, clearly they have. I don't know. I mean, if he sent an email about it, then he hasn't thought it through himself to just say, hey, we just don't want to talk about this anymore. He's trying to figure out some other creative way. I try to offer it up.

But yeah, I mean, the best route would be. But if somebody is going to be direct with him, have it be the person that he'd be more willing to hear it from than the guy that maybe he secretly never liked and is in the group anyway. And if he delivers the message, then you just have Armageddon. That's funny. But look, as we all get older, man,

we're going to start telling worse stories. You become way less interesting. Yeah, you don't have, and you see each other even less. And then, like, hell, I'm in this weird phase where I'll catch myself and I'm like, what am I doing? This isn't even interesting.

Just shut the fuck up. Talking about a water heater? Yeah. No, it's like, again, poor Saruti. There'll be times with him I'm on the phone because i'll talk to show out and i'm sort of like creatively thinking out loud and i'm throwing stuff at him and then i tell some fucking stories earlier at seven times and then at least i'm catching it i'm a couple years away from not even catching it the poor guy's gonna be on the phone much longer with

me but i he's sort of my guy that i bounce things off of and then it'll inspire something else. So that's why I've always liked working with him. But he is dealing with some horrible phone calls for me. Sometimes I multitask though. I'll multitask when I'm on the phone with you too. I'll get some work done if I know you're going to go on a long story or something. So it's not like a total loss.

No, I like Ryan. You would even admit this. You'd be like, there's probably a story that I've heard. You'd be like, stop me if you've heard this before and I probably had heard it before but I wasn't sure the intro and then I've heard it so I'm like all right um but you're right like there's that's part of the creative conversation it's fun um yeah so we're just being nice about it but I he knows like hey I call and then he's like all right don't say anything for the first six minutes because we're still just going and he's just but a lot of that is me working out the process of what it is that i want to say or the idea and he'll get stuck with a bad story in

there but i'm still i'm still catching myself enough i'm not guaranteeing this will happen in a couple years but or i can go hey this isn't interesting anymore yeah i'm gonna hang up now sorry yeah you're aware you'll say all right i gotta stop let's hang up bye and then you'll abruptly say goodbye too because you just gotta i don't yeah i don't my goodbyes are quick which i respect yeah speaking of enjoy your weekend that's life advice thanks kyle and steve also shout out kyle happy birthday oh that's right what oh no no i don't do that stuff no don't you and steve you better not fucking put it in slack because i hate that shit. It's Kyle's birthday. At Tom Shady, wishing him a happy birthday.

What do you got planned for tonight? Me and the boys going to Tom Bergen's Irish pub. I've heard it's the new dark room. We've never been. I'm going to get Tate and Titus to come from the west side and Jim Cunningham and all the old crew. Probably not Tommy Alter. I'm not a big enough name yet. Although I do have a blue check, Tommy,

if you did want to come. but that's that's all i got we're just gonna get have a few drinks today and not drive a few yeah they well the hardest was picking a starting time uh they were like oh what do you think as seven eight nine i was like i mean to be honest with you i'm gonna be fighting the urge for a couple hours by seven o'clock so let's just say seven so seven o'clock tom bergens everyone yeah go see him go say hi to kyle i'm gonna say this pod's going up early so kyle's got an early early start to the day done by one i have one request make sure keep posting your songs though uh whenever you go out because i find great enjoyment that late night oh shucks thanks i don't know if this is a jukebox place but but I'll let you know. Good.

Just bring a little outdoor speaker. That's what everybody does in Manhattan Beach. You just bring it in. Anybody doing that in bars yet? Public places? Oh, outdoor speaker thing on the bike? Big deal. No self-awareness.

Or they're just on a bike. I don't know who's right or wrong in that one all right we'll leave that one for another pod thank you as always please subscribe rate and view we'll talk to you on monday Thank you.